You can build a cube fast if you stop treating it as a design project and treat it as an assembly job. Friday night you pick a skeleton and a list. Saturday you pull and buy cards. Sunday you sleeve, you draft it once, and you write down what broke. The cube that exists on Sunday night is worth more than the perfect cube that never leaves the spreadsheet.
This is a plan for anyone who wants to bring a cube to the table within the week. It assumes a 360-card cube at peasant or budget-legacy power. If you want the longer, more deliberate version, start with how to build your first cube and come back here when you are ready to sprint.
Why a weekend, and not a month?
Because the first version of your cube is wrong no matter how long you spend on it. Nobody knows what their cube wants until eight people have drafted it. The owner who spends six weeks perfecting a list before the first draft learns the same lessons as the owner who spent two days, just six weeks later.
A short build also keeps you from the most common first-cube trap: putting in every card you like. A deadline forces you to fill slots, not curate a museum. You can curate later, once the slots have told you what they need.
Friday night: choose the skeleton (two hours)
A skeleton is the empty structure of the cube, before any card names. For a 360-card cube, the standard skeleton looks like this. These are house guidelines, not rules, and most well-drafted 360 cubes land within a few cards of them.
| Section | Cards | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| White | 50 | |
| Blue | 50 | |
| Black | 50 | |
| Red | 50 | |
| Green | 50 | |
| Gold (two-color) | 50 | 5 per color pair |
| Colorless (artifacts) | 20 | Mana rocks and equipment |
| Lands | 40 | Mostly dual lands, 4 per pair |
| Total | 360 |
Ryan Overturf’s piece on cards per color in cube design argues for 50 to 60 lands in a 360 cube and about five gold cards per color pair. He sets 60 as the real minimum when every land fixes only two colors, so expect to grow toward that. We land at 40 lands for a weekend build because budget dual-land cycles are the first thing people run short on; grow the land count as drafters complain about mana.
Then decide one thing per archetype. Write ten lines, one per color pair, each naming the plan: white-blue flyers, blue-black control, black-red sacrifice, red-green ramp, green-white go-wide, white-black aristocrats, blue-red spells, black-green graveyard, red-white aggro, green-blue ramp or value. The lanes are described in detail in the ten two-color lanes. You are not inventing anything tonight. You are writing down defaults.
Last job for Friday: pick a published list to copy from. Search CubeCobra for a 360-card peasant or budget cube with a primer and a long changelog. A cube that has been edited fifty times has been drafted fifty times. Export its list as a CSV. That is your shopping list, and tonight is done.
Saturday: pull, buy, and fill the gaps (six to eight hours)
Saturday is physical work. Set up five piles by color plus gold, colorless, and lands, and go through your collection against the list. Mark every card you own. Most players with a few years of boxes find they already own a large share of a peasant list, often around half.
For the gaps, you have three options in order of speed:
- Buy the missing cards as one order from a single store with a cart-optimizer, so they arrive together. For scale, a full 450-card Pauper list on CubeCobra (The Pauper Cube) totals roughly $150 to $200 at the time of writing, so filling a half-complete 360 pauper list usually costs under $100. A peasant list with uncommons can cost twice that.
- Substitute from your collection. If the list wants a two-mana red creature with haste and you own a different two-mana red creature with haste, swap it. Same color, same mana value, same role. Do not swap a two-drop for a five-drop because the five-drop is cooler.
- Proxy the stragglers on plain paper for the test draft, and replace them when the order arrives. If that bothers you, read the piece on proxy etiquette; for a private test draft nobody minds.
Buy basics while you are at it. Forty of each basic land is enough for eight drafters, and a bundle of basics is cheap. Forgetting basics is the single most common reason a first draft stalls at deckbuilding.
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Sunday morning: sleeve and sort (two hours)
Sleeve everything in one color of opaque-backed sleeve so proxies and mismatched card backs disappear. Buy 400 sleeves for a 360 cube; sleeves split and you will add cards. The storage piece on sleeves that survive weekly play covers brands, but for a weekend build any matte sleeve from the game store is fine.
Sort the sleeved cube by section and count each pile against the skeleton. If white has 53 and green has 47, fix it now. Count twice. A cube that is short three cards drafts fine; a cube with 54 blue cards and 46 red cards will feel wrong and nobody will be able to say why.
Then make 24 packs of 15 cards. Shuffle the entire cube thoroughly first, not pile by pile. A common mistake is to shuffle each color separately and then deal, which produces packs that are weirdly even.
Sunday afternoon: the test draft (three hours)
You need bodies. Four players is enough for a test, drafting two packs of 15 and playing 40-card decks, or use the 180-card half of the cube with the two-player and four-player formats. Eight is better. Text the group Friday night, not Sunday morning.
During the draft, do not play to win. Play to watch. Keep a notepad open and write down:
- Which color was still open at pick 8 of pack 1. That color is probably too deep or too weak.
- Which cards wheeled that should not have. Those cards are weaker than the list thinks, or your group does not value them.
- Which decks had too few playables. If a drafter in two colors could not find 23 cards, those colors or that archetype are thin.
- How long deckbuilding took. Over 20 minutes means the cube is confusing or the mana is bad.
The detailed version of what to look for is in your cube’s first draft. For a weekend, the four bullets above are plenty.
Sunday night: write the first changelog
Before you put the box away, write down five to ten changes based on what you saw. Not fifty. Five to ten. Then make a CubeCobra entry for the cube, paste the list, and record the changes in its blog. The CubeCobra guide walks through that in ten minutes.
You now have a cube, a list, a test, and a changelog. That is more than most cube ideas ever get.
What a weekend cube should not try to do
A weekend cube is not the place for a theme, a restriction, or a clever power band. No tribal cube, no “only cards from 1996 to 2003,” no three-color archetype map. Every one of those is a good second cube. As a first cube they multiply the decisions and the weekend runs out before the cards are sleeved.
It should also not try to be finished. A cube is a living list. A cube drafted every week for a few years usually turns over a large share of its cards. The weekend gets you to version one. Versions two through forty are the hobby.
FAQ
How many cards do you need to build a cube fast?
Three hundred and sixty, which supports eight players drafting three 15-card packs. A 180-card cube works for four players and halves the weekend’s work.
Can you build a cube in a weekend without buying anything?
Usually, if you accept more substitutions and a lower power level. Most players with a few years of draft leftovers can fill a 360-card pauper or peasant skeleton from boxes they already own, then upgrade later.
What is a cube skeleton?
It is the count of cards per section (each color, gold, colorless, lands) decided before any card is named. Filling a skeleton keeps the cube balanced; filling a wish list does not.
Should a first cube be powered?
No. Powered and high-end unpowered cubes depend on expensive cards and a lot of balancing knowledge. Build a peasant or budget cube first, learn what your group likes, then decide whether power is worth it.
Draft it this week
A cube that is drafted is a cube that improves. Get yours to the table, then let the table tell you what to change. The game is the reason. The people are the point.
If you want cube ideas in your inbox, from skeletons to cut lists, subscribe to The Ludarium newsletter. And if you are near Indianapolis, you will hear first when Cube Commonwealth, our cube group, sets its first night as part of The Ludarium.
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