Magic: the Gathering cube general

why do we never talk about cubes, Veeky Forums?

Post em

Draft em

give feedback

ask questions

cubetutor.com/viewcube/66131

looking to cut my pauper cube down to 360 and beef up the colorless section. it's super janky right now pls no bully

Other urls found in this thread:

cubetutor.com/viewcube/5961
cubetutor.com/viewcube/72819
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/vintage-cube-cardlist
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/how-build/building-your-first-cube-2016-05-19
turnonemagic.com/abasicguidetocube/
cubetutor.com/viewcube/72818
cubetutor.com/viewcube/74268
cubetutor.com/cubeblog/74850;jsessionid=B158288AC548718921E081BCE9F87BFB
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I've never played cube, but I've watched some people playing and I've tried to build one with random cards I had. I have to say, building it was a lot of fun. Trying to find jank that works together and is genuinely fun to play is so cool.
It kinda felt like I was building my own fantasy world, but I had nobody to share it with

sometimes that's the best way to go: start with a jank pile and refine it over playtests

Too many people try to theorycraft the perfect cube before testing it out. "No good plan survives first contact with the enemy"

One of the cubes I wanted to submit to that sham of a contest that was from WotC was themed around horror art cards.

All of the cards were just creepy in appearance, with graveyard themes of course.

Speaking of, for the 2 people who poke in this thread, don't make a cube based around graveyard mechanics, they're a fucking tit to balance.

Any place where there is a large database of cubes?

cubetutor ya drangus

too bad, i love graveyard shenanigans

If you want to do a gravecube keep in mind that ISD/DKA only had 1/4 of it's cards with the word graveyard on it.

The balance has to be struck between the power of the graveyard and the amount of interaction. Having Rest In Piece will kill any game but so will casting yawgmoth's will with a stocked yard

True. I tend to avoid "hate" cards anyways.

bump

bumping one last time before bed :(

i wish Veeky Forums talked about cubes more, it's my favorite format.

Aren't all vintage cubes technically graveyard cubes when properly constructed?

I wanna build that pauper cube Adam Styborski has been going on about, I watched LRR draft it once and it looks so sweet. It also looks like a great tool for getting intermediate friends to learn how to draft as well.

I can completely attest to this, this is the only Cube I own to date, it's a Vintage Powered Cube where the Power and various expensive, reserved list cards are custom foil cards I got off Amazon, and the rest are Modern and Legacy combos like Tinker, Splinter Twin, Oath of Druids, Lands.dec, Countertop, Grixis Storm, MUD, etc that my cousin and I had 1-ofs of but could never EVER hope to build a deck around. I threw it all into a pot, added all the fetches and shocks I owned plus most of my Jund/Abzan deck and called it a Cube and everyone had a HILARIOUS time with it. And now I use the Masters price drops to supplement the Cube slowly like I do with Snapcaster Mage now.

Sorry, I lost connection for a good hour before I gained it back again, but seriously, what are you worrying about, I forced Grixis Reanimator AND Grixis Storm. IN A SINGLE DRAFT. With Teachings as a little after-fuck cuddle. You're a sick man. I love it! Now I wanna build this filthy Cube.

What pauper cube? Mind sharing a list?

And is your cube really working that well? It could be really unbalanced to do something like that.

cubetutor.com/viewcube/5961

It's one of the more fastidiously-designed cubes, he updates it every new set with an update post usually explaining the changes.

And also, read the box label. Balance isn't quite on top of the agenda. You could take the Cube seriously I suppose, but that wasn't quite my intention when I threw all the card in.

I just wanna play degenerate Magic, man.

So I took a look at the vintage cube again since I needed to throw in the Snapcaster Mage and I remember how it goes. Since most of the degenerate combos are two card combos, you are free to build the reat of the deck as a regular draft, and then use the combo as a way to close games out fast. For instance my friend draft splinter twin into a really aggressive goblins deck with stuff like Goblin guide, matron, siege gang commander, slender and piledriver, but when he ran out of steam he just twinned out to close the game.

Similarly I drafted a Grixis control with some great counterspells, discard and Damnation but I also had the Tinker combo and Black Lotus to combo off t1 for a free win.

Another time, I drafted a Oath/Show and Tell to try and cheat out Gristlebrand but my friend drafted such a sweet Bw tokens deck that she ended up grinding me out.

At the same time on a basic level there's shit like an elfball deck somewhere in there floating somewhere between an Abzan midrange and a Jund midrange, and there's theoretically a Stoneblade/Countertop deck somewhere in there that's untested. MUD was a really great deck too since I threw in Winter Orb to lock lands down. There are also 5c Shrines and UW flyers to throw people off, but then the same people could also chance upon the Dark Depths combo and all those Land tutors and not really need to give a shit. So at the end of the day the Cube ends up working itself out.

