The Cube is a strange format at times. Sometimes you get beaten by a turn one Library of Alexandria or a well-timed Mana Drain, and there’s not much to say there. The best cards in the cube are really, really broken. Other times, though, you end up staring across the board at a card you didn’t quite appreciate. In this article, I want to talk about the cube cards that seem unassuming, but can dominate the game. I chose cards that weren’t highly ranked on the MTG Salvation cube forum, and that I see excluded from many lists. Let’s go!

Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile

People often look at my cube list and declare that Bridgid is underpowered. I usually look at suggestions pretty carefully, but that’s one case where I just don’t. Bridgid has singlehandedly won more games than I can count. She’s an absolute madman against token strategies and, you know, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. Nothing with less than five toughness can even swing in with an active Brigid sitting back to block. She makes combat a mess for your opponent, and if you need it- she can make a Cloudgoat Ranger fly.

Ith, High Arcanist

I see a lot of cubes that seem to struggle to find good stuff for the U/W slots, and for some reason, Ith gets no love. He really, really should. He’s Maze of Ith, but doesn’t cost a land drop, on a pretty much huge body that you paid two mana for. He complements UW strategies in a ridiculous way- he’s a wall that forces them to overextend into Wrath of God while stopping scary combat effects like Ashling, the Extinguisher or Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni and he can attack in the meantime. What more do you want?

Spitemare

I get the problem with Spitemare- there are a ton of good cards in WR multicolor like Ajani Vengeant, Lightning Helix, and Brion Stoutarm. But if you divide multicolor and hybrid, as I do, Spitemare definitely deserves a spot.

Aside: The reason it’s a good idea to include hybrid and multicolor separately is that they really accomplish different things. Multicolor rewards you with strong cards, at the price of a more tenuous manabase. Hybrid actually works the way Shadowmoor/Eventide were supposed to- it encourages monocolor decks. And often the effects you get from those hybrid cards are completely unfair in one color or both. Take Dominus of Fealty, for example. Why can blue give a borrowed creature haste? In monoblack, Unmake is hands-down the best removal you can have. Without a doubt, the best monocolor decks that have been built with my cube have used hybrid cards heavily, and I highly recommend including a fair amount of hybrid if you really want to push monocolor in you cube.

But back to Spitemare. There is a card that absolutely locks down the board when she comes down. She makes combat hugely problematic for your opponent, and in general she is going to either be a two-for-one if she dies in combat, or demand a quality piece of removal (like Swords to Plowshares or Terror) that your opponent might have rather saved for a bigger threat. If you’re playing her in a red deck, you probably also have mass damage effects like Earthquake or Pyroclasm, and just like Stuffy Doll, Spitemare multiplies those in a terrifying way. I’ve been impressed every time I’ve played with her, or against her.

Guardian of the Guildpact

This unassuming creature is a perfect example of the kind of card that turns out to be great in the cube, once you remember him. He’s not a constructed all-star or “best creature ever”, but he fits into any white deck and does a good job of it. In control decks, he infini-blocks to help you stabilize. In aggro decks, he’s nearly unblockable and ridiculous with any kind of buff. In a way, he’s a little bit of a hack- undoubtedly better in the cube than in his limited environment. There’s a lesson there- when you find other cards like that, with awesome abilities that are somewhat less good in their block, they can be really outstanding in another setting.

Diabolic Servitude

This is one that really baffles me- I’m not sure how Diabolic Servitude isn’t an auto-include. Seriously guys- it’s repeatable recursion. You can use it more than once! I… don’t even know what else to say. I absolutely think it’s a more relevant include than slow removal like Consuming Vapors, or one-time reanimation like Makeshift Mannequin.

Attrition

Attrition is another one that I advocate on the grounds of it basically dominating the game nearly every time it shows up. True, it’s not as effective when your opponent is playing black or has creatures with shroud. In nearly every case, though, it means that you are constantly trading your worst dude for their best. Get a token maker in that deck- Bitterblossom comes to mind- and you are golden. Furthermore, there are a few other broken things to do, as with any sac effect- Squee, Goblin Nabob, Bloodghast, Adarkar Valkyrie and persist creatures are all silly.

Shaper Parasite

Shaper Parasite is on my list because his effect is so unusual for blue. Sort of like a Psionic Blast- totally out of color and thus totally welcome in the cube. Sometimes he’s just sniping a pesky Nezumi Shortfang or Mother of Runes, but because his effect is on a body, he can also trade with a bigger creature as well. Win-win! I’m always happy to have this guy in my deck.

Squirrel Nest

Squirrel Nest is my favorite type of card for the cube. It’s always playable- it doesn’t have to be part of a combo to be good. But when it is, it’s absolutely busted. Opposition/Squirrel Nest is the ultimate, but Attrition works too. Beyond those two, there are tons of effects that work well with Squirrel Nest- green Lieges, Deranged Hermit, Greater Gargadon, Garruk Wildspeaker (two ways!), both Sarkhan the Mad AND Sarkhan Vol… and I’m confident that your cube includes many others.

