General Alternative Design Methods

[TrainmasterGT]

Designing a Cube is hard. There are so many ways to design a cube. Here are some alternative design methods to increase efficiency and decrease mental load wastage.

Explosive Synergy Matrix Method–
Take your favorite constructed decks, remove the basic lands, and put them into a box together. Removing duplicate cards is optional. Marinate them, giving all of those nice design flavors a chance to get to know each other. The resulting experience is proven to be 69% better than that of the average MTGO Vintage cube draft.

Thermal Expansion Method–
Choose some number of your favorite cards and load them into an empty Cube on Cubecobra. Then, use the "resize" feature to fill out the rest of the list. The resulting Cube should roughly resemble a Cube. Why not give it a try?

The Thermal Expansion method combines well with the Explosive Synergy Matrix method.

Masuda method–
Hatch cards from eggs to increase your chances of finding a shiny. This is accomplished by breeding two Magic cards created in sets of different languages. When done correctly, this can result in a Shiny rate of 8/4096 (equal to 1/512).

Ship-Toasting Method–
Using Napalm or classic Greek Fire, burn down a boat. Like a whole damn ship. This won't actually solve anything from a Cube design standpoint, it just looks pretty.

Balduvian Method–
Use cards that don't currently exist (you have to design them yourself).

 

[Brad]

The Thermal Expansion Method took my five Eldrazi titans plus spawn producers and a few big Eldrazi... and expanded to a 450 cube with 293 multicolored cards and 345 legends...

 

[TrainmasterGT]

The Thermal Expansion Method took my five Eldrazi titans plus spawn producers and a few big Eldrazi... and expanded to a 450 cube with 293 multicolored cards and 345 legends...

That sounds like one of the Cubes of all time.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Excellent shitpost XD

 

[blacksmithy]

the future is now, lads

 

[LadyMapi]

I tried the resize method on a list that only had Storm Crow in it, and this beautiful pile of cards is the result.

I think my favorite part is the single Soldier token. You know, I never thought about making people draft their tokens, but maybe that's the wave of the future?

EDIT: I keep finding new things to love about that pile. Like the bounceland manabase that stops just short of giving every color pair a gainland, the existence of Fractured Powerstone in a non-planechase cube, and the weird Rat Tribal subtheme (it's got Pack Rat, Rat Colony, Pestilence Rats, and Relentless Rats in there... as singletons).

 

[Onderzeeboot]

EDIT: I keep finding new things to love about that pile. Like the bounceland manabase that stops just short of giving every color pair a gainland, the existence of Fractured Powerstone in a non-planechase cube, and the weird Rat Tribal subtheme (it's got Pack Rat, Rat Colony, Pestilence Rats, and Relentless Rats in there... as singletons).

Did you already notice it runs Regna, the Redeemer and Krav, the Unredeemed, Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom and Okaun, Eye of Chaos, and Virtus the Veiled and Gorm the Great, but that Sylvia Brightspear is left hanging without her partner Khorvath Brightflame?

Edit: Or that, despite starting with Storm Crow, the color with the least cards is blue?

 

[Zoss]

EDIT: I keep finding new things to love about that pile. . . the existence of Fractured Powerstone in a non-planechase cube

You say that, but there's also a single copy of Kilnspire District. Between that and Seek Bolas' Counsel, I think it technically is a Planechase cube!

 

[LadyMapi]

You say that, but there's also a single copy of Kilnspire District. Between that and Seek Bolas' Counsel, I think it technically is a Planechase cube!

I should never have doubted THE WISDOM OF THE CUBE.

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

Edit: Or that, despite starting with Storm Crow, the color with the least cards is blue?

This makes perfect sense. If you’re starting with Storm Crow you clearly don’t give a toss about the colour.

 

[Jason Waddell]

GameCube Method

Create the best platform fighter ever and spend the next 20+ years alienating its fanbase.

 

[LadyMapi]

This makes perfect sense. If you’re starting with Storm Crow you clearly don’t give a toss about the colour.

That raises a pretty good question — I wonder what the cube would look like if the "seed" was just a bunch of "color matters" cards?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That raises a pretty good question — I wonder what the cube would look like if the "seed" was just a bunch of "color matters" cards?

I'm waiting for your findings

 

[LadyMapi]

So, here's Green (But Fake This Time)

I started it from a seed of ten cards that literally only cared about Green creatures and spells (with Arbor Elf to say that Forests were also important).

You'd think that Green would be the biggest section. It is not.

EDIT: Apparently there's a lower limit on how much you can ask it to shrink one of your cubes — I was curious about what it would give me if I told it to give me a 5-card version of the Capitalism Cube, and the end result was 74 cards.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So, here's Green (But Fake This Time)

I started it from a seed of ten cards that literally only cared about Green creatures and spells (with Arbor Elf to say that Forests were also important).

You'd think that Green would be the biggest section. It is not.

To be fair, it is your second largest section. It looks like it just compensated blue for your Storm Crow cube

 

[LadyMapi]

AI-Generated Cubing
It turns out that, for whatever reason, CubeCobra's mighty AI really likes Conspiracies.

 

[blacksmithy]

Marie Kondubing - look through every card in your house and ask, "does this spark joy?"
Begin by discarding...