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

On his website about the format, Tom LaPille said this about cube drafting: “Go make a cube, or at least convince someone else to. That cube will enhance your life and the lives of everyone else it touches.” This may be the most true statement about the format by far, as it has been the most fun that I’ve ever had playing Magic: The Gathering. Many articles and webpages like this very site, Cubedrafting.com, Tom LaPille’s site and cube list, various articles on StarCityGames.com and a few articles on MTGsalvation and TCGplayer have been created to enlighten the world about the greatest Magic: The Gathering format that has never been sanctioned: cube drafting.

When people think of cube drafting, they think of cards such as Black Lotus, Balance, Future Sight, Mind Twist, Flametongue Kavu, Tarmogoyf and Desolation Angel and if I had to wager, I’d say about 200 cards or so (most of which are covered in MTGSalvation’s “Official Cube Power Rankings” thread compiled by MTGSalvation forum member Silent Edge) can be considered the primary tier of what should be in a cube. But what about the others? What shouldn’t be in a cube?

This article will help with this oft-neglected aspect of cube design, by helping you discover what should and shouldn’t be in the “2nd tier” of cube cards. Cards like Sorrow’s Path and Dwarven Song are obviously suboptimal cards? Most of the suboptimal cards in peoples’ cubes however, aren’t that obvious. These “2nd tier” cards will comprise the bulk of the colors’ cards and kinds of decks that the colors can create and will ultimately determine how your cube plays and performs as a set.

After all, the goal of cube design isn’t to simply throw a bunch of good cards into a box, shuffle them up and draft them. Your goal as a cube designer to build an extremely powerful, unique, fun and well-balanced Magic: The Gathering set to booster draft, which happens to feature the most powerful cards of all time.

I’ll be referencing my own cube list as well as a commons cube list that my friend, makenfunny, created.

I’ll start with a story from when I drafted with the aforementioned commons cube. His cube had only been drafted about 5 times by me and some other people, so we decided to draft it at a 24-hour restaurant to give my friend some more data.

At some point my wg aggro build got paired against a blue control deck. I couldn’t deal enough damage in “Phase 1” and eventually got Capsize locked out of the game.

Bored and sitting there with a cup of coffee and with a handful of now useless cards, I pondered how aggro decks performed in his cube and remembered that they’ve not performed well, as control decks like Grixis Control typically ended up doing much better than aggro decks.

This caused me to turn to my friend and ask him “Has anyone ever drafted aggro in this cube and won?” (in terms of a winning record, not just a single game.) I don’t remember his response, but he didn’t disagree with my rather long-worded claim that aggro was weak in his cube. This conversation, along with some good design on his part, has helped aggro become a much better and healthily draftable archetype leading to a more balanced cube “metagame” and a much more fun environment (and in my opinion, become the best commons cube that I’ve seen.)

While aggro can be drafted in cubes that don’t explicitly support it and can win all of their matches, it is much more the exception than the rule. Let’s look at the Magic 2010 limited environment to underscore this point. Despite the inclusion of a few quality common aggro cards in M10 like Nessian Courser, Stormfront Pegasus and Trumpet Blast, aggro strategies are unlikely to succeed in M10 limited for several reasons:

* Firstly, although aggressive creatures and cards exist in the format, there are not nearly enough to provide the archetype with its required critical mass of support.

* Secondly, there are also several common creatures like Horned Turtle and Griffin Sentinel which can stymie the efforts of an aggressive start, giving midrange and aggressive decks time to stabilize and win in Phases 2 and 3.

* Thirdly, there aren’t enough disruptive cards like Molten Rain to punish midrange and control decks, making them lose tempo and preventing them from getting into Phases 2 and 3 of the game that their decks are tailored to thrive in.

* Finally, it is difficult for aggro decks to be able to “seal the deal” and win the game. Reach is hard to come by for M10 decks because there are no common pieces of equipment in M10 and what reach is available is in small amounts through cards like Lava Axe and Lightning Bolt (the latter of which will be picked very early).

Aggro decks rely on consistency, redundancy and efficient use of their mana on each turn to achieve their goal of winning the game as soon as possible. The main crux of this article is to say that while many of the above components are used in cubes, they aren’t used enough and fail to provide the necessary support through the required redundancy.

The first step is to provide aggro decks with a critical mass of cheap and efficient creatures, so that the aggro drafter can consistently deal damage quickly to win.

