MTGevent
An MTG cube draft is a booster draft where the packs come from a curated, reusable pool of cards (the "cube") instead of sealed boosters. Usually one person owns the cube, and players draft from it, build 40-card decks and play matches, then hand every card back at the end of the night.
This guide covers what a cube is, how many cards and players you need, and how to run the night itself: seating, rounds, pairings and standings. We run drafts ourselves, and that last part is what almost nobody writes about.
What is an MTG cube draft?
A cube is a set of Magic cards someone has put together specifically to draft. Most cubes are singleton, so every card appears once, and most are built around archetypes the owner wants people to draft, like a Boros aggro deck or a blue-black reanimator deck.
On draft night you shuffle the cube, deal it into packs and run a normal booster draft. Nobody opens product and nobody keeps cards. The cube goes back in its box, ready for the next session.
Cube vs booster draft
| Booster draft | Cube draft | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the cards come from | Sealed boosters from one set | The cube owner's collection |
| Cost per night | Three boosters per player | Nothing after the cube is built |
| Who keeps the cards | Each player keeps what they draft | The cube owner keeps everything |
| Power level | Fixed by the set | Whatever the owner chooses, from Pauper up to Power Nine |
| Replayability | A new set every few months | Same cube, a different draft every night |
New to drafting? Start with our booster draft rules.
Common types of cube
Vintage (powered) cube: the strongest cards in Magic's history, Black Lotus and the rest of the Power Nine included.
Legacy or unpowered cube: close to vintage cube, minus the Power Nine.
Pauper cube: commons only. Cheap to build and surprisingly deep.
Peasant cube: commons and uncommons only.
Set cube: cards from one set or one block, for reliving a favorite draft environment.
Lucky Paper's What is a cube? goes deeper on each of these. Some groups also run Commander cubes. That's a separate multiplayer format, and this guide sticks to regular 1v1 cube.
How a cube draft works, step by step
The rules are the same as any booster draft:
Make packs. Shuffle the cube and deal 15-card packs, 3 per player. For 8 players that's 24 packs and 360 cards.
Draft. Everyone opens a pack, takes one card and passes the rest to the left. Keep going until the pack runs out. Pack two passes right, and pack three passes left again.
Build. Each player builds a deck of at least 40 cards from their picks plus basic lands from a shared land station. Forty is the minimum for any Limited deck under the Magic Tournament Rules, and there's no maximum.
Play. Best-of-three matches, usually three rounds. The section on running the night below covers how to pair them.
Cube owners often add house rules on top, like a banned list or "no proxies." Tell everyone those before the first pick.
What you need: cards, players and supplies
How many cards are in a cube?
Each player needs 45 cards (3 packs of 15), so the minimum cube size grows by 45 per player. Lucky Paper's cube FAQ gives the same numbers: 360 cards for a standard 8-player draft, as few as 180 for 2-4 players, and 45 more for each extra player.
| Players | Cards drafted | Minimum cube size |
|---|---|---|
| 2-4 | 90-180 | 180 |
| 6 | 270 | 270 |
| 8 | 360 | 360 |
| 10 | 450 | 450 |
| 12 | 540 | 540 |
Plenty of 360-card cubes get used for 4-6 players. The cards you don't deal just stay out of that draft, so the cube plays a little differently each night.
How many players do you need?
Eight players is the classic pod, and it's what most cubes are built around. At home, 4-6 is the most common turnout, and a normal pass draft still works fine at that size.
With 2 or 3 players, a pass draft gets thin and swingy. Small groups usually switch to a different draft method (covered in the small-group section below).
Supply checklist
The cube, sleeved. Use identical sleeves on the cube and the basic lands so no deck is marked.
A basic land station. Lucky Paper suggests 30 to 40 of each basic type for an 8-player draft.
Something to keep packs apart: deck boxes, dividers or just separate stacks.
Playmats, dice and counters for each table.
A plan for pairings and standings. Paper works for 4 players. Past that, use an app.
