The idea for this cube came from me wanting to somehow develop a small cube that I could easily whip out when me and someone else had a spare hour so we could draft a quick pair of decks and duel. I looked at all the 180 Winston Cubes I could find here, as well as looking at Peasant Cubes to see what kind of cards went well in those kinds of lower-power cubes. I went for the lower-power scale because it occurred to me that the only way I could make a Winston Cube work with the small number of cards seen would be if there was a sizeable hybrid portion--that way people could draft enough cards to build a reasonable 2-color deck if possible, as well as increasing options, since a wide variety of options is what I wanted to allow for in this cube. Also, since in a Winston draft, luck can be king (the scenario when one person looks in a stack, sees and takes a Sol Ring, and the other guy never knew he missed it and instead takes something significantly less good, thinking it's still a nice pull), I wanted to encourage synergy. That way, if I'm drafting Wx tokens, I can prioritize cards like Lingering Souls or Sarcomancy that my opponent, who's drafting Izzet CounterBurn wouldn't want.
I set up my hybrid section with the best hybrid cards (split cards count as hybrid) in the category, as well as supplementing them with a 10-card cycle of off-color flashback cards that could theoretically be cast in a mono-color deck just like hybrid cards could (though they'd be less good, of course). Also I really like flashback, so I included it where I could--and the use of Momentary Blink in the WU flashback slot supplemented cards I already wanted to use, such as Blade Splicer, Mulldrifter, Flametongue Kavu, etc.
So there's an introduction to the cube: it's designed for a 2-player synergistic approach to drafting, using themes that can be drafted around but aren't terrible on their own (tokens, flashback, ETB effects) while using hybrid and off-color flashback costs to allow players to have greater access to available cards in deckbuilding.
Cube Size: 180 Breakdown: 22 Each Color, 30 Hybrid, 20 Artifact, 20 Land Type of Cube: "Winston" Cube (though it can do more than Winston, of course), slight themes included for a more synergistic approach to drafting (hybrid, tokens, flashback, and ETB effects) Average Number of Players: 2 (almost exclusively) How Often Drafted: Occasionally--I only just built it! Location: Waterville or Portland, Maine
Card Selection Proxies: Only until I get them! Portal: Fire Imp (maybe coming out?) Snow: Nope "Un" Cards: No Banned Cards: Power balance is tightly monitored. I don't want this cube to be defined by bomb cards--if a card is incredibly powerful, I want it to be through synergies (Reveillark) rather than raw power (Grave Titan). I want to encourage synergistic deck building rather than just seeing who can draft the next most powerful card. Errata: No, all cards are played according to their oracle wording.
Cube Design Standard or Multiplayer: Standard Sideboards?: Yes, but no sideboard specific cards in cube Cards Sorted As Played/As Written: As Written
Things White likes to do:
Aggressive token-based strategies
Control strategies with DoJ, Elspeth, & Wall of Omens
As I explained earlier, I designed my hybrid section to encourage versatility. It's been tweaked extensively because for a long time, I pushed versatility over usefulness. Some of these color combinations just don't have very good hybrid cards! Stuff like BR was pretty easy, while BG has been giving me headaches forever. Ultimately I decided to allow more "guild-style" hybrid cards just for power level (Ghastlord of Fugue, for example--Oona was just way too bomby) in the hopes that even if someone drafts a UR deck, they might still run a "7-mana Ghastlord" which costs UUUUU. But hopefully we get better hybrid cards in Return to Ravnica!
The Artifact section is mostly just some good utility spells and creatures that everyone could potentially want, though of course certain archetypes would want some artifacts over others!
Lands are pretty hum-dum. They're mostly just here for fixing purposes, rather than being full of amazing activated abilities. I want this cube to have a reasonably large amount of nonbasic land-fixing (but I don't want to shell out for crazy stuff like ABU duals or a full set of shocks)
In light of the discussion on subthemes in cube, and in an attempt to continue theorycrafting my cube to be something that's more fun & dynamic, I've made a swath of changes, either to increase the power level, to adjust themes, and to combat the powerhouse that is Reveillark (in this cube, anyway). Any thoughts on the new cube would be swell!
Hi, nice to see someone else working on a 2 player cube. I'm currently putting together a 2 player peasant cube myself, and it's nice to see what other people are doing in this area.
