MTG Cube

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

1. Not enough spot removal. A couple of times my opponent was able to stick a midrange fattie and I couldn’t deal with it. Juzam Djinn single handedly ate me up starting on turn 5. Ouch. The sad thing is I only had 1 way of dealing with him directly: Aftershock. Now while I love this card, I needed to have a little bit more backup.
2. Not enough midrange creatures. I think I focused too much on the 1 and 2 drops. My creatures couldn’t break through mid game which further compounded the lack of removal.
3. Not enough spot removal.
4. Not enough spot removal.
5. Not enough spot removal.
6. No this is not a typo, not enough spot removal.

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!

This draft cap is actually from June 11, 2010, so I’ll try and remember as best I can. To start things off, I took first place and went completely undefeated in the double elimination tournament. My final match up was against TLM (Too little manhood? JK!). It was getting quite late and Zach conceded after I won a grueling game 1. It could have been an even later night because at that point he had to win TWO matches back to back against me to win since I was yet to get a single elimination. I’m going to attempt to recap the tournament in three sections: Draft, Deckbuilding, & Matches.

Draft

I knew I wanted to force control this go around. I tend to lean towards aggro so I wanted to mix things up a bit.

P1P1 WINDMILL SLAM LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA (again!).

P2-3P1 Artifacts: Sword of Light and Shadow & Sensei’s Divining Top

P4P1 Psionic Blast (At this point I thought I might be in blue control)

P5P1 Parallax Wave (Ok white/blue control with heavy spot removal I can deal with this)

P6P1 Rout. This one was tough. I was at a breaking point it was either Rout or some really good blue card which I can’t remember. While deciding which to take I started a bottleneck with about 4 packs in my queue. That is how difficult this pick was. I settled on Rout with these thoughts in mind:

1. If Rout was still in the packs at P6 then there’s a good chance White control is underdrafted.
2. When I play control I do tend to lean on my board clears pretty heavily
3. The blue card only had a single U in the CC where Rout had double white. If I was to go Route I’d be committing myself to at least White.

The Rest of the picks just fell into place. Rout was directly followed by Wrath of God, which was directly followed by Catastrophe. By this time I knew I was going to be heavy white with some sort of a splash. I continued to pick up a few U or U/W cards along the way but mainly focused on White. I ended up netting SIX board clears if you count Moat.

Around PxP3 I was starting to worry about my creature count but like the rest of the draft that problem solved itself. I quickly soaked up all the efficient, yet heavily White costed, weenies: Eight and a half Tails, Stillmoon Cavalier, Knight of Meadowgrain, & Paladin en-Vec.

Deckbuilding

At this point, I was still thinking I’d be White with a Blue splash. However, I didn’t nab a single piece of color fixing since I went so rabid taking all the juicy White cards. While building out my curve it occurred to me that I actually had enough versatile White picks to go Mono Colored. The deck building was actually quite simple by that point. I had basically built my deck while I was drafting so the work was done. I only had to pull all Blue from my pile and make a couple of easy White cut. Add some Plains and I was done. What I was left with is what you see below. I titled the deck “Erotic Portal” to honor one of my favorite cube cards: Erratic Portal. This little baby earned its weight in gold by messing with people’s minds (Garrett!) while they either forgot I had it or forgot that if it’s untapped you actually need to keep TWOmana open.

Fun Synergies

1. Moat + my flying finishers
2. Balance/Catastrophe + Moxen & Land Tax
3. Eight and a half Tails + Sword of Light and Shadow/Stillmoon Cavalier
4. Cloudgoat Ranger + Parallax Wave/Erratic Portal

Matches

Every match I played was fought Tooth and Nail. We forgot to run match timers and all my matches were 1hour+. Mindslaver single handedly won me 3 games. The best one though was against Garret. I pop the slaver, take his turn. He had a Sylvan Library out which I then made him draw the extra cards for 8 damage. Then I killed his Plainswalker, unequipped his Grafted Wargear, played a land, and discarded down to 7 cards. On my turn I played….drumroll…Balance LOL. Due to my slaver, he had to discard down to 2 cards, lose like 3 lands, and clear his critters. Best, Balance, ever.

Unfortunately I don’t remember any more specifics about the matches, but WOW there was some stiff competition that tournament. Nicely done drafting fellas!

