The Elegant Cube (v5.2.20)
The Elegant Cube aims to be a format that is, above all, fun.
- Accessible: The cube should be fun for new players, who need a forgiving draft section and don’t know what most cards do.
- Deep: The cube should be fun for veteran players and reward their skill and knowledge of the game. The cube should create drafting and especially gameplay situations in which decisions are interesting and ambiguous.
The Elegant Cube is a "main cube", which brings in other concrete goals:
- Comprehensive: The cube should offer a sample of all that Magic has to offer: card types, mechanics from various blocks, decks ranging from good-stuff to archetypes, fast decks, slow decks.
- Replayable: The cube should offer significantly different experiences depending on the deck that was drafted. It should also have a large number of different "decks" to be drafted.
The Power and Speed Axes
The Cube's foundation is a relatively low power, slow environment in which games are decided by small incremental advantage. Constructed comparisons are Invasion/Odyssey and Kamigawa/Ravnica standard.
At this speed and power level, there is a broader variety of viable card inclusions, archetypes, and ways in which archetypes can be constructed. The slower speed coupled with curbing of snowbally effects increases gameplay agency by creating fewer non-games.
Threats are much weaker than contemporary constructed to maintain the slow speed. Board wipes are powerful, and spot removal varies in power level and is not particularly scarce or plentiful. Attrition is high, but aggro is offered tools to be resilient and exert sustained pressure.
The slow speed also means (most) planeswalkers and other cards that generate value over time are disproportionately more powerful, so these cards are considered above the power band even though they aren't "too fast".
The Synergy Axis
This cube rewards synergy, but does not mandate it.
Simply picking generically useful cards in two colors should create a functional deck.
Macroarchetypes (aggro, control, midrange, aggro-control) are a second layer of possible decks that are a little harder to build, but have a slightly higher ceiling.
Microarchetypes (like artifacts or lifegain) come in various archetype shapes, which vary in difficulty to build and linearity. Tribal decks are mono archetypes and linear to build, though they don't have as high a density of enabler that the whole deck can be tribal. The deck has to be complemented by support cards and usually a support color.
Most other microarchetypes are broader, not following the typical 10 pair archetype structure. Drafting 2- or 3-color decks is the norm, and the same microarchetype can be drafted in different color combinations.
List of microarchetypes:
- Artifacts/Equipment (tetra archetype)
- Tokens/Sacrifice (tetra archetype)
- Madness/Graveyard (tetra archetype)
- Counters (triangle archetype)
- Spells (triangle archetype)
- Lifegain (pair archetype)
- Humans (mono archetype)
- Wizards (mono archetype)
- Zombies (mono archetype)
- Goblins (mono archetype)
- Elves (mono archetype)
- Burn (mono archetype)
- Ramp (pivot archetype)
The Complexity Axis
Card selection takes into account how simple a card is to grasp, which is a combination of its elegance and resonance. Drafting a pack should feel exciting, not overwhelming.
The number of mechanics is not restricted, however, leading the cube to have a very large number of different mechanics - though all of them have reminder text in the card, in the spirit of "the cards do exactly what they say".
The Agency Axis
The most recent shift in the Elegant Cube is a focus on player agency, something that was missing in recent iterations are focused on lowering complexity. I wrote The Art and Science of Giving Choices (part 1, part 2) on the subject.
A slow speed goes a long way to spread the weight of the outcome of the game between many decisions. Card choices are made with the slow speed in mind, and favoring recursion, resilience and mana sinks helps with maintaining tension over time.
The speed is not low enough though that there aren't tempo vs card advantage tradeoffs, though. Fast decks will still exert early pressure and slower decks will have to choose between long-term development and short-term safety.
Cards are chosen with agency in mind, balancing this need with complexity. Alternate modes, low mana curves and sequencing and timing tensions guide card selection.
The Deck Variety Axis
Packs 1, 2 and 3 are respectively made of 13, 14 and 15 cards from the Core module (cards with >80% chance of being in the draft) and 2, 1 and 0 cards from Occasional Module (cards with <10% chance of being in the draft). Cube Occasionals provides variety while the Core module provides cohesion. See Cube Occasionals.