Hello and welcome back to the Magic Super Cube!

If you don’t know, this is the blog we we go through the history of Magic and choose cards from sets that were Standard legal or would have been Standard legal had the format existed and make a massive Cube from all of those choices.

Speaking of, I made a slight error last time we talked about the Cube. I went in believing that Homelands was the next set released, when in actuality it was the set Chronicles, which was a tournament legal set that follows the parameters I had set out.

In order to correct my mistake, I will be choosing cards from this set for the Cube, which is a smaller set of 116 cards, but is is comprised of reprints from Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark with the goal of helping get some of the harder to get cards into players hands.

It was not met with the best reaction, and with its close proximity release with Fourth Edition and making certain cards “lose value” by reprinting them led to the eventual decision to make The Reserved List, and that’s a topic for another day.

Let’s get started!

White

Since each color had a small number of picks, there were some hard choices to make, especially since the set was all reprints I had to check which cards I had already picked.

White was one of the easier times for me, especially with the noncreature card I ended up going with. It is a card that has an ok ability, but is more so remembered for is artwork that I decided to go for it.

The creatures were a bit trickier to pick since most of the creatures were not that great. In the end I decided that removal would be better, especially if it was a unique form of removal being attached to creatures, one through combat and one as an activated ability.

My picks for white are Abu Ja’far, Indestructible Aura, and Witch Hunter.

Blue

Blue was trickier than white with my picks because there were some decent picks, but not a lot of space for me to make them.

For my creature pick, I didn’t have too much of a difficult time since there was one creature that I had already picked and the other creature options comprised with an overcosted evasive creature, a Wall the sticks around, and a Wall with a unique ability for the time, which is what I ended up with.

The noncreature suite of cards provided a lot of interesting number of choices, though I decided to build upon the fundamentals of blue. I added a counter spell and a way to give our creatures evasion.

My picks for blue are Remove Soul, Teleport, and Wall of Wonder.

Black

Black has historically been an easy color for me to pick, however this was one of the few times I had some trouble making some choices.

With the noncreature spell I only had two options, and while one would have been an interesting choice in the long run, I think that it is one of the less intuitive effects and would not be a fun choice. Instead I went with the safer option and picked a card that could serve as either offensive or defensive utility.

The creature picks were pretty difficult because black had a bunch of neat creatures to pick from. In the end I picked a cheap creature that had a downside attached to it and another creature that could be an interesting build around and provided a direction to give black.

My picks for black are Hasran Ogress, The Wretched, and Transmutation.

Red

Red actually provided one of the easier time picking cards, not the easiest but definitely tied for second easiest.

The noncreature options available were either cards I had already picked or didn’t really help the color much. My noncreature pick is something that will help develop an archetype I’ve been adding bits and pieces of and will continue to help develop.

The creature picks were also pretty easy, though for different reason. One choice was purely because I thought it would be a fun include, which also happened to be a decent creature in certain match ups and the other provided a different play style option for red to use in the future.

My picks for red are Aladdin, Goblin Shrine, and Mountain Yeti.

Green

Green was the other option that tied with red as the second easiest color to choose from because a lot of it was me adding cards I wanted to add but couldn’t.

My creature pick was one of the tougher choices because while there were some decent picks for green, I went with adding a creature that added a new play style for green and could be a decent creature for that strategy once I add more support for it.

The noncreature picks were almost instant picks in this case. One of which included a pick that helped make combat more effective and the other pick was a way to help green get some bigger creatures in play.

My picks for green are Concordant Crossroads, Metamorphosis, and Rabid Wombat.

Multicolor

This was the easiest series of picks to make, mostly because there were a bunch of multicolor picks from Legends that I could add.

Since all the multicolor choices were creatures, for the two color choices I decided on creatures that had abilities over vanilla creatures because they would make for more interesting plays, as well as having some creatures prepicked for me since I had already picked others in other sets.

Then there were some cards that I would have picked before, but decided against it so I could pick them now, and they are three color creatures that are iconic in the history of Magic.

My picks for multicolor are Ayesha Tanaka, Nebuchadnezzar, Axelrod Gunnarson, Marhault Elsdragon, Kei Takahashi, Chromium, Nicol Bolas, Vaevictis Asmadi, Palladia-Mors, and Arcades Sabboth.

Artifacts and Land

To round up the rest of the list, we have artifacts and lands, of which there weren’t too many to choose from.

For the singular land pick, the only reason I chose it was that it was a land that I hadn’t chosen from earlier sets. While it is a land that provides an interesting play style, it was more so made to have a land pick for the set.

The artifacts on the other hand mostly comprised of a lot of cards I had picked from other sets, so my picks were made for what would make games more interesting. One would help with dealing with a certain creature type in the future, one helped in combat, and one helped cheat creatures into play after a period of time.

My picks for artifacts and land are Arena of the Ancients, Runesword, Sentinel, Triassic Egg, and Safe Haven.

In Conclusion

Chronicles was a tough set to pick cards from, mostly because they were all reprints and among them were cards I had already picked.

This set helped me figure out how to make sure that I didn’t add duplicates to the Cube, since I want as many unique cards in the set, but this also helped me figure out a few ideas for archetypes in the future.

When we come back to the Magic Super Cube we will be going to Alliances, a set that introduced some iconic cards to the game as well as some interesting mechanics that would help establish some interesting designs in future sets.

As usual, here is the Moxfield link to keep up with all the cards in the Cube!

See you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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