-This is the live & updated version of the v1.0 article found here-

This article aims to draw together a bunch of research that helped me get started cubing, pulling on advice from other cubers, resources on the cube subreddit, and external articles. The goal is to cover the basics, outline the questions new cube designers should be asking themselves, answer the FAQs, and collate links to other resources for further reading.

(please bear in mind this is a round up of advice through the lens of my own bias, I am not claiming any advice here to be the way things should be done, just to provide a starting point to people who don’t yet know how things could be done)

Note: The comments on linked reddit posts provide some valuable discussion and perspective on many topics and are worth reading.

Post breakdown:

• 0 - What is a Cube?
• 1 - Quick Start
• 2 - Detailed Start
• 3 - Extras
• 4 - Resource Hub

0 - WHAT IS A CUBE?:

“A cube is a ... 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.” - Building Your First Cube

MTG wiki - Cube Draft
Tolarian Community College - What is a Magic: The Gathering Cube?

How many players do I need to play my cube?:

Cube can be enjoyed with anywhere between 2-8 players. A brilliant summary of different draft methods for different player counts can be found here

1 - QUICK START:

So you like the look of cube and want to get started playing the best limited format ASAP? Here are some of the easiest ways to start building and playing Cube:

• Pull together 360 cards you already own into a Cube, following the rough colour balance guidelines in the WotC “Building Your First Cube” article
• Purchase a premade cube (links in the resource hub)
• Copy or gain inspiration from some of the most popular cubes (links in the resource hub)

If you decide to build your own first cube, as long as you have reasonably even colour sections and a curves similar to what you might want to draft in retail limited you will produce an environment that will be a blast to play.

Other early facets you may wish to explore are:

• Card power delta - i.e. how much stronger your strongest card is compared to your weakest. Typically cube design aims to cut out the draft chaff found in retail limited so that all packs contain fun and playable cards.
• Archetypes you enjoy - e.g. if you enjoy Madness and graveyard interaction cards, building a cube environment that supports this type of gameplay is a worthwhile goal!
• Cards you enjoy but aren't 100% sure whether they fit... Just jam 'em in. It’s not necessary to worry too much about individual card balance early on. Actually playing with the cards in the cube will be the best way to inform decision making.

Remember, you can always add and remove cards as you see fit. It’s not necessary to agonise over individual card choice at this point (although of course you may if that floats your boat).

CubeCobra is the community favourite cube management website. It is similar to existing decklist websites (mtggoldfish etc.), but made specifically for cube. It has all sorts of tools for managing, analysing and playtesting your cube, and is invaluable for a cube designer.

Playing your cube: Playing paper magic is currently challenging to impossible depending on where you are in the world. See the Resource Hub for ways to play your cube online.

2 - DETAILED START:

To help make this section more searchable/digestible I’ve split it into what I’d consider to be the key elements to think about when building your first cube:

1. Defining One's Goals
2. Size
3. Power & Removal
4. Curve and Card-type Balance
5. Archetypes
6. Signposting
7. Gold count
8. Non-basic lands
9. Colourless
10. Colourless Ramp
11. Singleton or Not?
12. Board State
13. Devotion
14. Planeswalkers
15. Playtesting & Feedback

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2.0 DEFINING ONE'S GOALS:

To get the most out of this article, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of what your goals and intentions in building a cube are. Parker breaks down 4 main questions a cube designer should ask themselves before sinking their teeth into cube building in his Lucky Paper article Here, guiding players through:

1. How will your cube be played?
2. What are your restrictions?
3. How powerful do you want your cube to be?
4. How does your ideal environment play?
   Answering these questions helps lay a foundation to inform further decision making in your cube design.

For example, although I didn't have the above article to reference at the time, my goals could be broken down as:

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2.1 SIZE:

The size of your cube affects a number of factors, such as card density, number of players, variation between drafts, cohesion of archetypes etc. Typical cube sizes are multiples of 180 (as they divide nicely into 15 card packs)

• 180: Normally the minimum cube size one should build, it will support only 4 players drafting or 2 players sealed, and will provide a low variation in each draft. The pros of a 180 cube are that they can be used to support archetypes difficult to play at higher card counts, provide a draft consistency useful for teaching new players, are cheaper to build and sleeve, and can be more easily transported.
• 360: The /standard/ cube size, supporting a full 8 player draft pod or 4 players sealed and provides twice the variation per draft! This is my recommended size for a first cube. It should provide easily enough variation for long lasting fun, without being an unwieldy first project.
• 450: Often used as a stepping stone above 360 to introduce further variation into the cube (still drafted in 8 man pods), and to allow more sealed players and alternate draft methods.
• 540+: For further variation in 8 man pods, or support for two 8 man pods at higher card counts.

