Cube Draft Reports - California Cube Championships 2025

A special edition of my draft reports, this time recapping all the drafts I did in and around California Cube Championships! My classic caveats:

• I purposely don’t look at cube lists before drafting. The mystery and surprise of it all and having to piece together the puzzle on the spot is one of the main draws of Magic for me, and some of that is spoiled by knowing the shape of what is there in advance. I only really go in knowing what the cube owner says in their pre-draft setup spiel, and any loose memories knocking around from previous drafts.
• These draft reports are first and foremost for me, but format and level of detail about certain aspects are something I’m interested in experimenting with. If you want to hear more about say, my thoughts during the draft or my feelings about XYZ, let me know and I will almost certainly take it into account, even if I don’t seem to actively do anything about it.

Plus, a bonus caveat! Uts not reflected so much in the report itself because I personally don’t like immortalizing people’s names in my random blog without permission but: getting to play and chat with so many cool people was far and away my favorite part of the event. If we played a match or bantered during a draft or even just got to chat in the lulls throughout the day, please know you made the event such a source of joy, even beyond all the cubes.

Limited Cube (October 3, 2025 - Day 0)

I was lucky enough to get to head up to Santa Rosa early on Friday, and play in some of the cubes happening before the event. The first cube that got firing was the Limited Cube, a cube that I later realized during the draft was primarily a Standard-legal peasant cube. Instead, the highlights from the spiel that I picked up on was that (a) there would be a “rare”^[1] in each pack distinguished by an inner sleeve with a fancy golden frame and (b) you could add four of any guild’s pathways (e.g. 4 copies of Needleverge Pathway // Pillarverge Pathway if you selected Boros) to your pool after the draft. This, to me, translated to: (a) skip to the end of each pack you open to see the rare you got, and (b) worry even less than usual^[2] about picking up fixing during the draft.

My first pack I opened Oketra’s Monument as my rare, and I was very happy to go down the path of white weenie/tokens, especially when I opened up Gryff’s Boon as my rare in pack 2. White dried up in the rest of pack 2 though. I suspected the player to my left was also white, so I picked up some blue cheap, evasive creatures like Spyglass Siren and speculated on some red anthem-style effects like War Effort for my go-wide plan throughout the rest of pack 2 and 3. My pack 3 rare absolutely failed to be on color in the form of Colossal Skyturtle, which was a little sad to break the streak. There were so many Golgari cards going around, but that absolutely didn’t stop me. By deck building I found out I was right that the player to my left was also in white, and it turns out they were also in Jeskai. I’ve really got to stop doing that “draft the same color combo as the person next to you” thing, though since I was to the right this time I feel marginally less bad. I had only picked up fixing that would get me white or red mana, so I took the Azorius pathways, splashed a single red card, and called it a deck.

My first opponent was on an Esper deck with an artifacts theme. I ran them over both games. In the first I curved Cloudfin Raptor into Dawnwing Marshal^[3] into Summon: Choco/Mog into War Effort while my opponent played cantrips or some trinkets. The next game Prairie Dog gained me a ton of life and meant I never felt the need to hold back from repeatedly chipping in. A Plumecreed Escort for my opponent’s Sidequest: Hunt the Mark removal basically locked up the game and match for me.

My second opponent was on a primarily blue splashing red tempo list. I mulliganed the first game but drew all my 5-drops while stuck on 4 lands as I got beat up by Brineborn Cutthroat, Floodpits Drowner, and a pair of Faeries from Faebloom Trick. The second game I was a bit more in it, but my Lionheart Glimmer was Tractor Beamed and I went from having a bit of time faced with chip damage from some 1/1 Faeries to dying very quickly to 2/2 Faeries, and I didn’t have enough removal or pressure fast enough to keep up.