2-powered 1 drops have been an essential element of aggro decks since Magic’s beginnings, as they are one of the most cost-efficient sources of damage in the game. While cubes that do not support aggro include some of these powerhouse creatures, like Isamaru, Hound of Konda, these cubes do not provide them with enough support through other powerful aggro cards, therefore denying them the required consistency and redundancy to help them succeed.

Unfortunately, many cube designers perceive aggressive creatures like Jackal Pup to be weak for 2 reasons: Firstly, these cards don’t fit into control decks that care about a strong Phases 2 and 3, because drawing a one drop creature on turn 6+ is just useless or at least suboptimal for those decks. (Aggro decks, on the other hand, want to draw as many of those in the early game to keep on the pressure, even if they lose significance as the game progresses.) Secondly, these cube designers do not use these cards because they typically overstate the drawbacks on these cards.

Let’s discuss the first reason by distinguishing the difference between universally playable cards, aggro cards and control cards.

Most cube cards are universally playable in the sense that they can be used in almost any deck of the appropriate color and sometimes are splashed. These are cards like Flametongue Kavu and Magma Jet, cards that are equally at home in aggressive decks and control decks. Due to their flexibility and power, these cards should comprise a majority of a cube’s contents.

Control cards and aggro cards are cards that are mainly played in their corresponding archetypes. Aggro cards include cards like Grafted Wargear and Savannah Lions, whereas control cards include cards like Akroma’s Vengeance and Eternal Dragon. To show how their distinction and use in detail, let’s examine two decks with regards to Goblin Guide, an aggro card in Shards of Alara/M10/Zendikar-era Standard.

The first is the Blue-Red-White control deck that Luis Scott-Vargas used to win the Los Angeles Star City Games 5K event in January, 2010.

Deck
Spells [27]
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Path To Exile
4 Spreading Seas
4 Flashfreeze
2 Jace Beleren
2 Double Negative
2 Divination
3 Ajani Vengeant
2 Earthquake
2 Mind Spring
Creatures [7]
4 Wall Of Denial
3 Sphinx Of Jwar Isle
Lands [26]
4 Island
2 Mountain
4 Plains
4 Arid Mesa
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sejiri Refuge
Sideboard [15]
4 Baneslayer Angel
3 Luminarch Ascension
2 Mind Control
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Cancel
2 Essence Scatter
2 Negate

Let’s say that someone got a foil Goblin Guide and decided to change LSV’s deck by taking out a card to put in the Goblin Guide (for the sake of argument, we’ll assume that metagames are a non-factor, since cards like Spreading Seas preyed on a format where blue wasn’t played much.) You’d say that no matter what card is removed, using Goblin Guide in LSV’s deck is a bad idea. Why?

Goblin Guide doesn’t fit the themes of LSV’s deck. LSV’s deck uses creatures with shroud, spot and mass removal, mana denial, countermagic and card advantage to win a long game. Goblin Guide clashes with these themes because it adds nothing to any of these themes and clashes with the deck, like putting a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a slice of pizza. Therefore, Goblin Guide is a bad card in this particular deck.

The next deck is a Boros Bushwhacker deck, played by Fabian Lucero to a 1st place finish at the Open Summer 2010 Cash event in Chile:

Deck
Creatures [26]
4 Elite Vanguard
3 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Guide
4 Kor Skyfisher
4 Plated Geopede
3 Ranger of Eos
4 Steppe Lynx
Instant [11]
4 Burst Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Path to Exile
Land [23]
4 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
5 Mountain
5 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
Sideboard: [15]
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Celestial Purge
4 Unstable Footing
3 Slave of Bolas

4 Goblin Guides are played in Lucero’s deck successfully, because it doesn’t clash with the deck’s themes, it supplement them, namely the theme of dealing damage to an opponent with lots of cheap and efficient creatures (as Lucero’s deck not only runs Goblin Guide, but also Steppe Lynx, Elite Vanguard, Plated Geopede, Goblin Bushwhacker and Kor Skyfisher to provide Goblin Guide support).

