Interview 1: Companion Cube with Greg

Cade introduces the interview project and discusses the CompanionKube being showcased at KubeCon 2024. Greg, the designer of the CompanionKube, explains that it allows players to companion any card according to the original companion rules. The cube is built and drafted like a normal cube, but players reveal a card from their sideboard to act as their companion for each game. Greg came up with the idea after attending Magic Cons and being inspired by other creative cubes. He tested the concept using an old cube and made changes until all the original cards were replaced. The goal of the CompanionKube is to offer a unique and enjoyable drafting experience where players can build around their favorite cards. Hello, my name is Cade. Welcome to the first part of an as-of-yet unnamed interview project. My goal is to offer a bite-sized conversation about Kube and a platform for designers to share about their creations and curations. Greg was a delightful first guest and I wanted to be sure to share his interview in conjunction with the CompanionKube being showcased at KubeCon 2024. Feel free to let me know if this is the sort of thing you'd like to hear more of. Enjoy! Hello, my name is Cade. I'm here with Greg Cortazzo, the designer of the CompanionKube, and today we're going to talk a little bit about that cube and the design decisions that led to its existence. Hello, Greg. Hi, Cade. How are you doing? Doing well. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for taking your time to talk a little bit about this project. Yeah, of course. I'm excited to be here. Give us the elevator pitch for the CompanionKube. Sure. So, CompanionKube is a cube where you can companion anything according to the original companion rules. That's the elevator pitch, as it were. So, you draft as normal, you build your deck as normal, and at the beginning of each game, you're going to simultaneously with your opponent reveal a card from your sideboard that will act as your companion for that game, and you can play it right out of the sideboard, like the companion rule used to work before the errata. And the natural follow-up question is, Wait, Greg, you mean any card? Yes, any card. It does not have to be a creature. It doesn't even have to be a spell. Lands are allowed, which can make for some pretty interesting deck-building decisions when it comes to how many lands you actually want to put in your deck if there's one that's always in your opening hand. This is a wonderful and wild design concept. How did you come to this idea? About a year ago, I started getting sort of back into cube, more into the cube scene as it exists today, and so I started traveling to Magic Cons in order to meet some other cube people. So last February at this point was Magic Cons Philadelphia, and I met a lot of cool people there, a lot of people who had really cool cubes, and I had the experience of drafting Zach Barish's Cascade Cube, which was featured at Cube Cons this past year, as well as Ryan Stack's Build-A-Round Cube. And for those who don't know, the Cascade Cube also has a unique rule, which is... Yes, everyone starts with a Maelstrom Nexus Emblem, so the first spell that you cast on any turn has Cascade. So I had a ton of fun with those cubes. I had so much fun meeting all these people. I wanted to create something that could be in this kind of space. I also drafted the Devoid Cube for the first time during that trip. Just all kinds of really creative projects, new and exciting ideas, and I just wanted to make something that could do that as well. So how long did it take for you to arrive at this kind of rules change? Was it as simple as, what do people want to do, or was there a bunch of scrawled notes on a whiteboard? How did you land here? Well, I think other than the cubes that I experienced at Magic Con Chile, the other biggest inspiration for this project was an episode of Lucky Paper Radio that was about Commander Cubes. And at some point during that episode, Andy briefly floated the idea, well, how can we fix the color identity rule in draft? Because a lot of Commander Cubes you'll see have modified color identity rules that make it difficult to draft a legend and then draft a deck that fits within the subset of all those colors, right? And so he theorycrafted for a second, like, oh, what if we got rid of the color identity rule, or what if we just got rid of your commander has to be legendary, or what if we even got rid of your commander has to be a creature? And so I'm thinking, oh, that's kind of cool. You could commander whatever you want, right? Like a spell, like an Oathbreaker, or maybe just some kind of cool build-around artifact. So I was thinking about some of the cards that I saw in the build-around cube, and one of the reasons I don't like commander very much is because of the repetitive play patterns of casting your commander over and over again from the command zone. And