Intro
Hi, my name is Oleg. I play Magic on and off for 20+ years. Hobbyist game designer for 20+ years, 2D artist in gamedev for 10+ years. I largely switched from constructed to draft around 2016 and sold off my cards in 2021 in favour of other boardgames and cube only. When cube host left for another country, it left a gaping hole in my heart for years. So in 2025 I caved in, and proxied my own cube from scratch.I dislike powermax philosophy and I don’t care at all about rarity or format restriction. IMO cube is a gamedesign exercise. Magic rules is your engine; thousands of cards are your assets. So you are inventing a new way to play. I don’t vibe at all with taking “the best” cards from an artificially limited pool. Your taste of theme and power level should dictate your choices, not WotC constructed formats. Say, restricting to Modern format doesn’t make sense outside of specific nostalgia factor, if you are into that. But that is just my stand, and everyone is free to make cube their very own. That’s the spirit of the format that makes it the best there is.
Mu initial core design considerations were the following:
- This isn't a novice cube per se, but I cater to non-MtG players. So I'm limiting unintuitive interactions, similar yet different abilities, excessive use of tokens etc. Ideally each mechanic is used deliberately and multiple times.
- No double-sided cards, adventures or emblems. Reading the card explains the card.
- No planeswalkers, vehicles or equipment. Just don't enjoy their lore and play patterns.
- No fetchlands, few tutors or shuffles. Time consuming and not newbie friendly.
- No fast mana, hard combos, and "I win" cards. Fair macro archetype Magic with some build around "cool stuff" in place of true combo decks.
After bans, the cube is around 350 cards. We draft 5 packs of 9, plus some amount of burned cards in the end of the pack. I’ve tried variations from 5x12, burn 3 (good) to 5x15, burn 6 (maybe too much). 5x9 without burns can definitely cause problems of diluted 3 color decks due to not seeing enough cards opened.
I have read A TON of r/mtgcube subreddit and Riptide Lab over the past months/years. Listened to hours upon hours of Lucky Paper Radio. So I feel like trying to pay back with my own lessons learned from all you fine folks and from designing a personal cube.
CUBE COBRA LIST is here.
Speed, power level and play experience
Due to mana sinks, utility lands and backup graveyard abilities, most games are decided by tempo, and rarely reach empty hands with topdecking mode. This makes me very happy. I often feel like I have agency to sequence different plays, and think of my mistakes instead of roulette blowouts when I lose.My default reference point for X mana is X/X creature with upside, which works good in the middle. But 1/1 with upside might be too slow to properly police the format even in my low powered cube. Big creatures without ETB effects feel weak, just like in old times. I don’t know if I even mind. I’m so tired of pushed mythics doing everything at once. I think you should properly sequence for big monsters, not slam and autowin with them. But statline balance definitely deserves more attention.
Due to low amount of tokens, counters and wordy mechanics, games usually feel lean and clean, which I love. The problem I have is not being able to decide which style I should push more in Sam Black's terminology. I like “small games” with clear board states, low permanent count and each interaction feeling important. But my search for synergistic interactions pushes me towards “big games” with lots of permanents and long matches. I tried to shift synergies towards graveyard and instant/sorceries, that’s why I avoided tokens and go wide strategies. But I feel kinda stuck here. That’s what you get for not knowing what exactly your cube should try to accomplish.
I tend to not like boardstalls. They are part of the game and are fine eventually, but not as a norm. I usually put in X/1 creatures instead of 1/X, so they’d often trade in combat. It honestly works good, and it’s rare to have no possible attacks at all. But UW flicker and green ramp tend to flood the board with lots of things. Maybe aggro is too weak to punish these. But so far it’s not an omnipresent problem.
I feel I can increase power and complexity, because my players took this good, and rarely failed to draft a reasonable deck. The rest is fine-tuning. I will probably add token and creature engine strategies in my second cube.
Linear aggro
I’ve read too much “you need aggro in cube” and took it to heart. Sidestepping from only supporting monored sligh, WBR are central weenie aggro colors as much as space allows. It seemingly works, I’ve even splashed green in 3-color aggro. But it doesn’t get drafted often, and takes a lot of slots in cube. Drafting all 1 drops probably isn’t what my players see as fun or logical. Maybe because it’s underpowered, maybe because it seems boring. They certainly want to mess around with spellslinger, enchantments or blink instead.A solution I’m pondering is to forfeit 1-drop fun police, and instead push slower thematic touches like prowess, go wide or artistocrats in place of linear aggro. But I’m afraid it would make grindy slow decks go unpunished. I feel there should be more consequences for not committing to the board for 3 turns. I’m hoping for non-linear aggro that’s not parasitic 1 drops. Could it even exist?
I didn’t want actual mono blue, but hoped to see aggro splashing for tempo bounce and counterspells. So far, nothing. If you draft blue, you always end up in a grindy big deck. I must be lacking the understanding what makes aggro-control work, or designed it the wrong way.