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2.2 POWER (and power consistency):

How powerful do you want the contents of your cube to be? @landofMordor has written up a brilliant shorthand for differentiating cube power levels here This scale ranges from 1 (Retail limited) to 10 (Fully powered, absolute strongest cards in magic the gathering)

It is important to consider power consistency when building your cube. Ideally most of your cards ought to sit at a roughly equal power band to provide fun and fair gameplay. For an extreme example, a cube that runs Sol Ring (found in ~strix 8+) should not include drastically lower power cards such as Celestial Prism (and vice versa). Ideally you don’t want situations where your drafters win because they have the “better” cards than their opponent. Cube is an opportunity to move away from the chaff/bombs divide present in retail limited.

A useful tool for gauging the balance in your cube after building it is to use the filters in CubeCobra to sort your cube by “Elo” and scrutinise any outliers. The elo system ranks cards by recording each card picked against every other card passed in a pack. <1000 elo is very low >2000 elo is incredibly high (power 9 sit in this spot).

Due to how elo is calculated it doesn’t take into account:

• Your environment - A card with low elo but important to a synergy in your cube may well be a high pick bomb in your environment
• Card “power” - Elo is a reflection of how early drafters pick cards. In a cube draft, assessment value is often given by players to cards that allow them to fix mana, ramp or stay open. For this reason, the Elo of a card such as arbor elf is significantly higher than dragonlord atarka

In summary, Elo is a useful tool to flag outliers, but individual card merit must still be assessed by the cube designer in the environment they are creating.

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2.2(a) REMOVAL:

Removal in cube plays a significant role in how your environment functions and its overall power level. Density and efficiency are the main dials of removal that can be tweaked to adjust your format.

• Low density - Removal becomes a premium. Threats stick to the board for longer. Baneslayers are more viable
• High density - Mulldrifters become a premium / Baneslayers are less viable. Less focus on creature combat.
• Low efficiency - Aggro has a greater window to get “under” the other players as the removal can't trade efficiently or early enough.
• High efficiency - Threats need to be cheap and provide high value to not be outclassed by cheap removal.

Ideally density and efficiency of removal should reflect the rest of your cube. For example, high efficiency high density removal is best suited to environments that have very efficient threats.

Efficiency can be adjusted by raising/lowering the CMC of removal spells (Murder vs Blood Curdle), deciding on instant vs sorcery (Parting Thoughts), colour devotion, or including removal with restrictions/drawbacks (Bone Splinters)

Attaching removal to bodies increases both density and efficiency. E.g. Ravenous Chupacabra

Density can otherwise be adjusted by increasing/decreasing the removal card count in your environment.

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2.3 CURVE AND CARD TYPE BALANCE:

Using a desirable retail draft average as a baseline is a reasonable place to start (WotC article on limited mana curve). In 24 non-land cards, a reasonable average is:

• 0-1cmc: ~3 (13%) = 6.5 cards in a 50 count coloured section
• 2 cmc: ~7 (29%) = 14.5 cards in a 50 count coloured section
• 3 cmc: ~6 (25%) = 12.5 cards in a 50 count coloured section
• 4cmc: ~4 (17%) = 8.5 cards in a 50 count coloured section
• 5cmc: ~3 (13%) = 6.5 cards in a 50 count coloured section
• 6cmc+: ~1 (4%) = 2 cards in a 50 count coloured section

Your curves in different colours may look quite different depending on what archetypes you wish to support. For example, if you intend for red to present aggressive options to your drafters, you would need to include a higher ratio of 1-2CMC creatures and spells, and fewer 4+. Or for a green ramp/cheat shell you might reduce 4-5 drops in favour of a few more 6cmc+ cards etc.

