We Built a Mono Blue Desert Cube | #102

We build a new cube!! In this episode of Powerful Nothing, we go over a mono blue desert designed for 4 players. We go over how we built the cube and what cool archetypes and packages we've included, as well as give some advice for those looking to build their own desert cube.

Cube List: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/powerful_waterworld

Time Codes:
1:18 - Blue Desert Overview
8:57 - Picking the constraints for the cube
24:02 - What are the archetypes?
44:33 - What are the packages?
54:33 - How has it played?
57:05 - How would you scale it up?

Cards Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/8gZIGNY-YEW3rTz1PyEXpg

Video Version: https://youtu.be/m9tVORL-mk0

Cube Skeleton Episode: https://youtu.be/92aS4ZU_nd8
My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/2sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

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Transcript

0:03

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James James. How have you been this week? Yeah, I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing all right. Thanks. Yeah, I actually know James. I had a problem recently. I had a spare bit of space on my shelf, and the only thing I thought to fill it with was another cube. Yeah. You've got to say, on top of that, you know, have a space that got a bit a bit roomy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't look empty. It's all about making my dining room. Looks good. That's definitely the reason why I've gone ahead and built another cube. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. I've gone ahead and built a mono blue desert cube. So what we're gonna be talking about today, I'm gonna be talking about the cube and also the kind of design and build process, in case you were thinking about building a desert cube yourself. Before we get into that. A quick bit of housekeeping. As always, there will be time codes down in the show notes below if you want to jump around to certain parts of the episode, as well as a link to a card gallery where we'll show every card that we talk about if we don't read them out. And also down there, there'll be a link to a YouTube version if you want to see the pretty pictures move around the screen while you're down there, please consider giving the podcast a five star review. Thumbs up greatly helps us out. Do cool and new things, but let's talk about my new cube. Is this number five? Is this number six? There's no way of knowing. For a while I wanted to build a desert cube. I drafted one for the first time at at the very first cube, about 18 months, maybe two years ago now. And I really liked the way it flipped the draft on its head. We'll get into that. We know what Monte Blue means, but what is a desert cube for our listeners? Yeah. So a Desert cube, kind of comes in two basic flavors, like the the general gist is, is that, the ones that I have played, it means that you have to draft your lands. So it's a slightly bigger cube. The cube is maybe about 30% bigger than it would be normally, but you draft, your lands are like lands are a resource. Like the desert part is that like the lands are drying up, they're hard to get that kind of stuff. I have seen some versions where they like, restrict it to, like only having one land in the land box. So like, you can only so like you have to draft all your colors, but you can have as many swamps as you want. Like for me, I like the, the conceit of you have to draft up everything, including your lands. And that's what this desert cube is. Yeah, I think that's cool. And, it's an interesting restriction to put in the players. Right. So you say the cube is bigger. We were also drafting more cards. Yes, generally you are. So for, full context so that the version I have built is a four player cube. So that would be, I guess a two, but as it were. But, as a version I have built is 216 cards. How I got there is that traditionally when you do an eight player, does it does it cube you draft three packs of 18. So basically what I did is I just multiplied that an up to scale so that every card was drafted and it had enough for four players. And that's how I ended up at 216. Nice. Yeah, that makes sense. So you have enough slots to get roughly the same number of spells drafted as you would in a normal cube. Plus the slots, because you have to draft your lands, including your basic lands. Yeah, because of the make up, you are playing a higher percent. Oh, you're playing a much larger percentage of your picks because the lands are in there as well. But like the pool of cards that you're not running is not as big as a normal draft. But like you, there's still enough room for you to make picks. It's not like, you have the emblem or that conspiracy where you have to play every card you draw. You, you still have enough cards to build a deck. Basically, you're still cutting about 15 to 20 cards. Yeah, for sure. But no, not a lot of transformational sideboard plans unveiled in the desert cubes I found. Yeah. That's it exactly. I like the actual numbers. You have 14 cuts to make. So that's still wiggle room. You still have a time to build the deck that you want. Another thing that I liked about the idea of Desert Cube is I also quite like the form factor. I like the if I'm honest, I like the idea of a whole cube that fits in a flat pack. That's quite nice to me. That's one thing I could put in my bag, bring to the pub and we can play. As for players, that's quite nice. Yeah, for sure, for sure. If having to get in to just have a cube in the bottom of your bag is quite nice. If, the spots where you would like the cube and you're just like, oh, here's, here's, here's a cube I have flying around, and that's great. So talks about why it does a cube. What let's use going mono blue. Yeah. So when I was thinking about what I wanted from a desert, I knew I wanted that, I wanted the lands to matter. But I kind of realize I didn't specifically mean that the colors of mana had to matter. Like the the fact that you are doing stuff with lands and having to draw off lands is interesting in itself. I kind of settled on the idea of mono blue because I've built cubes before that have not been full fledged colors like I've built, like I built a salt I two. But a couple of years ago, I'm kind of like I've definitely found like, there are very easily ways of making decks and archetypes that don't follow the color pi like, as long as like the I knew going into it, I knew I would need to have specific or different themes to make it work. But like, I felt the I felt that blue to begin with anyway, had the most interesting things that I could do with it as a starting point and had like enough themes to make it interesting. And also it means that kind of like, like one of the things that kind of like we've heard on like, like the other podcasts talk about and like we've touched on a few times here is like the, like mental capacity that comes with a draw. Like, you can't throw too many things at your players. And like, from my experience of doing deserts in the past, like having the notion of you have to draft your lands when you have to then worry about the colors of lands as well. That can take away from me anyway, from the experience. So for me, taking the taking the color part of it out of it, stripping that away makes it easier for my Cubas to draw off the cube and enjoy themselves, as long as I was still doing. Interesting thing with the lands. Like if it was just it was all islands that wouldn't be interesting. But like, you can throw in tap plans, you can throw in lines that don't generate colors of manner. You can add in artifact lands, you can do different things with them. And that's how you kind of regain that element of like drafting lands is interesting and still matters, but without having to worry about like the colors basically. Yeah, that checks out. I, I