Introduction
Hi all, welcome to the 2016 Optimal Multiplayer Cube! For newcomers, the Optimal Multiplayer Cube is an attempt to find the best cards to put in a 360-card multiplayer cube. This list of 360 cards has existed in various forms for many years now for 1-vs-1 play, but a multiplayer-based one did not exist, so we set about trying to fix it. In previous years, we did this by voting on the best cards in a multiplayer setting for each of the cube sections. We ran Multiplayer Power Rankings votes for four years between 2012 and 2015, and found that while we are in furious agreement on some cards being top-tier for multiplayer (such as Blatant Thievery, Exsanguinate and Insurrection), finding the best 360 is an altogether different prospect, so a vote was needed.
Once we made it to 2015, the results started looking fairly repetitive, meaning that we were starting to agree on the best multiplayer cards as a group. This then meant we were able to produce a Best Multiplayer Cards Available list as a base, and then simply add to that for newer sets. In 2016, we've held two votes to add cards to this list:
This year, we'll take the Best Multiplayer Cards list, as well as the results from these two votes, and piece together an optimal cube list. This is now the fifth year we've done this - if you want to catch up on previous efforts, you can see the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 optimal cubes, and you can draft the 2013-15 cubes on CubeTutor (with links either in my signature, or in the articles themselves).
A Cube, You Say?
Unless you've been under a rock, or are fairly new to Magic: the Gathering, you probably know what a Cube is by now. For those who are yet to explore the fun that is Cube, the MTGS Cube Forum's Great Cube Resource Thread is a great place to start. It'll hopefully help you catch the cube drafting bug and make you want to build your own. For our results, we need to set some boundaries as to what our optimal cube is going to look like. A 360-card cube is the bare minimum for eight-player drafting, so this is a good baseline. For each of the sections, we'll use the sizes specified by Tom Fowler in his excellent Hip To Be Square series - 50 of each of the five colours, 50 gold, 30 artifact, 30 nonbasic land. We also need to account for taste. There are all sorts of wonderful variant cubes floating about already, and you will likely want to account for your own (and your playgroup's) personal tastes when constructing your own. So we're going to suggest 80% of the cards for each cube section, and then suggest a couple of viable archetypes that could be added in the remaining space. Finally, some of the cards that have come out on top are heinously expensive, and are obviously only going to be available to those who truly want to power their cubes. Multiplayer guys are inevitably playing at their own kitchen tables, and not operating on a top-tier tourney player's funds, so we'll also look at the more budget options available.
The Card Pool
The last sets voted on in 2016 were Eldritch Moon and Conspiracy: Take the Crown. This is the cut-off point for this exercise - the 2016 cubes do not include new cards printed in Kaladesh, Commander 2016 or onwards.
The Results Format
For each cube section, we'll reveal the cards that were voted into the top 80% of each section (that means the top 40 cards for each of the sections that carry 50, and the top 24 for each of the sections that carry 30). We'll look at them according to casting cost, as well as creature vs. non-creature - those who've built a cube before know that it's important to get this balance right. We'll then list cards that just missed the cut, and potential budget alternatives to some of the money cards that appear in that list. Finally, we'll look at the options we have for filling that final 20% - the archetypes that fit well with the cube we've wound up with. Where a price for a card is listed, it is refers to the cheapest printing available according to PucaTrade's PucaPoints system as of the time of publishing.
I will also refer to the Best Multiplayer Cards Available list when swapping cards out for alternatives - this has been updated through to the cutoff point for these cubes, and, in essence, gives us a way of finding the best multiplayer card in a particular slot when we're seeking a replacement card.
So It's Multiplayer.... What Changes?
What makes the optimal multiplayer list different to the optimal 1-on-1 list already floating about the MTGS Cube Forum, or the list of most-run cards on CubeTutor? Two things. Firstly, the optimal 1-on-1 list contains many cards that shine in duels, but are downright unplayable in multiplayer settings. In particular, traditional aggro strategies go out the window in multiplayer - they simply run out of steam against multiple opponents. A case in point is Goblin Guide - it is ranked as one of the top ten red cards in a traditional cube, but is pretty much useless in a multiplayer arena. It didn't garner a single vote in the multiplayer power rankings in four years of voting. Secondly, you are usually afforded more time and space in a multiplayer setting, so the average casting cost of the cards in the cube can afford to be higher than they are traditionally. This gives us the room we need to fit in expensive multiplayer staples like Insurrection and Blatant Thievery.
Let's Go!
So now, you can sit back, relax and enjoy (while I try and find the time to feverishly hammer out the results)!
Please feel free to add your comments in this thread - feedback is always appreciated!
White
The white section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for white. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 31 white cards onboard, so let's start with those:
Our creature-to-spell ratio is 13:18, so we need to add a lot more creatures than we do spells in our final bunch.
We also have the usual problem with white - it is loaded with resets. While seven reset spells is not as many as some years, it's still too many for a balanced cube - we normally keep three here and drop the rest.
Finally, the white curve is currently at 7-4-4-8-3-5. It's got a huge road bump at CC4. We'll be able to fix that by dropping some of the CC4 reset spells, but we probably want to avoid bringing in new cards at that same CC.
Fixing the Holes
This is mercifully pretty easy for us to set up this year. In years past, we have kept Wrath of God, Balance and Austere Command as our three resets, and there's not much reason to change this year, especially as we're trying to drop CC4 cards, and most of the others sit at this point in the curve. So let's drop the other four for starters:
-1 Martial Coup
-1 Armageddon
-1 Cataclysm
-1 Day of Judgment
This leaves us needing seven creatures and six spells, which is almost even, and leaves our curve at 7-4-4-4-3-5. If we add evenly across the curve for both creatures and spells, we're there.
There were only three other white cards that received votes in 2016, and they were all a fair way below our cutoff point for acceptance into the Best MP Cards list, so it's safe to simply pick the cards off the bottom of the master list from previous years. If we add a creature and a spell at each CC, and throw in a second creature at CC5, we end up with a pretty flat curve. We also need to remember to avoid adding more resets to the list (sorry, Terminus)! Finally, we literally have nothing left at CC1 for spells, so we'll throw in whatever is lying around. This means we end up adding the following:
+1 Soul Warden
+1 Auriok Champion
+1 Knight Exemplar
+1 Hero of Bladehold
+1 Cloudgoat Ranger
+1 Karmic Guide
+1 Blazing Archon
+1 Island Sanctuary
+1 Aura of Silence
+1 Ghostly Prison
+1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
+1 Elspeth Tirel
+1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
As much as we apparently want to add every printing of Elspeth ever, things look OK! This gives us a curve of 8-6-7-6-5-7, which is pretty good.
Since last year, this equates to the Rector swapping places with Stoneforge Mystic (which is now down around the $15 mark). For two of the other three, we can make the same swaps as last year:
-1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
-1 Moat
+1 Yosei, the Morning Star
+1 Norn's Annex
Last year, we swapped Auriok Champion for Soul Warden, but Soul Warden is already in our list this year. That's OK... Suture Priest is a ready-made replacement at the same CC.
-1 Auriok Champion
+1 Suture Priest
There's absolutely nothing out there like the Rector at the same CC, so the best we can do is find something similarly tricky and combolicious for the same casting cost. Fortunately, Restoration Angel is just off the initial list of best white cards, and there would be few complaints about adding it.
-1 Academy Rector
+1 Restoration Angel
Blue
The blue section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for blue. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 25 blue cards onboard, so let's start with those:
Fixing the Holes
Okay, we have fifteen more cards to add here, and this is blue, so we want a 40/60 split between spells and creatures (for those new to cube design, blue is traditionally better at spells than creatures, so we load up on spells here, and then balance things by doing the opposite in green, which is traditionally better at creatures than spells). This means we want 16 creatures and 24 spells all up, and we're currently at 8/17, so we want to add eight creatures and seven spells.
Our curve is currently at 2-6-5-4-1-7. It's pretty lumpy, and a lot of this is due to our creatures - we really want to be adding creatures with uneven casting costs, and we also want to find a few more things at CC5 in particular. Let's focus on that as we add the last fifteen.
We also need to consider a few cards that were just outside our threshold in this year's voting - Mind's Dilation, Crush of Tentacles, Thing in the Ice and Mystic Confluence (in that order).
Heading back into our Best MP Cards list, if we dig out the next eight creatures with odd casting costs, we get:
+1 Kira, Great Glass Spinner
+1 Djinn of Wishes
+1 Mulldrifter
+1 Palinchron
+1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
+1 Hunted Phantasm
+1 Chasm Skulker
+1 Noble Benefactor
Well, that's not the worst list ever...
If we then add the next seven spells we find in our list without much regard for CC, we get:
+1 Show and Tell
+1 Omniscience
+1 Mind's Dilation
+1 Windfall
+1 Future Sight
+1 Crush of Tentacles
+1 Dream Halls
We find a couple of our new cards sneaking into the list, and we've managed to find a couple of CC5 cards! Excellent!
Once we've finished doing all this, we find the curve sitting at 2-6-11-4-5-11. Well, it looks like we went a bit overboard adding CC3 things.
Let's aim to drop a few CC3 things, and find a couple more CC4-5 things to balance things out. If we drop three CC3 cards for two CC4s and a CC5, we get to 2-6-8-6-6-11, which is serviceable. Let's drop the last three CC3 cards we added, and head back into the Best MP Cards list for the three replacements. This gives us:
-1 Chasm Skulker
-1 Noble Benefactor
-1 Windfall
+1 Aura Thief
+1 Glen Elendra Archmage
+1 Force of Will
Our wallet isn't going to like us much, but this at least works otherwise.
Black
The black section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for black. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 26 black cards onboard, so let's start with those:
Fixing the Holes
This gives us a current curve of 2-5-4-5-2-8, and a creatures-to-spells ratio of 12/14. We need to add eight more creatures and six more spells.
The curve also has its usual problems in black, with the top of the curve loaded with finisher creatures. Once we've added our last fourteen cards, we're likely going to have to drop a few of these to even the curve out.
So let's head back into the Best MP Cards list to flesh out our final 14. From this year's voting, we also need to consider Relentless Dead.
The next eight creatures gives us:
+1 Crypt Ghast
+1 Fleshbag Marauder
+1 Phyrexian Obliterator
+1 Vampire Nighthawk
+1 Reassembling Skeleton
+1 Bloodghast
+1 Dread
+1 Avatar of Woe
Not too bad, even if there are a couple more finishers in there. Never mind, we'll get to that.
The next six spells gives us:
+1 Innocent Blood
+1 Pestilence
+1 Pox
+1 No Mercy
+1 Oversold Cemetery
+1 Mutilate
Again, decent stuff.
Adding all that gives us a curve of 3-8-7-10-2-10. As expected, we've got a big lump at CC6+, but we've also got a fair few at CC4 and not much at CC5.
Firstly, we've just added Mutilate, and that's not only a CC4 card, but it's also another reset on top of Damnation and Living Death. Let's swap that out for the next CC5 spell we have available.
-1 Mutilate
+1 Liliana Vess
Not the worst.
Okay, if we drop the last four finishers from our creatures and swap them for CC5 creatures, our curve starts looking fairly reasonable. That gives us the following:
-1 Avatar of Woe
-1 Dread
-1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
-1 Grave Titan
+1 Shriekmaw
+1 Bloodgift Demon
+1 Malakir Bloodwitch
+1 Noxious Ghoul
This has now brought our curve back to 3-8-7-9-7-6, which isn't perfect, but is good enough to keep.
Sadly, Kalitas is currently just above the threshold. As soon as he stops being a darling of Standard, he'll be in our budget list for a long, long time. Yawgmoth's Will has spiked way back over the $20 mark in the past twelve months to end up on here, as has Bloodghast. The other three are carry-overs from last year. We added a Vampire tribal element or two up higher, and we appear to be knocking a couple of Vampires out here, so it would be good to at least find a couple more Vampires as we swap, too.
Firstly, the three changes we made last year:
-1 Damnation / +1 Mutilate
-1 Phyrexian Obliterator / +1 Nighthowler
-1 Vampiric Tutor / +1 Phyrexian Reclamation
Let's try and swap the two Vampires for two more:
-1 Bloodghast / +1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
-1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet / +1 Butcher of Malakir
And finally, there's nothing else like YawgWin. Let's just find the next CC3 spell in our list under $20 and add that:
-1 Yawgmoth's Will / +1 Underworld Dreams
Red
The red section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for red. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 21 red cards onboard, so let's start with those:
All of that brings our curve to 5-3-13-5-6-8. Things would be pretty good if it wasn't for that great lump of cards at CC3. If we drop the top five for three CC2 cards, a CC4 and a CC5, that gets the curve to 5-6-8-6-7-8, which is almost palatable. That produces the following:
-1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
-1 Viashino Heretic
-1 War Elemental
-1 Magus of the Moon
-1 Guttersnipe
+1 Bazaar Trader
+1 Kargan Dragonlord
+1 Fanatic of Mogis
+1 Malignus
+1 Dwarven Blastminer
There's only one problem there - I don't think there's going to be much in the cube that you're actually going to want to donate to people with Bazaar Trader! So we'll swap him out for the next CC2 creature in the list:
-1 Bazaar Trader
+1 Kiln Fiend
Green
The green section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for green. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 30 green cards onboard, so let's start with those:
Fixing the Holes
This gives us a curve of 4-4-2-6-5-9, which has a few too many finishers and a big hole at CC3. We'll try and address that as we add the last ten cards.
Our current creatures-to-spells ratio is 14/16. This would ordinarily be wonderful, but we're in green here - we're trying to hit a 60/40 ratio, given green is better at creatures than spells, and that we're trying to balance out blue (which is the opposite). This means we want a ratio of 24/16. So we've already got our spells, and we just want to add ten good creatures.
We'll go and pluck the next ten best creatures from our Best MP Cards list. It's a shame there's no more room for spells, as we voted Seasons Past outside of the threshold for inclusion this year by an absolute whisker... and there's no room for it here either. Think of the fun we could have had with all those black tutors we added. Oh well, maybe we'll find room in the final 20%...
We also need to consider Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Tireless Tracker from this year's voting. Let's see if they scrape in...
+1 Acidic Slime
+1 Vigor
+1 Silklash Spider
+1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
+1 Verdant Force
+1 Terastodon
+1 Birds of Paradise
+1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
+1 Spike Weaver
+1 Tornado Elemental
Well, we got Selvala in... let's look at what that did to the curve.
Our curve is now 5-5-3-7-7-13. We haven't really smoothed out that bump, have we? If we drop the four CC6+ creatures we just added for four CC3 creatures, we reach a curve of 5-5-7-7-7-9, which is palatable. Let's do it.