It is worth resisting the temptation to stuff your cube full of flashy high CMC cards as they will very rarely be cast without proper support at 1-3CMC!

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CARD TYPE BALANCE:

A typical draft deck in retail limited normally contains ~17 creature spells and ~7 non-creature spells. We can use this as a baseline to model the ratio of creature to non-creature spell available in our cubes. 17 creature spells and 7 non-creatures in 24 total nonland cards =

• ~70% creature
• ~30% non-creature.

If we want to include nonbasic lands in this equation, I'll assume 3 nonbasics in a deck brings the ratio to this:

• ~62% creature (~224 in 360)
• ~26% non-creature (~95 in 360)
• ~11% nonbasic lands (~41 in 360)

You can tweak the input figures for what you consider to be the average deck composition, but supplying your drafters with a reasonable ratio of creatures/non-creatures/non-basics is definitely worth considering.

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2.4 ARCHETYPES:

You may wish to decide on supported archetypes at the inception of your cube, or allow them to present themselves through play of your quick start cube.

Archetype support is a tricky beast, many cube designers have differing opinions on how (or even if) archetype support should be implemented. Two main axis that archetype support can be measured on are “Parasitism” and “Weight”

"Parasitism in cube" video and thread

Parasitic strategies work within their own defined bounds, don’t care much about other cards, and are underperformers/useless outside of their strategy.

• Mill and tribal can be examples of parasitic archetypes.
• Medium parasitic cards might be fringe playable outside their intended strategy e.g. Auramancer
• Low parasitic cards are playable in multiple shells but shine even brighter in their desired archetype. E.g. Galvanic Blast

Running cards that have a good floor (i.e. worst case scenario) but improve in your chosen archetypes is a good way to reduce parasitism in your cube. Additionally, running cards that fit multiple archetypes can be desirable e.g. Rimrock Knight is useful to mono R aggro, spells matters, and weenies

“Weight” is the term I’m giving to the measurement of how prominent each archetype is in each colour. A lower weight may allow for more organic strategies to develop in your draft environment A higher weight may result in drafters feeling like they are being pushed to do what you "want" them to do

For example if you run 20 Prowess creatures in red and white, players may feel obliged to lean into the strategy given to them instead of having the agency to build their own unique deck.

Where your cube sits on the Parasitism/Weight scale will be personal to you, and will likely change as you develop and adjust your cube. You and your playgroup's enjoyment can help drive these decisions.

@Japahn has an excellent article here on archetype design in cube.

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2.5 SIGNPOSTING:

Signpost cards are cards that support and communicate the presence of a strategy to drafters. These can be used effectively to help players understand what is possible in your cube. For example, if a drafter opens a pack and sees Thermo Alchemist and/or Talrand, Sky Summoner they might reasonably believe that a “Spellslinger” theme is present in your cube.

In the same line of thinking, it can be worth avoiding false signposts that lead players to believe a strategy or theme is present that actually doesn’t exist. For example one half of the blood combo without the other, or otherwise playable cards that suggest a strategy that doesn’t exist e.g. Champion of Dusk without vampire tribal.

You may even consider eliminating one-off mechanics for comprehension. E.g. I cut Aether hub in favour of Tendo Ice Bridge after a drafter was disappointed that Energy wasn’t a present mechanic in the cube.

Gold cards are a good opportunity to show your drafters some of the strategies possible in each colour combination. This should feel familiar to players, as WotC employs the same design in their retail sets.

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2.6 GOLD COUNT:

Gold cards can be very fun, they act as good signposts and are often players’ & designers’ favourite cards. The temptation to include lots of gold cards is high among beginning cube designers for these reasons, however a lower count is generally more beneficial for the environment.

Fundamentally, gold cards are relevant to far fewer players and have a tendancy to wheel around the table before landing with a player who doesn’t want them.

For example, a Lightning Helix is very relevant to your Boros drafter (if there even is one this session), lightly relevant to your Naya/Jeskai/Mardu drafters (if there are any) and irrelevant to everyone else. In contrast Lightning Strike is relevant to ⅕ of your Mono colour drafters. 5/10 of your 2 colour drafters and 6/10 of your 3 colour drafters. Someone at your table will be playing red, and this card is guaranteed to be relevant and desirable.

