MTG Cube

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.