Hiii, I recently started working with my LGS to create some Magic content and we drafted The Fallen Empires :) just wanted to share!

Was my first time ever interacting with the set, and while it was pretty janky it was fun!

What are the top 3 best green 5-cmc creatures in your opinion?

I'm currently building a relatively high-power 540 peasant cube that excludes several power outliers (Mother of Runes, Gut, Skullclamp) and I'm considering adding in a learn/lesson package because the mechanic is cool. However, I'm disappointed in how bad the small pool of learn cards is. There's maybe 4 or 5 that are playable? Is there still enough there between Strixhaven & Avatar?

If there isn't, what are y'alls perspectives on adding Learn or the lesson subtype to existing cards? What cards/types of cards should I be looking to add each of these mechanics to?

Just as a note, I don't want to break singleton in this cube, but you definitely could to support it without modifying any cards if you're fine breaking singleton.

Cube Archetypes:

UW: Blink (tap/untap subtheme thanks to Captain America)

UB: Draw 2/3 Control

BR: Aristocrats

RG: Lands Midrange

GW: +1/+1 Counters

WB: Reanimator/Attrition

UR: Non-creature Spells/Artifacts

GB: Graveyard Midrange (Insidious Roots subtheme)

RW: Go-Wide

UG: Ramp

I have an idea for a cube that would maybe simulate kitchen table magic from the infancy of the game. My pod wasn’t even born when this game began and we only play commander so I was thinking in order to interest them, I would make a cube where it’s balanced to play as a 4-5 player, 20 life multiplayer game (no commander).

I’ve gone up to Scourge looking for cards that affect each player or each opponent so that it’s hopefully not a 4 hour grindfest. I’ve found that of course that would mean Red Burn is supported. My only question is, will a cube like this really just be an old school goodstuff pile or is there a way to make some cohesive synergies within the cube?

These cards don’t seem as focused on specific strategies like the cards of today. I’ve gone through some Premodern meta decks for maybe some examples of deck strategies that would work with old cards and a lot of it is not standing out as particularly useful in a 4 player game or even draftable as an archetype in a cube environment. So if anyone could provide some guidance or even examples of similar cubes I’d greatly appreciate it!

I'm running a one time commander cube draft with 6 players, I don't really want to go out of my way and buy a lot of cards so I have this list

https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/f3c78160-b44d-4135-87e7-94910140a87e?view=mainboard#

I would be using the Commander Legends ruleset with 3 packs of 20 with seeded commanders included highlighted in yellow. I think the math is right but I'm looking for feedback on cards, this is my first commander cube so I don't know about my mana value spread or anything like that. I can add some cards from my other cubes here and there but this is my solid list right now!

A 4 mana swords that gives your opponent an evasive creature is pretty mid.

I've tried it a few times and it's pretty underwhelming.

Especially considering how good other 3 drops are, like Adaleine or Bombs, Skyclave, etc...

Edit: Sphinx's Tutelage, not revelation! Milling opponent out.

In my low-power cube, I have both mill and self-mill as archetypes. I like the "creature cards in both graveyards" text as a beater that can go in both, and I'm trying to decide between these two cards. Somnophage is cheaper and also enables both strategies, but Nighthowler is a 2-for-1 with bestow, and can be put on an evasive creature.

I have a Retro Vintage Cube (Alpha to Ravnica Allegiance) I would like to use Planechase cards in somehow. I have every plane printed between the original Planechase sets and MOM Commander. Have any of you guys used Planechase cards in your own cube? I am thinking in each game there should only be one plane shared between players with no planeswalking or very minimal planeswalking so there is some effect to build the game around. This plane/effect should be known to players during the draft. I’m not sure where to go from there. Any help is appreciated!

We made it to 100 episodes!! To celebrate we're taking a look back at my cube as it was when we releases our first episode back in May 2023, talking about what worked, and a lot about what didn't.

Hey all!!

I've made my first cube and am trying to come up with a catchier name. I originally built it to be a home for a favorite card of mine [[Mayhem Devil]] and I love sacrifice archetypes, but eventually it turned into a cube where all 10 archetypes are built around sacrificing permanents (to some degree) so the devil is out.

I originally just called it Sacrifice Cube but that is really basic and boring. Right now I've been calling it The Wood Chipper

Here is the list, Id love suggestions/ideas for other names and also if you want to look at the list and give any other feedback I'd love that too

Link

In paper I've mostly seen vintage cubes and pauper cubes, with no real theme other than being as powerful as powerful given the legal cards.

On the internet, I see plenty of strange and specific gimmick cubes, such as esper only cube, commander cube, etc. It's not clear to me whether most people actually play with these cubes over and over, or if it's more of the novelty that they build and then only use once or twice.

I rarely see discussion of other themes or gimmicks, but maybe that's just my own ignorance. Are there any themed cubes you own or have played that are genuinely fun and never get old?

A 3 mana [[Nekrataal]] variant kind of a black skyclave.

I build a Squadron Hawk cube. Mostly focused on xW pairs. Might add more Hawks.

Kinda themes:
GW Counters
UW Blink
BW Sacrifice
RW Combat

Also have a gate and lesson/learn package.

Just made this yesterday, will test at some point.

Hi everyone! I'm finally back to writing, and here I have a discussion on how you should draft cube. I think it's often espoused to draft the good cards, the best cards out of each pack early on, and to stay flexible, but what if there was a slightly different, more rewarding way to approach a draft? I think I've developed a way to do so that works for me, and I've called it Drafting with a Vision. Here's a link to my post about this approach if you want to give it a read: https://giffordj17.substack.com/p/drafting-cube-with-a-vision Happy cubing!