If this is your first time hosting at all, our guide on how to host a Magic tournament at home covers the space, the snacks and the timing.
How to build your first cube
You don't need 540 cards to start. A 180-card cube runs a 4-player draft, and 360 handles a full pod. You can grow it later.
Pick a power level before you pick cards, because a cube that mixes Pauper staples with Power Nine plays badly. Keep the five colors roughly balanced, give each color pair something to draft toward, and include enough fixing for two-color decks. After a few drafts, cut whatever nobody ever picks.
People have written whole series on this, so we'll point you to them instead of repeating them:
Wizards' Building Your First Cube is old (2016), but the fundamentals still hold.
Lucky Paper has guides on cube design and draft formats.
Cube Cobra hosts thousands of cube lists you can copy, tweak and playtest.
How to run a cube draft night
Most cube content stops at the draft. The slow part of the night is usually the hour after it, when somebody has to work out who plays whom.
Before the night
Fix a start time and stick to it. A full cube night takes most of an evening (timeline below).
Confirm the headcount the day before. Pod size decides how many packs you make. Eight players need 24 packs, six need 18.
Pre-shuffle and pre-pack. Deal the packs before anyone arrives. It saves 15-20 minutes and keeps the first pick on time.
Set up the land station where everyone can reach it during deck building.
Seat the draft pod
Seat players randomly around one table so the passing order isn't the same as last time. Write down the seating, because it tells you who passed to whom, and some groups pair round one by draft seat.
Give each match its own table number for the play portion so nobody wanders around asking where they're sitting. If you'd rather not do this by hand, we built draft software that seats your pod and pairs rounds for you.
How many rounds should you play?
Three rounds of best-of-three is the standard for an 8-player pod. Three rounds is also the most that fits in an evening after a long draft.
| Players | Suggested structure | Rounds |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Round robin on paper (everyone plays everyone), or 2 rounds of Swiss if you're short on time | 3 (or 2) |
| 5 | Swiss, one player gets a bye each round | 3 |
| 6 | Swiss | 3 |
| 7 | Swiss, one player gets a bye each round | 3 |
| 8 | Swiss | 3 |
| 9-16 | Two pods draft separately, then one Swiss across everyone | 4 |
One note for rules nerds: the Magic Tournament Rules (Appendix E) recommend straight single elimination, no Swiss, for 5-8 players. That doesn't fit a cube night. With single elim, half the table is out after round one, after drafting for an hour. Swiss gives everyone all three rounds.
Pairings and byes with odd numbers
Swiss works like this: round one is random (or by draft seat), and from round two on you pair players with the same record against each other, avoiding rematches. After three rounds of an 8-player pod you usually end up with one 3-0, three 2-1s, three 1-2s and one 0-3.
With 5 or 7 players, someone gets a bye every round. Give the round-one bye at random, and after that give it to the lowest-ranked player who hasn't had one yet. Nobody should get two byes. A bye counts as a match win (3 points).
Paper falls apart around round two with 7 players. You're juggling records, past opponents and who already had the bye, while six people wait at the table. A Swiss pairings app handles all three for you.
Running 8 players or fewer? We built MTGevent to handle this part. It seats your pod, pairs every round and keeps standings, free for up to 8 players. Players join by scanning a QR code and report their own results from their phones. Start a cube night →
Standings and tiebreakers
Rank players by match points first: 3 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss. With 8 players and 3 rounds you'll almost always get ties, so the standard Magic tiebreakers settle them, in this order:
OMW%: your opponents' average match-win percentage
GW%: your own game-win percentage
OGW%: your opponents' average game-win percentage
The full math, including the 33% floor, is in Magic tiebreakers explained. For a casual cube night, just make sure everyone agrees on the order before round one, so nobody argues about it at midnight.
Prizes and "who won the cube"
Cube is casual, and nobody keeps cards, so prizes are whatever your group likes. Some common ones: bragging rights, first pick or first choice of seat next time, getting to add a card to the cube, or a booster from someone's shelf. Agree on it before the draft so it doesn't turn into a negotiation.
