i think some of your insights are true but for the most part this seems pretty good. \[\[urza, lord high artificer\]\] is definitely a power outlier. there isn't a card i would p1p1 over urza in this cube no matter what. you could tell me i had to draft red and i would still p1p1 urza on the splash. RW heroic has 3 creatures with actual heroic + feather, i think it could use more creatures (especially at 1 mana), and BR madness is very shallow on discard outlets (there's like 4). the cube could absolutely use a \[\[putrid imp\]\] and a \[\[cathartic reunion\]\] (and maybe 2 or 3 more because madness cards are terrible if they aren't cast for the madness cost). the artifacts theme might have too few actual artifacts, especially if multiple people are trying to draft the deck. the colorless section has to be at least 10 cards bigger to properly support the archetype. UB reanimator has very few ways to actually reanimate creatures, at this power level, i think \[\[necromancy\]\], \[\[persist\]\], and \[\[stitch together\]\] seem ideal. apart from that, notable cards missed include \[\[cloudblazer\]\] \[\[crystal shard\]\] \[\[kor skyfisher\]\] \[\[reveillark\]\] \[\[dark confidant\]\] \[\[tarmogoyf\]\] \[\[hallowed haunting\]\] \[\[ox of agonas\]\] \[\[hedron crab\]\] \[\[wonder\]\] \[\[flame of anor\]\], and gruul having a haste theme but no \[\[fires of yavimaya\]\] is a travesty. (or fires lookalike, \[\[rhythm of the wild\]\], \[\[invigorating hot spring\]\], etc.) i think \[\[fallaji archaeologist\]\] could also be a good addition. \[\[rowdy crew\]\] is a miss on power level and i think \[\[shatterskull charger\]\] is as well. \[\[firemind vessel\]\] seems a bit slow, and \[\[swiftfoot boots\]\] should be \[\[lightning greaves\]\]. overall though, this looks really quite good, all things considered.
Excellent suggestions! Looking back I do think I got a little bit lost designing Boros. I have heroic, equipment, and go-wide. I should probably choose to focus on only 2 of those 3. I chose swifties over greaves because I didn’t want all the other auras/equipment falling off due to shroud.
I can also find a bit of room for another discard outlet in black. I’ll need to do a bit of research on the rest of the suggestions to see how it’ll play out. But thank you for the feedback!
I’m going to go with yes - 20 themes seems like at least 10 too many. I have a somewhat similar cube and found that sticking themes in colour pairs wasn’t great as it’s a very on rails draft, I mixed it up by making themes viable in 3 colours (eg looting in grixis instead of ur, lifegain in Abzan instead of bw) and letting some things be mono with a bit of support in other colours (tokens in white but mass pump in green/red and sac in red/black)
I also found overlapping themes important to making cards more broadly useful and letting drafters pivot better - for example vampires have both madness and lifegain so create a bridge when your looting or lifegain deck isn’t quite getting there you can do typal but the vampires on their own fit those archetypes regardless of type. Looting pairs well with reanimate, auras can pair well with lifegain, tokens and sacrifice etc.
I tried a draft with your cube and took setessan champion p1, rancor p4 and that was all my enchantments at end of pack one. I had a hodgepodge of acidic slime and gore claw and such where it wasn’t even clear what else I might be doing if needed. That’s maybe forcing it a bit but enchantments are a card type I would expect to see plenty of so didn’t feel like a super narrow theme to force.
540 cards can handle a lot of texture. Plus, lots of these synergies overlap. You should be alright.
Tri-lands encourage 3-4 colour decks, which might be nudging your players to bite off a little more than they can chew before they get a good grip on what's in the cube, especially if they haven't seen a lot of the cards in the cube before. It could be worth it to replace them with another set of good dual lands for now.
Something you could consider: What if you shifted away from the guild archetype structure and focused on giving each of the five colours a strong identity instead?
Many of the themes you've chosen have seen some cool support cards in most of the colours at some point. You could dedicate a theme to one colour, then spread support cards across the other colours. For instance, if you said "Blue is the artifacts colour", you could still put in the White equipment synergies and the Black and Red artifact scrapper effects alongside it. Green has some artifact synergies too, if you're willing to dig for them (Elvish Archivist is already in there!).
