Modern Horizons set preview for Peasant Cube

Set preview time! Let's get into Modern Horizons!

I run a loose grading scale, based on my personal interest in the card:

Slam it - The holy-crap-I-am-so-happy-they-printed-this card.
Cube - This card will go into my cube and I expect to be happy with it.
Needs testing - The card looks like it could be powerful, but may or may not work out.
Playable - Interchangeable with similar cards, depending on the flavor of the moment might see play.
So close - I want to play this, but it's probably better if I don't.
? - No idea what to think of this card.
Pass - Not interested. Every card not listed here automatically gets this grade.

If the card is not on this list, you can assume I'm not interested, is a reprint (or forgot to list it). Some reprints will get listed if it's the first time it gets a modern border. 

Link to Modern Horizons card image gallery on Dailymtg.com

Building your format

Seven years ago I built my first peasant cube. I had just sold most of my expensive rares I never played with and thought it might be fun. Peasant cubes used to look similar to each other, a collection of all the best commons and uncommon Magic has to offer. No restrictions or other building guidelines. Peasant was the restriction. For me, the challenge was to prove you could still build a powerful cube without rares.

If you go on the mtgsalvation peasant cube forum now, you'll find a lot more variation. Cube owners pay more attention to the overall format of the cube. Modern frame peasant, cubes focused on archetypes, peasant+ cubes that add rares to fill holes (*cough* mana fixing *cough), cubes that cut the top end on the power level scale to get a more even power balance.

A good example is Leelue's Peasant Cube. Apart from adding rare lands, his cube does not have cards that are strictly better than others. This makes sure no single draft pick is solved. Control Magic will always be the pick over similar cards. But what if you take it out of the equation, would you pick Domestication, Binding Grasp or Mind Control?

Like how Wizards of the Coast has been focusing its draft formats more on identity and replayability, so have cube owners. It makes sense if you think about it. The draft formats that seem to come up most when players get asked about favorite draft formats are original Ravnica block, triple Innistrad and Rise of the Eldrazi. All formats with a strong identity, strong buildarounds, and highly replayable because of the plethora of different styles of decks you could draft.

But like with most 'top X best'-lists, personal preference is key. And this is where opinions start to differ wildly. Some people loved Kamigawa block, while others absolutely hated it. Lorwyn was annoyingly complicated, but it was also a delightful puzzle that cared about all kinds of different overlapping metrics. Heck, I enjoyed triple Zendikar and its fast aggro decks, but I know that's exactly the reason many people were fed up after a couple of drafts.

Identifying what you (or your playgroup) want out of a format is something I'd recommend to everyone building a cube. It can be anything like building around a powerful enabler, opening up bombs, midrange creature combat, piecing together interlocking combo pieces, flat power level, blazing aggro battles or durdling in all-gold battlecruiser Magic, etc.

There are so many cool Magic cards out there that it doesn't make sense for every peasant cube to look the same. If your favorite archetype is not viable in 'regular' cube formats, maybe you need to make up your own format where said archetype shines.

One becomes three

Last november I posted that I was in the process of building one large cube instead of a single medium sized archetype-based cube. We assembled a pile of 1200 of the best peasant legal cards to make sure that everything we found good, fun, cool, nostalgic, <insert value> got into the cube. We wanted a lot of variance, the ability to play a lot of different cards, and low maintenance.

What we didn't anticipate happening was that the low maintenance also made that we were less connected to the cube. Updates were not super exciting, and because of the large size the cube didn't really require tuning (nor do changes have a lot of impact). Less cube in mind equals less cubing.
The higher variance was meant to enable higher replayability. While that's true, a larger cube also makes specific archetypes almost impossible to draft or even include in your cube. There's a reason my original peasant cube became as heavily archetype focused as it did, and I should have paid more attention to that.

But, there was also a reason we decided to make one big cube last year. My old cube tried to do so many things at the same time while also including the classic power cards, that it actually started losing depth. We included so many different archetypes that the total number of different decks may have been quite high, the amount of flexibility while drafting was low. You basically picked a build-around card early and from there on there were basically only 1 or 2 logical options each pack. The decks might look cool if everyone keeps to their lane, but drafting either became solved or a frantic scramble to make something out of a train-wreck when you got cut off.

We needed a solution, so I went back to the drawing board. I started with something that was basically a smaller version of what my cube looked like before expanding to 1200. Powerful cards mixed with a number of supported archetypes. I made sure the archetypes were not too specific or required too many specific cards. Already, we were having a lot more fun again because we were able to consistently draft our favorite cards and actually draft decks again instead of midrange soup.
After a couple of drafts, though, another issue started to become apparent. The power cards showed up more often as well. In the case of archetype specific cards, this was fine (and actually what we wanted). The problem was that there were a lot more powerful removal and bombs relative to the archetype cards. This in turn made some archetypes worse because they weren't really able to combat the amount of 2-for-1's or hard-to-answer threats.

At this point, I wasn't sure where to go with the new cube. I could cut down on power and removal, but this would mean not playing with some super iconic cards (which was the reason I started a cube in the first place). Cutting down on archetypes was also not what I wanted. So, how do you balance different kinds of archetypes and powerful cards? Well, maybe you can't in one cube.

One cube. Does it have to be one cube? What if we made more than a single cube (variation), but kept them small (well supported archetypes)? What if I made sure there would be no overlap between cubes (high number of different cards) and have each cube have their own identity (balance in power level)?

We decided on building three cubes of 400 cards:
- A cube with only old frame cards
- A modern frame cube, archetype focused
- A cube with tribal synergies and less powerful archetypes, and a lower power level to support it

If you want to check out the lists, they're in the menu bar (Old School Peasant Cube, Archetype Peasant Cube and Tribal Peasant Cube). I'll talk more in-depth about them in the future.

Cheers!