IMPORTANT! You may only vote for 2 cubes! For further information, see the contest thread
I’ve drafted each cube once without diving deep into the list, and once after having done so. I generally used 5 packs of 9 cards for a 4 player draft, unless the cube curator made a custom draft format. An interesting note is that the behavior of the CubeCobra bots was wildly different depending on the egg. Apparently Black Lotus has a higher ELO than Mister Gutsy...
I structured the feedback by first giving a description from the cube from my point of view. Ech cube got a top (best part of the cube), a tip (point of improvement), and my favorite card (highly subjective). Unfortunately, I didn’t find the time to give feedback to the two late entries, but I did add them to the poll!
NO GUTSY NO GLORY - @MilesOfficial
Mister Gutsy is a potentially very powerful card, and you haven’t held back! It provides a card advantage engine and a finisher for just a little mana. Its colorless cost makes it also very dynamic in terms of color fixing and combinations.
Top: There are so many synergies in this small card! Equipment, aura’s, +1/+1 counters, casting from exile, artifacts, sacrifice, they’re all here! This, combined with the very low mana value of this card, make this a really dynamic eggs for drafting and the strongest synergy egg of the bunch!
Tip: I was left with so many playables! Cutting cards was the biggest part of deckbuilding, and I think you can balance that better by including more nonbasic lands. Those that produce colorless can push players more towards monocolored decks while fixing lands push more towards color soups. I think both could work here!
Favorite card: Flickering Ward is a card I once built a commander deck around. I think it might be very much on the strong side for this cube, but it’s okay to play favorites!
Gaslight, Gatekeep, Green - @LadyMapi
Land Grant very much acts like a fetchland. Shuffling, finding a wide array of possible lands, getting cards in the graveyard. But this egg also enables prowess and storm. You’ve nicely identified a true multitude of smaller and bigger synergies. I could also see a desert cube version of this idea!
Top: Multiple Land Grants really shift the evaluation and power level of every card. And even with all the things you’ve found, I think there’s still so much to explore if you’d even up the card count to 360. This is especially since you’re the only one who chose (only) an instant/sorcery.
Tip: I think the triomes are too strong and make manabases of any color arbitrary, especially since you also put the original duals in the basic land box(?!) I wonder what would happen if you’d replace the triomes with shock- or bicycle lands, since that would enable a wider range of decks.
Favorite card: Spellweaver Helix is a dream I’ve yet to live, and I think your cube is one of the only ones in the world where I could!
Work of the Wicked - @ravnic
Wand of Vertebrae kinda feels like an out-of-left-field pick, but actually enables a really interesting environment. I feel you’ve approached the cube with the assumption that you’ll have the wand in most opening hands (or at least that’s how I drafted it). I also admire that you’ve chosen to make it the only colorless card in the cube!
Top: This is turned into a graveyard cube by the egg, and I think you make an excellent choice crafting archetypes through binning card types. You really expand player agency by engraving graveyard access into the cube itself. Even the second ability of the wand gives you a plethora of options in the lategame.
Tip: I think decks rarely want more than 5 Wand of Vertebrae, which means having 30 in your cube is too much. I think one possible theme you could add to combat this is giving them a really aggressive angle, for example making them able to attack themselves through artifact animation.
Favorite card: Slogurk, the Overslime has always intrigued me, and I think fit this cube like a glove. I’ve always wanted a land-based synergy deck to work in the cubes I try
Slickshot Gut Shot Showdown - @TrainmasterGT
Slickshot Showoff and Gut Shot are a nice pair of cards. I do feel Slickshot Showoff has a far bigger impact on the cube (at least it did during drafting and deckbuilding). I did actually manage to draft a monored deck once, which is probably unrealistic during a real draft. I noticed how your eggs are the only (non-hybrid) red cards in the cube which I thought was a nice touch.
Top: Your cube has very much a “protect the queen” vibe, a la the Delver decks of yesteryear. All decks will have very spellslinger-centric gameplay, which gives a big focus on sequencing, tempo, and finding those small edges. I’ve played those chess-like games before and they’re VERY rewarding to win.
