Hey all I'm looking to build my first Cube with a friend as a project and I wanted to get some thoughts, tips and tricks for it from this lovely community.
Our goal/idea: Tribal Cube, trying for lots of cross color tribes so that we have good support for probably 3-4 tribes in each color. Humans for example.
- Restrictions: Most of the cards available come from Innistrad and later, we have some rares but have always been more casual players, generally open a box or two each set + he has almost every Wizards precon product. We have no issue with buying more cards if they fit well, but arent wanting to go spend like $5-10 per card and are trying to stay in the bulk or less range.
Tribe thoughts:
I was thinking it'd probably be good to do like a varying (specialty/depth/something) of tribes for each color. For example have a broad tribe like Humans/Elementals to cross all colors, then more niche ones like Wizards/Warriors to cross 3 colors with maybe a splash here or there in another color, then even more narrow with things like Giants/Zombies/Fairies to be 2 colors with a small potential multi color splash, then go as narrow as it gets with things like Goblins/Elfs. This would give me 3-5 tribes with decent support per color, and keep the ability to splash pretty well and do like a bi-tribal draft.
I'll have to do more research but off top of my head, some of the following could be good types:
-T1 (all color)
= Human
= Elemental
= Ally
= Sliver
= Shapeshifter
-T2 (most colors)
= Warrior
= Wizard
= Rogue
= Knight
= Shaman
= Horror
= Bird
= Spirit
-T3 (guild based + splash)
= Giant
= Zombie
= Vampire
= Minotaur
= Beast
= Sphinx
= Faeries
= Druids
= Naga/Serpents
= Goblin
= Elf
-T4 (most narrow, mostly 1 color)
= Treefolk
= Dragons
= Kraken
= Demon
= Angel
**If you have suggested tribes for this type of thing that covers all the colors pretty well, please share, seems like its going to take a good bit of work/research to find the best support/power levels/distribution.
Questions:
Does anyone have like a good guide for where to start for cube?
Im guessing I'd probably want the small 360 version as we normally only have 3-4 players tops and sometimes even just draft 1v1. For the breakdown, is it something like 50 of each color, 40 colorless, 40ish multi color, and maybe 30 non-basic lands?
If someone has done a tribal cube like this, what sort of spells/creature ratios did you use, is ramp super important for cubes (again this is real casual play, mostly while drinking and joking, but never fun to get mana screwed)
Super cube-noob question here: How do you go from a pile of 360 cards to "draft packs", just shuffle it around, blindly pick up 15 cards and go? This seems like it could be a bit rough and super RNG with my smaller play groups and still being tribal focused.
In yalls opinion does this seem like a fun/reasonable first cube?
I would suggest that you cross post this over on /r/cube. I've personally gotten more feedback on my own non-traditional cubes on those boards than I have here.
Anyway, with that said, I'm not sure how much help I can be as far as your tribal aspect goes, but I'll give it a shot. I think if I were doing a tribal theme, I'd pick one tribe per each guild and then possibly just have one five color tribe with slivers across all five. Don't go overboard with the tribes or you'll just end up with an incoherent mess. I would try to mimic the feel of Lorwyn block limited where, for instance, if you were drafting UW, you were definitely in a merfolk deck. Don't make it too complicated for your drafters to figure out which tribe their deck wants to be in. Keep the guilds focused and try to include as many universal cards as you can. You want guild specific creatures, but you probably also want cards like Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell because they fit into pretty much any deck that wants those colors. So, I'd pick one tribe per guild and then figure out what those decks want to do. Keeping with the UW Mefolk example, is that deck a control deck? Choose creatures and spells based on that tribal theme.
Our very own Salmo wrote a fantastic (and very long, in depth) guide to cube. I'd highly suggest you check that out. I've been cubing for ten years now and even I found it very entertaining and informative. I wish I'd have had something like this ten years ago. http://turnonemagic.com/abasicguidetocube/
A 360 list for me would be 50 of each color, 50 colorless (including colorless and rainbow lands), 30 guild lands, and 30 guild cards. I would honestly prefer a 450 list just to give me some room to breathe and to provide some variance from draft to draft.
I've never done a tribal cube, so I can't really comment on the spell/creature ratio. I'd probably just look at the spells/creatures that made sense to include and let it fall where it may. In traditional lists, this usually just works itself out.
