Cube Draft Reports - July 2025

I love hearing about different cubes. Hearing about all the different variations, minute to massive, I find often inspiring and always just plain delightful. There are many wonderful cube-related design podcasts that satisfy my craving to learn in-depth about a cube (Recross the Paths and Cuberviews particularly fit this bill with heavy focus on a single cube/designer at a time), but there’s something about event/draft reports that really tickles my fancy. I think it’s hearing from a player perspective. Hearing from the designer directly taps into my inner cube designer and makes me want to figure out what could be applicable for me. Draft reports can spark thoughts in my cube designer brain too, but also have the added bonus mode of letting me just sit back, relax, react, and live vicariously through another.

Plus, I was mainly inspired to write more articles by a Recross the Paths episode with Zoydraft that framed blogging as a form of journaling. And while I’ve embraced that mentality, I was looking for some of the temporal aspect of journaling, to capture how I and my perspective might shift as time progresses. I was most directly inspired for this, cube draft reports, to be the format this took by the lovely Joe’s Week in Magic podcast. Then, with all that inspiration rattling around in my brain, why wouldn’t I try my hand at memorializing my own drafts?

A few pertinent notes:

• 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.
• My memory is fallible. I’ve tried to take notes about how the cube went as close to when it happens as possible, which is normally when I get back home from the draft, but that often ends up being in the vicinity of midnight and thus well past my bedtime^[1], which only compounds mistakes. If I misremember something about the cube, the draft, or my games: you are probably right and I am sorry.
• These draft reports are first and foremost for me^[2], 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.^[3]

West Coast Cube (July 2, 2025)

The West Coast Cube is a cube I’ve played twice before: once as a 3-player pod and once as a 5-player pod. In those forms, the focus was mainly on its super cool ability to be split into 180 ally/enemy card modules for smaller drafts. But I was excited for tonight, where we had a full 8-player pod. The cube skews low-medium-power, lower-curve, and aims for simplicity. To that last end, it has a good number of errated and modified cards, plus a small smattering of custom cards, to explain and streamline the total number of different keywords and effects.

For my pack 1 pick 1, I passed on a Demonic Tutor in favor of Greymond, Avacyn’s Stalwart. I find I draft better decks when I have a clear direction from the get-go^[4], and Human typal is about as clear of a plan as you can get. I branched out to green upon seeing a Bristly Bill, Spine Sower because I think that card’s just bonkers, and toyed some of my speculative non-Human picks with more of a go-tall Landfall counters theme (I remembered that this cube has a Bunch of Prismatic Vistas from previous drafts, so I knew it wouldn’t be too hard to make it work), but solidified myself in a more go-wide plan by picking an Anthem of Champions, a card I love and am still trying to make fit in my primary cube.^[5]

The cube breaks singleton and I took full advantage, getting two copies each of Thraben Inspector, Resolute Reinforcements, and Thalia’s Lieutenant. The one thing that made me a bit concerned was my lack of removal: I had a single Elspeth’s Smite and a Thraben Charm in the sideboard, and that was it. When building the deck, I opted for 17 lands when most of the time in this cube I opt for 16 (which is what most of the others in the pod did). Even with the sheer number of 2-drops I had, I figured my best course of action was to be able to drop two 2-drops on turn 4, so 17 lands it was.

The first match I was up against a RW discard aggro deck. A Thraben Inspector pretty well stymied my opponent for a bit with its 1/2 body, and two Thalia’s Lieutenants resolved in sequence got me enough power and toughness to close out the game. The second game I kept a slower hand and struggled to keep up, and completely folded to a Hazoret the Fervent. The final game we both got a bit mana flooded; I managed to piece together a decent board but a Sage of the Skies with the copy thanks to a Lava Dart in the graveyard for the extra spell turned the tides for my opponent as I didn’t really have an answer to a flyer with lifelink.

