Crafting Your Cube: Guidelines

There are many things to take into consideration when you are coming up with the list for your cube. Before I started picking out any of my favorite cards to put into my cube list I wanted to have a lay down some guidelines to help me come up with my list.

1) All cards are legal

I knew that I didn't want to limit myself in anyway when constructing my cube. Some people like to create block, pauper, or even standard cubes. As I stated in a previous post, part of the reason why I created a cube was to make the most of my old favorite cards while still playing on an even playing ground with any other people I was playing with. I decided I wanted to take this one step further and not worry about any card banned/restriction statuses. All cards were fair game.

2) No Proxies

Many players proxy powerful cards such as the power nine in order to be able to draft some of the most powerful cards that have ever been printed. Personally I made the decision to only work with cards that I already had. Again, This was largely motivated by the desire to be playing with my favorite cards more so than trying to lower the power of card pool. That being said, I would gladly play those cards and many others if I had them.

Not using proxies also allows me to gradually buy singles in the deck and will allow me to keep growing my cube. Some people might not want to put down the money for more expensive cards and I completely understand that. It is really just an issue of personal preference.

3) Drafted Decks with Constructed Power Level

I was looking for a power level closer to a constructed type 2 deck rather than the usual power level of a drafted deck. This again is really a personal preference. For my first cube I really wanted to make things as powerful as I could while still following guideline #2.

I have also toyed around with the idea of making a cube made up of what I feel the worst cards in the game are. It would certainly be much cheaper than getting some of the cards I plan to acquire in the future, but this did not align itself with my original goals of making my cube so if I plan on ever using bad cards it will be for a separate cube entirely.

So with these guidelines in place I took the plunge and started selecting my cards. The first pick seemed like an easy enough choice to me. It was the first card that ever got me excited about playing blue: Man-O'-War