Learning Limited 101

 Hey friend - I am here to help you understand some core tenants of limited MTG. Together, we will get a foundation of solid fundamentals around drafting, deck building and gameplay to make you competent, and much more confident when you sit down to draft or play in your next pre-release.

Today - let's talk about limited as a format for playing magic and why it is a great way to enjoy Magic the Gathering. I will introduce you to some key topics at a high level and expand on them individually in future articles. My hope is that by reading these, a newer drafter or a beginner can gain the knowledge they need to become comfortable when they sit down to play. It's always good to review the fundamentals, so even an intermediate or advanced player could gain something from these. 

What is Limited?

Limited, means that you are playing with a limited subset of cards. You will opening and playing with cards from individual packs. These could be from the latest set like Reality Fracture, or a variety of packs like in a Chaos Draft. You could also be playing with someone's cube, but for the sake of this article I will keep to traditional formats. If you want to learn more about Cube, I have an article for that here: Cube for a New Player

One of the benefits to limited Magic is accessibility. Anyone can sit down at a draft table or go to a Pre-Release event and play on a level field with everyone else. While it helps, you don't have to have prior knowledge of the set you're drafting. In the case of a pre-release, no one will have a great sense of what the latest cards are and how they will perform, and that is much of the allure/draw to that type of event. People like feeling like they have a valid chance at winning. 

Mirror this to constructed. Whether it's Modern, Commander or Pauper, you will need to have built a deck and have an idea of how to play it to be able to participate. The gap between decks in constructed have a greater degree of impact on how you are going to fare at any given event. There are budget constraints, and just a lack of availability for some key cards unless you're willing to shell out a lot of money to buy the list at the shop or order them online. While Pauper mitigates this by only allowing commons, some decks in modern, standard or commander can run well into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And, yes, this does give you an advantage vs the field. While budget decks can perform well with a lot of format knowledge and in the hands of a skilled player, most of the "meta decks" or most popular decks run these key cards and mana-bases for a reason. They're good, and people don't like to lose.

Deck Building

I want to start us off with deck building as this is possibly the most important component of limited Magic.  

Limited decks have 40 total cards 99% of the time. This is the minimum amount you can play for a legal deck in limited. You can go over, but I wouldn't suggest it. Ever. The corner cases, the 1% that you feel like is a valid reason, is probably wrong. Over the last 10 years and I have learned that minimizing flaws in your deck give you a much better chance of winning than the slight edge you may feel your 41st or 42nd card will give you. 

Magic is a game of both skill and randomness. You have some control over what you keep in an opening hand, but you don't have control over what you will draw from your deck and this is where deck building really impacts the game. I cannot tell you how many matches myself or my opponent have lost due to poor deck building. For the first few years I played limited frequently, I would experiment with an extra card or 2, less or more lands and lose games because of it. You want to stick with recommended ratios as a baseline to improve your chances of drawing a playable hand, and drawing what you need to cast spells in each part of the game. 

Out of your 40 card deck, 16-18 lands and 22-24 spells is what you're aiming for. As a baseline, use 23 spells and 17 lands and move up or down from there. 

The next important component of your deck is your creature(or cards that create creatures) count. Specifically, your early creatures. Most of your decks should have a minimum of 6 creatures that cost 1-2 mana. This allows you to play a creature on turn one or two in most of your games. The games you don't, you are much more likely to lose. When you are sitting down to draft, or are building your sealed deck; 2 drop creatures often times don't stand out as much as a bomb 6 mana rare, or a sweet build-around enchantment. However, you need a density of early plays to be able to afford to play these impactful late game cards. Think of this as a healthy diet. Eat your vegetables. Broccoli may not be as exciting as a cajun filet biscuit with cheese and honey mustard dipping sauce, but they make sure you live and can function. The same holds true in limited. You need to check off certain boxes to have a functional deck, and early creatures is a sure fire way to make sure you are competitive each game. Your total creature count should be between 12 and 18 with 75% of them being 3 or less mana. 

Now let's chat about interaction, which is the 2nd most important component. Being able to remove a threat, counter a spell or change creature combat with combat tricks gets the most out of your creatures. It's odd to think of it this way, but without creatures, your removal is less impactful. Staring down a board of 3 creatures when you have nothing except a removal spell is a tough place to be. Which is the same for your opponent. Now think about having 3 creatures yourself and your opponent plays a 6 mana bomb without anything else in play of any significance. Your removal spell of combat trick can clear the way for you to close out the game. You need to be able to interact in some way with your opponent, so prioritize efficient removal, cards that destroy or exile creatures, deal direct damage or allow your creatures to trade up in combat. Just as in the creature conversation, cost is also very important here. 1 and 2 mana interaction is way way better than 3 or 4 mana interaction. Aim for at least 50% of your interaction at 2 or 3 mana.