My last opponent was on a Boros aggro deck. The first game they played Arabella, Abandoned Doll which I unsurprisingly died to in very short order, but I did get to ninjitsu out Spyglass Siren for Moon-Circuit Hacker, so. W. The next game Oketra’s Monument let me curve into Lionheart Glimmer and Dalkovan Packbeasts on the same turn with two free 1/1 vigilance Warriors to boot, and my opponent did not have an answer for that. Not going first in this matchup proved pretty dire as I was pretty quickly on the backfoot in the third game. I almost stabilized with All-Fates Stalker picking off a token and Case of the Gateway Express getting rid of my opponent’s biggest threat, but a Stoke the Flames to the face put an end to me. There was also an oopsies with me not shuffling in the Twinmaw Stormbrood after playing Charring Bite. Whoops.

The cube had a good balance between some spice going on during the draft but the gameplay felt reasonably, well, standard to be engagingly familiar. All in all, a good way to ease myself into a bunch of cubing.

Party Box (October 3, 2025 - Day 0)

People had started coming in at this point, but I needed a break and wanted a chance to explore the game store (Outer Planes Comics & Games) we were playing in. I was more than happy to pass on the vintage cube firing given they got up to a pod of 8 without needing me, and instead wandered the game store for half an hour. When I came back, there were two things about to fire: an Apocalypse battle box that was going to be drafted as a cube (it needed to be shuffled, per the owner), and a party box. I opted for the latter. ^[4]

This party box was definitely on the more muted side from the party boxes I had watched on Youtube, which I appreciated. There were some similarities to the ones I had seen: all four players shared the library and the graveyard, and all cards in all zones could be played face-down as lands (and thus counted as lands). It was definitely very silly, but also reasonably balanced: Yu-Gi-Oh monsters that could be normally summoned without needing to sacrifice other creatures in tribute were errata-ed to have 0 power so you couldn’t just oops into killing someone by drawing one. Cards from other products were errata-ed to work within the rules of Magic: the Gathering. There were no wildcards as I had seen in other party boxes, as the owner explained they found that was too warping towards people with in-depth game knowledge. Instead, special silver inserts allowed you to pick up spare cards from packs opened via the many Booster Tutor effects in the cube.

I blinked a lot of my lands with the plethora of Flickerwisp effects in the cube to cheat out some permanents, and eventually The Explorer Hero card let me dump out my hand in the form of lands, enough to reanimate a previously binned Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger. Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger got people in top-deck mode, and I was cursed with Curse of the Nightly Hunt opened in a Mystery Booster 2 pack for my sins. Meanwhile, my opponents were, clockwise respectively: sitting on an absolute ton of mana via a Sol Ring opened in a Commander Masters booster pack that was subsequently copied with a Copy token card, doing some shenanigans with a Yu-Gi-Oh card that involved repeatedly swapping out the cards in their hand with their lands on the battlefield, and using Walk-In Closet to repeatedly play a Yu-Gi-Oh trap card face-down as a land, that could be then flipped up to reanimate a creature. Somewhere in there I drew a Hullbreacher and picked up enough treasures to cast a Cavalier of Flame. The party box owner remarked it would be good to give things haste (especially given I was still forced to attack with all my creatures), admitting later they completely forgot the last ability as they swung at me and I used Cavalier of Flame as a chump blocker. The death trigger dealt damage to each opponent equal to the number of land cards (which is all cards) in the graveyard, which at that point had gotten up to around 50 cards.

So I won! Technically. Though it was really just a fun, goofy time that was a perfect palate cleanser for me.

Need for Speed (October 3, 2025 - Day 0)

The game store was nearing closng time by this point, but we had enough time to jam a draft and 1 round of a cube. The cube in question was Need for Speed, an Eiganjo Drift-inspired Vehicle-centric cube I had played locally.

Given I had played (and vaguely trainwrecked) in this cube before, I started off taking cards that had wrecked me that first time in the form of Reckoner Bankbuster and Mistmeadow Vanisher. I then did not learn any lessons about how to play this cube and drafted a very similar deck to last time of white ramp, but with blue as a supporting color instead of green.

