Meet Shitcube Link to Cube When I took my first stab at building a cube, it was beyond terrible, a bona fide clown fiesta. It was the refuse of my collection, and held conventional ideas of cubing in contempt, thus the name. Now, it's consistently the most fun I have playing Magic. This is half sales pitch, half cube philosophy, and half wild ramblings. That's right, this cube is so good it turns fractions upside down. Strap in folks, let's explore Shitcube.



Before I introduce the cube, I think it's worth looking into my approach to cube design. First and foremost, I want cube to be fun and replayable. In addition, I want to emulate legacy with intense and interactive gameplay, and I hope people learn new things while playing it. (Spellstutter Sprite isn't a may ability!)



Fun is kind of a weird word, and everybody has their own definition of it. I play Esper (read: "bad") Deathblade for fun. I think wasteland keeps games honest. I left modern with Pod, and I truly believe that junk aristocrats was the coolest standard deck since I've been playing competitively. I think that trying to play eggs in modern is a noble pursuit, and when it comes to games other than Magic, I will always try to play storm. I don't play Leovold EDH, but the deck seemed dope, and I play the attrition game in checkers. If, at this point, I sound like a terrible person, probably don't read any further.



Replayability, on the other hand, isn't hard to define at all. I want to be able to play this cube forever and not get sick of it. Pretty simple.



I said I'm trying to emulate legacy gameplay, and when I say that, I don't mean I want some guy to draft like a Brainstorm and a Thalia. Legacy (at least pre-top ban) is the best format. In my mind, there isn't a contest. Thanks to widespread playsets of cantrips, legacy decks are able to do what they're built to do often and well. This consistency is something I've tried hard to breathe into my cube, judging by the last time I lost to Bomberman, I succeeded. Thanks, also to cantrips, answers are able to be found more often than in other formats, creating a one-for-one environment that's interactive or miserably grindy, depending on whether or not you're winning. My English teachers in high school always talked about how we should include smooth transitions between sections but they always felt like they were just bad segues apologizing for poor writing structure. Anyway, section two:



Cube Philosophy and Architecture Let's talk about fun. When I'd draft other peoples' cubes, my favorite thing to do was to draft, and then assemble in-game some wonky combo or engine that only belongs in EDH. When I started trying to make my cube more than just a flaming garbage pile, I decided to try and include cool and hipster-y combos either that I thought were neat, so that other people could share in that joy. However, Picking Splinter Twin and never getting a Pestermite feels pretty bad. I want to prevent that from happening. So, I didn't include Twin. More importantly, all cards in my cube appear in every draft. Initially, this meant that my cube was 360 cards, and I think this was a good call. Does having every card drafted

conflict with replayability? Yeah it absolutely does. I think, though, that having a larger cube isn't worth it. If I were to increase the size of my cube, all I would be doing is randomizing what intriguing things my cube includes at the cost of maybe tempting people into combos that aren't supported this time around.



My solution to this would be to have a larger cube, and to break the cube down into modules, which can be switched out for the sake of variety. For what it's worth though, it hasn't gotten old yet, and the changes I make naturally have been enough variety for me, so I don't think this needs much more consideration at this point. Slightly below average transition sentence. My cube includes a shit-ton of Terramorphic Expanses, and two playsets of fetches on top of duals and shocks. Plenty of cube junkies argue that easy mana makes for an easy draft, and that– honestly that's true. I think that's alright though. Cube is a choose-your-own-adventure in a box, and if you want to play six color control, I think you should have the mana to do it. Part of helping people have consistent decks is giving consistent mana. This is probably the single decision that most brings this cube close to Legacy. This decision does have consequences though, and I'll touch on them later.



To accommodate this wealth of lands, I found myself making lots of cuts. Anybody who has ever built a casual deck is very aware that making cuts can get very difficult very fast. At some point, I decided that not only were these cuts difficult, but they were to the detriment of the cube. I caved and decided that I should increase the number of cards in the draft. Each pack, I decided, should include an extra card. My cube was 384 cards, and that felt kinda weird. When I realized that that meant each player saw a pack twice, the symmetry grew on me. A Lore Seeker pack brought the total card count to a nice clean 400, so that was a no-brainer.



Including a wealth of lands means that the decks play fewer basic lands. If the cube stayed at 360, that would leave fewer chaff cards, which leave less room for error. I like to tell myself that including 40 extra cards isn't actually making the cube too easy, rather it's compensating for that added difficulty that comes with perfect mana. In booster limited, you don't usually find yourself with more than a few nonbasics in the 45 cards you draft, playing somewhere around 25 of the 45 cards you're trying to draft, leaving room for around 20 mistakes, unplayables, late picks and off-color fatal pushes. However, I found that in my cube people were often playing 10-12 nonbasics and some conspiracies. This, combined with lower curves and conspiracies meant that people were very plausibly including 35+ cards of their 45 cards in their draft, halving the number of chaff cards they could have in their sideboard, and drastically lowering the margin of error. Adding 40 other cards to the draft means that there are five more picks out there.



Conspiracies pretty much all make for more consistent decks, as well as more powerful decks. For me, this mean that many of them were auto-includes.



