Hello! I am hoping that some of you can offer me pointers about my cube, things that are good and bad.
My goal was to make it nuts and bolts magic, particularly beginner friendly since I live in an area with not a lot of magic players so I usually have to start from the beginning with people (no flip cards, no obscure abilities that would require a lot of explaining during a draft, no walls of text).
I am going for good clean grindy magic, best of limited archetypes, and hoping some fun interactive gameplay shakes out.
I assume most people will be pulled into shards and wedges.
The archetypes as I see them are-
Bant blink
Bug reanimator
Naya/Mardu blitz
Esper Control
Jeskai prowess
Jund midrange
Abzan rock
Grixis spells
Temur Ramp??
It’s largely shaped around the ravnica blocks so I assume people will go into a guild with maybe a splash.
My main concern right now is around the tribes. I have elves/zombies/goblins, which are the ones with the most support by quite a ways, and the creatures also fit well enough into general strategies. I had some human tribal, and considered spirits but at that point I started worrying the tribal theme was taking up too much space and didn’t want it to be the sole focus.
I know some people might be thinking it’s far too many cards but I can’t help but want to include a large roster because there is a lot of sweet stuff, and I want every draft to feel different. Do I run the risk of bogging it down, will it be harder for people to “get there”?
I ask because frankly I haven’t been able to play it much with people, it’s so hard to convince a group of strangers to play something for the first time. But I keep adding to it with the hopes that sometime it’ll click.
Be honest, does this cube even seem fun? I’m also having trouble distinguishing what cards are even good in limited, for instance Momir Vig who I recently added, but debated between that and Sharktocrab. I love cute things but is it in the simic players best interest to just have good stuff at their disposal? I debated combing through all the evolve/adapt cards and making their strategy revolve around that, currently it’s more simply an Edric type tempo deck. Similarly with orzhov, perhaps extort and blood artist kind of nickel and dime type thing where it’s currently more just tokens and removal.
The best I could hope for is that you look through the list and tell me what cards you feel AREN’T good in limited, I read something like Opt is just air, but I want spells matter decks, does that mean preordain or other air is bad too? Same thing goes for discard spells, but I had hoped the reanimator player could have extra outs to pitch things, is my thinking way off there? Also are most of my reanimator targets too midrangy with not enough bombs? I find myself cutting a lot of true finishers in favor of cheaper stuff with maybe a drawback besides cmc. Should I include more 7+ cards? I know it’s pretty stacked on 2 & 3 drops. But I also feel with such a vast pool, redundancy is a good thing.
Also would be nice if you could suggest archetypes for me to built towards. Should I cut the tribal lords for more all purpose cards? I feel red might be the worst because half of it is goblin aggressive, but there’s also nonbo board wipes, and I don’t feel I have a firm grasp on what burn is the best to use.
Oh, and if there are any cards I’m sorely missing please let me know. Cyclonic Rift and Mirari’s Wake are in the mail-
Note, I have pretty much every good limited card at my disposal so it would be easy to switch things out. I just don’t have enough experience to make good decisions on my own.
The cube is probably too big to be able to consistently flesh out the archetypes you're trying to support. I would consider 720 a max, but probably not until you've got a ton of cubes under your belt. It'll be harder to manage at the bigger sizes, and harder to see how your changes impact your games.
Too much gold. By a ton. You're playing 21 cards per guild. I'd be playing 6 per guild. Maybe 7 at the most.
Not enough mana fixing lands. You're WAY short of the fixing needed to support a cube of that size. You have 60 total lands in your entire cube. I have 60 mana-fixing lands in my cube. And my cube is 200 cards smaller than yours. Which also leads me to ask ...where are all your utility lands?
The curve is really high. You have almost no 1cc creatures, which will hurt decks that want to be aggressive. I would trim fat and try to give faster decks the tools they need to be at least mildly competitive.
Individual card choices aside, I'd focus on the skeleton of the cube first. Slim it down, cut multicolor, add fixing, reduce the average casting cost. Those things will increase the playability of the cube by 10x the impact that swapping around individual cards will.
Best of luck with the project. Cheers, and happy cubing.
Awesome thank you! I will cut gold cards. The cube was at 720 but I added some artifacts, and then didn’t make any cuts.
What are some examples of utility lands? I’ve been a stickler for uniformity, so I’d want to add them in increments of 5 or 10. I don’t see a need for expensive lands like Port, Karakus, Phyrexian Tower, Gaeas cradle, even urborg I’m reluctant about because there aren’t any other lands that match the utility. The innistrad lands don’t actually fix mana, so they seem like basically just more gold cards. I’m open to the suggestion that they bring more to the table than multicolor cards. I’m also open to the mentality that perfect uniformity isn’t necessary. I should like to add teramorphic expanse and evolving wilds but again, that would be only 2 cards out of what I would view as a set so I’d have to buffer it probably by adding more artifacts.
