What Is Cube in Magic: The Gathering?

What is cube in MTG?

Cube is a customizable DIY draft format. If you go to any game shop and sign up for a Magic draft, you and 7 other players will open 3 booster packs, choose cards from whatever set of cards you’re drafting, and use those to build draft decks. Cube replaces those booster packs with randomized “packs” of cards from a curated list built by the cube’s designer. Cube is super popular for three main reasons: You get to play with awesome cards. Normal limited drafts include a lot of cards that aren’t very good. With cube, you can play with whatever you want—including the most powerful cards in Magic’s history! You can customize the play experience. Cubes are infinitely customizable, so you can curate whatever kind of experience you want. Once the cube is built, it’s free to play. You need to spend about $40-60 on packs if you want to draft a normal set. With cube, drafting is always free once you have the cards.

Constructing a Cube

Determine how big you want the cube to be. Cubes are typically around 360 cards on the low end, or 720 cards on the high end. 360 is the minimum for 8 players, so that’s ideal if you want a carefully curated experience. 720 can support up to 16 players, which is best if you want a bigger cube or more variety. The cube can be any size you want so long as it’s at least 360 cards. Most players don’t go too far beyond that because it can be hard to balance the cube if it’s very big. More cards also create something called archetype asymmetry. Basically, the bigger the cube is, the less likely it is that a player in a given archetype will see the key cards they need.

Choose a theme if you’re seeking out a specific flavor. Cubes can be made out of whatever you want! Most cube designers start with a theme and then choose fun archetypes for it, but you can do it the other way around, too! Here are some ideas: Formats: Perhaps the most popular theme, format cubes may use the best cards in Modern, Legacy, Vintage, or a few specific sets. Wedges/guilds: Wedges and guilds refer to the different color combinations in Magic. You could build a cube based on the Ravnican guilds or Khans of Tarkir tribes, for example. Tribes: For example, green drafters get elves, blue drafters get merfolk, red drafters get goblins, white drafters get angels, and black drafters get zombies. Chaos (themeless): If you don’t have a theme in mind, just choose cards and archetypes you and your friends enjoy playing with! There’s nothing wrong with a themeless cube.

Select the archetypes you want to include. Every color combination and theme element you choose to include should have a clear archetype. This could be an associated mechanic, a type of gameplay, or a type of creature. Let’s say you’re building a general themeless cube. Here is an example: Blue-white: Countermagic control and card draw. Blue-green: +1/+1 counters matter. Green-white: Enchantments and tokens. Blue-black: Reanimator and graveyards matter. Black-white: ETB effects and flicker. Green-red: Land destruction. Black-green: Sacrifice and creature recursion. Blue-red: Tempo or Storm combo. Red-white: Aggro. Black-red: Discard and hand control. Mono-brown: Big artifacts.

Make sure each archetype’s colors are represented. As you build your cube list, keep the distribution of cards as symmetrical as possible. This way, everyone has equal access to the different archetypes and colors, which keeps drafting interesting but still allows everyone to build competitive decks. For a 360-card cube, here’s a good distribution: 250 cards, with 50 for each color 50 red, 50 green, 50 black, 50 white, 50 blue 50 multicolored cards 5 each for the 10 color pairs 30 artifacts If you include a mono-brown archetype, consider doubling this number (at least) and trimming on the individual colors, since anyone can draft colorless cards. 30 nonbasic lands Include all the colors of each cycle you include. For example, if you include Creeping Tar Pit, include the 4 other manlands.

Include signal cards that tell the players what the archetypes are. Signal cards, or key cards, are the draftable cards that are obviously designed for specific decks. These signals reinforce what the archetypes are so that players don’t feel lost as they’re choosing cards. For example, if a player opens Exhume, it’s an obvious sign that there’s a draftable black deck in the reanimator archetype. If they open a Brain Freeze, they can safely assume there’s a draftable blue storm deck.

Compose a list of the cards you need. You can do this in a Word document or Google sheet, or build your list in an online platform designed for cube builders, like Cube Cobra. Cube Cobra is popular because it lets you simulate what the draft packs of your cube will look like, which can help when it comes to adjusting your cube list.

Acquire the cards on your list. Many cubers take a lot of pride in building their cube using specific versions of the cards, foils, or alternatives, but you can totally just buy the cards the cheapest version of each card if you prefer. You can buy single cards at your local card shop or use an online platform like TCG Player or Star City Games. Pro Tip: You don’t have to buy the super expensive cards. There’s nothing wrong with using proxies and fake cards! You can print the card images out and slide them into sleeves on top of basic lands, or buy cheap fakes from a site like Printing Proxies.

Playing and Drafting the Cube

Shuffle the entire cube together. Get as many friends together as you’d like to draft with (up to whatever the cube’s max capacity is). Ideally, find 7 other friends, if you can. Take the entire cube out and shuffle the cards. Most cube enthusiasts keep their cube in a large deckbox, but you can even put the cube in a shoebox, if you don’t want to get fancy.

Deal out 3 packs of 15 cards each. Split the cards up face down and ask everyone to help you build “packs” of 15 cards. You need 3 packs for each player, so if you’ve got 8 players, build 24 packs. Don’t let anyone look at the contents of any of the packs as you’re distributing them. Some players go a bit further and use plastic dividers or small containers to separate the custom packs.

Add any “rare” cards to each pile (optional). Some people decide to keep a pile of special, higher-powered cards and then add those to the packs separately. This way, every pack the players open will have something at least interesting going on in the pack. This is a higher-level practice that involves another layer of design and cube building. Don’t worry about skipping this if you’re building your first cube. Good rare options include the power 9, cards from the reserved list (proxied, of course), or cards that are banned in certain formats.

Draft the cube until all the cards are chosen. Draft the packs the same way you’d draft normal boosters. Each player opens a pack, looks at the cards, and chooses one for their deck. Then, they pass the remaining cards to the player on their right. This continues until all of the packs have been exhausted. You must choose a card from the packs you’re handed—even if you don’t plan on playing it. The unused cards will just sit in your sideboard.

Give players a period of time to build their decks. Give everyone 20-40 minutes to build the deck they’ve drafted. Each player chooses which cards they’ve drafted to put in their deck and which cards to put in their sideboard. Players can add any number of basic lands to their deck. If the cube cards weren’t already sleeved, have each player sleeve up their deck.

Play round-robin games or run a mini-tournament. Once everyone’s deck is ready to go, play against one another in whatever way you’d like! You could have a round robin matches where each player plays against each other player once, or set up a tournament where winners play each other until there’s one player left standing. There’s no right or wrong way to run the draft pod! Once everyone is done, reshuffle all of the cards and set them back in the cube for a later date. Tinker and experiment with your cube. If you notice black decks keep doing well and red decks seem to struggle, swap out some of the weaker red cards for stronger options, and nerf the black archetypes, for example!