Tip: I think you did yourself dirty by having a relatively small variety of cards. There’s even a lot of overlap between the different cards that you did include. Even within the tight tempo shell you have crafted here, there is more opportunity to prevent every match from feeling like a mirror match.
Favorite card: Living Death is in many ways the antithesis of your cube (slower, depends on (only) your creatures dying), but I really dig small plugs like that!
Old Fogey - @TekLazar
Black Lotus as your egg makes this the most expensive cube of the bunch. I was also very amused when finding out that every card in the cube costs either 3, 6 or 9 mana. A nice touch! It was really challenging to balance the amount of lands and amount of lotusses a deck needs. I tried to make a lands-less deck in the second draft, although I think that wouldn’t be possible without bots.
Top: Big mana, big plays! Crazy possibilities in a cube like this. This cube should make every Timmy/Tammy heart relish in delight. It obviously makes the whole thing difficult to evaluate, but that’s the beauty of it!
Tip: With already 50(!) cards in the cube identical, I’m a fan of diversifying the others a little more. I’m not necessarily talking about playing your remaining 130 card singleton, but I’m talking about mana value as well. Unless you expect all players to have only Lotusses as mana production, you’d normally expect to have 4 or 7 mana on turn one with your land drop. Ironically, this’ll lead to a lot of unspent mana in this cube.
Favorite card: "Ach! Hans, Run!" is a unique buildaround that fits really well with the higher mana value part of the cube. It’s this cube’s version of reanimator, and a very potent one at that!
The Omelette Cube - @Nanonox
Chromatic Star is the quintessential egg, so it is a top-notch choice for this contest! The CubeCobra bots took the stars higher than I’d expected which made the decision when to take them myself very interesting. In my second draft I took the stars far higher and probably ended up better for it. I actually think that, if the players would evenly divide the star among themselves, each would have the ideal amount (which is a nice consideration).
Top: Your choice for an egg is rock-solid. I think you’ve recognized a lot of interesting archetypes, cards and interactions. You mention a few archetypes you’ve created, but I think the vast amount of micro-synergies actually make the possibilities far greater than the few you’ve laid out yourself.
Tip: Splashing a third, fourth and probably fifth color is very easy. Normally aggro is a deterrent to color soup decks, but I think your aggro section is not buff enough to deal with value-based decks. I think the cube could benefit from either more mana-intense cards or a denser aggro section.
Favorite card: Chamber Sentry has never found a place in anything I’ve built because the card has so many prerequisites to be useful, but this cube weaves them all into a nice thread that makes me excited to try this one out!
The Hedron Puzzle Box - @Kirblinx
Hedron Alignment is such a bold choice! It’s difficult to construct a cube around a mostly do-nothing enchantment, but you have found quite a few avenues. Deckbuilding is also so much harder, because at least 5 slots are already set aside for the hedrons. I never wanted to have 40-45 cards in my deck as often as here. I’d also be interested how this idea would fare as a battle box.
Top: I’m too curious how this would pan out. I really want to try to build a cube like this myself, because you really pulled off making this one feel like a puzzle!
Tip: Some creatures you’ve added are statted well enough that I’m afraid their clock might outpace aligning the hedrons. This is difficult to say for sure of course, but I would feel incentivized to skip the hedron plan entirely and focus on something proactive. Maybe having more focus on top-of-library stuff would help diversify slower strategies and maybe pull the stinger from aggro.
Favorite card: Aphemia, the Cacophony brings another, truly proactive, angle to a player’s game plan, while also enabling the hedron win. It attacks the opponent from two angles, which I really enjoy.
Maelstrom Mania - @StrionicAdventurer
Invasion of Alara certainly is the egg with the biggest impact once it hits the battlefield. There’s a lot of moving part on this (double-sided) card, and you’re making the most of it! There’s a lot of way to fix your mana to enable casting your egg, and I feel like a lot of the cards are big fat arrows point towards the Invasion of Alara and screaming: “pick this card pick this card!”
Top: I really like that your chosen egg is a two-step quest: First I need to get the invasion on the battlefield, then I need to attack and transform it. You’ve really enabled strategies to do both of these in different ways, which upps the replayability in a very interesting way.
