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This is the deck that I went undefeated with one cube draft night. Pack one pick 1 bloodbraid elf and I never looked back. Once a berserk wheeled the table of 8 players I knew I was where I wanted to be. The name comes from how several games were ended… burn …. to the DOME
Kevin
Thanks to Steve for linking me to this great tutorial on how to make your very own, high quality proxies. Of course, big props to “HarderTimes” on the awesome video. Check it out!
Cubers, it’s that time again! Cube will be at my place, crackin packs no later then 6:30. While I don’t have to wake up the next day most people probably do so try and be a few minutes early. Feel free to show up anytime though as I’ll be home by 5.
If you have a cube, bring it! I will have mine but it’s only got enough cards for 8 people which may or may not be enough.
2595 SW 194th Ave Beaverton I’ll be sending out a google calendar hit. Hope to see you all there!
With our regular number of Cube drafters growing like a fastbonded Vinelasher Kudzu, The Cube received its first Expansion Pack treatment with the addition of 90 new cards! Making the jump from 540 to 630 cards was a difficult decision. Although we essentially lowered the overall card quality of The Cube, I personally enjoyed seeing a greater variety of cards during the draft and subsequent matches. Not to mention we can now draft with up to 14 players, which will help us avoid an angry mob of drafters who would otherwise be unable to participate each week.
You can now view our fully updated Cube contents, a more detailed Changelog, and the specific Expansion Pack contents below. Let us know what you think of the additions!
Welcome fellow drafters to another Cube update on the eve before the highly anticipated Magic 2011 core set release!
We’ve been hard at work here at MTGCube.com to bring you the very best Magic drafting experience possible. It’s my pleasure to announce nearly 40 updates to our Cube this week, which you can view in full detail here. Without further ado, here are the highlights:
That’s it for this week’s update. Before our draft, be sure to check out the Top Picks so you don’t act a fool and pass a bomb to your neighbor. One final note: MTGCube.com will be suspending for 3 weeks of vacation in Undiscovered Paradise, to return in mid-August.
See you all Thursday at 6:30pm sharp!
Before I drop into the breakdown of this week’s winning deck, I want to thank MTGCube.com for sponsoring such a spectacular drafting experience week after week.
Drafting and Deck Construction
I went into the tourney looking to play a fast deck but had not pre-selected a color concentration. Midway thru the first pack I had a solid red foundation, mostly burn, and a Mox Ruby. Early pack two I picked up my girl, Chandra Nalaar. Mono red becoming realistic, I wisely procured Puppet Strings and the Ring of Gix. These allowed me to deal with scary beat-sticks mono red would otherwise have no answer for. By pack three I needed more creatures and happily soaked up some solid picks to help round out my mono forty. I had an abundance of red to choose from and dropped many great cards to maintain a low mana curve; this allowed me keep swinging as consistently as possible in the critical early game.
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Deck Play
Play was very straight forward; hit fast and keep the heat on. I primarily just burned immediate threats. In many games I happily exchanged blows the first few turns, using direct damage to end the bout. Almost without exception, every card in the deck had a moment when it became an all-star, I felt like I always had what I needed, and I always kept the pressure on.
Notable Match – Cem
The only wizard out that night that had what it took to not get 2 – 0 by the Red Fury. Game one was lando lockdown from my boy, Dwarven Blastminer, against a heavy non-basic land user. Game two started with my usual blitz, but with a timely Zuran Orb draw Cem managed to drag the game out until Red Fury’s flame was snuffed out. Game three could very well have been the duel of the night, but was halted early due to time limit and ended in a draw. Well played, Cem.
Retrospective Analysis
Life gain is the bane of this deck. Should I ever resurrect Red Fury, I shan’t let Sulfuric Vortex pass my fiery grasp.
~Mike
I have made my distaste for this card known on many occasions however I stand here now with my foot in my mouth. I did a little reasearch at http://magiccards.info and found something slightly disturbing. But before I go into that I’d like to touch on why I felt the way I did about it before:
Given the above points I’ve been pushing to remove Mana Crypt from the cube. Until now. I was bored at work so I thought I’d try and dig up some dirt on our old friend the Crypt to get some hardnosed analytical reason why it shouldn’t be in the cube. What did I find you ask? The most blatant reason why it has to be included.
