Brirro's Variant Cube

[Brirro]

Brirro's Variant Cube​

Welcome to my cube! I've been working on it since August of 2021, it's come a long way, but I'm sure there's also a long way to go. I've recently started listening to the Lucky Paper Radio podcast, which has caused me to make quite a few changes to my cube and design goals. I've also been reading more of the cube articles that have been posted across many sites. If anyone has any more recommendations for cube or just magic content in general, that would be much appreciated.

Cube Philosophy:​

The primary goal of my cube is to be an enjoyable experience for everyone who drafts it. I want this environment to be heavily synergy based so that by combing different cards, those cards can become more powerful, and create unique memorable experiences. While synergy is the basis of this cube, some cards are included for the potential fun situations that they can bring to it.
Another goal I have for this cube is for it to support many of the oversized cards that no longer have a home elsewhere in magic. I still have a lot of tuning to do to get the cube into a place where it is somewhat balanced even with the oversized cards. And finally, I also want to "support" the chaos of using multiple of the variants at the same time, albeit something that shouldn't happen too often.

Archetypes:​

WU: Blink
UB: Ninjas
BR: Wildfire, Reanimation/Ficker
RG: Big Creatures
GW: Tokens
WB: Stax, Tokens
BG: Reanimator
GU: Flash
UR: Spells
RW: Aggro

Spoiler: Examples

Aggro -​

Aggro is supported in WR

Flicker -​

Flicker is usually in the bant colors, but has support in all 5 colors.

Ninjas Tempo -​

Swing in with cheap evasive creatures with ETB's, ninjutsu in a Ninja, and replay the ETB creature. This archetype is supported in UB

Wildfire -​

This deck is based in red, but typically has B or G as a support color.

Discard -​

Discard creatures with power 2 or less, and reanimate them! This deck is often BR sometimes splashing green for hornet queen.

Big Creatures -​

Ramp out massive threats! This deck is often RG.

Tokens -​

Make an Army and swing for the win. This deck is often GW but also has supported in UB as well.

Stax -​

Take symmetrical Stax effects, and make them asymmetrical. This deck is often WB

Spells -​

This is the least creature-based deck in the cube I believe. Historically supported in UR, but I've been working to also support it in WB

Flash -​

Why play spells on my turn, when I could play them on your turn instead! This deck is supported in UG, and also probably needs help.

Graveyard Value - BG u/r​

Just cards like care about the graveyard. Primarily in BG but also some support in UR

Now for the namesake of the cube, the Variants!

Vanguards​

Vanguards were made to get people to start playing on Arena. They were insanely overpowered and balanced horribly. They released 4 series of these vanguards starting all the way back in 1998. I had no option of playing with these cards when they came out as I was not yet born, but while designing this cube I stumbled across them and wanted to give them a home. I do not currently own of all them, but I am working on it, I own 8 of the 33, but I have been focusing on buying the more expensive ones first.
I want to try to incorporate these vanguards into my environment more than any of the other variants, but I have not really started to get to the meat of this, because I've been trying to make my current archetypes work better.
A lot of my cube is going to need to change to get this to work, and I'm hopefully going to start the process soon.
I've done one draft with these, each player getting a random one of what I own, and most of the people I was playing with forgot they existed during their matches, so I didn't really end up with useful data.

Planechase​

There are many options for drafting with the plane chase cards, and I will cover the 3 options that I am considering.
1. Normal Drafting - Give each player a pack of 10 planes to draft from. Each player will construct a 5? card Planechase deck from the planes they drafted. From there the game is played as usual, except with the Planechase rules.
2. Eternities Map - When playing Eternities Map I remove the draft of planes altogether, just shuffle all the planes into one pile, and then play how it normally goes.
3. Random Plane - Before the draft begins a random plane will be chosen, and all of the games will be taking place on that plane. This one came from this Cubecobra Article.
I do not currently own all of the planechase cards (only owning ~10 of them right now), but I am working on buying more of them.

Archenemy​

I have never played archenemy, so I don't know how games normally play out, so preparing the Archenemy variant for my cube has been pushed back for future me to look at. Archenemy sounds fun, and I've seen many Archenemy cubes, I also feel like it's less interesting than the Vanguards and Planechase, but I could be completely wrong.

Conspiracies​

Many cubes include some of the conspiracies, and many people agree that some of them are too powerful. The power of them is a concern with my cube, but compared to Vanguards, I don't think they are the best cards in the cube. What is Backup Plan when compared to starting the game with 10 cards using Tawnos.
I think that the conspiracies can add a lot to the draft, and also have some interesting synergies.
Gerrard is often considered pretty weak because of how slow he is, starting the game with only 3 cards in hand. Combine Gerrard with Backup Plan and now you start the game with 7 cards, and a decent ability, and can even help to fuel reanimator when discarding back down to hand size.

Heros​

I think the heroes have the potential to play similarly to the conspiracies but perhaps a little more balanced. I'm sure many of these cards can be very powerful, maybe too powerful, but I have not gotten around to testing these just yet.

Ante​

Ante is a long antiquated mechanic, where the winner of a game would get a random card from the loser's deck. While it no longer has a home in magic anymore, I think that cube would be a perfect place to house it. Simply put, before each game each player removes a random card from their deck and puts it up for ante. Whoever wins the match, gets all the cards put up for ante, and those cards are added to their card pool.

Challenge Decks​

With many other variants that need support, I'm going to include minimal support for these. They are intended for a smaller pod, as more of a puzzle rather than competitive games.
Garruk the Slayer - To challenge Garruk, simply take your deck and play a match against him. He uses one of his loyalty abilities every turn, and whoever's 'life' reaches 0 first loses.
Horde Deck - To face the horde deck, everyone will draft their decks as normal, and then join in on a cooperative battle against the horde deck. This is my horde deck, but any horde deck will work. I have also not tested this yet, so some modifications might need to be made.
Theros Challenger Decks - Similar to the Garruk Challenge Deck, but instead of fighting Garruk, you fight one of the challenger decks made for Theros.

