Reid’s Guide to building manabases in Magic’s most challenging format: Powered Cube

Powered Cube Draft is one of the most difficult formats that MTG has to offer. It combines the greatest challenges from both Limited and Constructed, and rolls them into a package where you’ll never, ever see the same deck twice.

Today, I’ll offer advice on how to build manabases for decks in Powered Cube, also known as Vintage Cube. I’ll include tips for both drafting and deckbuilding, and I’ll discuss lands as well as the huge range of non-land mana sources available. I’ll end with discussions of uniquely interesting cards, plus real-life examples of decks I’ve drafted.

Note that I’ll mention cards that may not be included in the most recent incarnation of the Magic Arena Powered Cube. This is intentional, as my goal is to be helpful across as wide a range of different cubes as possible.

How Many Colors Should You Play?

Compared with a Standard-release draft set, the cards in Powered Cube are far more potent and unforgiving. Stumbles are deadly. In short, you can–and should–expect a lot from your deck.

We might be fine with a 9-Swamp, 8-Plains manabase in a Ninja Turtles draft deck, after all there aren’t always a lot of alternatives. But that manabase doesn’t live up to the high standards of Powered Cube. There are two techniques you can use to improve the consistency of your manabase:

Draft manafixing.

(More on this to come).

Play fewer colors.

Something that I personally do a lot more than other Cube creators and experts out there is that I draft mono-color decks. By focusing on one color, you get built-in consistency; you free yourself from needing to spend picks on mana fixing; and you even get to play a couple of colorless value lands like Strip Mine guilt-free!

So while Boros Aggro is great, I’m personally much happier if I can be either Mono-White or Mono-Red. At least I’ll navigate the draft that way unless I have a clear reason to commit to a second color. I somewhat frequently wind up with decks that are primarily one color with a light splash. Say, Mono-White splashing Lightning Bolt and Forth Eorlingas!

I also think building a normal, two-color deck is perfectly fine, and indeed I’ve had success with all ten two-color combinations. If you find yourself doing this, look for opportunities to snatch up mana fixing. Ideally, you’ll end your draft with at least three high-quality dual lands in order to achieve a healthy level of consistency and unlock double-colored cards like Hymn to Tourach.

That said, many drafters can’t resist the allure of playing many colors, and Powered Cube does offer the support to do so. The best way to create a many-colored manabase is to focus on fetchlands and pair them with dual lands that have basic land types. 

Fetchlands are the best fixing available in Cube. They’re perfectly reasonable as first picks out of packs that don’t feature power or a standout top 50 card.

Next come dual lands with basic land types. These are extremely strong due to their pairing with fetchlands. When you have a Scalding Tarn and an Underground Sea, you’re set up incredibly well for a wide range of outcomes.

If you go straight blue-black, you’ve turned your Scalding Tarn into a premium dual land.
If you go blue-red or red-black, you can splash the third color.
If you go blue-red and pick up Bloodstained Mire, the Mire can now fix for both of your colors thanks to Underground Sea.

Having too many tapped lands can slow you down, so I rank these lands roughly: Original dual lands, Trilands, Shocklands, and then Surveil Lands. But they’re all pretty good, and it’s reasonable to speculate on them whenever you can do so at a low cost.

Finally, there are dual lands that don’t have basic land types. You should mostly take these once you already know you’re playing the matching colors. They’re still quite valuable in the appropriate decks; it’s just that they don’t set you up with quite the same level of flexibility as a combination of fetchlands and fetchable dual lands do. 

How Many Lands Should You Play?

Seventeen lands in a 40-card deck is a healthy baseline for any format. It minimizes mulligans and sets you up nicely to hit your first three land drops, while still having plenty of nonland action.

In normal booster draft formats, I play eighteen lands a small but nonnegligible portion of the time. Maybe my curve is a little high, I need the extra colored sources to play three colors, or perhaps I’m just a bit short on playables.

I sometimes play eighteen lands in Powered Cube draft as well. However, if you’re doing it because your deck is clunky, it’s a red flag that something has gone wrong. Powered Cube decks should be sleek, reliable, and efficient, with plenty of cheap cards. You should primarily go up on lands when you have value lands with non-mana activations, or else when you’re playing a small subset of unique cards like Fastbond that pay you off for drawing lots of lands.

