Tesseract #2: Should I Build a Peasant Cube?

Features Opinion

Spootyone

10 December 2018

1998 views

Hello internet, and welcome back to Tesseract, the series that goes hyperdimensional on cube!

That’s right, that catch-phrase is the best I’ve got so it’s here to say.

Last time, in Episode 1, I began this series outright by explaining in detail what my cube consists of. For those of you who may have missed it and don’t wish to go back and read that episode, my cube can be found here: The Spooty Contemporary Peasant Cube. That all said, I do recommend last episode be read by newcomers, as having a good knowledge of what my cube and it’s stipulations are will pay dividends in the long run, as I won’t have to continuously say “Actually, I can’t play that card, sorry.”

In this episode, I want to go into finer detail about Peasant cube as a whole, and from a broader perspective than just my own. I want to explain what Peasant cube NORMALLY is, and what the positives and negatives of building and playing a Peasant cube are. My hope at the end of this article is to convince a small portion of you to go out and build your own cube, and hopefully a good amount of those people to consider making their cube Peasant-legal, as I find it to be a fantastic balance point to build around. But before I get into that, I want to talk about some of the things that were discussed with me since episode 1.

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your comments and responses to episode 1. I’m still getting used to the flow of writing again, so if there were issues in the writing itself, my apologies. Most people had only positive things to say about the piece, and certainly some had negative things to say about my cube. Nonetheless, I welcome criticism - as long as it’s well meaning. I want to talk a bit about some of the criticisms weighed against my cube.

Let’s begin by talking about cube identity and the importance it can have to the cube’s designer. I am a Johnny-Spike, in MTG personality profile speak. But getting more into myself on a minute scale, I have always craved to be unique and find identity in things I do and create. At times, this can be a personality flaw. At times, it is a wonderful boon for creativity. This certainly clashes with my other personality quirk: a desire to be right, and a desire to win.

When I played standard, all I wanted to do was build my own decks. But my own decks lost to decks that were widely known to be pillars of the format. This eventually led to my own demise as I burnt out on magic and left the game for a while. When I built my cube, however, I learned something incredible: I am making the format. If I want a particular deck to win, I can make it win. If I don’t want aggro to exist, BOOM! It’s gone! Is green being annoying? BOOM! It’s gone! This power comes with responsibility, though, as no one really wants to play the “Spooty has gone mad with power” Cube.

Thus, I strive to create a cube format that has my signature flair to it, while also being a fundamentally “good” format. And as I bring my creation into the light and showcase it for the entire MTG world to see, I can that what I consider balanced, fun, and correct DOES NOT meet those same criteria for every person who views my cube. In fact, I dare say not everyone on the internet agrees with one another

Sarcasm aside, I think some issues that were raised about my cube design will make sense and yet - still be ignored. One such issue is that my system for card legality is too convoluted. I agree with anyone who says this is the case. I believe I was one of the first to say as such. Nonetheless, it shall remain. Why? Because “I have always craved to be unique and find identity in things I do and create”. Having a cube that is different - even in a silly or convoluted way - is crucial to my enjoyment of the format. And I encourage anyone who feels the same to do the same for themselves. This cube is a part of me as a designer and creator.

All this said, I am not impervious to fault. So, let’s talk about some of the criticisms that I’ve found myself agreeing with. The landbase of my cube has been criticised for multiple things, but where I can find understanding most is in the use of cards such as Celestial Colonnade and Strip Mine. To me, it made more sense to include any lands of any printing and of any rarity once I broke the “Peasant” rule in regards to my land base. “Why add confusing rules?”, asked the man accused of having too many confusing rules. Well, perhaps I have gotten ahead of myself from a design perspective.