My match was against what I was told was a blue/red pirates deck which, for narrative symmetry, was nearly the same archetype as the deck that had thoroughly crushed me the first time I played the cube. The first game they used Anchor to Reality to cheat out a Parhelion II on turn 4. I had a Daring Thief, but couldn’t steal it because it was my only creature and my only vehicle was Reckoner Bankbuster, so I didn’t have enough power for the crew cost and died to a pile of Angels as a result. The second game I used Vedalkan Engineer to ramp out a Detention Chariot turn 4 to pick off my opponent’s only creature. That same Vedalkan Engineer let me activate my Reckoner Bankbuster to accrue a bunch of advantage that I rode to victory via Canyon Vaulter and Reckless Velocitaur making my already big vehicles impossible to feasibly block. The last game I mulliganed, and got stuck on four lands with my full trifecta 5+ drops in hand^[5] of Detention Chariot, Guidelight Pathmaker, and Possession Engine. Any of the random creatures I could play would’ve immediately got blown up by my opponent’s Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, so instead I didn’t bother and just let the Skysovereign, Consul Flagship murder me.

I still haven’t learned my lesson with this cube, but its not not due to willful ignorance. I blame not knowing how to drive in real life.

Defenders of the Polyverse (October 4, 2025 - Day 1)

I went to bed not-that-early in preparation from the event. I went almost full-random throughout the event, avoiding the three cubes I had played before in the A(n) Cube, Hella Cube, and World Championship Museum (96-04) but expressing no preferences otherwise. For my first cube, I was thrilled to be placed in Defender of the Polyverse. I had really enjoyed playing against and chatting with the cube owner previously, but hadn’t gotten a chance to try their cube, so was excited to get the opportunity now. Plus, an unpowered, relatively normal cube felt like a good way to ease into the event.

There were many jokes among my friends about drafting Boros aggro in the first cube of the day, no matter the cube, to try and get lunch early. My first pick I didn’t commit to that plan, instead picking up Unearth as a) it was very flexible being able to be cycled, b) there were a good amount of good 3-or-less mana value creatures in the pack, and c) it was the only black card in the pack for a decent signal. I went for a Marsh Flats second pick in the first pack to be responsible and because I knew I would always be happy going Orzhov, and then wiped any possibility of being aggro by picking up Wrath of God and Day of Judgment third and fourth pick. There’s a pool picture in pick order^[6] but I ended up in a sort of Esper control/tempo deck with a draw-2 subtheme, a tokens/aristocrats subtheme, and a healthy amount of flash creatures. I am very proud of how responsibly I drafted land-wise, espeially in pack 3: my first 5 picks in that pack were all lands, so I ended up with all three on-color fetchlands and all three on-color surveil lands and actually felt extremely happy to play 3 colors.

My first match was against an Esper control mirror match^[7], but their deck was much heavier on cantrips, counterspells, and card draw spells than mine, putting me firmly in the tempo position in our match. In the first game we both ran through most of our decks, them with their draw spells and me with some bounce shenanigans with Proft’s Eidetic Memory. We traded back and forth, letting me see their main reset button in Toxic Deluge and their main wincon/value engines in Sphinx of Forgotten Lore and Celestial Colonnade. By the end, we each had a single-digit number of cards left in our library, I was at 3 life and they were at 1, but they had cleaned up my board and I couldn’t find another point of damage and had no way left in my deck to remove the Celestial Colonnade, which subsequently killed me. The second game went much faster: Sedgemoor Witch and Cathar Commando presented too fast of a clock for my opponent, who dug for but failed to find their Toxic Deluge. With our final game starting with about 9 minutes left in the round, my opponent kept a 1-lander off the back of a bunch of cantrips, Toxic Deluge, and a Thoughtseize. The last on turn 1 revealed my unusually resilient hand of three lands, Path to Exile, Lion Sash, Tidehollow Sculler, and an Unearth to recover the latter two. They opted to take my Path to Exile, but failed to find a land on their turn 2 via their cantrips, while I stole their Toxic Deluge with Tidehollow Sculler on mine. I surveilled with a land and kept Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on top, which kept my opponent off any further cantrips to keep digging. They did draw another land and picked off my Tidehollow Sculler, but I Unearthed it to steal back Toxic Deluge, and they had no answer for my wider board before I beat them down.