-1 Vigor
-1 Verdant Force
-1 Terastodon
-1 Tornado Elemental
+1 Predator Ooze
+1 Managorger Hydra
+1 Titania's Chosen
+1 Heartwood Storyteller
I swear Tireless Tracker is juuust off this list! Poor thing... I guess we'll have to see if we can sneak it into our final 20%, like Seasons Past.
Gold
The gold section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 39 cards in our power rankings for gold. We traditionally further break this down into five cards for each allied guild, four for each enemy guild and five of three colours or more, and then leave a slot in each of these 11 guilds for the final archetypes (which is why we want 39, not 40, here).
To make things exciting, our Best MP Cards list currently has 43 gold cards onboard - we're actually going to have to cut from our list here! Let's see what we have first:
Fixing the Holes
This gives us a curve of 1-4-11-7-9-11. It'd be great if it wasn't for that lump at CC3 - we expect gold to have a higher curve, but we want to level that bump out a bit as we go.
Our creatures-to-spells ratio is 27/16. That looks high, but it's normal to be loaded with creatures in gold. We usually don't stress too much about the ratio in here, as we make up for it in colourless (which is traditionally a ratio of one creature to three non-creatures).
Our main problems are that we need to even the guilds out and drop four cards. We want to end up with four cards in each of the allied guilds and 3+ colour cards, and three in each of the enemy guilds. And if we can drop some CC3 cards while we're at it, that would be peachy.
Azorius is fine at four cards, so our first port of call is Dimir, where we need to add one. The next guy in our list is a fine choice:
+1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
Rakdos needs two more added. Our list gives us:
+1 Demigod of Revenge
+1 Terminate
Demigod is not exactly wonderful in a singleton format, but I suppose we can clone him...
Orzhov has been a hog too. It's currently got five where it wants three. Dropping the lowest two:
-1 Ashen Rider
-1 Magister of Worth
Izzet needs to add one more card. Our list gives us:
+1 Dominus of Fealty
Hard to cast... but fun...
Golgari has twice as many cards as we want it to have! Why, Golgari? Why? Let's drop the lowest ranked three:
-1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
-1 Glissa, the Traitor
-1 Maelstrom Pulse
Sad to see Meren go (who was juuust outside of third in the list), but not sad to lose two CC3 cards...
Boros has the correct number of cards, so we can move on to Simic, which needs to lose one. The least popular one gets voted off the island:
-1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Finally, we have five 3+ colour cards, where we only want four. We need to drop one. This one's easy... let's not pretend we're playing five-colour Sliver decks in a Limited format, shall we?
-1 Sliver Hivelord
All of this brings our curve to 1-4-7-6-10-11... almost perfect. Let's see if we can drop a CC3 for a CC4 somewhere.
Our creature-to-spell ratio is now at 24/15, which is palatable. It's pretty close to a 60/40 split, which is actually really, really good for gold!
Okay, about that CC3 card...
The easiest solution here is to nerf Vindicate and swap it for Utter End. Utter End may cost one more and not hit lands, but it's going to be fun to piff things at instant speed.
Dack Fayden has fallen off this list from last year, thanks to his Eternal Masters reprinting.
Given Leovold is in the 3+ Colour pile, we pretty much get a free swing replacing him with something awesome with three or more colours. Sliver Queen is the next card in our Best MP Cards list, but we've already discounted Slivers. After that, it's really tight between Animar, Doran and The Mimeoplasm. Let's swap a Sultai card for a Sultai card.
-1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest / +1 The Mimeoplasm.
Colourless
The green section in a 360-card cube is 30 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 24 cards in our power rankings for green. Our Best MP Cards list currently has no less than 40 colourless cards onboard... this could be fun...
We normally try to find an even spread in this section between creatures, equipment, mana rocks and anything else.
Fixing the Holes
The curve here is 7-5-4-11-2-2-9. We normally get a bit skewed here by the jewellery and the finishers, but this is ridiculous... look at that gaping hole in CC4-5! We'll have to fix that alright...
The ratio between creatures/rocks/equipment/utility is 9/9/10/12. Pretty even, but we want to drop to 6/6/6/6, so we've got some work to do.
First things first, let's drop the lowest ranked stuff off the bottom of each list and see where that gets us.
We need to lose three creatures. The bottom two are:
-1 It That Betrays
-1 Metalworker
-1 Memnarch
Which naturally leaves us with almost nothing but CC6+ finishers for creatures. Yaaaay... so I guess we'll be revisiting this section shortly...
Now for the bottom three mana rocks.
-1 Mox Pearl
-1 Mana Crypt
-1 Mana Vault
Amusingly, we rank Sol Ring ahead of the Moxen in our rankings (mostly because we'll own a Sol Ring or two in our lifetime, but not a Mox), so we drop the lowest ranked (which is the Pearl, only because a few people put it below the other four for a couple of years of voting). Sorry white!
Okay, that's done. How's our curve? We're now at 5-3-1-5-2-2-6. But we now need to get a couple of smaller creatures in.
Let's at least make a cursory effort, and drop the next two CC6+ creatures in our list for stuff that costs less (but isn't CC3, for goodness sake)!
-1 Steel Hellkite
-1 Sundering Titan
+1 Spellskite
+1 Psychosis Crawler
Well, that could have been worse - the curve is now at 5-3-2-5-2-3-4. Good enough.
Amazingly, Umezawa's Jitte is currently off this list thanks to its FtV:Lore printing. Looks like you can add some brokenness to your cube for cheap at the moment.
Emrakul, Skite, Bridge and the power were all on our list last year, so we can try and make the same swaps. Unfortunately, we swapped Skite for Solemn Simulacrum last year, and that's already in our list this year, so we'll have to pick the next half-decent creature around the same CC instead. We have the same problem with the Bridge, which we dropped for Expedition Map last year (but the Map remains in this year). We also traditionally drop the Lotus and Moxen for Lotus Petal and the five allied Signets, but given we've only got four Moxen in the list this year, we'll just go with the five Signets for completeness. Blightsteel and the two Swords are new wrinkles. The two Swords we can drop for the two we cut from our initial list - they're both under the $20 mark. We can just add back the best finisher we cut earlier for Blightsteel. This gives us the following:
-1 Black Lotus / +1 Azorius Signet
-1 Mox Emerald / +1 Dimir Signet
-1 Mox Jet / +1 Gruul Signet
-1 Mox Ruby / +1 Radkos Signet
-1 Mox Sapphire / +1 Selesnya Signet
-1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn / +1 Artisan of Kozilek
-1 Spellskite / +1 Hangarback Walker
-1 Ensnaring Bridge / +1 Vedalken Shackles
-1 Blightsteel Colossus / +1 Sundering Titan
-1 Sword of Fire and Ice / +1 Sword of Body and Mind
-1 Sword of Light and Shadow / +1 Sword of War and Peace
Non-Basic Land
The non-basic land section in a 360-card cube is 30 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 24 cards in our power rankings for non-basic land. Our Best MP Cards list currently has no less than 56 cards on it... I'm not even going to try and pretend to list that.
Instead, let's just throw in what will likely perpetually be the best 24 according to our list - it's going to take an absolutely exceptional set of cards to knock any of these out of the top 24, considering the competition...
Budget Constraints
And now let's swap all this out again! With the explosion of the enemy fetches in the past twelve months, we find ourselves turfing 18 of the 24 on the list:
Optimal Multiplayer Cube 2016
Righto, we've done the hard work and put the top 80% of the cube in. It's now time to fill the last section in with our archetypes. Let's do this as per last year, adding an archetype per two-colour guild. We have 72 cards left to add, but six of these are land and six are colourless (which aren't normally too guild-related). So for the remaining 60, let's hand six to each guild. For each guild, we'll add one gold card, three of the first guild colour and two of the second. Let's go!
Archetypes
It's important to note here that the archetypes being added here are by no means the best possible to add. That will always be subjective and meta-dependent (just like my use of the word "optimal" each year! At least I'm not calling these cubes "definitive")! What you should be considering when adding archetypes to your cube is whether it forms a cohesive strategy, whether every element is draftable, and, most importantly, whether it is fun.
This is usually where the cube designer adds the pet cards and strategies that their meta loves. As an example, my own personal cube has an Enchantress archetype onboard - not because it's the most effective strategy, even in a Limited environment (because it isn't - I won't waste any more pixels on why openly inviting people to two-for-one your creatures is a bad idea), but because the guys I play with adore it (and yes, it has won games out of my cube)! This is what keeps people coming back to an environment like Cube - not because they can draft what they know are the best cards available, but because of the stonkingly fun time they can have doing so. In that regard, it makes sense to have a bit of fun with the last 20% of your cube!
This year, I'm going to look hard at what each guild has obviously missing, what can play nicely with what we have, and what will form the best archetype we can manage in each space. Some are known commodities, some are hard work. Let's see what we end up with.
Body Double(Good blink target, even better with Reveillark rolled into the mix)
Obviously, you could easily put Snapcaster Mage in here, but I'm thinking of your wallets at this point. Lavinia of the Tenth is another popular blink target if you want to tinker with your Azorius section a little.
Dimir - Zombie Tribal
Black has already given us a fair bit of Zombie work in Gary, Noxious Ghoul and Kalitas. Let's push it way over the top with a million 2/2 zombie tokens.
Gisa and Geralf(Lets you continually recur a lot of the key pieces of this archetype)
Undead Alchemist(Zombie creator that works beautifully with a couple of other cards already in the cube)
Stitcher Geralf(Another creature that works beautifully in tandem with the Alchemist)
Increasing Confusion(Mill card that pairs beautifully with the Alchemist and the self-mill we are performing)
Ghoulcaller Gisa(Probably the best 2/2 zombie producer in the game, and better than her brother)
Cemetery Reaper(A tribal lord that will produce even more tokens and halt other players' graveyard strategies)
Rakdos - Vampire Tribal
We had about half a decent Vampire Tribal lump in Rakdos (thanks to Malakir Bloodwitch, Olivia Voldaren and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet). Let's see what else we can rustle up for Vampires, and throw black a bone with some direct removal as well.
Olivia, Mobilized for War(Cheap, evasive flier that will vampirize your other creatures and play into reanimator strategies)
Bloodline Keeper(About as close to a decent Vampire lord as we'll get)
Gruul - Tokens
This guild tends to go wiiiide when it comes to tokens, and we've already got Dragonlair Spider, Doubling Season and a few other usual suspects on board. Let's exploit it.
Awakening Zone(A perpetual stream of ramping token creatures)
There are obviously a million other things you could place here. Outpost Siege is another Impact Tremors alternative. Second Harvest and Parallel Evolution are alternate Parallel Lives copies. Siege-Gang Commander is another excellent red token producer that is missing, and there are millions of green options.
Eternal Dragon(Another excellent land-fetcher and finisher for white)
Orzhov - Stax
Orzhov has just about all the pieces for a nasty stax deck... black has Grave Pact, Sheoldred and Braids, while white has removal and token generation. If we make sure we add Smokestack in the artifact section, this goes over the top in terms of multiplayer hate. While we probably only need one or two more sacrificial things, the rest is simply raw token creature generation.
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad(A brilliant token spammer and lifegainer... and then if you pull off his ultimate...)
A popular EDH variant of this involves Teysa, Orzhov Scion, but it usually needs a two-card combo with Darkest Hour to go truly bananas (and no-one in their right mind is drafting Darkest Hour in a vacuum). You may want to try her out in place of Sorin. Other decent stax cards we haven't included here are Hokiri, Dust Drinker, Magus of the Abyss and Bitterblossom.
Izzet - Artifacts
There have been that many decent cards thrown into this area in the last year or two that it's almost a no-brainer. With all those juicy cheap mana rocks in our cube, we have two planeswalkers itching to get onboard too.
Ral Zarek(Untaps mana rocks, clears the path and produces ridiculous swings if he ultimates)
Obviously, Kaladesh was too new to have its cards considered for inclusion into the 2016 cube. If it was allowed, Metallurgic Summonings and Combustible Gearhulk go in here like a shot.
Golgari - Graveyard Durdle
We promised higher up to try and add a couple of new cards back in later on. One of those was Meren, the other Seasons Past. Both of these cards encourage us to find sacrificial fodder with toolbox ETB effects, and then find ways of bringing them back for profit. We already have Recurring Nightmare, Survival of the Fittest, Sheoldred, Living Death and any other number of enablers for this. Let's find some fun stuff to throw overboard.
Boros - Knights with Sticks
We've quietly stuck a lot of Knights into our cube, and we already have Knight Exemplar. Indestructible Knights holding Swords will always work well, no matter the environment. Let's go for it.
Mirran Crusader(A beast of a knight that just missed out on our initial list)
Simic - +1/+1 Counters
We have Prime Speaker Zegana, Doubling Season / Primal Vigor, Forgotten Ancient and Managorger Hydra in here already. The rest is gravy.
Master Biomancer(Given Prime Speaker is already here, let's add another +1/+1 counter maven)
Hardened Scales(Adding another accelerator of +1/+1 counters)
The Final Gold Card
We've left room for one final 3+ colour gold card. Let's see... blink... graveyard recursion... I have a feeling Siege Rhino would have fun here...
The Artifacts
Time to add the final six artifacts. We try and do this by adding things that will help the archetypes above, and by trying to keep an even spread between creatures, equipment, rocks and utility.
Smokestack(We committed to thinking about this in the Orzhov Stax archetype. Will be nasty in here)
Quietus Spike(Brutal attached to knights and other assorted double strikers)
Burnished Hart(Sacrifices for Golgari and Orzhov, triggers landfall for Selesnya)
Grimoire of the Dead(Zombie tribal card that also acts as a discard outlet and works with proliferation)
It would've been really fun to add Sunforger to the list for Boros, but there aren't enough red or white instants in the cube to make it worthwhile (we're currently sitting at about 10, and probably would've only been able to consider it at about 15+).
The Non-Basic Land
Okay, let's add our last six land, continuing to throw a bone or two to our archetypes.
Drownyard Temple(Works with the Dimir self-mill, plays with discard and sacrifice outlets, capable of multiple landfall triggers for Selesnya)
Budget Version
Okay, we have our optimal cube for 2015. But look at it... it's full of Power Nine, dual lands... if you're just starting out with cube building, this is hardly the cube you're going to build off the bat.
As we've gone through the construction of the optimal cube, we've had budget suggestions the whole way through, as those starting out with cube construction will definitely have a budget of some kind (because we're all playing at kitchen tables as it is). The $20 price limit on any single card cuts out a lot of the unfeasible stuff that the average person is never going to be able to sleeve up in real life, but it also gives a big enough range that someone starting out will be able to see the money cards that they should be aiming to pick up if they haven't already.
