I’m going to take a quick break from getting my butt whooped on Cube via Magic: Online to let you all know that our September MTGCube.com Draft will take place this Sunday, 9/30 in downtown Portland. If you live in the Portland area, you can always find more details about our upcoming drafts here:
And for those of our readers who can’t make it in person: think about getting a few Cube drafts in online to practice up!
Just a quick update that the shipment of our brand new MTGCube.com shirt has 14 suspend counters on it — meaning participants in next month’s Cube draft will have a chance to win one of their very own! Check ‘em out:
Last month’s draft winner, who wishes to remain anonymous, will also receive his shirt as promised (MTGCube.com always pays its debts!) OK, we actually haven’t quite gotten around to blogging the exciting outcome of the August draft…but stay tuned for that.
Oh, and if you’d like a shirt but can’t come to Portland to compete for one, leave us a note in the comments and we’ll try and get one to you at minimal cost. Happy drafting everyone!
Tavish
“…and from the fiery ash rises The Cube, reborn.”
Today marks a special day in the history of MTGCube.com as it makes its move from the Beaverton suburb to downtown Portland. With its new location and Meetup.com group, along came a fresh set of drafters who dueled it out in a four round Swiss tournament on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The action was packed despite the reduced number of drafters, and in the end, Cube Architect Tavish L. emerged at the top of the smoke stack with a record of 2-1.
Honorable mentions go to the remaining three drafters: Keston O., Nick P. and Mohammad A., all who showed out to welcome the MTG Cube back into primetime. We’ll see you all next time!
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This was the first draft we did after dropping the Moxes, Black Lotus and the signets. I was worried about control having a difficult time but when I first picked Elspeth and got an early Fact or Fiction and Sower of Temptation I decided it was time to go for a control plan (and get hunting for some cards with a lower CMC!). This turned out to be wise, as the other white and blue drafter was on my left, and pack 3 slammed me with p2 Day of Judgement and p3 Wrath of God.
The lack of reliable acceleration really made me rethink control. Though I had many powerful cards in the 5+ CMC slot, I realized that I may never be able to cast them in time. Gideon Jura and Time Spiral were the only expensive cards that made the cut. I felt I could rely on the finisher package of Luminarch Ascension (a wonderful dark horse of a card), Gideon, Exalted Angel and Elspeth.
So with a bunch of sweepers and planeswalkers it looks mostly like a normal control deck, however the Tangle Wire and cheap creature package was the true backbone. Tangle Wire + Flickerwisp took entire games by themselves, with aggro choosing between swinging and developing their board, and rival control and mid-range decks unable to do anything. I can’t say those were fun games, but they showcased the power of Tangle Wire, even in a deck without a lot of manafacts or cheap permanents. I have always valued it highly but it’s close to first pick material for me now. The built-in asymmetry and the colorless mana cost make it incredibly attractive.
Another notable, but obvious, combo that made the deck hum was Gideon + Lumiarch Ascension
A final note about land drafting. I picked up a Tropical Island at some point, thinking I was going Bant, but it didn’t pan out. However, that pick turned a late Windswept Heath into a virtual U/W fetch. Never underestimate the boost in power that a dual land can give to any fetches that come along later.
MTGCube.com’s June draft brought in a wealth of new players and pushed the Cube to its limit, with 630 cards drafted by 14 participants in a 4 round battle royale that would crown one planeswalker supreme over all others.
To balance the playing field for the newcomers to Cube drafting, seven Power cards were set aside and awarded at random to the losers of the first round of Swiss. Indeed a Sol Ring or Black Lotus booster shot proved to make all the difference for those players in subsequent rounds. But in the end only four players would come out on top, with Kuleli’s Esper deck topping Ledesma’s Bolas-packing Grixis to win top honors with a 3-0-1 finishing record. Now on to the top decks of the night!
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It may be that you won’t know whether you win or lose by turn four, in the all in crusade of the aggro deck. It may be that most games you play seems to take forever, running out of time always an option. But this is how Blue should play. Slowly, yet steadily, you march towards victory. In this case, victory meant Elspeth, Knight-Errant.
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The very first pack I opened was a fairly weak pack with no major power cards or bombs to speak of. There was only one green card in the pack (Vengevine) and I decided early on that if I took the green card I could possible cut the color early and my intuition told me that it was likely the other drafters might be going to have a heavy amount of black and blue. Red has been known among our playgroup to be an underdrafted color, especially when one Mono Red Mike Adams is absent. I saw some packs that had some decent red cards that I thought could wheel and it was just my fortune that they did. It turned out that out of the five of us drafting no one else was in the color red and as a result I got some pretty sweet pickups late in the packs.
