A peasant cube allows every card printed at common or uncommon. That one extra rarity is a bigger change than it sounds. Uncommons are where Magic puts its signpost gold cards, its best Equipment, its playable planeswalkers of the last decade, and a handful of cards that were rares until a Masters set downshifted them. A peasant cube keeps the budget and the flat power curve of a pauper cube while gaining the tools to make every archetype feel finished.
This is a construction guide for the format: what uncommons do to a commons pool, which ones most lists exclude, how the sections split, and how the ten lanes change when the uncommon layer arrives. If you have not built a pauper cube, that guide is the companion to this one.
What does the uncommon layer add?
Four things, roughly in order of impact:
- Real signposts. Common gold cards are thin. Uncommon gold is where sets put their archetype flagships: Kitchen Finks, Fire // Ice, Mortify, Izzet Charm, Winding Constrictor. A peasant cube’s gold section can have three or four clear signposts per pair, which makes the cube far easier to draft on sight.
- Premium removal. Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt (also common), Go for the Throat, Ravenous Chupacabra, Flametongue Kavu, Control Magic, Fire Covenant. The Draftsim peasant cube overview lists most of these as the format’s staples.
- Build-arounds with teeth. Animate Dead, Reanimate, Dance of the Dead, Skullclamp, Loxodon Warhammer, Eternal Witness, Mother of Runes. In pauper these decks are approximations; in peasant they are the real thing.
- A few planeswalkers. The War of the Spark uncommon walkers (Saheeli, Kasmina, Davriel, Jaya, the Wanderer) are legal and mostly fair. Most peasant cubes run two to five of them.
What it does not add is bombs. Uncommon creatures top out around Flametongue Kavu and Kitchen Finks. There is no Grave Titan in a peasant cube. Games are still decided by curves and combat, just with better tools.
Which cards should a peasant cube exclude?
Rarity is not a perfect power filter, and a few uncommons from the game’s early years are out of scale with everything else. The Draftsim peasant cube overview notes that most players agree the first group below does not belong, partly on power and partly on price. The other two groups are our own watch list:
- Fast mana and mana denial: Sol Ring, Ancient Tomb, Strip Mine, Wasteland, Mana Drain (uncommon in Legends), Library of Alexandria.
- Combo enablers: Frantic Search and High Tide are the usual watch-list cards; most cubes keep them and cut the storm payoffs instead.
- Free spells: Daze and Gush are the ones that get cut. Snuff Out is common and most keep it.
The practical approach is a short written ban list of five to ten cards, framed as “these are out because they bend the format,” rather than a long one. Many public peasant lists on CubeCobra document their exclusions on the overview page, which is the right place for them.
How big, and how is it split?
Draftsim’s overview finds 360 the most common size, with 450 and 720 for larger or more frequent groups and 180 for two to four players. A workable section split for a 360 and a 450, as a house guideline:
| Section | 360 | 450 | What changes from pauper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Each color (×5) | 50 | 62 | Slightly fewer creatures (50 to 55%), more spells |
| Gold | 40 | 50 | Larger: 4 to 5 per pair, mostly uncommon signposts |
| Colorless | 20 | 25 | Equipment and mana rocks become real |
| Lands | 50 | 65 | Uncommon fixing: tri-lands, bounce lands, gain lands, Thriving lands |
The gold section grows and the color sections shrink a little because uncommon gold is good enough to carry archetype identity on its own. The land section gets better rather than bigger: the Shards of Alara tri-lands are uncommon, and gain lands, bounce lands, Thriving lands, the Kaldheim snow duals and Ash Barrens are all common or uncommon. A peasant cube can support three-color decks a pauper cube cannot.
How do the ten archetypes change?
Mostly, they sharpen. The lanes are the same ones the common pool supported; the uncommon layer makes each one a deck instead of a leaning. Examples of what the uncommon adds to each:
- White-Blue flicker: Reflector Mage, Cloudblazer, Momentary Blink, Soulherder. The deck gains a lord-like engine in Soulherder and real tempo in Reflector Mage.