Looking at both of these decks, we can conclude that just because LSV’s rwu control deck can’t use Goblin Guide effectively, that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad card, it’s just not the right card for LSV’s deck. It’s a phenomenal card in Lucero’s rw Boros Bushwhacker deck due to the support that Lucero’s deck provides for the goblin. No matter how efficient a creature like Goblin Guide is, it can’t kill the opponent by itself, barring an extremely bad hand kept by the opponent. Similarly, Lucero’s rw Boros Bushwhacker deck is unable to use Luminarch Ascension effectively because it doesn’t supplement the aggressive themes of Lucero’s deck of killing an opponent ASAP, even if the angels created by the quest are cheap.

Although it may seem self-evident that aggro cards often aren’t very good in control decks and vice versa, the point is that restrictive cards that only fit into aggro or control strategies aren’t necessarily bad, but that they require support through other cards.

Therefore, a cube with Isamaru, Hound of Konda as its only white 1 drop will have a “weaker” Isamaru than a cube that has Isamaru, Student of Warfare, Elite Vanguard, Savannah Lions and Steppe Lynx due to the lack of support. The sole inclusion of Isamaru in a cube doesn’t mean that the cube in question is conducive for white aggro (although it’s a good start) as it lacks the critical mass of support for Isamaru.

Many strong cards have an added drawback (a common one is somehow dealing damage to its owner) to compensate for having a undercosted effect or above average power/toughness. Many cube designers do not use these cards because they typically overstate the significance of the drawbacks on these cards (for example, thinking that Wild Dogs is a bad card because it may defect to an opponent and that Jackal Pup is bad because it damages its controller). This can’t be further from the truth! While creatures like these obviously have drawbacks, their drawbacks in aggro decks are usually not enough to make the cards unworthy of being deemed powerful cards.

For example, in the case of Jackal Pup, for the most part, the only time that you will take damage from a Jackal Pup is when it dies from either a burn spell or combat damage. Taking 2 damage from trading with a Venser, Shaper Savant is an insignificant drawback, especially since the Pup has dealt 4-6 damage to a player on its own. Similarly, cards like Wild Dogs ask the caster to be at a higher life total than an opponent, which a good aggro deck should be doing anyway (and while the opponent can cast a lightning bolt on the dogs’ caster, this scenario is not common and is a scenario that I haven’t personally seen happen).

The overstating the significance of drawbacks is similar to when new cards are revealed and people look for the absolute worst scenario for a card, dismissing a card. Some people dismissed Path to Exile at first because it let your opponent put a land into play and could potentially help an opponent out of land/manascrew. As time has proven, Path to Exile‘s drawback and scenarios when it could result in its caster being blown out proved to be nowhere near as much as people had feared and Path to Exile was given more respect and is rightfully ubiquitous in white decks.

Of course, not all 2/X creatures for 1 mana are worth using, as creatures like Accursed Centaur and Scythe Tiger are creatures with extremely significant and prohibitive drawbacks. After all, I’m not advocating using inferior aggressive cards over good control cards. I’m advocating the opposite.

“What about the other creatures?” After all, 1 drop creatures aren’t the only creatures that aggressive decks use, since that’d make for an abysmal curve. Aggro decks (cube aggro decks being no exception) also rely on efficient aggressive creatures that are 3 mana or less, like Keldon Marauders or Soltari Champion to form the backbone of their creature base, so that they can deal a lot of combat damage to an opponent quickly. We can enable aggro decks to thrive by providing a critical mass of creatures in this mana range.

Each aggro color needs to devote about 1/5th of its total slots to aggressive one and two drop creatures. In other words, if you have 60 cards in each color, and want to support aggro in black, white, red and green (blue, for the most part, doesn’t support aggro well due to the fact that its 1 drop creatures as well as its 2 drop creatures are, for the most part, not very efficient attackers), 12 of the creatures in those colors need to be cost 1 or 2 mana, focusing more on creatures like Bloodghast, than cheap universally playable ones like Knight of Meadowgrain, Mother of Runes and Sakura-Tribe Elder because they’re still very good in aggro decks. Using this critical mass helps aggressive decks achieve their needed support through redundancy to win through creature combat.

For an example of how this applies in a color section, look at Tom LaPille’s white creature section in his posted cube list as of 2007. Tom included many white efficient 2 drop creatures, like Soltari Priest, as well as the best white 1 drop creatures available (Steppe Lynx, Student of Warfare and Elite Vanguard did not exist when he last edited his public cube list) to ensure that aggressive strategies in his cube were viable through providing white aggro decks with the necessary critical mass of early creatures to build their decks.