I made this as a capstone to a seven-month project designing my cube. I hope you all enjoy!

Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/Revscube

Rules and Guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vm3tQq_Fh5xp1xOINhVOPzgDmoOyekk/view?usp=drivesdk

thats about all i got. this sucks. landfall or perish and then hope you draw your landfall bombs before the other does.

Got to play with the card in a cube for the first time yesterday, and am just curious if any of yall have go to [[frankie peanuts]] questions or favorite interactions?

You can obviously signal a potential mono-color deck in your format via cards such as [[Gray Merchant of Asphodel]] or [[Nightmare]]. But you don't need to explicitly point at a game mechanic for it to matter. [[Phyrexian Obliterator]] is a creature you'll only ever play in Mono-black, or via cheating it out. Meanwhile, [[Lotleth Giant]] can be splashed incredibly easily, making it playable in any color of deck that likes to fill the graveyard.

We can use As-fan (how many cards of a certain mechanic/theme are expected to be found in a given pack) as a tool to look at sets with mono-color themes, and how many high color weight cards, as well as cards which explicitly benefit from mono-color decks, that were included to push those themes (Table 1). Across each of the mono-color themed sets, we see that most packs will have around one-and-a-half cards with high devotion. Combining both high devotion cards and those with explicit mono-color mechanics, this lands our as-fan somewhere around 2.3-2.7 for most monocolor sets. I would consider ELD a high deviation however, as a notable cycle, the CCCC hybrid uncommon cards, can be played in 2/5 monocolor decks instead of 1/5, meaning of the of the ten cards in the cycle, any given mono-color deck can play four of them.

These are also sets well-known for shoddy fixing lands overall, meaning if you were building with a primary-color theme in mind and wanted tools from a second, you'd be splashing at best. For example, You want to play [[WIngsteed Rider]] in your Theros limited deck while also maximizing [[Evangel of Heliod]] as a tool to gum up the ground. According to Frank Karsten (Table 2), in order to consistently cast the Rider on turn 3 (92% chance), you'll need 12 Plains. At 17 lands in the deck, if you wanted to include [[Medomai the Ageless]], you're still not consistently casting him on curve with 5 Islands, he's a splash at the very most.

Going back to Eldraine, for an optimized deck, we can consider spells with Adamant to have been cast "on curve" if we're able to trigger adamant the first turn the spell is able to be cast, making them CCC color spells. for MV 4 and 5 spells, the most frequent mana values with Adamant, this pushes the number of colored mana sources in the deck to 13-14. At 17 lands, this leaves once again 3-4 land slots available for a splash of another color, while triggering Adamant at the appropriate time. Of course, if these sets had more fixing lands, it would be easier to play a second color and still trigger adamant.

In Cube, we have the benefit of adding more fixing lands, or seeding our packs with one or more fixing lands each, to ensure a greater access to colors. At higher rarities, this is a genuine fix. For rarity-restricted cubes or ones emulating a limited feel, those fixing lands are going to be entering tapped. For the first few taplands, this won't be an issue. But as the density increases, suddenly you find yourself knocking yourself off-curve. For encouraging mono-color, this actually helps us, as it means they remain tools for splashing rather than ways to play every early game removal spell.

The idea of how many fixing lands is necessary in a deck to make a curve work is touched on in Andy Mangold's article: How Many Lands Should You Include in Your Cube? It demonstrates most issues cropping up in the 1 MV slot, and in cases where multiple mana symbols are involved. Aggro decks are hit particularly hard. A deck with both [[Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer]] and [[Kytheon, Hero of Akros]] wants at least four fixing lands, but taplands don't help cast either of them on turn 1, so they're a wash. Compared to a deck wanting to play [[Sylvan Caryatid]] and [[Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer]]. Same want of four fixing lands, but you have room to play one on your first turn. You lose tempo, but gain flexibility of multiple color's tools.

Taplands are the best tool for enabling splashes, rather than multicolor themes. Mangold shows us how many fixing lands would need to be in our cube in order to get these multicolor mana curves to work. For example, A deck that plays both [[Brimaz, King of Oreskos]] and [[Nissa, Who Shakes the World]] wants at least 5 or more fixing lands to accommodate the color weights of each. If that's the norm for decks in your cube, you'll want 60 fixing lands in your cube (assuming 67% of them are maindecked. The higher skill your pod, the more drafted lands will be played, the fewer lands you need.) As stated earlier though, too many taplands increases the chance of being stuck playing one on turn 3 or 5, knocking you off your curve.

By controlling the average color weight of our spells and the number of fixing lands available, we can encourage monocolor play. Taplands allow for splashing in monocolor play without sabotaging the theme altogether. One of my favorite things to include in such environments is off-color kicker and flashback as rewards for splashing in such formats.

How many colored mana sources does a card make your deck need before you consider it a mono-color payoff? Do you have a monocolor theme in your cube? If so, what's your cube's fixing land count, and are they mostly taplands?

Table 1: How much of a mono-color set's pack contributes to the mono-color theme by as-fan

Table 2: The minimum colored mana source count to consistently cast (on curve with a 89%+m% success rate) a spell. Frank Karsten, 2022, How Many Sources Do You Need to Consistently Cast Your Spells?, TCGPlayer

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/b1803e12-a286-4ed4-9984-1a65b3b512f7

I am looking to add some new cards and would prefer not making it larger than it is, at a glance what cards would you consider cutting?

The main themes are graveyard focus, reanimation, delirium, enchantments, manifest dread, sacrificing, spellslinging, and aggro (kind of). There are also some smaller packages but they are not really meant to be full archetypes.