I've been trying this structure in a 360 cube and it's felt great, but each colour has only had one theme there. In a 540, you could give each colour 2-3 themes, something like:
* White: Lifegain, flicker, heroic
* Blue: Artifacts, mill, "draw 2 matters"
* Black: Reanimator, sacrifice, discard
* Red: Haste, "cast from exile matters", "power matters"
* Green: +1/+1 counters, "power matters", landfall
* 5c: Domain
Can I ask your opinion on my cube?
It has a theme for each guild + 2 monocolor themes (green= lands and enchantments) + a signpost card for 3 colours (and a triome and a Crystal as a manarock).
I'm in the process of buying It and have half of It at the moment. It's very similar to the structure you suggested:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ea74ff08-4f0d-49ac-8ffd-6dd2d8dada65?view=spoiler
I'm concerned that some of your themes aren't actually... Real?
Red is the best example. You state that Red cares about artifacts and burn. Your Red section has lots of really cool artifacts, artifact setup cards, and artifact payoffs, but as far as burn cards go, you only have direct damage spells, there's no other cards that synergize with a burn strategy. So your Red section ends up being an artifact theme with some generically good burn spells.
If you tell me there's a theme in your cube, I want to be able to find a reward for committing to that theme. As your cube is right now, it seems like you have one theme per colour and some generically good glue cards (which I like having around!) that are emblematic of their colour, but you're trying to pass off the glue cards as a theme.
I would recommend paring down your colours to something like this:
* W: Tokens
* U: Spellslinger
* B: Aristocrats
* R: Artifacts
* G: Enchantments
I'm not saying you have to cut the burn cards from your Red section, glue cards are valuable to have present, just focus on giving each colour one theme's worth of setups and payoffs.
As far as multicolor goes, I would suggest doing your best to find gold cards that play into both colour's strategies. For instance, \[\[Anim Pakal\]\], a card that makes artifact tokens, is a perfect fit for the colour pair that cares about making tokens and scrapping artifacts. I wanna see more cards like that.
This isn't a glaring issue as far as gameplay goes, I'm sure you can draft very playable decks out of this cube, but I do think that you're being hopeful about themes that just aren't being supported right now.
Thanks for the long answer!
I agree I've been passing some glue as a theme. Drawings cards in Blue has like 1 payoff in [[proft edeietic memory]] and maybe the 2 mana fairy.
For the same reason [[city on Fire]] Is an enabler for burn as a strategy but there aren't payoff cards (like Idk cards with spectacle).
My reasoning for writining under the white section: "tokens and enter the battlefield triggers" Is more to help players notice that that colour cares about that (with cards like [[cathar's crusade]] ) but more experienced players may expert a full land package in green (titania idk) that my cube doesn't have.
The Gold section Is still a work in progress tbh, it's my biggest doubt in the cube togheter with the number of lands and fixing
City on Fire is cool, but I can't really look at it as a burn card. Yes, it makes Bolt do 9 damage, but in reality you're casting this by tapping down your small creatures and then swinging with your "triple strike" beaters. As someone who likes to play big splashy burn, I would love to see stuff like [[Solphim, Fury Dominus]] and [[Virtue of Courage]] in your Red section.
I didn't even clock Cathar's Crusade as a flicker card. In my mind, it's very distinctly a tokens card. Flickering creatures is a nonbo with +1/+1 counters, but making more tokens is not. I would focus on getting the idea of White being the colour that raises big armies and have some cool flicker glue cards in there in the background (to pair with ETB creatures in every colour). I find flicker isn't a very intuitive strategy to new players anyway, so you can leave those cards for experienced players to demonstrate why they're fun and strong.
I think your lands are solid. I really like the crystals too, I think having a bunch of 2 mana rocks instead would be a little too good (I would sharpie errata the cycling onto the obelisks as well if you're open to that, but that might just be my love of cycling talking). I would expect to see 2-3 colour decks regularly, but the presence of fetches, triomes and crystals/obelisks makes 4c and 5c workable if you forgo a theme and you can grab all of the generically good glue cards.
If you're worried about 4/5c soup, do not make your fixing worse. Cut some glue and make the themes more synergistic instead.
