Say hello!

[Eric Chan]

I know there's a couple folks lurking, who maybe don't want to get into drawn-out debates about cube theory and design. But I figure it wouldn't hurt to get to know each other. We're all cube enthusiasts, after all!

I'm Eric, and I cube about once or twice a month in the Toronto area. I'd love to cube more than that, but I don't play at stores anymore, and suburban sprawl makes it hard for my group to get together more often. So I spend way more time thinking about cube, and reading and talking about it online.

I started building my cube in early 2011, after reading Thea Steele's articles on SCG and thinking it would be a great idea to provide my own playgroup with a cube. I decided to restrict my cube to Modern-era cards, at first for cost reasons, but also because I like the design principles of the modern era of Magic better. Nostalgia's great and everything, but I firmly believe that gameplay trumps all.

The cube debuted sometime in the summer of 2011, and while everyone had a riot, I knew right away that my cube design and balance was way off the mark. I've been iterating on the design and talking shop with anyone who'll lend an ear since.

As a drafter and a player, I lean on the conservative side. At the beginning, I loved building a good mono-red aggro deck, or a white/X weenie deck. My control decks are okay, but I could learn to be greedier, as I've definitely lost drafts for not having enough raw power in my consistent two-colour control decks. I would very much like to draft a green ramp deck one day, but as my playgroup is crazy about green, and 3-4 players seem to fight over it every draft, that may not happen anytime soon.

This kind of bleeds over into my cube design. The first year of my cube designs mostly featured simple, straightforward archetypes over complex synergies. Innistrad limited made me realize how effective layering can be, and how subtle synergies can really enhance and liven a draft environment. So I'm slowly coming around to the idea of putting in cards with more depth, and focusing on fun interactions rather than raw power.

Anyways. Let's hear from you guys. Doesn't have to be as long-winded as me. Say hi!

[Calvin Chan]

Hey guys, I'm Calvin. I'm not related to Eric, but we do play in the same area and I got pulled into cube since Eric introduced it to our playgroup.  I haven't been able to cube often since I'm out of time, but Eric keeps me in by discussing cube choices and rankings. 

As a player, I love synergies and interesting card interaction.  I think I'm generally a flexible drafter, testing all types of different archetypes in Eric's cube. 
Currently, I mainly play limited and commander (for sweet card interactions). I'm also working on a cube.  It's still going through some tinkering, but basically there's a semi-gold theme building on interactions between keywords and colours.  Mainly since I want to take a step away from "goodstuff" and introduce more complicated thinking into the draft process, especially looking for hidden synergies.

So I'm nowhere near a cube expert, but I hope I'll be able to contribute to your discussions.

[Jason Waddell]

Hi, I'm Jason Waddell, an American living and working in Belgium. I recently started writing Cube articles for ChannelFireball.com. 

I am relatively new to Magic, and come from a background of working with Major League Gaming, a company that creates competitive rulesets and gametypes to be used for tournament play. I think there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this kind of approach, and perhaps the Spike psychographic in general. Let's take a pretty classic example. When Halo 2 was released, Bungie released it with some pretty atrocious gametypes. These matches basically revolved around hoping your team spawned closest to some power weapon of absurd vehicle, and then holding that position for the remaining 10 minutes or so. Games were often virtually determined in the first 30 seconds, were extremely frustrating at a competitive level, and left people extremely dissatisfied. 

A lot of the confusion, in my opinion, assumes that people are dissatisfied with losing. The dissatisfaction comes from playing in an environment that is not presenting you with a high density of interesting decisions. The games were boring and frustrating. We all have opportunity costs. If one game isn't cutting the mustard, hell, there are thousands of other out there. Naturally, the push for better rules and gametypes came from the top. The players at the very top of the leaderboard wanted an experience that was worth their time. It probably comes as little surprise that these players were also the ones winning oversized checks in Halo 1, 3, 4, etc... Players who not only recognized the components of fun, but understood the decision dynamics so well that they excelled at them themselves. 

Much of MLG's growth in that period came from everyday players who were immensely dissatisfied with that Bungie's gametypes had to offer. Regular living-room controller jockeys who had no intention of ever attending a tournament, but wanted settings that could hold their interest. 

I believe in the Magic community, that there is a deep craving for the sort of good design that brings us to Magic in the first place. So far, Cube design has catered to the casual, the players who want to see big things happen and tell stories to their buddies. There's nothing wrong with this, but it really does nothing for my psychographic. I'd do something else with my time. In the world of games, there are casual variants (mods) that do goofy and over-the-top things, and variants like DOTA and Counter-Strike that are so undeniably good that they spawn an industry of their own.

