Community Voices
2023 — Cube in Review
2023 has come and gone, so we have once again reached out to friends from around the Cube community to help us summarize the past twelve months in Magic. In a year of Universes Beyond, Booster Fun, and an ever increasing pace of new releases, some cube designers have fully embraced these trends while others eschew them, choosing instead to focus on other aspects of the game. Here are the sets that Wizards of the Coast gave us in 2023:
- Jumpstart 2022
- Phyrexia: All Will Be One and Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander
- March of the Machine, March of the Machine Commander, and March of the Machine: Aftermath
- The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth and Tales of Middle-earth Commander
- Wilds of Eldraine and Wilds of Eldraine Commander
- Doctor Who
- The Lost Caverns of Ixalan and The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander
As always, we tried to find people with a set of diverse perspectives on the game for our annual wrap up. Let’s meet this year’s contributors:
is one of the most prolific Cube design theorists working today with over 250 articles to his name on Star City Games, most of which focused on Cube. He is a cohost of the much-missed Cube podcast The 540 and is known for coining the term “Twobert” to describe small, 180 card cubes meant to be drafted by 2-4 players.
is a Magic writer, content manager for TCGPlayer, a member of the Pauper Format Panel, cohost of the Heralds Horn podcast, and number one Thraben Inspector stan.
is a Cube designer from New York City. He’s one of the organizing members of the ‘Bar Cube’ event at CubeCon 2023, which kicked off a wave of new Cubes designed for casual, unsleeved play in public spaces.
is a core member of Madison’s vibrant Cube community. She is an accomplished constructed player, winning the modern event at NRG Chicago 2022, an experienced Cube curator, and an occasional Twitch Streamer.
, aka “DSB”, is a public artist and old-school Magic afficianodo. He is reknowned for his charming, impomptu hand-drawn tokens from CubeCon and can be found penning striking eloquent Cube theory on the MTG Cube Talk Discord.
Cube “Hit” of the Year
I’m going to go with an unorthodox answer here and say Universes Beyond as a whole. The concept had a rough start with The Walking Dead release, but the Warhammer 40K Commander decks showed us that there was something special with these product lines. The care with which The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth and the Doctor Who Commander decks were cultivated offers rich designs on a per-card level, motivations for new Cube designs, and the basis for environments unto themselves. In a lot of ways Universes Beyond gives us stuff we might never see in Magic otherwise mechanically, and of course aesthetically. The releases this year were great, and I’m looking forward to the future of Universes Beyond and the impact these releases will continue to have on Cube.
Seeing the return of the Adventure mechanic with a color twist in Wilds of Eldraine was my highlight of the year, where Woodland Acolyte became an immediate favorite in my Peasant Cube. Adventure is one of my favorite Magic: The Gathering mechanics in recent times, as condensing two spells onto a card promotes flexibility, synergy, and in some cases, raw power. With a cycle from Wilds of Eldraine offering a second color on the Adventure side, this means you can also be flexible when it comes to Draft, where you’ll gain the best value if you happen to be in both colors, but it isn’t always necessary. Cards like Woodland Acolyte are some of the best examples when it comes to lower-rarity Cubes such as Peasant in terms of play patterns, as they provide a concise design that is immediately understandable regardless of the player’s background in Magic.
My qualifier for this considers any mechanical developments applicable to the widest possible range of Cube designs. It is perhaps on-brand at this point to point towards effective mana fixing, but alas. Here we are. While the Lord of the Rings Landcyclers can (insufficiently) harken back to Ash Barrens, the Landcyclers are more strategically complex and farther reaching on what, exactly, they can cycle for.
Landcycling 1 is the innovation, and it’s obvious to many why this is the case, but it bears stressing here: pricing these at one mana makes them feel like supercharged, colorless Lay of the Land that are also another entire card when needed. They’re commons, they fix for dual lands at every power level (thanks DMU!), are relevant in the graveyard and acceptable late-game top decks. They’re affordable, yet scale well into high power formats. It’s flexibility and smoothing at a very low cost.
