I'm looking at building a cube because I keep wanting to build a deck for every legend that I think about. One of the biggest issues I've run into is resources on how to start selecting cards.
There are plenty of things around about the very beginnings of a cube (How much are you willing to spend?), and plenty on the finished product, but no guides that I've found about the card selection, or the commander selection (in the case of an EDH cube).
My solution to making an initial draft of an EDH cube was to deconstruct my existing EDH decks. (I probably had about a half-dozen at the time, but that was always in flux) And pick out all the staples (aside from a few which just didn't work in a cube environment) and those were the first, easiest includes. Once I ran out of 'gimmes' is where it got interesting.
So I went through and figured out how many generals of each color combination I wanted. You're gonna have an easier time with this than I did, because you're starting this post Khans/C16, which creates a whole world of options. I went with 1 of each mono-color, 3 of each 2 color combination, and 2 of each tri-color combination. (Well 2 of each shard 1 per wedge, but I evened it out shortly after when Khans came out) It's important to make sure every guild (or every shard/wedge) has the same number of options so no colors are easier to play than others.
Once the number was ironed out, I started filling in slots. Just fill them in on instinct at first, though try to avoid anything that needs very specific support cards that don't fit in any other decks, like Zedruu or Norin, for example. Once all the slots are filled in, look at what archetypes/strategies each general calls for, and try to replace any generals that have another option in their guild/shard that uses the same strategy. For example, you don't want both Melek and Mizzix in izzet, because they want to do the same thing and it doesn't give you options for how to play that guild. Once that's done, look for any stategies that only have 1 to 2 supporting generals, and replace them; overlap is good, you just don't want it in the same color combination. Strongly consider cutting any generals without a clear theme. (Your good-stuff generals)
Once all this is done you should have a nice compact list of strategies your cube needs to support, as well as what colors generals for those strategies will tend to be in your cube. Next think of the cards that are the heaviest hitters in those strategies: Mycoloth for sacrifice strategies, DEN for blink, stoneforge in voltron, etc. Those are your next includes, especially if they're flexible cards. (Mycoloth is a prime example; it works in sac decks, token decks, and counter decks) This should be a lot of obvious cards.
Next, look for cards that bridge gaps between strategies. Angel of Invention was sweet when it came out because it would be fought over by token, blink, and artifact decks. Burnished Hart is wanted by ramp, artifact, and occasionally sace decks. There's a lot of cards like this, and they're the gold standard because drafting is no fun if everyone is just being railroaded; you want players fighting over most cards. (Also: Not every deck type will be in every draft, and we don't want anything to ever not be usable by someone at the table)
Finally, figure out your pet cards and what cards seem to always end up in your decks. Find stuff you always wanted to play, but always fell just short of the cut. Take the cards you just love playing with. Mash them all into a pile, and you have a basic framework for your cube. Cut some cards or find more includes until your colors and guilds are even; (DO NOT INCLUDE 3-COLOR NONGENERAL CARDS, everyone who makes an EDH cube learns that lesson the hard way) don't worry about the card number being a pretty multiple of 90 or whatever; that'll come later as you refine the list down.
If you want to take inspiration from it, my cubetutor is in my sig, though the generals section is kinda broken there because I haven't updated it and the partners aren't displaying properly. But the cube itself is all basically sorted.
I've had an EDH cube for quite some time now. I don't know if it's the usual way to do it, but what's worked for our playgroup is making a set of "Commander mini-boosters" first. What I mean is that right now I'm running one 'default' commander for every color (so 5), one 'default' for every guild (so 10 dual-colored and 10 tri-colored) and one prism commander (Progenitus. The tri-colored commanders and progenitus are also the only cards in cube with >3 colors, because once you include more of those they simply will not be played.
This makes 26 'default' commanders. This way, when playing with 6 people, I make 6 'mini-boosters' with five cards (the 26 commanders, plus 4 mana-fixing lands like Command Tower and kin). Doing this, every player can select a couple of possible commanders before drafting. All other legendary creatures are simply included in the cube somewhere, and I try to do this as much as possible; my list is stuffed with them. The deal is that every Legendary creature can be your commander, but using the mini-boosters when starting you'll guarantee that everyone has multiple ways to go plus you're able to influence which commanders will see play.
I built my cube kind of the way SCDL described. Cubetutor is a good resource and a nice way to maintain your list. Unfortunately, mine is way outdated: I've alterd a lot without keeping my list up to date.
