Hello and welcome to a new blog called the Magic Super Cube!

The premise of this blog is to go through every Standard legal set and formulate what I think would be the most interesting cards to use in a Cube.

Now there are some rules to what I will be considering for the Cube, and just letting you all know I am not a master Cube builder and this is a fun little side project.

Rule 1: Only cards that were from Standard legal sets or would have been Standard legal had the format existed will be considered. There will not be any Modern Horizons sets, Commander sets, supplemental sets, Unsets, or unique decks up for consideration, just whole sets.

Rule 2: Each set will have 30 cards in the Cube, a minimum of three from each color with at least one being a creature, meaning that fifteen slots will be dedicated to monocolored cards. The rest will be a mix of artifacts, lands, and multicolored cards. The notable exception to this rule will be Alara Reborn, but we will get to that.

Rule 3: This will be a proxy friendly Cube, meaning that there will be very expensive cards on this list and proxies will be heavily encouraged if someone wants to actually build this Cube.

Rule 4: This is not to be taken too seriously. Like I said, I am not a master Cube builder and while there will be some consideration for strategies, this Cube will eventually end up as a hodge podge of Magic cards that may occasionally have some synergies. I am not perfect, and neither is this Cube.

With all that out of the way, let’s get started with the cards from Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited (ABU for short).

I am counting the three sets as one set because they are all essentially the same set, and while I can triple dip into all three sets for a solid foundation, that wouldn’t be in the spirit of making the cube.

Besides, we can double dip when we hit Revised and early Core sets.

White

Starting in WUBRG order, we have the white cards from ABU.

I wanted to consider having more creatures for white because early creatures in Magic were not the best, but White does have some decent enough creatures for this period of time and can be hold up in the future as stable bodies.

As far as other spells go, I think that there are a couple of options, and I think having a bit of removal is probably the ideal move to pick.

My picks for white are Savannah Lions, Serra Angel, and Swords to Plowshares.

Blue

Blue is probably the strongest color in ABU, clearly indicated by the fact that the only non-artifact members of Power Nine are blue cards.

The hardest part is picking which spells. I could go for two members of the Power Nine and then a medium creature, but I do want to open up for some certain strategies as we get into the later stages of building the Cube, a bit of preplanning if you will.

I do want at least one member of the Power Nine from blue, and going for the most versatile one is probably for the better while picking another iconic blue spell.

My choices for blue are Ancestral Recall, Counterspell, and Lord of Atlantis.

Black

Black is an interesting color to look at in ABU, mostly because I knew which spells I wanted instantly, but the creature proved to be a bit more of a tough choice.

As far as spells went, black has some iconic spells early on that will make Cube building very helpful in the future and are ones that people will instantly recognize.

However, choosing a creature is harder because while there is an option for setting up an early typal strategy, I want to lean more into a more versatile creature that will be useful no matter what stage of the Cube we are in.

My choices for black are Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor, and Frozen Shade.

Red

Red is a tough color to narrow down early on, because should the Cube lean more into the creature aspect of early red or the burn of early red.

There is at least one iconic red spell I want to include, no doubt about it, but there are a variety of other creatures that I want to include as well as other iconic spells in red.

Ultimately I think setting up some more creatures in the early Cube will help things in the long run, at least for red. Red can pivot in either direction, but for ABU, I want to have more creatures.

My choices for Red are Goblin King, Lightning Bolt, and Shivan Dragon.

Green

Green is a color where the creatures will be the centerpiece of the color, it’s more so which creatures to choose.

The spell is the easy part, especially since some of the more iconic ones do get reprinted into Core sets where we can get them as needed, the creatures for ABU are going to be a bit of a difficult question.

Green has a number of small utility creatures and huge beat sticks that we can use, I think it would be better to have one of each for ABU while picking some more common ones when we hit Revised and Core sets.

My choices for green are Berserk, Birds of Paradise, and Force of Nature.

Lands

Now here comes the hardest part when deciding to figure out what to choose for ABU. While multicolor is a couple of sets away, ABU only has one set of unique lands not including basic lands.

So I could choose all ten of them and call it a day, except there are certain cards that I want to include, but don’t have enough room to include them.

Luckily for building the Cube, these set of lands do appear in Revised so I can take five here and the rest when we get to Revised.

My choices for the lands are the five allied dual lands; Tundra, Underground Sea, Badlands, Taiga, and Savannah.

Artifacts

As far as artifacts go, there are several that I think are obvious, as well as a couple that are not as obvious.

The ones that are not obvious will help bring in some unique strategies as building the Cube goes on. This is looking to be a decently powered Cube, so having some different strategies can come in handy.

Artifacts can be strong early on in Magic, so having some of the strongest upfront can help make sure the Cube is powerful and can handle some strong strategies.

My choices for artifacts are Black Lotus, Howling Mine, Juggernaut, Nevinyrral’s Disk, Sol Ring, and the five Moxen.

In Conclusion

I think that we have a decent enough start for the Cube that we can go into the future sets knowing that we have access to powerful cards.

Arabian Nights is the next set, and that one will be a bit more challenging to choose which cards, but that is something we will take a look at the week after next.

If this gets more traction then I can post this once a week, but until then it will be an every other week affair.

So until then, thank you for reading.

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual