Every so often, you’ll see an MTG Arena Cube event pop up in our Arena event calendar. Maybe you’ve built a cube in the past, or, if you’re like me, you weren’t really all that familiar with Cube before it was introduced to Arena. So, what is this format, how does it work, and where did it come from? Let’s talk about that.
So, Cube. It’s pretty simple, in that it’s basically a custom draft format. A “cube” is created containing whatever cards the organizer wants to include (360 is the recommended size of a cube for beginners, which can support eight players just like a regular draft), usually using powerful cards.
Players then pick cards to build their deck one at a time from rotating 15-card packs that use cards from the cube, just like you would in draft. After the game, the cards go back to the cube. Basically, Cube is a custom draft game where the players use the organizer’s cards and then give them back afterwards.
Some cubes follow other themes or restrictions or are built around specific archetypes/synergies. Cube is also generally singleton, meaning there’s only one copy of each card in the cube. We’ll get to all that in just a bit, though.
MTG Arena and Cube: The Juicy Details
Arena’s Cube is Historic, mainly to offer a larger card pool (550, if you were wondering). Standard Cube is a thing but the format is much better with a larger card pool. On top of that, Alchemy cards are also part of the cube, though only the rebalanced versions on those cards are available.
Since MTGA has sets from Ixalan forward along with the Historic Anthologies and remasters of Kaladesh and Amonkhet, it makes the most sense to have a Historic Cube event. It’s generally more fun and provides more variety and opportunity for interesting/unique gameplay that you just can’t get in any of the other formats on Arena. Which, really, is the biggest appeal for Cube to begin with.
The best example of this is Vintage Cube, which you can play on MTG Online. There’s plenty of different ways to create a cube, with different “rules” and requirements going into it. Pauper Cube includes only common cards, Legacy Cube allows cards from all sets, and Powered Cube (referring to the Power 9 cards) uses cards considered “too powerful” in other cubes.
Power 9 cards
Now that we’ve covered the “technical” side of Cube on MTG Arena, let’s jump into the event itself.
Having had a chance to play the cube a little now, it seems to be mostly about splashy, powerful cards and incredible engines.
You need to have a cohesive deck with a very well defined plan. This is not normal limited, it’s “Standard Lite” — so you want a mini-Standard deck. Don’t throw together two colors worth of “good cards,” or you will likely start losing.
The cube has many limited all-stars of sets past (the “Incredible Bombs” category in the Draftsim card ratings), and many of those cards continue to be bombs in the cube. A card that was incredibly powerful by itself in draft, such as The Immortal Sun still is insane in cube. You want to take these bombs early and draft your decks around them. Other examples are Patient Rebuilding and planeswalkers.
A real bomb provides card advantage andis a win condition!
Planeswalkers appear a lot more than they do in typical limited. This means that your deck needs to have a way to deal with them, either through establishing an early board presence, having evasion, or having flexible removal spells that are capable of interacting with them. I’ve even liked Redcap Melee a lot more than I expected because it cheaply nukes planeswalkers.
Maybe it goes without saying, but you should be taking planeswalkers highly and putting them in your own deck, too. Some of the War of the Spark uncommons are a little less good or have niche roles, but they’re still playable.
Don’t put “just stats” or semi-vanilla creatures in your deck just to have creatures. They should be generating value. So—unless you’re an aggro deck—basically every creature you grab should generate a two- or three-for-one or be part of some insane engine.
Many of the planeswalkers and cards in the cube generate copious amounts of tokens. Especially if you are a controlling or ramp style deck, it is crucial to have a couple sweepers in your deck to come back from when the board gets out of control.
Unlike regular versions on the cube, this one has tons of mana fixers. This means playing 3+ colors is very easy if you want to dip your toes around. But there’s a catch: you need to prioritize lands before spells.
Let’s say you’re deciding between a medium power level spell like Elder Gargaroth and a Triome on your initial picks. The land should be your pick; Gargaroth is more replaceable since you won’t run out of powerful spells. I’ll go over this in more detail a little further down.
Here are some key cards in the cube before we move on to archetypes:
Archetypes updated for January 2022 Cube by David Royale
If you’ve been winning with anything I haven’t mentioned here, be sure to leave a comment on this article or Tweet at Limited Decks so we can all see! For now, let’s talk about what archetypes are supported in the Arena Cube this time around.
If you have experience drafting, you’ll definitely recognize some of these strategies. The great thing about Cube is that there are so many overlapping strategies. Here are some of the main deck archetypes to look out for when drafting.
