Hi! I've co-crafted two cubes before, but this is the first time I'm making one for myself. I would very much appreciate feedback, if you'd care to read about my design parameters and take a gander at the list below.
CONCEPT
The overall idea is to make a cube with the same rarity distribution as you'd find in modern boosters. This means 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 10 commons per every 15 cards (the basic land slot normally found in boosters has some special considerations - see below). If you make suggestions, please respect the rarity of the card (lowest available rarity anywhere applies).
On the next level, we find 10 archetypes - one for each guild (tri-color and greater are banned for symmetry reasons). The rares and uncommons have not been picked based on maximum power level, but rather to support the archetypes and round out mana curves etc. As a guideline for the cube's power level, I've excluded cards like Skullclamp, Sol Ring and Overrun for being too much of an "I WIN"-button. There is also a $10 cap on cards both for budget reasons and to exclude disproportionately powerful rares. I don't really want rares that are significantly more powerful than cards like Isochron Scepter or Curse of Predation.
The basic land slot normally found as the 15th card in boosters posed a design problem since there are no basic lands within the cube and we traditionally want packs of 15 to draft with. My solution here was to include cards from various expansions that have all occupied the land slot - notably conspiracies, "draft matters" cards and timeshifted cards. These cards (24 slots total) break the normal rarity distribution rules in the cube. For ease of filtering/overview, I have tagged them all as "timeshifted" on cubetutor, so you can easily located them.
Also note that in a typical selection of 24 packs, you'd have an additional 4 foil cards, roughly distributed as 2 commons, 1 uncommon and 1 rare (in the place of 4 commons). This further distorts the rarity distribution, so that there is actually a total of 25 rares and 73 uncommons in the cube, in addition to the basic land slot special cards.
ARCHETYPES
There are 4 cards per guild, 1 rare + 1 uncommon + 2 commons. For the most part, these cards support or imply a certain concept within the guild (there are exceptions: Kitchen Finks in the Selesnya uncommon slot actually supports the bounce/blink archetype found in several other guilds, more than the tokens archetype typical of Selesnya, because it's just such a good card for the cube and there is already plenty of token support in the mono colors).
The cube does not support the archetypes combo, reanimator or (gasp!) ramp. I wanted green to be about something else entirely than ramp, so it serves various roles in the midrange decks that it forms a part of. (This is not to say the cube is free from combos, ramp cards or reanimation spells - but there is no critical mass or archetype support).
The archetypes include:
AGGRO
Boros: Basic undercosted creatures and versatile removal, with the possibility for more of a tokens based go-wide strategy if so desired
Rakdos: Unleash-based aggro with some suicidal elements, sacrificing either card advantage or life total for kill speed
Izzet: Tempo/spells matters, prowess etc.
MIDRANGE
Selesnya: Tokens with some wrath protection support.
Golgari: Using graveyard builders to support delve and threshold is intended, but not necessary to draft the color.
Gruul: High-toughness creatures to go with Pyroclasm/Firespout and bounce in the form of Horned Kavu and Temur Sabretooth to reuse those Wall of Blossoms and Fire Imp. Doesn't mind splashing white for more bounce/blink effects.
Simic: Flash creatures and instant spells. You'll notice that green has a larger-than-expected instant section.
CONTROL
Azorius: ETB-creatures control with lots of bounce and blink effects.
Dimir: Similar to azorius, but more draw over creature density, and using utility reanimation to compensate for lack of white blink/bounce.
Orzhov: Does it annoy you when your opponent has non-land permanents in play? Lots of removal, a few wincons with blink or reanimation for protection.
NOTABLE INCLUSIONS
Land selection: I've included the pain lands in the three aggro colors. Rare slots are at a real premium in the cube, but I feel these are well spent. In the non-aggro colors, you'll find ravnica karoos instead. I also included the refuge reprints as they are common rarity and pretty OK. Gemstone Mine turned out to be a time-shifted card, which saved me an uncommon slot! I don't have room for the tri-lands, but I did manage to fit the vivids (they also have more synergy with karoos).
