Greetings, fellow Cube enthusiasts! I hope everyone is enjoying this stretch of Vintage Cubes on Magic Online. This is a very interesting time for the broader world of Magic as well, with a massive banlist update dropping last week. This banlist update might not seem like it has anything to do with Cube on the surface, but it has me thinking about a topic that I find compelling as a Cube designer: How should we treat cards that have been banned in Constructed formats while curating our Cubes? Let’s dig in!
One of my Cube mottos is, “your Cube, your rules.” Following that motto to its extreme, you can just put any card banned or not in any Cube and call it a day, but there’s more going on here. We want well-curated Cubes that offer fun play experiences, not lazily slopped together piles of cards that ignore the way that perception shapes reality. A card being banned in some capacity changes the way that players think about the card. Whether it’s something like the Simian Spirit Guide ban in Modern that highlights that the card is too often found in conjunction with archetypes that are up to no good, or a Splinter Twin situation where a vocal crowd adamantly opposes the ban. Being banned shines a permanent spotlight on a card.
Of course, this matters more or less on a Cube by Cube basis. Vintage Cubes, for example, aren’t going to shy away from cards just because they’re banned in other formats, and they tend to highlight more cards that are restricted in the Constructed format than not. The line is harder to draw in any other style of Cube though. The following outlines my approach for considering cards that have been banned in Constructed for Cube consideration:
Is the Cube a Format Cube?
An important starting point is delineating Cubes with a specific focus on some Constructed format. Your Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and even Commander Cubes. These are the Cubes where the corresponding format’s banlist will be most relevant, but these are certainly not the only Cubes where a banlist carries weight. I would expect that the most common rule for inclusion would be to automatically exclude any card banned in the named format, but I would argue that there are exceptions to such a rule that could improve a given Cube’s play experience.
The philosophy of a given format’s banlist is an important consideration here. Let’s use a Pioneer Cube as an example. There are aspects of the Pioneer banlist that are just fundamental to the format. Fetchlands have never been legal in Pioneer, so it wouldn’t make aesthetic sense to include them in a “Pioneer” Cube. Pioneer is also allergic to two-card combos as a format, so Felidar Guardian and Saheeli Rai would be an ill fit, too. But what about Walking Ballista? The card was banned largely due to a combo with Heliod, Sun-Crowned, but it isn’t itself doing anything offensive on rate. If you were to ask me before my morning coffee I might even tell you that Heliod was the banned card!
I’ve maintained Pauper Cubes on and off for over a decade, and I’ve never strictly abided by the Pauper banlist. In fact, my current Pauper Twobert contains three cards currently banned in the format! I’m certainly pushing things with Treasure Cruise, but one Gitaxian Probe in a Limited deck hardly has the impact that four do in Constructed. I also don’t think there would be anything wrong with including Invigorate in a Pauper Cube in a format where Dark Ritual and Lotus Petal have been core features of several banned decks while remaining legal themselves. A little cheating on mana is allowed and some would say encouraged in Pauper!
Of course, the purpose of today’s article isn’t to put every format’s banlist under a microscope – it’s to share my more general criteria for when a card that is considered in some ways categorically messed up can make positive contributions to the world of Cube. That in mind, let’s go over the questions that I’m asking myself on a card-by-card basis.
Is the Card More Powerful in Limited or Constructed?
I touched on this regarding Gitaxian Probe, and I believe that this is a topic that deserves a good amount of attention when it comes to Cube curation. To an extent it is better to be able to see your opponent’s hand in Cube than in Constructed because Constructed offers far more context clues, but Gitaxian Probe would be equally banned in Modern if it didn’t have that line of text at all. Being able to add four zero mana spells that replace themselves while adding to storm counts is too much for a large Constructed format to bear.
A great example of a card that is much worse in Cube than in Constructed is Deathrite Shaman. We see it in digital Cubes now and again and the reliability with which Deathrite Shaman can tap for mana in a 540-card Cube is dramatically less than what we’ve seen in Constructed formats with fetchlands. Deathrite Shaman caught bans in multiple formats for doing a lot more than tapping for mana, but it’s not catching any heat in Pioneer because Llanowar Elves is much better in the card’s primary role there. I would go so far to say that Deathrite Shaman is actively weak in a lot of Cubes, and is likely to be slightly overvalued given its status as a twice banned card.
The most recent banlist update involves almost exclusively cards that vary widely in power level between their impact in 40 vs. 60 card formats. Up the Beanstalk is a cute Limited card that went absolutely berserk when combined with a bunch of free and discounted spells- something that you just can’t reliably reproduce in singleton formats. Karn, the Great Creator has some relevant text for Cube, but with so much of the card being centered around accessing sideboard cards I would expect that the card is rarely if ever featured in any Cubes. The card coming off the banlist, Smuggler’s Copter, is one that I would argue is considerably more powerful in Cube than Constructed largely because instant speed answers to 3/3 fliers aren’t in great abundance.
