Taylor: 0:10

What's up wizards. It's time for rule zero, the show that helps you prepare for the best game of commander. I'm Taylor.

Shawn: 0:15

And I'm Sean. It is our hope that through our combined 20 plus years experience of playing EDH and cultivating a great play group, tons of great decks, and also trying a lot of outside the box variants and homebrew rules, that we can pass that golden knowledge on to you. Taylor, what's something that has you excited this week in the world of Magic?

Taylor: 0:33

So on a bit of a personal note, I have put my cube back together. I've had a few different iterations of it, and I'm really excited for today's topic, we decided to talk about your D and D cube after I put my cube back together, so here's what we're We'll talk about some of the differences between the two, but my cube plays very differently from your cube, and I think it's a really interesting world for magic players to look in. And we'll talk about some of those reasons why, but I think it's a lot of fun. I would love to shout out the lucky paper radio podcast. They are a hoot to listen to. Even if you don't play cube, it's just a good magic, the gathering podcast. I love listening to. How they talk about the game, how they design their cubes. And I think that they have a lot of lessons that you can take from their show and apply it to building your own commander decks and playing in this format that we talk about, but it's so nice to be reminded that there is more than one way to play magic and cube is one of them. So take us off. What are we talking about today, Sean? What's your D and D cube?

Shawn: 1:38

So traditionally, cubes are about recreating a limited 1v1 sort of environment, but Commander Masters kind of blew the gates off of What people had already been doing, building commander cubes, but kind of gave it a particular structure, and a sort of stamp of approval that like, this is the thing you can do. So with the D& D cube, I've been playing D& D since I, you know, was 14 or whatever. I was very excited about all of the Dungeons Dragons sets that came out for Magic. And as soon as that happened, I had it in my mind that like, let me build a magic limited environment that Just oozes flavor. And so the D and D cube became a thing. I got all the secret layers for the Dungeons and Dragons cards. I tried to include as many special alternate versions and really flavorful sort of a monster manual ask sort of variants that I could, I got signatures for cards in the cubes from the artists and it's still a work in progress. but it has been a labor of love, a project that is ongoing. And I think one that we can learn a lot of lessons from in building a commander cube, if that's something that the audience has ever thought about or is interested in, cause it can be an intimidating and honestly very difficult process.

Taylor: 2:54

Yeah. So for our listeners that might not know. A cube comes in all sorts of different flavors, different sizes, different themes, different ideas, so on and so forth. So my cube that I have is a, uh, I call it legacy light. It is not nearly the power of legacy, but it's a little bit beyond just modern and it's 360 cards. And the best way that it is Drafted is in a group of eight. And so each person gets three packs of 15 cards and you draft like you normally would at your game shop, if you're drafting a new limited set. And so, if you are drafting, say, outlaws at thunder junction, which is the most current set at the time of this recording, you'd get three of those packs and pass them around. Magic has changed a lot over time. And one of my. Favorite times in magic is when we had the block structure and you would get to mix in different packs into your store draft. And that's what a cube I think tries to do is create its own limited format. In a typical draft, you're building a 40 card deck, just like you would in a draft scenario. However, in a commander cube, you're drafting slightly different numbers. Sean, walk us through how we would draft your cube for a commander cube.

Shawn: 4:07

Absolutely. So 540 cards. Typically we want to draft, draft. with a draft pod. I can support up to eight, players that draft 20 card packs. And what you do is you grab a 20 card pack, you take two and then you pass it left or right or whatever the rotation is during that particular round of draft. So first round might be left. Second round's right. Third round is left. And you're just taking two cards until the pack runs out. Everybody has a pack. So you're seeing this wide variety of things and you're trying to keep in mind the whole time. Like there's so many legends and commanders in there that I've put in that it's not hard at all to build a 60 card commander deck. So it'll be 59 cards and your commander or 58 cards and your commander or your background, which is a mechanic, very particular to D and D. That's kind of like a partner thing. And then you just have this fun, fair, kind of weird experience. That's very particular to the flavor of Dungeons and Dragons.

Taylor: 5:11

I love this cube. I think it's a lot of fun and I think that there are myriad reasons why somebody might want to create a cube. For me, I had a lot of cards that I wanted to play and I just never got the chance to play them anymore. And so I just shoved them all in this big box that I've got and I've sleeved them up and we get to play with them now. And there's more than one way to play that cube. Two, because you can do it draft. You can also do sealed pools out of my cube. I'm sure you can do sealed pools out of your cube. And then that way there's a little less of the intimidation factor of drafting. I think that draft is oftentimes a little scary for newer players just because they don't necessarily know what they're looking for. And I think sealed is a great way to kind of bridge that. Between constructed and drafting in a sealed pool, you're just given six packs and you get to build based off of what you open. And I think that's really a fun way to go about it. And it could potentially help teach people about your cube. So Sean, you mentioned why you built your cube. You love D and D you've been playing it for a long time, and now you've got this kind of homage to something that's so important to you. And I think that's an amazing reason why people should have a cube. I think another really good thing to mention is that we oftentimes have discrepancies in power levels. If you listen to our last episode, we talked a lot about how, you know, sometimes you have a deck that you think is a seven, but somebody else says that their deck is a seven, but really it's a four at best on a good day and they draw perfectly in a cube. In the most ideal of cubes, the power level is flat. And so everyone has the same power level potential. And it really boils down to how good are you at drafting? And how good are you as a magic player? Instead of did I open the Best broken card there is in the cube. And that happens sometimes, but that's part of the process. And we'll talk about fine tuning cubes later on. But Sean, you've got a resource to help people out, if they're interested in potentially building a cube, you want to tell us a little bit about cube Cobra and what that is.

