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I chat on IRC a lot (you can find me on EFnet in #themanadrain as well as #mtgvintage and a few other rooms) and a friend of mine recently designed his own Cube, then put up a bot so we could draft from it. This caused me to design my own Cube, and now I need to make some changes to it.

First of all: What’s a Cube? Some say it’s The Best Draft Format Ever. Imagine designing your own set of reprints, specifically for drafting. And when I say “set”, I don’t mean 145 cards or 210 cards or something like that. The minimal cube size expected is 360 cards – three packs per person at 15 cards a pack for 8 people. More than that allows for either (a) more drafters or (b) a better ‘rarity’ feel as not every card will be getting drafted.

So when I designed my Cube, I broke it down into 7 (or 8 depending on how you count) sections – one for each of the five colours, one for land, and one that is shared between artifacts and multicoloured cards. I’m not running any cards that are one colour to cast and a second to flash back, so what you see in the top right corner is what you get. Each category then got broken down into Commons, Uncommons, and Rares. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Each pack has 15 cards – 9 commons, 4 uncommons, and 2 rares.
  • Each monocolour has 32 commons, 15 uncommons, and 7 rares. There are 50 lands, 10 colorless nonland cards, and 30 multicoloured cards.
  • The monocoloured cards are broken up thematically. The commons are in four themes with 8 cards each, and the uncommons are five themes of three cards each. The rares I tried to make “7 themes of one card each” – in other words, I tried to make them cards that didn’t hit on any of the other themes.
  • The lands are basically: Common – regular duals, fetches, and one utility land per colour; Uncommon – manlands; Rare = 5-colour lands or colourless utility lands (think Wasteland or Maze of Ith).
  • The colourless cards are all common. The allied cards that require more than one colour to cast are all common, and two cards per allied pair. The hybrid cards, at one per allied pair, are uncommon. The cards that require opposing colours of mana, at one per opposing pair, are uncommon. The “shard-allied” cards, one per shard, are rare.
  • I don’t want the most powerful cards in each colour. This is not going to be a cube full of Moxen, Goyf, Jace the Money Sculptor, and the like. But I’m not looking at “reject rares” either. I am, however, adding a few cards that just make people shake their heads and go “wait, what??” One of my favourites in the list right now is Merchant Ship, in the list as one of Blue’s defensive creatures.
  • I’ve tried to make certain deck types playable but not overpowered. For example, Reanimator is playable and so is Storm, at least in theory. I’ve also made sure I added cards that were foils to each.

So far this is where my Cube is: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvPOtIvISj4KdFJzYXl0azZqYzBGTTY1TXdTR3ljS3c#gid=0

After a few practice 1v1 drafts and some random discussion from theoretical pack 1 pick 1 discussions, and reading some articles after, I’ve found a few concerns:

I also wanted to make mono-coloured decks playable and leave some “rewards” for people wanting to play them. Cards like Pentarch Paladin, Blue Sun’s Zenith, Sorin Markov, Moonveil Dragon, and Leatherback Baloth were all put in with an eye toward a person wanting to draft a mono-coloured strategy. Some of them (the Paladin and the Dragon, for example) have seen play while others (the Baloth and the Zenith) have sat on the sidelines. Then again, as I mentioned, I’ve only managed 1v1 drafting and playing with my Cube thus far.

So far, changes I’m looking at are as follows:

  • Sublime Archangel (White, Common) becomes Emancipation Angel
  • Restoration Angel (White, Common) becomes Kemba’s Skyguard
  • White Knight (White, Common) becomes Paladin en-Vec
  • Pongify (Blue, Rare) becomes Time Spiral
  • Jace, Memory Adept (Blue, Uncommon) becomes Ambassador Laquatus
  • Clone (Blue, Rare) becomes Tezzeret the Seeker
  • Launch (Blue, Common) becomes Sphinx of Lost Truths
  • Ragamuffyn (Black, Common) becomes Necropotence
  • O-Naginata (Artifact, Common) becomes Loxodon Warhammer

Any other suggestions would be welcome!