Introduction
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! I write to you today with the intention of preaching the merits of Cubing in a multiplayer setting. It's a subject that's very near-and-dear to to me since I've been playing it almost exclusively for the past 10 or so years. My metagame's ratio of Cube games to constructed ones has been roughly 10:1 at times as its easily our favorite Magic variant. It's an endlessly fun and variable format that has a "bad" habit of hooking people for life once they've gotten a taste for it. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or a young up-and-comer players bitten by the Cube bug often become life-long advocates of the format that eschew most others altogether. Throughout this article I'll discuss what Cubing is, who should Cube, why you should Cube, the issues surrounding Cube costs and even put my own Cube on display.
What is Cubing?
Cubing can be split into 2 major components, the Cube itself and the format. Simply put a Cube is a large collection of powerful Magic cards with a roughly even distribution of colors supported by various amounts of lands and artifacts. That's it. It's literally as easy as "I had these 360 cards lying around so I stuck them in a box." I know that when you see Cube threads they're always so neat, organized, cool looking, filled with expensive, powerful cards blah blah blah but let me assure you that none of that is actually important. My first Cube cost me about $250.00 and it was TERRIBLE. We had so much junk in there because it was cheap and/or we already owned it. Wanna know something? Doesn't matter! That janky Cube provided us with thousands upon thousands of hours of pure, unadulterated fun. Above all else all you need are good friends and a love for Magic because nothing else matters when it comes to multiplayer Cubing. I'll obviously still show you what my Cube looks like today and I do hope that it will help shape your own but please don't feel that money is the only way that you can have fun Cubing. A good Cube isn't one filled with Ancestral Recalls and Black Lotuses. A good Cube is one that you and your friends will enjoy drafting. In the coming sections I'll explain why they'll probably love any combination of cards at the end of the day but for now all you need to know is that a Cube is a large collection of cards.
The act of cubing, i.e. the format itself, is the plain old draft format that any Limited Mage has come to know and love throughout their Magic career. While there's many draft variations out there for the purposes of this article I'll just focus on the "regular style" since it's by far and away the most common. You know, the typical "draft 3 packs of 15 cards and build a 40+ card deck" draft format. In order to draft a Cube you must sufficiently randomize it at the beginning of every new session. This is extremely important to avoid drafting someone's exact deck the next time that you sit down to play because boy it sure it isn't fun when all of the Black cards or Green cards are sitting the same packs. Pile shuffling is the fastest and easiest method to employ since rifle shuffling is usually far too time consuming and expensive (the sleeve damage adds up fast). Regardless of how you go about it after the Cube's sufficiently randomized each player should then be asked to construct three piles of 15 cards. These represent your "packs" and in the same way that you draft 3 packs in Limited you'll typically draft 3 "packs" while Cubing. Once the piles are completed feel free to collect them so that you can distribute them randomly. You can accomplish this any numbers of ways and personally we make a big stack since it looks cool. I did say that this was fun didn't I? Each player should then be asked to randomly select a pile from the stack and draft (aka select) 1 card from it. Everyone should then be asked to pass the remaining 14 cards to the player on their right. Count the cards each time! If someone isn't the getting the correct amount, figure out why and correct the mistake. No, this has nothing to do with cheating or ill-intent. I've been Cubing for roughly 10 years now and in that time I've learned that far more often than not harmless mistakes are made when it comes to drafting. People mix piles up, pass the wrong way, pick 2 cards by accident, on and on and on. It's not a big deal, you don't need to fuss about it, just make sure that everyone gets 45 cards to build a deck with. Either way this process should then be continued until the entire pack has been drafted and each player has 15 cards. Repeat the process with the remaining 2 packs while alternating the direction in which you pass the cards after each one. That is, pack 1 is passed to the right, pack 2 is passed to the left and pack 3 is once again passed to the right. Once each player has drafted their 45 cards allot them a reasonable amount of time (10-15 minutes) to construct a 40+ card deck. Once the deck building period has run its course feel free to dive right into the action and start slinging some cards with any multiplayer format that you desire. Our format of choice is Chaos (free-for-all) but feel free to select whichever you fancy.
Why Cube?
Let's start with the obvious question: why should anyone invest in a Cube? Well, one of the most compelling reasons is that it's insanely fun! Drafting a sweet Cube deck and showing it off to your friends is a blast and anyone at any skill level can find joy in it. It also allows everyone in your playgroups to play with new and exciting archetypes even if they can't afford to spend a lot of money on the game. Whereas a budget-minded player might only be able to build and play one deck for an extended period of time Cubing ensures that things can stay fresh and exciting for everyone. Moreover, if certain cards start to become oppressive you can very easily eliminate their presence. Whereas managing a personal banned/restricted list can be a giant hassle Cubing takes away all of the stress and frustration. You just remove the problematic cards and the issue is resolved. No one is personally targeted or hindered because you're still all on equal footing.
Now, some of you might be thinking "well isn't it better to let people purchase and play with their own cards?" The short answer is "no" and here's why. First of all, one of the biggest problems with multplayer Magic is that it doesn't have a formal banned/restricted list. I have seen a lot of 4x Sol Ring and 4x Tinker decks in my day so I know how problematic that can be. House rules are a solution but they're not an inherently adequate one. Even if you declare a blanket ban on all infinite combos there are still hundreds of non-infinite, degenerate ones that'll persist (say Hive Mind + Pact of the Titan). Moreover, Magic is, in many ways, a pay-to-compete game. There's a enormous gap between "haves" and a "have nots" in the sense that most $50.00 decks will struggle to compete against player fielding ones worth thousands of dollars. As much as anyone would like to think and/or suggest otherwise the people with the deepest pockets will usually win. Furthermore, there's also a very large issue regarding player skill. People with weak card pools tend to be newer players who're just getting their feet wet with the game. They often have significantly less experience than the established pros and have a loose understanding of the game at best. What this is means is that multiplayer Magic is often comprised of seasoned veterans with extensive card pools and a firm grasp on the game competing against greenhorns with limited resources who barely know what they're doing. The outcome of this disparity is typically a scenario in which a small minority of players win the vast majority of the games (to the point of being oppressive). That doesn't create a happy, healthy environment in my experience. Finally, there are also issues with degenerate/infinite combos, horrendously unfair cards, massive disparities in overall deck power-levels, etc. While some people like to think that these issues can all be resolved with communication I can safely say that after doing this for 13+ years that that simply isn't the case. I have read countless horror stories of metas "poisoned" by overly competitive players who, even when confronted, failed to take their foot off of the gas. The typical advice given to people in those situations is usually "just don't play with those people" which is a ludicrously inadequate solution that's frequently proposed by people who've never taken said action themselves. Life is way more complicated than tossing relationships aside over a hobby like Magic and there are plenty of people who're great individuals 95% of the time but who may take Magic a bit too seriously.
Multiplayer Cubing, in my opinion, is the single best way to (more-or-less) eliminate these unbalances. By forcing everyone to adhere to the same format, playing the same cards, building the same kinds of decks, etc. you can ensure that there are no massive disparities. You can promote grindy, interactive, slow games that everyone will enjoy. Don't want combos to ruin games? Don't put them in your Cube! Hate playing against Armageddons? Don't include them! Rather than having to construct some random, personalized banned/restricted list that can't possibly make everyone happy you can just build a Cube that excludes combos and extremely unfun cards/mechanics. Furthermore, by forcing everyone to play with powerful cards you eliminate scenarios where small handfuls of players win the vast majority of the games. Absolutely anyone can cast Insurrection and win a multiplayer game which provides the newer players with a giant leg-up that they wouldn't have otherwise had. Ever since I started Cubing my personal win% has completely tanked and every game feels like a struggle where everyone can take home the win (and they do). The fact of the matter is that when absolutely every deck is filled with ramp, draw and Battlecruisers you cannot possibly hope to boast an impressive win rate. Even if you're playing against people who're new to the game if they're casting Craterhoof Behemoths on boards full of creatures then it doesn't matter how many more years of experience you have over them. You still lose... and that's good!
Who Should Cube?