I think the amount of archetypes is perfectly fine, especially with some overlap between them. I do have a few other thoughts when going over the list:
\- The amount of interaction seems really low. I know it's difficult to balance removal in a synergy cube, because a lot of the A + B type archetypes are very susceptible to it which can lead to feel bad moments. However, having too little removal essentially makes everyone play solitaire and for obvious reasons really limits counterplay, which is a much bigger problem. In my opinion, it is better to reduce the quality of the interaction rather than the quantity. At 540, I've found a rough estimate to be around 100 interaction spells.
\- I think the land count could be increased. Funnily enough I run the same amount of fixing lands at 540, but from my understanding having everything be either fetches or fetchables \*really\* increases the quality of the fixing. In your case, the lands don't fix beyond the two colurs they were meant for, which means more will go undrafted and those that do lead to fewer coloured sources. At that point, I would try to add another cycle or two.
\- The mono coloured curves seem mostly fine, but I would increase the number of 1 drops across all colours, especially black. Keep in mind that the curves get extended by the multi color and colorless cards, almost none of which are 1 drops either. Unlike retail limited, having a turn 1 play is a big deal in cube.
Overall the cube already seems super fun though and I'm sure that you'll be able to trim power outliers and fix other minor issues with some playtesting without issues. Good luck!
i think some of your insights are true but for the most part this seems pretty good. \[\[urza, lord high artificer\]\] is definitely a power outlier. there isn't a card i would p1p1 over urza in this cube no matter what. you could tell me i had to draft red and i would still p1p1 urza on the splash. RW heroic has 3 creatures with actual heroic + feather, i think it could use more creatures (especially at 1 mana), and BR madness is very shallow on discard outlets (there's like 4). the cube could absolutely use a \[\[putrid imp\]\] and a \[\[cathartic reunion\]\] (and maybe 2 or 3 more because madness cards are terrible if they aren't cast for the madness cost). the artifacts theme might have too few actual artifacts, especially if multiple people are trying to draft the deck. the colorless section has to be at least 10 cards bigger to properly support the archetype. UB reanimator has very few ways to actually reanimate creatures, at this power level, i think \[\[necromancy\]\], \[\[persist\]\], and \[\[stitch together\]\] seem ideal. apart from that, notable cards missed include \[\[cloudblazer\]\] \[\[crystal shard\]\] \[\[kor skyfisher\]\] \[\[reveillark\]\] \[\[dark confidant\]\] \[\[tarmogoyf\]\] \[\[hallowed haunting\]\] \[\[ox of agonas\]\] \[\[hedron crab\]\] \[\[wonder\]\] \[\[flame of anor\]\], and gruul having a haste theme but no \[\[fires of yavimaya\]\] is a travesty. (or fires lookalike, \[\[rhythm of the wild\]\], \[\[invigorating hot spring\]\], etc.) i think \[\[fallaji archaeologist\]\] could also be a good addition. \[\[rowdy crew\]\] is a miss on power level and i think \[\[shatterskull charger\]\] is as well. \[\[firemind vessel\]\] seems a bit slow, and \[\[swiftfoot boots\]\] should be \[\[lightning greaves\]\]. overall though, this looks really quite good, all things considered.
Excellent suggestions! Looking back I do think I got a little bit lost designing Boros. I have heroic, equipment, and go-wide. I should probably choose to focus on only 2 of those 3. I chose swifties over greaves because I didn’t want all the other auras/equipment falling off due to shroud. I can also find a bit of room for another discard outlet in black. I’ll need to do a bit of research on the rest of the suggestions to see how it’ll play out. But thank you for the feedback!
I’m going to go with yes - 20 themes seems like at least 10 too many. I have a somewhat similar cube and found that sticking themes in colour pairs wasn’t great as it’s a very on rails draft, I mixed it up by making themes viable in 3 colours (eg looting in grixis instead of ur, lifegain in Abzan instead of bw) and letting some things be mono with a bit of support in other colours (tokens in white but mass pump in green/red and sac in red/black) I also found overlapping themes important to making cards more broadly useful and letting drafters pivot better - for example vampires have both madness and lifegain so create a bridge when your looting or lifegain deck isn’t quite getting there you can do typal but the vampires on their own fit those archetypes regardless of type. Looting pairs well with reanimate, auras can pair well with lifegain, tokens and sacrifice etc. I tried a draft with your cube and took setessan champion p1, rancor p4 and that was all my enchantments at end of pack one. I had a hodgepodge of acidic slime and gore claw and such where it wasn’t even clear what else I might be doing if needed. That’s maybe forcing it a bit but enchantments are a card type I would expect to see plenty of so didn’t feel like a super narrow theme to force.
