It’s been a wild one. 500+ Magic players met in Madison, WI to draft some cubes. Some were in it for the competition (top prizes provided by WotC and Daybreak Games), but I was there to draft the weirdest cubes I could. I’m a serial cube designer myself, and more than anything else I wanted to see some of the creative energy that other prominent designers were putting into their environments.

The Cubes⌗

All in all, I drafted nine cubes over 4 days. They were:

Prequel Draft: Way Too Hybrid by irreleverent⌗

  • CubeCobra Link
  • I drafted: BW Midrange with some Aura synergies
  • I went: 0-3

Not quite as mind-melting as I’d been led to believe, but the draft is definitely still mentally taxing: the hybrid nature of the cube means you have to read more cards than you normally might (i.e., a larger proportion of the cards in each pack are “on-color”). I probably would’ve done better if I’d read some signals more clearly and gone harder in the Auras direction. It also really wants you to be monocolor, and while I was originally flirting with black and green, I probably could’ve been monowhite if I’d drafted differently.

My bad BG midrange deck, all laid out on the table
I'd call it BG mid, but that might be too generous

Bar Cube: Modern Draught by ChillMTG⌗

A beautiful, unsleeved tribute to pre-2018 Modern. There’s some newer cards and some older cards (Mother of Runes?!), but you won’t find any pitch elementals, and the best monkey in the cube is either Kird Ape or Simian Spirit Guide. A great draft over some beers, just try not to spill.

Bar Cube: Khans of Barkir by IslandPonder⌗

  • CubeCobra Link
  • I drafted: Some kind of Mardu pile
  • I went: N/A—we only had about 30 minutes, so we decided to just draft and declare whoever had the sweetest deck the winner

This one missed me a bit. I’m not sure how fond I am of the non-Khans additions, especially compared to the next cube on this list. It’s possible I’d change my tune if I’d actually played any games with the deck, so don’t take this as a complete review of the cube (and especially not an idictment of the designer). It really made me want to try my hand at this same concept, though.

My Mardu tokens or reanimator or something deck, haphazardly arranged
Mardu tokens or reanimator or something

Main Event #1: Khans Expanded 2.0 by raff_sputin⌗

  • CubeCobra Link
  • I drafted: Jeskai Tempo
  • I went: 1-2, but I punted away a match that was mine to win

I may have gotten genuinely emotional about this one. It’s not a perfect replica of Khans of Tarkir, but it’s not trying to be. What it is is a love letter to the limited format. The decks I loved back in 2014 are clearly here, and the non-Khans cards aren’t stealing the show—rather, they’re beautifully supporting the biggest players from 3xKTK. They feel at home.

Also, as much as I love playing with cubes that push the boundaries of what Magic is as a game, there’s something to be said for a cube that manages to have such a strong identity with no special rules at all. Just 360 cards, drafted by 8 players, 3 packs of 15. Build 40-card decks, and play some Magic. Classic gameplay.

My Jeskai tempo deck, laid out by curve
Classic Jeskai

Main Event #2: Neal’s Micro Cube by Neal Aneja⌗

  • CubeCobra Link
  • I drafted: Essence Reliquary + Yidaro
  • I went: 0-3 0-6

And we go from “classic, no special rules” to an extremely custom format. This is a cube where players build 15-card decks and play games where they don’t lose to drawing from an empty library. I’m a general fan of 15-card Magic as an occasional diversion; it really turns the game on its head and makes you care about different things. I mostly wanted to play this one because I wanted to see what an aggro deck could look like in an environment like this (my previous experiences revolved around control and combo decks), and I think I did see one sort of answer.

As for my own performance, I built a deck that was capable of powerful things but was both too slow and too disruptable. A glass cannon in a world very prepared for that sort of thing. The Essence Reliquary + Genku combo can probably work if the entire rest of the deck is protection for that combo, interaction, and probably one way to shuffle a card from the graveyard.

Also, I’m genuinely surprised Mistveil Plains is in the cube. It’s way too strong in this format. Graveyard recursion needs to cost a nonland slot in your deck.

The 20 cards I had at my disposal
My pool
The lemonade I made with these lemons
My pile

Main Event #3: 100 Ornithopters by Andy Mangold (of Lucky Paper Radio)⌗

  • CubeCobra Link
  • I drafted: RB graveyard loop with 9 Ornithopters (numbers 1, 11, 13, 22, 32, 33, 40, 41, and 91)
  • I went: 1-2

I felt pretty lucky to get to draft this one at all. It was pretty in-demand because it’s a unique take on Magic created by one of the most listened-to voices in the cube scene. I’ll let the cube description tell the whole story, but the gist is that the cube contains (as the name suggests) 100 copies of the card Ornithopter, individually numbered, and the only ways to win a game somehow involve an Ornithopter.

How many Ornithopters is it correct to run? How highly do you need to take them in draft? How many lands do you run when a quarter of your deck costs zero? These are some questions I still don’t have good answers to, but exploring them was an absolute blast.

I happened to get assigned to draft it when it was featured, and I was seated just to the left of cube streamer and Madison local Caleb Durward (so he passed to me packs 1 and 3, and I passed to him pack 2). In pack 1, I opened Vanquisher’s Banner, which definitely seemed powerful (a draw engine and a win condition all in one), then quickly fell into red looking for ways to get the banner into my graveyard and Goblin Welder effects to cheat it in from there. I suspected black would be a good pairing for that (Raise Dead effects and maybe some sweepers to keep my opponents in check?), and after seeing a 7th pick Vampiric Tutor solidified on that plan.

