I’ve been wanting to write posts about my cube, but it feels weird to make those without introducing the cube first. So in this article I will do that.

Trolley Problem Cube is my personal vintage+ cube. By vintage+ I mean that it contains all the traditional power cards like Black Lotus, but those are not necessarily the strongest cards in the cube. The cube is a mix of normal magic cards, weird things that wizards made, and custom cards. All coming together to create a unique environment.

The cube has a couple of main goals, the first goal is to be fun. Which trumps all other goals, this is mostly obvious but worth explicitly stating. Secondarily, I aim to somewhat replicate the feeling of constructed vintage, this comes down to games being all about powerful cards clashing into each other, while accepting the non-games that can come from that premise.1 Thirdly, a big appeal of the cube is recontextualizing cards to be very different in power level from what you’re used to. Looking at a pack with Black Lotus in it but not being sure whether you should pick it feels cool. Finally, I like showing off cool things, custom cards I find iconic for various reasons, weird things wizards came up with, or just fun stuff from various other card games.

Now let’s discuss how I achieve these goals. To get closer to the power of constructed vintage, there are two important choices I’ve made: the creatures in this cube are extremely strong and dangerous, and fast mana is significantly more available. For example, the cube contains a pre-flipped Ormendahl, the Corrupter. These creatures help the cube not settle into a space normal vintage cubes often end up in, where you often just draft a midrange good-cards-typal deck. Because you have to respect the creatures so much, you have to commit to how you’re dealing with them. Are you matching or exceeding your opponent’s board state, are you loading up on removal to buy turns, or are you holding on for dear life scraping to your combo? If you cannot assume you’ll be alive on turn 5, playing midrange becomes a far riskier choice.

The abundant fast mana also makes it far easier for decks to get the kind of explosive openings that exemplify constructed vintage, and because they are common, decks need to have plans to deal with them. Which further pushes players to pick a proactive or reactive lane instead of a passive one.

That about wraps up my philosophical justification for my choices. However, there are other important things to know about the cube that are less grounded in game design. These simply emerged from the core concepts of the cube. But they are no less important when drafting the format: the command zone and the incredible fixing. Starting with the latter, the lands in this cube are so much better than you’d see in other cubes. There are 9 lands that tap for any color of mana without any major downside. Those lands are further backed up by the traditional fetch/shock/dual manabase from normal vintage cubes. I think this level of fixing adds a lot of interesting texture to the draft. The high power level of some individual cards makes splashing already appealing, and this level of fixing enables that urge. Both of these factors push fixing into the very high-picks, which leads to its own interesting draft balance between fixing and bombs.

Moving on to the command zone, this cube has a lot of cards that “live in your command zone”, by which I mean that you always have access to them. This includes more traditional types like conspiracies, vanguards and companions. But also heroes, and this cube’s special rule: “If a card says it can be your commander, it can be your commander.” Notably, I rule that this does not require your deck to follow said cards’ color identity2. All types of cards that live in the command zone have minor differences that add unique texture to the format, but all of them ask a fundamental question in the draft phase: “How good is it to always have access to a card? Is it better to always have a small upside or have a chance to draw a large upside?” I personally believe them to be incredibly strong, but how strong exactly is an open question.3 Learning how to evaluate the command zone is one of the main skills you learn as you play the cube more.

The cube in general has had very positive reception among players and has, over many iterations, evolved into its current state, which I am broadly happy with. I’m still tinkering with the list often, making changes to try and make the cube even better. I also softly intend to start documenting the updates to the cube on this blog, but writing this introduction before doing that felt important to me.

  1. There is a general misconception in many magic spaces that vintage is all about combo-ing off on turn 1, but this isn’t really the case. The format is more about managing your powerful resources against your opponent to get into a state where you have enough advantage that you can win. That can happen in turn 1, but is by no means expected to. ↩

  2. The rules justification for this is that the rules for following color identity are part of the commander/commander-draft format, which we are not playing. We are simply letting card text override the CR, as it instructs us to do. ↩

  3. My previous article about Lutri, the Spellchaser touches on this topic in more detail, read that here. ↩