Semi-colored colorless cycle: Oketra's Monument, Crystal Shard, Scrapheap Scrounger, Shrine of Burning Rage and Pendelhaven form a mini-cycle that are best with their respective color but can be played in others too. Subtle symmetries like these make my heart sing for some reason Mystic Enforcer: A bit of an odd card in the cube. As a timeshifted card, he saves me a "true" rare slot and has a subtle synergy with selesnya tokens - the token creating spells all build threshold. With threshold, he is hard to remove and evades even most of the cube's sweepers. He's also eminently splashable in golgari. Avatar of Woe: Another timeshifted rare. Hardly the most pressing card to run as black's 3rd rare (each color has 3 rares and 10 uncommons, and one of those will be timeshifted), but it is cards like this that enable me to spend 3 rare slots on pain lands. Basically smearing a sufficient amount of semi-powerful rares across the cube makes draft picks like Curse of Predation less swingy, and the timeshifted cards help greatly with this. Sovereign's Realm: Pretty much the only realistic way to play 4+ colors in the cube - at the price of hymning yourself. I also like this for not hogging mana fixing and being self-sufficient. Advantageous Proclamation: Included to better support mono-colored decks, or decks with small splashes for a second color. More variety for the drafters!
NOTABLE OMISSIONS
Green-producing mana elves: The cube curves out at 6 CMC. I don't want to support ramp and reanimator with 7+ CMC bombs, so instead I prioritize mana-fixing elves. If you're in golgari, producing even more green mana when you can already cast your elf is less useful than gaining a black source - hence Elves of Deep Shadow over Fyndhorn Elves.
Signets: For the same reason as mana elves. Also, I want to promote the bicolor archetypes, and TOO much good fixing makes tri-color decks come too easily. I envision splashing for a third color as an added benefit mostly for green decks. Double Stroke: Just makes already good spells even more swingy, which is exactly what I don't want. Same with many other problematic conspiracies that I've deliberately omitted.
WHAT I WOULD LIKE HELP WITH
Mono-colored commons: 37 each and 10 archetypes to support makes it very hard to get an overview of what's optimal. Am I missing any good cards for my archetypes?
Rares and uncommons: Are there better cards out there in these rarities to support my archetypes? Or are perhaps some archetypes over-supported by rares and uncommons, such that I should run others that are generically more attractive picks or more versatile?
Higher order design recommendations: For example, if you think that archetype X is just a pipe dream that won't pan out and make for unhappy draft experiences, don't hesitate to suggest it (even if it will ruin weeks of thinking and planning
Thanks for reading this far!
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CONCEPT
The overall idea is to make a cube with the same rarity distribution as you'd find in modern boosters. This means 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 10 commons per every 15 cards (the basic land slot normally found in boosters has some special considerations - see below). If you make suggestions, please respect the rarity of the card (lowest available rarity anywhere applies).
On the next level, we find 10 archetypes - one for each guild (tri-color and greater are banned for symmetry reasons). The rares and uncommons have not been picked based on maximum power level, but rather to support the archetypes and round out mana curves etc. As a guideline for the cube's power level, I've excluded cards like Skullclamp, Sol Ring and Overrun for being too much of an "I WIN"-button. There is also a $10 cap on cards both for budget reasons and to exclude disproportionately powerful rares. I don't really want rares that are significantly more powerful than cards like Isochron Scepter or Curse of Predation.
The basic land slot normally found as the 15th card in boosters posed a design problem since there are no basic lands within the cube and we traditionally want packs of 15 to draft with. My solution here was to include cards from various expansions that have all occupied the land slot - notably conspiracies, "draft matters" cards and timeshifted cards. These cards (24 slots total) break the normal rarity distribution rules in the cube. For ease of filtering/overview, I have tagged them all as "timeshifted" on cubetutor, so you can easily located them.
Also note that in a typical selection of 24 packs, you'd have an additional 4 foil cards, roughly distributed as 2 commons, 1 uncommon and 1 rare (in the place of 4 commons). This further distorts the rarity distribution, so that there is actually a total of 25 rares and 73 uncommons in the cube, in addition to the basic land slot special cards.
ARCHETYPES
There are 4 cards per guild, 1 rare + 1 uncommon + 2 commons. For the most part, these cards support or imply a certain concept within the guild (there are exceptions: Kitchen Finks in the Selesnya uncommon slot actually supports the bounce/blink archetype found in several other guilds, more than the tokens archetype typical of Selesnya, because it's just such a good card for the cube and there is already plenty of token support in the mono colors).
The cube does not support the archetypes combo, reanimator or (gasp!) ramp. I wanted green to be about something else entirely than ramp, so it serves various roles in the midrange decks that it forms a part of. (This is not to say the cube is free from combos, ramp cards or reanimation spells - but there is no critical mass or archetype support).
