For those of you who know me, you know that I spend the majority of my free time playing Magic, which is probably why I still haven’t managed to hit level 50 in SW:TOR, haven’t 100% completed Arkham City, and haven’t even touched a number of other games.
I’ve been playing magic since M12, playing all the competitive formats from Legacy to Standard but with summer coming and having (I hope) additional time to play want to get into some casual formats. This has got my attention to cube and the awesome possibilities available. For those that don’t know, cube is a limited draft format that serves as a “greatest hits” style draft allowing players to use to most popular and most powerful cards printed.
The first step to getting into cube is designing the cube itself. Selecting the cards you want to play with, making sure they interact well together, and keeping each color and archtype equal in terms of power. For my cube, I started with the outline from Evan Erwin’s cube (you can find the list here) and updated the list with new cards. The list available there hasn’t been updated with Dark Ascension and doesn’t have plans for Avacyn Restored. Then I added some cards that I wanted to play with and this is what I’ve come up with.
From here, we need to compile the cards. This is a long and time consuming process, especially if you don’t have the money to simply go out and buy everything you need. Most of us can’t do that. If you check out my list I’ve provided the cheapest price for each card (based on starcitygames.com prices). If you notice only the white cards will cost you around $250. So just buying all the cards is not necessarily an option for most people. Moving forward I’ll be posting on Monday with any progress I’ve made throughout the previous week. I’m hoping to use my current trade stock and any winnings from playing competitive events to add to my cube collection.
I’m not starting from scratch, though, I currently have eight cards that are cube ready. Here they are:
Lightning Bolt
Savage Lands
Tectonic Edge
Devil’s Play
Dismember
Sheoldred, Whispering One
Geist-Honored Monk
Boros Signet
Seems pretty pedestrian for someone who plays a lot of competitive magic, right? Well you are right, I’ve picked those becase they are all PIMP! The way I see it, anyone can build a cube but not everyone can have a pimp cube full of foils.
That’s my start and I’d love some feedback on my list and anything else, especially if you have experience with cubing. I’ll be back next week with any progress I’ve made and any additional ideas.
Until then keep it real!
VGL_Jon
