Blast From the Past

I'm not talking about the Unhinged card, but instead Chain Lightning for a very good price - half off. Sure, it's beat to hell but as wtwlf123 quickly pointed out: "The missing corner on that Chain Lightning is awesome! You just know that card has killed its fair share of 3-toughness creatures in its day."

Indeed. And it will continue to nuke creatures for some time to come.

In not-quite-as-awesome-but-still-important news, I'm looking to add creatures with morph to my cube. Having more morphs ensures there is both less certainty about what morph a creature could be in a given deck as well as providing "colorless" creatures to help any deck that's a little light on them.

Gathan Raiders is a great card because of the colorless morph cost, so I'm anticipating that the original great take on a morph with colorless cost, Zombie Cutthroat, will find it's way into some surprising decks. Echo Tracer and Patron of the Wild are in-color effects or blue and green, respectively, that feed the subtheme of those colors similar to Skinthinner's inclusion in black.

White is where I struggle to find a reasonable morph. My personally leading candidate is Lumithread Field since it can either swing as a 2/2, or give me the +0/+1 half of Glorious Anthem for a very reasonable cost, morphing or not. This might seem pretty weak but against a deck with pingers it becomes highly relevant. Those pingers are really good.

Choices, choices.

Data Driven Dynamics

With the influx of new posters to MTGSalvation we've had quite a few new cubers start commenting, post their cubes, and provide links to new resources, like the deck analysis tool at magic-decks.de. There's both an English and German version, and either language options supports card names from both languages. It will fix minor card errors, list cards it did not recognize (i.e. you misspelled so horribly that it couldn't recognize it), and provide a graphical output of the color distribution, mana costs, and card types in the deck. It's very spiffy! While it won't replace my spreadsheet (and the quick and dirty analytics I have in it) it will provide a quick way for others to see the breakdown in a pretty and graphical way.

The current version of the PMC Analytics Online is available here but the link will change as the cube changes. It would be great to have a static link to overwrite with it isn't available.

I should be getting cards in a few days which will both increase the foil count significantly as well as provide me with five more cards to throw into the mix. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

More of the Same

Now that the cube feels fairly tight, plays well, and has accrued some use I can focus on finer points with more clarity than before. The first thing I've done is cut the allied color gold card count by one.

Cuts:
Vedalken Outlander, Etherium Abomination, Singe-Mind Ogre, Nacatl Outlander, Sigil of the Nayan Gods

These are all fair cut in terms of either lack of support (Sigil), redundancy (Outlanders), or inefficiency (Abomination and Ogre). This gave me room to add in more monocolored cards:

White: Cage of Hands - reusable removal is good, buffs control
Blue: Impulse - card filtering that should never have been cut to begin with
Black: Tortured Existence - recycling creatures is always good
Red: Martyr of Ashes - pseudo board sweeper in a cube that needs board sweepers
Green: Phantom Tiger - hard to kill critter

I've also tightened and adjusted in other ways:

Red-Green:
Rip-Clan Crasher, Exploding Borders - OUT
Deadshot Minotaur, Branching Bolt - IN

Switching up to include more cards that can generate a two-for-one card advantage, especially against fliers in the two colors lacking them.

Blue:
Confound - OUT
Arcane Denial - IN

There was a great discussion about Arcane Denial and, realizing that it is a common, decided to give it a try. We'll see if giving your opponent "Draw two cards." isn't as bas as it seems at first glance.

I'm looking forward to Zendikar for more opportunities to expand high quality cards into the cube. There's a white card that was revealed at GenCon that looks to be an auto-include for most cubes. I won't spoiler it here but you can read up on all of the previewed and spoiled Zendikar cards that may be cube-worthy in the 'Zendikar Cube Discussion' thread here.

Outside of the new fall release, there are other cards that feel like a great fit:

White: Soltari Visionary - evasive beater that is a Demystify on a stick
Blue: Carnivorous Death-Parrot - a 2/2 flying for two without a "drawback"
Black: Gravedigger - mmmm... brains (and card advantage) are good
Red: Vithian Stinger - pingers are really good in this cube
Green: Nantuko Vigilante - morph + Naturalize effect is good

I'm also going to retool each of the multicolor sections, individually, looking to improve overall quality to maintain as high counts as possible. It just wouldn't be the PMC without the 'M'!