How useful are you finding the (relatively large) hybrid mana section? Do the cards get played regularly? I'm trying to decide between entirely eliminating multicolor from mine, making it extremely small, or limiting it entirely to hybrid or off-color-flashback type stuff that can theoretically see play in decks that only play one of the colors.
Also, how much variation do you see in archetypes? Is there enough to keep people coming back for more? I worry that every deck of a particular color will look approximately the same, although I suppose since you're only seeing half the cards in a typical draft or sealed deck it's probably not a big deal.
Hi, nice to see someone else working on a 2 player cube. I'm currently putting together a 2 player peasant cube myself, and it's nice to see what other people are doing in this area.
How useful are you finding the (relatively large) hybrid mana section? Do the cards get played regularly? I'm trying to decide between entirely eliminating multicolor from mine, making it extremely small, or limiting it entirely to hybrid or off-color-flashback type stuff that can theoretically see play in decks that only play one of the colors.
Also, how much variation do you see in archetypes? Is there enough to keep people coming back for more? I worry that every deck of a particular color will look approximately the same, although I suppose since you're only seeing half the cards in a typical draft or sealed deck it's probably not a big deal.
To be honest, the hybrid mana section is still very awkward. Problem is, there aren't a lot of hybrid cards in the style that I'd like, even after adding off-color flashback cards and split cards. Most players treat them as being multicolor cards in their head, and are more hesitant to put them in decks that aren't both color, but occasionally you'll see something like Mystic Retrieval in the WU Control deck. I want to stick to 3-per-guild because of guilds like Azorius, which has 3 perfect hybrid/flashback cards for the cube, even though some other guilds (most notoriously Dimir, strangely enough) require some stretching. Hopefully Return to Ravnica brings us more hybrid cards that can spruce up the multicolor section. But it's working out really well to enable more variety in playables.
My suggestion would be to either go with hybrid mana or without multicolor entirely in a 180 cube. But I'd say if you only want to go 20 hybrid cards, it shouldn't be too difficult. I'm having some luck working with a 30 card section.
As for archetypes, I typically draft with 100 out of the 180 cards, so that the individual decks can be more powerful, but you could just as easily cut it down to 90 or 92 (if you're Winchestering). The idea was to give each color access to both aggressive and controlling cards, though some colors would obviously be tilted towards one or the other (Blue -> control, Red -> aggro, etc). But in theory, you could build a WU control deck with lots of removal, or a GWU aggro deck that is filled with tokens and tempo cards. I've played with it several times, and the only pattern I've seen so far is that passive, removal-heavy control strategies are markedly weaker (because the creature quality is so high, and tokens is GOOD). When you're playing, expect a color to be utilized by both players, and expect one person to fall into the "aggro" role and one person to fall into the "control" role. If you're always playing the aggro deck, it might get boring, but in Winston, you can very easily just force a more controlling or more midrangy deck to change up your play experience.
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Man, I haven't updated this thread in a while either! Here's the updates from Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash--they were significantly more sizable than with my Antiquities War cube!
Also this cube has gotten rather popular and has been very successful for me here, as it's dynamic enough and powerful enough that people actively want to play it and explore it. Sometimes we tend to end up in the same deck archetypes... but that just encourages players to play it more often!
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out my Cubes! Feedback is always encouraged!
The idea for this cube came from me wanting to somehow develop a small cube that I could easily whip out when me and someone else had a spare hour so we could draft a quick pair of decks and duel. I looked at all the 180 Winston Cubes I could find here, as well as looking at Peasant Cubes to see what kind of cards went well in those kinds of lower-power cubes. I went for the lower-power scale because it occurred to me that the only way I could make a Winston Cube work with the small number of cards seen would be if there was a sizeable hybrid portion--that way people could draft enough cards to build a reasonable 2-color deck if possible, as well as increasing options, since a wide variety of options is what I wanted to allow for in this cube. Also, since in a Winston draft, luck can be king (the scenario when one person looks in a stack, sees and takes a Sol Ring, and the other guy never knew he missed it and instead takes something significantly less good, thinking it's still a nice pull), I wanted to encourage synergy. That way, if I'm drafting Wx tokens, I can prioritize cards like Lingering Souls or Sarcomancy that my opponent, who's drafting Izzet CounterBurn wouldn't want.
