Hi all! New to the site, but I thought I would share some info about my Tribal cube.
I originally went with 6 tribes:
Elves(Green)
Goblins(Red)
Soldiers(White)
Wizards(Blue)
Zombies(Black)
Shapeshifters(5 Color)
Each tribe consisted of 40 creatures of that color. I also included 25 general purpose spells of each color, and lots of "tribal" effects (brass herald, adaptive automaton, extinction, etc). I had almost no gold cards.
In draft, though, I found that this created either too much tension (from one or more other players being in your color) or too little (from no other players being in your color, thus giving you free reign). To fix this, I modified to the following:
Elves(Naya)
Goblins(Jund)
Soldiers(Bant)
Spirits(Esper)
Zombies(Grixis)
Shapeshifters(5 Color)
Now each tribe has 20-25 creatures of their primary color, and 15-20 creatures that include at least one of their secondary colors. This helps to create a lot of tension, because each tribe is in 3 colors. That means that if you see a good black removal spell, Goblins, Spirits and Zombies could all be potentially interested in it. Tension inside the tribal cards will not be as high (unless another player is in your tribe) but tension in the general purpose spells will be much higher.
I also added what I call "Tier 2" tribes.
Elves(Naya) - Beasts
Goblins(Jund) - Dragons
Soldiers(Bant) - Angels
Spirits(Esper) - Sphinxes
Zombies(Grixis) - Demons
Similar to the tension created for generic colored spells above, these are powerful creatures (generally more powerful than the Tier 1 tribal creatures) that are mostly in one color. Each Tier 2 tribe only has five "slots," four of which are their primary color and one of which has all the colors of the shard. This means that most of the Tier 2 Tribal creatures can also be played by any tribe in that color. In other words, 4 of the 5 Dragons are mono-red, which means that Zombies, Goblins and Elves could all potentially be interested in them, which creates a lot of draft tension. The 5th dragon is RGB (in this case Broodmate Dragon), making it harder for other tribes to play.
By encouraging players to diversify their colors and tribes, I am hoping to make cards like Extinction and Engineered Plague still playable instead of being total blowouts. Those cards are part of the fun of tribal games, and I wouldn't want to cut them from my cube just because they work well. I also used a lot of the tricks mentioned above, like cross tribe creatures (ex. zombie/goblin), shapeshifters (and changelings), and any spell that plays with creature types. Let me know what you think, and I'll try to get a full list of my Tribal Cube up soon.
I originally went with 6 tribes:
Each tribe consisted of 40 creatures of that color. I also included 25 general purpose spells of each color, and lots of "tribal" effects (brass herald, adaptive automaton, extinction, etc). I had almost no gold cards.
In draft, though, I found that this created either too much tension (from one or more other players being in your color) or too little (from no other players being in your color, thus giving you free reign). To fix this, I modified to the following:
Now each tribe has 20-25 creatures of their primary color, and 15-20 creatures that include at least one of their secondary colors. This helps to create a lot of tension, because each tribe is in 3 colors. That means that if you see a good black removal spell, Goblins, Spirits and Zombies could all be potentially interested in it. Tension inside the tribal cards will not be as high (unless another player is in your tribe) but tension in the general purpose spells will be much higher.
I also added what I call "Tier 2" tribes.
Similar to the tension created for generic colored spells above, these are powerful creatures (generally more powerful than the Tier 1 tribal creatures) that are mostly in one color. Each Tier 2 tribe only has five "slots," four of which are their primary color and one of which has all the colors of the shard. This means that most of the Tier 2 Tribal creatures can also be played by any tribe in that color. In other words, 4 of the 5 Dragons are mono-red, which means that Zombies, Goblins and Elves could all potentially be interested in them, which creates a lot of draft tension. The 5th dragon is RGB (in this case Broodmate Dragon), making it harder for other tribes to play.
By encouraging players to diversify their colors and tribes, I am hoping to make cards like Extinction and Engineered Plague still playable instead of being total blowouts. Those cards are part of the fun of tribal games, and I wouldn't want to cut them from my cube just because they work well. I also used a lot of the tricks mentioned above, like cross tribe creatures (ex. zombie/goblin), shapeshifters (and changelings), and any spell that plays with creature types. Let me know what you think, and I'll try to get a full list of my Tribal Cube up soon.