Yugioh Cube: A new way to play old-school Yugioh but with a Twist!

 I am a huge cube enthusiast. Cube is a custom format, which originates from Magic the Gathering (MTG). Basically, you take some of your cards (typically around a few 100 cards, like ~400) which you can draft in a group. The set of cards is called your cube.

Draft is a way to simulate opening packs. The draft format also originates from MTG, where most sets are specifically designed for draft. Normal Yugioh sets are NOT designed for cube (which will become apparent after explaining how a draft works). Let's say you are four people that want to play Yugioh Cube Draft. Each player gets 3 packs with ~15 cards (of your cube). Each player looks at one of their packs and picks a card from it. After you pick a card, you pass this pack to the person next to you. You take cards from sequential packs until all cards from the first packs are drafted. Then, each player opens their second pack and you pick cards again (passing cards in the opposite direction to the first round). In the end, each player is left with 45 cards that they picked out of the packs. Out of these, you can make a deck fulfilling the deck requirements and the rest is your side deck.

So far so good. Doing such a draft with normal Yugioh boosters would result in really incoherent messes especially with newer sets leaning more and more into archetype specific support. Thus, when I was thinking about making draft viable for Yugioh, my mind immediately went to Cube, where I can put ANY card in that I want into the set of cards which are drafted.

Traditionally, the list of cards that are about to be drafted (your cube) doesn't contain any duplicates. You can obviously not do this if you don't want to, but it is more fun from my experience to use this Singleton spirit. The reason for this is to increase the variance when playing and drafting the cube multiple times. If you put one card ten times into your ~400 card cube, you will see the card multiple times in the draft with a very high percentage. In a way, drafting cube is about embracing individual cards, thus making them more special. Your drafted decks will contain only one copy of each card. This is very reminiscent of Goat format where you had access to the most powerful spells and monster cards, but only at one copy each.

Talking about an old-school format, I kinda miss old-school Yugioh. Firstly, for the less combo-centric gameplay and secondly for the iconic old (and also banned) cards that began to rot in my binder. I had to make use of these cards! Additionally, I have tons of friends from board game groups which I always try to lurk into my card game obsessions. Unluckily for me and luckily for them, they don't like to invest too much time (and money) into cardboard. However, I noticed most of them being familiar with the basic rules of Yugioh either from their childhood or the Anime. The good thing about a Cube is that none of the other players need anything. You bring your cube and that is it. The people just have to be there. I can already tell you that you will get a much larger amount of people drafting your old-school Yugioh cube than your Synchro-Pendulum-Synergy-Link cube (obviously, if go to a LGS, you can also fire up different cubes, where you can go ultra-bananas).

Thus I started to put together old-school cards and also bought a few cards that I didn't own which I deemed as being good cards for my Cube Draft environment. The objective of my cube was to bring old-school Yugioh back. However, I didn't want the cube to be a durdle fest, where people are just playing beatsticks (although that should also be viable). The first thing that I included was power. We play Pot of Greed, Deliquent Duo, Victory Dragon (with OCG rules!), pre-erata Chaos-Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End, Imperial Order and Crush Card Virus, etc.

Cube is about what you want it to be. For me, Cube is not about having a perfectly balanced format. For me Cube is about celebrating the game, in my case the early days of Yugioh. Having overly powerful Spell cards, being FTKed or being Yata-locked are perfectly fine for me and my playgroup. The good thing about cube? You can decide for yourself with your playgroup what you want to celebrate. In my case, I am advocating for old-school as a lot of people probably resonant with it more.

For this old-school vibe, I included basically every playable "staple" from the first sets of Yugioh up until Light of Destruction right before the Synchro era. However, some cards which I deemed as having old-school vibes were also included. As some point, when I have a ton of time, I will post the whole list online.

But what is the Twist? The first one is Fusions. Old-school fusion monsters are awesome and really iconic. Unluckily, original fusion summoning is a failed mechanic. Especially in a draft format, you would have to get three cards, the fusion and its respective materials. Additionally, Fusion material monsters are often awful cards on their own. So how to make the Fusion summoning mechanic more playable? We invented the following rule which felt really "synchro-xyz-link"-esque. Namely, every fusion monster's summoning restrictions are lifted. Every fusion monster can be special summoned (this is to not confuse player's when cards say "can only be special summoned by..."). Additionally, you can Contact Fusion any Fusion monster by using a monster of its Type and its Attribute. Example: Master of Oz can be fusion summoned by sending a Beast and an Earth monster from the field to graveyard. This enables a TON of different strategies as this way, Fusion monsters become really powerful. It also brings some important meaning to the type and attribute of monsters, something with unfortunately wasn't heavily explored in old-school Yugioh. Additionally it provides some modern gameplay for players like me who enjoy modern Yugioh.