do think from the ones that I've done have Skip I have learned that I have more variations on that islands than I knew existed. I think you found out about every alternative of island that comes into play that yeah, is very good, very good. I love a good halibut that. Exactly, exactly. So it sounds like. So that makes sense for, a four player cube as well. Right. Because it can be tricky to do a four player cube with the full five colors and not have it devolve into like one person is the only person in that color and that deck is completely cracked. So I think going for a four player desert cube mono color makes loads of sense. Actually, I think that's quite cool. Yeah, exactly. And I think with the desert as well as a desert should never be someone's first cube. It should not be the first cube you built. It's always going to be a second or third game. It's always going to be a cube. You pull out every so often. And when you're doing that, it means that generally there's going to be less people that naturally want to do it, if that makes sense. Like like, we've definitely found that kind of in our play group. They're kind of like, if it's on a weekend, we can get between 6 and 8 people to draft quite comfortably on a weekday. We like it's there's less people about people are doing things people have things on. And that's kind of more where this is for. If I want to do this, it's more for like us doing stuff midweek because I only for Player Cube that we currently have in our rotation is your, version of the order of up to cube, which is a lot of fun, but and it really did great, great at filling that role of what do we have midweek to do, I think I guess we have auto battler as well. But like I said, it's a thing to do midweek and like I think we there's just another thing that we can kind of put in my bag, take to the pub, we'll play for a couple of hours and then we'll go on our merry way. I'm like, yeah, that kind of form factor was what was quite nice to me. Yeah, no, it seems very, very nice to have as an option. So there's I've talked about why you want to go mono do Taza. What was your what's your process to sort of picking out your constraints, that you wanted to apply to this cube. Yeah. So I think with the desert, like you, you already have kind of your theme, if that makes sense. And I think it's important to lean into that. Your theming around the idea that lands are resource lands are a rarity. So therefore kind of leaning into that I think is important at every point. For me, as I kind of touched on, we then like whenever you're building a cube, number of players is important. I knew what I knew I wanted to build for four. So that was sorted. The question of, are you drafting that all the lands or not? Are you giving them their land box like like I mentioned, like some people do that, you can have as many swamps or plains as all this or waste as you want, but you have to generate your colors in the cube. For me, I thought it like, if I'm going to do a desert, I wanted it to be the full, sweaty experience of pack five. Do I have enough land? There's no saving me in the land box. I like the idea of everything being in there, just being a nice form factor. That was important. So for me, for this anyway, the drafting all the lands within the cube was important. The next thing that I really want for me, for a desert and for any cube and this question is very important for desert, is what is the power level in a desert cube? I personally think that the power level should be quite low, like you're actively giving your players a bad mana base, so therefore you can't. Like if you then have super efficient spells that snowball quickly, they will just take over and it will kind of lead to so many non games because in this cube, there is a high potential that someone might not play a land every time. For the first five turns, because you're limited to what you have drafted. Some people like like I did make it so that in the cube there is enough for everyone to have 19. That was the number I figured on. But there's a world where someone drafts slightly more, which means someone ends up with slightly less. So like there's a real world where someone could be running a 1516 land deck. And if the super powerful, efficient cards that come down and take over a game and snowball are in it, it means that, it means that even. Yeah, it means that it's not going to be as fun. So for me, having the lower power level in a desert is important because because it gives people time to catch up. It means people can't get too far ahead. But then also, if I'm honest with you, like I have a bunch of cubes that do powerful things. There's a bunch of cool jank that I want to run and like. For me, this was the perfect place to do it. Yeah, no, I think there's some some very cool car choices in vibe. First, you don't get to see in many cubes for, the downed weapon Smith package. Oh, yeah. It's absolute power. Yeah. I yeah, I think one of the things you absolutely nailed to the rescue was the, the ratio of lands to spells and the fact that the lands aren't all on the same power level is quite cool. A valley did feel like there was that splat, and you really had to work for it. I think the draft I did, I just got to 17 lands and it really needs 17 lands my back. But I had to play, like, some very, very bad ones. I think I was playing, lair, and my motto blew that quick. Oh, yes, I ten overlays like that, like crew lands. Except for you only tap for one mana. You know you've got it, you've got a return land to play. But that you see your back to your hand from play. But there's some taps for one mana, so you're kind of just down a mano. It's. It's bad, tough. But we made it work. But, yeah, I, I felt like it really had that good sweat. Like. So you mentioned the on the flop to cute earlier. I think I'm kind of on to rebuild my two bit version of that a little bit, because one of the small issues I have with it is I think there were slightly too many on a fault. Like, I don't think you need to sweat enough. And I think this that the land fascia invest really does make you sweat. And I think that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, I settled on 19. Just because, like, like, yeah, obviously I don't need 17. And like, because this is also like, like, power level wise, it's kind of like limited pre 2020 magic if that kind of makes sense. Right. That's kind of really what it's like like when we go through it a bit more like like there are some power outlets, but you have to draft around them. But like generally speaking that's kind of what it's settled on. But like, yeah, when it came to the lands that I was thinking, okay, I, I might want 18 potentially. But like so so the 19 number I thought was that is enough for everyone to get them. But you have to actively get it. Like, like part of it was like I wanted the lands to matter. Like I wanted an island to be a defensible pack one, pick one, because, you know, it's going to go in your deck and you know it's going to be good. For the time. Yeah. The first time I played this, I definitely did my math wrong. I was like, okay, I think may end up doing six packs of nine to replicate the three packs of 18. I was like, okay, I need two lands, a pack and I'm going to be golden. Then halfway through, I redid my math like, no, that's wrong. I only have six lands. Halfway through, I'm like, oh wait, I've done my math awfully. The last half was very sweaty. We got there though, like, if I'm going to do a desert, I want to lean into that. I want to have those moments where it's like, there's this awesome card, but there's a land I need to make my deck function. That's that. That's kind of why you're doing it. If that makes sense. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think the selection of lands as nice as well, like Island is not the best land, but it's definitely like solid, the top half of the level of land, you know, because there's a lot of tap stuff in there. And, you know, you can afford a few tap lands in your deck without them punishing you. Right? But the the more tap lands look like the six tap plan to add to your deck is way more impactful than the first step that you add, right? Yeah, because the first one you draw, you can get away with playing at a point in your life where it doesn't hurt you at all. If you draw free tap lands, the third one is like definitely hurting you and stopping you playing a spell, and you would be able to, and the wave and mana base to set up in this cube. It's I mean, we've got to be on like close to 50% of the lands and to tap twice, I would assume. So, yes. So fair is like a pretty big premium, I think, on lands and phone tapped. Which is cool. And it's, it's an interesting puzzle of how you're meant to prioritize those things as well. And that also like the lands also directly kind of affect the power level, like it's one of the reasons why the power level can't be that much higher, because people are going to be playing tap lands. They're not going to be playing on curve like like with the lands as well. It also directly kind of when I was choosing them, like so this is a mono blue cube, but there are a couple of ways of generating mana outside of those colors. And that was, that was very deliberate. Like, like I, I like the idea of there being ways of playing other colors, but you have to really work for them. It's not like like 95% of your deck will be blue. You might have one splash, if that makes sense. And that there's a few ways you can do that. And I was quite careful with the lands like specifically like, I've put like, 1 or 2 of the verges in here. They're the lands that tap. I've put the ones that tap for a blue, or they can tap for a different color. If you control an island because we're making them care about the islands, it's not very like the lands mattering like that's kind of the base. And like like. Yeah. Jones mentioned the layers. They are ways of making other colors, but they're not good. They're not reliable. They're not going to do it on turn one or early in the game. That kind of stuff. Like, another card is called like Ancient Spring because then it's like tap to tap side for a blue, or you can add a white or a black. That's how you're casting your card with the black splash. You get it one time, that kind of stuff. And like, but there's a couple of ways of like, like making treasure in this, but not a great amount. But like it's you have to do something. You have to go through like hoop to get your spells. And like for me, because I decided it was going to be blue quite early leaning, like again, I chose something, I'm leaning into it and that was important. So like like there are some powerful cards in here that are in other colors. There's like carpet to flowers, very powerful card that makes a bunch of blue mana. So that makes a bunch of mana equal number of islands. Your opponent, which is very broken in this. But how are you actually casting it? Like, there's a card like skull in here. Whenever a player taps an island for mana deals that are damage. Incredibly powerful. But like, there's only, like 4 or 5 ways in the whole cube of making red very powerful. But you have to build around it. And that was very important. Yeah. And it's cool as a way of getting powerful, splashy effects into what is quite a low power cube. Fundamentally, it's for your advantage, for limitation of that. Mano is a difficult thing to come by. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I think like like there are a few other cards to kind of like live in that sort of. So like I called like Dread Return is in for example, like two black black. It's almost impossible to hard cast and it's like technically doable. But you are taking a bad land and a treasure creature and hoping to draw them in order and then dread return. But the flashback is interesting. The flashback three creatures effectively makes it a colorless card. So there's there's those kind of things sprinkled in. I'm in any cube where you're kind of, limiting colors. Still think of cards with alternate casting, cos I think that's quite important as well. I thought that was quite a cool way of doing it. Yeah. No, I think that's cool. All. So I notice in this cube that we are not sticking entirely to Singleton. John talks me through with his. Yeah. So so that's for a few reasons. Firstly, like the very first Desert Cube broke Singleton. I mean, we're breaking it like for from the off because we have islands in the cube. We have like 20 islands. That's immediately breaking. Singleton. The first Desert Cube I think was made had a bunch of accumulated knowledges and a lot of Kindles. And like when I was thinking about it again, because of that memory load, because of that, like, complexity, like how much a player, like how much a player should have to handle when building, like when playing a cube, running cards, the cap, running cards that come in multiples and care about multiples is a nice way of taking a load off of a player, because you only have to read accumulate knowledge once. So so specifically in this cube there are eight accumulate knowledges one in a blue instant, draw a card and draw cards equal the number of accumulated knowledge cards, and all graveyards probably been drafted, but it basically does the same thing. You only have to read that card once and you know what it does. And like when you're sweating about like, what's my land count? Just have it. Just having that little bit of low taken off you, I think is important. But like I haven't gone too hard with it. Like originally that was like a bunch of other packages that cared about like cards of the same name. But that's where, like the renowned weapon Smith stuff comes in, I get I, I'll go over there a bit more when we talk about some of the packages, but like Renown Weapon Smith, like there's two of those and it has an ability that that lets you two your cards named harp piss a bow or vault of Dragon Fire. So kind of like there's six cards in here, but you only have to read three of them. And also, it's kind of nice in the draft of like, it's a combo that has what the bits you want written on the card. It's something cool you can do in this power level of cube. The is written for the player. They don't have to work out how does this combo like like what are the deep combos of this cube based stuff with names I think is very interesting and like I've wanted to do stuff with like names matters for a while and this seemed like a perfect place to slide in. And one of the best ways you can do it is breaking Singleton. Yeah for sure. Yeah, I think the arc thing is cool actually, because there's eight acres in the cube and you know, they're all open, right? And they're in a four player draft. I think it's sort of an interesting puzzle of when do you want to get involved in the fight for Vex? Why do you not? Because also obviously arc normally, you know, it's like path with law and city path with two getting interesting at three. But when most of your opponents are kind of like, say, I have no case right at the end of a draft and, and I know my opponents on average you can have like three acres each. So if I see the like the last arc, I can I probably want to run it as a single turn. Right. And just three of all of my opponents. Okay. It's most of match ups. Yeah. My guess is everyone would want at least one arc, and then maybe some people go home and try and get the to like get the three or 4 or 5 of them. And then in the mirror you're like, I draw six cards now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you also end up for games for all interesting like so normally how it plays out when both players have a case is that neither player wants to cast them. Because you don't want to be the one casting arcs one and two involving one card and