Blue and non-blue control
Newsflash, people think blue is broken! That even birthed a belief of it being the best color to the point of my players hatedrafting it from me, despite me not caring as an all color enjoyer. This is likely my bad for wanting to have iconic cards in there. But 2 mana counterspells might be too good for my power level. Cube Cobra Elo rating shows blue occupying the highest slots. I think my mistake is oversupporting it due to nostalgia, and undersupporting the rest. Maybe solution is to just bring up other colors, instead of cutting down counterspells. But funnily enough, blue decks have low win rate, because everyone wants to draft control, and fails to pilot it properly due to inexperience.I tried to place seeds for Ux-control in all colors. Or even go without blue, like BW control in Premodern. I’ve drafted non-blue, and it was honestly fun and fair Magic. But it’s obviously worse than blue-based control. Against other decks it often doesn’t have enough advantage to bounce back in the late game. I’ll try to give it a little more toys. Not because it’s good, but because I want to consciously detach from blue is only control, and control is only blue.
Green ramp
Between creatures and enchantments green has a whopping 13 ramp pieces (27% of green cards). And 5 cards in artifact section. On a positive side, drafters loved 1 mana dorks. But I worry 1 mana ramp is too strong for my environment. 5 dorks share the highest Elo ranks with blue according to Cube Cobra.It “balanced” out by green not having generic good creatures. It’s either enchantments, or big ramp into… Whatever? So I understand common criticism that green ramp is boring in cube if you don’t ramp into an “oops I win” Eldrazi. If you don’t draft from a few selected beasts, my players complained they don’t have good on curve beaters. So, in my second cube I’m cutting ramp significantly in favor of small utility creatures and good bodies with hooks for various archetypes. Like a medium sized beast for graveyard, for counters, for disenchant effect. But it could just hit face if you don’t care.
Mana fixing and 5 color goodstuff
I’m happily proclaiming there wasn’t a single greed pile so far. I just don’t have environment for it. I have no generically strong value and removal in gold. You should have monocolored cards for that. I think it’s boring when 2 color card is just “same but better”. My gold section is strictly for signposting different strategies. Often you don’t even want all of the cards in the same 2 color deck, not even talking about a 5 color one. For now, I feel that I solved 5 color goodstuff without it even becoming a problem. Or maybe I just didn’t have that kind of greedy madman at the table.I’ve pushed good fixing with a lot of lands and backup options in artifact section, maybe too much. But no fetchlands and no triomes means you don’t have “free” splashes. I routinely draft 5+ nonbasics and utility lands in 2 colors with a possible splash, but my drafters still need convincing these cards aren’t there just to clog up spaces in packs. We only draft 4 players, so everybody freely settles in whatever they want, but most 2 color lands often don’t find a home. I have 4 in each pair: fastland, painland, surveil tapland and horizon/cycling. Then a dozen of 5 color ones.
I’m not certain my group will ever grow to 6-8 drafters. So, for the second cube I’m planning 20 fetchlands and 10 landscapes, plus shocks and surveil taplands. My idea is to make more lands suit outside of strictly 2 colors. My worry is that fetches are too good, and constant shuffling is annoying.
Graveyard as a broad theme
I wouldn’t call it a graveyard cube per se, but it’s definitely the main theme here. BG is more creature focused, while UR is more spellslinger focused. Even white has a few tricks. If you don’t draft a “graveyard deck”, you still benefit from self-mill and flashback due to the frequency of graveyard interactions.A resounding success. I’m definitely using this approach in the next version. Less pronounced archetypes, but more scattering of seeds across multiple colors. Say, I plan to put in a lot of incidental artifacts all colors could use, not “this guild is artifacts”.
Archetype overdesign — GW(b) enchantments
Settling on GW theme was a big thing for me. First, it’s my least favorite color combination by far. Second, I hate goodstuff midrange. That’s why I went way too hard with enchantments. I’ve had one success with GW generic ramp, but most of the time GW is just auras and enchantments, full stop. I’ve seen BG enchantments do reasonably good. But BW auras seem to suck and no one has ever drafted Kor Spiritdancer. Sigil of the Empty Throne is either do nothing, or “oops, I win”. Auras at times are perfect curveout into payoffs, but more often a wreck with wrong half of the deck doing nothing, and then blown up with removal.I have specifically excluded hexproof creatures, as I think boggles deck would be dumb “gotcha” in limited. And I wanted to push auras instead of equipment. I’ve been considerate with removal quality, making it either sorcery or more expensive, but my players still feel frustrated having spent an aura to catch a 2-for-1 the next turn. Despite me hoping aura bonuses would outweight the risks. When it works on curve, it might be brutal, but it’s very inconsistent.
