MTG Salvation

Cube breakdown:

W White: White offers a balance of aggro and control. Many of these cards fit into midrange strategies, most often sharing with G. White represents the most balanced colour in terms of offering something to every possible theater, and being able to deal with any problem permanents. W/B is commonly seen in both aggro and control forms, owing to the lifegain of white being able to offset black's life expenditure. WB aggro and WR are the fastest draftable decks in the cube.

U Blue: I wanted a very traditional appearance to my blue section; the aggro focus in R, W and B is counterbalanced by a heavy control lean in blue. Nonetheless, many of the best blue spells are as good or even better in aggro frames, leading to common splashes for blue in aggro decks like UW or BRu. UG midrange is a popular combination, providing a ramp deck that doesn't run out of either fatties or land ramp. The artifact deck and ramp packages are natural buddies so U/G decks with high mana artifact creatures can be tough to beat.

B Black: In smaller cubes like this, black seems tailor-made for aggro - as many 2 power one drops as the other colours combined, excellent disruption and discard, and insane card advantage from the likes of Dark Confidant and Bitterblossom. The latter cause you to lose life, which suits aggro just fine. BW or BG aggro are commonly drafted to cover black's glaring weakness to enchantments and artifice. Black's disruption, sweepers and removal suite also ensure it sees its fair share of play in control builds, and it has probably the most potent monocolour finisher available in Grave Titan. Splashes for black's reanimation and kill spells are also common for a variety of midrange archetypes, like WBG Rock. However, black's focus is primarily on aggro, giving it the lowest converted mana cost of any colour section.

R Red: Red is traditionally accepted as the best or second best aggro colour in the majority of cubes, and it has been historically the most aggressive colour in Magic. However, its one and two-drops are fairly limited in scope compared to those of the other aggro colours, with the exception of gems like Goblin Guide or Grim Lavamancer. For this reason, red sees the majority of play as a splash or shared colour for its best aggro creatures and burn, as well as bombs like Sulfuric Vortex. Some of the weaker aggro creatures, which are often included as part of a critical mass, begin to become outclassed at this level; instead, a range of more midrange and control support with higher card quality is available to ensure a lot of variety in red's game plan. It was also remarked by players that red decks often rely a lot on equipment in order to ensure that their creatures, which usually lack evasion or quality, can compete in the later game. With that in mind, many red cards were selected to work well with burn and equipment, and future card selection will favour first and double strikers in particular.

G Green: Green has its own archetype in magic as the one able to ramp, play extra lands and get creatures out ahead of the curve. This can lead to a very insular nature for green in the cube, where its cards are not sought after by other archetypes, resulting in linear builds of primarily green decks splashing for other colours. Green aggro support is a popular solution to this problem, providing a subset of more versatile cards. Many of these cards are in tough competition at the smallest cube sizes, however, with only a few being able to compete with the W and B one drops. In designing this cube, we went somewhere in between the two philosophies; we kept the best and more splashable green aggro critters, and kept the mot played ramp support. In all, the most versatile and splashable green creatures were prioritized, as well as engine cards like Life from the Loam and Survival of the Fittest, that can perform roles in other decks. With this approach, ramp decks are still draftable whilst allowing green to mesh with aggro and midrange builds in other colours. The addition of resilient creatures to green's roster, which defy removal for no or little extra investment (such as Thrun and Vorapede), has strengthened the colour massively against removal and particuarly sweepers, which used to GG against green. Lastly, Green has extremely powerful Planeswalkers in Garruk (and recently in M15 Nissa) and give green a long-term game plan that it has never had before.

WUBRG Gold: Given their inherent lack of flexibility, gold cards are a good opportunity to provide some fun and powerful archetype support to various decks. We don't necessarily want players to have to splash for the gold cards, but they should be strongly considered in most decks running their colours. In G/W, we're currently running one less card in each of those colours, and two additional hybrids in the pair. That has spared us from cutting some really fun and strong gold cards.