Well... THIS series is EXACTLY what I have been looking for! My "cube" is 720+ cards but doesn't have much in the way of guidance or form. I'll be taking it back to the drawing board, so to speak. I look forward to continued entries in this series!
I have just got into Cube building and have created two Cubes. Artifact Cube: tappedout.net/mtg-cube-drafts/artificial-cube-1/ and a Pauper Cube: tappedout.net/mtg-cube-drafts/captains-pauper-cube/ We are testing the Artifact Cube next Tuesday and I'm trying to watch all building tutorials to improve them both. ^_^
I'm not surprised really, I loved opening up and brewing with it, its janky nonsense that just sits well with me. Not the normal underpowered creatures and spells we've got atm. Maybe it's the theme that sits better with me right now. Plus Squirrels!
For the "Desert Cube" (www.cubetutor.com/thedesertcube) I ended up creating a red-heavy cube by imagining the color pie had become a wheel, with red at the center, and each red color pair as a spoke, and the non-red colors on the rim of the wheel. This required eliminating two color pairs. For the desert theme, I removed Simic and Orzhov, leaving in Izzet, Boros, Gruul, Rakdos as the red-centered pairs, and Azorius, Selesnya, Golgari and Dimir as the non-red pairs. The four "wedges" are Naya, Jeskai, Jund and Grixis, and are supported with the appropriate triland and one payoff card. Since you have to draft all lands you're going to use, the multicolor cards are significantly more powerful than the monocolor cards. Also, since red mana is more prevalent in the cube, red cards are generally less powerful than WUBG cards. There is a larger colorless portion of the cube, with a small number of colorless bombs, but mainly draft filler quality cards. The desert cube is intended to be drafted with a draft pool of 54 cards. You should end up with somewhere between 16 and 23 land cards, and the remainder in spells.
That sounds like a really cool idea! Definitely worth showcasing that on the mtgcube reddit page as I think people would love that concept. If you could send me another link to it that would be great as the link isn't working for me. Would love to see it!
I currently have a Pauper (420 cards), a multicoloured (360), a Vintage (540), a Ravnica block (360), a travel (180) and an early 90s nostalgia cube (360). Lol ya...I'm pretty nuts about cube. My playgroup also made a peasent cube together. I think Pauper is an awesome idea because it is super restrictive. The hard part is making the guilds work together. You need redundancy and sometimes it just isn't there. Simic has very few archetypes at common and black is often aggro-ized (I feel) because of rakdos and orzhov. At least, Red and white pauper cards don't seem to meld amazingly with black unless it's more aggro to midrange. Good luck with the project! I can't wait to hear what you do with it! As you may already know, the two authorities on the subject are Adam Styborski and Usman. I built my cube based on Adam's originally but since then have moved on. Usman's is really unique and pretty awesome ;)
Sorry for the spamming but I also found this pretty thorough outline of pauper archetypes a couple of weeks back: www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/articles-podcasts-and-guides/623913-pauper-archetype-vs-power-level-does-it-matter
That is a really great article - very interesting read and certainly great for anyone looking to learn more on the subject. Thank you for sharing! I'll certainly take a look through your pauper cube, always interested to see what everyone else has built. I'm not sure you have enough cube's there, but then again, can you ever have too many cubes? (I think you've got the right idea there!) I agree that adam and Usman are two great people to read articles from in terms of pauper - while I don't agree with some of adam's choices he's helped to really bring pauper cube's to a larger audience which is fantastic!
I’ve actually built a free for all Cube for 4-8 players where players draft a cube much like a Brawl deck. Recurring themes in my Cube are Legendary creatures, +1/+1 counters and auras, equipments as well as loads of political cards, cards that involve multiple choices and players and Commander-specific tools.
Here is the link to my Origins STD cube www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/68451. My skeleton was prorated down by card count. Separated for color and spell type. I included multicolored cards, but I didn’t spend enough time balancing the colors of the guilds or color pairs. I completely missed BW multicolor cards. My next step will be to fix my multicolored card pool for more proportional representation. Thanks for the great video!!
