Arena Powered Cube Draft February 10–March 2

MTG Arena Feb 9, 2026

Zach Barash

Black Lotus | Art by: Chris Rahn

Greetings! Welcome to Arena Powered Cube, February 2026 edition. This cube goes all out, allowing you to play with many of Magic's strongest and most storied cards of all time. This includes the famous Power Nine: Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby, Mox Emerald, Timetwister, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, and, of course, Black Lotus.

If you're already well-acquainted with Arena Powered Cube, you can skip ahead to our philosophy for this version of the cube.

Time Walk Booster Tutor Comet, Stellar Pup Black Lotus Sol Ring Library of Alexandria

Slow Down! What's Arena Powered Cube?

Cube is like Booster Draft but pulls cards from across Magic's history. There are all sorts of permutations of cubes, from high-powered to rarity-restricted, special rules to color-restricted, and many, many more flavors. Arena Powered Cube is:

1. Powerful (and power-full): Arena Powered Cube showcases many of the strongest cards available on MTG Arena, including uncollectible cards like the Power Nine. You won't find a Limited format more chock-full of the biggest power-level outliers on MTG Arena.
2. Fast: Between the best mana acceleration, the strongest threats, and the most potent combos, this cube requires you to have a plan or be proactive. Arena Powered Cube rewards you the most for doing your homework and having a plan.
3. Singleton: Arena Powered Cube contains exactly 540 cards with only one copy of each.
4. Phantom: In tabletop, a cube is lent out to players who return the cards at the end of the draft, and the same is true here. Cards drafted are not added to a player's collection.

How to Draft Arena Powered Cube

While some people have been drafting powered cubes for decades, for others, Arena Powered Cube will be their first foray. We want to give you a brief guide before you jump into the deep end.

In general, you should take intrinsically powerful cards like Sol Ring; Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes; and Strip Mine that can enable wins all by themselves. However, it's ideal to draft around them to improve their potency. Sol Ring is absolutely busted, but you can find it twice as frequently with Urza's Saga. Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes rewards you for having Ancient Tomb (or Mana Crypt) to accelerate the card out a turn or two early. Strip Mine becomes even more misery-inducing fun potent when combined with Icetill Explorer. This heuristic is true for the majority of cards in the cube—Underworld Breach isn't the most straightforward to use, but combine it with Brain Freeze and Lion's Eye Diamond, and you'll almost certainly be able to win the game on the spot (mill yourself to fuel escape, then mill your opponent's entire library). We won't get bogged down detailing every card and card interaction in the cube, but we want to give you a taste of all that you can discover in Arena Powered Cube. Instead, let's focus on some broad archetypes you can use as a guide.

1. Aggro: Pick a base color—usually red or white—and draft lots of cheap creatures and removal. You can load up on fixing and play multicolor aggro, you can find aggressive lanes in black or green, and you can even play a full Five-Color Domain Aggro deck.
2. Ramp: This is primarily found in green and artifact decks. Generate extra mana in the first turns of the game, then deploy a devastating finisher. This could be an early Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger off an early Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or Channel; a Comet, Stellar Pup on turn two or three; or a massive Upheaval that leaves you ahead and your opponent discarding eight cards.
3. Cheaty: Many decks try to "cheat" a powerful card into play, putting an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or an Atraxa, Grand Unifier onto the battlefield without paying its mana cost, for example. There are many flavors of this, but the most common is Reanimator, a black-centric deck (often paired with red or blue) that seeks to put a giant threat like Archon of Cruelty into its graveyard and then cast Reanimate or Animate Dead to bring it into play. There are also Sneak decks which avoid the graveyard by using Flash, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, or Natural Order to put these cards into play from your hand instead.
4. Artifacts: Most commonly found in blue and red, these decks take advantage of the cube having a lot of artifacts. Generate a ludicrous amount of mana with Urza, Lord High Artificer or Tolarian Academy; be aggressive with a giant Kappa Cannoneer or Nettlecyst; or Tinker out a Bolas's Citadel.
5. Control: Remove all your opponents' threats and win the long game, or keep your opponent off balance long enough and win as a Combo Control deck, such as using Hullbreacher or Sheoldred, the Apocalypse alongside Wheel of Fortune to instantly upend the game.
6. Mix and match: Hybridize archetypes, such as a Combo Cheat deck or an Artifact Aggro deck. Make no firm commitments to any one archetype, take lands to keep yourself open, and combine multiple strategies to win.

These are the broadest archetypes, but there are plenty of other directions to go toward and card synergies to discover.

What's New with Arena Powered Cube?

The first edition of Arena Powered Cube was a seismic endeavor years in the making. The second version changed drastically with the addition of Universes Beyond cards and several adjustments to affect Boros decks. We are quite happy with the state of the card list, so these changes are much more gentle, involving just 33 cards.

Boros Check-in

Boros was the big story in the first version of Arena Powered Cube. It was both the most played archetype and its win rate was too high. Our goal last time was to gently reduce its prominence and win rate by removing a few heavy-hitters and some redundancy. We did not want to significantly harm the archetype, as aggro is generally a great deck to have in a cube.

We're pleased to say that Boros's play rate and win rate have decreased to acceptable levels. This is a bit unusual, as an archetype's play rate decreasing often increases its win rate due to the archetype being less contested. Boros is still doing quite well, though, so we're taking one more significant piece from it in Broadside Bombardiers. However, I'd expect we'll see our boastful friend again sooner or later.

Green: Landfall and Titans

Green called for a bit more of a shakeup, so we're trying out two small packages. First, we're adding several cards to bolster existing landfall cards like Scythecat Cub and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower. Second, we are bringing back a few Eldrazi titans to give Channel and other creature-cheating cards some higher impact targets, as well as some reliably available support in the form of Eladamri, Korvecdal.

One Good Bird

By popular request, we are adding a digital-only card, Oracle of the Alpha. This Bird has big dreams, from giving players one more bite at the apple of playing with Power each draft to adding new dimensions to "draw seven" effects.

Free Timeout (Starting in Week Two)

Arena Powered Cube is among the most complicated Limited formats, so a common request has been a bit more time, particularly for click-intensive combo decks. Now, messing with temporal mechanics is a tricky business, so we chose not to delay this iteration of Arena Powered Cube for this feature. Starting on February 17 at around 12 p.m. PT, however, Best-of-One and Best-of-Three Arena Powered Cube players will start each game with one timeout instead of zero. After that, players will earn one timeout for every three turns they complete without seeing the timeout rope as usual.

Changelog

Another popular request has been a changelog so people can quickly see how the current Arena Powered Cube list has changed from the previous version. These aren't one-for-one swaps—Unlicensed Hearse wasn't replaced by Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, for example—but this will give all those interested a quick summary of the changes.

Wrapping Up

We hope you have an absolute blast playing Arena Powered Cube and experiencing over 30 years of Magic's history. We look forward to seeing how you all feel about it and hearing your thoughts on this iteration. Until next time, I hope to see you in the draft queue!