The next match was against a four color no black domain aggro deck. The first match I was under the gun by their aggression: I ended up burning both my Wrath of God and Day of Judgment to clean up the board and get us both top-decking, but I drew lands while my opponent had excellent action in Recruitment Officer to dig for more threats and Six to recur what I had destroyed, and my fragile life total could not handle it. The next match some bounce shenanigans with Proft’s Eidetic Memory with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd and Kor Skyfisher let me keep my hand and board flush with threats. The latter being a flyer in particular let me close out the game in my favor. The final match we started with maybe 8 minutes left in the round, and my opponent suggested coin flipping to decide a winner, but I really wanted to play the match out and wasn’t super concerned with top-8 if we tied. My opening hand proved to be less aggressive then some and more on the long-game plan of: gum up the board a touch with some permanents that let you draw like Thraben Inspector, board wipe when the pressure is too much, then recover with your card advantage after. With the time left on the clock I was pretty sure we would only get through the first two of those three steps in the plan, so I didn’t not play for a tie, and indeed that is what happened as I used my board wipe on turn 1 of turns and neither me nor my opponent had enough resources to beat the other one fast enough before turns elapsed.

My final match was against a Rakdos tempo deck. My opponent unfortunately mulled to 6 both games. in the first game they lost a lot of life to the ward on Sedgemoor Witch, especially after I Unearthed it and they removed it the second time. In the meantime, I had put Mischievous Mystic to work and created a lot of chump blockers that also flew in for the last points of damage I needed to close out the game. The second game my opponent got very clearly flooded out, while I curved Thraben Inspector into Cathar Commando and those two proved to be a very effective clock.

I really enjoyed this cube; it definitely curved higher than indicated on the Hedron Network tin, but was a very “regular”-feeling cube with a lot of interesting parts and small synergies to glue together. A more normal cube was definitely nice to start with, and let me ease my way into the mechanics of the event like the check-in and out pictures and the timed rounds. I wasn’t too concerned about my overall record, but I was happy to have secured a solid record in a cube over the weekend, at least.

Spicy Splashes (October 4, 2025 - Day 1)

Shoutout to the cube captain in my first cube for keeping everything moving and keeping track of time, because I had a good chunk of time to enjoy a gyro for lunch before being thrown into the deep end with my next cube: Spicy Splashes. Its a fully multi-colored cube where everyone starts with a Pillar of the Paruns in play.

I find it very hard to wrap my head around this style of context-shift cube where a land partially fixes mana, as I’ve found while playing Need for Speed. I don’t tend to splash colors, and that really reduces the surface area of cards I have to fully parse in packs, so having splashing be literally in the cube’s name boded ill for me. The first card I saw in my pack 1 was a textless Terminate I had to look up to confirm the text for, which was not a great start for me parsing-wise. The fact there were 16 cards per pack made it extra overwhelming. Normally I try to draft mono-color(-ish) in this style of cube, but here I couldn’t really pick out what color to go with, so I really tried to latch onto a theme and stick to it. I ended up first picking Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, and made a plan to draft all the token generators and some sacrifice outlets. That pretty much guided my draft into a four-color no-blue token/sacrifice deck, so I did achieve what I set out to do during the draft. Notably, my focus on that theme meant I had picked up almost no removal, which was a bit concerning, but it was past the point of resolving that.

I briefly contemplated trying to shoehorn Jegantha, the Wellspring in as my companion before deciding I wouldn’t get too much use from the ability and Burning-Tree Emissary, Carnage Interpreter, and Kitchen Finks would probably be more valuable for my deck. I wasn’t super sure how many lands to play given we start with one in play: I vaguely remembered 15 as a number in the Need for Speed cube, and my curve felt less egregiously high as some of the decks I was seeing around me, so it seemed fine. Looking at the decks around me though, I definitely felt like I wasn’t as greedy as I needed to be in this cube; my deck had a plan, but I wasn’t sure if a plan was better than just taking some of the busted gold cards going around and trying to cast them.

My first match was against a Sultai self-mill deck. The first game, they played Grisly Salvage on my end step turn two and milled Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath. They escaped it turn three and I was very dead at that point, though it took another few turns for my life total to catch up to that reality. The second match was more of a grindfest. Prosperous Partnership proved to be my favorite card in my deck, and it in combination with Hidden Stockpile let me dump out a bunch of tokens and get some card selection value. But my opponent had once again milled Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath early, but this time copied it with Likeness Looter for the low low price of 2 mana. That plus a Teval, the Balanced Scale meant I was getting beat up in the air with flyers I couldn’t block, and my opponent was gumming up the board with Zombie Druids I couldn’t swing through, all while accruing a ton of card and mana advantage. I managed to Mardu Charm away Teval, the Balanced Scale get out Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and sacrifice enough things to trade with the Likeness Looter-Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath that was threatening to kill me on the spot, and played an Otharri, Suns’ Glory that served as a flying blocker and potential threat that could get me some life and potentially back into the game. But my opponent followed up by playing Sin, Spira’s Punishment and of the dozen or so permanents in their graveyard exiled Teval, the Balanced Scale, and I couldn’t answer two big flyers in time before my death.

My second match was against a 5-color ramp/good stuff deck looking to ramp into either Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Niv-Mizzet Reborn. The first game Prosperous Partnership proved its worth again, this time in combination with Mayhem Devil to chip away at my opponent’s life total by sacrificing treasures. Mardu Charm to pick off Inga and Esika proved essential to slow my opponent down mana-wise. My opponent eventually played Mirari’s Wake and subsequently dumped out their whole hand to wall up against my tokens, but I had Anathemancer to deal exactly 4 damage for the kill. The second game I got Korvold, Fae-Cursed King out with plenty of sacrifice fodder and Dihada, Binder of Wills in hand to let it freely swing and gain me some life, but my opponent ramped out into Atraxa, Grand Unifier and flipped into Éowyn, Fearless Knight, which I had zero way to prevent from exiling my Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and letting my opponent freely swing and take me out, given all my cards were some component of Jund. The last game I raced fast and got my opponent into single digits, but my oppoent had Klothys, God of Destiny to keep gaining life and hang on long enough to cast Mirari’s Wake into Niv-Mizzet Reborn. One of the cards revealed was Behemoth Sledge, which my opponent was able to cast and equip immediately to gain an insurmountable amount of life. I drew Anathemancer the next turn, but they hadn’t been quite low enough before and definitely were not low enough to take them out after the swing, and I perished pretty quickly after that.

My final match was against haste typal headlined by Sonic the Hedgehog. The first game I got to get up to some Ob Nixilis, the Adversary shenanigans but died real bad to Kellogg, Dangerous Mind and Sonic the Hedgehog; the former prevented me from casting the Otharri, Suns’ Glory and Korvold, Fae-Cursed King in my hand lest I get them stolen. The next game I drew both Mardu Charm and Inevitable Defeat to pick off Kellogg, Dangerous Mind and another threat, while I got to crack in with Otharri, Suns’ Glory and close the game out from there. The final game, I once again did some Ob Nixilis, the Adversary shenanigans, and also once again died real bad to Kellogg, Dangerous Mind and Sonic the Hedgehog, but this time with bonus Bloodbraid Elf beats.