Further, look at the sample RW cube decklist that Tom LaPille posted on his site as a showcasing of what a cube deck looks like.
Deck

1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
1 Mother of Runes
1 Savannah Lions
1 Jackal Pup
1 Mogg Fanatic
1 Grim Lavamancer

1 Silver Knight
1 White Knight
1 Soltari Monk
1 Soltari Priest
1 Whipcorder
1 Goblin Legionnaire

1 Paladin en-Vec

1 Calciderm

1 Firebolt
1 Rift Bolt

1 Incinerate
1 Sudden Shock
1 Lightning Helix
1 Volcanic Hammer
1 Magma Jet
1 Demonfire
1 Fireball
1 Ravages of War
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
1 Plateau
1 Sacred Foundry
1 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine
2 Mountain
7 Plains

Note the 6 1-drops and the 6 2-drops in the deck. If Tom didn’t provide a critical mass for early creatures like he and I use in our cubes, decks like these wouldn’t be possible and the draftability of good aggro decks would suffer.

I’ll sum up the critical mass of cheap and efficient creatures discussion using a up with a recent discussion: I was asked a few weeks ago why I’m running a bad card like Jackal Pup if I’m already using the superior Goblin Guide in my cube. The reasons are because Jackal Pup being a cheap and efficient creature with an overstated drawback and that Jackal Pup helps me provide aggro decks with support through a critical mass of cheap efficient creatures. These reasons are why Jackal Pup‘s in my cube and always will be and that a cube that doesn’t use Jackal Pup represents incorrect design.

Disruption

Much like how many cubes will only run creatures like Isamaru, Hound of Konda for aggro creatures, these same cubes will similarly only include cards like Avalanche Riders, Strip Mine, Wasteland and Rishadan Port for mana denial cards as a means of gaining tempo and hosing non-basic lands.

For example, casting a turn 3 Molten Rain without applying any kind of pressure would be much less effective tempo-gaining play than casting a turn 3 Molten Rain with a Wild Dogs and a Tarmogoyf on your side of the battlefield, since not only are you holding back your opponent’s mana development and keeping the opponent in “Phase 1” longer, but you’re also capitalizing on the gained tempo with your creatures. This isn’t a fringe strategy either, the plan of using land denial to gain tempo and to hose non-basic lands has been used in various ways: in sideboards of decks like Boros Bushwhacker by using Goblin Ruinblaster, in Extended Zoo decks such as these that use Molten Rain to deal damage and gain tempo and in Vintage Aggro MUD and Aggro Stax decks use Smokestack and Tangle Wire.

The main thing about disruptive cards like these is that these are cards that make people want to draft aggro. When someone opens cube a pack, for example, they look for the best card or at least something to build around: Recurring Nightmare makes a player want to draft a black reanimation deck or a deck that abuses “enter the battlefield” triggers on creatures, whereas Isamaru, as good as it is, doesn’t make someone necessarily want to draft a white aggro deck.

Disruptive cards like Armageddon, Nether Void, Plow Under and Winter Orb are the kinds of cards that make people want to draft aggro decks, as can be seen by LaPille’s sample rw deck and the white-centered aggro archetype discussions on this site, but as I’ve discussed, cards like these should not be the sole representatives of disruption.

Other means of disruption include discard spells and gaining tempo by destroying artifact based mana accelerants like Moxen, Signets and Sol Ring (although tt is, however, harder to rely on this strategy with regards to tempo since not every deck is going to have a Mox or a Signet, especially if the cube is unpowered). For the most part, these are generally included in pretty decent amounts in many cubes, but I think more need to be used through cards like Duress (which still has plenty of juicy discard targets in a cube and is definitely worthy of inclusion in a cube even if the cube has Thoughtseize.) Creatures with disruptive abilities which that trigger when they enter the battlefield (Viridian Shaman, Kor Sanctifiers, Shriekmaw) tend to stronger due to their inherent card advantage generally be easier inclusions in decks than their spell counterparts, but their non-creature counterparts are definitely cubeworthy as well.

