Conquering The Commander Cube
Doubling Cube by Mark Tedin
Greetings, Commander players! I am excited to discuss something new this week: the Commander Cube! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Commander Cubes, they're a unique form of Limited where players draft cards from packs constructed by the Cube owner. This distinguishes Commander Cubes from most other forms of Limited, which see players opening official MTG product and constructing decks exclusively from the product. In Commander Cubes, players are drafting cards from a curated pool chosen by the Cube designer. Anybody can put together a Commander Cube, and there are even starter Cubes available through online shops such as Card Kingdom. In this article, I would like to offer some design considerations and items to keep in mind when putting together a Cube.
This article is meant to act as an introduction to the art of designing Commander Cubes, and if there is demand, I am open to turning this into an ongoing series, so be sure to let us know if that is something you would like to see by either upvoting this article on Reddit or writing to the Commander's Herald.
What is a Commander Cube?
As the name suggests, a Commander Cube sees players drafting cards from curated packs put together by the Cube owner to construct Commander decks to play with. The rules of Commander Cubes will vary (something we will talk more about in a moment), but most of the fundamental Commander rules will still apply. You cannot have more than one copy of a card in your deck (except for basic lands), you will have a commander that determines the color identity of your deck, and your deck will have to have an exact number of cards--though many Commander Cubes opt for having fewer than 100 cards for the sake of time and resources.
Usually, both commanders and the rest of the cards in the deck are drafted, and one of the key design decisions that you will have to make is if commanders are drafted separately from the rest of the deck, or if commander cards are included within the larger card pool. I prefer to have a separate commander draft before the rest of the draft, as it helps players in making decisions about what cards to select throughout the rest of the draft.
With that introduction out of the way, I would like to dive into the important design considerations in creating Commander Cubes while also providing advice based on my own experience to help Cube designers both old and new in making the most fun and engaging Commander Cubes around.
In this article, I am providing five design keys to consider in designing your Cube. These keys are essential in conceptualizing your Cube.
The Keys to Designing a Commander Cube
1.) You are the game designer
Being a game designer myself, Commander Cubes have always appealed to me, as creating them is an exercise in game design. If that statement surprises you, consider the question of what game design is. As the famous game designer and author of The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell, notes, game design is the art of engendering a certain kind of experience in an audience. A game designer makes a series of decisions about what the game experience will entail in order to create the experience that they envision. The idea of games as an experience conduit is particularly relevant when we think about Commander Cubes, as the cards that we choose to include in the Cube will be pivotal in determining the kinds of experiences that players of our Cubes have. The same will be true of the rules that we choose to adopt for our Cubes.
I include this key and list it first in order to help Cube designers approach Cube creation with the right mindset, one that will help them create Cubes that are fun and interesting for players and that will lead to unique and memorable moments. One of the first things that game designers are usually taught in school is to consider their audience; specifically, consider what kind of experience they want players to have, and use that to drive the design of their game. You should do the same thing with your Cube: consider who will primarily be playing your Cube, whether it be seasoned MTG veterans, new players, or a group that sits somewhere in between, and design a card pool that will be interesting and exciting to the group. For instance, when I design for newer players, I tend to put bigger and splashier cards in the Cube, as games tend to go on for longer and newer players tend to be Spikier in their playstyle. On the flip side, more seasoned players may want to see what kinds of strange and novel card synergies and combos they can create from the pool of cards.
You'll also want to think more broadly about what it is that makes Limited as a format fun for players. One could easily write a whole column about what makes Limited interesting, but if I had to distill the appeal of the format down into one sentence, I would say that it's the uncertainty and unpredictability of drafting from a pool of cards that one is not familiar with and knowing that each play experience will be very unique. Contrast that with Constructed formats, where--especially at the competitive level--matches can start to feel incredibly repetitive and trite over time. That isn't to knock Constructed formats, as they certainly have their own unique appeal (particularly their high emphasis on skill and deckbuilding strategy), it's just to establish that Limited as a format emphasizes novelty and uncertainty and we should lean into that dynamic as Cube designers.
2.) Choosing a size
One of the first design decisions that you will need to make is what size Cube you want to create. There is no hard and fast rule for how big a Commander Cube must be, but some considerations you will want to make are:
How many people will typically be drafting from the Cube? 4? 8? 12?
What size decks do you want players to build? I've seen Cubes that build decks as small as 40 cards and as large as the standard 100 cards; just keep in mind that more cards means longer draft times and larger Cubes.
What is your budget for the Cube? And related to that, are you building from an existing card pool or will you be buying all of the cards for the Cube? While you can build a large Cube on a budget, generally speaking, a larger Cube is going to mean a larger budget.
Per the Command Zone, the general Cube sizes are as listed below:
- Small Cube = 360 cards
- Medium Cube = 540 cards
- Large Cube = 720 cards
- X-Large Cube = 900+ cards
3.) Balancing (power level, colors, and archetypes)
Balancing is a topic that warrants an entire article all to itself, but in this article, I would like to make note of the different kinds of balancing that Cube design entails and provide some general tips for balancing your Cube.