Erratic Portal

Sorry, other cards on this last- I saved my favorite for last. Erratic Portal is a card, like Squirrel Nest, that has a straightforward purpose that is Just Fine- namely, to slow your opponent down and save your dudes from removal if need be. Obviously though, the goal is not be fair at all. Instead, I want to put Erratic Portal in a deck with Reveillark, Mulldrifter, Siege-Gang Commander, Broodmate Dragon, or basically any other good creature ever. Seriously, how long would this list be? It’s also part of an infinite turns combo with Time Walk and Eternal Witness…. and basically an infinite anything combo with Eternal Witness, actually. If you want to be a jerk, and I do, blend with Avalanche Riders and Karmic Guide.

In my opinion, this is the best part of having a cube- the part where you try out a new card, and realize that you can no longer live without it. What’s your favorite unsung cube hero?

- Thea Steele

Special thanks to Thea for letting me publish this piece here. It was originally featured on her cube blog Masked Admirers. If you want to contribute to cubedrafting.com, here’s how! -Evan

Check out the complete cube audit.

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.

Capsize my dude EOT? Again? Sooo fun.

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.

Drawback? What Drawback?

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.

Is Wrath more fun to play against than Armageddon?

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.

Do I do enough for 6 mana in cube? ...not really.

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.

It slices, dices, and resets Planeswalkers!

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

I have a confession to make- I’m a magic player without a playgroup. I’ve recently moved across the country, and my magic-playing community consists of myself and my boyfriend. The good news is that the cube is a great format for two. Here are my tips for designing and playing the cube with less than 8 people, and my observations of how a smaller group changes the format.

Stick to Limited

Nearly all of the cards in the cube should be playable in every deck of their color. In other words, your cube shouldn’t be made up of combo pieces or cards that rely strongly on finding the cards that go with them. For example, would you play Entomb in a deck without reanimation? Of course not. But not every black deck will be a dedicated Reanimator deck. Likewise, would you want Darksteel Colossus if you didn’t have Tinker? There is a reason that the Colossus is a late pick even in M10 limited.  If you include too many cards like this, there will be more dead cards and the overall power level of your decks will decrease- and that’s not the point of the cube! This piece of advice is relevant for any cube, but it really becomes necessary if you intend to draft with two or four people. Since you see fewer cards – we draft with 100 for two people – you have less of a chance of seeing combo pieces with their other halves. A good rule of thumb is that every card should have been good (or great!) in its limited format. Furthermore, it’s worthwhile to limit cards that require a very strong commitment to one color, since virtually all decks in small-group drafts will be at least two colors. Some cards are worth the commitment- Sacred Mesa and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir come to mind- but too many cards like that make decks hard to build.

Emphasize Utility Effects

It goes without saying that some pretty broken things can happen in the cube. Turn 2 Sphinx of the Steel Wind? Turn 1 Library of Alexandria? Sometimes, that is going to be game over, but it doesn’t have to be. The solution is to make sure utility effects like creature and artifact removal are plentiful, and LD is present especially in green and red, since those decks can otherwise have trouble fighting control. It’s a good idea to articulate what a deck of a certain color should always have and then include that effect at a high level. For example, I want nearly every white and black deck to have efficient spot removal, and every green deck to have some sort of ramp or land fetch. The downside is that some spots in your cube are going to be devoted to less-than-sexy effects like Naturalize or Scrabbling Claws. However, those effects are absolutely vital to fighting otherwise game-ending cards like Recurring Nightmare or Jitte. Our cube used to run Apocalypse Hydra as a big, must-answer monster. Recently, we replaced it with Vithian Renegades. Is that a strict increase in power level? No. But it makes it more likely that red/green decks will have a way to deal with problem cards like Icy Manipulator or Forcefield.

Watch the Curve

The last few times a new set has been spoiled, there has been a really cool white creature at the high end. We thought about both Iona, Shield of Emeria and Admonition Angel for the cube. However, the reality is that our cube doesn’t lack for high-end white finishers. Until there is a white creature strong enough to replace something that is already there, it’s unlikely that a creature that costs 5 or more is going into white. It’s valuable to know what the average cost in each color is to help you make informed decisions about what can go in and what can’t. When we calculated the average CMC in black, we found it was surprising low and that we were able to add another big monster. Likewise, it’s important to keep in mind what each color lacks. For example, I’m constantly on the lookout for good early red creatures for the cube, since we’ve struggled to find ones that feel strong.

