The Cube Skeleton - The easiest way to build a cube!! - #88

In this episode of Powerful Nothing, Dan & James discuss the cube skeleton, a cube base that anyone can use to make a cube. If your looking to build a cube, and don't know where to start, this is a great tool to get an awesome and functioning cube super easily.

Cube Skeleton: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTNgHUAiBCFL1WhRzZ3CG7N0M34OKjDclbZVdD2PYkLBvnCTSJqEbo3oTQuJk9M_Lu012wive0l4HQ9/pub?output=pdf

Timecodes:
0:51 - What is a cube skeleton?
4:26 - Why use a cube skeleton?
10:49 - Downsides of using a skeleton
20:43 - Looking at the skeleton
45:17 - Reasons to break the skeleton

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/krA7Ufpoo0idUUajIkeMag

Video Version: https://youtu.be/92aS4ZU_nd8

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

Social Links: https://linktr.ee/toosweetmtg

Runaway by Diamond Ace | https://soundcloud.com/diamond-ace-music
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

Transcript

0:03

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Q podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James. How are you doing this week? Yeah, I'm pretty good, dude. I'm pretty good. How are you? I'm doing all right. We have a fun episode for everyone today. Today we're going to be breaking down a cube skeleton. We're gonna be going over what that is and how it can help you with your cube construction. And it's not just going to be helpful if you're building a cube from scratch. It's also going to be nice and helpful if you've had a cube for a while and you just want to double check the numbers, make sure everything is balanced, and make sure everything is as it should be. The link to the cube skeleton. There'll be a PDF link down in the show notes below. While you're there, please consider giving the podcast a five star review. A thumbs up. All that good stuff greatly helps us out. Also, down in the show notes, there will be time codes and a link to a card gallery where you can see any of the cards that we're talking about in today's episode. But with that preamble out of the way, let's jump into our main topic. So today we're going to be talking about a cube skeleton that we have put together. I think a good place to start is what is a cube skeleton? Well, basically a cube skeleton is a template. It tells you how many of each bit you need to add in order to get a working cube together. It's weighted to what generically is the best set up for each color. So like white and red and green have more creatures, blue has more non creature spells, red and white have more cheap creatures and green have bigger creatures. It's a really good starting point. If you're looking to put a cube together. Yeah, I quite like this idea. Building cubes is really hard. Especially, especially if you've not done tons of it. And especially if it's, you know, a larger size of cube that you're building a 540 or something. It can be difficult to get started. It can be difficult to make sure that all your numbers line up to have a, a balanced play environment. And this hopefully will be like quite a nice little, little shortcut. It's not something you're going to have to stick to religiously for all your cubes, but it should be some nice guidelines. I think. Yeah, exactly. Like the idea is that this is the jumping off point. If you if you follow the cube skeleton, you will end up with a functional cube that just will work. You can then iterate on top of that and make it more your own and customize it as you want. But it's a great starting point because like I remember when I built my first cube, there was nothing like this that really existed. I basically just like got a pen and paper and found a similar cube to what I was building. I just wrote down how many one drops in this color they have and kind of effect to me, built something similar myself, but I was kind of going in a little bit blind. I kind of the like. The hope is that with this, we've done the hard work for you. You can just take it and use it and crack on and enjoy the fun part of cube. That is finding the cube cards not working out all right. How many red three drops do I need? Anything like that? We're taking the faff away from you. And also we have talked about something similar to this before, like in the past, like on our episode where we talked about the time I built my own mystery booster at Home cube. That was a cube of 2000 cards. And for that I took the set template that was is used to balance sets and and I use it to make a cube. Wizards do this whenever they build a set they have like, oh, in return. District seven is the next set coming out. That time of recording that their notes will have. Okay, we need this many one white drop commons with roughly this these abilities they have that for like areas like the whole town. But that's kind of why you do see a lot of like the similar types of cards in each sets, because they have a slot for it in their guides, which they're looking to fill with it's habit for building sets. And this is something similar, but specifically for cube. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's nice to as well. Even if you're going to deviate a little bit from these numbers, it's good because you know, if you're doing it deliberately, right, if you like, if you're I want this color to have a white lower curve for some reason, because that plays well with the themes that are going on. And that's great. You can deviate from it, but it means you're not just having, a lower curve because you missed out a bunch of good, expensive style. So you're not, you're very decent, lacking removal because you just forgot about cheap burn spells. You know, I mean, it means you can make sure your, where you are deviating from it. You're doing it in a deliberate way for a reason, right? Yeah, 100%. I think it's kind of touch on some obvious upsides of using a template. And basically it's the main thing is it's really good as a way of getting started, like, I personally am someone who I like to think about, like, what are the decks? What are the archetypes that you want to add to go into your cube before you build it? What are the packages? Some people don't want to do that. Some people just want to just start adding cards to a cube. And what's what's nice is that with the set skeleton, you can do it both ways. You can come up with your packages and come up with all caps, and then work out where they go into the set skeleton. Or if you want, you can just take the set. This goes in and start adding cards that you like, but it's something you can do. And if you're doing like a best of cube, a cube that kind of takes the best of a certain period of time, or from a grouping of sets or themes, you can really just find that, find your search term and scry for and just pick the cards you like and start adding them and it will work. Really nicely for you. Yeah for sure, for sure. I