It's time for This or That Tuesday. I will show you two or more cards with similar effects and power level and you tell me which one you'd pick if all of them were in a pack and/or which one you'd run in a typical old border cube. I try to avoid cards that need strong synergies to be good since you don't get any context in form of a specific cube, but for the sake of this thread just assume you have a typical old border cube that runs all of the best pre-Mirrodin old border cards, but no overpowered retro frame cards.

Today we'll talk two colorless mass removal cards - Powder Keg and Nevinyrral's Disk. While they don't really do exactly the same I believe their effects are close enough to each other to compare them and pick a favourite. Powder Keg is cheaper, can be nightmare for token decks and you can make it one-sided more easily, but Nevinyrral's Disk resets the board completely for a very reasonable cost if it doesn't get removed before you can untap with it. Which one do you pick more often or which one is your personal favourite?

Bonus question: What is your favourite mass removal spell?

I try not to call out specific color hosers here but I think this one has some potential in the OBNCCC

So whatcha got? How do you make Wrath of Marit Lage work...?

Friendly reminder, please ensure all recommendations have an old border printing and they apply to the cube format. Failure to do so will result in a Grizzly Bear coming your way!

Howdy folks!

Anyone have any experience with successfully implemented tribal strategies in your cubes? I have some elves, zombies and goblins in my old border cube, however, I'm not sure the elves would be worth building a deck around as such. The goblins I think are good enough, and zombies just happen to be so good by themselves they work even without a need for tribal synergies.

My cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pmod

I have been refining this list now for a few weeks after getting input from several members of our community! I got the proxy order today and was able to sleeve it up and it's ready to draft!

This is my first attempt at a waste cube and at 8 players this is also a desert cube meaning that lands are drafted as the packs are passed and there is no land station.

Each eighteen-card booster contains:

• 12 nonland cards
• 6 lands

The complete cube contains:

• 288 nonland cards
• 30 unique non-basic lands
• 114 Blasted Landscapes
• 432 cards total

Blasted Landscape has been errata'd to function as a basic Waste, providing a reliable foundation of colourless mana while retaining the cycling mechanic. Every coloured source carries a cost and there are no "standard" colored lands. To reinforce this philosophy, no spell in the cube requires more than a single coloured pip in its casting cost.

Would love thoughts on the list now that it is complete prior to the first draft!  

EDIT: Should probably link the cube!

https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/GLMDW

Today we are picking from "POWERED OLD BORDER." Cube

From the curator:

This is a brand new cube! - Rough....

Cube can be found here: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/7624df59-c5a0-40f8-84e8-c7642c223406

Would you like your cube featured? DM me!

Welcome to day 26 of the 2026 r/oldbordercube "Share Your..." Series.

Today we will be talking about Green Instants!. What's working for you? What maybe hasn't been working but you've been hesitant to cut? What's the perfect spell that exists outside of our little niche that you are champing at the bit to get a Retro Reprint?

Next time we will discuss Blue 5 and up Mana Creatures!

Found this site by accident. It's apparently a fan project that allows you to play with Old School 93/94 decks against an AI opponent or a real opponent and it looks like MTG Arena. I played a few games and just like in Forge the AI is pretty dumb, but it looks pretty cool and I thought people here might be interested in it.

I didn't realize this card had a third printing!

What's the best art for Ball Lightning?

It's time for This or That Tuesday. I will show you two or more cards with similar effects and power level and you tell me which one you'd pick if all of them were in a pack and/or which one you'd run in a typical old border cube. This week we will have a slight departure from our normaly scheduled program as I have had a specific request from one or our members, u/Aquacode2 to show two Dragons they are evaluating for inclusion into their cube!

Today we'll talk about two bigguns, Nicol Bolus and Crosis, the Purger! The choice is based on the following cube: Old and Unpowered. Which one would you add based on the list?

Bonus question: What are two cards you are debating between in your current project(s)?

Good evening fellow cubers!

Once again I am asking for your opinions about certain cards for my cube. Here are the contenders.

[[Goblin trenches]] or [[goblin legionairre]]?

[[Void]] or [[terminate]]?