I’ll add another one or two cycles of dual lands. Debating now between Temples, Pain Lands, Filter Lands and Fast Lands.
And I will find some better 1 cost creatures to improve the curve. I’m a control, Johnny player at heart which is probably pretty obvious but I’ll try to change gears and put more aggressive support.
The manland cycle is great. Provides increased threst density and mana fixing. It would help solve 2 problems.
Full cycle fixers that might help would be the 5 Vivid lands. Powerful and a cheap uniform cycle.
I'd add in at least 5 colorless lands in there somehow, Mishra's Factory is cheap and good, and there are a lot of other solid options in this category.
And 5-color fixers. City of Brass, Mana Confluence, Gemstone Mine, Grand Coliseum, Ash Barrens, Terramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds ...there's many good options to choose from here, and they're playable in almost every deck.
Again, trim fat and gold for mana fixing and cheap universally playable cards and you'll be off to a good start.
The suggestion to cut gold cards and add 5-color lands is smart. I don't think you have to be as drastic in cutting your gold section as wtwlf123, but it doesn't help to play that many gold cards. If you cut 10 cards from each guild, that would be a massive (100 card) change. That's huge, and it's still not as much as wtwlf123 suggests. Unfortunately, you don't really get to play all the gold card you want until you get to my size, which is why guild slots are so competitive for cubers. Playing fewer gold cards will make drafting smoother, and I suggest when looking for cuts you cut things that can be done in monocolor (like cutting Curse of Chains since both Blue and White have two mana enchantment based removal).
Honestly, this cube looks fun, and is not dissimilar to my own. Just gradually replace random cards like Dead Reveler with cards that support multiple archetypes (like Weaponcraft Enthusiast), cards that are good everywhere (like Phyrexian Rager) and cards that are unique (like Plague Spitter). Generic goodstuff being the least prioritized.
Note: never play a card like Dead Reveler just because it's a Zombie, Elf, or Goblin. You can almost always find a better card in those tribes.
Sweet, I will add those city of brass type cards, ancient tomb, Mutavault and so forth.
There is some amount of chaff which as you pointed out is mostly to support individual tribes and also strategies. Trumpet blast and rally the peasants seem like the one ofs for those specific decks but I suppose they’re better off with more strong curve out picks. I did cut Overrun. I tried to pick up the best of white weenie stuff from every limited format for Boros in particular.
Curse of chains I added recently specifically because hybrid cards are versatile.
I agree with the guys, I think the cube is too large. You mentioned ravnica block as a model.
I would go to 500 cards, this would be like combining Ravnica Allegiance with Guilds of Ravnica.
If we look at a set like guilds of ravnica, the set is 250 cards. 75 of these cards are multicolored. Therefore, roughly 30 percent of the set is multicolored spells. Your cube is a at 27%. If your cube was 500 cards, then 150 cards would be multicolored to maintain the same ratio. This would mean 15 cards in each guild.
Also, if you are having trouble putting a pod of 8 together, then you are incentivized to have a smaller cube. This will make the putting the decks together easier, as the cube will be more dense.
If you went 500 cards, I would run 35 lands. putting your mana fixing at about 7% of the cube. This would be a tad better than 1 land per pack.
I would trim to
57 cards of each color
15 of each guild
35 lands
30 artifacts
again, this is assuming you are trying to mimic ravnica block.
If you are trying to support tribal, perhaps include some tribal support cards like vanquisher's banner, heralds horn, and coat of arms. These cards would work in any tribal deck.
Lastly, after drafting your cube, I really felt the need for original duals. There just were not enough targets for my fetches. I only saw man-lands and tri-taplands, basically making my fetches worthless, because it was not on both my colors. I would get dual proxies at least to smooth this out. You won't believe how much better your cube drafts.
The best way, in my opinion, to judge if a card is good enough for cube is ask "Would I consider this in any constructed format?". If the answer is no, it is probably too weak. Parhelion Patrol, for example, is great in limited, but awful in constructed. And cube decks are more similar to constructed than limited.
I drafted this deck (I didn't make it into a deck). I was aiming for Black Green (or Abzan) Delirium/ graveyard whip deck.
I think you got some awesome synergies in your cube, but i was hindered a bit by the lack of color fixing (less than what I would like even for 2 color decks). I would do is to cut down on the mana intensive cards (Nights whisper vs Sign in Blood - I would cut sign in blood) or increase the amount of mana fixing.
