Cube Draft Reports - February 2026

February was an interesting cubing month for me! We got through most of the Stone Soup draft games at work, but I still have one left, so you won’t be hearing about it quite yet. The bigger note of interest is that on one of the weekly Wednesday cube nights, I just hung around while my cube was played. Let’s talk about that first actually, because it was the first cube outing of the month.

On February 4th, I was taking my new Chromatic Composition Cube out for its very first draft at the Wednesday cube night. We ended up having 5 people show up, including me. The cube does play 5^[1], but was very much designed first for 4 players. Given it was supremely untested already, I wanted its first outing to at least resemble what I had primarily designed it for. So, I decided to sit out and let everyone else play, and had them figure out their own way of deciding what three colors would be the bassline colors. I vaguely envisioned all sorts of methods: full random, patchwork series of eliminations and favorites, some sort of compromise brokering, etc. One of the players was brand-new to cube night, so the group asked their preference, which was for one of the colors to be red. The remaining three, after expressing preferences such as “not blue”, rolled dice and the top two rollers each picked a color, ending up at Naya. Since the player new to cube night was also somewhat new to Magic, they opted for a standard booster draft, and I suggested 5 packs of 9.

The draft went well; everyone had fun and I got a lot of good feedback and things I wanted to try changing.^[2] But that’s all cube-designer-me stuff I want to save for a different forum; this is just a long-winded explanation of why there’s no draft report from February 4th despite me being there and my cube being played. Speaking of draft reports, the now-standard 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.
• Draft reports are written up when the draft and games are all concluded, for drafts and games that span multiple weeks/months.

The Chaos Museum (February 11, 2026)

This week was The Chaos Museum, a cube consisting of pre-built 15-card packs representing various Magic sets. Before the draft I learned the Conspiracy pack, which is pretty much just all the most broken conspiracies^[3] had yet to show up in any of the paper drafts of the cube, so obviously I was angling for that. We had a decently big turnout at 9 players too, so even though there were still packs to spare I felt like our odds were pretty good.

I opened up the Alara Reborn pack as my pack 1, an interesting one to start with considering that unlike most packs, which generally have some semblance of color balance through at least one monocolor card of each color or some color-balanced cycles, the Alara Reborn pack includes only gold cards: one of each color pair plus some extras. I opted for Zealous Persecution, which I knew to be powerful mostly from playing it in Cards That Make Me Feel Something, another regular cube in the group. Plus, Orzhov is a color pair I naturally gravitate towards. I then threw that away when the next packs turned out to be the Amonkhet block special, picking up Hazoret the Fervent from the Amonkhet pack followed immediately by Abrade from the Hour of Devastation pack. Black seemed like it was getting cut, so I decided I probably shouldn’t count too much on playing my first pick and pursued red instead, which felt pretty open. It was about this time in pack 1 I remembered very vaguely griping to the cube owner the last time I played this cube about playing a low-to-the-ground aggro plan and feeling like the creatures were outclassed. I knew there definitely had been changes since then, but still wanted to play it safe, and decided to go for a more Gruul monsters style approach. This plan solidified when Bloodbraid Elf wheeled from my opening pack. I then discarded this plan upon opening my pack 2, which turned out to be the Ikoria pack, featuring companions like my pick: Lurrus of the Dream-Den. The cube owner had already announced we would play with original companion rules when Lutri, Pauper Otter had gone around in the Mystery Booster pack in pack 1^[4], so I slammed Lurrus of the Dream-Den and, given my plethora of red cards and that black seemed not open, decided to force Boros aggro. And that’s exactly what I did for the rest of the draft, and was quite pleased with it. We didn’t end up opening the Conspiracy pack though, which was sad.

My first match was against an Esper midrange deck. I ran them over in game 1: Arc Lightning let me pick off my opponent’s blockers, Grateful Apparition let me proliferate my opponent’s The Bath Song to its third chapter and get the mana on my turn when it wasn’t so useful instead of their’s, and then Brute Force plus Fight as One let me explode out some more damage, especially when the latter on my Dreadhorde Arcanist gave me enough power to cast Brute Force a second time. Game 2 was more of the same: I kept a sketchy hand with no white mana but I was never punished and drew white mana in time for turn 3, so clearly it was the right decision. My opponent did Wrath of God, which was a little brutal given it was partially a Stone Rain because of my Gobland, but casting Lurrus of the Dream-Den fixes all problems. I got to use Grateful Apparition to proliferate level counters on Kargan Dragonlord, which was sick, though it didn’t overly matter before my opponent died.