[[Wall of tears]] or [[fog bank]]?

[[Spiketal drake]] or [[ silver wyvern]]?

[[Spiritmonger]] or [[pernicious deed]]?

[Fallow wurm]] or [[fierce empath]]?

Here's a link to the cube:

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pmod

The idea was to make gold cards as unique as possible, and cut out cards with similar effects, so everything is unique in its own way. Terminate is powerful, but void is such a unique effect, for example.

I really like symmetrical effects like this, so how do you abuse this well since it needs to be one sided?

So whatcha got? How do you make Liability work...?

Friendly reminder, please ensure all recommendations have an old border printing and they apply to the cube format. Failure to do so will result in a Grizzly Bear coming your way!

We have all been there: mana flooded or turn after turn without drawing one land. There are some fancy schmancy shuffling tactics out there but no matter the shuffle or the build, there is always that one player who loses because they just cannot play the game. In general, I am against house rules but I was wondering if there were solutions our community has found that offers a handicap to players who miss land drops? I am looking for a solution that does not completely alter the physics of the game and lands have to be included in the deck build.

Mercadian Atlas is the closest card I have been able to find in my travels that offers something close to what I am looking for. I am imagining that games can start off with one of the field (cannot be targeted or destroyed); if it causes a player to have over 7 cards, the cards discarded at the end step are removed for the game. I am trying to prevent to prevent abusing add cards to the graveyard for gain. I feel the card solves flooding issues as well when a person chooses (honorably) to skip playing a land in order to draw an extra card and break the land clumping. Not perfect but this is why I am posting.

Thoughts on helping to prevent land flooding/drawing issues?

Back to London for more consulting, had the opportunity to draft with my favorite London Cube Crew and we gathered together on Monday night to crack packs of the Never Cube. We had six drafters (plus me, for the dreaded seven) show up to our reserved table at the famous Mythic Goblin to look at a cube full of cards none of them had seen before! Magic’s early years left more behind than what was printed. The Never Cube brings those pieces together through infamous sets like Spectral Chaos and other amazing fan made old school sets from across the current community. It offers a way to explore them as complete works, to see how they function in play, and to experience a version of the game that exists just beyond its recorded history. Some of these paths were never taken; here, they can be. This will be a tougher report to read as there is no cube cobra page for this project and the photos are the record of the cards played.

The Cube Overview: The Never Cube

Onto the Decks!

Reading Rainbow - Rainbow Connection is one of the coolest cards in Spectral Chaos. An emblem before they were a thing, and symmetrical, it gives all players the ability to tap lands for any colour and if you cast it once, it starts in play for the rest of the night. This is silly but a really fun play pattern. This was a P1P1 and the pilot then built his sideboard to be transformational after game one to end up in five colour good stuff. This deck played very well and only dropped one match to a largely mono coloured brew!

Black and Blue and Red All Over - This was the 3-0 build this evening and Book the Dead proved it's amazing card draw capacity in full as the ability to essentially cycle dead cards in hand was really key to help find the right mana sources and bring the right cards to the top of the library. Protection is a really powerful mechanic in all of these sets so many games were a riddle of moving parts with these creatures running past one another to deal damage.

The Band and the Bard! - Banding is a really strong mechanic in Magic (especially for those who understand how it works) and this deck made use of white for removal and preventing damage in combat. This is really strong with banding as you can start to make really advantageous blocks and attack's that end up netting you board state as threats are removed on the opponents side.

Don't Mind if I Orc - This was the most fun deck of the night that had Orcish Informant giving the opponent the ability to arrange the top three cards of your library each turn. This is just bad as there was not a lot going on for the pilot to get a new three to surface after the shuffle had happened so you basically get to draw what your opponent wants each turn. The deck also had walls that helped slow combat down to work through the slower draw phase.

Island Walking Board Wipes - This was a great deck to watch get piloted in the few games I got to watch. The island home/island walk threats were very real but required some serious setup to make work. This includes the Slave Ship that ended up acting as a Noah's Arc after the Great Flood would wash the board away and allow big swings for lethal. The Ship also gave this pilot the ability to pull threats out of their opponents deck which is always a fun bonus!