To get from a cube to packs and drafting, we just shuffle the whole thing, then count out packs of 15. We sort the cube after each draft, so our shuffle process is probably longer than groups who don't sort, and the whole process (with others helping) only takes a few minutes, so it's not too bad. If I shuffle by myself, I'm usually doing it while I watch YouTube or Netflix, so again, it's not too bad. I like to sort it because it's easier for me to makes sense of the shuffle process. I sort by color, then I shuffle those eight piles into four piles, then those four into two and then the final two into one fully shuffled cube.
For a first cube, I honestly think you'd be better off looking at lists online and putting together something more traditional. There are lots of resources and lists out there to give you ideas for unpowered 360-450 lists or you can go with a peasant or pauper cube depending on how your group might feel about those types of formats. Peasant cubes are more akin to a traditional block draft format as far as power level and deck archetypes go. However, it's not completely unreasonable to build a tribal list and make it work, even if it's your first cube. Part of the fun of cube, at least for me anyway, is building it and maintaining it. Finding the right cards to make a tribal cube work would probably be more fun than actually playing with it, if we're being honest.
The best thing about cube is it's YOUR format. Do what you want and make sure you and your group are having fun. Create the draft environment that works best for your group. And listen to their feedback. They'll tell you what's not working and what is. If a card is unfun or just bad, they'll let you know. And if they don't, then ask.
Im guessing I'd probably want the small 360 version as we normally only have 3-4 players tops and sometimes even just draft 1v1. For the breakdown, is it something like 50 of each color, 40 colorless, 40ish multi color, and maybe 30 non-basic lands?
I would cut some multi colour cards for more lands. 30 guild cards give you 3 slots in each then you can add a couple of 3+ colour cards based on power/uniqueness. Too many multicolour cards and you end up with awkward packs where noone wants/needs the cards.
Super cube-noob question here: How do you go from a pile of 360 cards to "draft packs", just shuffle it around, blindly pick up 15 cards and go? This seems like it could be a bit rough and super RNG with my smaller play groups and still being tribal focused.
You just shuffle all the cards together and make packs of 15. You can reduce the variance by giving everyone an extra pack, or giving everyone double the "usual" amount of packs and having each player pick one as usual and "ban" another this way you get the feel of having twice as many players and see a lot more cards. For the second option people often do triple instead of double and ban 2 cards, but I have found this to be a little time consuming.
Is ramp super important for cubes (again this is real casual play, mostly while drinking and joking, but never fun to get mana screwed)
This is where lands can help out a lot, there are a range budget 2 or 3 colour cycles you can use as well as rainbow lands and artifacts. If you have a good mana base you should avoid getting mana screwed as often.
-Changelings will definitely help fill out decks and also means players aren't "on rails" in regards to there creature picks since everyone might want them. I would think of them as a tool rather than an actual tribe, but the again changling&lords.deck could be amusing.
-Supporting 3-4 tribes per colour seems a bit ambitious unless you plan out your Race/Class balance very well (i.e Bird Warrior vs Human Warrior vs Cat warrior; do you take the strongest card or the one that best balances your supported tribes?)
FWIW, the guide that calibretto refers to is admittedly not the best resource for tribal cubes specifically as I don't have a ton of experience with them. But if you are new to cube, please check it out!
Otherwise, your best starting point might be to find a tribal list and copy it at first, or a few and combine their ideas. I did this when I was first making my pauper cube and there were a ton of cards that I didn't know existed/how powerful they would be but they showed up on a number of pauper lists. After a few plays I made some adjustments, but there were less changes than I thought. This probably applies even more to tribal lists, since there are only so many options anyways so it can help narrow down the searching/inclusion process. Also, it can help give you an idea of how others do their tribes, what they try to support, what they don't, and try to figure out *why* they don't include certain archetypes. Is there not enough support? Or is it not strong enough to draft vs other guilds? Like, there might be a scarecrow guild, but I don't think there are enough cards for that deck to show up every time.
Also, changelings are super important as grog refers to. Like with calibretto's STP example, you're going to need a number of cards that suit into any deck considering the amount of variance that goes into generating a draft pool if you don't use the whole thing, and even if you do you still want/need those universal cards. If a player is forced to draft 23 elfs and only ends up with 15 and a smattering of other cards that synergize with each other but not the elves, then there are going to be a number of games where you're not synergizing and that kinda sucks. Changelings are great since they going into any deck to support the strong tribal interactions that occur, and also when you don't get all the way they can support multiple tribal interactions within the same deck. So if for some reason you did have a few scarecrow cards like a scarecrone or something, you could get the elf interactions from the elves and then sac the changelings to the scarecrones later. Don't take that as me recommending scarecrone, but as highly recommending changelings.