More cards able to be played by more people in more strategies = more agency for your drafters

20-30 gold cards in 360 anecdotally works very nicely.

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2.7a NONBASIC LANDS:

Good fixing in cube is crucial to help games run smoothly. Not being able to play magic due to mana screw is one of the least enjoyable aspects of the game. Good fixing reduces the number of feel bad games your drafters experience due to poor variance.

Benefits of good fixing:

• Players get to play more magic. Non-games lost to mana screw aren't fun for either player.
• 2 colour aggro becomes more viable
• The gold section is more reliably useable

30-60 lands in 360 cards will help ensure the games are more enjoyable for everyone. Unfortunately, good lands can be expensive, but proxy printing/sharpie changes can solve this issue! (proxy resource links below)

I have created a tool to help determine how many lands you may want to include in your cube by inputting how many lands you would like to see in your "average" deck. Link here.

Frank Karsten's "How Many Colored Mana Sources Do You Need to Consistently Cast Your Spells?" provides a fantastic breakdown of how many coloured sources constructed decks ideally want.

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2.7b "Goodstuff":

There is a lot of discussion around cube designers being afraid of the draftability of the 4-5 colour "Goodstuff deck" in their cube.

This deck comprises of the best cards available in each colour and is supported by lots of nonbasic lands (and sometimes artifact fixing).

Some designers opt to run a low non-basic land count to reduce the draftability of "5c goodstuff", however this is a very blunt approach to a nuanced problem that is being created by the environment as a whole, not just the fixing.

Better axis' to correct the "goodstuff" problem:

• Curate a smaller power delta: - Avoid the "best" cards being far more powerful than the "worst" cards
• Assess the presence of guaranteed value cards: - Top tier mulldrifters/Planeswalkers that protect themselves or easily produce massive value
• Ensure that individual card quality doesn't outclass deck quality by supporting macro and micro archetypes correctly.
• Support a reasonable aggro package to put pressure on players over-stretching.

Solving the "goodstuff" problem this way instead of by reducing land count is much more healthy for the environment as a whole and helps 1-3 colour decks to play far more reliably.

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2.8 COLOURLESS:

Colourless cards are effectively “free” picks for your drafters, allowing them to remain open in the draft while providing powerful effects. Fun utility cards and curve filling creatures are perfect candidates for the colourless section.

Due to the “free” nature of colourless cards, you may wish to balance them in such a way that they don’t outclass your coloured cards.

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2.9 COLOURLESS RAMP:

Colourless ramp such as Sol Ring and Dimir Signet allow your drafters to cheat past the early stages of the game. Be very cautious about including cheap colourless ramp in any lower powered environment.

Reasons to be careful:

1. Strong ramp can invalidate aggro
2. If you want ramp to be part of Green’s identity, colourless ramp can invalidate it (or reduce its uniqueness)
3. It can cause swingy games based on variance - Opponent plays a T1 sol ring and you have no ramp. You’re almost guaranteed to lose

A rough guide for the power level of environments single mana producing rocks belong:

• 0-1CMC rocks (Moxen/Sol Ring) - Powered cubes only (Strix 9-10)
• 2 CMC rocks (Signets/Talismans/Diamonds) - Medium cubes (Strix 5-8)
• 3+ CMC rocks (Crystals/Lockets/Cluestones) - Lower power cubes (Strix 0-4)

Don’t be fooled by “enters tapped” clauses. Sphere of the Suns is still likely too strong for a low powered cube.

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2.10 SINGLETON OR NOT?:

• Singleton Pros:
  • Higher variety of cards
  • More unique mechanics
  • Draft decks will contain all unique cards
  • Aesthetically pleasing to some
• Singleton Cons:
  • Higher complexity for newer players (learning 360 new cards in a single draft can be a lot)
  • Some strategies may require a higher density of a certain effect at a certain CMC to be viable (i.e. you decide your cube needs 2x reanimate in order to help the deck be consistent enough)

Breaking singleton is a fine thing to do, but typically is only worth doing to fulfil a design goal that can’t be achieved by another unique card. A common singleton break is for nonbasic lands, as cube designers often want to provide the best possible fixing for their drafters.

