Low-Power Cube for Six

akj

akj

Hello!

Designing and building a 360 card cube for casual drafting. Thanks to everyone here who has posted their lists or taken the time to give me feedback on the build so far - whether that's on card choice, balance, color identity, curves - it's been invaluable, so shout out Sigh, Grillo, Rasmus, Raveborn, Kirblinx.

And here it is!

The aim:

1. Fun and interactive plays, with plausible decks existing in any of the ten, two-colour combinations.
2. Fluid archetypes with reasons to splash and competition for cards.
3. Combat-permissive cards, with weakened removal and support for combat tricks.
4. Support for aggro/midrange/control, with a sensible power band.
5. Support for multicolour.

Archetypes:

The archetypes in the cube are a bit leaky; frequently cards supporting an archetype might be found outside the pair of colours chosen, leading to either weird new decks or three-colour decks. Primarily, however, the archetypes encouraged are:

Black/Blue: Graveyards Matter
Black/Green: -1/-1 Counters
Black/Red: Suicide Aggro
Black/White: Tokens
Blue/Green: +1/+1 Counters
Blue/Red: Spellslinger
Blue/White: Blink
Green/Red: Combat-Trick Aggro
Green/White: Enchantments Matter
Red/White: Artifacts Matter

Vital statistics so far:

Cards: 360
Average CMCs per Colour: [W: 3.06] [U: 3.17] [R: 2.44] [G: 3.07] [B: 3.04 ]
Overall CMC (ex Lands): 2.88
 
sigh

sigh

Hello and welcome to posting :) .

An entire new cube is quite a bit to unpack. Overall it looks like a great format if you are willing to grind out some of the rough spots. I'd imagine it'd play fine as is, with plenty of room for growth.

Focusing in on one of your concerns, the GW enchantment deck, I like that you are adding a good chunk of enchantment through bestow. very space efficient. I think there are a couple of these effects in white you might want to consider:

One thing I notice is that you have a lot of enchantress effects. maybe don't need quite so many, especially at 315. A couple sticky creatures might be a good idea, like

And hexproof is strong too, but can be too strong

First priority, though, is probably to laser in on the power level you want. Your power band is a bit wide right now, and some of the top end, like Verdurous gearhulk outshines some of the techier stuff you are doing, like enchantments.
 
akj

akj

Guys, thank you so much for replying and for drafting the cube. Having posted it I then realised I'd done exactly what I wasn't supposed to do which is 'here's a cube, here are some archetypes, what do you think?', so I'm keen to remedy that.

First things first, combat.

I love good combat, and I want the cube to support interesting, bluff-worthy combat maths. I see this working in three ways:

1. Menace - this is a brilliant mechanic. It is a form of evasion which is less game-ending than, say, shadow, which is completely non-interactive, AND it gives an extra boost to combat tricks - a double-blocked creature which suddenly gets +3/1 and first strike is a huge momentum shift. With this in mind, red cards like Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, Stormblood Beserker, Pyreheart Wolf, Sin Prodder and Rampaging Ferocidon are probably the bit of the combat cube I'm most excited by.

2. Combat Tricks & Removal

Building on the above is combat tricks. More simple - the cube should support them. This affects the removal above all else - tone down instant-speed removal (especially in black). Instant-speed removal ought to be either expensive, combat-focused (especially in white, see harm's way and dispense justice) or tempo-based in blue.

3. Flash

Green identity is difficult, and I think I'll need to make some changes, but Flash creatures feel like a good place to start.

Grillo_Parlante said:
Im going to give it a few drafts, the smaller size might be throwing me, but it looks like a high spell to creature ratio?
Click to expand...

It may well be, yes - perhaps I'll boost to 360 and up the creature count.

sigh said:
Hello and welcome to posting :) .

An entire new cube is quite a bit to unpack. Overall it looks like a great format if you are willing to grind out some of the rough spots. I'd imagine it'd play fine as is, with plenty of room for growth.

