normally cubelet is a 100 card deck for a 2 player game. this one is 200 cards subtible for 2-4 players.
CUBELET RULES:
1) all players draw from the same library, but have their own graveyard.
2) opening hand has 7 cards.
3) there are no lands. instead a player MAY play one card from their hand face down that can tap for any color of mana.
4)besides that all other normal rules of magic apply.
DRAFTING RULES:
1) each player starts with 3 packs of 16 cards and chooses 1 card from each pack. 2) each player will hand the remaining packs clockwise. 3) choose another card from each pack. 4) do this until no cards remain. each player will end up with a 48 card deck. in a 4 player game this will use up all but 8 cards of the cubelet.
-follow the same rules for lands as mentioned above in CUBELET RULES.
WORTH MENTIONING:
there are a few reasons there isn't any lands 1) this format eliminates mana screw and mana flood 2) it promotes planning and strategizing. you have to put thought into what cards you are willing to give up to make your mana drops and what cards you think you may want to hang onto. 3) 200 cards is perfect for 4 players and fits nicely in two 100 card boxes. (no mana taking up extra space)
ABOUT THE DECKS:
a lot of thought went into the theme of this cubelet. I basically created 5 decks that could potentially face off against each other that felt unique to one another and that were fairly balanced. feel free to test out each individual deck if you like. (in fact, that could be a third way to play this cubelet) I chose to use cards from kaladesh to theros beyond death because there is a lot of variety in mechanics just within these sets that I feel compliment each other very well. plus I have really enjoyed them. I chose rakdos in particular for two reasons 1) its my favorite dual color deck type and 2) because rakdos is very often a color combination you see in the meta.
DECK 1: RE-ANIMATOR - fill your graveyard up and use Gate to the Afterlife to get God-Pharaoh's Gift onto the battlefield for re-animation. Bomat Courier and Rotting Regisaur are big early game threats that will help fill your graveyard (and/or hand), and Thrill of Possibility will also give you card advantage while filling your graveyard. if you need more creatures in your graveyard Thud can deal some damage and put a creature in there for you. or, in the late game "thud" big zombies at people that are buffed by a Death Baron. another trick this deck has is with Torgaar, Famine Incarnate. we want creatures in the graveyard so sac them to torgaar to deal big damage to your opponent or restore some of your own life if you are below 10.
DECK 2: BURN - not much to say about this one except that it deals a lot of damage very fast and it has effective card draw using cards like Light Up the Stage, Risk Factor and Theater of Horrors etc. most of the creatures have haste, triggered damage dealing abilities or both. Skewer the Critics and Wizard's Lightning are equivalent to Lightning Bolt and are extremely deadly. this deck struggles against life gain which is a mechanic in this cubelet. to offset that there are a few cards that turn off life gain. during the ixalan standard rotation I found this deck to be nearly unstoppable. (keep in mind all decks are diluted by being part of a five deck cublet)
DECK 3: ARISTOCRATS - this deck is heavily influenced by the "theros beyond death" and "throne of eldraine" sets. this deck boarders on the line of agro and control. cards like Witch's Oven and Woe Strider are perfect sac-outlets to use on creatures you steal from your opponents with cards like Claim the Firstborn and Act of Treason. (don't forget to attack with the stolen creatures before sacking them) Cauldron Familiar will give you repeated value from witch's oven. food tokens can also help you survive agro and burn, and there is a little bit of self-mill to help you "escape" your threats from the graveyard to the battlefield.
DECK 4: VEHICLES - this deck use aggressive-low cost creatures like Rimrock Knight etc. to get in early damage and/or crew vehicles which can mostly be evasive in the air. due to the larger toughness of these vehicles (Heart of Kiran, Consulate Dreadnought, Skysovereign, Consul Flagship) it will typically take extra burn to take them down. killing the creatures that crew the vehicles won't help much. most of them can be re-casted from the graveyard to crew again (Dread Wanderer, Scrapheap Scrounger).
DECK 5: CONTROL - during kaladesh standard rotation I had a rakdos control deck that could adapt to many situations. this isn't exactly that deck but it is similar. this is the deck that kinda keeps the other four decks in check. it contains much of the life gain that is offered in this cubelet. for example; Gifted Aetherborn, Murderous Rider, Vraska's Contempt etc. all these cards plus others usually double to do other things like be a body, or removal, or something else. this control deck is also where you will find the graveyard hate. Tymaret, Chosen from Death, and Elspeth's Nightmare are two cards that will help empty graveyards while other cards in this deck exile creatures when killed.