Would you consider doing a video about Commander cubes? I have one as a pet project online that I will probably never build in reality due to costs, but the idea behind it intrigues me a lot. Conspiracy proved that multiplayer drafts are fun, but combining them with a large and powerful enough card pool to support 100 card decks is where I find true satisfaction. :D The big question is probably how to handle Commanders - some people do a small draft of legendary creatures first, but from what I have tried, simply adding them into the card pool and grabbing them as you go works just as well (if not better) as long as there are enough choices - I use 5 per two- and three-color combination, 5 four and 5 five-colored ones and whatever is good enough to include in mono color (no dedicated legend slots there). For 4 players, to get 100 cards, 8 packs of 15 for a normal draft seem to be a good number, but more variance seems to be key here, especially with 110 slots already taken up by multicolor commanders alone, so I am shooting for 1000 cards ;).
I'd love to look into commander cube's - set up correctly it could be a lot of fun and I really do like the multiplayer aspect of that. You're right conspiracy was fantastic and I was a bit unhappy how quickly conspiracy 2 passed everyone by due to the next set of spoilers coming 2 weeks after the release. So many great cards in there! Seems that you've got your idea there pretty spot on, the hard part I would guess is being able to have enough variance in the cards to support the "commanders" they choose while still being good cards in their own rights. I'll certainly have to have a look at your cubetutor when you've built it and 1000 cards definitely seems reasonable. I'd personally go with the commander draft first and going from there, but I guess there is no harms changing up when you're drafting as there will end up being a lot of legendary creatures in a cube.
I'm building a Commander Cube with great success in playtesting! Players draft a deck containing exactly 50 cards (includes Commander), roughly 20 lands and 30 spells Each player gets 4 packs of 15 cards: • First two rounds contain two legendary creatures (from a seperate pile) and 13 cube cards per booster • Third and fourth rounds contain two nonbasic lands (from a seperate pile) and 13 cube cards per booster • Players start with 40 life • 21 Commander damage My cube has 32 legendary creatures to choose from: The original Elder Dragons, the dragon cycle from Invasion, the cycle from Future Sight, the cycle of multicolor abilities from Khans lastly, color Identity matters! My cube has a few themes: Dragons, morphs, multiplayer/politics spells and loads of big spells (but not the OP staple ones)
I've recently begun taking a crack at building a cube because my friends and I love the limited style of play but don't always want to be dropping money on drafting new sets. I made a Theros Peasant Cube as my first which has been fun and gave me a taste for building a cube. I recently took a stab at building a new Cube more towards current standard cards since most of the group really got back into MtG with the release of Kaladesh. So far we've drafted it twice with some interesting play/decks. Here's my list www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/108917 love to have some feedback.
How about a cube that focuses on 3 color combos with: 40 of each mono 45 guild cards (7 per combo) 45 tri color (7 per combo) 35 artifact 35 non basic land
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me! I'd want to make sure that I have a fair amount of fixing for this. Minimum bounce, life and signets. Probably guildgates too.
Hello, Mark! I finished watching the build along series, and I want to say they're great. Thank you very much!:) But there's still one question I'm concerned about. Many people advise to start creating a cube with thinking of its core. But I can't understand what exactly the core of a cube or a set is. Does this word cover the anchor (or CORE) cards for archetypes, or there's some another meaning?
So there seem to be a lot of different ways people explain it, but for me once you know the size you want, then you're looking at the cube's skeleton do decide how it's going to be made up. Then its deciding what archetypes/roles you want each colour to have and from there you can find cards that fit this. I believe that the "core" as people may put it, is these steps combined. As without knowing the size or how you're going to try and make it up, you won't know what cards you'll need. Once these stages are done, then like you said, it's time to find anchor cards and build up a the cube structure before expanding with narrower cards or more archetypes. Hope that's some help.