Shawn: 7:13

Yeah, sure. So cube Cobra is, I think the only remaining cube site. There may be others. There used to be more, but they sent shut down. So I'll post the link to the D and D cube as it is on our show notes as well, but it's on cube Cobra and cube Cobra has a commander cube building guide from 2021 link in the show notes as well. It's, and there's another link I want to post from Reddit user, dank train Tom, who, Has a cube Cobra page But a great primer on the ins and outs of why they built this commander cube. It's a massive behemoth at 960 cards Clearly a labor of love but it really goes over some of the important things that a cube has to have Anybody can crush together 360 cards. Can you make it balanced? Can you make it fun? I mean, this is what the wizards design team has to struggle with all the time with every set and they don't even succeed on a lot of sets to be fair. So doing it yourself by your lonesome is a tough process, but I think it's ultimately worth it because you get to create, like you said, sort of a block structure, a limited environment that just oozes flavor of a particular type. So we'll share those links but some of the important pieces I think that matter one before you build a cube You want to know what your theme is? Who's your audience? With a D& D cube, I want to ooze Dungeons Dragons flavor So I've got all kinds of dungeons and I got dragons and I got mythical warriors and magic swords and cartoon Secret lair cards from the D& D cartoon and even cartoon Hugh Grant, which you know is now canon in the D& D universe

Taylor: 9:00

For those of you that don't know, there was a movie that came out Dungeons and Dragons honor among thieves. We as a play group, we also play D and D we went to go and see it. We had a lot of fun with it. And I think it's important to talk about something like cube and going to see that movie together because these are People that we play cards with and we're slinging spells with on the weekends or whenever we get the chance to, they're also our friends. I think it's nice to have more than just one thing to do, because that can lead to, to use a metaphor here, a stalled board state. Your friendships need a different. Pieces to help foster and grow. And so mixing it up and doing something other than just playing constructed commander can help with that. So we've got cubes, we do chaos drafts. We go to movies together. We have food together. We do all sorts of things just to try and keep things fresh. Because as a friend group, we do more than just play magic, but we love it. So we wanted to talk about Q as an alternative way to play. One of the first things we have to tackle is, you know, Actually getting the cards together. 360 cards sounds like a lot, or for Sean's cube, 540 cards seems even more. If you have been a magic player for any amount of time, you have 360 or 540 cards. There's just no way that you don't. And maybe you don't have those around, but they're easy ways to jump off into this format here. One of the easiest ways to go about it is getting into the starter cube. And so card kingdom has a starter cube. It's a hundred dollars and it's a 360 card cube includes your basic lands. All you need are sleeves. If you want them in a box to put them in and you've got a cube, that's definitely one way to go about it. I built my cube out of my collection. It took drafting it a couple of times to really see what were good cards were bad cards. And there's still a lot of fine tuning to do, but at this point I spent 0 on my cube because I just built it out of the collection already had from commander. And there are a lot of really powerful synergies that I was able to find within my collection to start to build that up. But you also have some cubes you can purchase on eBay. So Sean, you said you've seen a cube on eBay, it's running for about 400. What, what kind of cube is it? Do you have any other information on that?

Shawn: 11:15

This particular cube, it just seems like kind of good stuff dot cube Uh But if you want a starting place, I'm trying to think of like how intimidating it is to imagine building a cube and knowing on the back end how much work went into trying to tune one. Sometimes it is nice to just be able to, if you have the money to do it, look on eBay or some other, Place where you might buy some cards Craigslist who knows don't do anything too shady, but you know Just to have that done for you because If you don't have the luxury of time, well, maybe you have the luxury of money this particular cube, it's got planeswalkers giant Baneslayer angel type flyers, you know it just seems like a generic sort of like Good stuff sort of cube But let's talk a little bit about What is the difference between say your cube and a commander cube?

Taylor: 12:03

When you play my cube, it is designed for one V one. We are playing some heads up magic and we want to create kind of a rotation where we have a clear winner at the end. We have, Really simple tournament app to help create some pairings. So we can see who actually wins it, but in the commander cube, it's a little bit more nuanced than that because you draft and then you play in a pod. So in my cube, you might try and cut colors and get people off of their game plans because you're reading the signs, the draft, or maybe you've got a particular strategy you want to go with. But in the commander cube, it's a little bit different than that because one, you can only play certain cards and in your cube, you have to draft your commander. So you've got to be thinking, okay, I want good cards, but they might not match my identity. And so in my cube. I have a lot of mana fixing, so it's very easy to build a five color deck, but in your commander cube, it is much more difficult to do that.

Shawn: 12:58

The structure of it has increased like It to the point of I need to maybe jump from 540 to 720 because what I wound up doing was including a lot of the legendary creatures from the pre con commander decks as well. So it is brimming with legendary creatures. It is not hard to find a commander. Mana fixing on the other hand, as you said, a little difficult because D& D didn't have a lot of mana fixing things for all colors outside of maybe like Some old reprints that they reflavored like pilgrim's eye or something in the commander deck And so since i'm trying to stick so much to dnd i've had to find some like You know really kind of suspect things like putting a ton of evolving wilds that are all just dnd flavored or command towers that have the dnd art on them. In the cube in order to sort of support some sort of fixing. I would say that is one of the biggest challenges of it overall though.