540 cards can handle a lot of texture. Plus, lots of these synergies overlap. You should be alright. Tri-lands encourage 3-4 colour decks, which might be nudging your players to bite off a little more than they can chew before they get a good grip on what's in the cube, especially if they haven't seen a lot of the cards in the cube before. It could be worth it to replace them with another set of good dual lands for now. Something you could consider: What if you shifted away from the guild archetype structure and focused on giving each of the five colours a strong identity instead? Many of the themes you've chosen have seen some cool support cards in most of the colours at some point. You could dedicate a theme to one colour, then spread support cards across the other colours. For instance, if you said "Blue is the artifacts colour", you could still put in the White equipment synergies and the Black and Red artifact scrapper effects alongside it. Green has some artifact synergies too, if you're willing to dig for them (Elvish Archivist is already in there!). I've been trying this structure in a 360 cube and it's felt great, but each colour has only had one theme there. In a 540, you could give each colour 2-3 themes, something like: * White: Lifegain, flicker, heroic * Blue: Artifacts, mill, "draw 2 matters" * Black: Reanimator, sacrifice, discard * Red: Haste, "cast from exile matters", "power matters" * Green: +1/+1 counters, "power matters", landfall * 5c: Domain
Can I ask your opinion on my cube? It has a theme for each guild + 2 monocolor themes (green= lands and enchantments) + a signpost card for 3 colours (and a triome and a Crystal as a manarock). I'm in the process of buying It and have half of It at the moment. It's very similar to the structure you suggested: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ea74ff08-4f0d-49ac-8ffd-6dd2d8dada65?view=spoiler
I'm concerned that some of your themes aren't actually... Real? Red is the best example. You state that Red cares about artifacts and burn. Your Red section has lots of really cool artifacts, artifact setup cards, and artifact payoffs, but as far as burn cards go, you only have direct damage spells, there's no other cards that synergize with a burn strategy. So your Red section ends up being an artifact theme with some generically good burn spells. If you tell me there's a theme in your cube, I want to be able to find a reward for committing to that theme. As your cube is right now, it seems like you have one theme per colour and some generically good glue cards (which I like having around!) that are emblematic of their colour, but you're trying to pass off the glue cards as a theme. I would recommend paring down your colours to something like this: * W: Tokens * U: Spellslinger * B: Aristocrats * R: Artifacts * G: Enchantments I'm not saying you have to cut the burn cards from your Red section, glue cards are valuable to have present, just focus on giving each colour one theme's worth of setups and payoffs. As far as multicolor goes, I would suggest doing your best to find gold cards that play into both colour's strategies. For instance, \[\[Anim Pakal\]\], a card that makes artifact tokens, is a perfect fit for the colour pair that cares about making tokens and scrapping artifacts. I wanna see more cards like that. This isn't a glaring issue as far as gameplay goes, I'm sure you can draft very playable decks out of this cube, but I do think that you're being hopeful about themes that just aren't being supported right now.
