I've been thinking about making a cube for a while now, and reading some of the articles on here inspired me to actually go for it. I would very much appreciate any feedback you have!
I'm aiming for a power level somewhere in the vicinity of MMA. I want the games to feel more like limited than constructed, but with more powerful cards and interactions than in your average retail set. The cube is currently sitting around 450 cards, but I'd like to get it down to 405 or even 360.
I have a few design constraints that I'm trying to keep in mind while working, and a few things that I'm currently concerned about. Any and all feedback is welcome, but the following are the areas I'm most interested in getting opinions about:
I'll usually be drafting with 1-5 others, most of whom are fairly casual players. For that reason, I've tried to keep the number of keyword abilities to a minimum, and the number of lenticular cards high. If you notice a keyword that's not being used on many cards, please bring it to my attention! It may be that I think those cards are worth it, but it may be that I just didn't notice.
In particular, I've deliberately avoided protection, intimidate, and landwalk. Since these cards are generally excellent or useless, depending on the opponent, I expect they won't be much fun in drafts with a small number of players. Are there any other cards/abilities that are more/less fun in small drafts that I should be aware of?
I'm trying to keep costs reasonably low. I'm definitely planning on proxying some important expensive cards (like the land base), but I'd like to keep the proxies to a minimum. If you see a budget substitute for any of the more expensive cards, I'd appreciate the suggestion!
I'm not great at judging power level, so there may be some blatantly under/over powered cards. I'm hoping that most of these can be simply removed and bring the cube size down.
I'm a much better aggro player than control player, and so I think the cube slants that way. Obviously it's hard to tell without playing it, but I would like to achieve as much of a balance between aggro and control as possible before buying cards.
I'm not concerned about keeping singleton, but having not played much cube, I'm not really sure which cards need duplicates.
I'm planning on running a Utility Land Draft, but haven't figured out what cards will be included yet. How many cards should it contain if less than 8 players are drafting?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts! Even if all you can do is draft my cube, I'd be happy to draft yours in return.
Props for cutting protection! The only other annoying keyword I can think of is hexproof on small creatures alongside an aura theme (think Invisible Stalker plus Spectral Flight) I must say your initial list looks of pointers looks pretty promising! I do think your ally theme is way too thin though. I think it's a perfect theme as far as power level go, but it's really one that needs pretty deep support. Don't be afraid of mixing and matching cohort, rally and original allies here. To be honest, the old style allies like Akoum Battlesinger are much less playable than the new rally and cohort allies, who play much better with a mixed creature base.
Another way to look at allies is this: How many other allies do I have to cast after (or before) this one to be happy with the effect it provides? Then you can see how many other allies you need in the deck.
Example 1: For Umara Raptor I would be happy if I cast one other ally, but it would be decent enough even without another ally (because 2/2 flying for is respectable in limited), so 0.5 is a good number. I want to cast Raptor on turn 3, then cast another ally on turn 4 half of the time. On turn 4, on the play, I will have seen 9 other cards. So 0.5 * (40/9) = 2.2 other allies in the deck. This average number does not take into account though that I might want to cast other allies on curve before the Raptor, so I would shoot for a little more.
Example 2: Oran-Rief Survivalist is pretty shitty as a Grizzly Bear, but awesome as a 3/3 for , so I need at least one ally. It's also a two-drop, so I want another ally on turn 3. Say we're on the play, so by turn 3 we've seen 8 other cards. This means I need at least 1 * (40/8) = 5 other allies in the deck if I want the Survivalist to work on the play.
Example 3: Akoum Battlesinger is awful as a 1/1, and doesn't work at all with non-allies, so I want to trigger it multiple times. I think I want 2 allies at least on the battlefield when I cast it, and then I want to trigger it at least once more to feel it's worth it. So the number is 3. Say we cast this on turn 4 (to be able to cast two allies before it), and the fourth ally is cast on turn 5. On the play we will have seen 11 other cards by turn 5, and three of those need to be allies. 3 * (40/11) = 11. So I need 11 (!) other allies in my deck to be satisfied with Battlesinger's effect.