then two cards. Then your opponent casts arc number three and four and fours, because in that four cards, you've come out very badly from that exchange. So often what happens is you get to the villain for the the late game, and both players have a couple of accidents and eventually someone gets behind, feels the need to cast their arc, is quick to, to get something going and and generally as well for their opponent. But it's, it's an interesting puzzle and I like that card. You don't get to play in cubes very often, so I think it's a nice inclusion. Yeah. And like that's definitely kind of taking a little bit of inspiration from like down down, if I'm honest with you, this was one of like the version I've done that I have has I think eight, eight I can acknowledge and it was I don't think is the norm anymore. But I was like, yeah, that little sub battle is really cool and it's not something I just said, yeah, I get to do that often, which is very fun. Yeah, yeah. And I think to me like what we've just gone over is important for like anyone building a cube for the first time or any other cube, like working out your constraints, working out your numbers of players, working out like your lands, working out your power level, and like questions like singleton and colors. Those are very important. But specifically with a desert, you're kind of flipping it a bit because like the are you breaking singleton is way more important. What are you doing with your lands is way more important. And like, yeah, it's one of the cool things about building a desert is that you're you're working within the confines of something, you know, but you get to kind of how does this change, change how I build the whole thing. And that's really interesting. That's like like that's one of the reasons I wanted to build this. Yeah, it was a cool design experience as well. So a lot of fun. Guess. So let's move on. Talk about some of the archetypes involved. So it's always tricky with like monocle, all of cubes without the full five colors of you need a way to make sure that the decks on all the same. Because normally we get that for free because everyone's a bunch of different colors, so they can only play certain cards. We don't have that in the Manipulate You deck site, and you don't want to end up at the point where everyone's just like, take the best card out of every pack because they're all the same color. I think we've done quite a good job of having like different packages and archetypes. How do you find that is changes? So in a desert cube versus a vacuum cube? Yeah. So it's like with, with this cube, I know I wanted everything to be slightly light touch like from the, from the desert I've done in the past. They've generally had like 4 or 5 big overarching archetypes that kind of you can fall into again because of that. Like, because of how complicated? Because people are already worrying about one thing, like, how many lands do I have? Trying to build a complex archetype can be a bit much. It's not as enjoyable. So when I was building this, for me, it was important to have 4 or 5 big themes and then have a bunch of like little packages that kind of make the decks a bit more unique instead of like, I guess the packages is more the the fact it's one color, because if it's for me, if it was overarching themes, then you just end up with decks blending into each other a bit much for me. So. So the overarching archetypes is kind of the desert part of it. The mono blue part is like the individual packages, because then it gives each deck a different flavor. Like, like, like not everyone is actually not doing the same thing. Like like like, I mean, I mean, you can have two, two decks that kind of care about drawing cards, but one of them is doing this with it. One of them is doing that with it, like making the decks different. I think in that way was important. Yeah, for sure, if that makes a lot of sense. So getting into, what some of those archetypes look like. So I see there's a lot of cards in here for care about us drawing cards, which makes sense in a mono peachy. Yeah. So, like, the first point of this was like asking myself a question of like, what is blue good at? What can it do? Well, what can it easily support? And like the first part is, yeah, is drawing cards. Blue is very good at drawing cards. I knew I wanted to communicate analogies. That's a cool way of like I like being rewarded for drawing cards is I'm rewarding people. I'm rewarding people for doing the thing they want to be doing anyway. If I say the word mono blue to someone, they're like, I'm going to draw a lot of cards. So they're rewarding them for that makes a lot of sense. Like, like again, let's talk about parallel because like, like the payoff for this is a card like clink. Once I make this is three in a blue for A11 bird wizard with flying, whenever you draw a card, put a counter on this creature so by yourself over cost it for the stats. But if you're drawing six cards off of your teammates knowledge, then this becomes very scary. You also have a card like, Nvidia Kraken, which I quite like. This is one blue blue for 2 or 3. Whenever you draw a card, you may pay one. If you do, put a counter on it and create A11 blue tentacle creature token. So if we're doing the cool things, it like if we're drawing cards, this can become a powerful threat. It's not a great it's not a powerful card on its own. It needs help. And that's kind of the kind of the power level that I was kind of going for with this. Yeah, that makes sense for, a clean queen. Sky mage was always absolutely giant for me. It was like just A6X the next turn. Every single time. It felt great. But yeah, you do have to do that bit of work to get it going. I guess. So we've got drawing cards, matches. I can also see quite a lot of discarding cards, masses. Yeah, this kind of came about because like, when I thought I was like, okay, I want to be drawing cards in blue like this looked like, again, for me, it kind of comes back to the land. It's kind of like that's kind of like the the lands. I really wanted to matter in this group because that's kind of the reason for doing it. So that's the whole conceit is the lands matter. So let's actually make the matter. So I was looking at what lands I can run as. Oh lonely sandbar. Love this card. It is a land that comes into play. Tapped taps are a blue. Or you can cycle it for a blue. Cycling means that you draw. It means you discard it to draw a card. So we're drawing a card of it that goes great with the dear Kraken, but we're also discarding it. So I was like, okay, let's like oh, so you have cause like merfolk blue to think kind of you get a bit of overlap, like, oh, I want it to be a fantastic card in this cube, which draws us a card, but also discards a card so we can kind of lean into that. And then once we had that as like an idea you have cause like Drake Haven really powerful pay off two in a blue. Whenever you cycle or discard a card, you may pay one. If you do create a two to blue Drake creature token with flying, that's a really strong pay off if you can lean into it. And if you can get some card, some cards discarding, some cards discarded, or you have an awesome card like containment construct two generic for two one artifact which a construct whenever you discard a copy of that card from a graveyard. If you do, you may play that card this time like I think you had this and you definitely gasped. Or you or you played at least 2 or 3 lonely sandbars off of this for fair value. Like very cool. A really nice little, little engine when you get it going. Especially because, hitting your land ops is really important. And not trivial in this cube, you know, forgetting to cycle your land diecast and play it in the same turn is very good. Yeah. And then also I found a card like, but we've been running marauding Mako and, like, high powered, cuz I found there's a blue version. I forgot