It’s my biggest fail with the first version of the cube. And drafters ended up thinking white and green are the worst colors. Yes, I can definitely push it more. But I’m not happy with this enchantment theme, so I’m dropping it completely. That means white and green would need whole new identities. I’m thinking go wide tokens, +1/+1 counters, lands and a sprinkle of spellslinger to compliment blue and red. I don’t mean full-blown decks, more like thematic touches. But WG has proved to be the most challenging guild for me. Maybe my core designer’s fault is just not being a big fan of the combination, that’s why I try so hard to be “cute” with it. I can just make it goodstuff midrange for those who enjoy that, but it feels like giving up.
Archetype overdesign — UW flicker
I have explicitly oversupported it, so value flicker is just what UW routinely does. It was reasonably well received, clear for my drafters, and it works good. It’s just honestly not that interesting of a play pattern. Endlessly bouncing permanents back and forth for an additional card or a token. And generating bloated board states I don’t really like. I’ve never seen UW aggro or UW control that I hoped for. I think I’m cutting most enablers, and I won’t miss it. You kinda feel clever with juggling these cards, but I found it really repetitive and samey each time.Archetype overdesign — UR spellslinger
On the other hand, I love UR spellslinger theme, as it doesn’t feel too parasitic to me. Be it prowess aggro or draw-go control. Unless you design it specifically in another way, casting instants and sorceries are what these colors want to do even in a generic environment. So having some payoffs feels natural. I suspect UR-control might be the best deck in cube due to my affection towards it. I tried to seed some in other colors. White ended up having too little support to care about it. Black is a tiny bit better. With artifacts in the next cube, I plan to make noncreature spell density another broad theme, instead of just UR spells. Honestly, it just works because of omnipresent card types every deck can play. Retiring enchantments should free a lot of space for it, especially in white and green.Archetype combinations
BG graveyard + enchantments didn’t feel like a cadaver, but just a reasonable combination in a good midrange deck. Other time 2 neighbouring drafters were in 2 different BG decks. That gave me strong inspiration that you don’t have to strictly identify as a single archetype if synergies are sufficiently good. Riptide folks have long theorized nonlinear multifaceted decks, having different lines of play in all stages of the match. I doubt I can get it right the first time, but the idea itself have launched me into the dream of sandbox cube where you can draft radically different decks in the same colors, due to synergies coming in small modules instead of the whole decks. I have no idea if I could make it work without being parasitic, but one could hope.I’m thinking something like go wide aggressive deck, but it can recur from the graveyard in a long game, control the board with Sparksmith in a creature mirror, or have a big combo finish with Blood Artist. Not goodstuff midrange, but synergy midrange? I don’t know how to call it.
Archetypes as the idea itself
Pronounced archetypes help players to feel smart when they discover one of the less explicit synergies I’ve put in. Like enchantment based removal working with constellation or self-mill being generally useful in a graveyard themed cube. When it’s called out, I can’t help myself, but to smugly reply “Who might’ve put this card in?!”. Jokes aside, cards with hooks are great to set players off on a journey. But I’m less happy that I designed the journey to end up in the same deck every time. That’s the cycle I hope to break.I knew all that, and I’ve read a lot about “drafting on rails”. I thought I’d be clever to design flexible archetypes, bleeding in multiple colors. But in the end “cool deck” is the obvious one, that I predesigned. And while testing with bots, I’ve caught myself to be forcing decks I want to exist, instead of experimenting with different possible combinations. Can this be changed in the next cube? That’s my main goal.
Player group and feedback
Feedback is often frustrating. My players trigger over the most innocent things like creatures flying over blockers or theoretical highest ceilings on cards. I have to reiterate that you can kill opponent before he goes into magical Christmas land with 10 mana and 5 creatures on the field. I’ve banned a dozen of cards, but mostly used my own judgement. I try to collect a short questionnaire every time, and most complaints over broken cards are different each time. The only one that was consistently called an “autowin” is Triskelion, so I caved in and removed it.I gravitate to the notion, that it’s a personal project, that I enjoy spending exorbitant amount of time on. So it should be gratifying for the designer not to drop it. Feedback shouldn’t be taken as literally “ban this and that”. More like that there are problems with your design, that could be solved in different ways. Luckily, after a few months, my group is rather happy with what we have, especially after I publicly took Triskelion out of a sleeve into the shame corner. I’ve also promised them I would make WG better in the next cube, without enchantments.
It’s kinda refreshing hearing them complain about Warkite Marauder, Unsummon and Countryside Crusher, but not about Counterspell, Snapcaster Mage and Birds of Paradise. Reminds me how deep I am into Magic meta for half of my life.
They also claim I babysit them too much with simple cards and straightforward archetypes. So I’m taking off training wheels in the next version. Let’s see them having fun with Winter Orb, Wildfire and Smokestack. Hopefully that doesn’t blow up with me not having a group anymore.
