Hello everyone, I love cube and at the moment I have an unpowered vintage cube at 360, but it's not well built since it has a lot of parasitic mechanics and bad stuff, and I don't have the money to make it better from that point of view. So my way of thinking was to build a different cube, to run in parallel to the other, while I'm waiting for building in a better way my "main" cube. Since I started playing in the timeframe of Time Spiral and Lorwyn, and I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, my idea was to build a cube (360 since I don't have many friends and many sleeves) only with cards from around that timeframe, so my time period of choice was from eighth edition and mirrodin to eventide (coldsnap included obviously). I don't want, though, to make too many errors, since one thing I noticed from my first tries was that I was putting too many niche cards and bad cards.
So my idea to build this is: start with cards that HAVE to be there, like all the cube staples from that era (Bitterblossom, Ancestral Vision, Figure of Destiny and so on) and then decide some archetypes, also based on some of the famous standard decks from that timeframe (even though I am worried that affinity and faeries would be too much parasitic as archetypes, I'd really love to have them). So my first question is: what cards would you think "oh, this card has absolutely to be in this cube! I wouldn't think of a mirrodin-eventide cube without this card".
Thank you all for the answers I will get, I love this site and it really helped me with understanding how to build a cube. I'm not English so sorry for my bad language writing
If you are willing to stretch the definition a bit by saying the core of the Cube should at least consist of mechanics that originated from these times, you could definetly import a Persist-archetype. Use Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap and maybe some other Persist-creatures as payoffs and Blasting Station, Spawning Pit and maybe some other sacrifice outlets - the only thing you then have to include from outside is something that closes the loop like Renata, Called to the Hunt, Grumgully, the Generous or Good-Fortune Unicorn. The last three are not really from the sets you like, but I'd say Grumgully is very defendable as a Goblin that would fit into Lorwyn and the Unicorn is kind of okay.
So my idea to build this is: start with cards that HAVE to be there, like all the cube staples from that era (Bitterblossom, Ancestral Vision, Figure of Destiny and so on) and then decide some archetypes, also based on some of the famous standard decks from that timeframe (even though I am worried that affinity and faeries would be too much parasitic as archetypes, I'd really love to have them). So my first question is: what cards would you think "oh, this card has absolutely to be in this cube! I wouldn't think of a mirrodin-eventide cube without this card".
Thank you all for the answers I will get, I love this site and it really helped me with understanding how to build a cube. I'm not English so sorry for my bad language writing
This was my attempt: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/his3. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!