Looking to build my first cube as a cheaper and more accessible alternative to FNM draft

[OrthoWeevil]

Someone on r/mtgcube told me i might get a better response if i post here so this is a repost from reddit:
My brothers, cousins and I just got into magic about a month and a half ago and we love it but I can see how the cost of playing can get out of hand very quickly so I've been looking into budget decks, going infinite on MTGO and now cubes. Also most of us are busy Friday nights. So I've kind of settled on cube as being the most fun looking format. (Admittedly my only experience with limited is building sealed decks from the janky pile of excess cards we have but we will be trying sealed tomorrow at the FrF prerelease at our LGS.)

I'm not totally committed yet but I'm leaning towards building an Innistrad set cube because it has a cool flavour and seems relatively easy to build. I'm also fairly interested in pauper cubes as it seems like an interesting format but the work involved in assembling all the cards(as meager as it is) kinda turns me off.

If I build an Innistrad cube it won't be a traditional singleton cube but rather an approximation of triple Innistrad draft. Building a set cube like this seems like the easiest way to make a budget limited environment since I can order the commons/uncommons in bulk. For the rares/mythics I would just leave out the expensive ones or proxy them. Heck I could even try it as a peasant cube for a while first.

If I were to build a pauper cube it would likely be Adam Styborski's pauper cube. I'm just not really a fan of collecting all the cards to do it. I tried mass entry on TCPlayer but alot of the sellers won't ship to Canada.
So i have a few questions:

1. Would you recommend cube to a group of new players? Is anyone experienced with this?
2. Is Innistrad a good set for learning limited?If not what set would you recommend?
3. How do you feel about pauper/peasant compared to set limited?
4. Am I better off just spending the money on 3 or 4 budget decks to mess around with?

Also for anyone who has an Innistrad cube, or a different cube they recommend, on cubetutor can you link it for me. Also if you are recommending a different set can you give me an idea of what it's like. (just looking for 1 or 2 sentences here) Also any other general recommendations would be appreciated.
TLDR

• I want to get into cube and I'm looking at Innistrad, peasant/pauper.
• I don't know much about the other expansions, except that RoE common/uncommon sets are harder to find.
• I'm cheap so I'm not interested in expensive cubes and if I include expensive cards($10 and up) they will be proxies.
• I think this is a good idea but I'm looking for input before I spend a hundred bucks or so.

 

[Laz]

Well, first of all, welcome.

Obviously by asking this here, you are going to get a very biased view. Everyone here feels passionately enough about Cubing to take the time to discuss and argue about it with people we don't know online, so I think you will find people are overwhelmingly in favour of going down the cube route.

Cube allows you to design a set for precisely the purpose you intend it. Hence, if you want to design a Cube for newer players, you absolutely can do so. If I recall, there are some cubes expressly built for newer players that people have posted about in the Cube Lists forum. I assume when you say new players, you are not teaching people how to play with Cube (much in the same way you wouldn't give a completely new player three boosters and say 'Ok, this is drafting, you take one card from each pack, have fun'). I feel that many cube lists are very punishing for newer players, since many of the broken cards from Magic's past require strong card evaluation skills to recognise. Balance for instance, is mind-bogglingly strong, but that is likely not the perception a newer player will have. In addition, many cards in more conventional cubes are something of a 'wall of text' and accurately assessing a pick from a pack of such cards is likely to be a time-consuming task.

There is no reason why a Cube you design needs to be like this. I can see the appeal of Pauper/Peasant simply because NWO dictates the level of complexity available at these rarities, though I feel it is a false solace. Many Common/Uncommon cards from Magic's past are just as complex (or more so) as modern Rares, and these arbitrary constraints really hamper your ability to genuinely improve your environment (mana-base issues are the biggest one, but there will be plenty of Rare cards which would fit in from a power/complexity perspective and be denied for no other reason than a gold set-symbol). Set-cubes I feel suffer from similar problems, in that often perfect cards for the archetypes/game-play you are promoting might happen to have been printed in a different set, and you are suddenly excluding a card which improves your environment for an arbitrary reason again.

Look for Grillo's threads in the Cube List forum, it seems that he(?) has been trailblazing precisely for you, with an Innistrad-themed cube and his latest project 'The Penny-pincher Cube'. Grillo has a strong grasp of each environment that he has cultivated and his posts do very well to explore and explain the types of interactions that create interesting games.

