First time on the site and first time making a cube so please be gentle. When I started playing with the idea of creating one of these beauties, I was told this community is where I'd get the most help / insight. Any input you folks have would be greatly appreciated!
Cube Size: 850 Cards Breakdown: 66 Generals, 96 Each Color, 96 Colorless, 180 Gold (18 per color combo), 17 monocolored lands, 9 Conspiracy. Theme: EDH/Commander # Players: Typically 4, but can support up to 8 players How Often Drafted: Whenever I can get a group of people together
Cube Design Standard or Multiplayer: Multiplayer Sideboards?: no? there will be leftover cards from the draft, but sideboard should be fairly arbitrary / unnecessary. Even Color Balance: Yes, should be pretty dang close Gold Balance: Yes Hybrid/Split/Kicker as Gold: Yes Color Triggers as Gold: Yes Perfectly Balanced CMC: No Snow Lands: No
Card Selection Proxies: No Powered: No, but I've included some cards that are banned in Commander "Un" Cards: No Banned Cards for Power-Level: Nothing yet.
EDH/Commander Rules Variations Generals Draft: Multicolored Legends are drafted first in their own packs. Players may use any one of these legends, or any legendary creature drafted normally, as the general for their deck. Draft Structure: Up to 8 players draft 6 packs of 15 cards (90 cards total, trying for around 60-65 playables) +1 General pack (the pack should be around 5-8 commanders). [seeing how 6 packs works out for now. In the playtesting I've done so far I haven't had anyone that couldn't make a full deck, but might have to bump it to 7 packs if it becomes an issue] Deck Construction: 99 card deck +1 General, Standard Color Identity Rules Starting Life: 40/Player
Because I've built my cube with the goal of drafting full sized 100 card commander decks, I've found that randomizing the entire cube doesn't work well when drafters have to stick to color identity. People ended up getting stuck with not even seeing a full deck's worth of cards in their color, let alone actually getting a chance to draft them. In order to solve this problem, I've found a simple and easy way is to make sure there's balance when creating the "packs" each drafter gets. To do this, I've adopted the process of building each pack with: 2 cards of each color, 2 colorless cards, and 3 multicolor / lands / conspiracy cards. This has worked like a dream in making sure that regardless of what commanders you draft, you have an equal opportunity to see cards in your colors.
However this balance does come at a cost. Because everyone knows what the makeup of the packs include, you're provided with a more information on what your neighbors are drafting than you would get in a typical draft. I don't think this has affected the drafting process as a whole too much though; you're just more likely to know what has a higher probability of wheeling and what you should slam immediately.
Again, still super new to the site so once I figure out how to do those fancy shmancy spoiler dropdowns I'll split everything up on here for everyone, but for now I've got it on Cubetutor (Note*** the commanders are all in a separate cube on that website so the playtest draft is as close to the paper copy as I can get.)
Just saw some of the M19 spoilers and I've gotta say... Pretty excited for some of them. There are a couple Elder Dragons that have been spoiled so far that look pretty bonkers: Bolas being one that'll definitely get included, as well as the Jund Vaevictis. Cleansing Nova could also find a place in here. Also looking at quite a few changes to red with Sarkhan's Unsealing, Spit Flame (dragon tribal creature removal), as well as the Goblin Lord. We'll see what other juicy additions there will be once they finish spoiling the set.
So I have made myself a commander cube as well and have been making changes to it for the last 3 months, and want to share some feedback on what I've been doing/trying with my friends whenever we play (which has been hard to get the necessary people to play). So I have shared a lot of concerns over will people be able to make decks from drafting 6 packs of 15 cards, and while browsing the internet looking for anything of relevancy to an EDH cube I found someone saying that they cut deck sizes down to 80 cards per deck. The first time I tried out my cube it was its first draft and was a bit of a mess and a friend's kid (barely knows magic) wanted to cube with us and reluctantly I said sure. Everyone except the kid was able to make semi functional 100 card decks, mine being probably the best since I was mardu and who wants to be in mardu colors. The problem was the time that it took to get the draft done. I was having each person draft 9 packs of 12 cards, 108 cards total, and it took a little more than an hour to get through the draft. After the hour draft the game took about 2.5 hours, mainly because the cube had quite a few clunky parts and wasn't too concise on what options were out there and it wasn't as strong as it is now. Since that first time I had been toying with the cube changing many cards out getting each color equal, figuring out what to do with the drafting process, what archetypes I could engineer to be competitive and consistent to draft, how to fix the time issue, and finding out what cards were good for cube and what was bad.