Welcome to the forums. As with any first cube project, expect to come under a trial by fire.
I have given your cube a couple of drafts to feel for the format and it seems like a decent starting point, and I can see what you are trying to do.
Since you were nice enough to have a bullet list of topics you want to talk about, let's go through each of them...
1 & 2 - Keyword Density
You have yet to explicitly mention what keywords you are running, so I decided to run through and see what I could find. I decided to ignore all the 'eternal keywords' like flying, trample, deathtouch, lifelink etc, as I feel they should be able to know what those abilities do (if not they should learn)
What to take out of that is that you probably had more than you thought. If you want to cut some of them down, you can cut the keywords that only have 1/2 cards that use it. Most of them are easy to explain though. The ones I would personally want to avoid are Vanishing/Fading, Regenerate, Shroud. These seem to be a bit hard for some newer players to understand, which is why wizards don't print these keywords as much. The ones that are borderline are Transform, Overload, Madness and Delve. These give some nice gameplay that I am happy to spend some difficulty points on. The cuts are up to you. I have just done all the legwork for you to figure out what keywords you had
3 - Bugetizing
So I took your list and threw it into Deckbox.com and sorted it by price to see what was costly. I am going to be talking about everything I can see over $10. I might try and help bugetize the stuff over $5 later but this should be a good start. Here we go!
Goblin Guide - Just play another aggro one drop. He is not worth the extra $35 to be able to swing on turn 1. Play either Zurgo Bellstriker or Lightning Berserker for hasty 1-drops Consecrated Sphinx - This card is an absolute bomb. I would be cutting it due to power concerns. If this lives one turn, they have pretty much already lost. Rhys, the Redeemed - I'm not sure if this card is needed. Sure his abilities are cool but you have lategame token mana sink in Selesnya Guildmage. My choice for replacement would have been Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage but the other guildmage is good enough. Monastery Mentor - Could possibly be too powerful. Ability is too unique to replace. Sower of Temptation - Could also be too powerful. Replace with either Control Magic (just as powerful, maybe even more so) or something like Persuasion or Hypnotic Siren. Vengevine - Too unique to replace. Unsure if GY deck requires him for support though, too many threshold cards. Archangel of Thune - Pretty 'bomby'. Gives lifegain an actual decent card that any other white deck will take. No close analogue I can think of. Venser, Shaper Savant - Pretty cool card. Pretty unique and no real budget replacement I can think of. Doesn't really support any archetypes though; just spice and not really part of the main meal. Fauna Shaman - So worth that $12. Get this one. The spicest of spices that helps various archetypes (graveyard, beats, etc) Bloodghast - Reassembling Skeleton is the closest but it is crappy and not aggressive. Great, but not at that price :\ Entomb - I have never been a fan of tutors. This might make people think that broken reanimator is a thing in your cube, which it isn't. Fairly unique, especially for the (mana)cost. Can try out Buried Alive or Corpse Connoisseur if you want this type of effect. Inquisition of Kozilek - I've been pretty happy with Blackmail, if you want to give it a go. WOrse early game, better late game. Can hit lands, which is interesting. Maelstrom Pulse - Generic removal spell is generic... I don't know... Putrefy maybe? Crucible of Worlds - Pretty much all there is is fetchlands. I'd rather buy them them fork out $70 for this thing that will just wheel and wheel around your table. Bitterblossom - You already have Curse of the Shallow Graves which is just as strong (possibly stronger?) probably just cut?
Lands - Yeah, fetchlands are awesome. I'd get them whenever you can. Shocks also. I've been going with 2x Shock, 1x Bounce, 1x Temple and 1x Buddy which have pretty good for the budget. Still wish for fetchlands though.
So to recap the only cards I would fork out the money for are the lands and this guy:
If you already have any of the others, give them a try. The problem I feel is that a lot of them are a lot higher power than what the rest of your cube feels like it wants to be. I'd hate for you to get any of the cards then have to use them due to being GRBS.
