#mtg cube draft

[hikorzik]

Behold ! I have made a cube with cards laying around and some new cheap additions ! For the use of 2-4 players, mostly me and my gf ! And it is very fun !!!

Here we winston drafted with 2 players. She got an abzan aggro plan, while I went for izzet storm. It's a lot of fun and a bit of a puzzle. I've had a very good goind off turn of like : basalt monolith on board, tap it, manifold key, untap monolith, tap it again, desperate ritual, young pyromancer, demand answers, windrider sorcerer, into crow storm for 6 shiny crows !!

I recommand trying to put together a cube if you enjoy commander's jankiness and originality, and also if you have a lot of cards lying around not getting played. Sometimes even chaff can become good in the right environment!

And, for good measure, here's the link to my cube :

[smilinsisyphus]

No one can ever make me forgive commander for killing magic the gathering

[skinslip]

Draft Cube updates - 2023.01.27

Bloated up to 80 cards per color, cut back down 60 cards. Moved lands to their color identity sections, now each monocolor section is 62 cards.

462 is the current card count. Considering inflating to 550

[party-arty]

I love vintage cube I love vintage cube I love vintage cube I'm so fucking bad at it but HOOOOOWHEE i love vintage cube

[markrosewater]

More a note and I don't even know if there is a solution to my problem: I am a 100% limited player with a tight budget. With play boosters being more expensive then draft booster, due to budget, this just leads to me playing less. Also inflation is additional stress on my budget. I feel, that I'm getting less and less enfranchised and engaged because now I do less drafts. I fear loosing MTG as a hobby. I mostly play in my LGS and don't have a private playgroup, where we could play cheaper options like cube. I know WotC is a company and has to show growing revenue but it just sucks, that I may loose this great hobby and game because of monetary aspects.

I hear your frustration. The popularity of set boosters meant when we consolidated draft boosters and set boosters, they were crafted more to match set boosters. We essentially made set boosters draftable.

I will note that the price of boosters didn't go up. Play boosters cost the same as set boosters, and, like set boosters, you do get a higher amount of rares/mythic rares, on average, to match the higher price point. But yes, if all you do is draft, the individual drafts got more expensive.

None of this change was done to somehow squeeze extra money out of people. We just took the most popular booster product and sold it at the same price, but with added value (more cards per booster and made it draftable).

[kiefbowl]

I just tried out a W/B deck on spelltable and loved it! I play dimir irl but I think I'm just a fan of anything with black : - ) My friends and bf all have really expensive OP decks, and it's been a lot of fun beating them with my little fairy precon with minimal upgrades hehe. The golgari sound really cool, do you play standard or commander?

Oh I'm running a mono white weeny lifegain cheap deck on standard in arena right now and it does really well against bad players with "everything good" decks, I love beating them with it. It has no legendaries or planeswalkers lmao

I play everything. I got in via commander, like everybody now a days :) Then I got into standard via arena. But now, my favorite format is limited (aka drafting). I think it's where the game design shines. Commander is still fun, but in a lot of ways it's a "solved" game. Like you said, your bf and friends have these expensive figured out decks, the longer you play the longer you realize you can only experiment so far. That's not to discourage you, but to actually encourage you by doing deck building challenges with your play group. One of my favorite deck I built came from a $50 budget commander challenge our playgroup put on each other, and I built a devil tribal Zurzoth deck that I still play. It also changed the meta up of our group by getting everyone to think outside the box and try strats they don't normally try. $50 budget is fun, you could probably even do $25 (basic lands didn't count toward the cost, but anything we used that we already had we had to include it's value towards our budget.). You could also maybe pick like 10/15 of the most weird niche commanders, and "draft" them between each other.

My dream is to build a big cube. One day, when I can drop hundreds of dollars, I'll do it.