Thanks everyone, thats been a huge help, my friend and I are still wanting a more tribal theme, but we are taking yalls advice and toning it down in the complication aspect. If people step on each others toes while drafting, well sucks for them haha. Its been a bit of a busy week, but I'll try to keep this topic updated with our progress.
You could start by focusing on the tribes in the two innistrad blocks, since those were pretty well supported. Then expand into tribes you could support in enemy colors, perhaps focusing on classes--knights, wizards, warriors, and soldiers can all work.
The Lorwyn tribes aside from elves and goblins have no synergy with anything else in Magic.
The Onslaught tribes have had a lot more support over the years. Since most blue tribes are unfun or terrible you could make blue more of a artifact tribe.
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Our goal/idea: Tribal Cube, trying for lots of cross color tribes so that we have good support for probably 3-4 tribes in each color. Humans for example.
- Restrictions: Most of the cards available come from Innistrad and later, we have some rares but have always been more casual players, generally open a box or two each set + he has almost every Wizards precon product. We have no issue with buying more cards if they fit well, but arent wanting to go spend like $5-10 per card and are trying to stay in the bulk or less range.
Tribe thoughts:
I was thinking it'd probably be good to do like a varying (specialty/depth/something) of tribes for each color. For example have a broad tribe like Humans/Elementals to cross all colors, then more niche ones like Wizards/Warriors to cross 3 colors with maybe a splash here or there in another color, then even more narrow with things like Giants/Zombies/Fairies to be 2 colors with a small potential multi color splash, then go as narrow as it gets with things like Goblins/Elfs. This would give me 3-5 tribes with decent support per color, and keep the ability to splash pretty well and do like a bi-tribal draft.
I'll have to do more research but off top of my head, some of the following could be good types:
-T1 (all color)
= Human
= Elemental
= Ally
= Sliver
= Shapeshifter
-T2 (most colors)
= Warrior
= Wizard
= Rogue
= Knight
= Shaman
= Horror
= Bird
= Spirit
-T3 (guild based + splash)
= Giant
= Zombie
= Vampire
= Minotaur
= Beast
= Sphinx
= Faeries
= Druids
= Naga/Serpents
= Goblin
= Elf
-T4 (most narrow, mostly 1 color)
= Treefolk
= Dragons
= Kraken
= Demon
= Angel
**If you have suggested tribes for this type of thing that covers all the colors pretty well, please share, seems like its going to take a good bit of work/research to find the best support/power levels/distribution.
Questions:
Anyway, with that said, I'm not sure how much help I can be as far as your tribal aspect goes, but I'll give it a shot. I think if I were doing a tribal theme, I'd pick one tribe per each guild and then possibly just have one five color tribe with slivers across all five. Don't go overboard with the tribes or you'll just end up with an incoherent mess. I would try to mimic the feel of Lorwyn block limited where, for instance, if you were drafting UW, you were definitely in a merfolk deck. Don't make it too complicated for your drafters to figure out which tribe their deck wants to be in. Keep the guilds focused and try to include as many universal cards as you can. You want guild specific creatures, but you probably also want cards like Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell because they fit into pretty much any deck that wants those colors. So, I'd pick one tribe per guild and then figure out what those decks want to do. Keeping with the UW Mefolk example, is that deck a control deck? Choose creatures and spells based on that tribal theme.
Our very own Salmo wrote a fantastic (and very long, in depth) guide to cube. I'd highly suggest you check that out. I've been cubing for ten years now and even I found it very entertaining and informative. I wish I'd have had something like this ten years ago. http://turnonemagic.com/abasicguidetocube/
A 360 list for me would be 50 of each color, 50 colorless (including colorless and rainbow lands), 30 guild lands, and 30 guild cards. I would honestly prefer a 450 list just to give me some room to breathe and to provide some variance from draft to draft.
I've never done a tribal cube, so I can't really comment on the spell/creature ratio. I'd probably just look at the spells/creatures that made sense to include and let it fall where it may. In traditional lists, this usually just works itself out.
