Happy Wednesday, gamers! Let’s start today off with a little good news/bad news. We’ll start with the bad news. For those who have been waiting with bated breath for the final module of my Time Capsule Cube, you’ll have to wait a few more weeks. The good news is that we have a new Spotlight Cube to draft on Magic Online (MTGO) this week!
The Spotlight Cube this time around is a continuation of MTGO’s exploration of three-color Cubes started by yours truly. We’ve seen my Grixis Cube, Autumn Burchett’s Bant Cube, and Ellie Rice’s Temur Cube previously. This week, David McDarby offers us Mardu Cube! You can find McDarby’s write-up of the Cube here, and I’ve also ported the Cube list over to Cube Cobra.
General Notes
Before we get into the specifics of Mardu Cube, I’ll give my usual breakdown of how to approach drafting three-color Cubes. With a higher volume of mono-color cards for each color as well as an increased chance that a given land fixes your colors, it is easier to play both mono-color and three-color in these Cubes than in more traditional five-color Cubes. So while the Cube is called Mardu Cube, it’s just as easy to draft a mono-color deck of any of the Cube’s colors or any of the two-color configurations.
In fact, for Mardu specifically, I expect that one- and two-color decks will be more common and successful than going full Mardu. We always used to joke that the Mardu wedge represented “kill spells splashing kill spells,” and while there are reasons to play all three colors, I expect that just curving out will be of paramount importance in this environment. You’ll also want to make sure that your threats line up well against your opponent’s removal, because this color spread naturally lends itself to a lot of battles of attrition.
With that in mind, let’s break the Cube down by color and go over how I would go about drafting it!
White
White gets its usual aggressive support here, and I expect that white-based aggressive decks will be fine. Something to consider is that there are lots of creatures in this Cube and few draws to noncreature decks. Beyond creature cards, there are myriad token makers. So in addition to a high volume of removal spells, you can also expect a lot of blocking.
That means that your volume of Savannah Lions is less important than the tools that you use to punch through blockers and removal. In Vintage Cube I’d give some extra weight to a one-drop over a planeswalker in a close decision, but in Mardu Cube I’d reverse that paradigm. That means that aggressive and controlling decks will be fighting over some specific cards to a higher degree than usual.
Going Wide
Generating tokens or other forms of incidental value is far more important than individual bodies. Baneslayer Angel is typically mopey in Cubes, so that’s nothing new, but the more significant difference is that cards like Reveillark actually seem significant for keeping bodies on the battlefield. Solitude is just always great, but it’s worth pointing out that it’s the exact style of card that I expect to see in winning Mardu Cube decks.
Going Big
A lot of the five- and more-mana spells are better in Mardu Cube than in Cubes featuring blue due to not having to clear a counterspell hurdle. You’ll want to watch out for Mana Tithe, but for the most part, tapping out for a big value play is where the smart money is. Just casting Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite for seven looks backbreaking against a lot of what’s going on in this Cube. With so much of the gameplay centering around playing for position on the battlefield, I’d also expect Elspeth Conquers Death to be backbreaking. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is usually great, and it’s as good as ever here.
The Monarch
A critical aspect of Mardu mirror gameplay to highlight is that becoming the monarch is one of the most significant ways to generate card advantage. This is more or less true in any Cube, but there’s a real argument to be made for Palace Jailer being the overall Pack 1, Pick 1 in this environment. I’m also very interested in pairing Archon of Coronation and Court of Grace with a bunch of removal, sweepers, and blockers.
Black
Black looks a bit different in Mardu Cube from what we’re using to seeing. This is most pronounced in the increased volume of cheap aggressive creatures and support for black beatdown decks. I’m not necessarily a believer in Cabal Therapist, but hits like Knight of the Ebon Legion and Carrion Feeder go a long way in making aggressive decks work.
Sacrifice
Black’s greatest strength seems to be rooted in sacrifice strategies, with Rankle, Master of Pranks and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician providing powerful top-end. The Meathook Massacre is among the most powerful black cards in this Cube, and more often than not I would be looking to play it in these sacrifice decks for the reach that it offers. Bitterblossom will be one of the better threats in this Cube for being resistant to most forms of removal, and access to any of these top-end cards allows you to put any token generator over.
Devotion
Black devotion is a draftable archetype, and I can get behind Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Erebos, Bleak-Hearted. Phyrexian Obliterator is the sort of card that you should plan on wheeling and often benching even if you’re firmly in this archetype, but enchantments like the aforementioned The Meathook Massacre and Phyrexian Arena are quite powerful. Bastion of Remembrance is also great as a bridge between devotion and sacrifice decks.
Reanimation
There’s a Reanimator package featured in the Cube, though the absence of blue cards is much to the detriment of these decks. You can still draft good Reanimator decks, but there will be a great emphasis on making sure your deck is playable in the average case and not just when you have the nut draw.
