With last week’s announcement of the Community Cube having fired off as a success, it’s time to turn to more mundane, but vitally important, matters. We begin this week tackling the most difficult mental aspect of building a Cube: identifying and consolidating the core features.

While bringing in the faces and names of the Magic community to provide a little TLC to Cube decisions is something that is absolutely happening, it’s you—the quiet voters at large—who will steer the overall goals of every section of the Cube.

Narrowing down all options to get to the initial list will be a multistage process:

1. Core themes and goals by color, level of multicolor, artifact, and land support voted on.
2. Oversampled (that is, too many cards) lists generated by Adam for presentation to community and sent to names for review.
3. Recommendations from names posted for final community vetting.
4. Final list assembled and posted for the community.

These aren’t listing weeks out—it’ll actually go down a little faster than that—but the general game plan, if you were curious.

So let’s get started! You voted last week on the size of the Cube, and it was a close battle between 450 and 540 cards. The final tally put 450 cards into the winner’s circle. This leads to a few potential breakdowns between colors and sections:

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These breakdowns drive the balance of the Cube, providing the root structure of what the Cube feels like. If you’re not sure what the differences are, the brief summary here will help clarify:

Smaller sections for each color amplify the multicolor aspect. They force players to move away from mostly monocolored or splashed-colored decks into genuine two- and three-color decks. The upside to smaller sections for colors is that the power level of individual cards remains higher: The monocolored cards will feel more powerful. This is particularly true due to the overall weaker nature of a deeper multicolored section; the selection available is much more narrow for gold cards, even considering the multiple multicolored sets released.

Smaller sections for multicolored cards minimizes color variance, and maximizes the power of multicolored cards as a whole. Since the population of gold cards is much smaller than that of monocolored, the overall strength of gold is fairly diluted. Restricting gold lends itself to more one- and two-color decks, and relegates true three-, four-, or five-color decks to the sidelines. The tradeoff is that by expanding the colors, the overall power for each color individually dips slightly.

Unlike Cubes with higher rarities, there isn’t a deep diversity of lands and artifacts. The recent shift back to Mirrodin has helped the latter, but the former is still a bit light comparatively. This is why the sections are relatively flat across options.

Now let’s look at each color individually.

White

While Cubes that include higher rarities will lump White in as a more controlling color, at all-commons, White comes with many efficient creatures, removal spells, and combat tricks. It’s an aggressive color, as evidenced by numerous environments of the past. This leads to two distinct ways to approach a list for White.

A focus on creatures leads to White being the king of keyword abilities. Flying, Shadow, First Strike, Flanking, Horsemanship, and more all flood the ranks of White bodies. Backed up by the efficient removal and tricks White has access to, it becomes one of the premier colors to being aggressive. Games will move faster as White provides more aggressive starts, but it can lead to some onboard noninteractivity—combat with creatures that can’t be blocked isn’t as engaging. It isn’t that White can’t support more controlling strategies at common, but rather that it particularly excels in attacking.

A focus on balance leads to a trickier, tamer White. While combat-specific keywords are still present en masse, more removal and tricks lets the color pair well with a more controlling focus. While aggressive decks starring White creatures will still happen, the increased count for combat tricks will sway the balance toward slightly slower decks. Being able to create value without as many creatures can be very interesting, but it also creates more stalemates and longer gameplay.

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There’s another aspect to White that’s worth exploring: a Soldier subtheme. White is home to two Soldier lords at common—Veteran Swordsmith and Veteran Armorsmith—as well as the generic creature lord in Veteran Armorer. Highlighting a Solider theme would involve picking and including more Soldiers, if the sensible option is available, as well as providing some support for a tribal theme with Changeling and mass-pump effects.

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Blue

Blue is a tricky color at common. While there is a relative abundance of counter, there is a dearth of aggressive bodies. Flash and Flying are excellent keywords on creatures, though, and the powerful mix of card-draw can help most Blue decks smooth through issues. There are two ways to approach Blue.

A focus on spells drives at what Blue does best: countering spells, drawing cards, and bouncing permanents. Blue’s options here are always the best, and it provides incredible support for other colors. However, that becomes a liability in Cubes. When the overall power level of creatures is higher, due to the focus on efficient and powerful options, it becomes much more difficult for Blue to be the primary color. While the opposite is true in higher-rarity Cubes, at all-commons, it’s difficult to run a control deck without access to true board-sweepers, leaving Blue light on anti-aggro options.

A focus on balance allows some more flexibility in Blue. While its spells will still be amazingly powerful, pushing for more creatures will allow access to some of the aggressive options. Pure control decks will be slightly hard to draft, but Blue gains the benefit of blending more of the powerful support of Blue with any other color—all much more aggressive than Blue alone. Shadow and Horsemanship are two keywords that will appear in a balanced approach.

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Black

Black is the preeminent color. Within Black, one usually finds a combination of evasive creatures and removal, both clutch capacities. Black also has access to some card-draw and graveyard recursion, providing it the capability to be more controlling—usually pairing with Blue to do so. In pauper, Black has the only board-sweeper equivalents available in Crypt Rats and Pestilence, making it arguably the most important color. Black can be handled in two ways.

A focus on balance puts Black in much the same shoes as a balanced Blue. Several evasive creatures, with Intimidate/Fear and Shadow being most obvious, and powerful removal help Black clear blockers and push damage through. By ensuring that other spells are pushed similarly, recursion and board-clearing mechanics provide control with adequate tools.

A focus on creatures pushes Black in a similar direction to White: attacking early and often. Like White, removal can be used to bump out blockers and continue driving damage across the board. Thanks to the renaissance of the Vampire tribe, Black has received considerable recent support for being an even more aggressive color. It also enhances the enemy color pairings with White and Black, but reduces the total synergy with midrange and control strategies.