think it plays really well into those, I want to say generic cubes for cubes where your, your theme is more of about, you know, when the cards were printed or, artwork or flavor or whatever it is, rather than being themed around something more gameplay specific, where you might be deviating a little more from this template. Yeah, exactly. Like I used something. I used a version of this, of this template or this skeleton for my old board at cube, and I've also just used a set skeleton just raw for a new cube, building, which is like from eighth edition to, well, drain. It's like modern bordered. But before we get into the like I say, ill drained, there's like thriller possibilities. The only l drain got in there. We're not doing Oko. We're doing. That's like a different rummaging effect. That's like the power level, but like, Yeah, like like for that kind of environment or for like. Yeah, like like if you're doing a theme of like, like a, like a replica cube, like I have, like, you're building a cube set on a plane or like, you're doing like a theme. Kind of like the spooky cube. Like, like, like a horror themed cube or anything like that. You can just find your search terms and just start adding cards. And at the end, at the end of it, you will have a functional cube that's really nice. And there's a really nice cheat code to just being able to quickly make cubes. And it's also great if like and, and just having that peace of mind that it's going to be balanced and it's going to function. It's also really nice if you already have a cube and you want to double check your numbers, like this is something we touched on during my doc when we did an episode a few weeks ago about like me doing like a checkup, a check in on my on my unpowered vintage cube, which I've had for like six plus years now. I've not double checked the number since I built it, just going in and like checking it against a set skeleton. So made me see some points where oh, like over time. Like over time I thought I was quite good is I will always cut to one drop for a 1 to 2 drop for a two drop. But really I've not. I've marked around with the numbers and I've saw some points where, okay, I need to cut some of my red fours and add a bunch of red ones because I have skipped there basically. And like that's that skeleton is a good like even if you already have a cube, it's good. It's a good tool to reset things and just make sure things are balanced going forward. Yeah, it's kind of interesting to, to just compare those numbers, isn't it? I was looking at it and comparing it to my dual commander cube, which I didn't. I didn't use any sort of set scales in building it, but, it was kind of interesting to just run and see where the divergences were. I have a, I have significantly more Lans, which I kind of knew would be would be the case because cube, you are encouraging people to play more colors. Plus there is a very strong LAN stream service, but if utility Lans tuber colors have so less features, I think that that's probably intentional on the grounds that you have a creature in your command zone free hand. So, you maybe don't need quite as much redundancy and your curve out guys, but yeah, it was I'm sure there are some spots where, I could be known to make those comparisons and, you know, maybe beefing up some of the some of the interaction counts, I think in a couple of the colors might be might be worthwhile. No, 100% like you can definitely use it as like a, like if you've noticed in the cube, like, like maybe a color isn't performing as well or like a deck isn't coming together, but I do. You can look at the underlying numbers and see, oh, is it represented like like, does it have enough pieces? Because yeah, there is a part of cube, like where if you're not really basing on anything and I've done it like I did a bunch of times in my early tips where you are just kind of guessing a little bit like, is this enough? Like like like like like like we all roughly know that kind of like red has more cheap creatures, normally in a cube, but kind of like what's nice is like, we have defined it like like this cube, like the keeps goes in, will tell you how many of each bit, how many creatures in each color you need to run in each point of the curve you need to run. It'll tell you how many planes, all that's how many instance, and sorceries, all that kind of stuff. This tells you what you need to know. And that's I think is really nice. I think on top of it's quite nice to track in a you've built your cube and maybe the colors are balanced, but the games just aren't playing out quite in the way you anticipated. Like maybe the games are all pretty quick and snowball. That might be a sign you don't have quite enough cheap interaction in the cube. That might be a good reason to go and check in on this, this template, see if the templates suggest you should be running more the more interaction or different interaction. Possibly for games are all super attrition and no one can get that synergies going. But it might mean, hey, maybe we've got a bit too much interaction, not quite enough that, you know, says I think good for good for just checking in on that stuff as well. Yeah. Completely agree that before we kind of break down the cube skeleton in a bit more finite detail. And again, there's a link below while we're talking about it, open it up. It's a PDF. You can look at it. It'll open on any phone. I assume in 2026 should be fine. But there are some downsides. Like like before we kind of like whenever we present something to the world, we do want to give both sides of an argument. I don't want to be like, we have fixed cube. We've solved it for everyone. You're welcome. There are some things you have to consider when using a set skeleton, and the primary one is it won't work for every type of cube. Like it doesn't work if you're doing something out of the ordinary. Like James touched on this a minute ago, but like, like 100 on the top, for example. That doesn't work in the set. Skeleton designed for a normal cube environment, because the creatures don't like, my cube goes and tells me I need six white, four drops, but how am I how but like. But if you only creatures are 100 on adopters, that just doesn't work. So that is something you need to consider. A powered cube as well also won't necessarily work with a set skeleton, and we'll go into reasons why towards the end of the episode, when we kind of touch on like reasons to break a set skeleton, but like a powered cube is trying to run all the broken cars no matter where they are on the curve, they're trying to fit them in as best as possible. So Power Cube breaks a set skeleton wide open by running a bunch more zero drop artifacts and a bunch more blue cards than a regular cube will. It'll run more. Yeah, but like like, but. And then other points of the curve where just some, some cards and colors have got more powerful. They will break because it's just trying to do the more it's trying to fit all the broken cards into one environment. Yeah for sure. For sure. It's you're not going to line up because I can I think you'd like to also stuff like the set skeleton includes planes. Walkers is a type. You built a pre-modern cube recently. You're not going to have any planes. Walkers. But. Yeah, it's it's nice. The starting point isn't that, I was kind of curious using this skeleton. Are you being sort of flexible at all? And, Moving cards between the types, depending on what role they play. Like, let me give you an example. Right. If, if we've got so it's in blue, for example, it suggests six counts of spells in a free 60. And I assume for instance category, if we've got like a mystic snake, say in our cube, are you then like, okay, if that's one of my counterspell slots or not, because it isn't an instant what, what message say has flash. So oh so yeah. So like like I'm someone who like when I organize a cube, I put it in the point that it should be like a good example for me is like a card, like shriek. More like in my cube list. I put shriek more as a sorcery. Yes. Okay, I think that makes sense. Yeah, because I'm using it as, it's going into the cube as a one on a black sorcery speed way of killing something. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense above it. Then, just this is what you've code for. Tells me the the cut, the types are. So that's what I'm putting into my template. Yeah, partly. That is. So I can make the cube in my, in my head just, like, match a skeleton a bit more than it should. Like, we've all, I'm pretty sure everyone counts, like Amazons, pilgrims, or the, hierarchs as green creatures. Not three garlic creatures or two color creatures, because those slots are a bit more rare. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I definitely take this too far. Sometimes I remember in my parachute being like, oh, I do kind of want to keep the colors balanced, but all my get is that gold cards and dope. Well, I can cast 50 mana for one word red. So. So now if I can save money, right? And I can keep my oh my my is a gold cut. The one that I'm terrible for is spells. They just fill whatever in the curve especially. Is it like like yeah I think I said, in a region I've said I've got she even Devastator as a red one drop. That's x x and the red zero zero enters with X plus one was on counters on it. I've got that as a as a one drop because my one drop so it's not a nice trick about love assist I guess. Yeah. Technically count. Yeah, it's technically a one drop, but yeah, I know there's something that I need to get better at, but yeah. Yeah. But for me, when I am counting cards, effectively it's where is it actually going to see use? Because like in theory, there's a world where force of will isn't a five minute spell, it's a zero amount of spell. I would classify it the way it's going to be used the most. So like shriek, more can be played as a creature. You can cast as a creature. But I see most of the time it's going to be evoked out for that cheaper cost basically. Yeah. So in your when you're doing your fat scouts and you're counting shriek Mars two man one that black sorcery. Exactly. Yeah. I would classify it as a sorcery speed piece of removal for me. Yep. That checks out some other things that we should touch on in terms of downsides of ice cubes. And before we kind of start looking at it proper, is that I don't want to say it's not. It won't lead to a deep environment, but it is a starting point I think is the best way. Describe it. Like like like like like like for some people, just adding all the best cards to a cube is what they want. But a lot of the coolest things that we think about in terms of cube and cube experiences are because the designer has added something on top, they've added those packages, so they've added those additional synergies, and you tend to not get that if you just add the best cards. I like, like people can still find these synergies, like they still if you just smush all the best cards from a certain period of magic into into each other, people will find cool things to do with them. But what I mean is, like you can still use the sets as a guide and keep that in mind. So like you can use you can play Kiki as one of your read five drop creatures, and you can add pest management to it as your blue three jobs. For example, like that's adding a additional level of synergy to a deck or to the cube that isn't just big, powerful, good cards into each other. Basically, that is something to consider because like for the modern board of cube I was thinking of, I'm thinking of building. I'll use this as a start, and I'm going to go away and think about it and talk and talk to my play group about what packages, what additional bits of synergy do we want? What cool decks can we add by cutting a generic creature for a synergistic piece that works better in a cube environment? These are things I kind of like. Like like for me, the skeleton is the starting point is the jump off point. And then effectively the things that make the cube you or yours. And for your playgroups you will then start adding on top as and to extend a lot of those will come through, will come over time and iteration. You add more cards that you'd like and work well together as time goes on. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's I think how you want to use scouts and sort of depends partly on, what are you doing to make your cube unique, right. Because generally we don't set out to build cubes for just the same as a bunch of other cubes that came before. Right? If you're going to the effort of building a cube, which is a lot of effort, you know, you've got a you've got a lot of cards, you've got to get 10,000 leaves, you've got to get a giant leaves. So you didn't be doing that because you're like, oh, I've got this really cool idea. I think it would be a really fun environment to play. I think I'd love to draft. I think I have a group who would enjoy drafting it. And generally that's because that's something a little bit different about your cube compared to all the other cubes. And if that thing that is different is something like, yeah. Like I'll, I'll drain that cube. I it's a like, nostalgia based thing or let's say, themed around, so a set. So all of them, whatever it might be, then that is a good candidate to use the skeleton because your theme isn't causing you to diverge from it. Right. Whereas if the thing that is making it super unique is that, we're really based around certain very synergistic packages of which rely on high numbers of specific types like, say, you can really depend on not fact stack. This packet, this this template is presumably going to break down a little bit. Right. Because, by necessity, to make that deck work, you're going to have to go over the recommended artifact count. Or if your cube is something really off the deep end, like I think, yeah, 100 odd. If this was a great example, this skeleton doesn't work at all because, you've imposed a massive restriction on the types, which is, kind of going to invalidate this. But yeah, I think all of the cubes where the thing you're making unique isn't something that's directly causing you to diverge from a skeleton, then I think it's a very good thing to use. Exactly. And it is a thing of like, I we are talking about these caveats, but I do think this cube skeleton or the idea of the cube skeleton will hold up for like 75, 75 to 90% of cubes. Like it's not really gonna work for like, desserts or. Yeah, the everything revolving around like or 100 of one creature that those kind of environments. But like we talked about every card having more of last week like that is a possibility for a cube. This would probably still work that like like this sets open works for it. So it works as a base for all of my cubes. But we will go on to later how we can change it and why you should change it. But I think a good thing to do now is actually just go over the set skeleton itself, actually talk about what we see in front of us. And again, links down to show notes. It'll be there. The gist is you open it up and there's a and there's a skeleton for four different sizes. There's 364, 5540 and 720. If you're not building one of those I'm sorry I couldn't be asked to make this multiple times. And really obviously those are the four most common cube sizes because 360 is enough is enough. For eight drafters for 50 is enough for ten drafters, five, 50 is 12, seven, 20 is 16 drafters. Those are the common sizes that we generally see. And like 550. Is that most common? I think that's what the Mitko Vintage cube, what the arena cube is those what both of those what I think most of ours are James. But like, those four sizes, you should be able to find something that works for you. And if you are something in between, then you can look at the one above it and the one below it and kind of find a nice line that works for you. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's let's say sort of how it's up to you how you want to use this, I guess. Right. You can use it as an this is the exact size of my cube. And I'm going to use that counts in all of this categories. So that would work very well. But you can always also use it as just more of a guideline, more of a point of comparison. Yeah, 100% look like like I have structured this in a way where, where we have given firm numbers for things. But the reality is everything is slightly fluid. You can go up and down want like as long as you have a reason why. Like but again we'll get onto the reasons why in a bit. But like it's I've given firm numbers because I found when I put things on the internet that I have ballparks, I get a lot of questions on them. Like like, oh, this has 10 to 12, which was better. Like, I don't care. Like, like, like follow the numbers here and you'll be fine if you want to change one for it. Like if you want to move one up and down at it's not the end of the world, but like it's it's again this is a starting point. This is a jump off point. Because what you will see in the skeleton is the skeleton will tell you how many cores in each color and type you need to add. For creatures, there is also the manner value of each. So it will tell you how many one drops two drops, three drops up to eight in each color you need to run. We don't go that deep for non creature spells because generally if you're just adding the best ones, they will work in a curve. But try not to just be like oh, it says I can run 18 blue instance in a 450 cube. Therefore I'm going to run 18 six drop instance like you're you're going to run the best ones. Some of those are generically going to be one drops two options centimeters. So kind of like follow the curve of the creatures to an extent. But you don't have to be as rigid because realistically it is the curve of the creatures that will affect the the board states a bit more. So that's why there's curves for creatures, but not, for instance, and sorceries. There is also notes on staples. So staples are cards that we know we're going to run. So for example, let's like in white, in a 550 cube, we want four bits of instant speed removal. We want to sorcery speeds, bits of removal and three board wipes. It's these are the core cards that you see in every cube that they just need to make work. Even if you're doing a theme, you still need removal in black. You need hand attack. This kind of stuff. You need ramp in green. These are important things that that I think if we are building the best of cubes, you should be running these staple cards. If you want to, we can again you can you can use this as a jumping off point. If you're like, oh, there's no removal in my cube. That's a choice you have made. But as a base for each number and for each color, we tell you how many staples to run because I think it is important to run these. It'll give you the goal of the set. Skeleton is to leave you with a functional, with a good working, functioning, awesome cube. And if you follow these, you will get that. Yeah, absolutely. I think I like as well for a little bit of details in here, like, suggestions of, like how many of your sorceries should ramp you and a green in your green or how much, options for how many cards for spells, how much rummaging in your that I think these, are very nice guidelines. And it's also nice, you know, when you build a cube because you're just so many cards and you're spinning a lot of plates, right? And it's, it's nice to have those things flagged up. So I have like, oh, actually, I have like no filtering in my red section currently. That's going to make the decks kind of inconsistent. Maybe we should add some. It's, it's nice to have those little cuz I think it's. Yeah. As you're building. Yeah. And it's something we could have gone into much more granular detail on what like like the wizard set building, set skeleton I touched on earlier like that literally goes into the detail of like, oh, how I need, I need a this drop with this keyword or one of these two keywords with set mechanic. We're not going that deep because it's a guide. But, I'm also aware of I don't want everyone just build the same cube afterwards. Like cube is an expression of yourself as a cube builder or yourself or your play group. Why? It says six removal spells in black in a 550 cube is not because. And it doesn't say run these six. It's because I want you to pick the six that you like. That's important. Yeah. And I kind of feel like for wizards, that skeleton is to a certain extent a cautionary tale of that because I think that was definitely a point where as someone drafting most of the sets at least a little bit, I sort of knew what was in the set skeleton, and I kind of felt it. And I was like, yeah, sure. Here's the tormenting voice variant. Here's, green six man, a creature that gains me some life. Here's that green form on a creature with reach like it's, after set number five of five, it does start to get a little bit tedious, so. Exactly. And it's a good thing and a bad thing. Like. Like just on that. Like like it's. It means that their ratio of hit draft environments, in terms of how fun they are to play, has gone up like there was a when we started drafting. Like initially there were like more bad sets that were less fun to draft because they hadn't really nailed this yet. And the flip side is now we're in a point where there's six standard sets a year. We're just seeing more of them, and it's kind of like it's more notable when there's three months between every set, it's less noticeable. The repeating of effects and the repeating of spells. When it's six weeks between a set, you see it more. But this is not a podcast where we complain about turtles again now. Yeah, so I think you're right. I do think there was a point to me three it was about sort of if adrift in the spell set really leading up to that. Where they had a run of. Yes, there were no bad sets. Oh, no. Really bad sets. Fairly. But, they also felt a little bit safe. And, there weren't really many old timers in that sort of. Yeah. It month, Ziva, I think they went through a phase where they were quite rigid on that stuff, and, Yeah, fail works very well. Fine. But it was very much, but but I think they weren't taking those big risks. They were quite on their, on the, on template on that, they didn't have the home run. Ziva, you know. Yeah, I agree, and I'm that's kind of what I was not directly what I was alluding to when I was talking about some of the downsides of using a scattergun, but like, just because you have because you will have more time than wizards to make your cube, they're making a set every three months. They just need to like, we just need to get this out the door. That's kind of I am sympathetic to an extent for that. Like, oh, for the designers. I'm very sympathetic for the CEOs and said, let's. But like, like like I said, when you're building your cube, you have more than six weeks between building one cube and building the next cube. To think about this and to find those deeper synergies, to find those cool interactions, to think about like, like, like like I sort of like I get the modern boarded one I built. The starting point is all the good cards, but I'm going to talk to my playgroup about what do we like from that period, like, like like should, like should we be doing some siege rhino stuff? Like, what cards do we remember as a collective and what decks do we remember from like standard or modern at the time that people like, how can we reflect those? That's what we'll give you, that deep environment, having that additional time with the set skeleton to to let percolate and let it kind of work for you. That will what give that is what will give you that deeper environment that I think we were alluding to, that some of the drop sets haven't had as much. But yeah, absolutely. And you have way more freedom when building your cubes than wizards designers do when building a game. They have to they have to build it around the theme that the set is as a cube design, that you can stick on a theme, or you can entirely make your own or do whatever you want. And that's the best part about cube. And this is a tool to help you with that experience, to make it easier and less stressful for you. I think let's actually touch on so, so the set skeleton is laid out with how many you should run in each section and each color and then curves for creatures. We're going to run. We're not going to sit here and read it out to you because that's boring. We're going to go over the broad design choices that we see here. And talk about roughly why they are that way. And again, it's to give you information behind the decisions we have made, not list them all out. So a good place to start will we'll go from a good place to start is white because Walberg. Right. What you'll notice with white in the cube and in most cubes is the white has more cheap creatures. White has the second most creatures in the cube. It's quite a high creature. Count just off the green. But a lot of those creatures are in the cheap drops. They're like one, two and three. That is where the bulk of the white creatures are. If you play the cube, you know that white tends to be aggressive. It tends to. It's what white generally does best. That's why it's reflected here in that design choice. It also white as a color has more enchantments than other colors because we tend to see removal in white as well. Things like oblivion ring effects tend to show up a lot in white because they're one of the best things that white can do. The point of a cube skeleton is to highlight what the colors do best. So that's that's one reason why we see cheaper white quick or more white more cheap white creatures and more enchantments. Yes for sure. And I think I would be focusing more with the removal on how many removal spells I have rather than sticking super rigidly to which colors they fall into, like, which types they fall into, right? Like if, if I want to have save other than two sorcery and three enchantment removal spells, if I want to have five sorceries or five enchantments, but with removal, I think that's fine because they're still filling the same role, right? They're having the same function. Exactly. And like and again, we're on to this. But like especially if you were pushing enchantments as a deck, if you were pushing enchantments in white, a great lever you can turn is I will add more enchantment removal. Cut it from instant, cut it from sorcery. So I can have that additional level of synergy with something else. That's a reason to make a change. That's a reason to break the set skeleton. That's good. We like that. Yeah. For sure. Moving on to blue. Blue shockingly has the least creatures. It has the least creatures of any color because it wants to make room for more insult and sorcery. It has the most instanced by quite a long way of any color, because that's what blue does best. We want to highlight again, we wanted to highlight the counter magic in blue, the cantrip, the card draw, the cool interaction. That is what blue is really known for. We want to make room for that and that is what you will generally see in most cubes and also most decks running blue. I mean, blue historically has had kind of weak creatures like small and decisive creatures and makes up for it in the spells effect. So yeah, it's it makes a lot of sense to reflect that in the, in the skeleton. Yeah. But then when you move on to black, black has the black and red both have an average number of creatures. They're both right. Slap bang in the middle in terms of number of creature count, black has, I think, the highest number of sorceries of any color. That's because we generally see in black sorceries. We see things like hand attack, we see removal, we see reanimation spells. That's also reflected in, black also has three enchantments. When I think of black enchantments, I am thinking of things like animate, dead, that kind of stuff. But like, like like they can be something else, but there's room for them in here. Yeah. It's interesting, the balance of incense and sorceries versus but between blue and black, it kind of makes sense, right. Because both are blue having white more since black having way more sorceries because, they both have a form of interaction that is unique to that color. Right? Only black cats discard spells, only blue gets permission. And permission inherently only works if it's instant and what, you don't like us to have instance feet discard because someone decided not to using them in that force that isn't fun. I, respectfully disagree, but, you know, it's true. I mean, have you never been dillian click? Someone has such a good time. Leave the treatment. Yeah I know, oh. Also with black, it does have a bit more of a flatter curve, like it's one of the few ones that has the same number of two drops and three drops. This is where the power level traditionally tends to be in black. Yeah. In red, as we mentioned, it has a high it has an average number of creatures. Again, that's kind of partly because it does have a high incidence sorcerer count higher than something like white or green, because it generally has good ones, like we love Lightning Bolt, we love Wheel of Fortune, we love these awesome kind of effects. And from a creature point of view, it has the most one drops. It has noticeably the most one drops. And again, this is definitely the classic version of Red, where mono red or where your red deck is going to be aggressive. The power traditionally with red is in the cheap creatures. This is one point where it doesn't work as well. And like for a power couple, we'll touch on wine in a little bit. But like, yeah, this has like like over half the creatures in red. 1 or 2 drops. That's quite an aggressive section. And then this is one point where I could see people making changes if they don't want Red to be as aggressive. But like traditionally in most cubes and in most environments, if you go back to standard, if you go back to modern and they kind of inform. But if I miss, that is where the power level of red has tended to be. Yeah, for sure it did. It's anticipating that Dex wanting to curve out with cheap creatures. Right. If that's the case in your cube, then for that number is probably pretty good. If it's not the case and your red decks are more about expensive spells, then maybe you can, and tweak that curve upwards a little bit and it's going to start looking more like for curve of creatures, we have an in green. So yeah, I'm moving on to green. Green, quite unsurprisingly has the most creatures of any color. It has the least instance of the least sorceries. Because it's power green, traditionally its power is in the creatures. It has a bunch of one drops because traditionally these are going to be your mana dorks. It has more five drops than any other color, because green five isn't a very good. It has more six, seven, and eight drops than any other color, because green is generally going to be ramping, going to be playing some big creatures. Yeah. Green Green's power is with what it's putting onto the board, less so about its stuff doing its less so than its stuff doing in its hand, and it's really reflected in this cube skeleton. Yeah, that makes sense. When you get to colorless, be broken, colorless, down by creatures, planes, walkers and artifacts, there's curves for creatures in the curves right of X. Creatures. It's it's a bit of a normal curve, but there is a bit more room in the top end, because generally in colorless, we see things like L draws or big artifact creatures that they they're cheap targets that can go in multiple decks. They're generally quite nice, like having, colors because it means they can go in any deck trying to run them. When it comes to artifacts, it is a pretty normal curve here. Yeah. Colorless, pretty solid, pretty standard. It's your colorless creatures like your owl draws again, you want to make creatures, and then your artifacts are your non creature artifacts. Yeah. For sure. I always wonder with color stuff how I meant be categorizing it because, quite often you end up with a bunch of colorless spells in your cube that only rarely go in. In 1 or 2 decks, right? So choose my you'll kind of cuz it's an example of, playing candle off of Tainos and the artifact. So but that is only ever going in a blue deck, right. Because I don't think there's many slots where you want that an anomaly back or even something like, I know sort of a mic. Right. You're not putting it in an anomaly deck, but it is in the color slot. There's not taking up a blue. So if I'm trying to balance out all the colors in my cube, should I really be tossing those in blue slots? Because, otherwise my blue card, but they're actually blue cards in the in terms of the, but deck building space variant. Right. And, and I might just get sneaking extra blue cards in there and I'm balancing my colors to being honest, if you're starting off, don't worry about it. Is my my honest opinion. And my hot take is if you're starting off, don't worry about it too much. As you start getting more confident, you can start tailing because like in theory, the average colorless action is going to be. What you said is very true. But that's kind of true for every artifact. It's kind of like, but it's like, where do you consider a card like bone splitter? Like if you have like it's like to an extent colorless. The nice thing about colors is technically they are cards that can go in any deck. But like if if you've noticed, you put in two cards for your blue deck. We'll put in two cards for your green deck. What? What's a green? What's a green deck going to want from an artifact? Maybe it's more ramp. Maybe it's a big cheat. Like like a trip to Titan. To ramp to something like that. Like that. That's kind of how you can keep it. Balances. If you know these cards are for this color, just make sure all your colors are, taken care of. But that's something you can kind of come to later on if you, as you kind of get more comfortable with the cube building. My honest opinion is to begin with, these are slots for you to play with. Choose them like put them in as you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Because like if, if like in this cube. Right. A big part of what blue is doing is the artifact stuff. Right. So there's by necessity lots of cheap artifacts which are going to be more likely to go in a blue deck than an anomaly deck. So like maybe there's an argument for you play less actual blue cards to, to compensate for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. I do see what you're going. Yeah. I do see where you're going. But I when it comes to colors, I generally