Power 9 Low Power Cube [360]

Power 9 Low Power 360 Card Cube
A cube with the Power 9 and other powerful spells from the early days of magic, paired with simple but sweet cards drawn from Modern around 2015 and Pauper. Inspired by the Oldschool 93/94 format, and letting the game of Magic the Gathering itself shine, in place of the text boxes of individual cards.

This is basically my idea of a "classic cube", without the trappings of just playing whatever cards are the strongest, favoring instead a play style closer to building kitchen table decks with access to strong spells.

Cubecobra link: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/80bf8290-6bf2-4027-a573-9882e37d2337

Color Identities
I haven't assigned any particular color pair identities, choosing instead to favor a kind of "pile of cards" approach, where each color has internal build around cards (mostly the powerful spells listed below). The individual colors are pretty straight forward:

{W}: White weenies curving into balance, armageddon or cataclysm
{U}: Play some fliers, then backup with counter spells and bounce
{B}: Discard, removal and symmetric sacrifice as disruption, with creatures that try to break the symmetry
{G}: Ramp into fat 4 and 5 drop creatures, backup with pump spells
{R}: Goblins and burn, classic red deck wins approach

Cube Foundation
The basis for the cube is pairing the Power 9 and other powerful spells with pretty average creatures. The Power 9 consists of:



Some additional powerful spells:


This is then paired with a bunch of riptide lab style low-to-mid power creatures that mostly can't take over the game itself:


Example Decks
So far I've only done a couple of test drafts on CubeCobra, but here's some of them:

Jeskai Black Lotus Tempo











UB Timetwister Aggro









Abzan Siege Rhino Cataclysm









 
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Really cool concept. While I love my well balanced high synergy cube, sometimes I just want to draft some macro archetypes with some sweet power outliers from the ninties.
 
My friend and I drafted and played this cube last night. First match he made a crazy Red/green Aggro deck sylvan library, bloodbraid elf etc to get an early card advantage and overwhelm me. I went a black white stacks deck after first pack first picking smokestack. I ended up also getting braids and drafted a ton of creatures that sac’ed for value. I never really got smokestack online but the deck still functioned well. Got a TON of value off that 1/3 black human wizard guy that draws you a card when a creatures dies.

second match we somehow both drafted Azorius control decks and the games turned into pretty hilarious standoffs.

overall thought the cube was super fun and well designed. Probably too much removal and fixing for my tastes but that’s purely a personal preference thing. There were points where we literally had back and forth removal battles featuring me play mother of runes turn one on the play. He immediately portable holed it. Then I oblivion ringed his portable hole. Then he used cast out on my oblivion ring. Then I used unexplained absence on his cast out. Hilarious but seems like too high of a density considering we were in the same colors.

Really liked the concept and definitely plan to draft and play it again.
 
How and where did you draft and play it?
We draft on draftmancer.com
You can upload custom card sets (I.e. cubes) quite easily and draft using a ton of different formats. We usually do glimpse and burn with a 1 card burn and 2 bots with 5-6 packs. That’s the one we have found most feels like the quantity and quality of cards you get in a standard 3 pack 8 person draft.

for playing we used to use untap.in but it’s pretty laggy to we started using something called xmage and its worlds better.

all of it is free so pretty nice
 
We draft on draftmancer.com
You can upload custom card sets (I.e. cubes) quite easily and draft using a ton of different formats. We usually do glimpse and burn with a 1 card burn and 2 bots with 5-6 packs. That’s the one we have found most feels like the quantity and quality of cards you get in a standard 3 pack 8 person draft.

for playing we used to use untap.in but it’s pretty laggy to we started using something called xmage and its worlds better.

all of it is free so pretty nice
Fun! I'd love to see any deck lists, if you still have them. I have some cards on post order I'm still waiting to arrive, but I'm hoping to get to play this cube in person sometime soon.
 
overall thought the cube was super fun and well designed. Probably too much removal and fixing for my tastes but that’s purely a personal preference thing. There were points where we literally had back and forth removal battles featuring me play mother of runes turn one on the play. He immediately portable holed it. Then I oblivion ringed his portable hole. Then he used cast out on my oblivion ring. Then I used unexplained absence on his cast out. Hilarious but seems like too high of a density considering we were in the same colors.

Really liked the concept and definitely plan to draft and play it again.
Thanks for drafting the cube! Very flattering to have it getting play tested. I agree that there might be a high number of removal spells, but I tend to prefer slightly too much rather than too little removal starting off, since it tends to make it easier to deal with the explosiveness of the unfair cards in the format.

I'll keep an eye out for how it feels when I play myself, and maybe tune it back a bit. Another reason for the number of removal spells is that I wanted to avoid being too "cute" with build arounds and thing-matter cards, something I've felt like I've over emphasized before.
 
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