Feel free to send me more mtg questions I love it :)

[stealthrockdamage]

i need to play like an mtg cube designed to be godawful and hellish and i need the cube to just inexplicably have mesmeric orb, basalt monolith, narcomoeba, dread return, sharuum the hegemon, blasting station, and emrakul the aeons torn. just for no reason. the threat of activation (nigh impossible: but someone might be insane enough to draft four horsemen)

[goqmir]

sorry if this is a bad question for ur blog but do you happen to have any good recs for how to learn magic the gathering? it looks cool but also i have no idea where to start

sure i mean definitely the number one thing u need is someone to play with, ideally someone that already knows the game. if this is offline then if they already have decks u could borrow one of theirs, otherwise u could get an mtg starter set which i think comes with 2 decks for pretty cheap! if its online thats great because u have literally every card at your disposal assuming youre playing in a commander sim against your friends! our playgroup uses tabletop simulator which works GREAT but theres a 20$ buy in to the application (its worth it. plus you can import 3d models during the game and play other tabletop games there too. its a good app to have on hand) alternatively ive heard things about cockatrice for free but i have no experience. commander is the format that everyone loves to play and build casually where you pick a main guy and build around him but i know theres plenty of people who will swear to you that limited (the draft and sealed formats) are the way to go and youll see a lot of them play with custom "cubes" (custom-built limited draft formats with around 360-720+ cards) and the traditional 60-card formats are alive and well especially on mtg arena! if u have homies that want to play commander or cube id recommend giving it a shot with them! theyll probably have decks theyre happy to let you play with and itll be a lot of fun. if you dont have anyone to play with and you dont want to find people to play with you my recommendation is to sign up for mtg arena where you can matchmake for draft formats, standard, and historic brawl; unfortunately its a profit app run by wotc so you dont have every card to play with and you have to earn enough ingame currency to draft but its still a good environment that plenty of people love. otherwise my advice is just to build some decks! i have probably over 25 commander decks now that ive just been building nonstop since i picked up the format 6 or so months ago. its incredibly satisfying and i promise youll get the hang of it quick :)

[josies-not-suicidal-now]

sometimes you'll be watching a mtg streamer draft a cube, and they mouse over the cards and gesture to this one and say "I like discharge"

[theunwellkingdom]

Design Deep-Dive #4: Lands Week - Designing the Illusory Palace

One big takeaway from researching set cubes is that mana bases in an average MtG set have a tendency to be very weak, to the point that many cubes will pad out the quantity and quality of mana-fixing lands from other sets.

For the Unwell Kingdom to remain self-contained, I knew I'd need some solid lands... but I also knew that each card in the set is precious, representing hours of work for me to design and illustrate! I wanted to find a way to make color-fixing consistent without devoting a huge chunk of the set list to do it. To solve this, I looked to real Magic cards, hoping to find some insights...

What Would Wizards Do?

Two existing lands stuck out to me as potential solutions, though each came with caveats.

Evolving Wilds is a quintessential fixer that gets reprinted constantly. It's simple, familiar, and flexible -- not strong enough to see much constructed play, but a welcome sight when building a limited deck! However, in this set cube environment, even Common cards only exist as 4 copies total. That alone wouldn't cut it, but printing more might enable greedy decks with too many splashed colors!

So I turned to a set designed for high-powered draft play: Double Masters. For those draft boosters, WotC tried something bold: a land guaranteed in every pack called Cryptic Spires. The Spires function as a tapped two-color land, which is nothing special, but this time there was a twist! Before shuffling up to play, you could choose the colors on each copy by physically marking the cards.

This proved to be an elegant solution with some serious pain points. Obviously, I don't want people writing on my cards in a set that's meant to be replayed. My solution couldn't be single-use. Second, it could be tricky to tell which colors were picked, since the art stayed the same. And lastly, it introduced a minigame to deck building that seemed more fatiguing than fun... Adding even a simple choice to a card can take precious time away from more pressing deck building decisions.

By combining aspects of Evolving Wilds and Cryptic Spires, I found my answer:

Introducing: The Illusory Palace

The Illusory Palace is both a single card and 10 unique ones -- one for each color pair. It will be the 16th card in each Unwell Kingdom pack, a guaranteed extra slot!

It has two functions. You can sac it like an Evolving Wilds to grab a basic land from your library, with the restriction that you must stay within its color pair. The land enters tapped, so it's a bit slow, but thinning a land out of your deck never hurts!

