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Cathy's Budget Essentials Cube

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Creature (173)

Land (52)

Sorcery (47)

Instant (52)

Artifact (14)

Enchantment (12)

Planeswalker (10)

Overview

This cube is 360 cards with no specific format, but designed to be slightly lower power than the average Modern cube. A larger percentage of the cards than normal are multicolored, leading decks to tend towards 3 colors. There is ample support for a 3 color manabase though, so this hasn't been a huge problem, and 2 color decks are still reasonable. Some cards are very powerful in a vacuum, but in context of the cube I feel like any card has about as much utility as any other.

The cube is about half creatures, 1/8 each of instants, sorceries, and lands, and the rest is enchantments, noncreature artifacts, and planeswalkers. There are a full set of fetch lands, Kaldheim snow duals, and Zendikar manlands. The rest are enemy color painlands, allied color taplands, and assorted all color and utility lands.

Each two-color pair has a supported draft archetype. Due to the multicolor nature of the cube, often a deck will combine 2 archetypes, especially when some cards could support either theme. Below is a quick summary of each theme with some example cards from the archetype

Control

White Blue Control decks focus on stopping or slowing down the development of your opponent's gameplan with removal, counterspells, and boardwipes so you can play a powerful but expensive late-game threat

Taxes

White Black Taxes decks focus on playing efficient creatures alongside discard spells, cards that make casting spells more difficult, and creature removal to disrupt the opponent's plans while you beat them down

Aggro

Red White Aggro decks focus on overwhelming the opponent with low-cost creatures as quickly as possible, supported by equipment to power them up and damage spells to remove blockers or deal the last few points of damage

+1/+1 Counters

Green White +1/+1 Counters decks focus on making your creatures larger in combination with cards that specifically care about or interact with +1/+1 counters to maintain a large board presence

Reanimator

Blue Black Reanimator decks focus on getting a threatening but expensive creature into the graveyard by discarding it from your hand or milling it off the top of your deck, then returning it to play with a reanimation spell to get around paying its cost. Most of the reanimation spells in this cube are slightly more expensive than normal to balance the extreme game-ending power of the reanimation targets

Prowess

Blue Red Prowess decks focus on combining creatures that get more powerful when you cast spells with draw spells, spells you can cast multiple times, and spells that make your creatures harder to block to create a turn where you attack for lots of damage all at once

Lands

Green Blue Lands decks focus on getting additional lands into play, either to benefit directly from cards that care about lands entering, or to ramp up to powerful but expensive spells more quickly

Artifacts

Black Red Artifacts decks focus on playing, sacrificing and reanimating artifacts to combo with cards that care about artifacts being played or effects that happen when you sacrifice them

Graveyard

Black Green Graveyard decks focus on putting as many cards as possible into the graveyard to use it as a resource by returning creatures to play, exiling cards to pay for delve costs, or synergy with cards that directly care about what cards are in your graveyard

Value

Red Green Value decks focus on playing cards that give you the most impact per card as possible, mostly by creatures with an efficient cost for their stats, powerful secondary effects, or creatures with the ability to protect themselves from being removed

Powerful Outliers

Despite cards being balanced on average, some cards are still very powerful on their own in the context of the cube, worth noting as great first picks from packs, potential reasons to play an extra color, or making decisions on what to prioritize removing. Below are what I believe to be the most notable cards, which should be paid attention to whenever they appear

The 5 Best Cards of Each Color

White

  1. Approach of the Second Sun - Hard to interact with win condition, gives inevitability to control decks
  2. Swords to Plowshares - Super mana efficient removal that deals with any creature at instant speed
  3. Elspeth, Knight-Errant - A planeswalker that excels both on defense and offense while gaining loyalty counters the whole time
  4. Stoneforge Mystic - Versatile card that lets you find whatever equipment best fits the scenario and can put it into play to avoid counterspells
  5. Luminarch Aspirant - Aggressive card that instantly starts snowballing into a threat

Blue

  1. Brainstorm - Gives excellent card selection for 1 mana, and with shuffle effects the one drawback can be avoided
  2. Shark Typhoon - The cycling ability is an uncounterable instant speed creature that draws a card, which usually outclasses the (already good) main card
  3. Fact or Fiction - Can always draw at least 2 cards at instant speed, and your opponent doesn't usually have enough info to perfectly split the piles
  4. Jace, the Mind Sculptor - Controls what people draw, what creatures are in play, and can Brainstorm if you need cards
  5. Snapcaster Mage - Efficient, instant speed creature that lets you double cast an instant or sorcery