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
I mean, my draft is structured similarly, just taken to an absolute extreme. The draft opens with a general pack, which is six cards, but my pool is WAY bigger. I like the idea of having people rarely if ever be able to get the same general, so my generals section is a stack of 82 cards; they're mostly legendary creatures, but I make some exceptions for Nephilim and Kaya. (1 colorless and five-color, 2 of each quad and mono-color, and 3 of each dual and tri-color. I used paired up partners to fill some of the trickier slots.)
There are a ton of legends in the cube proper that can be used instead if you pick them up, most of them put there because they're harder to build around or more good-stuffy. (I made sure I included at least one per guild)
I've loved the results, and everyone has made super varied decks. The only general I've seen show up twice was Breya, and I've gotten to do some fun stuff I never would have like Akiri/Vial Smasher. (Both of which were picked up during the actual draft, not the generals pack) The only consistent thing is I will always nearly mill myself out even when I'm not playing blue. (And these are 60 card decks. Admittedly, Prime Speaker wasn't hard to accomplish and I probably shouldn't have ulted nissa. I still lost.)
No matter what, you're gonna do it your own way; making a commander cube is not something super common and studied so there's no formula. We all make our own rules slightly differently.
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Check out the thread for my cube if you have the time, and tell me how terrible it is.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
Out of curiosity: how many legends do you have in your cube in total? I actually don't know how many I have and oddly enough I only now realize that I can probably make the general packs a lot bigger than I have up to now...
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
I put together a list for this just recently. Similarly to how SCDL described, I started with the generals; in this case 3 each mono-colored, 2 (later 4) each guild, and one each 3 colored. These were picked based on what I had, what is cheap online, and what would give a variety of strategies. Then I checked on edhrec for 5 signature or top cards for each general, including 1 each colorless, different for each one and color balanced. That was about half of what I wanted (about 600 so 2/3 get drafted with four players). I filled in the rest with either good cards I already have or cheap cards from edhrec commonly used in that color or combination.
It's kind of budget, but testing on cube tutor (use 6 packs and 3 bots) seems like I'm able to put together a decent deck pretty often. I've a few cards to buy (about 100 cards for $50 or so) and some refining before putting it together in paper. Here's the list.
I don't think a separate commander draft pack will be necessary, since there's a fairly high number of legendary cards everyone should have a few guild, shard, or wedge options pass through their hands at some point. If I had them, I'd throw the four color commanders into the mix as well. And a couple more good land cycles are definitely advised.
Is MLD acceptable in a cube?
--> That's entirely up to you. In mine, it is, because our playgroup normally doesn't appreciate it. When cubing, everyone knows things can happen that normally don't.
Is more removal better than less?
--> In my opinion, no. It will quite often result in an empty board if you play a lot of removal. If I where you, I'd look like cards like Shriekmaw and Fleshbag Marauder for removal, because they serve more than one purpose.
Should each colour's curve be balanced?
--> In my cube, it is. I believe this is more like a best practice for people who are new to cube, because keeping it balanced is a good guideline.
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
This is getting cheesy maybe, but that doesn't make it less true: it depends entirely on what you want to achieve. Best example: I'm considering making a cube based on the Urza's Saga cycle. There won't be a single land in there that makes multiple types of mana.
So your choice here depends on what you want to achieve, both concerning speed / power level and the types of decks you want to support (and, of course, the contents of your wallet...). Personally, My own cube is very multicolor-oriented. I run all shocks, all fetches, and a couple of ABU duals (the remaining ones have become to expensive for me). Moreover, I run City of Brass, Grand Colisseum, Forbidden Orchard, Paliano, the High City, Terramorphic Expense, Mana Confluence, Cavern of Souls, Gemstone Mine... and I'm probably forgetting some. I really want people to have a good time playing with it, so being mana screwed just shouldn't happen unless your picks are bad. So yes, in my case, the mana base is a key component of the cube. I do think that if you want a cube that supports multiple players playing a 3-colored commander deck, you have to think this through. My 585-card list contains 46 lands, most of which enable multiple colors.
However, if you'd run a cube that mainly supports two-color decks, you can quite easily get there with a number of ETB-tapped lands (I strongly recommend man lands for this, because they serve multiple purposes) and some artifact-mana fix (like Darksteel Ingot, Coalition Relic, Solemn Simulacrum). Azorius Signet and it's kin are very good options (I also run those) and there are several more of those like the Cluestones.
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
When we draft my EDH cube we deal out a pre-assigned number of generals and draft them out. There are more in the cube itself, and you are welcome to use those as well. Normal draft is 5 packs of 15 cards to make a 60 card deck. Every player receives a Command Tower during deck building.