The beast! It grows! THE HORROR!

I've been pouring over other cube lists, specifically pauper cube lists, and working through feedback on the cubes after the massive changes hit.

The Good:
Draft, sealed, and multiplayer play is so much better than before that I'm extremely disappointed that I didn't understand the depth of Klug's "Cut the junk." advice sooner.

The Bad:
Control is a weak archetype and something that will take more work to push to the forefront. While I'm not looking for Control_Cube.dec to necessarily be the best archetype, having a deck that plays counters, pings your dudes, and generally buries you in card advantage seems like a respectable deck type I want to see.

Here are the latest changes:

RED:
Out: Fire Imp for not being a common
In: Fire Ambush for being awesome

GREEN:
Out: Wild Elephant for players not being too wild about it
In: Elephant Ambush for being surprisingly good

Cube Expansion:

White: Plover Knights - control and aggro friendly white beef with evasion
Blue: Brainstorm - stupid good
Black: Shade's Form - black card advantage and/or insurance policy
Red: Vulshok Sorcerer - pingers are awesome
Green: Giant Dustwasp - green evasion, fair size

If you've missed out on the discussion so far, head on over to the Cube Forum at MTGSalvation and check out the PMC v2.0 Thread!

Version 2.0 Release

I've finally finished updating and cross-referencing every change I've made in overhauling the cube! You can see the updated list, as well as the breakdown of the recent changes, at the official PMC thread at MTGSalvation.

Ramosian Sergeant, Ramosian Lieutenant, Defender of Law OUT.
Soltari Foot Soldier, Soltari Lancer, Order of Leitbur IN.

By taking out the two searching Rebels that really don't stand alone (leaving the two more aggressive or evasive searching Rebels) I made room for more Shadow evasion. Leitbur feels more relevant (and useful later in the game) than the Defender.

Wei Scout, Fledgling Djinn, Expunge OUT.
Prickly Boggart, Foul Imp, Skinthinner IN.

Boggart and Imp are upgrades to Scout and Djinn respectively. I thought long and hard about what to cut for Skinthinner. Leaving behind the more flexible removal makes more sense than a Dark Banishing with cycling tacked on: when would I ever cycle this? Skinthinner is either a 2/1 two drop or a great morph flip, both serving some of the purpose that Expunge served while giving aggro a boost too. Feels okay but there may have been something I missed.

Temple Acolyte, Undo, Cuombajj Witches, Sparksmith, River Boa IN.

These bring my total cube to 360 (perfect for an 8-man draft) as well as boosts the number of picks that a control deck would want. Acolyte is an improved Bottle Gnomes, Undo is a great tempo card, Witches are a pinger in black, Sparksmith is looking to combo with Dragon Fodder/Empty the Warrens, and the Boa is just a great creature.

I think that covered this round of changes!

Getting the Job Done

After culling a hefty stack of cards from the cube (70 cards to be exact!) and working through some of the mana curves the colors present I've been upgrading and pimping everything I can. White, blue, and black have all been updated heavily with more changes coming but not nearly as dramatic as has already been done. You can see the updated cube for these colors and it becomes apparent that this cube is getting significantly tighter.

Thursday I had the pleasure of drafting with three very sharp Magic players, one of which was Klug himself. I forced a black/red aggro-burn deck that had both the red bounce spells (Stingscourger and the Gone side of Dead//Gone), plenty of burn, and a bevy of removal (like the incredible Ashes to Ashes). While I was a little on the lighter side for creatures I was able to nuke opposing critters and swing with the few that consistently dropped. Klug, however, drafted a sick green/white aggro deck backed up by a strong curve of green-white critters and Shield of the Oversoul. He also splashed for just Fireball - wow. While my deck had the bounce and exile power to deal with the shield I never saw any of it.

Some burn and a few creatures just don't hold the fort against a pure curve of aggro beatdown.

I'll try to grab decklists next-time. The feeling we came away with was that control, via traditional blue/black or blue/white pairing, just wasn't tenable. Blue/red counterburn might have been stronger if all the burn I had been grabbing had instead flowed a little better. The other deck also used blue but it was very underwhelming. I think blue may need the most work of all the colors: aggro feels like the best way to go, and aggro in blue is the pits. As Klug puts it "It seems like drafting the best aggro is the way to go. I don't know if control can really work with so many creatures around."