Focusing in on one of your concerns, the GW enchantment deck, I like that you are adding a good chunk of enchantment through bestow. very space efficient. I think there are a couple of these effects in white you might want to consider:

One thing I notice is that you have a lot of enchantress effects. maybe don't need quite so many, especially at 315. A couple sticky creatures might be a good idea, like

And hexproof is strong too, but can be too strong

First priority, though, is probably to laser in on the power level you want. Your power band is a bit wide right now, and some of the top end, like Verdurous gearhulk outshines some of the techier stuff you are doing, like enchantments.
Click to expand...


Agreed and great analysis. I'll look at the top of the line stuff and find replacements. Am I right in understanding this as poison, i.e. a threat that comes down and is just way out of proportion with the rest of the cards?

One more question for pro cube designers. I lied a bit about the archetypes - I tried to make them three color, using the matrix below. My concern is I'm overcomplicating it - is it the case that having a third color supporting just 4 cards or 16% or of the archetype is just a waste of time, and is too small to consider actually going down that route?

https://ibb.co/kjGByG
 
sigh

sigh

poison principle largely relates to things that work only in an extremely tight context: Infect, storm, isolated tribal, etc. What you call a wide power band isn't super important. What is important is that you're correct in what will potentially happen. Cards far above the power level will warp the game around themselves, and to some small or large degree invalidate the lower powered things that were happening.

Example, why take Epic Proportions when you can take the far superior Verdurous Gearhulk for a similar effect with much higher upside and lower downside.

I like your three points above as a basis for the directions you are trying to take. As to point two, you'll want to watch removal in all colors of course, not just black. Blue may actually be the most critical color, because cheap instant-speed bounce is just so natural and easy to include, but can be very punishing when it's regularly hitting 2-for-1's.
You already seem to have done this, but enchantment-based removal in white is a great opportunity to tie into the GW enchantress theme.
 
akj

akj

Thanks Sigh (I drafted your cube, really really good), and thanks Kirblinx and Grillo for drafting the cube.

Here are the first set of changes.

Nightscape Familiar -> Ruin Raider (Narrowing to support suicide aggro)

Undying Evil -> Graveblade Marauder (Narrowing to support Dredge/Delve)

Psionic Blast -> Thirst for Knowledge (Narrowing for Sorcery/Instants Matter)

Glimmerpoint Stag/Karmic Guide/Miraculous Recovery -> Hundred-Handed One, Act of Heroism, Ghostblade Eidolon (Narrowing the focus of White, adding the equivalent of menace but on the blocking side, more support for enchantress without enchantresses)


Siege-gang commander -> Rage Thrower (Narrowing red)


Mesa Enchantress -> Eidolon of Countless Battles

Eternal Witness -> Wolfir Avenger (Support for enchantments and has flash for combat tricks!)


Snap -> Body Double (Reducing the power of the instant tempo, better support for graveyards matter)


Goblin Welder -> Frenzied Goblin (Not much in the way of targets for the welder)


Verdurous Gearhulk -> Sandsteppe Mastodon (Power normalization)

Hooting Mandrills -> Rishkar, Peema Renegade (Mandrills were doing the opposite of what I think G/B wanted, so this is a switch to support +1/+1 counter theme)

Sheoldred, Whispering One -> Soul of Innistrad (Power Normalization, but I haven’t played with SoI before – is it too powerful for this cube?)
 
sigh

sigh

Looking good so far. The only objection I have is probably to Eternal Witness, which is as close to cube staple as a card can get, I feel. Can maybe see one of the 3 mana +1/+1 counter lords going for ewit to stay.

Deck you drafted was nice, Living Death probably isn't ideal in it, but sweet sligh deck nonetheless.
 
akj

akj

sigh said:
Looking good so far. The only objection I have is probably to Eternal Witness, which is as close to cube staple as a card can get, I feel. Can maybe see one of the 3 mana +1/+1 counter lords going for ewit to stay.

Deck you drafted was nice, Living Death probably isn't ideal in it, but sweet sligh deck nonetheless.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I thought it might be handy if the first five turns aren't quite enough to finish them off, but maybe just nub drafting skills.

