How to Quickly Shuffle Your MTG Cube

Shuffling a Cube is a process of evenly distributing hundreds of cards into randomized boosters — a daunting task, especially when every Cube session ends with is sorted back into decks. With the right approach, shuffling a cube can take as little as 10 minutes for just one person, or even quicker with a few helpful friends!

Cubes are often 360 or more cards, too cumbersome to shuffle in a single stack. Instead, a cube needs to be shuffled in portions, which then need to be mixed together. The Broadcast Shuffle efficiently remixes each portion, so we can confidently reach a fully-randomized state as quickly as possible.

1. Split the cube into a row of 4 stacks. (or more if a quarter is too large to comfortably shuffle)
2. Mash or riffle shuffle each stack as you would a deck, just 3 times each.
3. Split the first stack into a second row of 4. Split the second in quarters and add the quarters to the new row. Repeat with the last stacks until your new row has 4 stacks, each made from quarters of the previous stacks.
4. Repeat 4 times, shuffling each stack and broadcasting them into a new row.

And you’re done!

After a Broadcast Shuffle, a cube will be uniformly random, whether it started already kind of random, as the decks from the last draft, or fully sorted. You’re ready to start dealing out packs for a draft or start any other format.

• If a quarter of the cube is too large to quickly or comfortably shuffle, do the same process with more piles. For example, if your first row has 6 stacks, the second iteration will broadcast 1/6th of each stack into a new row.

• More iterations of the whole sequence won’t hurt, but the great thing about this method is that just 4 broadcasts will be fully random.

• If multiple people are shuffling, have your helpers shuffle the individual piles, but don’t waste time shuffling each stack more than 3-4 times. Also ensure every card gets remixed with the rest of the cube, regardless of who shuffled the stack.

For more details on why the Broadcast Shuffle is optimal, including visualized comparisons with other methods, see this comprehensive article on Cube shuffling.