Mono-Colored
Mono-colored decks are builds with just one color in the entire list with little to no splash. The most powerful are mono-red and mono-white followed by green, black, and finally blue holding last place in terms of power level.
What sets mono-red apart from the others is the presence of Embercleave in the cube. This card can win games on the spot, and nothing does its job better than this legendaryequipment. It also has access to powerful haste creatures in the form of dragons that can pressure your opponents in the latest stages of the game. On top of that there’s a ton of spot removal that can hit your opponent’s face by dealing direct damage to them.
Mono-black has access to removal, giant creatures, and discard packages along with a pseudo-reanimator package.Phyrexian Obliterator is a clear sign that this archetype is open.
Mono-green can be drafted two different ways: aggro or ramp. The aggro version relies on cheap and oppressive creatures to get the upper hand in the early stages of the game including combat tricks and punch spells. The ramp version relies on ramp spells and creatures that add mana to cast big spells like Eldrazi or cheap early threats like Ulvenwald Hydra.
Mono-blue is the last on this list, and it’s the weaker color since it’s harder to properly assemble. The best way to do it is to prioritize cheap value creatures with flash and put yourself into the tempo role. The problem with this is the removal; it’s too narrow since a big spell resolved is painful to come back from. Your plan is to counter everything before that happens, but it’s tough if you let something slip through or if you’re on the draw and can’t answer a Ranger Class, for example.
Being mono-color is a good bet. If you spot that it’s being under-drafted early in the cube you’ll end up with a compelling deck. But be warned: this strategy excels the best in BO1 since hand smoothing helps a lot and it’s easier to curve out.
Big Creatures and Reanimate Effects
This archetype relies on discarding and reanimating spells to get on its feet. This can take a while since you need to dig for your pieces to get things going. Because of that, you also need to prioritize removal to not die in the process.
Your best cards are in the Mardu () colors, so look to prioritize fixing them. You could also go the Grixis () or Esper () colors if you’re looking to build a more control version. The latter is the preferred version since it gives you access to Unburial Rites.
Control
Control is a mix of big value spells that trade 2-for-1 for your opponents, counterspells, board wipes, and spot removal. You can easily find yourself playing less than five creatures in this archetype since you don’t rely on them too much. Except for Scholar of the Lost Trove, a key card for this archetype. Control is where planeswalkers shine, so these are usually your win conditions.
This archetype is easy to play in more than a color pair. You’ll be primarily blue followed by red or black and white. Green is the only color that doesn’t synergize too well with this kind of strategy, so you shouldn’t look to play a Simic () control build.
Prioritize fixing, removal, and big spells if you want to dive into this one. And spoiler alert: Grixis is the best color combination for control.
Sacrifice Effects
This archetype relies on Blood Artist effects to kill your opponents. It synergizes particularly well in the Mardu colors and exceeds it in Rakdos () since its multicolor cards are the best at getting the job done.
5-Color Nonsense
This is probably the most fun and challenging archetype to draft. You want to focus almost all of your initial picks on lands. Except for signature spells that have four or five colors.
You usually also want green as your primary color since most of its ramp and fixing is there. Not to mention that some creatures, like Oracle of Mul Daya, let you play multiple lands from the top of your library.
Multicolor Support
Like with every cube, you always have your 3-plus-color pile of good stuff. This happens when you pick bomb after bomb, grab a land base to support it, and run all the goodies. Sometimes good cards are just good.
This Cube event is quite similar to previous versions. It remains a phantom event with BO1 and traditional BO3 formats. The entry fee is the same if you’re paying in gems (600) but the price has scaled up to 4,000 in gold.
Rewards
BO1
# of Wins
Rewards
0
2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
1
500 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
2
1,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
3
2,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
4
3,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
5
4,000 gold + 1 uncommon + 2 rare ICRs
6
5,000 gold + 1 uncommon + 2 rare ICRs
7
6,000 gold + 1 uncommon + 2 rare ICRs
BO3
# of Wins
Rewards
0
2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
1
2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
2
4,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
3
6,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
The Cards in Chromatic Cube
With a total of 540 cards, the idea behind this particular Cube format is to be somewhere in between the Arena Cube and the Tinkerer’s Cube. In Arena Cube, the focus was on individually powerful cards thrown into your deck to increase the power level. Tinkerer’s Cube’s was aimed towards a more puzzle-like style of deckbuilding. The idea was to draft cards that worked with your other cards to build a deck that worked well.