There is also a second twist. We were talking about the minimal deck size of drafted decks. In MTG, your deck when drafting has to have at minimum of 40 cards. You usually draft around 45 cards from which you take around ~25 cards that go into your deck. MTG has basic lands which you do not draft. A normal Magic deck has 60 cards. So if we transition a 60 card competitive MTG deck to a 40 card draft MTG deck, that would be equivalent to transitioning a 40 card competitive Yugioh deck to a ~27 card Yugioh draft deck. The problem is that getting 27 cards in a Yugioh draft to form a cohesive deck is not that straightforward, especially if your available card pool is limited. Type strategies such as Dragon, Zombies, Fairies, etc. are really punished by big decks as there are simply not that many powerful monsters of these type lines. So we though a lot about it. What about a 20 card minimum like in Duel Links? What about a 15 card minimum? Or only 10 cards? And then we came to the, in my opinion, most degenerate but also most interesting solution: There is NO minimum deck size, meaning that you can play 5 cards in your deck. This might not be something which is a good idea for most people but we had a ton of fun breaking the cube by certain FTK or OTK strategies, but also Jar strategies that prey on people only playing 10 card decks.

One should generally show and tell. I talked a lot about the ideas and theory behind building a cube, however seeing actual decks and thinking about whether they are good or not is much more fun! Thus, in the following I will show a few decks, which were drafted in my old-school Yugioh cube to maybe inspire a few of you. A lot of aspects about Yugioh cube will become more apparent when looking at actual drafted decks. Note that Cube is about drafting cards. Thus, the average card quality is lowered and some card choices may seem really strange especially when some cards appear next to Pot of Greed. The beauty of cube is finding playability in different cards because of the Singleton natures, so some cards might be really strong in certain situations!

1) Fairies + Equip Spells OTK

The first deck is a perfect example for a deck that wouldn't be this easily possible without our custom rule. This deck is a 13 card deck which tries to OTK the opponent. Guardian Eatos is an insane card for such a low deck count strategy being playable early for free. Additionally, Valhalla Hall of the Fallen is a perfect support piece for big Fairies which is perfectly utilised here with Eatos and Archlord Krystia. Note that a lot of Fairy support in this deck is not really "old-school" going into the Synchro era. This is the beauty here, as you can put into the cube what you like. The spicy thing here is the additional inclusion of Ben Kai and the two Equip spells. Not only does the reduced deck size make it very consistent, the Equip spells also synergies with Guardian Eatos. The thing that is really missing from this deck are some power spell cards and also more backrow destruction, which comes at an absolute premium in a draft environment where options are limited. 

2) Uria + Hamon Memes

Cube is not always about winning. Cube is also about expressing yourself and playing funny jank decks. This deck here plays Uria AND Hamon. It that a good idea to win games? No. It is hella fun to play both in the same turn? Hell yes! The funny thing about this type of cube is that decks like this are better than they look if you can draft some staples. This deck has a lot of power pieces in Forceful Sentry, Confiscation, Harpy Feather Duster, Imperial Order and Cyber Jar. It also got multiple stall and burn pieces which work quite well together. In the end, it really doesn't matter how you win the game. Thus, I don't even know what else I could have used to kill my opponent in a faster way than to play a 3000 ATK Uria.

3) Dragons + Chaos  

A classic which is probably coming together in most drafts. Like its counterpart in competitive Yugioh, the deck utilizes Dark and Light monsters to power out OG Chaos Emperor Dragon and thus banishing cards to bring back with Dimension Fusion. Additionally, the deck has a ton of power at its disposal in Pot of Greed, Delinquent Duo, Giant Trunade and Dimension Fusion. A card like Red-eyes Darkness Metal Dragon is a personal favourite of mine.

4) Airblade Turbo without Airblade

Decks can also become insanely focused and have only one gameplan. This deck wants to use Monster Gate and Reasoning to power out big boss monsters, but optimally Dark Magician of Chaos (preerata!), thus being able to recycle powerful spell cards like Change of Heart to OTK the opponent. However, decks like this are usually very easily counterable as they only have one gameplan. Note that upon side decking, your opponent can also trim down on cards in their deck to have to specific answers at hand.

