The Couple's Cube

Hello Everyone! I know its been a while, but my last week or so has been very busy with baseball, band and the likes. So today, I've decided to return with a bit of a treat.

My friend Will Nehlsen recently started a power cube. I have ALWAYS wanted to build a cube ever since I drafted one for the first time, but I haven't really had the time to get much of one started. With Will starting one up, I decided that it was time to do the same. I only faced one major problem in this.........where would I find the time? Like I said, my life is very busy and going through every Magic card and nitpicking which ones I like and don't like is very time consuming. Sure, I could just go online and use another person's cube, but in my eyes that is cheating. This got me thinking about a smaller cube. A cube for 1v1 Winston Drafts consisting of only about 100 cards or so.

With this base put into place, I only needed an idea for the cube. I figured that for a small 1v1 cube, a theme would be more interesting than just 100 of the best cards. First, I thought about a crap cube, which would be not the 100 best, but instead the 100 worst cards. After getting ideas from friends about bad cards, I didn't like what the final product would look like. This sent me back to the drawing board for ideas. After an hour or so of Google searches, I came up with people who were doing tribal cubes. Since my cube was only 100 cards, I decided to pick just one creature type. The only problem was thinking of a creature type that appeared in all 5 colors. Elves and goblins didn't work and soldiers wasn't that interesting. My friend Adam then recommended Elementals. A quick gatherer search showed more Elementals than I ever knew of. So many creatures are Elementals and I didn't even realize it. I was quickly attracted to the thought. When looking through gatherer, I discovered how powerful the color red would be. I had to do my best to limit it down, while still including the staples like Flamekin Harbinger and Smokebraider. A few hours later, and I had a basic list. I decided that it was good enough for the time being, a printed the cards that I didn't own out on paper. Quickly they were sleeved into penny sleeves and I searched for 20 of each basic land. One of the cool ideas I had for the cube was that instead of putting lands into it and clogging it up, I decided that each player would automatically start with a Primal Beyond (Elemental tribal land) in his/her sealed pool. I was ready to try it out.

The day was Sunday, and it was NPH release day. I quickly found a friend to try out the cube with and we had a blast. We built our decks and I got destroyed, but it was fun overall. I played with friends about 7 more times that day and each time was fun (except for one where I completely mis-drafted and my deck was VERY BAD). My friend Shawn quickly caught on to the idea, and decided him and my friend Max were each making one too. We brainstormed ideas and had a few good ones on the drawing board. One part about my cube everyone especially loved was the free land. They decided they would do that in their own mini-cubes. Shawn drove me home that night, and we had fun trying to think of names for the mini-cube. Shawn came up with Couple's Cube and it stuck. From there, my job was to build a second one that was just as cool as this one.

Overall, the cube made it a great night (especially after my horrific 2-3 finish in the release event). For anyone who loves quick fun, one draft and match only takes about a total of an hour. It makes for the ability to do it many times in a night, and it is very different from a normal Magic draft.

That's all for today! Thank you for reading and if you have any ideas for my second Couple's Cube, let me know in the comments. I started one that was all cycles (commands, original planeswalkers, the genju's, the pacts, etc.), but I didn't like the look of it. It was scrapped and I am now hungry for more ideas. Please help in the comments, and all ideas are appreciated. Remember, it is more of a theme, similar to tribal (preferably not another tribal), so don't give ideas like all card with art by Rebecca Guay (yes, someone did say that). Thanks again, and I'll return next time, possibly with an interview. Also, jump over to rogueinsight.blogspot.com. That is my friend Mike's blog, and it is a great read. Follow me on Twitter @AJKerrigan55. Goodbye.