My goal is to study the things that make Wizards' product great, and push week after week to make my design better. I want to make a set that is so undeniably good that tournament players can't help but love it. It's a labor-intensive process, and I think there's a tendency to underestimate what it requires ("if you don't like something, just cut it"). Maybe I could get there on my own, but I know I'll reach a higher potential from the input of minds like yours. Whatever your cubing experience, I believe we can come together to help each other make something truly great. 

[worstshacona]

I'm Kevin.  I built my first cube right after Tempest came out.  I guess the word cube didn't exist at the time, but that's irrelevant.  I love cube because for me it is Magic perfected.  Cube eliminates all the compromises of official formats and allows you to play the game exactly how you want to play it.  Magic is a great game that is hamstrung by awful organization.  The cube is how we bring organization to the game.

I don't consider myself a "Magic Player".  I consider myself a general game player.  Magic just happens to be a really good game that I have a long history with, so I enjoy talking about it.

I design my cube on an emotional level.  I have no desire to make it "good" on any objective level.  I want it to fill myself and my playgroup with joy.  Having the games play "well" is an important part of that, but its not the only thing.  I think of cube as a personal experience.  I don't begrudge people for trying to make give them universal appeal.  But, just like I have absolutely no interest in playing Standard, EDH or Legacy, I have no interest in playing in mass appeal cube.  However, I am extremely interested in hearing your thoughts on cubing so I can make mine better.  The world is small and even if are intentions are very different, that doesn't mean our causes don't have common bonds.

This is why the conversation about contracting the definition of cube is so frustrating to me.  The disparate ideas of cube designers never have universal applicability, but they are always interesting and often useful, even if just from an academic standpoint.  Trying to draw some arbitrary line where discourse must end over a trivially unimportant aspect of the activity is, to be blunt, stupid.

[Dom Harvey]

The state of my local playgroup(s) means I don't get to play competitively or Cube as much as I would like, so most of the time I spend on Magic is used for theorycrafting. Cube design - and game design in general - is one of my favourite topics, so it's great to have a proper place to discuss it; I've tried fighting the good fight on MTGS in challenging some of the conventional assumptions about Cube, but the place is a mess and I (like many others I suspect) only use it because it's all there is. When I was building my Cube a few years ago there weren't many resources online and my building process was kinda haphazard (working with a shoestring budget and gradually trading for anything that seemed like it might be good), which made me more open-minded about cards that aren't usually thought good enough. I enjoy experimenting with new and/or interesting ideas at all levels of Cube design: cards (Birthing Pod, Dream Halls), archetypes (storm), and themes (mono-colour Cubes, split-card Cubes - when I saw a Evolving Wilds/Bridge from Below card for the first timeI fell in love), and there's a ton of stuff I like in Jason's articles. I'm looking forward to talking with all of you! 

[Hannes Versmissen]

Hy, I'm Hannes, a avid magic player since fourteen. In those five years i played at first only Casual, then Commander and Since last year I also play Standard.

Last month, after randomly Winston-drafting a pile of deconstructed decks on my desk with a friend, I decided to build a Cube. I'm new to cubing, but eager to learn. Apart from learning, I'll try to contribute to the group from time to time.

[Rob Dennis]

My name is Rob, I'm a software developer in Washington, DC. I started playing Magic during Urza's Block/Masques standard back in the late 90s, stopping after odyssey block. Kept up with the game off and on through reading dailymtg.com and refound the game during Innistrad after some coworkers went in on a Homelands and Fallen Empires box draft (oh boy).

Been pretty engaged since, but a lot more watching/reading/thinking than playing due to work and home commitments (wife and I just had our first kid). Found cube through LSV's channel fireball videos and really got psyched up with the wave of content that came in the wake of the first MTGO cube week.

Cube design really appeals to the part of me that likes to break things down to their framework (this card is part of a package that is trying to give this color something to do) versus just listing things I like (Hellrider get in there!), and presents an interesting enough problem to give me something to think about when I have the time. Now, I'm psyched to be able to talk about it with folks :)

I have a ~450 cube that gets 2-man grid drafted twice a month at best, and has had two 8-man drafts (typically on holidays) in the last 4-6 months.

