In General: Grandpa's Pauper Cube Part 3: Cube Considerations

Hello Zoners! Welcome to In General. The Sunday segment here on The General Zone is about general topics applicable to Magic. Today's article is a continuation of a series all about my Pauper Cube.

In today's segment I will share with you the design document that governs how I build and maintain my cube. I think that this is the most important planning piece that you can do because it sets the stage for all the decisions you are going to make in the future. It is important to conceptualize what you want to accomplish and set out clear rules for how you will achieve those goals.

Guidelines

• 540 cards, Commons only, designed for casual Booster Draft and Sealed deck play.
• Singleton only, only one copy of each card is included.
• The cube does not follow the Pauper banned list. There is currently no banned list for the Cube and all cards that have been printed at common at least once are theoretically eligible for inclusion.
• No cards from Unhinged or Unglued are currently included in the cube although some cards from these sets have appeared in previous editions of the cube. E.g. Carnivorous Death-Parrot.
• No foils. Although they look nice, many foil prints warp, bend, or curl. They are also heavier than standard cards. All of these factors make the foils detectable even through sleeves, which would give frequent players an unfair advantage over players that are new to the Cube play group because they could identify certain cards by the general shape that they take.
• No foreign language cards. I only include the standard English printings of cards. Again, although they are desirable collector's items, they slow down drafting and gameplay if a player doesn't understand what a particular card says. This can also give more experienced players who could recognize card art or other features the ability to quickly evaluate cards in draft and create an unfair advantage. It is important to me that the cube stays accessible to new players. It is a casual format.
• No textless cards. Same as above.
• Whenever possible I use the original printing of a card from the first set it appeared in. Note: I will always allow players to use the Gatherer site to look up oracle wordings or judge rulings during play and draft. I assume all cards to work in the way that their oracle wording is stated in the event that it is functionally different than the card as it was printed.
• Cube updates occur frequently, but always at least once when a new set is first released. I monitor how individual cards are used and how they perform. I allow myself to change cards on a one-for-one basis pretty much whenever I feel it is necessary, but I do like to give questionable cards a few weeks to prove themselves.
• In previous editions, the cube expanded by two cards every time a set was released, meaning that it grew in size over time. With the release of Khans of Tarkir I committed to a major expansion of the cube moving from about 480 to 540 cards. This is already very large so I am not sure if I am going to continue my policy of adding two cards per set.

My Ongoing Goals for the Pauper Cube

• Make every card legitimately main deck-able. Efficient sideboard cards are necessary for any limited environment, but value-added versions of common cards are much more likely to see consistent play in every draft.
• Include at least one card from every expert-level expansion and modern core sets. 
• Include cards with historical significance, notable tournament performances, or unique abilities. There is a limit to how far I am willing to take this though, Benthic Explorers, while unique for a Blue card, just isn't competitive in this limited format.
• Include sufficient fixing so that drafters can take any card they want from a pack and realistically play all of their best cards in their deck regardless of color. Decks with better mana will get screwed less often than decks with less off-color requirements, so there is a benefit to being a disciplined drafter, but I don't want someone to feel left out if they are playing Blue/Green and the only removal they saw was Red.
• As always, decks with a coherent strategy and solid mana curve are more likely to win, so I try to keep the average converted mana cost of all the cards as low as possible. I shoot for a target of 2.5 and try to keep the Creature count above 50%. This mix ensures that the average average deck drafted from my cube looks like an all-stars team of other limited environments. More colors, but tighter curves. 
• Speed is one consideration that I often overlook. Proactive decks are good in this format, but pure Aggro decks often perform poorly. I want a way to create aggressive decks that win without giving up powerful taplands and multicolor cards.
• The Cube, first an foremost, should be a fun way to showcase the awesomeness that is Pauper. If it isn't fun to play or it isn't a good ambassador for the format, then it isn't doing its job.
• People should come away from a draft with a new perspective on how Pauper can be played. Most people underrate the power and depth of the format, assuming that commons are generally bad. That might be true of most commons, but Pauper is an eternal format and over the years some nasty stuff has gone to print. I want people to have that educational experience in an organic and entertaining way.

That is it for today. I will be back next week when I finish up my Pauper Cube series by sharing some fun facts. See you then, Zoners.
-GG