(Short version: About $825 as of August 2021)

I've been doing some light number crunching to figure out how much the cube has actually cost with all the bells and whistles. My interest was peaked by the "Owned Cost" widget on the cube's overview page, and by checking out prices for a sealed booster box of original Innistrad. Here are my results.

The "Owned Cost" statistic was relatively accurate at about $450. However, it only counts the cards in the cube list, and as discussed in previous posts I bought a complete 6th common set so I could swap cards out of the cube as desired. It also doesn't take into account my buying mistakes, lands, sleeves, reusable booster packs, and a storage solution.

The playable cards themselves amounted to 918 cards, plus 64 checklist cards for every dual-faced card. I bought roughly 300 original Innistrad lands (at least twenty of each of three artworks for a total of sixty lands per color). I also made a mistake with my original TCGPlayer order and got a bunch of cards from newer sets. I was initially going to let it slide, but some of them were printed at different rarities and it made sorting after a draft a nightmare. So aside from some very expensive mythics and rares, I reordered those cards so everything would be from the Innistrad set.

I ordered Dragonshield and KMC Perfect Fit sleeves for everything, almost 1,300 cards, as well as Burger Tokens 22S deck boxes. Finally, I housed it all in a Gamegenic Dungeon, with a BCW 800 count box holding the lands and extra commons.

The sleeves alone cost about $190, with the deck boxes adding another $75. The Gamegenic Dungeon was $60, so our grand total for protection, packs, and storage comes to roughly $325. I'd estimate that my card order bungling added about $50 in additional expenses, so we'll round up the card cost to $500. I may be underestimating some numbers, but this cube, with all the bells and whistles, comes out to about $825. The crazy bit is that a sealed booster box of Innistrad is about $810 as of August 2021, so building a completely premium, all-out cube that can be drafted forever can be had for the same price as one authentic original Innistrad flashback draft.

It's also important to point out that these costs can be drastically reduced, even if you still want this particular cube's experience! Proxying just Lilliana, Snapcaster, and Parallel Lives will chop off almost $180 off the set cost, and adding in Balefire Dragon with a couple of the other rares and mythics can drop the price even further. Buying cheaper sleeves in bulk and not double-sleeving brings more savings, as well as buying bulk lands or having your friends bring their own. You don't need the checklist cards at all, or resealable deck-boxes; flipping the cards in their sleeves and team bags (or even Ziploc baggies) work just as well. As for storage, a big BCW card box costs just a couple of bucks and will do the trick nicely.

Finally, the most drastic option of all! If this cube is too big and bulky and expensive even with all those cost saving steps, there are many other Innistrad cubes on CubeCobra alone that offer basically the same experience with fewer cards and smaller storage requirements. There's something for everyone out there, so happy cubing!

The Mission of the Cube

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Intro

I realize that despite writing a decent amount about the cube, I've never actually set down the goal and mission of it in detail, so that's what this blog post is all about. Hopefully it will put into context the decisions I made, and help people figure out if this cube is for them!

Overall Goal

I've been involved with Magic since about 2009. My first wave of playing came after I discovered the game; a friend introduced me to drafting and we played a bunch of drafts at our local LGS, starting with Scars of Mirroden. Once I got to college, I quit playing for various reasons. I started playing again during Amonkhet, and as I learned more about Magic and its history, I heard again and again how great Innistrad draft was, and found out it had been released just after I quit.
The fact that I had just barely missed out on one of the greatest draft experiences in Magic's history kept bugging me, especially as I drafted more and got better at it.

When I finally decided to build a cube, Innistrad was the natural choice for several reasons. First, I wanted to build a set cube so that I didn't need to worry about designing a cube from scratch. Second, Innistrad is a legendary format and I wanted to experience what I had missed. And finally, with older sets slowly getting more expensive over time, especially with the recent pandemic and EDH boom, I wanted to put together Innistrad before it became prohibitively expensive even for a cube.

With this in mind, I elected to build an original Innistrad set cube that replicated the original draft experience as closely as possible.

The Details

With that decision made, I had to decide how to actually build the cube. I did some research into the various ratios, cube sizes, and their respective feels. The most widely used ratio for set cubes appears to be 3/2/1, as it's usually a good balance between size, cost, and feel. However, many players agreed that to really replicate a set so it feels like the original draft experience requires about 5 or 6 sets of commons and 3 sets of uncommons, for a 6/3/1 ratio. Another personal consideration was that I wanted to create actual boosters with my cube, and to have no leftovers after boosters were created. In the end, I ended up using the 6/3/1 ratio as a starting point and created my own ratio that's discussed in the Golden Ratio post.