You have your creatures and your spells locked in, let's talk about the mana base. Every deck requires to have enough lands to cast spells of each color. However, there are cards in Magic that create mana on creatures and artifacts. Or, like in Reality Fracture, cards that cycle to find a land. These sources that are not untapped lands should count towards your total numbers, but they are NOT 1-for-1 replacements for untapped lands. We talked about how important it is to have early plays, and so having untapped lands/basic lands available in your primary colors will let you curve out 1/2/3 more often and put your opponent on the backfoot. Many intermediate players fall prey to greedy mana-bases. This is so common in fact, that I would attribute 20% of my wins to being able to cast my spells on time while my opponent took a turn off due to tapped lands, or getting color screwed. Your early plays need to be in your base color or colors. The less you ask of your mana-base, the easier it will be to win and to keep your opening hands. In these primary colors, you need a minimum of 8 untapped sources. However, aim for 9-10. If you are doing the math, 9 basics of each would mean you run too many lands. Here is the trick. instead of adding in tapped lands to patch up your mana-base, lean heavily into a single color for your early creatures. I tend to draft and build almost mono-color decks. This takes a lot of practice, but if you can get super heavy into one color, you will be give yourself so much flexibility on the other colors you add in. A great composition to aim for is 80% one color and 20% 2nd or 3rd colors. These tertiary colors should be complimentary, impactful cards. Think of hyper efficient removal, late game threats that are bombs or must answer creatures. Your secondary cards should also be single pipped. A color "pip" is the mana symbol on a card. So if you see a 4 mana spell that requires 2 Red and 2 colorless, this should be played when you have 7+ sources of that color. 

These are all broad and nuanced topics. There is so much to dive into, that it would take much more than a few articles to master and each set or format has its own tweaks to general rules like what I laid out here. This is what makes Magic such a fantastic and sometimes daunting game to play. However, with a good foundation, you can better understand how different formats and cards impact the games and make adjustments from there. 

Gameplay - Limited Resources

Now that we have a solid deck, let's focus a bit on gameplay before we wrap this up. I want to basically plant a seed in your mind to consider when playing your games out. You and your opponent have a limited amount of everything. 

We looked at deck ratios earlier and learned that the majority of your spells are going to be creatures. Creatures are the default win-condition in limited. They tick your opponents life total down, they protect your own life total and ultimately, the person with the better board state will win that game of magic. Due to this, removal/interaction is less common and needs to be used very carefully. Most removal is a straight 1-for-1. I spend a card to remove your card. Given this fact, you'll want to ensure you try and maximize it's effectiveness with timing. Wait until you need to. If you're ahead on board, try to hold off on removal until you are either about to close out the game or until they play a must answer threat. This means you can probably also wait for them to have tapped out for that threat and should kill it while they don't have the mana up to deploy their own removal or trick in response. If you're behind, deploy creatures before firing off removal if the creature isn't going to start snowballing the game out of reach. Having a few creatures out to allow you to put the pressure on after you remove their threat(s). The alternative is that you remove first and pass back, allowing them to deploy more threats and you're back to square one. 

There are cards in magic that can swing games in an obscene direction. These are mostly bombs at higher rarity and thus come up less often, but they do exist. So, with this in mind, you should play like these exist and try to get to know what they are. What colors have what swingy bombs that I need to look out for? How can I maintain a board presence and win if they have (x)? The key is usually, pressure. Getting ahead and chewing up your opponents life total allows them less time to setup, build up their mana base and draw to their bombs. A clock is the best way to mitigate a disparity in card quality. Your opponent will run out of options with less life and less time. So again, early creatures are key in limited.

Conclusion

Overall, we covered a few bases here. Not everything, but this should give you a direction when you approach your next event. We will cover more in future articles, but I hope that this gives you some ideas and helps you lose less games of Magic. Notice I said lose less, as opposed to win more. There are no shortages of win more in Magic. 

Draft Report: Second Nature

 A hero emerges from the fray. The local Wizard, Daniel has overcome his opponents with raw card advantage and fliers to grab the trophy. 

