Hip to be Square: The Cube

[Dr. Tom]

This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Hip to be Square: The Cube. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.

[Freakazoid]

Cube is the best format ever, and I agree: we need more cube articles. Everyone should have a cube, in the sense that everyone should have a pet deck. It's a casual necessity. Thanks for writing that, and thanks for Umezawa's Kitten Kabob. I must now own one. : P

[Jester's Tear]

I've been working on a cube for the last few weeks. I started off with someone else's cube list as my template, and as I've gone through building it I've eliminated what feel to be cards thrown in because they were once powerful (but are not anymore, and especially not in the cube environ) and adding my own preferred cards in.

I plan on having two variants of my cube. One normal, the other with "fun" cards. Cards such as Super Secret Tech (I do use foils whenever possible), Booster Tutor, and even a "wild" card that is a blank MtG card from the old pro tour decks. The rule on the "wild" card will be that it is any card from MtG as long as you know the mana cost and card text, and it can not be a card that has already been revealed during the current game.

I'm 73 cards away from my cube's completion, and I look forward to the next phase - taking it to the local game store, laying it out on one of the tables and going over it with my friends to see what else should be changed. I already have a small stockpile of cards that I feel are worthy, and the question will be to trade out cards or just make the cube bigger? Then it's the playtesting phase, where I get some of the best limited players at my store to assist in evaluation.

After that? Well, apparently word has gotten around. People that I've never mentioned the cube to have come up to me asking if it's completed yet. I easily have 20 people wanting to draft out of it. As mentioned in the article, I'm going to have to say no to some of them. Some will be allowed in later, but they aren't good limited players so they can't be involved in the initial testing. Some I just don't trust to return my cards. Some are just no fun to play with, and cube draft is supposed to be all about the fun!

A question to cube owners, though - while many of us go through and try to make our cube as unique as possible, do you do anything special with the land? Do you just sleeve up the first pile of basic land that you come across, or do you go for a theme?

With my cube, I use as much foil lands as possible. The remaining slots are filled by lands from either Portal, Starter Unglued or Unhinged, as well as the Euro lands. I wanted to use the old Arena land, but I only have one of each land and those are in my basic land binder.

[starwarer]

Why not Oxidize instead of Crumble? Is the ability to hit your own artifacts for life that good?

[bateleur]

Good article!

Multicolour in Cube is an interesting problem. In many ways I prefer Cubes with high levels of multicolour cards in them, but that requires plenty of good mana tools to make the resulting decks playable. Good to see the Blades making the cut in your cube, though. It will be interesting to see how long they manage to hold on to their slots.

[JrGMan2004]

Ok, so this is somewhat random and off topic, and more just a tip to the writer...

Please learn how to use the macro on your camera when taking pictures on cards.

If you don't know how, look for that little symbol of a flower. If it's on a turn wheel, turn it to the flower. If it's a button, push it til the flower shows up on your screen. Also, turn the flash off (Lightning bolt in side of one of those circle with a line through that tells you not to do stuff... ) This way, we get nice, glare free, in focus, up close pictures of your awesome cards you want to show off...

Besides that, great article. Thanks a ton... I had been wondering what Cube was and now I have a great suggestion to a friend that loves to have drunken draft parties... this would be a great way for all of us to have some fun and save a lot of money on draft packs.

[Dr. Tom]

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

Cube is the best format ever, and I agree: we need more cube articles.

I have another one in the works, and ideas jotted down for a bunch more. Patience, grasshopper.

Thanks for writing that, and thanks for Umezawa's Kitten Kabob. I must now own one. : P

You're welcome. I can't take credit for the graffiti of the Jitte that led to Umezawa's Kitten Kabob. That happened at a 5-Color tournament in PA. I think the best graffiti I did was turning Mother of Runes into Mother of Blofeld (because I thought she had a "Before I kill you, Mr. Bond..." look on her face).

Originally Posted by Jester's Tear

A question to cube owners, though - while many of us go through and try to make our cube as unique as possible, do you do anything special with the land? Do you just sleeve up the first pile of basic land that you come across, or do you go for a theme?

I would use Guru or APAC lands if they were affordable.

I considered using foil lands, but then you have the problem of foils potentially bending and warping more than non-foil cards, and I didn't want everyone to have marked cards in the cube drafts. The basics in my cube are all from Time Spiral and Lorwyn, though I eliminated pictures I didn't care for (like that very un-Swamplike Swamp in Lorwyn that has the bright flowers all over it... gah).

Originally Posted by starwarer

Why not Oxidize instead of Crumble? Is the ability to hit your own artifacts for life that good?

Potentially, I guess, but I've never done it. I wanted Crumble because it's older, more obscure, and (IMO) cooler, while still being a good card. Everyone knows Oxidize. Not everyone knows Crumble, and it's neat when people open cards they've either never seen or had forgotten about.

Originally Posted by bateleur

Good article!

Thanks!

Multicolour in Cube is an interesting problem. In many ways I prefer Cubes with high levels of multicolour cards in them, but that requires plenty of good mana tools to make the resulting decks playable.

It does. I think I have enough mana-fixing to make it work. Ideally, I think I want slightly more multicolored/hybrid cards than cards of any one color; right now, they're even. I'm sure I can find a few artifacts and nonbasics to ditch for them. The problem is that some color pairs (especially the enemy ones) are shallow. They have a few good cards, sometimes a few really good cards, but no depth after that. I'm thinking about cutting 5 or 10 cards from artifacts and nonbasics and adding one or two cards of each allied color pair. There's more to choose from in those pairs, after all. That would give me 80 or 85 gold cards.

