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

Enjoy!

Blue Creatures:

Blue Spells:

White Creatures:

White Spells:

Red Creatures:

Red Spells:

Black creatures:

Black spells:

Green creatures:

Green spells:

Lands:

Lands pt2:

Artifacts pt1:

Part 2:

Multicolor part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Phew! That was a lot more work that expected Hope you enjoyed it!

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

Here were my goals for this update:

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

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

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

So with that, let’s get started!

White

Adds:
Emeria Angel
Conquerer’s Pledge
Day of Judgment
Iona, Shield of Emeria
Steppe Lynx

For me the big question mark about these inclusions was whether or not to include World Queller. This is a creature with all sorts of upside and a very interesting and versatile answer to all sorts of stuff.

However, IDTE (It Dies To Everything), it’s incredibly slow, and a 4/4 for five mana that doesn’t fly or have evasion or do anything else neato besides the sac effect is tough to warrant. Also, U/W control, the deck I most saw this using, should have very little trouble with creatures (it’s either killing all of them or controlling them), Enchantments (it has Disenchant), Planeswalkers (bounce spells, counterspells, Take Possession et al), and anything else. So with that I’d rather include the Landfall’in Steppe Lynx.

Steppe Lynx is probably the most controversial simply because it is ‘just’ an 0/1 Landfall guy, and I didn’t include its counterpart Plated Geopede. It also is probably going to be replaced by Loam Lion, but that’s for next time. Regardless, Steppe Lynx is a welcome and proven addition to any Zoo or White Weenie arsenal. With the cube now featuring ten fetchlands when it previously only held five, suddenly getting him to trigger many times is not an issue, and should be a regular occurrence.

Iona, Shield of Emeria is simply a Reanimator target (or a U/W control finisher), Emeria Angel is just killer any way you slice it, Day of Judgment gives U/W Yet Another Wrath, and Conquerer’s Pledge is a card I feel will get some love by the B/W Aggro Discard or G/W Aggro builds, both capable of dropping Conquerer’s Pledge and ending the game soon after (Armageddon, anyone?)

Blue

Adds:
Serendib Efreet
Rite of Replication
Sphinx of Lost Truths
Sphinx of Jwar Isle
Into the Roil
Mark of Eviction

Drops:
Djinn of Wishes

Ah, poor Djinn of Wishes, it just wasn’t meant to be. Oh well, we still have Serendib Efreet (via From the Vault: Exiled no less) backing him up. Blue needed some cheap fatness anyway, and he fits the bill. I’m also looking hard at Serendib Djinn for the next update, as he’s pretty freakin huge for a measly four mana.

Moving on we have a pair of Zendikar Sphinxes, Sphinx of Lost Truths and Sphinx of Jwar Isle (Jwar-Jwar around these parts). Both of these Sphinxes are incredibly efficient at what they do: The first one draws you infi cards or powers up Reanimator (or both); the second just wins games while dodging all of your removal. Pretty simple stuff, but it gets there.

Rite of Replication is a favorite of mine, and getting to nine mana in the cube isn’t really that tough, particularly if you’re playing a U/W or U/B control deck. Kicking this thing should almost guarantee Game Over, but in the cube, things are never that simple.

Lastly we have Into the Roil and Mark of Eviction, two of my favs. Now Into the Roil could’ve been a thousand different variations on Essence Scatter (and almost was), but in the end I decided a unique utility/bounce spell (particularly one that goes great with Isochron Scepter) should get the nod. Mark of Eviction is a fav of mine from back in the Ravnica days, and after I saw some of its power show up again at Worlds in Rome last year, I decided it was time to move it back into the big leagues. Just the absolutle sickness with any enters-the-battlefield ability, but is versatile enough to take care of a pesky creature for a turn, sure to be countered on the way back in.

Black

Adds
Sorin Markov
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
Vampire Nighthawk
Bloodghast
Vendetta

As for Zendikar, I think the three biggies speak for themselves: Sorin Markov is absurd, Ob Nixilis, the Fallen is completely busted after two triggers, and Vampire Nighthawk is so good it feels like cheating (but hey, it’s the cube! It should feel unfair at times!). Bloodghast is a card that I feel will have all sorts of uses, from B/W Aggro Discard to U/B Control. He may not work out, but I’m going to see what he can do. I’m sure there’s oodles of combos and interactions I’m not thinking about (Survival of the Fittest, Recurring Nightmare etc are coming to mind), and I think he’s worth it.

As mentioned in the introduction, Vendetta is kinda the Bizarro-Swords to Plowshares, and as such definitely deserves inclusion. There are infinite fatties and weenies that will die at the hands of this card, and I hope it shines as brightly as it does in other cubes.

Red

Adds:
Burst Lightning
Goblin Guide
Goblin Ruinblaster
Obsidian Fireheart
Hellkite Charger

Here is where Red got a little lopsided: Instead of sticking steadfast to the Spells/Creatures split, I went three creatures deep with Red cards. For me, there are too many good ones to cut for more burn spells. I love Hellkite Charger with a passion, as that guy is incredibly scary and usually ends the game in a turn or two. Obsidian Fireheart is just a complete badass, and setting any lands on fire usually kills your opponent soon after. Goblin Ruinblaster is another Avalanche Riders most of the time (except for 2RR of course), and that’s never a bad thing. Goblin Guide is a mainstay now in aggressive decks in both Standard and Extended, and that’s more than enough ammo to get it rocking G/R and Mono Red aggro decks in the cube.

Lastly, Burst Lightning is one of the best burn spells printed in years. Versatility to the max. I also love the Isochron Scepter interaction (but I’d rather have Magma Jet on it, thanks).

