Building the Noob Cube
I have a lot of friends who I am in the process of teaching Magic. The end goal, of course, is to broaden my local cube community. However, I have a problem- my cube is too complicated for magic new players to fully enjoy. For example, I recently had one of my friends learn to play Magic to cube with my playgroup over the holidays. The week before the draft, we spent a few hours teaching him to play, and he watched some videos on how to draft and cube gameplay. When we got to the draft, he ended up doing fine- better than I expected, actually- but I could tell that the whole experience was a little overwhelming for him. Now, I have multiple people "in the pipeline" of learning Magic, but I am afraid of losing them to complexity. Unfortunately, decks that try to grind value on axes other than simple board dominance are a little bit confusing to new players. It's not apparently obvious that Life from the Loam is a better magic card than Storm Crow. I have decided that my needs would be best met by constructing a new cube. This environment will focus on simple, easy to understand cards that can lead to complex decision trees. I want to strip Magic down to its fundamental pieces without putting the game on rails. The only problem- I've never built a cube like this before. That's where you, the reader, come in. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be working on building a tentative version of a "noob cube."
Design Goals
For a cube like the Noob Cube, it is important to set strict design goals. I don't want to build a cube-ified version of a core set. Therefore, I have come up with the following outline for what I want this cube to end up looking like.
-Simple cards with deep decision trees
-Cards with reminder text for abilities wherever possible.
-Multiples of the same card for "bread and butter" effects.
-2-Color archetype focus.
-Small gold section.
-Mono-Color support.
-Aggro support in every color.
-Maintain a cube feel.
-Medium Power Level.
Explanation of goals.
Simple cards with deep decision trees.
What I mean by "simple cards with deep decision trees" is that I want to focus on cards that aren't hard to understand but provide a lot of options to the player. Take Magma Jet. This card does 2 damage, and then it lets you look at the top of your deck. It's not a hard card to digest and understand on first reading, but it does a lot in practice. It makes the player as questions about what they want to hit with their spell, and what cards they want to put on top of their deck.
Cards with reminder text for abilities wherever possible.
I want to make ease of understanding the cards in this cube a top priority for design. The best way to do that in my evaluation is to have the cards themselves explain what they do. I don't want people not to take a good card during a draft because they don't know what vigilance does or something like that. Because I plan to focus on including reminder text where possible, I can also use non-evergreen mechanics such as flashback when designing this cube. Most cards with non-evergreen keywords have reminder text built into the card. This means that it can be easier to find a flashback card with reminder text than, say, a card with flying and reminder text.
Multiples of the same card for "bread and butter" effects.
Most decks need a density of effects to work well. A blue control deck, for example, needs multiple counterspells to function optimally. I can cut comprehension complexity from the cube by using multiple copies of the same card for it's given type of slot. Instead of forcing players to read Llanowar Elves, [/c]Fyndhorn Elves[/c], and Elvish Mystic, I'll just use three copies of Llanowar Elves instead. There is no point to making a new player have to read 4 different cards if they all are meant to serve the same function.
2-Color archetype focus and small gold section.
I want to help guide drafters through their new cube experience. One way of doing this is to make clear two-color decks. I plan to do this by using clear "signpost cards" in my gold slots. Each two-color pair will include 2 copies of a gold card meant to represent what that deck wants to be doing. These will be the only true gold cards in the cube. In addition to this, I will be including a slightly more flexible (but still on-theme) hybrid card in each color combination. For example, Blue/White might have 2 copies of Empyrean Eagle and a copy of Judge's Fammiliar to support and clearly signal a fliers deck. Each color should either be a part of four two-color decks that either play synergistically together or are not negatively affected by each other's presence.
Mono-Color support and Aggro support in every color.
I want to make sure that someone who "took all the blue cards" isn't punished for making that draft decision. Therefore, I want to make sure that every color has the pieces it needs for a mono-color deck. As long as my main 2-color pair archetypes aren't too parasitic, cards from multiple decks should all fit into a mono-color deck. For example, a mono-white build can use pieces from a token deck and a fliers deck to build a "white weenie" strategy. In addition, I will seed each color with some cards that only work optimally in a mono-color aggressive strategy. Expedition Envoy is a fine white card, but it only truly excels when it's in mono-white.
Maintain a Cube feel at a Medium Power Level
Above all else, this cube is meant to be a cube, first and foremost. I don't want this to feel like an awful core set draft experience that just also has cards with flashback. Therefore, I would like to maintain a medium power level across the board where I can. The only caveat here is in the power level of the finisher cards for midrange and control decks. I'm going to avoid too many splashy finishers. This is for two reasons. For a start, big splashy creatures ("baneslayers") aren't always great in cube, and I don't want to get my drafters into the habit of running into traps. Otherwise, I want the focus of this environment to be on synergies between cards and not "my big dragon ate your face."
Conclusion.
The Noob Cube is going to be an adventure to be sure. Although many people have tried to design cubes for newbies before, many don't have as strict design goals and feel like a corse set in a box or a watered-down legacy cube. That approach isn't bad per-say, but I want to introduce my friends to my favorite game with a format that feels like my preferred format, not a core set. Please feel free to include comments either here on the RTL forums or through any other methods you have of reaching me.
I'll be posting a tentative list here once I have at least a partial cube populated.
Thanks!
-TGT.
W/U Fliers