Anyone who has the time for it and who has an active playgroup should strongly consider building a Cube. A typical Cube game, in my experience, lasts for roughly an hour and a half (which includes drafting, deck construction and gameplay) so if you're only able to play for 30-45 minutes between class/while on lunch then you probably shouldn't bother building one. If you have a more serious group (not serious as in "competitive," serious as in "we like playing Magic on a frequent basis and for extended periods of time") then you should absolutely make a concerted effort to construct one. I can almost guarantee that it's worth the time and energy. After all, Cubing is an amazingly complex, fun and interactive format that allows you to become a designer and player in a multiplayer format that's completely your own. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from; play it once and you'll probably be hooked for life.
The Issue Of Cost
Before moving on I feel that it's important to touch on the aspect of Cube cost. I'm going to go ahead and guess that a lot of people out there have smallish budgets like I did back when I was 20 or whatever. I'm not saying that I was dirt poor or anything, I wasn't, but I certainly couldn't afford to drop a grand on a Cube. I'm sure that a lot of people reading this are hesitant to purchase a Cube because every list that they've seen has been absolutely filled with 50$+ dollar cards. Let's be real here; a typical Powered Cube is worth more than what most of us drive. While I'm here to deliver some semi-positive news I'm not going to bull**** you about the financial aspects of Cubing. A powerful (but not necessarily Powered), unproxied Cube is probably going to cost you a couple hundred dollars at the very least. This is especially true if you're using a local game store as opposed to online vendors. The reality of the matter is that Cubes are large and virtually every card within them will cost you something (even if it's just a buck). You can try to lean heavily on commons and uncommons but you're still going to set yourself back a pretty penny. After all, it's important to remember that you're probably not going to factor in variables such as sleeves and a deck box which will both cost you legitimate sums of money. It all adds up in the end. That being said, a couple hundred dollars is actually fairly reasonable sum when you think about it as an investment. The initial cost is certainly daunting but as with any other investment it will provide its return in the long-run. While a Cube may cost you $250.00 today you could easily get 10 years worth of play out of it. Sure, you'll make updates as time goes on, but I you shouldn't need to make many serious investments after the initial one. If you're someone who's going to purchase a new deck every month or so anyways then investing in a Cube could easily save you a ton of money over time. You might have to dial back on the parties and booze for a month while you recoup your initial loss but I that's not asking for too too much I don't think. To give you an idea, my personal expenditure on cards reduced to about $50.00 annually ever since I started Cubing. I've spent less in the past 6 years on cards than I shelled-out in my first. Insofar as you can afford to make the initial investment without compromising your current quality of life then I can virtually assure you that your checking account will thank me at some point in the future.
Proxies
This is a subject that I want to tackle now because it's one that carries a lot of negative connotations in the MTG community. I'm often under the impression that people would rather suffer a painful death than play with proxies. I also get the vibe that some people consider proxy-users to be the lowest scum of the Earth. For the life of me I'll never understand why this is but at the same time I'm not going to waste my breath trying to convince everyone to embrace them. Still, I want to briefly discuss this topic for the people who aren't completely jaded on the subject. I personally believe that you can and should consider proxying a portion of your Cube. You could obvious proxy the entire thing if you were so inclined but I don't think that that's necessary. Proxying, to me, is a way for anyone to acquire cards that're unreasonable to obtain through traditional/average means. The best examples that I can provide are old, powerful spells such as Sneak Attack and true duals such as Underground Sea. By proxying these types of cards you can gain access to rare and powerful effects without having to shell out unreasonable sums of cash. How heavily you proxy will ultimately boil down to your budget and willingness to use them but I personally use them for cards that cost more than $10.00. Again, I'm not trying to push you into using proxies if you're one of those people who just plain refuses to use them. I just don't see what the big deal is myself. If I can make my Cube more fun and more powerful without breaking my checking account then I'm all for it. You can call me frugal, cheap, scum, whatever, I don't really care. No one that I've ever played with has cared if my Cubes have had proxies and I'm not above proxying fun, fair cards that I just plain can't afford.
Cube Lists
Other than my multiplayer guides a great resource to acquire Cube lists is to visit the Cube lists forum. Cubes tagged as [M] or [Multiplayer] will provide you with a solid idea of what your Cube should look like. You can also view my own personal Cube here and visit the dedicated multiplayer Cube thread here. For discussion's sake I'll post my current Cube list but by no means am I suggesting that it's the "best" multiplayer Cube or anything. It's merely the one that I personally use. Simply, I'm not going to do a big write-up on building a Cube and what kinds of cards you should consider using because there are plenty of other resources available to you for things like that. Use my Cube as a starting point if you want and just add/detract from it based on what you own and what you're looking to spend. If you have to run Guildgates over Duals because you can't afford them and you don't want to proxy them (like I did) that's absolutely fine. If you want to make swaps based on what you already own, go for it. These resources are only meant to serve as guides. At the end of the day you're going to be the one building and playing your Cube so make decisions that you'll feel comfortable with. Don't worry about me or what I think.
EDIT: In the interest of longevity please refer to the Cube link in my sig to see the most updated version of my Cube (insofar as I remember to update it every one in a while). I will never remember to update this thread and I don't want to have it list a massively outdated version of my Cube posted.
Rolling Earthquake costs $7. It was reprinted in From the Vault: Annihilation.
My bad on that. My Cube is roughly 5 years old at this point (I think) so at the time it was not an option for me. I've updated it to say Three Visits instead. Thanks for pointing this out btw. I think I'll pick up actual copies of RE and Burnign of Xinye now that I know that they're affordable.
I should have have been more clear and stated that they're powerful, old and rare; not that they auto-win games. Still, the entire sentence served no actual purpose so I removed it.
According to MTGO Vintage Cube stats, the top three cards that are most likely to earn you a 3-0 record are notBlack Lotus, Ancestral Recall and Time Walk but (in no particular order) Sol Ring, Library of Alexandria and Skullclamp. Only one of these is on your "banned for power level" list and I dare say it's the wrong one.
I've gone on record multiple times saying that I think that Sol Ring is the absolute best casual card in the game that stands well above the others. The deck itself is purposely unpowered (LoA, Bazaar and Workshop being unofficial members of that list) and the reason why things like Sol Ring/Clamp aren't removed is because seem to enjoy playing with them and no one has asked me to remove them yet. We've removed tons and tons of cards from my Cubes throughout the years but ultimately I like to let people play with cards that they enjoy fielding and we haven't seen enough evidence to support the notion that Clamp/Sol Ring win far too frequently in our games.
YMMV depending on the contents of the cube, but questionable bans include:
Library of Alexandria. This card is only ever broken on turn 1 in a 1-vs-1 game. In multiplayer that'll make you a target and you'll basically be a land drop behind the rest of the table, struggling to muster a defense. Multiplayer politics tend to sort that out real quick. Unlike, say, Sol Ring, this card does not allow you to fend off two determined opponents.
Think of it as a honorable member of the power 12 alongside the other 2 broken lands hat aren't included. I honestly just didn't care enough to write all of this down when I copied my Cube on this site because I didn't think that anyone really cared about how/why various overpowered cards weren't in your Cube.
When you ban Vault for being too good suddenly Key becomes too bad and gets cut. if we did add Vault back in we would have to add the enablers and Vault was HORRENDOUS for us when we tried it. Every game at some point someone would randomly win on turn 7-8. It was by far and away the winningest card and it only took a few games to realize that we couldn't possibly keep it in. Once it left all of the untappers became useless so they're no longer there.
Rolling Earthquake costs $7. It was reprinted in From the Vault: Annihilation.
My bad on that. My Cube is roughly 5 years old at this point (I think) so at the time it was not an option for me. I've updated it to say Three Visits instead. Thanks for pointing this out btw. I think I'll pick up actual copies of RE and Burning of Xinye now that I know that they're affordable. I'm also 100% going to start building a lot more Wildfire decks now that I don't have to run Destructive Force. You, sir, made my night!
Underground Sea costs 80 million dollars because it's powerful and wins games.
I should have have been more clear and stated that they're powerful, old and rare; not that they auto-win games. Still, the entire sentence served no actual purpose so I removed it. Good catch.
According to MTGO Vintage Cube stats, the top three cards that are most likely to earn you a 3-0 record are notBlack Lotus, Ancestral Recall and Time Walk but (in no particular order) Sol Ring, Library of Alexandria and Skullclamp. Only one of these is on your "banned for power level" list and I dare say it's the wrong one.