Cheers,

Steve

It was a Thursday night of epic proportions. While all the cool kids were watching the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics in game one of the NBA Finals, the really cool kids participated in a nine-player Magic: the Gathering cube booster draft Swiss system tournament. I was really impressed that this many players showed up. I want to thank Tavish for putting so much work into the cube and providing the hospitality for these tournaments. It appears that our circle of planeswalkers has grown, and hope that everyone had an awesome time.

Changes to the Cube

Tavish’s cube had recently undergone some changes. There was a dramatic decrease in the number of gold cards. The goal in mind was to make mono-color decks more viable. I believe that these changes were effective in producing new deck styles.

Some of the new cards added to the cube that saw play this tournament were Timetwister, Moat, and Terramorphic Expanse. Some of your suggestions made an impact in improving the cube, so keep them coming! We also implemented Steve’s idea that we should record the 15th pick of each pack to get an idea of which cards are least popular. We will start bringing you some data on these “first offenders”. While we constantly improve the cube, we also advance in our pursuit of knowledge, and these tournaments will only get better.

The Draft

With a honed cube with less gold cards, some players decided to focus strongly on specific colors. Three players drafted mono-colored decks. Despite the fact that there were less gold cards, Tavish did create a prismatic deck. As others were passing up dual lands like crazy, Tavish snatched those up. Personally, I was not interested in counter-drafting this time, and passed some über rares to Tavish, who was sitting next to me. We had published a blog post that featured a list of 20 of the top cube cards, and at one point was looking at a pack that had three of them. After picking the blue one (Treachery) I passed a pack that had both a Balance and an Armageddon. As I anticipated having six or seven control magic spells in my deck, I also passed a pack that had both a Land Tax and a Baneslayer Angel. That’s not to say that the person drafting mono-white was neglecting his duty. Zach drafted a bomb deck that had some massive synergy. After noticing that some bomb blue cards were being passed my way, I let an Upheaval pass only to receive it as a 15th pick. This is what happens when the cube is honed with the most phenomenal cards in Magic.

(more…)

After many days of culling the weak, we’re excited to announce some major changes to the Cube.  Here’s what you need to know before heading into the draft tonight:

• The Cube has shrunk by 40 cards in total, from 580 down to 540. This means an overall better draft experience from a stronger cardpool!
• 80 cards were removed from The Cube, a vast majority of which were multi-colored cards. You can expect mono- and dual-colored decks to be more viable as a result, with 3+ colored decks having a tighter, but higher quality pool to choose from.
• 40 brand new cards have been added to The Cube – keep an eye out for them tonight!
• We’ve been listening to your feedback and have added 10 of the 15 cards you recommended. Keep those suggestions coming!

Feel free to check out a fully updated listing of The Cube, as well as our Changelog for specific additions/removals.  Keep in mind there were some very difficult decisions to make…and as always, share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Lastly, for any newcomers and/or those looking to brush up on your drafting skills, here’s a list of the overall top 20 ranked Cube cards, as voted on by the MTGSalvation community. (Tip: Review these before the draft tonight!!)

1 Library of Alexandria
2 Sol Ring
3 Ancestral Recall
4 Mind Twist
5 Umezawas Jitte
6 Balance
7 Recurring Nightmare
8 Time Walk
9 Black Lotus
10 Armageddon / Ravages of War
11 Sword of Fire and Ice
12 All Mox (Ruby / Jet / Pearl / Sapphire / Emerald)
13 Mox Diamond
14 Mana Drain
15 Skullclamp
16 Demonic Tutor
17 Survival of the Fittest
18 Strip Mine
19 Treachery
20 Mana Crypt

Stay tuned for more exciting announcements at the draft tonight — see you at 6pm sharp!

Ok so perhaps my opening post is a bit cocky but hey, I did have white permanents on the board so don’t I get to return this spell to my hand so I can play it again? Alright alright, I’m just kidding. I’m sure next draft will have me crying in my pillow after I drive home at 1am on a weeknight.

I thought I’d give a little draft/play recap from my perspective. I apologize in advance if this isn’t all that coherent, I am on a 2hr phone meeting at work after all! I’m going to attack this in two parts (obviously!) the draft and the subsequent games.

Drafting

P1P1: Skullclamp. It is always good. There are not many decks I wouldn’t main board this handy little piece of banned equipment.

P1P2: Mind twist. Ok, powerful spell. Splashable. I’ll take it!