This cube definitely delivered on its promise of spice and splashiness, even if I was not so good at engaging on those fronts. Really wish I could’ve gotten more people with Anathemancer, though. Maybe if I drew my Eladamri’s Call even once.

Conspiracy Companion Cube (October 4, 2025 - Day 1)

After a lovely dinner and some boba, I went over to the rental house some friends were staying at to jam a quick draft of Neon’s Conspiracy Companion Cube, a cube I knew had only been played once previously and was described as very much still experimental. It’s a powered cube with some special rules: first, any card can be your companion, with old companion rules. Second, there is a power pack with pieces of power, conspiracies, and other good and wild cards. A Lore Seeker is seeded into pack 1, and whoever drafts the Lore Seeker will get first pick of the power pack after pack 1. The power pack goes all the way around the table, and then is set aside. Then pack 2 is drafted as normal. After pack 2, the power pack snakes back around the table so the last person who picked from it previously after pack 1 gets the first pick of the remainder now, and then it goes back around the table in reverse order.

It was peak tired casual hours at this draft: there was a lot of pack seeding so the cube owner could test things, and so much of the fixing ended up in the cards not used we just ad hoc added some non-basic lands to each of the pack 2s right before we drafted it. At the end of the draft, the fixing still felt light, so we just grabbed another nonbasic land we wanted from the undrafted pile^[8]. Plus, we were doing 3 packs of 15 with 5 people, so there was a lot of wheeling going on.

I am generally unfamiliar with powered cubes at the best of times and that, combined with the extra rules, combined with the atmosphere, combined with having done two cubes during the day and being lightly fried, made me draft real loosely. I first picked Wrath of Leknif because it was a playtest card and seemed fun, but then I remembered the cube owner had asked previously for people’s favorite combos when initially designing this cube, and I had suggested Aluren^[9], so naturally I snapped it up when I saw it. I picked up a few cantrips to try and dig for it, and also speculated into some white flicker nonsense. I was second to last on the power pack, and on the first go-around picked up Unexpected Potential, which allowed me to not worry about having to play green if I wanted to cast Aluren, so instead I committed fully to a blue/white plan. I had picked up Thespian Stage pack 1, so I grabbed up Dark Depths and Expedition Map when they came around in pack 2 as maybe another plan. When the power pack wheeled back around I should have taken Summoner’s Bond to tutor up Parasitic Strix and Cavern Harpy, but I hadn’t actually seen the latter and was pretty sure it wasn’t in the undrafted cards (the cube owner had gone through and noted any combo pieces) but couldn’t entirely remember because. I was sleepy. So instead I picked Double Stroke to copy one of my cantrips. I could even tutor the cantrip with Spellseeker, so. Value I guess? I did manage to grab the Cavern Harpy pack 3 though, so the Aluren plan was semi-online. During deckbuilding I realized I also had taken an Arcane Savant and had literally no other instant or sorcery to exile under it other than Ad Nauseam so. I might just accidentally kill myself with that too, if we got that far.

My one match before I needed to go back to my hotel was against an actually coherent Jeskai energy aggro deck. They had grabbed the Lore Seeker, and was rewarded with a Time Walk that they companioned. They murdered me in quick succession both games. I even companioned Wrath of Leknif the second game, but eschewed getting the mana fixing I needed to cast it with Expedition Map in favor of doing Dark Depths plus Thespian Stage thing. They had a Path to Exile and several blockers for it, but that’s not important; what is important is I did do it.

It was very fun to see the cube I had been hearing about, both during design and from its first run out; I would love to play it properly when my neurons are actually firing.