The first iteration of my cube broke singleton in a few places and it was fine, but very quickly I felt like I was wasting slots that I'd rather use to increase variety and replayability.

Interesting write-up on breaking singleton by @Shamim

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2.11 BOARD STATE:

Do you want a front heavy (i.e. 3/2 creatures) or a back heavy (i.e. 2/3 creatures) board state? This article discusses the advantages of a front heavy board state.

I won’t repeat the detail of this article here as I’ve nothing extra to add, but the main point is that a front heavy board allows for meaningful attacks and reduces board stalls.

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2.12 DEVOTION:

Cards with a high colour devotion (i.e. multiple coloured pips in their casting cost) are more difficult to cast by more of your drafters. For example Knight of the White Orchid can only reliably be cast on curve by a mono white (or heavily white) deck. Cards with low CMC and high devotion are particularly problematic, as finding 2 white by turn 2 in a Selesnya deck is a lot harder than finding 2 white by turn 5 to cast Regal Caracal.

When designing with this in mind, high devotion cards can be used to tune the accessibility & viability of 3+ colour decks.

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2.13 PLANESWALKERS:

Planeswalkers have a warping effect on environments and need to be considered carefully when selecting which (if any) you wish to include.
Planeswalkers provide value disproportionate to any other card type for the single card investment and as such must be treated with caution. (see above notes on power delta and "goodstuff" drafting)

@thesidestepkids' article The Case Against Planeswalkers explores in detail the considerations that need to be taken when including planeswalkers in cubes, as well as exploring possible alternatives.

This is not to say that one shouldn't run planeswalkers, but rather to arm you with the knowledge of what impact and considerations are involved in planeswalker selection.

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2.14 PLAYTESTEING & FEEDBACK:

Playtesting is an incredibly useful way of validating whether the types of decks/gameplay you are trying to support are in fact possible in your environment. Running test drafts in CubeCobra ("playtest" tab in the top right of the cube view) is an excellent way to repeatedly draft your cube vs bots to assess the general feel for your environment and to force specific builds to assess how easy/viable they are to assemble.

Playing with real players is invaluable for assessing your cube, and your first full draft will yield information that no cubecobra analysis or test draft could.

Useful things to pay attention to across the games people played:

• Did decks end up in railed archetypes?
• Did everyone end up midrangey or was there a good mix of Aggro/Tempo/Midrange/Combo/Control at the table?
• Did many games stall?
• What cool and unexpected decks/interactions were explored by your players?

Some useful questions to ask your playgroup when asking for feedback:

• What was fun / not fun
• What felt too strong / too weak

Remember that individual feedback is subjective. Be sure to assess the feedback you are given and understand that it is a single data point in a complex system. You don't have to react too quickly to feedback if you believe the topic in question still needs time to be explored in play. e.g. A player says inordinate rage is unplayable, citing combat tricks being useless in vintage cube. You might however be in a much lower power environment with a Heroic package that nobody happened to draft. A possible avenue in this instance is to force draft the archetype in a future draft to "prove" its viability and help players understand what can be done in your environment.

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3 EXTRA

Cube Costs:

Within reason, cube can be as expensive or cheap as you want it to be. Here’s a quick breakdown of costs associated with cube:

• FREE - Playing a CubeCobra list exclusively online
• FREE - Playing with cards you already own
• ~$35 - 550 Sleeves required for 360 cards + 34 of each basic land
• Variable - Cost of singles bought for the cube. Your design goals and tolerance for proxies dictate this.
• Proxying (Requires sleeves):
  • Free - Printing on any printer you have free access to (University/work etc.)
  • Variable - Printing at home, cost variable on printer/ink/card stock
  • ~$0.25/card - Online printing services
• $10 -$200 - Storage

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Reviewing your first cube
u/Fleme’s write up on assessing your first cube was a massive boon for reviewing the first cube I built. Reading this before and/or after building your cube should provide lots of useful insight.

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4 RESOURCE HUB

A hub for cube and draft resources!

Many of the resources below have been discussed and analysed in a vast number of different articles/videos/podcasts. If any one topic takes your interest, a quick google will almost always lead you to more content on a topic. (e.g. Quadrant theory has been analysed by a plethora of different players on many platforms. One just has to google.)