The second match I was up against a Grixis control deck. I pretty much just went wide and grew the board out of my opponent’s reach twice; the first with Bristly Bill, and the second with Thalia’s Lieutenant and Anthem of Champions.

The final match was more of the same of the second match, but against a Rakdos deck (plus apparently the tiniest green splash that I never saw). I got very lucky with my Elspeth’s Smite to snipe a Qarsi Revenant in both games, and very consistently cast Resolute Reinforcements, with Blade Splicer presenting an excellent blocker to stall a little until I could drop a Thalia’s Lieutenant to close out the games. I mulled to 5 on the second game, but the clues from Thraben Inspector ensured I had the resources I needed.

The solo MVP of my deck was honestly the one copy of Elspeth’s Smite: I got very lucky with having it pretty consistently, and the exile Always mattered, hitting key blockers with graveyard abilities in the form of Qarsi Revenant and a Molten Gatekeeper. Otherwise, the consistency was the main star of the show: I very consistently was able to curve into Thraben Inspector, Resolute Reinforcements, and Thalia’s Lieutenant, letting me easily get some early chip damage while going wide enough with humans to make my damage potential explosive. Pretty much every game I won ended with me dropping a Thalia’s Lieutenant or Anthem of Champions (or both), swinging at my opponent with four or more creatures for 8-15+ damage and forcing them into unfavorable blocks to live, then them seeing if they could kill me on the crackback and being short of mana or damage and dead on my next turn to my still massive board.

I never drew Greymond, Avacyn’s Stalwart. Tragic.

Progressive Vintage Cube (July 16, 2025)

Had to skip a week due to a cold, so I was excited to get back into it with the Progressive Vintage Cube, a brand-new-to-me cube given the owner is only in the area for the summer. I hadn’t played any vintage-style, power-heavy-focused cubes: I’ve yet to indulge on MTGO, and there’s none in the local cube rotation.

The cube explanation quickly made it clear this was far from a traditional draft. It is structured with 4 packs of 13, with each pack “progressing” (hence the name) to a different theme: buildarounds, power, removal, and lands. Certain cards only appear in the pack of its theme. We were also presented with some optional rules to further augment the draft. Everyone could start the draft with a modified Cogwork Librarian (dubbed “Pogwork Librarian”) that had a better in-game impact, as a 1-mana 1/1 with the ability to let you tutor any land to the top of your library on entering the battlefield. We were also told that the first pack would have 2-3 companions, with the companion rule modified to cost exiling a nonland card from your hand to put the companion into your hand, and that another optional rule would be to require everyone to have at least one companion for their deck. If we didn’t get enough cards to fulfill a given companion requirement during the draft, there were a selection of “C-tier limited cards” (as described by the cube owner) in the lands box to enable meeting the requirements.

I wanted to do one or the other of these rules: they both felt like they heavily impacted the draft in divergent ways. Having both together would be both overwhelming, but also felt like they might somewhat neuter each other given we would already be in somewhat separate drafting lanes based on our companions. Another player had a slight preference to play with the Cogwork Librarian effect, so we opted for everyone starting with Pogwork Librarian and making companions optional. We were warned that this would make playing companions probably a bad idea, which most people heeded: I think the only player who had any companions was the cube owner, who ended up in a cool-looking deck with two companions.

I dithered on my first pick but ended up selecting Balance as a card I wanted to try. A second pick Stoneforge Mystic pretty much solidified me in picking up some equipment, and I quickly realized/remembered a good way to play around Balance would be a bunch of artifact mana. I picked up a Nettlecyst and wheeled a Batterskull in the first pack, and made use of my starting Pogwork Librarian to take a Gleemox and a Sol Ring from the second, “power” themed pack. That guided me through the draft to a base-white Jeskai artifact equipment/ramp deck, picking up a mix of equipment like Shadowspear and Skullclamp and cards that could win me the game single-handedly especially if I ramped into them quickly, like Comet, Stellar Pup and Otharri, Sun’s Glory, plus some small creatures to pick up equipment if need be. My deck came together relatively quickly: I was a little unsure on how to do the lands but figured I should just do a traditional 17-land spread, but count my two moxen (Gleemox and Mox Pearl) as lands. I was, once again, a little light on removal, having spent most of the “removal” themed pack taking equipment instead, but figured I would be the more proactive deck and I could present enough stuff fast enough, there wouldn’t be anything I needed to urgently remove.

