Greetings! If you're new to the whole MtG Cube thing and looking for some help to get started, you've come to the right place.
What this isn't is an exhaustive guide to how to cube. Plenty of highly experienced and intelligent people have written tons of those already (in fact, see below!). What this is is a repository of resources for the new cuber. I'm hoping that, rather than start up a new thread every time someone new comes along asking for advice, we can simply direct them here. If you have other resources to share, or simply want to offer your own tips, please add them below.
So where to begin?
A good place might be with a bit of reading. Here are a few comprehensive guides to what a cube is, and what sort of things you should be thinking about when first putting yours together:
The Cube Academy at the Riptide Lab. A well-organized series of two dozen or so short articles arranged as "lessons." A great read front-to-back for the total beginner; good too when you have more specific concerns about, say, accessories or planeswalkers.
Wtwlf123's Cube Design Philosophy. A great article built around a number of common cube questions, by one of the most thoughtful and vocal cubers out there.
Salmo's Basic Guide to Cube The newest addition to the list, a thorough and cleverly written survey of colors, staples, draft methods, archetypes, power/unpower, and much much more.
Next, if you haven't already, it's time to familiarize yourself with our most valuable tool:
Cube Tutor! This site has just about everything you need to build your perfect cube. It allows you to keep a detailed, customizable electronic database of your cube(s), draft against decent AI, and construct and save decks. Just as importantly, it lets you see the most commonly cubed and most commonly played cards - overall and by set - and check out other people's lists. This is great when trying to figure out things like how many 2-power 1-drops should red run at a given size, or how many counterspells you should have in blue in a pauper cube. One thing to bear in mind: Ben's cubes are based on statistical averages, which makes them a good place to see commonly played cards that you may be overlooking, but not as much when you're trying to figure out questions of balance or archetype support.
All of that should be more than enough to get you started. When you want to do a little more, here are some additional resources that can be terrifically useful:
Forge. Community-made rules-enforcing Magic software, with passable AI to boot (and, recently, multiplayer support as well). Like MTGO, but free and totally customizable. What that means is, you can draft and build decks on cubetutor, export them, and then play your own cube against AI. Neat, huh?
Comprehensive List of Cube Archetypes. An awesome article by Falcone1983 that details, as of this writing, 35 different archetypes that can be supported in cubes. I guarantee, some of these you would never have thought of on your own. Plus it discusses the difference between "archetype" and "theater," which you will get street cred for if used correctly.
Cube Card Power Rankings. The results (scroll down a bit) of a 2014 poll organized by Silent Edge to determine the most powerful cards per color and overall. More fun than anything, but it can be a good place to see cards you may have overlooked, and also learn why you probably shouldn't throw a Sol Ring into your peasant cube. (Answer: it is the most powerful cube card of all time).
Finally, I want to offer a few general tips of my own. Take em or leave em as you will!
Start with what you have. Don't worry about picking up the "best" cube cards for now. As you play, you'll figure out what works and what doesn't. (But also see #9.)
Certain colors like spells/creatures more. My ballpark creature percentages are Green (70%), White (65%), Red (50%), Black (50%), Blue (40%).
Keep your average CMC as low as you can! 2.5-2.8 is a good range, with aggro-y-er colors like Red and White preferring the lower end of the scale.
Speaking of which, aggro can be tough to get right. 2-power 1-drops are essential. Take a look at other cubes of your size on CubeTutor to figure out about how many you should be running in aggro colors. (For me, white, red, and black; some people do green aggro; others don't do black. It's up to you how you'd like to use those colors.)
You'll be tempted to run a lot of sweet multicolor spells. RESIST THE URGE. In my ~450 card cube, I only have 3 dedicated non-land cards per guild. If you go much higher than that, ratio-wise, you'll end up with a lot of frustrated players, constantly passing otherwise cool gold cards that just aren't in their colors. Three-color cards are even more restrictive and should be used with extreme caution.
The exception to the above rule is hybrids. Good hybrids are some of the best cards in cube. Why? They can be played in vastly more decks than gold cards.
Cube builders tend to be obsessed with round numbers and perfect balance, but there's no need to be. Want to run 60 cards in red, black, white, and green, but just have to run 61 in blue? Why the hell not?
Whether to proxy or not is up to you and your playgroup, but I recommend it. For no other reason than the fact that good lands are crucial to making multicolor decks work, but good lands also range from expensive to insanely expensive. The same can be said for certain cards that whole archetypes are built on (Sneak Attack, say, or Survival of the Fittest).
A little bit of advice from my own dumb experience. I started off with a budget cube. Then I went out and spent a fair amount of money on like bulk rares that seemed interesting. But they weren't, really, and soon got replaced with slightly more powerful cards. But a lot of those weren't powerful enough, and I started spending more and more, and my binders kept filling up with cards that nobody particularly wanted. The point isn't to not spend money on cards; I just recommend having an end goal in mind. In other words, it's better to buy one card for ten bucks than ten cards for a buck each, if you're going to upgrade all of the latter within six months.
Have fun! If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.