The Game Determines the Archetypes

There is a delicate balance in the cube- the choice between playing to each color’s strengths, and including unique effects that stretch the bounds of what that color is allowed to do. In the cube, it’s important to do both. However, you’ll find that if you just choose the best cards, you will naturally accomplish both goals. For example, just by including excellent cards, your cube will support white weenie, reanimator, and both control and aggro-control in blue- that’s just the reality of what Wizards has printed for those colors. You’ll also want to include the strong out-of-color effects, like Harmonize, Magma Jet, and Damnation.

However, there is a difference between supporting an archetype and enabling decks that look exactly like constructed decks. The cube is still a limited format, and the chances that you will have a white weenie deck of entirely one- and two-drops and Crusade effects are slim. Forcing that possibility means doing so at the expense of white control archetypes, which are also intrinsically really strong. The cube produces incredibly powerful decks, but that is not the same as producing exact copies of constructed decks. This is especially true in two –player drafts, where all decks tend to be slightly midrange because of the smaller cardpool. Don’t try too hard to do so, and you’ll end up with more variety and more interesting decks and games.

When you can support more than one archetype with one card, do so! Cards that fit into control and aggro archetypes are gold. One of the prime examples of this is Vendilion Clique. Some other examples I’m fond of are Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile, Pestermite, Swans of Bryn Argoll, and Aether Vial.

If you’re in the position of playing the cube with a small group, take advantage of the benefits this offers. When we draft, we usually play to best of five (the official games) and then as many more as we like. When we used to play with more people, it was sometimes frustrating to have a disproportionate number of mulligans or lack of lands knock you out of a match without ever really getting to play your deck. With just two people, that virtually never happens, and we usually play enough games to experience all the strange interactions and powerful effects the cube offers.

How to Play

We’ve developed a pretty good system of drafting with two people, so I thought I would share it here. First, our cube is divided into nine sections- five colors, artifacts, multicolor, hybrid, and land. We take ten cards from each section at random, and then add an additional ten cards selected randomly from any pile. This means that we have a bit more variety in terms of which colors are supported in a given draft. After these cards have been shuffled thoroughly, we do a “Let’s Make a Deal” draft. We put one card each in three piles, face down, then one person looks at the first pile. They can either take that card or add one from the stack of remaining cards to the pile and look at the second pile. If after the third pile, they haven’t taken a pile, they take one card off the top of the stack. Then it’s the other person’s turn to repeat the process. In this way, you simulate the normal draft process of seeing some but not all the cards the other person takes, and retain the ability to hate-draft, which is pretty crucial in the cube.

Recently, we’ve decided that it is advantageous to go second while drafting. You have the potential when you go second to see more cards, and have an idea of what the other person is not drafting. I’m not completely sure on that point, though. If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

- Thea Steele
http://crib-swap.blogspot.com/

Special thanks to Thea Steele for sending this in! – Evan

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.

By now, the rules and definitions of building a cube are pretty well set, by Mr. Erwin, Tom LaPille, and the rest of the cube community. (The short version: there are no rules.) Certain conventions lay about, here and there, with people professing the play value of Power Nine in a fully-rared-out cube, or maintaining balance or certain strategies amongst the colors and their combinations. There are people that espouse rareless cubes.

I belong to this last group. Fully-powered cubes are fun; there’s no disputing that. But really, there’s a lot of “pure” Magic that doesn’t really get showcased too often in cube matches. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard things like “and then he reanimated Blistering Firecat and I ate 13 damage to lose.” Sure, cube Magic lets you tell sick beatz stories, but is it really that much for engaging, real-world limited Magic with stupidly powerful cards? Not so much.

Most limited formats give you access to a bomb or two, some removal, and some support cards. When every card is a bomb, it’s hard to play limited Magic. In my opinion, of course. That “It’s like constructed Magic, only you draft it!” line is fun the first few times, but after awhile, the Guy with the Turn One Tinker-into-Colossus and the Guy-that-Drafts Mono-Blue and the Ramp-into-Tooth-and-Nail-with-Oath-Backup gets a little silly. Some of us want tight play, incremental advantage, and creature combat that doesn’t involve a Jitte.

So I (and some friends of mine) built an all-commons cube. No Force of Will, no Kokusho, no Tarmogoyf, no Ancestral Recall. But also no Fact or Fiction, no Swords to Plowshares, no Avalanche Riders, no Psychatog.

The benefits to this are as follows:

1. You can use any card that was printed, in a normal expansion, as a common. That means Kird Ape and Atog, and others, get to play. As well as dozens of other overpowered cards that people forget are or were commons.

Ice Age Counterspell

2. You get some really fun pimping options. Personally, my rules for pimping are as follows: Original printings take priority. That means a Limited Edition Dark Ritual gets in over, say, Ice Age. This makes things a little extreme when you’re paying $50 for a common like Counterspell, but it also reminds things about the game’s past that you wouldn’t normally see. If an original printing was foil, its in as foil. If not, tough cookies. If there’s an FNM-versus-Original Foil battle, FNM wins. Occasionally some rules are broken in this regard, like my FNM Wall of Roots, but by and large, this is how I roll for editions. Ninth Edition foils are neat, but I’d much rather play with an Arabian Nights Kird Ape, thanks.