As far as ‘hits’ go by my metric, there’s nothing this year that comes close to the Landcyclers impact on our Cubes.
For me, CubeCon 2 electric boogaloo was an amazing time, meeting new friends and hanging with old, but that’s not the hit of the year for me. I was in NYC for two days seeing some broadway shows, and I wanted to see some of my magic friends for a bit, but was not going to have enough time to do so. So we arranged to meet to draft my friend Rebell’s Ravnica cube. It was so wonderful being able to connect a bunch of friends through a shared love of Magic from different parts of the game, be it constructed, limited, and commander through the drafting of cube.
Cube designers don’t win or lose. Success in Cube design is not reached through binary competition and points, but rather through subjective community experiences. So when 400+ cube designers get together in one place…it really just comes down to vibes.
CubeCon 2023 was by far the Hit of the year. The way this event solidifies, energizes, and creates community is beautiful and important. Sure, there’s a “competition” or whatever to appease the status quo, but the real meat (“ham”) of the event is the sharing of creativity, of ideas and possibilities. It is a constant rallying of minds to explore artfully curated probabilities, all in service to the goals of enjoyment, intrigue, and community.
It’s easy to cover CubeCon as a competition because these lines of thought and media structure are prevalent and engrained everywhere in our lives. But it is far more interesting to see it as a conceptual world’s fair of mathematical experiments, a think tank for game design in general, and a networking event for community organizers. It is a nexus for a nascent multi-dimensional society of minds.
Cube “Miss” of the Year
Descend! There’s not a single exciting card with descend 4 or 8 in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan and I’m honestly kind of mad about it! It’s clear that the mechanic was not developed with anything beyond retail Limited in mind, to the point where it looks like they were afraid of the idea of any of the cards being strong. Would it be so wrong if Coati Scavenger had the capacity to be more powerful than Eternal Witness in any meaningful way? I understand that the graveyard is a scary zone, but I feel kind of bullied to have seen this mechanic during preview season only to receive zero exciting cards in this space.
Similarly to what could be considered a ‘hit’, my ‘miss’ concerns a mechanic that fell flat across the widest possible range of Cubes. The introduction of Battles to Magic was the most excited I’d been about a mechanic all year long, and I was deeply wrong on how these cards would play out. I’m unsure if any of you have had similar experiences, or were just off the card type entirely from the start. But it’s worth going over why I think these missed as hard as they did.
To paraphrase David McDarby, “The more life matters, the worse Battles will play.” At first I couldn’t see how much I took the damage race for granted, or how punished I would be for trying to defeat a Battle until I played with the cards in MOM limited. Because you have to play with the cards. Theorycrafting alone does not make good gameplay. Well, after a few drafts I went from being in love with Battles to actively avoiding them under most circumstances.
If life matters in your cube it’s because mana and tempo matter. Under these conditions Battles should be evaluated purely for their front side, and the majority of Battles aren’t worth the front side cost.
I’m looking forward to different expressions of Battles, but I’m not holding my breath.
Wilds of Eldraine did not deliver on cube haymakers as its predecessor did. While it gave us some cool new tools like Agatha's Soul Cauldron, the black and white virtues, a new creature land cycle, and some beans, the long term impact of this set on cubes just isn’t there.
In Spice8Rack’s ‘The Entire Story of Magic: The Gathering’ video, a little over an hour in, it lays out how Elesh Norn is beaten and how that causes an extremely cliche ‘ripple’ effect destroying all of Phyexia everywhere or something. The more important point it makes is that this entire story arc is basically crammed in, cut short, and disrespected considering its enormity of effect on the metaverse. Spice8Rack rightly points the blame at the capitalist system and I compleatly agree with it.