Taylor: 13:57

I think too, it's important to know that when it comes to playing in a commander cube, I think the games tend to go. Sometimes slower, sometimes fast. It just kind of depends on who drafted what one of the most recent times we drafted your commander cube. Uh, there was a descent to Avernus that came out a couple of times and it absolutely launched the game forward, but sometimes games go slowly and that's okay. I think what's nice about that is everyone's on that same playing field, right? Because if somebody is new to my cube and they don't know that they should prioritize mana fixing, because it's so good in my cube. They might not be able to play at the same rate as somebody else does. That maybe it's a bit more familiar with my cube. So your cube, I think is a great introduction to help teach people the ins and outs of drafting, to see what some of the potential synergies are. And it's okay if the games go slowly because everyone has the evolving wilds. In my cube, people are playing a lot of fetches and triumphs and shock lands. And that just creates a really different environment. But what I'd really do like, and I've said this before and I'm going to keep saying this, is the power level in a cube is ideally flat, so everyone's on the same playing field. One thing that I think we can kind of, shift into are some other resources that people can look at if they're interested in either a watching cube and seeing how it works and then be what building their own cube, could do and how they could go about that. So I think when people hear cube, the first thing that they really think about is the MTGO vintage cube. I think that it's a really powerful environment to draft in. I love watching LSV draft because he's so good at it. He will admit that he's just really lucky sometimes, and he kind of plays into that, but watching him draft, last night, I watched one where he drafted a Ractos reanimator deck that just seemed perfect, and he just happened into it, but he knows that cube on the inside and the outside, and he knows the people that he plays with and what they prefer to play, and so he leverages that knowledge into it. Vintage cube is not the only thing out there. And I think it's actually a really bad place for new to cube players to start because you don't know what combos you're looking for. You might not value the mocks and like you should, because you might just think, oh, it's just a land, but you don't realize, no, it's a free land. I love the commander cube because anybody can open up a pack and see a really cool legendary creature and build around it and have a lot of fun with it. So I think that's something really important to recognize, but I do think that there is something special about listening to LSV talk through his thought process and why he drafts what he does. So you could watch him do that and then take that to the commander cube and use that same process where he talks through his plays. He talks through his picks and explains why he's doing certain things and you can leverage that knowledge in your own drafting experience. So you've got some fun things in your commander cube, Sean. How did you narrow it down to 540 cards? What did that look like in that process for you?

Shawn: 17:05

Sure. So my particular cube, I've got like close to 80 cards of each color to, in order to make it sort of balanced. I try to keep mana cost at a fairly even rate. So enough, one mana cost enough, two mana costs to try and create sort of a natural curve, a curve in every color. And in addition I have like 54 colors, 28 lands. Just that anybody can play that are universal sort of cards, that can help out those decks. The benefit of a commander cube is that if you have, I think I have close to a hundred different commander options in the 540 cards. So you're going to have a signal very early on. And this is important signpost cards as they call them in cube speak, of, What is telling me to draft this particular archetype or this particular color pair or color threesome? and So the commander does that in the commander cube? It's like if I'm getting Minsk and boo out Well, I know that either depending on which version it's either red green or it's red green white And those are my colors that I'm focusing on. I know I make a token I know that I could probably benefit from synergies that double tokens that kind of thing. The commanders do great jobs of signpost cards. That's one of the benefits of a commander cube, I think versus a non commander cube is that the commander tells you exactly what to do. If it's a dungeon commander, you want to draft dungeons. So for D and D world, I've tried to have some of the main archetypes. So like blue, white flyers could be a thing. Blue white blank is sort of a thing because of cards like teleportation circle in D and D. But you could have gruel beatdown as well with just a minskin boo really powerful Let's put some counters on some hydras But I also wanted to include dice rolling because that's such an integral part And there are unexpected cards in dnd world That have dice rolling synergies such as the blue fairy that lets you double your dice rolls So you can find some really interesting paths that way