I still need Yawgmoth's Will and the Miracles I think.

Bumping before I sleep.

>cube
>no power
>no academy, yawgmoth's, crypts and manadrains

why even play the game

cubetutor.com/viewcube/72819
My Cube so far (no Budget just cards i already habe)... I need to Cut down multicolor anderen add rares as Well as lands ( will only add Budget lands)

We don't talk about Cube because what I feel about Magic players and Limited in general extends also to Cube.

I feel that the vast majority of Magic players don't play Limited outside of prereleases; because that shit takes personal organization and effort. This has nothing to do with the fact that you need to have a box of product. You simply can't get 7 other people together to sit in one fucking space for 3-4 hours on a regular schedule without the store having to babysit them. You can't even ask people for one fucking Sunday morning a month to dedicate to draft; I tried with sign-up and everything to make sure multiples of 8 people; and some dipshit always flakes out or sleeps in so it's always only 7 or 15 people show up and it's just bad feels all around.

It takes real effort to learn Limited and repeated effort every new set to learn the format. And players are pussies who would rather avoid getting stomped than learn to get good. Hilariously most would rather build shit decks, lose constantly against netdecks, and moan when they could have used that money to get good at Limited.

That's why I feel we don't talk about Cube here. It takes an absurdly mature and large community to get Cube to take off and most communities can't even get 8 dedicated people together to regularly draft whatever product is already out there. You can't get bored enough to play Cube if every three months there's fresh hotness to draft. Additionally Wizards probably doesn't want to give players free reign to build their own Cubes online because in doing so they would probably eat into their revenues because people would just build set-Cubes and draft them and not draft the re-release of old drafts, so that makes it even harder to get it going.

but why

How many cards do I need to make a cube?

360 for a general cube, you can do less but most people reccomend at least 360.
540 if you want something different just about every time.
Don't forget to add fixing, even if you don't want to focus on gold cards, mosst games of regular magic are fun because of all the effects you can play, and you get the most effects from multicolored decks

This is unfortunately true, but a lot of players don't play limited because it can be expensive. Not everyone here lives in America At my LGS, the owner usually has to play so we can have enough people.

Mold Adder seems like a "feel bad" card for everyone, since it's either amazing or completely useless. There's also no strong theme or enough support for the ones I can easily notice.

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/vintage-cube-cardlist
>properly constructed

While WotC's list does include strategies like reanimator and storm(which usually needs Yawgmoth's WIll of Past in Flames to go off), the list misses some pretty powerful cards, no Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Gravetroll, Dread Return, or even Past in Flames.

Every cube should have some grave recursion, like an Eternal Witness or some shit but that doesn't make it a gravecube.

>Don't forget to add fixing, even if you don't want to focus on gold cards
Funny you mention that, because I plan to make a "fixed Alara-Reborn" cube that's nothing but Gold cards, hybrid-mana one-drops, and fixing.

While there are ways to draft personal cubes online, even that can be a waste of time. Aside from the pain of trying to get a draft to fire when it's all anonymous players who haven't paid any cash, drafting someones cube can be a bore.

Another message to the new cubers in this thread: Please balance your cubes. If the best card in your cube is Sol Ring and the second best card is Serra Angel the player who opens Sol Ring is going to outclass the other players.

Also put in more cards that win the game on their own within about 7 or less seven turns. Cards like Judge's Familliar are cute little tricks to play to many cards like that and your cube will slog.

Everyone has tried to build fixed-multi-color draft.

It doesn't work.

Unless everyone at the table likes to build 5-color bullshit and play against nothing but 5-color bullshit. Draft works because you can shift strategies when things go bad and make actual challenging and decisive decisions. When you have a mostly multi-color Cube the only good strategy is 5-color bullshit. During the draft there is absolutely no decision making to be made; it will be staggeringly obvious what is the right pick from the first pick in the first pack onward.

Don't waste your effort or money - every experienced Cube designer and player knows this.

oh yeah? could you post your decklists?

because my entire cube costs like $5

>Sol Ring

Sol Ring is literally better than power and as such I never play it in my cube. There's no decision making to be had with it, you should literally always pick it, and if you plop it down on T1 you win.

I almost forgot one thing... Since my group Likes Multiplayer Matches Wewould Focus on them. And in Multiplayer it could get pretty strong.
But I will keep that in mind, when looking for cards to Board Out...