Collective Brutality and Bone Shards are very powerful Reanimator enablers, but I’d be making sure I was also pairing them with some cards like Bloodghast as well as playing creatures like Grave Titan that are generally castable as my preferred targets for reanimation spells. There are only so many discard outlets, and the reanimation spells are less efficient and scarcer than in the most powerful Cubes. There’s a fine argument to be made for just casting cards like Archon of Cruelty; just be careful not to assemble a glass cannon in a Cube without much card selection.
Red
The red column of Mardu Cube is peculiar. You have some of the best red one drops of all time in Dragon’s Rage Channeler and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, but the actual GOAT Monastery Swiftspear is absent. This makes more sense when you dive into the cheap instant and sorceries in the Cube. Lightning Bolt is here, but Chain Lighting is absent.
This design features a lot of great cheap creatures, but there are some exclusions that make pulling off a generic burn-style deck unrealistic. Keep this in mind when drafting red decks, as there aren’t all that many cheap red removal spells to clear away blockers. Similarly to white, there’ll be a greater emphasis for red decks to have a few heavy-hitting expensive spells.
Enchantments and Expensive Cards
Sulfuric Vortex is present, but with the volume of creature support in this Cube, it’ll be questionable in a lot of matchups. I’m seeing Goblin Bombardment as a much higher pick in this environment as a way to proactively support sacrifice decks, as well as a way to reactively push back against removal and sweepers. Once again, creating tokens and finding other ways to generate value seem very important in arguably the most midrange wedge.
I’d pick a card like Glorybringer much higher than a card like Baneslayer Angel simply by virtue of having haste, and as such I see more value in the average expensive red card than many of the black and white ones. I’ll also highlight that Fury seems busted here as either a free sweeper or a back-breaking five-drop.
Hiding in Hybrid
There are some cards that are technically mono-color in this environment that are hiding out in the gold column by virtue of costing hybrid mana. The significant red card among them is Lutri, the Spellchaser. How good is Lutri? Well, the ceiling for the card is based on what kinds of spells you can copy. I imagine this will generally be a removal spell. More importantly, in this heavily attrition-based environment a companion is a free card, and as such Lutri looks like a very high pick.
Lastly, an early sleeper from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty that has taken Magic by storm lately, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, meaningfully shows up among the three-drops in Mardu Cube. Simply generating two bodies will be a big deal in this environment, and the card selection and other value that the card generates make it a clear standout in this Cube.
Gold
The quality of gold spells in Mardu Cube ranges wildly, and as a rule I would value lands for my two- and three-color decks higher than most of the gold spells. How significant is access to Anguished Unmaking? Not very. There’s plenty of removal in each of the three colors, and gold removal spells broadly are not a big draw to playing more than one color.
There are some gold standouts, though. We’re looking for everything we sought in the mono-color columns: good planeswalkers, becoming the monarch, and other forms of value. Valki, God of Lies, or rather Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor, will be a game-ender. Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast is busted. Showdown of the Skalds is a rare form of card advantage, and Queen Marchesa gives us another way to become the monarch.
The other major standout in the gold column for me is Damn. It’s very likely that you’ll have access to either cast or overload the card in this environment, and any deck that can meaningfully leverage a Terminate / Wrath of God split card is going to be well set up in this Cube. Most of the other gold stuff is merely fine. Cards that you’ll sometimes play, but nothing to go out of your way for.
Artifacts
Mardu Cube features Talismans, Signets, and a few other mana rocks. There aren’t many ways to draw cards and only so many planeswalkers, so these aren’t as significant as they would be in most other Cubes. They’re still strong cards to be sure, but unless you’re able to line up the powerful card advantage spells from the Cube, then you’ll be signing up to trade whatever spell you ramped into one-for-one with some removal spell from your opponent pretty often in a Cube where every color is long on interaction.
There are some other very powerful options in the colorless column, though. First and foremost, with so many creatures aiming to attack and block, I expect that all three protection Swords will see heavy and meaningful play in this Cube.
Beyond that, you see the usual suspects. Smuggler’s Copter is incredible. As is Coercive Portal. If you’re planning on going bigger, then Wurmcoil Engine and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are cards that are more likely to do better than trade one-for-one than most cards in the Cube. Oh, also Umezawa’s Jitte is here. I wouldn’t plan on passing that one basically ever.
Lands
There’s not all that much mana-fixing in Mardu Cube, but there are ten lands for each color pair in addition to fetchlands, Prismatic Vista, and Savai Triome. Again, I’d pick most lands over most gold cards in this list, but I’d also keep the option open to only play one or two colors. You’ll also be paid off for doing so with powerful utility lands like the mono-color creature-lands and the new channel cycle.
I think that midrange fans are really going to enjoy Mardu Cube, and there are plenty of avenues to get at least a little fancy as well. I’m pretty big on sacrifice decks, so I plan on doing at least a few drafts where I try to combine The Meathook Massacre and Goblin Bombardment. While I wanted to close this article with a Mardon’t pun, I couldn’t think of one. So I Marwon’t. Later, gamers.
