My Extended 10/01/10 CUBE (October 1, 2010)

This project was born after accidently reading up on a local initiative this week when subscribing for my local M11 pre-release draft tournament. Apparently, The Cube is a draft format with the best cards around as 1 offs. As I am somewhat of a collector in nature and want to have at least 1 copy of each card in a set this is perfect for me (These are of course neatly stored in separate 3x3pocket card holders !). Besides that a CUBE is re-usable whenever you want, no need to buy boosters! A "boxed" off-the-shelf and ready-to-play game. And the best of it.. you can design it yourself!

So I started googling for further info to get the design rolling. Below are the first design choices for my CUBE.

Size

Objective is to get an 8 player Cube going, which requires at minimum 360 cards. So initial objective is to get it to 400 cards – 50 each color, 50 artifacts, 50 multicolor, 50 lands (the 8 “colors”).

Sets

I chose to start with the Extended sets as of October 1, 2010 as I started playing Magic again when M10 came around. Besides that I own a (net decked) Jund and love all the Alara cycle Multicolor cards (both art and what they bring to the table). Then I also wanted some additional variety and thus expanded to the extended format. I am a long way there for each set starting at M10, with M10, ZEN, WWK and M11 mostly complete and only ROE lagging behind. Everything before will come out of need from the CUBE (if I don’t have them from my Esper Artifact and Jund deck). This should allow me to get most cards through trade and doesn’t include unattainable or expensive cards like the power 9. However, I won’t shun from creating proxies to get the CUBE ready for play testing.
Thus sets included are:

• Lorwyn
• Morningtide
• Shadowmoor
• Eventide
• Shards of Alara
• Conflux
• Alara Reborn
• Magic 2010
• Zendikar
• Worldwake
• Rise of the Eldrazi
• Magic 2011 (effective July 16, 2010)
• Scars of Mirrodin (effective October 1, 2010)

Sets will be added as and when they come out.

Cards
Basicly, the most powerful from each color, while supporting a variety of types and archtypes (e.g. UW(B) Control, R/B aggro, Jund, Rock, G/x Ramp etc.). The Cube should be a well functioning draft set. When building I’ll keep curve in mind. To help me I use various internet sources as the site of Tom Lapille (playmagicwith.tomlapille.com). Base distribution creatures vs spells will be 50/50 for the 5 base colors with exception of blue and green, which will be split approximately 40/60 and 60/40 respectively. Minor variations may occur in the design process.

Start building
I start with some known CUBE list on the net and identify the cards applicable to my set limitation. From there I sort them in colors, split by creatures and spells (exception is multicolor, which will be split by mana combinations). Reference is Tom’s Cube Design Handoff Document and the Ultimate Cube resource thread on MTG Salvation.
Cube lists to start with scrutinizing are:

• 2009 CUBE power ranking by the MTGS community
• Tap into the Cube of Thom Krone
• BennyDJazz modern Cube
• Cube drafting by Evan
• The GMU Cube of Happy Gilmore

Users and using the Extended (10.01.10) CUBE
It’s always good to know who the intended users will be, right?! To be fair with you this is mostly me. I don't have any close friends that play MTG. If I play it is either with my brother or at drafts (release or weeknights afairs)

At this point I have not been able to convince him to join this new project. Actually, he isn’t all that excited about playing it! So I have to build this the most appealing CUBE for him to so that at a minimum he will love playing it with me. Target is to get him to beg me to bring the CUBE along whenever I visit him.

Once I have something more to report on you can expect an update!