|
The Next Level - Building The Cube
|
Have you experienced The Cube? I have and have to say that it is the most amazing Magic: The Gathering format I have ever played. For those of you who like Drafting, Old School Magic and Formats that are Skill Testing or Casual, this is for you. What is The Cube?
The Cube
The Cube is all of the best cards in Magic collected, crammed into a box, stirred up, sleeved (for the most part), made into packs and drafted (drafting is the most popular, but there are other formats.)
When I think of The Cube, I think of Power. Imagine eternal formats, Vintage and Legacy, and then equate that to a limited format. What you now have is The Cube. So to make it powerful, you need the most powerful cards.
Before you say, “oh well guess that counts me out, I don’t exactly have Power Nine, Imperial Seal and Tarmogoyf laying around,” think again. Proxies are a commonly used alternative. How do you make a cube?
Constructing The Cube
To make The Cube powerful you need power (however some play groups use less powerful cards, such as only Type II legal staple cards), this can be done through proxies. Why use proxies?
I am what most would call a PTQ player. I travel to competitive REL events and try my best to qualify for the all illustrious Pro Tour. During these travels I meet new people and after a day long event, or an X-3 drop I want to draft. Drafting requires other people, and usually the more the better. So me and my four or so friends I traveled with talk to those we know from other PTQs and events to draft together. Usually those friends have some more friends, mostly people we might not know, and they tag along. So off we go to the local IHOP or what have you, and draft. Since I don’t know most of these people, I don’t fully trust them to the extent to test them into seeing if they are going to yank my Tarmogoyf or not. So I use proxies. Many cards I use proxies for I don’t own ( Power Nine, Library of Alexandria, Mana Drain, Juzam Djinn, Imperial Seal and other pricey cards) and so to get the power level of Vintage, I must proxy. For others that I do own, expensive cards such as Goyf, Thoughtseize and even Wrath of God is proxied in my cube. I do own these cards, but by proxying them I have no worries and can concentrate on the draft, the food and the conversations of Magic players. My proxies are nice and at first glance look like actual cards, but they are alas only pieces of paper printed out and put in a sleeve along with a common. In this manner, not much ascetic value is lost. So between proxying the cards of value, say $20 and up, and the other junk rares, commons and uncommons, you too can construct a cube of Magic Invitational caliber. Also, as mentioned above some players only use say, Type II cards in their cube, which is much easier to assemble. What do I use for my cube?
My cube consists of the 720 best limited cards in the game. This is enough to have two 8-man drafts going on at once. The cube list I use is very similar to the 2007 Magic Invitational list, as I used it as a starting point. What do these 720 cards consist of?
White – 112 Cards
Blue – 112 Cards
Black – 112 Cards
Red – 112 Cards
Green – 112 Cards
Artifacts – 80 Cards
Lands – 50 Cards
Multicolor – 30 Cards
Due to formating issues with the blog, I am not able to display my cube list. If you are interested in what all it contains, email me at: Shin_Tsun@neo.tamu.edu for the full list.
Differences
No Meddling Mage. Personally I think this card sucks. Sure it is a very fine constructed card, but not in the cube. First of all his ability is only Ok, Ok cards don’t belong in the cube. Usually game one he is pointless for most players (some masters can predict according to the archetype what bomb or trick they passed the opponent and what they likely drafted, this is still not a 100 %.) Game two and three, it is a vastly more useful spell. However he has two bad marks against him, first he is a creature (the weakest card type in the game) and second he is multicolor. I also believe that Wizards intentionally had each invitational card in the pool, since it was the Magic Invitational. Overall, I believed there were better cards that could go in the cube. Also, I kicked Dragon Storm. For it to be more than just a turn 7-9 play that you get one dragon with, you have to draft around it. In the cube there are a decent amount of dragons, but you need to draft a couple, Dragonstorm as well as rituals to make it work best. There is also a handfull of other cards I took out as well as a few added cards. Why change the cube?
This is probably the coolest thing about the cube. You can do whatever you want. There is no perfect cube. You may have your nice, powerful, balanced cube and then a new set comes out. There may be a card that fits perfectly into your cube from a new set. I would think it crazy for a cube owner not to analyze every new set and check out new cards if they want to make their cube better. Also I came up with what I believe to be a better number of cards for each color. How does this affect the cube?
Making Booster Packs
So now you have a cube, how do you make packs? The way in which I make booster packs greatly affects the number of cards of each color I need. To construct the boosters (up to 48 with a cube of 720) follow these steps:
1. Separate the cards into piles of colors: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green and Artifact-Land-Multicolor. This should be 6 piles with the pile of artifacts lands and multicolored cards being the biggest stack. Shuffle each stack.