In pack 2, I opened both Tolarian Academy and Gaea’s Cradle. Since I was in neither blue nor green, I figured Academy was going to be generally stronger this environment and passed the Cradle to Caleb (had a fun little chat about that after that draft). I later took a Tinker figuring that I had an opportunity to splash blue, but I didn’t see the duals I’d have needed to make that splash happen. Didn’t matter, though—Academy is still broken even if it’s effectively producing colorless mana.

By the time I got into pack 3, I was starting to sweat the fact that I only had 6 Ornithopters, which didn’t feel nearly enough (average count would be 12.5 if they were evenly distributed). I had to bump them up in my pick order. I never expected that I’d be looking at a Wooded Foothills and an Ornithopter, hemming and hawing about that decision, then landing on taking the thopter and feeling secure in that decision. Wild stuff.

My 100 Ornithopters draft pool, featuring only nine ornithopters
My pool
My 100 Ornithopters deck, featuring every one of those nine
My deck

I lost my first game pretty solidly, learning the first important lesson about games in this cube: maybe don’t just run out your thopters at the first opportunity. And for my deck in particular, I needed to play more reactively and build toward one or two big turns where I could deal a huge amount of damage. I still lost round 1, but the second game felt more like a real game. Round 2 went better: I won the first game by the skin of my teeth, dead on board to 13 Ornithopters that had been Yawg Will’d back from my opponent’s graveyard, after topdecking a Rakdos Charm to turn my opponent’s force against him. Game 2 was a more convincing win.

Round 3 was a loss to an Auras deck, but I think there might’ve been a way to navigate one of the lost games a bit differently. Ah, well! My opponent’s deck was still sweet.

One of the other unique features of the deck is a special rule where after a game win you get to add a tally mark to the thopter that won the game (or one of your choice if there were several). My goal going in was to add at least one tally, and I accomplished that and then some. My second round opponent had to text Andy to ask how to handle the Rakdos Charm situation—the ruling was that I got to pick one of my opponent’s thopters and mark that one.

Ornithopters number 32 and 57, removed from their card sleeves, each with a fresh tally mark applied to the corner of their art box
Marking thopters 32 and 57

Main Event #4: Wheeler’s One Drops by Ben Wheeler⌗

Another strange one! This particular restriction didn’t appeal to me on its face, but I saw some gameplay videos on a LoadingReadyRun stream and it looked fun enough that I added it to my wishlist. After the fact, I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about it, but I’d definitely draft it again.

Much like Way Too Hybrid, the cube seems to reward monocolor decks. You want a really low land count, and unless you get a ton of duals, it’s just too easy to get color-screwed. Not knowing this going in, I ended up in a grindy BG deck that resembled one of my favorite fringe pauper decks from 2018. My first pick was Reanimate, but as soon as I passed the pack it dawned on me that the card may not be as broken here as it is elsewhere (why bother cheating on mana when everything costs 1?) and deeply regretted passing a Boseiju, Who Endures. For whatever reason, though, Boseiju wheeled. Better lucky than good, I guess!

My all one drops deck, organized in some way that made sense at the time
My deck, with all 11 lands I ran (13 if you count MDFCs)

Round 1 was a routing. My opponent was on monoblack aggro, and there was simply no way to recover from their aggressive starts. I’m pretty sure I could’ve stacked my deck and still lost. One of the most potent cards my opponent leveraged against me was Darkblast, and honestly I think including that card in this cube was a mistake. When drawn in an aggressive deck, it completely invalidates an opponent’s ability to interact in combat, and the card itself has few to no answers.

The other rounds were more credible games of Magic, though! In round 2 I had a close match against mono-red aggro, mostly carried by the combo of Carrion Feeder and Mortician Beetle, which together do a pretty good Arcbound Ravager impression. Round 3 was a bit of a nightmare for my opponent, who came out strong but couldn’t close out the game before I got a Tortured Existence / Ruthless Sniper loop going, eating away at his board and stranding a bunch of 1-toughness creatures in his hand (and it took long enough that we only got the one game in).

Open Drafting: DESCEND INTO AVERNUS by irreleverent⌗

  • CubeCobra Link
  • I drafted: BR “how many Disciple of the Vault effects can I jam into this deck without actually playing Disciple of the Vault”
  • I went: 1-0

I’ve been hearing about Avernus for ages, and now that I’ve finally drafted it I can see what all the fuss is about. It’s a grixis commander cube, but with the game’s resource system turned on its head. I could describe it in more detail, but really the cube description will do a far better job than I ever could.

The best word I have to describe the turns in this environment is “dense”. At several points players had to think for a minute to decide whether they wanted to pass priority. I went second, and the game ended on my fourth turn (though it could’ve ended two turns prior). And that felt late. I’m going to have to build myself a copy of this cube. It won’t be an every week cube, but it’ll be an occasional draft-night treat.

Open Drafting: $5 Fair ‘Nuff by gaytransmulldrifter⌗

I got recruited to be the 8th seat in this one (I think my words were, “I didn’t come here not to draft cubes”). It was kinda refreshing to draft a more normal cube—the cards mostly did what they usually do, there were no special rules or anything. Lots of synergies to identify in the draft (in particular, the rather large number of Ash Barrens meant discard payoffs were better than usual), followed by some games of good, clean Magic.

I drafted a very classic-feeling UR deck. I was two seats down from someone drafting a more blitz-y Kiln Fiend deck, and it definitely felt like both plans were supported well enough for us to coexist. I was straddling the spells/cycling line perhaps a little too much, but even if Rielle only draws you one card that’s still awesome.

A bog-standard UR spells deck
My deck. That extremely late Talrand says hello.