For me I wanted to get my card count down to somewhere below 900. I originally decided I would do 100 each color, 500, 15 per guild, 150, max of 5 for each wedge, 50, use all the 4 color commanders, 5, 100 cards for colorless cards, 100 non-basic lands, and a few wubrg cards. So far it has worked well for these combinations except in a few fronts. I have trouble getting boros to 15 cards, currently sitting at 8, so I have decided you know what boros is ***** and there aren't many good boros cards for a commander cube that would stand up to any other card in the cube so I just don't worry about it. Other than that I also have trouble with wanting the colors to feel equal on power level. I constantly feel that white and red and black are just worse than blue and green. In commander the power of ramp from green, and the card draw and devastating efficiency of blue just outclasses the other colors, and to that I have said it is fine. This cube allows people to be three color, four color, or even wubrg quite easily. With the inclusion of all 15 of the partner commanders it allows players to be very flexible in drafting since they can almost assuredly see 2 partners during the draft.
The drafting process I always thought to be the main part away from playing the game. I don't believe this to be true for all players, but players who are entrenched in commander, build tons of decks, and are always tinkering, changing, and playing their many decks I feel side with me and love seeing your deck come together as you make it. One thing with that mindset is that people want to start out with a template or an idea to follow through with, so starting the draft with no commander locked in can be a problem, so originally I decided to make all the packs for the players, and then pull out all the legendaries from the rest of the cube and then randomly give each person a pack of 4 commanders to draft, to have a baseline of what direction they could take their deck. The problem with this is probably 1 in 4 of the people would get packs with crap legendaries that are meant to be in the 99 and/or mono colored commanders that don't give a good direction. To remedy this issue after my friend suggested to a pack before the 6 packs that would be a face up draft with legendaries that way there could be a more immediate direction of where you want to take your deck be it colors and archetype. I decided to actually spice it up a bit and go by a binary point system of cards that could be in this face up pack of 24. The points were assigned as any commander eligible card were worth 1, banned cards were worth 1, some of the best cards in the format were worth 1, eg sol ring, cyclonic rift, mana crypt, mana vault, etc, any extra turn cards were worth 1, that way some of the more competitive cards for commander would see more light, and give drafters more freedom to make decisions, do I first pick the mana crypt or take muldrotha and go sultai value town.
The archetypes are still kinda in the testing phase, but I have found that aristocrats, storm, and big mana value town are all very flexible and have a lot of interchanging pieces. The main thing that I made sure was that no matter what you could win a game in a flashy way, whether it be with a good combo, or through assembling an oppressively large board state.
The time issue has been remedied through adding more infinite combos, with redundant pieces, making the cube more concise, lowering the deck size to 80, and trying to make sure people don't take too long drafting.
Cube - http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/106213
Commanders - http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/109618
Cube Size: 850 Cards
Breakdown: 66 Generals, 96 Each Color, 96 Colorless, 180 Gold (18 per color combo), 17 monocolored lands, 9 Conspiracy.
Theme: EDH/Commander
# Players: Typically 4, but can support up to 8 players
How Often Drafted: Whenever I can get a group of people together
Cube Design
Standard or Multiplayer: Multiplayer
Sideboards?: no? there will be leftover cards from the draft, but sideboard should be fairly arbitrary / unnecessary.
Even Color Balance: Yes, should be pretty dang close
Gold Balance: Yes
Hybrid/Split/Kicker as Gold: Yes
Color Triggers as Gold: Yes
Perfectly Balanced CMC: No
Snow Lands: No
Card Selection
Proxies: No
Powered: No, but I've included some cards that are banned in Commander
"Un" Cards: No
Banned Cards for Power-Level: Nothing yet.
EDH/Commander Rules Variations
Generals Draft: Multicolored Legends are drafted first in their own packs. Players may use any one of these legends, or any legendary creature drafted normally, as the general for their deck.
