Art by Wizard of BargeThis is a 360 powered cube, focused on making a fun drafting environment where opening packs makes you sweat about what to pick. Following Data Generated Vintage Cube. Thinking about a more tailored build like Sol cube
Supported Strategies
The sections below explore various strategies supported by this cube. I've broken down the strategies included in the cube by the amount of commitment you as a drafter need to make
Base blue
Now, we need to start with a special acknowledgment of Blue; universally seen as a powerhouse in cube formats. We see its versatility in supporting multiple themes due to its depth of powerful cards like Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and Mana Drain. Let's explore how blue forms the backbone of various dynamic themes in our cube before moving on to archetype specific descriptions.
Archetypes
I define an archetype as something that requires a heavy drafting commitment. Decks in this category focus almost exclusively on a cohesive game plan, with the majority of cards in the deck working toward achieving a specific goal.
Artifact
This theme thrives on leveraging artifacts to increase your mana resources, making it ideal when paired with premium accelerators like Sol Ring or a Mana Drain. It excels at deploying powerful finishers swiftly, putting opponents on the back foot by ramping up beyond their capacity to respond.
Ramp
The Ramp archetype in Vintage Cube, while formidable in other formats like Legacy Cube, finds itself slightly outpaced in the high-powered environment of Vintage Cube. This archetype often lacks the explosive or disruptive elements provided by other cube strategies, making it less dominant.
The strategy revolves around utilizing mana ramp creatures to quickly deploy significant threats or impactful cards. Although the Mono Green Ramp archetype is straightforward and easier to pilot, it's important to incorporate elements of disruption, similar to those outlined in the lands overview section, to enhance its effectiveness and ensure a more robust deck.
Death and Taxes
Death and Taxes utilizes an array of seemingly underpowered cards that, when synergized, create a formidable strategy capable of winning games. This archetype thrives on efficiency and speed, frequently benefiting from being under drafted despite having one of the highest win rate of archetypes.
The strategy is straightforward; deploy cheap, efficient white creatures early, enhance their impact with equipment, and disrupt the opponent's mana base to maintain tempo. This approach aims to build a quick and overwhelming presence before opponents can stabilize.
Storm
Storm remains one of the most intricate and rewarding themes to draft in the cube. While not always the strongest archetype, its appeal lies in the complex puzzle-solving it demands and the exhilarating off-the-wall combinations it can produce. Storm's strength comes from its speed and ability to operate independently of the opponent's actions, though it requires precise play and a critical mass of specific cards to succeed.
Themes
A theme requires a few synergistic cards to execute but do not necessitate a deck to be entirely focused on them. These allow for mixing and matching with other themes in a deck. Further, cards in a theme are often interchangle or replaceable with one another.
Lands
The Lands theme in the cube exploits the multifaceted utility of lands beyond mana production and are are actually a collection of various combos drafters can assemble. These themes are ideal for players who enjoy manipulating the battlefield through their lands.
Reanimator
Reanimator decks are known for their ability to swiftly bring formidable creatures from the graveyard back to the battlefield, making them a powerhouse in the cube. Typically rooted in black, these decks can also effectively incorporate elements of blue or red, enhancing their strategic depth and flexibility. The core strategy involves placing a powerful creature into your graveyard and resurrecting it as quickly as possible, enabling some of the format's quickest and most dramatic plays. This approach not only allows for explosive game starts but also shares synergies with Sneak Attack and Flash themes, creating a dynamic overlap that enriches the deck's tactical options.
Sneak and Breach
Over time, the Sneak and Breach theme has evolved within the cube meta. Once heralded as the most reliable combo deck, it now competes with a wider range of viable strategies, such as Flash
Wheels
The Wheels theme in the vintage cube capitalizes on the dynamic interplay between wheel effects—like Echo of Eons and Timetwister—which compel all players to discard their hands and draw new cards, and draw punishers that restrict or penalize opponents for drawing multiple cards. Draw punishers such as Leovold, Emissary of Trest, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. The key strategy involves deploying a draw punisher before triggering a wheel effect, drastically curtailing opponents’ options while replenishing your own hand.
Build-arounds
These are centered around single, unique cards in the cube that dictate the deck’s strategy. These cards are often powerful enough to shape an entire deck around but are represented only by single copies, making them unique focal points.
Channel
The Channel theme explores the high-risk, high-reward potential of the card Channel. This card, by allowing you to convert life points into colorless mana, provides a flexible foundation for casting powerful spells that can decisively influence the game. The deck can dramatically swing games by enabling the casting of overwhelming threats early or by accelerating the deployment of multiple smaller yet impactful plays.
Flash
The "Flash" theme revolves around the cunning use of the card Flash, which allows you to put a creature card onto the battlefield and then sacrifice it unless you pay its mana cost. This strategy is potent due to its ability to instantaneously deploy creatures with powerful enters-the-battlefield (ETB) or leaves-the-battlefield effects at a moment's notice, often catching opponents off guard.
Time Walk
Time Walk as a build-around card and draft theme in the cube focuses on leveraging the extraordinary capability of taking additional turns through various synergistic interactions. Time Walk when combined with specific other cards, can have it's extra turn effect repeated or amplified to achieve overwhelming board states and game advantage.
Tinker
The Tinker theme revolves around the strategic use of the powerful Urza's Legacy card, Tinker, which transforms early-game artifacts into colossal mid-game threats by allowing players to sacrifice a cheaper artifact to instantly deploy one of the most formidable artifacts from their deck. This quick transformation can dramatically shift the game balance, making Tinker a pivotal element in executing a game-winning strategy.
Oath of Druids
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Lurrus
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