I think I'm going to go up to 360, take some inspiration from the Sigh cube, then put the thing together and test it. Thanks again for all your help - read through the entire sigh thread and it's super useful.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

If I'm not mistaken you had a much fewer cards at 5 and 6 cmc when I checked in earlier this week, so if you changed that I'm glad to see it! Slower decks need things to play in the midgame. There seems to be a pretty large amount of gold cards for a 315 card cube? Usually I see 3 golds per color pair in 360, so any more than that in 315 seems to imply a multicolor emphasis, is that correct?
 
akj

akj

Rasmus Källqvist said:
If I'm not mistaken you had a much fewer cards at 5 and 6 cmc when I checked in earlier this week, so if you changed that I'm glad to see it! Slower decks need things to play in the midgame. There seems to be a pretty large amount of gold cards for a 315 card cube? Usually I see 3 golds per color pair in 360, so any more than that in 315 seems to imply a multicolor emphasis, is that correct?
Click to expand...


Hi Rasmus - thanks for looking - I bookmarked your cube for inspiration earlier this week. Yes, I wanted a multicolour theme, pushing it with signets and lands. I've made a few more changes this afternoon.

Current issues I think are;

1. Blue is slightly too creature-heavy.
2. I think I'm light on removal.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

(Very sweet of you to bookmark the cube!)

My goto tip that I'm going to keep giving to everyone is to build decks with your cube. (!!)

This is a really handy way of getting to know the card pool you've assembled. I usually have the cards nearby, and occasionally I'll see some cool card and end up trying to build maybe a control deck or some graveyard dredge thing and realize that I'm actually missing key cards even though I have access to the entire cube. Good way to find out which cards to throw out and which to include!

Since you feel that you might have too many creatures, you can always do a little math about the ratios (there are nice articles about that stuff over at WotC's site), and of course try to build some Ux decks and see how many creatures they would want.

For the removal, it depends a little bit on the quality of the removal and how many pieces you want in your players decks. I would start at the drafted deck end of everything and calculate my way backwards to the complete cube, by stating how many removal cards in average each player should have, and then multiply that by the number of players (6 in this case) and account for the drafted removal that aren't included in the decks. Voila! You now have a magic number to compare your current number of cards with. Even if this number is off, it's still a reference, and informs you in your decisions.
 
akj

akj

Rasmus Källqvist said:
(Very sweet of you to bookmark the cube!)

My goto tip that I'm going to keep giving to everyone is to build decks with your cube. (!!)

This is a really handy way of getting to know the card pool you've assembled. I usually have the cards nearby, and occasionally I'll see some cool card and end up trying to build maybe a control deck or some graveyard dredge thing and realize that I'm actually missing key cards even though I have access to the entire cube. Good way to find out which cards to throw out and which to include!

Since you feel that you might have too many creatures, you can always do a little math about the ratios (there are nice articles about that stuff over at WotC's site), and of course try to build some Ux decks and see how many creatures they would want.

For the removal, it depends a little bit on the quality of the removal and how many pieces you want in your players decks. I would start at the drafted deck end of everything and calculate my way backwards to the complete cube, by stating how many removal cards in average each player should have, and then multiply that by the number of players (6 in this case) and account for the drafted removal that aren't included in the decks. Voila! You now have a magic number to compare your current number of cards with. Even if this number is off, it's still a reference, and informs you in your decisions.
Click to expand...


Cheers Rasmus. I'll do the maths on removal as suggested. It's certainly helpful pulling decks together. A few are working nicely, others less so. As pointed out by...

Grillo_Parlante said:
I would consider some painlands. You have a lot of hyper aggro support, but the mana base is very bad for aggro decks:
Click to expand...
Thanks Grillo, you're absolutely right.

Here's the latest change list based on more Riptide Lab reading. Cutting some blue artifact stuff which seemed overly situational or just plain bad (Padeem) and looking more closely at Blue supporting +1 counters through proliferate.


Red doesn't do tokens, so Kuldotha Rebirth is out and Volcanic Hammer is in, for sentimental value if nothing else.

Ulcerate is in for suicide aggro - perfect.