My main problem was a lack of overlap between archetypes. Not sure if I'm too used to nonsense's easily overlapping archetypes, but this felt like there was a cluster of cards focused purely on supporting their one type of deck, rather than having wider application. Made it hard to find good mid-range and aggro cards not tied to a linear theme.
Curve wasn't too bad though, but there was little mana-fixing to encourage shards/wedges or goodstuff, which combined with the aforementioned, made signalling difficult and forced me into a deck type.
Hello! I am hoping that some of you can offer me pointers about my cube, things that are good and bad.
My goal was to make it nuts and bolts magic, particularly beginner friendly since I live in an area with not a lot of magic players so I usually have to start from the beginning with people (no flip cards, no obscure abilities that would require a lot of explaining during a draft, no walls of text).
I am going for good clean grindy magic, best of limited archetypes, and hoping some fun interactive gameplay shakes out.
I assume most people will be pulled into shards and wedges.
The archetypes as I see them are-
Bant blink
Bug reanimator
Naya/Mardu blitz
Esper Control
Jeskai prowess
Jund midrange
Abzan rock
Grixis spells
Temur Ramp??
It’s largely shaped around the ravnica blocks so I assume people will go into a guild with maybe a splash.
My main concern right now is around the tribes. I have elves/zombies/goblins, which are the ones with the most support by quite a ways, and the creatures also fit well enough into general strategies. I had some human tribal, and considered spirits but at that point I started worrying the tribal theme was taking up too much space and didn’t want it to be the sole focus.
I know some people might be thinking it’s far too many cards but I can’t help but want to include a large roster because there is a lot of sweet stuff, and I want every draft to feel different. Do I run the risk of bogging it down, will it be harder for people to “get there”?
I ask because frankly I haven’t been able to play it much with people, it’s so hard to convince a group of strangers to play something for the first time. But I keep adding to it with the hopes that sometime it’ll click.
Be honest, does this cube even seem fun? I’m also having trouble distinguishing what cards are even good in limited, for instance Momir Vig who I recently added, but debated between that and Sharktocrab. I love cute things but is it in the simic players best interest to just have good stuff at their disposal? I debated combing through all the evolve/adapt cards and making their strategy revolve around that, currently it’s more simply an Edric type tempo deck. Similarly with orzhov, perhaps extort and blood artist kind of nickel and dime type thing where it’s currently more just tokens and removal.
The best I could hope for is that you look through the list and tell me what cards you feel AREN’T good in limited, I read something like Opt is just air, but I want spells matter decks, does that mean preordain or other air is bad too? Same thing goes for discard spells, but I had hoped the reanimator player could have extra outs to pitch things, is my thinking way off there? Also are most of my reanimator targets too midrangy with not enough bombs? I find myself cutting a lot of true finishers in favor of cheaper stuff with maybe a drawback besides cmc. Should I include more 7+ cards? I know it’s pretty stacked on 2 & 3 drops. But I also feel with such a vast pool, redundancy is a good thing.
Also would be nice if you could suggest archetypes for me to built towards. Should I cut the tribal lords for more all purpose cards? I feel red might be the worst because half of it is goblin aggressive, but there’s also nonbo board wipes, and I don’t feel I have a firm grasp on what burn is the best to use.
Oh, and if there are any cards I’m sorely missing please let me know. Cyclonic Rift and Mirari’s Wake are in the mail-
Note, I have pretty much every good limited card at my disposal so it would be easy to switch things out. I just don’t have enough experience to make good decisions on my own.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Too much gold. By a ton. You're playing 21 cards per guild. I'd be playing 6 per guild. Maybe 7 at the most.
Not enough mana fixing lands. You're WAY short of the fixing needed to support a cube of that size. You have 60 total lands in your entire cube. I have 60 mana-fixing lands in my cube. And my cube is 200 cards smaller than yours. Which also leads me to ask ...where are all your utility lands?
The curve is really high. You have almost no 1cc creatures, which will hurt decks that want to be aggressive. I would trim fat and try to give faster decks the tools they need to be at least mildly competitive.
Individual card choices aside, I'd focus on the skeleton of the cube first. Slim it down, cut multicolor, add fixing, reduce the average casting cost. Those things will increase the playability of the cube by 10x the impact that swapping around individual cards will.
Best of luck with the project. Cheers, and happy cubing.
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!
What are some examples of utility lands? I’ve been a stickler for uniformity, so I’d want to add them in increments of 5 or 10. I don’t see a need for expensive lands like Port, Karakus, Phyrexian Tower, Gaeas cradle, even urborg I’m reluctant about because there aren’t any other lands that match the utility. The innistrad lands don’t actually fix mana, so they seem like basically just more gold cards. I’m open to the suggestion that they bring more to the table than multicolor cards. I’m also open to the mentality that perfect uniformity isn’t necessary. I should like to add teramorphic expanse and evolving wilds but again, that would be only 2 cards out of what I would view as a set so I’d have to buffer it probably by adding more artifacts.
