Happy Wednesday, gamers, and welcome to another week of the Spotlight Cube Series on Magic Online (MTGO). This week we’ll be playing Caleb Gannon’s Powered Synergy Cube. Many of the most powerful cards in the usual Vintage Cube are present here, but once you peel those layers back this environment is quite different.
When I saw the announcement that we’d be getting another powered Spotlight Cube I was cautiously optimistic. MenguCube and Alt-Vintage Cube weren’t without their charm, but for the most part Vintage Cube gameplay is defined by the most powerful cards and a lot of the peripheral elements are interchangeable. Powered Synergy Cube takes a more dramatic stab at differentiating itself to this end.
You can find Gannon’s article on the Cube here, and Cube Cobra list here. The first thing to note is the absence of many of the game-ending combos and individually powerful win conditions that we typically see in powered Cubes. No Splinter Twin, no Oko, Thief of Crowns. Not even a Jace, the Mind Sculptor! The absolute most powerful cards are all here though, and some hammers like Urza, Lord High Artificer are hanging out in the list as well.
Enough cards have changed that decks in Powered Synergy Cube will look pretty different from your typical Vintage Cube decks, but for the most part the Cube is still going to be about the most powerful cards. I see a greater emphasis on figuring out what your deck does in this environment, especially given that the archetypes have shifted significantly, but there’s still no way to make the 500th best Magic card comparable to the 50th best Magic card. This has been my experience with every powered Cube I’ve drafted going all the way down to things like Old School Cube, and you can see this principal in action with lower powered Cubes with wide power bands as well.
That in mind, let’s take a look at the Cube by color, noting what is different from the usual powered Cubes we see on MTGO and how to approach drafting each color.
White
Mono-White Aggro is generally the winningest white deck in the MTGO Vintage Cube, and many of the cards that make this true are present in Powered Synergy Cube. There are fewer total one drops, but I wouldn’t be surprised to successful Mono-White Aggro decks when you’re able to assemble the one drops and some of the more powerful two-drops. The one drops are what you’ll want to watch closely though, and it does seem more likely that you’ll want to go into two or more colors for aggressive strategies here.
Solitude, Skyclave Apparition, and Palace Jailer remain near the top of my pick order for white in Vintage Cube, and cards like Whitemane Lion and Spirited Companion don’t factor into this equation at all. As I often point out, white is the most rigid of the colors for really any type of Cube, so white’s aggressive slant here is to be expected. There are some unique archetypes worth discussing though.
As Gannon points out in the preview article, Second Sunrise is a “don’t try this at home” style combo deck. To the extent that I’m interested in exploring this archetype, I would never pick Second Sunrise highly and imagine that both the right cards need to be opened and that you need to wheel everything you’re looking for to pull it off successfully. Auriok Salvagers is a little easier to pull off, though is still reliant on Black Lotus or Lion’s Eye Diamond. Nobody is passing Black Lotus, and Lion’s Eye Diamond looks to be at a premium with Underworld Breach and all of the usual Storm suspects present here. I see Auriok Salvagers combo as a powerful avenue to victory, but as a card that you should pick late to speculate on assembling the right pieces or if the rest of the deck has already started to come together.
I’m more into Swift Configuration than the other two combo cards highlighted, largely because it generally functions when you’re not comboing. If this one is new to you, it’s another way to make infinite mana with Devoted Druid. It’s actually pretty rad because you can play the Configuration on a summoning sick Devoted Druid and it will lose summoning sickness by virtue of no longer being a creature. Devoted Druid is also a totally reasonable piece of mana acceleration that other players are more likely to pass, so the assorted flavors of Devoted Druid combo are something to watch in this Cube.
Blue
There’s some cool stuff going on in blue’s creature column, though once you get down to the spells you see the real draw to blue. This is ultimately a powered Cube and we’re trying to play with Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, and Mana Drain!
There are enough all-stars here that you could still build a typical mono-blue deck that you would see in the usual Vintage Cube, and the closer your deck looks to that the more successful I would expect it to be. Thieving Skydiver, Vendilion Clique, Urza, Lord High Artifer, Snapcaster Mage, busted card selection and counterspells are going to be the driving force for blue decks here the same as anywhere. I’m intrigued by the Ninja theme, but you won’t catch me passing Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy for a blue creature that’s interested in attacking. Similar to some of the white combos, I’d move in on blue aggressive decks on the wheel if at all.
I called out Whitemane Lion in white, and Shrieking Drake is worth at least as much of a callout. I think Shrieking Drake (similar to Whitemane Lion) would be a hard sell in a Pauper Cube, and it’s a much harder sell next to so many all-time greats with excess upside to play a card with such significant downside. Rebuying Ninjas is cute and all, but not nearly enough of the powerful cards have been skimmed off the top for that sort of thing to be inviting. These cards do set up some infinite shenanigans with Aluren, but I’m incredibly skeptical of the consistency and power of these decks.
Black
Black is where we start to see some meaningful differentiation from the more stock Vintage Cubes. There’s no Reanimator theme here, and black aggressive and sacrifice decks are heavily supported. Storm support and busted cards like Demonic Tutor round out the black column, though the most slots by far go towards the sacrifice theme.
As such, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is going to be a great deal more powerful in Powered Synergy Cube than other Vintage Cubes, and I would pick it very highly. I’m much less keen on that Pitiless Plunderer, and many of the black one drops are whatever, but the support for the sacrifice theme has me valuing Skullclamp higher than usual as well.