this card existed. Scrounging sky gray, one on a blue one to flier whenever you discard one or more cards. But that many put encounters on this creature. And cycling for two generic. So this card with turns a lonely sandbar into a flying beater. That's very cool. And like, again, these are quite like these are overarching things that are kind of just rewarding us for what would, in theory, going to be doing anyway. And that's kind of why I thought it worked quite nicely. Yeah. Seems fairly good for, the Drake Haven especially is very, very powerful when you get it going. Yeah. Nice. And then end of which seems to have very strong support throughout the cube was an artifact. You'd expect that the cube. How did you go about building that one? So, yeah, this one also. Yeah, it comes back to the lands because when looking at good at lands, that tap to generic blue manner, we have seat of the sign. It is an artifact land that is interesting. Again like like Civ sees this. I know it might be the most powerful land in this queue because it it's an artifact. It makes you colored mana and it, synergize this with stuff that cares about artifacts of match plays and play. It cares about affinity. All that stuff's really good. So like, again, it started with the lands and then it's like, okay, that's an interesting idea. How can we make this work? So we have cards like, cards with, with affinity that make them cheaper to cast. So like thought cast we, we draw some cards with that or like somber hover guard makes a big flier cheaper to cast. Then you also have a really cool card like Filigree Attendant. This is actually like my favorite, but this is the perfect power level for this cube. It's two blue, blue for star, three artifact creature homunculus with flying and it's power is equal to number of artifacts you control. For me, that is the perfect power level for this. It just rewards you for having more artifacts. It's an artifact itself. And like, what's nice about Max well, is it's a pretty generic theme. It's like a big again, it's big and overarching. It's not like possessed combo. I don't know why I say you've got a very big hard pull to devolve. Exactly. And do artifacts matter, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And like, I like there's there's a very easy way of sprinkling more artifacts in this game as well. So like we have the artifact lands, but then also because blue isn't really great at dealing with creatures once they're on the board. Like I made a bunch of the answers be artifacts. There's a bunch of like like the it's like if you've played, prerelease any points in the last like five years, any of, like, the bear trap, it comes down pings something or destroys a pound. But those those are kind of like the cheap ways of answering stuff in this cube. And like them being artifacts, I think it's quite nice. It just adds to the deck. It's pretty solid. Yeah. For sure. And those cheap artifacts that have the potential to kill a creature. You also put vial of dragon fire, which you can get for weapons within this category, but they don't look like infection cards because they're not efficient cards. I think they are actually kind of premium in this cube because, yeah, we have a lot of synergy pieces here which really rely on our creature sticking in play. And there's I assume for that reason, the movie is very, very scarce. I assume that was an intentional choice. It was. Yeah. Just like actual factual. Good answer. Something is very rare in this. Like, because of the power of the cube, we can't go super efficient with our answers. All right. That's very cool. So moving on. That's, really interesting archetype, which I saw you drafted to great effects as, tapping and, tapping matters. Yeah. This one is a bit niche, than some of the other ones, but it's something that blue does quite well, and it's something I've wanted to put in a cube for quite a while. So it's kind of this kind of overarching archetype is rewarding you for tapping things for value and then, tapping them to redo the value. So some of the most obvious ones are like, a called like particle sorcerer or like formed wind fairies. These are effectively creatures that you can tap them to deal something, a damage. So if you combine that with effects that untap them like, aura, that is a aura that says pay a blue untap target creature that effectively can turn a particle sorcerer into a machine gun. That's like, I want it with you. My, a school teacher ruined ruined me with that as a kid. And I've had that deck in the back of my head for a while. I'm like, that's quite cool. But then, like, because there's so many cool effects that you can combine with that there's like Sigil of Sleep, which is like an effect that when I picture deals damage to, to a creature, bounce it, that turns your particle sorcerer into a machine. And they can bounce people's things, or better a card like curiosity. You put curiosity on a particle sorcerer. What that means when it does, if you paying the opponent, you draw a card, and then suddenly you then have overlap with your card draw matters deck, and then that becomes interesting and that becomes cool. We're kind of. Yeah. Starting to find that overlap for me was really interesting. Yeah. Fairly cool. And I think that overlap is important because none of these archetypes are so deeply supported. But we're going to have a whole deck for this is doing one thing. We're probably going to be a mishmash of a couple of these archetypes, right? And if those types have some natural synergies with each other, that gets really interesting, actually. And I, so moving, we have there's a bunch of cards that care about islands, whether that's us having islands in play or our parents having islands in play. And to set this in context, the islands count is, what, about 20 on the cube? I think so I think there's so over 70 lands. There are 25 basic islands, but then we have a couple of lands that are incidental, the islands. So things like moonrise Island, Mystic Sanctuary. So it's probably around the 28 mark would be my gut. Okay, cool. So we can get to a decent number, but we're not going to have for free, like ten plus islands in our deck, right? We've got to do a bit of work to get there. What are we what's a good payoff for this? So. Yeah. So, at the base level, you have creatures. You have creatures like I called, like Tide Walker two and a Blue star star comes into play with a time count on it. For each island you control, vanishing and its power numbers are equal to number of time counters on it. Like if, like, I knew I wanted islands again. Most of my thoughts in this started with the lands. And like, if we're doing, mono blue cube islands really need to matter. So just finding any card that cared about islands in some way I thought was important. So yeah, Tide Walker is a great one. We have, other creatures like Water Spout gin. It's for mana for a for for flier. As we know, if you keep sacrifice it. Unless you can return on Sept Island, you can travel to its owner's hand. Like for for flier for four. Mano is quite perfect in this format. So that being the downside, I mean, you have to have islands. I think it's fine. Obviously we also have cause like high tide. High tide is a very powerful card. Kind of checked a little bit in this queue because there's only so much you can do with it. Like, it's one of those things where, like, in powerful cubes, you can run powerful cards if what you're doing with them is not the most broken like this cube could have. Tinker in it if we're not tinkering for something stupid, if that makes sense. It think is not in. But as an example you have I got like gush that is it's a great card dry spell but needs islands in play. We have flow of ideas. That's five and a blue for sure. So we draw a card which island you control like game, hopefully drawing you at least 5 or 6 cards. I do know that, our friend