MTG Salvation

View on Cubetutor

Cube Size: 968 Cards
Breakdown: 68 Generals, 100 Each Color, 200 Gold (20 per guild), 200 Colorless. (All cards sorted by color identity)
Theme: EDH/Commander; slower games
# Players: Up to 12 players
How Often Drafted: Whenever

Cube Design
Standard or Multiplayer: Multiplayer (but you could always draft duel decks)
Sideboards?: Yes
Even Color Balance: Yes
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 run 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. These cards may be included as normal cards in the deck as well.
Draft Structure: Up to 12 players draft 5 packs of 15 cards +1 General pack (divided evenly among all players).
Deck Construction: 65 card deck (= about 39 business cards and 26 lands) +1 General, Standard Color Identity Rules
Starting Life: 40/Player


Stat format blatantly stolen from Wildfire393

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Decide how you want to draft first as that will affect your cube composition. I'd also run either 0 or 1 of the 3 color cards, being 3 colors makes them extremely limited in what decks they can be played in. I run 1 of each except BUG because I couldn't find a good card for that color combo. 0-1 5 color cards for the same reason. I do not like the idea of running so many cycles for the lands. I've got a fixed number (8) for each color combo and I simply run the best ones I have. This way you can play the manlands and the fetches/temples you have. Budget options are OK here, the Guild Gates are perfectly fine if you don't have anything better. My limiting factor on size is basically the number of red cards I run before they become terrible. My Commander cube is in my sig, there's some useful links there as well.

I am working on making my own commander cube. One thing I am working on at the moment is selection of commanders. I think I am going to allow so many slots for each color combination and pick out a number of commanders for those colors based on that number. It might end up with some bleh commander options in some colors but I think its fairer to each color to have the same number of commanders as each other.

For instance, I see 5 bant commanders which feels a little unfair to some of the other wedges like Green/Blue/Black who has one commander option.

Two commanders in each color combo seems to be the "norm" for edh cubes around here. I run 3 per guild, shard, and wedge, and in that case, I end up having to use a few stinkers like Oros and zedruu. My cube is a bit bigger than most though, and my highest priority is variety, rather than consistency in draft. Hopefully the fall block is the long anticipated wedge-themed one that folks have been predicting and we get some new commanders to play around with!

Donald - that's a good idea about the lands. I could always trade out checks for their like colored fetches. I lime how wildfire included his colored lands in the appropriate section and will steal that idea.

ISB - this list isn't an attempt at balance. View it as laying of everything you own and making your cube from that stack.

Honestly, ignore us, put the thing together and see what happens. I've found that everyone does these things differently and it's way more about the playgroup than the cube. As you play, pay attention to patterns (of dependency and neglect), make edits based on what you think they'd like to draft, and expect for your first draft to be only 80% on the mark. I think that most people here would tell you to look at their cube and build it like theirs simply because we've all put a ton of time into making them and thus believe that ours is right. But, I've now played 3 cubes and the cards in mine are very tailored to what we like to play. I've had people play mine and say "Your's feels much slower than the other ones in town and more like a normal game of EDH." And that's fine since that's what we like.

I would say that you want to build your cube to the size of your regular playgroup. The Cube is a gaming resource and if it takes too much time to draft, that will kill it. If there isn't enough variety that will kill it. If you aim to make 100 card decks every week you better have people willing to spend 2 hours just getting ready for their first game. Etc.

Initially I know I can get a group of 4 players that meet regularly and whom I trust enough to actually do this. Potentially I know 4 more but the logistics of getting all eight of us together would be harder. So should I build the first cube to handle 4 players, or if I think I can swing it, build for 8? And no matter the size, is it better to build so that the entire cube is split to be drafted or should there be leftovers every time, so that there is always that random element?

Also the commanders. I know different people have different preferences about drafting them separately or mixed into the cube. What are all of your experiences?

Building a Cube for 4 is not something I have experience with. Mine has been drafted by that many but we do sealed at that point.

I know Donald likes his huge so there are leftovers, but I hate that. We'll distribute the leftovers if there are less than 8 so that there aren't any pieces missing - it sucks when you see your 2 Jund generals in the left overs after drafting RG hoping for Black... but it's also not that big of a deal since we've done it both ways and had fun regardless.

We randomize ALL cards since part of drafting is knowing what to prioritize and figuring out how to build a deck from a random card pool within the rules of the game... basically putting generals anywhere but packs feels really weird to be and so far has never been an issue. There have been a few times where a player went 2 color and held out hope for a 3 color general and didn't get it. But it didn't matter since they just built a 2 color deck. Some guys pick generals in the first pack and others just pick good stuff for a pack or two, find a general in the middle, and then polish it up in packs four and five. The few times I have drafted cubes with generals on the side... Separate draft = I found that I got my general, drafted the deck, and didn't really care about a bunch of the cards that went around because I was already in my colors. With Wildfire's Cube there was a 2 or 3 color general in each pack. I still don't get exactly why he does that since it distributes the generals amongst the 40 packs (or whatever number there is) the same as putting them in the packs except that instead of exactly 1 per pack mine will sometimes have 0 and sometimes have 4... but the average per pack ends up being the same I think.

More questions for everyone:

1. Is your cube a pile of goodstuff, or do you try to make apparent themes to complement the colors and/or generals?
2. Banned cards. Do you use them, and if so, which ones? Currently I have Gifts, P-Hulk, Nightmare, Mirror, and Balance that I want to run. I ended up trading away my Academy, and I dumped Prime Time after his ban so they're out. Which banned cards should I avoid? Which ones aren't that bad?
3. How many basic lands should I have available to ensure everyone will have as many as they want?