This post has a lot of great resources and advice. One more resource I'd recommend for new cube designers is the list I've been maintaining of cube staples that cost less than $2. Twenty good cards that cost $0.50 apiece will have more impact on a new cube than one card that costs $10, and pretty much all of these cards are solid cube staples make even the tightest of cube lists, and will likely not need to be replaced for a long time if ever.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
This post has a lot of great resources and advice. One more resource I'd recommend for new cube designers is the list I've been maintaining of cube staples that cost less than $2. Twenty good cards that cost $0.50 apiece will have more impact on a new cube than one card that costs $10, and pretty much all of these cards are solid cube staples make even the tightest of cube lists, and will likely not need to be replaced for a long time if ever.
Great suggestion, thanks! And awesome work on the list. I wish I'd had this when I was starting out.
This - and every topic linked to in this - has been very helpful. Thanks a bunch!
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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.
One more really important topic that's not addressed here is mana fixing lands. The conventional wisdom is that 10-15% of your cube should consist of mana fixing lands. Your players should have no trouble finding enough playable spells to draft, and cube cards are often quite color intensive (see wtwlf's "Mana Short" article above for a more detailed explanation of how this impacts your cube), so having plenty of land available in your cube will help turn dead picks that would otherwise rot in sideboards smooth out mana bases, enable splashes, and expand deckbuilding options. Ten to fifteen percent typically means one complete cycle of dual lands per 100 cards plus the best 5-color fixing lands you can find.
The top 4 cycles of duals are generally considered to be:
If you're on a budget and can't afford the top tier and/or don't want to proxy them, it's better to run whatever you have on hand or don't mind buying cheaply until you're willing and/or able to invest in better. My cube ran pretty well for quite a while with only check lands, pain lands, Temples, bounce lands, and Vivid lands as fixers as I gradually upgraded to better. Any fixing at all is better than not enough, but be aware that many decks (especially aggro) will suffer from having to run lands that enter the battlefield tapped.
There's a lot of good advice here about balancing for power, CMC curves, having the right amount of multicolored cards, keeping your cube interactive, and how to put your own unique stamp on this format.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
There's a lot of good advice here about balancing for power, CMC curves, having the right amount of multicolored cards, keeping your cube interactive, and how to put your own unique stamp on this format.
Salmo's put together a fantastic guide for new cubers here: A Basic Guide to Cube. This should be considered required reading for anyone who's serious about building their first cube.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I've only read a few pages up to now and it'll take me a while to read all of it, but this is fantastic. Great job.
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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.
What this isn't is an exhaustive guide to how to cube. Plenty of highly experienced and intelligent people have written tons of those already (in fact, see below!). What this is is a repository of resources for the new cuber. I'm hoping that, rather than start up a new thread every time someone new comes along asking for advice, we can simply direct them here. If you have other resources to share, or simply want to offer your own tips, please add them below.
So where to begin?
A good place might be with a bit of reading. Here are a few comprehensive guides to what a cube is, and what sort of things you should be thinking about when first putting yours together:
Next, if you haven't already, it's time to familiarize yourself with our most valuable tool:
All of that should be more than enough to get you started. When you want to do a little more, here are some additional resources that can be terrifically useful:
And a few more articles on Mtgsalvation that you may find helpful:
Finally, I want to offer a few general tips of my own. Take em or leave em as you will!
Akrasia, a Custom 360 Cube
New To Cube?
Cubing with Two: A Guide to Two-Player Draft Formats
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Great suggestion, thanks! And awesome work on the list. I wish I'd had this when I was starting out.
Akrasia, a Custom 360 Cube
New To Cube?
Cubing with Two: A Guide to Two-Player Draft Formats
The top 4 cycles of duals are generally considered to be:
1) ABU duals
2) Fetch lands
3) Shock lands
4) Manlands (although many people swap out Stirring Wildwood for Horizon Canopy)
After this top tier pain lands, check lands, filter lands are all quite good and are available for all color pairs. Scars lands and Battle/"tango" duals are also decent options, but they're only available for allied color pairs.
The best 5-color fixing lands available are City of Brass, Evolving Wilds, Gemstone Mine, Grand Coliseum, Mana Confluence, Reflecting Pool, Terramorphic Expanse, and Undiscovered Paradise. I also run City of Ass and Paliano, the High City which are great fixers but some cube managers dislike for flavor reasons. The Vivid lands are also fine if you want additional 5c fixing.
If you're on a budget and can't afford the top tier and/or don't want to proxy them, it's better to run whatever you have on hand or don't mind buying cheaply until you're willing and/or able to invest in better. My cube ran pretty well for quite a while with only check lands, pain lands, Temples, bounce lands, and Vivid lands as fixers as I gradually upgraded to better. Any fixing at all is better than not enough, but be aware that many decks (especially aggro) will suffer from having to run lands that enter the battlefield tapped.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
"Making your first cube or want feedback for your cube? Maybe this thread can help!" by Fleme
There's a lot of good advice here about balancing for power, CMC curves, having the right amount of multicolored cards, keeping your cube interactive, and how to put your own unique stamp on this format.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Good catch, added it.
Akrasia, a Custom 360 Cube
New To Cube?
Cubing with Two: A Guide to Two-Player Draft Formats
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Thanks! I appreciate it
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