Black

  1. Palace Siege - Both modes are great, either giving your creatures resilience or directly draining your opponent around their defense
  2. Murderous Cut - Efficient removal with no drawback aside from needing a few cards in graveyard
  3. Griselbrand - If left in play it can win the game on its own. Due to its mana cost it's best to reanimate it
  4. Liliana of the Veil - Efficient planeswalker that erodes your opponent's hand and creatures so your creatures can push through
  5. Dark Confidant - Low-cost creature that draws you a card every turn for 2-3 life on average, but with high variance, often drawing lands for free

Red

  1. Goblin Engineer - Gets an artifact from your deck when it enters, then abuses "enters the battlefield" abilities. Excellent synergy with Breya's Apprentice
  2. Bonecrusher Giant - Removal and creature in 1 card. Not game ending, but usually ends up trading 1 of your cards for 2 opponent cards
  3. Goblin Bushwhacker - Gives your entire team a buff and haste for only 2 mana. Playing it in the same turn as another creature can win the game out of nowhere
  4. Monastery Swiftspear - 1 mana creature that can quickly threaten a win with enough spells cast
  5. Glorybringer - Powerful removal and an immediate threat. Can often lead to a win after 1 attack

Green

  1. Vengevine - Aggressive creature that doesn't like to stay dead, and often feels great to discard or mill into
  2. Sandwurm Convergence - Difficult to answer threat and defense all in one. Usually wins the game in a few turns
  3. Scavenging Ooze - Low-cost creature that controls what's in the graveyard while growing larger and gaining life the whole time
  4. Tireless Tracker - Card draw engine that becomes giant quickly. Combos great with fetch lands
  5. Managorger Hydra - Snowballs just from playing the game, quickly becoming massive and hard to block

The 10 Best Two-Color Cards

  1. Fractured Identity - Steals anything with no chance to get it back
  2. Death Grasp - Multipurpose spell that scales with the time spent in each game, good as creature removal and as player damage
  3. Angelfire Ignition - Superbuffs a creature for a turn, letting you push through an attack, then lets you do it again
  4. Kitchen Finks - Efficient creature that's playable in a lot of decks. Every +1/+1 counter after it dies once removes the -1/-1 and lets it die again
  5. Fallen Shinobi - Turns any unblocked creature into a free 5 damage and 2 cards from your opponent's deck
  6. Sprite Dragon - Fast, hard to block, and grows larger permanently
  7. Trygon Predator - Evasive creature that removes one of an opponent's hard to answer permanents every time it hits
  8. Fire Covenant - Lets you pay life rather than mana to remove everything important from your opponent's side of the table
  9. Grist, the Hunger Tide - Protects itself, removes creatures, and is a win condition. Being a creature out of play means it can be reanimated etc.
  10. Huntmaster of the Fells   - Jack-of-all-trades creature; creates tokens, gains life, kills creatures, and damages the opponent as long as you can keep flipping it

The 5 Best Colorless Cards

  1. Arcbound Ravager - Whenever an artifact would die, the Ravager grows instead. If the Ravager dies, its counters just move to another artifact creature
  2. Hangarback Walker - Can be played early and slowly grown over the game, or have counters dumped on it by Arcbound Ravager et al.
  3. Nevinyrral's Disk - Board wipe that works in any deck. Can just sit in play until you feel like destroying everything
  4. Ugin, the Ineffable - Value engine that can create creatures that draw cards on death, or destroy anything short of an artifact
  5. Sword of Body and Mind - Turns a creature into a game-ending threat with relevant defensive and evasive capabilities over and over again

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Date added 2 years
Last updated 1 month
Legality

This deck is Limited legal.
Rarity (main - side)

28 - 0 Mythic Rares

162 - 0 Rares

105 - 0 Uncommons

55 - 0 Commons
Cards 360
Avg. CMC 3.03
Tokens Bat 1/1 B, Beast 3/3 G, Bird 1/1 W, Clue, Construct 1/1 C, Dinosaur 3/3 G, Earthshaker Khenra 4/4 B, Elemental 1/1 R, Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Emblem Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Emblem Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, Goblin 1/1 R, Human 2/2 G, Human Warrior 1/1 W, Insect 1/1 BG, Insect 1/1 G, On an Adventure, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Horror */* C, Soldier 1/1 W, Spider 1/2 G, Spirit 1/1 WB, Spirit 2/2 C, Monarch Emblem, Thopter 1/1 C, Timeless Witness 4/4 B, Wolf 2/2 G, Wurm 5/5 G
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