I set up my hybrid section with the best hybrid cards (split cards count as hybrid) in the category, as well as supplementing them with a 10-card cycle of off-color flashback cards that could theoretically be cast in a mono-color deck just like hybrid cards could (though they'd be less good, of course). Also I really like flashback, so I included it where I could--and the use of Momentary Blink in the WU flashback slot supplemented cards I already wanted to use, such as Blade Splicer, Mulldrifter, Flametongue Kavu, etc.
So there's an introduction to the cube: it's designed for a 2-player synergistic approach to drafting, using themes that can be drafted around but aren't terrible on their own (tokens, flashback, ETB effects) while using hybrid and off-color flashback costs to allow players to have greater access to available cards in deckbuilding.
Breakdown: 22 Each Color, 30 Hybrid, 20 Artifact, 20 Land
Type of Cube: "Winston" Cube (though it can do more than Winston, of course), slight themes included for a more synergistic approach to drafting (hybrid, tokens, flashback, and ETB effects)
Average Number of Players: 2 (almost exclusively)
How Often Drafted: Occasionally--I only just built it!
Location: Waterville or Portland, Maine
Card Selection
Proxies: Only until I get them!
Portal: Fire Imp (maybe coming out?)
Snow: Nope
"Un" Cards: No
Banned Cards: Power balance is tightly monitored. I don't want this cube to be defined by bomb cards--if a card is incredibly powerful, I want it to be through synergies (Reveillark) rather than raw power (Grave Titan). I want to encourage synergistic deck building rather than just seeing who can draft the next most powerful card.
Errata: No, all cards are played according to their oracle wording.
Cube Design
Standard or Multiplayer: Standard
Sideboards?: Yes, but no sideboard specific cards in cube
Cards Sorted As Played/As Written: As Written
Things White likes to do:
Aggressive token-based strategies
Control strategies with DoJ, Elspeth, & Wall of Omens
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
1 Steppe Lynx
1 Cloistered Youth
1 Wall of Omens
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Soltari Champion
1 Stonecloaker
1 Geist-Honored Monk
1 Reveillark
1 Path to Exile
1 Disenchant
1 Intangible Virtue
1 Journey to Nowhere
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Day of Judgment
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Things Blue likes to do:
Spell-based card advantage & control
Bounce/Tempo strategies when paired with another aggressive color
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Serendib Efreet
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Dungeon Geists
1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Silent Departure
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Mana Leak
1 Remand
1 Counterspell
1 Deep Analysis
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Control Magic
1 Capsize
Things Black likes to do:
Early aggro (zombies, Blind Creeper)
Attrition-based control (Phyrexian Arena, Liliana, Barter in Blood)
1 Sarcomancy
1 Guul Draz Assassin
1 Pack Rat
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Skinrender
1 Sengir Vampire
1 Disfigure
1 Doom Blade
1 Go for the Throat
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Stupor
1 Living Death
Things Red likes to do:
Creature-based aggro (Stromkirk, Lightning Mauler)
Burn-based aggro-control
1 Stromkirk Noble
1 Reckless Waif
1 Keldon Marauders
1 Hellspark Elemental
1 Lightning Mauler
1 Torch Fiend
1 Cunning Sparkmage
1 Fire Imp
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Firebolt
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Magma Jet
1 Staggershock
1 Pillage
1 Char
1 Sulfurous Blast
Things Green likes to do:
Midrange creatures
Ramp-ramp-ramp (Sup Duskdale Wurm!)
1 Jade Mage
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Strangleroot Geist
1 Skinshifter
1 Eternal Witness
1 Nantuko Vigilante
1 Deadbridge Goliath
1 Briarhorn
1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Pelakka Wurm
1 Vines of Vastwood
1 Naturalize
1 Regrowth
1 Cultivate
1 Bramblecrush
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Harmonize
As I explained earlier, I designed my hybrid section to encourage versatility. It's been tweaked extensively because for a long time, I pushed versatility over usefulness. Some of these color combinations just don't have very good hybrid cards! Stuff like BR was pretty easy, while BG has been giving me headaches forever. Ultimately I decided to allow more "guild-style" hybrid cards just for power level (Ghastlord of Fugue, for example--Oona was just way too bomby) in the hopes that even if someone drafts a UR deck, they might still run a "7-mana Ghastlord" which costs UUUUU. But hopefully we get better hybrid cards in Return to Ravnica!