The odd number of players and the fact that my first match went lightning-quick meant I opted to be the leftover and sit out for a decent chunk. Normally I wouldn’t mention this, because I’m more than happy to just watch other people’s matches, but I bring it up this time because the venue was hosting a Japanese curry popup, which was unexpected and delicious enough I feel compelled to mention it. It was a particular delight to have a real solid meal, given I hadn’t eaten dinner before cube night that day like I normally do.

My second match was against a Grixis control deck featuring Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh at the top end. My first game I ran them over with Goblin Guide and Lurrus of the Dream-Den resiliency. The second game I mulliganed to 5 after two land-heavy do-nothing hands. My opponent played Blood Knight turn 2, which was quite a concern for my deck with the protection from white. However, they had pivoted from splashing black to a straight Izzet control deck, and without a lot of pressure I had time to get to Lurrus of the Dream-Den next to Benevolent Bodyguard, and my opponent never had two removal spells to get through the pair. That gave me room to recur my Cathar Commando and pick off their Twinshot Sniper, which opened up the board enough for me to swing and close out the game.

My third match was against the other 2-0 deck: a Bant Yorion, Sky Nomad deck^[5]. A no-land opening hand meant I mulliganed to 6, while my opponent ended up mull’ing to 5. With my opponent low on cards, my plan was to load up on removal and keep them off of Yorion, Sky Nomad, which lined up very well against my opponent’s plan to cast Yorion, Sky Nomad as fast as possible and try to use it to stabilize. I Abraded their Delighted Halfling and used Fling on my Thraben Inspector to pick off their Devoted Druid after they blocked with it. My opponent cast Fact or Fiction to try and get back into the game, and flipped one of the worst Fact or Fictions I’ve seen of 4 lands and a Mana Leak. They did end up casting Yorion, Sky Nomad, but on an empty board, and I had Fight as One plus Arc Lightning for the extra damage I needed to seal up the game around it. The next game my opponent mulliganed to 5 again, while I had an ultra-aggressive 7-card hand including Rabbit Battery, Rhys the Redeemed, Reckless Charge, and my Arid Mesa to fetch Gobland. I even had a Goblin Guide, but I sandbagged it for a few turns to try and prevent my opponent from clawing back some cards. By turn 4, my opponent was so low on life and had not enough going on that they just scooped. We played a for-fun game 3, where I kept a slower hand and my opponent ramped out Yorion, Sky Nomad turn 3 with Devoted Druid. They immediately followed it uup with a Wall of Omens and a Wall of Blossoms, and I couldn’t get through, especially when they Prison Realmed my Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Cast Out my Goblin Bombardment.

One day we’ll see the Conspiracy pack. Hopefully the same day we see the Alpha pack.

Chromatic Composition Cube (February 18, 2026)

We only had 3 players signed up for most of the week, so I was asked to bring back Chromatic Composition Cube to accommodate. By night of, we ended up with 6 players. This is when I figured out how the cube could play 5 and 6 players: for 5 players the pattern continues with 4 bassline colors and 1 melody color, which seems obvious in hindsight but I simply never tried the math for. For 6 players like tonight, we played effectively “peasant cube mode”: all the bassline colors shuffled together, nothing special about selecting colors or restricted lands.^[6] I opted for 4 packs of 11, with a smidgeon of cheating on my part to look at the 6 leftover cards and shuffle back in a Thriving Heath fixing land into the pool.

The cube always involves shuffling from sorted, and we very possibly could have done a better job shuffling^[7] because my first pack had about 5 red cards, and the pack that I was passed had about 6 red cards. One of the changes I had made to the cube in the interim 2 weeks was to add some more ramp payoffs in green, as that was something players noted was missing last time. I used the opportunity to add some survival/being-tapped-matters support in green that I wanted as well. I decided to put those changes to the test and play Golgari ramp. When the draft was done, I realized the colors were stunningly evenly split: going around the table starting with me, people were playing: Golgari, Azorius, Jund, Azorius splashing green, Golgari (planning on playing Jund, but cut red during deckbuilding), and Azorius. There’s maybe some interesting thinking to be done on why players gravitated to those color pairs in the absence of gold cards, but that’s thinking to be done elsewhere: I had games to play.