The Changes
Here are the suggested changes from earlier:
Legacy-Legal Version
So we have an optimal cube, as well as a budget version - it's time for a Legacy-legal version. Why do we do this? As well as being the most accepted Banned/Restricted list for kitchen tables, a Legacy-legal version of the optimal cube ends up quite close to what a cube designer would consider the best feasible thing they can construct (in that they're not going to be shelling out thousands of dollars to power their cube, but it remains carrying some of the most powerful cards ever printed, and has a lot of the unfair stuff identified and removed).
This version will keep cards that are a couple of hundred dollars in value, but will inevitably drop all of the Power Nine and cards rightfully banned for their brokenness.
Removing the Banned Cards
The current Legacy Banned List can be seen here. Thankfully, our budget version already identified replacements for quite a few of these, so we'll make our budget swaps where possible. Where we need something else, we'll discuss it.
White
White loses a single card in Balance. Last year, we swapped it for Armageddon, and that remains a perfectly acceptable swap.
-1 Balance / +1 Armageddon
Gold
There remains no gold cards on the Legacy banned list, so this section lives to fight another day.
Colourless
Here, we lose the jewellery, Sol Ring and Skullclamp. We swapped five pieces of jewellery in here out for Signets in the Budget Cube, and that remains safe. Last year, we swapped Clamp for Basilisk Collar, which is fine, and Sol Ring for Mox Diamond, which would be fine if Mox Diamond hadn't tripled in price over the last twelve months. Let's pick Chrome Mox instead this year for the sake of everyone's wallets.
-1 Black Lotus / +1 Azorius Signet
-4 Moxen / +4 remaining Allied Signets
-1 Skullclamp / +1 Basilisk Collar
-1 Sol Ring / +1 Chrome Mox
Conclusion
Well, that's it. Thanks to all who voted in the power rankings to aid in the construction of this year's cubes, as well as for your continued interest in my annual mad folly.
If you're just starting out building a Multiplayer-centric cube, by all means use this as a guide, and don't stop if you're missing half of the cards - replace them with whatever is lying around and draft like no tomorrow. Your group will enjoy it regardless! From there, the continual upgrading of your cube is one of life's simple pleasures (but perhaps not your wallet's)!
Remember that this list is not intended to be the absolutely definitive current list for the bestest multiplayer cube ever - as always, feel free to figure out what you and your playgroup consider fun, and then go and include it in your own list (optimal cube lists be damned)!
What's Changed
Thanks to CubeTutor's fan-diddly-tastic cube comparison page, it's easy to have a look at what has changed since last year.
* - Chosen as part of an archetype in the final phase of cube construction. Or, in other words, you didn't vote for them, I just stuck them in later because I felt like it.
What It Costs To Build
Thankfully for me, CubeTutor has added a pricing feature in the last twelve months. Running that across our three cubes gives us the following:
Optimal Cube - $66,672.06
Legacy-Legal Cube - $27,745.62
Budget Cube - $1,182.87
The cube prices are assuming Alpha copies of the Power Nine and dual lands, so it is through the roof appropriately!
As you can see, we basically cull 95% off the cost of construction simply by swapping out anything over $20 a copy in the Budget Cube. Don't let the price of the Budget Cube keep you away from building your own - this only proves how easy it is to build a cube on a budget, culling a quarter of the price off it without even trying. I have even seen the beginnings of attempts at Multiplayer Pauper in the last year or two, and it should theoretically be possible (around 100 of the 360 cards in the Budget Cube are Pauper-legal, so it's more than a quarter of the way there already). The Budget Cube's price has actually dropped $150 since last year, too!
Even my own cube started out as roughly 50% coming from a Lorwyn common/uncommon playset I had bought (and the cube was very, very tribal for the first year or two as a result!), so don't be frightened off building your own by price or card availability - this is an optimal cube (and even mine is not optimal!), and is only a guide to aim for long-term. Until then, sleeve up what you have, and go have more fun than you could possibly imagine.
Ready, Set, Draft!
Anyway, that's enough facts and stats. I'm not silly. I know what you want. You want to hurry up and draft the suckers! Ask and you shall receive - here are the links to all three cubes on CubeTutor. Enjoy drafting them, feel free to give me any feedback, and, as always, please support Ben, the CubeTutor admin!
Thanks for the great work! I will use this as a starting point for my first MP cube for sure.
One thing though, separating in just three categories (creature, spell, reset) seems a bit few at first glance. There's zero targeted removal in black for instance. Is this accounted for when filling in the remaining 10 for each colour?
Thanks for the great work! I will use this as a starting point for my first MP cube for sure.
One thing though, separating in just three categories (creature, spell, reset) seems a bit few at first glance. There's zero targeted removal in black for instance. Is this accounted for when filling in the remaining 10 for each colour?
Thanks! Yeah, I try to fill in gaps like this with the last ten in each. I suspect gold will fill in a few things like this too (my own cube doesn't have a heap of direct removal in black these days... but Orzhov... wow...).
But anyway, I'm a man of the people... if someone wants to see something in the last 20%, I'll more than likely try and smash it in for lulz.
Contents
Introduction
Hi all, welcome to the 2016 Optimal Multiplayer Cube! For newcomers, the Optimal Multiplayer Cube is an attempt to find the best cards to put in a 360-card multiplayer cube. This list of 360 cards has existed in various forms for many years now for 1-vs-1 play, but a multiplayer-based one did not exist, so we set about trying to fix it. In previous years, we did this by voting on the best cards in a multiplayer setting for each of the cube sections. We ran Multiplayer Power Rankings votes for four years between 2012 and 2015, and found that while we are in furious agreement on some cards being top-tier for multiplayer (such as Blatant Thievery, Exsanguinate and Insurrection), finding the best 360 is an altogether different prospect, so a vote was needed.
Once we made it to 2015, the results started looking fairly repetitive, meaning that we were starting to agree on the best multiplayer cards as a group. This then meant we were able to produce a Best Multiplayer Cards Available list as a base, and then simply add to that for newer sets. In 2016, we've held two votes to add cards to this list:
- Battle for Zendikar | Oath of the Gatewatch | Commander 2015
- Shadows Over Innistrad | Eldritch Moon | Conspiracy: Take the Crown
This year, we'll take the Best Multiplayer Cards list, as well as the results from these two votes, and piece together an optimal cube list. This is now the fifth year we've done this - if you want to catch up on previous efforts, you can see the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 optimal cubes, and you can draft the 2013-15 cubes on CubeTutor (with links either in my signature, or in the articles themselves).A Cube, You Say?
Unless you've been under a rock, or are fairly new to Magic: the Gathering, you probably know what a Cube is by now. For those who are yet to explore the fun that is Cube, the MTGS Cube Forum's Great Cube Resource Thread is a great place to start. It'll hopefully help you catch the cube drafting bug and make you want to build your own. For our results, we need to set some boundaries as to what our optimal cube is going to look like. A 360-card cube is the bare minimum for eight-player drafting, so this is a good baseline. For each of the sections, we'll use the sizes specified by Tom Fowler in his excellent Hip To Be Square series - 50 of each of the five colours, 50 gold, 30 artifact, 30 nonbasic land. We also need to account for taste. There are all sorts of wonderful variant cubes floating about already, and you will likely want to account for your own (and your playgroup's) personal tastes when constructing your own. So we're going to suggest 80% of the cards for each cube section, and then suggest a couple of viable archetypes that could be added in the remaining space. Finally, some of the cards that have come out on top are heinously expensive, and are obviously only going to be available to those who truly want to power their cubes. Multiplayer guys are inevitably playing at their own kitchen tables, and not operating on a top-tier tourney player's funds, so we'll also look at the more budget options available.
The Card Pool
The last sets voted on in 2016 were Eldritch Moon and Conspiracy: Take the Crown. This is the cut-off point for this exercise - the 2016 cubes do not include new cards printed in Kaladesh, Commander 2016 or onwards.
The Results Format
For each cube section, we'll reveal the cards that were voted into the top 80% of each section (that means the top 40 cards for each of the sections that carry 50, and the top 24 for each of the sections that carry 30). We'll look at them according to casting cost, as well as creature vs. non-creature - those who've built a cube before know that it's important to get this balance right. We'll then list cards that just missed the cut, and potential budget alternatives to some of the money cards that appear in that list. Finally, we'll look at the options we have for filling that final 20% - the archetypes that fit well with the cube we've wound up with. Where a price for a card is listed, it is refers to the cheapest printing available according to PucaTrade's PucaPoints system as of the time of publishing.
I will also refer to the Best Multiplayer Cards Available list when swapping cards out for alternatives - this has been updated through to the cutoff point for these cubes, and, in essence, gives us a way of finding the best multiplayer card in a particular slot when we're seeking a replacement card.
So It's Multiplayer.... What Changes?
What makes the optimal multiplayer list different to the optimal 1-on-1 list already floating about the MTGS Cube Forum, or the list of most-run cards on CubeTutor? Two things. Firstly, the optimal 1-on-1 list contains many cards that shine in duels, but are downright unplayable in multiplayer settings. In particular, traditional aggro strategies go out the window in multiplayer - they simply run out of steam against multiple opponents. A case in point is Goblin Guide - it is ranked as one of the top ten red cards in a traditional cube, but is pretty much useless in a multiplayer arena. It didn't garner a single vote in the multiplayer power rankings in four years of voting. Secondly, you are usually afforded more time and space in a multiplayer setting, so the average casting cost of the cards in the cube can afford to be higher than they are traditionally. This gives us the room we need to fit in expensive multiplayer staples like Insurrection and Blatant Thievery.
Let's Go!
So now, you can sit back, relax and enjoy (while I try and find the time to feverishly hammer out the results)!
Please feel free to add your comments in this thread - feedback is always appreciated!
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
The white section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for white. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 31 white cards onboard, so let's start with those:
The Curve
First up, let's see where this puts our curve before we start figuring out our last nine cards.
Creatures
1 Mother of Runes
1 Weathered Wayfarer
CC2
2 Stoneforge Mystic
CC3
3 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Mirror Entity
4 Academy Rector
CC5
5 Baneslayer Angel
5 Reveillark
5 Stonehewer Giant
6 Sun Titan
7 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
8 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
8 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
Spells
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Land Tax
1 Limited Resources
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
CC2
2 Balance
2 Luminarch Ascension
2 Martial Coup
3 Grasp of Fate
3 Oblivion Ring
CC4
4 Armageddon
4 Cataclysm
4 Day of Judgment
4 Humility
4 Moat
4 Replenish
4 Wrath of God
6 Austere Command
Our creature-to-spell ratio is 13:18, so we need to add a lot more creatures than we do spells in our final bunch.
We also have the usual problem with white - it is loaded with resets. While seven reset spells is not as many as some years, it's still too many for a balanced cube - we normally keep three here and drop the rest.
Finally, the white curve is currently at 7-4-4-8-3-5. It's got a huge road bump at CC4. We'll be able to fix that by dropping some of the CC4 reset spells, but we probably want to avoid bringing in new cards at that same CC.
Fixing the Holes
This is mercifully pretty easy for us to set up this year. In years past, we have kept Wrath of God, Balance and Austere Command as our three resets, and there's not much reason to change this year, especially as we're trying to drop CC4 cards, and most of the others sit at this point in the curve. So let's drop the other four for starters:
-1 Martial Coup
-1 Armageddon
-1 Cataclysm
-1 Day of Judgment
This leaves us needing seven creatures and six spells, which is almost even, and leaves our curve at 7-4-4-4-3-5. If we add evenly across the curve for both creatures and spells, we're there.
There were only three other white cards that received votes in 2016, and they were all a fair way below our cutoff point for acceptance into the Best MP Cards list, so it's safe to simply pick the cards off the bottom of the master list from previous years. If we add a creature and a spell at each CC, and throw in a second creature at CC5, we end up with a pretty flat curve. We also need to remember to avoid adding more resets to the list (sorry, Terminus)! Finally, we literally have nothing left at CC1 for spells, so we'll throw in whatever is lying around. This means we end up adding the following:
+1 Soul Warden
+1 Auriok Champion
+1 Knight Exemplar
+1 Hero of Bladehold
+1 Cloudgoat Ranger
+1 Karmic Guide
+1 Blazing Archon
+1 Island Sanctuary
+1 Aura of Silence
+1 Ghostly Prison
+1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
+1 Elspeth Tirel
+1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
As much as we apparently want to add every printing of Elspeth ever, things look OK! This gives us a curve of 8-6-7-6-5-7, which is pretty good.
Creatures
1 Mother of Runes
1 Soul Warden
1 Weathered Wayfarer
CC2
2 Auriok Champion
2 Stoneforge Mystic
CC3
3 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Knight Exemplar
3 Mirror Entity
4 Academy Rector
4 Hero of Bladehold
CC5
5 Baneslayer Angel
5 Cloudgoat Ranger
5 Karmic Guide
5 Reveillark
5 Stonehewer Giant
6 Sun Titan
7 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
8 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
8 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
9 Blazing Archon
Spells
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Land Tax
1 Limited Resources
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
CC2
2 Balance
2 Island Sanctuary
2 Luminarch Ascension
3 Aura of Silence
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Grasp of Fate
3 Oblivion Ring
CC4
4 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Humility
4 Moat
4 Replenish
4 Wrath of God
5 Elspeth Tirel
CC6+
6 Austere Command
6 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
Budget Constraints
The list of white cards over our $20 budget threshold has changed slightly since 2015. Naturally, Moat is still over.
- Academy Rector ($26.47)
- Auriok Champion ($27.96)
- Avacyn, Angel of Hope ($24.00)
- Moat ($580.53)
Since last year, this equates to the Rector swapping places with Stoneforge Mystic (which is now down around the $15 mark). For two of the other three, we can make the same swaps as last year:-1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
-1 Moat
+1 Yosei, the Morning Star
+1 Norn's Annex
Last year, we swapped Auriok Champion for Soul Warden, but Soul Warden is already in our list this year. That's OK... Suture Priest is a ready-made replacement at the same CC.
-1 Auriok Champion
+1 Suture Priest
There's absolutely nothing out there like the Rector at the same CC, so the best we can do is find something similarly tricky and combolicious for the same casting cost. Fortunately, Restoration Angel is just off the initial list of best white cards, and there would be few complaints about adding it.
-1 Academy Rector
+1 Restoration Angel
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
The blue section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for blue. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 25 blue cards onboard, so let's start with those:
The Curve
Creatures
2 Gilded Drake
2 Phantasmal Image
4 Master Transmuter
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
6 Consecrated Sphinx
6 Deadeye Navigator
9 Inkwell Leviathan
10 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Spells
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystic Remora
CC2
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Mana Drain
2 Stasis
2 Time Walk
3 Capsize
3 Propaganda
3 Rhystic Study
3 Timetwister
3 Tinker
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Rite of Replication
CC5
5 Evacuation
CC6+
6 Time Spiral
7 Blatant Thievery
9 Expropriate
Fixing the Holes
Okay, we have fifteen more cards to add here, and this is blue, so we want a 40/60 split between spells and creatures (for those new to cube design, blue is traditionally better at spells than creatures, so we load up on spells here, and then balance things by doing the opposite in green, which is traditionally better at creatures than spells). This means we want 16 creatures and 24 spells all up, and we're currently at 8/17, so we want to add eight creatures and seven spells.
