“I enjoy cube, but I just don’t have $1000 sitting around to make one myself.”

“I don’t even know how to begin designing a limited format!”

“If I wanted to play a format where my opponent could cast Mind Twist and Ancestral Recall on the same turn, I’d just play Pokemon.”

What is Cube?

If you’ve been playing Magic for more than a year, there’s a reasonable chance you’ve heard of cube. Maybe you’ve thought about building one yourself. Maybe you’ve justified not doing so with something like the quotes above. Unfortunately, every one of these statements is inaccurate, and each is inaccurate because it leans so heavily on a particular definition of cube that unsleeved copies of Mulldrifter can be heard to whine from the stress. None of this is their fault, however. Cube is not like other Magic formats. What sets cube apart from Wizards of the Coast sanctioned formats is that cube intentionally evades a single, consistent description. Gnarled, grotesque people like me who talk about it all day seem to have a shared understanding of what they all mean when they say cards are ‘unplayable’, but even this is an illusion, the kind of thing that if you were to look too closely would just blow away in the wind. I have sat at my desk for several minutes now trying to think of a single, consistent definition of the word ‘cube’, and this is what I have come up with:

cube

/kju:b/

noun.

a collection of Magic: the Gathering cards intended to be played by two or more players in a format derived from – but not necessarily identical to – retail limited.

This definition is, of course, useless. And even as vague and non-committal as it is, there are still some parts I’m unsure of. Cube is simply too much, varying wildly by context, means, purpose and even geography. To precisely describe what cube is, it makes much more sense to start at the other end, describing what cube isn’t. So what isn’t cube?

Cube Is Not One Thousand Dollars

By far the most commonly-cited reason not to build a cube is easily the most inaccurate, the matter of cost. The idea that a cube involves a minimum large investment in the hundreds or thousands of dollars is less a myth and more like if a large group of people heard the story of Icarus’s fatal journey to the sun and immediately set about building their own pairs of waxen wings. There is nothing written in the stones that says you must get signed, border-extended foils of every card in your cube. It is very possible, even likely that you will be able to build and enjoy a cube without spending an additional penny on Magic: the Gathering beyond what you are already.

Do you have a constructed collection that you don’t use anymore? Perhaps a rotated Standard deck you enjoyed, or a toolbox for trying out new Modern or Commander cards? Congratulations, they’re a cube now. I’m serious. My first cube was a joint venture between myself and a friend who also spent more time thinking about Magic than actually playing it, and it was nothing more than the three-hundred and sixty coolest cards we owned, with some minor concessions to colour balance. Nothing more. The only purchase I actually made that took me into the illustrious world of Cube Ownership was a box large enough to hold all the cards. Total cost of cube: Four years playing Magic + £20. Everything else I had just gradually accrued as a result of a Magic habit.

My cube was made of rotated Standard and variously banned or retrofitted Modern cards, but yours doesn’t need to be. I have seen fantastic, enduring cubes built just by holding on to your draft pool after each week. Having a quick wander around the table and picking up the piles of commons and uncommons that everyone leaves behind because they weren’t worth enough store credit for a packet of crisps. If you really love a limited format, one of the best things you can do for it is enshrine it forever in a cube. This nets you the double benefit of preserving a format in such a way that prevents Wizards of the Coast from selling it to you again in the future, while also allowing you to omit the cards that you personally feel detract from the set, be they constructed rares, planeswalkers or mana fixing being stuck at rare. Once it’s your cube, it’s yours. You can take as much or as little prodding from WotC’s design lexicon as you like.

For us, once the cards were in the box, that was really it. We were able to start playing it immediately, and it was a fantastic, unique game. It was also truly, truly awful. Which leads me neatly on to my next point.

Cube Is Not A Meticulously Crafted Limited Format

Once the cards are in the box, they’re a cube. No lack of balance, theorycrafting or playtesting can take that away from them, or from you. If you offered me now the chance to step into the time machine and play the very first version of my cube, it would take me quite some time to decide whether I wanted to. I now firmly believe that my cube was, when it was first built, a bad game. But I only learned that by playing it. And during all that time it took to go from being three-hundred and sixty magic cards to one of my favourite games ever, it remained a cube.

The people who will tell you about their cubes are people like me, who have had years of thinking, playing and testing to hone their environments. Indeed the most popular cube in the world, the Magic Online cube, is subject to statistically-motivated development decisions with dizzying sample sizes multiple times per year. But these cubes make up a tiny percentage of all cubes that exist, and a tinier percentage still of all the cubes that could exist if people like you were to make them. Cube is, ultimately, a game, and the thing that all games need the most is to be played. If you are doing that, then all is well. Balance and revisions can come later. For now, focus on bringing together Magic: the Gathering cards and using them to play with your friends.

What’s that? You say you don’t have cards powerful enough to justify making a cube? Well, I have good news for you:

Cube Is Not Singleton Vintage (Or Any One Play Experience)

I have played Vintage powered cube. I have played Kamigawa block cube. I have played pauper cube. I have played a cube that contained no nonblue spells. I have played a cube that contained over 200 artifacts. I have played a cube that contained Clocknapper. I have played a Jund cube. I have played a cube in which every 3 turns, the top card of a deck of mass removal spells was flipped up and put on to the stack.

Even though I would only play three of these ever, ever again, the variety they demonstrate is cube’s greatest strength and best-kept secret. I contribute to the keeping of this secret myself, every day. I will do so more as I continue to update this blog. Because the language with which I and other cube enthusiasts talk about the format has difficulty reflecting its sheer diversity, and indeed it can’t. This would be like if you took every conversation about what cards were and weren’t playable in Standard and imagined it was instead applying to all of Magic at the same time. The reality is that cube is just too big to speak about all at once.

This is not to say you should never listen to anyone about cube, however, indeed you should hoover up as much cube theory as you can, much like you should listen to Legacy and Standard players in order to get a more complete picture of how to play your Modern deck. You should just take care to remember that your cube resides in an impenetrable fortress in your mind. You and your cube are fundamentally tied, and anything anyone says about a card being unbeatable or unplayable is only true in the general, relative case. If you want to make a cube that lets you draft storm, you can do that. If you want to make a cube in which Jori En, Ruin Diver is a strong first-pick, you can do that. If you want to make a cube in which Sol Ring is just okay, you can do that too.

So What Is Cube?

Having carefully constrained what I mean by cube, I can now tell you a few of the things I have found cube to be. Cube is everything you like about Magic, but more. Cube is a party in every pack, and all the guests are cheerfully throwing up. Cube is truly an interactive deckbuilding exercise. Cube is the source of some 40-50% of my best Magic anecdotes. Cube is just like the first time you really found your feet in constructed magic. Cube is busted. Cube is fair. Cube is like if chaos draft was actually fun.

If you’re willing to give it a little bit of your time, cube can easily be everything.

So get building, and until next time, remember to pass to the left.