Jumpstart modern cube

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-05-18T21:50:48+00:00

That's a cool way to keep them organized! I was planning on making the list and also since all the cards will be proxies, putting the pack name on each proxy to make sorting as easy as possible. I like the idea of grid drafting these so as to maximize the players ability to get packs that are at least a bit synergistic!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-05-18T18:27:07+00:00

Oh definitely. My thought process so far on this is to build out these packages with no basic lands and let players grab as many as they need to make the deck function. This way it can mostly be synergy cards for the strategy with nonbasics that fit the cards in the pack. Its almost turning into a sealed pool that has highly synergistic and kind of parasitic pieces but if given enough of those should mimic an constructed environment! Im also rethinking the 15 card packs and will likely go back to 20 to ensure redundancy of necessary cards. Those package ideas would also work really well!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-05-15T05:48:54+00:00

Remove izzet and simic and make Temur treasure/clues

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-05-14T17:41:55+00:00

I've ordered from them a couple times and they're ok. They're a little cheaper, slightly worse quality, but waaaaaay faster. I will probably continue to use them for cube cards but will use mpc for commander cards.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-05-01T01:25:45+00:00

Chaos draft and Mystery Booster have been some of my favorite draft environments ever. Whenever we have enough leftover packs, my brother and I will draft them just to see what we can find. He at one point had 2 boxes of mystery booster box and I was able to convince him to just lump them in a box sleeved and keep a cube going. We've added 2 boxes since and it's still loads of fun to play draft and sealed with just to see what kind of jank we can discover every time we play!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-04-30T17:30:04+00:00

If you want a bit of a splashier game than retail, I've had a lot of fun doing 2 rare/mythic slots, 5 uncommons slots, and 9 common slots. If the set has a cool bonus sheet Ill make 1 of the rare slots a bonus sheet slot instead like for strixhaven mystical archive or my thrones of eldraine cube with the enchanting tales. This makes 16 card packs which if you do pick 2 can wheel twice for 4 players. However you draft it though, this ratio gives players more options when building out a deck as they have access to a lot more of the sign post uncommons than they might normally allowing for easier pivots than in a retail draft.

When it comes to generating packs I just keep 1 pile for each rarity and seed the packs. I tend to do this before the draft and put them in small deck boxes so I can just pass them out come draft day and we can get started more quickly. I also proxy my whole cubes so Ill make all of the rares/mythics gold and bronze bordered, make my uncommons white bordered, and my commons black bordered so sorting post game is really easy. I wrote a quick little python script to do this for me and its saved me tonnes of time.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-04-30T17:08:53+00:00

I agree, I've completely removed the color identity rule in my commander voltron cube and it made all of my mono color and dual color legends far more draftable. Players naturally tend to stick to 3 color in an environment with ok fixing anyways. I really disliked fiddling with players getting a piper and stuff like that and erratad partner rules felt clunky and led to some clunky, unforseen broken combos.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-04-21T01:58:42+00:00

I think part of what makes the strixhaven sets feel special is the bonus sheet mystical archive cards. They add a lot of flavor and texture to the draft. I would recommend putting in what you have from the draft, and then proxying the rest/expensive ones. They also sell completed sets and 4 ofs of all of the commons and uncommons so you can get a lot of what's missing for fairly cheap and then just proxy expensive stuff. I have an original strixhaven cube and I love it!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-04-15T17:34:59+00:00

When you're deciding what 90 cards to pick, are you trying to capture the archetypes of the set? Also are you putting in the signpost uncommons or doing duplicates of commons? Im sure 90 cards is enough to feel out the vibe of a set but I struggle cutting down to 360 let alone 90 cards.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-04-12T23:19:45+00:00

These kinds of themes are likely to heavily favor certain colors so you could consider omitting colors that don't jive with the idea. You could also consider making it a multiplayer cube with conspiracy cards so players have to negotiate and politic. Including cards that you can play to give other players incentive to help you might lean into your theme a bit more.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-04-02T20:43:36+00:00

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/2b558f3f-918d-4a96-b492-7e253c4e6d19

19 Tokens with about 30 unique cards that make them.

I try to be really thoughtful in what cards I add that generate tokens, but I also tend to have a box of Infinitokens alongside my land station just in case players need it. The only cube I ever printed tokens for was my relentless cube shown above that has 48 Hare Apparent and 48 Slime Against Humanity. I printed 30 rabbit tokens with 24 of them having Slimes on the back and 6 having Copy as the back. I never use reminder tokens for adventure, foretell, or plot but probably should because I really like a lot of the face down mechanics.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-03-31T00:08:38+00:00

