February 2, 2024 was an important milestone for my new cube list: the first paper test (notes from that test are on my blog). My beautiful new bar cube, built out from the idea that card text in the graveyard wouldn’t matter, was finally a real thing people played. Cube designers tend to be precious about their work—how can we not be?—but I hope there's value in sharing the steps I went through, and especially how the cube community encouraged and influenced me along the way.

Tilling the Soil

Ryan Overturf's November 2022 article "How To Make A Twobert Cube of the Brothers’ War" talks through cube creation from scratch without being aimed at novice designers. I had never read something like that. I enjoyed it, was inspired by it, and you should prioritize reading it because that's part of what I'm aspiring to.

Andy Mangold introduced his Neoclassical Cube in January 2023, but it was the follow-up on Lucky Paper Radio in May, "Going Against Your Intuition" that really caught my attention with the description of gameplay that feels foreign to modern Magic. Deviating from your usual principles has value.

On July 10, Matt Grenier published his essay "The Platonic Solid". It's not for everyone, but I found it the AP English approach to design energizing, and I started using some of the techniques he shared.

The idea for this cube came to me in the next couple weeks. That essay was a midwife. I wanted to build another "trash cube" and realized that card text in the graveyard was an avenue for streamlining that I hadn’t seen explored. What if your graveyard matters, but you only care about how big it is? The idea had promise.

But first, rewinding even further...

I built my first "trash cube" in Summer 2020. It was an ultra-low complexity, ultra-low budget cube to be played unsleeved in parking lots and on picnic tables, with no counters or tokens. Most importantly, to be played with COVID restriction. I built it, we played it. It was fun because Magic is fun, but it wasn't good. It taught me about using complexity, and how card advantage can be the only thing that matters. Hanging out on Twitter (RIP) and r/mtgcube I found others designing similar experiences, usually calling it travel cube.

In Winter 2021-22 I tuned into Derek Gallen's "Cube and Coffee" Twitch show, where ideas that would lead to his formulation of the Bar Cube movement were percolating.

In August 2022 I built a second, much better trash cube for my sister. I built a third the following winter for some friends. These cubes leaned more into synergy, kept cards flowing, used equipment and recurring auras to make board states more dynamic, and structured themes across shards or wedges more often than guilds.

Okay, so why is this one different?

All these earlier cubes were built from cards-on-hand. That was a core restraint that sculpted those environments. Feeling distinct from my main cube was not a goal. But there's a bigger world out there and I wanted to explore it.

Ideation

On July 31, 2023 Matt Grenier streamed a video companion to the essay: The Platonic Solid: Seeking the Ideal in Cube Design. On August 1 I created Trash IV on Cube Cobra and started dumping cards in.

From August to November, I built a list of anything that caught my eye. Minimal editing. Unlike my earlier cubes this didn't start with "what can I build from on-hand?" Instead, where could this idea go?

Simultaneously, I wrote notes trying to answer the question of what is this cube about? What am I trying to do? What do I want to be good? How should it feel to play? Some of those are just in my notes app, some on my tumblr, some on the cube overview, some in the changelog. The corpus of notes is less important than the process of articulating what I was trying to do. It's much easier to develop your ideas when you're not keeping them all in your head.

I took a mechanics-first approach. I knew I wanted Delve and that I should explore Threshold. I was hot off a successful Slay the Spire discard deck, so I was only a step away from Madness. I added cards to my list as I went. I barely edited, and I kept writing notes.

I searched Scryfall for anything that might provide some structure. When I noticed that cards from Khans block, Time Spiral block, Torment, and Modern Horizons 2 kept coming up I started reading about those limited environments.

If you're going to have Delve, maybe you should have other cost reduction mechanics. Convoke and Affinity could filled the anemic white column.

Now we're casting spells for cheap, but where are combat dynamics? I was reluctant to go to Equipment again, and most recurring Auras come from the graveyard, so instead went hard into Prowess and Heroic, and decided to test Vehicles.

How do we push Prowess in a land of cost reduction? How do free spells sound? Gush, Frantic Search, Gut Shot, Dark Ritual, these all make sense. For Heroic: spells with multiple targets. And how do you counter all that Stormless Storm? Taxes.

At this point the "Cube" is big shapeless list of candidates sitting on Cube Cobra, breaking a lot of the loose guidelines of "fair" magic that my other projects have embraced.

Execution

Derek streams "A Cube to Fit in Your Pocket" on November 5. Hot off the success of the Bar Cube event at CubeCon he lays out the tenets of the format.

November 11 I get Forge running again and get some testing with my formless list with the goal of seeing what feels fun and what doesn't.

When I test on Forge or XMage my goal is to see what cards feel good together, and what seems under-supported. You can get a limited sense of what is strong, and what feels bad to play against. I let the first draft go wherever is natural, and from there avoid repeating things I’ve already done.