There is the argument that cards like these are “unfun” cards to play against, but I personally don’t agree with this argument for several reasons. Cards like these aren’t “unfun” because they encourage a more balanced cube “metagame” where control isn’t overbearingly powerful as the only game in town and disruptive cards like these are as important to aggro decks as cards like Wrath of God are important to midrange and control decks. Besides, one could argue that it equally isn’t “fun” to have your board wrathed, and it isn’t “fun” to be unable to beat a control player because they’ve stabilized behind a Capsize and counterspell wall. The concept of “fun” is very subjective and not including cards solely based on what someone may perceive as fun or unfun is detrimental to the overall health and balance of a cube.

Reach

When I was discussing the use of aggro cards in a cube with a friend, he said that Wild Dogs wasn’t good because of the aforementioned “it can switch sides” argument and also because it can’t kill something like an Elvish Warrior (or, for a more relevant cube example, a Kor Skyfisher or a Knight of Meadowgrain / Black Knight.) On its own, Wild Dogs can’t kill one of these creatures. However, if you look at the above rw decks (and pretend for the sake of argument that Wild Dogs somehow became a red or white creature,) you’ll find that neither of these decks would be shut down by a White Knight, after all, if that was the case, the White Knight and Black Knight tag-team would have forced Boros Bushwhacker and pretty much every Standard aggressive deck out of the format. Why would a deck like Lucero’s or LaPille’s rw cube deck be not scared of a Knight? Reach.

When many people think of reach in aggro decks, they tend to think of direct damage. While this certainly is a component, it does not encompass all of what reach is.

Reach is also used either to increase the significance of your creatures,and while Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow are extremely strong cards that are auto-includes in cubes that can run them, much like with land denial and with aggro creatures, a common mistake is eschewing the other quality reach cards, like Bonesplitter, Glorious Anthem and Grafted Wargear. While cards like these are not as windmill-slammingly awesome as cards like the Mirrodin Swords, Umezawa’s Jitte and Skullclamp, they’re excellent cards whose inclusions shouldn’t be overlooked in cube, because much like the “1st Tier” equipment, they increase the damage potential of creatures. A turn 2 knight followed by a turn 4 or 5 Grafted Wargear is scary enough, but a turn 3 Wargear is even scarier and can end games quickly.

With regards to the direct damage aspect of reach, another common mistake in cube design is that red typically doesn’t have enough direct damage in its arsenal. MTGSalvation forum member and cube enthusiast wtwlf123 proposed the idea that in red, half of the red section’s cards should be able to deal damage to an opponent without attacking. This enables aggressive decks to finish off an opponent who has stabilized with removal for your creatures or who has controls bigger creatures like Yosei, the Morning Star and Kokusho, the Evening Star. In many aggro decks, your aggressive creatures will deal damage in the early stages of the game to “soften up” an opponent through dealing early damage, using direct damage to finish an opponent off (although direct damage tends to also really good at destroying creatures.) Much like how it’s difficult for aggressive decks to thrive without proper support, it’s difficult for red aggressive decks to thrive without a good chunk of its arsenal being able to dome an opponent for his or her last few remaining points of life. This allows red to play into one of its major strengths and in cube, like in all Magic: The Gathering formats, each color should play into its major strengths.

Repeatable burn is an especially excellent tool for red aggro decks to win. Much like Jackal Pup, cards like Sulfuric Vortex and Stormbind are sometimes deemed bad cards due to their drawbacks, which also cannot be further from the truth. While cards like Sulfuric Vortex and Stormbind can have their drawbacks be detrimental towards you, their drawbacks (causing you damage, making you discard cards) are typically overstated because, for the most part, they won’t matter as they’ll be finishing the job that aggro creatures in an aggro deck started as being at 6 life against an active Vortex or Stormbind is quite scary.

Again, looking at the sample RW cube deck that Tom LaPille made and the Boros Bushwhacker deck, you’ll see that both use a significant amount of red direct damage spells to not only clear a path for their attacking aggro hordes, but to also finish off a weakened opponent. Without a significant portion of red spells being able to deal damage to an opponent, decks like these would be weaker. In my cube’s 55-card red section, 28 of the cards can deal damage to an opponent without attacking. Increasing the amount of red burn to the amount that I presently have has helped aggro decks in my cube finish off weakened opponents.

Aside from burn and the 1/5 cheap creature ratio, you’re probably wondering how much support is needed to make sure that aggressive strategies are a healthily viable archetype. Unfortunately, it’s hard to quantify these concepts and a lot of this really depends on the individual contents of the cube, its size and even the people who draft it. One method that I’ve found to be a good method of evaluation is just observing how aggro decks perform. In other words, it doesn’t matter as much if people can draft aggro decks if aggro decks can’t consistently win because as mentioned at the beginning of the article, aggro can win in cubes that do not provide it without support, it just won’t happen very often and only if the right pieces fall into place.