Power Level
One of the first considerations that you'll want to make is what power level you want your Cube to be. If you want a higher-powered Cube, you'll want to obviously include high-powered commanders, but you'll also want cards that synergize with those commanders and provide for explosive combos. I recommend checking both EDHREC and mtgtop8 to see who the most popular commanders are, and see which cards are played at the competitive level. Use those cards to fill your card pool. If you want a lower-powered Cube, you'll want to include commanders that aren't as high-powered, particularly commanders that are easy to break and exploit for infinite combos and other power plays. I am currently building a lower-to-mid-powered Commander Cube, and one thing that I've opted to do is avoid putting any of EDHREC's top 100 commanders in the Cube, both because I want to offer a fresh gameplay experience for my players by giving them commanders that they might not typically play and because, for the most part, they tend to be less powerful that many of the most-played commanders. You'll also want to avoid infinite combo pieces such as Peregrine Drake and Staff of Domination, particularly ones that go infinite with only one other card.
Colors
One of the hardest things to balance in a Commander Cube is color identity. Making Limited as a format work for Commander is uniquely challenging, as decks can only contain cards with a color identity that matches the deck's commander. In a draft format, this can prove particularly challenging, as players aren't always guaranteed to draft a critical mass of cards in any one particular color. Even if you evenly distribute cards of each color in packs, players could end up competing for cards of the same color, which will leave some--if not all--of the players shorthanded at the end of the draft. For that reason, I recommend only putting commanders of at least three different colors in the Cube. If players have at least three colors that they can use in their deck, it's much more likely that they will also have viable card options during the draft.
Another way to avoid the card drought issue is to simply draft a larger number of cards, which is what I prefer to do with my Cube; that way, players are less likely to feel like they are putting together a piecemeal deck at the end of a less than optimal draft. You'll see that all of the commanders included in the recommended commander list have a three-color identity, as I find that to be the sweet spot for Commander Cubes. I don't like five-colored commanders in Cubes, as it makes it too easy for players to simply resort to a good stuff strategy, where they simply take all of the cards they think are best in each card pack without considering strategy or deck synergy. You should also try to balance the color distribution as well so that players aren't all vying for the same colors in a given draft.
Another option is to change the rules of your Cube or offer Regalia that change the color identities of your commanders, as Brandon Sanderson does for his Cube (more info in the "Customizing Your Cube" section).
Archetypes
When it comes to gameplay archetypes, it's generally best to stick to broad or well-supported archetypes when it comes to choosing archetype support cards for your Cube. For instance, it will be unlikely that players will draft enough cards to make a viable mill deck, but there are hundreds of graveyard-focused cards from across MTG's history that you can include in your Cube. There are also many more commanders that care about graveyards than mill, so it's easier to create synergistic card pools for graveyard commanders.
My recommendation is to stick to heavily entrenched and broad strategies, such as counters (particularly +1/+1), graveyard recursion, artifacts, stompy and heavy aggression, etc. That way it's easier for players to make the cards they draft fit their commander's strategy.
4.) Deciding the rules of your Cube
When it comes to the rules of your Cube, like everything else, you'll want to think about what will be most conducive to a fun play experience. I've found that drafting commanders first tends to lead to funner drafts, as it allows players to be more strategic in their card selection during the draft. I also recommend letting players draft multiple commanders, from which they can choose one as the draft goes along and they draft cards.
For my Cube, I like to let players draft four commanders and then draft cards to see what kind of deck they can best build to fit one of those commanders. Drafting two commanders can work well too.
Other rules to consider are whether card trading is allowed at the end of the draft, whether the decks must have an exact number of cards as they do in traditional Commander, and whether you want to offer players any "freebies," or cards that are offered automatically to players. In my Cubes, I like to offer [elSol Ring[/el], Arcane Signet, and Mind Stone as freebies.
5.) Customizing your Cube
Finally, there is the option to customize your Cube by adding unique rules or mechanics to your Cube. As noted before, famous fantasy author Brandon Sanderson actually includes custom-made cards that he calls "Regalia" in his Cube's packs. These Regalia change the rules of the game in fun and interesting ways. For instance, there's one that allows the player to add an extra color of their choosing to their commander's color identity. Another lets players declare a certain number of creatures in their deck as a particular creature type.
If you want to see this mechanic in action, I highly recommend you watch the episode of Game Knights where the Knights play Brandon's Cube.
While customizing your Cube isn't required, it's something to consider, particularly if you want to distinguish your Cube!
Final Thoughts
Hopefully this article has provided you with some useful tidbits to help you get started with designing a Commander Cube. Like regular deckbuilding, Commander Cube design is very much an iterative process, so be ready to playtest your Cube and make changes as needed. I like to see Commander Cubes as perpetually changing, as players are always finding new cards to include in their Cube. That is ultimately a good thing, for it will help to assure that each play experience is unique.