YMMV depending on the contents of the cube, but questionable bans include:
Library of Alexandria. This card is only ever broken on turn 1 in a 1-vs-1 game. In multiplayer that'll make you a target and you'll basically be a land drop behind the rest of the table, struggling to muster a defense. Multiplayer politics tend to sort that out real quick. Unlike, say, Sol Ring, this card does not allow you to fend off two determined opponents.
The Cube itself is purposely Unpowered. I'll remove the P9 from the "banned cards" section. That's needlessly confusing.
LoA is mostly there as it belongs to the "power 12" including Bazaar and Workshop.
I've gone on record multiple times saying that I think that Sol Ring is the absolute best casual card in the game that stands well above the others. The reason why things like Sol Ring/Clamp aren't removed is because people seem to enjoy playing with them and no one has asked me to remove them yet. We've removed tons and tons of cards from my Cubes throughout the years but ultimately I like to let people play with cards that they enjoy fielding and we haven't seen enough evidence to support the notion that Clamp/Sol Ring win far too frequently in our games. For the record I was being really lazy when I transcribed that stuff and most of it is coming from like 5 years ago when I built it. I was also really tired from sorting and writing my entire Cube so I didn't care enough to explain everything perfectly.
Gifts was asked to be removed by someone at some point many years ago. Yawgmoth's Will and Recoup were definitely in back then but it's possible that someone was upset about something else. Black was the best color back then (I'm pretty sure) so maybe people were just mad that it was basically a 4x Demonic Tutor when I used it in my Black decks. I don't remember how or why and never cared enough to add the card back in. When it comes to removing cards it doesn't take much to sway me so I'll cut anything that people find especially egregious. I've literally been forced to cut Tendrils of Corruption for being too good. Besides, Snappy and Ruins are in the Cube. Life from the Loam, Yawg Will, Recoup and Crucible also were at one point but Crucible basically only existed to Strip lock someone and that wasn't very fun nor powerful. It made one player miserable and by no means did the person wasting his land drop every turn have a strong chance to go on to win that game. Eventually it got cut because Strip Mine serves an important role whereas Crucible was basically only ever degenerate (it's hard to draft enough fetchlands to make it consistently useful). No one wanted Crucible in the Cube alongside Strip/Wasteland and given the choice of choosing one or the other it was an easy Stip/Waste. Unburial Rites was in the Cube at one point and so was Loyal Retainers. Black/White decks with Elesh Non/Sheoldred/Avacyn/Griselbrand/Iona were too oppressive so they got cut to make the archetype less consistent. There was so much good revival that even if you killed them once or twice they just never stopped coming back.
Eh, screw it. I'm going add Gifts back in and proxy up a Retainers again. Green needs to get knocked off its high-horse.
When you ban Time Vault for being too good suddenly Key becomes too bad and gets cut. If we did add Vault back in we would have to add the enablers and Vault was HORRENDOUS for us when we tried it. Someone would randomly win on turn 7-8 every game and there would be nothing that any of us could do about it. Counter magic isn't that great in general and people don't play every turn like they'll lose if they can't destroy an artifact at instant speed. It was by far and away the winningest card and it only took a few games to realize that we couldn't possibly keep it in. Once it left all of the untappers became useless so they're no longer there.
I'll fix that banned/restricted stuff up and post the list that we would likely agree to today (and not 3-5 years ago). Thanks for the help :).
Fixed that post for you. You had an erronous [/quote] when it should have been a [quote]. It's happened to me and the editor is really wonky when something happens that it doesn't like.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is listed in Black and Colourless. I doubt you have 2 copies in your Cube. So, one of those slots is actually occupied by another.
I think this is great just as an example of "best in house". If you want to build a multiplayer deck, these are the cards you should be using.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is listed in Black and Colourless. I doubt you have 2 copies in your Cube. So, one of those slots is actually occupied by another.
I think this is great just as an example of "best in house". If you want to build a multiplayer deck, these are the cards you should be using.
Yeah I fixed that just now actually. Like I said I built this thing years ago and I just remembered that I cheated and counted Urborg as a colorless land because it technically helped everyone (it allowed Fetchlands to tap for colored mana) which is why my numbers were weird. I know that I'm basically "cheating" to get an extra Black card in the Cube but I don't actually care. I'm a Black mage, sue me :P.
A while ago build a peasant cube, but it's mainly based on 'popular' cube lists. So it's not really build with multiplayer in mind. And in my playgroup we find that we most often play multiplayer, so I'm looking at updating it so it fits the multiplayer vibe a bit more.
However I'm afraid that black will be too powerful in multiplayer, ofcourse it's simple to say just don't put too powerful cards in the cube, but without the 'OP' cards I'm afraid the opposite will happen - black being too weak. Are there multiplayer black cards which would fit nicely in between the "OMG this is too powerful" and "now it's pretty much just a meh support color".
Also - this is something I haven't been able to find yet - is there something like a multiplayer (preferably peasant) cube 'staple' list I can look at to see how the power/utility is divided amongst the colors?
A while ago build a peasant cube, but it's mainly based on 'popular' cube lists. So it's not really build with multiplayer in mind. And in my playgroup we find that we most often play multiplayer, so I'm looking at updating it so it fits the multiplayer vibe a bit more.
However I'm afraid that black will be too powerful in multiplayer, ofcourse it's simple to say just don't put too powerful cards in the cube, but without the 'OP' cards I'm afraid the opposite will happen - black being too weak. Are there multiplayer black cards which would fit nicely in between the "OMG this is too powerful" and "now it's pretty much just a meh support color".
Black isn't even close to being the best color. Green is the strongest color by far.
Also - this is something I haven't been able to find yet - is there something like a multiplayer (preferably peasant) cube 'staple' list I can look at to see how the power/utility is divided amongst the colors?
How many people do you need for a good cube? Is it fun with as few as 3 or is it like booster draft where you really need allot of people for it to be fun?
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I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
How many people do you need for a good cube? Is it fun with as few as 3 or is it like booster draft where you really need allot of people for it to be fun?
I've tried a 3 player FFA Cube EXACTLY once (about 5-6 hours, so 5-6 games total) and I completely refuse to ever waste my time doing it again. I don't think that 3 player anything can be reasonably fun. It combines the worst aspects of duels and multiplayer play without offering any of the advantages. This isn't just Limited to Magic either mind you as I've never enjoyed any 3 player activity. So no, I personally wouldn't recommend 3 player Cubing but then again I'd never suggest playing 3 player Magic in general.
what number would you say is the minimum for it to be worth doing?
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I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
Hooray for an MP Cube post! I may infact be in the running with Prid3 to be the biggest MP Cube fanboi.
I'm pretty sure I've done a three-player sealed pool out of my cube, and that was OK. I wouldn't be drafting it, though, I don't think. Four is a really good number, though... you get through the draft quickly, and get a good number of games in.
A few of the 1vs1 cube guys are currently advocating a two-player draft method called Burn-Four... the general idea is that you draft a card, and then pick four to pull out of the booster and leave undrafted before passing the pack (essentially burning the four cards, as per poker terminology). I'm yet to try it with my cube, but it's apparently a bucketload of fun.
Also, to carry on Prid3's theme of "what about the cost" when it comes to building a cube, here's the thing... sod the cost, just find the 360 best cards you have right now. It doesn't matter if half of them are rank commons or bulk-bin rares. Even in this scenario, Cube is fun anyway. My initial cube spent the first 12-18 months of its life being a Lorwyn Tribal Frankenstein before I was able to budget getting some decent power into it (I had a common/uncommon Lorwyn playset lying around, and that filled out a fair bit of the initial cube). And even though it was quite tribal-oriented, it was still incredible fun to draft and play with. It caught on in my playgroup anyway. And you'll find that about half your playgroup will enjoy the discussion/banter/debate/argument on what to swap in and out of the cube, too (I have about 8-10 in my playgroup, and 4-5 of them generally enjoy helping me make the cube changes).
