Basic Information
Cube Size: 360
Breakdown: 40 WUBRG, 105 artifacts, 25 multi, 30 land
Standard or Theme: Theme: Artifacts
Snow Lands: No
Average Number of Players: Variable
How Often Drafted: Infrequently
Card Selection
Proxies: No
Powered: No
Portal:[
/b] None currently, but not opposed
"Un" Cards: No
Banned Cards for Power-Level: P9, most fast artifact-based mana sources (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Mishra's Workshop, Tolarian Academy), Tinker, Tezzeret (both versions.)
Banned Cards for Time Constraints: None
Banned Cards for "fun" factor: None
Cube Design
Standard or Multiplayer: Standard
Sideboards?: No
Color Balance: Yes
Gold Balance: No
Hybrid/Split/Kicker as Gold: Yes
Color Triggers as Gold: Yes
Perfectly Balanced CMC: No
White:
Significant "equipment matters" theme is the backbone of white's aggro plan, although there are enough tools to pull off W/x Control as
well. Overall, white in the Artifact Cube displays the same schizophrenic aggro/control duality as in many standard Cubes.
White Creatures
White Spells
Blue:
Blue's usual strengths are all represented here - card draw, countering, copying, stealing - but there are also enough elements present for Blue Aggro to be a thing.
Blue Creatures
Blue Spells
Black:
Black's lack of interaction with artifacts is painfully obvious here, especially in its spells. The quality of black's creature removal has been bumped up a bit to help compensate, and as such it currently plays well as a support colour.
Black Creatures
Black Spells
Red:
Somehow Red got all the tools needed for Big Red to be a very strong deck, but almost no aggro elements (beyond cheap burn.) Combined with plentiful artifact removal, we've found R/x big mana decks to be almost unbeatable if they reach the late game.
Red Creatures
Red Spells
Green:
Green obviously has a lot of artifact removal at its disposal, but for
power level- and balance reasons I've left a lot of it on the sidelines. The quality of its creatures has been bumped up in compensation. The hexproof trio (Troll Ascetic, Thrun, and Plated Slagwurm) are all on the watchlist as they're extremely difficult to deal with in this format.
Green Creatures
Green Spells
Multi:
There's still a lot of random goodstuff in the multicolour section (especially spells - Fire/Ice, Electrolyze, Lightning Helix, Terminate) - finding artifact-related multicolour cards is surprisingly difficult. Note that this section is not colour-balanced; I didn't feel it was right to include irrelevant cards just to make up the numbers in certain sections, at the cost of powerful artifact-related options in others.
Multicolor
Artifact:
Mirrodin Swords and Umezawa's Jitte are on the watchlist for being too powerful (although personally I think if you didn't pick up answers for artifacts while drafting this Cube you probably deserve to die horribly to a Sword-wielding whatever.)
Artifact
Land:
Top-notch colour fixing didn't seem to be a priority in this Cube (given the heavy artifact presence and the
small size of the multicolour section), so I didn't bother including ABU duals.
Land