Murderous Cut > Ulcerate
Eternal of Harsh Truths > Thrummingbird
Trinket Mage > Siren Lookout
Padeem, Consul of Innovation > Silent Departure
Doomed Traveler > Deftblade Elite
Immolating Souleater > Fireslinger
Kuldotha Rebirth > Volcanic Hammer
Spirit of the Labyrinth > Lotus-Eye Mystics
Wayfarer's Bauble > Pentad Prism
Chronomaton > Contagion Clasp
Taplands -> Painlands
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

UWr Blink Midrange from CubeTutor.com












Took the cube for a spin. First picked Blade Splicer, and then second picked Mistmeadow Witch. Felt tempted to really milk the value from splicer, and ended up in blink pretty quickly. At first the cube seemed a little heavy handed with the themes, but I still felt like I had to navigate some, and it's nice to be able to read themes so clearly. This is something I want for my own cube as well, so it's nice to see other building in that style.

It's possible you should be on the lookout for cards that really don't cut it outside of their decks while not contributing to that deck either. Some cards looked a little on the weaker side with the power band being pretty wide (blade splicer for instance is a really good card, same with Brago). Nevertheless, a cool cube!
 
akj

akj

Hello, and thanks for all the feedback so far.

I'll be filling in some gaps in the collection on Sunday, so working through some final changes before then. Lots of updates!

OUT








IN:







I've added a fair amount more artifact hate, partly in response to the splicers which are being (rightly) picked very highly in people's drafts. I like them as a feature, so would rather counteract them than remove them, but happy for some guidance here.
Creaking OCD aside, there's no reason to have all the charms - some are just bad, so I've swapped out the worst ones.
I've added a few more lands to the mana base which will do more to support the archetypes, and ditched some cards which weren't supported well enough, like the Auriok Salvagers and Fabricate, and some garbage like Kiora's Follower.
Q1. I'm not a massive fan of Myrsmith - any suggestions for a white artifact-friendly card I could add?
Q2. Umbra Mystic - awful?
Q3. Any obvious areas where the power balance is too wide? Is aether vial a mistake, or will it scale with the rest of the cards like Snapcaster Mage does?
 
sigh

sigh

Q2: the eidolon you took out is probably quite a bit more useful to the format than Umbra Mystic. If you want that "removal protection" aspect, Griffin Guide is good.

Q3: aether vial is a trap in cube. In competetive it's almost always a 4-of and the deck is entirely built around its usage. Don't think it will be helpful to you here.
 
akj

akj

sigh said:
Q2: the eidolon you took out is probably quite a bit more useful to the format than Umbra Mystic. If you want that "removal protection" aspect, Griffin Guide is good.

Q3: aether vial is a trap in cube. In competetive it's almost always a 4-of and the deck is entirely built around its usage. Don't think it will be helpful to you here.
Click to expand...

Thanks Sigh - switched back the Eidolon and added Ashnod's Transmogrant (!) to support both artifacts and +1 counters.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Transmogrant really makes me wanna see some artifact lords? There are a couple of artifacts with +1/+1 counters so maybe there's a possibility for an overlap here.
 
akj

akj

Anyone had any success with the Awaken in a cube?

E.g. in my current cube, which explicitly supports +1/+1 counters in blue and green, could do something like this.

->
->
->
->
->

->
->
->
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

Is your original post up-to-date with your current supported archetypes? Makes it a lot easier to switch from looking at the cube and looking back to this thread at what you want to accomplish with it.

My first pass of the cube has me questioning the sort of density you're building at certain spots. For example, there are 5 creatures in the 5-drop slot for white, and 4 5-drop white creatures that support a "tokens" strategy in some way. Though each one is pursuing a different goal, having so many at such a high point in the curve will lead to the weakest of them (in this case, Sensor Splicer) typically going underplayed, or may lead to midrange slugfests where the early game simply doesn't matter, since the white player is dumping tons of bodies on the board starting T5+. A similar question arises at seeing 9 3-drop black creatures, and 10 3-drop green creatures; that's quite a lot! And when you look at it from a color pair standpoint: the {B}{G} deck is going to have up to 19 3-drop creatures to choose from. That's going to have a negative impact on their curve, and it's going to, again, push some of your weaker options out of decks entirely.

