MTG Cube

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.

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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