so I thought, if I were to build a cube like that, I would probably just say you can only cast your commander one time, which would make it function much more similarly to the companion rule, right? You're just casting it straight at your sideboard, and then it's just part of the game. If it dies, it goes to your graveyard. If it's not, it's gone, whatever. And so that was kind of how I arrived towards the companion rules change for the cube. And I was talking to my girlfriend about, I was just kind of, you know, theorycrafting out loud, and she was like, oh, companion cube. And I was like, ah, companion cube. Like, wait, companion cube from Portal. And so once we strung together the words companion cube, it was like, well, we have to build the cube now. Like, we have to put it in a box that looks like a companion cube. That's the whole thing. So once you had this concept in place, when you were building it, were you considering how each card fits into that rule, or was it a little more broad, like, I want to build an environment and then add this rule to it? So I had a very strange design process for this cube that I probably wouldn't recommend in general. What I did here was I had a completely different cube that I had built probably three or four years prior that I was no longer very happy with. And I was thinking, okay, I should probably test out this companion thing to see how it works. Like, I just want to play with a cube and add the companion rule just so I can get a feel for what does the rule do to the cube, right? And so I took this old cube out of my closet, and I was like, let's just draft this and use the companion rule and see what happens. And we did that. And from there, I took this cube, which, by the way, was like 800 cards. Well, hold on. That's a big sidebar, but continue. So this cube was like... Well, that's useful here to me because I just got to cut hundreds of cards out of the cube that I thought were no good for the companion cube project, right? So I kind of did this thing where I started with this giant block of marble and carved the cube out of it because I had this cube laying around already, and that was just my testing ground for the rules change. And then you can go back in the history of the companion cube Cobra page and see it was just a random assortment of cards, basically, at the beginning because they came from this other cube. And then from there, I just made changes, made changes, made changes until all of the cards that were originally there were gone, basically. Is that a design process that you've used for any other environments that you've worked on or are working on? No, not at all. I kind of just stumbled into it because it was a rules change that I wanted to test, and I already had a cube laying around. Something you don't hear often. I just had an extra cube lying around that I could test with. Yeah, well, that cube, it was called Spice Cube, and it was something that we drafted in college for a while, and it had started getting very bloated. As I mentioned, it was way too big. I also had tons of uncards and weird extra rules. There was a fractured Power Stone in there that I allowed you to roll the Claytoner guy with, and there was a booster tutor and draft matters cards and all kinds of crazy junk, right? And that was the kind of stuff that we were having fun with in college, but as I listened to Lucky Paper basically and started to get a feel for what my ideal magic looks like, like the more competitive side that I enjoy, I realized that this cube was not the kind of magic that I wanted to be playing, and so I just threw it in the closet. I cloned the Bun Magic Cube. I started building my Atomic Cube out of the Bun Magic Cube, and so that cube was kind of just laying there forgotten, and so I crafted it into Companion Cube. So you mentioned a phrase that I think is really, really cool here. You said the ideal magic that you wanted to play. What kind of play patterns are you looking for? What do you expect people to do, or what do you hope people will do when they pick up a cube like yours, like the Companion Cube? Well, I definitely have a hope for what happens when someone picks up the cube for the first time, which is open a pack or just rifle through the cube as we're shuffling and say, wow, I can't wait to Companion this card or this card or this card. I really love explaining the rules change and then you can see the gears turning, because everybody has a card that they love from Constructed or a card that they like playing a cube or whatever that they really want to be able to build around, and a lot of the cards in this cube come from iconic Constructed decks, and so people will just look at the cube and say, oh, Lightning Bolt, Goblin Guide, Thoughtseize, Counterspell, whatever it is. Like, this is my favorite card. Or sometimes it's something weird. Sometimes it's Allurian or something like that, right? And they're just like, oh, I