I've got the challenge laid down. For perspective on how I'm looking at blue I've taken out card filtering and replaced it with more creatures and distruption. The idea I'm working towards is that blue, paired with whatever color you want to match up, would weather the first wave of aggression, disrupting and countering spells, then push back with raw card draw and evasive creatures. With red or black the deck would gain removal and with white or green the deck would gain sifficiently strong creatures to reinforce and attack with.

We'll see how the next round goes.

Grinder

I have made a broad sweep of changes which will take quite some time to completely document (and there are a few straggler cards I'll need to order... I can't wait for this to stop). Some cards, like Chain Lightning, just aren't "in the cards" for me right now. Other cards, like Soltari Visionary, are obtuse and not that easy to track down for the few cents it's actually worth.

I will be making a listing of cards that are needed for the cube to scrounge up anything my friends have. Something of note: my friend is going to give me a Limited Edition Alpha Prodigal Sorcerer. Talk about some non-foil pimp!

I've got some other ideas in the works; we'll see how long Klug is staying stateside so I can squeeze an alter for the cube out of him.

Push it to the Limit

While I was making M10 changes I was encouraged to follow through farther: there is a lot that can be done to improve the cube. After some more consideration I'm finalizing the following:

• Stripping out even more multicolor and hybrid waste.
• Pushing the colors to perform to their fullest strengths:

1. White will be the pure weenie color, with a Rebel chain, creatures with shadow, and creatures with flying.
2. Blue will have a full array of pingers, more tempo and board disruption, and more counterspells.
3. Black will have the most creature removal, some efficient and evasive weenies, and graveyard effects.
4. Red was already pretty tight, but swapping in better creatures and available burn will finish the color up.
5. Green will have pure acceleration and land fetching, efficient fatties, and some pump effects.
6. Multicolor will be focused on "best of what is there" cards to encourage two color decks.
7. Artifacts will be the best color fixing, acceleration, and equipment available.
8. Lands will be the best color fixing as well as the cycles of cycling lands.

• Properly tuning the mana curves of colors where possible.

I'm looking forward to "finishing" the cube before Zendikar comes out this fall. This last push will really help this cube appeal better to my local players. I'll miss Klug's cube while he's doing the Korea thing and this cube can perhaps bridge the gap his awesome common/uncommon cube will leave behind.

M10 Prerelease; Cubing Continues

I've made a few updates to the PMC (which you can read about here) and M10 promises to bring quite a few new commons to work with. Here's a quick look at what I'm considering:

Blinding Mage is yet another tapper for White. Any Blue/White control deck would love to get a tapper or two and being able to run yet another seems good.

Safe Passage looks to be weak at a glance but I'm struggling to find something solid in White that can get a slow control deck to flip a game on its head. A one-sided Holy Day feels like it wouldn't the all bad, but I don't think there's anything it's directly superior to in the cube now. Dawn Charm is similar but functions as a counter or saving grace for a critter, flexibility that's relevant more often than Safe Passage.

Ice Cage is a two mana Arrest in a color that lacks real removal. While it won't hold for long it can shut down something long enough for an answer to appear or a game to be won. It feels decent but I'm not sure what this would replace.

Child of Night isn't an evasive creature, but lifelink is not an ability to joke about. This is cheap enough to fall right into an aggressive black focused deck's curve and strong enough to be worth something later on.

Doom Blade is very similar to Terror but in trading away the anti-regeneration clause for being able to smoke artifact creatures makes this feel better than Terror. With very little in terms of regeration abilities in the cube I suspect that Doom Blade will outperform Terror in many cases. Does it replace Terror? Hell no. But it does up the "two mana cost removal" count by one which is very nice.

Sign in Blood is the common improvement on Night's Whisper that can also win a game by killing your opponent. Drawing cards or dropping an unexpected Shock on an opponent? Count me in.

Deadly Recluse is the sign of deathtouch becoming the way Green is given removal. From my experience in the prerelease today (which I played two Green heavy decks in my drafts) this guy is both annoying and useful. While his toughness nearly ensures that he dies to nearly anything he blocks it's big enough to avoid pingers and the deathtouch keeps him able to trade with virtually any creature your opponent has around.

