Hello and welcome to a late edition of the Magic Super Cube!

If you didn’t know, this is the blog in which I happen to go throughout the various sets of Magic that were Standard legal or would have been Standard legal had the format existed and pick cards from each and every one of those sets to make what I hope is the largest Cube ever known.

We start our look at the interesting block that was Time Spiral block with the titular set Time Spiral. This block was interesting because they played into the concept of past, present, and future with these sets with Time Spiral being the first set in Magic history to have a bonus sheet.

What’s more, the cards from this bonus sheet were considered Standard legal, which did widen our card pool by quite a bit. This was also adding in that the set also has a lot of interesting cards to choose from, which made picking cards a lot harder than normal.

Let’s get started!

White

If I had to pick which of the five colors was the easiest, white would probably hold that title, but that isn’t saying too much.

The creature spells for all the colors was tough, with white being the one that was the easiest by only a small margin. The creature I chose is a call back to an older card and while I didn’t choose a lot of this particular cycle of cards, I did like having this for white.

The noncreature spells were the easiest part for white, with there being a card that helped propagate a particular archetype that can be developed further in the future and the other is a card that can help you buy an extra turn that is hard to interact with.

My picks for white are Angel’s Grace, Magus of the Disk, and Momentary Blink.

Blue

Blue was probably solidly in the middle of the pack in terms of which cards to pick from.

Again the creature spells for all five colors was tough to pick from in all five colors, but for blue it was probably the hardest. There were plenty of decent creatures to choose from, but the creature that I ended up picking plays into another archetype that I want to develop as the Cube goes by and it does so in a pretty unique way.

The noncreature spells were a bit easier, but there were still some tough calls to make. I ended up choosing a card that made reference to an older stronger card while using one of the set mechanics to balance it out and the other is a cards that can be very powerful when cast multiple times, but at a downside cost that needs to be worked around.

My picks for blue are Ancestral Vision, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, and Walk the Aeons.

Black

Black was the second easiest color to choose from, and a lot of that came from the noncreature spells.

The noncreature spells that I chose are pretty iconic cards from this set and have seen a lot of play in plenty of formats. Both are cards that are solid ways to reanimate your creatures except one has a way that can bring back one creature from your graveyard and do that twice, and the other also happens to function as a board wipe and mass reanimation spell.

The creature spell was pretty tough here, and while I had plenty of options, I decided to opt for a creature type that I have a fondness for. The reason I chose this particular creature is that it happens to allow you to make use of this type of creature as a way to generate mana while working with sacrifice strategies as a bonus.

My picks for black are Basal Sliver, Dread Return, and Living End.

Red

Red was probably the hardest of the five colors to pick cards from, and it was quite difficult to choose.

The creature spell was probably the most difficult because there were so many options that were available that in the end I had to pick a creature that provided a good bit of options that also happens to work pretty decently with a discard strategy that can be developed further along the Cube.

The noncreature spells were also tough to pick from for the same reason. So many options to pick from and not enough slots to pick all the ones I wanted, so I chose a common finish for decks that happen to play a lot of spells and a way to refill your hand and play into discard strategies as well.

My picks for red are Grapeshot, Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, and Wheel of Fate.

Green

Green was the second hardest color to pick from among the five, and it was a pretty tight race all things considered.

The noncreature spells were pretty tough because of the bevy of options available. I did end up going to the Timeshifted Bonus Sheet for one of the cards because it does something that green doesn’t normally get to to do and one I missed from an older set and a card that can cheat a lot of things out of both players hands.

The creature spell was tough because I could have ended up going into the well and picking a particular creature type for a typal strategy, I instead opted for a creature that happens to work well in a go wide and go fast strategy.

My picks for green are Avoid Fate, Hypergenesis, and Primal Forcemage.

Multicolor

Multicolor options were pretty wide and varied in what was available, so I had to really figure out what I wanted to add.

One was a creature that plays well into a particular typal strategy that makes those creature much more of a pain to remove, a top end creature that punished your opponents for playing too many spells, a creature that can sacrifice itself to recur another creature you control, a solid creature with a bunch of decent abilities attached, and a big creature that plays well into a particular creature type and can help be a card to help make those decks more viable.

My picks for multicolor are Opaline Sliver, Kaervek the Merciless, Saffi Eriksdotter, Lightning Angel, and Scion of the Ur-Dragon.

Artifacts

It’s been a while since there were a lot of potential artifacts to choose from, and there was a wide variety of abilities available.

One is an artifact that can become a creature that has a way to get bigger in a very unique way while also being a mana rock, an artifact that can help make a particular typal strategy work better, a card that is a reference to one of the most iconic cards in the game while also being a decent mana rock even in the late game, a creature that can play into a very particular strategy, and a typal creature that is more so something that can help add into the numbers of this particular creature type.

My picks for artifacts are Chronatog Totem, Hivestone, Lotus Bloom, Stuffy Doll, and Venser’s Sliver.

Lands

Its been a long time since I decided to pick lands that were not in a particular cycle and lands that provide an interesting amount of utility.

One is a land that can help you recur artifacts from your graveyard, one makes a creature token of a particular type, a land that can actually be more beneficial to you if you are playing second because it can provide mana fixing, a land to make use of a lot of mana generation from a particular series of lands, and a land that is used in several strategies that use particular lands and works well in a singleton Cube that this one happens to be.

My picks for lands are Academy Ruins, Kher Keep, Gemstone Caverns, Urza’s Factory, and Vesuva.

In Conclusion

This was a tough set to choose cards from, all things considered and while I didn’t make full use of the Timeshifted Bonus Sheet, I do think that it was a neat idea that can be very tough to bring to modern Standard sets.

When we next come back to the Magic Super Cube, we are going to be taking a look at the next set in Time Spiral block, Planar Chaos, a set that happens to play around with the color pie a bit and adds some interesting variety of cards effects for each color.

As usual, here is the Moxfield link to keep up with all the cards in the Cube and here is the second part of it Moxfield II!

See you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual