I'm really curious about this so has anyone else tried making a cube of a specific standard season? Kind of like maybe a 93/94 cube but with different sets? Right now i'm planning a Theros to Origins cube because i really liked the cards in these sets and i just wondered if anyone has done the same thing before. Theros to Origins has 8 sets in total so i think i can make a pretty decent cube. If i remember correctly 93/94 cubes use 7 sets, Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark.
I saw someone that had a cube like that before. It's typically a core set and two blocks, and represented constructed play from a specific time in standard. I saw one with Tempest Block and Urza's Block and the core set there, and it ran multiples so that the common decks of the era could be drafted.
There are a lot of cubes out there that also run a "unified block" theme, where they play the original block and the "return" block to get the sets together. A lot of Ravnica, Mirrodin and Zendikar cubes do this.
I saw someone that had a cube like that before. It's typically a core set and two blocks, and represented constructed play from a specific time in standard. I saw one with Tempest Block and Urza's Block and the core set there, and it ran multiples so that the common decks of the era could be drafted.
There are a lot of cubes out there that also run a "unified block" theme, where they play the original block and the "return" block to get the sets together. A lot of Ravnica, Mirrodin and Zendikar cubes do this.
Originally i wanted to make a Khans block cube that was singleton but i set that plan aside first and just decided to wait for Return to Tarkir to make a better unified block cube. What do you think of Standard Season cubes like this though?
All the themed cubes that I've planed have been fun, but lack the depth to have them be a blast forever. They were cool for a few drafts, but the environment grew stale because of the lack of fresh blood rotating in and out of them.
You do have a point there, what's your opinion on M15-Frame only cubes though? Making a Powered cube without proxies (but using IE CE) would be very expensive even in non-foil so i figured that the next best thing could be a cube made from M15 onward. That would take care of the environment getting stale and over time the cube wouldn't have any fillers and would be just full of good stuff like a normal cube.
Not sure if this is the right place but...
So i see many people running Champion of the parish as a white aggro drop, my question is how many human u need to play in white to justify its inclusion, I run 700 unpowered (weird size i know) and i have 18 humans in white, that doesnt seem like nearly enough right....
How many other humans do you have in your other colors? I don't think that the player who drafted Champion of the Parish will stick to mono white and will usually include one other color. If you have say around 30-ish humans all in all in cube it could be run i guess.
I run him, but my density of humans is a lot higher than yours. Also, the only relevant humans to count are the ones at low mana costs in aggressive colors. As long as you can reliably get a counter on Champion he's a solid aggro creature. If he's not very reliable there's no real argument for running him since there are plenty of white 2-power one drops now.
I run 51 Humans + 2 Changeling, and I opted to cut Champion of the Parish. Say you play it in T1, what would you follow up with it on T2? Black 1 and 2 drops are heavily Zombies, Green are elves.. Then you realise that the volume of humans don't help much if humans don't fit your curve.
I've just written a small article about a new type of draft my playgroup and I have develop recently. The draft format is mainly dedictate to quick 1 on 1 cube session and testing has shown so far it can do a pretty decent job. You can take a look at it if you want to. I think you might find it interesting.
This may be a supid question because I'm new to cube, but how do I balance archetypes and colors? Playtesting is obvious, but if I love Vent Sentinel and the best walls in the game are green, and red green is generally a ramp deck in cube, how do I balance multiple archetypes into multiple colors? When I'm building my cube, should I start with archetypes or cards I want to play with?
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The best way IMO is ensuring overlap between archetypes. For example, making sure most of your fatties are effective Sneak Attack targets as well as working in ramp and reanimator decks. That may be difficult to do in your case if you're trying to add a bunch of walls to the traditionally aggressive red deck, but if you don't mind lowering the power level, anything can be viable.
Like you said though, testing is the only way to really know if it will work.
So that I've got the nerves up to get started, what are some common cube archetypes for each two-color pair? I've drafted cube before, but sometimes the archetypes aren't as obvious during the draft as they are in gameplay.
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Check out this thread on cube archetypes, I guarantee you'll find some interesting ideas for archetypes for your cube you might not have thought of. Right now I'm actively supporting fatty cheat, reanimator, RecSur, token/anthem, super ramp, stax, Twin combo, and Wildfire. In the past I've supported blink, Fires, Warrior tribal, and hatebears. I'm considering experimenting with some tribal themes in Soldiers, Zombies, and Goblins.
The thing about archetypes is they often take up more than one color pair, and often times new archetypes will emerge that you're not even explicitly trying to support just because you're running versatile cards with a lot of different interactions. When your drafters start finding interesting decks that they like to play out of what's already in your cube, start adding more support to those decks.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I agree with everything in Spike Rogue's post. I do think having some ideas for archetypes is good. It can help give you direction when designing the cube. For example, in my cube BW is heavily focused on token decks. You could pick up some anthems and make that an aggro tokens kind of deck, or you could pick up cards like Braids and Smokestack and break the symmetry with token generators.