Best locations for cube content and discussion:

• CubeCobra:- Articles, Cube Hosting/Playtesting/Analysis
• Riptidelabs:- Articles, discussion forums
• MTGCube Subreddit:- Discussion & Articles (The sidebar on the right contains lots of useful links to podcasts/discord channels/popular threads etc)
• Lucky Paper: - Articles, Surveys, Podcasts, Cube map

How to draft:

• Cube draft methods for 2-8 players
• Absolute beginners guide to draft
• Drafting the hard way

Card Evaluation:

• Quadrant Theory - A method for evaluating cards, useful for design and play within your cube.
• Draft evaluation in cube - This video focuses on how to draft cube more effectively, and in turn contains information that can be very useful when considering your design.

How to shuffle:

• Fully randomising your cube by regular thorough shuffling is normal and provides good gameplay.
• u/moak0’s semi random shuffle method (video)

Booster pack options:

• No packs - Just piles of 15 Envelopes/Casettes/Ziploc bags
• Burger Tokens
• Cubamajigs
• Cube shell

Cube shell/Cubamajig comparison (s)

Ways to play online:

• Dr4ft.info - Draft tool with cube support and pack size, pick number, draft speed, and bot options. Produces saveable draft logs + deck lists for importing elsewhere
• mtgadraft.tk - Alternative to dr4ft.info with improved UI and draft options
• Untap.in - Promising looking for drafting and playing in browser, but anecdotally have encountered issues with cards that refuse to load or produce errors.
• Tabletop Simulator - A simulator that allows you to play board/card games as in real life ($15|MedWeight|New|Quick setup)
• Tabletop Sim card importer - Custom table with a card importer (paste your dr4ft.info list here)
• Web based TTopSim card importer
• Cockatrice - play online. (Free|Lightweight|Old|Quick setup)
• Xmage - draft and play online. (Free|Lightweight|Old|Slow setup)

Accessories:

• Cube storage
• Booster packs (see above)
• Dry erase tokens

Proxying:

• MTGpress.net - convert your card lists into printable pdfs
• MPC - High quality card printing. Won’t print official MTG card backs due to copyright, will reject your order if you try. (MPC subreddit/MPC AutoFill)

Premade cubes:

• Card Kingdom Starter Cube - comes with basics (and undersized box that won't fit the cube once sleeved)
• Card Kingdom Pauper Cube - comes with box+sleeves+basics

Popular cubes to copy/gain inspiration from:

• The Starter Cube - Low cost (~$120) cube starting starting point (~Strix 4)
• The Miser's Cube - Budget friendly (<$500) higher power cube (~Strix 6)
• Modo vintage cube - ($15,000+)(Strix 10)
• CubeCobra’s most drafted cubes - Popular cubes drafted regularly by the community
• Pauper Cube (cubecobra) - Pauper legal cards only, managed by a committee. (<$100)
• MTGA cubes - Curated by WotC and hosted on Magic the Gathering Arena
• The Degenerate Micro Cube - Broken magic, guaranteed combos and turn 1-2 wins (Strix 11)

EDH/Commander Resources:

• EDH Cube advice
• EDH_Cube Subreddit
• Lucky Paper Radio Ep.22 - Designing an EDH Cube

Other:

• Front vs Back heavy cards in limited
• Resource for flavour and set based cubes
• Lucky Paper Cube Map - all CubeCobra cubes mapped by shared cards. Excellent for exploring the cube space and gaining inspiration.

Extras:

• Cube occasionals - Interesting method of adding variety to a cube without compromising balance/integrity
• alternate play modes
  • Battlebox: Website & Subreddit
  • Riviera Live Draft - Similar to Battlebox but with more player agency and less variance

My Cube:

• How it started - My cube as it was first built, warts and all!
• How it's going - My cube now that I've been developing, playing and testing non-stop.
• Comparison - Showing the difference between day 1 and now.

I've included this as an example of a cube that started as a pile of cards in my collection has grown into a refined environment. It was excellent fun to play on day 1, and it's even more fun to play today!
My number one advice to anyone looking to build a cube is to just get stuck in.

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Thank you for reading, and happy cubing!

If anyone has any feedback, suggestions, questions or useful links that ought to be included, please let me know by leaving a comment below and I will update the live version of this article.