On the other hand, cutting down to sixteen lands can be a good sign that you have a nice, low mana curve and that you feel very solid about your colored mana requirements. That leaves us with:

18 lands when you have multiple powerful nonbasic lands.
17 lands as a baseline in a normal deck with between zero and four nonland sources of mana. 
Below 17 lands in a focused, low-curve deck, and/or when you have numerous nonland sources of mana.

The three bullet points above are a good shortcut. And if only it were that easy, we’d all be so much closer to optimizing our manabases. However, Powered Cube features many cards that influence your manabase in diverse and subtle ways. Some lands don’t produce colored mana, or fail to produce any mana at all. And non-land cards ranging from Mox Sapphire to Thran Dynamo can be part of your manabase as well.

Nonland Sources of Mana

Should you treat a Mox as a land?

This is the most common question I get when I make Powered Cube Draft content. Indeed, it’s the question that inspired this whole piece!

The short answer is: Yes, you can treat a Mox (especially an on-color Mox) as a land.

If you’re building a Mono-White deck with 17 Plains, instead playing 16 Plains and a Mox is a good bet. However, things are rarely that simple, and the formula quickly breaks down as the examples get more extreme and convoluted. So let’s search for a more precise answer.

When evaluating a nonland source of mana, consider the following:

How does it contribute to your number of colored sources? (On-color is better than colorless or off-color).
How much does it cost to cast? (Mox Sapphire is a better replacement for land than Thran Dynamo).
How fragile and/or reusable is it? (Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, and Mana Vault can’t be used turn after turn. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary will often get killed by removal).

An on-color Mox is about the best you can do in all three categories. But still, if I was lucky enough to draft all five Moxes, I wouldn’t cut down to twelve lands. This is because I consider my land drop each turn to be a valuable resource on its own. You lose out on much of the strength of mana acceleration if you’re missing your land drops anyway! So in all things, strive for balance.

To get a complete picture of your manabase, check in on the following questions:

How many lands?

This question considers your land drops. So right now we’re talking about actual, factual cards with card type: land. So Strip Mine and Bazaar of Baghdad count, even if you don’t plan to use them to cast your spells.

As previously mentioned, 16 or 17 is healthy. Playing more than 18 or less than 15 is pretty extreme, and you should have a good reason for doing so.

How many total mana sources?

Now count every card whose primary function is producing mana. Now Bazaar of Baghdad doesn’t count, but Mox Sapphire, Birds of Paradise, Coalition Relic, Thran Dynamo, Exploration, and Lion’s Eye Diamond do. (Strip Mine and Urza’s Saga - that’s up to your judgment in how you plan to use them).

This question is important because it checks for a healthy mix of mana versus action. A common pitfall for new and experienced Cubers alike is building too much mana into their deck. “I watched twenty LSV draft videos, and now I’m playing Tolarian Academy, Lotus Petal, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Coalition Relic, plus every Mox and Talisman I can get my hands on!” Before you know it, you have 29 mana sources in your deck, your one Timetwister gets countered, and you’re stuck with absolutely nothing to do.

I try to never have more than twenty-four dedicated sources of mana in a 40-card deck. In my experience, that’s the line where you start to flood an unacceptable amount of the time. I’m often happy to have 21-24 mana sources, but when I do I become wary of playing too many low-impact cards. Instead, I prioritize card drawing and haymakers.

Swords to Plowshares, Dismember, and Thoughtseize are very, very good cards. But if you have 24 mana sources and your opponent has 17, then trading one-for-one on action cards comes at a high price. Do it too much, and they’ll easily grind you out.

Similarly, when I’m playing green ramp I’m happy to keep a hand with six mana sources and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, but unhappy to keep six mana sources and Tarmogoyf. Nissa can dominate the game on her own if I resolve her on turn 3, but Tarmogoyf doesn’t do enough to carry you if you’re flooding.

How many sources of each color?

This question is self-explanatory, but remember that you should have higher standards in Powered Cube than you would in normal Limited. I might splash two cards off of four sources when playing Ninja Turtles sealed deck, but I strive to avoid that in Powered Cube Draft.

How many untapped sources of each color?

