Just curious but would anyone have a few rules on how they would approach this so I could free up space in my guild section? My cube's been changing quite quickly lately and I don't know if I should just lable hybrids and splits as guild cards or find slots they can go in for mono colored as i've seen others talk about but I have no experience doing myself.
If a card only sees play in one of the two colors, or is played without access to one of the two colors, it's probably fine to slot it into one of the corresponding sections. Playing Dryad Militant in white if you don't support green aggro decks, for example. I don't have any cards that meet those requirements, but they exist out there for some groups, depending on the construction of the cube and what decks/archetypes are supported.
Personally, I classify everything where it's best, and hybrid or not, the cards are better in their respective guild sections. Plus, moving a hybrid to a mono-colored section to make room for more gold sounds like a bad idea to me. The net result is taking out a mono-colored card and adding a gold card, which reduces the average playability of the cards in the cube. I would just exclude the lesser gold cards, play more mono-colored cards and more hybrids in place of gold, and leave the mono-colored sections with a higher number of cards. It makes the cards in the cube more playable.
Just classify things how you want to. It's your cube, after all.
We classify Dryad Militant as a white card because we don't support green aggro. We classify Kitchen Finks as a Selesnya card because it's played in both green and white decks.
I haven't played my cube in a while, but I organize it this way a little bit. I include hybrid in mono-color sections symmetrically, but only for hybrids that have two color symbols or less. For example, Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap can each be played as a 1CC.
I don't do it evenly, so only white, black, red, and green have 1 hybrid in each. I add them in pairs (as if each hybrid counts as 1/2 of it's colors) so the overall number of each color is roughly the same. White/green has a pair (Dryad Militant/Kitchen Finks) and red/black has a pair (Fulminator Mage/Rakdos Cackler).
If there were more good hybrid pairs, I would probably consider adding them. I don't think this method is "the best" but I like opening up a couple more slots in Selesnya and Rakdos for interesting or iconic cards like Knight of the Reliquary. I also think the extra cards are more creatures, and I try whenever possible to give edges to aggressive creature decks in my cube.
I think this largely depends on the card quality of the guild. In deep sections like Selesnya you're not sacrificing much by squeezing another gold/hybrid card in over a mono-colored card. I too have moved Dryad Militant and Finks to White and Green repectively. In contrast, my Boros section still has Figure and Reckoner because the 6th or 7th choice in that color pair are undoubtedly weaker than the bottom 5-10 cards in either my white or red sections.
Where you position hybrids depends on how they are most typically played. A card like Turn/Burn will only be playable in straight Izzet whereas Life/Death is often played in B/x reanimator decks so fitting it into your black section makes more sense.
Dryad Militant in white and Rakdos Cackler in red are two examples of hybrids I classify in a mono-colored section. I also classify Squee & all the cards with Phyrexian mana as colorless.
In the beginning I was so strict on rules of balancing & organizing my Cube. Now I just do what makes the most sense (even with slightly unbalanced sections) and the results have been great.
Some of the best Cube advice I've learned is to not be a slave to rules
I keep hybrids and split cards in my guild section for organizational purposes, but I count them differently for overall color balance. Each guild is allowed up to 4 true gold cards, but as many split cards or hybrid cards as I want to run. And when I'm tallying up cards for color balance purpose, I count each mono color card plus each multi color card with that color. As long as each color is within 1 or 2 of the rest, then that is balanced. This system means I don't have to make Dryad Militant compete for apace with Mirari's Wake, but also makes sure that each color overall has the same average number of viable picks per pack as every other color.
The same question can also be asked of cards like Kird Ape or Loam Lion. By mana cost they might be seen as mono-colored, but really they aren't. I put Kird Ape in Gruul and Murderous Redcap in Black, personally. I like that the hybrid costs allow me to shift a card to a different color to make room if need be. If I want to add more black cards, I can always shift Redcap to my red section, for example.
Personally, I classify everything where it's best, and hybrid or not, the cards are better in their respective guild sections. Plus, moving a hybrid to a mono-colored section to make room for more gold sounds like a bad idea to me. The net result is taking out a mono-colored card and adding a gold card, which reduces the average playability of the cards in the cube. I would just exclude the lesser gold cards, play more mono-colored cards and more hybrids in place of gold, and leave the mono-colored sections with a higher number of cards. It makes the cards in the cube more playable.
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We classify Dryad Militant as a white card because we don't support green aggro. We classify Kitchen Finks as a Selesnya card because it's played in both green and white decks.
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I don't do it evenly, so only white, black, red, and green have 1 hybrid in each. I add them in pairs (as if each hybrid counts as 1/2 of it's colors) so the overall number of each color is roughly the same. White/green has a pair (Dryad Militant/Kitchen Finks) and red/black has a pair (Fulminator Mage/Rakdos Cackler).
If there were more good hybrid pairs, I would probably consider adding them. I don't think this method is "the best" but I like opening up a couple more slots in Selesnya and Rakdos for interesting or iconic cards like Knight of the Reliquary. I also think the extra cards are more creatures, and I try whenever possible to give edges to aggressive creature decks in my cube.
Where you position hybrids depends on how they are most typically played. A card like Turn/Burn will only be playable in straight Izzet whereas Life/Death is often played in B/x reanimator decks so fitting it into your black section makes more sense.
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In the beginning I was so strict on rules of balancing & organizing my Cube. Now I just do what makes the most sense (even with slightly unbalanced sections) and the results have been great.
Some of the best Cube advice I've learned is to not be a slave to rules
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