1 Azorius Guildmage
1 Momentary Blink
1 Plumeveil
UB
1 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Ghastlord of Fugue
1 Inkfathom Infiltrator
BR
1 Ashenmoor Gouger
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Strangling Soot
RG
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Boggart Ram-Gang
1 Giant Solifuge
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Dryad Militant
1 Travel Preparations
WB
1 Stillmoon Cavalier
1 Immortal Servitude
1 Lingering Souls
UR
1 Mystic Retrieval
1 Fire/Ice
1 Nivmagus Elemental
BG
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Life/Death
1 Noxious Hatchling
1 Boros Reckoner
1 Rally the Peasants
1 Rise of the Hobgoblins
GU
1 Cold-Eyed Selkie
1 Snakeform
1 Spitting Image
The Artifact section is mostly just some good utility spells and creatures that everyone could potentially want, though of course certain archetypes would want some artifacts over others!
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Perilous Myr
1 Galvanic Juggernaut
1 Trusty Machete
1 Brittle Effigy
1 Mortarpod
1 Mind Stone
1 Runechanter's Pike
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Grafted Wargear
1 Tumble Magnet
1 Vessel of Endless Rest
1 Icy Manipulator
Lands are pretty hum-dum. They're mostly just here for fixing purposes, rather than being full of amazing activated abilities. I want this cube to have a reasonably large amount of nonbasic land-fixing (but I don't want to shell out for crazy stuff like ABU duals or a full set of shocks)
1 Blood Crypt
1 Breeding Pool
1 Godless Shrine
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Grounds
1 Temple Garden
1 Watery Grave
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Marsh
1 Vivid Meadow
The Shard Lands
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Savage Lands
1 Seaside Citadel
If you have any comments, suggestions, thoughts at all, please let me know! This is here for discussion, after all
180 Winston Dueling Cube!
Antiquities War-themed Artifact Cube!
Accorder Paladin -> Soltari Champion
Arrest -> Seal of Cleansing
Blind Creeper -> Bitterblossom
Brimstone Volley -> Staggershock
Condemn -> Swords to Plowshares
Duskdale Wurm -> Pelakka Wurm
Jade Mage -> Scavenging Ooze
Mercy Killing -> Selesnya Guildmage
Mind Control -> Confiscate
Phantom Centaur -> Deranged Hermit
Skeletal Vampire -> Harvester of Souls
Sturmgeist -> Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
Swans of Bryn Argoll -> Plumeveil
5-1-12
Preordain -> Ancestral Vision
Confiscate -> Capsize
Into the Roil -> Control Magic
Thieving Magpie -> Dungeon Geists
Spiketail Hatchling -> Snapcaster Mage
Canker Abomination -> Golgari Guildmage
5-5-12
Condescend -> Dissipate
Tracker's Instincts -> Spitting Image
6-1-12
Flame Javelin -> Char
Cankerous Thirst -> Life/Death
Return to Ravnica
Selesnya Guildmage -> Dryad Militant
Wolfbitten Captive -> Jade Mage
Nucklavee -> Nivmagus Elemental
Repeal -> Cyclonic Rift
Golgari Guildmage -> Deathrite Shaman
Bitterblossom -> Pack Rat
Crystal Ball -> Druidic Satchel
Glacial Fortress -> Hallowed Fountain
Dragonskull Summit -> Blood Crypt
Sunpetal Grove -> Temple Garden
Sulfur Falls -> Steam Vents
Woodland Cemetery -> Overgrown Tomb
Wickerbough Elder -> Deadbridge Goliath
Scavenging Ooze -> Sakura-Tribe Elder
Yavimaya Elder -> Nantuko Vigilante
Gatecrash
Hinterland Harbor -> Breeding Pool
Isolated Chapel -> Godless Shrine
Clifftop Retreat -> Sacred Foundry
Rootbound Crag -> Stomping Ground
Drowned Catacomb -> Watery Grave
Gwyllion Hedge-Mage -> Immortal Servitude
Spitemare -> Boros Reckoner
Deadly Allure -> Noxious Hatchling
In light of the discussion on subthemes in cube, and in an attempt to continue theorycrafting my cube to be something that's more fun & dynamic, I've made a swath of changes, either to increase the power level, to adjust themes, and to combat the powerhouse that is Reveillark (in this cube, anyway). Any thoughts on the new cube would be swell!
