[M:tG] YCMers, let's build a cube.

[bury the year]

Don't know what a cube is? Click here. Now, let's get started. I want to build a cube, YCMers, and I'd like your help to bounce stuff around.

• No price barrier. The cube will be entirely proxied: I plan on making the proxies with the M15 template using MSE and getting them professionally printed on standard playing cards. Anything up through and including M15 will be included, and if we take long enough to construct this to the point where KoT is released I'll include them as well.
• Powered cards. The above makes this feasible, and since most of my group got into Magic kinda late we haven't had the experience of playing with these kinds of cards, and I'd like to give people a taste of it. Plus, I like crazy plays, and the more power we have, the more potentially hilarious stuff can happen.
• Even colour/guild distribution. I simply don't like the idea of giving one colour more real estate than another.
• 450 cards. Allows for variance while keeping the card pool at a manageable size. I'll poll my playgroup and see how many would be doing this often enough, though: if the amount's low I'll drop it to 405 or 360.
• Singleton, because that's the best way to do it.
• No Un-set cards or Conspiracy draft affecters. At least for now.
• No level up, flip or transform cards, if only because I don't know how to make them work with the new template.

Here is what we have to start. As you can see, it's pretty... boring. In fact, it's blank. However, once I get around to it, I plan on adding the following 50 cards:

[spoiler="Open me!"]• The 10 ABU dual lands.
• The 10 Ravnica shocklands.
• The 10 Ravnica karoos.
• The 10 Onslaught/Zendikar fetchlands.
• The Power 9 and Sol Ring.[/spoiler]

That's 50 down already, so we have now 400 to go. So, I first have a few questions.

1) 1v1 or multiplayer? I honestly don't know which one to go towards. Our group plays a lot of EDH so I'm thinking people may like the multiplayer aspect more, and this allows us to use some more unique and uncommon cards (ex. Death by Dragons, TNN, the vow cycle, anything with will of the council, etc). However, it also potentially pushes up the average mana curve, which I want to avoid, and makes some archetypes I really want to use (mainly aggro and wildfire/LD) untenable. At this point I'm leaning more towards 1v1, but I want to hear your thoughts.
2) Which archetypes? Similarly to Conspiracy or Modern Masters, I plan on having 10 "suggested archetypes," one for each color pair with a few key cards to support each exclusively. I've been considering either blink or artifacts-matter for WU, pox potentially for WB, and wildfire/ramp and LD for RG, but outside of that I'm a bit stumped.

Lemme hear it!

[.Rai]

I'm probably wrecking a lot of your ideas, but I do feel the traditional cube is just such an outdated format. Particularly, breaking singleton for lynchpin cards works wonders in cube, and that powered cubes do not make for the most fun (especially if the rest of the cube is at a disparate power level in comparison). Still, just suggestions, the traditional cube format still works.

Also considering a utility land draft is helpful. A lot of colorless lands do not have space in cube, so this solves all the issues.

[Poc]

Power cubes are kind of lame tbh, it really skews the whole draft when the power 9 are must first pick cards.

 

Anyways, if you want a strong cube you need to build some deck archtypes and put support cards into it. If not, you just get a bunch of value cards that don't support eachother and the draft becomes really predictable. For example, you would have a green ramp archtype. So you put in some cultivates, landowar elves and some fatties. A good idea is to have a archtype for each color and each color pair. After you plan that out the cube almost builds itself.

[Rodrigo]

I believe 1vs1 is the best way to go. Your starting lands are good enough for the mana fixing, and the Power cards sound fun to mess with. I don't know if I prefer Guildgates over Karoos, but I guess since this isn't supposed to be beginner friendly, the Karoos might open up some interesting plays.

 

Now for the archetypes, I'll give some rough ideas for each color pair:

 

Azorius - Control (Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile, Supreme Verdict, AEtherling, Remand/Counterspell)

Boros - Aggro (Goblin Guide, Lightning Helix, Ball Lightning)

Dimir - Mill. Yes, I know it's cliché, but I couldn't pass the opportunity of suggesting Glimpse the Unthinkable. And Cipher stuff is overcosted.

Golgari - Dredge (Golgari Grave-Troll, Life from the Loam, Worm Harvest, Dread Return)

Gruul - Ramp (Tooth and Nail, Worldspine Wurm, Wood Elves, Ranger's Path)

Izzet - Storm (Rite of Flame, Grapeshot, Empty the Warrens)

Orzhov - Extort seems weak for a power cube, so maybe tokens?