Taylor: 19:11

Yeah. And when it comes to building a cube, I think that it's really important to recognize that you need to have these synergies built in and in the commander cube, I think you did a really good job of explaining how you've got all of these kind of archetypes built in naturally because people are looking for. The commander and what cards they ought to play with it. So for instance, one of my favorite commanders to draft is Jan Jensen because I'm a wily, uh, gnome artificer at heart. I love tinkering with things and it's fun to look for cheap artifacts that I can, tinker away and, Turn into useful things. So it's fun to be able to do that. And my commander tells me exactly what I'm looking for. When I find the commander that I'm drafting in my cube, it's a little bit different. I run 54 of each of the colors and I only run 30 multicolored cards. And so I have to be really specific in which of those cards that I'm including. One of my favorite color pairs to play in this cube is Demir that's black and blue. And the signpost cards that I have that indicate what you're doing are in that multicolored slot, because I'm trying to. What does blue like to do? What does black like to do? And how do they marry together in this cube? So the first signpost card that I have is Vohar Vidalian desecrator. That's a two drop, and it's a looter. So I can tap it to draw a card and then discard a card. It's got some other texts on there that lets you do some life damage possibilities, but it also led to your cast spells from your graveyard, which is really cool. So that's the first one. The next one is obsessive stitcher. It's a one, a blue and a black. It has the ability to tap, draw a card, then discard a card. And then it's second ability tells you exactly what Demir wants to do. It's two, a blue, a black tap it, sacrifice the stitcher return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. So Demir is all about reanimator. And you might not pick that up on with Vohar, but you definitely do with obsessive stitcher and you definitely do with the last one here, which is extract from darkness three, a blue and a black, each player puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard, then put a creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. So when I see those signposts, I'm looking for a couple of things. Number one, I'm looking for blue to give me some of those discard effects, like frantic search that let me draw cards and put them in the graveyard. I'm looking for black spells that maybe help me reanimate at a cheaper cost. Or I'm looking for just really big beaters that it would be great to cheat into play. So that's where signposting plays a role. That's how you have to do it. My cube compared to looking at your commander from the D and D cube.

Shawn: 21:45

I think one of the other big differences that's important too between commander and regular cubes is the idea of color identity. So obviously in commander, if you have your commander picked out in your first pack, well, then you probably know that if you have red, green, white, minsk and boo, you're not playing any blue or black cards at all. But in a regular cube, you can totally splash for four and five color decks. It's absolutely a thing. So I almost think the commander cube is. sort of cube with training wheels in a way for newer players. It's a lot harder I think to build it properly, but I think once it's built, newer players could jump into a commander cube at least commander players could and kind of have an idea of what to do in a regular cube. I've often found myself kind of lost. I played a mono blue power cube, which was a really cool insane thing to witness. But I was like, I'll just play merfolk. There's so much merfolk support in here. Well, it turns out merfolk can't do anything versus ancestral recall timewalk deck My tidebinder mage or whatever is just chilling and uh, yeah watching the world literally go by and him die so

Taylor: 22:57

Poor merfolk.

Shawn: 22:58

A poor poor merfolk.

Taylor: 23:00

I think that there are a lot of cool resources out there that can help you learn about them. And the first one you have listed here is the five 40 podcast from Ryan overturf and Ryan Sachs. You want to tell us a little bit about that show.

Shawn: 23:12

Yeah, sure. So this spawns from a star city games crew. If you ever watched the star city game circuit, Ryan over turf was often an interviewer and or a commentator on a lot of the star city game circuit matches, but his real passion was building cubes and this podcast, it goes back away. So you've got more modern things like lucky paper radio. But, I think that their podcast was a great resource because it had very specific how to from like every angle of like how to build a proper cube 540 being only one of the numbers of types of cube you can build but they had an actual theory episode on why they thought it was like the ideal amount versus 720 or 360 so you can listen to them agree or disagree but it's a really interesting philosophical resource that if you're interested in building a cube, you can probably browse through the titles of the episodes and be like, that really appeals to me. They built a Kamigawa cube. How do I get into that? You know? So I think that's a really neat resource.

Taylor: 24:18

I'm glad you mentioned Kamigawa and your DND cube kind of is like this. One of the ways that people get into the idea of cube is through the set cube. And so they really liked a particular block or a particular set, and they wanted to recreate that draft environment. And so the professor from Tolarian Community College is known for his Innistrad set cube. And that's one of the most flavorful and fun draft environments. That magic has ever had. And so getting to recreate, that's a lot of fun. You might want to do that with neon dynasty or in Sean's case, the D and D cube, which is looking at those commander sets, that the D and D collaboration, has put out for us. I love cube Cobra and just looking at random cubes, but a really cool function that cube Cobra did in conjunction with lucky paper radio is the cube map. And so if you click on the cube map link on any cubes page, you can look and see what cubes are adjacent to it and may have. Similar cards, they both play. And so it can kind of give you some inspiration. So if you have played a cube with somebody and you'd love to build your own, that can be a way that you look and see, Oh, well, maybe Sean doesn't play this one particular card in his cube, but this other cube does. And you might see some other interactions that might not be present in one cube, but is in

Shawn: 25:41

Yeah, absolutely. And another great thing about cube Cobra is that you can adjust how it breaks down the cube to your liking. So if you want to split up cards by color, and by common uncommon, rare, whatever you can design, however you see your cube laid out before you as like a list rather than I'm just having like a boring text list. It'll actually show like different shades of colors for multicolor or artifact or whatever. And you can see the numbers of each particular type of car that you have in the cube. So as cube designer, you just have a job of tweaking and making things balanced for every color. Dungeons and Dragons was a notoriously bad draft set, not the Baldur's Gate one, but the one before Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. It was bad. It so one of the challenges I had was how do I make blue playable in the D& D cube? And the only way you can do that is kind of this constant tweaking which cube Cobra makes into a breeze

Taylor: 26:36

I think for everything else in this world, there's a subreddit for it. There's also a discord for it. Uh, but you mentioned tweaking it. That takes us into one of the things we have to keep in mind when we're building a cube, just like a commander deck, you're never really done building it. So what doesn't work for a new cube designer, Sean?