Thursday promises to be great as Klug, creator of one of the first commons/uncommons cubes as well as all round great Magic player, is going to give some input and help feel out more of the cube. I have a feeling I know a few things he'll point out but it's the alternatives and reasoning that will ultimately be better than the swaps that will invariably result. Stay tuned for the update!

Hammer Dropping

I've made some great changes to the cube over the past few days and I should be able to schedule some testing and full scale drafting.

Until I finalize detailing my changes, check out this new article at MTGSalvation about making a cube. Dr. Tom is the shit.


P.S.
Happy Birthday America.
(Sorry I forgot to post in time for you, Canada. I'll try for next year.)

Thankfully, there's the internet.

Thanks to Usman over at MTGSalvation I have received recommendations across the board for the cube.

There's quite a few awesome cards I'd never seen before or even knew could be a common (False Demise... as close to common Control Magic as there is!) and it's going to take some time to cross reference all of the recommendations with the cards I've found in the gatherer (creatures that the cube desperately needs to support aggro) to really make the next push in changes.

What I truly need is a team of players to test with and work through where the finer sticky points are: there is only so much I can do myself with theorycrafting and online posts.

Any volunteers?

Spring Cleaning

While the namesake card is not in the cube, I did make some fairly dramatic changes to the cube to move it in the right direction. Here's the take-away style summary:

1. More chicks, less tricks. By upping the creature count the cube feels more smooth and natural in terms of Limited play.
2. Better tricks and tricks on sticks. By keeping the best tricks and swapping in creatures that have a trick stapled onto it play is stronger and more efficient both more like a cube should be.
3. Domain in twain. By scaling back the inclusion of domain mechanic cards, I made room to more general efficiency and creatures. However, domain should still have enough presence to be a great subtheme.
   
4. Slivers in 'da house. Slivers are included and should help promote a minor tribal subtheme.
5. Colored shift. By cutting out some lands and artifacts and upping the monocolor count the cube feels more similar to a traditional cube than before (and this is a good thing).

However, some questions still concern me and they won't be answers without more testing:

1. Is there still too much mana fixing? If so, where is the weakest fixing? Did I miss something better?
2. Are there enough creatures now? If not, what spells can be shifted into a creatures (a la Tin Street Hooligan)? What spells can be outright cut for creatures?
3. Do shard-based archetypes bear fruit? If there enough depth in monocolor cards and allied cards to make a two color deck (or if I've really screwed up a monocolor deck!) viable or better than the three-or-more color possibilities?
4. Are domain and sliver compatible or competing subthemes? What can be some to bring synergy between archetypes and themes traditionally present in one or two colors to be meaningfully integrated for three-or-more color decks?
5. What the hell did I screw up and overlook?

I'm looking forward to any feedback; you can find the thread that details the breakdown of the cube by color and creature/noncreature, with links by card, at the PMC thread on MTGSalvation.

All the Glitters is not Gold...

...except in my cube now. I recently placed and order through some of my favorite Magic online retails or basically foiled out almost all of my gold, hybrid, artifact, and land cards. With my so-call "focus on multicolor" I really wanted it to stand out in sharp contrast to all of the monocolored cards I've added recently.

"Cards I've added?" you ask? Some slivers, as promised, and some significant upgrades across all the colors. I will be making a sweeping update to my list of cards, as well as finishing a spreadsheet detailing the breakdown by color, type, and print version (i.e. set, foil, FNM, or other information pertinent) to post for anyone who cares.

"[W]ho cares" is a phrase that leads me to ask something of anyone reading this: if you're into Magic and want to see more information please add yourself as a follower for this blog. I'm going to list some pretty convincing reasons now:

1. I'm an average guy doing something that isn't quite as average as you think. Also, I'm just as bad at Magic as you.
2. This is just the beginning of the story; there will be significantly deeper analysis of cards along with commentary, feedback, and support from players who can actually play this game.
3. Magic 2010 is bringing a shitload of rules changes to Magic. This actually isn't a reason to follow me but it's worth stating it if, by some miraculous failure, you're hearing it from me first.
4. This stuff is downright fun, and not just a "Oh, cool." kind of fun: this fun is the kind that makes you think "Huh. I never would have tried that." and "Holy shit. That's a common!" It's an addictive process of evaluation and trial (and lots of errors on my part) and you need to experience it, even if it's just vicariously through my posts.

Well, there you have it: four great reasons to follow me. I will throw a secret fifth reason out there for those of you who really, really read this: I will give you a fun card just for being one of the first three followers. Follow me and I'll pass along something special; details to follow in an email (because you have to follow me first)!

Fixing, Tricks, and Domain

I had a chance to make some pretty comprehensive changes to the cube, though I haven't finalized the changes completely. Even after cutting some multicolor fat, less-than-stellar artifacts, some mana fixing, and some inferior lands the cube still felt clunky.

More specifically, there is still a little too much mana fixing and too few creatures. While I love things like Seal of Cleansing and Smash, the fact is these effects can be better served by having these effects (or at least similar ones) attached to a creatures (see Ronom Unicorn, Tin Street Hooligan, et al.). The obelisk cycle from Shards of Alara is fair for mana fixing, but when the cube is already saturated with effective, more efficient alternatives there is little reason to keep these slower, clunkier sources of fixing in. In all I expect to trim 10-15 cards more then swap in as many creatures that have relvant effects attached.

In other examinations, I'm looking hard at domain cards. While they are a house playing Stack, they are, generally speaking, only powerful when paired with a domain focused deck. That is to say that either these cards will be skipped frequently or will force players to draft domain. I'm not a fan of either, but nothing sayd "Play a ton of colors!" better than a five-color focus. I was frustrated for awhile until I realized that I was wrong; there is one mechanic that demands as many colors as possible: slivers. There are two upsides to switching slivers into the cube for the domain mechanic:

1. Slivers are creatures. There are a lot more slivers than creatures with domain (and by "a lot" I mean "a shitload more") and creatures are something my cube needs.
2. Slivers are fun. There have been plenty of attempts to make competetive sliver decks but, ultimately, slivers were more dominant in Limited environments. In the ultimate Limited environment of a cube, and one that is pushing multicolor as a theme as well, slivers look to be both a draft strategy and color-pushing theme players actually enjoy.

I've got a long way to go and this journey starts a few cards at a time. Once I've made a second round of changes I'll update my lists and test even more.

"We need Megazord power now!"

Aside from cliched cultural references to mid-nineties kids shows, I have been working assiduously on improvements to the PMC. There are two things that are greatly improving what I'm working with:

1. My local Magic scene is populated with players who are, thankfully, much better than me. These players offer (for free, even!) insight and advice for me to work through. They aren't calling the shots, but being issued a blunt challenge to improve the power, interactivity, and cohesion of the cube is both expected and exciting.
2. I opened a box of Urza's Saga and Urza's Legacy. While those of you without an addictive habit will be scratching your heads going "Why?" I gleefully committed more money than I should have on old cards that are, generally speaking, irrelevant to most formats. I did pick up a few beauties (Gaea's Cradle, two Grim Monolith and two Goblin Welder, and foils of Sick and Tired, Swat, and Unearth, and other miscellaneous stuff) but, more importantly, I shored up access to a wide selection of phenomenal cards.

With some tweaks, additional cuts, and ordering a few cards I don't have I feel confident that the next iteration of the cube will be significantly tightened and appreciably increased in power level.

On Fatties and Tricks

I've been reviewing the availability of fatties (using the polished release of the new Gatherer at the Wizards of the Coast website) at the common level and I must say that, well, there isn't a lot of "true fat" in anything other than green and multicolor (generally requiring green mana anyway, making the multicolor either already included or a moot point). I consider "true fat" to be at the 5/5 level or above and general fat to be creatures at least 3/2 and larger.

While there are a few interesting options I have struggled to properly identify which of these options makes the most sense. Do I go with some hybrid creatures that have a landwalk ability tacked on, or do I go a more traditional route to grab evasive beaters and large dudes with a drawback? With trying to keep the monocolor choices so tight the hybrid seem like a fair compromise, but there is real fat available in monocolor picks. I was considering cutting hybrid already; would swapping in these slightly evasive beaters be enough?