Our curve is currently at 2-6-5-4-1-7. It's pretty lumpy, and a lot of this is due to our creatures - we really want to be adding creatures with uneven casting costs, and we also want to find a few more things at CC5 in particular. Let's focus on that as we add the last fifteen.
We also need to consider a few cards that were just outside our threshold in this year's voting - Mind's Dilation, Crush of Tentacles, Thing in the Ice and Mystic Confluence (in that order).
Heading back into our Best MP Cards list, if we dig out the next eight creatures with odd casting costs, we get:
+1 Kira, Great Glass Spinner
+1 Djinn of Wishes
+1 Mulldrifter
+1 Palinchron
+1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
+1 Hunted Phantasm
+1 Chasm Skulker
+1 Noble Benefactor
Well, that's not the worst list ever...
If we then add the next seven spells we find in our list without much regard for CC, we get:
+1 Show and Tell
+1 Omniscience
+1 Mind's Dilation
+1 Windfall
+1 Future Sight
+1 Crush of Tentacles
+1 Dream Halls
We find a couple of our new cards sneaking into the list, and we've managed to find a couple of CC5 cards! Excellent!
Once we've finished doing all this, we find the curve sitting at 2-6-11-4-5-11. Well, it looks like we went a bit overboard adding CC3 things.
Let's aim to drop a few CC3 things, and find a couple more CC4-5 things to balance things out. If we drop three CC3 cards for two CC4s and a CC5, we get to 2-6-8-6-6-11, which is serviceable. Let's drop the last three CC3 cards we added, and head back into the Best MP Cards list for the three replacements. This gives us:
-1 Chasm Skulker
-1 Noble Benefactor
-1 Windfall
+1 Aura Thief
+1 Glen Elendra Archmage
+1 Force of Will
Our wallet isn't going to like us much, but this at least works otherwise.
Creatures
2 Gilded Drake
2 Phantasmal Image
CC3
3 Hunted Phantasm
3 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
CC4
4 Aura Thief
4 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Master Transmuter
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
5 Djinn of Wishes
5 Mulldrifter
5 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
CC6+
6 Consecrated Sphinx
6 Deadeye Navigator
7 Palinchron
9 Inkwell Leviathan
10 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Spells
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystic Remora
CC2
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Mana Drain
2 Stasis
2 Time Walk
CC3
3 Capsize
3 Propaganda
3 Rhystic Study
3 Show and Tell
3 Timetwister
3 Tinker
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Rite of Replication
CC5
5 Dream Halls
5 Evacuation
5 Force of Will
5 Future Sight
CC6+
6 Crush of Tentacles
6 Time Spiral
7 Blatant Thievery
7 Mind's Dilation
9 Expropriate
10 Omniscience
Budget Constraints
As always, this is where we take half of blue and throw it out the window!
- Ancestral Recall ($1801.76)
- Force of Will ($80.43)
- Gilded Drake ($23.51)
- Mana Drain ($188.70)
- Time Spiral ($33.27)
- Time Walk ($1351.31)
- Timetwister ($930.92)
We haven't thrown Snapcaster Mage in this year, and, remarkably, Show and Tell is a fourth of the price it was this time last year, so those two fall off last year's list to be replaced. However, Gilded Drake is now back over the $20 mark, and we've also added Force of Will and Time Spiral this year.This is mostly easy to sort out - we can simply make the same swaps as last year for the four that remain from last year's over-budget list... and miraculously, the two of the three remaining cards match the final two cards we were considering from this year's voting in terms of casting cost! This leaves us with Time Spiral to worry about, so we'll just pick the next CC6+ blue spell off the Best MP Cards list... which just so happens to be Time Stretch! Let's do this!
-1 Ancestral Recall / +1 Visions of Beyond
-1 Force of Will / +1 Mystic Confluence
-1 Gilded Drake / +1 Thing in the Ice
-1 Mana Drain / +1 Counterspell
-1 Time Spiral / +1 Time Stretch
-1 Time Walk / +1 Standstill
-1 Timetwister / +1 Trade Secrets
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
The black section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for black. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 26 black cards onboard, so let's start with those:
The Curve
Creatures
2 Blood Artist
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
CC4
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
CC6+
6 Grave Titan
6 Kokusho, the Evening Star
6 Massacre Wurm
6 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
7 Sepulchral Primordial
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Griselbrand
Spells
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Vampiric Tutor
CC2
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Exsanguinate
2 Waste Not
3 Necropotence
3 Phyrexian Arena
3 Recurring Nightmare
3 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Damnation
4 Grave Pact
4 Syphon Mind
CC5
5 Living Death
6 Yawgmoth's Bargain
Fixing the Holes
This gives us a current curve of 2-5-4-5-2-8, and a creatures-to-spells ratio of 12/14. We need to add eight more creatures and six more spells.
The curve also has its usual problems in black, with the top of the curve loaded with finisher creatures. Once we've added our last fourteen cards, we're likely going to have to drop a few of these to even the curve out.
So let's head back into the Best MP Cards list to flesh out our final 14. From this year's voting, we also need to consider Relentless Dead.
The next eight creatures gives us:
+1 Crypt Ghast
+1 Fleshbag Marauder
+1 Phyrexian Obliterator
+1 Vampire Nighthawk
+1 Reassembling Skeleton
+1 Bloodghast
+1 Dread
+1 Avatar of Woe
Not too bad, even if there are a couple more finishers in there. Never mind, we'll get to that.
The next six spells gives us:
+1 Innocent Blood
+1 Pestilence
+1 Pox
+1 No Mercy
+1 Oversold Cemetery
+1 Mutilate
Again, decent stuff.
Adding all that gives us a curve of 3-8-7-10-2-10. As expected, we've got a big lump at CC6+, but we've also got a fair few at CC4 and not much at CC5.
Firstly, we've just added Mutilate, and that's not only a CC4 card, but it's also another reset on top of Damnation and Living Death. Let's swap that out for the next CC5 spell we have available.
-1 Mutilate
+1 Liliana Vess
Not the worst.
Okay, if we drop the last four finishers from our creatures and swap them for CC5 creatures, our curve starts looking fairly reasonable. That gives us the following:
-1 Avatar of Woe
-1 Dread
-1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
-1 Grave Titan
+1 Shriekmaw
+1 Bloodgift Demon
+1 Malakir Bloodwitch
+1 Noxious Ghoul
This has now brought our curve back to 3-8-7-9-7-6, which isn't perfect, but is good enough to keep.
Creatures
2 Blood Artist
2 Bloodghast
2 Reassembling Skeleton
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
CC3
3 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Crypt Ghast
4 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Phyrexian Obliterator
CC5
5 Bloodgift Demon
5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
5 Malakir Bloodwitch
5 Noxious Ghoul
5 Shriekmaw
6 Kokusho, the Evening Star
6 Massacre Wurm
7 Sepulchral Primordial
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Griselbrand
Spells
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Innocent Blood
1 Vampiric Tutor
CC2
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Exsanguinate
2 Oversold Cemetery
2 Waste Not
3 Necropotence
3 Phyrexian Arena
3 Pox
3 Recurring Nightmare
3 Yawgmoth's Will
CC4
4 Damnation
4 Grave Pact
4 No Mercy
4 Pestilence
4 Syphon Mind
5 Liliana Vess
5 Living Death
CC6
6 Yawgmoth's Bargain
Budget Constraints
There are six cards to worry about here.
- Bloodghast ($23.84)
- Damnation ($60.64)
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet ($20.67)
- Phyrexian Obliterator ($29.49)
- Vampiric Tutor ($27.11)
- Yawgmoth's Will ($31.07)
Sadly, Kalitas is currently just above the threshold. As soon as he stops being a darling of Standard, he'll be in our budget list for a long, long time.Yawgmoth's Will has spiked way back over the $20 mark in the past twelve months to end up on here, as has Bloodghast. The other three are carry-overs from last year. We added a Vampire tribal element or two up higher, and we appear to be knocking a couple of Vampires out here, so it would be good to at least find a couple more Vampires as we swap, too.
Firstly, the three changes we made last year:
-1 Damnation / +1 Mutilate
-1 Phyrexian Obliterator / +1 Nighthowler
-1 Vampiric Tutor / +1 Phyrexian Reclamation
Let's try and swap the two Vampires for two more:
-1 Bloodghast / +1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
-1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet / +1 Butcher of Malakir
And finally, there's nothing else like YawgWin. Let's just find the next CC3 spell in our list under $20 and add that:
-1 Yawgmoth's Will / +1 Underworld Dreams
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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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
The red section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for red. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 21 red cards onboard, so let's start with those:
The Curve
Creatures
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
CC3
3 Chandra's Spitfire
3 Taurean Mauler
5 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
5 Urabrask the Hidden
7 Balefire Dragon
7 Molten Primordial
Spells
1 Banefire
1 Earthquake
1 Rolling Earthquake
CC2
2 Comet Storm
3 Acidic Soil
3 Blood Moon
3 Mana Flare
3 Repercussion
3 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Wheel of Fortune
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
CC6+
6 Wildfire
8 Insurrection
9 Blasphemous Act
Fixing the Holes
This currently gives us a curve of 4-1-8-1-2-5... what a mess! Look at those holes we have to fill at CC2 and 4!
Our creatures-to-spells ratio is currently 7/14, so we're almost exclusively adding creatures, too - we currently need to add 13 creatures and 6 spells to hit our quota. With red creatures notoriously lame in multiplayer, this could be brutal...
We'll head back to the Best MP Cards list, also noting that Mizzix's Mastery received relatively high votes this year too.
Firstly, the next thirteen creatures in our list are:
+1 Goblin Welder
+1 Guttersnipe
+1 Thundermaw Hellkite
+1 Inferno Titan
+1 Magus of the Moon
+1 Flametongue Kavu
+1 War Elemental
+1 Scourge of Geier Reach
+1 Viashino Heretic
+1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
+1 Hateflayer
+1 Hostility
+1 Ashling the Pilgrim
Actually not looking too bad for our curve problems!
And the next six spells:
+1 Mass Mutiny
+1 Splinter Twin
+1 Furnace of Rath
+1 Reforge the Soul
+1 Price of Progress
+1 Chain Reaction
All of that brings our curve to 5-3-13-5-6-8. Things would be pretty good if it wasn't for that great lump of cards at CC3. If we drop the top five for three CC2 cards, a CC4 and a CC5, that gets the curve to 5-6-8-6-7-8, which is almost palatable. That produces the following:
-1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
-1 Viashino Heretic
-1 War Elemental
-1 Magus of the Moon
-1 Guttersnipe
+1 Bazaar Trader
+1 Kargan Dragonlord
+1 Fanatic of Mogis
+1 Malignus
+1 Dwarven Blastminer
There's only one problem there - I don't think there's going to be much in the cube that you're actually going to want to donate to people with Bazaar Trader! So we'll swap him out for the next CC2 creature in the list:
-1 Bazaar Trader
+1 Kiln Fiend
Creatures
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Goblin Welder
CC2
2 Ashling the Pilgrim
2 Dwarven Blastminer
2 Kargan Dragonlord
2 Kiln Fiend
3 Chandra's Spitfire
3 Taurean Mauler
CC4
4 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flametongue Kavu
CC5
5 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
5 Malignus
5 Scourge of Geier Reach
5 Thundermaw Hellkite
5 Urabrask the Hidden
6 Hostility
6 Inferno Titan
7 Balefire Dragon
7 Hateflayer
7 Molten Primordial
Spells
1 Banefire
1 Earthquake
1 Rolling Earthquake
CC2
2 Comet Storm
2 Price of Progress
CC3
3 Acidic Soil
3 Blood Moon
3 Mana Flare
3 Repercussion
3 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Wheel of Fortune
4 Chain Reaction
4 Furnace of Rath
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Splinter Twin
CC5
5 Mass Mutiny
5 Reforge the Soul
6 Wildfire
8 Insurrection
9 Blasphemous Act
Budget Constraints
There are only a couple of killers in here:
- Blood Moon ($38.83)
- Wheel of Fortune ($44.27)
These are the same two cards as last year, so we can make the same swaps as last year:-1 Blood Moon / +1 Flamebreak
-1 Wheel of Fortune / +1 Molten Psyche
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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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
The green section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 40 cards in our power rankings for green. Our Best MP Cards list currently has 30 green cards onboard, so let's start with those:
The Curve
Creatures
2 Priest of Titania
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Scavenging Ooze
CC3
3 Eternal Witness
4 Forgotten Ancient
CC5
5 Genesis
5 Seedborn Muse
5 Thragtusk
6 Bane of Progress
6 Hydra Omnivore
6 Primeval Titan
7 Avenger of Zendikar
7 Sylvan Primordial
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
Spells
1 Burgeoning
1 Fastbond
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Rancor
CC2
2 Survival of the Fittest
3 Genesis Wave
CC4
4 Birthing Pod
4 Defense of the Heart
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Greater Good
4 Natural Order
5 Doubling Season
5 Garruk, Primal Hunter
CC6
6 Lurking Predators
6 Selvala's Stampede
7 Tooth and Nail
Fixing the Holes
This gives us a curve of 4-4-2-6-5-9, which has a few too many finishers and a big hole at CC3. We'll try and address that as we add the last ten cards.
Our current creatures-to-spells ratio is 14/16. This would ordinarily be wonderful, but we're in green here - we're trying to hit a 60/40 ratio, given green is better at creatures than spells, and that we're trying to balance out blue (which is the opposite). This means we want a ratio of 24/16. So we've already got our spells, and we just want to add ten good creatures.
We'll go and pluck the next ten best creatures from our Best MP Cards list. It's a shame there's no more room for spells, as we voted Seasons Past outside of the threshold for inclusion this year by an absolute whisker... and there's no room for it here either. Think of the fun we could have had with all those black tutors we added. Oh well, maybe we'll find room in the final 20%...
We also need to consider Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Tireless Tracker from this year's voting. Let's see if they scrape in...
+1 Acidic Slime
+1 Vigor
+1 Silklash Spider
+1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
+1 Verdant Force
+1 Terastodon
+1 Birds of Paradise
+1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
+1 Spike Weaver
+1 Tornado Elemental
Well, we got Selvala in... let's look at what that did to the curve.