5) Good-stuff + Antimeta pile

The ultimate strategy in such a cube is just to take the best cards out of every pack that is passed to you. Good cards together are good and this deck is using a lot of good ones. Some of the card choices might seem really odd, but it will become more apparent when looking at the next deck, which this deck specifically sided towards. In particular, Gorz seems awkward in a heavy backrow deck, but it makes sense in the context of playing against an OTK deck.

6) Beast + Master of Oz deck 

I mentioned previously that there was a Twist in the Fusion summoning mechanic. One of the most interesting ones is Master of Oz. A card that would only be playable in Cyber Stein decks as its two materials are far from the required powerlevel. However, with the house rule of it being playable with a Beast and an Earth monster on the field makes it busted. A card like Rescue Cat matches its powerlevel in days of Cat Synchro being a Master of Oz on a stick being able to summon a beast and an earth monster. In combination with Giant Trunade, Wild Nature's Release and Big Bang Shot, this deck can consistently OTK. Note that this deck was way smaller in the first games against the previous deck. However, upon the opponent siding in cards like Necro Gardner, Jowgen and Pachy to cripple the OTK, a small deck relying solely on an OTK is very risky as you will probably die from an empty deck when your OTK play is answered. This led the player to increase the deck size to play a longer game with the OTK option still being available.

7) Really strong Anti-meta

A recent example of a deck that seemed nearly unbeatable. Having access to probably the best three trap cards in Yugioh and a plethora of removal makes this deck really strong. Unexpected Dai is a really new card we tried because it felt right at home and it is an insane powerhouse without any extra deck shenanigans.  The combination of Imperial Order, Skill Drain and Judgment is quite good. However, such strategies are not unbeatable as the pilot of this deck realized when the opponent sided into an equally small sized deck having consistent Crush Card Virus, which completely decimates this deck.

8) FTKS

If you allow your players to play an arbitrary amount of cards in their deck, players will obviously play as few cards as possible. And then, there are players that want to exploit decks being small. Unfortunately, I don't have a decklist of this deck, but I included a picture of the most important cards that were used by the drafter. Basically, the deck resolved around playing a Cyber Jar on your own turn followed by a Book of Taiyou to let you and your opponent draw a ton of cards. The FTK was finished with a card destruction, which was usually enough to OTK (or even FTK) an opponent with a small sized deck (depending on how many monsters Cyber Jar hit). Obviously, this specific deck can't perform a consistent FTK as it has to play a larger deck size to not die from an empty deck itself, but FTKs happened.

However, there are other card combinations that could lead to consistent FTK's. One example which we found is a 6 card deck of

Fiber Jar

Makyura the Destructor

Book of Taiyou

Dark World Dealings

Secret Barrel

Ultimate Offering

which are all included in my cube. This deck is a high probability FTK. If you have Dark World Dealings as the last card in your deck, you can play Fiber Jar + Book of Taiyou to have the chance of another hand with Dark World Dealings. If you get it, you can play it to draw the last card and execute the combo by discarding Makyura. Then you can play Ultimate Offering form your hand, pay 500 LP to set Fiber Jar, then play Secret Barrel to deal 1000 damage to your opponent. Play Book of Taiyou to reset all the pieces and start again by paying 500 LP to summon Fiber Jar and dealing 1000 LP to your opponent as often as you like.

This is only one example of a possible FTKs in such a format. I bet there are tons more possible (I would appreciate your input on other possible combos!). For us, it is a really nice gimmick to think about such combos when drafting. Additionally, this being a draft format, it will be very very unlikely for you to pick all of these cards, which makes it even better when such a deck comes together.

That was it from my part. I think that this format is really underrated and I barely see it mentioned. I see lots of Yugioh Youtube Channels going more and more into the casual side of Yugioh playing custom made formats often with old-school cards. As a really old card game, I think that Yugioh should venture more into casual formats to get a broader playerbase. MTG has, is and will support itself with casual formats like EDH and Cube and these communities are very passionate about the game. I would like to see more format variety in Yugioh.

So? What is your opinion? Will you try a cube on your own? And what other FTK decks can you come up with using a limited deck size?

Thank you if you made it to the end! I appreciate any type of comment or question.