MTG Salvation

The Optimal Multiplayer Cube - 2013

Contents

1. Introduction
2. White
3. Blue
4. Black
5. Red
6. Green
7. Gold
8. Colourless
9. Nonbasic Land
10. Optimal Multiplayer Cube 2013
11. Budget Version
12. Legacy-Legal Version
13. Conclusion

Colourless

The colourless vote was completed on November 18th 2013.

The Top 24
The colourless section in a 360-card cube is 30 cards in size. As we are listing the top 80% we are after the top 24 cards in our power rankings for colourless. In order, these were:

1. Nevinyrral's Disk (12.8)
2. Sol Ring (10.7)
3. All is Dust (9.4)
4. Black Lotus (8.4)
5. Skullclamp (8.2)
6. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (7.7)
7. Umezawa's Jitte (7.3)
8. Sword of Fire and Ice (7.1)
9. Mind's Eye (6.7)
10. Mox Ruby (6.0)
11. Sword of Light and Shadow (6.0)
12. Mox Jet (5.9)
13. Mox Pearl (5.8)
14. Mox Sapphire (5.7)
15. Wurmcoil Engine (5.7)
16. Mox Emerald (5.6)
17. Oblivion Stone (5.6)
18. Mimic Vat (5.2)
19. Blightsteel Colossus (5.1)
20. Batterskull (4.6)
21. Solemn Simulacrum (4.4)
22. Steel Hellkite (4.2)
23. Ensnaring Bridge (3.6)
24. Sword of War and Peace (3.3)

Just outside of this list were Basilisk Collar (3.1) and Sword of Feast and Famine (3.0).

The Curve
These 24 cards give us the following curve for colourless...

 While this looks pretty good, there are a couple of problems with the initial curve:

• We're not interested in creature/spell balance here like we were with other sections, but we do want to make sure we have somewhere between a third and a half of the artifacts as mana/colour-fixers. This means we want 8-12 in our list here, and we currently have only seven (with Solemn Simulacrum arguably #8).
• Our curve is 6-2-1-5-2-2-5. It has a fair bulge at CC3 that would be nice to iron out.
• We have three colourless resets here (Disk, All is Dust and O-Stone), and we're trying to limit the resets available.

Fixing the Holes

Thankfully, this shouldn't be too nasty!

Fixing the Mana Stone Balance
Let's throw one more in here, just to be sure of things, probably removing a card out of that massive glut at CC3 in the process.
Our next decent stone or fixer in the power rankings was Expedition Map. Wonderful.
Our bottom non-stone card in the Top 24 was Sword of War and Peace. We've not got all five Swords here, and we're trying to remove CC3 cards, so this can definitely be the one to go.
-1 Sword of War and Peace
+1 Expedition Map

Fixing the Resets
Nevinyrral's Disk was our #1, so it has to be the other two (All is Dust and O-Stone) that go overboard, given we want to drop to one colourless reset. We don't want too many resets in the cube, and colourless ones in particular make it very easy for a deck to pull a reset off. It's a shame to remove All is Dust, though... it barely got a vote in 2012, and it made it all the way to #3 this year...
We want to avoid CC3 cards in our replacements, given we're about to smooth the curve out anyway. The next two in our list that aren't CC3 are Basilisk Collar and Darksteel Forge. Fair enough. That at least lets someone live the dream of the Disk-Forge combo.
-1 All is Dust
-1 Oblivion Stone
+1 Basilisk Collar
+1 Darksteel Forge

Fixing the Curve
Our curve is now 6-4-1-4-2-2-5. That's not too bad, but we could probably stand to drop a CC3 card for one at CC2, just to make the curve a little smoother. This would give us a curve of 6-4-2-3-2-2-5.
The bottom CC3 card is now Ensnaring Bridge. Off it goes into the sunset.
Our next CC2 card in the list is our old friend Lightning Greaves. Perfect!
-1 Ensnaring Bridge
+1 Lightning Greaves

Okay, we're done! That gives us the following...

 Budget Constraints

I think there may be a few we lose...

• Black Lotus ($2038.39)
• Mox Jet ($600.00)
• Mox Pearl ($575.01)
• Mox Sapphire ($800.00)
• Mox Ruby ($575.01)
• Mox Emerald ($575.01)
• Umezawa's Jitte ($42.68)
• Sword of Fire and Ice ($35.55)
• Sword of Light and Shadow ($23.81)
• Batterskull ($26.23)
• Wurmcoil Engine ($28.43)
• Emrakul, the Aeons Torn ($39.44)

Yeesh. Blightsteel Colossus just sneaks under our $20 limit, too (at just under $19 a copy).
We're looking for three different things here... six fast mana stones, four awesome pieces of equipment, and two gorilla finishers.
Allied Signets are about the best thing we can replace Moxen with. Lotus Petal remains in play as a budget Lotus.
Cranial Plating is probably the best remaining 2CC equipment.
Sword of War and Peace and Sword of Body and Mind are actually under our $20 floor, and both very, very good. Not bad to replace Swords with Swords.
There is pretty much nothing else in terms of 5CC equipment. Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang at 6CC is a replacement of sorts.
The next two gorillas in our vote list were It That Betrays and Memnarch, who are both perfectly fine replacements.

Archetypes to Add
Again, our aim here is to simply support the archetypes we already have in the cube, but our remaining six cards can take on a few guises.
If you've added five of the Signets above, the other five can go here to complete the set.
If you want to go the whole hog with equipment (and you've got the budget to do it), you can put the remaining three Swords here.