Nostalgia, aesthetic and design goals
So, my cube is full custom made proxies in a unified 1996 old-border frame, but with modern oracle text. I’ve taken liberties to edit a few functional erratas and a lot of added reminder texts for new players. Also never existed borders for colored artifacts and enchantments. I’m not a collector at all, and I hate when MtG is being treated as a stock investment market. So proxies and zero budget restrictions were among the first decisions I’ve made. I won’t argue about proxies here, just know, that my cube aesthetic makes no real sense. It has hints of nostalgia, but a lot of modern cards.I’ve sold out of the game long ago. Cube will outlive Magic, as they say. I think WotC have lost me as an enfranchised player for good with EDH, Universes Beyond, power creep and word soup. But they still have a hell of a design team working on mechanics of the same old game. No wonder they’ve exhausted “everything is kicker and horsemanship” over 30 years. But I’d be damned if they don’t still come up with creative ways to push color identities and interesting zone interactions. I just have to sift through a ton of modern cards, rejecting wide majority due to aesthetics or mechanics I don’t want to play with.
Yes, disregarding initial nostalgia motivation, my modern design cube having old border aesthetic makes little sense. I just think it’s good, beautiful and functional, okay? I abhor 95% of ugly Secret Lairs and dozens of different card finishes. I think of my cube as a kind of capsulated board game, plundered from the existing CCG. I want it to have a given cohesive look. So I loosely follow the line of “high fantasy with a tint of horror”. No starships and Spiderman in my draft!
I miss the art, the vibes or weird effects they don’t print anymore. Yeah, Serra Angel is an iconic card. But sadly that’s the one that doesn’t really push you into any creative directions. With the heaviest of hearts, I decided to drop the idea of cube being an expedition into Magic history and old artwork, in favor of putting gameplay first. I’d happily play modern limited design with art from 90s. I love watching Premodern videos. But power level and desired synergies just aren’t there for what I want from my environment.
I have a tendency to chase everything at once. The one rare advice I’m thinking of from the art world, is watching LESS art, not more. It obfuscates senses of your own thing going, and makes you envy those artists you don’t even intend to follow. You can’t have all artstyles at the same time. I might have been consuming too much of cube content, that clouds my own vision, and pushes me in too many different directions. Lesson is: your cube can’t be everything at once. Decisions must be made, and I’m putting engaging gameplay first from now on. I can’t marry 90s aesthetic and modern(-ish) synergistic design style. Maybe I’m too weak, I don’t know. But one must go. I want soft synergies and multiple archetype glue cards, instead of full-on combo decks and broken cards of old.
Deciding the identity of your cube is hard. That’s why most players gravitate towards powermax goodstuff as a default mode. Because that’s already set for them. Honestly, “cards from your childhood binder” is a more interesting constraint, than the best cards ever. Today’s Magic is more like ten games in a trenchcoat. So understanding what exactly you want from it is a big deal for mental clarity. EDH? Skill grind? Nostalgia? Collecting rare prints? And making your own cube is a testament to it. But you are also unlikely to get it right the first time. You have to wet your feet, and learn from some wrong decisions. One game developer has called it “Biased knowledge”, which I like. You can read a ton of books, but you don’t have a feeling of how much salt to put in your soup.
It took me a while to formulate that I live for these tiny non-obvious interactions you find in some multifaceted decks, when cards cooperate like a charm in flexible directions. Linear aggro/combo blitz for the win or pushed midrange mythics rarely interest me. I'm Johnny-Timmy, if you will. And this first cube version is a start, but not what I truly crave. Which is a replayable sandbox of emergent interactions.
What’s next
Mind, I did not test the current cube rigorously, and my group aren’t core Magic players. Maybe some things didn’t work out because we haven’t drafted it enough. But that would require either a few years or a huge playtest group. I’m still very happy with it, and, after 21 years, Magic still came back as my favorite game of all times. I hope it’s possible to grow the group to 6 player pods monthly, if not more often.I just shared what I have learned over the past months. Version 2.0 of my cube is shaping up to be a whole different thing, with few cards in common. Right now I aim for more complexity, wide archetype shapes in 3-5 colors and more sandbox draft feel, with banhammer carving out balance as we go. I’m afraid I might be worrying over archetypes too hard, so I’ll have to cut down the rails of overdesign. I currently have 1000+ cards for version 2, and cuts are harder each time. I see that I definitely oversupport some ideas with a dozen pieces instead of 3-4. That’s the problem when you want everything to go with everything. I’m cutting away whole deck ideas, before adding them back in a week later.
It certainly won’t be newbie friendly or celebrating old iconic cards. It will be a custom format of my specific tastes in Magic. But that’s probably what a personal project should be.
Current CUBE COBRA LIST in case you’ve missed it in the text.
Thanks for reading!