don't think you need to be as strict as you need to be with the other colors, because in theory, someone else still might take it like it's it's in the draft. It's free for someone to kind of spec on or take because it goes in any deck, you're less you're in theory, you are less likely to get a colorless card than you are a colored card, because it's more or less because of openness in the draft, that kind of stuff. That's true. And lots of cheap artifacts in most cubes are going to be just mana anyway. Which which do go in any deck. Let's move on to multicolored. For multicolored, we've given a total and how many of each guild or try and five color. So in a 360 cube, you run four cards in each get in each two color guild. In multicolored, you run five in each to get two color guild in a. In a 540 you run six, and in a 720 you run eight. Basically, the bigger the cube is, the more room you have for multicolored spells. Also here we haven't worry too much about curve. This is to an extent your choice is the cube design of what you put in. Because the mono colors are curved correctly, you have that flexible. It doesn't have to be as strict. But do try and think about what your deck is trying to do. If you know your Burris deck is going to be aggressive, don't fill it with six drops. You can have one, but don't have all six of my gold Boris cards being six drops. Or more. If I want the deck to be aggro, put in the two drops, the three drops, that kind of stuff. But this is very much up to you. And also, I know your multicolored if I was running Cygnus or talismans, I would include them here because they are in from a yes, they can go in other decks and yes people can splash them. But from a purely organizational point of view, a Zorya Signet is an associates card, not a colorless card. Just from an organizational point of view. That's how I would do it for this type of when you're putting the cube together. Anyway. Yeah, I makes that makes sense. Yeah. I think for the sickness of often, it's almost to makes them as they're just good cards and they when they're fully on color and they're giving you fixing as well as acceleration, and then they also sometimes go in just an artifact deck or a vamp deck that doesn't care about the colors and just needs acceleration. Yeah, exactly. Moving on to lands generally here, the bigger the cube, the more land you get to get that, the more lands you get to run. Similarly to multicolored cards, we've listed how many each guild gets the run, it gets you get more the bigger the size of the cube. I have also listed Troy lands in here, like things like tri ohms or like tap three color lands. Just really good. And running a bunch of cubes if you don't like them, you can just run more. More, jewels. That's perfectly fine. And then also, we've listed how many five color or utility lands you can run as well. Now, these utility lands can also be mono colored. So, like so in a high powered cube like your Gaia's cradle or your children academy, this is where you can make room for them. This is something that James like, like I do personally tend to run more utility lands because I like them and I think they're good, but I've had to make room for them somewhere else. But like, as a base level, this is how many like we've listed here, how many you can run in your cube. Yeah. And again, if you know, if you if you're running decks which really care about those utility lands and by that, you know, they're doing more for you than just having an extra creature land or something. And that's not certainly a number you might want to tweak right? Yeah. And it's the reason why we put it in here like this is because there is definitely a quality drop off from higher power level cubes to more like mid powered cubes. In terms of the in terms of the utility lands, you can run there is a big drop off between two Larian Academy and the next best version of that effect. Yeah, they keep trying to to do fake surviving academies and they really don't work. That's the one thing you improvise. It's kind of cool. That's quite hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do like the there's the enchantment. The flips into a academy which is like a budget academy. Anyway. Which I quite like. But anyway, so that's so that's kind of what you will see when you load up the set skeleton again, it is a great base for anyone putting a cube together. Like and even if you have a cube, just double check it. Have a look. The last thing I think is I want to touch on is reasons why you break the sets. The sets got some reasons why you move away like we've touched on a couple of times. Like like, the Mega Vintage Cube, like, has a bunch more zero drop artifacts because that's where the power level is, like, like when we're talking about red creatures in this cube or in the sets out in red has a bunch more one drops than the Mega Vintage Cube does. That's because the MC Goethe-Institut is trying to run the most powerful cards possible, and in that environment, the power level is three, not one. So in the Mega Vintage Cube, they've they've made the decision to run less one drops to run more three drops because that's where the power level in the in the butterflies they printed recently has been. But that's a reason. And that's important. Having a reason to make a change is the important part. If you can explain it, then do it like another good example is for my personal cube, like like my main cube, which we spoke about a few weeks ago when we did the, review of it. I am pushing an artifact deck to make room for that deck. I've run less sorceries and instance and enchantments in white, blue, black, and red because I've replaced some of the effects like would get there with artifacts that do a similar thing. That's given me the ability to boost up that artifact number, and it's meant that my cube varies from the set skeleton because rather than in white in a 540 cube from the six guys, and you would normally run one artifact in my cube that's pushing an artifact deck, I'm running five in white. That's a choice I've made. That's a reason behind it. I can explain it. That's a good reason to break a cube skeleton. What's not a good reason is, oh, I really like this red seven drop, but I don't have room for it. I'm going to add it. If you do that once, you'll be okay. If you do that all over the cat, all over the shop at multiple points, not having a reason to break from it, you're just putting in cause you'd like, then you're not really using a set skeleton. You're just like, that's when thing. That's when the draft environment will be directly affected by the choices that you make. Yeah for sure. I think we have a we have a soft reason. You will do a lot of small breaks for me, even in in cubes, which are mostly conforming. It's just because there aren't cards you're excited about in that exact slot. And yeah, we can therefore treat those numbers. Right. So, for example, in a