My first match my opponent was on a base-blue planeswalker-y control seeming deck. I got a taste of power from the first game, ramping a land and Mox Pearl into Stoneforge Mystic. The Batterskull’s token I cheated out the next turn got quickly removed, but I managed to catch my opponent tapping out for an Oracle of the Alpha with a Mana Tithe, and from there Comet, Stellar Pup won me the game. In the second game we were off to a more reasonable start, but it quickly turned sour after I played my Midnight Clock and my opponent dropped a Sheoldred the Apocalypse, meaning I was more than likely dead to Sheoldred triggers off of my own Midnight Clock popping with no real way to remove either. I managed to claw my way up to 17 life via Batterskull to just about survive both the clock striking midnight and my draw step on my turn before it would have triggered, but a main-phase Orcish Bowmasters on my opponent’s turn with the Midnight Clock at 11 counters firmly hammered a nail in my coffin. Apparently wheels was their main win condition, and I just did it to myself. Oops. The last game, I mull’ed away a blasé hand with 3 lands and Kellan, the Fae-Blooded as the only castable spell with a bunch of 5 drops, and then got Magic the Gathering’ed by mulliganing straight into a no-lander (without any moxen). My 5-card keep had some action: two Plains, an Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, a Shadowspear, and Comet, but I drew my way into pretty much all of my Boros cards with no red mana in sight, which was aided by my opponent using Jace, the Mind Sculptor to helpfully fateseal any such red mana source to the bottom of my library. I ended up perishing to a bunch of Elk courtesy of Oko, Thief of Crowns.

My second match was against an opponent playing a base-red deck featuring a combat-based plan similar to mine, but with a lot of the removal I failed to acquire. The first game was a good-back-and-forth, but Otharri, Sun’s Glory let me fly over the board stall and eke out a win. The second game my opponent went on the aggresive with Gut, True Soul Zealot and I ended up dying to a swarm of three delirium-active Dragon’s Rage Channelers in the air, the extra 2 being copies courtesy of a flipped Reflections of Kiki-Jiki plus the original Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. The final game was off to a bad start, with my opponent dashing a Ragavan via a Mox Ruby and flipping my Skullclamp, which drew them approximately a million cards. Thankfully, I managed to stabilize thanks to Comet, Stellar Pup, and eventually manage to get there with a Kappa Cannoneer that was nigh-impossible for my opponent to remove due to Ward. Suiting it up with a Nettlecyst with three total artifacts in play let me close out that game and match.

My third match was against a reanimator deck packed with counterspells. Thankfully my opponent milled Karakas early on, and a turn one Giver of Runes and turn two Luminarch Aspirant held down the fort for me long enough to cast Otharri. My opponent Memory Lapsed it the first time around, but didn’t have anything in response to me casting Otharri again the next turn, and it snowballed to win me the game, with my opponent’s Agent of Treachery answer unable to get through the Giver of Runes. The second game I got the best opening hand I got all night: Island plus Gleemox into Sol Ring into Stoneforge Mystic naming Batterskull. My opponent admitted after the game they could answer the Stoneforge Mystic, but it wouldn’t do me when I could just hard-cast the Batterskull next turn anyways, so instead I played an Umezawa’s Jitte and cheated in the Batterskull on their turn. Turn 3 I drew and cast Otharri again and my opponent had enough and scooped it up.