To get from a cube to packs and drafting, we just shuffle the whole thing, then count out packs of 15. We sort the cube after each draft, so our shuffle process is probably longer than groups who don't sort, and the whole process (with others helping) only takes a few minutes, so it's not too bad. If I shuffle by myself, I'm usually doing it while I watch YouTube or Netflix, so again, it's not too bad. I like to sort it because it's easier for me to makes sense of the shuffle process. I sort by color, then I shuffle those eight piles into four piles, then those four into two and then the final two into one fully shuffled cube.
For a first cube, I honestly think you'd be better off looking at lists online and putting together something more traditional. There are lots of resources and lists out there to give you ideas for unpowered 360-450 lists or you can go with a peasant or pauper cube depending on how your group might feel about those types of formats. Peasant cubes are more akin to a traditional block draft format as far as power level and deck archetypes go. However, it's not completely unreasonable to build a tribal list and make it work, even if it's your first cube. Part of the fun of cube, at least for me anyway, is building it and maintaining it. Finding the right cards to make a tribal cube work would probably be more fun than actually playing with it, if we're being honest.
The best thing about cube is it's YOUR format. Do what you want and make sure you and your group are having fun. Create the draft environment that works best for your group. And listen to their feedback. They'll tell you what's not working and what is. If a card is unfun or just bad, they'll let you know. And if they don't, then ask.
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I would cut some multi colour cards for more lands. 30 guild cards give you 3 slots in each then you can add a couple of 3+ colour cards based on power/uniqueness. Too many multicolour cards and you end up with awkward packs where noone wants/needs the cards.
You just shuffle all the cards together and make packs of 15. You can reduce the variance by giving everyone an extra pack, or giving everyone double the "usual" amount of packs and having each player pick one as usual and "ban" another this way you get the feel of having twice as many players and see a lot more cards. For the second option people often do triple instead of double and ban 2 cards, but I have found this to be a little time consuming.
This is where lands can help out a lot, there are a range budget 2 or 3 colour cycles you can use as well as rainbow lands and artifacts. If you have a good mana base you should avoid getting mana screwed as often.
-Changelings will definitely help fill out decks and also means players aren't "on rails" in regards to there creature picks since everyone might want them. I would think of them as a tool rather than an actual tribe, but the again changling&lords.deck could be amusing.
-Supporting 3-4 tribes per colour seems a bit ambitious unless you plan out your Race/Class balance very well (i.e Bird Warrior vs Human Warrior vs Cat warrior; do you take the strongest card or the one that best balances your supported tribes?)
-Anything with "Name a creature type" could be fun (e.g. Engineered Plague, Shared Triumph, Metallic Mimic etc.). In a world of tribal synergy even something weird like Standardize could be playable in a casual environment, get weird with it.
Try http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text= [%22choose%20a%20creature%20type%22]
Otherwise, your best starting point might be to find a tribal list and copy it at first, or a few and combine their ideas. I did this when I was first making my pauper cube and there were a ton of cards that I didn't know existed/how powerful they would be but they showed up on a number of pauper lists. After a few plays I made some adjustments, but there were less changes than I thought. This probably applies even more to tribal lists, since there are only so many options anyways so it can help narrow down the searching/inclusion process. Also, it can help give you an idea of how others do their tribes, what they try to support, what they don't, and try to figure out *why* they don't include certain archetypes. Is there not enough support? Or is it not strong enough to draft vs other guilds? Like, there might be a scarecrow guild, but I don't think there are enough cards for that deck to show up every time.
Also, changelings are super important as grog refers to. Like with calibretto's STP example, you're going to need a number of cards that suit into any deck considering the amount of variance that goes into generating a draft pool if you don't use the whole thing, and even if you do you still want/need those universal cards. If a player is forced to draft 23 elfs and only ends up with 15 and a smattering of other cards that synergize with each other but not the elves, then there are going to be a number of games where you're not synergizing and that kinda sucks. Changelings are great since they going into any deck to support the strong tribal interactions that occur, and also when you don't get all the way they can support multiple tribal interactions within the same deck. So if for some reason you did have a few scarecrow cards like a scarecrone or something, you could get the elf interactions from the elves and then sac the changelings to the scarecrones later. Don't take that as me recommending scarecrone, but as highly recommending changelings.
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The Lorwyn tribes aside from elves and goblins have no synergy with anything else in Magic.
The Onslaught tribes have had a lot more support over the years. Since most blue tribes are unfun or terrible you could make blue more of a artifact tribe.