If you do want to spend the money, my cube went up a cog in power level by adding the Shocks, Fetches, Swords and Titans. And, I should add, it cost me a fair bit more back when I made those changes that it would now - the Onslaught fetches have been reprinted, the Zendikar fetches are no doubt in the queue somewhere, and the Titans and a couple of the newer Swords have dropped in value somewhat. And I didn't just do this all in one expensive hit - I traded, sent in buylists, and did the upgrade in increments. Cube is a resilient-enough format that you're probably not going to unbalance things by not doing all of this at once (in fact, finding the unbalanced stuff is half the fun).
Our group has only banned three cards in the cube's entire lifetime - Tinker, Recurring Nightmare and Sylvan Primordial. There are a couple of other obvious ones that we've never put in (hi there Limited Resources!), as we tend to encourage unoppresive open play, and the first three are probably free to come back in if the power level in the rest of the cube rises to catch up (which it no doubt will at some point, thanks to power creep), but the fact that it's taken me four years to ban just three cards should tell you how balanced a format this can be.
Also, to carry on Prid3's theme of "what about the cost" when it comes to building a cube, here's the thing... sod the cost, just find the 360 best cards you have right now. It doesn't matter if half of them are rank commons or bulk-bin rares.
If you do want to spend the money, my cube went up a cog in power level by adding the Shocks, Fetches, Swords and Titans.
Swords, to me, feel like colorless 1 card combo kills against specific players and overcosted do-nothing against others. I've seen far too many people lose on turn 4-5 fifteen minutes in to a two hour game because they didn't draw their 1 cheap answer to a Sword and died after 2 hits. They're never coming back in mine. I absolutely despise the impact that they have in multiplayer games where you'll almost always be playing against 1-2 opponents who're playing those 2 colors. They're like True-Name Nemesises in that sense. You can't possibly win games with them but you will a kill player off in a non-interactive fashion.
Our group has only banned three cards in the cube's entire lifetime.
The only card that's been emergency banned from my Cube is Carpet of Flowers. It was 1 mana "you win the game" and made Sol Ring look like a fair Magic card. Taking any of the Power 9 over it would have gotten you laughed out of the room. I use the term "banned cards" loosely and most of them were merely removed because they weren't fun. Emrakul wasn't winning too many games, in fact he basically NEVER won games, he was just very boring to play against.
Swords, to me, feel like colorless 1 card combo kills against specific players and overcosted do-nothing against others. I've seen far too many people lose on turn 4-5 fifteen minutes in to a two hour game because they didn't draw their 1 cheap answer to a Sword and died after 2 hits. They're never coming back in mine. I absolutely despise the impact that they have in multiplayer games where you'll almost always be playing against 1-2 opponents who're playing those 2 colors. They're like True-Name Nemesises in that sense. You can't possibly win games with them but you will a kill player off in a non-interactive fashion.
True, I have had to maintain a fair balance of artifact/enchantment removal in my cube to counteract this. I could still probably do with one or two more artifact removal spells, but they're probably at the point right now where they're first picks, and feel very mythic, but are probably not the ultimate game-winners (Fire and Ice has helped win a game or two lately, but I'd argue that Insurrection, Blatant Thievery and Rogue's Passage have done a lot more damage, and deserve a higher billing. For the record, I love the fact that massive CC cards with high colour requirements in their casting costs are high up on this list... you'd never first-pick Insurrection or Blatant Thievery in a million years, but if you can squish them into a deck and then resolve them, you probably deserve to win anyway).
And, surprisingly, the cheapest of the five (Body and Mind) is probably the most powerful here... it's pretty easy to deck someone with it when you're all running 40-card decks (though, admittedly, "Sword of X and Y is the best of the five" is a great way to start a whole other thread).
TL;DR: Swords are fine so long as you balance accordingly with enough removal across all colours. Otherwise they are stoopidly overpowered.
The only card that's been emergency banned from my Cube is Carpet of Flowers. It was 1 mana "you win the game" and made Sol Ring look like a fair Magic card. Taking any of the Power 9 over it would have gotten you laughed out of the room. I use the term "banned cards" loosely and most of them were merely removed because they weren't fun. Emrakul wasn't winning too many games, in fact he basically NEVER won games, he was just very boring to play against.
Man, I love that card... one day I'm going to build a degenerate Carpet of Flowers / Quicksilver Fountain deck, and then kill everyone in one shot with all that mana...
And yeah, the only reason we banned those three was that they all proved unfun on multiple occasions. Tinker had always been close to brokenly good. And then someone landed a T3 Memnarch, stole someone else's artifact on T4, and then Snapcastered the Tinker on T5 to land Inkwell Leviathan to boot. Recurring Nightmare was a similar case, and then someone used it to continually swap Ashen Rider and Trike. Sylvan Primordial basically blatted an entire table thanks to Deadeye Navigator to get onto our watchlist, and then I broke it a month or two later without Deadeye (in a Gruul deck, shuffling it back in on death with Bow of Nylea, and then automagically shuffling it back towards the top with RSZ). We've swapped it for Terastodon (which is similar, but fairer, and hands out elephants, which always cheers up a sad face).
you'd never first-pick Insurrection... in a million years
It's literally the only Red card that I'll first pick and it's one of the only cards that will prevent me from forcing mono-Black as hard as I possibly can. It's a "you win the game" spell in a format where you're going to hit 8 mana. No one card has led to more instantaneous, unanswerable wins than Insurrection for us.
That would be the first thing I'd ban, then. Probably along with Craterhoof Behemoth. Why sit through an hour of drafting, deckbuilding and playing if it's going to end like that anyway?
We had actually removed it at one point very early on in the Cube's development. The problem with Red as a color is that it's worthless up until the moment that it explosively wins the game. When you start cutting the legitimately good Red cards no one has any incentive to draft it period and the last 4 picks of every pack are Red. I'm not even exaggerating; that exact scenario has happened far too frequently in our drafts and remains a problem to this day. All of the other colors have good early game, card draw, lifegain, recursion, defense, something that pulls you towards it. Red has basically nothing but explosive finishers like Blasphemous Act + Vicious Shadows (cast together as an 8 drop), Mob Rule, Insurrection, big fatties into Wildife, stuff like that. Otherwise you're just playing expensive mass removal, Forks, unexciting bodies, etc. Their gold cards are also on the weaker side of the spectrum. Boros is strong but combos like Rakdos and Izzet are mostly horrendous. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I just don't think that I can cut back on Red's power given how weak the color is in general compared to the other colors. Red only does one thing well and if you take that away from it then you can't expect people to play it.
Now, I could get behind cutting 'Hoof. Green does NOT need any help. It's the best color by far and it's completely normal to see half the table drafting it (or trying to at the very least).
Doesn't even have to be the 360 best cards, any 360 will do! You can literally just grab the charity box at your LGS and start cubing with that. All you need is basic lands.
Absolutely! Though, pro tip: When it comes to upgrading your cube, sticking good lands in it is the best way to make it feel like an upgrade. I don't think the top 35 non-basics in my cube are changing for the next decade now.
That would be the first thing I'd ban, then. Probably along with Craterhoof Behemoth. Why sit through an hour of drafting, deckbuilding and playing if it's going to end like that anyway?
To be fair, Insurrection and Blatant Thievery are only the top game-winners in my cube right now because no-one is valuing the countermagic. Every time I see one resolve without the blue players across the table batting an eyelid, I think "why the hell did you leave your counterspells in the sideboard?" (though to be fair, it's easier to get Blatant Thievery underneath countermagic, given you're already deep in blue if you're running it).
Swings and roundabouts, I suppose. If something is dominating your meta, it's easy enough to adapt the cube to counteract this in most cases (Sylvan Primordial was just too busted in too many different ways for me).
1. Drafting and playing was slow. Most ppl had never seen most of the cards and had to read them.
2. We had plenty of mana acceleration like Signets and Worn Powerstone variants, but only the veteran players picked those and gained really nice advantage from that.
There's always a few kinks to work out at the start but it's still infinitely better than dealing with constant power-level and skill-level discrepancies. As long as you remind people that Signets and such are high-priority picks they'll get there eventually and once people start learning what the "good cards" are the drafting process gets expedited over time. The biggest appeal of drafting for me is the fact that anyone can win when everyone has access to powerful cards so you get to avoid all of the dumb BS of trying to manage the power-level of your decks (and those of others) because everyone is suddenly on the same playing-field card pool wise.