Have you taken a look at Conspiracy cards? The vote cards are really fun, and so is the monarch mechanic. I had a blast when I drafted it.

Is there anything better than t1 Sol Ring? You can play a 4-drop turn 2 and it's harder to deal with than an elf since most people aren't going to maindeck artifact removal. It belongs strictly to very high-powered cubes.

A lot of people put Sol Ring in their cubes because it's an inexepensive powerful card with a ton of supply.

Also personally I think Library of Alexandria is the best card in any limited environment. Other strong contendors are obviously Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall, followed by Moxen

what do you guys think of Empyrial Armor in a pauper cube? I thought it was trash, but BCS you can pump your 2 drop to a 5/5 or something insane like that

No but I like the idea of conspiracys...
But how to include them?
Are they another Card Type to include
If so how many of them can YouTube Board in ?
Do they have a certain colour or follow some kind of scheme that you can Build arround?

Why not Empyrial Plate? And in my opinion auras aren't as bad in limited as they are in constructed. Forcing the opponent to block or taking a huge chunk of life can be really good even if it forces a 2 for 1

let's see BCS

t1 drop a land and a 2/1 - 5 cards in hand
t2 draw, drop another land, drop EP - 4 cards
t3 draw, equip, 5 cards in hand and a 7/6

damn [B]rodie

B-Balanced?

well that's BCS

worst case is you top deck it, which is far more likely to happen in pauper cube

to add on: most of the time it will be a worse Vulshok morningstar

I agree, and you have to keep cards in hand if you want it to do anything. I imagine it works best in a tempo deck, or maybe even a control without any good creatures that's looking for a finisher.

if you want that, go for Vulshok Gauntlets IMO

bump

Why? You can't untap the creature and it costs 3 to equip. I want to beat down with 1-2 creatures and Empyrial Plate while bouncing back blockers and countering spells.

Alright, I'll join in. I'm a returning player to magic, and want to build a cube from scratch, just cobbling together cards and mechanics that I like.

How do? Assuming I don't really have any pet mechanics considered yet.

I'm no expert, but here's what I'd do:
1. Read articles about it. For example:
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/how-build/building-your-first-cube-2016-05-19

turnonemagic.com/abasicguidetocube/

2. Take a look at lists, some explain the card choices.

3. Choose your favorite mechanics, some quirks, draft archetypes, decide the power level of your cube.

4. Start brewing.

The Professor has some great videos on Cube, and there are some pretty good lists floating around this thread. Just be aware, as mentioned earlier, to build a fun cube, what you really need is friends.

I wager it's one part critical mass of fun synergies, one part the best cards in your collection you were never going to build decks out of anyway, one part removal in every colour and fill up the rest with mana fixing.

- Start at 360 cards; don't grow that number until you figure shit out
- Restrict multi-color cards to 3 at most in each color combination; the last thing you want is multi-color cards being last-picks
- Don't worry too much about balancing the numbers in each color
- Break singleton; double up or triple up on cards that are useful for a lot of decks
- At least 40 fixing lands (20 fetches; 20 fetchable duals); 60 would be even better
- Don't include signets; I don't care how much you like them; let everyone fix with lands; don't let them fix and ramp with signets
- Don't fucking use real cards if you don't own them already
- Provide tokens and dice

The rest is up to you.

i mean as a finisher

>take a look at the pauper cube list
>don't really like the archetypes, even though the list itself is amazing
>still feel the need to fill it with some cards of other rarities

which one, the one in the OP?

This one: cubetutor.com/viewcube/5961

I really wanted to use an aristocrats strategy and a reanimator strategy, but i'm not good enough at making cubes to change it and not make everything unbalanced.

My intention was just to start with something like 15-25 cards that I liked, and build the cube with some of their mechanics in mind. Figure out power once I realize what I'm dealing with.

But thanks for the help, I'll take a look.

But that works too, you just have to think about how they fit into bigger strategies.

i'm new to magic, what is "aristocrats strategy"?

it's trash tbqh

yeah pauper really restricts a lot of archetypes and good cards in general.

still a hell of a lot better than standard drafts

I'm looking at making a Cube. Is there a Cube primer somewhere that can give me a good idea of where to start?

Proxies m8

Sacrifice creatures with death triggers toward stuff like carrion feeder and blood Bairn so that you get the Death trigger value AND your creature (the "Aristocrat", as it were) gets larger.