Hey there!! I've been wanting to build a unstable cube and already ordered one of every card in the set as a start. What do you think would be a best rout: Doing it singleton and adding up cards that may go well with the set? or Buying multiples of the uncommons and commons so to recreate the drafting environment? Thanks in advance
Personally if you wanted to just have unstable and no others I'd go the 4x commons / 2x uncommons / 1x rare / 1x mythic route as it would make the set play better as a whole (especially with the contraptions) - but if you were going to try and make an un cube out of all of the sets, then singleton is the way forward there. That being said, no harm in trying the singleton route, with additional cards like you said and then trying the multiples later on if you feel it doesn't work out.
I like to build my first cube so Ive got a question: I want to build a cube that feels a litle bit like a vintage cube(there should be archtypes but with many overlaps, so players are able to build "there one deck). My idea was to build an archtype for each tree color combinatio(5 creature based 5 non creature based) becouse I thought there would be more overlap between the archtypes and the players have more freedom in building/drafting theire deck. Does this make sense?
I recently completed planning a Pauper cube of my own at 360 cards, just need to acquire the missing cards now to actually play it. :) What are your thoughts about Storm in Pauper cubes? I chose to use all three available pay-off cards (Grapeshot, Temporal Fissure and Goblinstorm) and simply made sure to support "Spells matter" in izzet (with storm as part of the plan), with some indirect support in other colors like rebound, suspend and a focus on blue free mana spells and cheap spells in general. I think this is an archetype that really begins to suffer once the card pool grows beyond 100% visibilty per draft or when played with 4 or fewer people - do you have experience with this?
It's definitely possible to create a decent storm deck in pauper, I just wouldn't really want to play it. I have no issues in using empty the warrens, but I'm not sure I'd want to play the others, plus there are better removal spells available to us too! I'd probably say as addons to a burn/spells matter deck with the likes of nixiv cyclops, wee dragonauts, kiln fiend and so on certainly be interesting to play. Huge fan of playing izzet here ^^ Have you tried a different drafting method such as glimpse, pancake or sight drafting with 4 or less people? I find these options work out well to be able to see a lot more of the cards and build a stronger deck. I'll need to create the video on the sight draft, but the guidelines are in the description of the cube size video if you wanted to check that out.
Storm is very hard to do in Pauper. Most cubers say it isn't worth it. I put a minor storm theme in mine but at 420 cards, it's hard to make it happen. Most likely it will be relegated to "Izzet spells matters" to make the engine turn. www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/28203 There are also some interesting articles on making Storm work with artifacts. I can't seem to find them with a simple google search but if you dig, you will find them.
You already know my cube ;) www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/68805 It doesnt follow any rules because it was built and refined over many many games. Theres probably a slight imbalance of green since the rainbow section includes a few green cards. But I find the successful decks are Grixis (what i always play). Aggro does ok too with Naya. Sadly, I need to find some more power in the khans tri colours. Not many people build sultai, jeskai, etc.
+Teemo XDD I'd say look the glimpse draft which is easily expandable to 3 people. One of my favourites personally. The guide is in the cube for two playlist. There might be others there you like the look of which you could expand to 3 people easily too! Hope that helps.
Is winston draft expandable to 3? Wont it be awkward? I enjoy winston draft as a 1v1 draft format and I was thinking of using it as our drafting method for 3.
I don't see why you couldn't do a winston draft with 3 people with adding in the additional 45 cards. You'll just have to attempt to figure out what both players are trying to build rather than one when leaving piles. I'd say give it a go and worst case it doesn't work out well you can try another.
That non-basic land (and filler artifact) count seems low for a fully multicolor cube. Isn't fixing way more important? Hybrid deserves at least a mention here since it actually makes those colors more flexible, not less. Finally, picking themes will go hand in hand with picking your shard colors. For example, if WRB end up token colors, you could consider arranging the colors in UWBRG order or something to use Ponyback Brigade. Depending on the power of your cube, you may decide not to include any of the lower-powered 3-color commons.