Draft Structure: Up to 8 players draft 6 packs of 15 cards (90 cards total, trying for around 60-65 playables) +1 General pack (the pack should be around 5-8 commanders). [seeing how 6 packs works out for now. In the playtesting I've done so far I haven't had anyone that couldn't make a full deck, but might have to bump it to 7 packs if it becomes an issue]
Deck Construction: 99 card deck +1 General, Standard Color Identity Rules
Starting Life: 40/Player
Because I've built my cube with the goal of drafting full sized 100 card commander decks, I've found that randomizing the entire cube doesn't work well when drafters have to stick to color identity. People ended up getting stuck with not even seeing a full deck's worth of cards in their color, let alone actually getting a chance to draft them. In order to solve this problem, I've found a simple and easy way is to make sure there's balance when creating the "packs" each drafter gets. To do this, I've adopted the process of building each pack with: 2 cards of each color, 2 colorless cards, and 3 multicolor / lands / conspiracy cards. This has worked like a dream in making sure that regardless of what commanders you draft, you have an equal opportunity to see cards in your colors.
However this balance does come at a cost. Because everyone knows what the makeup of the packs include, you're provided with a more information on what your neighbors are drafting than you would get in a typical draft. I don't think this has affected the drafting process as a whole too much though; you're just more likely to know what has a higher probability of wheeling and what you should slam immediately.
Again, still super new to the site so once I figure out how to do those fancy shmancy spoiler dropdowns I'll split everything up on here for everyone, but for now I've got it on Cubetutor (Note*** the commanders are all in a separate cube on that website so the playtest draft is as close to the paper copy as I can get.)
For me I wanted to get my card count down to somewhere below 900. I originally decided I would do 100 each color, 500, 15 per guild, 150, max of 5 for each wedge, 50, use all the 4 color commanders, 5, 100 cards for colorless cards, 100 non-basic lands, and a few wubrg cards. So far it has worked well for these combinations except in a few fronts. I have trouble getting boros to 15 cards, currently sitting at 8, so I have decided you know what boros is ***** and there aren't many good boros cards for a commander cube that would stand up to any other card in the cube so I just don't worry about it. Other than that I also have trouble with wanting the colors to feel equal on power level. I constantly feel that white and red and black are just worse than blue and green. In commander the power of ramp from green, and the card draw and devastating efficiency of blue just outclasses the other colors, and to that I have said it is fine. This cube allows people to be three color, four color, or even wubrg quite easily. With the inclusion of all 15 of the partner commanders it allows players to be very flexible in drafting since they can almost assuredly see 2 partners during the draft.
The drafting process I always thought to be the main part away from playing the game. I don't believe this to be true for all players, but players who are entrenched in commander, build tons of decks, and are always tinkering, changing, and playing their many decks I feel side with me and love seeing your deck come together as you make it. One thing with that mindset is that people want to start out with a template or an idea to follow through with, so starting the draft with no commander locked in can be a problem, so originally I decided to make all the packs for the players, and then pull out all the legendaries from the rest of the cube and then randomly give each person a pack of 4 commanders to draft, to have a baseline of what direction they could take their deck. The problem with this is probably 1 in 4 of the people would get packs with crap legendaries that are meant to be in the 99 and/or mono colored commanders that don't give a good direction. To remedy this issue after my friend suggested to a pack before the 6 packs that would be a face up draft with legendaries that way there could be a more immediate direction of where you want to take your deck be it colors and archetype. I decided to actually spice it up a bit and go by a binary point system of cards that could be in this face up pack of 24. The points were assigned as any commander eligible card were worth 1, banned cards were worth 1, some of the best cards in the format were worth 1, eg sol ring, cyclonic rift, mana crypt, mana vault, etc, any extra turn cards were worth 1, that way some of the more competitive cards for commander would see more light, and give drafters more freedom to make decisions, do I first pick the mana crypt or take muldrotha and go sultai value town.
The archetypes are still kinda in the testing phase, but I have found that aristocrats, storm, and big mana value town are all very flexible and have a lot of interchanging pieces. The main thing that I made sure was that no matter what you could win a game in a flashy way, whether it be with a good combo, or through assembling an oppressively large board state.
The time issue has been remedied through adding more infinite combos, with redundant pieces, making the cube more concise, lowering the deck size to 80, and trying to make sure people don't take too long drafting.
If you want to take a look at my cube here's a link: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/132966