Good to see the Blades making the cut in your cube, though. It will be interesting to see how long they manage to hold on to their slots.

I don't know. THey're fairly unique in terms of mana cost, so they don't really fit into color pairs. I guess I could shoehorn them in that way if I really had to. Some of the Blades are better than others, but none of them are bad. The other perk to having a few more gold cards is that it makes the Blades better, since they're "turned on" more often.

Originally Posted by JrGMan2004

Please learn how to use the macro on your camera when taking pictures on cards.

What can I say? Dammit it, Jim, I'm a doctor writer, not a photographer!

Thanks for the photo-taking tips, though. I'll remember them if I have to take pictures of cards again.

[SnoopDoggAtog]

Nice cube Tom...ours is somewhat similar, but we are on a tighter budget and do not have duals to spare. So players have some difficult choices to make about colours and tempo. This leads to nicely competitive quality cards not getting drafted until later. Some players in your regular group will whine about this. Since a cube is meant to be drafted, you have to listen to other people to some extent, but you have the final say.

We cube draft regularly with some older players who stopped around Scourge and they gave us some surprising feedback: "where's all the power? what are these janky artifacts and equipments?" So we took out some of the more whimsical stuff (Snake basket, Phyrexian processor, Soul Foundry etc.) and replaced them with proxied power, and discovered the cube was actually LESS fun to draft because the quality of picks dropped off considerably after the power was taken. The difficult choices went away and it became easier to go multicolour aggro, but only for one or two guys. Everyone else had the same difficult choices as before, except now they had no hope of getting into the top 4. Combo in the type 1 sense never materialized, thankfully. But the vintage players who asked for the changes, pointed this out as if it were a negative.

I suspect there is a balance between power and fun, and we have since taken out the proxies and put back in some of the fun cards, and some competitive quality rares. One former competitive player still slags our cube at every opportunity for not being high power. The rest seem to have adjusted to the cube well, and offer suggestions from time to time that we have run with.

We are still working on blue, which is problematic. Our blue lets you draft a pretty nice stable of midrange fliers, most with special abilities: Thieving Magpie, Somnophore, Rootwater Thief. Our countermagic is light - we have Counterspell but no Mana Drain, and plenty of splashable soft counters like Leak and Remand to go around. These are more than enough. I worry that mono-blue is too strong a draft strategy in an otherwise multicolour environment.

[ThatOneNinja]

Your article inspired my brother and I to make a cube today! We made it out of commons/uncommons and a few rare bombs we just had laying around. Its not a high powered cube, but I think it will still be plenty of fun and I can't wait to draft it.

Edit: How many basic lands should I sleeve up for an 8 man cube? I was thinking 45 of each, but I'm not sure.

[mohawkdan]

for those building their first cubes or those just wanting to try out new cards dont forget that proxies make things a lot easier and affordable.

[heroicraptor]

Go with Filigree Fracture.

[Usman]

Originally Posted by heroicraptor

Go with Filigree Fracture.

Don't, it's not really worth it due to it in generally not hitting cards that make it worth the extra mana and there are better options in cards like Krosan Grip and/or disenchants on a stick like Indrik Stomphowler, Wickerbough Elder and Nantuko Vigilante and even m10's Acidic Slime.

Overall, it was a pretty good article, but it didn't really bring anything new to the table that I haven't heard from other articles/videos, myself. It pretty much says "run the best cards" which, since it is the draw of the format, is pretty much only useful for those who haven't heard of the format.

The article doesn't really say anything like ensuring balance in colors, mana curves (which is a huge problem that I see in a lot of cubes: a lot have aggro strategies in cubes become rather useless overall due to the lack of support from bad mana curves and many decks/games end up becoming mainly midrange/control strategies) and things like that, which I think would have definitely helped.

There were some other things which were suboptimal like the rebel chain (would you run Ramosian Sargeant and Defiant Falcon as the only rebels in a white deck? I wouldn't, myself) and other cards which I think are suboptimal: Aura Blast (Ronom Unicorn is better), Serra Sphinx, Erg Raiders, the volvers and the like.

But, the more press for the best format in Magic ever, the better. There's a Cube subforum here (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=349) and I'd easily say it's the best cube discussion area online.

[JeroenC]

To some of the poeple with a cube, I was wondering, what is (estimated) the amount of money you've spent on it?

[iceage4life]

Originally Posted by JeroenC

To some of the poeple with a cube, I was wondering, what is (estimated) the amount of money you've spent on it?

No idea, mine is probably worth about six grand. I've spent a lot on it and traded for a lot of it. As far as cash for cards in the cube I'd guess $1000-2000 and I've traded for the rest.

[Seeker after Chaos]

Originally Posted by JeroenC

To some of the poeple with a cube, I was wondering, what is (estimated) the amount of money you've spent on it?

In terms of actual money, about $200 in one-to-five dollar increments for foils and foreign cards.

In terms of what the cube is worth, about $1000-$1500. I mean, I had four Cryptics and four Reflecting Pools and four textless Wraths after Regionals last year. I now have one of each, and they're all in the cube. Entire T2 decks have gotten traded for cube stuff.

Of course, my cube is unpowered and doesn't have the original duals in it, so your mileage may vary, but I'm pretty sure I could get $1k for it if I was to trade every card in it right now.