The Chube
This is a traditional cube designed for anywhere from 2 to 8 drafters. The emphasis is on drafting a coherent gameplan and playing the matchups well. Playing at least a Bo3 with sideboarding between games is encouraged. If you'd like a little more overview with your overview, read on! But going in blind should be 100% fine for amateurs and pros alike.
Hold the archetypes, please
Rather than focusing on specific archetypes like sac, tribal, or enchantress, this cube is built around accommodating 4 of what I’m calling, for the sake of differentiation, “deckstyles”: Aggro, Tempo, Midrange, and Control, which can be thought of as existing on a spectrum from proactive/threats to reactive/value. As a result the card pool leans fairly heavily towards the goodstuff end of the synergy-goodstuff spectrum. Any card can be good in any deck if it fits the gameplan, and even if it isn’t a perfect fit, it will still be of value because each card is efficient on its own. Think Serum Visions instead of Otherworldly Gaze. The goal is to encourage small games of magic, defined by Sam Black to mean games where most cards answer another, frequently creating impactful decision space and small boardstates. Games will be more about what you cast your removal on when as opposed to assembling value engines.
Each color supports both proactive and reactive gameplans, with some leaning more heavily one way or the other depending on the nature of the color. For example, while any color pair can build aggro, boros can expect to find more consistency in doing so than dimir.
When it comes to navigating your choice of deckstyle while drafting, its easiest to think in terms of classic well known ones (azorius control, mono red aggro, the rock, etc.) and in terms of what individual colors tend to support. Here are some outlines of both:
Color Focus
- primarily aggro, secondarily control, midrange support
- split between tempo and control
- jack of all trades
- strongly aggro and tempo, midrange capable
- backbone of midrange, surprising tempo, best for splashing
Deck Ideas
Control
Combine white boardwipes with blue counterspells and card draw to dominate the long gameDeck Wins
Play threats from turn 1 and win before the other player knows what hit themProwess
Cantrip your way to the perfect sequence of threats and disruption, empowering your creatures while keeping the other side off balanceFlash
Sneak in your threats, protect them, and keep your opponent guessing until its too lateMidrange
Ramp into mana fixing to deploy a wide array of tools for any situation, whether holding aggro at bay or attacking control from every anglePower Level
As far as I can tell, Pioneer is likely the best comparison to the cube in terms of deck power level. Cards are individually powerful and efficient, but ultimately fair; no free spells, combos, etc. The focus is on interactive gameplay and proper sequencing between classic matchups across a range of colors and flavors. For these reasons the power band is purposefully narrow, to deter games from being decided by exceptionally strong cards as opposed to strong gameplans. Unfortunately this isn’t possible in all cases, particularly when adhering to singleton (while, for example, trying to fit in enough red removal). The hope is that this wiggle room in power level makes the draft portion more interesting, as Lightning Bolt gives greater reason to go into red than Play with Fire.
Player Count
Speaking of drafting, the goodstuff nature of the cube should make this suitable for even just two players, despite only using a chunk of the pool while doing so, assuming the drafting is done right. See various options here.
I’m most excited to try face up drafting myself, to see what my friends take and offer draft tidbits along the way, as most of them don’t have much draft experience.
Enjoy!
My hope is that this cube - this middle of the road, goodstuff, fair archetype supporting cube; with its cards recognizable to seasoned and casual players alike, selected for being fun to play with and against; capable of being drafted with a few friends, and their friends, or with just a roommate - will be not only the perfect way to share my love for drafting and 1v1 magic with my friends, and hopefully imbue it within them, but also to enjoy over and over, with cards freely swapped as new cards and new feelings come and go. Have fun, and let me know how it goes! I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it.
I hope too that my conceiving of this cube can serve as inspiration for anyone else looking to make their own first cube, or their own cube not shackled by archetypal constraints. This is my second cube, but the first for 1v1 gameplay, and whereas the first cube was hastily made and followed the tried-and-true 10 color pair archetype structure, this was my first success conceiving of a cube differently from that (after many tortuous attempts of asking myself things like “what 5 three color archetypes should I support, how will those line up within the corresponding 2 color pairs," etc etc, ad infinitum). I will summarize my thought process here, as well as share my creation notes for the cube, along with some great cube resources that undoubtedly led me to this eureka moment.