Market Forces are the biggest Cube ‘Miss’ of the Year. Such that it creates an environment where creativity is pushed towards, as Reinhold Niebuhr would say, ‘emotionally potent oversimplifications’. Thus it is no surprise to see Universes Beyond mining our emotional nostalgia for that quickly recognizable hit, no surprise that power creep is edging out vanillas, and no surprise that huge story arcs get cut off with cliches to make way for the ‘next new thing’.
What the Market Forces are taking away from Cube is the fermentation of the meta. The epiphanies only realized from moments of stagnation (sligh anyone?). Slow down WotC. Give your stories more space, and give us some more time to get weird with the stuff we already have.
Cube Card of the Year
It’s still pretty new, but I’m going to go with Bitter Triumph. Infernal Grasp was an awesome upgrade in the Doom Blade department and Bitter Triumph improves considerably even on that. Black hasn’t ever gotten a removal spell that is better than Swords to Plowshares, which always made it kind of silly that black was “the removal color”. Bitter Triumph not only gives us a rate that makes sense for combatting the value-generating creatures and planeswalkers of today, but it does so while opening up synergies as a discard outlet. It’s a card that fits naturally in high-powered environments while technically having a drawback in lower powered ones. An absolute home run.
If we’re discussing the best Cube cards released in 2023, I think Bitter Triumph from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan is certainly in the conversation. It’s a top-tier removal spell coupled with “downsides” that encourage interesting synergy if utilized correctly. While it’s far from exciting, it’s nuanced enough for Cube curators to see it more than an up-to-date Doom Blade that can also hit Planeswalkers. Hell, I think this card is first-pickable in many scenarios.
I waffled a lot on my ‘Card of the Year’ because I want it to represent the current WotC design philosophy along with a ‘Yes, and..’ mentality (thanks, Matt Grenier). There are cards printed in 2023 that have moved the conversation forward on what, say, a ramp target looks like, or a removal spell does. These are fine choices, but I believe in choosing them we’re just upholding the same old philosophies of card evaluation. I find this method acceptable, but insufficient.
Inti, Seneschal of the Sun does, well… everything I want. They are a card advantage engine, a discard outlet, they distribute counters, and like Gut, True Soul Zealot, Inti doesn’t need to be the one attacking. You get incidental value from discarding anything, and if you’re touching the graveyard at all Inti helps you along that path. Simply the best red two drop ever printed.
If anything, we’re not taking enough advantage of Inti. There’s more space to be exploited, so much that’s incidental to what Red decks can and want to do… and we’re out here, content playing Inti face up, with no synergistic application.
I used to evaluate these cards by feeling relieved I was looking at a self-sufficient threat. However, in my current world, Inti inspires me. I want to live in the world where we evaluate our cards not only by what they do, but also with what they promise us, as players and as designers, and lean into that promise.
Inti therefore represents both the powerful and the aspirational. A true marriage of power and synergy. That’s the dynamic world I want to curate, and I’m thankful that Cube affords us these avenues of creative expression.
Atraxa, Grand Unifier. There are very few cards in magic’s existence that can get me to pause and re-evaluate my draft in context of being able to support a changing strategy. Previously, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim was the card that could do that for me. This year, Atraxa joined the party. This card fulfills all of my requirements for my affection. As a lover of all things multicolored, grindy, and midrange, running out of cards and resources is my biggest worry. Atraxa solves that, restocking your hand with the best that the top of your library has to offer you. Tack on lifelink, vigilance, flying, and deathtouch and you’re immediately stabilized. She compleats me.
Poison Dart Frog. You’re already mad, I can tell. But you know exactly what this card is and does. If you close your eyes you can even see its smiling little face there in the dark. It’s one of those perfectly medium, slightly over powered, flexible lil guys that just finds their way into conversation and cube lists. It’s innocent lil smile and Lovecraftian black eyes slightly distract you from the skull it’s sitting on. It could be from nearly any realm or time. It is clean and iconic, colorful and dangerous, useful and annoying. The top end will come and go, synergy pieces will move in and out of vogue, but this lil fixer will keep hiding in the 2 drops, smiling.