 

[Ecophagy]

Hey man, welcome to the forum. I'm new here too, but I thought I'd chime in with some impressions. Very cool idea for a cube, gives it a lot of flexibility and freshness without needing to carry too many extra cards.

The overall design certainly looks like a challenge. It must be hard to support so many different variants with the same base - especially since they are very different ways of playing MTG (Vanguard + Conspiracies are OP power magic, Archenemy and Planechase are multiplayer focused, Challenger decks are more of a puzzle). If it were me, I would be really sure that there really is demand for so many variants - especially since you say your group doesn't meet up that often, so they may not need as much going to keep things fresh and interesting, or they might benefit from being able to work out How To Cube Good before adding too much additional complexity on top. As alternative might be to pick one or two variants and build the cube towards working with and without the additional cards. Then you can add stuff incrementally instead of all at once.

For the Vanguards, I think it would be very reasonable to make some custom ones (or errata existing ones) - as you say, they're really old and not really all that balanced. So why not make some better ones! Gerrard might be pretty good if he started with 4 or 5 cards in hand, or had to pay mana to get the bonus draw or something. Trying to balance broken Vanguards with also-broken conspiracies seems very risky - you're just as likely to end up turbo-charging OP Vanguards a you are to balance out the UP ones.

I think Ante in Cube is very cool, since although it sucks to lose your best card it's not actually permanent and adds an extra layer of competition. I have also seen people do "graffiti ante", where the winner gets to physically draw or write something on the losing ante card - it adds a lot of texture and memories to the physical cards, but you obviously have to be ok with them being defaced! However, almost all of the actual "ante cards" look basically unplayable, apart from Contract From Below which is obviously bonkers. It's cool to add them to the draft, but I can't see anyone actually playing them so it seems like a waste. You can jut play for ante without the extra baggage - or Custom cards could be the option here as well! But ultimately if you're not a fan of the variant, why support it?

To address your final question - what about the cube seems unbalanced and in need of fixing? If you're crushing every draft is that because your other players are making suboptimal picks? Building suboptimal decks? Or make suboptimal plays? You might want to think abut removing inconsistent cards/archetypes (renanimator and storm are often like that), or simplifying some of the cards or archetypes - are ninjas not working because the cards are bad or because the player piloting it doesn't know what to draft for it?

One thing I found when I first started building a cube was that I found it easy to over-support and over-power archetypes I felt were very clearly defined. E.g. tokens is very simple (make tokens, make anthems) which makes it easy to have too much of a good thing, compared to a more vague theme like "Big creatures gruul smash". Plus, tokens gets support across multiple colours, which other theme do not so there's more density equating more consistency. For example it's entirely possible ninjas doesn't work out because neither blue nor black have much support for evasive tempo strategies - they have to support renimation, tokens, flash, spells matter, Stax, and blink instead.

Hopefully some of that will be helpful, and I'm not trying to just be a downer. I honestly think the cube list (both current and projected) look basically fine and fun, and the variants are a cool idea, I just think a bit more restraint or focus in some areas would be beneficial.

 

[Brirro]

Thank you very much for the reply!
I think that my group is perfectly content with my cube with no variants, so adding them is not at all necessary, however, I'm posing it to myself as more of a design challenge than something I need to do to keep the cube interesting. So I would like to try and give it a shot even if it doesn't work out super well.
Custom Vanguards/Errating Vanguards sounds like a great idea. I will probably end up doing that, but I want to at least attempt to keep them vanilla at least for now. If I do end up changing/making custom vanguards I could see trying to model them more off of Ral's Vanguard instead of the older ones.

Trying to balance broken Vanguards with also-broken conspiracies seems very risky - you're just as likely to end up turbo-charging OP Vanguards a you are to balance out the UP ones.

I can see this happening, I will need to keep my eye on it. I think in general(not true for all of them), lots of the best vanguards have you starting with extra cards, whereas some of the worse ones(again, not true for all of them), generally have fewer cards in your starting hand. I think that maybe Backup Plan could work here, as a way to bring starting hands lower than 7 up, but also a card that higher starting hand sizes don't necessarily want, as it reduces their hand size. I can see this causing more problems, but I would like to try it.

I do like the idea of Ante in cube, I was just trying to say that I found Ante less interesting than playing with planechase or vanguards, but thinking on that now I think that by just not including the underpowered/overpowered Ante cards, it actually sounds like a lot of fun! My main reasoning for wanting to include them was because they "can't" be played anywhere else, so I thought cube could be an interesting spot for them. I might still try to include Jeweled Bird thought, and maybe just errata it to be a sacrifice ability when not playing ante.

My question regarding balancing was less of an x and y are too good, but more of a is there anything I can do to help balance it, while not being able to playtest it often.

are ninjas not working because the cards are bad or because the player piloting it doesn't know what to draft for it?

The time I remember the most with the ninjas is when I was piloting it, and it was one of the drafts that I went 0-3. The biggest problem I was seeing then was I was getting a lack of evasive creatures, with my group picking cards like augury owl very highly, so I was left with ninjas, and only a few evasive creatures. In my planned updates list, I've tried to help this a little, with slightly narrower cards, for example spectral sailor as a cheap evasive creature, without an etb, while still potentially seeing play in a flash deck. But I'm also not 100% sure how a tempo deck aims to win, so maybe I'm off the mark with this one.

Thank you for all of the help!

 

[Brirro]

Time for some musings.
I really like the vanguards, so I'm going to work on incorporating them into my cube some more.