3. You get to play “actual limited Magic”. As I mentioned before, the limited core of advantage and deckbuilding theory apply here, as opposed to a rared cube, where you can feasibly build U/B Upheaval Tog with Meloku backup (which I’ve done, and won a draft with.) While many similar, classic archetypes are viable in commons cube, there are significantly fewer “Oops, I win” moments. Tight play is rewarded a lot more often than sticking an Akroma or getting Survival/Nightmare going. You can play R/G Beats or R/B Burn or U/B control or Mono Green Aggro or some Affinity thing or Storm. But you’re not going to win just because you’re playing an achetype.

4. You can build a cube for a much, much lower budget to start, and costs to maintain it are significantly lower. Rather than having to chase after new rares, you can use your excess commons from drafting a new set to make your additions/deletions.

5. You can take it place to place without having to worry about it. My friend’s full cube is worth thousands of dollars in dual lands, the occasional power card, and chase rares. I bought my cube from StarCityGames (for the most part, anyway) for less than $200. If I lose it or some jerk steals it, I’m out–essentially–nothing but time. Obviously this doesn’t necessarily hold if you have a Beta Counterspell in there.

There are, of course, some downsides:

1. People hear “commons” and “cube” and neurons start misfiring. “What’s the point of cubing if I don’t get to play with Dark Confidant or Kamahl or card x?” The point isn’t so much on playing with broken cards (although a lot of people forget things like Rancor and Blastoderm are common) as it is playing Magic and socializing.

2. There is a lot of redundancy in card selection. To wit: red has an awful lot of burn at common. Blue has a lot of drawing, counters, and bounce. White has a lot of stupid life gain. How you choose which cards of a certain utility make it in versus those that don’t is time consuming and can be frustrating.

Capsize

3. Blue is frustratingly overpowered in some senses. Capsize is the best soft lock in the commons cube, but take it away and all blue really does is annoy the opponent to no end. While we’ve included some good blue dudes–remember what a beating Errant Ephemeron was in TSP limited?–it’s hard to win with mono-blue. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Finally, I offer some general commons cube guidelines for those wishing to build one, in addition to the “normal” cube guidelines:

1. While, thanks to Ravnica, multicolor options and splashing is relatively easy, try to keep your multicolor options to pairs. Playing a UR card is significantly easier than a URB. It’s less of a headache for drafting and deckbuilding.

2. This is a corollary to 1. Hybrid cards are entirely different animals than gold cards. If you’re including both, balance them amongst colors and consider them separately. A UW card and a (U/W) card still play differently, and they go in different decks.

3. I’m not sure if this is “canonical”, but if you’re pimping your cube, try to keep your cards in English. Not everyone knows what every card is on art (especially if you have an alternate-art card). Sometimes playing commons that no one has seen for years (or ever) causes confusion enough even in English. Try to keep it simple. Related to this: if you’re using original edition cards with old templating, make sure everyone knows how the card is worded and/or works with modern templating and rules. It’s also nice to have a copy of Oracle on hand, either on the internet with Gatherer or some other resource. Personally, I have a Windows Mobile phone with PocketMTG running on it.

4. Have fun, and make it your own! The list I’m including is what I consider to be the best build we’ve discovered, but it’s certainly not the best cube it could be, and it might not serve your playgroup.

With all that out of the way, here is my Commons Cube, updated through Shards of Alara. It is 455 cards total, which is enough for a ten-person draft, with 5 cards left over. While I have yet to have a full ten-person table, it handles up to eight people quite well. There are a few different themes and subthemes, with a few different deck archetypes possible, as well as some I probably haven’t seen come out of it.

I direct you here to see/download my cube.

Rick Cummings
rickiep00h on MTGO, Twitter, and literally everywhere else.

Special thanks to Rick for submitting this article. Remember you can submit your own cube articles by contacting me via 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…

White Cards

If you’ve never been to Ohio you may not be aware of two things:

1. There’s not much to do beyond the typical, go to the movies, eat greasy food.

2. A lot of Magic gets played (1. being a contributing factor).

One of the many stores I’ve played while I was living there was called Hobbytown and players went there every Wednesday night and Saturday morning to draft. Weird times, right? Not long after I found out about it I met a guy there named Tom Lapille. One day Tom hands me a list of cards asking, “Do you have any of these?” One of the cards that I remember was AWOL. Tom was known for being almost exclusively a constructed player so it struck me as pretty odd that he was looking for an AWOL. “What is this for?” I asked.

“I’m building a Cube.”

Blue Cards

“Oh, I’ve heard of something like that.” I replied. And we went on to talk about the format and trade some cards. A few weeks later Tom introduced me to Winston drafts with his cube and very shortly we were having 6-mans at Hobbytown or over at Tom’s.