Mana curves and too many expensive cards.

Another common mistake in cube design that usually leads to the predominance of midrange and control strategies and the failure of aggro strategies is including too many expensive cards. One of the best ways to “trim the fat” of a cube is to monitor a cube’s curve and average mana cost per color.

Many cubes tend to have too many cards in the middle to higher mana range because these cards seem more impressive and because much like gold cards, they are overwhelmingly fun, but that doesn’t mean that they should be represented as heavily in your cube. Dragons are fun, but making the entire color red comprised of 75% dragons and 25% fireball effects would make red an absolutely unplayable color.

The mana curve process involves not only placing cards according to their mana cost, but according to their actual mana cost to accurately reflect their true mana cost by including cards at the casting costs where they’re mostly cast. For example, I have Force of Will as a 0 mana blue spell because it’s almost always cast by pitching a blue card and paying 1 life, when I used to use Spitebellows, it was included as a 1rr spell instead of a 5r creature, because it was almost always evoked and Rude Awakening is included as a 6gg spell, since it’s almost always played with the entwine cost. Don’t think that you should include everything at a lower mana cost, as this is only cheating the system, as the purpose of doing using a mana curve of the first place. The whole point of using a converted mana cost average system is to help you identify how your mana curve truly plays out and to identify strengths and weaknesses in each color, as well as your entire cube.

While cards with lower mana costs aren’t necessarily aggro cards (and conversely, cards with higher mana costs aren’t necessarily control cards) – the concept of having a good mana curve in a cube is good to follow, as not having enough low casting cost cards, or at least aggro-friendly cards, does not allow aggressive decks to thrive.

A good rule to follow is that each color in a cube should have a casting cost average (ignoring X spells and any color-aligned lands) as close to 3 as possible, with colors such as blue skewing higher (to about 3.3-3.5) and colors such as red skewing lower (to about 2.7-2.9.) Again, each color should play to its strengths and many of blue’s more powerful cards cost a lot of mana, so its average mana cost should be higher than other colors’.

Don’t freak out, though, if you put Bogardan Hellkite into your red section and red’s average converted casting cost goes up, because average converted casting cost shouldn’t be used for the sole metric regarding your cube’s mana curve and balance of archetypes, but it’s a good general barometer in that, for example, your average conveted mana cost for blue is 3.65, you should look into cutting some expensive cards.

This step makes you more critically analyze the merits of the cards in the section as getting your average converted casting cost to as close to 3 as possible enacts a certain degree of discipline for your cube by making you ask questions like these “Is this card REALLY worth 6 mana? Is it as good as the other options at the same mana cost?” This process makes you give cards a much more critical look, not so much regarding whether a card is good (because very few cards that will ever enter a cube will be bad cards) but rather regarding whether the card does enough for its casting cost. This imposed discipline also makes sure that you do not use too many control cards as using an average converted mana costs mimics natural curves in decks. Like I said earlier, using too many cards with high mana costs won’t do well, and a cube with a mana curve like that won’t allow for aggro decks to be able to be a healthily draftable archetype.

This is the very reason is why I’m advocating examining your mana curve – to see if cards do enough when compared to other options at the same mana cost. Sorting cards by their mana costs help to make comparisons like these and realize that some cards may not be as powerful as other options in the same casting cost even if at first glance, the card seems powerful, because it very well may be just a man behind a curtain.

This doesn’t mean that a cube shouldn’t use powerful high-casting cost cards, but the problem is not only having an unhealthy mana curve due to many putting in too many expensive cards but also using suboptimal control cards at the cost of excluding powerful aggressive cards, for example, using Ryusei, the Falling Star over Jackal Pup.

You’re probably thinking “Ok, this guy’s been going on and on about Jackal Pup, which is good and all, but there’s no way that it’s better than Ryusei. Wasn’t it a first pick in Kamigawa draft?” There are a few problems with this.

In a cube with 55 red slots like mine does, Ryusei, the Falling Star should never make the cut. It’s true that in something like Kamigawa-era draft, Ryusei was a very high pick as it was not only a 5/5 flier for 6 mana, but being a mass removal effect (albeit, an inconsistent one.) Yet, I’m not running it nor will I ever run it in my cube. Why? The key is understanding context.