can't wait to open this. Like, I can't wait to draft this card. That actually reminds me of another inspiration that brought this cube to fruition, which was Dom Harvey on Lucky Paper talking about how he loves Amulet Titan, essentially his iconic Constructed deck that he's well known for playing very well, and he was lamenting essentially that you can't make Amulet a bigger work in cube because it's such a narrow build around and it needs to be so consistently drawn. Like, the card doesn't really do anything unless you're doing all these bounce lands and prime times and things, right? And like, he really loves that deck and was never able to make it work in a drafted environment, and so that was another huge inspiration for me was how can I make Amulet a bigger work in this cube? Like, that specific card, because having heard somebody's story of this is a card I love to play in Constructed but I just can't make it work in cube, those were the kinds of cards that I wanted to make shine in this cube. And Dom Harvey, a famous proponent of this cube, I believe, seeks actively to draft it as often as possible, rumored to be making his own clone of or variant of. That is true. I got a bit of a shout-out on his podcast and he has drafted this cube not quite more than me but definitely second most out of anyone. Well, you know that with people having pet cards, do you find that your players, your drafters, or you, lock into particular companions that are aiming for it? Do they change game to game, draft to draft? I think it depends. People who are drafting for the first time do definitely gravitate towards those cards that they like in other contexts but some people who have drafted it more times are going to be like, oh, I'll try this new companion, I've never done this before or I saw someone do something really cool with this last draft, I'm going to give that a try. Meanwhile, I'm always drafting whatever I just put into the cube, as I'm sure many cube curators do. What have been some of the most surprising drafter play patterns you've seen? Because I know you have an expectation going in. What have you not expected? I think what I really love about this cube that I wasn't necessarily intending from the get-go was the ability to blend together archetypes so effectively. I remember an early test draft where I put together this cascade deck with a companion shardless agent like Rhinos kind of thing. But then I also had Wilderness Reclamation and Nexus Estate and Capsize and doing that kind of stuff, right? So I had this plan A of cascade, make some Rhinos and then if my opponent can kill the Rhinos and invalidate my companion, then I'll turn into Temur Reclamation afterwards. And I think that's really cool. I think the ability to draft multiple archetypes but the archetypes are all famous decks kind of thing, it makes for a really exciting draft experience because people are like, oh, I blended together this cool modern deck that I like alongside these other synergy pieces from a legacy interaction that I think is really cool. So in that spirit, and as you're talking about designing this cube or whittling it down, carving it from marble, what kind of cards make for the best companions? In terms of win rate, the best companions tend to be cheaper cards in terms of mana cost. And the reason for that, in my opinion, is that the more expensive a card is, the less important it is for you to cast it on curve. When somebody puts together a control deck in this cube, if they're choosing between companioning Hullbreaker Horror versus Counterspell, usually Counterspell is a good bet because you want to have Counterspell in your hand from the get-go, but you don't actually care about casting Hullbreaker Horror on turn 7. You can cast it on turn 9 and it'll still win you the game. But as far as other types of cards that aren't so cheap, the next best thing to be doing, or possibly in contention for also the best thing to be doing, are just the most powerful build-arounds. So if someone's brand new to the cube and they're like, what should I companion? I usually say companion a 1-drop or a 4-drop that's going to win you the game when you cast it. And that's sort of a decent heuristic, I think. Stuff like Allurin makes for a really good companion. Those sorts of really busted build-arounds are also good. So then I guess the extension to that question is, what sorts of cards would yield the most compelling decisions during draft and deck building? I think there's a lot of those. I think that's one of the things that's fun about this cube is there's a lot of weird build-arounds that you're not really sure how you're going to get there. I did mention Allurin already. So Allurin is a card that, like, you've got your Cavern Harpy in here, but there's no Parasitic Strix, there's no Aether Arach. So you can find the Cavern Harpy in the Allurin, but then you kind of have to work for it. Like, you can do it with Kroxa, you can