While vanguards are incredibly powerful, because everyone gets one, and they are always active, I think that it somewhat balances them. For example, if I had Sol Ring in my cube, it would be the best card in it by far, and whoever drafts it has a large advantage. Now let's say instead everyone gets a Sol Ring, it would end up similarly to commander, whoever draws their Sol Ring gets a large advantage. How about everyone starts with their Sol Ring in play, everyone would have an equal advantage(assuming decks were built for it). It's the same with vanguards, assuming that the vanguards included are roughly balanced, would mean that everyone is roughly on the same playing field. Is my thinking with this correct, or am I completely off base with this one?

The next thing on my mind has been an MTG Salvation post from 2011, the post covers potential archetypes that each vanguard would work in, and I count 13 of them that work well in an aggro deck. But looking over the vanguards I count 5 that start with over 30 health, and one with 29. Maybe I'm also wrong with this, but I don't think that aggro can beat someone starting with 30 life very easily. Maybe this problem could be fixed by supercharging aggro, but that causes the problem as there are vanguards that start with 15 or less life. I think the solution to this problem is just removing or errataing the vanguards that cause problems.

I found this article, which has rankings for each of the vanguards, the list is probably not perfect and might be different in my cube environment, but I think that starting with the 16 vanguards from B+ tier and below. My problem with that is Urza and Oracle both have life totals close to 30, which might wall aggro. I am still going to test them, and I will report my finding once I manage to get together for a draft. My other idea for aggro dealing with higher life totals is maybe having a larger top end, maybe an Inferno Titan could help close out one of those games.

Spoiler: Vanguards I'm testing

 

[Zoss]

First off, I love how you support a ton of different draft experiences! I agree with your points about Ante cards playing much more interestingly in Cube than in any other format. Graffiti ante is new to me as well, so thanks for introducing me to that one, Ecophagy!


For balancing the cube and specifically for balancing archetypes, I would look at "standard" cube examples and examine what cards tend to cluster together to get a better sense of what hangs on what power level.

Archetype-level thoughts:

Ninjas: This is a much lower-powered archetype than the rest you advertise, generally speaking, but I think the biggest problem with this archetype is the lack of things to do on turn 1 in Blue decks. You have a total of four proactive 1-MV spells in Blue (Opt, Preordain, Faerie Seer, Consider), meaning that aggressive starts in Blue are going to have a rough time. On that note, I'm a big proponent of customizing your mana values to reflex where cards will actually be played on the curve (ex. Condescend will, in reality, cost or rather than ; as such, leaving it in the MV 1 slot won't help you extract information from the table or the summary statistics that CubeCobra automatically generates).

If you really want to juice Ninjas (and who doesn't?), I'd recommend 1) adding a few more MV 1 plays in Blue and 2) adding Ninjas that affect your opponent's board. The former is easy to achieve with things like Judge's Familiar, Spectral Sailor, [neat, you already did this one!] or cantrips, but the latter is a little more subtle. Specifically, I'm worried that your current version of a Ninjas deck just doesn't run enough disruption to make it play like a tempo deck. Things like Okiba-Gang Shinobi, Dokuchi Silencer, or Throat Slitter can really kick this deck into high gear. (Sidebar: why isn't there a ninja that Duresses on hit yet? And no, Biting-Palm Ninja isn't it because you can only do that once.) Things like Grave Titan also just end any aggro deck's plan, so trimming the top-end down might help lower-curve decks. I've found that lower-strength high-MV cards will end the game just as well while giving aggro decks a bit more breathing room.


Izzet Spellslinger: Adding more cantrips will also help this deck! Hard Evidence is premium, for example, and would go great in a Bant Glare of Subdual deck.


Aggro: Honestly, it's a bit of a combination of thing keeping aggro from thriving here. First, I'd recommend playing aggro and beating the socks off of everyone. However, I think your cube could benefit from a few swaps. Wall of Omens is a pretty hard stop for aggro; Spirited Companion is a lot more manageable. Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile are powered-cube levels of removal, but I don't see any great dedicated aggro cards past MV 1. Your removal could stand to be a little more expensive; spending 2 mana vs. 1 is fine if you're killing a Griselbrand, but it's a lot less okay against Isamaru.


RW: Assemble the Legion and Glory of Warfare are midrange/control cards, not aggro cards, and Goblin Trenches isn't much better. The latter could have a place in aggro decks in lower-powered cubes, but I think that your cube is just too high-powered for these to have an effect in those decks. At this point (I know that reanimator may be on its way out), your aggro decks have to deal with a Exhumed Grave Titan on T2 some percent of the time, and I don't think these cards will cut it. Adult Gold Dragon, Angelfire Ignition, and Winota are my top-ends of choice for RW aggro. Feather. the Redeemed is a good choice as well. On that subject, I'd recommend freeing yourself on specific multicolor section sizes; I've found it quite liberating to just have roughly four cards per color pair and a total of 45ish.


Specific card-by-card thoughts:

Pack Rat is incredibly game-warping, and it pushes out a lot of strategies. Ninjas can't thrive when they're always blocked by bigger creatures. I'm sure you *can* make an environment with both that's balanced and fun, but I suspect it will be difficult to do so.

Burning of Xinye / Wildfire are traditionally paired up with either planeswalkers or artifact- or enchantment-based ramp that provides color pips to help break symmetry. As of right now, you have little of the first and none of the second, meaning that this is going to skew towards control decks rather than the combo-control decks seen in most cubes. Also! Feel free to break singleton, especially if it's exactly the same effect on both cards. There are advantages and disadvantages either way.

Speaking of which, I would personally pick one between Unsummon and Fading Hope just to simplify things for my drafters. Neither is bad, but unless singleton is a goal (which is fine!) it can often be a feelbad to have the strictly worse version of an effect.

