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Thanks to Timothée Simonot, You Make The Cube contest winner, for writing this guide to his fantastic and unique Cube. You can draft the Twisted Color Pie Cube on Magic Online until November 30th.

The Twisted Color Pie Cube has been designed to provide a new Cube experience by switching the strengths of each color away from what you’d find in most other Cubes. This means that you can draft some cool archetypes, such as blue aggro or white reanimator. However, you may feel a bit confused if you are looking for Goblin Guide, Birds of Paradise, or Counterspell, which have all been intentionally kicked out. This guide is here to give you clues about what you can and can’t do in this unusual Cube environment.

What you can expect from the five colors:

White (Control, Prison, Reanimation):

Savannah Lions and Wrath of God are two of the most iconic white cards ever printed, and both are quite far from what white tries to achieve in the Twisted Color Pie Cube. White weenie isn’t a supported archetype, and Wrath effects are red’s territory. If you go for white, you’ll find almost only control cards. Twenty-five of them are enchantments, and 18 will either gain you life or encourage you to do so. White’s minor themes are also on the slow side: in this Cube, white has reanimation, prison cards (with artifact support like Sphere of Resistance), and big finishes with expensive Angels.

Blue (Aggro, Combo):

Frost Walker is preferred over Cryptic Command, and Patron Wizard took the place of Brainstorm. Blue isn’t controlling anything here. There’s a large number of cheap, aggressive creatures with a Wizard tribal subtheme. Counterspells haven’t been completely eradicated, but all of them are much better in aggressive strategies than a normal control deck. There are almost no hard counters, which is relevant as big sorcery-speed threats are more likely to resolve than you might be used to. I would not recommend that you play Thwart or Misdirection if you plan to make the game go long.

If you decide to play blue outside of an aggressive strategy, you should be aiming for combo pieces like Polymorph or very specific cards like Laboratory Maniac or Propaganda. You won’t find many cantrips or draw spells. Note that blue has five discard outlets that other colors may need.

Black (Sacrifice, Disruption):

Black isn’t really controlling either, with no Thoughtseize or Damnation, and very few instant removal spells. Even more important to know: black has only two reanimation spells in Unburial Rites and Recurring Nightmare. What black has is a good supply of creatures that can easily return from the graveyard and a strong sacrifice theme. Stronghold Assassin and Reassembling Skeleton together, for example give you access to an extra Doom Blade each turn! If you don't want to take the graveyard path, then you can still run a few mana cards and fatties to support white or red, or you can focus on card advantage and disrupt your opponent with cards like Chittering Rats.

Red (Pingers, Big Control):

Mountains have never been so quiet: red players won't attack in the first turn, instead working to create an army of pingers or waiting for big control spells like Wildfire. Red works very well with artifacts, has access to many wrath effects, and runs more planeswalkers than any other color. If you are the kind of player who loves fast and punishing aggro decks, you won’t find it with red cards this time, but you should definitely read the next paragraph.

Green (Aggro, Tokens):

Green is the new red, with many offensive creatures and key pump spells. You won’t find mana acceleration creatures or midrange stuff: you are trying to end the game on turn five by entering the red zone with oversized creatures. Green also has a nice number of enchantments, more removal than you might expect, and some tools for a token archetype.

Archetypes

Now that the colors’ identities are clear, let’s go deeper with an overview of the archetypes you can draft on a regular basis:

Monogreen Aggro:

The best green aggro decks are monocolored and focus on the early drops. The curve matters more than the quality of your creatures, and the cards that will win you the game are the enchantments and sorceries that boost your whole team. Key cards: Overrun, Curse of Predation, one drops.

Monoblue Wizards:

Blue aggro decks naturally have a Wizards subtheme. It’s less powerful than green aggro, but it can disrupt midgame plays with almost free counterspells. If you can’t stay monoblue, add red pingers or a few green tricks. Key cards: Patron Wizard, Standstill, Master of Waves.

White and Green-White Enchantments:

There are two very different ways to draft an enchantment-based deck. One option is to draft a slow Starfield of Nyx deck and deal with threats one by one while keeping your life total high. This deck plays eleven Plains and splashes for any good enchantments you can find. Or you can choose the aggressive path with green creatures and cheap auras. Key cards: Starfield of Nyx, Replenish, Troll Ascetic, Ethereal Armor.

