Welcome to Mardu Cube! This will be the Magic Online spotlight cube running for a week starting on April 6 and follows in the footsteps of Ryan Overturf's Grixis Cube, Ellie Rice's Temur Cube, and Autumn Burchett's Bant Cube in that it features only cards from three colors of Magic. This time, it's red, white, and black! So, if you're interested in attacking quickly, casting lots of removal spells, or otherwise not having to worry about green creatures or blue instants, then this is the cube for you!

Just a smattering of what Mardu Cube offers.

We Mardu what others Mardon't.

This cube is unique in that it features three colors prominently and has a whopping 600 cards! This is a classic cube number and borders on the "large" range. But since this experience is limited to only three colors, it was important to have diversity for repeat drafts, as you experience the full range of what the three most aggressive colors in Magic have to offer! That's not to say there aren't control or combo strategies, but I wouldn't expect to be playing a lot of counterspells or creatures that add mana this time around.

Mardu Cube also offers plenty of gold cards to—hey wait, the Phyrexians are here, too?

Degavolving Themes

Since there are 600 cards that are mostly in these three colors, there are a lot of deep cuts that you might not see in most cubes, which allow for a cornucopia of experiences illustrated with only red, white, and black ink. For that reason, each color combination has two different themes: an "aggro" one for those who like to Smile at Death, and a "control" archetype for those who like to Crackle Doom. But since only 360 cards are present in each draft, they aren't quite as "thick" as they might be in other cubes. Many of the themes blend together, even across color combinations, to make your decisions while drafting that much harder and/or fun!

And to continue to set expectations, while all the cards featured in these themes are sweet build-arounds, there is a plethora of cheap creatures that attack and removal spells that stop them from attacking! Oh, and hybrid cards are fair game, as long as one of their colors is red, white, or black.

BLACK-RED: STEAL 'N' SAC and MADNESS

For the Rakdos in all of us, you can either take your opponents' creatures and sacrifice them for your nefarious deeds or you can discard your own cards for value by using the madness mechanic. Either way, you're making things go down, whether it's the cards in your hand, the number of creatures on the battlefield, or your opponent's life total!

WHITE-BLACK: ARISTOCRATS and LIFEGAIN

For those who don't mind if their creatures die, there are a good number of cards that actively want your creatures to die, often by your own hand. On the flipside, for those players who don't want to die themselves, we have plenty of spells to stop that from happening. All Orzhovian themes are present!

RED-WHITE: EQUIPMENT and PIÑATAS

For the classic Boros player, we've got more sticks and stick shakers than you can . . . shake a stick at. And for the refined cuber who loved Magic Online's Live the Dream Cube, we've brought back creatures that want to be dealt damage and spells that deal lots of damage! That's what we call a combo in the biz.

RED-WHITE-BLACK: REANIMATOR and DRAGONS

And for those who want to use all parts of the Dinosaur Cat Nightmare, we've got a myriad of ways to bring back bigguns with a pile of reanimation spells and ways to benefit off your bigguns being unarguably the greatest creature type in the game: Dragons!

Sans-Simic

There are of course the usual suspects of aggro, burn, and tokens for you to try for a spin, but there are also other exciting paths to walk as you try to live free under the wind:

As always, the rest of the Magic Online team and I read your feedback, so keep it coming! There will of course be more cubes and other sweet experiences to come soon as we're about to enter the Streets of New Capenna, and you can always check out the Magic Online schedule on our Calendar here.

So, whether you played these colors back in Invasion when it was called Dega, played them when they were called Vehicles during Kaladesh, or maybe even during Khans of Tarkir when they were gifted their name, I truly hope you enjoy your time playing Mardu Cube!

Magic Online Product Manager David McDarby and the Magic Online team
@J_Beleren on Twitter