Double faced cards present a potentially interesting challenge for a cube, both with how they are incorporated into boosters and actual gameplay. Presented here is my own personal solution to the problem.

The origin of this update to the cube was that I realized my old solution (pulling the cards out of their sleeves and flipping them over, then putting them back in) was too cumbersome, time-consuming, and prone to damage. Since I went to all the trouble of double-sleeving the cards, why defeat that protection by constantly pulling out and resleeving a decent portion of them?

I know an obvious question is why I didn't use checklist cards to begin with. The reason I didn't order any when I was putting this cube together is because I assumed that they would be prohibitively expensive and hard to get, so I didn't bother looking for them. This turned out to be a mistake because I discovered you can still obtain unmarked original Innistrad checklist cards in bulk, for bulk prices (about 10 cents a card).

With that discovery, my DFC plan fell into place. Here's how my cube is currently set up:

Each double-faced card is double-sleeved in a KMC Perfect Fit inner sleeve and Classic Clear Dragonshield sleeve (do not get Clear Matte sleeves, they have a textured side that obfuscates the card). Each double-faced card is paired with a double-sleeved, properly marked checklist card. This includes the extra common DFCs that aren't used in the cube so that I can swap them out as I see fit (see The Golden Ratio blog post for details). When making boosters, I put the sleeved checklist card last and the actual card second to last to prevent everyone seeing what DFCs are present in packs. When drafting, if you pick a DFC you take both it and its checklist card.

I'd like to also acknowledge that this is a very perfectionist and nit-picky way of dealing with DFCs; it would be just as effective to use a bunch of old land cards that have the DFC name written on them. My goal with this cube, however, was to preserve the feel of playing original Innistrad drafts as much as possible, which included procuring Innistrad basic lands and all original Innistrad cards (no substitutions from later sets!). Getting original Innistrad checklist cards felt like a natural extension of that goal, and I'm pleased with the final result.

The default custom booster draft should now be fixed and follow all the filters correctly; extra commas were doing funky things to the booster makeup.

I'm still trying to figure out how to implement some form of color balance so the bot draft more closely resembles the end result of my shuffle method. So far, my only idea has been to make sure one card of each color is present in the commons and leave the other cards up to chance. Unless/until I come up with something better, it seems like the best compromise at the moment.

This solution should be present in the custom draft by tonight.

I tried to bulk out the lower end of the creature curve and include one broad utility spell for each color. I'll see how it works and adjust from there.

Double Faced Cards
Village Ironsmith
Villagers of Estwald

Commons
Ambush Viper
Ashmouth Hound
Avacyn's Pilgrim
Blazing Torch
Bloodcrazed Neonate
Cobbled Wings
Crossway Vampire
Darkthicket Wolf
Deranged Assistant
Doomed Traveler
Elder Cathar
Feral Ridgewolf
Geistflame
Ghoulcaller's Bell
Ghoulcaller's Chant
Ghoulraiser
Kessig Wolf
Markov Patrician
Moon Heron
Orchard Spirit
Ranger's Guile
Selfless Cathar
Selhoff Occultist
Silent Departure
Silverchase Fox
Spare from Evil
Stitched Drake
Stitcher's Apprentice
Traveler's Amulet
Typhoid Rats
Unruly Mob
Vampire Interloper
Walking Corpse
Wooden Stake

Since this is an Innistrad Limited cube, my goal is for the shuffling method to produce balanced packs that recreate what you would open in an actual Innistrad booster.

This Cube follows a 5+37/3/1/0.5 distribution, which totals up to 848 cards. See the blog post about the Golden Ratio for an in depth discussion about how this ratio was created. The advantage of this ratio is that we can make exactly 60 booster packs with every card in the Cube (minus 8 leftover mythics). This is enough for two pods of 8 and one half pod of 4.

Each pack contains 9 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare/mythic, and 1 double faced card of any rarity, for a total of 14 cards. Original Innistrad packs also included two more cards, but since those were basic lands and marketing/token/checklist cards, they're unnecessary for a Cube.