Best Set for Cube
I think there’s a lot of merit to choosing The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, not the least of which being that you know there are going to be more “Lord of the Rings” Cubes than any other kind of Cube motivated specifically by any other release this year, but I’ve already given plenty of praise to Universes Beyond. Instead, I’m going with Wilds of Eldraine. The return of adventure as a mechanic provides more tools for Cube games to go longer, gives players more decisions, and helps to prevent players running out of cards in hand/spells to cast. This has become sort of a problem when it comes to Constructed Magic, but there’s still plenty of space for more cards like this in the singleton Cube space. The off-color adventure creatures are also a powerful tool for incentivizing players to play multiple colors without presenting them with casting costs that are too difficult. Beyond that, Mosswood Dreadknight and Questing Druid are two of the coolest cards ever printed. They’re elegant relative to what we often see today and powerful without being game-warping, which is also something that can feel like a rare treat in 2023. The set also offered more Food support, more Sagas, new creature dual lands, and a lot of cool top-down designs. Role tokens are admittedly a bit of a mess, but however much anyone dislikes them should be counteracted by the warm feelings of joy generated by Regal Bunnicorn.
Commander Masters! Oh boy, what a banger of a release! From a Commons and Uncommons perspective, Commander Masters impacted Peasant Cube in numerous ways with incredible downshifts in Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Judith, the Scourge Diva, and Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit, plus many more! It’s refreshing to see so many popular Legends downgraded to Uncommon because these cards were strong back in their Standard heyday, but now serve an alternative role as signpost Uncommons in Peasant Cubes. While there weren’t any Rare-to-Common downshifts like with Dark-Dweller Oracle in Double Masters 2022, Commander Masters certainly shook up lower rarity Cubes in a meaningful yet exciting way. Let’s not talk about that Monastery Swiftspear downshift, though.
I’m going to go with Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. The set has something for any cube, with Orcish Bowmasters and The One Ring being outstanding and defining cards of the year. Unless you’re against using Universes Beyond in your cubes, there’s value here for everyone.
March of the Machine. MOM added a new premier reanimator target, Etali, Primal Conqueror, a blue midrange threat in Chrome Host Seedshark, a baneslayer variant in Boon-Bringer Valkyrie , and a new take on white sweeper in Sunfall. Plus battles like Invasion of Ikoria, Gobahkan, and Tarkir, among others add a new twist to gameplay. Putting reprints of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Monastery Mentor, and more into the hands of cubers makes this set a grand slam in my mind.
Having not followed any of the 2023 sets but still wanting to make a mildly educated statement here, I dove head long into Scryfall. I decided to base my opinion on new cards, below 5mv, with 1 or 2 colors, less than 25 words, no double face. The idea being: “What cards are readable at a glance in a draft and useful in the broadest context of cube design?”
Here’s the search I went with:
year=2023 not:reprint is:unique game:paper mv<5 color<3 -t:emblem -t:card -t:token -is:dfc -e:mat -e:cmm -e:moc -e:sld -e:rex -e:woc -e:onc -e:who -e:lcc -e:ltc -o:/([^\s]+\s+){25,}/ - ONE: ‘toxic’ is an alt win con I don’t like, and oil counters are an unnecessary complexity. But the artifact themes and proliferate stuff fits broadly.
- WOE: probably the most powerful due to the double duty of Adventures. Roles as enchantments might matter broadly.
- LCI: ‘explore’, ‘discover’, and ‘descend’ are mechanics that can slot into broad Cube themes, although a challenge without reminder text.
- LTR: Wtf is ‘the Ring tempts you’? Amass Orcs is on the fence for broad usefulness. Food is mid.