4 - Power Level
I have already touched on some of the costly cards being overpowered. Now I am going to do an image dump of all the cards in my personal opinion that are either over or under powered for the level I think you are going for. I will do a little chat on some of the main offenders but not everything, otherwise this will never get posted Possibly Overpowered:
So, most of these I have already covered above. The only ones here that I really want you to cut are the Sphinx and Upheaval. Sphinx was the only other playable 6-drop in the titan (and wurmcoil) era, so that shows you its pedigree. My belief is that every turn it survives your win percentage goes up about 25%. So therefore if it has lived 4 turns you have probably already won. Upheaval on the other hand is just an unfun card to play against (and even sometimes with). I don't know why most people like to start off with their card in their cube lists. It is like they have never played it before. I avoid this card like the plague. Once it is cast it is like you have lost, only that it takes an extra 20 minutes to finish and the game gives you this false hope that you can still win. Nope. No chance.
The rest of the cards are strong but not broken or unfun. They are what I would keep an eye on and see how often their appearance to win percentage is. Nearly all of them are expensive anyway, so maybe leave them out and add them in later when you can get them on the cheap for a bit of extra spice.
Probably Underpowered:
I was surprised at how solid white was. Not entirely sure about the lifegain theme, but I'll let it play out for now. These are on the list for a variety of reasons. I could go over every individual card, but I an getting rather lazy at this point. Here are some vague reasons as to why I chose some of these cards:
Don't understand how you would get to play them (Crush of Wurms, Army of the Damned)
Why am I paying that much? (Nut Collector, Gladehart Cavalry)
Just plain weak (Nip Gwyllion,Cryptborn Horror)
Is outlassed by a card in the same cube (Tail Slash by Fall of the Hammer)
Unsure as to what purpose it serves (Spreading Seas, Noggle Hedge-Mage)
If you want any in-depth answer as to why I feel one of these cards is underpowered and you want to keep it in, I'm willing to argue the point with you to see if it really suits your environment
4 - Control vs Aggro
In all the drafts I did I ended up in a midrange/control build, so I think you have given enough tools to control for it to compete. With the lifegain theme, you have already helped out control even though it is meant as an aggro archetype. I think you have given all of the colours more than enough board sweepers. In fact I think you have given too many. I would probably cut Pyroclasm as Anger of the Gods should be enough (and double red will stop midrange from taking it too highly).
There is even cards like Timely Reinforcements, which when you look at the card in abstract, it helps both token and lifegain themes. However, If you are in either of those themes, you would be ahead in either creatures or life so you wouldn't actually get the mode you want. This is purely a control card to stop early aggression and something that your cube probably doesn't need.
My first draft I did for example, Allez Cuisine! (I don't think I used that right?):
Getting the Control/Midrange/Aggro balance is something that you can't really figure out during the design process. You need to do some drafts and get some data then start shifting things around. I wouldn't worry about this. If people want to play control they will find a way to use the abundance of aggro creatures to make a controlling strategy. Have faith in your cube and your players. If RW heroic always seems to be winning then shift some more spot removal in later for control. Just draft, draft, draft and the balance will happen.
5 & 6 - Breaking Singleton and ULD
Breaking singleton is pretty easy. All you need to do is identify an archetype/deck you want to support and put those cards into your cube. If there isn't enough of what you need then just break singleton on those key cards. A couple of examples that could be what you are after...
You need another heroic 1-drop in white? Double up on Favoured Hoplite!
I can see that you have already put in 3 Gravecrawlers, which is great for Black aggro/Sacrifice themes. Surprised you haven't gone with Bloodsoaked Champion, but if you want a more zombie-heavy theme then gravecrawler is definitely the way to go.
There isn't an exact science to this, I've doubled up on Bonesplitters, Perilous Myr, Remand, Delver of Secrets, Satyr Wayfinder, etc. because I liked what the cards did and wanted another of each to be going around the draft and the alternatives I had for these slots weren't just cutting the mustard.
For ULD, I would suggest that you don't have one to begin with. Since you mentioned that your playerbase is mostly casuals, cube is enough of a daunting task. Adding in an extra round for ULD is an unnecessary complication. I've thought about it a couple of times with my cube, but with my playerbase, I don't think the time is right for them just yet. Once they get used to the cube and they aren't taking ~5 minutes to read each pack then I might add a ULD for some spice.