Tip: Casting the battle is very complicated. The second of the two steps mentioned before, the attacking part, has the opposite requirements when compared to the first part: casting a 5 mana rainbow colored spell. One enables fast clocks, while the other needs slow clocks. The card choices that enable me to flip my battle also enable me to kill you before you can even cast yours.
Favorite card: Collector’s Cage, mainly as an example of my favorite way to “cheat out” the battle: hideaway! There’s a lot of fun build-around hideaway card in the cube, but this one is my personal choice.
30 Monoskelion - @Nemo
I unfortunately didn’t have time to review this cube, sorry!
The Cloud of Faeries - @Nagazube
I unfortunately didn’t have time to review this cube, sorry!
The contest yielded amazing results, I hope the participants feel the same way! The amount of diversity is unexpected, as the eggs ranged from fixing to combo pieces, enablers to payoffs, and the odd hedron floating around. Take a minute to look at each list for some inspiration; I know my head is buzzing with it. I believe at least two people mentioned they’d build a list from this contest!
Please feel free to share your own thoughts and celebrate each others’ cubes down below! As mentioned, this poll will close in exactly 7 days, so be sure to have voted by then.
- NO GUTSY NO GLORY - Mister Gutsy
tldr: voltron it up in a low-to-the-ground battlefield - Gaslight, Gatekeep, Green - Land Grant
tldr: though fetchlands were the most dynamic? think again! - Work of the Wicked - Wand of Vertebrae
tldr: making your graveyard a second hand - Slickshot Gut Shot Showdown - Slickshot Showoff / Gut Shot
tldr: high-octane tempo-based gamepl- - Old Fogey - Black Lotus
tldr: go big or go home - The Omelette Cube - Chromatic Star
tldr: live the (colorless yet colorful) dream! - The Hedron Puzzle Box - Hedron Alignment
tldr: not your grandma’s laid-back sunday sudoku - Maelstrom Mania - Invasion of Alara
tldr: join the battle to cast and transform a rainbow - 30 Monoskelion - Monoskelion
tldr: for those who like counting and counters - The Cloud of Faeries - Cloud of Faeries
tldr: discard, draw, untap and squeeze this flying menace from all its value
I’ve drafted each cube once without diving deep into the list, and once after having done so. I generally used 5 packs of 9 cards for a 4 player draft, unless the cube curator made a custom draft format. An interesting note is that the behavior of the CubeCobra bots was wildly different depending on the egg. Apparently Black Lotus has a higher ELO than Mister Gutsy...
I structured the feedback by first giving a description from the cube from my point of view. Ech cube got a top (best part of the cube), a tip (point of improvement), and my favorite card (highly subjective). Unfortunately, I didn’t find the time to give feedback to the two late entries, but I did add them to the poll!
NO GUTSY NO GLORY - @MilesOfficial
Mister Gutsy is a potentially very powerful card, and you haven’t held back! It provides a card advantage engine and a finisher for just a little mana. Its colorless cost makes it also very dynamic in terms of color fixing and combinations.
Top: There are so many synergies in this small card! Equipment, aura’s, +1/+1 counters, casting from exile, artifacts, sacrifice, they’re all here! This, combined with the very low mana value of this card, make this a really dynamic eggs for drafting and the strongest synergy egg of the bunch!
Tip: I was left with so many playables! Cutting cards was the biggest part of deckbuilding, and I think you can balance that better by including more nonbasic lands. Those that produce colorless can push players more towards monocolored decks while fixing lands push more towards color soups. I think both could work here!
Favorite card: Flickering Ward is a card I once built a commander deck around. I think it might be very much on the strong side for this cube, but it’s okay to play favorites!
Gaslight, Gatekeep, Green - @LadyMapi
Land Grant very much acts like a fetchland. Shuffling, finding a wide array of possible lands, getting cards in the graveyard. But this egg also enables prowess and storm. You’ve nicely identified a true multitude of smaller and bigger synergies. I could also see a desert cube version of this idea!
