The Ruin - Old Border Desert
Just wanted to share my list for my old border desert cube, The Ruin, that I put together and just drafted in person for the first time on Wednesday.
The theme is meant to evoke the feeling of stumbling across an old ruin or artifact, where you might ponder who created it or what the original intent was. Based on an 8th-9th century British poem of the same name, which is about an even then ancient ruin (probably Roman). The cube highlights the individuality of the cards by being sleeved in clear sleeves so that the wear on each card is visible front and back, slight advantages be damned.
I decided to use only cards from 1993-2001, stopping with Apocalypse (with one exception that slipped through from Odyssey). My process for selecting cards was a brute force Scryfall search of the 4000+ cards from the time period. I narrowed this to ~1700 and then started cutting. You can see the cards that didn’t make it in the maybeboard.
Mechanically, I went for cards which had interesting designs and which had the potential to synergize with other cards and strategies. I wanted to keep the power level low to allow more strategies to be viable, so you won’t see many of the iconic powerful cards of that era. To give players more agency, I avoided cards that rely too much on what your opponent is doing, including protection from colors. Aside from a few key exceptions, I also removed cards that care about the color of other cards you control because this is harder to plan for in a desert draft. Similarly, I also avoided cards that reference basic land types, including landwalk, because basic types are scarce in a desert environment.
Thinking more about the land base, I wanted to create a space for many underplayed land cycles, including the various depletion lands. In addition to contributing to the theme, this was another driving force in making this a desert cube. Having slower/restricted lands can lead to game actions being more intentional, and the slower pace also opens up viability for more card combos and unique game states. Based on the first draft, I would probably encourage 1 game matches, at least until players are more familiar with cards.
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to learn about my cube! If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about it, and personally it was the most fun I’ve had with Magic in a while. Please feel free to ask questions or share thoughts about the list. This was really my first foray into pre-modern/old border play, so I’m sure there are things I may have overlooked.