See, the reason why I give credence to this complaint is because I am wrong. I’m not wrong to include rare lands, though - I am wrong to include THESE SPECIFIC lands. The main purpose of including rare lands at ALL was to help balance the format. Aggro decks require specific mana base needs that midrange and control decks need less. Notably, that mana be fast and come in untapped, regardless of the downside. The problem, though, is that WotC doesn’t print good dual lands at uncommon or common. And so, I was forced to either make boros aggro play with Wind-Scarred Crag or allow them to play with Sacred Foundry.

I believe I have made the correct choice is giving boros Sacred Foundry. And I believe I have made the correct choice in giving Rakdos Sulfurous Springs. But I do not think I was right in giving azorius Celestial Colonnade. And before you say “well, duh, that card is insane”, I ALSO think I was wrong in giving simic Lumbering Falls. The reason is not that the card is strong - it is that they do not provide the original purpose of breaking the rarity rule. I needed fast mana that came in untapped. I did not need strong spells that are pretending to be lands. I don’t need Creeping Tar Pit for dimir to win games. I don’t need Strip Mine for Boros to win games. I have decided instead to remove rare or otherwise non-legal lands apart from those that are there for mana-functions.

Next up, let’s talk about signets. Signets are of some contention in Peasant and even in unpowered cube settings. They’re just so strong and flexible during draft. One would want them to act more like Boros Locket, when they actually act like Darksteel Ingot. It doesn’t matter that Boros Signet is “RW”, because I’m just going to use it in my Simic deck. It’s a 2 mana ramp spell in any colored deck.

Even worse, I’m only including Azorius Signet and Dimir Signet in my cube list. My original idea was to help control out in those color combinations by providing them a boost in tempo, but as mentioned before, this doesn’t work. Any deck apart from an aggro build really wants any signet. As such, I will be removing the remaining signets in my cube and instead replacing them with actual guild cards. I think this will be smart in the long run, and there are plenty of other ways to help control (if it even needs it…).

Next, cube size. This is one that I am also in agreement with, but have less of an easy time finding a remedy for. My cube is too big. Not because 455 (that number is weird by accident, btw) is too big a number for any cube, but because my playgroup is regularly about 4 people. This means that in every draft we see 180 cards in total. That is, unless we are doing some sort of strange draft format. A 360 cube would normally be an incredibly small cube to work with, but for my playgroup it would be very fitting as we would see half of the cube every time at that point.

The problem, of course, is that I just don’t want to cut that many cards from my cube right now. Nearly 100 cards? That just seems impossible. I like so many of them far too much to do that. And it means that some archetypes have a harder time flourishing than others. Finding the right cube size means finding a size that allows for archetypes to share percentages of the cube without feeling like they are diluting it. Dinosaurs are a good example of this in my cube. For a while, I was playing Nest Robber simply because it was a dinosaur. The card wasn’t horrible, but it was certainly too weak for my cube as a whole. If the cube were smaller, I wouldn’t need to fill more slots with bad cards just to force a higher chance of a synergy occurring. And I’m painfully aware of this.

My goal moving forward is to strive to bring my cube down to a 420 sized cube once again. This won’t happen overnight, but I will try more often to make cuts and not always replace those cards. It may be painful in the short term, but it will be better in the long term. If any of you aren’t cube owners, it’s hard to explain the difficulty of downsizing a cube. Imagine building an edh deck but there is no rule saying to can’t play more than 100 cards and tell me you wouldn’t play 104 or 112 just because you can’t make those last cuts and no one is forcing you to do so. It’s really difficult.

This covers most of the issues brought up that I wanted to address.