Careful Cultivation is an interesting card that does a ton of things. Does it work with Wildfire? Genuinely curious, as I've loved the versatility (and the art, if I'm being honest) but have yet to find a home for it in my cube.

Chandra, Flamecaller is another very controlling Red card. I wonder if you might be choking out the aggro decks between this/Wildfire/Burning/Toxic Deluge/Living Death/Upheaval/Day of Judgment. Which, congrats! You have a ton of removal for a first cube here.

Court of Grace seems VERY strong, and is likely better than most White-containing multicolor cards. Monarch is a busto mechanic in 1v1. Palace Jailer is also very strong; I believe LSV has called it one of the strongest cards in Vintage cube.

I like to classify Realm-Cloaked Giant as a MV 5 sorcery in my cube. Also, it's another wrath!

Mirror Entity is stronk.

Rhythm of the Wild is a cute way to make Finks/Redcap persist combos a RG deck. Nice find!



As for Gerrard + Backup Plan, what makes sense to me is that you draw one hand of three cards and one of seven, but remember that Gerry still reduces your maximum hand size to four! Great for those reanimator decks you mention, though, and a cool interaction to support.


This isn't comprehensive, but I think you're trying to do something really interesting by including all of these powered cube faves in a more traditional synergy background. Excited to see what you do with it!

 

[Ecophagy]

Graffiti ante is new to me as well, so thanks for introducing me to that one, Ecophagy!

Apparently it's sometimes called "scribble ante" and originally is from an ancient casual format called 5-colour. I remembered it from this very old article (alongside a tremendously defaced Umezawa's Kitten Kabob): https://www.mtgsalvation.com/articles/15419-hip-to-be-square-the-cube.

It honestly looks like a lot of fun if you can stomach the "damage". Maybe in a pauper cube!

 

[Brirro]

Thank you very much for the reply and all the advice!

Blue Tempo: I've added quite a few more turn 1 plays for blue, with my favorite being blurry beeble, along with adding a few more ninjas that affect the board, so hopefully, the Ninja deck will be able to come together now. I've also added in a few more cantrips for a total of 6, which might still be a little low... but hopefully that will help Ninjas and Spells thrive.

Aggro: I've changed my white removal to 2 cmc instead of 1, and also increased my wraths to 5 cmc instead of 4. I've also revamped my boros gold section, I have no idea what I was trying to do with those cards. I've also tried to make my white 2's and 3's a little better in an aggro deck, so hopefully, that helps it as well.

I've found it quite liberating to just have roughly four cards per color pair and a total of 45ish.

I really like keeping my gold count low, I often only get to draft with 5 or 6 people, and gold cards are very often last picks. I already have a hard enough time cutting cards, so cutting ~10 more for golds would be hard.

I really like pack rat, and maybe I should remove it, but I'm going to try to keep it for now. I don't think anyone in my group has main decked him yet either.

Wildfire: I have 5 colorless rocks which might be low, how many rocks does the deck really need to thrive, and do you think that having more than 2 copies of this effect would be beneficial? I've been able to make the deck work with only 2 copies, along with some spells to help dig for them like faithless looting. As for careful cultivation it could definitely work with wildfire, putting it on a 2 toughness creature would allow it to survive, though I ended up cutting it for vivien's arkbow as I think it helps the flash deck a little more, however, I do want to try to get it back in the cube at some point.

Persist: I didn't even realize that Rhythm of the Wild would work with the persist guys. I have very few sac outlets in my cube currently, can the persist "combo" work fine without them? I think they work with my current sac outlets (Birthing Pod, Evolutionary leap, Greater Gargadon) to generate a good amount of value.

I completely forgot that vanguards also changed max hand size. Backup plan still provides card selection along with being able to get cards into your graveyard easily which still makes it pretty strong though. I'll include backup plan when I do my test on the vanguards to see what it can do.

Maybe in a pauper cube!

Maybe one day I'll make an unsleeved pauper cube just for this!

I've ordered quite a few cards, I'll post the changes here once they arrive!

 

[Zoss]

Aggro: I've changed my white removal to 2 cmc instead of 1, and also increased my wraths to 5 cmc instead of 4. I've also revamped my boros gold section, I have no idea what I was trying to do with those cards.

To clarify, your choices weren't bad! WR control is a ton of fun, it's just not helpful when you want WR to be aggro.

I really like keeping my gold count low

Sorry, I was unclear--I'm not advocating for 45ish gold cards specifically, but I am a fan of not worrying too much about Orzhov having 3 and Simic having 4 cards, for example. This also means that I can take 3+ color cards like Siege Rhino into account in the above calculations.

I really like pack rat, and maybe I should remove it, but I'm going to try to keep it for now. I don't think anyone in my group has main decked him yet either.

Try it out and see Frankly, if any cube is going to be able to handle the Rat, it's one with conspiracies and vanguards, so it's possible that it's fine. What I'm more worried about is the possibility that it's miserable when it's good. Your abundance of sweepers might have hedged against it, though, so taking those out of the ecosystem might make it a terror. Food for thought!

Wildfire: I have 5 colorless rocks which might be low, how many rocks does the deck really need to thrive, and do you think that having more than 2 copies of this effect would be beneficial? I've been able to make the deck work with only 2 copies, along with some spells to help dig for them like faithless looting. As for careful cultivation it could definitely work with wildfire, putting it on a 2 toughness creature would allow it to survive, though I ended up cutting it for vivien's arkbow as I think it helps the flash deck a little more, however, I do want to try to get it back in the cube at some point.

2 copies is probably fine, Karsten math means that it'll show up fairly regularly on curve. If having different names attached to the same effect helps, then go for it, I just don't like the aesthetic and wanted to broach the subject of breaking singleton.

Re: density of rocks, I am the wrong person to ask.