Origin Story, or “what do I want from this cube?”
The initial seed of desire that led to this cube was simple. I wanted a way to draft with an inexperienced friend of mine who visits once a year or so. Without a consistent group however, this would likely mean a draft between just the two of us. Initially I looked into Twoberts, and while I love the idea of a Tempo Twobert, I also didn’t want to make something so narrow - I’m only going to get to play so much cube in my life, so I’d rather have less cubes that I play with more than vice versa. So I thought, why not a more generic Twobert? Then I looked into 2 person drafting formats (linked above) and realized that hey, I don’t need a Twobert at all, especially if I build it with smaller draft groups in mind.
I had answered the first and most important question; “what do I want from this cube?”: a pool of cards capable of being enjoyably drafted by a various number of (new) players. All further questions were a matter of deciding what cards to include to fulfill that goal. Now for my next question: synergy or goodstuff?
Historically I’ve always loved synergy, as I’m a Johnny at heart. I love triggers and emergent effects, and in cube I especially love finding glue cards that work well across different archetypes. However, synergy cubes do not support smaller draft groups as well. For example, if one of your archetypes is sacrifice, but the half (or quarter!) of the pool you draft from is missing all of the sac outlets, you’d be sacrificing a lot of card choices! (ba dum tisss). While this is by no means catastrophic, (as missing archetype elements should deter players from drafting them regardless) it is a layer of friction, and I want those minimized in order to achieve a new-drafter friendly experience.
Choosing goodstuff however was breaking new ground for me, as in the past I’ve always chosen synergy and then gone straight into archetype planning. Fortunately I had a bit of a eureka moment at the same time, the kind that comes after a length of study, then conscious, and even unconscious reflection. So, instead of starting with a list of color coordinated archetypes, I started with a general list of deckstyles I wanted to support: aggro, tempo, midrange, and control. This gives more freedom with regard to what cards are included, while also increasing the likelihood that any given card can be useful in any given deck (Viscera Seer desires a dedicated sac deck to shine, but Regrowth can generate its expected value anywhere).
From there I made a simple description of how strongly I wanted each color to support the above playstyle list, as guidelines to wrap my head around while making card choices (the color focus list above).
With those ideas jotted down, I moved to clear up a few other things: how colorful, how powerful, and how wide of a power band I wanted. Naturally, for all of these the answer came again from my premise: what do I want this cube to be? Answer: new drafter friendly and function well even when drafted by just two people. With this in mind, the answers were simple: minimal gold cards to promote draft flexibility and simplicity; a high power level, so that individual cards are fun to use but not oppressive, and for card and gameplay recognizability;* a narrow power band, so that drafting is focused on gameplan crafting rather than powerhouse chasing, and games are decided by gameplay rather than bombs.
*Pioneer describes it well in contemporary terms, but in my mind I was thinking more nostalgically about the golden age of jund midrange in Modern. Scavenging Ooze was one of the first cards I added, in no small part because the friend I wish to play with has a playset of 4 proudly displayed in his binder from days past.
These are the questions I like to answer before I start picking cards out (and by picking I mean letting my mind wander through the endless catacombs of magic cards stored in my brain). But because I’m a freak for structure and like having numbers ironed out ahead of time, I first began crafting my skeleton for the cube, aka how many cards of each macro-type to include: monocolored spells, gold spells, colorless spells, and lands.
Structuralisms
Perhaps the most important of these are the lands, in particular the color fixing ones. After refamiliarizing myself with this excellent work I had my answer: I would run 70 fixing lands so that 2 color decks can reliably cast spells costing 1CC on curve (more intense costs than this in the cube are rare and require a little extra lifting in exchange for their power, such as Counterspell, a tradeoff I enjoy).
I obtained this number by combining 2 data points: 1) Frank Karsten’s number of sources to cast Cancel on curve (12) and 2) Andy Mangold’s rule of thumb (in the Lucky Paper article above) that drafters end up with anywhere from 2/3s to 3/4s of their fixing lands being relevant to their draft decks after drafting, with the ratio increasing along with the total ratio of lands in the cube.