The archetypes include:
AGGRO
Boros: Basic undercosted creatures and versatile removal, with the possibility for more of a tokens based go-wide strategy if so desired
Rakdos: Unleash-based aggro with some suicidal elements, sacrificing either card advantage or life total for kill speed
Izzet: Tempo/spells matters, prowess etc.
MIDRANGE
Selesnya: Tokens with some wrath protection support.
Golgari: Using graveyard builders to support delve and threshold is intended, but not necessary to draft the color.
Gruul: High-toughness creatures to go with Pyroclasm/Firespout and bounce in the form of Horned Kavu and Temur Sabretooth to reuse those Wall of Blossoms and Fire Imp. Doesn't mind splashing white for more bounce/blink effects.
Simic: Flash creatures and instant spells. You'll notice that green has a larger-than-expected instant section.
CONTROL
Azorius: ETB-creatures control with lots of bounce and blink effects.
Dimir: Similar to azorius, but more draw over creature density, and using utility reanimation to compensate for lack of white blink/bounce.
Orzhov: Does it annoy you when your opponent has non-land permanents in play? Lots of removal, a few wincons with blink or reanimation for protection.
THE LIST
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/120276
NOTABLE INCLUSIONS
Land selection: I've included the pain lands in the three aggro colors. Rare slots are at a real premium in the cube, but I feel these are well spent. In the non-aggro colors, you'll find ravnica karoos instead. I also included the refuge reprints as they are common rarity and pretty OK. Gemstone Mine turned out to be a time-shifted card, which saved me an uncommon slot! I don't have room for the tri-lands, but I did manage to fit the vivids (they also have more synergy with karoos).
Semi-colored colorless cycle: Oketra's Monument, Crystal Shard, Scrapheap Scrounger, Shrine of Burning Rage and Pendelhaven form a mini-cycle that are best with their respective color but can be played in others too. Subtle symmetries like these make my heart sing for some reason
Mystic Enforcer: A bit of an odd card in the cube. As a timeshifted card, he saves me a "true" rare slot and has a subtle synergy with selesnya tokens - the token creating spells all build threshold. With threshold, he is hard to remove and evades even most of the cube's sweepers. He's also eminently splashable in golgari.
Avatar of Woe: Another timeshifted rare. Hardly the most pressing card to run as black's 3rd rare (each color has 3 rares and 10 uncommons, and one of those will be timeshifted), but it is cards like this that enable me to spend 3 rare slots on pain lands. Basically smearing a sufficient amount of semi-powerful rares across the cube makes draft picks like Curse of Predation less swingy, and the timeshifted cards help greatly with this.
Sovereign's Realm: Pretty much the only realistic way to play 4+ colors in the cube - at the price of hymning yourself. I also like this for not hogging mana fixing and being self-sufficient.
Advantageous Proclamation: Included to better support mono-colored decks, or decks with small splashes for a second color. More variety for the drafters!
NOTABLE OMISSIONS
Green-producing mana elves: The cube curves out at 6 CMC. I don't want to support ramp and reanimator with 7+ CMC bombs, so instead I prioritize mana-fixing elves. If you're in golgari, producing even more green mana when you can already cast your elf is less useful than gaining a black source - hence Elves of Deep Shadow over Fyndhorn Elves.
Signets: For the same reason as mana elves. Also, I want to promote the bicolor archetypes, and TOO much good fixing makes tri-color decks come too easily. I envision splashing for a third color as an added benefit mostly for green decks.
Double Stroke: Just makes already good spells even more swingy, which is exactly what I don't want. Same with many other problematic conspiracies that I've deliberately omitted.
WHAT I WOULD LIKE HELP WITH
Mono-colored commons: 37 each and 10 archetypes to support makes it very hard to get an overview of what's optimal. Am I missing any good cards for my archetypes?
Rares and uncommons: Are there better cards out there in these rarities to support my archetypes? Or are perhaps some archetypes over-supported by rares and uncommons, such that I should run others that are generically more attractive picks or more versatile?
Higher order design recommendations: For example, if you think that archetype X is just a pipe dream that won't pan out and make for unhappy draft experiences, don't hesitate to suggest it (even if it will ruin weeks of thinking and planning
Thanks for reading this far!
A series of seven articles using Magic to explore the very stuff of the Universe!
"At least for those who can play cards, their present incarnation is not quite wasted."
[Click here for the articles!]