I really enjoyed playing cube for several reasons. Limited is my favorite format. I love the creativity of deck building on the fly. I love that there’s only a single copy of cards you’d auto-4-of in most constructed formats. It seems crazy to me now that I didn’t immediately begin trying to build my own.

Black Cards

It wasn’t until I was back visiting Ohio from college that I met up with Tom again and relived the cube. He had put a lot more work into it since at it was more fun than ever. So one night I started pulling cards from my collection. At first I just started pulling every awesome card I owned. Seemed simple enough. But as I delved further I realized that, at least to start, I wasn’t going to have all the cards I wanted to build my cube. And it was going to take quite a bit of time and money to acquire everything. This was problematic for me because one, I’m a little obsessive compulsive; I didn’t want to play a single game of my cube if cards were missing. And two, I’m pretty impatient. The solution came quickly. All the missing cards were mostly rare. Surely a no-rare cube would be just as fun.

Red Cards

So I set out building. I invited a few guys over my house that week including Ben Weinberg and Tom to test out my common/uncommon cube. It turned out great and we were able to identify a few mistakes from the start. It seemed like certain X spells were just too powerful for this sort of cube. Fireball would wreck games where you were clearly going to win and your opponent top decked it to burn you out. Let alone, Mind Twist. I’m not sure what I was thinking including that card. Blue was going to need some work. Since the majority of this cube is combat based, blue needed to be capable of handling the initial onslaught. It needed some earlier counterspells and a few more efficient creatures, hopefully some fatties too. I was happy nonetheless.

Green Cards

Over the next few months I combed Gather and received suggestions from those I played with. I pulled most of the commons and uncommons Tom was running in his cube. I was surprised and excited by each card I either didn’t know was a common/uncommon or had never seen before: Psionic Blast, Maze of Ith, Predatory Nightstalker, Hypnotic Specter, Serra Angel, Miraculous Recovery, Binding Grasp, etc; Soon my cube seemed really powerful for containing no rares.

If my memory serves my cube is almost two years old, and now looks like this.

Gold Cards

One thing I haven’t been able to adequately put into words until recently is the difference between playing a powered cube and common/uncommon cube. It is obvious to say that the games are much more weighted in combat and removal in this cube but that doesn’t say everything. The major difference lies in the fact that commons and uncommons are the brick and mortar of actual limited play. In that, I often feel a more powerful cube tends to emulate constructed (albeit some weird constructed).

Artifacts

Common/uncommon cube operates a little differently. I’ll give anyone who hasn’t cubed an instant visual – imagine you’re playing Shards booster draft and you open this pack:

Resounding Thunder
Branching Bolt
Oblivion Ring
Executioner’s Capsule
Blightning
Sanctum Gargoyle
Wild Nacatyl
Tidehollow Strix
Vithian Stinger

Lands

Esper Panorama
Necrogenesis
Bull Ceredon
Tower Gargoyle
(Rare Excluded)

Add the remaining expansions and you’re pretty close to common/uncommon cubing.

Special thanks to Eric for submitting this article. Remember you can submit your own cube articles by contacting me via 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?).

One of the more controvertial topics in my experience when building a Cube is the inclusion or denial of cards from sets that weren’t as widely released as the other major sets and cards only available through promotional materials, making the cards much more difficult to find and often more expensive to attain. I call this ‘The Three Kingdoms Dilemma.’ The sets I typically refer to having this problem are the three Portal expansions, the two years of Starter (1999 and 2000) and the two Un-Sets, Unglued and Unhinged. I also include those few Magic promotional cards with limited release.

Most people have decided that it simply isn’t worth the trouble to try to get the twenty or so cards from these sets, regardless of how powerful they might be. The problem with this is that I often see these very same Cube owners with very expensive and very rare cards like Judge foils or Mishra’s Workshop, cards that are at least as expensive as the ‘difficult to attain’ cards in question.

A bigger issue here, in my opinion, is to the regular Joe Q. Cube Master who simply can’t shell out the dough for luxuries at 50-plus dollars a pop for maybe a dozen cards. The cost outweighs the possible benefit of these inclusions and for those of you in this boat, I feel you, brothers.

The third problem with these cards is that some people, let’s call them “parade rainers,” simply don’t want to play with the cards because they aren’t from legal or at least one-time Standard legal sets. And to them I say this: it’s my Cube, I can Unglued if I want to. Also, it’s a poor excuse to be complaining about those few cards when also included in the Cube are cards like Skullclamp and Strip Mine.

Whether or not you wish to include these cards in your Cube is up to you, but if you do decide to include cards that have the ‘Dilemma,’ here is the list of cards in this category that I at least have on my Cube watch list that should at the very least be considered for inclusion in your Cube, along with an estimate price for your information.

