The Gozmit and Father cube - Low power & synergy

[Gozmit97]

Hello everyone, I'm Gozmit. This post is dedicated to the cube my father and i are building.

TLDR
Cube noobs trying to create cube
Unexperienced players
Low power
Approximately 400

I would like to preface this with some info on the two of us. We have both been playing magic for a fair while now, however, my father and I have not being playing much recently, him in particular. None of us have ever worked on a cube before and only I have cube drafted a couple of times.

Most players that we know and are ging to draft with, have less experience than we do. For this reason, i want to try and keep overly complicated and not to obvious things out of the cube, to make it easier n everyone. It's also a lower powered cube as to not have expensive rares undo the good play by one player as well as keeping the budget down. We're planning on making the cube around the 400 mark, as to be able to support a 8 man draft, yet still have some variation. I am the main work horse, since i have the most knowledge on the subject and time.

Synegy isn't going to be king, but it should play a major part. You shouldn't just jam the best control cards together and call that a day. You should always consider if you should pick the synergy or the raw power. With this being said, there should always be the option to play aggro, midrange control and the likes in more or less all colors.

If you have any questions reagrding the cube or us, do feel free to ask. All help is very much appreciated.

 

[Gozmit97]

At the current moment, we are in the midst of planning archetypes for the individual colour pairs. There is going to be one archeype per pair. The archetypes are meant to be more than just aggro, midrange, control, tempo and ramp, such as Izzet prowess. The ones in bold are the ones that are the main consideration at the moment, whereas the once not are other ideas for that colour pair. Some archetypes are in multiple of the colour pairs. ANy feed back or other ideas would be awesome

Artifacts (Faerie Mechanist, Ethercaste Knight), Inspired (Sphinx's Disciple, Stonybrook Schoolmaster)
Self-mill (Necromancer's Assistant, Headless Skaab), Evasion/ninja's (Inkfathom Witch, Throat Slitter)
Goblins (Warren Pilfereres, Tar Pitcher), Eldrazi/Colorless (Skitterskin, Nettle Sentinel)
Don't know
+1/+1 counters (Aquastrand Spider, Patron of the valiant), Spirits (Nightsoil Kami, Crib Swap)
Allies (Kor Entanglers, Zada's Commando)
Prowess/spells (Jeskai Windscout, Surreal Memoir), Top of library (Stormchaser Chimera, Whirlpool Whelm, Flamespeaker Adept)
Don't know
Sacrifice (Wakedancer, Catacomb sifter), Spirits (Thief of hope, Haru-Onna), Self-mill (Gurmag Angler, Satyr Wayfinder)
Enchantments(Grim Guardian, Blessed Spirits), Spirits (Nameless Inversion, Kami of the Palace Fields)
Domain/sunburst/Converge etc (Drag Down, Matca Rioters)

 

[Aoret]

I don't have a ton of time to give you in depth tips right now, but I thought maybe I'd throw out a few general ideas since nobody has replied yet. First, you shouldn't stress or feel like you have to force something into those color pairs you haven't yet found archetypes for. Your cube will play fine even if you don't have explicit ideas set up for those colors. Keep an eye on them and you may be inspired to do something later.

Second, your goals and process closely mirror my own from when I started designing; you'll likely find that some of your archetypes are too strong/weak compared to others. Stay flexible and be willing to kill your darlings. It's better to let an idea go than warp your cube around supporting notional ideas you started with once upon on a time. Note, I have no idea which archetype(s) will give you this problem as I haven't spent enough time looking at your list, but I feel confident that any new designer using this type of process will run into this issue.

Lastly, don't be too hard on yourself if a certain color can't do a certain thing (blue aggro or whatnot). Even wotc sets rarely achieve full archetypal support in every color in limited settings.

That's all I've got for now. Welcome and thanks for posting about your project! I'm eager to hear about how it evolves

 

[genericco]

Stay flexible and be willing to kill your darlings. It's better to let an idea go than warp your cube around supporting notional ideas you started with once upon on a time.

This is really good advice! Your ideas about what belongs in the cube will change as it takes shape and again as you start to draft it.

Once people have some idea of what to expect from the average pack, you'll find archetypes and meta-calls spring up that you never would have expected. If it leads to balanced drafting and fun matches, embrace it. I never thought a W/B tokens deck would emerge from my cube, but now that it's starting to, i'm sleeving up Lingering Souls.

This could come up for tribes - it takes a real density of creatures before a tribe is supported. It can be a challenge getting enough at the right power level of varying CMCs when making a cube list, let alone when you're passing packs around.

As for being a cube for beginners, avoid cards with a ton of text or unintuitive cards. The examples you listed all seem fine in this regard.

 

[Gozmit97]

Thanks for the great advice Aoret and Genericco
Having talked it over with my father once again and we agreed that perhaps making a cube with "goodstuff" would be a lot easier for our first cube. We can always make a new cube or insert archetypes into the current one once we have more experience.
This is the white section that I have been working on. There are a couple of cards I feel might be too good, such as day of judgement, considering the rest is pretty low power. Id you have any suggestions as to what is to powefull/to lackluster and what to replace it with, that would be great. We want the cube to still have some elements of normal limited in it, usch as combat tricks. So if you are wondering why there is a Dauntless Onslaught, that's why. I tried to take this into consideration when it came to the removal.
Once again, all feedback is much appreciated
-Gozmit