Why Break Singleton? I had five Birthing Pods after the modern ban, but dammit, that deck was too fun, so you can bet your collective bippies that those went straight into this cube. Or maybe this cube started out Melira Pod with 300 other cards shuffled in, There are some cards like pod with effects that I think are so integral to what I want my cube to be, and archetypes that I'm jazzed about such that I want multiples of some cards. Conspiracies also work well with multiples, making for some absurdly powerful interactions. Because of this, Shitcube is easily on par with poorly done powered cubes. Having multiples of some cards in this way means that archetypes emerge beyond "Midrange", "Control", "Burn", or "Weenies", so it creates an environment that feels a lot like a really neato Masters set, rather than a cube, except Champion of the Parish gets to be a common, rather than Cancel. More Poorly Placed Content:

What makes a good cube card? For me, one of the most attractive qualities a card can have is to fit in as many decks as possible. Chaff is a cube designer's worst enemy. As we get to those last few picks, most people find themselves staring down off-color, or useless cards, and if the number useless cards a person has in their pool, on average, is decreased, I would argue that is a good thing. This means that we want to look for cards that are kind of "Chameleons", cards that fit into as many archetypes, and as many decks as possible. My go-to example of this is Kiki-Jiki. He fits in kiki combo (obviously), and he still feels good to cast in an ETB-focused deck. He feels okay in goblins, and at the very worst, he's a dude. Village Bell-Ringer is another example, fitting into kiki combo, Humans aggro, and Elves. Another one, and this is probably my favorite, is Chromatic Star. This card is the Bee's Knees in Welder decks. It's a win condition in Bomberman. It's a free card with Balance, it doesn't feel bad to tinker, and at the very worst, it's a cantrip and fixing. I like Chromantic Star a lot.



Again though, there is a compelling argument that this makes the draft portion easier, because if every card in my cube is a good "chameleon", and works with every card, then drafters could just pick on-color cards and accidentally find themselves with a deck. However, I think it just makes building a palatable deck easier. On top of that, if the cube is easier for one person, then it's easier for every person.

Specific Archetypes Everything leading up to this point has been a sales pitch for a thought process. You can kind of pick and choose archetypes and still find yourself with a cube that plays similarly. The archetypes I have now have made for some particularly absurd games with really silly combos. These archetypes are usually four to twenty cards that, when backed up by other cards in the cube make for a coherent deck synergy. A Brief Aside: Modularity in Cubes

It's totally reasonable to think of the archetypes in this section as modules that can be added and removed. In fact that's how I would go about keeping this cube exciting if it ever got boring changing individual modules is a very clean way to maintain replayability, while also keeping the philosophy of the cube intact. Most of the changes I make are either in pruning the cards that don't fall into the archetypes, the "supporting cards", or in occasionally adding new archetypes.



Also, please note that the mana symbols under the archetype names are all the colors that synergize with the archetype in question, not necessarily all the colors required to build that archetype. Welder

Components and Synergies



Bomberman

Components and Synergies

Tinker

Components and Synergies

Cheat in Big Dudes

Components and Synergies

As Foretold

Components and Synergies

Leovold Wheels

Components and Synergies

Loam

Components and Synergies

Knightfall

Components and Synergies

Humans

Components and Synergies

Aristocrats

Components and Synergies

Birthing Pod

Components and Synergies

Sacrifice Combos

Components and Synergies

Goblins

Components and Synergies

ALUREN?

Components and Synergies

Eldrazi Displacer Bounce

Components and Synergies

UR Spells

Components and Synergies

Elves



The first three cards below are an infinite combo, and I think that's beautiful. Components and Synergies

Reanimator

Components and Synergies

Control/Tempo

Components and Synergies





Specific Cards I alluded to this earlier when looking at modularity in cubes: cards that don't fall into specific archetypes become kind of supporting cards, that either need to be cube staples, or help several archetypes do their thing, or both. In this section, I'm gonna briefly pick through a couple that stand out, and look at the effects they have in my drafts. 3 Strip Mines

Okay so I need to preemptively apologize for this, because somebody somewhere is going to lose to this, and get really upset by it. I added Ramunap excavator recently, and admittedly haven't drafted since. Some more yard hate is probably in order. However, when not being recurred, I do think strip mine really benefits this cube. It addresses some of the greedy manabases that I mentioned earlier that result from having nigh perfect fixing. It plays a very wasteland-in-legacy-esque role in some decks, and for that reason, it will remain in my cube. However, I'll concede that additional graveyard hate may be in order. Too Many Cantrips

Coming back to consistency as a goal, in addition to playing well with spells decks, cantrips ensure that decks are able to do what they want to do, and not feel silly trying to do it. With the high number of shuffles, four brainstorms doesn't often feel bad. I had the ponders and preordain lying around, so they got tossed in too. 4 Sensei's Divining Top

How many Tops did Miracles play? Yeah that isn't a coincidence, and I'm still upset about it. It's in a very similar situation to Brainstorm, but not quite as blue. Shuffle effects, again, make this a higher pick than in most cubes. Necropotence

I honestly just haven't seen it broken in my cube yet, and I want to see if somebody can do it. Cheatyface

This card has made for two of the funniest games of magic I've ever played. I honestly think every cube should include it. Regicide

This plays well in multiples, and it adds a neat additional component to the draft. I like it as the premier removal spell in my cube. It makes for a player-to-player interaction in the draft format, which is technically interaction.