Hi, my name is Brent and I've been playing MTG since Avacyn Restored in 2012. I've been into cube as a format for a couple of years now and I currently write content for Cardmarket. I'd also like to take this opportunity to explain that I'm writing this article for absolute beginners so if you've already built a cube or understand the concepts behind it, this article will probably just be full of stuff you already know. Nonetheless, everyone is welcome to read and I hope you all enjoy. :)
What is a Cube?To quote Melissa DeTora in their article titled Building Your First Cube:
A cube is a large collection of (often powerful) cards used for drafting and playing Limited. Drafting a cube is similar to drafting booster packs, but instead of drafting from three fifteen-card Magic booster packs, you draft from fifteen-card "packs" that you create from your cube.
I think this definition does a really good job of explaining cube as a format. However, when I was new to this whole thing, I recall wanting and needing additional details and a lot more structure. So, to that end, I offer my own definition below for what I would call a basic cube:
A cube is a custom collection of single cards that are all meant to be shuffled together, divided into packs of fifteen random cards each, and drafted as though you were drafting normal fifteen-card Magic booster packs.
Now, this definition does not fit all cubes, but it does fit most. For the purposes of learning what a cube is and how to build one, I think it's a good place to start.
What a Cube Looks LikeWhen I was learning all of this, I wanted to know what a finished cube looked like at this point so I could have an end-goal in mind. Luckily, Cube Cobra has many, many cubes you can look at for inspiration so I've pulled a couple to look at below.
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BrentT's 360 Card Cube: This is my own personal cube and is the first one I ever built. It's currently not updated since I have moved on to other cube ventures since this was first created but it's a good look at what I'd consider a basic cube.
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The Starter Cube: This 360 card cube list was put together by the members of the Solely Singleton podcast as an introductory cube product for people just getting into the format. It is an excellent place to start if you wanted to just buy a cube card-for-card.
You may notice looking at these cubes that they follow a sort of template, if you will. It's pretty self explanatory but essentially you want to make sure that all your colors are somewhat equally represented. For a 360 card cube you should probably have something like 54 cards of each mono color, around 30 non-basic dual color lands, around 30 artifacts, and around 30 multicolor cards. Now, as you can see in the above lists, these numbers are super flexible. One mistake I made early on was being way too rigid with following card counts when in reality your drafters won't really notice if those numbers aren't perfectly adhered to.
Cube ArchetypesA cube archetype is a group of cards included in your cube that support a common theme or strategy. Now, there are a hundred different ways to implement archetypes in cube so I'm going to explain what worked for me.
Rule #1: Figure out your mono color archetypes first. For example, you may end up with something like:
- Aggro
- Control
- Sacrifice
- Aggro/Burn
- Midrange
Rule #2: Use multicolor cards to tie your colors together. Building off the previous example, let's try and figure out what our multicolor cards should be. Our section is aggressive and our section is midrangey so my vote would be for cards like Ajani, the Greathearted and March of the Multitudes. Both of these cards benefit from our section's bunch of cheap creatures while also playing into the strength of 's grindy, value oriented gameplan.
As another example, let's try to figure out what our cards should be. is all about agression while has a sacrifice theme. Those two themes together make me think of Judith, the Scourge Diva and Mayhem Devil. Both cards are aggressive beaters that want your creatures to be sacrificed so they tie our and sections together perfectly!
Rule #3: Make sure control is supported. is our control color but it can't cope all by itself. It will need to borrow removal cards from other colors to produce real control decks so be sure to have a few board wipes like Wrath of God or Languish available for it to lean into. If you want to support the archetype even more, you can break rule #2 a little bit and add cards like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria or Keranos, God of Storms to your multicolor section even though they don't necessarily 'tie your mono color archetypes together'.
Rule #4: Make sure aggro is supported. While control only needs a few cards to really come together, aggro decks need a lot. One 40 card aggro deck needs something like 20 (give or take) creatures to be viable which means you have to have enough aggressive creatures in your cube that aggro players A) don't ruin each others drafts by both drafting aggro and B) can still play the archetype even if their good creatures get drafted my midrange players. For an example of how many aggro creatures to run, check out the cubes I linked earlier under What a Cube Looks Like.
A Note About Archetypes: The above example of how to figure out archetypes is really basic and is 100% not the only way to do things, it's just a method that works for me. If you want more details about all the many, many different specific archetypes (like Twin Combo, Reanimator, Mill, etc) then I recommend checking out this article series on Reddit.
Rule ZeroIf you're reading this and you play EDH, I expect you might know what this rule is. It's essentially a declaration saying that any and all format rules are yours to break so long as the group of players you play with are fine with it. With cube, this is even more the case because... there are no rules. Everything I've laid out in the above text are merely suggestions and commonly followed traditions but nothing is concrete. Cube is about curating an environment that you want so feel free to disregard, change, follow, or forget any of the above guidelines because at the end of the day all that matters is that you're having fun.
A good example of a cube embracing this Rule Zero mind-set is the Live the Dream Cube that was available on MTGO for a while. This cube completely did away with aggro decks and was filled with janky combos to provide fun, bizarre games of Magic.
Cube ResourcesI've shared a lot of knowledge today about learning how to build a cube but the absolute #1 thing I recommend to everyone is to get involved in the greater cube community. I'm a bit of an introvert so I'm not really as active as I should be but I would not have ever built my first cube if I hadn't had encouraging words from the community. So, I'll leave you with this list of resources that I highly recommend.