We played across the table for the first match^[8], so my first match was against an Azorius control deck. In game 1, Umbral Collar Zealot on turn 2 beat my opponent down for several turns, putting them low enough they couldn’t really play proactively while I got to ramp into Bashful Beastie and close out the game. In game 2, Mentor of the Meek from my opponent accrued too much value for me to keep up with, and I couldn’t beat Bereaved Survivor constantly recurring Benevolent Bodyguard. In game 3, I was stuck on two lands for the first few turns but still had enough action to put my opponent to effectively 1 life with the threat of an onboard Dubious Delicacy activation, but my hand sputtered out and I only drew lands and ramp while my opponent turned the corner and stabilized. Lumbering Worldwagon was a particularly demoralizing draw as my opponent dumped out their hand, and Wayspeaker Bodyguard from my opponent made it so when I did end up drawing a singular creature, they were tapped down to ineffectiveness.

My second match was against the Jund deck with a discard aggro plan. Flameblade Adept and Irreverent Gremlin put me on the backfoot early as I scrambled to get down enough creatures to deal with menace. Virus Beetle proved crucial on this front, cramping my opponent’s mana enough that I could get down Stubborn Burrowfiend and Defiant Survivor. Using the latter to saddle the former let me rapidly accumulate a bunch of manifest creatures, going wide enough to gum up the board in my favor and eventually close out the game. The next game was a similar plan, except Defiant Survivor was crewing Lumbering Worldwagon instead, so I got extra lands alongside my overwhelming board presence of manifest creatures that my opponent couldn’t keep up with.

I keep falling in love with how flexible this cube is, especially now that I’ve figured out 5 and 6-player modes for it, but that does make it so difficult to test, especially when still in the early stages of flux. This proved an excellent way to see all the bassline cards, at least. It let me experience the survival cards playing out really nicely, which is gratifying.

Welcome to Value Town (February 25, 2026)

This cube night we were playing Welcome to Value Town with the full pod of 8, so we were going to see the entire cube, including the bonus Lore Seeker pack.^[9] This is a cube all about value, but the cube owner was careful to emphasize that all that value still needs to go towards killing your opponent: if you try to just assemble a massive engine, you will probably get overrun. Control was specifically singled out as bad when your opponent’s deck is full of 2-for-1s. And also: original companion rules, again.

I went for a very out-of-character opening to the draft: I picked up Lórien Revealed followed by 6 fixing lands. There just wasn’t anything incredibly stand-out in the packs I saw, and I thought I’d try staying open for once in my life. Spoilers: I disliked it immensely and felt really unmoored throughout the draft. My fixing ended up mostly in Sultai, so I figured I’d do something in those colors. In pack 2, the pick 1 of Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath solidified Simic, and I figured I could do some sort of landfall or ramp plan. But I didn’t really see much of anything in landfall besides a Tireless Tracker, and I knew all the cheap mana dorks had gotten snapped up in pack 1, so I picked up a few more expensive 2-3 mana ramp spells and mostly just built a big curve. There was a slight learn/lessons package for flavor, though. My uniform distribution of a curve kind of made sense when I picked Birthing Ritual pick 1 of pack 3: it was more for mana-cheating then ETB or sacrifice synergy, and there was a mana dork that almost certainly would be very good for my deck. Mostly I picked it up because I had it played against me several months ago and it seemed super fun, so I wanted to try it out.

My first game was against an Azorius Yorion, Sky Nomad deck. My opponent whiffed on both their initial Thundertrap Trainer trigger and the one they got after flickering it with Thassa, Deep-Dwelling, which was great for my personal morale but did not translate into actual game advantage as I got stuck on four lands, even after digging with several draws off of Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner, Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, and grinding a bunch of value with Birthing Ritual. I had no removal though, so while I was digging for mana and bigger creatures that could break through, my opponent overloaded Winds of Abandon and made their Soulherder a more-than-lethal threat against my now-empty board. My second game I sided in actual removal and mulliganed to 6; my Deep-Cavern Bat showed my opponent had two lands and mostly 4-drops with a Thraben Inspector and Spyglass Siren, so I took the latter to at least have some life swings in the sky. And who knows, maybe they’d get mana screwed and I wouldn’t need to worry about those more expensive cards. Birthing Ritual once again got me a ton of decision equity, but I couldn’t grind through the beefy flyers of Yorion, Sky Nomad and Guardian Scalelord. Somehow I still had four basic lands to get when my opponent overloaded Winds of Abandon again, and yet I still topdecked another basic Forest with 6 cards left in my library.^[10] I managed to play an Elder Gargaroth to make it seem like I had a semblance of ability to block and live, but my opponent had the Jace, the Mind Sculptor I had seen all the way back on turn 2 with my Deep-Cavern Bat to bounce it and swing for lethal.^[11]