Josh, drafted a deck, and, this only ever drew him one card, which is kind of hilarious, but, interesting build around. Either way, you have our more efficient ways to cycle cards in this cave. Yeah. So if I did, Yeah. No, I think it's, It's definitely one you have to work for this archetype, right? Because the challenge is, it's 20 whatever islands in the cube. But you're not ness. It's not like other people don't also want the islands. Yeah, because, untapped lands have already quite premium. So I think the challenge is you've got to find a way to get, what would you be happy with, like eight islands to make this deck work? Do you think? I think so, I think that's I think at least eight is what you're after. And, like. And like, this is kind of the more the most generic, I think of, like, the overarching archetypes because in a way, it's not just you having islands that matters, it's also your opponent's having islands that matters. So like there's like creatures with like there's a sprinkling of creatures with island work, if that makes sense. So kind of like it's and then it means you can, like, weaponize a card, like spreading seeds, to give your opponent opponents. So again, it's islands mattering is like the least fleshed out in terms of like, well, I do X, and therefore I'm rewarded by this, that there's a sprinkling of, oh, I have islands. It's good for me. My opponents have have islands. That's also good for me because of island, which is, it was more of just a way of making islands matter because. If we're doing a mono blue thing, I think that's important. That's cool. Yeah. I was wondering, what do you think of how flipping of the seas for this sucks? I think it's too powerful, says one blue blue two to feature non-basic lands of islands. Yeah. So this is like the blue blood moon. It will make non-basic like, I know I lose that type. My gut is this might be too good just because there's only, like 25 basics in the cube, but it turns off everything else. But we're still. If I can still tap the blue, right? That's true. That's what you're trying to do in this Q anyway, that is true, but it might just make the manor a bit too good. Then I think it's like like so, so what? Why this won't be in the cube is because generally when I was looking at power level, it was kind of I kind of started from like peasant downs or anything from like an uncommon down was fine and then rares. I tried to keep them in check like I was looking at rares. It was very much trying to keep them pre 2020. And if I'm honest, this is an MH three card so it probably didn't come up in my search. Oh yeah. No that makes sense. I was kind of just thinking about having a CS plus flow of ideas. Sounds kind of. That is quite fun. Yeah, yeah. And hopping over the CS plus gold is also pretty spicy. Potentially like like. Yeah. But so, so because it only has two toughness, that means it could get in because a bunch of our answers deal with stuff this low toughness. So yeah potentially yeah yeah yeah yeah I think that could be a good one. Yeah. Could be an interesting one for the future. Nice. Cool. So moving on. One of the things that struck me like in this cube, when we think of what blue does and a lot of dudes do has like spells thing, instances of series, matter type archetype. We don't have that here. What was the, what's the thinking behind that? Yeah. So, like, there's, like a light touch of there's a, like, touch of this that do other things. Like, for me, the power level of spell slinger, like all the ones that you actually want to play, I think might be a bit too powerful. Like there is a couple that I like could see myself adding, if I made this up to a larger cube, but like, for example, like a card, like tall round in this cube would just be too good. Like like like the actual kind of like the spells, something to pay off. So you think of when you think like like generally they're like making tokens, like, can you imagine like a chromo seed shock in this cube, James. Like that would be nuts. Yeah. Be revolting. You can never you can never kill either. Yeah, yeah. It's it to me. Like like I think there's a world where maybe because it's just something blue. Blue generally does. Like, I could see myself making a bigger archetype. Maybe cause, like, thundering, like thunder, Drake. Like three and a blue 2 or 3 fly when you cast your second spell each time, put a counter on it, stuff like that, potentially, rather than, going super hand with like the, like the more powerful, more general, like more commander base spell slinging payoffs, but like, I thought the obvious payoffs would just be too powerful. And I like that there are some cards that, like rewards you for casting spells and stuff, but it's more like they're like milling out an opponent of that kind of stuff. They're doing something else rather than just giving you value, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I can see you don't want the, Yeah, the super powerful bouncing a payoffs because they're just going to be a bit free to enable they in the monopoly cube. You just it's not really doing work to put spells in your. The attack is that. Yeah. And it is I think about like there are more non creature spells and creatures in this script. Like it is a blue base cube. We are running more non good spells than we are creatures by a fair margin I think so like like and in my head as well. When I was building it I was kind of thinking like old magic of like the spells are good, the creatures are bad. That's kind of like I want, I want people to draw lots of cards. I want people to do cool things with their spells, but like how you get across the board and this like, like like like like for like like, Yeah. French channel. Josh firetruck modo. He has his blue. And I think there were some like those inspirations from that. Like I didn't go as ham in the do nothing part of it, but like the engine part of it, I definitely leaned into and like, yeah, I that was inspiration. And like, yeah, for me, it was important to not have the creatures be as pushed. And I feel a lot of the spell slinger pay offs are creatures that are a bit too pushed. Yeah, that makes sense, especially for me. Violas is sparse and not super efficient. It's, We don't want creatures that can just take over a game, right? Yeah. Cool. So, I think those are the main, most widely supported packages. If any other packages you wanted to highlight as we're going through. Yeah. So we have our overarching like things you can do in this cube, things that are going to be there. But like, the other thing that I think is important with any cube is to try and support your more the, the other type of overarching decks, which are like aggro control, tempo, range and combo. So I think having options for those again leads to a more rounded cube environment. And I like if you think of things for those to do, then I think the key will just play better. So if I'm honest, like I thought, tempo and mid-range would kind of take care of themselves with everything that we've previously gone over, like mid range drawing cards, that seems pretty solid like so. But like to make sure I had some aggro. That's where like cheap island creatures kind of came in. We have like gray Sky, grayscale, Gabriel and Richard and Doc and these are effectively one power creatures with Island Walk we can add cause like a trusty machete or a butcher's cleaver. And then we kind of get the cool, unblockable creature. Aggro deal, do some damage type of thing. Like, I thought that was quite cool. Like a suit up and a black creature doing the damage. That is fun. And also, do you then get the nice overlap with that of, like, unblockable creatures with cards like Coastal piracy? I love flying men. Going for flying men I think would be too good, but like again, adding a sprinkling of coastal piracy effects. These are cars that when when a creature you can draw does combat damage to