do it with Culture Familiar, you can do it with Uro. I saw one drafter at CubeCon who couldn't find a win condition for their Allurin deck, so they put Tidehall Escalarian, and they were like, I'm just going to exile my opponent's hand every single turn and find a way to win from there. Well, that's a good start. Yeah. So that kind of stuff is really cool. Displacement Kitten is another one. Teshar is one of my favorites. These kinds of cards that you don't know exactly what they do as you're drafting them, but you can find these, like, emergent synergies with them. Temeshi is another great example. Yeah, I really love those kinds of cards, where they make you think. And the power level ceiling on a lot of those cards is also really high. Like, you can go infinite with Displacement Kitten in this cube, but you also can just, like, play Displacement Kitten in your deck. Same is true for Temeshi. Like, there's some really awesome stuff you can do with Temeshi. Yeah, I think Ursa's Saga, Standstill, those kinds of things. But you can also just play Temeshi and draw extra cards off your bounce lands, or recur some artifact creature, just so you can have a persistent board state. And I think that's kind of neat. These, like, scaling builder realms. Do you find that having cards with that kind of flexibility and that kind of power make it easier or harder to make changes to the list? Okay, well, as far as, like, combo-centric cards, I do make a concerted effort not to put any two-card combos in the cube, because they would just be far too consistent. Like, if I put Splinter Twin in here and you could just Companion Pestermite or something, like, that would be no good. So, like, there are some incredibly strong two-card synergies. Like, you can Assemorate a Grief in this cube, for example, or you can Companion Life-Death and try and make a turn-two Crystal Brand. Things like that. But there's nothing that's just going to win you the game instantaneously, especially not for any reasonable amount of mana. Like, technically speaking, you could Companion Mindslaver and then have an Emery in your deck, and I guess that's, strictly speaking, a two-card combo, but not in the same way as Splinter Twin is. In terms of making changes to the cube, I actually found it surprisingly easy to make changes to this cube compared to other cubes. compared to other cubes that I've maintained, because the added degree of consistency from the Companion rule change, actually, it means that all of the packages are, like, really tiny. Right? Like, if you wanted to... Just as an example, I just added this Asmo food package to the cube in my most recent update. You're talking about Dash Moran and Marduk of Dice to Nicole Dakar? Impressive. Yes, that one. I have to... I devoted an embarrassing amount of time memorizing that, sorry. Well, you got to show it off then, yeah. So I think if you were trying to put a package to support that kind of thing in a more traditional cube, you'd have to dig really deep on stuff that makes food, you'd have to dig really deep on a lot of payoffs, and I've even seen cubes that go, like, 20 cards deep on the food package and it still doesn't really do anything. But when I made this update, I'm just, like, Asmo, Cookbook, Timesave, Academy Manufactor, and that was pretty much it. And that's, like, good enough. Like, Cat Oven is another good example of this. Like, you can't really just throw Cat Oven in any old cube because it's not going to come together and the cards don't really do anything otherwise. But in this cube, you can just Companion the Oven and now, like, you're already halfway there. That's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. I hadn't considered that as, like, the companion zone as built-in redundancy for almost any kind of effect. Yeah, exactly. Like, you'll even find, for example, this cube is really light on removal, it's really light on countermagic, it's really light on stuff like cantrips, and that's because if you're a deck that really wants that effect, you just companion it. And I don't have to worry about putting 17 one-drops here for the aggro deck or putting 17 cantrips for the control deck or anything like that, which is something that you really have to pay attention to in a more traditional cube. Like, that density of effects is just not something you have to worry about here. Do you find that more of your list changes come from actual play, or does more of it come from theorycrafting over time of, like, oh, I think this may be too powerful or not powerful enough? A little bit of both. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of my inspiration comes from existing constructed decks. So I'll have oftentimes a deck in mind where, like, I'll just, you know, watch the latest Bosh and Roll video or whatever and see something cool that I want to test out. But the other thing is that I also get a lot of really useful feedback on that front from drafters because they'll have a card that they associate with this archetype that maybe I've never even heard of. Like, maybe I wasn't playing at the time or whatever. Or they'll draft an archetype that was their pet constructed deck that I don't have any experience with, and they say, this didn't feel right. Like, this didn't feel like miracles because it didn't have this card or something. And so that can be super helpful for me as well. Another example is Cavern Harpy was in the cube as a... That was actually a holdover from the original cube. Cavern Harpy is just one of my favorite cards. I was playing it in the old 800-card cube, and we were drafting the cube in an early stage when I hadn't finished making all the changes yet, and one of the drafters was like, oh, I saw this Cavern Harpy. Is there an alert in the cube? And I was like, oh, well, now there is. Like, that's true, right? That kind of thing. So it's really just... Yeah, a lot of the changes come from constructed, from legacy, from modern. Do you have a favorite card to play as a companion yourself? Ooh, that's a tough one. Some of my recent favorites have been... Definitely Agatha's Soul Cauldron. That card is so cracked and goes in so many decks that you wouldn't expect it to. I mean, people have seen it in your traditional kind of hardened scales aggro sort of stuff, like putting a Walking Ballista or an Archon Ravager under that card is really powerful. But you can also just exile Gristlebrand with it in this cube or something like that. Yawgmoth, Chainer, those kinds of things. I like doing that weird stuff. You can put Grist under it. I don't know if you've ever seen anyone do that, but it actually goes infinite with a couple of different cards as well. So that one's been fun. I was also really excited about Besieged Mirror when that card came out. I was previously playing Bring to Light for some extra support on the Cascade axis, right? But that card was a little bit weak, and then Besieged Mirror came out, and I was like, oh, this is just, like, broken Bring to Light, basically. I've seen people playing it in Legacy with Guy's Will and all that kind of stuff. And I've seen a lot of people just, like, play Besieged Mirror because they drafted the One Ring and Shieldred and a couple of other broken 4-drops, and they just don't know which one is good. So they're just like, yeah, I'll play Besieged, whichever one is good. I'll just put the menu in my companion zone, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes it'll be Shieldred, sometimes it'll be the One Ring, sometimes it'll be Yawgmoth. One of those cards will win me the game. I just don't know which one yet. So as you think about the design process of the companion cube, from rules applied to an old environment to environment built around the rule to where it is now, what have been the most significant changes you've seen? I mean, there was a point at which I shifted from taking cards out that were no good for the cube and started putting cards in that were supposed to be in the cube, which is, I suppose, mostly just reiterating your question back at you. But that was kind of the turning point, I guess, is when I was like, okay, I have the 360 cards here, I have the rules changed, I feel comfortable with how this works in my head intuitively. Now, let me go out and find all of these cool constructed archetypes. And we had a period of time where I would be like, okay, here's the cube, but I added Amulet Titan to it, and someone would draft Amulet Titan in 3.0, and then I'd be like, cool, here's Dredge, and then someone would draft Dredge in 3.0, and then here's the Hardened Skills package, and then Hardened Skills was the best deck. And yeah, there's a couple people on CubeTalk that probably remember that era of some online testing we did of just, like, whatever was brand new to the cube, that's what you were supposed to draft, because it was broken. So as you reflect on the project, what have you learned from curating the companion cube that you would share to encourage newer designers? The first and foremost piece of advice I have for someone who's new to designing cube is just sleeve some cards up and draft them. I know that everybody and their mother has said that exact thing on every single piece of cube media out there, but it's so true. Like, you learn so much from that first draft. Like, you can stare at this Cube Cobra spreadsheet as long as you want, but until you actually put the cards in drafters' hands and feel what the gameplay is like, you're not going to know anything. And so just, like, get something on the table is the biggest part. And then as far as cubes with rules changes go, I think it's super important to cut down on any complexity in the cube that doesn't contribute to the identity of the rules change. As I mentioned before, I used to have this cube that had just, like, a zillion things going on, all these crazy bells and whistles. I don't even... There