Like a lot of software folks, you need to be doing things outside of work to improve the portfolio and keep fresh, and my current project is targeting a simple way to graphically compare two different cube lists:

https://github.com/rdennis463/cuesbey/wiki/Mockups

just hit a big milestone (e.g. I made the mockup real as shown in the link) and hoping to have a website up in the early summer. I hope to get feedback from this community to fill out a number of the important user stories.

[Jason Waddell]

Hey Rob, that program you're working on looks really useful. Especially for writing articles about MODO cube updates. Really looking forward to seeing how the project progresses.

[Peter Angell]

Hello.  I'm Peter.  Eric saw my posts on MTGS under my username of Toadisbest, and asked me to join this community.

I love game design and definitely view my cubes as an outlet to scratch that itch.  I made my first cube just last year, and followed it up with a drastically different cube that I made this year; it turned out way better than I could have ever hoped.  I'm always searching for ways to make the cube more fun for everyone involved, while still rewarding skillful drafting and play.

I look forward to talking cube shop with everyone!

On Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:14:24 PM UTC-4, Eric Chan wrote:

[Eric Chan]

Welcome, Peter! Very happy to see you made the hop over here.

Yet another software engineer in the ranks of this forum. We're slowly but surely taking over. Muahaha!

[tomc...@gmail.com]

Hi, I'm Tom, an avid boardgamer and sporadic Magic player from the SF Bay Area who stumbled into cube about three years ago. It has since taken over my gaming life.

My first cube was built from a box of draft castoffs I bought off craigslist, and featured cards like Meadowboon and Changeling Titan. I wanted to teach my sister-in-law how to draft, and sorted what I had by color and casting cost, and off we went. It was great, but I soon found the MTGS forums, and started posting, asking for help fixing things. My intent was to spend $20 more total to make it a more interesting draft environment--my early rule was that I wasn't ever going to sleeve my cube, to make sure I wasn't tempted to spend money on it. Two things happened--first, I realized that some of the people who commented had trouble wrapping their heads around the budgetary restrictions I had placed on myself, and would give me the same recommendations over and over. I was forced to keep my eye out for cards most wouldn't consider. Second, an amazing variety of people from around the world just up and mailed me cards, which pretty much stunned me. My Fact or Fiction is pretty battered, but it was sent to me from New Zealand, and it's never coming out of my cube. When I play one of the many cards that were donated, I feel all warm and fuzzy. (When someone sent me a Desertion, I finally broke down and sleeved.)

Since then, I have tried to keep my cube from being simply a mishmash of the best cards I'm willing to pay for. I try to center my power level around certain cards that I enjoy but that don't make most cubes: Ludevic's Test Subject, Sen Triplets, Yeva, Nature's Herald, Chaos Warp, Harm's Way. Once you eliminate the need to play only the very best cards, a world of slightly suboptimal budget choices open up to a cube designer. I recently made a cube for my sister in law consisting largely of the cube cards that I had cut from my main cube--stuff like Scute Mob and Ray of Command and Manabarbs. I think I've had more fun with that cube than my own recently, frankly...

One of the precepts I try to hold to as a cube designer is: Don't presume I know more than my players. The people I cube with are all far better Magic players than I am. I have learned a tremendous amount from cubing with them, and I don't want to presume that as the cube owner I know how a card or archetype should be drafted or played. I want to make a flexible draft environment, where people can experiment and have a variety of decks work. My son recently was given a little paleontology kit, which was a clay block with little plastic dinosaur bones embedded inside. You scape the clay away, and the dinosaur is there waiting for you. There are draft archetypes I see in cube that remind me of this: can you dig the Artifact Deck out of the bundle of cards you see? While I think it's fine to have some decks that only come together once in a while, I try to avoid archetypes that rely on cards that are only good in one deck.

Like Jason, I try to create an environment full of interesting decisions, both in draft and play. I've been removing protection from color cards and am minimizing shroud creatures. I've been adding in combat tricks, flash, and other cards that will hopefully make gameplay challenging.

I now have five cubes: my main cube, my sister in law's castoff cube, an MTGO cube that I built for $40 as a challenge back before the official one began, a split-card cube, and a fully-powered proxy Space Cube, that reskins the entire game into a sci-fi world. I play around once a week, almost exclusively with only two people (With kids, I don't have time to head out to a store or someone else's place for a full draft very often, but I can do a 2P draft and games in about 40 minutes at this point.)

Oh, and Jason, your post reminded me: back when I started grad school in the early '90s at the University Chicago, right after Marathon was released, Bungie had just rented their first office space upstairs from the climbing gym where I climbed. Jason and Alex would come down and take breaks from coding to climb all the time. My brush with computer gaming history...