It turns out I got very lucky to get Batterskull on the last pick wheel because I definitely underestimated how nice it was to have a big equipment-creature to cheat into play. I pretty much never wanted to fetch the cheaper equipment, and they turned into dead draws when I would’ve been happier with some more middling creatures. But I was lucky to roll very well on my Comet to steal value when I needed it, which made up for a lot. But it does make me a little sad that I didn’t end up wheeling the Kaldra Compleat I saw. I probably should have just taken it.

A(n) Cube (July 23, 2025)

It was my cube this week, and its first outing with 8 players! The A(n) Cube is a lower-powered cube^[6] where every card has to have my first name, An, somewhere in the card name. I felt like the shape of the cube had started to stabilize, whereas before, after every draft, I would rework 30+ cards in the cube^[7]. I had made just 7 changes before the draft, 3 new cards from Edge of Eternities I was testing plus some more souped-up multi-colored cards for funzies^[8]. I gave my spiel to the pod: that it was a lower-power, more good stuff than synergy, no combo cube (the last tacked on mostly for one of the drafters who had mentioned being primarily a Vintage Cube player), and then the points in the For Drafters section on the cube overview, and we started.

I went for fun and power on my first pick: Arcane Savant, a card I had been warned about for being unusually strong, but one I still like with because it is a) cool as hell and b) has a unique relationship to draft. I was not the only one trying out the draft matters cards in the cube: the player two to my left took Paliano, the High City pack 1 pick 1. The person to my left named “blue”^[9], so I felt reasonably confident in being able to go deep in blue in pack 2, at least. In pack 1 I saw Priest of Ancient Lore and Spirited Companion and figured some sort of Azorius ETB/Blink shenanigans was on the table (even if I didn’t end up wheeling the latter) which was reinforced when I went for the fun pickup of Panharmonicon pack 2 pick 1 and grabbed Abuelo, Ancestral Echo later in the pack.

It was mid pack 3 when I remembered that there was, in fact an infinite combo in the cube when I got passed Alrund’s Epiphany, a card that when exiled under my Arcane Savant would enable me to take many somewhere between one and finitely too many extra turns (with Panharmonicon and other blink options^[10]), or infinite with Abuelo, Ancestral Echo. My main focus was that I had definitely lied to the table during the pre-game spiel. Oops.

The deck came together very quickly post-draft, and I explained the infinite to the rest of the drafters in the process so they all knew what was up. I considered doing something a bit fairer (I had picked up a Badlands Revival intending to exile that), but my opponents were very kind in telling me to do what I wanted, and I selfishly wanted to see if I could make it happen. If it proved too consistently oppressive, I could change what I was exiling between games and matches.

My first opponent had forced mono-black, with a Phyrexian Obliterator and Gray Merchant of Asphodel to prove it. I managed to dodge both and take down my opponent 2-0, mainly by accruing a ton of value off the back of Archangel Elspeth and some Panharmonicon shenanigans. I took advantage of the fact that both Panharmonicon and Abuelo, Ancestral Echo interact with artifacts, not just creatures, to repeatedly flicker my Astrologian’s Planisphere and grow my board out wide. Notable new card standout was Quantum Riddler, which always felt good to have in hand, warp, and play. I never saw Arcane Savant in the match, and thus dodged that moral quandary entirely.

My second opponent was on a Boros aggressive deck that I was quite scared of given my curve skewed high and there was every chance it would just run me over first. The first game my opponent mulligan’ed to 5, and their only creature was a Hero token from a Samurai’s Katana that did smack me for a ton via Angelfire Ignition. Because they had mulliganed so low I ended up Planar Disruptioning the Hero token instead of the Katana like I planned to to prevent a flashback’ed Angelfire Ignition from putting me in burn-spell-death range. That paid off and my opponent never drew another creature. I closed out the game with Arcane Savant, but the extra turn seemed like rubbing it in more than anything. The second game my opponent did, indeed, run me over, mostly off the back of Kargan Intimidator removing any block options I had. The third game I managed to conserve my life total a bit better, mostly thanks to Fog Bank, while chipping in for damage and eventually closing out the game with flyers Abuelo and Quantum Riddler.

