Calming beach views, cooking for your friends, and all the Magic you could want! Tim and guest Shobi make the case for taking out a whole weekend with friends for playing Magic. Too much? Or not enough? They also go through all the cool drafts they did over the course of three days of Magic.
Topics Covered
This episode is a mix of events Shobi and friends have played in the past.
Mini Masters
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Mini-Master
Shobi also talks about playing Mini Masters with Vintage cube packs. Play three separate games with three separate packs, then combine them into one honed deck afterward. They also like the rule where if your library runs out, you shuffle in your graveyard. Creates some fun loops.
Binder Draft
Back when Shobi had a big collection, they’d each pick a set binder and build a limited singleton deck with it. Always wanted to get the Tarkir Abzan deck going but never made it work in draft? Now’s your time.
Vanguard
https://scryfall.com/search?q=type%3Avanguard
We talked a bit about wanting to playing with Vanguard sometime. Sort of a pre-EDH format. More on this later!
Slay the Spire Board Game
In between games (and before the late risers woke up), part of the group played the new co-op Slay the Spire board game. Two thumbs up from the players! It even has scaling “Ascension” difficulty like the videogame. It’s nice during a big weekend like this to have side activities between the big drafts.
Bloomburrow
We had a few people bring booster boxes, so as a warm up we did Bloomburrow draft! Doing a few of the same drafts in a weekend with the same people is very fun. Tim’s deck was mice with Mabel and Shobi’s deck was a disappointing Otters with Alania.
Supreme Draft
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Supreme_Draft
We had two power cubes with us, Tim and Brandon each piled out 18 packs each and did a Supreme Draft. This was a super fun filler activity between full-group drafts. Tim’s deck was a bit more artifact synergy whereas Brandon’s was Thoracle/combo-y, though both had a significant blue card overlap.
Gold Cube
Packed with tons of unusual gold cards from across time, Marcus’s cube adds in some custom cards to make it all work. Since players will be playing at least 4 colors and probably 5, they need help on mana. There are super-signets that have every guild signet ability as well as tri-color versions of the OG duals (three basic land types, enters unmaps, etc). Each player gets five of those lands as well as whatever cool lands/super-signets they can grab mid-game.
Brandon’s Power Cube
For Brandon’s draft, Tim put together a Red-White “Cards from the last two years” midrange deck to mixed success. Shobi played a remarkably consistent reanimation list that initial seemed like it was missing key targets.
Bloomburrow Round 2
Having seen Shobi swear off Blue from the last Bloomburrow draft, Tim moved in on Blue. Later he found out that not only was Shobi cutting Blue, but also another player between them! Ah well. Tim was UB removal next to UB Rats, and Shobi was fliers.
Sticker Cube
The Sticker Chaos Cube has three parts:
- Stickers that add rules text to cards
- A back side to cards that you can access for one card each draft
- Signed cards from previous winners of the cube
By now, a solid 10-20% of the cube is stickered cards. Another large portion are upgraded flipped cards. So, there’s a funny mix of very low powered commons and vintage cube-level rares.
Some freshly stickered cards from the weekend:
Christopher’s Power Cube
Christopher’s cube is pretty heavily curated and has new cards in it each set. This time around, Tim drafted some Sultai garbage, though he did have the great moment of turn 1 Surveil Land a fatty, turn 2 reanimated, which was nice. Gaby got to spend 30 mana on turn 5!
Mirrodin Cube
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/mirrodindoubleblock
Mirrodin cube is made of cards from the first two blocks. It uses rarity collation, so commons appear three times each, uncommons twice, and rares/mythics once. There’s a ton of colorless in it and lots of flexibility. Plus: Beacon of Creation is in here!
New Cube Brainstorming!
Both Tim and Shobi wanted to make a cube involving Vanguard, planes, and old Dominaria flavor. Some other ideas:
- When do you draft the Vanguard cards? Maybe see four, then pick two to bring into your draft, then finalize after the drafT?
- Should we draft planes too?
- Both of us were into inventing some new cards/mechanics for changing planes. Rather than using the die, what could we do? Shobi also imagined a die that had stuff on each side besides just the planar stuff.