Unless a dragon (generic term for a 6 mana 5/5 flier) has a significant drawback, it will always be played in limited due to its large size relative to other creatures in the format and evasion. Similarly with Wrath effects, unless a wrath effect is prohibitively costed, it will be extremely good because there are hardly any Wrath effects in the format. However, cube cards do not have this inherent premium to them and for 6 mana, creatures like Hellkite Charger, Rorix Bladewing and Crater Hellion do more for 6 mana than Ryusei (this doesn’t even include non-creature 6 mana red cards like Wildfire and Burning of Xinye.)

The most important reason to organize your cube by cube by mana costs is to help you easily compare cards with similar casting costs and forcing you to more critically evaluate the worth of cards in your cube. Even the act of putting the cards into their respective casting cost sections can help determine if anything is inefficient for its mana cost compared to already existing options at the cost or if there are too many cards at a specific casting cost for a color.

When I placed my white creatures in a row, these were the 3-drop creatues that I was running.

Flickerwisp
Pianna, Nomad Captain
Soltari Champion
Spectral Procession
Mirror Entity

After looking critically at them, I thought that Flickerwisp stuck out as the weakest out of these available options and thus removed it. Was I saying that Flickerwisp was a bad card? Of course not! It’s a 3/1 flier for 3 with a myriad of uses (resetting planeswalkers, Tangle Wire and Smokestack, killing token creatures, temporarily removing blockers and making lands like Azorius Chancery force an “extra bounce” when the land comes back into play and even making julienne fries!) Still, I felt that it was the weakest out of the options that I had for white 3 drop creatures and thus it got cut. Sorting out your cube by casting costs helps moments of insight like these happen more often.

As discussed earlier, my friend has made his commons cube more friendly for aggro decks and has helped them become a much more healthily draftable archetype that can, most importantly, consistently win games from doing many of the steps that I’ve referred to in this article. Interestingly enough, it’s had more far reaching aspects than one would initially think; it even changed how some cards functioned, which has special significance with regards to mana curve. Someone who drafted his commons cube in its early days said “I pay for everything <in this cube> at full value, I never evoke or pay for anything without kicker.” It struck me as odd… but after having a moment of clarity, the statement made sense.

Because aggressive strategies were losing ones, not only did you have to get as much of the card advantage out of cards like Ingot Chewer as games would often end up in slow card advantage wars. Contrast this with how Ingot Chewer is almost always evoked in Vintage, due to the fact there is a much higher premium to use mana efficiently and that games are generally quick (as well as cards like Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Tangle Wire and Smokestack taxing mana.) Since my friend has taken steps towards making aggro more viable, Ingot Chewer was no longer just cast as a 4R creature, but more as a R spell due to the way his cube changed.

If you have Microsoft Excel, I’ve created a spreadsheet that does the math for converted mana costs (with hybrid cards included) and even has some graphs if you’re more visual. If you don’t have Excel, I’d highly suggest downloading OpenOffice (because if anything, it’s a great free program) and using the spreadsheet for your own cube, after all, I’ve done all of the hard work! Deckstats.net is also a wonderful site for doing the numbers crunch with your cube to notice patterns and statistics. It even lets you input “true” mana costs for cards, for example you can enter Spectral Procession as a WWW card.

Conclusion

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this article about the more theoretical aspects of cube drafting. If you’re a cube designer, I hope that this article has gotten you to take a deeper look into the cards in your cube and has challenged some assumptions you may have had about the format. If you’re just a person who likes to cube draft, I hope that this article gave you a nice “behind the scenes” look into what makes up the format you enjoy and maybe pique your interest in designing your own cube. I’ve had a lot of fun designing my cube and am extremely proud of my list and how it has been designed, and being able to share the joy that I’ve felt in designing my cube makes all of the time that I’ve spent designing and maintaining my cube worth it. Creating a balanced environment in all facets (an environment where neither aggro nor control is too strong) is difficult and ultimately, most of your work in cube design will be in creating and maintaining a balanced drafting environment that’s fun to draft and which happens to feature the best cards of all time.

Cheers and happy cubing!

- Usman Jamil

Special thanks to Usman for sending this in! – Evan