Our curve is now 5-5-3-7-7-13. We haven't really smoothed out that bump, have we? If we drop the four CC6+ creatures we just added for four CC3 creatures, we reach a curve of 5-5-7-7-7-9, which is palatable. Let's do it.
-1 Vigor
-1 Verdant Force
-1 Terastodon
-1 Tornado Elemental
+1 Predator Ooze
+1 Managorger Hydra
+1 Titania's Chosen
+1 Heartwood Storyteller
I swear Tireless Tracker is juuust off this list! Poor thing... I guess we'll have to see if we can sneak it into our final 20%, like Seasons Past.
Creatures
1 Birds of Paradise
CC2
2 Priest of Titania
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Scavenging Ooze
CC3
3 Eternal Witness
3 Heartwood Storyteller
3 Managorger Hydra
3 Predator Ooze
3 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
3 Titania's Chosen
4 Forgotten Ancient
4 Spike Weaver
CC5
5 Acidic Slime
5 Genesis
5 Seedborn Muse
5 Silklash Spider
5 Thragtusk
CC6+
6 Bane of Progress
6 Hydra Omnivore
6 Primeval Titan
7 Avenger of Zendikar
7 Sylvan Primordial
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
Spells
1 Burgeoning
1 Fastbond
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Rancor
CC2
2 Survival of the Fittest
3 Genesis Wave
CC4
4 Birthing Pod
4 Defense of the Heart
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Greater Good
4 Natural Order
5 Doubling Season
5 Garruk, Primal Hunter
CC6
6 Lurking Predators
6 Selvala's Stampede
7 Tooth and Nail
Budget Constraints
This year, we have three cards over the $20 mark:
- Craterhoof Behemoth ($23.29)
- Doubling Season ($61.05)
- Survival of the Fittest ($45.69)
Seedborn Muse is also off this list by the skin of its teeth. It has three printings - two are over $20, and the original Legions printing is currently sitting around $19.60. Looks like we can expect that to be on the list next year.DubSeason and Survival were both on the list last year, so we can make the same swaps. And Hoof we can swap for the Hoof-lite Pathbreaker Ibex.
-1 Craterhoof Behemoth / +1 Pathbreaker Ibex
-1 Doubling Season / +1 Primal Vigor
-1 Survival of the Fittest / +1 Oath of Druids
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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
The gold section in a 360-card cube is 50 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 39 cards in our power rankings for gold. We traditionally further break this down into five cards for each allied guild, four for each enemy guild and five of three colours or more, and then leave a slot in each of these 11 guilds for the final archetypes (which is why we want 39, not 40, here).
To make things exciting, our Best MP Cards list currently has 43 gold cards onboard - we're actually going to have to cut from our list here! Let's see what we have first:
Azorius
Dimir
Rakdos
Gruul
Selesnya
Orzhov
Izzet
Golgari
Boros
Simic
3+ Colour
The Curve
Creatures
1 Deathrite Shaman
CC2
2 Baleful Strix
2 Qasali Pridemage
2 Vizkopa Guildmage
CC3
3 Boros Reckoner
3 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
3 Glissa, the Traitor
3 Jhoira of the Ghitu
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
4 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
4 Olivia Voldaren
CC5
5 Consuming Aberration
5 Havengul Lich
5 Prophet of Kruphix
5 Sigarda, Host of Herons
5 Sliver Hivelord
6 Dragon Broodmother
6 Magister of Worth
6 Prime Speaker Zegana
7 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
7 Kaervek the Merciless
8 Ashen Rider
8 Maelstrom Wanderer
8 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Spells
2 Sterling Grove
CC3
3 Aura Shards
3 Dack Fayden
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Vindicate
4 Deathreap Ritual
4 Mirrorweave
4 Supreme Verdict
CC5
5 Assemble the Legion
5 Fracturing Gust
5 Mirari's Wake
5 Venser, the Sojourner
6 Spitting Image
7 Debtors' Knell
8 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Fixing the Holes
This gives us a curve of 1-4-11-7-9-11. It'd be great if it wasn't for that lump at CC3 - we expect gold to have a higher curve, but we want to level that bump out a bit as we go.
Our creatures-to-spells ratio is 27/16. That looks high, but it's normal to be loaded with creatures in gold. We usually don't stress too much about the ratio in here, as we make up for it in colourless (which is traditionally a ratio of one creature to three non-creatures).
Our main problems are that we need to even the guilds out and drop four cards. We want to end up with four cards in each of the allied guilds and 3+ colour cards, and three in each of the enemy guilds. And if we can drop some CC3 cards while we're at it, that would be peachy.
Azorius is fine at four cards, so our first port of call is Dimir, where we need to add one. The next guy in our list is a fine choice:
+1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
Rakdos needs two more added. Our list gives us:
+1 Demigod of Revenge
+1 Terminate
Demigod is not exactly wonderful in a singleton format, but I suppose we can clone him...
Gruul also needs two more added. From the list:
+1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
+1 Dragonlair Spider
Selesnya has been a hog. It's currently got seven cards where we want four. So we'll drop the three with the lowest ranking in our list:
-1 Sterling Grove
-1 Knight of the Reliquary
-1 Qasali Pridemage
Orzhov has been a hog too. It's currently got five where it wants three. Dropping the lowest two:
-1 Ashen Rider
-1 Magister of Worth
Izzet needs to add one more card. Our list gives us:
+1 Dominus of Fealty
Hard to cast... but fun...
Golgari has twice as many cards as we want it to have! Why, Golgari? Why? Let's drop the lowest ranked three:
-1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
-1 Glissa, the Traitor
-1 Maelstrom Pulse
Sad to see Meren go (who was juuust outside of third in the list), but not sad to lose two CC3 cards...
Boros has the correct number of cards, so we can move on to Simic, which needs to lose one. The least popular one gets voted off the island:
-1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Finally, we have five 3+ colour cards, where we only want four. We need to drop one. This one's easy... let's not pretend we're playing five-colour Sliver decks in a Limited format, shall we?
-1 Sliver Hivelord
All of this brings our curve to 1-4-7-6-10-11... almost perfect. Let's see if we can drop a CC3 for a CC4 somewhere.
Our creature-to-spell ratio is now at 24/15, which is palatable. It's pretty close to a 60/40 split, which is actually really, really good for gold!
Okay, about that CC3 card...
The easiest solution here is to nerf Vindicate and swap it for Utter End. Utter End may cost one more and not hit lands, but it's going to be fun to piff things at instant speed.
Creatures
1 Deathrite Shaman
CC2
2 Baleful Strix
2 Sygg, River Cutthroat
2 Vizkopa Guildmage
CC3
3 Boros Reckoner
3 Jhoira of the Ghitu
3 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
CC4
4 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Olivia Voldaren
5 Consuming Aberration
5 Demigod of Revenge
5 Dominus of Fealty
5 Havengul Lich
5 Prophet of Kruphix
5 Sigarda, Host of Herons
CC6+
6 Dragon Broodmother
6 Dragonlair Spider
6 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
6 Prime Speaker Zegana
7 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
7 Kaervek the Merciless
8 Maelstrom Wanderer
8 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
Spells
2 Terminate
CC3
3 Aura Shards
3 Dack Fayden
3 Pernicious Deed
CC4
4 Deathreap Ritual
4 Mirrorweave
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Utter End
5 Assemble the Legion
5 Fracturing Gust
5 Mirari's Wake
5 Venser, the Sojourner
CC6+
6 Spitting Image
7 Debtors' Knell
8 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Budget Constraints
Only one card on this list - Leovold, the new hotness.
- Leovold, Emissary of Trest ($28.83)
Dack Fayden has fallen off this list from last year, thanks to his Eternal Masters reprinting.Given Leovold is in the 3+ Colour pile, we pretty much get a free swing replacing him with something awesome with three or more colours. Sliver Queen is the next card in our Best MP Cards list, but we've already discounted Slivers. After that, it's really tight between Animar, Doran and The Mimeoplasm. Let's swap a Sultai card for a Sultai card.
-1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest / +1 The Mimeoplasm.
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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
The green section in a 360-card cube is 30 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 24 cards in our power rankings for green. Our Best MP Cards list currently has no less than 40 colourless cards onboard... this could be fun...
We normally try to find an even spread in this section between creatures, equipment, mana rocks and anything else.
The Curve
Creatures
3 Metalworker
CC4
4 Solemn Simulacrum
CC6+
6 Steel Hellkite
6 Wurmcoil Engine
7 Memnarch
8 Sundering Titan
11 It That Betrays
13 Blightsteel Colossus
15 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Mana Rocks
0 Black Lotus
0 Mana Crypt
0 Mox Emerald
0 Mox Jet
0 Mox Pearl
0 Mox Ruby
0 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
Equipment
1 Skullclamp
CC2
2 Blade of Selves
2 Lightning Greaves
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Sword of Body and Mind
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Sword of Light and Shadow
3 Sword of War and Peace
5 Batterskull
Utility
1 Expedition Map
1 Sensei's Divining Top
CC2
2 Winter Orb
CC3
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mimic Vat
3 Oblivion Stone
3 Staff of Domination
3 Vedalken Shackles
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
CC5
5 Mind's Eye
CC6+
7 All is Dust
9 Darksteel Forge
Fixing the Holes
The curve here is 7-5-4-11-2-2-9. We normally get a bit skewed here by the jewellery and the finishers, but this is ridiculous... look at that gaping hole in CC4-5! We'll have to fix that alright...
The ratio between creatures/rocks/equipment/utility is 9/9/10/12. Pretty even, but we want to drop to 6/6/6/6, so we've got some work to do.
First things first, let's drop the lowest ranked stuff off the bottom of each list and see where that gets us.
We need to lose three creatures. The bottom two are:
-1 It That Betrays
-1 Metalworker
-1 Memnarch
Which naturally leaves us with almost nothing but CC6+ finishers for creatures. Yaaaay... so I guess we'll be revisiting this section shortly...
The bottom four equipment now go overboard:
-1 Sword of War and Peace
-1 Sword of Body and Mind
-1 Blade of Selves
-1 Lightning Greaves
It may break our set of five swords, but I've got a funny feeling they might be back in our budget version...
Now for the bottom three mana rocks.
-1 Mox Pearl
-1 Mana Crypt
-1 Mana Vault
Amusingly, we rank Sol Ring ahead of the Moxen in our rankings (mostly because we'll own a Sol Ring or two in our lifetime, but not a Mox), so we drop the lowest ranked (which is the Pearl, only because a few people put it below the other four for a couple of years of voting). Sorry white!
And finally, the bottom six utility cards.
-1 Oblivion Stone
-1 Vedalken Shackles
-1 Sensei's Divining Top
-1 Winter Orb
-1 Darksteel Forge
-1 Staff of Domination
Okay, that's done. How's our curve? We're now at 5-3-1-5-2-2-6. But we now need to get a couple of smaller creatures in.
Let's at least make a cursory effort, and drop the next two CC6+ creatures in our list for stuff that costs less (but isn't CC3, for goodness sake)!
-1 Steel Hellkite
-1 Sundering Titan
+1 Spellskite
+1 Psychosis Crawler
Well, that could have been worse - the curve is now at 5-3-2-5-2-3-4. Good enough.
Creatures
2 Spellskite
CC4
4 Solemn Simulacrum
5 Psychosis Crawler
CC6+
6 Wurmcoil Engine
13 Blightsteel Colossus
15 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Mana Rocks
0 Black Lotus
0 Mox Emerald
0 Mox Jet
0 Mox Ruby
0 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
Equipment
1 Skullclamp
CC2
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Sword of Light and Shadow
5 Batterskull
Utility
1 Expedition Map
CC3
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mimic Vat
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
CC5
5 Mind's Eye
7 All is Dust
Budget Constraints
And now let's throw half of this out and start again! This year, we send half the cards overboard:
- Black Lotus ($6506.45)
- Blightsteel Colossus ($25.42)
- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn ($34.02)
- Ensnaring Bridge ($38.26)
- Mox Emerald ($1201.20)
- Mox Jet ($1591.57)
- Mox Ruby ($1239.53)
- Mox Sapphire ($1900.90)
- Spellskite ($22.01)
- Sword of Fire and Ice ($38.04)
- Sword of Light and Shadow ($24.02)
Amazingly, Umezawa's Jitte is currently off this list thanks to its FtV:Lore printing. Looks like you can add some brokenness to your cube for cheap at the moment.Emrakul, Skite, Bridge and the power were all on our list last year, so we can try and make the same swaps. Unfortunately, we swapped Skite for Solemn Simulacrum last year, and that's already in our list this year, so we'll have to pick the next half-decent creature around the same CC instead. We have the same problem with the Bridge, which we dropped for Expedition Map last year (but the Map remains in this year). We also traditionally drop the Lotus and Moxen for Lotus Petal and the five allied Signets, but given we've only got four Moxen in the list this year, we'll just go with the five Signets for completeness. Blightsteel and the two Swords are new wrinkles. The two Swords we can drop for the two we cut from our initial list - they're both under the $20 mark. We can just add back the best finisher we cut earlier for Blightsteel. This gives us the following:
-1 Black Lotus / +1 Azorius Signet
-1 Mox Emerald / +1 Dimir Signet
-1 Mox Jet / +1 Gruul Signet
-1 Mox Ruby / +1 Radkos Signet
-1 Mox Sapphire / +1 Selesnya Signet
-1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn / +1 Artisan of Kozilek
-1 Spellskite / +1 Hangarback Walker
-1 Ensnaring Bridge / +1 Vedalken Shackles
-1 Blightsteel Colossus / +1 Sundering Titan
-1 Sword of Fire and Ice / +1 Sword of Body and Mind
-1 Sword of Light and Shadow / +1 Sword of War and Peace
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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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
The non-basic land section in a 360-card cube is 30 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 24 cards in our power rankings for non-basic land. Our Best MP Cards list currently has no less than 56 cards on it... I'm not even going to try and pretend to list that.
Instead, let's just throw in what will likely perpetually be the best 24 according to our list - it's going to take an absolutely exceptional set of cards to knock any of these out of the top 24, considering the competition...
The Duals
The Fetches
The Final Four
Budget Constraints
And now let's swap all this out again! With the explosion of the enemy fetches in the past twelve months, we find ourselves turfing 18 of the 24 on the list:
Volrath's Stronghold has snuck on to this list too. We can perform the same swaps we did last year for the first twelve. The five enemy fetches can go for the next decent enemy cycle of five in our list. And we'll head into our list for a Stronghold replacement too. This gives us:
-10 Duals / +10 Ravnica Shocks
-1 Tolarian Academy / +1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
-1 Gaea's Cradle / +1 Kessig Wolf Run
-5 Zendikar Fetches / +5 enemy Ravnica bouncelands
-1 Volrath's Stronghold / +1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
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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
Righto, we've done the hard work and put the top 80% of the cube in. It's now time to fill the last section in with our archetypes. Let's do this as per last year, adding an archetype per two-colour guild. We have 72 cards left to add, but six of these are land and six are colourless (which aren't normally too guild-related). So for the remaining 60, let's hand six to each guild. For each guild, we'll add one gold card, three of the first guild colour and two of the second. Let's go!