Shawn: 26:54

I think that in order to design a cube You either have to have an incredible amount of time and persistence a willingness and a play group Perhaps that will help you test that cube You on the fly or be able to sort of theory craft in your mind palace the cube. By that, I mean, maybe go to cube Cobra and have your friends do mock drafts of a cube that you haven't even put together in paper yet. And see what their feedback is. What do they like? What did they not like? It just requires constant tinkering. I think one of the downfalls of cubes, that one of the hardest things to do. is to, for instance, we'll just use the D and D cube and commander cubes in general. As an example, one of the problems I have is there's a push and pull a real tension between how many cycles do I run in the dungeon dragons cube? Because the D and D universe has a lot of cycles. So for instance, backgrounds, it's a partner esque, thing that is, adds a lot of flavor. It gives you a lot of variety with your color pairings. So you can play Wilson, the crazy grizzly bear with a cultist of the absolutes and turn them into a monster of green black potential. Or you can go with like a more traditional sort of token route. But you have to include like two or three backgrounds of each color. So that's like 10 to 15 cards. It's eaten up. Okay. Classes iconic in D and D. There's a enchantment level up class card for every class. Well, the problem I found is that some of these are supported and some are not. So artificer class one in a blue, has to do with artifacts. It makes sense, but you know what Dungeons and Dragons didn't have a lot of cool things of artifacts in like there's some, but they're, they're not the sort of. J and Jansen S tinkering cards that you would normally put like micro synth wellspring and stuff like that into a deck that just loves playing with artifacts. So that was a real challenge. And it's kind of like, do I take artificer out? I don't want to cause artificer gets the bad end of the stick in all Dungeons and Dragons world. It's not even a class on Baldur's Gate, even though it kind of is a class in real D and D. But yeah, that's a that you come into. It's like, how do I include all of the cycles of dragons. Well, there's five uncommon dragons of each color. There's ancient dragons of each color. Like that's flavor winning, but it also means that those spots are taken up from other cards that might be more synergistic with the cube. For instance

Taylor: 29:28

Yeah. So it takes a lot of tweaking to figure that out and to know what works, what doesn't work, things like that. And off the top of the dome here, how do you prepare your packs for your players to draft them out of? Some people see to them, they might put in a certain number of rares, uncommons, like you might get out of an actual booster pack. I don't do that in mine. I just shuffle the whole thing up and you get what you get. What are your packs look like? And what does that setup look like in your cube?

Shawn: 29:54

I do absolutely see the packs beforehand. And it's a great question because it comes up often. I think with the commander cube. Don't want a person to open a pack that doesn't have like several commander options in it So if I were to just shuffle up randomly and player one gets no commanders in their first couple packs. I Think it really hinders their ability to start building a coherent deck from step one whereas at least if you have two or three commanders to pick from and In your first pack you get an idea of where you want to go early, which helps all of your subsequent picks. That's one of the challenges, right? Between commander and regular cube, regular cube, just shuffle up everything. You can play any color you want, any, any combination of cards. But in commander cube, you can't. So you're, you're picking blind unless you see those commanders in the first pack. So I usually put like three commanders in each pack. I usually try to include one to two colorless cards in every pack that I seed. Often those are mana fixing cards. I try to put one land in every pack, sort of similar to a regular magic card pack where you almost always have like a basic land slot or something like that. And then I try to put an even balance of each color. So I put like two or three black cards. Two or three white cards But I do this Face down in a totally random order So I have these piles of cards and once I get the commanders down and the lands down then it's just like i'm just Looking at you know 36 or whatever packs Face down on the table and i'm just you know, two white cards here two white cards there two white cards there I don't know where they're going in. I don't know if those packs will be good or bad But they will have a balance And so far for me that's That's been helpful. Again, we're all walking in the dark hand in hand together on this. It feels right, though.

Taylor: 31:41

Yeah. Have you flirted with the idea of giving starter packs to people? So everyone would be provided with certain maybe staples. I know some commander cubes give everyone a command tower, a soul ring, an arcane signet, maybe like an evolving wilds and maybe your cube. You could also give them those things and then a pair of faceless ones. And so they could create their own color combinations. Have you played around with that idea?

Shawn: 32:04

I have played around with that some. I used to have backgrounds being an outside force in the Commander Cube of like, sort of a different, area of the cube where people might draft backgrounds separately. I've certainly had command towers and, and arcane signets. That balance is hard to walk and the decks currently, it's a little out of balance. I haven't been drafting it outside the cube mostly for logistical reasons, like having a bunch of different cube boxes. This, this box I have currently fits all the lands, all the cards, but it doesn't really do a great job of separating them into different sections or whatever but I see the benefit in that and I think that's honestly probably a good thing. Everybody gets Command Tower, everybody gets an Arcane Signet, everybody gets a Wayfarer's Bauble. Go.

