I know that if I pulled most of my 3 color generals it should still work as a regular EDH-less Multiplayer Cube, but I just haven't tested it for that.
Ah, that would be my special subject.
If you want to keep the cube limited to just four people, you want a 180-card cube. Any more, and you want to add another 45 cards per person - this is the equivalent of three 15-card boosters. The standard cube size (if there is such a thing) is 360, catering for eight people.
My cube is probably a good starting point - I've been hacking away at it for four years now, and most of its development is in the cube list thread. You can also give it a test draft at CubeTutor... just follow the links in my sig below. Other people who have good dedicated multiplayer cubes in the Cube Lists subforum are Prid3, Miaou, Blueduck and Psionic_ita (and there's probably a few newer ones in there too).
My archetypes are fairly loose these days, but I vaguely support the following:
That's off the top of my head, anyway - there's a fair bit of tribal in there due to the cube starting with a lot of Lorwyn onboard, and because it's fairly well-loved by my meta. There are certainly other things that work together very well. Simic appears to be a particularly strong combination ATM.
For you, I'd just smash together what you can and play the heck out of it - you'll figure out what doesn't work fairly quickly. Though if you're playing with four consistently, I'd definitely consider a couple of 2HG-centric cards like Serra Ascendant (in case you want to flip over to team games every now and then for a bit of variety).
I think the thing to keep in mind with multiplayer cube construction is, in addition to overall card power and efficiency, inclusions should take into consideration some of the following factors:
Can/will the card affect more than one opponent?
Can I get multiple uses out of a one-shot effect (flashback, unearth, rebound, etc)?
Can I still get value out of burnt out/dead cards?
Will my permanents accomplish something before 2+ players have a chance to respond?
Can my permanents threaten more than one opponent?
Do my cards scale well depending on the number of players or at any point in the game?
Can the cards I include accrue value over the course of a long game?
Can the cards I include reliably change the table's dynamic, even late into a multiplayer game?
Can my cards reliably build value engines?
I was about using conspiracy as base and cutting away vanilla creatures, creatures with just keyword abilities (eg. typhoid rats) and maybe those multikicker dudes (eg. skitter of lizards).
Also in conspiracy you have cards cogwork librarian and lore seeker but I can never see anybody actually putting this in their deck and are mainly for the drafting. I'd like to someway fix this.
EDIT: I don't intend to make the cube just for 4 people but in most cases I can only get 4 people together. 8 people is theoretically possible.
I was about using conspiracy as base and cutting away vanilla creatures, creatures with just keyword abilities (eg. typhoid rats) and maybe those multikicker dudes (eg. skitter of lizards).
Also in conspiracy you have cards cogwork librarian and lore seeker but I can never see anybody actually putting this in their deck and are mainly for the drafting. I'd like to someway fix this.
Are you only going Pauper/Peasant? Aside from Librarian and Seeker none of those are cards I would ever use in Cube unless I was restricted to C/UC.
Conspiracy was a great limited set, and would probably make a fine jumping off point for a multiplayer cube.
Be that as it may, some of the cards you've mentioned cutting would actually be cards I'd personally include:
Typhoid rats - for 1 mana, you have a cheap and effective deterrent against being attacked by multiple opponents; no one wants to lose a valuable attacker to a 1 drop rat (especially if it leaves them exposed to other players or a counter attack).
Librarian and loreseeker are basically cube staples at this point - these would be some of the absolute last cards I'd personally cut from a multiplayer cube!
Skitter - kicker and multicker cards are fantastic inclusions in a multiplayer environment, as the caster has the option to scale them up as their mana resources develop over the game. Skitter is certainly not the best multikicker card out there, but it certainly shouldn't be discounted!
Siren and flailing ogre fail the evaluation test of "given a choice, the opponent will typically pick the option least injurious to themselves and most injurious to the card's caster." The ogre also takes a lot of control out of its owner's hands. These cards seem like the kinds of stuff in an EDH "group hug" deck, a much maligned archetype and style of play...
I'd very much recommend the OP check out the Multiplayer and EDH cube discussion linked below. There's a lot of great tips for constructing and evaluating cards for multiplayer games. I'd also recommend checking out the causal and edh forums here on mtgs, as discussions in those sections frequently touch upon how to approach deck building and tactics in a multiplayer setting.
Conspiracy was a great limited set, and would probably make a fine jumping off point for a multiplayer cube.
