An MTG cube is a curated collection of Magic: The Gathering cards, usually 360 to 540 of them, built by one person to be drafted over and over. Instead of opening sealed booster packs, players shuffle the cube, deal it into fifteen-card stacks, and draft from those. Nobody buys anything. The same cards come back to the table every time, and the fun comes from how differently they combine each night.
If you have played Magic once at a kitchen table and bounced off the cost of keeping up, cube is the version of the game built for you. It is also, in my experience, the best thing that has happened to Magic as a social activity.
How does a Magic cube actually work?
Picture a long card box holding one copy of each card the owner has chosen. That box is the cube. On game night, the owner shuffles the whole thing and deals out “packs” of fifteen random cards from it.
Eight players sit in a circle. Each opens a pack, picks one card, and passes the rest to the left. This continues until the packs are empty. Then everyone opens a second pack and passes right, then a third and passes left. By the end, each player has forty-five cards and builds a forty-card deck from them, adding basic lands the owner provides.
Then you play. Usually three rounds, often Swiss pairings, sometimes a casual free-for-all. When the evening ends, every card goes back into the box. Nobody keeps what they drafted. The cube is whole again, ready for next time.
That last part is the whole trick. A cube is a draft environment that resets.
Why do people prefer cube to booster draft?
Booster draft is wonderful, but it has three problems that cube solves.
Cost. A booster draft costs each player the price of three packs, every time. Eight players, every other week, adds up fast. A cube costs the owner once and then costs the group nothing. The owner can spend well under a hundred dollars on commons or many thousands on original dual lands and Power, where a single Revised Underground Sea listed above $1,000 at the time of writing (October 2026). Either way, the players pay nothing at the door.
Quality. In a booster pack, most of the cards are filler meant for sealed-deck balance. In a cube, every card was chosen because someone thought it was fun or powerful. There is no fifteenth pick that nobody wants. Even the last card in a pack is playable.
Memory. Because the card pool is fixed, players learn it. After three or four drafts of the same cube, you know that the blue-white flyers deck is open if you see a particular card fourth pick. You know which rare the owner put in as a trap. The cube becomes a shared language, and the table starts to feel like a regular poker game where everyone knows everyone’s tells.
Here is how the two compare side by side.
| Booster draft | Cube draft | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per player per night | Price of 3 packs | Free |
| Card quality | Mixed, lots of filler | Every card chosen on purpose |
| Who owns the cards after | Each drafter | The cube owner |
| Card pool | Changes with each new set | Fixed until the owner updates it |
| Learning curve for the pool | Resets every few months | Builds over years |
| Setup | Buy packs | Shuffle, deal, provide lands |
What kinds of cubes are there?
“Cube” describes the method, not a specific card list. Owners build around whatever they love. A few common archetypes:
- Vintage or “powered” cube. The most famous style. Includes the strongest cards from thirty years of Magic, including the Power Nine, the original Moxen and Black Lotus. Expensive to own, thrilling to draft, and often built with proxies.
- Legacy or unpowered cube. Same ambition, minus the handful of cards that cost as much as a car. Still packed with the game’s best spells.
- Pauper cube. Only commons. Cheap, surprisingly deep, and the best teaching environment I know of. The article on pauper cube versus vintage cube goes deeper.
- Set cube. All the cards from one beloved set, like Innistrad or Ravnica, so you can draft it forever after it leaves stores.
- Themed cube. Tribal, graveyard, artifact, “cards from 1996 only,” whatever the owner finds interesting.
- Commander cube. Drafted decks for the four-player format, with legends seeded into the packs.
Most cube owners start with a cheap budget list and spend the next decade tinkering with it. Swapping five cards before a draft is half the pleasure.
Why does cube make Magic a better social game?
Competitive Magic, at its best, is a game of individual preparation. You build your deck at home and bring it to the tournament. The room is full of people, but you are mostly alone with your list.
Cube puts the building back at the table. Eight people draft together, build together, and pass judgment on each other’s picks. The owner is a host, not just a player. The cards are shared property for the night. Rivalries develop around specific cards. Someone always takes the dragon you wanted, and you remember it for a year.
It is also fair in a way that constructed Magic cannot be. Everyone starts with the same card pool and the same budget: zero. Skill in drafting and play decides the night. A fifteen-year-old with no collection has exactly the same chance as the owner.
If this is useful, the newsletter sends one piece like it every week.
What do you need to start playing cube?
If someone you know owns a cube, you need nothing. Show up, draft, play. That is the point.
If you want to own one, you need:
- A card list. Thousands are published free online, and the cube community shares them openly. Copy one that matches your budget.
- The cards. A pauper cube can be assembled from a bulk box or bought as singles for very little; one common estimate puts a 360-card pauper cube under $100. Higher-power cubes cost more, or you build with proxies.
- Sleeves. Cubes get shuffled a lot. Matching sleeves protect the cards and keep the deck from being marked.
- Basic lands. About twenty of each type, sleeved to match.
- A box. A long cardboard card box works. Many owners graduate to a custom case because it becomes a point of pride.
We walk through the whole process in how to build your first cube. If you have a Friday evening and eight friends, the guide to running a cube night covers the rest.
Is cube good for beginners?
Yes, and better than most alternatives. A new player at a booster draft is overwhelmed by three hundred unfamiliar cards from a set designed around a theme they do not know. A new player at a cube is drafting alongside seven people who can explain things, and the card pool rewards fundamental choices: creatures, removal, a good mana curve.
The fixed pool also means the second night is easier than the first, and the fifth is easier still. Nobody has to buy anything to keep improving. For a long time I thought the barrier to Magic was the rules. It is not. The barrier is the ongoing cost and the feeling of always being behind. Cube removes both.
FAQ
How many cards are in a Magic cube?
Most cubes hold 360 cards, which is exactly enough for eight players to draft three packs of fifteen. Larger cubes of 450 or 540 cards give more variety between drafts.
Do you keep the cards you draft in a cube?
No. At the end of the night every card goes back into the owner’s cube. You draft the cards for the evening only.
How much does it cost to build a Magic cube?
Anywhere from under a hundred dollars for a commons-only pauper cube to tens of thousands for a powered vintage cube with real copies of the Power Nine, since an Unlimited Black Lotus alone listed above $20,000 at the time of writing (October 2026). Most first cubes land somewhere between one and two hundred dollars.
Can you cube with fewer than eight players?
Yes. Four and six players draft fine with small adjustments to pack size, and two players can draft a cube using a format called Winston or Grid draft.
Come draft with us
Cube is the format we built a community around. If you play Magic and have never sat down to a cube draft, the Ludarium newsletter sends one piece a week on games that bring people to the table, and cube shows up often. Cube players are welcome at Cube Commonwealth, our drafting group, and when the Indianapolis lounge opens the cube will have a permanent table there.
The game is the reason. The people are the point.
Sources
- Draftsim, Pauper Cube guide: https://draftsim.com/pauper-cube-mtg/
- MTGGoldfish, Underground Sea (Revised) price: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Revised+Edition/Underground+Sea
- MTGGoldfish, Black Lotus (Unlimited) price: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Unlimited+Edition/Black+Lotus
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