General CBS

i do a walkthrough of the cube usually a night or two before draft night to make sure i’m not missing cards, all my orders came in, etc. sometimes you actually find stuff, like, on my last walkthrough i discovered i don’t actually own Journey to Nowhere
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I test my changes in Forge before making the actual swaps, and I work from a change list in Notepad++ Only when I decide to actually replace a card, I cut it from my Forge cube list, paste the cut card into my change list, so I can keep track of which card gets replaced by which, and then when I'm finally done I order cards, wait for all the shipments to come in, then delete entries from my change list one by one as I replace the actual cards in the cube. I usually update my Cube Cobra list somewhere between ordering my cards and updating my physical cube.
 
Do you guys also regularly sit down for 2+ hours and sort your cube to make sure you actaully have exacty the same cards in your physical cube like on CC and/or to make sure all the cards you're still missing are on your cardmarket wants list?

It's hard work no one ever talks about!

Yeah. My whole system is to use a tag on CubeCobra to label the cards that I want to acquire, un-tag once I actually pick up the physical piece, then store it in my cube inclusions binder under I actually get to physically sit down and make the update.

It's usually once every 2 months or so unless I have a draft coming up. I keep my cube in Cardamajigs within the storage case I use and have the packs usually set up in WUBRG order and sorted by CMC. Makes it easier to track down cards for swaps and go through them down the road. I'll usually just "crack" all the packs and go through swaps one by one after gathering up all the cards that I want to add and store the old cards in the binder. If I have a draft coming up I will pre-shuffle the entire cube after making swaps and build packs.

I'll review to make sure that there isn't major color imbalance or any super outlier configurations like 3 Voucher cards in a pack or somehow 9 lands or whatever. By the time the draft comes around, I don't remember any of these specifics so it's all good.
 
Really, you're making the packs and check them before a draft?
I always just sit down with the other 1-7 people and tell them how many packs of how many cards each they have to make :D
 
Really, you're making the packs and check them before a draft?
I always just sit down with the other 1-7 people and tell them how many packs of how many cards each they have to make :D

Yeah, doesn't take me too long. I used to do what you mentioned but it's always ended up being a hassle and added to the extra set-up time for cube sessions for me. I like keeping them well organized so we start and finish in a reasonable time since we're likely meeting at an LGS and doing this instead of draft or constructed. Since my cube is usually already in color order, I just use this method for building packs:

Even Color Distribution Method (for 15 card packs):

1) Divide everything in your cube by color (WUBRG) with gold/colorless/lands together in a sixth pile.
2) Take roughly 20% of each color and shuffle it into the gold/colorless/lands pile.
3) Distribute the mixed pile evenly into each colored pile, then shuffle those piles thoroughly.
4) You should now be left with 5 mixed piles each leaning towards a majority of a specific color.
5) Take three cards from each of your five piles to make your 15 card packs, repeat until you have 24 packs for a full pod.

I mostly just want to make sure there aren't any super strange outliers because that's happened before when I ran more duplicates. It's much easier to get set up because I've got the Cardamajigs to just store them ready to just distribute and open in a session. I just find it easier to have these ready to go as I give a short PSA for new participants about the unique features like the Utility Land Draft (which I lay out in the middle of the table for viewing during the draft), Squadron Lands and my Voucher System. That way we can draft main cube, draft the ULD, then get going relatively quickly.

Afterwards I have people lay out their main decks by CMC with dice on basics to represent the # and just snap a quick photo of each for a later recap on my cube blog. Then I just sort piles into basics and by colors/identity, remove any of my outside of the main cube inclusions that are marked by stickers in a specific corner, then just store them away in my Cardamajigs in whatever order.
 
Oh gosh, I just finished writing my Modern Horizons 2 article. It turns out it was 50% longer than my Strixhaven article! I have no idea how this happened! I even tried to keep this one shorter!

Oh well, I guess you all just get more content to read ;)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I noticed I'm running into a lot of hobbies at the moment and can't devote time to all of them. Cube is kind of on the backburner for a while, I fear. In case you're wondering why I'm not posting as much at the moment, now you know! Don't worry, Magic has been a recurring hobby since 1999 for me, I'll be back ;)
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I noticed I'm running into a lot of hobbies at the moment and can't devote time to all of them. Cube is kind of on the backburner for a while, I fear. In case you're wondering why I'm not posting as much at the moment, now you know! Don't worry, Magic has been a recurring hobby since 1999 for me, I'll be back ;)
Once you got the emote you were begging for you were out of here.
 
Anyone had success with the Populate mechanic? I was thinking I'd target 3/3 Golems and whatnot, but I'm interested to hear any experiences with it.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Anyone had success with the Populate mechanic? I was thinking I'd target 3/3 Golems and whatnot, but I'm interested to hear any experiences with it.
I have it on a couple cards in Eldrazi Domain but I don't know if I'd consider it a success. The cards that are playable without a good populate are the only ones really left in the list.
 
Anyone had success with the Populate mechanic? I was thinking I'd target 3/3 Golems and whatnot, but I'm interested to hear any experiences with it.
I have a (sub) theme dedicated to it. The best card is probably Spitting Image which says a lot about the mechanic. Having both a populate card in hand and a good target on the field is a rather steep requirement. Tokens are very fragile and having them killed/bounced before the populate spell resolves is just rough. I quite like the idea of Selesnya Eulogist but it's very unreliable.

I have been meaning to try Growing Ranks but I don't have high hopes for it either.
 
I'm currently running two populate cards



Growth is just a bit more interesting than Nature's Chant, so I'm keeping it with the hopes of double pips not being too problematic.

Ranks is an attempt to add another build around card. I have quite a few good targets, mostly in abzan colors. It probably helps that a four mana Bitterblossom isn't too bad at my power level if this is the best you can get. Time will tell.

 


Eh? Eh?

EDIT: In all seriousness, Belligerence is a way to convert your 1/1 Soldiers or Elementals into beefier tokens disguised as a removal spell.
 
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