Hi all! This here's my cube. It's a small combo cube for 2-6 players with an animating goal of "pull off some goofy shit." It's been a long road getting this thing to work, but it's now in a pretty good spot so I want to share it with y'all.
Why the Name?
There was this essay I read in school by some bigwig philosopher and at the end is the quote "It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar."
This cube is named in honor of those cats, because I would love to travel to Zanzibar and count those fucking cats.
The Goals
Be Small: My play group is quite small and I move around a lot, so the cube is 288 cards, enough for 2-6 players. It was originally 270 but I wanted to fit in just a little more. That means more than other cubes, cards really got to fit in a lot of decks. This is most apparent with the color fixing, which is all applicable to >2 colors. One upside of a small size is that I can throw in 2-card combos like doomsday and be sure they'll come together
Be Creative: This cube started with inspiration from games like Slay the Spire and The Quest for El Dorado. I want to empower players to remain open throughout the draft, and I want plenty of combos you can assemble to win the game. To achieve this, strategies are either broad and present in all colors (e.g. artifacts with Jackknight, Whirler Rogue, Crabomination, Gut, True Soul Zealot, and Tough Cookie), or tiny packages with only a few cards (madness, blink, etc). Decks become a mishmash of all sorts of things.
Be Goofy: There turns out to be a pretty big overlap between me and the other experienced friends wanting to play powerful combos, and the less experienced friends liking to do goofy things and pop off. For something to make it into the cube, it has to be both effective and make players put on their silliest grins when playing them. What's goofy, then? In no particular order: flashing in academy rector to cheat out shark typhoon on turn 2, beating out that hoity-toity storm deck with dumb red aggro, using more or less to bring the escape cost of underworld breach to zero cards, and animate graveyard.
Be Relaxing: Of course the strongest combos are found in the likes of the MTGO vintage cube. These formats are super exhilarating, but perhaps too high-octane for myself and my casual friends. This means I don't want the cube to pressure players into thinking too hard if they just want to chill out for the night.
What I've Learned
The cube's seen regular weekly play for ~a year and a half now. Here are some of the lessons I've learned.
The Other Kind of Enabler. More or Less was the first card on this list, and what I thought was going to be just a silly card turned out to be exactly the kind of effect that makes this cube work. More or Less is an enabler not in the way that Faithless Looting is for your graveyard deck, but in that it provides that last piece for whatever combo or trick you're cooking up. Pieces like these enable homebrew combos by bypassing restrictions, supercharging your meat and potatoes, or giving you that last step in the Rube-Goldburg machine. I've been striving to include more of these kinds of cards in the cube and every one I've found does so well. Other cards that do this include Unexpected Potential and Cloudstone Curio and I'm always looking for more.
When Removal Doesn't Disrupt Combos, Pressure Does. Playing the best removal is something I had a feeling wouldn't fit in this environment. This was confirmed early on when an update brought in many more removal pieces to each color. The result was combo decks all taking a control slant to shut down fair decks, which wasn't fun. Instead what seemed to work was making aggro strong and ensuring that decks of all kinds can exert strong pressure. This is a much better approach in my environment because it also meets the "be relaxing" goal.
Good Sac Outlets Makes Aristocrats Work. It was after one of my drafters told me that Goblin Bombardment was her favorite card for aggro that I had this paradigm shift for aristocrats. It turns out that any and all creature decks have a use for sac outlets that give good value, and when an aristocrats deck comes together, its success comes from those sac outlets. Now my aristocrats package is simply free sac outlets and it works wonders!
Mana and Cards are Good (duh). Spreading general archetype support (that is: artifacts, enchantments, graveyard, and spells) to 4-5 colors created a huge variety of decks given the cube's size. But the combo side of things was quickly getting stagnant. To remedy this, I've been shifting archetype payoffs to pieces that give you cards and mana. I mean, what's more fundamental to Magic other than making mana and playing cards with it?
Magic is Ours. Sometimes, the current card pool just doesn't have what you want. I used to be active in the custom cards side of Magic, so I don't shy away from non-"standard" cards. There aren't any custom cards in here, but there are plenty of un-cards, playtest cards, and erratas.
Looking Forward
I need your help! My play group is expected to grow pretty soon, so I'll need to grow my cube to match. I'd like to add 72 cards to grow to 360. Considering the number of cards needed to add more fixing, removal, and threats, as well as to add enough redundancy to certain combos, I expect enough room for 1 or 2 more combos or packages. What is this cube missing? What are combos or single-card archetypes you'd recommend?
