Cube Drafting Dot Com

Okay, so I was bored in San Diego waiting for the Pro Tour festivities to start and thought — why don’t I have pictures of my cube? So I made some.

Be on the lookout for some Worldwake updates I’m trying out as well!

Enjoy!

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So another three months have passed and it’s time to get all cube-updating in this hizzle. Or something.

Either way, last go-around I updated the cube with M10 additions. This time we’re adding five cards per color bringing the total cube size to 580 cards. Woo! I’m happy with a growth rate of 25 cards for this update, but don’t expect it to jump that high next time.

Here were my goals for this update:

- Add only the strongest Landfall cards. This included cards like Emeria Angel and Ob Nixilis, the Fallen. While there are plenty of powerful and surprisingly good Landfall cards (Plated Geopede is the first that comes to mind), I only wanted those that both excelled as creatures and as Landfall-triggering monsters.

- Don’t stop looking for ‘consensus’ cards. This is where the inclusions of Lignify and Vendetta came from. These are simply two examples of fantastic and powerful cards that are worth having in the cube. Every good monster needs an answer, and Lignify is a surprisingly powerful one, while Vendetta is like the backwards Swords to Plowshares, and I’m definitely okay with that.

- Continue the tradition of a ‘Sneak Peek’ from the new set. With the M10 update I threw in the five new Zendikar fetchlands, as I was 100% certain they were going in. This time I’m doing the same with Worldwake, including the five rare duals/manlands as they replace the M10 duals from the last update. While the M10 duals certainly have their upsides, they can’t both fix mana and go upside your opponent’s head, and that’s something I cherish (the latter more than the former).

So with that, let’s get started!

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This guest post is written by Reuben Bresler. For those wishing to contribute to cubedrafting.com, contact eerwin at gmail dot com.

It’s a fairly well known and accepted line of thought in Magic that, in general, the larger the format gets the weaker the aggro strategies become. This is because the answers to specific problems become more varied and accessible, while the relative strength of the aggressive cards goes down accordingly. Put more simply, a control deck has more options than an aggro deck does with the same card pool because there will only be 1 or maybe 2 2-power creatures for 1 mana per block, but there will be way more options on ways to kill that creature as the block gets larger…

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Hello everybody, it’s that time again…with Zendikar released into the wild, it’s time to add Magic 2010 cards to the Cube as well as shake up the colors in the direction I feel they should go.

Remember, the cube is your chance (and mine) to be developer and designer, so feel free to add or remove any card you like. The customization is part of the fun! That said, I wanted to accomplish a few goals with this update:

- Less Cards. Specifically, Hybrid Cards. This entire section has been eliminated. This leaves us with 28 fewer cards than my previous update (for a total of 527 from 555).

- More Support For Mono Color Decks. This includes giving black Sinkhole and green Acidic Slime. These cards allow those colors to deal with permanents (such as Maze of Ith or enchantments) when they had no way to previously stop those cards and/or it was very difficult to do so.

- Pay Attention To Cube Consensus. This means looking at other cubes in the cubedrafting.com forums, other cube forums around the net, and scouring magiccards.info in search of great cards to bring awesome limited experiences to players of my cube.

Wanna see what changed? Let’s go!
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Hello everybody, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I apologize for neglecting my cube-related duties. I’ve scoured the past two sets for their untold treasures, basked in the raw goodness of many-a-card, and now it’s time to lay down the gauntlet and for the “Cube Mothership” to detail the Official CubeDrafting.com Conflux and Alara Reborn updates.

This is a HUGE update with no less than 43 Cards Dropped and 85 Cards Added to the cube!

With this update I further refined what I wanted colors to do, gave a few more tools to various archetypes, increased the number of cards per color to 60, increased the number of lands by 5 for a total of 70, added another card-per-shard, added 5-color cards for the first time ever as well switching out well over 20 cards! Things are definitely different and more powerful as a result. This brings the total number of cards in the cube to a whopping 555!

Let’s take a look at the changes:

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This guest post is written by Rick Cummings. For those wishing to contribute to cubedrafting.com, contact eerwin at gmail dot com.

My name is Rick. I’m from Fort Wayne, IN, before which time I lived in Fargo, ND. My “claim to fame” is that I placed 3rd at the North Dakota Champs this past year, with EsperLark before it was cool (rogue cred: go!) I’ve written a few bloggy bits at TCGPlayer.com. Maybe you’ve read them. Probably you haven’t. But in response to Eric Klug’s commons/uncommons cube article, I thought I’d write the article I’ve been putting off for something like a year now: Building an All-Commons Cube.

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This guest post is written by Eric Klug. For those wishing to contribute to cubedrafting.com, contact eerwin at gmail dot com.

By Eric Klug

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Eric. I started playing Magic during Saga block and have never stopped. I play at a semi-competitive level. Recently I made it to my first Pro Tour in Kyoto. I live in Maryland but I’m originally from Cincinnati, Ohio…

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This guest post is written by Reuben Bresler. For those wishing to contribute to cubedrafting.com, contact eerwin at gmail dot com.

By Reuben Bresler

Hello there everyone. My name is Reuben Bresler. Some of you may have heard of me, but for those of you who haven’t let me quickly introduce myself. I have been playing Magic since I was ten years old and playing competitively at PTQs and Grand Prix since I was twelve. I have also been a writer for various other Magic web sites, including TCGplayer and Star City Games.

When it comes to the Cube, I consider myself to have a decent amount of expertise, having played with well over a dozen different Cubes of varying designs and sizes. With that in mind, I know that there are many issues you must face when building a Cube of your own, from the practical (how can I afford all these expensive cards?) to the theoretical (which X spells should I cut?) to the mundane (should I really spring for the double sleeves?).

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Here is video taken on the 2009 Magic Cruise just before giving my cube talk.

If things are fuzzy, I uploaded this baby in full 1280×720 High Definition. You can see it over here on the YouTube page (click on the HD button):

So you’ve decided you want a cube of your own. Where do you begin? What happens when you want a cube, but you don’t know where to start?

This article is for you. In this article we’ll go from idea to final product in just five easy steps. Let’s go!

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