Mana Crypt is Restricted in Vintage! (for a list of restricted / banned cards go here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=judge/resources/sfrvintage)
That makes it no different then Black Lotus or even Brainstorm believe it or not.
What does this mean? I’ll shut up about my distaste for Mana Crypt and start drafting that mofo like there’s no tomorrow. See you all on Friday for draft!
Steve
Another Friday gone so fast.
Another Cube night come and past.
We welcomed, to our game, a few new faces,
and some took advantage of our good graces.
In a night which saw so many draws,
one deck decided to take up the cause.
It was not a deck I believed would have caused rifts,
Though I found out it gave me many gifts.
No, I am not a poet, although the deck I built Friday night accidentally happened to be my best work. With the two people to my immediate right drafting blue cards, and a couple people down on my left drafting white, I found it hard to believe my blue/white deck aggro deck fared so well. Lets take a look shall we:
The Draft:
The number 1 draft pick: From the very start, I knew I would be drafting blue. Although I did see Bitterblossom and Mox Emerald, it would ultimately be Time Walk that would be my obvious first pick.
P2P1: I happened to pick up the pack of cards only to see a familiar face… well, technically a sword… staring back at me. Umezawa’s Jitte.
P3P1: I always like the option of playing two colors and my 3rd pick let me know what other color I would try to be playing. Good ol’ Land Tax. So now knowing my colors, I just needed ONE card…
Round 2. Found me some more good cards including Skullclamp (P1), Mox Diamond (P4), Gifts Ungiven… and the ONE card I was looking for, the Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. I also decided to counter-draft Sphinx of the Steel Wind, but the Orzhov Basilica, along with the Mox Diamond I already had drafted made me decide to play it.
After Round 2, I found myself in dire need of creatures, but the third round helped remedy that. After first pick Savannah Lions, I drafted 6 more creatures that round to bring my total creature count to 10.
The Deck:
Sadly, after drafting, I called this deck the 2nd worst deck I have ever drafted, but little did I know what the following cards had in store for me.
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Well… I realize now that my deck would have been nothing without the savior of the deck, Gifts Ungiven. The card was pretty much saying, “Which two of the following cards would you like to give me: The Jitte, Grand Arbiter, Time Walk, Eight and a Half Tails, Skullclamp, or what about the Sphinx?”
So for my matches, I went 2-1 against the newcomer Jad, tied against another newcomer Treavor with an epic game 1 in which if I only had one more card in my deck, I would have decked Treavor instead of myself. A brutal 2-1 match versus Cem followed by some Vengeance against Steve, 2-0.
Moral of the Story:
The cube is amazing. With people on both sides of me picking up my colors. I got some cards that I was not too excited about (which I considered second rate), but winning with those cards shows you the versatility of the cube.
And sometimes you don’t. This weeks draft cap is going to have more questions then answers. The cube was updated right before this draft with quite the agro package. Since I was following my heavy control biased mono-White deck I wanted to switch it up a bit and go agro. I figured, hey, not many people go green agro so I should have some pretty good picks if I force it. As the draft picked up it appeared that red would be a good compliment to my forced green agro strategy.
Then it hit me, P2P1 I opened a Time Walk! I saw quite a few U/G cards go by earlier so instead of letting this gem go by I snagged it up (And thankfully I did…because IIRC Tavish was to my right and would have killed to soak that one up). From then on out I focused on R/G agro cards and prioritizing Blue mana fixing. I ended up with 4 fetch lands which gave me 4 ways to nab my Volcanic Island paired with a Gemstone Mine I had quite the mana fixing (and thinning!) package enabling me to splash for 3 Blue cards: Trygon Predator, Time Walk, & Brainstorm
Now for the final decklist, which I thought was going to bring my oponents to their knees!
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Ok, now that I have my caliberated crap goggles on it’s time to to attempt to figure out what went wrong here. Because my deck sucked. Looking at it a second time I still don’t quite understand why, but it was terrible. Maybe the shuffle Gods decided to double fist punch me in the baby maker. The world may never know.
Well there you have it folks. I single handedly turned a blazingly fast, face-melting deck into a steaming pile of crap by not including enough…you guessed it! Spot Removal.
What is the lesson here? Don’t make an agro deck without enough ways to get blockers out of the way otherwise you may just end up losing to a Wall of Wood.
Until next time cubers! Happy drafting!