Green

Adds:
Lotus Cobra
Rampaging Baloths
Scute Mob
Wickerbough Elder
Lignify

So for Green we have two Landfall powerhouses: the explosive Lotus Cobra, and Rampaging Baloths. Now many people are familiar with both of these, so I won’t state the obvious. All I’ll say is that thanks to ten fetchlands I’m happy that these are in here and I expect some serious blowouts to come. The cube is already packing Harrow and Explosive Vegetation, so don’t be surprised if dumb things start happening soon

Scute Mob is a great card in that it requires an answer soon. Sure there’s Dragonmaster Outcast from Worldwake that is a bit better (and it’s looking like a pretty solid inclusion for next time), but there is little stopping a Scute Mob once a round or two of counters have been added. RAWR!

Wickerbough Elder is a novelty, in that it’s fat that can deal with answers. Sort of a twist on Indrik Stomphowler, but better because it can actually stop your opponent from playing powerful artifacts and enchantments until they deal with him, or it can mirror the Stomphowler exactly by simply paying for the Elder and then using his ability. Another versatile threat and answer, my favorite kind.

Lastly for Green we have the most controversial choice, Lignify. Now to this I say the same thing to those who doubt using Bull Ceradon instead of Brion Stoutarm — Play with it and tell me it doesn’t work. I’ve played with Lignify and I can tell you that card is a lifesaver. It hoses everything from Nezumi Graverobber to Akroma, Angel of Wrath, and that is good times right there. The “no abilities” clause is very important, particularly with triggered abilities such as Reveillark roaming the skies and shutting off Meloku the Clouded Mirror is pretty good too. All-in-all one of my new favorite green cards.

Artifacts

Adds:
Eldrazi Monument

Drops:
Guardian Idol

I wish I could say Guardian Idol was a staple card in a variety of decks and people were happy to windmill slam him, but he isn’t and he won’t be missed. Yet Another Mana Producer Guy, even if he can’t be Wrath’d away, just isn’t very exciting.

Eldrazi Monument, on the other hand, as we’ve see in the Standard Eldrazi Green deck, can be both explosive and game-ending. It gives an Overrun-like effect to colors that don’t normally have it or can’t normally cast it (R/G Aggro comes to mind). I love the power in this card, and I get all giggly thinking about it and Bitterblossom or Sacred Mesa.

Multicolor

Adds:
Nath of the Gilt Leaf
Doran, the Siege Tower

Drops:
Lord of Extinction
Teneb, the Harvester

So we switch out a couple of looks-awesome for a few actually-awesomes. Okay, Doran, the Siege Tower isn’t an auto pick or anything, but I believe it is far more playable now with ten fetchlands and a lot of fixing, and I haven’t seen anyone maindeck Teneb, the Harvester in many months, let alone cast him. So I think it’s time for a change.

Lord of Extinction looks so good. Unfortunately, he’s no Tarmogoyf and never will be. By the time he hits the board and is actually swinging, on Turn 6, your opponent has infinite chump blockers or infinite ways of stopping him (Maze of Ith etc) or both. Nath of the Gilt Leaf, on the other hand, begins affecting the board without swinging on the first upkeep you have him, and the discard is random, and it gives you a dude to boot! All of that and a respectable 4/4 body to boot. I’m sold.

Lands

Adds:
Celestial Colonnade
Creeping Tar Pit
Lavaclaw Reaches
Raging Ravine
Stirring Wildwood

Drops:
Rootbound Crag
Glacial Fortress
Sunpetal Grove
Drowned Catacomb
Dragonskull Summit

So this section is pretty easy to describe: One, I wanted a little taste of what was coming in Worldwake for the cube. Secondly, I like my dual lands to bash face if need be. I saw enough of these M10 duals enter the battlefield tapped to know they’re still very playable that way, and why not get a dude out of it to boot in the long game? All of the lands turn into creatures that fit the friendly color archetype, and all of them should look very enticing to cube drafters everywhere. I’m excited to see more of these in play.

Conclusion

So there you have it! With such a strong set, Zendikar added plenty of goodies to the cube, not the least of which include the five new fetchlands I threw in last update. However, we got a Planeswalker, some awesome Landfall creatures, and thanks to Worldwake a host of powerful and exciting dual lands to bash with.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my decisions in this update, and feel free to share your thoughts below in the comments or in the forums.

- Evan

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

Soltari Priest

A good example of this is Time Spiral block constructed. At the beginning of that PTQ season, Kavu Justice, Gargadon Red and White Weenie were very strong because the control strategies weren’t as fleshed out yet and had some glaring holes that the aggressive decks could exploit. But as the format developed, the Dralnu and Pickles decks evolved. When Future Sight came out, the control decks became much stronger. Not so much because of any one card, but because the control decks gained so many more options while the aggro and midrange decks only gained a few more creatures and other aggressive cards.

The Cube is no different, except that it’s on an even larger scale.

This is a problem that is often encountered in larger cubes (for the sake of this argument, lets say 450+). In smaller Cubes, the aggro strategies are much stronger for many reasons. One of them is the higher likelihood of multiple fetch lands and dual lands, allowing for easy splashes. In larger cubes, the lower occurrence of those lands make playing something like Hammer of Bogardan in the same deck as Stromgald Crusader or even Loxodon Hierarch much more difficult. In addition, the higher likelihood of particularly strong creatures, such as Soltari Priest, and equipment, such as Umezawa’s Jitte, being in a pack is also a problem in larger cubes. Sure, you’ll be okay with Knight of the Holy Nimbus, but you’d much rather have Silver Knight most of the time. This is in sharp contrast to the control strategies losing very little. Often, you’ll be just as happy to get Dismiss instead of Cryptic Command, Repeal instead of Repulse, or Compulsive Research instead of Thirst for Knowledge.