  Second Nature is a newer cube project of mine, designed to be accessible to anyone with access to MTG Arena and a small amount of common/uncommon wildcards. Our draft last night took me some effort to get organized, but it was quite fun and 100% worth it. If you are interested in following along with this cube project through future iterations or want to peruse the list for your self, you can view it here: Second Nature / CCobra 

As I mentioned before, Second Nature is designed for accessibility. The draft will mimic a retail limited set from before the change for "set" "play" boosters. Meaning there are a limited number or rare cards, and decks will be almost entirely reliant on commons and uncommons. I cut my teeth on limited sets from the 2018 to 2022 time period, although I have continued to dive into limited formats and cube ever since. This period is nostalgic for me and I thoroughly enjoyed getting excited for a rare or a few quality commons.

Our list of drafters was over 10 to start the day, but as these things go - stuff pops up, headaches happen and so we ended up with 6. Solid number, and plenty to have a variety of decks and cards opened. The group was mainly folks from my local area: Daniel - local tournament grinder and occasional cuber if he isnt running. Flutter - Former #1 ranked Mythic ranked Arena limited grinder and overall cube lover from Canada and internet fame. Joe - Podcaster and well known cube organizer from California. Ethan - regular cuber from Greensboro, NC only 40minutes from me. Willy - Another local from Greensboro and new to Arena drafting. Lastly, myself. 

My draft started out with some solid interaction with Unholy Heat. Instant speed removal is a high pick here as a lot of threats are augmented creatures and there is a lot of auras running around. I ended up seeing some decent white cards in pack 1 and picked up the boros signpost uncommon, Seedglave Mentor pretty late as well. Boros is a heroic/valiant deck that pumps up its early creatures to beat down. The mentor ended up being great. 

My deck was pretty smooth, and I got a 2nd rare with Eidolon of Astral Winds. This card works amazingly well with Valiant triggers and pushing damage in the air to close out matches. The power level of this card embodies what I am going for in this cube. It's a rare that is synergistic and feels impactful if supported. 

  

Here is my decklist: 

Let's get into the matches. 

Round 1 I played vs Daniel, he had a really sweet Selesnya enchantments deck with a blue splash for cloudblazer and soul herder. 

The raw card advantage in his deck was very hard to compete with. I am also happy to see that a light splash is possible without any fetch lands or shocks. These lands are tough to not include in any cube, but my goal of minimizing the need for dozens of rare wildcards means that the mana bases will be less consistent. 

Round 1 loss 2-0

Round 2, I played FlutterDev. He is a Canadian player who is very skilled. I know that he has reach the top of the Arena Limited Mythic ladder previously, so I know he will be a difficult matchup as well. 

Flutter built a sweet UB Ninja deck with Mulldrifter, Ninja of the Deep Hours and Bident of Thassa. His deck had very little interaction, outside of Deadly Cover-Up. That card is one that doesn't see play much in cubes. Due to the fact that it's 5 mana, and the extra effect of exiling the cards from your opponents deck with the same name isnt going to happen in a singleton environment. So the fact that this cube gives drafters 2 or even 3 copies of the same card makes the effect relevant. 

I was able to eventually outclass his threats with my buffed up mice and cats in this matchup for the victory. 

Round 2 win 2-1

Round 3, my opponent was a local drafter Ethan. Ethan is a super friendly and welcoming member of the cube scene in Greensboro and has a few super fun cubes as well. 

Ethan's deck was built around Landfall and was definitely on the aggressive side. 2 copies of the 1 drop chocobo at uncommon, Tannuk from EOE and a fetch land was pretty hard to beat on the play. The removal was timely in our games and my creatures being able to outgrow some of his early threats meant I could turn the corner and swing the game in my favor in a tight game 3. Out of every deck I played, I certainly felt the most early pressure from Ethan. 

Round 3 win 2-1

The 2 decks I didnt face belonged to Willy and Joe. Both of them looked super sweet and Joe was very close to taking down the pod with his UB control deck. 

Willy: 

Joe:

Overall, this was an awesome experience. I am definitely looking forward to playing the cube again, and hopefully with a full 8 pod! 

If you are interested in drafting, feel free to contact me on BlueSky or Discord. 

https://bsky.app/profile/lastabzan.bsky.social

Discord username is LastAbzan - 

What a Trip

 Last week's paper cube draft was the first for what felt like months and it got me excited to draft again this week. Our local group in Winston was voting for Pre-Modern, and so I decided to head up the road to Greensboro and draft with Luke and company. Luke is a fellow cube and pauper organizer and his group tends to be a little bigger. 

I was also accompanied by a new to the area player, Dylan. He moved from WI recently and was looking for a new Magic community to plug into. So, we drove up and chatted about living in a small town and job prospects in the area. 