And I agree that Careful Cultivation would be perfect in this sort of deck! It's a cool card that I haven't been able to make work, and I'm glad to see it has legs here.

Persist: I didn't even realize that Rhythm of the Wild would work with the persist guys. I have very few sac outlets in my cube currently, can the persist "combo" work fine without them? I think they work with my current sac outlets (Birthing PodEvolutionary leapGreater Gargadon) to generate a good amount of value.

Yeah, that can get pretty gross pretty fast. I think you might need a payoff of some sort if you want to do the degenerate combo bit, but it's a cool interaction I'd never seen before.

 

[LadyMapi]

Rhythm of the Wild + Wildfire. There's your degenerate persist combo deck.

 

[Brirro]

To clarify, your choices weren't bad! WR control is a ton of fun, it's just not helpful when you want WR to be aggro.

I do like playing the more controlling WR decks especially with Assemble the Legion, but I do think the more aggressive choices fit better for what I want boros to be doing.

This also means that I can take 3+ color cards like Siege Rhino into account in the above calculations.

This is tempting, I've been wanting to try and fit in Siege Rhino ever since I saw this Rhystic Studies video. With my recent addition of the 10 trilands (soon to be upgraded to the "10" triomes) it might even be castable!

I’m also perfectly fine with breaking singleton if needed but if I have the opportunity to keep it singleton with Wildfire and Burning I would prefer it that way. As for rocks, maybe I'll try adding in Fractured Powerstone as another rock that can also help with planechase later. I suppose testing is going to be key here.

I'd also like to avoid too degenerate of combos, but a freshly suspended Greater Gargadon + Murderous Redcap + Rhytm of the Wild can still kill someone at 20 life, which seems pretty good.

Rhythm of the Wild + Wildfire. There's your degenerate persist combo deck.

Found the deck I'm forcing next draft!

And as always, thanks for all the advice!

 

[Zoss]

You don't even need to have a fresh Greater Gargamel to make the Redcaps go off! Just hold priority and you can make it work even if it only has a single counter.

Greater Gargadon is a crazy card.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

This is tempting, I've been wanting to try and fit in Siege Rhino ever since I saw this Rhystic Studies video. With my recent addition of the 10 trilands (soon to be upgraded to the "10" triomes) it might even be castable!

Siege Rhino is always a good choice. It's a very good card.

I really like pack rat, and maybe I should remove it, but I'm going to try to keep it for now. I don't think anyone in my group has main decked him yet either.

I think if you're doing degenerate stuff Pack Rat is fine.

When people talk about the game warping effect that Pack Rat can have, they're usually basing their analysis on experiences in Return to Ravnica limited, Lower Power and MTGO style Cubes, or Return to Ravnica/Theros standard. In these formats, the rat was really good. Pack Rat thrives in slow environments where removal is not very prevalent. If Pack Rat dies right away every time it gets played or the game ends before one can make four or five rats, it's just not that great. In retail limited, the removal density is pretty low and the power level of the removal is often worse. You can't beat a pack rat if your removal suite consists of "wonderful" cards such as Launch Party and Avenging Arrow. Meanwhile, although many Cubes tailored in the same vein as the MTGO Cubes run powerful removal like Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt, they usually don't have enough of these cards to make beating a pack rat viable. Likewise, the slower games that type of Cube usually facilitate make it easier for the rat to come online and stay online. In a similar vein, a lot of lower-power Cubes still have the slower games that facilitate a powerful Rat, but don't run all of the powerful removal that keeps it in check, meaning the card ends up being more trouble than it is worth.

In Standard, pack rat was almost completely absent for the first year after it came out. High power level decks featuring cards such as Thragtusk, Huntmaster of the Fells, Restoration Angel, and Geist of Saint Traft dominated the field, while efficient removal like Tragic Slip and Pillar of Flame could effectively dispatch any rats left running around. However, when the cards that kept Pack Rat down rotated out of Standard, the Rat was able to take a key position as an inevitability engine in mono-black devotion decks, backed up by card draw from Underworld Connections and reach from Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Here, the Rat was able to hold a commanding position in many games, and it played a key role in the dominance of mono-black. The other best deck in the format was Esper control, which got to play Supreme Verdict, the best answer to Rat in the format. However, after Rat rotated from Standard, it really hasn't seen much play in eternal formats. The removal is just too good for it to thrive. It occasionally sees play in Duel Commander and Canadian Highlander, as well as in some Mono-Black Pioneer lists, but as a whole, Pack Rat has just never found a home in the eternal formats.

If you want to keep Pack Rat around, it's probably fine since you seem to be building at a higher power level and your removal suite seems to be of roughly the right power level to keep it in check. You probably would want to increase the number of removal spells in the environment a little bit, but there are lots of great options you can play that dilute the environment at all. Consider cards like Portable Hole, March of Otherworldly Light, Prismatic Ending, Bloodchief's Thirst, Eliminate, Burst Lightning, and so on.

 

[LadyMapi]

The main issue with Pack Rats is the issue with Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek or Oketra's Monument+Kor Skyfisher — once you get the "combo" online, it leads to some pretty repetitive play patterns.

 

[sigh]

The main issue with Pack Rats is the issue with Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek or Oketra's Monument+Kor Skyfisher — once you get the "combo" online, it leads to some pretty repetitive play patterns.

Exactly this. Sure it might not immediately run away with the game.... if it's powerful enough to include in a format, it's often the best thing that deck can be doing most of the time. So the rest of the game is just racing [hand size turned into rats] versus [answers to rats]

 

[Brirro]

I got together with 2 other people and we played some sealed out of the cube! I went 2-0 with a WG/u ramp deck. I only lost one game of all my matches when I conceded before they could crack their Ashnod's Coupon (Didn't want to drive to a Mcdonald's at midnight). One of my friends played a pretty cool Soverign's Realm Glare of Subdual deck and went 1-1. The last person was playing Rakdos stuff? I think they were aiming for aggro, but didn't quite get enough playables, and went 0-2.