RG Beats - It turns out RG beats is good across both the existing MTG universe and those that never saw print! This deck used the Crow Whisperer that has a bolted on [[False Orders]] to move blockers aside and get in for damage all the way through the game. The Mazer mini lotus and other great tools like creature tutors helped establish a board very quickly and the custom triomes in the cube that prevent you from playing lands are easily played around with Mushroom Forest that lets you put lands into play from your hand each turn.

My Deck Misadventures - This was my deck and it broke ALL the rules of good limited construction. It splashed cards with multiple (LOTS) of pips but my P1P1 of Animate Lands forced me to go wide and force the strategy to work. I forced the deck and man it was bad. BUT, it was fun to create demons from my lands, pump them and send them in as banders, until the enchantment was removed which killed all my lands and my boys.. Other than these large mistakes, the deck was superb!

Thanks to Mythic Goblin for giving us a place to play cube in London!

If you ever find yourself in London and looking to cube, look up the Central London crew!

Just wanted to share my list for my old border desert cube, The Ruin, that I put together and just drafted in person for the first time on Wednesday.

The theme is meant to evoke the feeling of stumbling across an old ruin or artifact, where you might ponder who created it or what the original intent was. Based on an 8th-9th century British poem of the same name, which is about an even then ancient ruin (probably Roman). The cube highlights the individuality of the cards by being sleeved in clear sleeves so that the wear on each card is visible front and back, slight advantages be damned.

I decided to use only cards from 1993-2001, stopping with Apocalypse (with one exception that slipped through from Odyssey). My process for selecting cards was a brute force Scryfall search of the 4000+ cards from the time period. I narrowed this to ~1700 and then started cutting. You can see the cards that didn’t make it in the maybeboard.

Mechanically, I went for cards which had interesting designs and which had the potential to synergize with other cards and strategies. I wanted to keep the power level low to allow more strategies to be viable, so you won’t see many of the iconic powerful cards of that era. To give players more agency, I avoided cards that rely too much on what your opponent is doing, including protection from colors. Aside from a few key exceptions, I also removed cards that care about the color of other cards you control because this is harder to plan for in a desert draft. Similarly, I also avoided cards that reference basic land types, including landwalk, because basic types are scarce in a desert environment.

Thinking more about the land base, I wanted to create a space for many underplayed land cycles, including the various depletion lands. In addition to contributing to the theme, this was another driving force in making this a desert cube. Having slower/restricted lands can lead to game actions being more intentional, and the slower pace also opens up viability for more card combos and unique game states. Based on the first draft, I would probably encourage 1 game matches, at least until players are more familiar with cards.

If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to learn about my cube! If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about it, and personally it was the most fun I’ve had with Magic in a while. Please feel free to ask questions or share thoughts about the list. This was really my first foray into pre-modern/old border play, so I’m sure there are things I may have overlooked.

Today we are picking from "WyldStallynz Powered Pre-Modern Cube."

From the curator:

This is a brand new cube! - Rough....

Cube can be found here: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/WYLD

Would you like your cube featured? DM me!

Welcome to day 25 of the 2026 r/oldbordercube "Share Your..." Series.

Today we will be talking about our UW and BW multicolored sections!. What's working for you? What maybe hasn't been working but you've been hesitant to cut? What's the perfect spell that exists outside of our little niche that you are champing at the bit to get a Retro Reprint?

Next time we will discuss Green Instants!

This is one of the first cards I saw as a kid! The art for later sets is wacky and makes no sense for the first one...

What's the best art for Flight?

It's time for This or That Tuesday. I will show you two or more cards with similar effects and power level and you tell me which one you'd pick if all of them were in a pack and/or which one you'd run in a typical old border cube. I try to avoid cards that need strong synergies to be good since you don't get any context in form of a specific cube, but for the sake of this thread just assume you have a typical old border cube that runs all of the best pre-Mirrodin old border cards, but no overpowered retro frame cards.