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Additionally, Black has an ongoing theme of “Black matters” cards in the form of Shades (Looming Shade) and Corrupt-type spells. This theme is something that has been incorporated into other Cubes, but comes with the drawback of forcing more all-in drafting of Black. It’s a powerful theme that is entertaining, and powerful, when it appears.

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Red

Red has a long history of burn spells and Goblins, and doesn’t disappoint in either at common. While Red has neither the most aggressive nor most efficiently sized creatures, it does carry the most versatile form of removal (burn spells, as they generally also target players) and two of the most powerful spells available at common: Fireball and Rolling Thunder. Red can be approached in two ways.

A focus on creatures is in the same vein as White and Black: abundant removal to support a crew of attacking critters. First Strike and Haste are common on Red creatures, and these pair well with other aggressive colors. However, Red’s creatures are not as powerful as White, Black, and Green varieties, and aggressive Red creatures don’t mesh with slower Blue strategies, either.

A focus on balance lets Red have access to some unique tools, such as making creatures unable to block for a turn. It spreads the curve out for Red, reducing its explosive potential for more universal options in pairing with colors. It also slows the color down, giving more room for control decks to both set up against Red decks and use Red to their own ends.

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One theme that has been pushed to success in some pauper Cubes is Red as the genuine midrange color. Many of Red’s best creatures are of Hill Giant status in both size and cost (such as Bladetusk Boar), letting Red have a bigger share of the larger creatures than other aggressive colors and giving Red an interesting niche and powerful asset to build with.

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Green

Green is the color of mana-acceleration and powerful dudes. At common , it’s also home to many of the efficient aggressive creatures as well. While it lacks removal, as is historically the case for Green, the wide range of creature options puts it firmly in the lead for a potential creature count. It also has a few tools for control strategies, but its specialty is in aggressive and midrange decks that leverage superior creatures at every step of the curve. This divides Green into two approaches.

A focus on creatures puts Green as the place to find creatures. With so many options available, it’s easy to fill Green with creatures across every cost, many with enters-the-battlefield triggers. Pump effects and mana-ramping would fill out Green’s suite, though the preponderance of cards would by far be creatures.

A focus on balance would force hard choices within Green, pushing several more utility and value spells into the choices. While Green’s creatures would still be very powerful, a variety of more interesting effects would be available, helping to slow the color down and take the edge off its aggression.

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Green provides the most stable and natural place to help multicolor strategies. Mana-ramping can often be leveraged as mana-fixing as well, allowing Green to function as the pivot color for multicolor decks. There are several spells in Green that can help nudge multicolor support (such as Crop Rotation, Harrow, and Farseek), and if good multicolor support is desired, a very strong mana-fixing theme would be as well.

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Multicolored (Gold) Cards

Multicolored cards are an oft-maligned section of Cubes. While streamlining and focusing the Cube on playing efficiently often relies on non-gold cards to be pushed, multicolored cards are often more unique than their monocolored counterparts. Generally speaking, the fewer multicolored cards there are, the more smoothly the decks function, and the more powerful the Cube feels. Invasion and Ravnica blocks are beloved for their gold overtones, and there are two ways to handle the gold standard in a pauper Cube.

A focus on balance pushes multicolored options to be evenly spread. While allied and enemy color pairs have been printed unequally over time, forcing equal portions to be represented in the Cube keeps all options flat. While most sets provide synergy along allied or enemy colored pairs, the Cube would push both and allow any pair of colors to be drafted and have support. This balance also helps provide effective splashes and greedy but more powerful, risky decks.

A focus on allied pairs represents the fact that ally options are both more numerous and more powerful on the whole. While enemy color pairs aren’t cut, they are suppressed in count compared to allied options. This pushes the general reaction of players to go into an allied pair but rewards skillful drafters who carve the enemy pair niche for themselves.

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Artifacts

Artifacts provide a unique position in pauper Cubes: They smooth out decks with easy-to-cast creatures, and provide the incredibly powerful equipment for decks of all varieties to use. Artifacts are also where colorless mana-fixing and land-ramping is present, opening up colorless options for decks looking to leverage gold cards without dipping into Green. There aren’t truly unique ways to handle artifacts, but two different questions should be answered within the section.

Utility artifacts help smooth the deck out without requiring color investment. The Signets from Ravnica, Mycosynth Wellspring and Wanderer's Twig, and Mind Stone are all the types of utility effects that promote open-ended deck construction. However, it’s the Signets that have been identified as the root of overly multicolored decks; the color-fixing those provide is unparalleled even by Green effects. Keeping the Signets out promotes Green’s fixing as a more powerful and unique niche to fulfill.

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Artifacts with colored mana costs are often included within their respective colors. While creatures like Trespassing Souleater and Sylvok Replica can be used in any deck, these serve drafters best who are already in the colors of the activated abilities these cards carry. Including them as general artifacts fills the artifact section more easily but dilutes the raw power of individual colors.

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Lands

There isn’t a plethora of lands available at common; nonbasics are mostly cross-sections of cycles such as the lands with cycling from both Urza’s Saga and Onslaught, and the “spell lands” from Zendikar and Worldwake. One particular cycle, however, receives additional attention: the “bounce land” cycle from Ravnica block. These lands have been considered a form of card advantage and, like their Signet counterparts in artifacts, help four- and five-color decks play very powerful, color-dense concoctions. Excluding the bounce lands restricts these types of decks from popping up regularly.

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Squared Away

That’s thirteen different questions to vote on, covering items from across every section of the Cube. I’ll be doing the dirty work of pulling initial pools for our community faces to consider, but I can’t do it without your input and direction. If you haven’t already, go back and vote!

Next week will feature spreadsheets of cards and some initial thoughts toward consolidating a final list—and of course, lots more voting! See you then!

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