Lately, the cube has been getting tons of exposure in the overall Magic community. Evan Erwin did a Magic Show about it, Evan Dean wrote an article for Star City Games, and it’s even a format at the invitational. This is really exciting for me; I love the cube, I think it’s the best Magic format not close, and the fact that I have had something to do with its spread makes me feel like I’ve done something good for the world. If you haven’t cubed before, go make a cube or make someone else do it, then force your friends to cube with you. It will make you a happier person.
The reason I like cube is that it brings together a ton of powerful and interesting cards that would never have otherwise interacted. This tends to lead to interesting games that are tricky and full of interaction. I hope you would agree that those are the best kinds of games of Magic that you can have. As the owner of a cube, it’s your job to bring together cards that make for good games. I work hard to put cards in my cube that are both fun and fair, becuase if people aren’t having good games, they won’t have as much fun and will be less inclined to cube with me later. This is not very different from being Wizards- if you can’t make a good game for your players, they won’t buy it. The better the game is, the more they will buy.
Given this, I find it utterly incomprehensible and strange that people put a ton of power cards in their cube. In Evan Dean’s cube article, he wrote this about a game he played against Rich Hoean:
Game 2
Black Lotus is soooooo good! Turn 1 elf, Turn 2 Shivan Wurm, the Crabby Commando conceded a turn later.
Yeah. Great. I bet you and Rich had a great time. Does that kind of game do it for you? Really? That was fun for you?
As the owner of your cube, you can prevent these kinds of games from happening. Really dumb and undercosted cards are simply not fun for anyone. Wizards doesn’t print cards like that anymore because of that very reason. There are a whole lot of cards like that that so many people put in their cubes because it’s supposed to be “all the best cards ever!” or something. That may be true, but do you actually enjoy playing against a Library of Alexandria that you have no hope of stopping? Perhaps getting your Blastoderm Mana Drained and then having someone poop out a Sundering Titan on you? Do you enjoy when your red opponent casts Wheel of Fortune or Timetwister after burning you down to 5?
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t include powerful cards in your cube. However, I do think that including cards that are powerful and not interesting is a huge mistake. I have Tinker and Balance in my cube, and I am very happy with those cards. Tinker takes some setup during the draft to unleash its full power, and Balance is an extremely skill-rewarding card in actual play. I’m also completely thrilled with cards like Masticore, Meloku, Future Sight, and Umezawa’s Jitte- these cards are all incredibly powerful, but they don’t singlehandedly end games before anyone gets to play magic. Sure, that Jitte is gonna make combat suck for you, but it’s going to do that over a number of turns that give you time to do something about it.
However, there are plenty of really powerful cards that I think are not okay. These fall into two categories. The first is fast mana, including cards like Black Lotus, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, and Mana Drain. These cards give people way too much mana way too quickly. With cards like this running around, there’s very little reason to play fair, so you get a kind of distorted vintage-like draft format that focuses on going broken as quickly as possible. The second category of unfun cards is things that are just wildly undercosted. This includes Time Walk, Library of Alexandria, Ancestral Recall, Wheel of Fortune, and Timetwister. These cards just do way too much for the mana they cost. They will lead to stupid blowout games that are barely worth playing.
I’m on the fence right now about if the original Moxes are too good for cube. Clearly they are awesome, but only giving you one mana that may or may not be of the right color for you is probably within reason. I’d be willing to try them and see how they felt. However, it wouldn’t take much for me to cut them again. They scare me. I don’t want to be responsible for bad games of Magic that are played in my cube.
When you don’t include cards that are both overly powerful and uninteresting in your cube, you and your players will have more fun. You would be an irresponsible cube owner to allow unfun games to happen, so cut them. If anyone yells at you for breaking theme or something, tell them that it was for their own good. Eventually they’ll come around when they realize that they don’t have to worry anymore about a Shivan Wurm on the other side of the table before they’ve played their second land.