a play a draw card again that's leaning into the card draw thing. That's pretty good. Also like, that's kind of how like that's how curiosity was meant to be played. Put it on an unblockable creature deal, damage an opponent, draw a card. Having the backups for that is quite nice. So. So yeah, that was kind of that kind of failed my aggro element out a little bit. The next one I want to look at was combo. So like, there is sort of a Re-Animator package in here, which I think is quite fun. Like, the main payoffs are like God, Pharaoh's gift, dread return, which we've mentioned and reenact the crime. These are cards that effectively let you put things from your graveyard into play. Which I think is quite cool. In terms of random X targets, we have a card like colossal Sky turtle. Again, tricky to cast in this because it requires two green pips to actually cast, but it can put itself into the graveyard and be a bounce spell, and then we can get it back with, with one of our Re-Animator effects and then the other, this one I'm quite proud of finding anyway, or putting in, the other Re-Animator payoff is Oversoul of Dusk. It is five hybrids. So Leslie Lesniak pips for A55 protection from blue from, black and red. There is no way of casting this in this cube, but if you can reanimate it, I think that's hilarious, because effectively, it's protection from everything that this is like, progenitor basically. Yeah. Very cool. But that's a lot of layers in this cube before you get to five. So near I think. Yeah, if you draft every layer and everything that makes treasure, you might just be able to cast it. Maybe. That's very cool. It's, then like opening up for first. Like me. Like I'm on a blue cube. This is a lot. So that's neat, but it makes a lot of sense. And I think there's good overlap between a lot of these things as well. Right. Like The Godfather is good for Re-Animator, but also just good in the not fact that, you're good at making the mana for it. Like, the noun weapon. Smith particular I think goes really well with that card because, see, just tap tapping for two artifacts. Mana gets you to seven very quickly. Yeah, exactly. And kind of that kind of leans like that kind of the God rose gift as well as like, it's going to be leans like there is sort of like a big ramp deck in this. Again, we have high tide. We have. Yeah. I sounds like the weapon Smith. And that's kind of what, like dreamscape artist and the cockpit of flowers that we mentioned are good for like you have. Yeah. You have got photograph as a payoff. But also there's like, mass manipulation. Big spell that gains control of a bunch of things. Or colossal whale, massive blue creature with oil and water bounce stuff and like, that's the big mana. It's kind of where I saw the control deck kind of getting its shine, if that makes sense. Like, it's it's it's it's it's the deck that's going it's lower and it's able to go above your opponent by casting big spells early game. It'll cast counter spells and like interact a little bit. But then like game is just going bigger, being more control it. And I thought that was quite cool. And yeah, kind of the last little package going back to combo is that there's a bit of a small package in here. We have ways of filling out either up or up at our opponents. Like we have a huge on crab in here. We have a chases erasure, which is one the blue. Whenever you draw a card, you may have target player for the top card of his or her library into his her graveyard. But and then but then we have cause like Stefan the Illusionist, which can kill us a lot. And then we have cause like, a laboratory maniac. Classic card that lets us win the game if we have no cards in deck. And then a nice little backup for that in living conundrum. This is when I just 100% stole from Josh, if I'm honest with you. Four a blue two five hex proof. If you would draw a card while you're like, we have no cards in it, skip that draw instead. And as long as there are no cards in your library, living conundrum is base power and toughness. 1010 and has flying and vigilance. Yeah, that one's very cool. Yeah, I really like this card. So like this actually this is your second copy of Lab Man. But it just gives you a ten and you have to beat down your opponent. That's really funny and really fun. And like, yeah, I'd like to add this was like 3 or 4 cards and you have this whole self milled deck. And that's interesting. Like like having these, having these little packages for me was quite important because yeah, we have our overarching archetypes. But then with these packages people can make it make the unique decks. And this because like because and because of how this cube is built and is drafted effectively, you're going to end up with like a deck that's made up of like one of the opening archetypes and then like 2 or 3 of the packages, you're not going to end up with the same thing every time, like no one's going to end up with the same deck every time. You're going to be combining this and that and this and that, and to build something cool each time. And that was really fun for me. Yeah. No, I think it comes together really nicely. All right. So we've talked a lot about the little packages of synergy. We've got, because we know we do need some glue cards for cube and some staples. How did you go about picking those out? Yeah. With any cube is important to make your staples lean into what the cube is doing. So by staples, I mean stuff like ramp cards or interaction like that kind of stuff like, because this was a mono blue cube, it's very tempting to run a card like Counterspell very powerful, very generically good card. And I've already said I wanted spells to be powerful, where that is. But like looking at the threats, Counterspell is too strong and it's not interesting. Why run Counterspell when you can run a card like deprive? Deprive is blue, blue counter target spell? We love that. But but as an additional cost to cost deprive return of land you control to his own his hand again. I'm making it come back to the to the land part. That's more interesting than me. It's making it. It's making it flavorful and making it work. With the cube, you also have a card like gainsay, which may be too powerful. I'm not sure yet. Maybe more testing, but it's one blue instant counter target, blue spell, or a card like jaded response. One blue instant count the target spell. If it shares a color with a creature you control, these are more interesting. There's a world where they might be more powerful in Counterspell, but they are more interesting. The counterspell in this style environment, and again, it's kind of counter target blue spell might seem quite obvious in this, but it's an interesting card. You would only get to like what part of the point? Like for me, one of the fun parts about building something weird is finding the weird cards that work with it and letting them shine. If gainsay turns out to be too good and it just becomes the best card, then maybe I'll cut it in the future. But like if I'm building a on blue, if I'm building something weird, I want to be able to see, oh, gainsay awesome card that works really well in this format. I'm going to run it. Yeah, it's very cool. V and it does. It's not a counter for thing like so a lot of big artifacts for, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah it does nothing against God barriers gift. There always around it. Exactly. But if we're in for type D spells I know we're doing some like colored breaks for super high power level cards. I wonder if, like pirate blasters and red blaster, things we could consider potentially. So obviously, if I like completely fat, making that manner, it's not a trivial thing. Yeah. I mean, there's a what's more, broken skull or pirate blast. There's a question where they're both about as good as each other. Yeah. Yeah. Potentially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I could