My suggestion would be to find up to 10 utility lands that you like and just throw them in your cube now (I only run 2; Academy Ruins and Shelldock Isle).
That should (hopefully) be enough for you to chew your brain on. As for me, my brain is now drifting away after being stuck at this screen for god knows how long (2 hours maybe~?~?). May your upheavals be picked up by wild birds and flown into the sunset where they can never hurt anyone's game ever again.
Thank you both! Your advice was extremely helpful (and impressively thorough).
Allies
I've decided to cut the allies theme for now; it makes the most sense in white-black, since so many of the lifegain cards are already allies, but white is currently very crowded. As a result, red is now low on creatures, but adding cards is much easier than cutting cards, so I should be able to correct that over the next couple of days.
Keyword Density
Kirblinx, thank you so much for going through all of the keywords. It was something that I was planning on doing "eventually," so it might have never happend without you putting the time in for me. I really can't thank you enough.
The two keywords you listed as appearing twice actually appear more than that (shroud appears 5 times, fading 3). Shroud I'm keeping because I personally like it better than hexproof, and I want to have a few creatures that are hard to remove. Fading I'm keeping because I want to have a Fire of Yavimaya deck be possible in red-green. All of the single appearances have been cut except for fight (which actually appeared twice) and unleash (which used to appear once, but now appears 3 times).
Doing those cuts reduces my keyword count by a third, which is huge. The other keywords I think all either show up enough to be worth learning, or are doing a good amount of lifting on various themes (for example, support plays really nicely with heroic, so it can stay on its two cards).
Budgetizing
Again, Kirblinx, thank you for putting the time in for me; you really went above and beyond. I've kept Monastery Mentor, Vengevine, Archangel of Thune, Fauna Shaman, and Bloodghast in the list; everything else I either cut or replaced. Those cards will probably be proxies to begin with, and I'll look to replace them with real cards if they're playing well.
Power Level
I think the possibly overpowered cards were all covered in the budgetizing section. The long list of underpowered cards was not too long at all! A few cards (Elvish Pioneer, Skyshroud Ridgeback, Land Grant, Somnomancer, and Beckon Apparition) I'm still interested in trying out, but I'll keep my eye on them.
ULD
You're probably right that ULD would be a bit too much to bring in at the beginning. I'll probably add 1-2 utility lands per colour and call it a day for now.
As far as power level is concerned, I would go through and cut all of the remaining mythics, they all look pretty busted here.
As for possibly over powered rares, I found these:
Not really a fan of the triple gravecrawlers, and triple monastery swiftspears. Lower powered lists shouldn't need to go to those extremes to grid fill, as the card pool is so much more expansive, and gravecrawler can't block. If you have to go that route, I would rather see bloodsoaked champion instead of crawlers, as they fit easier in more decks. Monastery swiftspear has been underwhelming for me in cube, and you would probably be better off with some mix of reckless waif, goblin glory charger, stromkirk noble, lightning berserker etc. Delver of secrets also looks kind of bad here.
The list is still kind of big for the number of people drafting it, and you would be better off going down to 360. Heroic is a pretty difficult theme to support, and this list doesn't do it particularly well already: extending out the size just makes that harder.
I'm not sure if you will be able to meet your goal of having the games feel more like limited, due to the rare density which is quite high.
I would probably cut madness, threshold, and heroic as keywords. They don't seem to be very well supported, and just add complexity.
Keep in mind that a fires deck is totally doable without blastoderm. IIRC the architects of that deck played it not because of the fading, but because it was the more solid undercosted beater at the time (And I believe the second best one, Jade Leech still saw play). It's just as possible to build fires with Polukranos or Deadbridge Goliath, if you like.
I actually believe that any ammount of keywords is fine, so long as they have the reminder text. The exact difference between a card with Vigilance (attacking doesn't cause this creature to tap) circa kamigawa and Attacking doesn't cause this creature to tap is mostly nothing in the eyes of your drafters, especially since their minds are usually on other things. Since most of the one off block keywords you'd include have to include reminder text since they were usually just created, it should be fine, though if you want to cut them for other reasons go ahead.