There's also some stray cards in this list that seem set to ruin someone's day; Bane of Progress is either an outrageous hoser or unplayable, Epic Proportions steals games in a really un-fun way (imho) at this kind of loose power level, Winds of Rath is potentially super unfun to face off against, and Loxodon Warhammer is the absolute biggest game-ruiner I ever cubed - and I once cubed Treachery. You can have a loose powerband and still have fun, but these cards in particular that I've pointed out seem like they're set to spoil the fun entirely, and I can't imagine a playgroup that's at this casual a level finding them enjoyable - but YMMV.

I feel like there's maybe more creatures than there should be personally, and blue in particular looks somewhat anemic. As someone who really loves spell-based strategies in Planeswalker-less (or Planeswalker-lite) cubes, this is a bit of a let-down to me, but it's up to you and your playerbase what you like best.

A final point about building a cube for less-than-8: determine how much each draft will vary, and let that inform your archetype support. For example, I'm (currently) drafting in a group of 3, and we draft from 5 packs each of 15 with a modified burn method. 3x5x15=225 cards that will be seen each draft, out of a pool of 300. 225/300=.75, so 75% of the cube is seen each draft, and 25% is not. That's more variance than I normally like, but I'm experimenting with it currently to see how I feel about it.

But how does that variance apply to my cube design? In a very general way, it essentially means that, if I want players to have, let's say, 3 payoff cards on average to show up in a draft, I need to include at least 4. Because 75% of the cube will be seen each draft, 75% of 4 will give me 3 of those payoff cards, on average, showing up in a draft. There's certainly more scientific approaches you could take here, but I think it's a useful benchmark to consider, especially at less than 8 drafters. In my personal experience, seeing only 50% of a cube in a draft completely de-rails archetypal design, and seeing 90% of the cube each draft is ideal for me to see really synergistic decks. As you get more involved with your cube and your playerbase, you'll likely realize where the sweet spot for your group is, and start moving towards it; some people like extremely high variety in draft, whereas others enjoy absolutely none. Figure out where your preference lies, and start building your cube with it in mind, and you'll have a format you're absolutely mad for in no time! :D
 
sigh

sigh

I think I'm going to try this 5x15 method, RBM. I usually play with 4, and it scales perfectly at 75% to my 400 card size. Sweet!

How do you do the burning? I was thinking just toss the last 6 for ease of execution.
 
inscho

inscho

I really like burning the last X cards for the highest quality decks, and is a little less cumbersome in practice. Alternating random burns between picks will be more challenging to draft which is also cool in its own right.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

sigh said:
I think I'm going to try this 5x15 method, RBM. I usually play with 4, and it scales perfectly at 75% to my 400 card size. Sweet!

How do you do the burning? I was thinking just toss the last 6 for ease of execution.
Click to expand...

Draft 1, pass, draft 1, pass, draft 1, shuffle face-down and discard 2, then pass. (10 cards left in the pack)
Draft 1, pass, draft 1, pass, draft 1, shuffle face-down and discard 2, then pass. (5 cards left in the pack)
Draft 1, pass, draft 1, pass, draft 1, discard the last 2

So basically, before you get back the pack you opened yourself, 2 cards get randomly burned from it, and you've had a chance to pick 1 card from each pack. It's easy enough to remember to count the packs as you pass imo, but it does require a bit of vigilance before the routine sets in.

I like this method a lot more than other burn variants I've encountered because
1) everyone gets to pull from a pack once after its opening/each burn session, increasing accessibility to archetypes tremendously
2) taking 3 picks from a pack makes it decision-intense; I've tried taking just 2 before from more packs and found it was quite a slog to go through so many packs, but 3 picks from 5 seems timely enough, and like a good number of first picks
3) burning 2 at a time randomly before the pack goes back to its owner conceals what everyone is picking into somewhat, and forces players to hate-draft explicitly if they want to eliminate something from the pool, increasing opportunity cost

You could try modifying it to your taste but I'm a strong proponent of random burning, because I found (at least in my playgroup) that the hate-drafting portion of choosing what gets eliminated from the packs tends to put everyone in the same 3 colors or hoses a strategy that someone has accidentally picked too obviously into.. :rolleyes:

edit: quick fix for clarity
 
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