see. Yeah. Yeah, potentially. It's definitely something you can do in this environment of like as long as the mana isn't as free, if I have to work for it and they can get it that way, then, then yeah, it's definitely something we can do. Like similarly with the power level, it's also because I knew I wanted the tap deck to exist, which revolved around like the way you win is by putting one, maybe two auras onto a creature. I wanted that to be interaction, so I didn't want a bunch of hex proof creatures running around, like I actually didn't have that much. There's there isn't that much hex proof in this cube. But but like, having a bunch of instant speed bounce would just make that deck unplayable. So there is some. But like most of it is at sorcery speed. And for me that was quite key. And just making that deck exist. But it doesn't mean that boring. Like we have card like, clutch of currents, single blue sorcery return target twist design, but it has awaken three for four in a blue, which means. Which means it can become an elemental creature. The land becomes a creature. It's doing something with lands. It fits into the theme of the cube. That's more interesting than just running an on someone that just houses one deck entirely. So we're one draft into this so far. I thought it played out great in that draft. How how did you think that one? Yeah, it nailed everything that I was after. Everyone, while drafting got a little bit sweaty in terms of am I going to get there? Is it going to be okay? I'll be honest, my wife finishing with 22 lands really threw a spanner and she finished with 22 lands and five acres or something like that. I was like, damn, she has it all. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. Like, I think every archetype shined. I think everything did as well as I wanted to, like. Like nothing was the best, if that makes sense. Nothing was so far beyond what anything else was the like. The only like there was a couple of sections of just raw efficiency. And that's basically down to like, like I think I did quite well with the power level of setting it as, yeah, commenting on commons and then try and get rares like, like broken rares before 2020. I'll fine if it was after that. Have to check a little bit. But like honestly, just like some super modern commons and on commons are still quite busted. So so like I've swapped some out like, we were running a couple of like, affinity creatures from like the turtle set and recent sets, and they're just so much better than some of the old affinity creatures that I just they were a little free, if that makes sense. But like, outside of that, I was very happy with the power level. And yeah, honestly, it's a lot of fun. Like from my end, I think, I, I think I was gonna be doing a bunch more of this. And I'm also kind of excited to like, take what I've learned from this and maybe, maybe, I think maybe green next, I think I might do a green one next, like green or red is what I'm thinking like party like that sounds cool. Does green do enough things? Fail is my question about green? I think it doesn't. I think I think it does enough things badly. Okay. Because like power level wise we have like, yeah, we have what auras or we have Enchantress, we have some artifact stuff, we have tokens, we have landfall. I think there's some interesting stuff there. I think Red could be fun. Like Red could just be, like throwing Kindles at each other. But I think, I think there's a world where maybe I start doing an overview for a bunch of these and see which ones we like. Basically. Yeah, I know it sounds very cool. Certainly this one I think is as played out right. So I think this works really well as a four player cube. If someone's listening and wants to try and scale this up to an eight player version, do you think that would be viable? Yeah, definitely. I think the way that I would. So yeah, I thought I thought about this a bit like the first thing I would do is double the number of lands, because you have double the number of players, double number of cars, double the number of lands. So yeah, the cube would go from a 216 to a what, 432? That sounds about right. There's a few other like I would look for redundancy of packages and also because I've broken Singleton, if there's key effects I can't get more of or there isn't redundancy for, just add a second one. Like if I can't find another cool reanimate to pay off, maybe not a second copy of God Pharaoh's Gift, but like a second copy of gate to the afterlife, the car that goes and finds it. That could be interesting. I would also probably look at maybe adding more packages, like, like for a long time, like Pirate Aggro was in this. But I definitely found with the small version anyway. Specifically, title matters is quite tricky. Like like, yeah, I could have pushed merfolk, or I could have pushed, humans or pirates, but then it becomes a bit too on the rails. I think if it was bigger, maybe that's possible. I'd also add, Monmouth's originally fathoms. It was in this the that's effectively that's that's that's the gash on a morph creature. But it was the only more feature in here. So therefore like, that's not interesting to me. I think you need at least. Well, I need at least Will Bender and Fathoms in here to make that interesting. Maybe ideally if you want, like, like like putting, like, a chroma in here. Could be fun. I don't know how you would flip it. Seems like something to add for players to work out, that there is some blue flicker. Maybe that might just be a bit too good, but, like, stuff like that is interesting. We could do that. We also have like the pickles combo, the combo that, locks or like, locks your own stuff down. That could be quite interesting. And I would definitely add more cards that care about names. That was the main thing for me that I really liked about this cube. I want to build more cubes that care about names. So like a card, like screaming Seahawk was in for a while. I would add that to a larger version. That's four and a blue two to flier. When it enters the battle, you may search a library for a card named Screaming Seahawk, put it into your hand, and shuffle it. Add more stuff like that, because I think that's one of the nice things you can do with this style environment. And I think it's actually I think stuff that cares about names is actually good here. Yeah, I think it's cool. And I think it's something we don't get to explore and cube very often. So it's very nice when we can. Yeah, exactly. And like do any other thing like that. And I think it's great for anyone building a desert. Like looking for nice self-contained draft archetypes from limited. I think like quite good. So like maybe pushing energy could be fun, maybe like lessons could be interesting here because it's kind of like those are kind of archetypes that don't really get to shine too much in bigger cubes. But here the power level is low enough, and because you're drafting every card, you can actually sculpt archetypes that actually work. And that's quite interesting to me. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. I think that's very cool. It'd be it'd be nice to see a scaled up fashion if someone, everyone tries to build that power off a list in the comments. Oh, I think it's more if after listening to this I get enough of a play group mentioning it to me, then yeah, maybe we can start like that. All right. Nice. I think that probably wraps it up. This was a super fun cube to play. And it's, it's interesting to dig into the design process as well. Pax it's, it is very different from thought building, building of that kind of cube with a basic LAN box. All right. That was a very interesting conversation to have. I think we're going to wrap it up for, y'all have been listening to powerful. Nothing. Please do like, share, subscribe, all of those good things. It really helps us out. And, we will see you next time.