Big Red:

Red control needs wraths and artifact mana acceleration more than anything else. With those, a Chandra or your big artifact creatures can end a game easily. You have no requirement to stay monored though; adding white removal spells and Angels or black and artifact mana and high drops can aid you. Key cards: Rolling Earthquake; Chandra, Torch of Defiance; Daretti, Scrap Savant.

Red-Blue Pingers:

Half of the red creatures can damage other creatures without risking themselves in combat. You can add a few blue-red multicolored creatures to their numbers as well. Pingers are slow and fragile, but exceptional against any creature-based archetype. They don’t mix well with red Wrath effects, though, so be careful not to mix your plan when drafting. Key cards: Goblin Sharpshooter, Basilisk Collar, Willbreaker.

White-based Reanimator:

White has several reanimator spells. They’re more expensive than the black ones that appear in other Cubes, but in the Twisted Color Pie Cube, fatties are harder than usual to deal with. There also aren’t many counterspells, which reduces the risk of spells with high mana cost. White has a good top end but lacks discard outlets, so you’ll need black or blue to solve that issue. Loyal Retainers in particular can bring back almost all the good reanimation targets, since most are Legendary. Key cards: any reanimation spell, any discard outlet, any big creature.

Red- or Green-based Tokens:

Red and green both have a significant number of token producers, but they won’t be good without a real payoff card. Going from a good token deck to a great one usually means having a card like Purphoros, God of the Forge; Opposition; or Mass Polymorph. Key cards: Sprout Swarm, Doubling Season.

Black-Red Sacrifice:

Black has good sacrifice outlets, red has cheap token producers. When you mix those two colors, you can build some very efficient engines that will clear the opponent’s board in no time. After taking control, black’s cheap creatures should be able to end the game in a couple of turns. Key cards: Grave Pact, Goblin Bombardment, Bloodghast.

Black-Green Dredge:

Black and green combined have access to many recursion effects. Filling your graveyard can give you access to cards like Splinterfright or Tombstone Stairwell. This engine is quite slow to start up, but once going is difficult to stop. Multicolored Golgari cards are essential to make this archetype competitive. Key cards: Life from the Loam, Genesis, Worm Harvest.

Advanced Strategies

From here, you should have a pretty accurate overview of how you can draft and what 90% of the decks you’ll face look like. For experienced players, there are more challenging archetypes to construct centered around fringe cards and unusual build-around cards.

Life:

Many white cards will give you extra life and, with enough of those, lifegain may become the key mechanic of your deck. Searing Meditation and Karlov of the Ghost Council can turn life gain into card advantage. The cards for a Life deck are not easy to gather, since there are few payoff cards and the deck often needs three colors to be competitive. A prison or reanimator sub-theme is almost mandatory.

Self-Mill:

Laboratory Maniac and Psychic Spiral are here for a reason. Milling yourself isn’t that hard, as you can find good dredge cards and efficient milling engine like Mesmeric Orb. Harder to achieve is winning with no cards in your deck. Bow of Nylea can return key cards from your graveyard to your empty deck during your upkeep. Snapcaster Mage can also flashback Psychic Spiral before your draw step. Make sure you have enough ways to interact with your graveyard when trying to draft a successful self-mill deck.

Eldrazi:

Bringing Kozilek to the table is challenging without Show and Tell, Channel, or Sneak Attack. The best card for this is probably Quicksilver Amulet, but you'll have to mix your strategy with cards like Proteus Staff and rely more consistently on your other gigantic colorless creatures. You can also produce a ton of mana with Cryptolith Rite or Gilded Lotus and just hardcast your Eldrazi. Eldrazi decks must find multiple ways to cheat out their monsters. This isn’t an easy deck to build, but the payoff is Eldrazi-sized! Note that Mesmeric Orb is a great plan B for the Eldrazi deck, as the titans from Rise of the Eldrazi will shuffle your graveyard into your library every time they get milled, while your opponent will be left with a library dwindling every turn.

Have you ever doubled a Scrap Mastery with Pyromancer's Goggles? Locked your opponent with endless Chittering Rats triggers? Reanimated a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth with Loyal Retainers? Damaged yourself with a Sun Droplet in play? Activated a Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind enchanted by a Keen Sense? Considered Equilibrium the best card of your draft?