Fixing is extremely important incubes, but yes a lot more so in multicolour, but if you've got 3x dual land options, cycle lands, terramorphic expanse, evolving wilds, ash barrens and signets you tend to be ok alongside other mana rocks. Hybrid mana I tend to have differing opinions on in terms of colour equality and where I'd put them in cube positions, but yes it does open up a lot more flexibility than having just x,y and z mana neede on the cards. As long as you're able to justify where each of the cards go and why to make it balanced then that's great. With your last point it shows why the planning stage is so important, I'm sure fine tuning would be needed no matter the initial skeleton you end up choosing. These are just outlines that people can use as a base and develop as their idea's flourish and deck types they are trying to support. I know my template certainly changed the more I've been planning this cube and probably may well continue to do so.
Awesome video, excellent information about the various cube shells. I have a pauper cube as well, been working on it for a few years now, www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/11076. I have a few self restrictions and have not included a few types of cards b/c they did not lead to fun and/or interactive games (i.e. shadow and hexproof with only a couple of exceptions).
+Chris Moore I can understand you not including shadow and hexproof, shadow is one I'm on the fence about right now in my initial draft. But with the other power levels of what I'm going for it might not be that unfun. Testing will sort that out. Personally there are enough ways to remove creatures in pauper I'm sure it'll work out. I'll definitely be interested to see which cards you put into your cube. Will check it out and give it a draft when I get home.
I agree that there is a lot of removal at common which helps to offset their impact. I used to run all of the shadow and hexproof critters. We made a decision to remove them and haven't really looked back. I do not fault anyone for running them, it just wasn't for us :) I have also found that one of my favorite commons, Disturbed Burial, was a bit too much as well and we ended up removing it. There was really no way for the other player to interact with it short of having a counterspell. Anyway thanks for the reply and look forward to seeing your cube as it progresses!
I guess if your playgroup is happier without them then that's all that matters. That's what I do like about cube, each is personal to each other. Your pauper cube certainly looks like a lot of fun! Any additions coming from Rivals?
There are a few that I am currently considering, Goblin Trailblazer (2 power with evasion, seems ok to me), Grasping Scoundrel (a one drop with two power on offense is hard to come by in pauper so I will try this one out, it's weaker on defense but the deck that wants this won't care), Kitesail Corsair (should be an upgrade from the Welkin Turns of the world), and Hardy Veteran (this two drop should play with cards like pestilence, I think it will do well). I also may test the Overgrown Armasaur since I do have quite a few pingers in the cube, not sure about how it will do though since the payoff (a 1/1 saproling) may not be good enough for an otherwise 4/4 vanilla critter for 5.
Great video! I’m interested in seeing how this cube turns out. As for my own cube, I’d call it a basic unpowered good stuff cube. Here’s a link if you’re interested: www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/24300
Nothing wrong at all with unpowered good stuff! Managed to draft a pretty decent red deck just now with it - just needed to pull a sulphuric vortex but can't win them all!
Great video! It's always interesting to see what everyone does. I had my cube at 540, but have since taken it down to 360. I am working with 50 cards on each color, 40 multicolored, 30 colorless, and 40 nonbasics. It was much more focused on multicolored when I had 540, with 80 multicolored cards. A lot of feedback from my playgroup, Reddit comments, and Milo The Gathering went into streamlining the cube more, and it's always evolving! www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/85977
+Masonzero Digital Works that's the best thing about cube. It's a living thing that never stays still for long. I'm always looking for cards to improve mine and ways I could do things better. I think if you don't need the larger size then it is worth reducing. It increases the average power level and decks as a result. I'll certainly take a look when I get home. Thanks for sharing!
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Well... THIS series is EXACTLY what I have been looking for! My "cube" is 720+ cards but doesn't have much in the way of guidance or form. I'll be taking it back to the drawing board, so to speak. I look forward to continued entries in this series!
I'm glad you are finding it useful - Best of luck on the restructure of your cube!
This is such a clever name for a channel. Love it. subbed
Thank you for this video. It gives first timers like myself a great jumping off point. Also great to see that you are back making content.
I have just got into Cube building and have created two Cubes. Artifact Cube: tappedout.net/mtg-cube-drafts/artificial-cube-1/ and a Pauper Cube: tappedout.net/mtg-cube-drafts/captains-pauper-cube/
We are testing the Artifact Cube next Tuesday and I'm trying to watch all building tutorials to improve them both. ^_^
This is a good 'bare bones' look at beginning any cube pauper or other!