The problem is two fold: green has a fair monopoly on the fat already in the cube (not counting the queued up Scaled Wurm that I have set aside) and black (with an exception of a card or two in white) has the monopoly on cards that can outright kill big, dumb fatties. A few cards that should be added, like Radiant's Judgment or Pendrell Flux, will help alleviate some of the issue but having general access to fatties across all colors, though not necessarily equally, is important as well.

More thought, and some better player's opinions, will be required to effectively sort this out.

Initial Testing; Initial Reponse

I was able to snake getting a four-man draft off this weekend and it was to mixed, but positive, results.

Mana fixing is plenty and decent which yielded decks that were all running at least three colors, one with a fourth as a splash, and having access to all five colors was easy (at least for the deck that dropped a 5/5 Skyreach Manta all the time). The downsides were that it felt a little "trick heavy" and light on creatures, two interrelated problems that will be corrected as adjustments are made.

Ultimately, as I make additional changes (like some sexy additions I mention in the forum thread over at MTGSalvation) and cuts (most likely starting with some more hybrid cards and touching on artifacts again) this will be tightened up and become significantly more fun: fun being the one other things that everyone agreed this was.

The Cube is Online!

The initial draft of the cube is now posted at MTGSalvation, in this forum thread.

Additional updates to come next week as I work to generate an Excel file which will detail so much more information. Any comments, questions, and suggestions are more then welcome!

Revised Totals: The PMC is Assembled for Testing

In my quest to include as much multicolor goodness in the cube, a little too much got in. After looking over some of my initial selections I found 5 gold and 5 hybrid cards that were very suspect inclusions and, along with a few artifacts and lands, I was able to cut back before finalizing the monocolor choices. Here is the general breakdown of the cube:

• 100 Gold
• 40 Hybrid
• 64 Artifact
• 41 Land
• 35 Each Color

This yields a final cube total of 420. While I don't have a stoner joke for you (though I wish I did) I will say that the cube needs some serious play testing in changes. Each color takes it's core element to a hard extreme:

• White has a lot of creatures that either tap other creatures or are very efficient in combat (first strike, flying, vigilence, protection, etc)
• Blue has a lot of card draw, bounce, and counter spells (most of which are cantrips in of themselves)
• Black has a lot of removal and graveyard recursion effects
• Red has a lot of burn and artifact destruction
• Green has land fetching spells and several "big, dumb creatures"

What worries me is that in order to prevent temptation to run an effectively monocolor deck with a small splash on the side I pushed the monocolor concepts too far and haven't included enough creatures overall. That said, protection is a very strong keyword that White has a lot of, Blue looks like it will be drawing and extra card every turn or so, Black doesn't have any significant creatures but an alarming selection of removal (at least 10 or so out of 35 cards) and Red has a similar situation with burn (again, around 10 or so), and Green really has the biggest creatures by far.

Will these concepts work well together? Will the abundance of removal and burn encourage more splashes of Red and Black or allow an absurd Black/Red deck with an overabundance of spells that punish their opponent's creatures? Is protection, despite being included for every color atleast through the two cycles from Invasion and Conflux, too much to handle? Are big, dumb creatures too much for Blue, Red, or White to handle properly?

I'll have a link to the cube posted next as well as a spreadsheet documenting every card and providing some concise breakdowns.

Preliminary Totals

105 Gold Cards
45 Hybrid Cards
67 Artifacts
43 Lands

The non-monocolor total is 260. Clearly, this presents a problem since I was originally looking at a total of 40 for each color, yielding 200 monocolored cards which in turn would create a cube of 460 cards. While 460 isn't a bad number to get to, it is significantly more than my target of 400 cards. This leaves me with only a few options:

• Cut the monocolored target down from 40 to 30
• Cut some of the cards currently pulled from non-monocolored selections
• Buy more sleeves for my cube

While just sleeving up for cards may be the easiest that fact that I'm overbooked in multicolor and hybrid cards leads me to believe I can cut from the 150 I have, as well as cut some from the artifact and lands totals.

I'll take a look at some of the more questionable selections and come back fresh at this later.