Rakdos - Burn

Selesnya - Could be tokens, could be Ramp, dunno.

Simic - Goodstuff seems too vague, but I'm not sure if Evolve is good enough (like Extort)

[Simping For Hina]

Simic would make a nice tempo style sort of deck with cards like Coiling Oracle. Drafting Storm, though is weird, but I having the Power 9 would increase the power level of the draft. Unpowered Cubes are much more balanced and harder to manage, thinking that a group thing is going to work for it. It also increases spots for 10 utility lands, say from Lorwyn.

[Poc]

mill is actually pretty strong in a 40 card format.

 

b/w should be tokens and g/w could be midrange with all the smiters and watchwolfs it has. u/g could be creature control. The rest of the color pairs seem pretty spot on.

[.Rai]

As if we could come up with a more generic cube. Break singleton, stick 3-4 Gravecrawlers into the cube, then support a Rakdos sacrifice + Zombies theme.

[bury the year]

@Rai: Honestly, powered or not doesn't really matter to me. I'm more just including them for the visceral fun factor and pulling that Black Lotus, but if in the process of building this they're deemed to be extraneous I'm cool with cutting them.

My thoughts... Dimir or Golgari could be good reanimator materials. I'm wary of storm, so Izzet could be counterburn and Rakdos would make suicide aggro work well, and Boros could take over weenies? I'd like to include a pox theme somewhere, though. Bleh.

[.Rai]

Dimir as a mill archetype compliments any reanimator theme you put into the cube. To be honest, a lot of the time, reanimator's an insanely unfun theme (by that, I mean cheating out giant fatties); cubes should really only ever be doing reanimator as a value theme. Unburial Rites into an Acidic Slime and things like that.

Support Boros as aggro, Izzet as a spells matters archetype, and Azorius as tempo. You get huge amounts of overlap, to make an overall more synergistic cube.

[Simping For Hina]

@Rai: Honestly, powered or not doesn't really matter to me. I'm more just including them for the visceral fun factor and pulling that Black Lotus, but if in the process of building this they're deemed to be extraneous I'm cool with cutting them.

My thoughts... Dimir or Golgari could be good reanimator materials. I'm wary of storm, so Izzet could be counterburn and Rakdos would make suicide aggro work well, and Boros could take over weenies? I'd like to include a pox theme somewhere, though. Bleh.

Golgari supports more of a reanimator theme, and is easier to piece together with Green Fatties and Black reanimation. Self Mill (Dredge) vs. Opponent Mill is going to be too much of a mash if we support the ability to draft a third color. BUG Theme could go into mill reanimation, since all the mill spells are self-mill influence.

 

Which also adds Dega to be a suicide aggro with small critters.

 

Counterburn could be an easy thing to include, as it does compliment other plans. UWR would be a fast burn/aggro deck with things to back up. This would also allow for an Esper control/mill.

 

I think we should bleed some ideas for 2 color archetypes into other color archetypes.

 

But what we could also focus on is the color split for each WUBGR and Colorless. Having 25-30 lands leaves us with 420 split and the colors should have equal representation where as Colorless should have at least 20 cards less that the colors entirely. This would lead into easy numbering with the cards, which would be 4 extra cards for each color. Then, we could only go down from there for the artifacts.

 

W- 4+

U- 4+

B- 4+

R- 4+

G- 4+

 

Dividing 400 by 6

 

This leaves 66(.66) cards for each color and colorless. The remaining cards could be another land.

 

This is really just a rough number quickly, to a basic idea of card separation for each color. Of course it will be easier when actually focused on.

 

The numbers are also easier to work with if we don't include the power 9 and we keep the utility lands down to at least 5. Anymore than that should be in increments of 10, so 25-35-45, and I don't suggest to go more than 35. By doing this, it opens up Gavony Township, Vault of the Archangel, and the 8 other Innistrad land, which would be easier to manage and take advantage of with the amount of color fixing there is simply within the manabase. The five other could be Manlands, which each color already has. And if we don't go artifact high, the colors pretty much have to be drafted for no support of a colorless archetpe.

[bury the year]

Hmmm, now I'm reconsidering the singleton restriction. Would it be better to possibly put in 2-4 of cards that aren't super-powerful but are still essential to a draft strategy?

[.Rai]

Breaking singleton is definitely a precise thing. You don't want to break it for random cards otherwise it can mess with your playgroup, but certain cards and archetypes become infinitely more fun and just better in multiples (Birthing Pod, Gravecrawler, Wildfire).