Top: Multiple Land Grants really shift the evaluation and power level of every card. And even with all the things you’ve found, I think there’s still so much to explore if you’d even up the card count to 360. This is especially since you’re the only one who chose (only) an instant/sorcery.
Tip: I think the triomes are too strong and make manabases of any color arbitrary, especially since you also put the original duals in the basic land box(?!) I wonder what would happen if you’d replace the triomes with shock- or bicycle lands, since that would enable a wider range of decks.
Favorite card: Spellweaver Helix is a dream I’ve yet to live, and I think your cube is one of the only ones in the world where I could!
Work of the Wicked - @ravnic
Wand of Vertebrae kinda feels like an out-of-left-field pick, but actually enables a really interesting environment. I feel you’ve approached the cube with the assumption that you’ll have the wand in most opening hands (or at least that’s how I drafted it). I also admire that you’ve chosen to make it the only colorless card in the cube!
Top: This is turned into a graveyard cube by the egg, and I think you make an excellent choice crafting archetypes through binning card types. You really expand player agency by engraving graveyard access into the cube itself. Even the second ability of the wand gives you a plethora of options in the lategame.
Tip: I think decks rarely want more than 5 Wand of Vertebrae, which means having 30 in your cube is too much. I think one possible theme you could add to combat this is giving them a really aggressive angle, for example making them able to attack themselves through artifact animation.
Favorite card: Slogurk, the Overslime has always intrigued me, and I think fit this cube like a glove. I’ve always wanted a land-based synergy deck to work in the cubes I try
Slickshot Gut Shot Showdown - @TrainmasterGT
Slickshot Showoff and Gut Shot are a nice pair of cards. I do feel Slickshot Showoff has a far bigger impact on the cube (at least it did during drafting and deckbuilding). I did actually manage to draft a monored deck once, which is probably unrealistic during a real draft. I noticed how your eggs are the only (non-hybrid) red cards in the cube which I thought was a nice touch.
Top: Your cube has very much a “protect the queen” vibe, a la the Delver decks of yesteryear. All decks will have very spellslinger-centric gameplay, which gives a big focus on sequencing, tempo, and finding those small edges. I’ve played those chess-like games before and they’re VERY rewarding to win.
Tip: I think you did yourself dirty by having a relatively small variety of cards. There’s even a lot of overlap between the different cards that you did include. Even within the tight tempo shell you have crafted here, there is more opportunity to prevent every match from feeling like a mirror match.
Favorite card: Living Death is in many ways the antithesis of your cube (slower, depends on (only) your creatures dying), but I really dig small plugs like that!
Old Fogey - @TekLazar
Black Lotus as your egg makes this the most expensive cube of the bunch. I was also very amused when finding out that every card in the cube costs either 3, 6 or 9 mana. A nice touch! It was really challenging to balance the amount of lands and amount of lotusses a deck needs. I tried to make a lands-less deck in the second draft, although I think that wouldn’t be possible without bots.
Top: Big mana, big plays! Crazy possibilities in a cube like this. This cube should make every Timmy/Tammy heart relish in delight. It obviously makes the whole thing difficult to evaluate, but that’s the beauty of it!
Tip: With already 50(!) cards in the cube identical, I’m a fan of diversifying the others a little more. I’m not necessarily talking about playing your remaining 130 card singleton, but I’m talking about mana value as well. Unless you expect all players to have only Lotusses as mana production, you’d normally expect to have 4 or 7 mana on turn one with your land drop. Ironically, this’ll lead to a lot of unspent mana in this cube.
Favorite card: "Ach! Hans, Run!" is a unique buildaround that fits really well with the higher mana value part of the cube. It’s this cube’s version of reanimator, and a very potent one at that!
The Omelette Cube - @Nanonox
Chromatic Star is the quintessential egg, so it is a top-notch choice for this contest! The CubeCobra bots took the stars higher than I’d expected which made the decision when to take them myself very interesting. In my second draft I took the stars far higher and probably ended up better for it. I actually think that, if the players would evenly divide the star among themselves, each would have the ideal amount (which is a nice consideration).