Matchup Round 1
This was versus Gorgalore’s white weenie deck in which he splashed black. Both games were very close as we took turns striking back and forth.
- Key cards this match-
Hero of Oxid Ridge
This guy was key in pushing through a few extra damage with his haste and ability to make weenies not be able to block. (Maybe I should take this guy out to the bar’s with me as a wingman sometime)
Thornling
So Garrett had an Ob Nixlis out and was draining me for 3 a turn. The board was lined with creatures from both players and I was having a hard time finding a way to get through with some extra damage. I was at 2 and would die the next turn as Ob Nixlis + Land Tax was making life difficult. I had a thornling in hand along with my rancor, but I was one green mana short of casting the thornling, giving it haste and putting the rancor on it for trample. I needed to top draw a forest for this to work and TADAAAAA! a forest appeared when I needed it most. With the thornling / rancor active I was able to swing in for the kill and win the game that I would have surely lost the next turn.
Raging Ravine
When your low on spells and need an extra body to keep up the pressure this guy is boss, an amazing land for sure.
Matchup Round 2
This was versus Tavish and his blue black control deck. Now Tavish was sitting to me left and I knew I had been feeding him some pretty sweet black cards. Grave Titan and Hymn to Tourach to name a few.
Key Cards this match
Chameleon Colossus
This was the MVP in an a long game 1 that started with me dropping a turn 2 tarmagoyf and tavish with a turn 2 juzam djinn. I hooked up my Loxodon Warhammer to the goyf and Tavish hooked up a basalisk collar to his djinn. We battled back and forth for awhile and the Colossus played a key role in neutralizing an opposing grave titan. A hammer hooked up to the Colossus pumped for the win.
Krosen Grip
This was a sideboard card that I added, I was going against a fair number of artifacts and playing vs counterspells. Vedalken shackles was a real threat, but I had the bases covered with this, the maindeck artifact destruction and Eternal Witness.
Matchup Round 3 Finals
This was against Steve and his black/white beater deck.
Key Cards this match
Path to Exile
When facing a Kokusho, The Evening Star this card bailed me out and eliminated the threat flawlessly… and for only 1 mana.
Inferno Titan
This guy really brought the pain and once a hammer got equipped to him it was gg.
Wheel of Fortune
This managed to draw me a bunch of cards and got rid of a few of his bombs in the process. He drew a mindtwist to take some of the lead back, but the damage had already been done when his Baneslayer, mortify and Elspeth? got sent to the yard.
-Firekraag-
So I apologize that it has been sometime since my last post. I’ve been hibernating if you will during these dull winter months. Working full time, getting quite sick for a couple weeks with what seemed like a lite version of mono, and just in general being lazy. Now that spring has arrived and I’m feeling better its time for a little type 2 action. We’ve seen the release of Mirrodin Besieged and I always enjoy having some new cards to work with. Infect has started to show up a little bit on the radar of some tournaments and I think it is probably the archetype that may have the most chance to level up to tier 1 status. Proliferate is a very powerful mechanic when combined with infect and essentially having to do half the normal damage to an opponent seems like a pretty solid strategy to go with. Heres the list
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A pretty basic build here that can end the game very quick. Some decks just can’t beat a turn 4 armored ascension on one of your infect guys. Especially if your turn 3 play was a tempered steel. Being that you only need to get to 10 poison you can have some devastating attacks when you land your enchantments. The proliferate mechanic comes in handy as a finisher and there are six non creature cards that can help get the job done there. This deck is a fine choice to suit up for a friday night magic and perhaps with some fine tuning and maybe the addition of a second color could be a tier 2 or 1.5 deck in the future.
Firekraag
I doubt I could have made this deck much better picking and choosing from the cube itself. A Bone Shredder and an Oona’s Prowler would have real nice but that’s about it.
The deck’s main plan is to get one of its two devastating finishers into the graveyard with one of the discard outlets, and then reanimate them for huge card advantage and a nasty threat. Hopefully the villain will kill them somehow so you can reanimate them again for further shenanegins. These finishers are ideal because they kill Planeswalkers and enchantments, many of which can wreak havoc on our plans. The deck also plays control, removal and survival elements so that it might just get to the point where it can hardcast its bombs. A second backup plan is to remove an opponent’s finisher and use it against them.