The redundancy of blue is the biggest problem here. This is mostly due to the fact that there isn’t a second archetype of blue cards in the Cube. White has aggressive weenies, like Elite Vanguard, but it also has control cards like Rout and Return to Dust for control decks. Black has many subthemes, from aggro (Carnophage, Profane Command) to ‘swamps matter’ (Mind Sludge, Nantuko Shade) to control (Damnation, Disfigure) and reanimation (Entomb, Dread Return). Red has a lot of burn and aggro guys to be sure, but it also has the L.D./control deck possibility. Green has weenies and fatties alike, plus pump spells and controllish cards, which don’t work well (Pouncing Jaguar + Primal Command?) together but enable different archetypes.

Blue does three things in the Cube: Draw cards, counter spells and take things. And it does all of those things very well.

Put it another way: If you could pick any one white card as the overall best card from the Cube, which would it be? Would it be Armageddon? Isamaru, Hound of Konda? Spectral Procession? Wrath of God? There’s discussion there, as well there should be, because white isn’t linear. There are may different possibilities. If Akroma’s Vengeance is in your third pack, you may not take it even though you are mono-white because you’re deck isn’t in the control vein. Similarly, if you’re in red you might not take Pyroclasm because you don’t want to kill your own Blood Knight or Magus of the Scroll.

This means that some things that you undervalue might not make it back around the table and vice versa, because while Banefire is a stronger card in your deck than Earthquake it might not be in someone else’s deck at the table.

Collective Restraint

Blue spells don’t have that issue. If you could pick any one blue card as the overall best, which would it be? The second best? I would wager that, if you had to, you could rank the blue cards in the Cube top to bottom and you would have very little argument from anyone. Every blue deck can use every blue card with rare exception (the only ones I can think of are Collective Restraint, Mistblade Shinobi and Ninja of the Deep Hours). This hierarchy makes blue very powerful because you can say to yourself, “well, there are 3 blue cards left so I will most likely get back this one,” and be able to plan accordingly.

How to solve this problem?

Introduce what the other colors already have: a different strategy.

Now, I know you aren’t going to want to cut what appear to be good blue cards, like Think Twice or Complicate, with ‘trash’ like 3/1 fliers for 3, but honestly it will make your Cube healthier and more fun to play.

Now let’s say you cut 7-10 of the blue cards, let’s say 2-3 each counterspells, draw and taking things, and one of the big blue fatties. Then add that many aggressive blue creatures (in addition to the Vendilion Clique, Serendib Efreet, etc., that are already in there).

For your consideration, I present what I think to be the best 10 blue aggressive creatures for the Cube.

Aquamoeba

Chisei, Heart of Oceans

Chronozoa

Cloud Spirit

Rishidan Airship

Sea Drake

Skyshroud Condor

Serendib Djinn

Skyshroud Condor

Vexing Sphinx

Wake Thrasher

In addition to (or instead of) these, you could add in the blue guys that make drafting artifacts better (Esperzoa, Master of Etherium) or add pingers (Fledgling Mawcor, Squ’ata Firewalker). Maybe try Merfolk (Merrow Reejerey, Silvergill Adept) or Faeries (Spellstutter Sprite, Sprite Noble). You could even go in a completely different direction and, instead of adding a blue aggro deck to the Cube, instead add pieces to a combo deck (Turnabout, Brain Freeze).

The fact that adding another archetype to blue helps other cards get better is another bonus. All of the equipment receive higher values when the possibility of an early Sea Drake carrying a Sword of Light and Shadow is added to the mix. If you go the tribal route, you already have Mutavault and Mirror Entity.

The point here is simple: everyone knows that blue is historically the best color in Magic and it got that way by drawing cards, countering spells and taking other people’s stuff and most certainly not by getting into the red zone as soon as possible, but add a little spice to your life. Then next time you open up your third pack and you’ll actually have a choice to make between ‘just another counter spell’ and… Cloud Spirit?

Reuben Bresler

Special thanks to Reuben for submitting this article. Remember you can submit your own cube articles by contacting me via eerwin (at) gmail (dot) com.

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

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

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

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

Wanna see what changed? Let’s go!

White

Drops

Archon of Justice
Feudkillers’ Verdict
Kataki, War’s Wage
Knight-Captain of Eos
Prison Term

Adds

Baneslayer Angel
Captain of the Watch
Elite Vanguard
Honor of the Pure
Parallax Wave

So what changed? Well, a few things. First, Baneslayer Angel is absolutely ridiculous, way, WAY over the curve for a Magic card, and is obviously a huge beast that will determine many a cube game in the future. That said, as many warned me, Kataki, War’s Wage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I replaced it with the White Weenie all-star Elite Vanguard (ie Savannah Lions 2.0).

Feudkiller’s Verdict was always a ‘neat’ spell for me, but rarely did what I wanted it to: Save me from certain death. Sure I got a 5/5, and gained some life, but that 5/5 had no ability to block evasive creatures, and normally just stalled the game for another turn or two when the aggro player would kill the token and me soon afterwards.

Knight-Captain of Eos was cute and ‘foggy’ and all, but Captain of the Watch is a terrific topdeck, works well with the newly-added Elite Vanguard and Martial Coup, and should be a welcome turn 6 follow-up to Cloudgoat Ranger.

Prison Term was removed because I felt I had perhaps one-too-many Arrest effects in the cube, and instead put in the cube-consensus card of Parallax Wave. This card is ridiculous and should be a welcome entry for control players (and even Aggro players in the mirror!). Archon of Justice was just not exciting, at least not when you stack Baneslayer Angel against it, and Honor of the Pure pushes White Weenie right where I want it: As a viable, draftable archetype.