[Jason Waddell]

Cool that you got to meet some of the early Bungie guys Tom. Oh, and don't let anybody say anything bad about Ludevic's Test Subject :P. That card is the real deal, and produces really fun games. It's one of the more unique and exciting cards in my cube. 

It sounds like your MTGS experience was a bit of a blessing. One of the most joyful parts of cubing is scouring through Gatherer and finding unconventional cards that fit your environment. Design is so fun when you back away from the tenets of pure power maximization. 

[Eric Chan]

Welcome, Tom! I recognize you from the salvation forums, and it's great to have a veteran like you on board.

For all the new members who've joined in the past couple of days, please don't be shy - drop in and say hi! Even if you just plan on lurking, and soaking up the banter, it'd be great to know what kind of cube you have, and how you got into the hobby.

[James Stevenson]

Hi guys! My name's James, and I've been addicted to cube for five or six years now. My cube started out as an amazing monstrosity into which I threw every card I had which seemed good, but no rares. We had the most awesome random games with all the cards I had lying around but never got played. It was great. Now my cube has rares and resembles a lot of other unpowered cubes, and I'm kind of sad that the randomness is gone. Right now I'm striving to remove pointless power in favor of synergstic cards. I want every pick in draft to be a decision. Jitte's been gone for a while, and the swords are on their way out. I'll have to cut stoneforge mystic, but I'm hoping to find a way to make it good again.

I've designed a couple custom cards for the cube, and I fully intend to do more. I'm thinking about enemy-color manlands at the moment, though I'm sure wizards will do that eventually.

I like my cube a lot, but I think there's an elite echelon on cube designers to which I do not qualify. I'm kind of a crappy magic player; I feel like if I understood draft better I could design a better cube. For the moment I just win a lot of drafts because LSV taught me how :D 

I live mostly in London and a little in Zurich, and I don't get to cube all that often for some reason. :C Any of you guys live in London? Anyway, I'm really happy this group is a thing. I've been sad since the cubedrafting.com forums died.

[Jason Waddell]

I host weekly cube drafts in Antwerp. It's not London, but if you're ever in the neighborhood...

[James Stevenson]

I hitch hiked to Ghent last summer and totally fell in love with Belgium. I may very well turn up :) Also your cube looks amazing.

[Michael Hansen]

Hi, 

I'm Michael, I'm a magic player from the Greater Toronto Area. I first started playing around, maybe slightly before Odyssey, and took up the game again in New Phyrexia. I've found myself to be a picky drafter, I tend to lean towards more fringe strategies, graveyard antics, and as many colours as I can manage. I learnt of cube through the MTGS forums a year ago, but have been having trouble developing a list based on the information contained therein. I recently finished my degree, so I'm trying to put the time into design now while I have it. I'm probably going to mostly lurk a lot, especially as I am not fond of how Google Groups works, but I wanted to say hello. My knowledge of cube design is pretty low, but I will try to contribute in a meaningful way to the discussion.

[Jason Waddell]

Hi Michael! Just wanted to say, we have two Toronto natives here that cube on a regular basis (Calvin and Eric), if you're looking for a playgroup. 

[Michael Hansen]

I certainly would be looking for a playgroup. Most of the people I know are more interested in playing Standard.

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

Hey everyone, I'm CML. I used to write for TCGPlayer (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article_search_result.asp?author=Christopher%20Morris-Lent) and SCG; I may even still write for SCG, though since I'm lazy, I'm not sure. I am proud to live in Seattle, because it lets me drink while playing live MTG, has a nice community, and gives me an excuse to not win PTQs.

I built my Cube about a year ago due to the rising price of hosting a weekly Classic draft. Like you, I played when I was a kid, then took a break for 10 years, coming back in SOM because its release coincided with the death of online poker and I was depressed and needed something to do that involved playing cards on the Internet -- but I do remember the days when RGD cost like $12 per head!

I love drafting old formats, and I agree with Jason that Cube should explore the best design principles in Magic. Old sets inform Cube design by embodying these principles and acquainting you with obscure cards. I play every constructed format and like to brew, especially in Modern -- I find Magic boring when it lacks the original and creative element -- so my favorite format for designing is Cube. Cube also solves all the intrinsic problems of casual play (that EDH exemplifies), though I've also written about Pauper EDH. Pauper EDH was, like most of my ideas, an idea a friend had first, and as a brewer and Cube designer I benefit greatly from the ideas of others (all good brewers net-deck more than net-deckers); for Cube I'm grateful for the honest feedback and good taste of my play-group.