high 40, I think we. Yeah. Fixed sets custom recommends for blue on top features. My cube. But you don't have any because there weren't any blue one drop features I wanted to include. You know, and we've also we convolve that number up in tattoos and that's fine. That's not going to cause a big break because blue isn't really big. It's kind of out dark anyway. Right. Whereas if we were, you know, looking at, say, white two tops. While it's really important for white status, for each one turn to a lot of cubes. So that's a number where we can't really just, you know, vol that's the next point on the curve because there have more exciting options. Exactly. And with that as well. Yeah, I could definitely see that being more of an issue. The know the bigger your I'm going to say restraint or that you're constriction. So like for example, if you're building a pull up a cube, you have just have less cards to build from than cube running commons and rares. Or if you're doing a themed cube or, or if you're doing a set cube, like a cube, everything set on Domino, you just have less cards to pick from. So, yeah, I could see a world where, there's less options for you maybe as well. Like, like not just roll up creatures. So go from a one drop to a two drop, maybe add another one drop sorcery. So your curve is still quite nice. That that's definitely a thing you can do. Yeah for sure. And the cube is a great point as well because, our planeswalker numbers are generally going to go to say enough of a cube. So there's are slots we can redistribute elsewhere. Yeah. And this is definitely one where I have given some numbers for the greater good. Not my personal opinion. I personally I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm 36. I'm not that old, but I feel I, I'm an old soul. I hate White walkers just as a card design, I hate them. I don't run many in my cubes like I run the ones I think are cool, but there aren't that many of them. So in my cubes I have way less plains walkers. But I think the average cube and the average player likes plains walkers more than me, so that's why they I reflect and just like yeah, the bigger your cube, the more plains because you get if you don't like them. And then again, that's a reason I have to said not liking but like but like I'm finding similar power level of cards to put him in in that place. Things that synergy I realize I it's a starting point. Do as I say, not as I do. I think it's the best way of putting it. Oh no, I think I don't like it is a great is a great reason. Like, yeah, you're building a cube because you want to play it like his, starting point. Right? Like don't put in cards you don't enjoy playing. But yeah, playing against, I know, like cubes generally a reflection of a person building them. Right. Unless you're going out and building, like, you know, Max power. Power cube, that is, you know, you don't have that much. Freedom. Right? But, outside of that, like, yeah, you know, play cards, you like, like, don't just go and, take 540 cards you think are cool with no discipline. I mean, you can do that. And they will have done, it'll be a weird environment. But within the constraints of what's going to keep the cube functional, like, you still have loads of choices and loads of options and picking cards you'd like and you think are fun to play with is is a very good starting point. And I think kind of justification enough and a lot of the time, as long as you're then, you know, and what this skeleton is, is a, a, a framework to help you do that and still have a functional cube for plays. Well, yeah. Yeah, I think that's actually a very nice way of pulling it all together, actually, because like, I abuse this when making that, or starting design the modern bordered cube that I'm thinking of building. And it was one of the nice it's one of the most fun I've had putting a cube together because it was just, okay, I'm just going to search for song and start off white Wander Up creatures, which are my eight favorites from this list, and you start adding cards that you like rather than having to think like. For me, it was definitely a more freeing way of building a cube than I've done it previously. Previously has been. I've been way more tied to I need. Okay, here am I ten guild colors. This is what each deck is doing. I need a card for each before I start going and you can then it's more faff. This was a very like honestly, I could see myself building or at least I at least base designing more cubes. Maybe not building more cubes because I do need to be at least somewhat conscious of cash at some point in this magic the Gathering environment. But like, I can take myself just putting bases for like making a bunch more cubes from a centralized point of view, just because it is fun to be like, what's the coolest card from this scribble search that I've put in as my base? What? What are the coolest cards I can run and just start adding cards you like? Knowing that I'm going to have something functional that works at the end is a really nice experience. Yeah. So if you have a nice thing about building cubes that way, where it's times just cards you think are cool, and then a reasonable number in each slot is that you can also crowdsource those ideas. You know, put it in your WhatsApp group with people who play cube and Magic. Players love talking about, oh, you remember this card from 2014? Wasn't that dope that that's like 50% of, magic player interactions at this point, I think. And, yeah, you can get lots of great ideas that way. I do quite like that. There is a world where maybe I just cut a card from every section in that list and just be like, open up to a WhatsApp group of like, what do I add? What do you. Yeah, yeah, I don't like that now. Awesome, right? I think that's a really good place to end it. James, thanks for time today. Really good. Pretty good chat. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Yeah, I know we mentioned the cube skeleton is down in the show notes below. Yeah. And I do also like, I think it's with caveats at the end of the episode. Just saying that I do know that everyone will have their opinion on this. Some will be like what? That many of this, this thing. How dare you. That so wrong. At the end of the day, it's a it's a starting point. And as we said, if you have a reason to change it, then I think that's fine. I have not stuck to this religiously. It's a starting point. It's a it's a very useful tool and I hope everyone listening finds it helpful as well. Let's we're gonna end it for today. Do make sure you like, share, subscribe, give the podcast a five star review, all that good stuff. Until next time. Well, we'll be back with our set review for Strix Haven Part two Electric Boogaloo. Can you tell I've not looked up the name of the set yet? Until then, it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from James and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.