Blue

Drops

Ponder
Dissipate
Honden of Seeing Winds
Psionic Blast

Adds

Djinn of Wishes
Exclude
Future Sight
Time Warp

So this go-round I chucked the cute-but-not-really-worth-it-without Honden of Cleansing Fire Honden of Seeing Winds. Just not good enough for five mana. Psionic Blast left due to it being really against what I want blue to do in the cube (which is control-only, no direct damage thanks). Dissipate is basically a suited-up Cancel and I replaced it with the cantrip-infused Exclude, which I feel could also be Essence Scatter but I chose not to go there. Finally, I dropped Ponder because with Brainstorm and Impulse, it was a little too much. Djinn of Wishes gives a blue deck both reach and a finisher for control decks. Future Sight, is, of course, completely bonkers and I have highly underrated it in the past. I’m ready to give it one more shot.

Black

Drops

Betrayal of Flesh
Decree of Pain
Grim Harvest
Night’s Whisper
Okiba-Gang Shinobi
Oona’s Prowler
Scepter of Fugue
Skinthinner

Adds

Cemetery Reaper
Grim Tutor
Necromancy
Sign in Blood
Silent Specter
Sinkhole
Slaughter
Throat Slitter

Whew, another slight overhaul for black. I do believe we’re finally reaching an equilibrium as to what this color should do (for me, at least) and how I want it to deal with other colors.

I was told Betrayal of Flesh was no Beacon of Unrest, and those dissenting voices were correct. However, Beacon of Unrest is no Necromancy, and that card should definitely be in ‘high powered’ cubes. That thing is nuts and I’m a little ashamed it took this long to get in there.

Skinthinner gets an aggro-upgrade in the form of Throat Slitter, Sinkhole replaced Scepter of the Fugue as a way for black to both disrupt their opponent’s mana and solve tough problems like Library of Alexandria and Maze of Ith.

Decree of Pain was just too much mana, while I love to throw in another Demonic Tutor in the form of Grim Tutor. Cemetery Reaper is a card I’m trying out to see just how good it is in attrition wars. Sign in Blood replaced Night’s Whisper (yes, it’s tougher to cast, but the versatility is worth it, and I like how it makes you commit more solidly to black); Grim Harvest always disappointed me and I gave black more creature removal power in the form of Slaughter. Silent Specter is pretty badass, as far as I can tell, is included in a ton of cubes around the net, and replaced the underwhelming Okiba-Gang Shinobi as a powerful discard tool and also helps up the Morph count in the cube, which is nice.

Red

Drops

Demonfire
Flameblast Dragon
Countryside Crusher
Changeling Berserker
Keldon Vandals
Pulse of the Forge

Adds

Banefire
Rakka Mar
Viashino Heretic
Blood Knight
Dead / Gone
Impending Disaster

This update saw red get a few upgrades, some versatility, and lose a few impressive but ultimately tough to utilize cards.

First up is the easy switch of Banefire for Demonfire. This was an overlooked upgrade from previous updates.

Countryside Crusher is a card I desperately want to be good, but rarely if every actually does what I want him to do. He seems to get chump blocked and after using something like Fireblast or holding a counterable Banefire while he’s Arrested or something is just miserable.

I switched the one-time use of Keldon Vandals with the multiple-use Viashino Heretic. I believe this is a positive change, as it’s been shown that creatures with repeatable abilities (Waterfront Bouncer, Mother of Runes, etc) are those that are most sought and powerful. Flameblast Dragon was really impressive, but in reality just doesn’t compare with a lot of other six drops, even good ole Rorix Bladewing. That dragon was replaced with the surprisingly effective and scary Rakka Mar. Go-go undying Spark Elementals!

Pulse of the Forge got worse with the removal of Mana Burn and I desperately needed to get Blood Knight in the cube. Protection from white is so important it’s tough to really put into words how badly its needed for red decks to win against U/W Control. Impending Disaster is my All-Star Treasure Find. I hope it works out as well as it looks. It appears fantastic for aggro decks and forces control decks to play much, much differently than they do now (which is dump every land they can into play and not worry about the consequences).

Changeling Berserker has been in the cube for awhile now, and while it certainly is cute and has it’s really cool moments, it often can sit in your hand after your opponent just Wrath of God‘d the board away. Instead I have the much more interesting Dead / Gone which gives red flexibility and versatility against a number of ridiculous plays and decks (particularly reanimator). With the new reanimator tools I’ve given black, it’s nice to throw red a bone in combating that strategy.

Green

Drops

Masked Admirers
Chord of Calling
Cliffrunner Behemoth
Eyes of the Wisent
Reclaim
Sprout Swarm

Adds

Acidic Slime
Explosive Vegetation
Great Sable Stag
Hidden Gibbons
Master of the Wild Hunt
Squall Line

I had to include some biggies from M10 this time. I didn’t get to include Ant Queen, but I think the rest of the all-stars make an appearance. Master of the Wild Hunt is just ridiculous if he gets going, Great Sable Stag is obviously a powerhouse against blue control or black aggro decks, and Squall Line deals with an evasive rush as well as killing cards like Akroma, Angel of Wrath at instant speed (as well as giving green a ‘Fireball‘ of its own).

Acidic Slime provides green a ‘catch-all’ answer to annoying permanents, whether they’re enchantments or lands. Hidden Gibbons replaced the horribly awkward Eyes of the Wisent and is a much better card pound-for-pound I think. Explosive Vegetation gives more fuel for ramp decks, including those that intend on casting Tooth and Nail before it’s over.