Be that as it may, some of the cards you've mentioned cutting would actually be cards I'd personally include:
Typhoid rats - for 1 mana, you have a cheap and effective deterrent against being attacked by multiple opponents; no one wants to lose a valuable attacker to a 1 drop rat (especially if it leaves them exposed to other players or a counter attack).
Librarian and loreseeker are basically cube staples at this point - these would be some of the absolute last cards I'd personally cut from a multiplayer cube!
Skitter - kicker and multicker cards are fantastic inclusions in a multiplayer environment, as the caster has the option to scale them up as their mana resources develop over the game. Skitter is certainly not the best multikicker card out there, but it certainly shouldn't be discounted!
Siren and flailing ogre fail the evaluation test of "given a choice, the opponent will typically pick the option least injurious to themselves and most injurious to the card's caster." The ogre also takes a lot of control out of its owner's hands. These cards seem like the kinds of stuff in an EDH "group hug" deck, a much maligned archetype and style of play...
I'd very much recommend the OP check out the Multiplayer and EDH cube discussion linked below. There's a lot of great tips for constructing and evaluating cards for multiplayer games. I'd also recommend checking out the causal and edh forums here on mtgs, as discussions in those sections frequently touch upon how to approach deck building and tactics in a multiplayer setting.
I don't want remove lore seeker or librarian but do you see anybody ever maindecking these cards? I want there to be a reason to maindeck lore seeker.
I just don't see multikicker dudes being interesting. They are just on the curve vanilla creatures.
Reason why I think siren and ogre are cool is because with siren you can target an opponent with no creatures or very low threat creatures and then steal something from some other player. Ogre in 1v1 setting just ends being a race but in multiplayer it is a tool. "Hey pump my ogre and then I'll give my humble defector to you."
I don't want remove lore seeker or librarian but do you see anybody ever maindecking these cards? I want there to be a reason to maindeck lore seeker.
I just don't see multikicker dudes being interesting. They are just on the curve vanilla creatures.
I don't think either of those cards were intended to be main decked, outside of somekind of deck building disaster for the player, post-draft. They're intended as fun and interesting ways of spicing up the draft phase itself, which both due an admirable job of. Deal Broker is probably the only real main-deckable one, as a 2/3 looter for 3 isn't that bad in a multiplayer game.
Just to repeat, I wouldn't get hung up on whether these cards are actually usable in decks or not. They are worth including in practically any cube as a way of increasing the dynamism and freedom of players to draft the cards and decks they want.
For themes I think red should get grouphuggie cards, flailing dudes, death by dragons, humble defector...
I have a spare karador so I've kept abzan cycling dudes. Also I want to bant have "cawblade", add in Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and you have a wombo combo deck.
Definitely look at CadaverousBl00m's list, he's one of the few active multiplayer Cube posters here. Prid3 also has one you could take a look at, I believe.
There's a Multiplayer/EDH Cube Thread, though Gals, Dolono, and myself tend to dominate it with EDH-specific talk.
As far as size goes, there are a few decent options.
180 will give you exactly enough cards to draft with four people, each having 3x packs of 15. This is ideal if you want to have a guarantee that every card shows up in a given draft. Perfect information helps you to pick up and send signals, and you can include two-card combos with the expectation that players can connect those cards with some regularity.
360 gives you enough to draft with up to 8 players. Additionally, you can do Sealed with 6x packs for four players. This is a good size if you ever find yourself drafting with more than just the same four people, or if you want to mix things up by doing Sealed's as well. Also, it adds more variance between the drafts, and you can set up two 4-man drafts to fire back to back, each with half the Cube.
540 is another possible size. This lets you Sealed with 6 players, draft with up to twelve (two pods of six or one big pod), and, most importantly, Glimpse Draft with four. Glimpse draft gives each player nine packs, and after each pick, the player chooses 2 cards in the pack to "burn" and remove from the draft entirely. This is a highly-strategic draft type that makes you think a lot about what you do and don't want to see in each draft, adding both variance and a high degree of consistency in what you can expect to see. It also makes for overall higher-powered decks, as each player gets nine first picks. 540 also lets you fire three back-to-back 4-man drafts without having to reshuffle the Cube between.
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I totally neglected to point you at the last three years' worth of Multiplayer Power Rankings results in my sig, too.
Because, you know, there'd be nothing valuable to help people building Multiplayer cubes in there, would there...