My third opponent was on Simic ramp. The first game I kept my hand off the basis of curving into Arcane Savant on turn 5. I managed to blink it twice before the opponent removed it, but ran out of cards. Meanwhile, my opponent accrued a bunch of value, with Faerie Artisans in particular being standout against my ETB-heavy deck, allowing my opponent to gain the same value I was getting but for free. The second game, I once again managed to cast Arcane Savant, but this time I pretty much immediately got the infinite turn loop going, which I was happy I managed once in the night. I thought about switching the exiled card now that I had achieved the infinite, but it was our last game of the night and I didn’t want to drag out the night for both of us by fiddling with my sideboard, and my opponent already proved they could beat Arcane Savant in the first game. My opponent ramped extremely quickly with Llanowar Elves, Loot, Exuberant Explorer, and Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, the last being one of the new additions^[11], and I folded to the big creatures, especially with Faerie Artisans proving once again extremely good at stealing value against my deck.

My focus on this draft was much more about the overall shape of the draft due to it being my cube, which should be a separate post if at all. My main takeaway from my playing was that the new testing additions seem good, but I don’t know whether I’ll keep the infinite combo potential in the cube. I don’t particularly mind having it, honestly, but a singular two-point-five-card combo feels a bit out of place, and given one of the combo pieces (Alrund’s Epiphany, I’m looking at you) likely only wants to be drafted for a big-blue deck already prepared to cast one of the other combo pieces, and they all share a color in this fixing-light cube, seems a bit too easy to fall into. But no matter what I decide, to cut one, both, or neither, I definitely should not accidentally lie about there not being any combos.

Hella Cube (July 30, 2025)

This time around it was the Hella Cube: a low-to-medium power, synergy-heavy cube I’ve played a few times before.

I ended up first-picking Titania, Protector of Argoth. It felt like it was the card in the pack that could take over a game without a ton of investment like the other synergy payoffs, espsecially given I recalled from a previous draft that there were fetchlands in the cube, but only for green. Later in the draft, it turns out those fetchlands had been removed (something that was definitely in the pre-game spiel I only half-listened to), but I picked up enough Modern Horizons 3 landscapes to make up that fact.

I ended up in black because I saw some good reanimator spells in the form of Rise of the Witch-king and Squirming Emergence. Normally I shy away from graveyard strategies because they just aren’t my preferred style of play, but wanted to push myself given I was already leaning into it a smidge with Titania. A Glacierwood Siege to round out the Titania plan meant I was at least splashing blue, and it seemed relatively open given that even with the packs being seeded with one card of each color, the last pack I saw before the wheel during pack 1 with 9 cards in it (there were 7 of us in the draft) had 7 blue cards. A spicy Nexus of Fate pickup locked in blue. The rest of the draft came together well: some cycling cards for big reanimator threats like Generous Ent and Archfiend of Ifnir, mana dorks in Gilded Goose and Elvish Mystic to get to the game plan faster, a late Sazh’s Chocobo in pack 3 for the landfall. Icetill Explorer was a standout pickup to do everything I wanted. My weakness was, once again, removal: I had a potential sweeper in Zero Point Ballad and a Vayne’s Treachery in the sideboard for the sum total of my removal. But, if the previous weeks had taught me anything: who needs removal?^[12] I really struggled to make my last cut: I dragged the cube owner (and others listening on) to tell me no, I shouldn’t play 16 lands in my big mana land-centric deck and that I had to cut something. I almost said “who needs removal” but with emphasis and cut Zero Point Ballad, but sweepers are something I find it really hard to say no to. I ended up taking a suggestion to cut Brainstorm instead.

