How to Build a Cube MTG: Your First Cube Under $200

If you want to know how to build a cube MTG friends will actually ask to draft again, start small, copy a proven list, and resist the urge to make it clever. A 360-card cube supports eight drafters, can cost under $200 if you build at the pauper level, and will be ready to shuffle in a few weekends. This guide walks through every decision in order, from card count to the box it lives in.

I built my first cube from a shoebox of commons and a printed list. It was not good. It was drafted thirty times anyway, because the people at the table did not care about the card list. They cared about the Tuesday.

What size should a first cube be?

Three hundred and sixty cards. That is the number that lets eight players each open three packs of fifteen, with nothing left over. It is the standard for a reason.

A smaller cube of 180 cards works for four players and is a fine place to start if your group is small. A larger cube of 450 or 540 adds variety but costs more and makes the card pool harder to learn. Save it for your second build.

Within 360 cards, the most common split is 50 cards per color (250 total), about 50 multicolor cards, about 30 colorless artifacts, and about 30 nonbasic lands. You can shift those numbers, but do not abandon the symmetry. A cube where blue has 70 cards and red has 30 will draft lopsided and your players will notice before you do.

Which power level fits a $200 budget?

Price in a cube comes almost entirely from a handful of expensive cards. Pick a power band that avoids them.

For a first cube under $200, pauper is the one that fits. Peasant is the better first cube if you can stretch to a few hundred dollars, or if friends’ bulk covers part of it: uncommons add bombs and build-arounds, and the gap between a good common and a good uncommon is where many of the interesting draft decisions live. We compare the power levels in pauper cube vs vintage cube.

If your heart is set on the famous cards, read the piece on proxies and playing Magic without going broke first. A proxied vintage cube can be built for the cost of printing.

Should you design your own list or copy one?

Copy one. Then change it.

The cube community publishes thousands of card lists for free, sorted by budget and style. Pick a well-regarded peasant or pauper list that has been drafted many times. Someone has already done the balancing work. They have tested whether the aggressive red deck is beatable and whether green has enough playable creatures at two mana.

Your job in month one is not design. It is assembly. Once the cube has been drafted five or six times, you will have strong opinions about which cards underperform. That is when you start swapping. Every cube owner I know tinkers constantly, and the tinkering is more satisfying when you have a baseline to compare against.

One rule for your changes: swap a card for a card that fills the same role. If you cut a two-mana red creature, add a two-mana red creature. Archetypes depend on card counts, and it is easy to starve a deck without noticing.

What archetypes should a 360-card cube support?

A draft needs enough coherent decks that eight players can all end up with something good. The classic structure gives each pair of colors a plan. Here is a common layout for a peasant cube:

• White-blue: flyers and tempo
• Blue-black: control and card advantage
• Black-red: aggressive creatures and sacrifice
• Red-green: big creatures and ramp
• Green-white: go-wide tokens
• White-black: aristocrats or lifegain
• Blue-red: spells matter
• Black-green: graveyard recursion
• Red-white: fast aggro
• Green-blue: ramp into value

You do not have to support all ten equally. But each color should have at least two good homes, and every archetype should have ten to fifteen cards that clearly belong to it. A new drafter should be able to see the plan from the cards in front of them.

The second thing every archetype needs is removal. A cube without enough ways to kill creatures becomes a race, and races are boring after the third draft. A rough guideline, and it is only ours, is to make sure every color that gets removal has enough of it that a drafter can expect to see several pieces in a draft.

If this is useful, the newsletter sends more like it.

Where do you buy the cards cheaply?

Three sources, in order of savings.

1. Your own collection and your friends’ bulk. Most players who have been around a few years have boxes of commons they will give away. Ask. Half a peasant cube can come from other people’s leftovers.
2. Bulk lots. Sellers move thousands of commons and uncommons for a few cents each. Buying a “playset of every common from Set X” lot often covers twenty cube slots at once.
3. Singles. For the specific uncommons the list calls for, buy singles from an online retailer. Sort your buy list by price and look hard at anything over two dollars. There is almost always a cheaper card that does the same job in a cube.

Do not buy anything near-mint. Cube cards get shuffled hundreds of times. Lightly played copies are cheaper and nobody will ever look at the corners.

What else do you need besides the cards?

The cards are the cube. These make it playable.

• Sleeves. Buy 400 of the same opaque color. Matching backs matter because mixed card backs from different printings can be marked through clear sleeves. Budget a few tens of dollars at the time of writing.
• Basic lands. Twenty of each type is plenty. Sleeve them to match the cube so they can be shuffled in. Most players have a hundred spare basics to give you.
• A box. A long cardboard card box costs a few dollars and holds 360 sleeved cards with room for lands. Many owners later buy a wooden or custom case, but that is a reward for the cube that gets drafted, not a prerequisite.
• Dividers. Index cards marking the colors make it easy to count and update.
• A way to make packs. The simplest method is to shuffle the entire cube and deal fifteen cards into twenty-four piles. Some owners deal by color to guarantee balanced packs, but random works fine for a first cube.
• Tokens and dice. A handful of each. Whatever the list uses most.

Total for the extras: call it $40 to $60 at the time of writing. That leaves roughly $140 to $160 for cards, enough for a pauper list from singles, or a peasant list if much of it comes from your own collection.

How do you know if the cube is working?

Draft it. Then ask three questions.

Did every player end up with a deck they liked? If two people were stuck playing bad cards in their colors, those colors are shallow. Count them.

Did more than one archetype win a match? If the same deck won every time, it is too strong or its counters are missing. Cut a card from the winner, add a card that beats it.

Did people ask when the next draft is? That is the only metric that matters. A cube that gets drafted beats a cube that is perfectly balanced in a drawer.

Once the first few drafts are behind you, the guide on how to run a cube night covers the hosting side: timing, pairings, and the little rituals that make a group come back.

FAQ

How many cards do I need to build a cube?

Three hundred and sixty cards supports a full eight-player draft of three fifteen-card packs each. One hundred and eighty is enough for four players.

Can I build a Magic cube for under $100?

Yes. Often, yes, if part of it comes from cards you or your friends already own. A pauper cube made only of commons runs about $100 to $150 from singles at the time of writing.

Should a cube be singleton?

Most cubes include only one copy of each card, which keeps variety high and makes every pick feel distinct. Some owners break singleton for key commons in a pauper cube, and that is fine.

How long does it take to build a cube?

Assembling a 360-card cube from a published list usually takes two to four weekends, including ordering, sorting, and sleeving.

Build it, then bring people to it

The first cube is a project. The fiftieth draft is a tradition. If you are starting one, the Ludarium newsletter sends new pieces on building a table people come back to. In Indianapolis, Cube Commonwealth, our cube group, is relaunching as part of The Ludarium, and new owners will be welcome.

The game is the reason. The people are the point.