Running Your Own Arena Cube

Magic Arena has brought a lot of great things to the Magic community. The ease with which new users are introduced to the game, and experienced users can always find a game, is certainly welcome.  But while Magic Arena is slowly expanding the formats available to play, it is still sorely lacking the ability to play Cube.

But Zuby, they already have Cube on Arena!

Okay, sure. You are correct, but what about your own Cube? Like many Magic players before me, I'm a huge fan of drafting and sealed. The excitement of playing a different deck every time you play limited can't be beat, and comes with additional benefits like improving your overall card evaluation ability. Those commons and uncommons that never see play in constructed are often power houses in the right Limited environment.

Insert Cube.

Cube is an amazing limited format where you, yes *YOU*, can build your own Limited environment. There are already a wealth of resources available to help you design and test your own cubes, so that's not what we're going to look at today. Instead I want to teach you how to build and play your own cube in Magic Arena.

Uhm Zuby, we can’t do that in the client.

Right again! You are correct so we have to make a Cube our own way. If you and your potential Cube drafters are flexible, you can build and draft the cube using a third-party site and play it in Arena! Here's how.

1. Make your list! Pauper and Peasant cubes work best, because while everyone is drafting together, ultimately each player must own or acquire the cards on Arena to build their decks.
2. Separate your colors into different “decks” in Arena for ease of importing to your cube website of choice. This is an easy way to make sure you have all the cards in your Arena collection.

3. Export the deck lists. Make a master list from these and import them into your favorite Cube website (we like CubeCobra.)

Balancing

This is always my favorite part. Do a few test drafts or sealed to see if any colors feel out of balance immediately, and invite others to do the same and give their feedback. A few simple tests can go a long way to making sure that the experience is what you want it to be once you have your friends cubing along with you. But there's no substitute for actual play, and you will likely continue to tinker with your cube over time. Each new set released on Arena opens up new opportunities and archetypes to investigate!

Playing the Cube

You’ve got the cube built and now you want to play. You can’t draft with friends easily in Magic Arena, so how do you play your cube? I have a short video to showcase how it's accomplished, but here are the simple steps:

1. Export your Cube list from cubecobra.com into a text file.
2. Visit MTGA DRAFT and upload your list in the Card Pool section.
3. Create a unique Session ID and invite your friends.
4. Add Draft bots if necessary and complete the draft.
5. After drafting, you can either make your deck on MTGA Draft or import it into Arena and finish making your deck there.
6. Direct challenge your friend and have fun!

While it may not be the perfect way to play and build a cube in Arena, it’s an option for those of us who love the format. Until Wizards makes it easier to play Cube in Arena, this is a relatively painless way to play Cube and get more value from your account. You may not always have the gold or gems to play in a limited event, but a group of friends can always throw down for some Cube.

Thank you for coming by and reading this, I’m hoping to have more articles about Arena Cube, including talking about my Pauper and Peasant Cubes and new additions made to them as new sets come out in Arena.