MTG CubeTutor Is Gone: How to Mourn a Website
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It’s hard to explain the particular sadness of waking up and realizing a website is gone. Not “down right now”. Gone gone. The bookmark still exists. Your muscle memory still reaches for it. But the place itself has been boarded up, and whatever lived there is suddenly out of reach.
We accept that technology is temporary, but our attachment isn’t really to the tech. It’s to the routines and relationships that happened through it. If you ever loved an old platform like Google Reader or Vine, you already know the sensation: the internet can erase a room in your memory.
A website isn’t just code, and CubeTutor proved it
When people talk about services shutting down, it gets framed like replacing an appliance. As if a website going offline is no different than tossing a microwave that stopped working.
But a good website isn’t an appliance. It’s closer to a community workshop or a local library. It’s where people leave notes for each other, build things in public, and learn by seeing what other folks made. The value isn’t the server. The value is the shared space.
And for Cube, CubeTutor was that space for a long time.
What CubeTutor gave Cube, beyond “list hosting”
On November 1, 2021, CubeTutor went permanently offline. For years before that, it was the first place a lot of cube designers learned to treat their cube as a living project: not just a stack of cards you draft, but an environment you curate, test, and revise.
Cube design is a funny hobby because the work is invisible on draft night. The hours happen alone: staring at the list, imagining packs, chasing archetype density, writing little notes to your future self about why a card earned its slot or why it got cut.
CubeTutor didn’t invent that impulse, but it made it easier to do and easier to share. It made “here’s my cube” feel as normal as “here’s my Commander deck”.
A few things CubeTutor made feel obvious (that weren’t obvious before):
- Publishing your cube publicly so other people could browse and learn from it.
- Iterating with intention, with swaps tied to a philosophy instead of just vibes.
- Drafting online as testing, not just entertainment.
- Treating cube design as a creative practice, not only a gameplay challenge.
If you joined cube later, it’s easy to take that for granted. But communities don’t magically become legible. They become legible when someone builds tools that make the work visible.
Tools don’t just help you do things, they change what you think is possible
Here’s the part that hits me the hardest: the tools you have access to change how you think.
When managing a cube is a hassle, fewer people do it. When sharing a cube is awkward, fewer people publish. When browsing other cubes is hard, you mostly end up reinventing what’s already near you.
CubeTutor lowered the friction. That matters because friction shapes culture. Less friction means more experimentation, more weird ideas, more “what if we tried…” energy. The cube community didn’t just get bigger because more cards got printed over time. It also got more diverse because it got easier to build in public and learn from each other.
When a cube site disappears, what’s actually at risk
The scary part about platform loss isn’t only “I can’t log in.” It’s the silent stuff that vanishes with it: the context, the history, the personal notes, the links you sent your friends, the version of your cube you loved two years ago.
Here’s a practical way to think about it:
| What you’re trying to preserve | Why it matters | A backup that actually holds up |
|---|---|---|
| Card list (names + counts) | Rebuilding from memory is miserable | Export to a text/CSV file and store it somewhere you control |
| Change log (cuts/adds + reasons) | Your cube philosophy lives here | Keep a running doc (even a simple notes file) with dated updates |
| Tags, archetype notes, categories | These are the “design brain” of the cube | Periodically export, or copy/paste into your own document |
| Draft/test insights | Your tuning decisions come from this | Save summary notes after drafts; screenshots work in a pinch |
| Custom images/renders | This is your cube’s look and feel | Store originals in a folder you back up (cloud + local) |
If you do nothing else, do the first row. A cube list is small, and the relief of having it safe is huge.
The end of CubeTutor, and the gratitude that stays
CubeTutor didn’t disappear because cube stopped being cool. It disappeared because running a site costs money, time, and ongoing maintenance. In his shutdown announcement, Ben cited both the financial burden and the growing workload of keeping up with modern releases and versions. He also pointed people toward Cube Cobra as a modern alternative, calling out its open-source approach and community contributions.
That’s the bittersweet truth of community infrastructure: it’s usually held together by a small number of people doing a lot of unpaid, unglamorous work. When it goes away, you suddenly realize how much was being carried for you.
So yeah, it’s reasonable to feel a little grief about it. CubeTutor helped shape what Cube is today. It made cube design easier to start, easier to share, and easier to take seriously as a craft.
Thanks, Ben.
FAQs
When did CubeTutor shut down?
CubeTutor went permanently offline on November 1, 2021.
Why did CubeTutor shut down?
The site’s creator cited ongoing server costs, the personal financial burden of keeping it running, and the growing maintenance load of updating the card database and modern web expectations.
Can you still recover your CubeTutor data?
After the shutdown date, the announcement stated that data would be deleted and not recoverable. If you already exported your list, you can still migrate it elsewhere.
What should I use instead of CubeTutor?
Cube Cobra became the most commonly recommended successor, including by CubeTutor’s creator, and it supports importing CubeTutor lists.
What’s the best way to avoid this problem in the future?
Keep a local export of your cube list and a simple change log in a place you control. Treat your cube like a creative project file, not like a social media post.