Happy Monday, gamers! As you may know, I’m usually published on Wednesdays, but there are pressing matters to attend to this week. Tinkerer’s Cube is back on Magic Arena today, and I’m here to give you the lowdown on the most recent updates to this recurring digital Cube offering.
As we’ve seen time and again with the Arena Cubes, enough cards are changing this run that it’s fair to think of this Cube and the previous iteration of Tinkerer’s Cube as entirely different Cubes. I’ve written more than once about the wide power band in previous iterations of Tinkerer’s Cube, and I think the power level of the average card is much flatter in this run than it has been in previous iterations, which I consider to be a more fun experience.
I also don’t spy any digital-only cards in the new list, which is the ideal scenario for me. When approaching that sort of thing, you have to ask if Arena Cube is for getting people into the particulars of Cube Draft or getting people into the particulars of Magic Arena, and it should come as no surprise that I see the former as the more noble goal.
Speaking of the current list, you can find David McDarby’s write-up and said list on The Mothership, and I’ve also done my usual porting of the Cube list to Cube Cobra. Without further ado, let’s break down the Cube by color and talk approach how to approach drafting the new Tinkerer’s Cube list!
White
Previous iterations of Tinkerer’s Cube offered more aggressive options than the name might have suggested, and the updated list has taken some steps to make it more difficult to draft strictly aggressive decks. The loudest of these changes is cutting the total number of white one-drops from eight to four. The heaviest hitters like Adeline, Resplendent Cathar and Intrepid Adversary are also no longer anywhere to be seen. I think that these changes line up very well with the stated goals of the Cube and the expected aesthetic of a Cube named for tinkering.
It’s worth noting that the Cube doesn’t offer a ton of spot removal options, and that in general the sweepers are more available at conventionally powerful rates. Realm-Cloaked Giant and By Invitation Only standout as some of white’s most powerful individual cards, and I imagine stalling a battlefield long enough to win with Approach of the Second Sun isn’t all that difficult.
In terms of playing to the battlefield, token generators and creatures with enters-the-battlefield effects definitely seem like the way to go in white. There are a few blink and self-bounce options in the spread that will allow white decks to go over the top, and I fully expect both of Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines’s abilities to be very high-impact in this Cube.
Tinkerer’s Cube is a synergy-driven environment, but I’ll still caution that individually powerful cards will still be important to value highly, and that in general you’ll want to avoid cards that don’t do anything on their own. In the Trenches will offer more in the average game than Divine Visitation, and I also see the payoff on Rabble Rousing as much more significant than Divine Visitation for its ability to work with any creature rather than relying only on future tokens to matter. Your mileage may vary, but these comparisons are illustrative of broad-strokes notions that have converted to game wins in my experience with these Cubes.
Blue
Blue is far more aggressive in Tinkerer’s Cube than it is in the average Cube, which I suppose makes a lot of sense if the idea isn’t to draft the sorts of decks that we usually see. With the spot removal in the Cube being on the middling side, Curious Obsession gets much more inviting, and Hadana’s Climb is realistically one of the more powerful aggressive options in the Cube.
That said, I am looking for a little more incentive or redundancy on the more powerful cards to draft an aggressive blue deck. The list of individually powerful blue cards in the Cube is perhaps refreshingly short, but even still, I’ll be looking for cards on that list to move in on blue. These cards bear a lot of similarities to white’s most powerful options, in that generating immediate value is largely the name of the game here.
Other card draw and counterspells will be solid, too, but admittedly blue is far less appealing here than it often is in Cube. I do believe that Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is one of the more powerful cards in the Cube, but being in a weaker color with a difficult mana cost helps to mitigate this.
Black
Black also offers something of an aggressive slant in Tinkerer’s Cube, but Cult Conscript and Gutterbones paint a clear picture of what you really want to be doing with creatures. Efficient rates are nice, but a sacrifice deck is going to get better mileage than a strictly aggressive on here.
One of the better cards for reducing your opponent’s life total to zero in the Cube is quietly Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. The more bogged down you can expect a battlefield to get, the more Vito can just win out of nowhere. There’s also a good amount of assorted lifegain in the Cube that can really make Vito’s job easy.
Black has some solid removal options with Murderous Rider pacing the field, but once again I’m looking at the sweepers for the real heavy hitters. Extinction Event is one of the most potentially brutal battlefield wipes ever printed, and with the card being incredibly splashable, it’ll have a heavy impact in a lot of Tinkerer’s Cube games.
The less aggressive a Cube, the more mileage you can expect to get out of hard-casting Bolas’s Citadel. Similarly to Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, it’s a tough one to cast, but triple pips on a six-drop are a lot easier than on a four. I’d pick the Citadel very highly without much reservation.