So, the first point: I want drafters to have 12 sources of both colors in their two color decks. Assuming 17 lands, this means players need 7 dual lands with a 50/50 split of the remaining 10 basics (7 boros duals + 5 plains + 5 mountains = 12 white and 12 red sources). Okay, so we want each player to have 7 fixing lands, great! But wait, they need to be relevant fixing lands. So, using Andy’s rule of thumb, we increase our number proportionally: if we want players to end up with 7, they need to take 25% more, or closer to 9, but we can be more exact: 7 * 1.25 / 45 * 360 = 70. Sweet! 70 is a great number to land on, as I can do 7 duals of each.
Now, obviously its unrealistic to think that the orzhov player will end up with all seven orzhov duals, of course. But Karsten’s numbers are simply the preferred amount for a certain (high) level of consistency - helpful down to the letter in constructed, but more of a guide for draft, even in cube; as Andy’s article points out, there’s an upper limit to the number of lands a cube can support before eating into drafters’ ability to end up with enough spells. Having imperfect mana is very much a part of most drafts, and something I’m fine with players having to navigate and deal with. Not to mention, only ~20 or so spells in the cube are as mana intensive as Cancel (some of which don’t even really want to be cast on curve anyways), most are less, and only a few are more. So if anything I think this amount of fixing will exceed requirements and allow drafters to achieve a high degree of consistency in their gameplay.
Okay, so 70 of the 360 cards will be fixing lands. Assuming we want 2 cards of each color in each pack (another rule of thumb I like), that's 2 / 15 * 360, or 48 cards, which is 240 cards altogether. That leaves 50 slots to divide between gold spells, colorless spells, and utility lands. Being the land fan that I am I went for 20/10/20, with 2 of each different color pair gold cards*, 2 of each color for mono colored utility lands, and a set of 10 two color utility lands. As picks were made and the cube was curated, many of these numbers changed as certain cards were undesirable, or at least less desirable than others in other categories. This "breaking of the skeleton" is a natural and good part of any cube design, similar to breaking 4 of's in constructed to make a more nuanced deck.
*The Lucky Paper guys have a great podcast about gold cards that discusses various reasons to include more, less, and even various amounts of them between color pairs. I’m curious to try this out myself down the line, but see it more as a tweaking/preference measure; I enjoy my symmetrical structure a lot as a starting point.
Landed Bureaucracy
When it comes to selecting which fixing lands to use, my initial thought was to keep it simple and use full sets, like all 10 slowlands, all 10 painlands, etc, because I enjoy the differences between lands and adhering to singleton. However, after doing some bot drafts I realized pretty quickly that 2 color decks have a hard time getting lands they want, as they only want 10% of the duals available. 3 color decks however can make use of 30% of the lands, which gives flashbacks to how much easier it is to make a good manabase for a 3 color deck in commander than a 2 color one, not a reality I want here. Anyhow, I listened to this Lucky Paper Radio episode about fetchlands that puts the problem very succinctly (around the second half) and not only convinced me, but made me very excited (once I tried it) to break singleton for the sake of doubling up on fetches and shocks, something I knew a lot of cubes did but assumed was more of an "imitating modern" thing rather than a draftibility thing.
It goes something like this. Your typical dual land, say Sundown Pass, is essentially a gold card in terms of card evaluation during a draft. Its actually a bit worse: despite fixing lands being extremely important, you would almost never take such a land until you knew you were going to be in boros, much less would you P1P1 it, whereas a powerful gold spell could pull you into its colors at various points in a draft. What's most likely is even worse: you're in rakdos but take it P2P12 because there isn't anything else in your colors anyways and maybe you'll want to splash white. Lameee. Thankfully, fetchlands provide an alternative.
Whereas typical dual lands are only useful for 1 color pair, fetchlands are useful in 7, and this use goes up in the presence of fetchable duals such as shocks and surveil lands. So while Steam Vents is still strictly good only in izzet, as a draft pick the card is worth a lot more than Stormcarved Coast because it makes any fetch that can search for an island or a mountain not just relevant but quite good in your deck. Even if you're in dimir instead, as long as you have a fetch that touches red or blue, Steam Vents is significantly better at splashing red should that be something you wish to do (and who doesn’t want to play Grixis!)