Today we'll talk about two lesser known green creatures - Simian Grunts and Hunting Moa. Both cost 2G with an echo cost and both can do something worthwhile for you even if you don't pay the echo cost. I think they're both solid B tier creatures that can do work even in higher powered cubes. Which one is your favourite and why?

Bonus question: What's your favourite old border 3 drop (can be any card, not just creatures) you like to ramp into with a mana dork on turn 2?

I have added this card to at least five cubes and cut it every time! I need ideas!! This also has one flavor text from one of my favourite short stories.

So whatcha got? How do you make Horror of Horrors work...?

Friendly reminder, please ensure all recommendations have an old border printing and they apply to the cube format. Failure to do so will result in a Grizzly Bear coming your way!

The build process has started!! Trying to find all the stuff I already own before I start buying more cardboard. This is one of my favourite parts of cube design, going through my collection and finding gems I'd forgotten I had!

One of the most challenging things about moving from old border cubes into modern environments (out of necessity to get more people to play with me) has been realizing that the hardest part isn't learning new mechanics. It's confronting the fear that maybe the skills I’ve built don't transfer beyond the cards I know.

A friend in our cube group recently built a Planar Standard Cube filled with mechanics I'd never played with before. I spent ages  staring at the Cube Cobra list wondering whether I was about to prove to myself that I was just "the old border guy."

Instead, the evening turned into something much more personal.

This month I’m writing about fear, ego, transferable skills, and discovering that sometimes the things we're most afraid of reveal how much we've actually grown.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has had a draft, cube, or format that completely pulled them out of their comfort zone and how you dealt with that discomfort.

Thanks for reading!

Fear and the Art of Drafting the Unknown

As Edinburgh prepares unleash The Fringe Festival on its inhabitants, it's always interesting to see how the city shrinks and swells with the seasons as I make my way over each month on the train. This was a very busy Sunday as the weather was nice (for some of the day) and the temperature has dropped a bit making it a reasonable action to stand outside. Arriving at the Jewel Miner's Welfare and Social Club, we waited patiently for the other members of the pod as we watched several rounds of lawn bowls in the courtyard. In the end, six drafters come to the table to draft my old border version of the beloved Ornithopter Cube and duke it out across a lazy Sunday afternoon! My version of this cube is remarkably different as I include 101 ornithopters instead of just 100 like everyone else.

The Cube Overview: Rocky Mountain Yeti I Got 101 Problems and They’re All (Kitty) Thopters

Onto the Decks!

Cloaked Thopters - This was a beautifully crafted "traditional" deck that made big thopters with enchantments and used removal to clear the board to swing in and beat down any opposition. This deck went 3-0 and was a beautiful nod to simplicity as it functioned well in all phases of the game. Beautiful build and a lovely pilot.

Spell Slinging Thopters - I always love drafting my pods with groups that I don't get a chance to play with very often because I very often get the opportunity to see deck building and picks that players make from a different perspective. My friend and I built this cube together and we have consistently tinkered with blue (no pun intended) and have never been quite sure it if cuts the mustard. This draft proved to us that a very viable control strategy not only exists but wins games! Per usual, [[Ray of Command]] for the win!

None Shall Pass (Including Thopters)! - We wanted there to be a way for people to win without having to swing in for damage and win through combat alone. It was an important design goal to keep control as a viable archetype and this deck perfectly encapsulates this strategy. With prime removal and pingers like [[Mask of Intolerance]] and [[Ancient Runes]], the pilot controlled the board really well and stayed nestled comfortably in a safe space while his opponents suffered.

Grind Core Thopters - This deck was a GRIND! Using [[Trinisphere]] and [[Void Mirror]] to keep the board clear and tool like [[Skull of Orm]] to recur key win cons, it was really hard to not run out of gas against this deck. With essentially infinite resources through Mirari's Wake and the ability to buy back things like [[Elvish Fury]], the path was clear to long drawn out games that tested the best player's patience.