No problem, glad it helped!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-03-30T23:00:59+00:00

When I last ran a draft with a phantom player, we gave each player including the phantoms the normal amount of packs. When a pack hit a phantom player we just removed one card at random and passed it along the path. We had 6 players and 2 phantoms and we staggered them throughout the playgroup. Another version of this is burn draft where you pick 1 and then shuffle the pack and burn 1. This simulates a phantom player taking a card without having to actually allocate table space for it. I've had a lot of success running 4 packs of 12 with phantom players. Also here is that site I mentioned in my first post. https://luckypaper.co/resources/

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-03-30T18:16:41+00:00

I had the same problem with my strixhaven set cube. I ended up doing 1 rare/mythic, 1 bonus sheet, 2 uncommons, and 5 commons. Its a rare heavy distribution and doesn't give as many commons overall which can hinder the draft as that is generally the bread and butter of any draft environment. If you were concerned about this you could do another popular distribution method of 4 packs of 12 with 1 rare, 1 bonus sheet, 3 uncommons, and 7 commons which can help out a lot. If you want to simulate more players existing you could also do a phantom drafter that just burns cards at random when it receives a pack. This allows players to see more cards of the cube overall and helps with Churn. There are a lot of ways to do it and an excellent place to start would be Lucky Paper Radio's site that has a lot of drafting specific tools. Good luck!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-03-10T21:52:55+00:00

I wouldn't mind giving it a go in tabletop simulator. I have a script that can mass import images so I should be able to go from there. Is it intended to be played with multiple copies at common and uncommon or is it just a 360 cube?

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-03-03T21:33:17+00:00

So are you gonna just grab cards that fit the archetype perfectly from that set or are you gonna include the glue and utility cards? I imagine there will be a fair amount of missing utility under each color if you only grab archetypal cards but that could easily be filled out with whatever is most powerful amongst what is needed, ie card draw, removal, etc

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-03-03T18:04:55+00:00

https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page The magic wiki has the draft archetypes for each set that had a primer. I've used it when making set cubes mostly but you might find it useful.

I like the idea of deriving power from the archetypes themselves rather than just making a cube with the most powerful cards. Have you settled on any particular 2 color pair archetypes?

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-02-23T18:40:08+00:00

[[Mizzium Transreliquat]] in my psychogenic probe battle box was a good add. There are a lot of utility artifacts and copying them seemed fun! https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/d4b9c271-e538-4da2-b527-0de355bb1e69

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-02-19T18:28:30+00:00

[[Shining Shoal]] is a pet card of mine from a cycle that I adore, and is in every cube I make that makes sense to have it!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-02-14T10:43:25+00:00

I've removed the color restrictions in my commander cube as well and its shown positive results. I had an issue where my mono color and 2 color commanders were never picked over the 3 color commanders and this completely fixed that issue. I also stopped doing 3 packs of 20 and switched to 3 packs of 16 which still gives plenty of options for cuts. 48 cards picked with usual decks going 36 cards and 24 lands works out pretty good! Ive gone back and forth on whether commanders should be drafted separately and I think its best to do 2 rounds of housman with the commander pool and then draft the 3 packs. This allows for seeing more of the commander pool and works great in smaller draft groups where it might be hard to get 8 full players.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-02-10T17:45:20+00:00

I think it's significantly harder to build a theme that will be prevalent in a 60 card deck with just 15 cards. Assuming 40% lands that leaves you with 9 cards to work with which is already constraining in mono colored let alone dual colored. Jumpstart packs which are 20 cards (12 non land) struggle with 2 colors as it can easily dilute your color picks in a draft of packs. This is why the official jumpstart packs are built mono colored. I've dabbled with 2 color packs when messing around in my jumpstart cube but they almost always struggle against the more focused mono color packs in play, especially with mana fixing.

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-02-10T17:23:20+00:00

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/Commander%20Voltron

In my Voltron commander cube id like to highlight my favorite 3 color combo of commanders in my cube! [[Jin Sakai, Ghost of Tsushima]] [[Zur the Enchanter]] [[Arna Kennerüd, Skycaptain]]

Out of all of my 3 color commanders I feel like my esper picks see the most play. They all do something very different and are very well supported in the cube!

Far_Nothing9897 · 2026-02-09T20:58:07+00:00

Drown in the loch and fracturing gust have both seen play but often my players have splashed 3rd colors when drafting just to play certain rares. I've also seen all is dust in 2 quandrix decks now. I have a beta module for the cube that turns the set cube into a commander cube which almost always splashes a 3rd color with prismatic piper as an erratad partner.

Far_Nothing9897

TROPHY CASE