As for the cuts, I’ll be honest I’ve been underwhelmed with basically every card in that list. Cliffrunner Behemoth was really cute in G/R Aggro, but there are better four-drop options (Cap’n Tickles, aka Giant Solifuge comes to mind). Reclaim has always been in my sideboards, Sprout Swarm doesn’t do what I want it to (provide a green control deck card…no one plays control with green), Masked Admirers are too slow, and Chord of Calling is nice in a G/W Aggro deck, but I think I’ve made significant upgrades in the creature power and viability of green in the cube, even as a mono-color option.

Artifacts

Drops

Epochrasite
Grim Poppet

Adds

Etched Oracle
Silent Arbiter

Pretty straight-forward: I felt that Grim Poppet was cute but ultimately not included in many final builds, even in the decks that would seem to support it easily (i.e. slow control builds). Etched Oracle is a card that rewards the 5-color drafters out there, as well as providing a powerful aggressive creature that can be traded in for an Ancestral Recall, while Silent Arbiter does what I feel Grim Poppet was designed to do, which is control the creature war in a control deck.

Multicolor

Drops

Hybrid Section
Child of Alara
Crystallization
Naya Charm
Sedraxis Specter
Jund Charm
Sen Triplets

The biggest changes, obviously, were to the Multicolor category. The previously found Hybrid section is now completely removed, and I think the cube is much better without it. “Forcing” a 5-card-per-hybrid-pair selection made me include cards like Noggle Hedge-mage, and nobody likes that guy, not even me. But it was a card I was ‘forced’ to play with as the constraints of my design called for it.

So, um…screw that design. Let’s instead fuse them together, allowing Spiritmonger to return to the cube and I shed some fat by removing one 5-Color card (the awful-in-hindsight Child of Alara), and removing one card per shard. The decisions were tough, but I think ultimately worth it. I also got to include more two-color cards if I wanted (such as the inclusion of Putrid Leech in B/G), while getting the pick of the litter of the hybrid cards. G/W is the section that provided the most grueling of choices, but I loves me some Kitchen Finks and while I’d love to include Armadillo Cloak again, I’m still fond of the powerful Behemoth Sledge to take it home.

Spitemare showed up in R/W again, and I think for the better. I love that creature, as it makes your non-black/non-blue opponent make some nasty decisions in terms of how to deal with it. While white could use a Pacifism effect, green and red have a hell of a time killing this guy without taking significant damage.

Izzet Guildmage also returned to U/R, a very underrated creature that does wonders in a red burn deck or even a control deck by copying spells like Ancestral Recall in blue or Firebolt in red. (That said, he’s still kinda underpowered…)

Lands

Drops

Cascade Bluffs
Fetid Heath
Fire-Lit Thicket
Flooded Grove
Graven Cairns
Mystic Gate
Rugged Prarie
Rupture Spire
Sunken Ruins
Twilight Mire
Unstable Frontier
Wooded Bastion

Adds

Arid Mesa
Barbarian Ring
Dragonskull Summit
Drowned Catacomb
Glacial Fortress
Kor Haven
Marsh Flats
Misty Rainforest
Rootbound Crag
Scalding Tarn
Sunpetal Grove
Verdant Catacombs

Lands in the cube are always tricky. You want just the right balance, where players can get the fixing they need without making 5-color an overpowering force (i.e. there’s a reason there are no Vivid Lands in the cube such as Vivid Creek).

With this update I completely removed the Hybrid Duals as provided to us from Shadowmoor and Eventide. I loved them, but I also hated the fact that if you had a hand of two hybrid duals you are almost forced to mulligan (or hold your breath to see if your deck comes through). However, with the M10 duals, if you don’t have the land that makes it come into play untapped you’ll still get the mana you need next turn, which is better than never if you don’t draw a land that activates your hybrid duals.

The only Zendikar entries this time are the enemy fetchlands, auto-includes in any self-respecting ‘powered’ cube, and also help balance out the loss of ten lands by supplementing ten lands that make the exact same color combination.

That said, two mana fixing lands left us: Rupture Spire and Unstable Frontier. Both of these cards are mediocre at best and help fuel an archetype that needs little to no help (i.e. 5-Color Good Stuff). Instead, I gave U/W control players a gift with Kor Haven, and red decks one in the form of Barbarian Ring.

Summary

So that’s it for another cube update folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my reasoning behind my decisions, and hope you either update or create your own cube to find out how truly awesome it really is.

Join us in February when we do this all over again, and see what impact Landfall and the powerful cards from Zendikar have on the cube as we know it.

Now get out there and cube!

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

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

Let’s take a look at the changes:

White Cards

Drops: Light From Within, Soltari Visionary

Adds: Cataclysm, Kataki, War’s Wage, Martial Coup, Path to Exile, Rout, Soltari Crusader, Wall of Reverence

This gives even more creedence to the dichotomy of white: It’s both the best weenie color and the best raw control color. I gave appropriate tools for both. Cataclysm is a card I’ve wanted in my cube for some time, and I’ve finally got it in here, Kataki, War’s Wage punishes the hardcore control decks and their reliance on powerful artifacts (Sensei’s Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Signets, etc), Path to Exile is, well, the best removal since Swords to Plowshares, Rout is another fantastic Wrath of God variant I really wanted in the cube, and Wall of Reverence should be able to block anything and slowly gain the control player life over the course of the game.

Soltari Visionary simply hasn’t done enough to make it worthy of inclusion, so I switched to the more aggressive Soltari Crusader. Basically unblockable with a pump ability, this guy gets in there and gives the G/W or B/W weenie decks something to sink their mana into turn-after-turn. Light from Within hasn’t really lit any deck/archetype on fire, and was a nice experiment, but it was time for it to go.