Grillo, thanks for the power level suggestions; I'll definitely keep those cards on my radar. I'm not 100% sure on what I mean by "limited feel" ... there's more to it than rare density, but that definitely is a good metric (which my cube is performing poorly at).
I agree that I should be aiming for a smaller list (360 would be the ideal, so that I could host an 8-man draft if all the stars aligned), and the 3x Gravecrawler and Monastery Swiftspear are mostly sitting there so that the ratios are okay for people drafting the larger list on cubetutor. I think I'd like to have 1-2 of each in the end.
I don't have time today, but either tomorrow or over the weekend I'll make a post about what archetypes I'm trying to support in my cube. Madness and heroic are two that I'm definitely prepared to cut, whereas threshold is one that I'd rather increase the support for than remove. I like that threshold is something that games naturally progress towards (unlike madness and heroic), so even if you're not able to pick up as many enablers as you want, the reward cards aren't useless.
Chris, the reason for including fading is for the Saproling Burst + Fires of Yavimaya combo. Blastoderm just comes along for the ride as the next most powerful fading card that fits well into the same archetype. But it's not a very new-player friendly keyword, and figuring out the correct number of counters to remove on Burst is non-trivial if you don't already know the answer, so maybe it should just be cut.
As to the number of keywords, I have two reasons for keeping the count low. Reason number one is that I strongly believe that there's a psychological difference between a keyword with reminder text and a spelled out ability, especially for newer/more casual players. The second reason is that for many of the keywords (like delve and battalion) you're required to look at things on a very different axis than usual, which I don't think is worth it for a couple of cards. For experienced players, neither of those reasons is a big issue, and if my cube is successful with my group, I will slowly start re-introducing those cards.
Fair enough. I think saproling burst might be a victim of the times, and removing it wouldn't be a huge mistake in my eyes.
In the lower power level formats, one of the cards I like which benifits hugely from haste is this fellow:
At 2 creatures in your yard it's comparable to hero of bladehold (who is probably a fair card at 6 mana), and that's the kind of numbers which are reasonably attained by attacking, blocking and killspells
Chris brings up a really good point, that you don't need to (and probably shouldn't) do direct ports of decks cross formats. Their will be some cases where it works, but generally I think it pays dividends to think critically about what the deck is really doing, and how to recreate that feeling in the format.
Grillo, thanks for the power level suggestions; I'll definitely keep those cards on my radar. I'm not 100% sure on what I mean by "limited feel" ... there's more to it than rare density, but that definitely is a good metric (which my cube is performing poorly at).
This is probably worth taking some time to unpack when you get a chance, as it seems critical to your format goals. I had a post that talks about this in a different context here.
To me, a low powered list is one that focuses on mostly commons and uncommons, with the emphasis on weaker cards putting players in spots where they have to craft game states over a period of turns. Perhaps you have some rares or stronger uncommons mixes in, which let people play catchup, but the focus is on weaker cards and game state management. Rares should exist in smaller numbers, and even than their shouldn't be too big of a gap in power level between rares and commons/uncommons, as otherwise players can just ignore the need to craft game states by drafting around rares.
High powered lists, are lists focused mostly on rares or mythics. I would imagine good versions of these lists have most of their rares at around a similar power point, but have a small subset of rares or mythics that provide the juice for catchup.
Limited power level, I think, is very similar to low power, except here, cards are actively inefficient. So, for example, you suddenly have removal that costs 3-6 mana, and thats ok. Or 4cc vanilla creatures and thats ok. Than you maybe mix in a small set of reasonably powered, but beatable rares.
When we say "limited feel" and MMA inspired, what are we trying to do here?
I should preface this post by saying that right now I play something like 90% constructed (FNM standard from original Zendikar to Dragon's Maze, and pauper and modern more recently). Part of the reason for building this cube is to get the chance to draft without paying $15 a session. So what I say below is based on a relatively small number of experiences, and so I would be very interested to hear other people's opinions on what makes a format "feel" like limited.