Taylor: 32:51

Cause I think again, I mentioned this earlier and I think this is my biggest thing. With what doesn't work with cubes is the fixing aspect, because it's really exciting to draft and want to play these really cool cards. But if you don't have the manna to be able to cast it, it doesn't feel good. And so I think that's an easy or an easier solution is to kind of give those starter packs to all drafters. I know that that's a thing that a lot of people do, but it can be challenging. If one person is able to get all of the best. Things. And so if only one person is able to. Draft the command tower. Only one person gets the soul ring. It can create some really unfair games. But I do think it's important to recognize that that's part of the process is it's a little sad, but you kind of have to see it happen sometimes and realize, Oh, this person had a bad time drafting my cube. Here's why. And here's how I can fix that problem. So again, keep tweaking them. I think some other things that don't work really well is as much as I love really strong cards. We can't always put all of those into the commander cube. And like you were just talking about with those different cycles of dragons, there is a lot of power disparity between them. Getting to play one of those ancient dragons versus one of the common cycle ones One is clearly better than the other and so it's really tricky to try and walk that line like you said So I'm glad you spoke to that that you might have to cut a card that is a personal favorite or you recognize It's powerful because you want everyone to have an equal access opportunity to the game Now again in commander you're playing in these pods of four and so maybe you can work together as a team Table and kind of take care of that one problematic player. But in my cube, when it's one V one, if I were to put an in tomb in my cube, that would be broken because I run animate dead in there. I think animate dead is fine. As long as I don't also run in tomb and say a dark ritual because a turn one dark ritual into an entomb and animate dead. Is game over for somebody, and that's not fair for my green white counters archetype who just wants to accrue value over time. And so it takes a lot of that. And it's really cool because I think you get to design this board game type thing, this environment that you've put a lot of attention into. So I think that it's really a neat opportunity, for players to kind of maybe pull their resources, because maybe if you don't have all of the cards for the cube, maybe somebody in your play group does, and they're willing to contribute to the cube and that's something that one person could kind of host and could bring out every now and then to mix up those games. Again, ideally everyone to the same power level and mixes up the play experience and it's not just that vintage level of play, it can be really low powered. And it can be anywhere in between. So what doesn't work well is pidgin, holding yourself into what a cube you think has to do. There are a lot of really cool opportunities. What are some traps you said that you know, are dealing with the classes. You've got these different cycles, but talk a little bit more about traps that we should be aware of when we're building these cubes, things that new cube designers ought to be careful of.

Shawn: 35:54

You kind of spoke to it a little bit. It's the idea of kill your darlings. Because sometimes you just have to. For instance, Artificer class, a card we talked about. When I swallowed the difficult pill, I have come to realize that that card has to be out of the next iteration of the cube. And I love artificers, but the cube simply doesn't support it. So the idea of having complete cycles of everything, I think, Is something you don't have to do in your cubes like some cycle members are just bad So you've got the fourth cycle or you've got like the pact cycle Some of the packs are not great pact indication is a wonderful powerful card pact of the titan. Not so much so Don't feel like you have to include full cycles of cards unless it's something like mana rocks like signets that could be beneficial to most another Trap that I find Is allowing the logistical hurdle to be the Thing that prevents design so by that I mean in my personal experience with the D& D cube I've come to realize that even though the box I have only holds 540 cards the best version of this cube is outgrowing that box and going to 720 Because in order to balance out all the legendary creatures and the powerful dragons and all the things that I have on the top end in this cube, I really need to buff up the low end. To have those 1, 2, 3 drops that really make a deck hum, card draw, counter spells, interactivity. It's honestly a little lacking in that department. It has this really fun top end, but, you Yeah, I need to add a lot more of the common D& D cards and the only way I can do that is by increasing its size. Kind of try to just almost listen to your cube like your cube whisperer like it's trying to tell you something and the last time we played I Recognized that like that was one of the things that's trying to tell me one. There's some cards that don't have a synergy artificer class. Nobody drafted it. And if they did, it was just by, you know, because it was the last card in the pack and nobody has a chance to play that card. So why keep it in there? Yeah, it's a cycle, but cycle doesn't help. And two, we got in a board stall. And so there's a need for like a lot more, maybe like targeted removal, things like that, The cube didn't support at that time.

Taylor: 38:23

Yeah, it's so tough to really fine tune it like you said because you might have a card you really like but it's difficult to keep It in there because it's not seeing the play that it needs to I think in the most ideal Cube designers world they have a cube where it is a difficult decision point Every pack, ideally, they're having to fight over really good cards and find those really amazing synergies. And when it comes time for deck building, yes, you should have a clear signpost for, okay, here's my commander. Here's what I want to do. And you shouldn't have to be forced into just bad cards. And that's really tricky because, you know, you want to play some of these really interesting build arounds, but. Will your drafters ever actually see them? You don't know. And so it's, it's really tough, but I think that if you give it the love and the attention it deserves, and it requires a cube can be a great resource to have on hand because it can be this labor of love and you can do all sorts of great things with it. Surprise. I have a pack one pick one pulled up and I've saved this image. So I'll put that in the show notes as well. I know that reading cards can be a bit of a challenge here. So I'll share this image. We'll do a card names and basic, whatever stands out for you, Sean. If there's a card in particular that really stands out, maybe you can tell us why you would pick it. And then, I'll tell you what I would pick.

