Hello and welcome back to the Magic Super Cube!

This is the blog where I’m going through the Magic sets that were in Standard or would have been Standard legal had the format existed and making a massive Cube out of those sets.

Last time we looked through Arabian Knights to help expand what the Cube did as well as adding some fun and wacky cards, and today we are looking through Antiquities.

Antiquities has a major artifact theme, so there will be a ton of artifacts added to the set, but we need to look at the other colors as well as the lands to see what we can add to the Cube.

Let’s get started!

White

There was a similar issue with Antiquities that Arabian Nights had, that issue that this was a small set at 85 cards and in some colors there was an imbalance of cards to choose from in terms of creatures and spells.

White wasn’t too bad, and there was the fact that almost every card in the set had something to do with artifacts in some capacity. This meant that picking which cards to add to start integrating some light artifact synergies for each color.

White allowed some artifact recursion and some protection from artifacts, which does help support potential artifact synergies later.

My picks for white are Argivian Archeologist, Martyrs of Korlis, and Reverse Polarity.

Blue

Blue was one of the trickiest colors to pick from because of there being only one creature to add and the rest being spells, limiting my choices in some regard.

Blue has some of the better synergies with artifacts, and the one creature option I had allowed for some card advantage for sacrificing artifacts.

The other spells I chose for blue allowed you to make your artifacts better or get you a stronger artifact that you could use in the late game.

My picks for blue are Power Artifact, Sage of Lat-Nam, and Transmute Artifact.

Black

Black has been proving to be one of the more interesting colors as I’m going through the sets, and has quite a few options to pick from.

Black’s artifact synergies come from sacrificing something, whether that be a creature or artifact, to gain some sort of benefit and some minor artifact hate strategies if an artifact uses an ability.

Choosing which cards was a bit of a challenge, but in the end I wanted to add some more removal and some minor artifact hate. I also wanted to lean a bit more into the lore of Magic by having some picks being useful cards that also had some lore teases.

My picks for black are Gate to Phyrexia, Haunting Wind, and Priest of Yawgmoth.

Red

Red has historically had some powerful artifact synergies, ranging from benefits to using artifacts to being a color that hates artifacts.

Red has the strongest forms of artifact hate in the set, which is why I decided to add them to help keep the artifact strategies a bit more honest.

I also decided to pick an iconic creature that debuted in this set that has a major synergy with artifacts and is low key one of my favorite creature types, so much so I think it may be a secret subtheme for the Cube as I build it.

My picks for red are Artifact Blast, Atog, and Shatterstorm.

Green

Green also has had some history with artifacts, and also has some strong interactions against artifacts.

The difference that green has with artifacts compared to say red, is that the creatures are able to deal with your opponents having artifacts, with your creatures gaining benefits for your opponents playing a ton of artifacts.

They also have one of the strongest ways to deal with a ton of artifacts tokens, which while not too relevant now will become relevant in the future.

My picks for green are Citanul Druid, Gaea’s Avenger, and Titania’s Song.

Lands

Before I get into the artifacts, I should probably talk about the lands that are going to be added to the Cube.

While there aren’t too many lands in the set, the ones that are available are incredibly powerful. They are also lands that are iconic to the game that leaving them out is out of the question.

I nearly added every land from the set, but I decided to add one later because it has been reprinted in a set later that I can add later.

My picks for the lands are Mishra’s Workshop, Strip Mine, Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power-Plant, and Urza’s Tower.

Artifacts

Now onto the main subject of the set, the artifacts.

There was so many artifacts to choose from that I really needed to look and see which ones I could add now and ones I could potentially pick later.

Some were iconic, some were powerful, some were unique, and others opened up new playstyles that could be built upon for the future.

The hardest part was narrowing down which artifacts to chose now and which I had to leave behind, but I think the ones I picked had a nice mix of iconic and unique.

My picks for artifacts are Ashnod’s Altar, Candelabra of Tawnos, Cursed Rack, Millstone, Ornithopter, Primal Clay, Su-Chi, The Rack, Triskelion, and Yotian Soldier.

In Conclusion

Antiquities provided an interesting challenge in what I wanted to add to the Cube, and definitely is the start to seed some more artifact synergies as the Cube develops.

The next set is going to be Revised, which is essentially a sort of reprint set where we can pick some cards up that we missed from previous sets and further set up a stronger foundation.

Once again there will be a Moxfield link where you can keep along with the Cube as it’s being built.

See you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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