Geological Appraiser in Limited as compared to Constructed might as well not even have the same card name. The way that cascade and discover break in Constructed are near impossible to replicated in Limited, and the decks that cast Geological Appraiser and win the same turn are nothing like the Cube decks that utilize the card to cast one additional random spell. A Pioneer Cube with a blink theme could do some pretty fun things with the card! You might not include Geological Appraiser in a Pioneer Cube because it’s generally weaker than Chandra, Torch of Defiance as a value card, but I can’t imagine eschewing it because it’s too powerful for the environment.
Is the Card a Haymaker or a Roleplayer?
Another question that I find fundamental to this discussion is whether we’re talking about a nuts and bolts card that has some small, card-neutral impact, or if it’s one with a big flashy effect. I personally find that Cube Draft is better when Ponder and Preordain are in the Cube, and I would absolutely put Ponder in a Modern Cube if I curated one. With regard to the freshly banned Fury, I have no such affection for zero mana Plague Winds.
The banned initiative cards in Pauper are another example of something that can’t just quietly exist in a Cube list. Introducing the initiative to a game has a warping effect that lasts the entire game’s duration, and even if you could argue that Aarakocra Sneak isn’t the most powerful card in your Pauper Cube, it is one with a bad reputation and a colossal impact on games. Compare this to recently banned Monastery Swiftspear, a card that only has one power on its own and that dies reliably to almost every removal spell you’ll find in a Pauper Cube.
I like to try to push the upper limit on what cards can fit in a Cube, and I gave Oko, Thief of Crowns one shot in my Tempo Twobert. I thought that the generally low mana curve of the Cube would allow players to meaningfully pressure the planeswalker in a way that would make it feel more balanced, but the first Draft that we tried, my friend topdecked it on an even battlefield and won very easily. It was the sort of spot that any above-average topdeck would have been a problem, but the game wasn’t fun for either of us and the burden of proof is on Oko to demonstrate that he can behave.
Unfun games are bound to happen from time to time no matter how well curated your Cube is, but some offenders are worse and louder than others. When your Cube generates a unique experience and everybody learns something together it can be fun to navigate even the most tedious of games if the experience is novel. But if you put Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath in your Cube and it out-values everything else going on there won’t be a lot of learning or fun involved.
Does the Card Offer Meaningful Archetype Support?
I consider this query secondary to a card’s individual power level and its general impact on a game, but an important consideration is whether a card helps one of your central archetypes tick. This could be something as blatant as adding Splinter Twin and Birthing Pod to offer more things to do with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker in your Modern Cube, or something less heavy-handed like featuring Faithless Looting to make graveyard decks more consistent.
There are some banned cards like Krark-Clan Ironworks that spawn archetypes entirely on their own that have a home somewhere in the world of Cube, but that are likely non-starters for a Modern Cube where the card was banned. It’s one of the most impactful slots in my Artifact Twobert, though it’s one that requires some amount of balancing around the card so that it isn’t just the most powerful thing going on.
There aren’t a ton of examples of banned cards that quietly supplement archetypes, but Dreadhorde Arcanist in Legacy Cube highlights the sentiment that I want to express here. Dreadhorde Arcanist is a perfectly reasonable card in singleton environments that helps to push spells matter style decks. Importantly, it is much weaker in Cube than in Constructed. Lurrus of the Dream-Den occupies similar space. It’s rare to see anything in Cube that stands up to the decks that got Lurrus banned everywhere, and it is a useful tool to add some recursion to decks playing value permanents and cheap creatures alike.
Is it Fun?
Finally, the most important question that should always be asked about every card in Cube: Is it fun to play with? This question is both subjective and contextual! As Cube curators, we are cultivating a play experience with our players that ideally we all enjoy and want to keep coming back to. Many of us like playing with broken cards, and that’s party of why Vintage Cube is so popular! Many of the cards that make Vintage Cube fun can lead to completely hopeless games in other environments, but even then balance isn’t the most important thing for every group! Some players just want to be able to cast Nexus of Fate again, and you know what, when it comes to do with their free time in causal formats that’s their right!
That’s all for me this week! I’m never sure how these theoretical design-drive articles are going to go over, so if you liked what you read today, please let me know and share with your friends! Next week I’ll be going over the updates to the returning stock Magic Online Vintage Cube. Until then, happy Cubing and have some fun!