In that first test Madness delivers. Heroic is feels parasitic and dull. Prowess needs more support. There's potential. Hell Mongrel cements its place. Sloppity Bilepiper falls out of favour.

On November 13 ChillMtG posts "Bar Cube - The Magic Community's New Cube Vibe" on YouTube. Two weeks later I've dumped all the cards I've listed to the Maybeboard and am trying to build an approximation of my vision using cards I have on hand. This is a familiar process:

Go through the long boxes pulling out everything that looks like it has promise: staples, stuff that aligns with the themes, and cards that can be filler until better fits take their place. Sort them into colours. Look at the creature curves. Look at the spell effects. Try to chisel sections out of the mass you've assembled.

Then realize the cube sucks, and it's not what I want it to be.

This is a new feeling. I've always built my cubes from cards on hand and iterated outward, but there's never been such a gap between my vision and the cardboard laid out in front of me. I don't know how to proceed. I have ~200 paper cards in a pile, and just as many in my maybeboard. How do I merge them into something I'm happy with?

Actualization

On January 7, loaded with post-Christmas store credit, I place an order for 38 cards that look like good bets to make the final list.

Hooting Mandrills, Monastery Swiftspear, and Hymn to Tourach are all staples. I want Loam Lion and Wild Nacatl to fill out Kird Ape's Naya Zoo. Vengeful Dreams and Sickening Dreams play into discard, but are also aggressively small game cards. Fiery Temper is a must. Circular Logic is a perfect embodiment of the cube. Anje's Ravager will make a deck work.

Some are safe picks, some are more out there, but these are cards that collectively will push the feel away from "generic" Magic.

Two podcasts come out the next day. First, Lucky Paper's Emergent Cube Design by Example. This podcast feels like a vindication of my approach to date, and a companion piece to Ryan Overturf's article. Second: UberCube's Building a Cube for Community. The topic wasn't the breakthrough. It was a comment by Anthony: with experience "people forget the steps." As you become familiar with a task you stop thinking about the component parts. That's normal, but don't forget that the steps aren't easy if you haven't done them before.

I had built four cubes. It got to the point where I felt like I could sit down and build one without too many questions, at least as far as "how do I do this?". Now though, I'd run into a step where I hadn't built those neural pathways. I needed to appreciate that. I hopped onto the UberCube Discord and said thank you for the inspiration.

That night and the next I did more playtesting. This time it felt like it was heading in the right direction. The mechanics felt good. The emergent simplication to Delve (“I don’t care what I’m exiling”) played a lot like the bones mechanic from Inscryption. Thrun, the Last Troll felt reasonable. Some needed changes made themselves obvious. Fireblast is too good. The project was back on track.

On January 24 I took a look at the Cube Cobra recommender and saw it had been updated. I jumped over to their Discord and talked with Ryan Saxe and had a lot of fun messing around with it. I re-explored niches using the revised tool and had several productive hours over the next few days. I dug through each colour, creatures and non-creatures, sometimes going as deep as specific mechanics at specific costs. Oh, I didn't know Mine Collapse. That's perfect.

I resculpted my Maybeboard and a week later put in an order for another 34 cards that could define the format.

The cube was finally done.

Just kidding. It was ready to play for the first time. That's a huge milestone though!

What does this all mean?

I think it was an episode of RadioLab way back, but I once heard that when you're listening to someone, your brainwaves start to follow theirs. At first you lag behind them, but gradually you sync up. The magical part is that as you listen, you start to get ahead of them. It's almost like they're transmitting their thoughts to you before they have them.

I have an annoying habit where when I’m listening intently to someone, and they misspeak I will very quickly correct them. I try not to do it, because it throws people off, but it happens when I’m following them very closely.

Ultimately this is just another cube. It's not even a good one yet, but as I reflected on that first paper test, I realized how much it was influenced by the cube community. Just maybe not in the way you would expect. I didn't hear about some new thought tech and then apply it. It's more like being swept up in a zeitgeist; listening to the conversation and taking the same steps alongside it.

I don't mean this in any metaphysical or supernatural way, but this cube was built in parallel with the community. My thought process and energy were propelled by the podcasts, streams, and Discord conversations that were happening. I'm really grateful for all this energy, all the work and passion in the community, and I hope that I can help energize someone else in the same way.

I am a cube hobbyist who started playing Magic at 28 years old (what a mistake) and started my first (and still main!) cube, Pink Sleeves in 2019. I post draft reflections and thoughts on accessibility on my tumblr, zoydraft.tumblr.com. I live in Toronto with my partner, our child, one horrible cat, and one okay cat.

Huge thank yous to Beeks (@rolltotweet), Cher (@cherjtankian), and Matt (@cryonicity) for providing feedback, thanks for Derek (@dgallenmtg) and Matt (@matt_grenier) for double-checking some stuff for me, and thanks to everyone in the cube community who I've mentioned or haven't!