- MOM: ‘incubate’ makes fairly complicated artifacts but…it’s doable in a larger context
Conclusion: It’s not my personal cup of tea but I think WOE takes the lead here. Adventures stuff so much value into a single card, and most of the Adventure effects are broadly useful, so there’s no way cube designers aren’t going to slam these into brews.
Cube Level-Ups
This question got me thinking, which I love. I spent some time reviewing articles that I’ve put out this year and while there is some temptation to plug something I wrote, that feels disingenuous. I think the biggest level up moment for me this year came with regard to how I evaluate the Cube designs of others. I’ve called out Sublime Epiphany as an oppressively powerful card in many different Arena Cubes, and it was something that I felt a little judgemental about every time I would see the card in a new Arena Cube list. I have a really hard time losing with Sublime Epiphany in those Cubes, which made it seem like an obvious candidate for removal to me. Over time, I’ve come to learn that the more skill-intensive and “balanced” a Cube is, the less appeal it has to a wide audience. We’ve seen a ton of different versions of Vintage Cubes on Magic Online and Cubes with power are just sort of universally popular. I’ve come to understand that this is because Black Lotus is about as egalitarian as Magic cards come. You can have hundreds more reps of Vintage Cube than me, years more experience playing Magic, maybe a better deck on-balance, but when it’s my turn to hold the Black Lotus? You’re just going to lose sometimes. And it’s awesome that everybody gets the opportunity to feel that power. Sublime Epiphany is far more powerful than most cards in the Arena Cubes, and now I understand that this can be good, actually.
Leveling up for me means connecting with and learning something about the community and about myself. I think this means I should talk a little about the Bar Cube experiment.
There are many ways to define what cube ‘is’ and for me, Cube is designing games out of Magic cards. Game experiences that stay with us can define or transform our lives. I didn’t set out to change anyone here, or brand anything. I wanted to design a very particular experience. I believe Bar Cube touched the people it did by connecting their game to an experience: there became a shared ritual that expanded outside the prescribed Magic space. I didn’t understand how important this aspect, connecting games to experiences, is to designing games, or maybe just for this game. It’s hard to articulate the feeling at times, but in writing this, it’s how vital that designers understand why they make the games they make, and for whom they are made.
This community is bound together through shared experiences, and Bar Cube is an output of the desire to share experiences with you all. However this doesn’t in any way trivialize good gameplay. If anything, it’s asking that the two become inextricably bonded: the games we play and the experiences we create. And as a designer, once you have that all going well, you are, I’m sorry to say it, at risk of making new memories with your players.
Everyone has a golden age of Magic inside of them. There aren’t many that will say it’s today. The experiences we hold close, the memories of those ‘perfect’ games long gone, those fleeting moments of joy. We can cling to what’s lost, or how it’s all changed. Maybe this is all just a way of saying don’t be afraid to make new memories together. Yeah. I think that’s it.
As I became more entrenched in discussions with the Madison cube community, one of my biggest new takeaways was that cube is intended to be fun for its players. You should have your players walking away from the table with a positive experience, rather than a negative one where they didn’t get to play Magic, or assemble their strategy successfully. Enabling your drafter to succeed rather than preventing them from executing their gameplan through the design of the cube will bring the player back to draft again. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but hearing the words, “I would draft this cube again,” are the best things a cube designer can hear.
In the evolution of the super meta of Cube as a format, the Level-Up of the year is the conceptual development and cultural codification of the ‘Bar Cube’ as a way of curation and manifestation. (wonderfully summarized by Chill MTG here).
In short, the Bar Cube is a VIBE. It is a deliberate prioritization of social, communal, casual play over the economics of collectability and market preciousness. The Bar Cube encourages redaction of card text which opens entirely new creative spaces, outlets, and ideological agency. It further suggests an anti-materialistic and minimalist approach discouraging excess tokens and counters. Explicit in its title, the “Bar” Cube promotes societal Third Spaces which are a fundamental piece of community organization and revolution.
It is conceptual frameworks like these that will keep Cube alive through the great nomadic and migratory period to come.