Thanks, onto the fun topics next!
Thanks for all the info about cube building, I will certainly try and follow your advice when building my Unstable Cube in the near future!
That sounds like a great project there bud - I know I'd love to do one in the future as the thing we bring out for a laugh!
Yeah, we are really enjoying that set, much more actually than the normal sets :D
I'm not surprised really, I loved opening up and brewing with it, its janky nonsense that just sits well with me. Not the normal underpowered creatures and spells we've got atm. Maybe it's the theme that sits better with me right now. Plus Squirrels!
For the "Desert Cube" (www.cubetutor.com/thedesertcube) I ended up creating a red-heavy cube by imagining the color pie had become a wheel, with red at the center, and each red color pair as a spoke, and the non-red colors on the rim of the wheel. This required eliminating two color pairs. For the desert theme, I removed Simic and Orzhov, leaving in Izzet, Boros, Gruul, Rakdos as the red-centered pairs, and Azorius, Selesnya, Golgari and Dimir as the non-red pairs. The four "wedges" are Naya, Jeskai, Jund and Grixis, and are supported with the appropriate triland and one payoff card. Since you have to draft all lands you're going to use, the multicolor cards are significantly more powerful than the monocolor cards. Also, since red mana is more prevalent in the cube, red cards are generally less powerful than WUBG cards. There is a larger colorless portion of the cube, with a small number of colorless bombs, but mainly draft filler quality cards.
The desert cube is intended to be drafted with a draft pool of 54 cards. You should end up with somewhere between 16 and 23 land cards, and the remainder in spells.
That sounds like a really cool idea! Definitely worth showcasing that on the mtgcube reddit page as I think people would love that concept. If you could send me another link to it that would be great as the link isn't working for me. Would love to see it!
Life Begins At 20 www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/48060
Give it a test draft if you have time. 4 packs of 14 works well.
Glad you have done the cube math for me :D ! I will use this knowledge to improve my cube hopefully
If I've managed to help one person from this series I've done my job ^^
I currently have a Pauper (420 cards), a multicoloured (360), a Vintage (540), a Ravnica block (360), a travel (180) and an early 90s nostalgia cube (360). Lol ya...I'm pretty nuts about cube. My playgroup also made a peasent cube together. I think Pauper is an awesome idea because it is super restrictive. The hard part is making the guilds work together. You need redundancy and sometimes it just isn't there. Simic has very few archetypes at common and black is often aggro-ized (I feel) because of rakdos and orzhov. At least, Red and white pauper cards don't seem to meld amazingly with black unless it's more aggro to midrange. Good luck with the project! I can't wait to hear what you do with it! As you may already know, the two authorities on the subject are Adam Styborski and Usman. I built my cube based on Adam's originally but since then have moved on. Usman's is really unique and pretty awesome ;)
My current pauper list (though I am definitely not an authority on the subject): www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/28203
Sorry for the spamming but I also found this pretty thorough outline of pauper archetypes a couple of weeks back: www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/articles-podcasts-and-guides/623913-pauper-archetype-vs-power-level-does-it-matter
That is a really great article - very interesting read and certainly great for anyone looking to learn more on the subject. Thank you for sharing!
I'll certainly take a look through your pauper cube, always interested to see what everyone else has built.
I'm not sure you have enough cube's there, but then again, can you ever have too many cubes? (I think you've got the right idea there!) I agree that adam and Usman are two great people to read articles from in terms of pauper - while I don't agree with some of adam's choices he's helped to really bring pauper cube's to a larger audience which is fantastic!
I’ve actually built a free for all Cube for 4-8 players where players draft a cube much like a Brawl deck. Recurring themes in my Cube are Legendary creatures, +1/+1 counters and auras, equipments as well as loads of political cards, cards that involve multiple choices and players and Commander-specific tools.
Here is the link to my Origins STD cube www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/68451.
My skeleton was prorated down by card count. Separated for color and spell type. I included multicolored cards, but I didn’t spend enough time balancing the colors of the guilds or color pairs. I completely missed BW multicolor cards. My next step will be to fix my multicolored card pool for more proportional representation.