I think the main negative points for the cube format are that you need to enjoy drafting and have time set aside to perform the draft in order to play this format.
If you don't enjoy the drafting process, this format will never be enjoyable. This statement applies to me.
If you don't enjoy the drafting process, this format will never be enjoyable. This statement applies to me.
I'm almost the complete opposite; I think I actually enjoy the draft session more than the resulting games. My group's draft sessions are usually full of s*** talking, teasing, boasting, and oh-ing and ah-ing all the neat cards, all while tucking into our 2nd - 3rd beers of the afternoon/evening. Back in the days when my group was able to more consistently meet, we even talked about draft beauty pageants, where folks would draft decks and receive a prize for the best looking (on paper) one.
1. Drafting and playing was slow. Most ppl had never seen most of the cards and had to read them.
2. We had plenty of mana acceleration like Signets and Worn Powerstone variants, but only the veteran players picked those and gained really nice advantage from that.
3. The casual players who often play really weak cards ect now had access to more powerful cards and they did a lot better than usually. (one of the main goals of the cube)
4. Mana curve of our cube is a bit heavy compared to your cube for example. Everybody was dropping six mana bombs and bigger : D We might try to change that, but for now its going to be a battle of wurms, dragons, giants and all kind of weird creatures.
Next time I hope the game goes a bit faster and maybe Ill give some advice about those mana rocks to all players : )
Sounds exactly like how mine started up, so I wouldn't worry - it's all a matter of the players getting used to the Limited environment.
After a good five drafts or so, the newer players will have seen enough to know:
Man, the Threat on the other side of the table always drafts those Signets, and has good games... maybe I should value those higher as I draft?
This booster I've just opened has three legitimate first-pick cards in it (not fifteen, like I thought a month back).
Oh, that's what you use {Insert 10+yo card here, e.g. Sneak Attack} for! I'm drafting that now!
After a while, the curve of the cube tends to drop as you put more efficient creatures in it, too. As long as everyone's having fun landing 6-drops, I wouldn't worry too much. Enjoy the ride!
If you don't enjoy the drafting process, this format will never be enjoyable. This statement applies to me.
I'm almost the complete opposite; I think I actually enjoy the draft session more than the resulting games. My group's draft sessions are usually full of s*** talking, teasing, boasting, and oh-ing and ah-ing all the neat cards, all while tucking into our 2nd - 3rd beers of the afternoon/evening. Back in the days when my group was able to more consistently meet, we even talked about draft beauty pageants, where folks would draft decks and receive a prize for the best looking (on paper) one.
Sounds awesome!
For me, the bit about drafting that I enjoy the most is, following on from the usual cocked-up / far-from-perfect drafts that don't come together, those nights where an entire archetype just lands in your lap on a platter. I had one of those nights about three months back where the rest of the group managed to completely draft around Orzhov and handed me Vizkopa Guildmage, Wurmcoil Engine, Sword of Light and Shadow, Baneslayer Angel and a whole mess of other lifegain stuff gift-wrapped in a parcel. There was a fair bit of wreckage that night - the Guildmage drained for 30 to finish the game. Damn, that was fun.
As the cube manager, I also take perverse delight in watching my friends crack a booster and then writhe in mental pain for five minutes while they try and decide which of the 5-6 first-picks in their booster they're willing to hand to the people to their left.
Greetings fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! I write to you today with the intention of preaching the merits of Cubing in a multiplayer setting. It's a subject that's very near-and-dear to to me since I've been playing it almost exclusively for the past 10 or so years. My metagame's ratio of Cube games to constructed ones has been roughly 10:1 at times as its easily our favorite Magic variant. It's an endlessly fun and variable format that has a "bad" habit of hooking people for life once they've gotten a taste for it. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or a young up-and-comer players bitten by the Cube bug often become life-long advocates of the format that eschew most others altogether. Throughout this article I'll discuss what Cubing is, who should Cube, why you should Cube, the issues surrounding Cube costs and even put my own Cube on display.
What is Cubing?
Cubing can be split into 2 major components, the Cube itself and the format. Simply put a Cube is a large collection of powerful Magic cards with a roughly even distribution of colors supported by various amounts of lands and artifacts. That's it. It's literally as easy as "I had these 360 cards lying around so I stuck them in a box." I know that when you see Cube threads they're always so neat, organized, cool looking, filled with expensive, powerful cards blah blah blah but let me assure you that none of that is actually important. My first Cube cost me about $250.00 and it was TERRIBLE. We had so much junk in there because it was cheap and/or we already owned it. Wanna know something? Doesn't matter! That janky Cube provided us with thousands upon thousands of hours of pure, unadulterated fun. Above all else all you need are good friends and a love for Magic because nothing else matters when it comes to multiplayer Cubing. I'll obviously still show you what my Cube looks like today and I do hope that it will help shape your own but please don't feel that money is the only way that you can have fun Cubing. A good Cube isn't one filled with Ancestral Recalls and Black Lotuses. A good Cube is one that you and your friends will enjoy drafting. In the coming sections I'll explain why they'll probably love any combination of cards at the end of the day but for now all you need to know is that a Cube is a large collection of cards.
The act of cubing, i.e. the format itself, is the plain old draft format that any Limited Mage has come to know and love throughout their Magic career. While there's many draft variations out there for the purposes of this article I'll just focus on the "regular style" since it's by far and away the most common. You know, the typical "draft 3 packs of 15 cards and build a 40+ card deck" draft format. In order to draft a Cube you must sufficiently randomize it at the beginning of every new session. This is extremely important to avoid drafting someone's exact deck the next time that you sit down to play because boy it sure it isn't fun when all of the Black cards or Green cards are sitting the same packs. Pile shuffling is the fastest and easiest method to employ since rifle shuffling is usually far too time consuming and expensive (the sleeve damage adds up fast). Regardless of how you go about it after the Cube's sufficiently randomized each player should then be asked to construct three piles of 15 cards. These represent your "packs" and in the same way that you draft 3 packs in Limited you'll typically draft 3 "packs" while Cubing. Once the piles are completed feel free to collect them so that you can distribute them randomly. You can accomplish this any numbers of ways and personally we make a big stack since it looks cool. I did say that this was fun didn't I? Each player should then be asked to randomly select a pile from the stack and draft (aka select) 1 card from it. Everyone should then be asked to pass the remaining 14 cards to the player on their right. Count the cards each time! If someone isn't the getting the correct amount, figure out why and correct the mistake. No, this has nothing to do with cheating or ill-intent. I've been Cubing for roughly 10 years now and in that time I've learned that far more often than not harmless mistakes are made when it comes to drafting. People mix piles up, pass the wrong way, pick 2 cards by accident, on and on and on. It's not a big deal, you don't need to fuss about it, just make sure that everyone gets 45 cards to build a deck with. Either way this process should then be continued until the entire pack has been drafted and each player has 15 cards. Repeat the process with the remaining 2 packs while alternating the direction in which you pass the cards after each one. That is, pack 1 is passed to the right, pack 2 is passed to the left and pack 3 is once again passed to the right. Once each player has drafted their 45 cards allot them a reasonable amount of time (10-15 minutes) to construct a 40+ card deck. Once the deck building period has run its course feel free to dive right into the action and start slinging some cards with any multiplayer format that you desire. Our format of choice is Chaos (free-for-all) but feel free to select whichever you fancy.
Why Cube?
Let's start with the obvious question: why should anyone invest in a Cube? Well, one of the most compelling reasons is that it's insanely fun! Drafting a sweet Cube deck and showing it off to your friends is a blast and anyone at any skill level can find joy in it. It also allows everyone in your playgroups to play with new and exciting archetypes even if they can't afford to spend a lot of money on the game. Whereas a budget-minded player might only be able to build and play one deck for an extended period of time Cubing ensures that things can stay fresh and exciting for everyone. Moreover, if certain cards start to become oppressive you can very easily eliminate their presence. Whereas managing a personal banned/restricted list can be a giant hassle Cubing takes away all of the stress and frustration. You just remove the problematic cards and the issue is resolved. No one is personally targeted or hindered because you're still all on equal footing.