The shop we attended for cube night is rather large. Dragon's Hoard in Greensboro has a standard sized shop, but also boasts a big side room that could easily have been a furniture showroom back in the day. Tonight, it was occupied by Beyblade players. I never got into Beyblades, but it seemed folks were enjoying smashing their tops against each other and chatting it up. Places like these make you feel awkward and welcome all at once. The exposed metal beams, random old posters of games long forgotten, microwaved food and some dusty parts of shelves makes a Magic player feel right at home. 

We were a group of 12 tonight. So, in preparation, I brought my "Look Ma! No Hands!" cube out. This cube is built around everyway you can cast spells from places that are NOT your hand. It's a celebration of card advantage, but in the less traditional sense. Graveyard, FutureSight, Madness, Theft, Cascade, Foretell, Adventure, Plot, Suspend and even casting from your sideboard are all prevalent here.  



The other cube was Julius' "Tapped Out" cube. It consists of 5 instant speed spells and lots of tap effects. Spacecraft, Vehicles, convoke and more. I wasn't able to play it, as we split into two 6 pods, but the draft chatter was rather lively. I do recall watching a game 3 after we finished our first round that involved a 10/10 Unicorn Mount with lifelink that pooped out horses or something from OTJ. Seemed like a cool cube. 

Here is a link to the 2 lists if you're interested in checking them out: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/NoHands

 Tapped Out

My draft started out with one of my favorite cards: Currency Converter. This cube has a ton of ways to utilize discard. Whether it's Madness, GY stuff or triggers around things leaving the yard. CC is a great engine and also being colorless, it is a great way to start a draft. My deck ended up being mostly Red, but Temur. I had some decent interaction with Remand, Circular Logic, Impending Flux, Rift Bolt, Skewer the Critics and Noise Marine. My engines were: Currency Converter of course, Headliner Scarlet, Faldorn, Dread Wolf Herald and numerous ways to Cascade. Stuff like, Into the Time Vortex, Wild Magic Sorcerer, and especially Norin, Swift Survivalist from Duskmourn. That was is so sick when you get multiple triggers from casting spells from exile. It also is helpful when you're facing a 6/7 Barrogoyf, which happened vs my opponent Sawyer. I was able to attack freely and exile before damage so he wouldn't gain any life. 

I ended up finishing 2-1, I lost to Dylan and his absolutely broken Boros deck. He had a timely Aven Interrupter which hosed my Cascade plans and a combo of Phlage and Bazaar of Baghdad that made life rough. My removal ended up lining up very poorly vs his deck. 

Here is my decklist from last night: 

We had a blast and look forward to the next one! 

Second Nature

Draft much? 

My favorite way to play Magic is limited, drafting a new set is always fun and exciting. New cards, new synergies to unlock and the Wild Wild West vibes of knowing that others you're playing against are experiencing this for the first time as well. It's a beautiful thing. 

However,  there is an issue with retail limited. Formats become solved over time. The wealth of content produced by folks like Limited Resources, Sam Pratt(Rough Drafts) and Alex with Limited Level-Ups combined with data from thousands of drafts and games on 17lands.com widens the gap between your average Joe and a seasoned limited grinder. The later understands what archetypes are best, what rares/mythics are worth building around and what a good deck in each color pair should look like. This creates a huge discrepancy between these two types of players and their end results. 

My brother in-law is new to Magic. I convinced him to come "hang out" with my fellow Magic nerds, drink a beer, and check out cool Goblin artwork a few months back. He oddly enough was dabbling in Warhammer 40k at the time, and I shared some of the cards and art that was used for the Warhammer Magic EDH decks. He was very intrigued and this led down a path of discovery for him. 

He came out to a cube BBQ event I organized at my home while my wife was at the beach with the kiddo. Brisket tacos, old school cubes, good weather and a bustling atmosphere drew him in. After that day, he was pretty much hooked. I got random texts about a card he discovered or a some Secret Lair that he bit on. It has been a very fun and rewarding thing to be a part of. 

I bring all of this up, as a preface for my new cube: Second Nature, because it was designed with him and folks like him in mind. In fact, this entire blog stemmed from a long post I made to try and help him understand how to draft and approach a new cube. I couldn't fit it all on my Cube Cobra update, so I was kind of forced. 