This helps people out, and makes certain more generals easier to play.
When first constructing a list for the cube, it was super easy to load up on 5+ mana cards, because those are the ones you really remember playing in a typical commander deck, while every player is really fighting for the low mana cards that go in every deck. My recommendation is to really limit yourself on high mana cards, and include even mediocre low cmc cards. This includes Boreal Druid and Divination, mostly because every deck was really starving for early plays.
Removal should be at a premium. I personally find games more enjoyable when you answer threats with more threats. Obviously there is removal, but they are not nearly as common as threats.
Make sure every archetype that you want to do is supported. The more cards that overlap between archetypes, the better. I tried to give every general a 'pet' card, that is really only good in that deck like Cloudblazer for Brago, King Eternal.
The tap function on cubetutor.com helps tremendously. I labeled every card with as many tags as I could think of, and it helps sort out the cube into categories. It also helps when making cuts, as you can cut from archetypes that are heavily represented and add cards for archetypes that need more help.
There are plenty of things around about the very beginnings of a cube (How much are you willing to spend?), and plenty on the finished product, but no guides that I've found about the card selection, or the commander selection (in the case of an EDH cube).
Can anyone with experience help me out?
So I went through and figured out how many generals of each color combination I wanted. You're gonna have an easier time with this than I did, because you're starting this post Khans/C16, which creates a whole world of options. I went with 1 of each mono-color, 3 of each 2 color combination, and 2 of each tri-color combination. (Well 2 of each shard 1 per wedge, but I evened it out shortly after when Khans came out) It's important to make sure every guild (or every shard/wedge) has the same number of options so no colors are easier to play than others.
Once the number was ironed out, I started filling in slots. Just fill them in on instinct at first, though try to avoid anything that needs very specific support cards that don't fit in any other decks, like Zedruu or Norin, for example. Once all the slots are filled in, look at what archetypes/strategies each general calls for, and try to replace any generals that have another option in their guild/shard that uses the same strategy. For example, you don't want both Melek and Mizzix in izzet, because they want to do the same thing and it doesn't give you options for how to play that guild. Once that's done, look for any stategies that only have 1 to 2 supporting generals, and replace them; overlap is good, you just don't want it in the same color combination. Strongly consider cutting any generals without a clear theme. (Your good-stuff generals)
Once all this is done you should have a nice compact list of strategies your cube needs to support, as well as what colors generals for those strategies will tend to be in your cube. Next think of the cards that are the heaviest hitters in those strategies: Mycoloth for sacrifice strategies, DEN for blink, stoneforge in voltron, etc. Those are your next includes, especially if they're flexible cards. (Mycoloth is a prime example; it works in sac decks, token decks, and counter decks) This should be a lot of obvious cards.
Next, look for cards that bridge gaps between strategies. Angel of Invention was sweet when it came out because it would be fought over by token, blink, and artifact decks. Burnished Hart is wanted by ramp, artifact, and occasionally sace decks. There's a lot of cards like this, and they're the gold standard because drafting is no fun if everyone is just being railroaded; you want players fighting over most cards. (Also: Not every deck type will be in every draft, and we don't want anything to ever not be usable by someone at the table)
Finally, figure out your pet cards and what cards seem to always end up in your decks. Find stuff you always wanted to play, but always fell just short of the cut. Take the cards you just love playing with. Mash them all into a pile, and you have a basic framework for your cube. Cut some cards or find more includes until your colors and guilds are even; (DO NOT INCLUDE 3-COLOR NONGENERAL CARDS, everyone who makes an EDH cube learns that lesson the hard way) don't worry about the card number being a pretty multiple of 90 or whatever; that'll come later as you refine the list down.
If you want to take inspiration from it, my cubetutor is in my sig, though the generals section is kinda broken there because I haven't updated it and the partners aren't displaying properly. But the cube itself is all basically sorted.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
This makes 26 'default' commanders. This way, when playing with 6 people, I make 6 'mini-boosters' with five cards (the 26 commanders, plus 4 mana-fixing lands like Command Tower and kin). Doing this, every player can select a couple of possible commanders before drafting. All other legendary creatures are simply included in the cube somewhere, and I try to do this as much as possible; my list is stuffed with them. The deal is that every Legendary creature can be your commander, but using the mini-boosters when starting you'll guarantee that everyone has multiple ways to go plus you're able to influence which commanders will see play.