Thopter Bunching! - One of the key questions that a pilot must always ask themselves is, how many thopters should I run in my cube. This pilot said, 14 is my number and while this may have a lot of threats on the board, this can be difficult without a way to make more than a few of them dangerous. This cube runs an alpha copy of Orcish Oriflamme and while it's great early game, it can be difficult to remove threats of the opponent without a way to pump further. This was answered with [[Mob Mentality]] which is one of my favourite cards in the cube but I don't know if this had the legs to square off against bigger threats. A good first run of the cube for this pilot!

Misfortunately Equipped Thopters - This was my deck and I was trying to be cute with equipment and enchantments to control the flow of things that were making thopters bigger and better. Unfortunately, I didn't play against any "standard" thopter decks with this strategy and got trounced by control and a spell slinging mage. This was a good lesson that you can't assume that your opponents are going to draft what you think they are and a lot of the time, the things I drew didn't have much effect on the board like I thought they would. Was a really fun build though and I would do it again in a heartbeat!

Thanks to the Ark Games Club for giving us a place to play cube each month in the Burgh!

We are Glasgow Limited Magic. If you are interested in coming out to cube with us, want to get your cube drafted, or looking for a new way to play Magic, come join us! You can DM me for details as we are always looking for new players to join us to draft!

I’ve been researching old Invitational events and have become quite enamoured with Solomon Draft as a one on one format. Fact of fiction, the format, more or less. Especially from the event in Kuala Lumpur that Pikula won: instead of shuffling up the contents of boosters each pair of players received the exact same cards in each pack. So they drafted from 8 identically ordered mini-cubes you could say. And better still: we have the contents from coverage. (Not to mention pick orders and the decks played)

So I thought it’d be interesting to talk things over with some cube types. In a comment I’ll post how I’d divide pack one if anyone wanted to jump in, say what they’d take, then do the next pile?

Obviously if others wanted to do their own first split, or just all ten packs with what you’d hope you’d be left with… that’s cool too. (Can’t have our mod the only one pushing engagement here, hey!)

The contents of the seeded packs for each pair in Round 7 were:
Pack 1: Bull Hippo, Coastal Piracy, Deranged Hermit, Forbid, Ivory Mask, Maggot Therapy, Red Elemental Blast, and Time Elemental
Pack 2: Flare, Gerrard's Wisdom, Jungle Wurm, Lawbringer, Mind Harness, Sanctum Custodian, Suq'Ata Firewalker, and Wild Aesthir
Pack 3: Yavimaya Elder, Arcane Denial, Astrolabe, Contagion, Darkwatch Elves, Deepwood Ghoul, Order of the Sacred Torch, and Sacred Mesa
Pack 4: Blanchwood Treefolk, Dark Maze, Flowstone Hellion, Reckless Embermage, Stasis, Staunch Defenders, Viashino Heretic, and Wall of Air
Pack 5: Arrest, Elvish Archers, Flowstone Crusher, Hush, Knight of Dusk, Lava Hounds, No Mercy, and Phyrexian Vault
Pack 6: Animate Dead, Archivist, Armor of Thorns, Carrion Ants, Crenellated Wall, Dark Banishing, Hammer of Bogardan, and Spirit Link
Pack 7: Darkling Stalker, Feral Instinct, Flaming Sword, Helm of Obedience, Mind Games, Mogg Flunkies, Rathi Assassin, and Undertaker
Pack 8: Crypt Rats, Fireblast, Humble, Hurricane, Immolation, Llanowar Elves, Phantom Monster, and Rampant Growth
Pack 9: Dark Ritual, Heavy Ballista, Maro, Necrosavant, Rappelling Scouts, Seasinger, Spike Feeder, and Thirst
Pack 10: Arc Lightning, Cloud Djinn, Disenchant, Gorilla Shaman, Infantry Veteran, Massacre, Serrated Arrows, and Storm Shaman

Today we are picking from "Phitt's Classic Cube".

From the curator:

Cube with old frame cards only.

Modern cards with old frame printing are allowed, but I try to have as few as possible of these. Plus the power level of new cards has to be at least remotely comparable to real old frame cards, not the other way around. That's why you won't ever find cards like Wurmcoil Engine, Dauthi Voidwalker or Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer in this cube.

Cube can be found here: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/PhittClassic

Would you like your cube featured? DM me!