Cube Draft “Cheat Sheet”
Version 1.1 C4 release 2
http://www.box.net/shared/aer8nl3kxo
Here are some rules governing the Cube. Note that the Cube has been designed with these in mind!
1 Land packs
Each player starts with 50 basic lands plus a handful of randomly allocated non-basics. This is a set limit.
2 Drafting
Divide the total number of boosters by the number of players. There may be more than three boosters per player.
3 Deck and sideboard size (the “40/20 rule”)
Each player can take a maximum of sixty cards that they draft into battle. Usually, this means a 40 card deck and 20 card sideboard.
4 Two-card ante
After shuffling, but before drawing your initial seven cards, remove the top two from the library (one face-up, one face-down) and put these in your ante. Winner of that game puts their two cards back in their deck, and puts the loser’s cards go into their winnings pile.
5 Winnings pile
At the end of the night, the player with the highest cumulative coin value in their personal winnings pile wins.
Strategy and Tips
- Basic lands matter! Make sure you have sufficient additional lands in your 20-card sideboard to cater for the loss of some through ante.
- Cutting cards is very difficult as the power level in vintage cubes is very high.
- If there are five or more boosters per player, don’t be afraid to pick power over archetypes for the first few packs, particularly if you can wheel archetype cards in these.
- There are very few mass removal spells, and thus they are high picks.
- Tutors, particularly unrestricted ones, are some of the most desirable early picks.
- Cards that are restricted or banned in some formats are often excellent Cube picks.