I’ll add another one or two cycles of dual lands. Debating now between Temples, Pain Lands, Filter Lands and Fast Lands.
And I will find some better 1 cost creatures to improve the curve. I’m a control, Johnny player at heart which is probably pretty obvious but I’ll try to change gears and put more aggressive support.
Thanks again!
Full cycle fixers that might help would be the 5 Vivid lands. Powerful and a cheap uniform cycle.
I'd add in at least 5 colorless lands in there somehow, Mishra's Factory is cheap and good, and there are a lot of other solid options in this category.
And 5-color fixers. City of Brass, Mana Confluence, Gemstone Mine, Grand Coliseum, Ash Barrens, Terramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds ...there's many good options to choose from here, and they're playable in almost every deck.
Again, trim fat and gold for mana fixing and cheap universally playable cards and you'll be off to a good start.
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!
The suggestion to cut gold cards and add 5-color lands is smart. I don't think you have to be as drastic in cutting your gold section as wtwlf123, but it doesn't help to play that many gold cards. If you cut 10 cards from each guild, that would be a massive (100 card) change. That's huge, and it's still not as much as wtwlf123 suggests. Unfortunately, you don't really get to play all the gold card you want until you get to my size, which is why guild slots are so competitive for cubers. Playing fewer gold cards will make drafting smoother, and I suggest when looking for cuts you cut things that can be done in monocolor (like cutting Curse of Chains since both Blue and White have two mana enchantment based removal).
Honestly, this cube looks fun, and is not dissimilar to my own. Just gradually replace random cards like Dead Reveler with cards that support multiple archetypes (like Weaponcraft Enthusiast), cards that are good everywhere (like Phyrexian Rager) and cards that are unique (like Plague Spitter). Generic goodstuff being the least prioritized.
Note: never play a card like Dead Reveler just because it's a Zombie, Elf, or Goblin. You can almost always find a better card in those tribes.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
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Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
There is some amount of chaff which as you pointed out is mostly to support individual tribes and also strategies. Trumpet blast and rally the peasants seem like the one ofs for those specific decks but I suppose they’re better off with more strong curve out picks. I did cut Overrun. I tried to pick up the best of white weenie stuff from every limited format for Boros in particular.
Curse of chains I added recently specifically because hybrid cards are versatile.
Appreciate it guys
I would go to 500 cards, this would be like combining Ravnica Allegiance with Guilds of Ravnica.
If we look at a set like guilds of ravnica, the set is 250 cards. 75 of these cards are multicolored. Therefore, roughly 30 percent of the set is multicolored spells. Your cube is a at 27%. If your cube was 500 cards, then 150 cards would be multicolored to maintain the same ratio. This would mean 15 cards in each guild.
Also, if you are having trouble putting a pod of 8 together, then you are incentivized to have a smaller cube. This will make the putting the decks together easier, as the cube will be more dense.
If you went 500 cards, I would run 35 lands. putting your mana fixing at about 7% of the cube. This would be a tad better than 1 land per pack.
I would trim to
57 cards of each color
15 of each guild
35 lands
30 artifacts
again, this is assuming you are trying to mimic ravnica block.
If you are trying to support tribal, perhaps include some tribal support cards like vanquisher's banner, heralds horn, and coat of arms. These cards would work in any tribal deck.
Lastly, after drafting your cube, I really felt the need for original duals. There just were not enough targets for my fetches. I only saw man-lands and tri-taplands, basically making my fetches worthless, because it was not on both my colors. I would get dual proxies at least to smooth this out. You won't believe how much better your cube drafts.
Deal with it.
I drafted this deck (I didn't make it into a deck). I was aiming for Black Green (or Abzan) Delirium/ graveyard whip deck.
I think you got some awesome synergies in your cube, but i was hindered a bit by the lack of color fixing (less than what I would like even for 2 color decks). I would do is to cut down on the mana intensive cards (Nights whisper vs Sign in Blood - I would cut sign in blood) or increase the amount of mana fixing.
My main problem was a lack of overlap between archetypes. Not sure if I'm too used to nonsense's easily overlapping archetypes, but this felt like there was a cluster of cards focused purely on supporting their one type of deck, rather than having wider application. Made it hard to find good mid-range and aggro cards not tied to a linear theme.
Curve wasn't too bad though, but there was little mana-fixing to encourage shards/wedges or goodstuff, which combined with the aforementioned, made signalling difficult and forced me into a deck type.
This user has language problems due to their mental health problems and sometimes may not use the best wording to explain their thoughts.
Draft the "'What Is This Nonsense?'" casual cube.