was an anti-card in there. I don't think I mentioned that before. It was a lot. Oh, no. But, like, we would bring a new drafter to this cube, and we would have to spend, like, 15 or 20 minutes explaining what was going on with it because there were just so many off-the-wall cards and weird interactions going on. And I feel like I learned a lot from that experience. Like, there is exponential complexity cost to anything that you're changing from what is just the baseline expectation for how cube works. And so, if you're going to make this change here, I would say don't make a rules change and then also change... Well, my example was going to be, like, change back to the original companion rules, but that's a terrible example for a black and white cube. You know, like, if you're going to make a turbo cube, don't also make it a desert cube and also change the way the companions work, but only for half the companions because Lurus is broken and, and, and, you know? Like, figure out what the cube is and stay true to that vision because that's what makes it a compelling piece of game design. In the process of working on this, since it, as you described, it kind of underwent a non-traditional development process, are there pieces of that that you would, that you would draw from to use for other more traditional environments? I thought that this process was useful to me because, again, I just needed a playground for the rules change. And I think if I had to go back and do it again, I would just test the rules change with an existing cube and then, with that intuition in mind, just, like, start from scratch. And I think that would have probably made the whole thing a lot easier on me. Like, just, okay, now I have a feel for this. I'm going to open up a new cube here and start loading in all of my constructed archetypes that I think are cool. But as I mentioned earlier, I also think that cloning a cube and making changes is a really good way to get started, especially if it's a cube that you already know aligns with what you want out of your cube. Like, when I started Atomicube, I knew that my preferred gameplay patterns were very, very similar to Andy's, and so it was reasonable for me to start there because I already knew that this cube was going to offer most of what I wanted and it would be a great jumping-off point for me. What's next for you as a designer or as a player? Well, I'm looking forward to a lot of magic events this year, for sure. I'm going to be at both of the magic cons that are happening in the U.S., a couple of smaller things along the East Coast, and I intend to be at CubeCon 2024. So, excited for just seeing friends, drafting cube, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I don't have any major design projects in the works right now, but I've started polishing some more battle boxes and other smaller, like, Dan-Dan-like experiences. And, yeah, maybe inspiration will strike before October rolls around and I'll have a new project to show off there, but for now, just trying to make Companion Cubes as good as I can. And people can often find you at those events with the eponymous Companion Cube as a physical object that you carry the deck in. That is true. I'm easy to spot at the cons. If you see a roughly 8-inch by 8-inch cube that looks like a Companion Cube, then I'm probably the one holding it and it probably contains this cube. If people would like to follow up on more of the Companion Cube or other projects you're working on, what would be the best place for them to check out? So, you can find the cube on cube.ro, of course. The short ID is CompanionCube, all one word. And you can find my other stuff under my username, which is DinrovaHorror, also all one word. And, yeah, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Discord. You can feel free to DM me or find me in any of the, oh God, probably 10-plus cube servers that are floating around at this point. I'm in all of them, so say hi. And then as a quick wrap-up question, if you could have any card printed as a judge promo, which card would it be and who would you have do the illustration? Ooh, that's a fun question. I'm gonna cheat a little bit and I'm gonna say that I hope for a judge promo reprint of some of the Mystical Archive arts because all of those arts are really, really gorgeous and I just do not like the frame at all. But, yeah, if we could get like that brainstorm or that demonic tutor or something like that in a nice normal magic frame, that would be beautiful. Well, Greg, this has been a delight. Thank you again for your time and for sharing about the Containing Cube and sharing the Containing Cube. I'm excited to have some opportunities to play it online, in person, and wherever the opportunity strikes. Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for chatting with me. I hope to see you and many other cube people at various magic events over the next year and we can get some drafts together.