Thanks for the great video!!
Would you consider doing a video about Commander cubes? I have one as a pet project online that I will probably never build in reality due to costs, but the idea behind it intrigues me a lot.
Conspiracy proved that multiplayer drafts are fun, but combining them with a large and powerful enough card pool to support 100 card decks is where I find true satisfaction. :D
The big question is probably how to handle Commanders - some people do a small draft of legendary creatures first, but from what I have tried, simply adding them into the card pool and grabbing them as you go works just as well (if not better) as long as there are enough choices - I use 5 per two- and three-color combination, 5 four and 5 five-colored ones and whatever is good enough to include in mono color (no dedicated legend slots there).
For 4 players, to get 100 cards, 8 packs of 15 for a normal draft seem to be a good number, but more variance seems to be key here, especially with 110 slots already taken up by multicolor commanders alone, so I am shooting for 1000 cards ;).
I'd love to look into commander cube's - set up correctly it could be a lot of fun and I really do like the multiplayer aspect of that. You're right conspiracy was fantastic and I was a bit unhappy how quickly conspiracy 2 passed everyone by due to the next set of spoilers coming 2 weeks after the release. So many great cards in there!
Seems that you've got your idea there pretty spot on, the hard part I would guess is being able to have enough variance in the cards to support the "commanders" they choose while still being good cards in their own rights. I'll certainly have to have a look at your cubetutor when you've built it and 1000 cards definitely seems reasonable. I'd personally go with the commander draft first and going from there, but I guess there is no harms changing up when you're drafting as there will end up being a lot of legendary creatures in a cube.
I'm building a Commander Cube with great success in playtesting!
Players draft a deck containing exactly 50 cards (includes Commander), roughly 20 lands and 30 spells
Each player gets 4 packs of 15 cards:
• First two rounds contain two legendary creatures (from a seperate pile) and 13 cube cards per booster
• Third and fourth rounds contain two nonbasic lands (from a seperate pile) and 13 cube cards per booster
• Players start with 40 life
• 21 Commander damage
My cube has 32 legendary creatures to choose from: The original Elder Dragons, the dragon cycle from Invasion, the cycle from Future Sight, the cycle of multicolor abilities from Khans
lastly, color Identity matters!
My cube has a few themes: Dragons, morphs, multiplayer/politics spells and loads of big spells (but not the OP staple ones)
I've recently begun taking a crack at building a cube because my friends and I love the limited style of play but don't always want to be dropping money on drafting new sets. I made a Theros Peasant Cube as my first which has been fun and gave me a taste for building a cube. I recently took a stab at building a new Cube more towards current standard cards since most of the group really got back into MtG with the release of Kaladesh. So far we've drafted it twice with some interesting play/decks. Here's my list www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/108917 love to have some feedback.
How about a cube that focuses on 3 color combos with:
40 of each mono
45 guild cards (7 per combo)
45 tri color (7 per combo)
35 artifact
35 non basic land
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me! I'd want to make sure that I have a fair amount of fixing for this. Minimum bounce, life and signets. Probably guildgates too.
Life Begins At 20 yeah I think it would have to have tons of fixing I am thinking that some of the 5 color lands could be used in land slots
Hello, Mark!
I finished watching the build along series, and I want to say they're great. Thank you very much!:)
But there's still one question I'm concerned about. Many people advise to start creating a cube with thinking of its core. But I can't understand what exactly the core of a cube or a set is. Does this word cover the anchor (or CORE) cards for archetypes, or there's some another meaning?
So there seem to be a lot of different ways people explain it, but for me once you know the size you want, then you're looking at the cube's skeleton do decide how it's going to be made up. Then its deciding what archetypes/roles you want each colour to have and from there you can find cards that fit this. I believe that the "core" as people may put it, is these steps combined. As without knowing the size or how you're going to try and make it up, you won't know what cards you'll need.
Once these stages are done, then like you said, it's time to find anchor cards and build up a the cube structure before expanding with narrower cards or more archetypes.
