An Amaz-ing New Cube

Posted on Nov 15, 2024

By Amaz

Let me start by saying, I love limited Magic: The Gathering. 

I have spent a lot of my free time drafting over the years—Standard sets, premier sets, and of course, Cubes! Like many Draft enthusiasts, I eventually felt the pull to design my own Limited environment and built the Amaz Peasant Cube. 

I was thrilled to have my Cube featured on Magic Online a few years ago, and the most unexpected part of that experience was all the feedback I got. Players sent kind messages complimenting the card list and the fun gameplay, and I’ve heard from multiple people at MagicCons that they built my Peasant Cube themselves—I’ve even singed a card or two for inclusion! 

When I was invited to be a part of the Creator Showcase, I knew I wanted to do a Cube event again, only this time, it is a brand-new cube! Let me give you a few design insights. 

Design Vision 

These were my goals in designing this Cube: 

• Offer a different experience from not only my Peasant Cube, but from the other popular Cube themes. 

• Showcase typal archetypes that care about creature types. 

• Offer multiple archetypes in each color pair. 

• Create a dynamic Draft environment and an interactive gameplay environment. 

My first version of the Cube ended up leaning too heavily into typal themes, making the drafting portion more "on-rails" than I wanted. I pulled back on “type matters” a bit such that while it is still one of the main themes, not every deck has to revolve around a type to succeed. That change felt great and put me on the path to my final list!  

You can review the whole list at the end of this article, but let me walk you through the main archetypes you will encounter in this Cube. 

Archetypes 

Each color pair features 2 archetypes, and a special "secret" archetype! For example, in the black-white Orzhov archetype, besides the primary reanimation and enchantment themes, it also has flicker/attrition bonus theme which got inspiration from the Orzhov deck I brought to the Regional Championship in Dallas this year. 

I'll go over the two main archetypes for each other color pair here, and it'll be up to you to discover what the other secret archetypes are! 

UW - Fliers / Artifact Creatures 

In Azorius, you can utilize fliers for a clear path to victory, or take advantage of the artifact synergies to create insane value plays. 

UB - Zombies / Discard Matters 

In Dimir, you can find lots of crazy zombie synergies! There are also a lot of rewards for discarding your cards in this color pair.  

BR - Sacrifice / Super Typal 

Rakdos features the classic sacrifice archetype as its headliner. The second archetype is what I call super typal: there's Vampires, Dragons, and Demons to build around! (Hint: changelings are crazy in this deck!) 

RG - Lands / {X} matters 

Ramp a lot of lands in Gruul to power out your big threats. This also works well for the other synergy in this color pair: X spells matter! 

GW - Enchantments / Tokens 

Selesnya has a lot of nasty enchantment payoffs. On the other hand, you can utilize a token-making strategy: go wide and swarm the battlefield or make copy your tokens for more value! 

WB – Reanimator / Enchantments 

In Orzhov you can draft the classic reanimator strategy, build an enchantments-matter deck, or some of both with cards like Rise to Glory.  

UR - Spells Matter / Artifacts 

Sling noncreature spells in blue-red, as Izzet cards give you a bonus for doing so. You can also utilize the numerous artifacts to power up your cards as well. 

BG - Sacrifice / Graveyard 

Sacrifice your permanents for the greater good through awesome Golgari synergies. You can also stockpile your graveyard for synergies such as delirium and recursion! 

RW - Equipment / Play from Exile 

Equipment cards are powerful in this cube, and Boros offers a lot of ways to tutor them or make them even stronger. Another strategy is to play exile cards from your library for card advantage while triggering bonuses for doing so. 

UG - Ramp / Sea Monsters 

And finally, we have a classic Simic archetype in ramping a lot of mana sources. What to do with all that mana? Why, play gigantic and powerful sea monsters of course! 

Three Colors and More 

This Cube also supports 3- and 5-color decks. You will find cool enchantment synergies in the Abzan colors, while the artifact payoffs are in the Jeskai colors. You'll notice that white is the overlapping color here, and so I included cards that pay you off if you have both enchantments and artifacts in your deck. 

Fixing is plentiful in this cube, but these cards might be a high priority for your draft pod so shift your priorities accordingly! 

Build-Arounds 

Here's a short list of cards I find are very interesting to build a deck around. You'll find these to be well supported, so go ahead and shoot for the stars when drafting your list! 

Bounties 

If you happen to beat a streamer on our bounty list for their trophy match, you'll get a 120 Play Point code (while supplies last)! Make sure to play fairly and only go on their streams after the match is over. We will be creating a list of streamers and pinning it to our social feeds during the Cube run. Follow each one of them to know when they go live, and see if you can take one of them down in the queues!

Outro 

I want to thank Daybreak again for the opportunity to showcase my new cube that was in the making for roughly 2 years. If you enjoyed it or have feedback for the list, let me know on Twitter @Amaz or let me know on twitch.tv/amaz . I'll be streaming some of my matches live, so maybe dear reader, we'll even get to play against each other! 

Amaz Cube Full Cardlist