The power rankings are something I try to do each year between the Multiplayer and Cube forums here. I've found their results helpful for my own cube too. I'm aware that the EDH Multiplayer forum has its own best cards list - that might be of some use too.
I was also thinking of the conspiracies themselves, given you're building from Conspiracy. Some people do run these. Worldknit and Double Stroke are both considered quite good.
I was think that for some archeotypes I think I'll go:
Jeskai: artifacts and walls matter
Bant: Name matters or "gotta catch them all"
Esper: Voting is a thing
I don't have much idea what to do with rest of the guilds/shards so if you have any idea let me know. I also was thinking if I included maybe one or two unhinged cards. Something like frankie peanuts seems fun in multiplayer.
How big the cube should be? I usually play with 4 people.
What sort of archetypes I should go for?
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
I'm out then.
I know that if I pulled most of my 3 color generals it should still work as a regular EDH-less Multiplayer Cube, but I just haven't tested it for that.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
If you want to keep the cube limited to just four people, you want a 180-card cube. Any more, and you want to add another 45 cards per person - this is the equivalent of three 15-card boosters. The standard cube size (if there is such a thing) is 360, catering for eight people.
My cube is probably a good starting point - I've been hacking away at it for four years now, and most of its development is in the cube list thread. You can also give it a test draft at CubeTutor... just follow the links in my sig below. Other people who have good dedicated multiplayer cubes in the Cube Lists subforum are Prid3, Miaou, Blueduck and Psionic_ita (and there's probably a few newer ones in there too).
My archetypes are fairly loose these days, but I vaguely support the following:
- Izzet Spells-Matter (e.g. Guttersnipe, Young Pyro, Talrand)
- GW Enchantress (e.g. Verduran, Enchantress's Presence, Ancestral Mask)
- Knight Tribal (e.g. Knight Exemplar, Kinsbaile Cavalier)
- Soldier Tribal (e.g. Captain of the Watch, Field Marshal, Knight-Captain of Eos)
- Mill (e.g. Sword of Body and Mind, Consuming Aberration, Extract from Darkness)
- Zombie Tribal (e.g. Death Baron, Noxious Ghoul, Lord of the Undead)
- Dragon Tribal (e.g. Sarkhan's Triumph, Utvara Hellkite, Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury)
- Blue Artifact (e.g. Vedalken Archmage, Memnarch, Inkwell Leviathan)
- Reanimation (e.g. Havengul Lich, Chainer, Coffin Queen)
That's off the top of my head, anyway - there's a fair bit of tribal in there due to the cube starting with a lot of Lorwyn onboard, and because it's fairly well-loved by my meta. There are certainly other things that work together very well. Simic appears to be a particularly strong combination ATM.For you, I'd just smash together what you can and play the heck out of it - you'll figure out what doesn't work fairly quickly. Though if you're playing with four consistently, I'd definitely consider a couple of 2HG-centric cards like Serra Ascendant (in case you want to flip over to team games every now and then for a bit of variety).
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Can/will the card affect more than one opponent?
Can I get multiple uses out of a one-shot effect (flashback, unearth, rebound, etc)?
Can I still get value out of burnt out/dead cards?
Will my permanents accomplish something before 2+ players have a chance to respond?
Can my permanents threaten more than one opponent?
Do my cards scale well depending on the number of players or at any point in the game?
Can the cards I include accrue value over the course of a long game?
Can the cards I include reliably change the table's dynamic, even late into a multiplayer game?
Can my cards reliably build value engines?
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I also want to have cards that have non-linear interactions in a multiplayer setting.
eg. siren of the fanged coast
flailing ogre
Also in conspiracy you have cards cogwork librarian and lore seeker but I can never see anybody actually putting this in their deck and are mainly for the drafting. I'd like to someway fix this.
EDIT: I don't intend to make the cube just for 4 people but in most cases I can only get 4 people together. 8 people is theoretically possible.
Are you only going Pauper/Peasant? Aside from Librarian and Seeker none of those are cards I would ever use in Cube unless I was restricted to C/UC.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Be that as it may, some of the cards you've mentioned cutting would actually be cards I'd personally include:
Typhoid rats - for 1 mana, you have a cheap and effective deterrent against being attacked by multiple opponents; no one wants to lose a valuable attacker to a 1 drop rat (especially if it leaves them exposed to other players or a counter attack).
