It's been a while since I sat down and really looked at the balance of this cube and offered an explanation, so that's what this blog post does.

I've been doing comprehensive testing and trying to make it fun for anyone to play with, regardless of your preferences. That also means that I've been trying to redistribute the color effects and play styles more evenly. In previous posts I've mentioned some of the revisions that were done, but the biggest ones are still on the way once appropriate legends are available. For the time being, there are still 4.5 color pairings that don't have a set identity in this cube, and a lot of maintenance/updates that need to happen to support the archetypes that I do have in here. The full list so far is below, as well as the main tribes for the five mono colors.

- WW (more support incoming), Soldiers as a tribe.
- Control, Wizards as a tribe.
- Discard, Zombies as a tribe.
- RDW, Goblins as a tribe.
- Landfall (more support incoming), Elves as a tribe.

- Stax
- Lifegain
- Equipment
- Tokens (more support incoming)
- Mill
- Spellslinger
- Ramp
- Treasures
- Graveyard
- Turbo (more support incoming)

Bant - Enchantress - Tuvasa the Sunlit is being added to link them.
Abzan - Humans - Anafenza, the Foremost inadvertently links this tribe.
Naya - Zoo - Marath, Will of the Wild naturally lends to this theme.
Grixis - Aristocrats - Anhelo, the Painter returning to link them, support incoming.
Mardu - Artifacts - Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter naturally lends to this theme.
Sultai - Legendary - Nashi, Moon's Legacy is being added to support this theme.
Esper - Superfriends - Dakkon, Shadow Slayer lends to this by colors only, but there isn't enough support or planeswalkers that work well together. This will be revised when 2.0 is finished. Probably swapped for Wheels/Raffine.
Jund - (TBD) - Slimefoot and Squee don't synergize with any major themes in this cube right now, are there for colors. They will probably get swapped back out for Gyrus, Waker of Corpses, as he's more aggro and fitting for how the colors work in this cube.
Temur - (TBD) - Animar, Soul of Elements is the only option by default without rebuilding these colors.
Jeskai - (TBD) - Shu Yun, The Silent Tempest is also the only option that fits this cube in this color scheme.

The biggest challenge for building and updating this cube is working within the constraints of the format - it is essentially a fan-made format at this point, and any support from WotC is accidental. A lot of cube staples are purposely omitted from this because they don't really offer anything to the CMC>3 format or are banned in Tiny Leaders/Tiny Leaders Reborn. A lot of great commanders in the format don't really do anything outside of specifically built decks (the biggest problem with Dakkon, for example). There are still gaps in coverage, like the lack of a Boros walker at this CMC. While it's numerically impossible for these gaps to stay forever, it's unlikely that they're going to get filled anytime soon.

Other problems come from balancing what's fun to play with what's actually playable. Including 5C commadners like Najeela, the Blade Blossom or Sisay, Weatherlight Captain seems like a great idea, but it would come at a heavy price for fixing elsewhere in the cube. Including Backgrounds would cut into other commander slots. Partners are essentially banned, as there can only be one commander in the command zone. While these challenges are sometimes frustrating (Teferi, Time Raveler would be bonkers here), it's really fun to use the constraints like a puzzle to solve.

The next wave of updates should be finished by September. Version 2.0 should be done by October, with very minor updates thereafter until something really cool comes along to shake up the format.

Thanks.