Competitive play also informs Cube design. My proudest achievements are my Cube, and a third-place finish in an online PTQ with my own Wb Martyr list. The two are inextricable from one another. Tournaments teach me a lot about constrained optimization, card evaluation, and deck design; Cube encourages me to look more deeply at what is possible in Constructed. Having played all the formats, Modern and Legacy can be very skill-testing, but Cube is the most difficult format of all. Much of the point of Cube is having good players fuck up. Otherwise, this game would be boring.

I like lots of fixing, multi-color aggro, a flattened power curve, a lack of tribal cards (except for Humans!), decks that do everything poorly, synergy over power, Eventide cards, and the four Squadron Hawks I crammed into a single sleeve. I'm grateful to Jason for starting this group and carrying the torch with his CFB articles. Cube is rich and interesting and teaches us a lot about ourselves inside and outside MTG. I hope I can help other people discover that kind of joy.

[Eric Chan]

holy crap is that punctuation from chris

and proper capitalization

[Jesse Hartman]

Hello everyone, I'm Jesse and actually just completed my first cube, with its virgin draft occurring a few weeks ago with my Southern Oregon playgroup. It went better than I had anticipated, but it opened my eyes to a plethora of design flaws contained therein.

Without the funds necessary to build a more standardized cube featuring the "greatest hits," I decided to build using only the expansions that I had been exposed to as a teenager and was just starting the explore the game. I was hoping for a blissful marriage of nostalgia and gameplay, but even though it was a big hit with the group, and everyone had a great time, the gameplay wasn't as robust as I had hoped.

To give you an idea of what I'm working with, the sets that have been included in the cube are (with plans to add Tempest block at a later date):

The Dark
Fallen Empires
Homelands
Ice Age
Alliances
Mirage
Visions
Weatherlight

I'm reading what I can on cube design, and it's slowly guiding me along. The format is a blast, and I really enjoy tweaking the card pool for balance, power level, curve, and every other factor that you can think of. It has certainly given me a greater appreciation for what challenges the design team at WotC must tackle with every set.

I'll probably lurk until I learn more about design theory and cube theory in particular, but when I'm more comfortable with the concepts I'll likely jump right into discussions =)

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

oops sry

[Chris Taylor (The Bakaist)]

Hey Everyone, My name is Chris and I'm also from the Toronto area

I've been involved in three distinct cubes over the years: the first was a 276 card mishmash of random fun cards that me and my buddies drafted after FNMs during my highschool years, around when ravnica came out (I'm bad with years). No spreadsheet, no color balance, no archetypes, just random cards jammed in a box and some basics. I think my buddy drafted some 12 times in a row the same 4 color control  deck which won with Goblin Trenches and Mirari's Wake :P
The second came after I came back to magic after a short sabbatical post coldsnap. Rise of the Eldrazi had just came out, and me and my buddies had come across some more free time during university, and so decided to build a cube together. Three owners, 1100 cards, proxies, power and lots of 5 and 6 drops later and we had some fun. It's amazing what a cube that size makes you look for. I remember a time scouring magiccards.info looking for sweet golgari cards to add to the 15 cards per guild multicolor section!

Eventually I grew tired of the ubiquitous midrange decks, disappointing multicolor cards and having to jam goblin guide and bogardan hellkite in the same deck because of variance, and struck out to build a cube of my very own: the one I have today.

It's 540 cards, includes all raraties/sets (IE non pauper, unhinged cards are okay), and includes some (but not all) custom cards.

I'd been designing custom cards for as long as I'd been playing magic, so this wasn't a great leap. I've got a pretty good handle on what makes a card too strong (at least for a cube environment) so the cards all fall within magic's overall power levels (no 5 damage lightning bolts etc)

I'll see if I can get a proper list up for discussion, but at the moment my cube is going through a bit of a descartes (Take out all the apples and return what works), resulting in an 85 card change (and I still haven't finished with white or blue). Once that's done, I'll get a thread started up and make sure what all the custom cards do is in the spreadsheet.

As for the reason behind it, I essentially came to the same conclusion Jason did, but implemented a different solution: some cards are great for a cube, but only small numbers of them exist (eg Gravecrawler)

I simply opted to create a few cards like ones that already existed instead of just doubling up on currently existing ones. (Little did I know just how many bloodghasts I'd need!)

On Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:14:24 PM UTC-4, Eric Chan wrote: