At Eric's request from a few days ago, here's my cube list. It's a mostly-modern cube; my official criteria for a card's inclusion is that it was either first printed in the modern era or it was reprinted in a booster release in the modern era. This includes banned cards, cards designed for summer multiplayer products, and many silver-bordered cards¹.
My list is strongly singleton, by which I mean not only is there only one card of a given name, I don't include cards that are functionally identical to another card in the cube. I care about identity within the context of the cube; this means that I don't include Kodama's Reach even though it's Arcane and Cultivate is not, because there are no cards in the cube that care about it being Arcane. However, I do include both Savannah Lions and Elite Vanguard, because the inclusion of Captain of the Watch means that they aren't always functionally identical.
Aesthetically speaking, my cube is designed to evoke the design principles of the modern era more than the feeling of the Modern constructed format. This means it's very creature-focused, ideally with a good balance between aggro, control, ramp, and tempo. There's some support for combo--mostly Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin--but it's less common and often less powerful than the other decks. Reanimation spells and enablers exist in the cube, but due to the relatively high cost of the spells available this is usually more of a side strategy in black decks. Effective dedicated Reanimator decks are few and far between.
I have a couple directions I'm trying to take the cube at the moment. A while back I started recording data about the drafts, and discovered that red decks, mono-red in particular, were performing much better than anything else. I've been trying to scale back red's power without incidentally hosing other aggro decks. Mostly this has meant taking out dedicated-burn cards like Hellspark Elemental and land destruction like Molten Rain, both of which fit better in heavy-red decks than other, more battlefield-focused aggro decks. This has been largely successful, but I am interested in ways to make non-red (or part-red) aggro decks better.
I'm also unhappy with the quality of black, especially when paired with white. Black is the worst color in the cube, and Orzhov is by far the worst color combination, with a match win percentage of 25%². I'm constantly looking for ways to fix this, but it's difficult with the tools available. Without some of the broken pre-modern cards available, black's strongest area is one-for-one removal, which tends to match up poorly against cube creatures. Recently, partly inspired by Jason's cube, I've been trying more of a graveyard/sacrifice theme in black; it remains to be seen how well this works.
Let me know what you think, if you have any questions, etc.
1. For silver-bordered cards in particular, I only like including them when I feel like they do something that's outside the normal Magic rules but still playable in a rigorous way. This means I don't include Blast from the Past, for instance, because it operates completely within black-bordered rules.
2. This may be an artificially low number; because experienced drafters tend to consider Orzhov to be bad, it's drafted more often by less-experienced drafters. Still, my subjective impression is also that it's the worst color combination.
My list is strongly singleton, by which I mean not only is there only one card of a given name, I don't include cards that are functionally identical to another card in the cube. I care about identity within the context of the cube; this means that I don't include Kodama's Reach even though it's Arcane and Cultivate is not, because there are no cards in the cube that care about it being Arcane. However, I do include both Savannah Lions and Elite Vanguard, because the inclusion of Captain of the Watch means that they aren't always functionally identical.
Aesthetically speaking, my cube is designed to evoke the design principles of the modern era more than the feeling of the Modern constructed format. This means it's very creature-focused, ideally with a good balance between aggro, control, ramp, and tempo. There's some support for combo--mostly Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin--but it's less common and often less powerful than the other decks. Reanimation spells and enablers exist in the cube, but due to the relatively high cost of the spells available this is usually more of a side strategy in black decks. Effective dedicated Reanimator decks are few and far between.
I have a couple directions I'm trying to take the cube at the moment. A while back I started recording data about the drafts, and discovered that red decks, mono-red in particular, were performing much better than anything else. I've been trying to scale back red's power without incidentally hosing other aggro decks. Mostly this has meant taking out dedicated-burn cards like Hellspark Elemental and land destruction like Molten Rain, both of which fit better in heavy-red decks than other, more battlefield-focused aggro decks. This has been largely successful, but I am interested in ways to make non-red (or part-red) aggro decks better.
I'm also unhappy with the quality of black, especially when paired with white. Black is the worst color in the cube, and Orzhov is by far the worst color combination, with a match win percentage of 25%². I'm constantly looking for ways to fix this, but it's difficult with the tools available. Without some of the broken pre-modern cards available, black's strongest area is one-for-one removal, which tends to match up poorly against cube creatures. Recently, partly inspired by Jason's cube, I've been trying more of a graveyard/sacrifice theme in black; it remains to be seen how well this works.
Let me know what you think, if you have any questions, etc.
1. For silver-bordered cards in particular, I only like including them when I feel like they do something that's outside the normal Magic rules but still playable in a rigorous way. This means I don't include Blast from the Past, for instance, because it operates completely within black-bordered rules.
2. This may be an artificially low number; because experienced drafters tend to consider Orzhov to be bad, it's drafted more often by less-experienced drafters. Still, my subjective impression is also that it's the worst color combination.
