my first commandment of cube design
There are no correct answers in cube design. The designer is constantly navigating a series of elaborate tradeoffs with card selection and the structure of the draft itself. For over a decade, cube designers have written boundless articles piecing together thought technology we can use to understand those tradeoffs. How much fixing should I have in my cube? What should my curve look like? What should archetype design look like? How do I avoid railroading?
All of these are useful questions as far as it goes, but several designers in the post-COVID era have begun framing these questions as a part of some higher "vision" for the cube. I think designers, myself included, can sometimes get bogged down in these questions while ignoring a crucial point. I want to call this my first commandment of cube design: "If it's not fun or interesting, change something."
I know this appears to be an obvious point, I can hear the theoretical comments section "well Noah I obviously want my cube to be fun or interesting, this is useless advice." I think that designers can underestimate an implicit willingness to sacrifice joy to "higher" design principles like signpost two-color cards, a thin power band, or the ever-dubious concept of "balance".
As an example, I had Umezawa's Jitte in my Bourbon cube, kind of a Bun/Atomic-like, tempo-value cube. The card was not too powerful, emphasized combat, and costed an effective 4. The only problem was that my players hated it. It created the occasional gamestate where the defending player couldn't block profitably or play around it, and it simply wasn't fun. Eventually, despite my own love for Jitte, I cut it in Bourbon, and the environment was better for it.
Now, "fun" and "interesting" are extremely subjective. My love affair with land destruction and 12/12 dreadnoughts in 1v1 magic is well documented, and that's not for everyone. I think using Parker Lamascus's "The First Four Questions Cube Designers Should Ask" provide a good starting point:
- How will your cube be played?
- What are your restrictions?
- How powerful do you want your cube to be?
- How does your ideal environment play?
I think after answering Parker's Four Questions, we have a baseline for what fun/interesting looks like for our cube, and every decision that we make as a designer needs to serve that vision. If it's not fun or interesting, change it. Draft. Play games. Iterate.