“A Kind of Magic” Cube

A Magic: The Gathering Cube designed by the Lundqvist Brothers

The Lundqvist Brothers’ “A Kind of Magic” Cube is a 360 card draftable set designed for 2 - 8 players. The fundamental design philosophy was to build a high-synergy draft environment that could accommodate as many of magic’s color combinations as possible, with enough room for multiple mechanical archetypes to fit within a given color combination. Each card in the cube tends to work well across several archetypes and will often have synergies that make them desirable draft picks for many different strategies. Decks that are built around multiple strategies and are able to take advantage of many card synergies are most likely to come out on top.

Although this cube was designed with the goal of generating unique decks in every draft, there are certain themes that are particularly prevalent in its design to help guide the identities of each color and their combinations. The major archetypes you will likely encounter during your draft and the colors that support them are listed below.

This list is not exhaustive! Keep an eye out for unexpected synergies and you may be able to really surprise your opponent.

Mechanical Archetypes:

Fliers: , Creatures that fly are able to go straight over the heads of your opponent’s grounded creatures. Pair with effects that care about combat damage being dealt and you’ll be in for a great time.

Artifacts: , All colors of mana have access to artifacts, but each utilizes them differently. Major artifact synergies are found in , with minor synergies in .

Blink: , This strategy uses cards that are able to “blink” your permanents to get additional value from “Enters the Battlefield” or “Leaves the Battlefield” effects.

Lifegain: , Use creatures with lifelink and other life gaining/draining effects to keep your life total high. This strategy is primarily viable in , but variants with the other colors listed are very possible as well. Some cards offer payoffs for gaining life each turn, so keep a good mix of payoffs and enablers.

Enchantments: , although all colors have enchantments to enable this strategy, have the payoffs which reward you for playing them.

Devotion: , With enough mana symbols among your permanents devoted to a specific color, certain cards will offer powerful effects. The gods of Theros offer support to those willing to tilt their distribution towards their mana color.

Counters: , Creatures can grow more powerful over time with +1/+1 and other ability counters. have minor counter themes but will likely need support from and/or to be fully effective.

Mill: , Cards that reduce the opponent’s library or care for certain numbers of cards to have made it into the opponent’s graveyard.

Reanimator: , The graveyard is just a resource and it's possible to get multiple uses out of your creatures. Strategies with tend to focus on reusing smaller creatures, but it is also possible to manipulate your graveyard to enable the reanimation of much larger threats.

Spellslinger: , This archetype likes to cast many small spells over the course of the game, typically focusing on cards that will reward them for doing so. Creatures with Prowess can become very powerful in decks that are able to cast multiple spells per turn. Spells that can be cast multiple times, or that can be “bought back,” are particularly valuable.

Discard: , Forces the opponent to discard cards in order to get card advantage

Self-Discard: , Certain cards benefit from discarding, allowing the player to generate value from cycling through their deck.

Aggro: , Get as many small creatures out as quickly as possible and reduce the opponent’s life total before they can set up defenses. Burn spells and -based removal help keep the board clear.

Tokens: , All colors can create tokens of different kinds. are the best at creating tokens and have the best cards for accelerating token creation.

Sacrifice: , Everything is a resource, even your own permanents! Some cards will provide benefits when other permanents are sacrificed. Creatures that have death triggers or tokens that aren’t critical to defense are great targets to pair with a sacrifice outlet. can be used for fodder.

Self-Mill: , The graveyard is just another resource. These decks like to put things into the graveyard and be able to use graveyard-based card effects or choose cards to return to hand later. Under the right conditions, you can even win the game with your entire deck in your library.

Ramp/Landfall: , This deck wants to put all of its resources into generating as much mana as possible, all in order to afford big threats that will trample over the opponent’s comparatively smaller creatures.

Tribal: Humans (), Wizards (), Rats (),
Elementals (), Warriors (), Zombies (), Elves (), Golems (), Goblins (), and Spiders ()! All these creature types have some kind of synergy in the cube, but all creature types can be viable tribes using artifacts that provide benefits for consistent creatures types such as Obelisk of Urd and Metallic Mimic.