I will be posting the weekly changes to the cube in each article, should there actually be changes. This week there were quite a number of them as I made an attempt to lower the overall size of the cube. Here are the changes to the cube that have been made since the last time we spoke:

OUT

Azorius Signet

Dimir Signet

Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker

Thermo-Alchemist

Sunscourge Champion

Unsubstantiate

Krosan Druid

Tormod's Crypt

Strip Mine

Celestial Colonnade

Creeping Tar Pit

Raging Ravine

Shambling Vent

Hissing Quagmire

Lumbering Falls

Stirring Wildwood

Territorial Hammerskull

Sailor of Means

Weaponcraft Enthusiast

Raptor Hatchling

Rampant Growth

Peace Strider

Pierce Strider

Prophetic Prism

Blazing Torch

Renegade Map

Juggernaut

Zhalfirin Void

Kozilek's Channeler

IN

Adarkar Wastes

Dimir Aqueduct

Karplusan Forest

Brushland

Yavimaya Coast

Caves of Koilos

Llanowar Wastes

Agony Warp

Migratory Route

Not much explanation should be necessary here if you read the previous section. Many cards have been removed across the board to lower over cube size. Then, the manlands were replaced with lands that function primarily for mana fixing purposes. They all ended up as Painlands for the time being except Dimir Aqueduct, which felt more appropriate for how DImir plays. Lastly, the two signets were replaced with Agony Warp, a safe reentry, and Migratory Route, a card I’ve been wanting to try out. I also replace Murderous Redcap with Bituminous Blast per the request of people who probably know better than I, and Phyrexian Reclamation came out so I could test out Stitch Together.

Now, onto the main topic for this week!

The first question someone will probably ask themselves is probably not “Should I build a Peasant cube?” Or, at least, it probably shouldn’t be. The first question should obviously be “Should I build a cube at all?” This is the main question I want to address today. Obviously, I’m biased towards wanting others to join me in experimenting with peasant cube like myself, but the truth is that varying types of cube result in various gameplay, and people and playgroups simply do have preferences. What I’m hoping to address by the end of this article is not just whether or not you should build a cube, but also which kind of cube you’d prefer to build if you were to do so.

So should you build a cube at all? That depends. Cubing is great for many reasons: It provides a creative outlet to express oneself in, it allows for expenditure-free magic once completed (more on that later, though), and it’s a means to enjoy a limited format like draft without having to use booster packs that might be full of unplayable cards. Ultimately, cube provides a means for players to enjoy a sort of hybrid between limited magic and constructed, while getting to be in full control of what is played and what is not.

So the first question I’d ask you is do you want to have that control? Many actually don’t. And I think to those of us who DO want that control this can seem like nonsense, but there are many magic players who use the game to relax and turn their brains off. To those people, I’d say building a cube is likely not for you. It’s not that building a cube necessitates extreme amounts of time and work and thought in all circumstances, but rather that a bad cube is likely to occur when those are not present. These kinds of people may still enjoy DRAFTING a cube though, so if you feel like you fit into this category, I say find a friend near you to start up their own cube and be a helpful playtester for them. You are still important! I also encourage you to skip to the “Alternative Cubes” section below.

For those of you who DO want to have that control, however, cube is basically the only format where you really can. Even in formats where you are in full control of what your deck is composed of, and even in those formats where the competition is a bit more relaxed, you are still held to the whim of the rules of that format, and what other decks you will be facing. I think EDH or Commander is a good example of this problem. Many think it’s a format where anything goes, but that’s not always the case. I have build many Commander decks that try to do silly things but don’t get to because they’re still too slow or too weak compared to my opponent’s decks. Building a cube allows you to craft the speed of the format, the threats, the answers, the archetypes, even the rules as a whole!

I will at this point assume that you are reading on because you want to actually build a cube. That’s great! You probably should! But which kind of cube should you actually build? That’s a much bigger question and answering it means going into detail about the various types of cubes that commonly exist, while also emphasizing the fact that at the end of the day, a cube can follow any rules that you might want to follow. Trust me - I’m the convoluted cube guy, remember?