You don't even need to have a fresh Greater Gargamel to make the Redcaps go off! Just hold priority and you can make it work even if it only has a single counter.

I completely forgot that the stack existed when I wrote that, yeah, Greater Gargadon is so cool.

In Standard, pack rat was almost completely absent for the first year after it came out. High power level decks featuring cards such as Thragtusk, Huntmaster of the Fells, Restoration Angel, and Geist of Saint Traft dominated the field, while efficient removal like Tragic Slip and Pillar of Flame could effectively dispatch any rats left running around.

I love learning about what cards were like when they were in standard, and what other formats they have been played in! It really lets me appreciate them, and some of my favorite cards in the cube were "fun" in standard from what I've heard, e.g. Thragtusk, and Siege Rhino.

The main issue with Pack Rats is the issue with Thopter Foundry+Sword of the Meek or Oketra's Monument+Kor Skyfisher — once you get the "combo" online, it leads to some pretty repetitive play patterns.

Exactly this. Sure it might not immediately run away with the game.... if it's powerful enough to include in a format, it's often the best thing that deck can be doing most of the time. So the rest of the game is just racing [hand size turned into rats] versus [answers to rats]

I didn't think of this... It's not necessarily that the card is too strong, but when it goes online it can become overly repetitive. I'm going to keep it in for now, I want to see it in action a few times, but I'm definitely keeping my eye on it.


And now for the changes I've made.

Spoiler: Changes

Out:​

In:​

Idk about inquisition, it might be a little too powerful, and it gives out a lot of information, probably won't be staying in for too long.

If I removed something I shouldn't have, let me know and I'll try to reinclude the card!

 

[TrainmasterGT]

It really lets me appreciate them, and some of my favorite cards in the cube were "fun" in standard from what I've heard, e.g. Thragtusk, and Siege Rhino.

If you enjoy those, you'd probably also like Workshop Warchief.

Also, I do have some comments on the changes, but I don't have time to write them out right now.

 

[Brirro]

I haven't had a chance to draft since the update as one of my friends from out of state (who doesn't know how to play magic) has come to visit, so not very much cube recently.

If you enjoy those, you'd probably also like Workshop Warchief.

Workshop Warchief does seem like a fun card, the obvious comparison is with Thragtusk, but not creating the token when leaving the battlefield makes it worse with the flicker effects I have in my cube. I'm not against adding him in, but I'm not quite sold, if anyone can sell me on it, I'd be happy to include it.

Here is the data from my last draft! This was before the update, so some things are out of date.

Spoiler: Draft Decks

Golgari Stuff?

I think they took me telling them to run 17 lands as 17 basic lands... They ended up going 0-3 this draft.

Bant No Win-Con

This deck also went 0-3. It had very few ways of winning.

Mono-Red Aggro?

This deck went 1-1 (wasn't time for a third game). They were trying to force red aggro but didn't get enough playables.

Boros

This deck went 2-1 (only lost to me). Based on its record it looks like it was pretty strong, but the other decks made were not very good, so idk.

Gruul Big Stuff

This was my deck, I went 2-0 (didn't have time for the last game). I think it was a pretty well-put-together deck overall, I ended up taking lots of damage early in the game, but once I stabilized I could finish the game pretty quickly. Against the Boros deck, I managed to keep a solid board presence after 2 board wipes.

Overall it looks like my group might need some more practice with drafting the cube. It also seems like my group doesn't draft fixing very highly I'm going to try and arrange a draft soon, I'll post the decks and results here later.

 

[Brirro]

I've finally managed to get people together to draft the cube again! Since that draft, I have moved off to college, so hopefully, I will be able to find a playgroup, otherwise, the cube is probably going to be pretty stagnant until I can test it more during breaks.

Here is the data from my last draft!

Spoiler: Draft Decks

Some of the cards in these decks are not in the cube, as Lore Seeker was used to open a Modern Horizons 2 pack.

Simic

This deck ended up going 0-3, just being the simic deck.

Bant Flicker

This deck was a bit of a meme, running 7 Forests for a chance to cast Hornet Queen. It did pretty well overall, going 2-1.

Rakdos Good Stuff

This was my deck, I was pretty much the only one in Red or Black, so I ended up with a ton of powerful cards. I went 3-0. I also won many games with just Pack Rat so sad to say, but he's out of the cube for now.

Artifacts?

It was this player's first time playing the cube, so they got to sign a basic land! They ended up going 1-2

I've made quite a few changes to the cube since my last post. One of the big changes is that I have finished upgrading the mana base! I now have all 10 Shocks, Fetches, and TriCycle Lands! I've also made a few more changes, which can be viewed below. A lot of the new blue and green cards I've included to try and push the Flash archetype a little bit further, so a lot of these changes are in testing. Also finding cuts for all of these cards has been very painful, so many of the cards I removed, I still really like and am not opposed to putting them back into the cube. On that same note, I am considering upping the cube to 450 if I can find a playgroup in college.

Spoiler: Changes

In:

Out:

 

[Brirro]

During my winter break (that ended almost a month ago now) I managed to get a cube draft in! It was a pretty standard draft, I have all the data for it, but don't feel like typing it all out. The biggest takeaway I had from this draft was how most of my playgroup was not reading the cards because they just looked like they had too many words. This combined with the Defining & Optimizing Complexity thread really made me think about reducing the complexity in my cube. So with that for my next update, I am dropping the singleton restriction, and also working on reducing both the complexity and word count of my cube.

I also decided that my aggro decks were not "synergistic" enough, so with lots of inspiration from the Post your Favourite Unusual Archetype/s thread, I decided to try and go for artifact aggro in white and a little bit in red. The For Mirrodin! cards are very interesting for this I think.

