Khans Block Squared = Cube?
Limited forum
Posted on April 5, 2016, 2:38 p.m. by JANKYARD_DOG
Hiya all, the other day I was pulling out all the Khans/Fates cards out of my standard box, when the thought dawned on me "Why not make a Cube?". This was abruptly followed up with "Uh...what's a cube?" Because I have no clue about the format. I have only heard whispers surrounding it around the LGS's and haven't really looked into it online but from what I can fathom its like a draft right? And seeing as I loved drafting Khans, I figure it'd be a good cube theme.
So my question(s) is; How exactly does one make a cube? Do you fashion your own "booster packs" (in the same fashion you buy them, 1 rare, etc?) and is there a set amount of cards? Is there anything special (tips, tricks, rules) that goes into making a cube?
I'm sure someone will just link me to some site or w/e, but your input I'd greatly appreciated as I do like to keep things diverse. TIA, look forward to hearing back.
Karns_Pyromancer says... #3
I'm really not sure what it is about Khans that attracts people. Anyway, Cubetutor.com is great as well. There's a few sites & Reddit pages dedicated to Cube too.
April 5, 2016 3:43 p.m.
brokendwarf says... #4
Honestly, you can make your cube however you want. If you want to play 360 Siege Rhinos than that's your call. If you only want to use commons from the set(s) you could do that too.
Generally, a cube contains a minimum of 360 cards that can be used to draft with up to 8 people using the typical 3 packs of 15. However you don't always have to do it that way. I've seen a 180 card cube that was designed for 4 people drafting 5 packs of 9. But 360 (which is considered a small cube) is probably the easiest.
You make the booster packs. You could set it up like normal packs with the 1 rare and everything, but you'd have to set that up for every pack every draft.
Making the cube takes time. You obviously need to try to balance the colors so no one color feels too overpowered or underwhelming. Since you're doing Khans be sure to have a good amount of color fixing.
CubeTutor is how I keep track of my cubes. Good place to put it together as you can see everything you add/remove.
April 5, 2016 3:44 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #5
There's a regular around here that has a Ravnica cube, they'd be able to give you some advice on a cube based off a specific environment. TheDevicer?
My guess would be singletons of every card in the set/block, mash them all together and shuffle them up, then draft away.
April 5, 2016 6:24 p.m.
JANKYARD_DOG says... #6
Another thing I am unsure of is whether or not to include Vanilla Creatures. If I do, it kinda adds to the draft experience. If I don't, it adds to the impact of plays. That's what I think anyway.
April 5, 2016 6:59 p.m.
I've made myself a cool Ravnica cube and I'm in the process of making a Khans cube atm.
I essentially begin by drafting up plans. I ask myself what are the things the different color combinations like to do, how large the cube ought to be, which bombs people would like to see, etc.
For example, I wanted to include the legendary Khan from each clan into the cube. However, since Narset is so uninteractive and her ability kinda sucks in an environment dominated by creatures, I replaced her with Shu Yun. This way, I get to maintain flavor and keep some balance.
When you're faced with a highly limited card pool to draw from, certain color combinations can be quite difficult to balance. For instance, as I was trying to balance my Ravnica cube, I noticed no one ever drafted into Dimir or Izzet outside of gaining access to some obviously powerful cards in scenarios where those colors where open. The simple fact was that my cube had decent removal and the Cypher ability of the dimir guild only set you up to 2-for-1 yourself in most cases. Similarly, the sort of manipulate power/toughness of your creatures that Izzet had going on for them wasn't consistent enough and relied on a handful of card to pull off well.
As a result, I resolved to make Izzet into a counter-burn termpo-centric guild. It got cards like Shock and Searing Spear from outside of Ravnica as they still fit the overall feel of the guild on top of some older burn cards from Rav, City of Guilds.
Sometimes you've got to make sacrifices to maintain balance around colors. Think about your card choices around the type of decisions players would have to make while drafting. If, for example, your lands are too accessible, people might just start drafting 4-color good stuff strategies. I'm sure no one is interested in playing cubes where the whole thing feels solved as you're only ever picking the best card out of every pack.
Colors need to represent trade-offs to some extent. For example, lets say you really like the cycle of banners (Jeskai Banner). You want to use them in your cube because they're thematic and offer decent color fixing with late-game relevance. Great! Still, what if that's the only mana acceleration you have available in your cube? No Map the Wastes or Rattleclaw Mystics. Now you've put yourself into a position where each color combination is capable of accelerating their mana equally well. That's not interesting at all.
Once you've figured out what your color combinations should be good at and what trade-offs you want players to make, it's all about working with the allocated number of cards you have to create a pool of cards for each strategy.
Oh, and something to keep in mind is that you're designing a multi-colored environment. Be careful of placing too many immediately powerful cards in the cube that are monocolored as various combinations can pick them up. Ideally, you'd want to have players commit to colors in order to gain access to powerful effects. Mantis Rider is a bonkers card, but people might just look to pick up Murderous Cut in its place if they can draft them into more strategies. I can toss that into any mardu build I create and it's still going to do work for me.
shuflw says... #2
a cube is loosely defined as a user-defined/managed set of cards maintained for the purpose of repeatedly playing limited (sealed, different types of drafts, etc). they can be further categorized a million different ways; powered, unpowered, multicolor, modern-only, common/uncommon, Khans block, etc.
in regards to a Khans block cube, it would be up to you as the owner to decide how to curate the cube. if you wanted to make it as close to a normal khans draft as possible, i'd say you could include 3 of each common, 2 of each uncommon and 1 of each rare and mythic. shuffle all of the like rarity cards together and construct packs in the normal way of 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 10-11 commons per pack, separating ktk and frf cards into their own packs. this would give you a close feel to the normal khans block draft, but would require more work to assemble packs before drafts and sort after. you'd also want to sleeve all of your cards if you don't want them damaged, and also sleeve enough basic lands for as many people as you'd expect to draft.
you could also have a hybrid khans block/traditional cube, and just pick 360 of your favorite khans cards and/or other cards that "feel" like they would fit in khans block, and just shuffle them all up randomly and make packs of 15. this makes setup easier and still might give the khans feel. 360 is the minimum number of cards to draft with 8 players, 3 packs each, 15 cards per pack. if you plan to have less drafters you could always go less, or if you want more randomness you could add more cards.
once you have the card pool and "feel" you want, you need to draft your cube a million times (not literally, but the more the better) and make sure you as the cube manager are curating things to give a good draft experience. if all the green cards in your cube are less powerful than other colors, then the person who drafts green is probly gonna have a bad time. if you don't have enough cards to support either aggro or control, the person who starts the draft picking a bunch of aggro cards and then gets stranded is gonna have a bad time. the more you can draft your cube, the better idea you can get of which colors/archetypes need help.
lastly, listen to your friends/drafters on what they think is fun. if no one else you play with likes khans at all, you might not have many people to draft with. if everyone hates a certain card, that card might not be worth running.
there are a million cube articles and forums online that you can peruse. cubetutor.com is also a great resource for keeping your list updated, and looking through other cube lists to get ideas.
cube is the best way to play magic, and i wish you luck.
April 5, 2016 3:41 p.m.