Now, some of you might be thinking "well isn't it better to let people purchase and play with their own cards?" The short answer is "no" and here's why. First of all, one of the biggest problems with multplayer Magic is that it doesn't have a formal banned/restricted list. I have seen a lot of 4x Sol Ring and 4x Tinker decks in my day so I know how problematic that can be. House rules are a solution but they're not an inherently adequate one. Even if you declare a blanket ban on all infinite combos there are still hundreds of non-infinite, degenerate ones that'll persist (say Hive Mind + Pact of the Titan). Moreover, Magic is, in many ways, a pay-to-compete game. There's a enormous gap between "haves" and a "have nots" in the sense that most $50.00 decks will struggle to compete against player fielding ones worth thousands of dollars. As much as anyone would like to think and/or suggest otherwise the people with the deepest pockets will usually win. Furthermore, there's also a very large issue regarding player skill. People with weak card pools tend to be newer players who're just getting their feet wet with the game. They often have significantly less experience than the established pros and have a loose understanding of the game at best. What this is means is that multiplayer Magic is often comprised of seasoned veterans with extensive card pools and a firm grasp on the game competing against greenhorns with limited resources who barely know what they're doing. The outcome of this disparity is typically a scenario in which a small minority of players win the vast majority of the games (to the point of being oppressive). That doesn't create a happy, healthy environment in my experience. Finally, there are also issues with degenerate/infinite combos, horrendously unfair cards, massive disparities in overall deck power-levels, etc. While some people like to think that these issues can all be resolved with communication I can safely say that after doing this for 13+ years that that simply isn't the case. I have read countless horror stories of metas "poisoned" by overly competitive players who, even when confronted, failed to take their foot off of the gas. The typical advice given to people in those situations is usually "just don't play with those people" which is a ludicrously inadequate solution that's frequently proposed by people who've never taken said action themselves. Life is way more complicated than tossing relationships aside over a hobby like Magic and there are plenty of people who're great individuals 95% of the time but who may take Magic a bit too seriously.
Multiplayer Cubing, in my opinion, is the single best way to (more-or-less) eliminate these unbalances. By forcing everyone to adhere to the same format, playing the same cards, building the same kinds of decks, etc. you can ensure that there are no massive disparities. You can promote grindy, interactive, slow games that everyone will enjoy. Don't want combos to ruin games? Don't put them in your Cube! Hate playing against Armageddons? Don't include them! Rather than having to construct some random, personalized banned/restricted list that can't possibly make everyone happy you can just build a Cube that excludes combos and extremely unfun cards/mechanics. Furthermore, by forcing everyone to play with powerful cards you eliminate scenarios where small handfuls of players win the vast majority of the games. Absolutely anyone can cast Insurrection and win a multiplayer game which provides the newer players with a giant leg-up that they wouldn't have otherwise had. Ever since I started Cubing my personal win% has completely tanked and every game feels like a struggle where everyone can take home the win (and they do). The fact of the matter is that when absolutely every deck is filled with ramp, draw and Battlecruisers you cannot possibly hope to boast an impressive win rate. Even if you're playing against people who're new to the game if they're casting Craterhoof Behemoths on boards full of creatures then it doesn't matter how many more years of experience you have over them. You still lose... and that's good!
Who Should Cube?
Anyone who has the time for it and who has an active playgroup should strongly consider building a Cube. A typical Cube game, in my experience, lasts for roughly an hour and a half (which includes drafting, deck construction and gameplay) so if you're only able to play for 30-45 minutes between class/while on lunch then you probably shouldn't bother building one. If you have a more serious group (not serious as in "competitive," serious as in "we like playing Magic on a frequent basis and for extended periods of time") then you should absolutely make a concerted effort to construct one. I can almost guarantee that it's worth the time and energy. After all, Cubing is an amazingly complex, fun and interactive format that allows you to become a designer and player in a multiplayer format that's completely your own. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from; play it once and you'll probably be hooked for life.
The Issue Of Cost
Before moving on I feel that it's important to touch on the aspect of Cube cost. I'm going to go ahead and guess that a lot of people out there have smallish budgets like I did back when I was 20 or whatever. I'm not saying that I was dirt poor or anything, I wasn't, but I certainly couldn't afford to drop a grand on a Cube. I'm sure that a lot of people reading this are hesitant to purchase a Cube because every list that they've seen has been absolutely filled with 50$+ dollar cards. Let's be real here; a typical Powered Cube is worth more than what most of us drive. While I'm here to deliver some semi-positive news I'm not going to bull**** you about the financial aspects of Cubing. A powerful (but not necessarily Powered), unproxied Cube is probably going to cost you a couple hundred dollars at the very least. This is especially true if you're using a local game store as opposed to online vendors. The reality of the matter is that Cubes are large and virtually every card within them will cost you something (even if it's just a buck). You can try to lean heavily on commons and uncommons but you're still going to set yourself back a pretty penny. After all, it's important to remember that you're probably not going to factor in variables such as sleeves and a deck box which will both cost you legitimate sums of money. It all adds up in the end. That being said, a couple hundred dollars is actually fairly reasonable sum when you think about it as an investment. The initial cost is certainly daunting but as with any other investment it will provide its return in the long-run. While a Cube may cost you $250.00 today you could easily get 10 years worth of play out of it. Sure, you'll make updates as time goes on, but I you shouldn't need to make many serious investments after the initial one. If you're someone who's going to purchase a new deck every month or so anyways then investing in a Cube could easily save you a ton of money over time. You might have to dial back on the parties and booze for a month while you recoup your initial loss but I that's not asking for too too much I don't think. To give you an idea, my personal expenditure on cards reduced to about $50.00 annually ever since I started Cubing. I've spent less in the past 6 years on cards than I shelled-out in my first. Insofar as you can afford to make the initial investment without compromising your current quality of life then I can virtually assure you that your checking account will thank me at some point in the future.
Proxies
This is a subject that I want to tackle now because it's one that carries a lot of negative connotations in the MTG community. I'm often under the impression that people would rather suffer a painful death than play with proxies. I also get the vibe that some people consider proxy-users to be the lowest scum of the Earth. For the life of me I'll never understand why this is but at the same time I'm not going to waste my breath trying to convince everyone to embrace them. Still, I want to briefly discuss this topic for the people who aren't completely jaded on the subject. I personally believe that you can and should consider proxying a portion of your Cube. You could obvious proxy the entire thing if you were so inclined but I don't think that that's necessary. Proxying, to me, is a way for anyone to acquire cards that're unreasonable to obtain through traditional/average means. The best examples that I can provide are old, powerful spells such as Sneak Attack and true duals such as Underground Sea. By proxying these types of cards you can gain access to rare and powerful effects without having to shell out unreasonable sums of cash. How heavily you proxy will ultimately boil down to your budget and willingness to use them but I personally use them for cards that cost more than $10.00. Again, I'm not trying to push you into using proxies if you're one of those people who just plain refuses to use them. I just don't see what the big deal is myself. If I can make my Cube more fun and more powerful without breaking my checking account then I'm all for it. You can call me frugal, cheap, scum, whatever, I don't really care. No one that I've ever played with has cared if my Cubes have had proxies and I'm not above proxying fun, fair cards that I just plain can't afford.
Cube Lists
Other than my multiplayer guides a great resource to acquire Cube lists is to visit the Cube lists forum. Cubes tagged as [M] or [Multiplayer] will provide you with a solid idea of what your Cube should look like. You can also view my own personal Cube here and visit the dedicated multiplayer Cube thread here. For discussion's sake I'll post my current Cube list but by no means am I suggesting that it's the "best" multiplayer Cube or anything. It's merely the one that I personally use. Simply, I'm not going to do a big write-up on building a Cube and what kinds of cards you should consider using because there are plenty of other resources available to you for things like that. Use my Cube as a starting point if you want and just add/detract from it based on what you own and what you're looking to spend. If you have to run Guildgates over Duals because you can't afford them and you don't want to proxy them (like I did) that's absolutely fine. If you want to make swaps based on what you already own, go for it. These resources are only meant to serve as guides. At the end of the day you're going to be the one building and playing your Cube so make decisions that you'll feel comfortable with. Don't worry about me or what I think.