Alternatively, you can use it right away as a filter land, paying a mana in to get a mana out in one of its colors! This still nets you one fewer mana for the turn, but it can allow you to tap into that color pair the turn you play it! You can also use this side of it if you can't decide which color basic to commit to, and keep paying extra for the flexibility.

My hope is that Illusory Palace will make it much easier to play two- and even three-color decks without ever feeling like the star of the show. Guaranteeing one in each pack should make it feel like a solid backup plan in case you don't find some of the more powerful lands lurking in the set...

Tomorrow on Lands Week! Tri-Lands of the Unwell Kingdom

UWK Lands Week >Designing the Illusory Palace The Tri-Lands Discard/Sac Lands Utility Lands Back to Basics

[jdragsky]

🌤️☔️ ?

🌤️ favorite mechanic from a game i'm working on

i'm only working on Prince Of Hounds right now so i hope everyone's ok with lots of hounds-posting!

so every Legate Oath has a way to find a friend in any port you arrive at, at level 2. the way the Trickster Saint, who is the manifestation of the Prince of Hounds himself, can sniff out a dupe to con into giving them lodging at the cost of making it more likely their friends get fucked over

☔ game idea i have i'll probably never write

card game about summoning demons to fight other demons, designed to be drafted with friends like a MTG cube, written in flowery old-timey language that sometimes leaves mechanics up for interpretation on purpose, and slowly changes as you and your friends play the cube together.

[hikorzik]

The new cube cobra feature is AWESOME !!! They already had a recommender, but they updated it to reflect something I really wanted : it compares it to other cubes that look like yours, but also tries to keep the themes of your cube to rank what cards look essential to your cube but also recommend you what you could add. You can filter, if you had one, with your maybeboard which is awesome and cool and I have some tweaks I can make already.

Also hilarious :

Those are the cards the LLM considers to be the worst and also least in theme with my cube. The absolute worst card is my favorite!!! I got a foild future frame volute and it is NOT going out, no machine can make me cute it! The 5 mana do nothing enchant stays ON during cube!!!

[skinslip]

Got some nice Alter Sleeves for my more expensive cards in my draft cube

[i-am-nickelbolt]

Pro Tour I: Phyrexia watch party

MTG dads like me don't get out much. So when I get to actually play some Magic with my friends in real life it's kind of a big deal. The Pro Tour is back, baby! So my Pro Tour watch parties are back too, now featuring Vintage Cube!

Unfortunately, I had some last minute cancellations, so we didn't have 8 for a proper pod, nor did we have 6 for a team draft. So I did some quick research and found an idea to simulate a full pod by doing a "pick one, burn one" draft. I made a couple last minute adjustments, but here's what we did.

Each of us got six 15-card packs. Between each player, we had a "burn pile." We took the first pack, burned one, and passed. The remaining 14-cards would be the *second pick* for the players. We took another full 15-card pack, made a pick for ourselves, then burned one, and passed. So at this point, there were two packs between each player. We proceeded with those two packs, then did the same process two more times (burn the first pick from the first pack, then pick one burn 1 from the rest). This worked out really well, the decks we ended up with were very much like decks you would get in a full pool. I tried to draft an actual deck with my burn picks (we'll get to that in a minute) which I think is a better way to do it than to burn at random, because a big part of vintage cube is planning for what cards wheel.

Here is the first deck that I've ever drafted from my physical copy of the MTGO Vintage Cube!

My pack 1, pick 1 was Solitude, which is one of the top 50 cards in cube, a fine place to start, but still kind of disappointing. I don't remember exactly the order, but I got Remand, Vendilion Clique, Splinter Twin (which didn't pan out), Jace Vryn's Prodigy, and I wheeled Spellseeker. In pack 2 I passed Mox Emerald in favor of Time Walk as with Jace and Spellseeker, this was already looking to be a sick Time Walk deck. I also got a Narset and wheeled Wheel of Fortune, as well as the Fractured Identity. Pack 3 got me both Strip Mine and Wrenn and Six.