Blue Cards

Drops: Covenant of Minds, Morphling, Chronozoa

Adds: Remand, Ponder, Ethersworn Adjudicator, Glen Elendra Archmage, Honden of Seeing Winds, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Pestermite, Riftwing Cloudskate

Good ole Blue. What I wanted to push in this update was to give Blue some decent creatures. I think I’ve done that.

First off I dropped Covenant of Minds for the Personal Howling Mine (aka Honden of Seeing Winds). It just works out better, and gives the control player the long-game benefit, which is what they want anyway. Morphling is gone because he sucks something awful with the Magic 2010 rules. Just a fact of life there. Thornling is still good enough…Superman is not.

As for the additions, Remand is just the best tempo-based counter in existence, and so it goes right (back) in. Ponder is Brainstorm 2.0, and nothing says This Card Is Awesome like being restricted in Vintage.

For the creatures, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner was suggested in the forums (thanks guys!) and it’s worked out really well. That creature is seriously annoying, not overpowered, and fits blue perfectly. You want to make your opponent ‘work’ to kill your guys, whether that’s fighting through Kira’s ability or counterspells themselves. Glen Elendra Archmage is a house any way you slice it, sure to rock control mirrors the world over. Pestermite is here for both tempo and the awesome Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo while Riftwing Cloudskate is an awesome creature that I left behind some time ago, but nowadays you’ve got its incredible tempo as well as comboing with Reveillark that keeps it both powerful and flexible.

Ethersworn Adjudicator is just a frickin house. If you’re playing Esper colors, he’s insane. If not, he’s still an easier-to-cast Air Elemental, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that in terms of a blue flying finisher that can both attack and block easily.

Black Cards

Drops: Rotlung Reanimator, Beacon of Unrest

Adds: Betrayal of Flesh, Cabal Interrogator, Corpse Dance, Dauthi Mercenary, Mesmeric Fiend, Okiba-Gang Shinobi, Scepter of Fugue

Ah Black. I’m always tinkering with your place in the cube. For this update, I wanted a few things: One, I wanted to make it more aggressive, and two, I wanted to give it more tools against control decks. If there is one thing that a control does NOT want you to play, it is a turn two Cabal Interrogator. Nezumi Shortfang is the other one-two punch that Black uses to punish control decks, and Cabal Interrogator fits right in there.

That said, Rotlung Reanimator was dropped because he wasn’t aggressive enough, nor did he provide enough tokens when he died. Bleh. Beacon of Unrest was replaced by Betrayal of Flesh. Betrayal does almost the same job (returning a creature to play), with the loss of a very narrow ability (returning an artifact to play) while losing the ability to target your opponent’s graveyard. This is a-okay with me, as I want this card to be used in Reanimator, and instant speed reanimation is fan-freakin-tastic. Secondly, while the inability to return an artifact is a loss, it’s also one of the most narrow abilities and one I only saw come into play maybe once or twice during my entire time spent playing with it, which is years and years now.

As for the rest of the additions, Mesmeric Fiend joins Tidehollow Sculler as a one-two discard punch for B/W decks, Scepter of the Fugue punishes control decks just like Okiba-Gang Shinobi does (with the bonus of being a great card in W/B Weenie Aggro-Discard), and Corpse Dance is another card I wanted for Reanimator players out there. Dauthi Mercenary is another card I like because it gives Black an aggressive angle. I want black decks to be able to swing in the red zone at some point, even while they wait to play Kokusho, the Evening Star.

Red Cards

Drops: Goblin Assault, Hell’s Thunder, Pyroclasm

Adds: Countryside Crusher, Hellspark Elemental, Incendiary Command, Ball Lightning, Magus of the Moon, Puncture Blast, Molten Rain, Volcanic Fallout

Welcome back Countryside Crusher! I missed ya, that’s all I can say. Countryside Crusher is a great creature to keep you running on gas, which is something Red Deck Wins or G/R Aggro has a hard time with. Sometimes you hit a land pocket, the control player gets an advantage, and you’re shuffling up for the next game before you know it.

In other anti-control news, Goblin Assault was good but not as good as expected. I simply removed it for a more diverse set of tools. The first is replacing Hell’s Thunder with Hellspark Elemental. At a mana less it hits earlier and harder, and Ball Lightning has come back to the cube in honor of M10. That guy remains awesome. Puncture Blast is a card that works fantastically with all of the fatties in the cube, and in other anti-control news, Incendiary Command, Magus of the Moon and Molten Rain really want to punish the 5-Color lovers out there. And that they do wonderfully well. It also gives a bit of mana denial flavor for red, something I always appreciate.

Pyroclasm got a strict upgrade with Volcanic Fallout, and thanks to the new rules, Pyroclasm wouldn’t be cube-worthy anymore anyway.

Green Cards

Drops: Heartwood Storyteller, Vinelasher Kudzu

Adds: Cliffrunner Behemoth, Centaur Glade, Chord of Calling, Kodama’s Reach, Noble Hierarch, Thornling, Wild Nacatl

On the green side of things, Cliffrunner Behemoth, my Conflux spoiler, is now rocking it cube-style. And it’s great in both G/W and G/R aggro, and if you’re inclined to go Naya (or get his rider, Figure of Destiny), then you’re in very good company.

Chord of Calling gives players the element of surprise, which is never a bad thing, and is welcomed with open arms back to the cube after being absent for awhile. Kodama’s Reach is simply one of the best mana fixers ever printed ever, and those looking to fix their mana should not only be in green but should have the ability to do so easily. Noble Hierarch is one of the best creatures ever printed, period, and will always have a place in the Cube. It’s Birds 2.0, and Birds aren’t going anywhere and neither is Hierarch. Wow is that girl incredible.