EDIT: In the interest of longevity please refer to the Cube link in my sig to see the most updated version of my Cube (insofar as I remember to update it every one in a while). I will never remember to update this thread and I don't want to have it list a massively outdated version of my Cube posted.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
My bad on that. My Cube is roughly 5 years old at this point (I think) so at the time it was not an option for me. I've updated it to say Three Visits instead. Thanks for pointing this out btw. I think I'll pick up actual copies of RE and Burnign of Xinye now that I know that they're affordable.
I should have have been more clear and stated that they're powerful, old and rare; not that they auto-win games. Still, the entire sentence served no actual purpose so I removed it.
I've gone on record multiple times saying that I think that Sol Ring is the absolute best casual card in the game that stands well above the others. The deck itself is purposely unpowered (LoA, Bazaar and Workshop being unofficial members of that list) and the reason why things like Sol Ring/Clamp aren't removed is because seem to enjoy playing with them and no one has asked me to remove them yet. We've removed tons and tons of cards from my Cubes throughout the years but ultimately I like to let people play with cards that they enjoy fielding and we haven't seen enough evidence to support the notion that Clamp/Sol Ring win far too frequently in our games.
Think of it as a honorable member of the power 12 alongside the other 2 broken lands hat aren't included. I honestly just didn't care enough to write all of this down when I copied my Cube on this site because I didn't think that anyone really cared about how/why various overpowered cards weren't in your Cube.
The card was asked to be removed by someone at some point many years ago. I don't remember how or why and never cared enough to add the card back in.
Don't agree with that but it's an Unpowered Cube.
When you ban Vault for being too good suddenly Key becomes too bad and gets cut. if we did add Vault back in we would have to add the enablers and Vault was HORRENDOUS for us when we tried it. Every game at some point someone would randomly win on turn 7-8. It was by far and away the winningest card and it only took a few games to realize that we couldn't possibly keep it in. Once it left all of the untappers became useless so they're no longer there.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
My bad on that. My Cube is roughly 5 years old at this point (I think) so at the time it was not an option for me. I've updated it to say Three Visits instead. Thanks for pointing this out btw. I think I'll pick up actual copies of RE and Burning of Xinye now that I know that they're affordable. I'm also 100% going to start building a lot more Wildfire decks now that I don't have to run Destructive Force. You, sir, made my night!
I should have have been more clear and stated that they're powerful, old and rare; not that they auto-win games. Still, the entire sentence served no actual purpose so I removed it. Good catch.
The Cube itself is purposely Unpowered. I'll remove the P9 from the "banned cards" section. That's needlessly confusing.
LoA is mostly there as it belongs to the "power 12" including Bazaar and Workshop.
I've gone on record multiple times saying that I think that Sol Ring is the absolute best casual card in the game that stands well above the others. The reason why things like Sol Ring/Clamp aren't removed is because people seem to enjoy playing with them and no one has asked me to remove them yet. We've removed tons and tons of cards from my Cubes throughout the years but ultimately I like to let people play with cards that they enjoy fielding and we haven't seen enough evidence to support the notion that Clamp/Sol Ring win far too frequently in our games. For the record I was being really lazy when I transcribed that stuff and most of it is coming from like 5 years ago when I built it. I was also really tired from sorting and writing my entire Cube so I didn't care enough to explain everything perfectly.
Gifts was asked to be removed by someone at some point many years ago. Yawgmoth's Will and Recoup were definitely in back then but it's possible that someone was upset about something else. Black was the best color back then (I'm pretty sure) so maybe people were just mad that it was basically a 4x Demonic Tutor when I used it in my Black decks. I don't remember how or why and never cared enough to add the card back in. When it comes to removing cards it doesn't take much to sway me so I'll cut anything that people find especially egregious. I've literally been forced to cut Tendrils of Corruption for being too good. Besides, Snappy and Ruins are in the Cube. Life from the Loam, Yawg Will, Recoup and Crucible also were at one point but Crucible basically only existed to Strip lock someone and that wasn't very fun nor powerful. It made one player miserable and by no means did the person wasting his land drop every turn have a strong chance to go on to win that game. Eventually it got cut because Strip Mine serves an important role whereas Crucible was basically only ever degenerate (it's hard to draft enough fetchlands to make it consistently useful). No one wanted Crucible in the Cube alongside Strip/Wasteland and given the choice of choosing one or the other it was an easy Stip/Waste. Unburial Rites was in the Cube at one point and so was Loyal Retainers. Black/White decks with Elesh Non/Sheoldred/Avacyn/Griselbrand/Iona were too oppressive so they got cut to make the archetype less consistent. There was so much good revival that even if you killed them once or twice they just never stopped coming back.
Eh, screw it. I'm going add Gifts back in and proxy up a Retainers again. Green needs to get knocked off its high-horse.
When you ban Time Vault for being too good suddenly Key becomes too bad and gets cut. If we did add Vault back in we would have to add the enablers and Vault was HORRENDOUS for us when we tried it. Someone would randomly win on turn 7-8 every game and there would be nothing that any of us could do about it. Counter magic isn't that great in general and people don't play every turn like they'll lose if they can't destroy an artifact at instant speed. It was by far and away the winningest card and it only took a few games to realize that we couldn't possibly keep it in. Once it left all of the untappers became useless so they're no longer there.
I'll fix that banned/restricted stuff up and post the list that we would likely agree to today (and not 3-5 years ago). Thanks for the help :).
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
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Thanks! I deleted it once that got sorted out because I've already re-typed it. I'll be more careful with my quotes in the future.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I think this is great just as an example of "best in house". If you want to build a multiplayer deck, these are the cards you should be using.
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
Yeah I fixed that just now actually. Like I said I built this thing years ago and I just remembered that I cheated and counted Urborg as a colorless land because it technically helped everyone (it allowed Fetchlands to tap for colored mana) which is why my numbers were weird. I know that I'm basically "cheating" to get an extra Black card in the Cube but I don't actually care. I'm a Black mage, sue me :P.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
However I'm afraid that black will be too powerful in multiplayer, ofcourse it's simple to say just don't put too powerful cards in the cube, but without the 'OP' cards I'm afraid the opposite will happen - black being too weak. Are there multiplayer black cards which would fit nicely in between the "OMG this is too powerful" and "now it's pretty much just a meh support color".
Also - this is something I haven't been able to find yet - is there something like a multiplayer (preferably peasant) cube 'staple' list I can look at to see how the power/utility is divided amongst the colors?
Black isn't even close to being the best color. Green is the strongest color by far.
Not that I'm aware of.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I've tried a 3 player FFA Cube EXACTLY once (about 5-6 hours, so 5-6 games total) and I completely refuse to ever waste my time doing it again. I don't think that 3 player anything can be reasonably fun. It combines the worst aspects of duels and multiplayer play without offering any of the advantages. This isn't just Limited to Magic either mind you as I've never enjoyed any 3 player activity. So no, I personally wouldn't recommend 3 player Cubing but then again I'd never suggest playing 3 player Magic in general.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Anything >= 4 is sufficiently adequate.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I'm pretty sure I've done a three-player sealed pool out of my cube, and that was OK. I wouldn't be drafting it, though, I don't think. Four is a really good number, though... you get through the draft quickly, and get a good number of games in.
A few of the 1vs1 cube guys are currently advocating a two-player draft method called Burn-Four... the general idea is that you draft a card, and then pick four to pull out of the booster and leave undrafted before passing the pack (essentially burning the four cards, as per poker terminology). I'm yet to try it with my cube, but it's apparently a bucketload of fun.
Also, to carry on Prid3's theme of "what about the cost" when it comes to building a cube, here's the thing... sod the cost, just find the 360 best cards you have right now. It doesn't matter if half of them are rank commons or bulk-bin rares. Even in this scenario, Cube is fun anyway. My initial cube spent the first 12-18 months of its life being a Lorwyn Tribal Frankenstein before I was able to budget getting some decent power into it (I had a common/uncommon Lorwyn playset lying around, and that filled out a fair bit of the initial cube). And even though it was quite tribal-oriented, it was still incredible fun to draft and play with. It caught on in my playgroup anyway. And you'll find that about half your playgroup will enjoy the discussion/banter/debate/argument on what to swap in and out of the cube, too (I have about 8-10 in my playgroup, and 4-5 of them generally enjoy helping me make the cube changes).