However, the pieces of that archetype (Lingering Souls, token generating planeswalkers, sacrifice effects, anthems) are all good in other decks anyway. You could also just build an Orzhov aggro or control deck depending on what's passed to you. There aren't very many cards in my cube that are only good in one archetype, and if so, they need to be excellent in that archetype.
I want the tools to be there for a UR artifact deck, but there's nothing stopping a person from cherry-picking the blue artifact cards and combining with cards like Blade Splicer and Venser, the Sojourner to create a hybrid blink/artifact deck. There's a lot of crossover there anyway with Crystal Shard, Whirler Rogue, Myr Battlesphere, etc. I didn't necessarily explicitly plan every single one of those interactions, but it's an example of how archetypes can cross-polinate in cube in really cool ways.
Part of the fun of cube is getting to sandbox a little. I like to think of it as giving players some guidelines and some tools and letting them innovate and find fun interactions rather than setting up hard and fast color-pair archetypes.
Had a weird moment last night where someone took a Backup Plan over a Black Lotus in a glimpse/burn draft and there was a serious debate about which was actually better. It felt kind of crazy hearing the words come out of my mouth and the thoughts go through my head, but I honestly think Backup Plan is one of if not the best card you could possibly have in cube and could be better than most if not all the other options.
While Black Lotus is the card that is winning the game, it's so rare to see the Backup Plan player have an opener that doesn't work out or straight up win them the game. The more focused your deck is on an archetype/plan, the better Backup Plan plays too. With cards like Tinker, Recurring Nightmare, or other enablers, being able to find those at such a higher percentage is frankly insane. Plus Backup Plan is amazing in literally any deck; no matter where you end up after P1P1, your deck wants a Backup Plan.
A lot of people will prob think Im crazy for saying all of that, but the more we play with and see Backup Plan dominate matches, the harder it is for us to pass it over anything.
My Theros-M15-Khans-Origins Cube (Trimming)
There are a lot of cubes out there that also run a "unified block" theme, where they play the original block and the "return" block to get the sets together. A lot of Ravnica, Mirrodin and Zendikar cubes do this.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Originally i wanted to make a Khans block cube that was singleton but i set that plan aside first and just decided to wait for Return to Tarkir to make a better unified block cube. What do you think of Standard Season cubes like this though?
My Theros-M15-Khans-Origins Cube (Trimming)
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
My Theros-M15-Khans-Origins Cube (Trimming)
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
So i see many people running Champion of the parish as a white aggro drop, my question is how many human u need to play in white to justify its inclusion, I run 700 unpowered (weird size i know) and i have 18 humans in white, that doesnt seem like nearly enough right....
My Theros-M15-Khans-Origins Cube (Trimming)
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
There is the link to the article :
Zetsu's Cube on CubeTutor.com
Zetsu's Ebay MTG Online Store
Zetsu's Poker Draft Method
Or are you interested in a Fiora flavor cube? Conspire and win!
Level 2 Judge
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Like you said though, testing is the only way to really know if it will work.
The thing about archetypes is they often take up more than one color pair, and often times new archetypes will emerge that you're not even explicitly trying to support just because you're running versatile cards with a lot of different interactions. When your drafters start finding interesting decks that they like to play out of what's already in your cube, start adding more support to those decks.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
However, the pieces of that archetype (Lingering Souls, token generating planeswalkers, sacrifice effects, anthems) are all good in other decks anyway. You could also just build an Orzhov aggro or control deck depending on what's passed to you. There aren't very many cards in my cube that are only good in one archetype, and if so, they need to be excellent in that archetype.
I want the tools to be there for a UR artifact deck, but there's nothing stopping a person from cherry-picking the blue artifact cards and combining with cards like Blade Splicer and Venser, the Sojourner to create a hybrid blink/artifact deck. There's a lot of crossover there anyway with Crystal Shard, Whirler Rogue, Myr Battlesphere, etc. I didn't necessarily explicitly plan every single one of those interactions, but it's an example of how archetypes can cross-polinate in cube in really cool ways.
Part of the fun of cube is getting to sandbox a little. I like to think of it as giving players some guidelines and some tools and letting them innovate and find fun interactions rather than setting up hard and fast color-pair archetypes.
While Black Lotus is the card that is winning the game, it's so rare to see the Backup Plan player have an opener that doesn't work out or straight up win them the game. The more focused your deck is on an archetype/plan, the better Backup Plan plays too. With cards like Tinker, Recurring Nightmare, or other enablers, being able to find those at such a higher percentage is frankly insane. Plus Backup Plan is amazing in literally any deck; no matter where you end up after P1P1, your deck wants a Backup Plan.
A lot of people will prob think Im crazy for saying all of that, but the more we play with and see Backup Plan dominate matches, the harder it is for us to pass it over anything.
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(That's actually why I took it out of my cube, but my cube is unpowered. I'd run it in powered cube I think.)