Tresserhorn Gardens (October 5, 2025 - Day 2)

After a nice sleep, I woke up refreshed and ready for two more cubes. I got placed into Tresserhorn Gardens, an all Grixis cube. I am not primarily a Grixis player, so was slightly concerned, especially when I found out there were 17-card packs to read through. I took Hullbreacher pick 1 because I figured people would be trying to get value and it would be a good way to get people, and then saw Kappa Cannoneer pick 2. I had watched that get used to great effect the previous night in Neon’s Conspiracy Companion Cube and am easily influencable, so picked it up and decided to lean into some artifact/sacrifice shenanigans. I also thought about trying to restrict the number of colors I was playing, but my next two pickups both being Rakdos cards made that unlikely.^[10] I speculated on all All Will Be One as well because I had seen not only a lot of planeswalkers, but a lot of battles, but that started to dry up and I felt like I didn’t have a good base of cantrips or counter magic to try and find and cast it for 5-mana, so I abandoned that plan by the end of pack 1. My pick 1 out of pack 2 was Orcish Bowmasters and it was at this point I realized “hey, I should probably actually be doing a wheels deck with Hullbreacher and Orcish Bowmasters!” But that realization came after I had passed on Narset, Parter of Veils and Wheel of Fortune proper in the first pack, so I figured I would keep an eye out for more wheels but would need to accept potentially not making that the basis of my deck. The huge stream of good, cheap artifacts for the rest of pack 2 and into pack 3, kept me locked in on the artifact plan instead, though I did notice some artifact payoffs didn’t wheel. It turns out both players upstream of me to my right were also in artifacts, though admittedly in different flavors: the person directly to my right was doing Paradox Engine shenanigans and the person to the right of them was on artifact combo between Bolas’s Citadel plus Aetherflux Reservoir plus Sensei’s Divining Top, and Tinker plus Blightsteel Colossus. Still, whoops. Wish I would’ve figured out the wheels deck earlier.

Match 1 I got absolutely destroyed by a player who said they were definitely the only person in reanimator in the pod, and also that they thought reanimator was one of if not the strongest thing to be doing in this particular cube. I got walloped in short order in both games by the deadly combination of Griselbrand and Archon of Cruelty. In the first I tried to flash in Orcish Bowmasters at the end of their turn 3, and they responded by casting Frantic Search, pitching Griselbrand, reanimating it with Shallow Grave, and then drawing all the cards their heart desired while my Orcish Bowmasters was still on the stack. The turn after they Exhumed the Archon of Cruelty they had just discarded to hand size and I had precisely zero answers to it. The second game I held Hullbreacher for their Exhumed Griselbrand, but they had Daze backup for it and I died to the Archon of Cruelty they reanimated after.

The second match was against the artifact combo player. The first game I got turn 3 Blightsteel Colossused after they Tinkered away their Sensei’s Divining Top. The second game, they once again got turn 3 Blightsteel Colossus, but I had been holding a Kitesail Larcenist to take care of it. I had also gotten down an early Kappa Cannoneer via Mishra’s Workshop and had a steady stream of equipment to bolster my flyer and the turtle and eventually just beat my opponent down before they could find an answer or the Bolas’s Citadel to combo. Game three was slower: I was slowly chipping in with Marionette Apprentice and an Orcish Bowmasters but was failing to draw an impactful followup, or some red mana. I eventually got red mana for Mayhem Devil while they found Tinker, but that red mana paid off in the form of the Invasion of Azgol that had been sitting in my opening hand for the Blightsteel Colossus. The ping from Mayhem Devil from being forced to sacrifice a creature for Invasion of Azgol put my opponent at 2, but they cast Fiery Confluence to wipe out my board, and neither of us drew anything else to do before we drew in turns.