If you do want to spend the money, my cube went up a cog in power level by adding the Shocks, Fetches, Swords and Titans. And, I should add, it cost me a fair bit more back when I made those changes that it would now - the Onslaught fetches have been reprinted, the Zendikar fetches are no doubt in the queue somewhere, and the Titans and a couple of the newer Swords have dropped in value somewhat. And I didn't just do this all in one expensive hit - I traded, sent in buylists, and did the upgrade in increments. Cube is a resilient-enough format that you're probably not going to unbalance things by not doing all of this at once (in fact, finding the unbalanced stuff is half the fun).
Our group has only banned three cards in the cube's entire lifetime - Tinker, Recurring Nightmare and Sylvan Primordial. There are a couple of other obvious ones that we've never put in (hi there Limited Resources!), as we tend to encourage unoppresive open play, and the first three are probably free to come back in if the power level in the rest of the cube rises to catch up (which it no doubt will at some point, thanks to power creep), but the fact that it's taken me four years to ban just three cards should tell you how balanced a format this can be.
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Agreed.
Swords, to me, feel like colorless 1 card combo kills against specific players and overcosted do-nothing against others. I've seen far too many people lose on turn 4-5 fifteen minutes in to a two hour game because they didn't draw their 1 cheap answer to a Sword and died after 2 hits. They're never coming back in mine. I absolutely despise the impact that they have in multiplayer games where you'll almost always be playing against 1-2 opponents who're playing those 2 colors. They're like True-Name Nemesises in that sense. You can't possibly win games with them but you will a kill player off in a non-interactive fashion.
The only card that's been emergency banned from my Cube is Carpet of Flowers. It was 1 mana "you win the game" and made Sol Ring look like a fair Magic card. Taking any of the Power 9 over it would have gotten you laughed out of the room. I use the term "banned cards" loosely and most of them were merely removed because they weren't fun. Emrakul wasn't winning too many games, in fact he basically NEVER won games, he was just very boring to play against.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
True, I have had to maintain a fair balance of artifact/enchantment removal in my cube to counteract this. I could still probably do with one or two more artifact removal spells, but they're probably at the point right now where they're first picks, and feel very mythic, but are probably not the ultimate game-winners (Fire and Ice has helped win a game or two lately, but I'd argue that Insurrection, Blatant Thievery and Rogue's Passage have done a lot more damage, and deserve a higher billing. For the record, I love the fact that massive CC cards with high colour requirements in their casting costs are high up on this list... you'd never first-pick Insurrection or Blatant Thievery in a million years, but if you can squish them into a deck and then resolve them, you probably deserve to win anyway).
And, surprisingly, the cheapest of the five (Body and Mind) is probably the most powerful here... it's pretty easy to deck someone with it when you're all running 40-card decks (though, admittedly, "Sword of X and Y is the best of the five" is a great way to start a whole other thread).
TL;DR: Swords are fine so long as you balance accordingly with enough removal across all colours. Otherwise they are stoopidly overpowered.
Man, I love that card... one day I'm going to build a degenerate Carpet of Flowers / Quicksilver Fountain deck, and then kill everyone in one shot with all that mana...
And yeah, the only reason we banned those three was that they all proved unfun on multiple occasions.
Tinker had always been close to brokenly good. And then someone landed a T3 Memnarch, stole someone else's artifact on T4, and then Snapcastered the Tinker on T5 to land Inkwell Leviathan to boot.
Recurring Nightmare was a similar case, and then someone used it to continually swap Ashen Rider and Trike.
Sylvan Primordial basically blatted an entire table thanks to Deadeye Navigator to get onto our watchlist, and then I broke it a month or two later without Deadeye (in a Gruul deck, shuffling it back in on death with Bow of Nylea, and then automagically shuffling it back towards the top with RSZ). We've swapped it for Terastodon (which is similar, but fairer, and hands out elephants, which always cheers up a sad face).
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It's literally the only Red card that I'll first pick and it's one of the only cards that will prevent me from forcing mono-Black as hard as I possibly can. It's a "you win the game" spell in a format where you're going to hit 8 mana. No one card has led to more instantaneous, unanswerable wins than Insurrection for us.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
We had actually removed it at one point very early on in the Cube's development. The problem with Red as a color is that it's worthless up until the moment that it explosively wins the game. When you start cutting the legitimately good Red cards no one has any incentive to draft it period and the last 4 picks of every pack are Red. I'm not even exaggerating; that exact scenario has happened far too frequently in our drafts and remains a problem to this day. All of the other colors have good early game, card draw, lifegain, recursion, defense, something that pulls you towards it. Red has basically nothing but explosive finishers like Blasphemous Act + Vicious Shadows (cast together as an 8 drop), Mob Rule, Insurrection, big fatties into Wildife, stuff like that. Otherwise you're just playing expensive mass removal, Forks, unexciting bodies, etc. Their gold cards are also on the weaker side of the spectrum. Boros is strong but combos like Rakdos and Izzet are mostly horrendous. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I just don't think that I can cut back on Red's power given how weak the color is in general compared to the other colors. Red only does one thing well and if you take that away from it then you can't expect people to play it.
Now, I could get behind cutting 'Hoof. Green does NOT need any help. It's the best color by far and it's completely normal to see half the table drafting it (or trying to at the very least).
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Absolutely! Though, pro tip: When it comes to upgrading your cube, sticking good lands in it is the best way to make it feel like an upgrade. I don't think the top 35 non-basics in my cube are changing for the next decade now.
To be fair, Insurrection and Blatant Thievery are only the top game-winners in my cube right now because no-one is valuing the countermagic. Every time I see one resolve without the blue players across the table batting an eyelid, I think "why the hell did you leave your counterspells in the sideboard?" (though to be fair, it's easier to get Blatant Thievery underneath countermagic, given you're already deep in blue if you're running it).
Swings and roundabouts, I suppose. If something is dominating your meta, it's easy enough to adapt the cube to counteract this in most cases (Sylvan Primordial was just too busted in too many different ways for me).
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There's always a few kinks to work out at the start but it's still infinitely better than dealing with constant power-level and skill-level discrepancies. As long as you remind people that Signets and such are high-priority picks they'll get there eventually and once people start learning what the "good cards" are the drafting process gets expedited over time. The biggest appeal of drafting for me is the fact that anyone can win when everyone has access to powerful cards so you get to avoid all of the dumb BS of trying to manage the power-level of your decks (and those of others) because everyone is suddenly on the same playing-field card pool wise.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
If you don't enjoy the drafting process, this format will never be enjoyable. This statement applies to me.
I'm almost the complete opposite; I think I actually enjoy the draft session more than the resulting games. My group's draft sessions are usually full of s*** talking, teasing, boasting, and oh-ing and ah-ing all the neat cards, all while tucking into our 2nd - 3rd beers of the afternoon/evening. Back in the days when my group was able to more consistently meet, we even talked about draft beauty pageants, where folks would draft decks and receive a prize for the best looking (on paper) one.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Sounds exactly like how mine started up, so I wouldn't worry - it's all a matter of the players getting used to the Limited environment.
After a good five drafts or so, the newer players will have seen enough to know:
After a while, the curve of the cube tends to drop as you put more efficient creatures in it, too. As long as everyone's having fun landing 6-drops, I wouldn't worry too much. Enjoy the ride!
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Sounds awesome!
For me, the bit about drafting that I enjoy the most is, following on from the usual cocked-up / far-from-perfect drafts that don't come together, those nights where an entire archetype just lands in your lap on a platter. I had one of those nights about three months back where the rest of the group managed to completely draft around Orzhov and handed me Vizkopa Guildmage, Wurmcoil Engine, Sword of Light and Shadow, Baneslayer Angel and a whole mess of other lifegain stuff gift-wrapped in a parcel. There was a fair bit of wreckage that night - the Guildmage drained for 30 to finish the game. Damn, that was fun.
As the cube manager, I also take perverse delight in watching my friends crack a booster and then writhe in mental pain for five minutes while they try and decide which of the 5-6 first-picks in their booster they're willing to hand to the people to their left.
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