Hope that's some help.
Yes, that helped me clarify the process, thank you once again!
Good video mark ,I’m sorry I haven’t been watching for a while I lost my iPad, and I changed my name again
+Away Ocean thank you! Don't worry, I don't expect every video to be watched bud.
Hey there!! I've been wanting to build a unstable cube and already ordered one of every card in the set as a start. What do you think would be a best rout:
Doing it singleton and adding up cards that may go well with the set? or
Buying multiples of the uncommons and commons so to recreate the drafting environment? Thanks in advance
Personally if you wanted to just have unstable and no others I'd go the 4x commons / 2x uncommons / 1x rare / 1x mythic route as it would make the set play better as a whole (especially with the contraptions) - but if you were going to try and make an un cube out of all of the sets, then singleton is the way forward there.
That being said, no harm in trying the singleton route, with additional cards like you said and then trying the multiples later on if you feel it doesn't work out.
You're Welcome
I like to build my first cube so Ive got a question: I want to build a cube that feels a litle bit like a vintage cube(there should be archtypes but with many overlaps, so players are able to build "there one deck). My idea was to build an archtype for each tree color combinatio(5 creature based 5 non creature based) becouse I thought there would be more overlap between the archtypes and the players have more freedom in building/drafting theire deck. Does this make sense?
No, it does not.
I recently completed planning a Pauper cube of my own at 360 cards, just need to acquire the missing cards now to actually play it. :)
What are your thoughts about Storm in Pauper cubes? I chose to use all three available pay-off cards (Grapeshot, Temporal Fissure and Goblinstorm) and simply made sure to support "Spells matter" in izzet (with storm as part of the plan), with some indirect support in other colors like rebound, suspend and a focus on blue free mana spells and cheap spells in general.
I think this is an archetype that really begins to suffer once the card pool grows beyond 100% visibilty per draft or when played with 4 or fewer people - do you have experience with this?
It's definitely possible to create a decent storm deck in pauper, I just wouldn't really want to play it. I have no issues in using empty the warrens, but I'm not sure I'd want to play the others, plus there are better removal spells available to us too! I'd probably say as addons to a burn/spells matter deck with the likes of nixiv cyclops, wee dragonauts, kiln fiend and so on certainly be interesting to play. Huge fan of playing izzet here ^^
Have you tried a different drafting method such as glimpse, pancake or sight drafting with 4 or less people? I find these options work out well to be able to see a lot more of the cards and build a stronger deck. I'll need to create the video on the sight draft, but the guidelines are in the description of the cube size video if you wanted to check that out.
Storm is very hard to do in Pauper. Most cubers say it isn't worth it. I put a minor storm theme in mine but at 420 cards, it's hard to make it happen. Most likely it will be relegated to "Izzet spells matters" to make the engine turn. www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/28203
There are also some interesting articles on making Storm work with artifacts. I can't seem to find them with a simple google search but if you dig, you will find them.
Storm is cool, but izzet blitz is more consistent.
You already know my cube ;)
www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/68805
It doesnt follow any rules because it was built and refined over many many games. Theres probably a slight imbalance of green since the rainbow section includes a few green cards. But I find the successful decks are Grixis (what i always play). Aggro does ok too with Naya. Sadly, I need to find some more power in the khans tri colours. Not many people build sultai, jeskai, etc.
Any suggestions for a 3 man draft. I only have 2 friends that play magic.
+Teemo XDD I'd say look the glimpse draft which is easily expandable to 3 people. One of my favourites personally. The guide is in the cube for two playlist. There might be others there you like the look of which you could expand to 3 people easily too! Hope that helps.
Is winston draft expandable to 3? Wont it be awkward? I enjoy winston draft as a 1v1 draft format and I was thinking of using it as our drafting method for 3.
I don't see why you couldn't do a winston draft with 3 people with adding in the additional 45 cards. You'll just have to attempt to figure out what both players are trying to build rather than one when leaving piles. I'd say give it a go and worst case it doesn't work out well you can try another.
Okay but why does the buzz lightyear pop only have one eye?
