How to Define Your Cube Goals

Identifying your specific kind of MTG cube focuses your design goals and allows you to more effectively communicate them. I lay out the major axes of design considerations, and I survey three popular cube taxonomies. We welcome special guest landofMordor, who is the originator of the latest of these: the Strix Scale!
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Decklists and Cards Cited:
List of cards discussed and shown in the video: bit.ly/35oqP81
Show contact:
Twitter: @CulticCube
Email: [e-mail]
Eleusis Cube: cubecobra.com/cube/list/culti...
Works Cited:
landofMordor's Strix Scale: / the_serra_scale_v2
shadowcentaur's Serra Scale: / what_is_your_cubes_ser...
Jason Waddell on archetype design: www.channelfireball.com/artic...
Cultic Cube on Signet design: • Do Signets Destroy Cubes?
Maro on deck size rules: magic.wizards.com/en/articles...
Fora for Cube Discussion:
MTG Cube Brainstorming Discord: / discord
MTG Cube Talk Discord: / discord
Riptide Lab: riptidelab.com/forum/
MTG Cube on Reddit: / mtgcube
MTG Salvation: www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...
Special Thanks:
Aeran
Afrosamurai
agamemaker
buildingadeck
cubedraft
cubefortwo
donethemath
Grimthorpe17
Gulaghar
landofMordor
LyonArtime
Metallix87
mlyons4
MoonShadow
MTGCubeCats
n1lzer0
noshadowkick
orclibrary
pixels
RocketSpace
RolyMac
SirFunchalot
Thomas Krone
Too_Much_Trevor
Usman Jamil
Wes_Mantooth
Zolthux

[@garagavia]

My favorite cube is called the Strictly Worse Cube. The goal is to have as low a power level as possible while still making all the cards have an impact on a game. 3 mana 2/2 is too strong in that environment, to give you a clue about what we're dealing with here. The drafts are really fun because everyone is laughing at the cards and trying to cobble together some pile of cards that does something. And the gameplay is very rich and deep. Drafting the cube is all about synergy. This kind of cube does not fit on these scales but it is quite amazing 🤩

[@guzelmadian]

as a new cube designer, this helps a lot. you’ve earn a subscriber from indonesia 👍 keep the contents rolling!

[@CulticCube]

I am delighted that you found the video useful! And it's truly awesome that KZbin affords us the opportunity to connect over vast distances. YT analytics show me breakdowns of viewership by country. After US viewers, the next largest group is from Germany. So tell all your friends about the channel; put Indonesia up there over Germany, lol! :)

[@lavarel]

@@CulticCube you've got yourself at least 2

[@Scienceboy0]

Great video! As a new cube creater, I love more generic videos like this one which go over more of the basics. Thinking about the power level of my cube is something I've been struggling to do correctly. The Serra and Strix scales presented here are definitely giving me a better idea of power balance. Watching your videos about specific things like the Titans and Signets are interesting, but videos that can be applied to all cubes like this one are so much more helpful to me.

[@CulticCube]

It's great to hear what sort of topics are most useful to you. Thank you for the kind words and the feedback!

[@redundancycheck]

Watches a video of yours for the first time. *sees the actual Eye of Sauron as a guest* Okay.

[@CulticCube]

For my next effort I'm summoning Nazgûl, lol! I was kind of cracking myself up with the scene that you reference. I thought the strix and the eye worked remarkably well together.

[@jacobwillson2545]

Great content as usual! What a fantastic opportunity to get all of this data

[@thecommandercube2236]

stumbled upon your content today and really enjoyed listening. Great job, subscribed

[@Chris-xr6jg]

Outstanding video. I'm a big fan of the Strix scale, but I believe a discussion in general about cube design goals is very important and, honestly, probably not recognized enough.

[@CulticCube]

I agree! This is a video that is probably most useful to newer designers, but of course there are many established designers who haven't heard of these tools before, so it's worth being aware of them, whether or not one adopts them.

[@drgnsenpai]

Great video!! Always grateful for your content! Keep them coming!!

[@CulticCube]

Thank you so much!

[@schonsospaet22]

outstanding arts and design in your video!

[@CulticCube]

Thank you! ❤️

[@grizzlymanverneteil4443]

My cube started with draft chaf too

[@paulr9562]

You're my hero!

[@CulticCube]

[@woodychelton5590]

heeey this is my old english professor hahahah

[@FelipeBudinich]

Sorry to say this, but the strix scale is jargon that is only useful for cube designers talking to other cube designers (and just a certain subset of cube designers). "Power Scales" are not indicative of actual gameplay, or what a cube is about (while you could say that actual P9 modify the gameplay, so saying that a cube is "unpowered" is a descriptor with descriptive qualities). It's way more useful to say what archetypes are you trying to support, list format restrictions and presence or lack of P9.

[@CulticCube]

I agree that the strix scale does not impart useful information to one's drafters. It can, though, provide a baseline for conversation among designers, as you say. Of course only a small subset of cube owners are aware of the scale, but then if they don't hear about it, then they can't be aware of it. People should certainly only adopt what seems useful to them -- my hope is that I make people aware of resources that they may not otherwise have known about. I may have given the wrong impression in this video, as I can totally see how one could understand me to have been arguing for applying labels such as those provided by strix to description of one's cube for all audiences. I should have been more clear that formalizing the parameters of one's cube is, I think, a useful exercise for oneself and for other curators. I apologize for not being more clear about that.

[@CulticCube]

Oh, also, I totally see what you are saying about the value of explaining the archetypes that one supports -- both to players as well as to colleagues when seeking input. This is particularly true when soliciting feedback about how to better support, you know, aristocrats or what have you. I think some metric of power is still useful, as it's not self-evident that someone who is powered, power max should be trying to support aristocrats at all.

[@C4rrEternal]

More of the video seemed to be focused on describing the Strix Scale than actually teaching what the title states. I can see how assigning a strix number to my theoretical cube could help me when I get defining the goals of my cube, but I still don't think I could actually be able to do that after just watching this video. You briefly discuss cube concepts early in the video (Set Cubes, Format Cubes, Budget Cubes, etc...), but you should have gone far more in-depth on that subject and what your cube actually wants to do, rather than spend more than half the video talking about power levels alone (as that seems to be only a fraction of the definition stage and entirely dependent on archetypes).

[@FelipeBudinich]

This is literally how I decided NOT to set my cube goals :)