In one of my games, I had a sequence something like this. End of my opponents turn, Memory Deluge. Untap, draw, loot with Jace, play Wrenn and Six, play Strip Mine, +1 Wrenn and Six on Strip Mine, play Strip Mine, play Time Walk. Untap, draw, Loot and flip Jace, +1 Wrenn and six on Strip Mine, play Strip Mine, Play Narset, -2 Narset, -3 Jace on Time Walk, play Time Walk. Untap, Draw, +1 Wrenn and Six on Strip Mine, play Strip Mine, play Wheel of Fortune, I draw 7, they draw 1 because of Narset. They scooped at that point.

Back to the "burn pile," I really wanted to try to build a deck out of it just to see what would happen. Here's what I ended up with.

I had to burn Black Lotus pick 1, then burned Emrakul to try to build a sweet Emrakul deck. I burned Channel, Through the Breach, Imperial Seal and Mystical tutor in pack 1, and in pack 3 I burned Mana Vault, Cityscape Leveler, Corpse Dance, Bazaar and Life from the Loam, so I was really excited to try to make this deck work. Then when I saw the pack 2 burns: Force of Will, Miscalculation, Spell Pierce, Mystic Confluence, Ugin, and Izzet Signet, I was through the roof! Obviously, there was a bunch of junk in the pile and it wasn't quite like actually drafting, but I was still excited to try to play this deck at least a couple of times.

We also took the opportunity to whip out the Warhammer 40,000 commander decks, also for the first time. We randomly chose decks, I ended up with the Chaos Marines deck. I was pretty skeptical about that deck but as it turns out, cascading into lots of mana rocks really helps out in the late game. You just have to not die in the early game and figure out ways to get Abaddon in for damage. I think I would have won if I had one more turn, I got a Blasphemous Act to clean up the board, but the Tyranid player somehow cobbled together a couple of haste creatures to win the table.

When I bought the decks last fall, I thought they were sweet as hell, but actually playing them and confirming that they were sweet as hell? Very, very fun!

Anyway, I am looking forward to Pro Tour II and hosting another watch party!

[mtgproxy1]

Want to draft paper vintage cube? Don’t have an extra $30,000 laying around? I’ve got a solution for you! Great value, solid quality, amazing support, fast delivery, and tons of options for art! Hundreds of Mtg Proxies later and I’m a customer for life!

[roy-dcm2]

(Limited) Ravnica Cube 2024

Here is my Ravnica Cube that I put together for Limited for whenever I get together with my friends. Most Cubes are designed for Draft, but me and my friends do not have the patience to do a Draft, so we're happy to grab five packs and treat it like it's pre-release night.

This is the most current iteration and I don't believe I'll be modifying it much further.

It took me a long time to refine it like this. The very first version had twice as many Gold cards. Someone on Reddit enlightened me that Multicolored cards are harder to cast in Limited environments, so I needed to cut back on the Gold cards, as well as add color fixing.

Speaking of color fixing, I most recently added the Surveil lands. I used to have the Guild Halls. As flavorful as they were, if you ended up with multiples, it came at the cost of not pulling color fixing lands, putting you at a disadvantage.

In addition, very few cards in the Cube have multiple colored pips in the casting cost. (I liked to joke that it's a Duel Masters Cube.) That plus all the dual lands / mana rocks, makes it very easy to mix all the colors. Most decks can be 4/5 color good stuff, which can mean its not a complex Meta, but me and my friends are not complex players.

Like I said, I'm likely not going to be adding many more cards. MTG had managed to resist power creep for the longest time, but the most recent sets clearly out pace the types of cards we got a decade ago. (Cards like Rubblebelt Maverick and Snarling Gorehound would not have been printed at common a decade ago.)

I also did some slight modifications based on ideas that Gavin Verhey talked about on his youtube channel. Cutting back on cards with First-strike, Flying, Hexproof, and making room for cards with Reach.

And that's it. Again, it's not an amazing Cube, but Ravnica represents the good times I had with my friends, so it'll always be special to me.