That non-basic land (and filler artifact) count seems low for a fully multicolor cube. Isn't fixing way more important?
Hybrid deserves at least a mention here since it actually makes those colors more flexible, not less.
Finally, picking themes will go hand in hand with picking your shard colors. For example, if WRB end up token colors, you could consider arranging the colors in UWBRG order or something to use Ponyback Brigade. Depending on the power of your cube, you may decide not to include any of the lower-powered 3-color commons.
Fixing is extremely important incubes, but yes a lot more so in multicolour, but if you've got 3x dual land options, cycle lands, terramorphic expanse, evolving wilds, ash barrens and signets you tend to be ok alongside other mana rocks.
Hybrid mana I tend to have differing opinions on in terms of colour equality and where I'd put them in cube positions, but yes it does open up a lot more flexibility than having just x,y and z mana neede on the cards. As long as you're able to justify where each of the cards go and why to make it balanced then that's great.
With your last point it shows why the planning stage is so important, I'm sure fine tuning would be needed no matter the initial skeleton you end up choosing. These are just outlines that people can use as a base and develop as their idea's flourish and deck types they are trying to support. I know my template certainly changed the more I've been planning this cube and probably may well continue to do so.
Awesome video, excellent information about the various cube shells. I have a pauper cube as well, been working on it for a few years now, www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/11076. I have a few self restrictions and have not included a few types of cards b/c they did not lead to fun and/or interactive games (i.e. shadow and hexproof with only a couple of exceptions).
+Chris Moore I can understand you not including shadow and hexproof, shadow is one I'm on the fence about right now in my initial draft. But with the other power levels of what I'm going for it might not be that unfun. Testing will sort that out. Personally there are enough ways to remove creatures in pauper I'm sure it'll work out.
I'll definitely be interested to see which cards you put into your cube. Will check it out and give it a draft when I get home.
I agree that there is a lot of removal at common which helps to offset their impact. I used to run all of the shadow and hexproof critters. We made a decision to remove them and haven't really looked back. I do not fault anyone for running them, it just wasn't for us :) I have also found that one of my favorite commons, Disturbed Burial, was a bit too much as well and we ended up removing it. There was really no way for the other player to interact with it short of having a counterspell. Anyway thanks for the reply and look forward to seeing your cube as it progresses!
I guess if your playgroup is happier without them then that's all that matters. That's what I do like about cube, each is personal to each other. Your pauper cube certainly looks like a lot of fun! Any additions coming from Rivals?
There are a few that I am currently considering, Goblin Trailblazer (2 power with evasion, seems ok to me), Grasping Scoundrel (a one drop with two power on offense is hard to come by in pauper so I will try this one out, it's weaker on defense but the deck that wants this won't care), Kitesail Corsair (should be an upgrade from the Welkin Turns of the world), and Hardy Veteran (this two drop should play with cards like pestilence, I think it will do well). I also may test the Overgrown Armasaur since I do have quite a few pingers in the cube, not sure about how it will do though since the payoff (a 1/1 saproling) may not be good enough for an otherwise 4/4 vanilla critter for 5.
Great video! I’m interested in seeing how this cube turns out. As for my own cube, I’d call it a basic unpowered good stuff cube. Here’s a link if you’re interested:
www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/24300
Nothing wrong at all with unpowered good stuff! Managed to draft a pretty decent red deck just now with it - just needed to pull a sulphuric vortex but can't win them all!
Great video! It's always interesting to see what everyone does. I had my cube at 540, but have since taken it down to 360. I am working with 50 cards on each color, 40 multicolored, 30 colorless, and 40 nonbasics. It was much more focused on multicolored when I had 540, with 80 multicolored cards. A lot of feedback from my playgroup, Reddit comments, and Milo The Gathering went into streamlining the cube more, and it's always evolving! www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/85977
+Masonzero Digital Works that's the best thing about cube. It's a living thing that never stays still for long. I'm always looking for cards to improve mine and ways I could do things better. I think if you don't need the larger size then it is worth reducing. It increases the average power level and decks as a result. I'll certainly take a look when I get home. Thanks for sharing!