Chromatic Cube has a lot of cards that are individually good in almost any deck, but the cards in the pool were also chosen to fit one of eleven archetypes. These were based on each of the ten color pairs plus 5-color “good stuff.” The idea is to have a variety of strategies to consider when building your deck while also including clear directions for players who may be unsure what direction to take their build in.
Following this logic, a lot of the archetypes are classic strategies for their color combo. Something to keep in mind is that aggressive decks that curve out in the early game will not work in this cube.
Archetypes
Here’s a list of all the color synergies to look out for when drafting MTGA’s Chromatic Cube:
This Cube draft format is also phantom, so nothing’s changed on that front. But what else is special about this new introduction to the Cube drafts in Arena?
This draft focuses on card interactions over raw power. Synergies and combos are the name of the game here, so massive cards that don’t really do anything for a team don’t really fit in. It’s all about the little guys that work together to make something really cool as a whole.
We’ve seen Tinkerer’s Cube draft pop up a few times now with the most recent event taking place September 3 through 16. It featured the same buy-in as usual with a 600 gems or 4,000 gold price tag and the option for BO1 or BO3 which featured the same win/loss record as ranked (7 / 3) and traditional draft (3 matches regardless of wins/losses) respectively.
Rewards
BO1
# of Wins
Rewards
0
2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
1
500 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
2
1,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
3
2,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
4
3,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
5
4,000 gold + 1 uncommon + 2 rare ICRs
6
5,000 gold + 1 uncommon + 2 rare ICRs
7
6,000 gold + 1 uncommon + 2 rare ICRs
BO3
# of Wins
Rewards
0
2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
1
2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
2
4,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
3
6,000 gold + 2 uncommon + 1 rare ICRs
Archetypes
The most recent Tinkerer’s Cube in the beginning of September saw some new additions from Jumpstart: Historic Horizons as well as a learn and lesson package from Strixhaven. A lot of the archetypes and themes featured in this cube had some overlap and definitely brushed elbows a bit. Wizards specifically mentioned that this was to “create a lot of interlocking pieces that can be put to a variety of interesting uses.”
They also said that you’d probably end up dabbling in more than one archetype to make a strong deck. There was a lot of emphasis on the key to victory, so do with that info what you will.
All that said, here are the themes and archetypes that shine the most in Tinkerer’s Cube:
It’s worth noting that the Cube events are “phantom.” This means that you don’t get to keep any of the cards that you pick. On the flip side, though, you’ll see more rares and mythic rares in the cube because of this and so you’ll be able to build a more kick-ass deck than you would in a normal draft.
You might be wondering if the Cube events are worth it. Well, if you’re looking for a different format to play and have fun in, then yes, I’d say it’s worth it. If you’re not particularly interested in Cube, though, and are just wondering if the entry fee is worth the rewards, then that’s another story.
Reddit has done the math for me—thankgod—so all I have to do is present you with their findings. And, with those findings, the answer to the “is it worth it?” question would be a resounding no. As the user who so helpfully put that nifty table together points out in their comment, the final value of the event depends on how much gold a gem is worth to you, which depends on what you do with your gems. But either way it doesn’t really pan out.
You don’t even really need all that fancy math to see that the event is not worth the entry fee, though, at least not in terms of rewards. I’d say it’s obvious that this event is meant to be for players to have fun with, rather than to offer enticing rewards if you can manage to max out your wins. That doesn’t mean this is the best way to go about something like that because 3,000 gold or 600 gems is a pretty hefty price to pay for a new format.
That’s all we’ve got for you today! Hopefully we were able to shed some light on this exciting addition to Arena’s event roster.
Cube is a great format, and certainly a breath of fresh air for MTGA. It’s fun, unique, and an awesome combination of limited and constructed. If you’ve never played, it may be worth a shot if you’ve got the gold or gems to spare.
Alternatively, if you’re into limited in general and draft like there’s no tomorrow, Arena Tutor could potentially be your best friend. Not familiar with my usual spiel? Perfect! Arena Tutor is our awesome tracker for MTGA drafting that can also help you with your picks thanks to our signature AI. Give it a try. Go on, don’t be shy. It won’t bite.
What are your thoughts on Cube? If you’ve played it, did you enjoy it? Let us know in the comments down there!
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Nikki is a writer and editor for Draftsim and a casual MTG player with a few years under her belt. She usually spends her time reorganizing her massive paper card collection or trying to make creative deck combos in MTG Arena.
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