My second game was against an Izzet tempo deck. My opponent went land-go for the first 4 turns, so I played greedy, sandbagging my Tireless Tracker so I could play a fetchland alongside it the next turn. This meant my threats got picked off one-by-one by Flametongue Kavu, The Flux, Mizzium Mortars and Glorybringer, and I died to those creatures plus Dragonhawk, Fate’s Tempest when my opponent cast Alrund’s Epiphany. The second game I mulliganed to 6 with two Forests in hand and only three-drops, but a top-decked Lórien Revealed solves all crimes and we traded blows, including a sick sequence where my opponent flipped Spitebellows off the The Flux and evoked it to pick off my Elder Gargaroth. We ended up both hovering around 10 life. Divide by Zero let me not die from Glorybringer’s hasty attack, and it let me grab Boomerang Basics from my sideboard to remove my opponent’s remaining blocker and win on the crackback. The third game, my opponent opened with a turn 1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, aka a certified Problem. Luckily I had Dinosaur Egg, which served as a blocker after turn 2. Knowing the composition of my deck, I figured the discover trigger would probably net me another blocker or a removal spell for this Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer too. My opponent did end up removing the Dinosaur Egg with The Flux, and I flipped into neither a blocker nor a removal spell, but Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner. It didn’t deal with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, but it did let me ramp and draw my way out of my land-light mulligan. I had to eat a third Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer hit when my opponent stunned my only blocker with Floodpits Drowner. That gave my opponent, who was stuck on three lands, enough Treasures to cast Consecrated Sphinx. Luckily, I got to copy it with Phyrexian Metamorph, and sidestep the potential game of draw-chicken by bouncing their Consecrated Sphinx with a top-decked Boomerang Basics I clearly had forgotten to take out of my deck from last game. With them turns away from having the mana to cast Consecrated Sphinx again, I got to run wild with Vaultborn Tyrant and lock up the game from there. The final nail in the coffin was Lose Focus on their Consecrated Sphinx when they did get the mana to cast it.

Siding in key pieces of removal of Bitter Triumph, Divide by Zero, and Lose Focus paid off in spades. I also pretty much never once thought about my colors of mana thanks to my quantity of fixing, just the amount of mana I had, but I still don’t think I like this whole “eating your vegetables first” thing.

Bryan’s Good Clean Magic (February 28, 2026)

A surprise Saturday draft!^[12] A usually out-of-town visitor helped arrange a 6-player evening draft, and of the cubes the attendees had, the visitor opted for Bryan’s Good Clean Magic for a traditional cube experience.

Spoiler for a future one of these draft reports^[13]: this is the cube that I did a rotisserie draft over the winter holidays that we are yet to play the matches for. Even more spoilers: I drafted mono-red in that rotisserie draft. So, for this draft, I really didn’t want to draft mono-red, even when it increasingly felt like red was incredibly open. Instead, I saw a Cruel Celebrant and Blood Artist and forced Mardu aggro aristocrats-only. The “only” is because I saw near zero token/recursion payoffs for my aristocrats, and I ended up cutting them in sideboarding midway through the draft. The deck would have almost certainly been stronger if I committed to mono-red aggro, but. Whatever.

