General Favorite cube cards from the late 90/early 2000s

gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

Hi, so I've recently become particularly enamored with the look of Magic cards from the period of Mirage block to Onslaught block (1996-2003) and have been thinking about constructing a small cube focused on that era of Magic. Problem is, I was not really an active player during this time (my first cards were from 7th edition and I didn't actually know how to play the game lol), so I don't really have the deep knowledge of the card pool from that era. What are some of y'all's favorite designs from this era, whether it be for gameplay, aesthetic reasons, or both? What themes do you think could shine in a cube pulling from these sets? Do you think there's enough material for a solid 180-ish cube?

I know that the power band of this run of sets is pretty wide (particularly because of the presence of Urza's block), but since playing with actual 20 year old pieces of cardboard would be part of the appeal here, I want to make this cube without proxies. So I would want to exclude some of the really egregious stuff so I'm not spending thousands of dollars getting Gaea's Cradles and Tolarian Academies etc. So not going for a full power max feel here.

If anyone has a list focused on this era that'd be helpful too!
 
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Rusje

Rusje

The problem is: what’cha want?
Of all these blocks it is possible to make a block cube. It is also possible to make a cube using cards from all these sets.

A few things to keep in mind:
Creatures are way, but I mean way, weaker than now. Still and surprisingly, the cards that are really powerful in max power cube like cradle or academy are not power houses in my urza block cube.
Over the years there has been power creep in especially creatures, look at creatures from mirage/tempest and compare them to onslaught.
Each block consists of around 330 (+20 basic lands) +143+143 cards. That’s over 600 cards. In the old days there were 2 or 3 main abilities in the block and many small unnamed abilities/themes. What they did correct and went wrong in my morph cube (onslaught block) is that only a part of the creatures should have morph (96 card have morph in their oracle) Similarly, there are only 60 cards that have/mention cycling.

Before I ramble on about those golden days of magic, where the major (maybe only?) flaw was that the fixing sucked really hard (and flood/screw mitigation but hey, who’s counting), could you tell us what’cha want?
 
StrionicAdventurer

StrionicAdventurer

This is a crazy coincidence, because I've been working on a 180-card retro nostalgia cube heavily based in the Invasion Block with some Onslaught, Odyssey, and contemporary core set cards included.

I'll post my list as soon as I can get CubeCobra to load it. There's some kind of glitch making it act weird.
 
Nanonox

Nanonox

What is your stance on Stax, color hate and such? There were a lot of hateful cards back then so knowing if you want to lean into it or avoid it would be helpful!
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
There are probably plenty of people who have already made cubes that fit this criteria. The term you are somewhat looking for is Premodern. If you search cubecobra for that term you will see plenty of cubes for inspiration. Here is one for example: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/1j7pg

Sure it might give you sets from before invasion, but most of those sets are either severely underpowered, or the cards that aren't are just too overpowered. Also gives an idea of what archetypes exist within this card set.

Also, wizards also made a set that tried to hit into this nostalgia vein already: Dominaria Masters
Sure, it also includes Time Spiral Blocks, but it is mostly from the sets you mentioned, so a lot of good cards there to mull(drifter) over.

If you are too lazy to search or click on link though, here is a smattering of cards I think hold up pretty well today and some personal favourites:



Hopefully this gives some cool ideas. Oh, and one playset of cards I should highly recommend:

These landcyclers have been a reliable source of fixing for 3 sets now (Onslaught, Vintage Masters/Eternal Masters, Masters 25), and they have even been power crept 3 times over the past year just to show you that this is a great way of making sure flood and screw are mitigates as much as the developers have the tools to do so.
 
ravnic

ravnic



Pianna is a weaker Glorious Anthem (also cool card) but doesn't eat up a noncreature slot.
Shelter is still just white's coolest trick imo.
Battle Screech is one of the few good token makers from that time and therefor essential to enable such synergies.
Pacifism is a good and elegant removal spell.
Death or Glory is tricky to enable but really fun if you can pull it off.



Merfolk Looter is perfect. So simple, yet does so much.
Willbender is my favorite morph. So fun to get someone with it.
Wonder is almost a buildaround but works in many different shells.
FoF is still the most fun draw spell innexistence.
Mana Leak is an example of the sweet counterspells we used to get in that era. Today it's deemed to strong fro Standard, because it counters stupid three mana 4/5s with ten upsides.



Gravedigger taught me about card advantage before I knew the term, a perfect design imo.
Husk is a great sac outlet. It and Carrion Feeder are a must have for any sacrifice things.
Nantuko Shade is a great payoff if you want to support mono color decks.
Do or Die is a very fun removal spell. Guess I like piles.
Haunted Crossroads is another favorite of mine, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling in a selfmill deck, athough such a deck might not be possible within that range.



Pup's the best Red 1-drop to actually attack.
Fledgling Dragon is a great Finisher that works in different shells.
Fiery Temper is a decent floor, great ceiling madness card. Love it.
Firebolt is a nice removal spell that can help Rx to pull ahead.
Similarly, Starstorm is a great sweeper. Instant speed is huge and cycling helps in situation where you're already ahead.



Rootwalla, Mongrel and RotW of course show how much I like madness and selfmill strategies, but what's great is that they all offer a decent baseline without those microsynergies.
Werebear is still my favorite 2-mana dork, which might be partly due to it's flavor Text, but also because he plays well.
Vigilante is an underrated Naturalize on a stick.