That said, the short answer is that I mean something close to what you call a low powered list. I definitely want the ability for people to play catch-up, but I also want game state management to be important. In more detail, here are the features that I think I want to define the environment:
1. Improvisation
I think this is the most important part of things. In constructed, you get to choose the best cards for your deck, you know what you're likely to face, and you likely have a very specific goal. So there's a lot of planning ahead of time, and in game you're often trying to stick to that plan as much as possible. In limited, you're very much making up the plan as you go along, and since the metagame is more varied, it's much harder to anticipate the opponent's cards and decisions.
2. Sub-optimal Deck Construction
This is very much related to the last point. Because you don't get to pick the best cards every time, you need to be prepared to play cards that don't fit in your strategy perfectly. Making the best use of those cards (both when building and when playing) is a skill that's pretty unique to limited.
3. Relevant Combat
Again, this is mostly an off-shoot of the first point. In limited, almost all of your interaction happens around the combat step, as opposed to constructed, where the interactions come in making the combat step as simple as possible. This may just be due to my lack of skill at limited, but I think it's much harder to identify who should be the aggressive player in limited, and so attacking/blocking decisions are much harder.
4. Simpler Cards
Limited formats are dominated by commons, and commons are simple. This makes it easier to focus on the battlefield as a whole, rather than individual cards, and is especially important for designing a cube with casual players in mind.
5. Varied Power Level
I think one of the biggest innovations in Magic recently is the focus on lenticular design: cards that seem simple to new players, but complicated to experienced players. Having a varied power level to cards acts in the same way: less experienced players can more easily pick out the more powerful cards, while more experienced players get to think about the choice between raw power and synergy.
How does my cube do?
I think I'm doing well on point 3; my cube deliberately has sub-optimal removal (I might be able to push this farther), and lots of creatures in all colours to make sure even the most turtley decks need to have some interaction. Increasing the number of combat tricks probably wouldn't hurt. Point 5 is probably also okay, and more importantly is the lowest priority of the five points.
To improve my outlook on 4, the first thing I think I should do is reduce my rare density. I think I've got a good number of french/virtual vanillas in the common and uncommon cards, but they're being crowded out by the number of rares.
1 and 2 I'm less sure on how to design around. It probably mostly comes down to having a variety of well-supported archetypes and making sure that cards go into multiple archetypes, so that there's a lot of variety in deck construction.
Thoughts?
I'd love to hear what people think about what makes things "feel" like limited, because there's a good chance there are some subtle (or not-so-subtle) elements that have gone over my head. Also any thoughts on how to work towards getting that feeling would be very much appreciated. I'm going to go back to the drawing board with the themes I want to support, and will post about that sometime in the next day or two.
I believe that 1 and 2 are just inbuilt to limited environments. The actual drafting process leads to improvisation and sub-optimal deck building. I don't think you can even really design for that. Being restricted to a limited card pool that you had to choose yourself enforces both of these points, so I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest.
Relevant combat (point 3) I think you are doing well on. In my eyes it really just means a really low un-conditional removal count. If you struggle to deal with creatures directly then indirectly through combat is the next best option. Transferring straight up removal (Oust) to combat tricks (Gideon's Reproach) can also help force more combat oriented actions. Not sure what the density of combat tricks:removal should be, that will be more of a trail and error thing.
For point 4, I think Grillo is right and you should cut all the mythics. There should be some spice in the draft, but rares should be sufficient. It will help reduce the complexity a decent amount too. Not much I can really suggest here for the same reasons that I am about to explain...