My personal preference is to shuffle and create all the packs ahead of time, which is why we don't need a player count. Packs are just pulled as required for drafts, and once all of the packs have been used, everything is shuffled up and prepackaged again. Creating the packs can be done in an evening, and if you're drafting with three other friends, this Cube will let you have five drafts before needing to create packs again. Even more time can be saved if you ask your friends to sort cards by color and rarity at the end of the night. Though it sounds like a lot of work, the reality is that everyone only needs to sort 42 cards plus lands, which takes just a couple of minutes.

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Making Packs:

My process is an adaptation of the method described by Metamind on mtgsalvation.com (reproduced at the end of this post), which creates well shuffled and pretty color balanced booster packs. I adjusted it to suit my own tastes, the goals of my Cube, and to properly account for rarities and dual faced cards.

The Preshuffle:

• Take all the uncommons, shuffle them together, and put them into a pile. Set that pile aside for now.

• Take all the rares, shuffle them together, and put them into a pile. Set that pile aside for now.

• Take all the non-dual faced mythics and shuffle them together. Randomly choose seven, and shuffle those into the rares pile. Take the unused mythics (there should be eight) and put them back into your Cube storage solution; they won't be used this time.

• Take all the dual faced cards, shuffle them together, and put them into a pile. Set that pile aside for now.

The Shuffle:

1. Sort the commons by making a pile for each color and artifacts (6 piles total). I put the multicolored cards and land cards in with the artifacts.

2. Take a pile of commons, thoroughly shuffle it and then calculate the number of cards to add to each booster. This is done by taking the number of cards in that common pile and dividing by the number of booster packs (in our case, 60), then rounding down. Add that many cards face down to 60 separate piles that represent the individual booster packs. Take the remaining cards of the common pile (if any) and put them into a "leftovers" pile. All other common leftovers will be added to this pile. If the number of cards to add was rounded down to zero, put the whole stack into the leftovers pile.

3. Repeat Step 2 for each common pile, then take the leftovers pile, shuffle it, and put one card face down on each booster pack pile (looping back to the starting pile when you get to the end) until the leftovers pile runs out. Each booster pack pile should now have 9 cards in it.

4. Choose a booster pack pile of 9, shuffle and randomly put one card into a new leftovers pile. Repeat for each booster pack pile, then shuffle the leftovers pile and put one card onto each booster pack pile. Each booster pack pile should once again have 9 cards in it.

5. Take the shuffled uncommon pile and put one card face down on each booster pile until the uncommon pile runs out. Each booster pack should now have 12 cards.

6. Take the shuffled rare pile and put one card face down on each booster pack pile.

7. Take the shuffled double faced card pile and put one card face down on each booster pack pile. If you are using checklist cards, then check each double-faced card as you put it on the pile and add its corresponding checklist card.

8. You now have 60 well shuffled and color-balanced Innistrad booster packs. Store them in the solution of your choice (I double-sleeved my Cube so I use Burger Tokens 22S PerfectFit deckboxes), and pull out packs as necessary for your drafts. Enjoy!

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Metamind's Method (Reply #14):

1. Calculate the maximum number of boosters needed. It usually is the maximum number of players*3. A shortcut can be made, making only the number of boosters necessary, but making the maximum number of boosters makes the shuffle better and eases it.

2. Take number of cards you have in each color, divide it by the number of boosters and round it down. In my cube it's 96 cards, for 283 boosters, which is exactly 2. For most of us this number is going to be between 1 to 2. Also, for most of us the number of cards in each color is equal. If it isn't, then calculate again for each color.

3. Put that many cards from each color in a face-down pile. Those piles will be your boosters. All the remaining cards will be added to those piles.

4. If you have any leftovers, put them aside in one face-down stack called the leftovers stack.

Do stages 2-4 for each color, artifacts and lands. If some sections are rounded down to zero, put all the cards in that section in the leftovers stack.

1. All your boosters should have the same number of cards. Count a booster or calculate what it is. At my cube it should be 2*5 for each color, 1 artifact, 1 multicolored and 1 land = 13 cards in each booster. Go to each face down booster, count the number of cards in it, shuffle it, remove one card from it and put it in the leftovers pile. The number of cards in each booster after this stage should be the number calculated at #5 -1, and if you have too many cards remove them until you reach exactly that number. If you have too few, add that many random cards from the leftovers stack. If the number of cards ends up at 14 or 13 I'd consider taking out two cards from each boosters to increase the randomness.