Basically, (loud groaning) adding more fetches and shocks not only enables better manabases for all color combos (including mono), it makes for a much more engaging draft experience. One of my favorite starts to a retail limited draft for example is taking something like Evolving Wilds P1P1. It leaves me incredibly open as the draft moves forward, and the card will basically always make my deck. A fetchland operates similarly in cube, so adding more of them, on top of all their other benefits, is a no-brainer.
Regardless of which lands you choose for your own cube, somewhere around 2022 I made a spreadsheet of lands to expedite the process, featuring categorization, description, and copy-n-paste lists for easy importing to CubeCobra and the like. Feel free to bookmark and let me know what you think!
Pick me, pick me!
With the skeleton ironed out, the picking began. Card choices come to me pretty naturally, but I do pay attention to the numbers as I go to make sure I’m adding appropriately costed amounts of creatures and noncreatures (the Curve View on CubeCobra helps visualize this). One of the nice things about the skeleton I worked out is that 48 is roughly double the number of spells played in a given deck, so when building out each color I can think of it as building a draft deck twice over, which further helps because most of the colors are a rough split in terms of what they support (proactive vs reactive; notice that the gold cards are split along this axis as well). Beyond that I try to adhere to at least 50% creatures in most colors, more for aggressive ones, less for blue specifically.
When it comes to hybrid cards like Lurrus of the Dream-Den, I just assign them to one color or the other, and try to balance them out (so if I have 2 split simic cards I'll assign one for green and one for blue) to keep the numbers of mono colored cards as similar as possible to one another. Cards like Lingering Souls, which can be used with one color but ideally want both, are best defined on a card by card (and cube by cube) basis. In this cube I don’t think a deck would be happy playing Lingering Souls unless it could cast it in hand and in the graveyard, so I would consider it a gold card rather than one or the other (even here there is wiggle room: what about a selesnya midrange deck that splashes black for the flashback?)
Each card choice is a step towards realizing your goals for the cube, and I go over the list often to ensure things make sense. Swords to Plowshares? I know I want efficiency, but that's a bit too much. Fountainport Bell? I like the idea for splashing, but its too weak. Changes like these can happen at any point in the cube’s development, and even if you include something a little too strong or too weak, or that simply doesn’t fit, you’ll find that out as you play, and replacing is easy and a good opportunity to try new cards and patch up whatever might need it!
Sometimes I needed to look at cards for ideas ("could there be a more fitting rakdos card here?"), and that's where scryfall came in. Since its a goodstuff cube, rather than searching specific text (“o:when a creature dies”) I just searched a type and color (usually with a given rarity) and sorted by release date. This worked well, as its an easy way to see new cards you might not be aware of as well as generally seeing stronger stuff. Even if I didn’t use what I found, usually within half a page I had an idea of a card or cards to add. I also found it useful to look at Pioneer decklists for staples I forgot about or to gauge how much of a card a deck needs (like counterspells in control) although be careful here: the creature/noncreature ratio of a Delver of Secrets deck is going to be different in a constructed environment where the player has access to playsets of Brainstorm and Preordain!
Once I got happy with the list (or bored of just staring at it lol) I found it fun and insightful to do a few bot drafts on cube cobra. There’s a lot you can learn about your cube evaluating it pack by pack for picks; is Wurmcoil Engine stronger than every other creature? (yes) Do you ever want to take Desolate Lighthouse even when izzet? (no). These are good things to realize as a cube designer, doubly so if you can recognize them before ordering/proxying the cards. Its these small catches on specific cards that can help you make room for other things, as well as start to break away from a given skeleton as you see fit. For example, after cutting some colorless cards I no longer wanted to have, I didn't have any colorless replacements for them, but decided that rather than go find new colorless cards to add, it was instead the perfect opportunity to add some more blue cantrips and card draw I really wanted but just couldn't find room for through replacement of other blue cards.*
*I've come to the conclusion that this (not having enough card slots) is a blue phenomenon specifically, for two reasons: counterspells and cantrips.
Counterspells are at their best with other instants, and outside of blue, instants are largely contextual in nature. Sure, you can pass the turn holding up Bitter Triumph alongside your Lose Focus, but there's always a chance you end up not wanting to cast either. You'll always want to cast Chemister's Insight though, given the chance. This is unique to blue; red creatures go well with any color of removal, just as black card draw can slot in alongside any color of threats. Counterspells however, true to form, are a unique style of card when it comes to maximizing their use, and their true maximization is found alongside specifically blue card draw.