Librarian and loreseeker are basically cube staples at this point - these would be some of the absolute last cards I'd personally cut from a multiplayer cube!
Skitter - kicker and multicker cards are fantastic inclusions in a multiplayer environment, as the caster has the option to scale them up as their mana resources develop over the game. Skitter is certainly not the best multikicker card out there, but it certainly shouldn't be discounted!
Siren and flailing ogre fail the evaluation test of "given a choice, the opponent will typically pick the option least injurious to themselves and most injurious to the card's caster." The ogre also takes a lot of control out of its owner's hands. These cards seem like the kinds of stuff in an EDH "group hug" deck, a much maligned archetype and style of play...
I'd very much recommend the OP check out the Multiplayer and EDH cube discussion linked below. There's a lot of great tips for constructing and evaluating cards for multiplayer games. I'd also recommend checking out the causal and edh forums here on mtgs, as discussions in those sections frequently touch upon how to approach deck building and tactics in a multiplayer setting.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-card-and-archetype/193777-the-multiplayer-edh-cube-thread
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I don't want remove lore seeker or librarian but do you see anybody ever maindecking these cards? I want there to be a reason to maindeck lore seeker.
I just don't see multikicker dudes being interesting. They are just on the curve vanilla creatures.
Reason why I think siren and ogre are cool is because with siren you can target an opponent with no creatures or very low threat creatures and then steal something from some other player. Ogre in 1v1 setting just ends being a race but in multiplayer it is a tool. "Hey pump my ogre and then I'll give my humble defector to you."
No.
I don't think either of those cards were intended to be main decked, outside of somekind of deck building disaster for the player, post-draft. They're intended as fun and interesting ways of spicing up the draft phase itself, which both due an admirable job of. Deal Broker is probably the only real main-deckable one, as a 2/3 looter for 3 isn't that bad in a multiplayer game.
Just to repeat, I wouldn't get hung up on whether these cards are actually usable in decks or not. They are worth including in practically any cube as a way of increasing the dynamism and freedom of players to draft the cards and decks they want.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
red:
black
white
blue
green
colorless
I have a spare karador so I've kept abzan cycling dudes. Also I want to bant have "cawblade", add in Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and you have a wombo combo deck.
white
green
black
blue
red
multicolor
colorless
blue
black
white
green
multicolor
colorless
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StaffThere's a Multiplayer/EDH Cube Thread, though Gals, Dolono, and myself tend to dominate it with EDH-specific talk.
As far as size goes, there are a few decent options.
180 will give you exactly enough cards to draft with four people, each having 3x packs of 15. This is ideal if you want to have a guarantee that every card shows up in a given draft. Perfect information helps you to pick up and send signals, and you can include two-card combos with the expectation that players can connect those cards with some regularity.
360 gives you enough to draft with up to 8 players. Additionally, you can do Sealed with 6x packs for four players. This is a good size if you ever find yourself drafting with more than just the same four people, or if you want to mix things up by doing Sealed's as well. Also, it adds more variance between the drafts, and you can set up two 4-man drafts to fire back to back, each with half the Cube.
540 is another possible size. This lets you Sealed with 6 players, draft with up to twelve (two pods of six or one big pod), and, most importantly, Glimpse Draft with four. Glimpse draft gives each player nine packs, and after each pick, the player chooses 2 cards in the pack to "burn" and remove from the draft entirely. This is a highly-strategic draft type that makes you think a lot about what you do and don't want to see in each draft, adding both variance and a high degree of consistency in what you can expect to see. It also makes for overall higher-powered decks, as each player gets nine first picks. 540 also lets you fire three back-to-back 4-man drafts without having to reshuffle the Cube between.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Because, you know, there'd be nothing valuable to help people building Multiplayer cubes in there, would there...
The power rankings are something I try to do each year between the Multiplayer and Cube forums here. I've found their results helpful for my own cube too. I'm aware that the EDH Multiplayer forum has its own best cards list - that might be of some use too.
I was also thinking of the conspiracies themselves, given you're building from Conspiracy. Some people do run these. Worldknit and Double Stroke are both considered quite good.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Jeskai: artifacts and walls matter
Bant: Name matters or "gotta catch them all"
Esper: Voting is a thing
I don't have much idea what to do with rest of the guilds/shards so if you have any idea let me know. I also was thinking if I included maybe one or two unhinged cards. Something like frankie peanuts seems fun in multiplayer.