Centaur Glade is my attempt at giving green a long game approach. All-too-often Green (particularly heavy or mono-Green) will just run out of gas and a Wrath of God or two later they’re done for. This is the gift that keeps on giving, another Phyrexian Processor that is difficult to deal with.

Thornling is good enough, even after the rules update, due to the Indestructability factor. I’m more glad than ever that he has it, and trample is no slouch either. Wild Nacatl is another best-of, as it’s a green Kird Ape (”Kird Kitty” as they call it) and is never a creature a control player likes seeing on Turn 1.

As for my drops, Heartwood Storyteller sounds like it would punish control players but rarely does it (mainly because it constricts yourself from playing burn/pump spells any longer), and Vinelasher Kudzu, while awesome in the long game, is not quite as awesome as any of the additions made.

Artifact Cards

Drops: Aether Spellbomb, Pithing Needle, Lightning Greaves

Adds: Staff of Domination, Obelisk of Alara, Sundering Titan, Grafted Wargear, Vedalken Shackles, Puppet Strings, Guardian Idol, Erratic Portal

Okay, some big additions and some interesting changes here. Firstly, I removed Aether Spellbomb because, as most cube cuts, it just doesn’t do enough. Sure a guaranteed bounce is awesome, and the cantrip effect is nice. But a reusable bounce is far more powerful, whether it’s Crystal Shard (one of my favs), or the even-more-generic version, Erratic Portal. Now you have, essentially, ‘two’ Crystal Shards and one is even easier to play and use repeatedly.

Staff of Domination returned from a long hiatus. This is a powerful and versatile card that finds a home in almost any control deck, and provides nice incremental advantages over long games. Obelisk of Alara is for the five-color junkies, rocking out fantastic abilities and is very difficult to overcome. This is another way of making artifacts matter, and making sure each color has answers to these artifacts. Puppet Strings is a wonderful control player’s tool, as Trip Noose was considered but for a merely one extra mana you get the ability to both tap and untap, which can mean serious combos with cards like Jushi Apprentice or Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. All in all a great addition in my mind.

Guardian Idol is awesome in a variety of decks, and fits in just about anything, as both a mana producer and a win condition. Sometimes control decks are all wraths, counterspells, and Urza’s Factory, and this gives them another option which is nice. Lastly, Sundering Titan returns because I missed the fella, and because he’s great in Tooth and Nail and Reanimator. Grafted Wargear is my contribution to more aggressive archetypes, as Lightning Greaves just wasn’t getting it done. As for Pithing Needle, it just doesn’t stop enough to make it more powerful or useful than basically any addition this go-round.

Multicolor Cards

Drops: Armadillo Cloak, Debtors’ Knell, Fires of Yavimaya, Glare of Subdual, Grave-Shell Scarab, Hellhole Rats, Izzet Guildmage, Kiss of the Amesha, Phantom Nishoba, Punish Ignorance, Rumbling Slum, Saffi Eriksdotter, Sedris, the Traitor King, Spiritmonger, Temporal Spring, Undermine, Void, Intet, the Dreamer, Vorosh, the Hunter, Hide/Seek, Spite/Malice, Brion Stoutarm

Adds: Behemoth Sledge, Bituminous Blast, Bloodbraid Elf, Crystallization, Enlisted Wurm, Identity Crisis, Izzet Chronarch, Lavalanche, Lord of Extinction, Lorescale Coatl, Maelstrom Pulse, Mirari’s Wake, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Qasali Pridemage, Sen Triplets, Slave of Bolas, Soul Manipulation, Spellbreaker Behemoth, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Uril, the Miststalker, Wall of Denial, Shambling Remains, Maelstrom Archangel, Child of Alara, Maelstrom Nexus, Nemesis of Reason, Bull Cerodon

Helloooo major changes! Yup, the Multicolor section of the cube has gotten a complete overhaul with no less than 22 replacements! A few things first:

1. There are now only two non-shards cards. Let’s face it, Vorosh, the Hunter, Hide / Seek, and Intet, the Dreamer suck. I’m sorry, it’s true, let’s face facts and get them the hell out of there.

Does that mean I haven’t seen both of those dragons win games? Of course not. But Hide / Seek has done nothing but ‘remove your most expensive spell’, which is hardly game-breaking by anyone’s standards, and those dragons are almost always passouts that no one wants. So instead of putting up with them and making the card counts imbalanced due to me adding a card-per-shard, we get to introduce…

2. 5-Color Section Added

Yay! 5-Color cards are awesome and when designed correctly, they can be incredibly powerful, swingy, and create fun game states. Maelstrom Archangel is a house in both 5-Color and reanimator strategies, Child of Alara is the control player’s second copy of Nevinnyral’s Disk, and Maelstrom Nexus simply has to be one of the most powerful cards ever once you untap with it. I love how it gives Cascade to cards that have no right having it (can you imagine cascading off a buyback spell like Capsize? Holy crap!), and untapping with that is just good times.

Moving on, we’ll briefly go over each section. U/W got Wall of Denial, a card that basically stops every creature in the cube sans a few, and will be very welcome by the U/W control players out there. I think Kiss of the Amesha is great, but the Wall fills a more needed role in that archetype. Nemesis of Reason is one of the best limited creatures ever printed, and acts as both a wall and a legitimate win condition when the U/B control player’s game inevitably goes long. Soul Manipulation replaced the much harder to cast Undermine, and is a fantastic and versatile counterspell in its own right.