P1Px: I started to see some really good red & red/black cards coming my way (Wrecking Ball Bituminous Blast)so my original plan was to go black red aggro. Glad I didn’t because later I foundE that Tavish soaked up all the B/R cards that I passed to him. Phew! Dodged that bullet!

As P1 went on I solidified my stance in R/W aggro when I saw cards like Plateau & Student of Warfare come back on the wheel. From then on out, the rest of the draft kind of fell in my lap.

P2P1: Mox Ruby Hell yes!

P3P1: This next pick was legend….wait for it….DARY. WINDMILL SLAM LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA I was so excited I had to flop it to the rest of the table so everyone else could revel in my awesomeness.

Deckbuilding

I kept my curve low while building my deck and my creature count high. I had 11 cards that were 1CC or less. My curve was so low I almost cut Cloudgoat Ranger but decided to keep it in as my single bomb to use during a stalled out game. My deck had some good synergies which I’ll list out below:

• Enlightened Tutor could fetch me up enchantment based removal, an additional land drop in the form of 1 of 2 moxen or an additional win con with Goblin Trenches
• Undiscovered Paradise, in addition to being aggro based mana fixing acted as a win con when matched with Emeria Angel
• Then of course who can forget the famous Skullclamp 1/1 token producers? Of which I had 4 sources.

Dueling

The theme of this section is going to be bad beats or… Gifts Ungiven.

My most epic start turned into an epic fail in game 2 against Mike. First turn: Plains, Mox, Signet. Second turn: Mountain, Scroll rack (activate rack), nothing. I then proceeded to get my shit kicked in for about 7 turns by Mike and responded by doing…well…nothing. Failbot.

Chris had me in a lockdown on game 2 where I actually had to ask Tavish to look through my deck to see if I had any answers to his Platinum Angel equipped with Sword of Fire and Ice. Sadly I did not. I couldn’t even deck him because he “Can’t lose the game”. OMG!!!

Game 3 V.S. Tavish me on the draw. Turn 1: Library of Alexandria (BOOYAW MOFO I’M GONNA SWEEP FOR BEST OUT OF 5) Turn 2: Mountain because Tavish Vindicate‘d my LoA He proceed to win that one with massive removal and a double cascade. Ouch!

Overall I went 7-3 losing 1 game each to each opponent.

So when’s the next draft?

Cheers,

Steve

Well, it finally happened. Tavish managed to once again beat me at a Magic: the Gathering cube draft one-on-one match. As they say, “You can’t win them all”. Of course, he didn’t win them all last week either, and in fact took another hardcore beating of which I’d like to relate.

Relying on a barrage of bomb creatures, broken spells, sweet dual lands, and Sarkhan, I ravaged Tavish playing some blue bombs of his own such as Jace Beleren, Time Walk, and Legacys Allure in a deck that also boasted an Akroma, Angel of Wrath. And as always, he just had to draft the Senseis Divining Top, my absolute most hated artifact in the cube, and one of Tavish’s favorites. Fortunately for Tavish, he didn’t get swept, but I did put a good beating on him, in part due to some extremely lucky draws getting perfect land draws to balance the überspells in my deck.

Playing All Five Colors

I still laugh about the fact that I’ve been scoffed at for playing more than three colors. Frankly, it’s my opinion that playing a mono-color deck in a cube draft is more difficult than playing all five colors. The specialty mana cards in the cube, including the many dual lands, moxes, and signets, make playing with more and more colors a real opportunity. Playing a Sol Ring and a Boros Signet also helped me boost my mana to get the bomb creatures out.

Fetch and Dual Lands

I’m a huge fan of dual lands and multi-mana producing artifacts, and drafted a great balance of land that helped me to dominantly play all five colors. Fetch lands are extraordinary combined with other dual lands, and this was the case in this deck. A Verdant Catacombs could essentially provide me with a green, black, or blue since it could fetch either a Watery Grave, and Polluted Delta could provide me with a black, blue, or white since it could fetch a Tundra. I also had a man land, Lavaclaw Reaches, which is always fun to play. I included an Exploration, but was never able to take advantage of it.

Awesome Mana Producer: Lotus Cobra

Lotus Cobra, the truly epic green landfall card, never fails to impress. This card is Über when playing five colors. It is especially harassing when it hits the board early on. During one game I the cobra was good to the very end, when I sacrificed it to Sarkhan the Mad to get a dragon.

