I have historically been an EDH player, but several of my friends basically only play limited. To bridge the gap, I decided to build my first cube. I decided to keep it at 270 for now, but I plan to expand to 360 once the 270 is built.
The only problem that I'm finding is that my commander card pool lends a lot of support to certain colors - like Green, Blue, and Black. Since aggro tends to be bad in EDH, I have basically no good aggro cards. For comparison - Green has Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Library, and Black has Demonic Tutor, Necropotence. I don't really have any of the good white Walkers like Elspeth, Knight Errant, let alone the quality aggro cards like Goblin Guide.
I even deliberately held back some of the most powerful cards like Cryptic Command, Mana Drain, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring because I was afraid they would be too powerful in an unpowered environment.
Should I take out some of these powerful cards because they might enable certain strategies/color combinations too much? Here is my current cube. It's pretty multicolor heavy because I wanted to encourage multicolor decks, but some basic testing has shown me that you can pretty much draft 4 color goodstuff a lot of the time, so I might trim the fixing and dual color cards back a bit.
TL;DR - Afraid to include powerful black, green, and blue cards withoudine cards. Do I risk overpowering certain strategies?
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My Cubes - The Busted Cube. A fully functional, almost 100% custom cube. The project started out by asking "What if other colors got cards on the power level of Mana Drain,Ancestral Recall, and Time Walk?" Draft and enjoy!
The best way to go about building your first cube is to look at other people's lists, come as close to that as you can with what you have available, then draft it and see what needs to be changed. If you're worried about power level, you can check out my low power list in my signature (labeled little cube). I don't include planeswalkers in that list and I try to keep the power level as low as possible while still promoting several archetypes and strategies.
The only problem that I'm finding is that my commander card pool lends a lot of support to certain colors - like Green, Blue, and Black. Since aggro tends to be bad in EDH, I have basically no good aggro cards. For comparison - Green has Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Library, and Black has Demonic Tutor, Necropotence. I don't really have any of the good white Walkers like Elspeth, Knight Errant, let alone the quality aggro cards like Goblin Guide.
Nothing in your cube list looks particularly underpowered, so I wouldn't cut any of the cards you mention here due to power concerns if I were you. In fact, Necropotence often doesn't make cube lists because it's hard to make work, and as good as Cryptic Command is it often ends up rotting in sideboards. I run CC, but some cube managers have replaced it with Mystic Confluence because it's less color intensive.
I even deliberately held back some of the most powerful cards like Cryptic Command, Mana Drain, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring because I was afraid they would be too powerful in an unpowered environment.
With the exception of Cryptic Command, this was wise. These fast mana cards are very unbalancing without a full set of moxen, Mana Vault, and other fast mana for the rest of the table to have access to.
As for aggro, having good aggro support goes a long way towards having a balanced environment that can put a fast clock on control and combo decks that tend to dominate more mid-rangey strategies. Since you're planning on expanding to 360, I recommend having at least 7 aggressive one drops in your white, red, and black sections and as many as you can find for your green section since it looks like you're supporting green aggro. You'll probably want 8-9 aggressive 2 drops in your white, black, and red sections as well.
The good news about supporting aggro is that it's generally really cheap to do. Even though you don't have a Goblin Guide on hand, you can still fill out a strong selection of 1-drops entirely from cards on my Cube Cards That Cost Less Than $2 list. As for any more expensive cube cards, if you and your friends enjoy cube draft, pick up the big-ticket stuff as you go.
Overall, I think you're off to a pretty good start. Any more questions, just ask away. Welcome to the forum, and happy cubing!
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
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I have historically been an EDH player, but several of my friends basically only play limited. To bridge the gap, I decided to build my first cube. I decided to keep it at 270 for now, but I plan to expand to 360 once the 270 is built.
The only problem that I'm finding is that my commander card pool lends a lot of support to certain colors - like Green, Blue, and Black. Since aggro tends to be bad in EDH, I have basically no good aggro cards. For comparison - Green has Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Library, and Black has Demonic Tutor, Necropotence. I don't really have any of the good white Walkers like Elspeth, Knight Errant, let alone the quality aggro cards like Goblin Guide.
I even deliberately held back some of the most powerful cards like Cryptic Command, Mana Drain, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring because I was afraid they would be too powerful in an unpowered environment.
Should I take out some of these powerful cards because they might enable certain strategies/color combinations too much? Here is my current cube. It's pretty multicolor heavy because I wanted to encourage multicolor decks, but some basic testing has shown me that you can pretty much draft 4 color goodstuff a lot of the time, so I might trim the fixing and dual color cards back a bit.
TL;DR - Afraid to include powerful black, green, and blue cards withoudine cards. Do I risk overpowering certain strategies?
Regular 450 unpowered cube (with some custom cards) - 450 Unpowered
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Nothing in your cube list looks particularly underpowered, so I wouldn't cut any of the cards you mention here due to power concerns if I were you. In fact, Necropotence often doesn't make cube lists because it's hard to make work, and as good as Cryptic Command is it often ends up rotting in sideboards. I run CC, but some cube managers have replaced it with Mystic Confluence because it's less color intensive.
With the exception of Cryptic Command, this was wise. These fast mana cards are very unbalancing without a full set of moxen, Mana Vault, and other fast mana for the rest of the table to have access to.
As for aggro, having good aggro support goes a long way towards having a balanced environment that can put a fast clock on control and combo decks that tend to dominate more mid-rangey strategies. Since you're planning on expanding to 360, I recommend having at least 7 aggressive one drops in your white, red, and black sections and as many as you can find for your green section since it looks like you're supporting green aggro. You'll probably want 8-9 aggressive 2 drops in your white, black, and red sections as well.
The good news about supporting aggro is that it's generally really cheap to do. Even though you don't have a Goblin Guide on hand, you can still fill out a strong selection of 1-drops entirely from cards on my Cube Cards That Cost Less Than $2 list. As for any more expensive cube cards, if you and your friends enjoy cube draft, pick up the big-ticket stuff as you go.
Overall, I think you're off to a pretty good start. Any more questions, just ask away. Welcome to the forum, and happy cubing!
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.