Matchwise I had alot of problems against Treavor’s U/G deck. It was sort of aggressive with evasion and tons of disruptive elements like Crystal Shard and Shackles. The 3/1 Faerie ate away my face pretty quick. His nastiest play was a turn 3 Mana Crypt/Sword-> Equip Sword to River Boa and swing for 7. Ouch! This deck just has very little that can deal with fliers and I’m lucky that I only faced one deck that featured a good amount of them.
Individual Cards:
The walls, Diabolic Edict, Call of the Herd, Uktabi Orangutan and Yavimaya Elder help the deck survive the early game, as well as provide fodder for Nightmare/Survival. Most of them provide card advantage in and of themselves, which is huge because they are going to die alot. Against a control deck I can get a real aggro start if I get lucky.
Putrid Leech: I’ve been irrationally down on this guy, but I picked him up because I was lacking creatures. What a beast. Stops aggro well and is immune to almost all black and red removal. If you can drop him turn 2 vs. control, they are begging for an answer or they are just dead.
Survival of the Fittest: No better card for a reanimator deck. Tutor your target and put him in the graveyard for 2 mana. Wow! This wheeled. I guess everyone hates green?
Terastodon: Another card I didn’t like the look of on paper but DAMN! This guy is so badass that when he shows up on the field, Koth of the Hammer thinks: “Man, I sure wish I was that cool”. Then he remembers that he’s a wizard so he uses his magic to turn himself into an elephant. But the elephant is only one third of the elephant that Terastodon is and Koth laments. Nothing beats the card advantage of neutralizing two Planeswalkers with one card, or reanimating this guy to blow up 3 of your lands to put 18 power on the table.
Psychatog: Yeah I splashed blue for this guy (and Creeping Tar Pit). Yet another card I was skeptical of, but in a reanimator deck he is boss. I actually ended a game with an enemy Jace fueled rampage from this guy, discarding 7 and removing 12 from the graveyard to pump him up to a 14/15. Don’t try this against a white deck, kids.
That’s right folks, The Cube is dropping fat faster than a mono-green ramp deck. Let’s have a moment of silence for all of the high class cards who just did not make the cut:
It’s farewell to these guys for now, but you never know when a select few may weasel their way back into the standard rotation. In the meantime, let’s bask in the much tighter card pool to draft from!
A blustery evening in Portland, Oregon brought Cube drafters indoors from across the metropolitan area for MTGCube.com’s monthly booster draft. With The Cube running at a leaner 495 cards, down from its previous 540, participants crowded around the draft table in stark anticipation of higher quality picks and a chance to crack one of the three newest additions: Hero of Bladehold, Thrun, the Last Troll, and Black Sun’s Zenith. (These were proxied in from one of the many Mirrodin Besieged Spoilers floating around the internets.)
The clock struck seven. Silence blanketed the room, and nine drafters popped the first pack to survey the selection. From the sounds of it, or rather lack of sound — some players have been known to spam the “Vuvuzela” app on their smartphones upon windmill slamming a top pick — you would think the recent Cube reduction was all for naught. Personally? I kept quiet as I slipped a Pack 1-Pick 1 Black Lotus into my pile. The rest of the seasoned drafters remained equally subdued as they thoughtfully pieced together their masterpieces.
Four rounds of Swiss, three large pizzas, and five hours of trash-talking later, the two top contenders sat down at Table One for a classic archetype battle: Clearence’s Blue/Green Beatsy Control versus Adams’ Mono-Red Burn. While the night’s winner would ultimately be determined by the total number of accumulated match points (Win = 3, Tie = 1, Loss = 0), all eyes were on Steve and Mike as the two duked it out for bragging rights.
Sadly, even at 3-1, my Green/Red Ramp could not Kodama’s Reach its way to the final table. However I did savor a sweet game victory over Clearence with a top-decked Banefire for the win, as he held not one but three counterspells in his hand. But moving on to the spotlight match for the evening…
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Indeed it was a battle of epic proportions — Chandra versus Jace. Meloku versus Inferno Titan. Wasteland versus Library. Don’t blink or else you may have missed this one. In fact, that’s indeed what happened. As I was munching on some leftover pizza, I glanced over and both players had already started reshuffling their decks. Could it really have ended that quickly?
The answer is a resounding yes.
In two straight games, Adams’ mono-red proved to be too hot to handle for his worthy adversary. In a friendly game three, Adams added insult to injury by Forking Steve’s Cryptic Command, both countering the original spell and netting an additional card. And with that, Steve scooped in defeat, but not without walking away the ultimate winner of the night by edging out the competition with his 3-1 record.
Congratulations to Steve, and to the remaining drafters who really raised the competition to a new level. Stay tuned for next month’s draft report and a full update on changes to The Cube.
Happy Drafting!
-Tavish