The Sarkhanic Transformation

Both Sarkhans? Bad-ass.

Drafting both versions of Sarkhan ensures that your opponent does not fizzle your pumped up Sarkhan Vol ready to unleash dragons by playing Sarkhan the Mad. I observed a game recently where an Ajani Vengeant had seven loyalty counters when his controller’s opponent cast an Ajani Goldmane. I mentioned, after it had been cast, that once that spell had resolved in play, both Ajani’s would go to the graveyard. It’s an awful way to lose your planeswalker.

That being said, what really made me excited was how these planeswalkers would work together in the same cube draft deck. I had hoped to first play Sarkhan Vol, and once his loyalty was six, pop him and put out five dragons. That same turn, I could have cast Sarkhan the Mad and immediately deal 20 damage. Perhaps if some brutal creature came out that I desperately needed to deal with, I could have gained control of it using Sarkhan Vol’s ability, then played Sarkhan the Mad to sacrifice it and gain a dragon. I didn’t get to do all this, but both planeswalkers did come in handy. Sarkhan Vol helped me boost my Cold-Eyed Selkie and other creatures as I brought on a massive onslaught, using my opponent’s creature when I needed to. I used Sarkhan the Mad’s ability to draw cards, and constantly got lands, allowing me to thin my deck out and get more mana, while still being able to use his other abilities later on. Awesome.

Pleasant Surprise: Cold-Eyed Selkie

After drafting, I had a sneaking suspicion that Tavish was playing blue. Lo and behold, he was. Like clockwork, he would play an early game island and I would then respond with the Selkie. I then proceeded to deal a damage to Tavish and draw a card each turn. I used Sarkhan Vol’s ability to pump up this unblockable creature by +1/+1 to draw more cards and deal more damage. This early game nuisance worked out extremely well as a damaging weenie addition to this deck.

The Blue Dragon Spirit: Keiga, the Tide Star

I can’t stress how incredible this dragon spirit is. Since this creature requires only one blue mana, it works great in five color decks or decks splashing blue, and worked great alongside the Control Magic as I sought to steal the creatures Tavish played. As a dragon, it also synergizes well with Sarkhan.

Other Bombs

Last draft we played in, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner was used by Steve to spoil all of Tavish’s plans. I decided to go the same route. How amazing is it to play a Bloodbraid Elf that cascades into Kira?

I had a blast playing Sphinx of Jwar Isle, as it meant I could look at the top card of my library without cheating while busting out another huge flier.

Nath of the Gilt-Leaf and Spiritmonger are testaments to the slaughtering power of the black/green unholy alliance. These beasts just dominate.

Dimir Guildmage is so wicked. It’s easy to play since it has casting cost color options, and its versatile abilities are nuts. At one point I used eight mana to force Tavish to discard the two cards in his hand. The guildmage, combined with Nath, helped to ensure that  Nezumi Shortfang would threaten to flip as Tavish’s hand was pulled dry.

More rape

Char completely pwns. Blightning is brutally painful. Regrowth is pure goodness. Remand single-handedly won a game for me. With so much domination, I never even needed to play a Day of Judgment.

Last thoughts

My only regret about this draft is letting that Maelstorm Angel slip away.

I finally cast the infamous Teneb, the Harvester, but the game was almost put away by then. This is a card that might not fit well into the cube, and which I feel could potentially be replaced by a Doran, the Siege Tower. Now that Teneb has seen some action, I wonder how useful he will be in future drafts. I would not be opposed to retiring him now. The Razormane Masticore also didn’t do me any good.

Overall, this deck just domineered Tavish’s face as I stole his creatures, forced him to discard cards, drew extra cards myself, and came at him with a storm of shrouded creatures. I can’t complain.

Thursday, Keston and Steve joined in for a four player Magic: the Gathering cube draft, utilizing the dice draft format, or as I feel it should be dubbed, the Tavish format, since he is the mastermind behind it. See the previous post to read about our last dice drafting experience. We’ve since come up with a variation on this dice format. Instead of rows of six, we use rows of five. When the die rolls a 6, you get to choose which card to pick. I’ll plan on adding a section to this blog that describes this dice drafting format in more detail.