Top: Your choice for an egg is rock-solid. I think you’ve recognized a lot of interesting archetypes, cards and interactions. You mention a few archetypes you’ve created, but I think the vast amount of micro-synergies actually make the possibilities far greater than the few you’ve laid out yourself.
Tip: Splashing a third, fourth and probably fifth color is very easy. Normally aggro is a deterrent to color soup decks, but I think your aggro section is not buff enough to deal with value-based decks. I think the cube could benefit from either more mana-intense cards or a denser aggro section.
Favorite card: Chamber Sentry has never found a place in anything I’ve built because the card has so many prerequisites to be useful, but this cube weaves them all into a nice thread that makes me excited to try this one out!
The Hedron Puzzle Box - @Kirblinx
Hedron Alignment is such a bold choice! It’s difficult to construct a cube around a mostly do-nothing enchantment, but you have found quite a few avenues. Deckbuilding is also so much harder, because at least 5 slots are already set aside for the hedrons. I never wanted to have 40-45 cards in my deck as often as here. I’d also be interested how this idea would fare as a battle box.
Top: I’m too curious how this would pan out. I really want to try to build a cube like this myself, because you really pulled off making this one feel like a puzzle!
Tip: Some creatures you’ve added are statted well enough that I’m afraid their clock might outpace aligning the hedrons. This is difficult to say for sure of course, but I would feel incentivized to skip the hedron plan entirely and focus on something proactive. Maybe having more focus on top-of-library stuff would help diversify slower strategies and maybe pull the stinger from aggro.
Favorite card: Aphemia, the Cacophony brings another, truly proactive, angle to a player’s game plan, while also enabling the hedron win. It attacks the opponent from two angles, which I really enjoy.
Maelstrom Mania - @StrionicAdventurer
Invasion of Alara certainly is the egg with the biggest impact once it hits the battlefield. There’s a lot of moving part on this (double-sided) card, and you’re making the most of it! There’s a lot of way to fix your mana to enable casting your egg, and I feel like a lot of the cards are big fat arrows point towards the Invasion of Alara and screaming: “pick this card pick this card!”
Top: I really like that your chosen egg is a two-step quest: First I need to get the invasion on the battlefield, then I need to attack and transform it. You’ve really enabled strategies to do both of these in different ways, which upps the replayability in a very interesting way.
Tip: Casting the battle is very complicated. The second of the two steps mentioned before, the attacking part, has the opposite requirements when compared to the first part: casting a 5 mana rainbow colored spell. One enables fast clocks, while the other needs slow clocks. The card choices that enable me to flip my battle also enable me to kill you before you can even cast yours.
Favorite card: Collector’s Cage, mainly as an example of my favorite way to “cheat out” the battle: hideaway! There’s a lot of fun build-around hideaway card in the cube, but this one is my personal choice.
30 Monoskelion - @Nemo
I unfortunately didn’t have time to review this cube, sorry!
The Cloud of Faeries - @Nagazube
I unfortunately didn’t have time to review this cube, sorry!
@LadyMapi and @Kirblinx are my personal favorites. They both made cubes that really speak to me, for very different reasons. I’m really impressed by the amount of design space Land Grant opened up while still feeling like a familiar effect. I also really enjoy the puzzle Hedron Alignment creates both in drafting and (probably) gameplay. These are the cubes I’m most interested in building myself!
An honorable mention goes to @Nanonox, who created the cube I’d expect to do best with a random group of people. It should also be mentioned that this cube revolves around an actual egg.
An honorable mention goes to @Nanonox, who created the cube I’d expect to do best with a random group of people. It should also be mentioned that this cube revolves around an actual egg.
The contest yielded amazing results, I hope the participants feel the same way! The amount of diversity is unexpected, as the eggs ranged from fixing to combo pieces, enablers to payoffs, and the odd hedron floating around. Take a minute to look at each list for some inspiration; I know my head is buzzing with it. I believe at least two people mentioned they’d build a list from this contest!
Please feel free to share your own thoughts and celebrate each others’ cubes down below! As mentioned, this poll will close in exactly 7 days, so be sure to have voted by then.