1. My cube is composed of both good stuff and cards that compliment certain niche generals and strategies (zur, voltron, tokens/durdle). I got into edh around 2009, and, with my omnivorous collecting habits, managed to pick up lots of the dawn-of-the-format staples before it really took off $-wise. I built my cube primarily as a way of getting use out of all the neglected cards I had collected, and as a way of eliminating the need for redundant purchases between lots and lots of decks.

2. I'm using primeval, sylvan primordial, nightmare, gifts, fastbond, balance, and maybe 1-2 I'm forgetting. Nothing has been abused to the point of needing a ban, although I will probably swap out fastbond now that exploration will be more widely available, and I've always kept my eye open for gifts issues.

3. I think I'm using 50-60 per color. Depending on the number of cards used per pack, I think my cube could support 9-10 people comfortably. Usually I host between 4-8 people tho.

****, sleeves are going to be expensive. I'll have to play degenerate decks at league to get enough store credit.

Pointless question time: Should I run proxies of cards I need to balance out the cube? Like generals I'm missing, for example.

Do you just pull from your cube when you want to build a deck?

Yeah, just buy all the sleeves up front. I started with 300 pink UltraPros and have had to buy them 50 at a time since. It's annoying and happened because I wasn't really thinking ahead too much.

Banned cards I include: Balance, Upheaval, Tolarian Academy. I don't run Prime Time or Sylvan Primordial because they already got cut before their bans because they proved to be too powerful and game swinging - basically, people had to draft them or push for an answer.dec so hard that it cut down on the variety of decks. Killing them off opened things up. We also banned Jace 3 and Sword of Body and Mind too.

Good point about sword. I will not run mill effects but I forgot about that sword.
6/3/2014 10:32:16 AM
I think I'm going to buy like 600 penny sleeves and build a mini cube for 4 players, see how it goes and take it from there. What's average, 65+1 card decks with roughly a 40/25 split of cards/basics?

Sixty five + 1 general approximates the 2/3 of a standard edh deck. To save time during drafts these days though, I've been making smaller packs and doing 60 cards + 1 general. This makes it so I don't have to quote any eccentric ratios of playables vs lands, just the regular 36 + 24 lands split.

Quote from Wildfire393 »

I do 65+1 and a 39/26 split.

65+1 is also what we came to (I think it was when we drafted yours that we came to that too ). 39/26 works for some, but I like going with 37/28, adding 4-5 utility lands which I count as half spells, and then making sure that I have enough small draw to get through things. I don't know how many of you run Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood, 10 Scrylands, Ponder, Preordeain, Brainstorm, etc, but those are well played and help smooth things out quite a bit.

Do you try to balance mana costs of generals when possible? Like trying to have a low and high cmc in each color combo. Or is the general more important?

And how do you avoid pushing players into certain colors because of an imbalance of colored generals? Do you intentionally exclude multicolor legendary creatures?

Quote from cryogen »

Do you try to balance mana costs of generals when possible? Like trying to have a low and high cmc in each color combo. Or is the general more important? And how do you avoid pushing players into certain colors because of an imbalance of colored generals? Do you intentionally exclude multicolor legendary creatures?

I think the challenge is striking a balance between role diversity, power, and usability/adaptability within the constraints of a draft environment.

During my early conversations with Wildfire on building an edh cube, he seemed to pick 2 generals per guild/shard/wedge that roughly corresponded with an aggro rep and a control rep. With 3 per in each of my colors I usually try and go for an aggro/voltron rep, a mid-ranger, and either a control or combo rep. My cube is very supportive of voltron decks, so it wasn't too hard to incorporate the pieces necessary for that. Combo generals get a little more tricky, as I need to specifically insert certain cards for them that may not have a great amount of generalized applicability.

Franky, you just have to test some out to see if they work or not. For instance, I included anax and cemede in my cube last year, because I was excited about such a low cmc boros legend. After a number of run throughs using cube tutor, it became very apparent that I just didn't have enough cards to reliably trigger heroic, so I cut the legend.

Quote from cryogen »

Do you try to balance mana costs of generals when possible? Like trying to have a low and high cmc in each color combo. Or is the general more important?

No. That doesn't matter when I build decks at all, so it doesn't matter to me here either. I just put the 2 in that I think people will like playing with.

Quote from cryogen »

And how do you avoid pushing players into certain colors because of an imbalance of colored generals? Do you intentionally exclude multicolor legendary creatures?

I don't do anything. The draft does. I have 2 of each Wedge scheme, 3 of each Shard, and then a generals in each guild that are good as generals or good as cards in decks. It always works out. I think I have 5 Boros Generals and only 1 or 2 Simic and we see just as many Simic decks as Boros decks.

So in a sense, choosing an arbitrary number of generals is a moot point since I will likely include more within the cube itself. So really I have three options when it comes to generals: I either seed them like Wildfire does, make general draft packs, or just throw everything in the cube and let fate take its course.

You don't even have to commit to any single one of those methods. I usually do a generals draft, cause I'm phobic of my players getting stuck with illegal decks, but it would be just as easy to shuffle all the legends into the cube and "let fate take its course." I'd just see what your group is comfortable with, or would find the most enjoyable.