I had perished quickly enough in the first round that I had watched the vast majority of the first round match between the artifact combo player and my opponent in round 3, and thus knew they were packing a wild variety of two-card haymakers like Show and Tell plus Omniscience, Narset, Parter of Veils plus Wheel of Fortune, Underworld Breach plus Lion’s Eye Diamond, and Phyrexian Dreadnought plus Fling. Our match was unfortunately rough all around, mostly thanks to mulligans. The first game we both mulliganed to 5. I Hullbreachered their Brainstorm, and making them put back two cards when we both started down two cards was extremely rough. I was able to just suit up Hullbreacher with Shadowspear and beat in for the win from there. The second game I mulliganed to 5. I got to Bojuka Bog their Buried Alive cards, and on my opponent’s Show and Tell dropped my Kappa Cannoneer to their Niv-Mizzet, Parun. I sadly had no red mana to Invasion of Azgol Niv-Mizzet, Parun away and we just swung back and forth. I managed to get a Shadowspear equipped on my Kappa Cannoneer to gain some much needed life back as I was dead to their draw step and any instant or sorcery spell, but that left me with not enough mana to flash in Orcish Bowmasters when they cast Wheel of Fortune and killed me. The last game they mulliganed to 5, and this time I caught their Wheel of Fortune to try and dig out of their card disadvantage with Orcish Bowmasters; the seven pings to the face followed by getting hit with an 8/8 Orc Army was enough to put my opponent out of their misery.

It was interesting getting to play with a bunch of Grixis-centered combos I don’t normally get to play in other cubes. Just wish I would have actually, you know, figured out wheels a bit earlier.^[11] I also wish I could’ve put that All Will Be One deck together, because that seems like so much fun.

Echo Park Peasant (October 5, 2025 - Day 2)

After a wild trip through some context-shift cubes, I was good to be placed in Echo Park Peasant during the casual draft. Several of my friends had played earlier in the event and enjoyed it, with heavy emphasis that it was by no means a peasant cube.

My first pick I snapped up Cogwork Librarian after nothing else in the pack appealed to me.^[12] From there I second picked Syr Konrad, the Grim, and flowed very easily into my bread and butter: Orzhov token aristocrats nonsense featuring Blood Artist and Marionette Apprentice. I even got to use the Cogwork Librarian twice with how the packs shook out. The casual draft definitely had a more, well, casual feel than the previous drafts, with lots of chatter throughout the draft, which I really enjoyed.

My first match was against an Esper spells deck. I curved out and ran them over both games, getting down Blood Artist turn 3 game 1, followed by Battle Screech that was immediately flashbacked. In game 2 I got out both Blood Artist and Marionette Apprentice on turn 4 in game 2 so by the time they had resources to block or remove my creatures, they were dead no matter what they chose to do. I love aristocrats.

The second match was against a base-green ramp pile. The first game they cast turn 1 Arbor Elf into turn 2 Utopia Sprawl on their Stomping Ground. With their million mana by turn 3 they kept dumping out big tramplers like Colossadactyl and Jewel Thief. I had a single Wrath of God to sweep up the board, but they followed up with an Honest Rutstein to retrieve their Colossadactyl and I couldn’t deal with the trample. The second game I kept my hand off the back of Bonesplitter, suiting up a Mandibular Kite token. This plan did indeed let me get in a lot of damage but I hit a streak of lands from then on, letting my opponent ramp again into some big threats which I didn’t have quite enough pressure to overcome.

The last match was against a Rakdos aggro deck. The first game I mulliganed to 5 but Blood Artist put in work as it always does, letting me make some strategic chump blocks for value and got some free swings in with some tokens until my opponent ran out of life. The second game I mulliganed to 6 but my opponent mulliganed to 5, and it turns out Mother of Runes into Porcelain Legionnaire into Bonesplitter kills people real dead without much recourse for them.

What a lovely cube, delightful pod, and cozy deck to end a wonderful event on. It let me do exactly what I enjoy doing, and have a blast doing it. What more can you want from a cube?

Tiny Wrapup

I said it up top, but it’s important enough to say again: I had an absolute blast at California Cube Championships, trying a bunch of cubes I don’t normally get to try but first and foremost getting to hang out with a bunch of wonderful people. Thanks to everyone involved, especially all the organizers, judges, and everyone I got a chance to speak to!

Footnotes