White: Ravages of War ($100-$150)

Ravages of War

There’s only one card in white we have to deal with, but it’s a doozy. Ravages of War is an exact reprint of Armageddon from Portal Three Kingdoms. For those of you with larger Cubes (500+ cards), adding a second copy of ‘Geddon is probably a good include.

However, at a cost of at least 100 bucks and likely closer to 150, it’s probably not in most Cube owners’ funds to spring for “just another Armageddon.” If you’re really hankering for a cheaper replacement, Catastrophe is a fine budget option.

Blue: Gifts Given ($50), Personal Tutor ($15), Lu Xun, Scholar General ($10), Sun Ce, Young Conquerer ($15), Sun Quan Lord of Wu (15$)

Blue has the highest density of cards with this problem of ours, but perhaps surprisingly most or them are actually creatures. Our first blue card is the one that I consider to be the single most powerful card in the Cube, even more powerful than Sol Ring, Gifts Given. I mean, it’s combination Bribery-Gifts Ungiven-Jester’s Cap. At instant speed. For four mana. Three of which is colorless, making it extremely splashable. Well worth it, in my opinion. If you get one card for your collection from this list that you should sleeve up, it’s this one.

Personal Tutor

Next up we have Personal Tutor. Basically it grabs you Wrath of God or Invoke the Firemind or whatever. Not the most exciting spell in the world, but it streamlines any deck it’s included in and your Cube-mates will think you’re the bee’s knees when you throw stuff they’ve never seen before in their packs. Did I mention it searches up Wrath of God?

The three blue Portal: Three Kingdoms creatures are all very good and are certainly worthy of spots on the All-Star team that is the Cube format, mostly because they abuse the oft-forgotten step-brother of Flying, Horsemanship. Lu Xun is Thieving Magpie with Horsemanship and therefore is easily replaced by the Urza’s Destiny Uncommon if you’re not looking to dole out the asking price.

Sun Ce is tougher to replicate, as there isn’t an analog to a 3/3 Man-‘o-War with Horsemanship around so you’re going to either skimp out on him or bite the bullet and spend the15 or so bucks for him. However, at the 5-drop spot he’s a good solid role player and worth inclusion.

Lastly is the big kahuna of Horemanship idiots, Sun Quan. As a 4/4 that grants your entire team horsemanhip for only 6 mana, Sun Quan is a must if you’re going to include the Portal sets in your Cube mix. It’s a small price to pay for a big blue finisher, particularly if it grants your other fatties evasion as well.

A quick note: If your Cube does not have power and your Time Walk replacement is Time Warp, perhaps going out and finding a nice Temporal Manipulation ($10) or Capture of Jingzhou ($40) instead to pimp out your Cube would be in order as well.

Black: Booster Tutor (2-4$), Evil Presents ($50), Wei Night Raiders ($10), Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed ($30)

Booster Tutor

Black has a decent density of ‘problem’ cards as well. The first one I’ll discuss is Booster Tutor, which has been a ton of fun whenever I’ve seen it played. In the interest of full disclosure, the way that I have seen Booster Tutor house-ruled is that you take 15 cards (or 11 or 9; however many cards were in the packs used to draft in that particular game) from the Cube itself and chose one of those cards, Making Booster Tutor a much more powerful spell than simply cracking the nearest pack of whatever’s handy. Either way, it’s still a fun and exciting card to include.

I’m not entirely sure that Evil Presents belongs in the Cube, as it’s somewhere in between the power level of its Holiday Promo brethren Gifts Given and Fruitcake Elemental (which got cut a long time ago). However, right now it’s in there and it has a pretty big impact on the game when it’s cast, with the combination Word of Command-Control Magic effect. Probably not worth the 50 bucks, but decide for yourself.

Wei Night Raiders is, luckily for you budget Cubers, another easily replaceable card since it’s so very close to Order of Yawgmoth. However, I prefer the East Asian flavor of the Raiders so the asking price doesn’t phase me much.

Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed has Horsemanship. Are you sensing a theme with these Three Kingdoms creatures? Xiahou Dun has another neat ability in being able to Regrow a black card in a pinch, but mostly it’s a 3-power dude with evasion in Black. Xiahou is pricey but is probably worth it.

Red: Blast from the Past ($1), Burning of Xinye ($45), Rolling Earthquake ($90-100), Imperial Recruiter ($90-150)

Burning of Xinye

Red has the honor of having my personal favorite of the ‘Dilemma’ cards in Blast from the Past. Flavorful, fun and increasingly powerful the longer the game goes on… and only a dollar at most. What more could you want in a Cube card?

Burning of Xinye is another Portal: Three Kingdoms exact reprint, this time of Wildfire. Just like with Ravages of War, it’s probably worth putting in if your Cube is big and you still want to support some major archetypes but it’s probably not worth having ‘two Wildfires’ in just 400 cards.

