I'm terrible with article titles. Sometimes it's clearly trying a bit too hard to be clever. Other times it's a genuine attempt that narrowly misses the mark. Just like my tastes in music, art, design aesthetics, decks, and ways to play Magic, I have a naturally affinity for the obtuse, awkward, and preposterous.

Today's article title is part hyperbole (obviously) but also part intrigue. Consider the curious case of the cube: small or large, tight or loose, cubes are a reflection of the things we find interesting, exciting, and powerful in Magic.

While a discussion on how known personalities would design a cube would be an interesting exercise in the creative, what I want to touch on today is tension within cubes and cards for cubes.

Setting the Stage

Tension is an interesting piece of Magic vernacular. It isn't a theory concept or specific bit of slang, but more of a contextual idea that is referenced regularly. Tension is on cards, like Viashino Fangtail and Balance, part of deck construction, such as when considering land number 17 or another low cost business spell in a limited deck. It's part easily defined as opportunity cost, such as having a 3/3 body but also the "pinger" ability, but also part essence, like deciding when it's best for you to cast Balance.

Tension is also exciting.

The interesting decisions presented by cards that create tension can be a major component of what makes games more engaging. Cubes are designed specifically to be the most engaging draft environment. Ignoring tension within your cube is a mistake, one that I certainly made early on. If you feel like your cube experience has been dragging perhaps it's time to examine your card choices through a different lens.

There are a lot of ways to examine tension, but the three general categories I use are:

• Dynamic Cards
• Strategy Overlap
• Unique Effects

Each way is slightly nuanced and debatable, but that's exactly why tension feels so natural: you can't have it all and if you were to indeed have it all you'd be bored quickly. Tension is the deliberate insertion of elements of uncertainty and variation that increase both the skill level and fun quotient of your six square-faced fun bucket.

Dynamic Cards

The cards you choose to include or exclude in your cube are important but more than anything else, exclusion alone can truly define what a cube is. Excluding "the power nine" or all rares, excluding specific cards to tear down specific strategies, or excluding entire archetypes as available constructions are all common ways exclusions matters.

Once exclusion is setting the firm boundaries of your cube the little decisions weighing into what you're including begin to solidify. Some decisions are decided simply by the existence of a card, as in how Blastoderm is pretty much an auto-include in any pauper or common/uncommon cube, but many choices are very flexible and depend upon what metrics you're using.

Metrics can vary, and it wasn't too long ago that I broke down some metrics at a very high level, so there's always some other axis to optimize along. Tension is a consideration that can lead to both awesome additions and awkward duds.

I recently added Giant Tortoise to my cube and the results were phenomenal. It could come down early as a sturdy blocker that could ignore most burn spells. But coming down early also opened up opportunities where the opponent didn't have a creature as fast. Sometimes it was some mana troubles. Other times it was just the opponent's curve starting at three. Attacking across an empty board with the Tortoise is an obviously appealing idea.

But through attacking a "shields down" moment is created and it left a window of opportunity for disaster to strike: Vulshok Sorcerer, Simian Grunts, Arc Lightning, Sunlance, and numerous other spells can take advantage of that moment. Attacking is usually a very appealing option but keeping the fat butt home keeps his butt fat. The tension is interesting.

I also at one point tried Darksteel Ignot. Anything with "darksteel" in the title is a known quantity of "this doesn't break" and the idea of encouraging heavily multicolored decks with mana fixing that couldn't be attacked directly was appealing. It's slightly more expensive than Signets but was indestructible: a tension between speed and reliability.

The result should have been easier to see up front: yes, the heavily multicolor decks picked it up but the abundance of signets and bounce lands ensured that the Ignot was in the sideboard most of the time. Three mana to accelerate up to five mana was just too slow and unhelpful. Powerful creatures wanted to come down on turn three.

Cards can feel wildly different inside the confines of your cube: some will flourish and generate discussions while others become that 13th pick forgettable. But trying unique cards that highlight a dynamic within the cube allows you to leverage tension effectively.

Strategy Overlap

Tension doesn't exist simply within the cards themselves. The very act of drafting itself is an exercise in the pleasures of tension. Which card do you pick? Why? What are you trying to build? Which individual card within this pack is the best fit for the budding deck?

Asking questions and examining circumstances is what tension naturally creates: you want more than one option. One way to heighten the experience is to carefully select some inclusions of cards that fall into multiple archetypes.

Being a big fan of redundancy, it probably doesn't surprise you that I include as many functional and "near functional" reprints of cards that are cube worthy. Cultivate and Kodama's Reach. Civic Wayfinder and Borderland Ranger. Volcanic Hammer and Fire Ambush. Leonin Scimitar and Bonesplitter.

These cards all function very similarly yet are desirable for a variety of decks. It doesn't matter the color of your aggro, equipment is very helpful. Considering a splash for a little removal or reach makes sorcery speed burn desirable. Casting Cultivate virtually ensures any mana issues are gone and your draws will be incrementally better.

But choosing one of these types of cards over a more powerful card in the abstract may be the right decision if the card that's "perfect for your deck" has the potential to table. The tension between a card that helps optimize all your other cards against potential draft picks that are less synergistic but more powerful is a classic cube quandary, one worth exploring directly with the cards you include.

Unique Effects

When I bring up the idea of unique effects in cubes most of the ideas that flash before our eyes are cards like Umezawa's Jitte and Fireball, cards that are so different that there isn't an effective replacement. Unlike redundancy, where multiples of the came card are available for multiple decks, uniqueness creates tension because there's no other way to have the given effect.

While aggro decks absolutely adore the Jitte, virtually any deck is interested in running it since you only need to connect once or twice for it to begin dominating the game. Shoehorning Fireball into nearly any deck is a classic Limited staple: drop a Mountain, then kill you out of nowhere or Wipe Away a board of critters. The tension around these types of cards is the tension of a cube.

What is best? How high to I pick this card compared to that card? How powerful is this card in the long run? As a new player fans through their first cube draft pack they are often struck by the deepest sense of wonder and awe. "This is hard!" they often exclaim, sharing that it isn't easy to make a decision on which "first pick" card to first pick.

One of the reasons archetypes are often used to describe and design cubes is that it's an easy way to compartmentalize information . When you say "Reanimator" or "Counter-Burn" it's easy to understand what, exactly, is going on even without the actual deck list. Unique cards break compartmentalization and exist on a different level.

Would you put Umezawa's Jitte into just about every cube deck you could muster? Of course. But once you have the card how much do you work to use it more effectively? Cards like Jitte want artifact tutoring and cheap, evasive creatures to swing with. While Reanimator is slower, does the value of Borderland Ranger or Saura-Tribe Elder go up because of the Jitte? How much outside the strict focus on your deck do you push when something like Jitte falls into your lap?

Tension like this, at the deck building level, results from powerfully unique cards at the draft level. The best card in the pack may be easy to include but incorrect to do so if the deck is not built accordingly.

Encore

Tension isn't about numbers on cards or win/loss records. Tension is about having cards that create questions with multiple correct answers, placing choices into players' hands that require both situational awareness and skill-intensive decision making.

Have you been asking questions around your cube lately?