- Blue-Black control: Ravenous Chupacabra, Baleful Strix, Forbidden Alchemy, Dinrova Horror. Now a two-for-one deck instead of a one-for-one deck.
- Black-Red sacrifice: Mayhem Devil, Judith, the Scourge Diva (uncommon in Commander Masters), Blood Artist, Goblin Bombardment, Skullclamp. Skullclamp alone changes how the archetype drafts.
- Red-Green monsters: Flametongue Kavu, Rhythm of the Wild, Boggart Ram-Gang, Bloodbraid Elf. Ramp already had Wood Elves and Sakura-Tribe Elder at common, so this lane changes least.
- Green-White auras and counters: Rancor is common; uncommon adds Ethereal Armor, Winding Constrictor, Conclave Mentor.
- White-Black aristocrats and taxes: Mother of Runes, Mortify, Zulaport Cutthroat.
- Black-Green graveyard: Eternal Witness, Satyr Wayfinder, Golgari Brownscale. The real gain is Animate Dead and Reanimate making reanimator a lane across BG and UB.
- Green-Blue ramp and value: Coiling Oracle, Trygon Predator, Growth Spiral, Tatyova. Simic finally has signposts.
- Blue-Red spells: Fire // Ice, Izzet Charm, Electrolyze, Young Pyromancer, Thermo-Alchemist. A full prowess-tempo deck.
- Red-White aggro: Boros Charm, Lightning Helix, Adanto Vanguard, Seeker of the Way, Loxodon Warhammer. Aggro gets reach and a second Equipment payoff beyond Bonesplitter.
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Is peasant better than pauper?
It is a different point on the same dial, and the choice is about who sits at your table.
Peasant suits groups that: already know the archetypes and want them to feel complete; want three-color decks to be possible; enjoy Equipment, reanimation, and a planeswalker or two; and have drafted pauper enough to feel its ceiling.
Pauper suits groups that: teach often, want the flattest possible power curve, lend the cube out, or travel with it.
A useful test: if your pauper drafts end with players saying “I almost had a deck,” peasant fixes that. If they end with players saying “every game was close,” do not touch it.
Many owners keep both as one box with a flag: the pauper list, plus a tagged set of 60 to 90 uncommons that swap in for peasant night. CubeCobra’s tags and the modular approach make the swap a ten-minute job.
What is a “peasant” card, exactly?
The rule most lists use is “printed at common or uncommon in any paper set,” including cards that were rare on first printing and later downshifted. That brings in a surprising amount: Masters-set downshifts, Jumpstart and Commander precon reprints have all moved former rares to uncommon; Ryan Overturf’s Commander Masters peasant update walks through one batch (Kirtar’s Wrath, Isareth the Awakener, Rorix Bladewing). Check each candidate on Scryfall with r<=uncommon and read the printings; a cube that treats “uncommon in the Commander precon” as legal is a different cube from one that does not, and both are fine as long as the primer says which.
The format most people call Artisan on Arena is the same idea restricted to Arena-legal cards, and the Arena Artisan events are a good quick way to feel the power level before you build.
FAQ
What is a peasant cube?
A peasant cube is a cube built from cards that have been printed at common or uncommon in at least one set. It keeps pauper’s budget and flat power while adding signpost gold cards, premium removal, and real build-arounds.
How is peasant different from pauper?
Pauper allows only commons. Peasant adds uncommons, which brings in cards like Swords to Plowshares, Kitchen Finks, Skullclamp, and Animate Dead, and makes three-color decks and reanimator viable.
Which uncommons are banned in peasant cube?
Most lists exclude Sol Ring, Ancient Tomb, Strip Mine, Wasteland, Mana Drain, and Library of Alexandria. The exact list is the owner’s call and belongs in the primer.
How many cards does a peasant cube need?
360 is the most common size for eight players. 450 or 540 adds variety for groups that draft weekly; 180 works for two to four players.
One rarity up, a whole format over
Peasant is the cube we recommend to anyone whose pauper cube has started to feel solved and who still does not want to spend a car payment on duals. The game is the reason. The people are the point.
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