A Comprehensive Guide to Tinkerer's Cube - April 2023 • MTG Arena Zone

Hello everyone!

Today I’m going to go over one of the most exciting Arena events – Tinkerer’s Cube! Tinkerer’s Cube is a unique Limited experience where, instead of acting like a normal draft format, rewards players for identifying and playing cards with inherent synergies. This doesn’t mean that traditional draft conventions fly out of the window, but if you’re thinking that you can just force Mono Red and be good, you may be in for a world of hurt!

In this guide, after going over the Arena Cube event details, I’ll be focusing on the best cards and archetypes in Tinkerer’s Cube and the key cards to look out for to see if that archetype is open. Happy Drafting!

Arena Cube Event Details

Welcome to Tinkerer’s Cube, where you draft from a cube to create an engine that’s more than the sum of its parts! Read on for this cube’s philosophy and the complete card list. Players will draft three fourteen-card packs, but cards selected will not be added to collections.

The Tinkerer’s Cube is a Phantom event, so cards you draft are not added to your collection.

Duration: April 10, 2023 to April 17, 2023
Format: Tinkerer’s Cube
Entry Fee: 4,000 gold or 600 gems
Match Structure:
- Best-of-one matches (BO1): 7 Wins or 3 losses (whichever comes first)
- Best-of-three matches (BO3): Three matches (regardless of wins/losses)

Rewards

Individual card rewards (ICRs) will be Historic cards not in Standard.

Best-of-One

Wins	Reward
7 Wins	6,000 gold + at least 2 rare and 1 uncommon Historic ICRs
6 Wins	5,000 gold + at least 2 rare and 1 uncommon Historic ICRs
5 Wins	4,000 gold + at least 2 rare and 1 uncommon Historic ICRs
4 Wins	3,000 gold + at least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs
3 Wins	2,000 gold + at least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs
2 Wins	1,000 gold + at least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs
1 Win	500 gold + at least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs
0 Wins	At least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs

Best-of-Three

Wins	Reward
3 Wins	6,000 gold + at least 2 rare and 1 uncommon Historic ICRs
2 Wins	4,000 gold + at least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs
1 Win	At least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs
0 Wins	At least 1 rare and 2 uncommon Historic ICRs

Card List

Wizards of the Coast

Important Note For Tinkerer’s Cube

Much more so than I’ve seen in any other cube or any other iteration of Tinkerer’s Cube is the philosophy of moving away from archetypes. David McDarby mentions that as one of the guiding principles to how they designed the cube was to have less emphasis on archetypes, but it seems they definitely took it to the extreme this time around. While I’ll still detail the decks that I’m looking to build when the cards are open, going for the best cards and then building around them if possible is likely the best strategy approaching this cube. For example, if you see an early Witch of the Moors, taking that and then prioritizing cards that gain life is a smart way of going about drafting this cube.

Best Tinkerer’s Cube Build Arounds

Since it’s better to build around cards than archetypes, here’s a list of cards you should be on the lookout for to build around or just pick highly because they are stronger than most other cards.

Best Tinkerer’s Cube Archetypes

Scholar of the Lost Trove Art by Volkan Baga

I want to reiterate the trying to draft archetypes specifically is not necessarily going to work out consistently, but if you see groupings of cards being open, these are the decks I would be looking to play from them.

Mono White Aggro

KEY CARDS

Likely the best aggro deck in the Cube, Mono White Aggro is awkward because it’s excellent when the deck is open, but if you’re cut even a little bit, it can fall apart. The nice part about this strategy is that it’s mostly looking for cards that the other White decks wouldn’t want, so if you see these low cost cards coming around, you know you have a solid chance of getting this together. While I wouldn’t normally recommend it for normal Arena Cube, splashing to get enough playables is definitely acceptable here. In regular Arena Cube, the decks tend to be much more efficient, but in Tinkerer’s Cube, most of the decks are going to be clunky. So, if you have the opportunity to take advantage of the clunky nature of the opponent’s decks, this is one of the better ways to do it.

Azorius Blink

KEY CARDS

While it seemed that they tried to eliminate as many archetypes from the Cube as possible, it seems Azorius Blink is still pretty heavily supported. As you can see, there are a lot of cards that do quite well for the Blink archetype and that’s not even mentioning all the ETB creatures in these colors! If you see these bombs open and ETB creatures flowing, this is easily one of the best archetypes to be in.

Gruul Aggro

KEY CARDS

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While Mono White is likely the best aggro deck, Gruul is very good as well and easier to get together. You can be pretty liberal with what cards you take here as long as they’re in the colors and cheap as the threat quality is pretty high here.

Rakdos Sacrifice

KEY CARDS

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Rakdos Sacrifice is an interesting archetype as the cards you absolutely need are really only in Black. Having the good sacrifice payoffs/enablers is obviously crucial to the success of the archetype, but once you get those, you can fill out your deck with cheap creatures and interaction to make it work.

Izzet Spells

KEY CARDS

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Very similarly to Rakdos Sacrifice, Izzet Spells does need the core creatures that work well with spells, and once you have those, you can really draft anything from there. Cheap instants and sorceries are the best in conjunction with these creatures obviously, but having some solid threats beyond these is also important.

Big Green

Good fixing and good ramp

I didn’t put any key cards here as it’s much more important you have the set ups rather than the payoffs. Realistically, this is going to be the most popular archetype in the Cube as you can just get fixing early as well as the best bombs you see, and then take good cards and cards to fill the curve out later.

CONCLUSION

Although I listed what I believe to be the best archetypes, realistically speaking almost, every deck in Tinkerer’s Cube is more than viable if you draft correctly. Don’t be dissuaded to try out other color combinations, archetypes, or cards if they seem open and/or you just want to try it out. Tinkerer’s Cube is meant to be fun first, but use this guide to get more acquainted with the format or to try and break even as often as possible.