This is deck dependent, and might not be such a big deal in–say–Azorius Control. However, if you have a bunch of one-drop creatures in white, green, or red, you can really hurt your ability to curve out if too many of your lands enter the battlefield tapped. If the gameplan of my deck is to play a green mana dork on turn 1, then I really hope to have at least eight untapped green sources.

Finally, check your fetchlands. In a perfect world, your fetchlands can not only access all of your colors, but specifically untapped sources of all of your colors. You don’t want to be waiting all game to cast your splashed Forth Eorlingas!, finally draw your red source, and it enters the battlefield tapped.

Individual Card Discussion

Mox Diamond, Exploration, Fastbond, and Lotus Cobra pay you off for drawing lands. Specifically, these cards basically do nothing in games where you don’t have three or four lands to deploy right away. So while Mox Sapphire or Chrome Mox can count as a land, Mox Diamond cannot.

On the other hand, these cards can’t be counted as action either. As non-action cards that ask you to maintain a high land count, you really need to proceed with caution and build your deck thoughtfully. Specifically, I’m not a big fan of Exploration and believe that card can often be a trap.

Mox Diamond is very good and is a high pick. But the one archetype where I often cut it is green decks with lots of mana dorks, since those decks don’t want the high land count necessary to support Mox Diamond. 

Like Moxes, cards that landcycle for one mana can be treated as a land pending all of the considerations I’ve outlined.

Companions incentivize you to play more lands and more mana, since you’re guaranteed something powerful to spend your mana on each and every game.

Lurrus decks are somewhat unintuitive, since they have low curves by definition. That said, my Lurrus decks are among those most likely to have eighteen lands, since I find them to be so mana hungry. (Plus, it can be tough to get 23 great cards under the companion restriction).

As an aside, companions are awesome. Don’t pass Lutri unless you’re taking a power card instead. 

I count these colorless value lands as roughly half a land. In other words, they’re a good tiebreaker in favor of keeping that 17th land.

In my opinion, fifteen or sixteen Plains, a Mox, and a Strip Mine is a very appealing manabase for a White Weenie deck. 

Cantrips that give you card selection like Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm don’t need to impact your manabase much. If you’ve drawn too few lands, you use them to hit your land drops; if you’ve drawn too many lands, you use them to find action.

However, true cantrips like Urza’s Bauble can count as a small fraction of a land. (Let’s say ⅓). These are useful cards, but be aware that they make your mulligan decisions less precise and can increase the risk of manaflood, so proceed with caution.

Sample Decks

This base-green deck had seven mana dorks and two land cyclers, so I slimmed down to 15 lands. I would normally cut Fastbond from a 15-land deck, but it specifically combos with Wheel of Fortune, Ramunap Excavator, and Upheaval, so I played it in this case. 

This Mono-Red deck had a very low curve and very easy colored mana requirements. I played 15 lands plus two Moxes.

A land cycler plus sixteen lands including Wasteland and Karakas in a low-curve Mono-White deck.

I could show you a lot of low-curve aggro decks that I drafted where I played 15 or 16 lands. But in this case, I stuck to 17. Mox Diamond does not incentivize you to cut lands. Plus, with so much power centered at the three- and four-mana slot in this particular deck, I wanted to hit a couple of land drops and use Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and Ancient Tomb to power out my gamewinners.

Here’s 17 lands flat (counting Sink into Stupor) in a normal, two-color deck. Note that Darkslick Shores, Xander’s Lounge, and Bloodstained Mire help to make the mana solid and support double-color spells in both colors.

This green-based “lands” deck was a rare case where I played 18 lands in addition to non-land mana sources. It was justified due to value lands like Wasteland, Dark Depths, and Thespian’s Stage, plus the presence of Fastbond.

Eighteen lands, two landcyclers, and four mana dorks makes 24 mana sources. Add in Zuran Orb, Fastbond, Crop Rotation, and Crucible and you begin to push your luck when it comes to flooding. At the same time, note the high impact of the other spells I’ve chosen to play, with minimal one-for-one trading and even an Elvish Mystic in the sideboard that failed to make the final cut. 

Conclusion

As you can see, there's a ton of nuance in building your manabases in Powered Cube. This is a lifelong but very exciting and rewarding journey!