The next big change I'm making to my cube comes from a recent podcast from Lucky Paper about common pitfalls new cube designers have. The part about how lowering your cube's mana curve could help to force your drafters to draft better decks really resonated with me, as my playgroup is not very experienced playing or drafting magic.

To go along with trying to reduce the wordiness of my cube I decided to make a little python script to collect some data on the number of words in my cube. There's probably someone else who has already made something like this but better, but this was fun to make so it is what it is I suppose.

Spoiler: My Useless Data Analysis

I made this script in just a couple of hours so there are still some minor features I would like to add and probably a ton of bugs that I have not encountered, but it works fine for my personal use so whatever. One of the program's quirks is that it counts the tap symbol and other mana symbols in the rules text as words, which might cause some numbers to be a little bit higher than they should be. It also includes reminder text in the word count if the latest version of the card on Scryfall has reminder text included in its oracle text.
I also wanted to be able to get an "AsFan" of words, so I made a little random pack generator to just get 15 random cards from the cube and count all the words in it, and then average that number of words with other packs being generated to try to get an accurate number. I just used the built-in python random function so it's probably not perfect, but it should be a fine baseline for me at least.
If any of you want to test it out for yourselves and can figure out how to do it (I have no clue how to actually share code or anything so here's a pastebin) this Pastebin has all the code. It works by downloading your cube data from Cube Cobra as a .csv, having the .csv in the same directory as your python file and then just typing the file name (ex. cube.csv). Then it will automatically fetch every card in your cube from Scryfall and count all the words on the cards. It will also ask you how many test packs you would like to calculate the average number of words per pack.

For all of the data I am showing in this post, I used 1,000,000 test packs.
I also grabbed these cubes data when writing this from Cube Cobra so if the Cube Cobra is not up to date, the number might be a little bit off, also if the cubes have any custom cards in them, then the numbers also won't be perfect.

My 360 card cubes data: 10297 total words, approximately 409.560388 words
This is my cube before any of the updates I'm working on, I think ~410 words per pack is quite a bit, so hopefully, I will be able to reduce this to a lower word count.

My cubes planned updates (I still need to cut it down to 360, currently at 417 cards): 12309 total words, approximately 427.425388 words in an average pack
This is the data for the update I'm planning for my cube, and it does not look like I'm making very good progress right now, so I guess I'll have to keep working on it.

This 360-card KTK set cube designed by markfoged on Cube Cobra: 7780 total words, approximately 317.965482 words in an average pack.
These numbers seem like they would be a pretty good number of words for my playgroup, although I doubt I will be able to reduce the word count to be close to this, as recent cards just seem to have so many more words on them.

Lastly, I wanted to check ravnic's CCC cube as it supports a lot of really cool archetypes that I would love to support, and I was also interested to see if power level could have anything to do with word count (altho this sample size to way to small to draw any conclusions)
ravnic's CCC cube: 12665 total words, 362.520799 words in an average pack
These numbers seem like they would also be a good fit for my playgroup, as dropping the word count per pack by approximately 50 cards seems like it would help my playgroup not be as overwhelmed by all the text.

I guess this is also less of an analysis and more just showing numbers (which could very well be wrong), but I think it has provided me with an interesting baseline for trying to reduce the wordiness of the cards in my cube.

 

[ravnic]

Your cube looks very cool and also relatively lean for such a young one. I feel like it took me many years to reach that level of cohesiveness, at east from what I'm seeing here.

Some cards I don't love:

Giada, Font of Hope

With like two other angels, this one seems like a wordy trap to me. There are some 2-power fliers for that cost that come without these problems.

Palace jailer

Is this a multiplayer cube? Because I personally really dislike mechanics like monarch in 1 vs. 1, they are so swingy and can just randomly hose reactive decks

Blurry Beeble

Are all your players wearing glasses? I would feel bad being the guy who can't block this

Grave Titan
Glorybringer
Inferno Titan

Those are some of the biggest power outliers I've found here. They are fine cube cards, but if you want to make stuff like Moonblade Shinobi or Master Splicher worth it, you might need to cut some cards from the top of your power band.

Sulfuric Vortex

I've just found this to be as uninteractive as it is powerful. I'd prefer to look for other cards to make aggro viable, if possible.

Slippery Bogbonder

Hexproof isn't a particular fun thing. As a result, I wouldn't touch the Bogbonder for a casual format like cube, even though it doesn't seem overpowered or anything.

Ebony Fly

That seems unnecessarily wordy and luck-based for just a mana rock. I'd add Coldsteel Heart or something instead.

Vedalken Orrery

Am I missing anything? In which decks is this worth it?

Lastly, I wanted to check ravnic's CCC cube as it supports a lot of really cool archetypes that I would love to support, and I was also interested to see if power level could have anything to do with word count (altho this sample size to way to small to draw any conclusions)
ravnic's CCC cube: 12665 total words, 362.520799 words in an average pack
These numbers seem like they would also be a good fit for my playgroup, as dropping the word count per pack by approximately 50 cards seems like it would help my playgroup not be as overwhelmed by all the text.

Lowering word count and such is really worth it. We as invested cube designers often forget how complicated cube and magic is and how much less invested players have to process that we shortcut.

Which themes from my main cube are you interested in? Could I maybe sport you some advice on any of them?

 

[Brirro]

Thank you very much for your reply!

Some cards I don't love:

I only included Giada as a generic 2/x flyer essentially, but you are right, a Stormfront Pegasus would probably just be better as it has so many fewer words. I might end up replacing this with a Kor Skyfisher.

My cube is 1v1, and Palace Jailer has been very powerful, I definitely want to find something to replace it with.