How long does a cube draft night take?
Plan for roughly 4-5 hours with 8 players and three rounds. Treat this as a rough guide, not an official number:
| Step | Rough time |
|---|---|
| Arrival, seating, explaining house rules | 15-30 min |
| Draft (3 packs of 15) | 45-60 min |
| Deck building | 25-30 min |
| Round 1 | ~50 min |
| Round 2 | ~50 min |
| Round 3 | ~50 min |
| Total | about 4-5 hours |
For comparison, competitive drafts run on a strict pick timer, so a full three-pack draft takes about 20 minutes, and the rules recommend 50-minute rounds for Limited (MTR Appendix B). Home cube drafts run slower because people read every card and argue about their picks, which is half the fun.
If you want to finish earlier, use a round timer, deal the packs ahead of time, and cap deck building at 25 minutes.
Cube drafts for 2, 3 or 4 players
4 players can run a normal pass draft. Each player sees more cards from each pack, so decks come out stronger. Some groups deal bigger packs or a fourth pack so there's more to choose from.
2 or 3 players usually switch to a draft built for small groups:
Winston draft: three face-down piles. You look at a pile and either take it or add the top card of the deck to it and move on to the next one. The classic 2-player format.
Grid draft: deal 9 cards in a 3x3 grid, and each player takes a full row or column.
Housman draft: each player has a hand of cards and swaps them with a shared face-up pool.
Rotisserie draft: the whole cube is face up, and players take turns picking one card at a time in snake order. Slow, but nobody gets a bad pack.
Lucky Paper's draft format guides explain each one step by step. With 2 players there's nothing to pair. Play best-of-three, or best-of-five if you have time.
Running a cube night at your store
A cube night works well as a casual side event at an LGS. It doesn't have to be sanctioned, and nobody buys boosters, so the barrier for players is low. Some stores charge a small entry fee to cover sleeves and card upkeep, since nobody keeps cards.
Store nights often get more than 8 players, and that's where pairings by hand start costing you. Our Pro plan covers unlimited players for $9.99/month (see pricing). MTGevent isn't a Wizards tool, so sanctioned events still go through EventLink.
FAQ
How many cards do you need for a cube draft?
360 cards for a standard 8-player draft (3 packs of 15 per player). For 2-4 players you can go as small as 180, and each extra player above 8 needs 45 more cards.
How long does a cube draft take?
The draft itself takes roughly 45-60 minutes at a casual table. A full night with deck building and three best-of-three rounds takes about 4-5 hours.
How do I build a cube draft for 4 players?
Start with at least 180 cards so each of the 4 players can draft three 15-card packs. Run a normal pass draft, or deal bigger packs or a fourth pack for more choice. Then play a 3-round round robin so everyone plays everyone.
What are the rules of a cube draft?
Standard booster draft rules apply. Take one card from each pack and pass it, alternating directions each pack, then build a deck of at least 40 cards with basic lands from the shared station. The cube owner can add house rules, like a banned list.
How many players are in an MTG cube draft?
Eight is the classic pod and what most cubes are designed for. At home, 4-6 players is the most common. Cube also works with 2 or 3 players if you use a small-group format like a Winston or grid draft.
Do you keep the cards in a cube draft?
No. The cube belongs to its owner, and every card goes back in the box at the end of the night so it can be drafted again.
How many rounds do you play after a cube draft?
Three rounds of Swiss, best-of-three, for an 8-player pod. Use 3 rounds for 5-7 players too, with a bye each round when the count is odd. With 4 players, a round robin (also 3 rounds) works well.
Run your next cube night without the spreadsheet
You've built the cube and dealt the packs. The pairings shouldn't be the part that slows the night down. We built MTGevent for exactly that: it seats your pod, pairs the Swiss rounds and keeps standings with tiebreakers. It's free for up to 8 players, runs in the browser and needs nothing installed, and Pro at $9.99/month covers bigger nights.
MTGevent.com is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast in any way. Magic: The Gathering is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast LLC.