My first match was against a Dimir ninjas deck, a deck I remember previously piloting in this cube. The first game I managed to hang on frankly a lot longer than I had any right to: I had to burn Zero Point Ballad pretty early to wipe out a Moon-Circuit Hacker and Ingenious Infiltrator pairing that had already drawn my opponent 3 cards in a turn, and I had no real answer to the flyers followup of Baleful Strix, Faerie Seer that had been ninjitsu’ed back to hand. I stalled for a while by the power of Gilded Goose foods gaining me I think a cumulative 15 life across the game, plus some 7-mana pseudo-Growth Spirals in the form of Nexus of Fate, but eventually my resources ran dry, while a bunch of accrued tokens from a Wingblade Disciple put me out of the game entirely. I sideboarded in a Chainweb Aracnir to deal with the flyers, but left it in the mainboard as I quickly found it to be one of the best cards in my deck through the night. I really underrated the power of a decently-sized threat I could recur via escape. The second game I managed to put the Titania plan together, using Glacierwood Siege to repeatedly recur one of my landscapes for Elementals. I also played an Archfiend of Ifnir, and chose to eschew the card draw from Lórien Revealed, despite having a hand consisting of a single land, to instead wipe out or neuter most of my opponent’s board via -1/-1 counters. That opened me up to swing out with my Elementals for the win. We started the game 3 with about 5 minutes left in the round timer, and given I knew my deck was almost certainly not fast enough to win when we went to turns I built up a wall of creatures to run out the turns and we indeed tied. I did win the rock-paper-scissors to go into the “winner’s” bracket, though.

My second match was against an Azorius blink deck packing a ton of removal but not a lot of threats I saw. The first game I ended up going through my whole deck, and managed to close out the game taking infinite turns with Nexus of Fate, with an escaped Chainweb Aracnir as the extra threat I needed to win through my opponent being able to trade with my remaining creatures on-board. The second game an escaped Chainweb Aracnir once again managed to be my main source of damage to close out the game: my other threats got picked off in short order (including a notably-exiled Titania, probably because I had resurrected her from my graveyard three times in the first game) but the only threat I saw from my opponent that game was an eternalized Timeless Dragon, which gave me enough time to have threats sticks for just long enough to cobble together enough damage to win.

My third match was against a Gruul aggressive deck. In the first game, I kept my hand on the basis of a plan to recur a landcycled Generous Ent with Rise of the Witch-king. That did help me stabilize, but Hunter’s Talent and Ferocification meant I really had to keep up two blockers so I didn’t just die from a newly-drawn threat. We entered a board stall for a bit: I managed to land a Titania but no landscapes in the graveyard meant I couldn’t build out my board with Elementals, while Hunter’s Talent let my opponent churn through their deck until a Tifa Lockhart alpha-strike with the enchantment buffs plus three landfall triggers via a land drop for turn plus two saved landscapes on my opponent’s side killed me super-extra-mega-dead. An early-game Scavenging Ooze in the second game proved a decent roadblock and let me keep my life total healthy until I managed to put together the Titania-Glacierwood Siege plan and force my opponents into chump-blocks and then death by repeatedly swinging with a growing horde of Elementals. In the third game, a turn 1 Sazh’s Chocobo into Slogurk, the Overslime and Icetill Explorer with a landscape in the graveyard let me turn into the aggressive deck: In extremely short order I managed to grow the Chocobo into an 11/12 and Slogurk into an 8/8 trampler to secure victory.

This deck was extremely fun to fit the pieces together while playing and also very mentally exhausting to play, which is probably why by the end I thought and still think (almost certainly incorrectly) that I could’ve run 16 lands in the deck. With two mana dorks and two ways to play lands from my graveyard, I think I only felt one short on lands once (to go from six to seven to keep a creature from Zero Point Ballad), and ended pretty much every game with 1-4 extra lands rotting in my hand. We love anecdotal evidence.

Footnotes