Still Had All These! » Pauper Cube: Infinite Limited in a Box

James had just asked us to come up with bios for this site. In doing so, I hit upon my love for all things cube. It got me to thinking: what about an article on cube of the pauper variety? I've definitely spent a lot of time constructing, refining and most of all playing mine. In today's article, I'm going to detail my thoughts and experiences with pauper cube and I'll talk about ways to construct your own. It's a ton of fun and definitely worth it.

First of all, what is Pauper Cube? Quite simply it's like cube (see Evan Erwin's cruise video on StarCityGames if you don't know what cube is), that uses no rares. Don't confuse it with Pauper, the constructed format that uses only commons. Uncommons are allowed in Pauper Cube too. The first time I drafted someone else's Pauper Cube, I thought it was going to be a watered down version of the fully powered cubes I'd already drafted with. That's not entirely off the mark, but you start to draft a Pauper cube, you don't really miss the rares that much. It feels a lot less broken and a lot more like a booster draft all-star game.

To quickly summarize how a cube draft works, your Pauper Cube will consist of only the best commons and uncommons of each color. From there, you randomize the entire cube and make piles of 15 cards. These will be your "packs". Each player gets 3 of these packs. Then you booster draft as normal. Again, it's just like a regular cube in that respect.
If it sounds like fun, it is. Now you might be interested in making your own cube, but don't know where to start. That's fine. Start from scratch, I had to, since I couldn't find a good pauper list on the internet. Be warned though, constructing any cube from scratch is an extremely time consuming endeavor. Prepare to spend several hours on it.
I don't want to go into the ins and outs of constructing a pauper cube, since it is in many ways similar to a regular cube. Again, Evan's video will suffice for advice on how to build one. Instead I'll talk about some differences between the two.

A pauper cube is by necessity going to be less powerful than a regular cube, but you are still going to have powerful, broken cards, though they will be few and far between. In order, I have found the top 5 best cards in pauper cube to be:

The first two are borderline banworthy and some people have given them the ax in their cubes, since the former just takes over games on its own and the latter allows for some unfair starts. I keep them in mine since I have a huge cube (more on that in a minute) and thus they show up less often.

Sensei's Divining Top is every bit as powerful as the other two, but you have to build around it. If you can draft a lot of shuffle effects the selection it provides you is insane, although it only really goes in midrange or control decks.

Urza's Factory flat out wins every control/midrange battle on its own and it is very difficult to answer. If I'm in any sort of non aggro deck, I will first pick this card without hesitation.

Finally, Booster Tutor is my favorite card in my pauper cube and no cube should be built without one. Yeah, it's an Unhinged card, but it's so much fun and very, very powerful. The way I've always seen it played is a player not in the match grabs 15 random unused cards from your cube and constructs a makeshift booster back from it. Then you pick one of those cards and put it into your hand. All for one black mana. The power, flexibility, and selection this card provides is phenomenal. What might surprise you is the first time I saw this in a cube draft it tabled! It goes without saying that Booster Tutor gets better the more colors you are playing and is at its best in 5 color control. In fact, if you have the card in your deck, it might be prudent to look for ways to access other colors of mana.

The next item I would like to address is the size of the pauper cube. In the Pacific Northwest, I know of at least half a dozen pauper cubes all of varying sizes and stripes. The one thing to keep in mind is you want your cube to be at a minimum 360 cards. This way you can run an 8 man cube draft. How much bigger you want to make it is up to you. I've played with some as small as 420-430 cards. Mine is a whopping 720 cards.

The tradeoff to consider is the larger the cube, the more diluted the power level. Also the larger the cube, the harder it is to build and balance. I would recommend starting small, then making it bigger as you see fit. I like the flexibility of being able to finish a draft, then set those cards asides and start a new draft right away.

The other tradeoff of a larger cube is it will be a lot harder to plant archetypes in your cube. For example, I tried to make storm decks viable and reanimator viable. The problem with the former is there weren't enough storm cards, you might see 1-2 per 8 packs, and obviously that does not a deck make. The issue with the latter was that all the best reanimation targets are rare! Oops.

On the flip side, your standards for what cards to include go down. For example, in a normal cube cards like Kor Hookmaster would probably be underpowered. Not so in a Pauper Cube! In he goes, especially in your larger cubes.