 

[Dom Harvey]

1. Cube can be entertaining yet accessible for new players, but you have to actively try to tone down complexity. Make sure that your themes are obvious and that it's apparent which cards work well with them, and try to ensure that the seemingly powerful cards in your Cube are actually the good ones - usually this means undercosted creatures like Savage Knuckleblade that jump out to newer players. Innistrad isn't a great set for this, as it relies fairly heavily on synergy and the independently good cards require some experience to identify. There are some good Werewolves, but if you're trying to stay away from complexity...

2. I'm in the minority in that I think Innistrad was a poor set for Limited. Werewolves, cheap tribal interactions, little manafixing, and a lack of good removal all meant that a large subset of games weren't remotely competitive. The format had some interesting gimmicks like the Spider Spawning deck, but if multiple players were going for those you could easily end up with a barely competitive mess. I think Kamigawa would be better for what you're trying to do.

3. I like C/Ubes a lot, and I kinda wish we had more here. The rarity constraint is an artificial one, but for someone designing their first Cube (or for those with more experience, as a thought exercise) these constraints can be useful to have; rarity, especially in modern sets, places something of a cap on complexity that you will find helpful. You won't be committing a mortal sin if you add a few appropriate rares, though.

4. Possibly, but a well-designed Cube will have much more replay value.

 

[shamizy]

Welcome to the forums! I was in the same boat as you near the start of last summer when I went to design my first cube. This is gonna be pretty long:

I would definitely recommend Cube to anyone that enjoys drafting. The most awesome thing about Cube is that you are in control of your own Limited format and you get to decide how to approach it. You don't need all the best cards from everywhere, just a good selection of cards that allow for a variety of different kind of decks to be constructed. For new players, a lesser complexity would be best. The biggest problem new players would have with a Cube is that they just don't know what each card does. There are a LOT of cards with unique interactions that just do anything imaginable and it would be hell for a new player to learn everything. However, you can mitigate this by just designing around archetypes that are simple to understand. Seeing as you'd like to something with mostly commons/uncommons, this shouldn't be much of a problem since greater complexities come with greater rarity.

I did not play Innistrad, (started playing Magic again about two years ago), but I did play a good amount of Theros Limited and have played in every prerelease since then. Limited formats change all the time, but the basic rules of thumb are the same across most: Removal is super important, 23/17 split of non-lands/lands (usually 16-17 creatures), Evasion is great, etc. From playing Khans and Theros Limited formats, I must say that while they follow these basic rules, there are BIG differences between the two in regards to what type of strategies work and what doesn't. For instance, Theros was a battlecruiser format where you could just make one creature huge and ride it to victory b/c removal wasn't very good. The same isn't true for Khans Limited, in fact, auras are usually terrible but they were great in Theros. This is something you can control with your own cube since you're ultimately in charge of whatever you want to see happen on a regular basis. You can tailor your cube to whatever you like, that's half the fun!

Never played pauper, but my friend has a Peasant Cube and it's a ton of fun to play. As long as cards are balanced and themes are well implemented, it doesn't matter whether you're playing with a Cube full of rares and mythics or commons and uncommons. It's all about the gameplay at the end of the day. If you can create an enjoyable environment that people will want to play again and again, you've build an awesome cube. I personally prefer well built Cubes at a lower power level because cards are usually along the same power level instead of just being a bomb-driven format. The issue with retail Limited is that every set has a straight up bomb that is downright unstoppable. Games definitely have to end at some point, but these sorts of cards cheapen the experience for me (like Wingmate Roc, Elspeth in Theros, etc.). There's just nothing you can do if you're behind.

If you like game design even a little bit or really like drafting, I would definitely recommend building a Cube. It's fun, keeps you interested in new sets, and you can constantly change it and see what kind of new things you can come up with. I took like half of last summer to build my cube, and I'm so glad that I did. It's been an awesome source of fun games of Magic and it's become something of a continuous project for me and I just love it.

TLDR: Cube rocks, you should totes do it.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Also, if you haven't already I'd really recommend reading some of the articles published on the riptide website (ie outside the forum). They give some pretty good insight in the basic design principles behind a cube, so might make it easier to judge wheter or not a card suites the cube you are trying to build. Check out the cube academy!