Point 5 I am not very good at responding to. I am not a designer, mainly a drafter. I can only see things in the 'experienced level' now and not the beginner level. I've thrown in some cards that I thought were easy to understand (Sylvan Safekeeper) but have been constantly bemused by newer players. If you do a decent job with archetype design in the planning stages, you should be able to find some good overlap cards that will work well for people who pick up on it? I don't know, and at this point I think I am just typing things to make my word count look impressive :\
I am always up for doing grid drafts over MTGO with Grillo's penny pincer cube. It is a great example of a low powered environment that hits very strongly on points 3, 4 and 5. If you want to give it a go to see how it feels I will be free now and tomorrow (I am +10 GMT). It might help you realise if you want cards like Archangel of Thune or Curse of Shallow Graves. As they would be really hard to deal with in the Penny Pincer Format. Throw me a PM and we can organise a time if you feel so inclined. Or you can check out the forum games section and check out any grid drafts between Grillo and myself, we go into rather deep detail with the games and you should notice a lot of interactivity (and even some blowouts, but due to sweet deckbuilding more so than one off bomb cards).
A couple points, first if you are making a cube to save money, I strongly encourage you to avoid any expensive cards, or at least proxy the expensive cards on your first endeavor. Building a cube is basically brewing 10-20 decks across color pairs/wedges/shards and putting them together into an environment, than tuning those decks/matchups so that the games are fun. Its easy to just blow tons of money on this process, especially if you are using expensive cards, are building your first cube, or have never really been a successful brewer. We've ton price checks on cubes here, and most of them are worth 2-5k when all is said and done (obviously a cube called the penny cube does not fit into the "most" category). Just something to keep in mind, and something I wish I had done.
Also, when we talk about simplier cards and casual players that can mean a couple different things. Some people are casual players in the sense that they don't want to really pay attention to the game, some people are casual in the sense that they just play it rarely, or are just getting into it.
The former is always going to have complexity issues, because anything that requires attention to the gamestate is going to be taxing for them. These are the people that just want to play out strong cards while drinking beer and joking with friends, and while there is nothing wrong with that, any card or keyword can potentially be a problem.
I had to cut triad of fates recently because it was "bad" but I'm still kind of in doubt about that: I think its more likely that its a slower card which requires multi-turn planning and setup to use well, and people just weren't able to handle that type of complexity. This is going to be relevant for you, with cards like zealous conscripts in the list. While that card opens up lots of interesting techy plays, 99% of the time your casual players aren't going to put in the prep work to make that happen, and will just use it as a glorified burn spell. Birthing pod can be a similar problem card, as well as gravecrawler ( ingenious, but bad brewers, love to run it as a value engine in midrange decks, unappreciative of how incoherent a gameplan that is with a creature that can't block).
On the other hand, you have new players who are just getting comfortable with things like "first strike" and "trample," and for those players you want to minimize the number of new concepts they are encountering.
In your environment you have tons of keywords and complex cards, so I am guessing the issue is being somewhat misstated?
Right now, I think you have an issue in that your running a sort of limited feeling removal suite, but your threats are very strong, and even worse, your best answers are tied to bodies (FTK, skinrender). There are a few different models I would suggest:
1. Limited Removal: inefficient answers vs. inefficient creatures, with a minimum of ETBs. You'll want to look at Chris' fantasy formats (or any of Chris' posts really) for this perspective.
2. Conditional Removal: efficient but conditional removal vs. threats that meta their way around the removal. This is the approach that the penny cube takes. Ghastly Demise. Sultai Scavanger. Devour Flesh. Troll Ascetic.
3. Power max: Unconditioned, efficient removal, vs. apex threats. Swords to plowshares. Grave Titan.
Their is kind of a sliding spectrum here, where you could also run heavily conditioned but efficient removal. Stuff like victim of night. You can also run somewhat toned down threats in conjunction with cards like path or swords, if you wished: as a rule of thumb, top shelve removal should exist to hit rares or mythics.
Kirblinx: Thank you for the grid draft offer; my schedule is pretty hectic right now (and will be for the next month or so), but I may want to take you up on it sometime.
Grillo: That is very good advice about budget. My plan is to start out with a lot of proxies, and over time replace them with either less expensive cards or real versions, depending on how well they play. But I'm probably never spending the hundreds of dollars needed to get a proper set of lands, so there will always be some proxies floating around.