Archetypes
It's important to note here that the archetypes being added here are by no means the best possible to add. That will always be subjective and meta-dependent (just like my use of the word "optimal" each year! At least I'm not calling these cubes "definitive")! What you should be considering when adding archetypes to your cube is whether it forms a cohesive strategy, whether every element is draftable, and, most importantly, whether it is fun.
This is usually where the cube designer adds the pet cards and strategies that their meta loves. As an example, my own personal cube has an Enchantress archetype onboard - not because it's the most effective strategy, even in a Limited environment (because it isn't - I won't waste any more pixels on why openly inviting people to two-for-one your creatures is a bad idea), but because the guys I play with adore it (and yes, it has won games out of my cube)! This is what keeps people coming back to an environment like Cube - not because they can draft what they know are the best cards available, but because of the stonkingly fun time they can have doing so. In that regard, it makes sense to have a bit of fun with the last 20% of your cube!
This year, I'm going to look hard at what each guild has obviously missing, what can play nicely with what we have, and what will form the best archetype we can manage in each space. Some are known commodities, some are hard work. Let's see what we end up with.
Azorius - Blink
Blue and white seem to have a fair bit of blinking going on already (thanks to Deadeye Navigator, Venser, the Sojourner and Eldrazi Displacer), along with some excellent blink targets (Sun Titan, Cloudgoat Ranger, Karmic Guide, Mulldrifter). Blue also had an obvious whiff in Archaeomancer (which was just outside the 40, and makes an excellent blink target).
- Brago, King Eternal (The king of blink, excellent wearing Swords / Greaves etc.)
- Knight of the White Orchid (Good blink target, fetches duals, ramps)
- Flickerwisp (Moar blink)
- Mangara of Corondor (Baaroken next to Deadeye / Displacer / Capsize)
- Archaeomancer (Awesome blink target)
- Body Double (Good blink target, even better with Reveillark rolled into the mix)
Obviously, you could easily put Snapcaster Mage in here, but I'm thinking of your wallets at this point. Lavinia of the Tenth is another popular blink target if you want to tinker with your Azorius section a little.Dimir - Zombie Tribal
Black has already given us a fair bit of Zombie work in Gary, Noxious Ghoul and Kalitas. Let's push it way over the top with a million 2/2 zombie tokens.
Rakdos - Vampire Tribal
We had about half a decent Vampire Tribal lump in Rakdos (thanks to Malakir Bloodwitch, Olivia Voldaren and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet). Let's see what else we can rustle up for Vampires, and throw black a bone with some direct removal as well.
- Olivia, Mobilized for War (Cheap, evasive flier that will vampirize your other creatures and play into reanimator strategies)
- Bloodline Keeper (About as close to a decent Vampire lord as we'll get)
- Anowon, the Ruin Sage (Vampire crowd control)
- Hero's Downfall (A decent targeted removal spell to help things out)
- Falkenrath Marauders (Hasty flier that gets out of hand quickly when pumped)
- Markov Blademaster (Cheap double-striker that gets out of hand quickly when made evasive)
There are obviously several other decent vampire cards out there. You may want to alternatively try Falkenrath Aristocrat in the Rakdos slot, or find room for Butcher of Malakir or Captivating Vampire.Gruul - Tokens
This guild tends to go wiiiide when it comes to tokens, and we've already got Dragonlair Spider, Doubling Season and a few other usual suspects on board. Let's exploit it.
- Xenagos, the Reveler (Complete token and ramp house)
- Descent of the Dragons (Pseudo-finisher for this deck. Takes your 1/1s and transmogrifies them. Brutal next to Doubling Season)
- Hanweir Garrison (An excellent new token producer of note)
- Impact Tremors (Somehow missed our initial list)
- Parallel Lives (Another token doubler)
- Awakening Zone (A perpetual stream of ramping token creatures)
There are obviously a million other things you could place here. Outpost Siege is another Impact Tremors alternative. Second Harvest and Parallel Evolution are alternate Parallel Lives copies. Siege-Gang Commander is another excellent red token producer that is missing, and there are millions of green options.Selesnya - Landfall
Poor Knight of the Reliquary juuuust missed out of our initial 80%... let's give it (and Tireless Tracker!) a home.
Orzhov - Stax
Orzhov has just about all the pieces for a nasty stax deck... black has Grave Pact, Sheoldred and Braids, while white has removal and token generation. If we make sure we add Smokestack in the artifact section, this goes over the top in terms of multiplayer hate. While we probably only need one or two more sacrificial things, the rest is simply raw token creature generation.
- Sorin, Lord of Innistrad (A brilliant token spammer and lifegainer... and then if you pull off his ultimate...)
- World Queller (Group sacrifice effect)
- Magus of the Tabernacle (Tax effect)
- Captain of the Watch (Army in a can)
- Ophiomancer (Token spammer and defensive guru)
- Attrition (A most excellent sacrifice outlet)
A popular EDH variant of this involves Teysa, Orzhov Scion, but it usually needs a two-card combo with Darkest Hour to go truly bananas (and no-one in their right mind is drafting Darkest Hour in a vacuum). You may want to try her out in place of Sorin. Other decent stax cards we haven't included here are Hokiri, Dust Drinker, Magus of the Abyss and Bitterblossom.Izzet - Artifacts
There have been that many decent cards thrown into this area in the last year or two that it's almost a no-brainer. With all those juicy cheap mana rocks in our cube, we have two planeswalkers itching to get onboard too.
- Ral Zarek (Untaps mana rocks, clears the path and produces ridiculous swings if he ultimates)
- Tezzeret the Seeker (Fetches every rock in your deck and then abuses it)
- Whirler Rogue (Fantastic Thopter spammer)
- Sharding Sphinx (Another Tinker target and artifact finisher)
- Daretti, Scrap Savant (A second Goblin Welder effect to start swapping Thopters for game-winners)
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar (Another excellent Thopter generator)
Obviously, Kaladesh was too new to have its cards considered for inclusion into the 2016 cube. If it was allowed, Metallurgic Summonings and Combustible Gearhulk go in here like a shot.Golgari - Graveyard Durdle
We promised higher up to try and add a couple of new cards back in later on. One of those was Meren, the other Seasons Past. Both of these cards encourage us to find sacrificial fodder with toolbox ETB effects, and then find ways of bringing them back for profit. We already have Recurring Nightmare, Survival of the Fittest, Sheoldred, Living Death and any other number of enablers for this. Let's find some fun stuff to throw overboard.
- Meren of Clan Nel Toth (The graveyard durdle party girl)
- Bone Shredder (Cheap 187 creature easily killed)
- Grave Titan (Just missed the boat earlier on, great thing to keep bringing back)
- Animate Dead (Another means of reanimation)
- Seasons Past (Recursion galore, basically an infinite loop with a black tutor)
- Reclamation Sage (Cheap artifact/enchantment removal toolbox critter)
Again, Kaladesh gives us great options here in the future. Gonti, Lord of Luxury and Noxious Gearhulk are well worth trying out in these slots.Boros - Knights with Sticks
We've quietly stuck a lot of Knights into our cube, and we already have Knight Exemplar. Indestructible Knights holding Swords will always work well, no matter the environment. Let's go for it.
Simic - +1/+1 Counters
We have Prime Speaker Zegana, Doubling Season / Primal Vigor, Forgotten Ancient and Managorger Hydra in here already. The rest is gravy.
The Final Gold Card
We've left room for one final 3+ colour gold card. Let's see... blink... graveyard recursion... I have a feeling Siege Rhino would have fun here...
The Artifacts
Time to add the final six artifacts. We try and do this by adding things that will help the archetypes above, and by trying to keep an even spread between creatures, equipment, rocks and utility.
- Smokestack (We committed to thinking about this in the Orzhov Stax archetype. Will be nasty in here)
- Quietus Spike (Brutal attached to knights and other assorted double strikers)
- Burnished Hart (Sacrifices for Golgari and Orzhov, triggers landfall for Selesnya)
- Chromatic Lantern (The perfect mana rock for multiplayer cubes)
- Blade of the Bloodchief (Cheap equipment that will aid both Rakdos and Simic)
- Grimoire of the Dead (Zombie tribal card that also acts as a discard outlet and works with proliferation)
It would've been really fun to add Sunforger to the list for Boros, but there aren't enough red or white instants in the cube to make it worthwhile (we're currently sitting at about 10, and probably would've only been able to consider it at about 15+).The Non-Basic Land
Okay, let's add our last six land, continuing to throw a bone or two to our archetypes.
We Have Our Cube!
1 Mother of Runes
1 Soul Warden
1 Weathered Wayfarer
CC2
2 Auriok Champion
2 Knight of the White Orchid
2 Stoneforge Mystic
CC3
3 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Flickerwisp
3 Knight Exemplar
3 Mangara of Corondor
3 Mirran Crusader
3 Mirror Entity
4 Academy Rector
4 Hero of Bladehold
4 Kinsbaile Cavalier
4 Magus of the Tabernacle
CC5
5 Baneslayer Angel
5 Cloudgoat Ranger
5 Karmic Guide
5 Reveillark
5 Stonehewer Giant
5 World Queller
6 Captain of the Watch
6 Sun Titan
7 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
7 Emeria Shepherd
7 Eternal Dragon
8 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
8 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
9 Blazing Archon
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Land Tax
1 Limited Resources
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
CC2
2 Balance
2 Island Sanctuary
2 Luminarch Ascension
3 Aura of Silence
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Grasp of Fate
3 Oblivion Ring
CC4
4 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Humility
4 Moat
4 Replenish
4 Wrath of God
5 Elspeth Tirel
CC6+
6 Austere Command
6 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Gilded Drake
2 Phantasmal Image
CC3
3 Chasm Skulker
3 Hunted Phantasm
3 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
CC4
4 Archaeomancer
4 Aura Thief
4 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Master Transmuter
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Undead Alchemist
4 Whirler Rogue
5 Body Double
5 Djinn of Wishes
5 Mulldrifter
5 Stitcher Geralf
5 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
CC6+
6 Consecrated Sphinx
6 Deadeye Navigator
6 Sharding Sphinx
7 Palinchron
9 Inkwell Leviathan
10 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Increasing Confusion
1 Mystic Remora
CC2
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Mana Drain
2 Stasis
2 Time Walk
CC3
3 Capsize
3 Propaganda
3 Rhystic Study
3 Show and Tell
3 Timetwister
3 Tinker
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Rite of Replication
CC5
5 Dream Halls
5 Evacuation
5 Force of Will
5 Future Sight
5 Inexorable Tide
5 Tezzeret the Seeker
CC6+
6 Crush of Tentacles
6 Time Spiral
7 Blatant Thievery
7 Mind's Dilation
9 Expropriate
10 Omniscience
2 Blood Artist
2 Bloodghast
2 Reassembling Skeleton
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
CC3
3 Bone Shredder
3 Cemetery Reaper
3 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Ophiomancer
3 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Bloodline Keeper
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Crypt Ghast
4 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Phyrexian Obliterator
CC5
5 Anowon, the Ruin Sage
5 Bloodgift Demon
5 Ghoulcaller Gisa
5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
5 Malakir Bloodwitch
5 Noxious Ghoul
5 Shriekmaw
6 Grave Titan
6 Kokusho, the Evening Star
6 Massacre Wurm
7 Sepulchral Primordial
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Griselbrand
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Innocent Blood
1 Vampiric Tutor
CC2
2 Animate Dead
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Exsanguinate
2 Oversold Cemetery
2 Waste Not
3 Attrition
3 Hero's Downfall
3 Necropotence
3 Phyrexian Arena
3 Pox
3 Recurring Nightmare
3 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Damnation
4 Grave Pact
4 No Mercy
4 Pestilence
4 Syphon Mind
CC5
5 Liliana Vess
5 Living Death
6 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Goblin Welder
CC2
2 Ashling the Pilgrim
2 Dwarven Blastminer
2 Kargan Dragonlord
2 Kiln Fiend
CC3
3 Chandra's Spitfire
3 Hanweir Garrison
3 Markov Blademaster
3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Taurean Mauler
4 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Hero of Oxid Ridge
CC5
5 Falkenrath Marauders
5 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
5 Malignus
5 Scourge of Geier Reach
5 Thundermaw Hellkite
5 Urabrask the Hidden
6 Hostility
6 Inferno Titan
7 Balefire Dragon
7 Hateflayer
7 Molten Primordial
1 Banefire
1 Earthquake
1 Rolling Earthquake
CC2
2 Comet Storm
2 Impact Tremors
2 Price of Progress
CC3
3 Acidic Soil
3 Blood Moon
3 Chaos Warp
3 Mana Flare
3 Repercussion
3 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Wheel of Fortune
4 Chain Reaction
4 Daretti, Scrap Savant
4 Furnace of Rath
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Splinter Twin
CC5
5 Mass Mutiny
5 Reforge the Soul
5 Savage Beating
6 Descent of the Dragons
6 Wildfire
8 Insurrection
9 Blasphemous Act
1 Birds of Paradise
CC2
2 Priest of Titania
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Scavenging Ooze
CC3
3 Eternal Witness
3 Heartwood Storyteller
3 Managorger Hydra
3 Predator Ooze
3 Reclamation Sage
3 Scourge of Skola Vale
3 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Titania's Chosen
3 Undergrowth Champion
4 Forgotten Ancient
4 Spike Weaver
CC5
5 Acidic Slime
5 Genesis
5 Kalonian Hydra
5 Seedborn Muse
5 Silklash Spider
5 Thragtusk
CC6+
6 Bane of Progress
6 Hydra Omnivore
6 Primeval Titan
6 Rampaging Baloths
7 Avenger of Zendikar
7 Sylvan Primordial
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Burgeoning
1 Fastbond
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Hardened Scales
1 Rancor
CC2
2 Survival of the Fittest
3 Awakening Zone
3 Genesis Wave
CC4
4 Birthing Pod
4 Defense of the Heart
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Greater Good
4 Natural Order
4 Parallel Lives
5 Doubling Season
5 Garruk, Primal Hunter
CC6
6 Lurking Predators
6 Seasons Past
6 Selvala's Stampede
7 Tooth and Nail
1 Deathrite Shaman
CC2
2 Baleful Strix
2 Sygg, River Cutthroat
2 Vizkopa Guildmage
CC3
3 Boros Reckoner
3 Jhoira of the Ghitu
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
3 Olivia, Mobilized for War
CC4
4 Brago, King Eternal
4 Gisa and Geralf
4 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Master Biomancer
4 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
4 Olivia Voldaren
4 Siege Rhino
5 Consuming Aberration
5 Demigod of Revenge
5 Dominus of Fealty
5 Havengul Lich
5 Prophet of Kruphix
5 Sigarda, Host of Herons
CC6+
6 Dragon Broodmother
6 Dragonlair Spider
6 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
6 Prime Speaker Zegana
7 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
7 Kaervek the Merciless
8 Maelstrom Wanderer
8 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Terminate
CC3
3 Aura Shards
3 Dack Fayden
3 Pernicious Deed
CC4
4 Deathreap Ritual
4 Iroas, God of Victory
4 Mirrorweave
4 Ral Zarek
4 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Utter End
4 Xenagos, the Reveler
5 Assemble the Legion
5 Fracturing Gust
5 Mirari's Wake
5 Venser, the Sojourner
CC6+
6 Spitting Image
7 Debtors' Knell
8 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
2 Spellskite
CC3
3 Burnished Hart
4 Solemn Simulacrum
CC5
5 Psychosis Crawler
6 Wurmcoil Engine
13 Blightsteel Colossus
15 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
0 Black Lotus
0 Mox Emerald
0 Mox Jet
0 Mox Ruby
0 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
CC3
3 Chromatic Lantern
1 Blade of the Bloodchief
1 Skullclamp
2 Umezawa's Jitte
CC3
3 Quietus Spike
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Sword of Light and Shadow
5 Batterskull
1 Expedition Map
CC3
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mimic Vat
4 Grimoire of the Dead
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Smokestack
5 Mind's Eye
CC6+
7 All is Dust
0 Badlands
0 Bayou
0 Blighted Fen
0 Bloodstained Mire
0 Cabal Coffers
0 Drownyard Temple
0 Flooded Strand
0 Gaea's Cradle
0 Marsh Flats
0 Mirrorpool
0 Misty Rainforest
0 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
0 Plateau
0 Polluted Delta
0 Rogue's Passage
0 Savannah
0 Scalding Tarn
0 Scrubland
0 Taiga
0 Tolarian Academy
0 Tropical Island
0 Tundra
0 Underground Sea
0 Verdant Catacombs
0 Volcanic Island
0 Volrath's Stronghold
0 Westvale Abbey
0 Windswept Heath
0 Wooded Foothills
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
Okay, we have our optimal cube for 2015. But look at it... it's full of Power Nine, dual lands... if you're just starting out with cube building, this is hardly the cube you're going to build off the bat.