Powered Cube

We will begin with Powered cube. Powered cube, as its name suggests, allows all cards to be present in the cube - including the Power 9. These cubes rarely have banlists apart from the current Vintage banlist, which includes things like Ante cards, as well as cards like holiday promos and whatnot. As DrRuler from the Solely Singleton podcast states, “Powered cube is like a vacation from regular magic.” In other words, powered cube allows for some of the most ridiculous and well...powerful experiences you can have in cube. But that also means cards that can be trickier to play for newer players, and games that can be a bit more swingy. Additionally, powered cubes are the most expensive as one would need to acquire the Power 9. These factors are reasons why many do not go for powered cube. The Immediate contrast to these cubes would be Unpowered cubes.

Unpowered Cube

There’s really only one major difference between powered and unpowered cube. Obviously, unpowered cube does not play with the power 9, but also usually does not include cards of a similar power level. Cards like Sol Ring or even Skullclamp are often not included in unpowered lists. Unpowered lists are probably the most common cube lists you’d find out there. Designers of unpowered lists usually wish to play with some of magic’s most powerful cards of all time, but want a more balanced approach to doing so.

These cubes can still be quite pricey, though, as they play almost exclusively sought-after cards that are likely to be rares and mythics from all of magic’s history. For those of you who don’t consider money to be any issue, these two cube types above are the ones that will allow for the most open-ended design space as very few cards are considered non-legal. For those of you who are tighter on cash, however, I suggest moving on to one of the next cube types below.

Pauper Cube

Pauper cube is likely to be the cheapest cube option out there for someone who wants to build a traditional cube, and not a cubelet. Pauper cube follows the same general legality as the constructed format of Pauper, being that legal cards include any card which has been printed at common on Magic Online. Of course, there are many that skip that small stipulation and just go with “any card that has ever been printed at common anywhere”. Pauper provides a cheaper option for obvious reasons. Common cards inherently have more supply available, and so they tend to be cheaper to purchase on the secondary market. Of course, money isn’t everything. And pauper is not without its shortcomings.

Pauper has two main problems in my opinion. The first of which is that there are many Pauper-legal cards in Magic’s history that are really not at the same power level of even GOOD commons nowadays. Cards like Maze of Ith and Strip Mine are clearly too good in this format for some. Because of this, people like Adam Styborski (the creator of the aptly-named “pauper cube”) have chosen to self-ban them in favor of a more balanced environment. This is an easy fix though. It’s easy to just not play with a card that is legal. But it is much harder to play with a card that is NOT legal.

I bring this up because the other glaring issue with Pauper is that there are many kinds of cards that are needed in a healthy cube environment, and the truth is that some of these kinds of cards just aren’t commonly printed...well, at common. Things like boardwipes and aggressive 2/1s for 1 are either rarely made to be common or simply never made at common at all. Because of this, it can be hard to find the right balance when designing something that can exhibit strength from all of the major archetypes in the game. But additionally, common cards tend to be a bit more linear and simple. This means that it can be hard to provides cards that actually fit into a specific theme or archetype, or that act as payoffs for such things. If you want a complex and intricate cube, pauper may not be for you.

Peasant Cube

And now we reach Peasant cube - my preferred choice. Peasant cube follows the card legality of the constructed format “Peasant”, which includes any card that has ever been printed at common OR uncommon. I kind of think of Peasant as “Pauper-Plus”. Effectively, being able to play with uncommon cards unlocks a lot of things that are missing from Pauper. These include but are not limited to: Aggressive 1-drops, board wipes, and archetypal payoff cards. While Peasant still doesn’t get Wrath of God, we at least get Pyroclasm, Drown in Sorrow and more. We don’t get Goblin Guide, but we have access to Monastery Swiftspear and Dauntless Bodyguard.

Peasant, in my opinion, provides the best balance between powerful, frugal, and adaptable. There are cheap peasant lists and expensive ones. There are low powered lists and high powered ones. Some peasant lists prefer a more simple design of combat and spells like pauper provides, while other like to build “find your lane” archetype cubes that go all in on Reanimator or UW Flicker or GW Tokens. Having access to important cards like Blood Artist and Intangible Virtue mean we can provide clear payoffs to decks that want to make tokens. While having cards like Bloodbraid Elf and Terminate provide the added oomph for exciting and dynamic gameplay.