2. Grab a color stack and make piles of two cards each of that color (face down) for each booster you need. Each player needs 3 boosters. Do the same for each color, you should now have stacks of ten cards in each pile. Do this with the Artifacts-Multicolor-Lands (AML), except there should be 3 AML in each stack. Each booster should now have 13 cards each.
3. Then for the remaining two cards in the booster do this: Take X cards from each of the six piles, where X = (Number of Players). So for eight players, take eight cards from each of the six piles, for a total of 48 cards. Shuffle these cards and put two cards from the pile into each booster pack.
4. Do NOT look at any of the remaining cards, if any, this distorts participants knowledge of the card pool.
Why do I make boosters this way, for balance of each color and good signaling in each draft? If you were to make each pack perfectly equal in color, i.e. without step 3, then signaling would be perfect and anyone could know exactly what each player took of the first pack. This way there is still a balance in colors in the pool, as well as a few random cards each pack (but balanced in the overall pool).
Some groups just shuffle the entire cube in one glob and make stacks of 15. This makes color clumping possible. Wizards of the Coast essentially does the same thing I do in making print runs. They also did something very similar for the 2007 Magic Invitational. What do you do with all of these packs?
Draft
Most of you reading this have probably done a booster draft, if not a brief explanation of a booster draft is at the end of this article. It is exactly the same as any other booster draft. Something to keep in mind is that the cards are, unlike in actual booster drafts, not packaged. So make sure to establish an identifiable way to separate things. A good idea might be to only pass out each pack as needed.
In addition to the standard drafting, you can Winston Draft, Team Draft, Rotisserie Draft, Type IV and do Sealed Deck with The Cube. The Cube is as versatile as you make it. What are some tips for someone who wants to make The Cube?
Constructing Your Cube
You don’t have to start off with the best 720 cards in the game. Instead just go through your collection and pick out the cards you own best for limited. Or just make your Cube the best 360 cards for limited that you own. Go from there, make slow improvements and seek out cards. Eventually, you might just have the best 720 cards in the game. Go through the invitational list, you might be surprised how much you actually own. Talk to your friends and your local store owner, they might be willing to donate a few cards so that Cube Drafting at your store might be possible.
The more expensive part is usually buying all those sleeves that you need. Remember that you need sleeves for basic lands when calculating the number of sleeves you need. About 50 of each basic land is good for a 16 player cube. Also keep in mind you might want some extras to replace broken sleeves. I went shopping online and found sleeves a big discount. The normally $9.99 a pack of 100 sleeves in my favorite brand where only $7.50 a pack with a buy three get one free and $1 shipping. Just shop around and you might pay less than 60%, as I did. Why should you make a cube, and why am I putting in the hours typing this?
The Cube is the Best Thing I Have Experienced in Magic
Everyone who I have played the cube with say things like:
“When are you going to Cube again?"
“This deck is Broken!”
“I would pay money to play this! I can't believe something free could be so fun”
And it brings me plenty of enjoyment as well. The Cube IS Magic. It will improve your skills in other formats, especially limited. You won’t regret building The Cube!
Kyle Edwards
Shin_Tsun@neo.tamu.edu
Links About The Cube
http://www.tomlapille.com/cube/cube.html
http://www.cubedrafting.com/Welcome.html
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/9975.html
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/11755.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CizAh377UHg
Bonus: Drafting for Beginners
So when I say the word draft, you say “what?"
Drafting is like Magic on Acid. Ever complain about Net Decks? Well in Limited (Drafting and Sealed Deck), there are no Net Decks. Drafting takes nothing but your on the spot deck card evaluation and building skills and pits them against you opponents. How do you draft?
To draft, you want five to eight players. Each player needs three booster packs. These booster packs can be anything, just as long as each players set of booster packs are the same, and each player opens their booster packs in the same order. For this example we are going to draft Lorwyn, Lorwyn, Morningtide.
Each player sits at the table, preferably a circle but a rectangular one works just fine. Each player opens their first booster pack, Lorwyn. Look at all the cards, pick the one you want and put it in a pile in front of you. Then pass your pack to the left player. Now the person to your right has just passed you a stack of 14 cards, look at that pack, pick a card and pass it to your left just the same as before. You continue this until you have a stack of 15 cards in front of you. Then open the second booster, Lorwyn, and do the same as the first pack except pass to the right this time. Lastly open the Morningtide booster. Like the first time you will pass to the left for this booster.
Now you have 45 cards. Using these cards and as many basic land as you want, build a 40 card deck. On average, this deck should contain 17 lands and 23 spells (creatures, instants, sorceries, enchantments, etc.), mostly creatures though.
After you have your forty card decks, you play Magic! Usually people do this in a tournament like setting where matches are determined at random, or you can do a Round Robin system where everyone plays everyone once.
Tags: Limited TheNextLevel
Related to:
Magic: the Gathering
|
|
 |
[-] |
|
|
|
