The Elegant Cube
The Elegant Cube aims to be a format that is, above all, fun. Fun for new players, who need a forgiving draft section and don’t know what most cards do. Fun for veteran players, who will explore a deep, interesting limited environment. Fun in evenings you are tired and all you have energy to do is force elves. Fun on days you are feeling inventive and assemble an intricate machine.
This cube rewards synergy, but does not mandate it. Both archetype decks and good-stuff decks should be supported.
Card selection takes into account how simple a card is to grasp, which is a combination of its elegance and resonance. Drafting a pack should feel exciting, not overwhelming.
Four principles guide design decisions for the Elegant Cube:
Approachability
Cube environments that deviate from powermax cubes are diverse. Realistically only the owner will know it deeply, in some cases along with a group that plays it often. The cube should be approachable by new players and familiar to veterans. Magic is already a daunting game. The challenge should be about making meaningful decisions, not keeping track of triggers, or getting caught in fine print on the backside of a flip walker.
Creativity
The Elegant Cube should be a space where exploration and experimentation can win games. Archetype rails and signposts should be visible and available, but not the only path to win a draft.
Deck uniqueness
A plethora of different decks and strategies have been successful in the history of MtG. The Elegant Cube should provide a wide variety of options and reward combining them so that each cube deck plays differently and in each draft a different array of decks is built.
Gameplay variety
Cube games should be memorable. Decks should not be so consistent that the matchup is predictable. Different card interactions should happen each time.
Version 5.x of the Elegant Cube is an evolution of the Elegant Cube 4.x. The core principles are the same, but the design is different. The innovation which prompted a major version bump to 5.0 are Cube Occasionals. Another concept this major version strongly relies on are Archetype Shapes. In the sections below I will talk about how these techniques are used in the Elegant Cube.
Module Design – Core + Occasionals
The concept of Cube Occasionals can be read about in Embrace the Chaos / Cube Occasionals.
The Elegant Cube consists of:
- A core module (346 cards as of v5.0.4)
- An occasionals module (573 cards as of v5.0.4)
15-card boosters consist of 13 cards from the core module and 2 cards from occasionals. This means that (as of v5.0.4) the chances of a card being in a given 8-person draft are 90.2% for a core card and 8.4% for an occasional card.
The core shapes the environment, setting the tone for speed, power level, and complexity, and providing archetype density and payoffs. The occasionals add the secret sauce, adding variety, unpredictability, chaos.
The Core + Occasionals design works towards the cube’s core principles in the following way:
Approachability: elegance is important for core cards, and resonance is valued both in core and in occasionals. The core’s stability rewards players’ experience from previous drafts.
Creativity: the core is tightly related to my vision of the cube. Occasionals, while still chosen by me, are often narrow, surprising, bridge between two archetypes, take the deck in completely different directions, and combine in unexpected ways. The core is a sandbox where players can create and play with occasionals.
Deck uniqueness: the archetype-based core can be combined in many different ways. While archetypes typically bundle the same cards together, reducing deck variety, each archetype plays more differently than if all decks were good-stuff. Cube occasionals add more flavors to those supported archetypes, provide bridges to combine archetypes in a particular draft, incentivize archetypes to splash certain cards, create unusually large densities of enablers / payoffs for an archetype, and just overall increase the variety of cards.
Gameplay variety: occasionals are not as constrained by effect simplicity or multiple archetype compatibility like core cards, and can be interesting cards with unique effects, which can be deck-warping, game-warping, narrow, and benefit from being surprising.
Archetype Design – Asymmetrical Shapes
The concept of Archetype Shapes can be read about in Archetype Shapes.
The cornerstones of the Elegant Cube’s archetype layout are Triangle Archetypes and Mono Archetypes. They are complemented by Pair Archetypes and Pivot Archetypes. Tetra Archetypes and Penta Archetypes are not used.
Triangle Archetypes are a good balance between real estate, build variety, and cube identity. In v5.0.4, five are supported: WBG Counters, UBR Discard, BRG Sacrifice, WUR Artifacts, WRG Tokens. Decks of these Triangle Archetypes are intended to be drafted using either 2 or all 3 of its colors.
Mono Archetypes are cost effective in that they take up little room and have reasonable build variety (four 2-color combinations plus the actual monocolored deck option). Most mono archetypes supported are tribal: W Humans, U Wizards, B Zombies, R Goblins, G Elves. By using the type line, they avoid warping the color’s identity too much, and rely on about 2 payoffs each, plus a couple of generic “choose a creature type” payoffs.
An additional Mono Archetype supported is R Burn. Burn is a core part of red’s identity so that we just need to run a couple of payoffs to support it.
Pair Archetypes are not particularly efficient, taking up ⅔ of the space of a Triangle archetype and having only one possible color combination. Still, five are supported at the moment to be true to traditional color identity, provide deck variety, and balance out colors that are over or underused by Triangle Archetypes. They are: WU Tapping, WB Lifegain, UB Rogues, UR Spells, UG Flash.
Finally, Gx Ramp and U(w/b) Fliers are the only Pivot Archetypes supported, two common and naturally occurring archetypes in limited environments, which take advantage of green naturally having ramp and blue naturally having fliers.
No Tetra Archetypes or Penta Archetypes are supported because they would warp the cube’s identity around them. This cube is meant to be a homage to Magic’s history and be a representation of the whole game. At 4+ colors, archetypes threaten to become the theme of the cube, rather than options in the cube.
This archetype layout promotes the cube’s core principles:
Approachability: One of the biggest challenges in limited is evaluating the power level of cards to pick the right one. The presence of archetypes allow snapping to the rails and having an easy default pick in many packs – though the optimal strategy is unlikely to be going all in like this. While the Triangle Archetypes involve more decisions in terms of colors, the Mono Archetypes present a single one: which support color to use. Pair Archetypes are also easy to snap to.
Creativity and Deck Uniqueness: Triangle, Mono, and Pivot Archetypes give quite a few choices in how to build that archetype, with the correct ones varying from draft to draft. Combining two archetypes on the same deck is quite feasible with these shapes, as opposed to Pair Archetypes.
Gameplay Variety: The archetypes have some redundancy in terms of enablers and payoffs, but are not particularly consistent, so even though they center around a theme, what they do within that theme will depend on the draw.
The “Elegant” Cube – still an appropriate name?
This cube has been branded “The Elegant Cube” for some time. It used to be “The Slow Cube” before, and the name was changed when I shifted its focus on approachability, moving towards simpler, more elegant cards.
Since then, I realized I was overindexing on this metric and not paying enough attention to other metrics like agency, variety, and resonance, and made the tradeoff of accepting a bit more complexity where it was worth it. Still, it remains a defining feature of the Elegant Cube that it shies away from complex cards where possible.
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