Shawn: 39:46

As we're looking at this, I just want to highlight for the listeners is a 15 card pack, not a 20 card pack as you would usually get. Cube cover does allow you to kind of create your own, Different versions, but the the template that's your baseline is 15 cards because that's normal draft There is a way on Cuba Cobra to make it 20 card packs where you pick two at a time though It just requires some back end work Looking at this pack in particular the thing that strikes me is I immediately have two very different commanders. I have Karazikar the eye tyrant, a black, red and three, a commander that has to do with goat. Looks intense and we have Elminster a card who cares about stacking the deck It's a planeswalker blue white and three commander that also makes a ton of fairy dragons. Think I choose one of those because I want a direction and it really depends on the type of gameplay. I want black red. I'm probably gonna be more aggressive blue white I'm gonna be way more defensive There's certainly other cards in the cube like council of four and you know stuff that you would traditionally find in a blue white deck Where you could play a more controlly build there's also another I could go mono green with old knob bone and Just have a big Silly Just stomp them easy build So there's a bunch of different varieties of card. I think personally I go with evolving wilds Which is another card in the pack land fixing. I value it really highly and then I pick a commander For me, I'd probably pick elminster But I think you're good for whatever

Taylor: 41:14

Yeah, that's my initial gut reaction as well is out of this pack. I see the evolving wilds. I see the Elminster and I don't think that anybody would pick up that true polymorph. And so I think that that would probably wheel back to us. And so if we took Elminster in. Pack one, pick one. And then when this came back to us, we could probably pick up that true polymorph and the minus three ability on elements or would make us a six one, one blue fairy dragon creatures off of that true polymorph, which I think is a really cool synergy, but because you picked that one, I'll go in a different route. I did spy that old knob bone, a seven, seven flyer that makes, uh, I think all of the treasures ever get made by old knob bone, uh, and there's, Yeah, everyone. And there's a find the path in this pack as well, which is two and a green and chant land. Uh, when find the path enters the battlefield, venture into the dungeon and chance and land has tap add to green, and so you've got some ramp built into this. You could also take the never winter dryad. Uh, it's a one man, a one, one that you can pay to, to sacrifice it and search your library for a basic forest card and put it onto the battlefield to tap. And so there's some ramp options here, which I think is really cool to play into, Old knob bone and there's also a clay golem. And so maybe that could wheel and you get to. Pump all of those treasures into the Golem to, pay six, roll a D8 monstrosity X, where X is the result. And when it becomes monstrous, destroy target permanent. And so you've got a colorless card that you can slot into this deck pretty easily that can put those treasures to good use. But that's kind of how it goes, right? Like you, you look at the pack and you think, okay, what are my potential options? What might come back to me? And then you've got to go with your gut. We would normally see five more cards. I'm so curious as to what those other five cards would have been, but it's a fun little exercise. I do this with my cube all the time. I look at fresh packs and I think, okay, does this pack represent the cube? And if it doesn't, I've got to figure out which cards. Don't necessarily represent the cube. And so I think that's something important for our listeners to do is if you're going to build a cube, you got to play with it and fine tune it and have a lot of fun doing it along the way.

Shawn: 43:24

Absolutely, and I saw a fourth option in that same pack too that was there is graveyard synergy in the in the deck So it reminds me that like I took cards from outside of the D& D sets to put in the cube to fill up holes So doom necromancer was not a D& D card or phylactery lich not a D& D card but They kind of seem like D& D cards So they are now in the cube as well to fix some various holes in different strategies that the sets didn't fix themselves

Taylor: 43:54

Nice. So cube is a great way to play magic. It really mixes up your typical gameplay and there are a million different ways that you can play with that space and have a lot of fun with it. You could do battle boxes. You could do wizard towers. You could do all sorts of things. There are two birds, which is a 180 card queue, which is designed to be drafted by two people. There are a lot of cool opportunities out there, but I just wanted to highlight one, this alternative style of format and two. Sean's D and D cube will link it and you get to see all of these, beautiful cards that he has assembled, to create this. And if you are ever in the area, I think Sean would love to show it off and let us draft it. It's something that we've done before where we just have some pizza and draft some cards and have a good time. And it's something that's not. Specifically, constructed EDH, but it's still based in this format that we love so much. So Sean, what are your final thoughts as we start to wrap up this episode on cube, your cube listeners who have never cubed before?

Shawn: 44:51

It almost sounded like a Star Trek intro bravely go where no cuber has cubed before I Think that a cube is Honestly, I love limited And there are a lot of ways that you can try to bring limited into a commander variant or a commander game. Cube is one of those. There's also like commander variant where you buy a box of a random set. That's a variant that I enjoy quite a bit. You can only build decks out of that one box that you got. So it's very limited in that way, but flavorful at the same time. It's a great way to cultivate an interesting, fun, dynamic, strange experience, whatever you want to do. And honestly, my final thought is that I really want to get my cube to a point where I can apply to be at cube con, which appears in the great white north every year. Cube selection is going on right now as we speak for the next cube con that takes place in about, I don't know, a couple of years from now. So, um, yeah, I think that's it. I think that's it for me. I really want to get it to that point because a whole convention of just random passion projects seems like a really fun experience.

Taylor: 46:02

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I think that that's what cube is a passion project. I think that we see a lot of commander players who are playing their decks and they say, Oh man, this just didn't work out the way that I want it to, but what's really cool is if it didn't work out the way you wanted it to, and your actual EDH deck, maybe there's a way to make it function inside of a cube. And I think that's a really cool opportunity because when I rebuilt this cube. It was a lot of pieces of previous commander decks that I wanted to make work, but never really could find a way to make it work. And now it has the opportunity to see play and to do some really cool things. We drafted this last week at our local game shop and the deck that one put to great use, the new veto from lost caverns of Exelon, and it. Did great work. It was perfectly built into an aristocrats strategy and, Max who piloted the deck was pumping out four, three vampires with flying, like nobody's business. And it was so cool to see that pop off. I lost. I came in last in that cube draft, but I still had a lot of fun. I think this is now like a common thing. I swear. I know how to play magic. And even though I'm not great at draft, I still love it. It's probably my favorite way to play outside of EDH.

