• A booster draft is traditionally played in 8-player groups called “pods.”

• Each player receives three booster packs, usually from the same set

• You open the first pack, pick a card, and then pass the pack to the next player

• Take the pack from the player passing one to you, pick a card, and do it again

• Rinse and repeat until everyone has opened three packs and you have a card pool which you'll use to build a 40-card minimum deck.

A cube is a large collection of (often powerful) cards used for drafting and playing Limited. Drafting a cube is similar to drafting booster packs, but instead of drafting from three fifteen-card Magic booster packs, you draft from fifteen-card "packs" that you create from your cube.

Building your first cube can be an overwhelming experience. How many cards should it contain? What cards do you choose to put in it? How do you balance colors and create synergy? Often we take for granted the intricate design behind drafting Magic cards. In Booster Draft, the mechanics, synergies, and worlds are already there for us to immerse ourselves in. In Cube Draft, you can also create this experience, and the best part is you get to make all the decisions! The themes, power level, strategy, and rules are all up to you.

WHERE TO BEGIN?

For your first cube, I recommend using 360 cards. A 360-card cube can support exactly eight players. If you create three fifteen-card booster packs for each player, this means that every single card in your cube will be drafted, which is the most optimal way to experience your cube.

Some cubes contain 720 cards. A 720-card cube can support two eight-player drafts. Many players prefer a larger cube because it allows them to play two eight-player drafts without having to reshuffle, and they'll never see the same card twice. Constructing a larger cube is not necessarily better or more fun. You'll have more draft archetypes and different experiences in each draft, but you'll also have more variance, as you won't see the same cards in each draft. Additionally, 720-card cubes are much more difficult to build and balance, which is why I'll always recommend starting with the 360-card minimum if you've never built a cube before.

Another rule of thumb for building a cube is that you want it to be singleton, or only containing a single copy of each card. A singleton cube is more balanced than a cube that contains many four-ofs. It's no fun for everyone else when one player ends up with all of the copies of Tendrils of Agony and is the only player drafting Storm while the other drafters are fighting over colors and the important four-ofs are split among them. We do want the decks to have little variance, but having many copies of the same card can get degenerate in some cubes. However, Cube is a casual format and there are no clear-cut rules. If your playgroup prefers a non-singleton cube, then you have every right to build it that way!

More information found here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/building-your-first-cube-2016-05-19