Similarly, Rolling Earthquake is basically a reprint of Earthquake… except that Rolling Earthquake deals damage to fliers as well, instead sparing those darned horse riders with Horsemanship. If you’ve got a Benjamin laying around burning a hole in your pocket this one’s probably the most important of the Three Kingdoms cards to get a hold of for your collection.

Lastly in red is the only non-Horsemanship creature from Three Kingdoms on the list, Imperial Recruiter. Though tough to find and expensive to buy, Imperial Recruiter is a wonderful addition to many different Cube archetypes and is therefore a great addition to any Cube. If you have the bankroll to shell out for it, I’d suggest doing so. You’d be happy you did. Especially if you drafted the Reveillark.

Sylvan Tutor

Green: Sylvan Tutor ($6), Uktabi Kong ($1)

As a glorified sorcery-speed Worldly Tutor, it’s probably not worth cutting something important to put in your Cube, but if you find yourself yearning for a card that has the phrase, “search your deck for a summon card,” in it then it’s a small price to pay for happiness on cardboard.

Uktabi Kong is not necessary, as giant green Fatty McFatfats are a dime a dozen, but with the ability to Shatterstorm upon entry into play, beat for eight trampling damage and occasionally create a mini-army of tiny Monkeys for the relatively low cost of eight mana I think that it’s well worth including.

Other: My First Tome ($1), Rare-B-Gone ($1), Who/What/When/Where/Why ($1)

I recently cut My First Tome from my Cube list, but it was fun while it lasted. If you’re looking for another good card-drawing artifact then maybe a copy of My First Tome isn’t out of the question, particularly if you have some foreign cards with really long flavor texts. German Isamaru, anyone?

Rare-B-Gone

I have twelve cards of each dual-colored combination in my Cube and Rare-B-Gone is, in my opinion, the best Red-Black card there for this format, and like most other Un-cards it’s only a buck. Scoop one up.

Who/What/When/Where/Why is the only 5-color card in my Cube but it proves its worth every time I get it. God help your opponent if you get this thing on an Isochron Scepter (because ‘Who’ has a converted mana cost of one).

Making a Cube can be a daunting task, particularly when faced with the cost of some of the game’s costlier cards and the work it may take to get some of the rarer treasures, and that task gets even more daunting when faced with collecting card from Magic’s rarest sets and promotional materials. But you shouldn’t be afraid to test out the waters and try to get your hands on some cards with The Three Kingdom’s Dilemma because the price might just be worth the reward.

Reubs

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

Step 1 – What Kind Of Cube Are You Building?

This is your most important question to ask because it will effect every decision you make regarding it from then on. You need to know exactly what kind of Magic experience you want to provide for your fellow drafters — are you interested in powerful game states, interesting limited environments, wacky situations, or something more focused (such as tribal cubes or crap rare cubes, etc)?

The cube I present here on the website is what I would call a Powerful Game State Cube. This means you’re using the most powerful/efficient cards in the game, or at least you’re trying to, and as such you need to be aware that sometimes first turn Black Lotus, Mox, Tinker into Darksteel Colossus is a possibility (just like their opponent playing Plains, Swords to Plowshares is also a possibility). The variance in this cube is high, meaning sometimes games will be complete blowouts versus each game being relatively ‘fair’.

One of the best things you can do at this point is try to get a ‘feel’ for other people’s cubes by looking at their lists. Now obviously you have my list, but there are plenty others out there in the forums or other places online. This gives you a sense of what creatures, spells, and tweaks other players are using in order to have the most fun or craft the most interesting draft experiences. This also allows you to see whose cube is built more for drafting head to head or in multiplayer, as both are very viable and fun options.

In regards to “Cube Types”, I would put them in these categories:

Powerful Game State Cube
Powerful Limited Cube – ie, the ‘best limited’ cards available
Uncommon/Commons Cube – self explanatory
Crap Rare Cube
Tribal / Focused Cube – including such themes as ‘Ice Cubes’ that have lots of snow permanents, Winston Cubes for 1-on-1, etc.

Once you determine what you wish to build, it’s time to move on to Step 2…

Step 2: Determine Your Budget

Magic cards cost money, it’s a simple fact of life. There are times when you just can’t upgrade your cube unless you want to fork out a little cash, and that sets the stage for the other big question in regards to spending money: What cards are you willing to proxy (i.e. make a land / worthless card into a fake high-powered expensive one)?

There are two sides to this question and I’ll try to present them both equally.

First, there is nothing like owning the actual cards in your cube. I know it’s a bit weird, but having the actual cards feels better than using a Giant Growth with the word BERSERK written in Sharpie on it. The cube is also surprisingly affordable, as many of the powerful cards in it are uncommon or common, and you can actually begin by purchasing the lower priced cards and slowly build your investment over time with foil, FNM, or other special variants of cards you have.