Shawn: 47:13

Yeah, for sure. And I think that that's a common experience that I've had. I find across a lot of people draft is a way to level a playing field, to have this shared and social experience before the commander game even starts. And it satisfies a need of like on the fly creativity, which can seem tough at first, but if the cube is designed correctly where the draft environment is designed correctly, it will give players the ability to kind of understand where they're going from the very first pack. And. It can awaken this sort of like excitement of like will I get cards that fit this archetype in pack two or three or whatever and it's just a totally different feeling than building your deck at home in the shadows and the of the basement with a towel over your head and candles around I don't know but that's what people do but

Taylor: 48:05

That's exactly how I build my decks. Have you been watching me?

Shawn: 48:09

there's cameras everywhere man um

Taylor: 48:13

Yeah, building an EDH deck in a vacuum is really challenging because you're not quite sure how it's going to play out against another pod. But in a cube, you're building it within the vacuum that these other players are also building within. And you're either going to succeed together or you're going to fail together or whatever the case might be. But I think that no matter what, you're going to have fun together. I have never had a draft experience where I have felt. Like I just didn't have a shot. I thought to myself, Oh man, if only this could have happened when I drafted last Wednesday, I thought to myself, man, if only this had happened, that would've been really cool. And it might deck popped off a couple of times and did some cool things, but that's just the luck of the draw. And I think there's a nice kind of mental aspect to this as well. It can be really easy in a commander game to feel like you're being targeted, or maybe you're on the outskirts of things, but in cube, you're kind of at the, the Whimsy of the cube itself. And it's okay that maybe not everything goes your way, but you get to have fun doing it and getting to see these lovely cards. I love the special editions you've got of these. The signatures are beautiful. It's a work of art in its own, right? It's really cool to get to experience. So thank you for building this and hosting it for our play group

Shawn: 49:26

Well, I appreciate the thanks and you know, I have the same experience. I love looking at it. Sometimes I just pull out packs to be like, look at that. It's the dungeon master from the cartoon and he's all shiny. Wow. Neat. It's just little shiny trinkets for me to, to play with and look at and enjoy. And I hope that it brings that same level of just nostalgia and enjoyment to other D and D players. And I think it does. And if it doesn't have the right mechanics necessarily, or if it's not all there, it does succeed on the level of like, you look at it and you're like, I am playing D& D. Fanzone version. Elminster's going at it hard against the Xanathar.

Taylor: 50:04

That's what's so cool is. For our listeners, go and just, even if you have no interest in building your own cube, go and look at some of the really interesting cubes that are out there and some of the options. I have seen some really interesting ones. One of the cubes I really like to follow is something called the turbo cube. And everyone gets an emblem that says that, activated abilities cost two less. And there are some really cool and crazy things you can do that otherwise wouldn't happen. And so you get to rule zero, even your cubes, it is your own environment. You get to have a lot of fun with it. So. Go and look at those cool ones, have some fun, look at your collection. Can you find 360 cards that play well together? Probably. And even if they don't play well together, jam them in and take out what doesn't work and then you can start to build your own cube. It's easier To do than maybe you might think is my piece of advice. My final thought, it takes time. That is definitely 100 percent the biggest hurdle, but if you've got the time, it's a great exercise as both an EDH deck builder, but also a magic collection aficionado. It forced me to sort all of my cards. So now I can find all my cards, which is great. If you're like me from two weeks ago, three weeks ago, however long, if you asked me to find a card, I'd say, Oh yeah, I've got that. Somewhere

Shawn: 51:24

I remember you gave me a box looking for the uh, what was that dragon enchantment the battle the

Taylor: 51:30

battle for Tarkir.

Shawn: 51:31

for tarkir you're like I have that somewhere for your sarkan deck Then you're like it's probably in here. I look through this box of like 3, 000 Cards randomly strewn about and it wasn't in there. It was actually somewhere else, but it was a funny experience I guess for me to be like, wow, look at all this stuff. This is cool

Taylor: 51:52

I think yet to my credit, I gave that to a mutual friend's child to be able to have, and I thought, Oh, it might be in there. I did find it for you later on. It just

Shawn: 52:00

Yes, you did the hard work of finding it, which I greatly appreciate. And honestly it was fun. Me and that friend both looked for the battle for Tarkir that night and just had stacks of cards everywhere on the coffee tables and stuff. And it took hours, but it was a fun bonding experience between the two of us regardless. And now his kid gets to enjoy this bounty

Taylor: 52:23

Awesome. If our listeners enjoyed this discussion about cube, the D and D cube, potentially building your own cube, or if you have no desire whatsoever, just cube in general. That's okay. Be sure to follow us on X and Twitter at rule zero podcast, or email us at rule zero podcast at gmail. com. That's rule the number zero podcast. And if you'd like for us to highlight one of your decks, or if you have your own commander cube, you'd like for us to look at, we'd love to just reach out to us and don't forget to subscribe.

Shawn: 52:51

and magic. There's no problem that a rule zero conversation cannot solve.