I play primarily with two groups of people. One group has been playing kitchen table Magic off and on since 2000, and the other group has only been playing for a year or two, but has lots of fun going to prereleases and the odd FNM. In both groups, when we play we are focused on the games, so attention to the gamestate is not the issue. The issue is that neither group is familiar with a large number of cards, and so throwing down a list that includes every mechanic that's appeared over the last twenty years is going to be overwhelming. If the cube is successful, I will happy to add more things in over time, but I think I need to start with a more focused list that keeps the complexity to places that count.
I'm working on a major overhaul of my list; my first draft included too much thinking about individual cards, and not enough thinking about the format itself. The rest of the mythics will be taken out, and the removal package is going to look a lot like what's in the Penny Pincer cube. I'm also going to be reducing the number of themes. My original plan involved different, but overlapping, archetype for each colour pair, most of which required 1-2 mechanics. But trying to cram that much in was overwhelming for me as a new designer (as evidenced by the unfocused nature of the first draft), and would probably be overwhelming for the players I am designing it for.
As promised, here are the themes I'm planning on including for the second draft of my cube. I've included the primary colours each theme will appear in, but the plan is for the themes to bleed into other colours to varying degrees.
They mostly involve things that naturally happen and/or encourage good behaviour: graveyards fill up, lands get played, attacking is good, etc.
There are some good overlaps between the themes; the lands/ramp theme is probably the most isolated, but also the one that requires the least commitment.
They fall pretty nicely into enemy colours. Aristocrats would really make more sense as a BR deck, but it's got so much overlap with tokens that I think the two of them could just coexist as a pair of Mardu themes.
I also put what I think will be the key mechanics for each theme, and there's only six, which is nice from a complexity standpoint. Evolve and transform are probably also going to make the cut, because I want to have Reckless Waif and Cloudfin Raptor as one-drops. So that's 8 non-evergreen mechanics (prowess doesn't count as evergreen yet due to its new-ness), but I think there could be space for a couple more, especially if they support multiple themes.
You guys have been giving me some great advice so far, thank you again! As I said, I'm going to be doing a pretty serious overhaul on the cube in order to bring the focus onto these themes and to incorporate the other suggestions that have been made. But if you have any thoughts about what I'm planning right now, I'd love to hear them!
That looks pretty reasonable, and should be a good spot to get started from.
Usually I look for flexible cards that can work in those decks, but aren't so narrow they only really work in those deck.
fyi dredge decks in cube are usually more about slow value accumulation and ETBs, which is fine. Actually dredge cards I find to be problematic a lot of times, because they tend to be too mana intensive, and its easy to fall behind on tempo with them.
The UG ramp deck is really good with bouncelands, though usually reaches out to a third color, because why not. Otherwise it tends to be more of a pure tempo deck, which is fine, but it sometimes had issues with interaction, so evasion, evasion granting cards, and whatever hard removal you can squeeze into the list tends to help a lot.
fyi dredge decks in cube are usually more about slow value accumulation and ETBs, which is fine. Actually dredge cards I find to be problematic a lot of times, because they tend to be too mana intensive, and its easy to fall behind on tempo with them.
yeah, darkblast and shambling shell have been very good for me as well. Brownscale is pretty good at lower power too. Other than that I try to fill out graveyard interactions with evoke/cycling/vanishing/fading.
Don't really like troll, loam, stinkweed imp, or thug.
Major update complete! I've incorporated the changes I mentioned earlier, as well as dialing the power way down. I decided to add in raid, since I no longer had enough zombies to justify Gravecrawler over Bloodsoaked Champion. I also cut evolve, because trying to force blue aggro isn't something I want to spend cards on right now.
The other major change is I've drastically increased the number of cards that appear as pairs (roughly a third of the cube, or a little over 60 unique cards, appear as pairs). My thought is that having fewer unique cards will help keep complexity down, and the duplicates can always be subbed out if we start drafting enough that we want more variety.
I didn't see your comments about dredge being problematic, so it may be a little over-emphasized right now. My hope is that the black dredgers will give the aristocrats deck the option to be a more controlling; we'll see if that actually works out.
The only other annoying keyword I can think of is hexproof on small creatures alongside an aura theme (think 