2. Shuffle the leftovers stack.

3. Add cards to each booster so it has 15 cards.

4. Enjoy your draft

The 4/3/1/1 ratio is a well established Cube convention, and for good reason. It strikes a nice balance between cost, portability, and set "feel". However, it does mean that a lot of cards don't get used when recreating booster packs, since the number of packs is limited by the amount of commons in the cube.

An obvious solution might be to just selectively add some extra commons and uncommons to make up the difference. However, my personal goal is to make sure every card is equally represented and has an equal chance of showing up (within the context of the original set ratios). This means our main tool will be playing with the ratios, and accepting that we won't be able to use literally every card. Instead, we'll try to eliminate as many leftover cards as we can. So, with that in mind, what ratio would use as many cards as possible when creating packs for an Innistrad Set Cube? Let's take a look, starting with the basic 4/3/1/1 ratio:

By excluding double faced cards from each rarity card total, and then dividing those numbers by the amount needed for a pack, it turns out we can make 44 common packs, 60 uncommon packs, 68 rare/mythic packs, and 52 double faced card packs with the cards at our disposal. This isn't a great spread; if we wanted to be able to build 68 packs so every rare and mythic gets used, we'd have to add one extra set of uncommons and bring the ratio up to 4/4/1/1. That ratio would mean we could make 80 uncommon packs and leave us nowhere closer to our goal.

What about the rares/mythics? Well, thanks /u/tonytastey, who posted their really cool custom Innistrad Cube vampire hunter chest on Reddit a few years ago, we have an interesting ratio to try: 4/3/1/0.5! The 0.5 means that half of the mythics from the set get randomly chosen and shuffled into the rares. You still have a full set of mythics, but only use half when making packs. What happens when we calculate our rare/mythic pack number now? There's 16 mythics; removing Garruk (the only double faced mythic) leaves us with 15, and dividing by 2 and rounding down leaves a final total of 7. Add that to our 53 rares (again, no double faced cards), and the final total is 60 packs.

That's fantastic! We already have 60 uncommon packs, and by using this 0.5 trick, we've balanced out the rares/mythics as well. I'm OK with only half of the mythics showing up in boosters; they're supposed to be extremely rare anyway, and having a different pool of mythics every time packs are built adds a nice bit of variety and uncertainty. Avoiding certain mythics getting lost in the shuffle and never showing up in packs is simple with this method as well; just shuffle in the unused half next time!

So our 3/1/0.5 ratio is perfectly balanced, which means our last point of attack is the commons. Let's first find the exact ratio of commons we would need to create 60 packs of cards. 60 x 9 = 540 commons, and with 101 unique common cards (excluding double faced cards), that means our common ratio is 5.346. Just a smidge above 5! To be more exact, five of every common nets us 505 cards, just 35 cards shy of the 540 needed. Adding a sixth set of commons would fill out those 35 slots, but mean that 102 commons would be unused each time packs are made.

Finally, having five of every common means we gain 6 extra double faced cards, and adding those to the double faced card total leaves us with 58, so 2 extra cards will have to be added. This brings our total card deficit to 37 (35 commons and 2 double faced cards).

So, where does that leave us? Assuming you're on board with the mythic trick, there are two options:

1. If you truly must have as many packs as possible (60 in this case) and refuse to add anything less than full sets of commons, the ratio for you is 6/3/1/0.5. Another reason to go with this option might be so that you can pick and choose your 35 extra commons and 2 dual faced cards from a full set, and swap them out as you please.

2. If you don't mind picking out 37 extra cards to add to the cube, the ratio for you is 5/3/1/0.5 (or 5+37/3/1/0.5, if you prefer to note the extra commons and dual faced cards). You might also be OK with skipping the 35 commons and 2 dual faced cards and losing 4 packs, which would mean 29 cards don't get used each time packs are made.

Personally, I think I'll buy 2 extra common sets, so I can adjust the makeup of the 37 extra cards as I see fit. I think it'll be good practice for adjusting the feel of a cube without going too far overboard, and it's a small enough number where it shouldn't matter too much anyway. Incidentally, the 5+37/3/1/0.5 ratio means that you can run two full pods of 8 and a half pod of 4 simultaneously.