Multicolor Playables

I finished weeding through all of the multicolor commons Magic has to offer and found a disheartening fact slam home: Red and Blue, the color pair, has the worst selection of cards available and many don't really register on the scale of playable cards. While older cards, like Quicksilver Dagger and Razorfin Hunter, make excellent picks, newer cards simply don't fall into greatness. And off-color abilities, like the kicker on Jilt and activated ability on Torch Drake, make up for some of this shortfall of useful Red and Blue interaction they don't replace a multicolor color by any stretch.

Hybrid Red/Blue doesn't look very promising either.

However, there is an abundance of great gold cards in Green and Black, and Black and White. It was very strange to look at cards and see that I couldn't fit them all in without putting into the cube some truly terrible picks.

All said, I squeezed off a multicolor card total of 105. If I can fill in 15 or 20 hybrid cards I feel confident that I'll have adequate color variety.

The Pauper Multicolor Cube Challenge

Welcome to the PMC Challenge, soon to be serving the greater Washington D.C. Metro Area. A brief introduction would be in order here:

I'm a mostly unsuccessful Magic: The Gathering player with a penchant for creating self-defeating deck concepts. I've tried my hand (read: experienced directly) at tournament, Limited , casual, and multiplayer formats. I've created far too many decks that were completely forgettable. Currently, I focus my efforts at writing about Magic as well as learning more about the finer workings of game as a whole.

Here is where this blog comes into play. After experiencing two great cubes I decided to work at creating one myself. While the astute (and spiteful) would be quick to quip "You're not qualified to create a cube if you aren't successful at Magic now." I must impress upon you that the process of creating a cube invariably involves the input and play testing of various players; the better the players the better the cube becomes.

I've noticed that "Powered/Unpowered Cubes" are far and away the most popular. This is perfectly sensible since so few of us have experienced the entire breadth of Magic's history and powerful cards. Themed cubes, like Tribal, "Peasant" (restricted to commons and uncommons), and "French" (pure democratic voting on cube changes, leading to surges/collapses in the power of certain strategies) make up the bulk of what else is out there. Two concepts jump at me when I create decks: Pauper (decks created strictly from all common cards) and multicolor (as well as it's bastard step-cousin Hybrid). Naturally, after seeing and experiencing the fun of cubes it crossed my mind to create on myself using these two pet concepts.

The Pauper Multicolor Cube Challenge was born in February 2009.

While the release of Conflux may have kicked my brain into motion I realized very quickly that my dream was a false hope. There wasn't enough true multicolor depth to warrant it as the central focus of a cube. Invasion, Ravnica, Shadowmoor, and Alara blocks give a lot of tools but it wasn't until Alara Reborn was released that the power, range, and availability of gold cards reached what I felt was a critical mass.

It would be pretty easy, and lame, to just grab every gold common, matching commons from the aforementioned blocks, a few other artifacts and lands, and roll them up into a cube. I stopped myself from doing this and began to sift through some data from other cubes. The local "commons/uncommons" cube provided great insight into commons that work at a greater power level than one would anticipate. Pure, unadulterated Limited play should be the primary tuning goal for a pauper cube; without broken rares and the support of broken and more effective uncommons, commons naturally lend themselves for Limited (the environment they see the most and are designed for) and it was something I wanted to get better at. I can't afford multiple drafts per week, but if my obsession for keeping play sets of cards could supplement this instead I would be just as pleased.

While multicolor is an obvious theme many people can easily get on board with, the pauper aspect is the obvious question mark. Commons are generally cheaper then uncommons and rares (even for straight up foil pimp commons) and I have bucket loads of them. Scraping up the 400+ commons needed for a cube would be both possible and practical from my time and wallet's points of view.

So where do I go from here? Right now, I'm pulling together everything I can (in a list in no particular order):

• Card box and sleeves for upwards of 500 cards
• Foil versions of cards that are going into the initial build (that I own or can trade for)
• Developing my version of a "Design Handoff Document" outlining the cube in a neat package
  
• A test crew to work through a draft or two, providing feedback and criticism

I have the card box and sleeves. I have most of my foils (a platry amount) pulled and sleeved already. I have the document in a rough draft to be finalized as the cube is assembled and tested. And once the cube is assembled, I just need to get a test crew to try it out.

But first, and foremost, I need to assmble the cube. Once done, this all becomes much more interesting.