The Magic Online Legacy Cube is what you get when you take the Vintage Cube and remove the cards that win on turn one. No Power Nine, no Sol Ring, no Mana Crypt, no Mana Drain. The list published on mtgo.com runs to 600 cards, and its games look much more like the ones most paper cube groups actually play.
That is why it deserves a profile of its own. The Vintage Cube gets the attention, but the Legacy Cube is the closer model for an unpowered cube at a kitchen table. Here is where it came from, what is in it, and what it teaches.
Where did the Legacy Cube come from?
Magic Online ran its first official cube in April 2012 and its first powered Holiday Cube that December. Two years later, the original unpowered Magic Online Cube was renamed the Legacy Cube and cut to 600 cards. The MTG Wiki’s Magic Online Cube page lists the first Legacy Cube run as November 19 to December 10, 2014, and cites Randy Buehler’s November 3, 2014 article “The New Magic Online Legacy Cube” as the announcement.
The idea was simple. The Holiday Cube was powered and ran once a year. Magic Online wanted a cube that could run more often without the Moxen distorting every draft. A Legacy-flavored card pool, meaning the strongest cards that are not on the Vintage-only list, was the obvious shape.
Since then the Legacy Cube has come and gone from the client in runs of a week or two, with gaps in between. Star City Games reported one such return starting June 10, 2020, for two weeks, in a June 9, 2020 news post. Ryan Overturf’s May 2021 preview, “Everything I Know About Legacy Cube’s Return to Magic Online”, opens by noting it had been away for almost a year.
What is in it, and what is left out?
The list on mtgo.com is labeled “Last Updated: 8/19/2021.” That date matters: unlike the Vintage Cube, which now gets several signed updates a year, the Legacy Cube list has not been publicly revised in a long time, so treat it as a snapshot rather than a living format.
Counted from that page, the sections break down roughly like this:
| Section | Approximate count |
|---|---|
| White | 81 |
| Blue | 79 |
| Black | 82 |
| Red | 81 |
| Green | 84 |
| Multicolor | 64 (six per guild pair, plus four cards of three or more colors) |
| Colorless | 56 |
| Lands | 73 |
Compare that to the Vintage Cube’s 540, where blue runs about 80 cards and white under 60. The Legacy Cube’s colors are nearly even. That is the first design lesson: once you take out the cards that make blue the best color by fiat, you can afford to give every color the same number of slots.
The notable inclusions tell the rest of the story. Force of Will, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Snapcaster Mage, Ragavan, Griselbrand, Umezawa’s Jitte, Batterskull, Wurmcoil Engine and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath are all there. These are Legacy and Modern staples, not Vintage ones. The power is high, but it comes from cards that cost mana.
What Overturf’s May 2021 preview flagged as absent from that run is just as telling: no Power Nine, no Mana Drain, no Strip Mine, no Prismatic Vista, and no Signets or Talismans. (Prismatic Vista appears on the later August 2021 list.) His read was that scarcer mana rocks make mono-blue harder and make Armageddon better. That is exactly the tension an unpowered paper cube owner faces when deciding how much fixing and acceleration to run, and fast mana in cube goes deeper on it.
Who shaped the Legacy Cube?
The Legacy Cube has never had the public curatorial identity the Vintage Cube acquired after 2023. Randy Buehler led the 2014 redesign. For the 2021 updates, the name attached in public writing is Emma Handy. Overturf’s August 2021 preview of a later run credited “the careful curation of my former colleague Emma Handy,” said her update emphasized “more engaging build-around cards,” and noted that Oko, Thief of Crowns was finally banned in Legacy Cube, which he called the best change. The mtgo.com page’s own change table lists Oko under Cards Out, swapped for Lonis, Cryptozoologist. Its full list still shows Oko in the Simic section, and the Wizards announcement has the same mismatch. Treat Oko as cut.
Wizards announced that run in its Magic Online Announcements for August 24, 2021, which lists the Legacy Cube from August 25 to September 8, 2021. The original page is offline, so the link goes to an archived copy.
That 2021 update is the last one the mtgo.com list reflects. Whether the Legacy Cube returns with a new curator and a new list is an open question.
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How does it play differently from the Vintage Cube?
Overturf’s May 2021 preview walked through the archetypes he expected: white beatdown and Azorius control, blue counterspell decks, Splinter Twin combo, Simic ramp, black Reanimator and devotion, red aggro and midrange, and green ramp, with Opposition and Gruul in the mix. That is the standard unpowered cube menu, and it is wider than the Vintage Cube’s, where fast mana compresses the field toward whoever gets to act first.
Three differences a drafter feels immediately:
- Turn one is a land, not a Mox. With no free mana, the two-drop slot matters again and aggro decks have a window.
- Combo is slower and more fragile. Splinter Twin and Reanimator exist, but Storm and Time Vault do not. You can interact with the combo deck across the table.
- Fewer “broken” games in both directions. Overturf’s own framing: fewer looks at the busted cards, but opponents play them less often too.
If you have read our piece on aggro in cube, you know why that first point is the whole ballgame for most paper cubes.
What should a paper cube owner borrow?
The Legacy Cube is a better template for most tables than the Vintage Cube, and the reasons are structural:
- Even color counts. Roughly 80 per color is a defensible starting point for a 600-card unpowered list, and it signals that every color is a real lane.
- Six gold cards per guild. That is a narrow gold section for a cube this size. It keeps players from being locked into a pair by pick three and keeps the mono-color sections doing the work.
- A separate land section. Listing 73 lands as their own section, rather than folding them into colorless, makes fixing density visible and easy to tune.
- A ban as a design tool. Pulling Oko out of a cube that still runs Griselbrand is a statement that “too strong” is about what a card does to draft decisions, not its raw power. Does your cube need a ban list? takes up that question.
The one thing not to borrow is the stale list. A cube last touched in 2021 has missed years of printings. The lesson is about structure, not contents.
FAQ
What is the MTGO Legacy Cube?
An unpowered Magic Online cube of roughly 600 cards built from Legacy-era staples. It excludes the Power Nine, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt and Mana Drain, and plays slower than the Vintage Cube.
When did the Legacy Cube start?
Magic Online first ran it in November 2014, announced by Randy Buehler. It has returned periodically since, often for windows of a week or two.
Is the Legacy Cube still updated?
The card list on mtgo.com shows a last-updated date of August 19, 2021. It has not had the regular signed updates the Vintage Cube now gets.
Is a Legacy cube the same as a “Legacy-legal cube”?
Not exactly. Many paper cube owners use “Legacy cube” loosely to mean an unpowered cube with Legacy-level cards. The MTGO list is one specific example of that style.
Draft the honest version
If the Legacy Cube’s shape sounds like your group, you are not alone; most of the best paper cubes live in this range. Subscribe to The Ludarium newsletter for new cube pieces. If you are in Indianapolis, Cube Commonwealth, our cube group, is relaunching as part of The Ludarium; subscribers hear first when the first night is set.
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