I'll throw my EDH groups' cube into the fray.
Its garbage

cubetutor.com/viewcube/72818

thank you so much for that helpful and constructive criticism you fucking dolt

And speaking of some of the shitty cards I like...
>Loxodon Heirarch
>Gnarlwood Dryad
>Elguad Shieldmate
>Plaxcaster Frogling
>Flickerwisp
>Truefire Paladin
>Gravedigger and Eternal Witness
>Tithe Drinker
>Ninja of the Deep Hours
>Nimbus Naiad[/url]
>Animus of Predation
>Weight Advantage
>Collective Brutality

These are all great choices. Strong cards that don't feel unfair and have synergies with many others.

Standard drafts aren't so bad, I had a lot of fun drafting OGW. Less so drafting AER because the rule is "pick green or lose" in that one.
That's exactly why I want to change it a bit. One day I'm going to post my cube and let you all humiliate me.

Two links were posted earlier, right here It's not much, but it's better than nothing, right?

In the interest of bumping the thread, I'll say that I absolutely hated OGW, and KLD/AER haven't been much fun either. It seems like only 3/8 people ever seem to end up with enjoyable decks.

what really killed AER for me was energy counters. don't see what they added.

bump before bed

if were gonna only have 1 cube thread every year might as well make it a long one

I've never played cube before, but I've been slowly getting a few friends into magic and think it sounds more fun then drafting.

Two questions:
1. Do you need 8 like limited, or could you make it work with as little as 4?
2. Is there a good cube always recommended?

We'd be playing over tabletop simulator so cost is not a factor.

You can play with 2 people dude, though yeah it drafts better with 6 - 8, google burn drafting/ways to draft with less than 8 people.

As for a "good cube" there's always Ben's Cube, the guy who runs cubetutor, though what you're looking to draft is entirely up to your playstyle. I find gimmicky drafts to be the best, like having to draft basic lands.

www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/1

Really now? You could draft any two-color pairings in OGW. I drafted a fun U/R Tempo. But I played against some opponents that were really frustrated with their draft, and I kept hearing about how they would've won if I didn't have Brutal Expulsion.
Innistrad is the best limited environment of standard, I just wish people would play drafts that aren't AER-AER-KLD

That's pretty much the main appeal of cube to me: it's like designing a fantasy set, but you'll actually get real people to play games of that set's limited with you. The drawback is that the set has to consist entirely out of reprints, but that's an acceptable trade.

A real test of autism is to create a set that feels like a new plane out of reprints. The challenge is that you can't use cards that explicitly refer to an existing plane.

no no no this is the real test

our cube is made out of cards that have a printing with the modern frame

Having only reprints isn't even that bad. Players love to see cards they've played with before.

People who say the old frame is better are wrong. Not saying that old art isn't great a lot of the time, but that frame was uggo.

Pauper list I run almost daily on xmage

cubetutor.com/viewcube/74268

running this now on the german server

Well it made it feel more like a Magical card game than a card game called Magic, but I agree, the new frame is better.

So who's picking stuff up for Cube this MM17? I already got Snaps as I mentioned earlier, but I will be getting the Fetches primarily for the Cube as well, and then Damnation. I wanna see if we can fit in a Jeskai Miracles deck too, since Sensei's divining top is already in my Cube.

Gonna get me some fetches, snappy, goyd, and lilly at the very least


what I'm more excited about though is all the downshifting to common

Pauper players seem very excited for the downshifts as well.
I'm posting just to bump this thread desu

same desu

The issue with Cube Threads, and I've posited this before, is that they're very similar to worldbuilding threads. Everyone wants to talk about their own cube, but nobody wants to talk about somebody elses' and since it's fairly private by nature (i.e. you can't show up with someone else' cube to a tournament or something) the threads naturally lead to stuff like that.

>the game is only fun if I can do broken shit

I never got this.

this is true, and also why dick rate threads fail

cubetutor.com/cubeblog/74850;jsessionid=B158288AC548718921E081BCE9F87BFB

So I started a list on this here cube. I have no idea what my plan is apart from adding cards that put me in a general direction.

>Innistrad is the best limited environment of standard
I agree wholeheartedly. Especially in EMN, where it was possible to give up on the deck you were building, go into another one, and the old cards were still viable.

The R/W deck was a thing of beauty, as was the "I pulled two Lone Riders, now to take Chaplain's Blessing to fuck with people" deck.

This is this guy:

I know nothing about Magic, thought this was literally about playing with a cube of cards, was intrigued and really confused that there were no tutorials on how to build the damn thing.

I don't get it, why would you bend and destroy your cards to build that? And what are those holes for? Inserting your hand and picking a card from a bunch of cards inside at random and them building a deck?

I don't undertand how this works

I don't know if you're funposting or not, but in case you're not, OP image is a red herring. A "cube" in Magic parlance is just a box of cards you draft from. Not like a literal cube.