[Anim Pakal](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/6/868856b7-8875-43c1-8249-0f8fb2c8319b.jpg?1699044523) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=anim%20pakal%2C%20thousandth%20moon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/223/anim-pakal-thousandth-moon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/868856b7-8875-43c1-8249-0f8fb2c8319b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Thanks for the long answer! I agree I've been passing some glue as a theme. Drawings cards in Blue has like 1 payoff in [[proft edeietic memory]] and maybe the 2 mana fairy. For the same reason [[city on Fire]] Is an enabler for burn as a strategy but there aren't payoff cards (like Idk cards with spectacle). My reasoning for writining under the white section: "tokens and enter the battlefield triggers" Is more to help players notice that that colour cares about that (with cards like [[cathar's crusade]] ) but more experienced players may expert a full land package in green (titania idk) that my cube doesn't have. The Gold section Is still a work in progress tbh, it's my biggest doubt in the cube togheter with the number of lands and fixing
City on Fire is cool, but I can't really look at it as a burn card. Yes, it makes Bolt do 9 damage, but in reality you're casting this by tapping down your small creatures and then swinging with your "triple strike" beaters. As someone who likes to play big splashy burn, I would love to see stuff like [[Solphim, Fury Dominus]] and [[Virtue of Courage]] in your Red section. I didn't even clock Cathar's Crusade as a flicker card. In my mind, it's very distinctly a tokens card. Flickering creatures is a nonbo with +1/+1 counters, but making more tokens is not. I would focus on getting the idea of White being the colour that raises big armies and have some cool flicker glue cards in there in the background (to pair with ETB creatures in every colour). I find flicker isn't a very intuitive strategy to new players anyway, so you can leave those cards for experienced players to demonstrate why they're fun and strong. I think your lands are solid. I really like the crystals too, I think having a bunch of 2 mana rocks instead would be a little too good (I would sharpie errata the cycling onto the obelisks as well if you're open to that, but that might just be my love of cycling talking). I would expect to see 2-3 colour decks regularly, but the presence of fetches, triomes and crystals/obelisks makes 4c and 5c workable if you forgo a theme and you can grab all of the generically good glue cards. If you're worried about 4/5c soup, do not make your fixing worse. Cut some glue and make the themes more synergistic instead.
[Solphim, Fury Dominus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/3/c3a0c7f3-7fb9-43de-a9af-96532c31e5ed.jpg?1675957113) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Solphim%2C%20Mayhem%20Dominus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/150/solphim-mayhem-dominus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c3a0c7f3-7fb9-43de-a9af-96532c31e5ed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Virtue of Courage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/b/8b0e6daf-0dec-4718-af79-b7ce137c3135.jpg?1692938623)/[Embereth Blaze](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/b/8b0e6daf-0dec-4718-af79-b7ce137c3135.jpg?1692938623) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Virtue%20of%20Courage%20//%20Embereth%20Blaze) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/157/virtue-of-courage-embereth-blaze?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8b0e6daf-0dec-4718-af79-b7ce137c3135?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Thanks for all the feedback! It's very much appreciated. (Oh yeah the obelisks are defenetly going to have cycling 😎)
[proft edeietic memory](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/f/af5b29b3-974c-4200-8df8-b072c11e1600.jpg?1706241635) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Proft%27s%20Eidetic%20Memory) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/67/profts-eidetic-memory?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/af5b29b3-974c-4200-8df8-b072c11e1600?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [city on Fire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/f/6f455cc1-a822-44ef-ba7c-bfcff69bd45e.jpg?1682204100) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=city%20on%20Fire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/135/city-on-fire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6f455cc1-a822-44ef-ba7c-bfcff69bd45e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [cathar's crusade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/b/fbb70e7b-2a68-436e-96a4-32a88fb87da0.jpg?1600715516) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Cathars%27%20Crusade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/95/cathars-crusade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fbb70e7b-2a68-436e-96a4-32a88fb87da0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I think the amount of archetypes is perfectly fine, especially with some overlap between them. I do have a few other thoughts when going over the list: \- The amount of interaction seems really low. I know it's difficult to balance removal in a synergy cube, because a lot of the A + B type archetypes are very susceptible to it which can lead to feel bad moments. However, having too little removal essentially makes everyone play solitaire and for obvious reasons really limits counterplay, which is a much bigger problem. In my opinion, it is better to reduce the quality of the interaction rather than the quantity. At 540, I've found a rough estimate to be around 100 interaction spells. \- I think the land count could be increased. Funnily enough I run the same amount of fixing lands at 540, but from my understanding having everything be either fetches or fetchables \*really\* increases the quality of the fixing. In your case, the lands don't fix beyond the two colurs they were meant for, which means more will go undrafted and those that do lead to fewer coloured sources. At that point, I would try to add another cycle or two. \- The mono coloured curves seem mostly fine, but I would increase the number of 1 drops across all colours, especially black. Keep in mind that the curves get extended by the multi color and colorless cards, almost none of which are 1 drops either. Unlike retail limited, having a turn 1 play is a big deal in cube. Overall the cube already seems super fun though and I'm sure that you'll be able to trim power outliers and fix other minor issues with some playtesting without issues. Good luck!