Red
Red has some solid cheap creatures as well as removal options, and there’s some appeal to trying to be aggressive when you expect the average player to be planning for a long game. There’s a little bit of a madness theme, too, that trends pretty lean. I could see getting run over by the right red deck with the right draw.
It’s notable that there aren’t all that many burn spells that can target players in this Cube, which can be a significant detriment for aggressive decks. You won’t be able to use your removal to finish your opponent, and cards like Fire Prophecy will be much more appealing to controlling drafters. I expect that it will be fairly difficult to fight another aggressive red player at the draft table, but if the aggressive red lane is open, you could find some of the easiest wins the Cube can theoretically offer.
On the other side of things, cards like Seize the Spoils and Big Score offer card selection and a mana boost that will be very effective at facilitating non-aggressive red decks. There’s not much in the way of payoffs in mono-red cards, but Treasures cast Bolas’s Citadel as well as any other mana source.
Green
Green does a solid job of offering aggressive options, mana acceleration, and big payoffs. Drafting green will involve some risk of outright losing to the powerful sweepers present in the Cube, but there are ways to make up card advantage here, too. I think green might have the highest average power level of the five colors in Tinkerer’s Cube, so long as you keep your deck focused. Curving Pelt Collector into Springbloom Druid probably means your deck is a little confused, but I’d be happy to draft with either card in mind abstractly.
That’s really the most important thing that I can say about green. I see green decks in this Cube as looking for a big payoff, whether they’re aggressive or more of a ramp deck, and the most important thing is to identify which payoff is appropriate for which deck. One wants to smack the opponent with a fast Ghalta, Primal Hunger, and the other wants to cast cards like Beast Whisperer and Soul of the Harvest and really go off. Depending on the draft, there will be a little overlap here, but I expect that the worst green decks will be ones that don’t know whether they’re ramping or attacking.
My personal preference will be towards cards like Sanctum Weaver and Armored Scrapgorger over Werewolf Pack Leader and Wildborn Preserver. I plan to cast a lot of Explores and Wolfwillow Havens.
Gold
The mana in Tinkerer’s Cube is a bit rocky for multicolor aggressive decks, but that’s pretty common in Cube. There’s enough mana-fixing in the lands column that I’m not going to shy away from first-picking a card simply because it’s gold. This is my short list of most first-pickable gold cards:
Okay, so the list is very short. Three of these cards have proven themselves over time in comparably powerful Cubes or even in more powerful environments, and the fourth is Old Rutstein. Old Rutstein had a short-lived stay in the Magic Online (MTGO) Vintage Cube, and while the card is nowhere close to powerful enough for that environment, it actually does a lot of stuff and I think is a quite powerful option for Cubes at lower power levels.
Artifacts
A number of the most powerful cards in this iteration of Tinkerer’s Cube can be found in the colorless column. I know how much some of you like to stay open, so this is great news! I’d be pretty happy picking up cards like Ornithopter of Paradise for almost any deck in this environment, and there are a lot of great options beyond that:
I don’t expect to pass any of these cards too often, with Emrakul being the card that I’m most likely to pass because it doesn’t fit every deck. That said, Emrakul will also be the most powerful card in decks where it does work. That’s definitely something to keep in mind. Meanwhile, Retrofitter Foundry will be the most powerful card in other decks without any effort whatsoever. I’m going to have a very hard time passing Retrofitter Foundry or Treasure Map in this Cube.
Lands
There aren’t a ton of mana-fixing lands in Tinkerer’s Cube, but there are enough options to consistently play two- or three-color decks. Four and five seem tough, but doable. The options available are shocklands, painlands, Temples, buddy lands, and Triomes.
Fabled Passage is also present as a relatively high pick, with Mana Confluence and Lotus Field featured as… less high picks. Tinkerer’s Cube offers enough slower decks that the damage from painlands isn’t a huge deal, but they’re weak enough that you should be able to get them late out of the average pack.
Mono-color creature-lands and ability lands like Otawara, Soaring City are definitely worth paying attention to, though I don’t expect them to have a dramatic impact on gameplay. They’re just nice options to pick up if you can get them late. The standout among utility lands in the Cube is Westvale Abbey, which can be absolutely back-breaking in environments like this. An 18-land Westvale Abbey deck is the kind of territory that I’m excited to draft in this Cube.
Seeing as this is the Arena Cube run that bridges the gap until the next set release, there aren’t any March of the Machine cards to talk about today. I’ll be breaking down my Top 10 most Cube-worthy cards from the set next week, though! For now, happy drafting.