180 Winston Dueling Cube!
Antiquities War-themed Artifact Cube!
How useful are you finding the (relatively large) hybrid mana section? Do the cards get played regularly? I'm trying to decide between entirely eliminating multicolor from mine, making it extremely small, or limiting it entirely to hybrid or off-color-flashback type stuff that can theoretically see play in decks that only play one of the colors.
Also, how much variation do you see in archetypes? Is there enough to keep people coming back for more? I worry that every deck of a particular color will look approximately the same, although I suppose since you're only seeing half the cards in a typical draft or sealed deck it's probably not a big deal.
To be honest, the hybrid mana section is still very awkward. Problem is, there aren't a lot of hybrid cards in the style that I'd like, even after adding off-color flashback cards and split cards. Most players treat them as being multicolor cards in their head, and are more hesitant to put them in decks that aren't both color, but occasionally you'll see something like Mystic Retrieval in the WU Control deck. I want to stick to 3-per-guild because of guilds like Azorius, which has 3 perfect hybrid/flashback cards for the cube, even though some other guilds (most notoriously Dimir, strangely enough) require some stretching. Hopefully Return to Ravnica brings us more hybrid cards that can spruce up the multicolor section. But it's working out really well to enable more variety in playables.
My suggestion would be to either go with hybrid mana or without multicolor entirely in a 180 cube. But I'd say if you only want to go 20 hybrid cards, it shouldn't be too difficult. I'm having some luck working with a 30 card section.
As for archetypes, I typically draft with 100 out of the 180 cards, so that the individual decks can be more powerful, but you could just as easily cut it down to 90 or 92 (if you're Winchestering). The idea was to give each color access to both aggressive and controlling cards, though some colors would obviously be tilted towards one or the other (Blue -> control, Red -> aggro, etc). But in theory, you could build a WU control deck with lots of removal, or a GWU aggro deck that is filled with tokens and tempo cards. I've played with it several times, and the only pattern I've seen so far is that passive, removal-heavy control strategies are markedly weaker (because the creature quality is so high, and tokens is GOOD). When you're playing, expect a color to be utilized by both players, and expect one person to fall into the "aggro" role and one person to fall into the "control" role. If you're always playing the aggro deck, it might get boring, but in Winston, you can very easily just force a more controlling or more midrangy deck to change up your play experience.
180 Winston Dueling Cube!
Antiquities War-themed Artifact Cube!
Return to Ravnica
Selesnya Guildmage -> Dryad Militant
Wolfbitten Captive -> Jade Mage
Nucklavee -> Nivmagus Elemental
Repeal -> Cyclonic Rift
Golgari Guildmage -> Deathrite Shaman
Bitterblossom -> Pack Rat
Crystal Ball -> Druidic Satchel
Glacial Fortress -> Hallowed Fountain
Dragonskull Summit -> Blood Crypt
Sunpetal Grove -> Temple Garden
Sulfur Falls -> Steam Vents
Woodland Cemetery -> Overgrown Tomb
Wickerbough Elder -> Deadbridge Goliath
Scavenging Ooze -> Sakura-Tribe Elder
Yavimaya Elder -> Nantuko Vigilante
Gatecrash
Hinterland Harbor -> Breeding Pool
Isolated Chapel -> Godless Shrine
Clifftop Retreat -> Sacred Foundry
Rootbound Crag -> Stomping Ground
Drowned Catacomb -> Watery Grave
Gwyllion Hedge-Mage -> Immortal Servitude
Spitemare -> Boros Reckoner
Deadly Allure -> Noxious Hatchling
Thank goodness for better hybrid sections!
Also this cube has gotten rather popular and has been very successful for me here, as it's dynamic enough and powerful enough that people actively want to play it and explore it. Sometimes we tend to end up in the same deck archetypes... but that just encourages players to play it more often!
180 Winston Dueling Cube!
Antiquities War-themed Artifact Cube!