As we've gone through the construction of the optimal cube, we've had budget suggestions the whole way through, as those starting out with cube construction will definitely have a budget of some kind (because we're all playing at kitchen tables as it is). The $20 price limit on any single card cuts out a lot of the unfeasible stuff that the average person is never going to be able to sleeve up in real life, but it also gives a big enough range that someone starting out will be able to see the money cards that they should be aiming to pick up if they haven't already.
The Changes
Here are the suggested changes from earlier:
White
-1 Avacyn, Angel of Hope / +1 Yosei, the Morning Star
-1 Moat / +1 Norn's Annex
-1 Auriok Champion / +1 Suture Priest
-1 Academy Rector / +1 Restoration Angel
Blue
-1 Ancestral Recall / +1 Visions of Beyond
-1 Force of Will / +1 Mystic Confluence
-1 Gilded Drake / +1 Thing in the Ice
-1 Mana Drain / +1 Counterspell
-1 Time Spiral / +1 Time Stretch
-1 Time Walk / +1 Standstill
-1 Timetwister / +1 Trade Secrets
Black
-1 Damnation / +1 Mutilate
-1 Phyrexian Obliterator / +1 Nighthowler
-1 Vampiric Tutor / +1 Phyrexian Reclamation
-1 Bloodghast / +1 Gatekeeper of Malakir
-1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet / +1 Butcher of Malakir
-1 Yawgmoth's Will / +1 Underworld Dreams
Red
-1 Blood Moon / +1 Flamebreak
-1 Wheel of Fortune / +1 Molten Psyche
Green
-1 Craterhoof Behemoth / +1 Pathbreaker Ibex
-1 Doubling Season / +1 Primal Vigor
-1 Survival of the Fittest / +1 Oath of Druids
Gold
-1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest / +1 The Mimeoplasm
Colourless
-1 Black Lotus / +1 Azorius Signet
-1 Mox Emerald / +1 Dimir Signet
-1 Mox Jet / +1 Gruul Signet
-1 Mox Ruby / +1 Radkos Signet
-1 Mox Sapphire / +1 Selesnya Signet
-1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn / +1 Artisan of Kozilek
-1 Spellskite / +1 Hangarback Walker
-1 Ensnaring Bridge / +1 Vedalken Shackles
-1 Blightsteel Colossus / +1 Sundering Titan
-1 Sword of Fire and Ice / +1 Sword of Body and Mind
-1 Sword of Light and Shadow / +1 Sword of War and Peace
Non-Basic Land
-10 Duals / +10 Ravnica Shocks
-1 Tolarian Academy / +1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
-1 Gaea's Cradle / +1 Kessig Wolf Run
-5 Zendikar Fetches / +5 enemy Ravnica bouncelands
-1 Volrath's Stronghold / +1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Mother of Runes
1 Soul Warden
1 Weathered Wayfarer
CC2
2 Knight of the White Orchid
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Suture Priest
CC3
3 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Flickerwisp
3 Knight Exemplar
3 Mangara of Corondor
3 Mirran Crusader
3 Mirror Entity
4 Hero of Bladehold
4 Kinsbaile Cavalier
4 Magus of the Tabernacle
4 Restoration Angel
CC5
5 Baneslayer Angel
5 Cloudgoat Ranger
5 Karmic Guide
5 Reveillark
5 Stonehewer Giant
5 World Queller
6 Captain of the Watch
6 Sun Titan
6 Yosei, the Morning Star
7 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
7 Emeria Shepherd
7 Eternal Dragon
8 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
9 Blazing Archon
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Land Tax
1 Limited Resources
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
CC2
2 Balance
2 Island Sanctuary
2 Luminarch Ascension
3 Aura of Silence
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Grasp of Fate
3 Oblivion Ring
CC4
4 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Humility
4 Replenish
4 Wrath of God
5 Elspeth Tirel
5 Norn's Annex
CC6+
6 Austere Command
6 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Phantasmal Image
2 Thing in the Ice
CC3
3 Chasm Skulker
3 Hunted Phantasm
3 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
CC4
4 Archaeomancer
4 Aura Thief
4 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Master Transmuter
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Undead Alchemist
4 Whirler Rogue
5 Body Double
5 Djinn of Wishes
5 Mulldrifter
5 Stitcher Geralf
5 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
CC6+
6 Consecrated Sphinx
6 Deadeye Navigator
6 Sharding Sphinx
7 Palinchron
9 Inkwell Leviathan
10 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Increasing Confusion
1 Mystic Remora
1 Visions of Beyond
CC2
2 Counterspell
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Standstill
2 Stasis
CC3
3 Capsize
3 Propaganda
3 Rhystic Study
3 Show and Tell
3 Tinker
3 Trade Secrets
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Rite of Replication
CC5
5 Dream Halls
5 Evacuation
5 Future Sight
5 Inexorable Tide
5 Mystic Confluence
5 Tezzeret the Seeker
CC6+
6 Crush of Tentacles
7 Blatant Thievery
7 Mind's Dilation
9 Expropriate
10 Omniscience
10 Time Stretch
2 Blood Artist
2 Gatekeeper of Malakir
2 Reassembling Skeleton
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
CC3
3 Bone Shredder
3 Cemetery Reaper
3 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Ophiomancer
3 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Bloodline Keeper
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Crypt Ghast
4 Nighthowler
CC5
5 Anowon, the Ruin Sage
5 Bloodgift Demon
5 Ghoulcaller Gisa
5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
5 Malakir Bloodwitch
5 Noxious Ghoul
5 Shriekmaw
6 Grave Titan
6 Kokusho, the Evening Star
6 Massacre Wurm
7 Butcher of Malakir
7 Sepulchral Primordial
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Griselbrand
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Innocent Blood
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
CC2
2 Animate Dead
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Exsanguinate
2 Oversold Cemetery
2 Waste Not
3 Attrition
3 Hero's Downfall
3 Necropotence
3 Phyrexian Arena
3 Pox
3 Recurring Nightmare
3 Underworld Dreams
4 Grave Pact
4 Mutilate
4 No Mercy
4 Pestilence
4 Syphon Mind
CC5
5 Liliana Vess
5 Living Death
6 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Goblin Welder
CC2
2 Ashling the Pilgrim
2 Dwarven Blastminer
2 Kargan Dragonlord
2 Kiln Fiend
CC3
3 Chandra's Spitfire
3 Hanweir Garrison
3 Markov Blademaster
3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Taurean Mauler
4 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Hero of Oxid Ridge
CC5
5 Falkenrath Marauders
5 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
5 Malignus
5 Scourge of Geier Reach
5 Thundermaw Hellkite
5 Urabrask the Hidden
6 Hostility
6 Inferno Titan
7 Balefire Dragon
7 Hateflayer
7 Molten Primordial
1 Banefire
1 Earthquake
1 Rolling Earthquake
CC2
2 Comet Storm
2 Impact Tremors
2 Price of Progress
CC3
3 Acidic Soil
3 Chaos Warp
3 Flamebreak
3 Mana Flare
3 Molten Psyche
3 Repercussion
3 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Chain Reaction
4 Daretti, Scrap Savant
4 Furnace of Rath
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Splinter Twin
CC5
5 Mass Mutiny
5 Reforge the Soul
5 Savage Beating
6 Descent of the Dragons
6 Wildfire
8 Insurrection
9 Blasphemous Act
1 Birds of Paradise
CC2
2 Priest of Titania
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Scavenging Ooze
CC3
3 Eternal Witness
3 Heartwood Storyteller
3 Managorger Hydra
3 Predator Ooze
3 Reclamation Sage
3 Scourge of Skola Vale
3 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Titania's Chosen
3 Undergrowth Champion
4 Forgotten Ancient
4 Spike Weaver
CC5
5 Acidic Slime
5 Genesis
5 Kalonian Hydra
5 Seedborn Muse
5 Silklash Spider
5 Thragtusk
CC6+
6 Bane of Progress
6 Hydra Omnivore
6 Pathbreaker Ibex
6 Primeval Titan
6 Rampaging Baloths
7 Avenger of Zendikar
7 Sylvan Primordial
1 Burgeoning
1 Fastbond
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Hardened Scales
1 Rancor
CC2
2 Oath of Druids
3 Awakening Zone
3 Genesis Wave
CC4
4 Birthing Pod
4 Defense of the Heart
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Greater Good
4 Natural Order
4 Parallel Lives
5 Garruk, Primal Hunter
5 Primal Vigor
CC6
6 Lurking Predators
6 Seasons Past
6 Selvala's Stampede
7 Tooth and Nail
1 Deathrite Shaman
CC2
2 Baleful Strix
2 Sygg, River Cutthroat
2 Vizkopa Guildmage
CC3
3 Boros Reckoner
3 Jhoira of the Ghitu
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Olivia, Mobilized for War
CC4
4 Brago, King Eternal
4 Gisa and Geralf
4 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Master Biomancer
4 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
4 Olivia Voldaren
4 Siege Rhino
5 Consuming Aberration
5 Demigod of Revenge
5 Dominus of Fealty
5 Havengul Lich
5 Prophet of Kruphix
5 Sigarda, Host of Herons
5 The Mimeoplasm
CC6+
6 Dragon Broodmother
6 Dragonlair Spider
6 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
6 Prime Speaker Zegana
7 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
7 Kaervek the Merciless
8 Maelstrom Wanderer
8 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Terminate
CC3
3 Aura Shards
3 Dack Fayden
3 Pernicious Deed
CC4
4 Deathreap Ritual
4 Iroas, God of Victory
4 Mirrorweave
4 Ral Zarek
4 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Utter End
4 Xenagos, the Reveler
5 Assemble the Legion
5 Fracturing Gust
5 Mirari's Wake
5 Venser, the Sojourner
CC6+
6 Spitting Image
7 Debtors' Knell
8 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
0 Hangarback Walker
CC3
3 Burnished Hart
4 Solemn Simulacrum
CC5
5 Psychosis Crawler
6 Wurmcoil Engine
8 Sundering Titan
9 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Blade of the Bloodchief
1 Skullclamp
2 Umezawa's Jitte
CC3
3 Quietus Spike
3 Sword of Body and Mind
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sword of War and Peace
5 Batterskull
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
2 Azorius Signet
2 Dimir Signet
2 Gruul Signet
2 Rakdos Signet
2 Selesnya Signet
3 Chromatic Lantern
1 Expedition Map
CC3
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mimic Vat
4 Grimoire of the Dead
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Smokestack
5 Mind's Eye
CC6+
7 All is Dust
0 Blood Crypt
0 Bloodstained Mire
0 Boros Garrison
0 Breeding Pool
0 Cabal Coffers
0 Drownyard Temple
0 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
0 Flooded Strand
0 Godless Shrine
0 Golgari Rot Farm
0 Hallowed Fountain
0 Kessig Wolf Run
0 Izzet Boilwerworks
0 Mirrorpool
0 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
0 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
0 Orzhov Basilica
0 Overgrown Tomb
0 Polluted Delta
0 Rogue's Passage
0 Sacred Foundry
0 Simic Growth Chamber
0 Steam Vents
0 Stomping Ground
0 Temple Garden
0 Watery Grave
0 Westvale Abbey
0 Windswept Heath
0 Wooded Foothills
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
So we have an optimal cube, as well as a budget version - it's time for a Legacy-legal version. Why do we do this? As well as being the most accepted Banned/Restricted list for kitchen tables, a Legacy-legal version of the optimal cube ends up quite close to what a cube designer would consider the best feasible thing they can construct (in that they're not going to be shelling out thousands of dollars to power their cube, but it remains carrying some of the most powerful cards ever printed, and has a lot of the unfair stuff identified and removed).
This version will keep cards that are a couple of hundred dollars in value, but will inevitably drop all of the Power Nine and cards rightfully banned for their brokenness.
Removing the Banned Cards
The current Legacy Banned List can be seen here. Thankfully, our budget version already identified replacements for quite a few of these, so we'll make our budget swaps where possible. Where we need something else, we'll discuss it.
White
White loses a single card in Balance. Last year, we swapped it for Armageddon, and that remains a perfectly acceptable swap.
-1 Balance / +1 Armageddon
Blue
Blue loses its three Power 9 members, along with Mana Drain and Tinker. It's perfectly acceptable for us to make the same changes for the first four as we made of the Budget Cube, and we've traditionally swapped Tinker out for Fabricate, which still works too.