On the other hand, proxying allows you to play with every card you want, no matter what. Library of Alexandria, for example, is one of my favorite cards in Magic, let alone the cube. But its also about two hundred bucks, and that’s not something you can really drop for a single card every day, particularly when you’re trying to compile hundreds of them together to create a unique experience. So, with that said, a good color printer, scissors, and tape do very nicely until you get the chance to attain a real one.

My suggestion would be to go through a cube list and spend some time with StarCityGames.com in order to get a sense of what this cube might cost. Give yourself a threshold – say, $100, $200, or even $50, and figure out what the most bang is for your buck. I think you’d be surprised how affordable many of these cube cards are, and how foil or special edition versions are just a few pennies more.

A Note On Sleeves

In order to have a successful cube, one important part is having sleeves for all of the cards and all of the land. Many will get the former right but fail on the latter. It is important for speed of play / deckbuilding for you to have a dedicated sleeve type for all cards. This allows for much faster deckbuilding and sideboarding, as well as keeping all of your lands readily available for use.

With that said, part of this budget should be dedicated to sleeves. Getting sleeves of the same type is important, and sleeves are very affordable. What I would suggest is that you plunk down a little change on some nice / decent sleeves. For myself, it was an $80 investment in the Magic the Gathering Ultra Pro sleeves. I haven’t been so happy with a Magical purchase in a long time: No longer would my inferior sleeves bust continuously or showing which cards were proxied. No longer would deckbuilding be a painful process of unsleeving and resleeving. Instead, I could sleeve up every card in my cube, every land, and have plenty of left over sleeves when they eventually break. No sleeves are perfect, and breakage will occur. So no matter what sleeves you end up using, make sure they’re all uniform (i.e. exact same form, color, and manufacturer), and make sure you include land in your necessary sleeve count.

Step 3: Finalize Your List

Now that you’d figured out what kind of cube you wish to make and how much you’re willing to spend, it’s now time to finalize your list. This isn’t the end-all, be-all version of your cube — it isn’t meant to be. Instead, you simply want to get a final list compiled that you can tweak later. The tweaking is the fun part anyway.

So get yourself an Excel spreadsheet (or use Google Docs for a free online spreadsheet) and divide up your sections into speadsheet pages as you see fit. Here is my suggestion in regards to the # of each type of card you want to include:

250 Color cards (50 each): White, Blue, Black, Red, Green

60 Lands, peppering dual lands, saclands, etc as you see fit.

50 Artifacts

60 Multicolored (i.e. Gold) – 5 of each pair, 10 tri-color

50 Hybrid – 5 of each pair

This is 460 cards. Remember that you need 360 cards for a full draft (45 cards each for 8 players), and with 100 left over you have the ability to include two more players if you wish. Other cubes are much larger, including 100 of each color and so on. These allow you to get a much more varied experience, as with more cards you see less of one specific card or combination over a series of drafts.

Note: Some people consider Gold and Hybrid cards the same (i.e. they don’t separate them into different categories / spreadsheet pages), so you can take this with a grain of salt.

Also, many people do not adhere to exact numbers of each color. I personally recommend that you have the same number of cards in each color, as it provides a more balanced environment of colors and effects, but that is only a guideline based on my experience. Others have had fun, for example, cutting White out of their cube due to its lack of ‘raw power’ in contrast with other colors. Some cut Green for the same reason. Either way, you can feel free to use my spreadsheet as a guideline, or the myriad of lists available in the forum.

Step 4: Compile!

Now you’ve got the style, you’ve got the budget and you’ve got the list. Now the fun part begins: Putting it all together!

Here’s what you’ll need: The cards themselves, sleeves, and 50 basic lands of each type.

I would suggest two cardboard boxes: One long box for the cube itself (the cube is not actually cube shaped, heh), and one short box for your land cards. Sleeve up all of the cards using the same sleeves (as mentioned above).

And now comes the fun part..

Step 5: Playtest, playtest, playtest!

Okay, so you’ve made it. You got your style, your budget, your list, your cards, and you’re ready to play.

The most effective way of judging any cube is playing with a full 8-man draft. This gives you a sense of archetypes (feel free to read up on Cube Draft Archetypes), and also lets you know what the winners and losers of your cube happen to be.

Here’s the easiest litmus test for the cube: Whenever something is continually a pass out (ie the last pick of the pack), it probably should go. This means that over many drafts (3+), you’ve noticed that one card or one type of card is simply not being played. This can be surprising based on your playgroup. For example, Necropotence, while being completely busted, overpowered, and banned in Magic for good reason, was taken out of my cube because it wasn’t played. Now that’s not to say I won’t include it again in the future, but it’s a testament of how players shape what is in your cube. No matter how good, if its not being played or utilized, then it’s not worth the slot.

After this process, feel free to upload your list to the CubeDrafting.com forums, participate in discussion of various cards and strategies, and shape and mold your cube to the most perfect format for you and your playgroup. Because if you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your cube!