Peasant certainly still has its downsides, and most of them are similar to the downsides of pauper. Not having access to rares means you might just be missing some of the better payoff or keystone rares that hold an archetype together. It might mean having to settle for Slice and Dice over Fumigate. And for most, one of the biggest issues comes in the form of the available base of dual lands that can be legally played, as WotC has made it clear they won’t be printing good duals at anything other than rare. As such, many pauper and peasant lists are forced to run mediocre duals such as Blossoming Sands or Woodland Stream, which can have a negative effect on archetype and color pair balance. For what it’s worth, this is why I choose to play with rare lands in my Peasant list.

To summarize, I believe that of these four major cube design groups, Peasant and Unpowered are the top 2, and I think the choice between them comes down to how much you are willing and able to spend on a cube. If money is no issue, I can certainly see the benefit of going for Unpowered. If you want a bit of a slower metagame, peasant may be your cup of tea. But these choices aren’t the only ones available. So for the final bit of this piece I want to address alternative cube designs.

Alternative Cubes

The main alternative cube you will find on the internet is the “Block Cube” or perhaps a “Set Cube.” A Block cube is for those of you who wish to be a bit less creative in your cube building. Yes, that means you, Lazy and/or non-creative person from above. These cubes typically take a block of sets in Magic’s history -- let’s say Innistrad block -- and created a cube that aims to mimic the limited environment of that block for replayability without having to continually buy new booster packs. This can be done by collecting one of every single card in the block (or set) and drafting as such, OR by finding a distribution of those cards based on rarity - such as getting 3 of every common, 2 of every uncommon, and 1 of every rare or mythic. You can then mash all these cards together and voila! A Block cube! (or Set Cube!)

Further down the rabbit hole you’ll find any number of unique cube designs, from the Jund Cube to a Creatureless cube! There is also an entire format of Commander Cube, but admittedly I know less about that than I probably should, so I’ll leave that for either another episode, or someone else. Basically, the sky's the limit. If you can dream it up, you can try to make it a reality. Some ideas are certainly better or easier to make than others, but no matter what, the choice of what you do is in your hands. Some people even make Custom cubes entirely made up of cards they’ve personally designed!

Congrats on taking the first step towards building your first cube! You’re about to embark on a fantastic journey through card and set design. You may unlock a hidden talent you didn’t know existed. You may find cards you never knew had been printed. And you might just find yourself with a new favorite format, and a new favorite hobby. When I first decided to take this step, I began with The Professor’s Beginner Cube Series. This is a great series of videos that covers some of what I’ve discussed here, while also going into a bit more detail into other areas. I fully recommend it for beginners. Additionally, here is a great write-up for those who are just starting out with their first cube.

And hey, while you’re checking out that write-up, why don’t you check out the entire mtgcube subreddit? The cube subreddit is a fantastic and welcoming community for those just starting their first cube. Myself and others are very willing to provide feedback to lists and answer questions that may arise, and there is a plethora of other materials that you can learn from be it videos or links to podcasts.

You can also check out the mtgcube discord channel, where you can chat in real time with myself and other cube enthusiasts and newbies. The discord is great for listening to the opinions of others through single card discussions or questions about cube design philosophy, and can be a great resource to get links to other peoples’ cubes for research and design ideas.

And with that, I will leave you all for this week. Yet another lengthy article! I spoil you all! If you enjoyed what you’ve read, make sure to let me know either in the comments below, or you can find me on Twitter at @Spootyone. Next episode I will be moving away from these lengthy dissertations and begin my first of many single card discussions. I will be discussing a personal pet card of mine, and one that has been in my cube basically since it was created. That card is….Autumnal Gloom  ^Flip!

The Spooty Contemporary Peasant Cube