Once you have determined how big you want your cube to be, the next step is to choose the cards. To start, I went through my awesome commons/uncommons box and selected some favorites. I then went through each block and tried to think of some of the best commons and uncommons for draft. With a working pile in front of you, the next step to balance out creatures/versus spells. Again, since the cards are weaker and this is closer to actual booster draft, you are probably going to want more creatures than a regular cube, something like 3 creatures for every 2 non creature cards.
In building my cube, I came across a few pitfalls for each color. It's important to be cognizant of these pitfalls and work to avoid them to achieve perfect harmony in your pauper cube.

In blue, coming up with creatures was a challenge. It was so easy to just throw in a ton of counters, bounce and card draw spells and call it a day. It's perfectly reasonable to have things like Welkin Tern or Cloud Spirit in your cube since blue/x aggro is a very reasonable strategy.
In green, the problem was dumping a ton of mana acceleration into the cube, with nothing to accelerate into! I had Farseek, Rampant Growth, Kodamas Reach, Harrow and more, but no fatties. The problem is many of the biggest creatures are rare, so you might have to play with some worse fatties and/or trim down the accel.
In red, the problem was too much burn, not enough creatures. Again, play only the most premium burn spells and lower the standards a bit on creatures. Yeah, you might have to include Goblin Shortcutter. Deal with it.
Black and white share the same problem, too many creatures. Specifically, too many 2 drops and stupid knights that cost BB or WW. Try to spread out your creatures among casting costs, so trim some of the worse weenies and don't be afraid to go up the curve. Creatures such as Belfry Spirit and Phantom Flock have been excellent additions to the upper end of the creature spectrum.

Finally, some general notes:

Be sure to include cards from Portal/Starter. I've got Goblin Settler, Ravaging Horde, Corrupt Eunuchs and Famine in my Pauper Cube. They might cost a fair bit to acquire, but I think they're worth it.
Sleeve all your cards and use proxies where you have to. The most costly part of any pauper cube is going to be sleeving it. I spent $70 just to get enough to sleeve my cube, plus the lands. Don't skimp on the quality of sleeves, since having them break all the time is bad news bears. Speaking of which, you want about 40 presleeved lands of each basic land type.
One issue when constructing a Pauper Cube has to do with cards in older sets. For example, in Arabian Nights, Antiquities, etc. there were no rares, just U1, or uncommon 1 (meaning it would appear once on a production sheet of cards). For all intents and purposes, they function as rares. It's up to you which way you want to go, but I prefer to stay in the spirit of Pauper and not run those cards. I made an exception for City of Brass though, since it's both iconic and not overpowering. Plus more manafixing in cube is ok with me.
Although Booster Tutor is tons of fun, I would consider the types of people you expect to draft with your cube when it comes to adding more unglued/unhinged cards. I decided to just keep it to one, but adding a couple more fun ones isn't out of the question. I've been thinking about adding Cheatyface actually...
Every cube, whether Pauper or otherwise is always a work in progress. You are never going to get it right on the first try, as such, you will constantly be taking cards out and adding new ones in. Just be sure to maintain the chi of your cube and keep it balanced. Be receptive to new ideas and criticism. In fact, it's a good idea to ask the first few people who draft with your cube for advice, or ask them what cards seemed underpowered and which ones were too good. Ask them if aggro/control are both viable, what themes work? What themes do not?
I'm not actually sure how much mana fixing should be in a cube, whether pauper or regular. It depends on who you ask really. There's no shortage of playables, since every card is at least reasonable in one deck or another. I would experiment with varying amounts of it, (both artifacts and lands), be sure to ask players if they thought there was too much or not enough.
I would recommend against foreign cards or textless cards. You don't want to have to tell people what a card does in the middle of the draft. You never know who may draft from your cube some day. Might as well make it as newbie friendly as possible.
Finally, most color hosers and cards like Tormods Crypt should be used sparingly or not at all. I allow sideboards when I draft with my cube, but the sideboard only cards are almost always last pick. You might want to include a couple cards like Seal of Cleansing or Naturalize, but remember that most of the good disenchant effects come stapled on creatures.