Psychatog is an (in)famous finisher that also works in different shells.
Mind Stone is still my favorite 2-mana rock, that taps for colorless. Elegant and useful.
The cycling lands are in my cube since forever. They're not exciting but the relief you feel when you topdeck them instead of a basic makes up for it.
 
StrionicAdventurer

StrionicAdventurer

There are already a lot of great suggestions in this thread, so I'm just going to mention something I decided to do while working on a similar project: include a (very small) number of modern cards that appear with the old-border treatment. I put 4 copies of Terramorphic Expanse and 4 copies of Ash Barrens in my list simply because mana fixing was trash in this era of the game, and I wanted to include my favorite multicolor cards and off-color kicker cards. I guess I could have included 8 copies of Terminal Morraine instead, but, like... yuck. Then I included one or two cards in each color that are either fun build-arounds like Mesa Enchantress or cleaned-up versions of old effects like Persist.

If I could get an old-border Murder or Assassinate in here, I'd do it. I ended up settling for Death Stroke but came very close to including Damn instead. But I didn't want to overseason the sauce with this kind of thing.

Anyway, CubeCobra is working for me again so here's my take on this: Picnic Table Tactics
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Kirblinx said:
Hopefully this gives some cool ideas. Oh, and one playset of cards I should highly recommend:
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These landcyclers have been a reliable source of fixing for 3 sets now (Onslaught, Vintage Masters/Eternal Masters, Masters 25), and they have even been power crept 3 times over the past year just to show you that this is a great way of making sure flood and screw are mitigates as much as the developers have the tools to do so.
Click to expand...
I am so happy they printed more versions of these cards. I always liked how typecycling played, but the actual creature ends of these cards felt very difficult to use and not that fun (save for Elvish Aberration, which rules). I think the extra options from MOM, LTR, and LCI are welcome additions to the Cubiverse.
 
StrionicAdventurer

StrionicAdventurer

Just want to shout out a family of creatures I think are actually really good and cool from this era:



There are more of these, like Doomsday Specter, and I've always been a big fan. Their bodies are above rate (especially for the pre-Watchwolf era when they came out) and they play really well with Kicker (and to some degree with Morph, too). If there's a more satisfying sequence than Flametongue Kavu into Shivan Wurm, I don't know about it.
 
ravnic

ravnic

StrionicAdventurer said:
Just want to shout out a family of creatures I think are actually really good and cool from this era:



There are more of these, like Doomsday Specter, and I've always been a big fan. Their bodies are above rate (especially for the pre-Watchwolf era when they came out) and they play really well with Kicker (and to some degree with Morph, too). If there's a more satisfying sequence than Flametongue Kavu into Shivan Wurm, I don't know about it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the good times when overstatted creatures used to come with downsides - that you could then turn into advantages by putting the right synergies together. I miss that time.



Call me an old fogey, but these spark much more joy for me than those.

 
Rusje

Rusje

There are already so many great examples of cards from that era. Invasion block was great. That era has a ton of cards which change the rules of the game without being bombs itself.
E.g:

Together with the fact that there was time to fumble for a turn, let alone as stated above the joy of having bad creatures. I am so glad that a cube of that area can bring back the joy!
Let alone the rattlesnake cards like the sleeper enchantments, the deed, and so on.

There is one overstatted creature in that era:

but even that one is nowhere near the powerlevelof today. You can chump it all day long.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

Whoops sorry gang had a busy week! Thank you so much for all the fantastic suggestions. This is a great place to start and I definitely feel like I can use this as a springboard to start putting something together :)

Some thoughts on stuff that came up:

Stax:
I don't think I would want to include so many of these that there is a viable prison deck that does nothing but play stax pieces and completely lock the game down, but could be fun to have a few of these that can be played the way something like Tangle Wire can, where it doesn't necessarily have to be a part of a full-on Stax deck but can just be used as one tool in your tool kit.

Color hate:
Might include a small smattering of this since it's part of the era, but wouldn't want it to be a major focus. I think if there's anything like this I'd want it to be more on the landwalk side of things and less on the Boil side of things (i.e: stuff that's strong against the opposing color, but doesn't completely shut that player out of the game).

Old rules:
Would be fun but unfortunately I'm just not familiar enough with the old rules to actually do it, since I'm usually the one in my play group explaining the rules to people. I also don't really play with enough really enfranchised players that I could convince them hey in order to play this cube you need to know the rules from the 90s. I know this nerfs some stuff, particularly cards that benefit from damage on the stack.

General goals:
I think the idea here will be to create a sort of "best of the stuff that's not $10+ dollars" cube, and mostly focused on the fair end of things since a lot of the combo pieces from this era are really expensive. I think the suggestions of stuff like Psychatog, Mystic Snake, Flametongue Kavu, Shivan Wurm, Call of the Herd, etc. are exactly where I'm looking to be!
 
Rusje

Rusje

So, you mean a invasion/odyssey block cube?
You know what, it might work.
Thing is: the main abilities in odyssey cube are great, but are parasitic to each other:
Flashback and treshold are at odds to each other. Even taken this into account, that block was seriously great.

Oh man, do I miss the times of beating each others heads with pre-constructed decks.
 
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