-1 Ancestral Recall / +1 Visions of Beyond
-1 Mana Drain / +1 Counterspell
-1 Time Walk / +1 Standstill
-1 Timetwister / +1 Trade Secrets
-1 Tinker / +1 Fabricate
Black
Black loses its two best tutors, its two best card draw engines and YawgWin. We've already replaced YawgWin and VT in our Budget Cube, so we'll make the same swaps there. Last year, we swapped Necro for Underworld Connections and DT for Beseech the Queen, and they remain fine swaps, but we also swapped Bargain out for Liliana Vess, and she's already in this year, so we'll have to get creative for that one.
-1 Demonic Tutor / +1 Beseech the Queen
-1 Necropotence / +1 Underworld Connections
-1 Vampiric Tutor / +1 Phyrexian Reclamation
-1 Yawgmoth's Bargain / +1 Null Profusion
-1 Yawgmoth's Will / +1 Underworld Dreams
The black Recycle can be a dangerous game sometimes, but Null Profusion doesn't have too much to worry about here, so long as you don't get stuck with two uncastable cards. The low hand size will encourage discarding for reanimation and so forth.
Red
Red loses a single card in Wheel of Fortune. We'll just make the same swap here as the Budget Cube.
-1 Wheel of Fortune / +1 Molten Psyche
Green
Green loses two cards in Survival of the Fittest and Fastbond. We swapped Fastbond for Sylvan Library last year, and that remains fine. But we also swapped Survival for Natural Order, and that's already in this year. Looks like we'll have to take Survival down a cog here in 2016.
-1 Fastbond / +1 Sylvan Library
-1 Survival of the Fittest / +1 Evolutionary Leap
Leap is not Survival by any stretch, but Golgari will enjoy it nonetheless.
Gold
There remains no gold cards on the Legacy banned list, so this section lives to fight another day.
Colourless
Here, we lose the jewellery, Sol Ring and Skullclamp. We swapped five pieces of jewellery in here out for Signets in the Budget Cube, and that remains safe. Last year, we swapped Clamp for Basilisk Collar, which is fine, and Sol Ring for Mox Diamond, which would be fine if Mox Diamond hadn't tripled in price over the last twelve months. Let's pick Chrome Mox instead this year for the sake of everyone's wallets.
-1 Black Lotus / +1 Azorius Signet
-4 Moxen / +4 remaining Allied Signets
-1 Skullclamp / +1 Basilisk Collar
-1 Sol Ring / +1 Chrome Mox
Non-Basic Land
Amazingly, only one truly busted card on here, and that is Tolarian Academy. Let's make the swap from the Budget Cube again.
-1 Tolarian Academy / +1 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
1 Mother of Runes
1 Soul Warden
1 Weathered Wayfarer
CC2
2 Auriok Champion
2 Knight of the White Orchid
2 Stoneforge Mystic
CC3
3 Eldrazi Displacer
3 Flickerwisp
3 Knight Exemplar
3 Mangara of Corondor
3 Mirran Crusader
3 Mirror Entity
4 Academy Rector
4 Hero of Bladehold
4 Kinsbaile Cavalier
4 Magus of the Tabernacle
CC5
5 Baneslayer Angel
5 Cloudgoat Ranger
5 Karmic Guide
5 Reveillark
5 Stonehewer Giant
5 World Queller
6 Captain of the Watch
6 Sun Titan
7 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
7 Emeria Shepherd
7 Eternal Dragon
8 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
8 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
9 Blazing Archon
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Land Tax
1 Limited Resources
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
CC2
2 Island Sanctuary
2 Luminarch Ascension
3 Aura of Silence
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Grasp of Fate
3 Oblivion Ring
CC4
4 Armageddon
4 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Humility
4 Moat
4 Replenish
4 Wrath of God
5 Elspeth Tirel
CC6+
6 Austere Command
6 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Gilded Drake
2 Phantasmal Image
CC3
3 Chasm Skulker
3 Hunted Phantasm
3 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
CC4
4 Archaeomancer
4 Aura Thief
4 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Master Transmuter
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Undead Alchemist
4 Whirler Rogue
5 Body Double
5 Djinn of Wishes
5 Mulldrifter
5 Stitcher Geralf
5 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
CC6+
6 Consecrated Sphinx
6 Deadeye Navigator
6 Sharding Sphinx
7 Palinchron
9 Inkwell Leviathan
10 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Increasing Confusion
1 Mystic Remora
1 Visions of Beyond
CC2
2 Counterspell
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Standstill
2 Stasis
CC3
3 Capsize
3 Fabricate
3 Propaganda
3 Rhystic Study
3 Show and Tell
3 Trade Secrets
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Rite of Replication
CC5
5 Dream Halls
5 Evacuation
5 Force of Will
5 Future Sight
5 Inexorable Tide
5 Tezzeret the Seeker
CC6+
6 Crush of Tentacles
6 Time Spiral
7 Blatant Thievery
7 Mind's Dilation
9 Expropriate
10 Omniscience
2 Blood Artist
2 Bloodghast
2 Reassembling Skeleton
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
CC3
3 Bone Shredder
3 Cemetery Reaper
3 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Ophiomancer
3 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Bloodline Keeper
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Crypt Ghast
4 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Phyrexian Obliterator
CC5
5 Anowon, the Ruin Sage
5 Bloodgift Demon
5 Ghoulcaller Gisa
5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
5 Malakir Bloodwitch
5 Noxious Ghoul
5 Shriekmaw
6 Grave Titan
6 Kokusho, the Evening Star
6 Massacre Wurm
7 Sepulchral Primordial
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Griselbrand
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Innocent Blood
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
CC2
2 Animate Dead
2 Exsanguinate
2 Oversold Cemetery
2 Waste Not
3 Attrition
3 Hero's Downfall
3 Phyrexian Arena
3 Pox
3 Recurring Nightmare
3 Underworld Connections
3 Underworld Dreams
4 Damnation
4 Grave Pact
4 No Mercy
4 Pestilence
4 Syphon Mind
CC5
5 Liliana Vess
5 Living Death
6 Beseech the Queen
6 Null Profusion
1 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Goblin Welder
CC2
2 Ashling the Pilgrim
2 Dwarven Blastminer
2 Kargan Dragonlord
2 Kiln Fiend
CC3
3 Chandra's Spitfire
3 Hanweir Garrison
3 Markov Blademaster
3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3 Taurean Mauler
4 Fanatic of Mogis
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Hero of Oxid Ridge
CC5
5 Falkenrath Marauders
5 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
5 Malignus
5 Scourge of Geier Reach
5 Thundermaw Hellkite
5 Urabrask the Hidden
6 Hostility
6 Inferno Titan
7 Balefire Dragon
7 Hateflayer
7 Molten Primordial
1 Banefire
1 Earthquake
1 Rolling Earthquake
CC2
2 Comet Storm
2 Impact Tremors
2 Price of Progress
CC3
3 Acidic Soil
3 Blood Moon
3 Chaos Warp
3 Mana Flare
3 Molten Psyche
3 Repercussion
3 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Chain Reaction
4 Daretti, Scrap Savant
4 Furnace of Rath
4 Purphoros, God of the Forge
4 Splinter Twin
CC5
5 Mass Mutiny
5 Reforge the Soul
5 Savage Beating
6 Descent of the Dragons
6 Wildfire
8 Insurrection
9 Blasphemous Act
1 Birds of Paradise
CC2
2 Priest of Titania
2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Scavenging Ooze
CC3
3 Eternal Witness
3 Heartwood Storyteller
3 Managorger Hydra
3 Predator Ooze
3 Reclamation Sage
3 Scourge of Skola Vale
3 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Titania's Chosen
3 Undergrowth Champion
4 Forgotten Ancient
4 Spike Weaver
CC5
5 Acidic Slime
5 Genesis
5 Kalonian Hydra
5 Seedborn Muse
5 Silklash Spider
5 Thragtusk
CC6+
6 Bane of Progress
6 Hydra Omnivore
6 Primeval Titan
6 Rampaging Baloths
7 Avenger of Zendikar
7 Sylvan Primordial
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Burgeoning
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Hardened Scales
1 Rancor
CC2
2 Evolutionary Leap
2 Sylvan Library
3 Awakening Zone
3 Genesis Wave
CC4
4 Birthing Pod
4 Defense of the Heart
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Greater Good
4 Natural Order
4 Parallel Lives
5 Doubling Season
5 Garruk, Primal Hunter
CC6
6 Lurking Predators
6 Seasons Past
6 Selvala's Stampede
7 Tooth and Nail
1 Deathrite Shaman
CC2
2 Baleful Strix
2 Sygg, River Cutthroat
2 Vizkopa Guildmage
CC3
3 Boros Reckoner
3 Jhoira of the Ghitu
3 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
3 Olivia, Mobilized for War
CC4
4 Brago, King Eternal
4 Gisa and Geralf
4 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Master Biomancer
4 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
4 Olivia Voldaren
4 Siege Rhino
5 Consuming Aberration
5 Demigod of Revenge
5 Dominus of Fealty
5 Havengul Lich
5 Prophet of Kruphix
5 Sigarda, Host of Herons
CC6+
6 Dragon Broodmother
6 Dragonlair Spider
6 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
6 Prime Speaker Zegana
7 Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
7 Kaervek the Merciless
8 Maelstrom Wanderer
8 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Terminate
CC3
3 Aura Shards
3 Dack Fayden
3 Pernicious Deed
CC4
4 Deathreap Ritual
4 Iroas, God of Victory
4 Mirrorweave
4 Ral Zarek
4 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Utter End
4 Xenagos, the Reveler
5 Assemble the Legion
5 Fracturing Gust
5 Mirari's Wake
5 Venser, the Sojourner
CC6+
6 Spitting Image
7 Debtors' Knell
8 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
2 Spellskite
CC3
3 Burnished Hart
4 Solemn Simulacrum
CC5
5 Psychosis Crawler
6 Wurmcoil Engine
13 Blightsteel Colossus
15 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
0 Chrome Mox
CC2
2 Azorius Signet
2 Dimir Signet
2 Gruul Signet
2 Rakdos Signet
2 Selesnya Signet
3 Chromatic Lantern
1 Blade of the Bloodchief
1 Skullclamp
2 Umezawa's Jitte
CC3
3 Quietus Spike
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Sword of Light and Shadow
5 Batterskull
1 Expedition Map
CC3
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mimic Vat
4 Grimoire of the Dead
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Smokestack
5 Mind's Eye
CC6+
7 All is Dust
0 Badlands
0 Bayou
0 Blighted Fen
0 Bloodstained Mire
0 Cabal Coffers
0 Drownyard Temple
0 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
0 Flooded Strand
0 Gaea's Cradle
0 Marsh Flats
0 Mirrorpool
0 Misty Rainforest
0 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
0 Plateau
0 Polluted Delta
0 Rogue's Passage
0 Savannah
0 Scalding Tarn
0 Scrubland
0 Taiga
0 Tropical Island
0 Tundra
0 Underground Sea
0 Verdant Catacombs
0 Volcanic Island
0 Volrath's Stronghold
0 Westvale Abbey
0 Windswept Heath
0 Wooded Foothills
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
Well, that's it. Thanks to all who voted in the power rankings to aid in the construction of this year's cubes, as well as for your continued interest in my annual mad folly.
If you're just starting out building a Multiplayer-centric cube, by all means use this as a guide, and don't stop if you're missing half of the cards - replace them with whatever is lying around and draft like no tomorrow. Your group will enjoy it regardless! From there, the continual upgrading of your cube is one of life's simple pleasures (but perhaps not your wallet's)!
Remember that this list is not intended to be the absolutely definitive current list for the bestest multiplayer cube ever - as always, feel free to figure out what you and your playgroup consider fun, and then go and include it in your own list (optimal cube lists be damned)!
What's Changed
Thanks to CubeTutor's fan-diddly-tastic cube comparison page, it's easy to have a look at what has changed since last year.
What's New
Cards that are newly-printed in 2016 that made it into the optimal cube are the following:
- Blighted Fen *
- Crush of Tentacles
- Drownyard Temple *
- Eldrazi Displacer
- Emeria Shepherd *
- Expropriate
- Gisa and Geralf *
- Grasp of Fate
- Hanweir Garrison *
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Leovold, Emissary of Trest
- Meren of Clan Nel Toth *
- Mind's Dilation
- Mirrorpool *
- Olivia, Mobilized for War *
- Seasons Past *
- Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
- Selvala's Stampede
- Tireless Tracker *
- Undergrowth Champion *
- Westvale Abbey *
- Zulaport Cutthroat
* - Chosen as part of an archetype in the final phase of cube construction. Or, in other words, you didn't vote for them, I just stuck them in later because I felt like it.What It Costs To Build
Thankfully for me, CubeTutor has added a pricing feature in the last twelve months. Running that across our three cubes gives us the following:
The cube prices are assuming Alpha copies of the Power Nine and dual lands, so it is through the roof appropriately!
As you can see, we basically cull 95% off the cost of construction simply by swapping out anything over $20 a copy in the Budget Cube. Don't let the price of the Budget Cube keep you away from building your own - this only proves how easy it is to build a cube on a budget, culling a quarter of the price off it without even trying. I have even seen the beginnings of attempts at Multiplayer Pauper in the last year or two, and it should theoretically be possible (around 100 of the 360 cards in the Budget Cube are Pauper-legal, so it's more than a quarter of the way there already). The Budget Cube's price has actually dropped $150 since last year, too!
Even my own cube started out as roughly 50% coming from a Lorwyn common/uncommon playset I had bought (and the cube was very, very tribal for the first year or two as a result!), so don't be frightened off building your own by price or card availability - this is an optimal cube (and even mine is not optimal!), and is only a guide to aim for long-term. Until then, sleeve up what you have, and go have more fun than you could possibly imagine.
Ready, Set, Draft!
Anyway, that's enough facts and stats. I'm not silly. I know what you want. You want to hurry up and draft the suckers! Ask and you shall receive - here are the links to all three cubes on CubeTutor. Enjoy drafting them, feel free to give me any feedback, and, as always, please support Ben, the CubeTutor admin!
Until the next mad folly!
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
One thing though, separating in just three categories (creature, spell, reset) seems a bit few at first glance. There's zero targeted removal in black for instance. Is this accounted for when filling in the remaining 10 for each colour?
Thanks! Yeah, I try to fill in gaps like this with the last ten in each. I suspect gold will fill in a few things like this too (my own cube doesn't have a heap of direct removal in black these days... but Orzhov... wow...).
But anyway, I'm a man of the people... if someone wants to see something in the last 20%, I'll more than likely try and smash it in for lulz.
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