No one in my playgroup wears glasses so I was just using Blurry Beeble as a 1 mana Looter il-kor, that also interacted interestingly with flicker effects, I do keep cheap 3d glasses that I got from amazon in my cube box, although they give everyone headaches while wearing them. It very well may be worth replacing him with another blue one drop, or even a cantrip.

I never really considered how many words Ebony Fly had, I always just kinda grouped it in with the other 2 mana rocks, Coldsteel heart seems like a good replacement, thanks!

I only included vedalken orrery to test it out in my latest draft, I wanted to see if it would help simic flash, and it didn't really change anything, I might try to switch simic to a more graveyard based strategy however.


Thank you very much for pointing out the power outliers as well, I am also trying to work on lowering the power level of my environment a little, so this was very helpful!

As for the themes from your cube that I would like to support, I would love to support madness in my cube, but my worry is that there are not good enough payoffs. Is a 3 Mana 4/4 Trample good enough? I do really enjoy this article by you and japahn about madness too.
I would also love to support Dredge, which I have tried to support before, but it never quite got there for my cube, maybe I could do it better if I tried again though.
I think your cube supports all the themes I tried to support when I first made my cube, before I stopped trying to support them because reddit said they were weak.
Thank you for all your help! I really appreciate it!

 

[Nanonox]

I would love to support madness in my cube, but my worry is that there are not good enough payoffs.

Does it have to be madness specifically? Because if not, then I think these are pretty powerful in the right shells:

 

[ravnic]

As for the themes from your cube that I would like to support, I would love to support madness in my cube, but my worry is that there are not good enough payoffs. Is a 3 Mana 4/4 Trample good enough? I do really enjoy this article by you and japahn about madness too.
I would also love to support Dredge, which I have tried to support before, but it never quite got there for my cube, maybe I could do it better if I tried again though.
I think your cube supports all the themes I tried to support when I first made my cube, before I stopped trying to support them because reddit said they were weak.
Thank you for all your help! I really appreciate it!

Well there is no weak theme per se. It all depends on how you build around it of course. If you really try to maximize on power level, madness and dredge will probably fall off. And so do Ninjas for the most part, I think. But you don't have to go down all that low either. I think you could have a slightly higher power level than I do and still support those themes successfully - even without the two madness wurms.

What has really helped me forming my cube with a relatively consistent goal in terms of power level, were themes and individual cards that function as markings. I always remmebered myself, that I wanted e.g. Madness to be playable; that I wanted a format where you are actively happy picking and casting Gravedigger. It's really difficult to abstractly formulate what power level you want your cube to have. So maybe you could sit down, go trough you cube and maybe other cards in your collection or on scryfall and figure out which decks and cards you love the most, then work towards the power band where biggest possible percentage of these are viable.

Hope I could help a little!

 

[Brirro]

So I found a bug in my code, which causes my average words in a pack to be lower than they should be (the bug had to do with me counting double-sided cards as two separate cards, which messed with the pack generator) but I think I fixed it now, ill update my code when I finish making a couple more additions.

Does it have to be madness specifically? Because if not, then I think these are pretty powerful in the right shells:

Those look fun, I'll definitely look into including some of these! How does currency converter play? I've seen it recommended around here but I've never seen it played. Also, how do the rootwalla tend to work, they look really interesting, but

It's really difficult to abstractly formulate what power level you want your cube to have. So maybe you could sit down, go trough you cube and maybe other cards in your collection or on scryfall and figure out which decks and cards you love the most, then work towards the power band where biggest possible percentage of these are viable.

This sounds like something I should spend some time working on!

Thank both of you for the advice and suggestions!

 

[Brirro]

I've made some changes to the cube(again), and generally lowered the curve quite a bit. About 160 cards were changed out, which is a pretty major change. I thought I was done with upgrading my mana fixing, but I was not. Replacing Evolving Wilds and similar cards for Prismatic Vista. And I'm considering increasing the number of lands I'm running in the cube for double fetch and double shock lands to improve fixing with the small pools I normally draft in. All the changes can be seen on my Cube Cobra Blog Page.

I also had a 3 player draft last night! We ended up doing a burn draft with each player getting 6 packs. The records are in games and not matches because it was late not everyone got to play all their matches.

Dimir Ninjutsu 0-2

This deck was actually a serviceable ninjutsu deck, unfortunately, they only got to play short matches against me, so I didn't get to see it in action very much. I think that this player has to work on their deck building a little bit. They chose not to run Ingenious Infiltrator because they were counting it as 4 mana and not 2. They also included Drake Haven and The Raven Man which, while they are good cards, I don't think they had a lot of synergy in this deck.

Golgari Goodstuff 1-1

This deck was probably the best deck at the table, unfortunately, he only got to play 2 games, so I didn't get to see it in action very much.
This deck had a good amount of removal, strong cards, and a really nice mana curve.
Tyvar's Stand actually played better than I expected it would, I really like the ability for green to have access to some combat tricks as it is a little lacking in terms of removal.

Bant No Creatures 3-1

I ended up drafting this deck, my friends weren't drafting or burning any of the fetch lands and good utility lands, so I ended up with almost all of them, while also drafting very few creatures. My sideboard had more fetches and another mana confluence that I decided not to run. This deck was fine. It was destroyed by the Golgari deck's number of creatures and removal, I only managed to win a game against them by making 11 tokens with Symbol Status and using Maul of the Skyclaves on one of them.
I also beast the Ninjutsu deck by using Tangle Wire while attacking with my Porcelain Legionaire with a Rancor.


Overall, I'm pretty happy with this draft. I think my efforts in trying to lower the cube were pretty successful. I have also decided that I'm not going to update my cube until at least the end of summer. (Except for maybe swapping Ingenious Infiltrator for Yuriko). I'm hoping that I'll be able to draft cube 1 or 2 more times this summer!