I built my cube kind of the way SCDL described. Cubetutor is a good resource and a nice way to maintain your list. Unfortunately, mine is way outdated: I've alterd a lot without keeping my list up to date.
There are a ton of legends in the cube proper that can be used instead if you pick them up, most of them put there because they're harder to build around or more good-stuffy. (I made sure I included at least one per guild)
I've loved the results, and everyone has made super varied decks. The only general I've seen show up twice was Breya, and I've gotten to do some fun stuff I never would have like Akiri/Vial Smasher. (Both of which were picked up during the actual draft, not the generals pack) The only consistent thing is I will always nearly mill myself out even when I'm not playing blue. (And these are 60 card decks. Admittedly, Prime Speaker wasn't hard to accomplish and I probably shouldn't have ulted nissa. I still lost.)
No matter what, you're gonna do it your own way; making a commander cube is not something super common and studied so there's no formula. We all make our own rules slightly differently.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
It's kind of budget, but testing on cube tutor (use 6 packs and 3 bots) seems like I'm able to put together a decent deck pretty often. I've a few cards to buy (about 100 cards for $50 or so) and some refining before putting it together in paper. Here's the list.
I don't think a separate commander draft pack will be necessary, since there's a fairly high number of legendary cards everyone should have a few guild, shard, or wedge options pass through their hands at some point. If I had them, I'd throw the four color commanders into the mix as well. And a couple more good land cycles are definitely advised.
Just a few questions though
Is MLD acceptable in a cube?
Is more removal better than less?
Should each colour's curve be balanced?
--> That's entirely up to you. In mine, it is, because our playgroup normally doesn't appreciate it. When cubing, everyone knows things can happen that normally don't.
Is more removal better than less?
--> In my opinion, no. It will quite often result in an empty board if you play a lot of removal. If I where you, I'd look like cards like Shriekmaw and Fleshbag Marauder for removal, because they serve more than one purpose.
Should each colour's curve be balanced?
--> In my cube, it is. I believe this is more like a best practice for people who are new to cube, because keeping it balanced is a good guideline.
So your choice here depends on what you want to achieve, both concerning speed / power level and the types of decks you want to support (and, of course, the contents of your wallet...). Personally, My own cube is very multicolor-oriented. I run all shocks, all fetches, and a couple of ABU duals (the remaining ones have become to expensive for me). Moreover, I run City of Brass, Grand Colisseum, Forbidden Orchard, Paliano, the High City, Terramorphic Expense, Mana Confluence, Cavern of Souls, Gemstone Mine... and I'm probably forgetting some. I really want people to have a good time playing with it, so being mana screwed just shouldn't happen unless your picks are bad. So yes, in my case, the mana base is a key component of the cube. I do think that if you want a cube that supports multiple players playing a 3-colored commander deck, you have to think this through. My 585-card list contains 46 lands, most of which enable multiple colors.
However, if you'd run a cube that mainly supports two-color decks, you can quite easily get there with a number of ETB-tapped lands (I strongly recommend man lands for this, because they serve multiple purposes) and some artifact-mana fix (like Darksteel Ingot, Coalition Relic, Solemn Simulacrum). Azorius Signet and it's kin are very good options (I also run those) and there are several more of those like the Cluestones.
This helps people out, and makes certain more generals easier to play.
Initially, we did away with the color-identity rule, but that went away very quickly (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker as the general with Restoration Angel and Demonic Tutor...)
When first constructing a list for the cube, it was super easy to load up on 5+ mana cards, because those are the ones you really remember playing in a typical commander deck, while every player is really fighting for the low mana cards that go in every deck. My recommendation is to really limit yourself on high mana cards, and include even mediocre low cmc cards. This includes Boreal Druid and Divination, mostly because every deck was really starving for early plays.
Removal should be at a premium. I personally find games more enjoyable when you answer threats with more threats. Obviously there is removal, but they are not nearly as common as threats.
Make sure every archetype that you want to do is supported. The more cards that overlap between archetypes, the better. I tried to give every general a 'pet' card, that is really only good in that deck like Cloudblazer for Brago, King Eternal.
The tap function on cubetutor.com helps tremendously. I labeled every card with as many tags as I could think of, and it helps sort out the cube into categories. It also helps when making cuts, as you can cut from archetypes that are heavily represented and add cards for archetypes that need more help.
I didn't really think the cards through all too much, I just put together what I think could be interesting.
I decided to put a lot of removal/answers in to start with, and reduce it to a good level through testing. Also decided on no tutors.
I haven't done the lands yet either.