Underplayed Cube cards

Hi there! Today on the blog, I want to share some underplayed Cube cards that you could add to almost any Cube and spice up your Cube experience! I’ve separated them into broad categories based on the purpose each card serves in the Cube.

Setup Cards

Cube is all about doing powerful things, and those usually require some amount of setup. These cards are the tools you need to set up those cool combos and big plays!

This card is for the storm enthusiasts out there. Underworld Breach provides a very powerful effect that lets you combo off through rebuying the best spells in your graveyard.

These two cards need a little support from the rest of the Cube in the form of creatures with good ETBs, but together they create UW blink as an archetype. This archetype does require a lot of moving pieces, but can eventually run away with the game through sheer blink value.

Crystal Shard has so many fun uses in the right deck. Against your opponents, you can almost always get them the first time they tap out for a creature without knowing you’re running Crystal Shard in your deck. It also works well with your own creatures, since you can decline to pay for the tax when you target your own creatures.

Payoffs

These cards require you to make some sacrifices while drafting, but they provide powerful effects and payoffs to make up for it.

This card single handedly creates an archetype of its own. When drafting the five-color Niv-Mizzet deck, taking lands and fixing becomes priority number one, followed closely by taking powerful guild-colored cards. These decks can often stumble on awkward mana, but play long, fun and interactive games.

Approach is the perfect payoff for certain control decks. It gives you a fun win condition, and creates the sub game of drafting library manipulation to cast the second Approach quickly.

One of the best payoffs for the “brown” decks in Cube, Urza is an incredible reason to draft artifacts in Cube. It also has a really cute interaction with Winter Orb if you’re not familiar. You can use Urza to tap your Winter Orb at the end of your opponent's turn, which makes the Winter Orb null during yours, freeing up your mana during your turns but locking your opponent up on theirs.

This card requires you to draft a large amount of instant and sorceries in your deck, but the third chapter of the Conjecture can set up some of the most powerful turns in Vintage Cube.

Silver-Bordered

These aren’t “real” Magic cards, hence the silver border around them. They can be really fun in a Cube setting, and I feature all of them in my current Vintage Cube.

My favorite silver-bordered card. Our home rules have you create a pack from the undrafted cards in Cube, and then they get put aside so those cards can’t be pulled again (this only works if you draft a 540-card Cube). It makes you pay attention to the cards that weren’t in the draft, because they’re cards you might see in your Booster Tutor packs.

A really fun addition to red in the Cube. Red has no shortage of powerful spells, but casting Blast from the Past for the cycling plus madness cost is just good value.

This card makes the drafting experience super fun. If you’ve ever played Sushi Go, it works similarly to the card Chopsticks in that game. Sometimes, you simply need to take two cards out of the pack, and Cogwork Librarian has you covered in those situations. My local Cube friends take Cogwork Librarian pretty highly!

Blue doesn’t need more powerful cards in Cube, but this is a fun one if you’ve never tried it. You can attach off-color cards to Arcane Savant, since the spell is cast without paying its mana cost, which opens up a lot of wonky options during the draft.

There you have it! My picks for favorite underplayed Cube cards you should consider for your own Cube. I’d love to know if you ended up playing with any of these, or what your own picks would be for this list!