My first match was against a Golgari graveyard deck. The first game I was on the beatdown: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben cramped my opponent’s hand as I dumped out my hand of 1-mana threats. Their only removal was in the form of Wrenn and Six, which thanks to Thalia, Guardian of Thraben came down one turn later on turn 3, when my opponent had already taken a ton of damage. I then had Fiery Confluence to deal with my opponent’s last few points of life. The second game, my opponent used Deathrite Shaman to ramp into Thrun, the Last Troll. I used Fiery Confluence as a one-sided board wipe after combat, with some damage already marked on the two creatures from them blocking mine. I was trying to force my opponent into spending their last points of mana into regenerating Thrun, the Last Troll^[14], but instead they let both die. I quickly discovered why when the next turn my opponent cast Living Death, bringing back both Deathrite Shaman and Thrun, the Last Troll alongside three other friends, including a Tarmogoyf. On my end, I had naught but a Blade Splicer and their Golem pal. I quickly perished despite my Golem’s best efforts. In game three, I started with Monastery Swiftspear, then picked off their Deathrite Shaman with Magma Jet and used it to scry two the top: first Hordeling Outburst to pair with my Monastery Swiftspear on board and my Hellrider in hand, with Boros Charm right after. I did wish I had them in the opposite order when my Hordeling Outburst tokens and Monastery Swiftspear were wiped out by a Pernicious Deed. My board being mostly tokens did mean the Tarmogoyf and Scavenging Ooze on my opponent’s end couldn’t grow too large, hovering around 3-4 power each. Blocking was a losing proposition, as it would allow my opponent to gain life and grow their Scavenging Ooze while weakening my potential Hellrider, so I had to take my lumps and just bide my time as they were also sizeable enough blockers to neuter my threats ofLuminarch Aspirant and Young Pyromancer. My life total was right on the edge of being forced to chump block to live. However, Boros Charm came in handy, as it gave me the extra 4 damage plus the Elemental token from Young Pyromancer to go wider than my opponent’s two threats with the help of bonus Hellrider damage. In a show of massive overkill, though, I topdecked Fiery Confluence, whose 6 damage meant I didn’t even need to bother playing out the combat math I had spent the previous turns calculating to figure out if I could just about pull out the win.

The second match turned out to be against the reason my deck couldn’t be the aristocrats deck I dreamed of: an Orzhov tokens deck, backed up by a pile of planeswalkers.In the first game I went wide with a bunch of cheap creatures, dumping out nearly my entire hand onto the board by turn 4. The sole card remaining in my hand, Boros Charm, meant my opponent’s attempt to trade off a bunch of their tokens backfired and they couldn’t deal with my still intact board. In the second game, my opponent played Bitterblossom and those tokens combined with an emblem buff from Sorin, Lord of Innistrad plus lifegain from Whip of Erebos let them swing them gain a ton life totals, all in the air, which I couldn’t deal with on several axes. In game three, I opened by Thoughtseize’ing away my opponent’s Mirror Entity. We then both went wide right into a board stall, but them getting back that Mirror Entity with Liliana, the Last Hope broke that stall wide open into my demise. We then played a fourth game for fun. In this one Fiery Confluence once again went board wipe mode, sweeping up my opponent’s tokens, most notably the Knights from History of Benalia, while leaving my Kari Zev, Skyship Raider and Golem token from Blade Splicer sitting pretty with their 3 toughness. They ended up being enough to seal up the game. We then played a fifth game. I got my opponent to 2 before my board got wiped out, and didn’t topdeck any of my burn spells before they stabilized with a whole host of planeswalkers and I died in return. At this point, one of the other matches had just finished game 1 thanks to a cursed control matchup, so we had everyone switch it up so we could get three rounds in.

My third match was against a Dimir tempo deck. In the first game, I turn 1 Thoughtseized Psychatog out of my opponent’s hand, and had turn 3 Arc Lightning to pick off my opponent’s turn 2 play of Porcelain Legionnaire and their turn 3 play of Thief of Sanity. That 2-for-1 combined with my board presence proved too much card advantage and pressure for my opponent. In game 2, my opponent returned the hand attack favor by turn 1 Inquisition of Kozileking away my Grim Lavamancer, while also getting a peek at my remaining hand of two lands, Monastery Swiftspear, Earthshaker Khenra, and my four drop Fiery Confluence. I very luckily managed to draw 2 lands in quick succession to use Fiery Confluence to wipe away my opponent’s board of Mischievous Mystic, two Faerie tokens, and a Baleful Strix, while keeping and even buffing my Monastery Swiftspear. My opponent was stuck with draw spells in hand with no on-board value for casting them, while I had creatures to lock up the gam, especially with haste from Earthshaker Khenra plus Chain Lightning to seal the deal.

I didn’t figure out my basic land count by doing something sensible like “counting the mana pips in my deck and assembling a similar ratio,” and instead just vibed it by staring at my deck laid out and announcing how many of each land I was going to play from that. I probably should not have done that, as I mulliganed from land color problems at least once every match. Speaking of things I should and should not have done: I should have played mono red and gotten both a more consistent and better card-quality deck out of it. But, I didn’t, and I enjoyed myself with my Mardu deck, so I shouldn’t have, actually.^[15]

Also, Fiery Confluence is so good.

Footnotes