For cantrips the reason is much simpler: xerox theory, which is a fun way of saying that everyone wants cantrips, not just prowess decks. Basically, every deck will have sequences where not every mana can be spent every turn. Cantrips (under a certain amount) are essentially free to run in this sense. You can see this in my card selection for the cube, giving each color access to its best cantrips, not just because every deck wants them, but because they help promote the kind of gameplay experience I'm pushing in this cube: flexible, consistent, and decision-rich.
...but maybe not me
There are a few types of cards I personally don't like the potential play patterns of, and while this is very subjective, I figure its worth mentioning here as an element of cube design.
Cards like the ones shown above are what I think of as high-roll cards. Like most 2 drops, Burning-Tree is best on turn two, but in its case its especially good on two, and gets worse later. Contrast this with a card like Bloodthirsty Adversary, which is good on two, but has additional value if played later on. To me this is a much more fun card to play both with and against; sure a turn two Burning-Tree is fun for the pilot (if it hits), but can feel terrible for the opponent, and the opposite (playing it on turn 5 or having it whiff) is also true. Black Lotus is a good example of a card that takes this to an extreme: even if both players have it in their deck, the mere presence of it will create non-games when one player has it and another doesn't. Such extreme chance based outcomes, which to some degree are intrinsically apart of magic, are things I’d like to mitigate rather than facilitate.
I also strayed away from "gotcha" cards like Orcish Bowmasters that are inordinately good against particular colors/effects/strategies. I like including hate pieces like Cathar Commando that can exist somewhere between maindeck and sideboard, but a card like Bowmasters is more than strong enough to be maindecked, while also randomly hosing the player casting Brainsurge, with flash to boot! At least Sheoldred, the Apocalypse lets you know beforehand that your draw spell is gonna hurt. Similarly, I ended up cutting my colorless graveyard hate (Ghost Vacuum and Unlicensed Hearse) for being too easy and free to run in an environment where every color has some graveyard benefits. I still have Lion Sash and the like because I think interaction is important, but it is notedly worse by requiring both mana for activation and a color for casting.
There are also cards that, while initially added for their obvious ubiquity, coolness, potential use, what have you, end up falling a bit short as the cube comes together. These are the ones you notice when, no longer having the room to freely add that next cool card, you have to start swapping instead of just adding, or in other words, making cuts. Anger of the Gods was one such card for me. I added it early alongside Pyroclasm as a powerful small sweeper in red. It wasn’t until dozens of card swaps later, without hardly ever considering cutting it, that I finally put it through the paces as it were: “why am I including this card? What decks want it?” Well, I included it because its unique and powerful. But to the second question, my answer came up flat. Jeskai control, I guess? Hardly needs it with access to white. Midrange doesn’t really want to exile its own things, and smaller decks don’t really want a sweeper. Moral of the story, its easy to add cards because they’re good/cool in a vacuum, but its important to interrogate their purpose within the context of your cube if maximizing relevant cards is a goal.
The opposite is also true: maybe you’re thinking of adding a unique effect like Dominate and upon analyzing potential cuts, come up with Treasure Cruise. You mull over Cruise’s playability and what it brings to the table for different decks, comparing it to other similar cards as well as to its niche as a whole. Purely in terms of uniqueness you’d be willing to cut one of many draw effects for a first blue steal spell but wait, is Dominate even good enough in the first place? What decks even want it? After pitting these cards against each other in this way, you’ll have a clearer idea of which you prefer and why, which contributes to a clearer understanding of your cube as a whole.
Cube will outlive Magic
Whatever cards you choose for your cube, don’t let price be a determining factor. Proxying high quality cards that look, feel, and play just like the ones from WOTC has never been easier. I highly recommend using MPC and MPCfill for all your card curating needs. The magic proxy discord is incredibly helpful and full of intelligent, passionate individuals. From what began as a desire to have better lands in my commander decks quickly blossomed into becoming a full on creator, making my own versions of the cards I love and being able to play with them at a fraction of the cost. Its like making your own secret lairs, but the cards are 30 cents apiece instead of $10. Plus if you decide to jump on the wagon and never look back, you can do what I did and sell your valuable singles to buy sleeves for all your cubes! Its a win-win!