B/R lost some chaff by removing Void, which no one was really using, and Hellhole Rats was dropped because…well…it’s a four mana 2/2. We can do better. And better we have! We now have a super duper removal spell in Bituminous Blast, and an incredibly aggressive creature in Shambling Remains. I wanted B/R to have both discard, beef and speed, and I think these additions help that.

R/G lost Fires of Yavimaya but I think made up for it in Bloodbraid Elf, and I replaced Rumbling Slum with Spellbreaker Behemoth. Sure Rumbling Slum got in an extra damage, but Spellbreaker does what you need it to do in topdeck mode: Make sure it sticks. The fact that it can guarantee your Cliffrunner Behemoth or Ball Lightning to remain uncountered is nice as well.

G/W got the most extensive rewrite, as I replaced no less than four of the five cards. Phantom Nishoba was a house, and is great for reanimator strategies, but Enlisted Wurm gives you free spells and a huge dude, and that seems like a much better deal to me. Armadillo Cloak was upgraded into its equipment version, which is less scarier the turn it huts, but far more scary in the long run. Armadillo Cloak was always something you could take care up with a removal spell, and now it’s much more difficult to attain that. Mirari’s Wake replaced Glare of Subdual, as few games were decided by Glare while I think many will be finished by Wake instead. Lastly, Saffi Eriksdotter was switched out for the Best Watchwolf Ever in Qasali Pridemage. Now you got your aggro and your tool against annoying artifacts and enchantments!

In W/B I finally fixed the Debtors’ Knell problem (where a Hybrid card was in the Multicolor section, I do it in the U/R section in a moment). Identity Crisis takes your opponent’s hand, graveyard, and dignity in that order, and sounds perfect for the cube.

In W/R I wanted to give this very aggressive combination of colors an aggressive monster to match it. Brion Stoutarm, in my experience, was primarily used as a beater and not his activated ability. 4/4s for four mana are a dime a dozen these days, and giving R/W it’s own ‘dragon’ (even if it doesn’t fly) sounds good to me.

U/R I switched the awkward Izzet Guildmage (which should be in the Hybrid section if at all) with Izzet Chronarch. Now with Reveillark it’s a more powerful creature, and I love how it gives you plenty of options. A mainstay from wayback, it’s nice he’s returning.

U/G lost Temporal Spring but gained a much more powerful creature in Lorescale Coatl. Sure it’s “just” a single +1/+1 counter per draw, but in the long game that guy is a house. It also makes any draw spells insane, and Brainstorm that much better. Can’t beat that.

B/G gained the oh-so-awesome Maelstrom Pulse, which is gladly accepted into the cube, and Spiritmonger was upgraded to a Lord of Extinction, a guy much bigger and scarier than Spiritmonger even if it can’t dodge Protection From Black creatures like Spiritmonger could. I think it’s a fair trade to switch out a 6/6 regenerator with a 20/20 in most cases.

All of the Shards gained one card, as there were a ton of fantastic choices to choose from via Conflux and Alara Reborn (mainly the latter) and I didn’t want to cut awesome cards if I didn’t have to. With that said, Esper starts us off with Mindslaver-On-A-Stick in Sen Triplets, a card that must be dealt with and quickly, as well as the Artifact Akroma, Sphinx of the Steel Wind. This guy is all that and a bag of chips, and don’t you forget it. Awesome in both control and reanimator strategies.

Jund gained a Lavalanche while Grixis got the badass Planeswalker as well as the incredibly fun and versatile Slave of Bolas. I love how Hybrids give you the functionality of a tri-color card in ‘just’ a two color combination. Wonderful. Speaking of awesome hybrids, Crystallization was added to Bant because I felt that U/W and G/W needed more answers to creatures in the format. Sure I could’ve thrown Rhox War Monk in there, but he’s a bit difficult to cast and didn’t really fill the role I wanted him to. Lastly is Naya which gained Uril, the Miststalker, an awesome Troll Shroud creature that does an excellent job of not dying to anything outside mass removal or a ton of blocks. Either way, my Moldervine Cloak loves him. Griffin Guide, too.

Hybrid Cards

Drops: Cankerous Thirst, Fire at Will, Mirrorweave, Rise of the Hobgoblins, Sapling the Colfenor, Shrewd Hatchling, Spitemare

Adds: Balefire Liege, Call the Skybreaker, Canker Abomination, Hearthfire Hobgoblin, Thistledown Liege, Waves of Aggression, Wurm Harvest

This section is the one that got switched around based on feedback and testing. Firstly, Shrewd Hatchling is no Call the Skybreaker. Yes, I’ve lost games thanks to Shrewd Hatchling, but at the end of the day Call the Skybreaker is a much more powerful card, even for red decks. Balefire Liege is an upgrade from Rise of the Hobgoblins, as it works fantastically in a red deck, Fire at Will got switched by the more aggressive and far less reactive Hearthfire Hobgoblin, and Spitemare leaves us due to Waves of Aggression, as I really wanted to push R/W as a fast, powerful deck that can ‘just win’ out of nowhere. Suddenly you’re one-drop, two-drop, three-drop, burn you, Waves of Aggression and the game is over.

Canker Abomination replaced Sapling the Colfenor, who wasn’t pulling much if any weight, and Canker is usually a 5/5 or 6/6 in a cube such as mine, in which many archetypes run very few creatures. Lastly, Mirrorweave got an upgrade into Thistledown Liege, who helps the G/W archetype as well as the U/W aggro-control archetype by having both Flash and being able to block 2/x creatures easily. Take THAT Kird Ape!

Conclusion

So with that my long-awaited cube update is complete. I hope you guys have as much fun with it as I do, because I love this wacky thing.

See you soon for the Magic 2010 Update!

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

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

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!