The black column is pretty long on two drops, and I’m hoping to not find myself in a position to play Miasmic Mummy, but the flagship cards make me bullish on the sacrifice decks. Another of these flagships that is still new to many of us is The Meathook Massacre, which has quickly proven itself to be an all-timer for sacrifice strategies, offering a lot of power both proactively and reactively.
I’m as in on Storm here as I usually would be. Which is to say that I will draft it often against my better judgment.
Red
Red’s themes closely mirror black’s, with Storm and sacrifice seeming to be the most powerful and prominent archetypes. Underworld Breach is among the most powerful cards in the Cube, though red looks a little rocky with regard to average card quality after that.
Mono-Red Aggro is significantly scaled back, and all of the easy combos are absent. I imagine that the most consistently powerful red decks will be sacrifice decks, and Goblin Bombardment is actually among the marquee red cards in this Cube list. Goblin Welder is likely much better here than usual, and Dragon’s Rage Channeler is an incredibly powerful one drop, but on balance I’m the least enthused about red as a color in this Cube relative to the other colors.
The madness theme is neat, though combining Life from the Loam and Molten Vortex has proven clunky in my experience in smaller Cubes with lower power ceilings. I like Squee, Goblin Nabob plenty, but for the most part I’ll be sticking to the red cards that we normally see in Vintage Cubes.
Green
A lot of the individual cards are different, but in practice the green decks in this Cube will be very similar to the green decks that I like in the regular Vintage Cube. There’s not Natural Order, but Green Sun’s Zenith and Finale of Devastation for Craterhoof Behemoth are both present, and access to these cards are among the most powerful draws to green.
I’m not about to endorse Collected Company, but I really like the increased volume of one drops in this Cube, whether you use them to lean into an Elf theme or just to play a powerful mana ramp game. The usual five drops aren’t present, but green decks in powered Cubes are driven so much more by one drops anyway that this isn’t terribly significant. Tireless Tracker is the only five drop that I need!
If you do want to go hard on Elves though, I imagine that Glimpse of Nature and knockoffs like Beck and Rite of Harmony are actually real workhorses here, with Heritage Druid being a very important card once you lean into this sort of shell. You won’t be able to assemble anything with the consistency of a Constructed Legacy Elves deck, but I imagine you’ll be able to pick up Glimpse of Nature on the wheel and make good use of it. Just like in regular Vintage Cube, you will want to take Craterhoof Behemoth as soon as you see it.
Gold
Powered Synergy Cube triples up on fetchlands and doubles up on both duals and shocks, so I don’t see a reason to be shy on taking gold cards. In fact, with more of the Cube feeling like filler I would be inclined to start with whatever the most powerful individual cards are in a pack with color or colors being more of a tiebreaker than anything.
If a gold card would normally be first-pickable in Vintage Cube then it’s first-pickable here, though I’d promote a few cards in those ranks as well:
Namely, Lingering Souls looks a lot better here than normal. There’s pressure to build a funky engine deck in this Cube, but the burden on assembling a powerful sacrifice deck is so much lower that I expect these decks to perform very well on average. It’s comparatively easy to assemble Lingering Souls and Goblin Bombardment along with other token makers bent on dealing damage as opposed to any particularly convoluted combo or engine.
Artifacts
There’s an aggressive artifact deck seeded here, which is an option for keeping your aggressive decks mono-color. This stuff all seems fine, but struggles both for this being a 540-card Cube and for the power ceiling to be well above casting creatures that attack and block. The highest picks for these decks look more like Retrofitter Foundry and Urza, Lord High Artificer than Steel Overseer, but the most important thing is that you’re able to hit a high volume of artifact creatures if you want to play a card like Arcbound Ravager.
Of course, the most important artifacts, and really the most powerful cards in this Cube or any other are going to be Moxen, Black Lotus, Sol Ring… You know the drill. It’s notable that Mox Opal makes an appearance here, and I expect Mox Opal to be great in decks that can support it, and many decks that can support it to be great.
Smugglers Copter is usually among the more powerful aggressive cards in powered Cubes, and I would expect that to hold true here. I would also expect Umezawa’s Jitte to perform better here than in the typical MTGO Vintage Cube.
There’s a bit of a Krark-Clan Ironworks shell here, and there’s definitely stuff that you can do with Scarp Trawler and undoubtedly some infinite loops. I’m used to seeing Krark-Clan Ironworks in Cubes with Marionette Master for a slight ambitious but generally easier access kill, but sadly that’s not an option here, which makes drafting KCI a bit more dubious.
Lands
Gaea’s Cradle, Tolarian Academy, and Strip Mine are all here and are all great. It’s interesting to see Field of the Dead in the spread without Primeval Titan, and I’m less keen on that one. Mostly we’re looking at mana-fixing lands here, with three copies of every fetchland and two copies of every dual and shock. It should be pretty easy to get your colors online, and with no aspirational cards like Niv-Mizzet Reborn or Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, I’m going to push my line of taking lands later than people are generally inclined to in powered Cube.
Of course, with blue being the best color it makes plenty of sense to draft blue lands more highly than others, and with sacrifice looking powerful and well-supported, there’s some additional incentive to move in on Mardu lands. Never thought I’d say that about a powered Cube!
Powered Synergy Cube is a more significant departure from the typical Vintage Cube than we’ve seen in the past, though ultimately I’m expecting the cards that we usually see to outperform the cards that we usually don’t. Perhaps I’m jaded, but I don’t believe I’m wrong. All the same, I’m intrigued to try the format out, and there are some cool aspirational things going on here. Honestly I’d like to see an unpowered version of this Cube, but for now you’ll be finding me in the powered queues.
