General 180-card cubes in general and building one

I have no experience on smaller cubes whatsoever, but the premise seems practical since I usually have about 1-3 other players available for a draft at any one time. Drafting 4-player or doing a 2-player sealed seems much easier without having to lug around twice the pool size as well.

Has anyone had any experience or thoughts on a smaller format? Seems it would be much harder since card choices are even more tight.

I am also contemplating building a 'themed'-180, and wondering whether something like that would be possible, or advisable even? Currently I am thinking of trying a 180-card tribal cube, perhaps even a peasant-tribal. Thoughts or suggestions?

Happy new year guys, and cheers! :D
 
I have a thread in the cube list forum, which is a pretty themed 180 cube, since I skipped white and red. Haven't been able to test it yet, but hopefully I'll get to that in the next few days.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Thanks for the suggest onder, however I'm not looking to build a battle box. Already have one! :D

Haha, sweet! :)

In that case I would go with Jonas' suggestion of keeping it themed in some way. It's already hard to exclude cards in a 360 cube, imagine what all-stars you'ld have to cut to arrive at 180! If you don't restrict yourself, you'll end up with a really cutthroat environment. I'ld suggest picking several themes you and your playgroup can have fun with (+1/+1 counters, domain, enchantress, etc.) and try to flesh out these themes in a few of the colors.
 

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
I tried experimenting with a low 180 list and was completely unsatisfied with the results. Cutting the design space is definitely the direction you want to go in, whether is be the total number of colors or some other form of controlling the diversity of potential decktypes. A generalist list spanning all five colors and attempting to support the full range of decktypes seems destined to fail. An extremely aggressive manafixing outside of the cube (land draft, giving each player a set of fetch/shocks) could also be an option as this would free up slots in the cube and allow for complete freedom in crosscolor synergy and design space that is normally a limiting factor. In a way that would sort of be making your cube "one color", but you'd still be using cards from all the colors.
 
I was already thinking of trying a themed 180 and I do like going +1/+1 counters and proliferate; but was wondering if a 180-tribal cube would work?
Not really interested in making the cube powered, unfortunately (10 moxen isn't really my thing).
I am, however worried about the manafixing in such limited space. I am thinking like 20 lands tops.
 
I have a mono-black theme cube that is about 200 cards. I only take it out a few times a year to draft because it gets stale fast. However, when we do draft it for those few weeks a year it's a blast. At such a small size themes definitely can work, but you may still have to break singleton. The themes in my mono-black cube are:

1. Zombies
2. Vampires
3. Reanimator
4. Storm
5. Control
6. Self Mill

With so many themes space is extremely cramped so I would recommend sticking to 3-4 different themes rather than the 6 that I employ.
 
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