Why the Name?
There was this essay I read in school by some bigwig philosopher and at the end is the quote "It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar."
This cube is named in honor of those cats, because I would love to travel to Zanzibar and count those fucking cats.
The Goals
Be Small: My play group is quite small and I move around a lot, so the cube is 288 cards, enough for 2-6 players. It was originally 270 but I wanted to fit in just a little more. That means more than other cubes, cards really got to fit in a lot of decks. This is most apparent with the color fixing, which is all applicable to >2 colors. One upside of a small size is that I can throw in 2-card combos like doomsday and be sure they'll come together
Be Creative: This cube started with inspiration from games like Slay the Spire and The Quest for El Dorado. I want to empower players to remain open throughout the draft, and I want plenty of combos you can assemble to win the game. To achieve this, strategies are either broad and present in all colors (e.g. artifacts with Jackknight, Whirler Rogue, Crabomination, Gut, True Soul Zealot, and Tough Cookie), or tiny packages with only a few cards (madness, blink, etc). Decks become a mishmash of all sorts of things.
Be Goofy: There turns out to be a pretty big overlap between me and the other experienced friends wanting to play powerful combos, and the less experienced friends liking to do goofy things and pop off. For something to make it into the cube, it has to be both effective and make players put on their silliest grins when playing them. What's goofy, then? In no particular order: flashing in academy rector to cheat out shark typhoon on turn 2, beating out that hoity-toity storm deck with dumb red aggro, using more or less to bring the escape cost of underworld breach to zero cards, and animate graveyard.
Be Relaxing: Of course the strongest combos are found in the likes of the MTGO vintage cube. These formats are super exhilarating, but perhaps too high-octane for myself and my casual friends. This means I don't want the cube to pressure players into thinking too hard if they just want to chill out for the night.
What I've Learned
The cube's seen regular weekly play for ~a year and a half now. Here are some of the lessons I've learned.
The Other Kind of Enabler. More or Less was the first card on this list, and what I thought was going to be just a silly card turned out to be exactly the kind of effect that makes this cube work. More or Less is an enabler not in the way that Faithless Looting is for your graveyard deck, but in that it provides that last piece for whatever combo or trick you're cooking up. Pieces like these enable homebrew combos by bypassing restrictions, supercharging your meat and potatoes, or giving you that last step in the Rube-Goldburg machine. I've been striving to include more of these kinds of cards in the cube and every one I've found does so well. Other cards that do this include Unexpected Potential and Cloudstone Curio and I'm always looking for more.
When Removal Doesn't Disrupt Combos, Pressure Does. Playing the best removal is something I had a feeling wouldn't fit in this environment. This was confirmed early on when an update brought in many more removal pieces to each color. The result was combo decks all taking a control slant to shut down fair decks, which wasn't fun. Instead what seemed to work was making aggro strong and ensuring that decks of all kinds can exert strong pressure. This is a much better approach in my environment because it also meets the "be relaxing" goal.
Good Sac Outlets Makes Aristocrats Work. It was after one of my drafters told me that Goblin Bombardment was her favorite card for aggro that I had this paradigm shift for aristocrats. It turns out that any and all creature decks have a use for sac outlets that give good value, and when an aristocrats deck comes together, its success comes from those sac outlets. Now my aristocrats package is simply free sac outlets and it works wonders!
Mana and Cards are Good (duh). Spreading general archetype support (that is: artifacts, enchantments, graveyard, and spells) to 4-5 colors created a huge variety of decks given the cube's size. But the combo side of things was quickly getting stagnant. To remedy this, I've been shifting archetype payoffs to pieces that give you cards and mana. I mean, what's more fundamental to Magic other than making mana and playing cards with it?
Magic is Ours. Sometimes, the current card pool just doesn't have what you want. I used to be active in the custom cards side of Magic, so I don't shy away from non-"standard" cards. There aren't any custom cards in here, but there are plenty of un-cards, playtest cards, and erratas.
Looking Forward
I need your help! My play group is expected to grow pretty soon, so I'll need to grow my cube to match. I'd like to add 72 cards to grow to 360. Considering the number of cards needed to add more fixing, removal, and threats, as well as to add enough redundancy to certain combos, I expect enough room for 1 or 2 more combos or packages. What is this cube missing? What are combos or single-card archetypes you'd recommend?