Keston ended up winning this single elimination tournament, with a deck that featured some bombs like Library of Alexandria, Oblivion Ring, and a Mox. I played Keston first, and despite having confidence in my deck, I didn’t find the balance in game one to stop Keston from brutally casting a Conquerors Pledge in my face while having a Miraris Wake in play. We couldn’t believe Keston hesitating when the Library dropped in front of him, but he did snatch it to our dismay. Almost every time I’ve played an opponent playing the Library, there’s always one game where it gets played first turn. Second game against Keston, he got the Library out early, and the massive card advantage was too much to handle.

Steve ended up beating Tavish to play Keston for the victory, but had to settle for second place. In the consolation match, I beat Tavish, all the while mocking his Staff of Domination.

Below are the deck lists for this draft tournament as well as each player’s favorite card from their decks.

Favorite card: Conquerors Pledge – This card just killed me. I knew Keston was looking wide-eyed at that card when it hit the table. This card turns out a real beat-down. Five mana for six 1/1 weenies is excellent alone and the kicker ability makes this a brutal finisher. Comboed with a weenie booster like Miraris Wake or Captain of the Watch, and this card becomes a real nightmare.

Favorite card: Kira, Great Glass-Spinner – Kira is an epically powerful and low casting cost blue flying creature. Kira can change the dynamics of the game just by landing on the battlefield.

Favorite card: Gerrard’s Verdict – I really like that there is another good two-mana hand destruction card for black/white. This time I actually benefited from the card’s bonus and gained three life when my opponent discarded a land.

Favorite card: Staff of Domination – I gotta give Tavish props for utilizing this artifact well. Of course, the more mana you have, the more versatile this card it becomes. A third turn staff really won’t help you that much, but once you have five mana available, it gets fun. If you have nine mana available, you can hold off two beasties attacking you by tapping both of them, or you could gain a life and draw a card. Last time I played with it my deck got dominated during the games in which I played it, and it never seemed to serve me well enough, despite its name. For those games, it was the Staff of Gettin’ Dominated. It’s one of those cards you draft with the hopes of playing the “STAFF OF DOMINATION!” while you’re beating down your opponent, but will bring scorn and mocking when you’re staring at an imminent demise and your opponent is laughing at your pithy artifact “of domination” as you gain a measly one life each turn.

Overall, everyone had a good showing. Congratulations to Keston for his victory on this evening. We look forward to our next matchups, and plan on doing an 8-player tournament soon, perhaps even next Thursday. Stay tuned, and if you’re in the Portland or Beaverton area, come play!

It’s amazing how versatile drafting with the MTG cube can be, whether it be a standard, Winston, or dice draft. Even drafting multiple times without returning previously drafted cards will continue to produce solid decks.

Recently, at Tavish’s loft, we were joined by Kevin to play a serious of cube draft matches. We voted to determine what kind of draft we would do first. We ended up deciding on doing a “dice draft”. To do this dice draft, we pulled a number of cards from the cube and aligned them in three rows of six, face up. We then took turn drafting two cards at a time. The first card drafted is any card of the current player’s choice. To draft the second card, the player names a row (i.e. first, second, or third row), rolls a D6, and selects that card the dice tells him to.

We figured that we would draft, play each other, and a winner would be determined outright. Instead, we ended up with the classic three way tie scenario, with Kevin beating Tavish, Garrett beating Kevin, and Tavish beating Garrett (something like that).

Here are the decks each of us drafted:

So to rectify this situation, we had to do an entire second draft, using the Winston draft format. The same situation ensued, resulting in a three way tie. It wasn’t until a sudden death draft the next day that Kevin squeaked out a victory. Pressed for time, I ended up not recording the deck lists for the two other drafts.

This was the first time I cast two cards which instantly became favorites of mine. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is the definite sweet bomb to drop, but the card that was by far the most fun was Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind. This dragon is not only a flying Library of Alexandria without the 7-card limitation, but it can deal damage each time you draw a card, including your draw step! This dragon gives you an extremely unfair advantage that can quickly turn a game from a nail-biter into pure slaughter. My goal was to play a well timed Wheel of Fortune with Niv-Mizzet out to create a massive explosion, but couldn’t quite pull that off in a game.

We also watched a crazy Trail Blazers game, ate chips, salsa, pizza, and sausage muffins with egg & cheese (and more), and played Mario Party IV until the wee hours of the morning. Gluttonous.