This article  will be based on the two main modo (MTGO) cubes; Holiday Cube and Legacy Cube or the powered cube and the midrange cube as I would classify them respectively. For the most part I draft them fairly similarly but the powered cube is more random, more complex and requires a deeper understanding of which cards go well in what. Although there is more to know for the powered cube all the things that apply to the midrange cube still have important applications in the powered cube. The aim of this article is to outline some of the important core principles you should remember when drafting cubes rather than normal limited formats, and to help some newer cubers to up their game.

Discipline and restraint are the most important factors for doing well in the modo cubes. Obviously if you are playing for fun do whatever you want to, but if you are playing to win then you will have to pass up super powerful cards and super fun ones in favour of some of the dullest cards in the cube. The threats in any cube are so powerful that you cannot hope to have it all covered, have all the outs and answers required. The best thing to do is aim to do one thing as consistently, quickly and well as you can. This way you will just win your games before you have to deal with too much broken stuff.

A big part of being consistent is focusing on your mana base. None of the modo cubes have an excess of fixing. As result of this is that I have a strong preference for mono coloured decks. I am happier to go more colours when I am green due to it having a good amount of fixing based spells. When I find myself forced into more than one colour I rarely pass up a dual land. I will also start to greatly prioritise cards with only a single colour requirement in their casting cost.

It is important to remember that every card in the cube is powerful. Do not just pick the most powerful stuff as you will have a deck with no focus and no curve. Pick what your deck needs, think what a good balance of the elements of your deck should be and what its curve should look like and then highly prioritise picking cards that fill in your gaps. Your end result should resemble a constructed deck in its ratios of card types and curve. You are drafting archetypes based on good constructed all time staples and not the kind of thing you do in normal limited.

I consistently have the best results with aggressive decks. Of those mono white and mono red are by far and away the best and most supported in modo cubes. This is the case for powered and unpowered cubes alike. When building such decks mana curve is everything. The lower you can get your curve without any off archetype cards, bad cards or real filler the better your deck is. This means picking one mana 2/1s over the vast majority of things you see. This might be off colour Mox, blue power, juicy planeswalkers in your colour or meaty equipment. Resist the urge to pick these cards and just take the dull beater! If your deck can go one drop two drop, or better still two more one drops with good consistency then you have good odds of winning.

I will almost always pick up an Elite Vanguard over something like a Hero of Bladehold. I would have to have an incredibly good list already with basically nothing above three on the curve with few picks left in the draft before taking the four drop. I avoid five drops altogether with the exceptions being Fireblast (which doesn’t count) and Thundermaw Hellkite which is only OK in aggro red. The curve of the cards in the modo cubes is higher than that you want in most decks. You will be passed far more three and four drops than you need or want. It might seem wrong to take Soldier of the Pantheon over Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, you are certainly taking a much less powerful card. but then there are about six aggressive one drops in white of which you want basically all of whilst there are about double that number of aggressive powerful four drops of which you only want a few if any.

Black, blue and green are harder to draft aggressive decks for because you can’t just pick up loads of one mana two power creatures. When I am in a green seat I generally look to go into a ramp deck where everything is cheap one and two mana ramp or top end game winning threats. The one mana ramp creatures become some of your most important pickups when going down this route. In the vintage cube you can use green for any flavour of midrange deck and they are pretty good but try this in the holiday cube and you will not have the speed or the power to consistently do well. Ramp works fine in both as you can cast powerful enough things quick enough to compete with most other strategies.

Black is very tough to make a good mono coloured deck out of and I have not tried it recently with the more refined modo cube lists. When the modo cube first came out I had some good success with mono black decks but this was a lot to do with the inexperience of the cube in the modo community back then. People know a lot more what they should be looking to do these days. It only tends to be a lack of discipline that lets people down and not a lack of archetypal and card pool awareness. I would advise against going mono black if possible or even a deck heavily black if you aim is to cast on curve creatures and attack people with them. Black is great as a support colour. It has some good removal and powerful gold cards. Black is often the support colour I look to if I don’t seem to be getting enough come through for my mono white or mono red aggro decks. One thing I will say for black is that in cube it is the best colour for combo. With only single copies of everything any direct tutors in black are far more important than the card draw and quality you get from blue. There are some combo like things to be done even in the legacy cube generally involving cheating a very large creature into play. For such decks black is a colour you want to be in.

Blue is the most powerful colour in terms of the cards it has. This is particularly the case in Holiday Cube. Unfortunately it is also really hard to make good blue decks in the cube, especially in the Legacy Cube where you can’t rely on cards like Time Walk, Ancestral Recall and broken artifact mana to carry you. In the legacy cube I tend to just avoid blue. The established archetypes for blue are slow and unforgiving. Blue is not great for being able to win games, decks full of powerful blue stuff are just a bit aimless and slow.

In the Holiday Cube I am much more keen to draft blue. Not only do you have the chance to pick up unwanted power in boosters two and three but you actually have some options on ways to win. On average I am sure the mono coloured creature decks outperform the good blue decks however good blue decks with good draws are unbeatable and the super rare broken blue decks are pretty unbeatable regardless of their draw. If you are not an experienced cube player then I would avoid blue at first if you want to keep up a good win rate regardless of what cube you are playing.  That being said it is hard to learn something without doing it and to be really good at a format you have to be comfortable playing anything that is viable. The safest and easiest way to play with blue is as a support colour for an aggressive red deck. You get to play with some of the most powerful cards this way but it isn’t always better than the mono red deck nor does it teach you about how to win with blue cards!

It would take far too long to go into much more detail about what works well and what doesn’t in the various modo cubes. I will try to get some articles out on more specific cube archetypes if that is of interest to people. For now these broad stroke nuggets should be a great starting place to improving your modo cube results. Those being keep your colours to a minimum. Keep your curve as low as possible. Aim for consistency over power. Avoid black and blue as main colours and always take the one drop!

If you have any questions or any comments about my strategy tips please post below.