Second Nature above all is meant to be the most accessible cube I have built thus far. It is comprised entirely of cards that are available to craft on MTG Arena. I know this is nothing new. However, I wanted to take it a few steps further and of course make it somewhat unique. MTG Arena does not allow you to just play with whatever they have outside of their own formats without first acquiring each card using their wildcard system. You're basically spending in-game currency to purchase a digital copy of whatever card you wish to play with. Commons and uncommons are plentiful and earned at a faster clip than higher rarity slots like mythic and rare. Given that I want to be able to play this cube with a newer player, I minimized the need for higher rarity cards. 

Using more commons and uncommons serves another purpose in my design goal for this cube. I want this to feel more like a retail limited set. My favorite cube, and by far my most popular cube with my playgroup is my IPA Block cube. It mimics Invasion/Planeshift/Apocalypse draft by including duplicates of commons and only 1 copy of uncommon and rare cards. When you open a pack, you mostly see commons, but will have a few uncommons and a rare to pick from. So, it does feel similar to opening a booster pack from back in the day. 

I want to evoke the feeling you get from sitting down and drafting a pack of retail limited, but with some fixes. I won't go too deep on this topic, but the recent changes Wizards of the Coast has made to retail sets includes cards that are not meant for limited play. In Second Nature, I have included 3 copies of each common, 2 of each uncommon and 1 of each rare. So, you will still be able to easily construct your draft deck with minimal wildcards on MTG Arena, but will also be able to power up your card pool with impactful and synergistic rares. 

 Now that you have a peek behind the curtain and into my mindset for this cue project, let's review the archetypes and some of the notable cards. 

UW Blink. 

Classic archetype that looks to gain value over and over with card draw and creature ETB effects. This is a mid-range deck that can also be on the controlling side by nature of blue counterspells and white removal. Soul-Herder and Cloudblazer are the signpost uncommons here

UB Ninjas  

 

So fun. Use evasive creatures in blue and black to sneak in for damage and on hit effects. This deck looks to control the board and gain advantage for a powerful late game. Cards like Fogwalker and Aether Poisoner are both evasive and have ETB effects that do double duty here. 

BR Sacrifice

Utilize aggressive red creatures to push early damage, then sacrifice then for value once they have been outclassed by your opponents threats. Act of Treason and several free sacrifice outlets are available at common here, so look to close out the game with a steal and sac combo or burn your opponents last life total away  using red's damage effects. 

RG Landfall

The mana base in this cube is mainly common and some uncommons, so expect to be more 2 color than not. The traditional Gx multicolor soup decks that are prevalent in cubes these days doesnt really exist. Instead this Landfall archetype is aggressive and looks to push damage with landfall effects that buff creatures or deal damage to your opponent directly. Brushfire Elemental and Akoum Hellhound do serious work in this deck. 

UG Flash

One of my favorite decks of a bygone era. Green Blue flash looks to use blue instant speed interaction and green combat tricks/auras to make combat and life in general very difficult for your opponent. This deck is a little more skill testing than others but is very fun to pilot. Cards like Frilled Mystic and Repulsive Mutation can be backbreaking, so prioritize them highly.

GW Enchantments

Less turtle-up and win without combat, this archetype looks to steamroll opponents with a myriad of impactful auras and evasive creatures. Cards like Gladecover Scout or Beloved Princess as 12/12 creatures is kind of sweet to pull off and definitely happens here. 

WR Heroic

This deck is definitely on the aggressive side. It wants to put the opponent on the backfoot and make them block with their key pieces so they don't die from out of nowhere. The heroic deck can turn a 1/1 into a 5/5 pretty easily and close out  with white fliers or red direct damage. Akroan Skyguard can get massive and make life very difficult if it's backed up with a few white protection spells and auras. 

WB Modified

Like the heroic deck, this WB strategy wants to buff your creatures and overpower the opponent. However, this archetype also plays with the control elements in black and sacrifice synergies to go into the late game as well. Oona's Blackguard and Aerie Auxiliary are perfect cards to pair together here. 

GB Graveyard Matters

This archetype is a late game powerhouse. Green has strong creatures and interaction for non-creature pieces and black has strong creature removal and recursion engines. Pair the 2, and you have a recipe for a grindy deck built for attrition. Cards that self mill, and reward you for having a large graveyard are very important here. Look for cards Like Champions of Dusan or Liliana's Elite at common for this deck. 

UR Spells

Spell Aggro is such a sweet deck to pilot. Blue and Red interaction paired with aggressive and evasive creatures puts your slower decks on the backfoot. Get on board and utilize blue and red interaction to disrupt your opponent. Cards like Thermo-Alchemist and Balmor Battle-Mage can push a ton of damage here. 


Lastly, I want to call out some notable rares and further dive into the manabase. 

The manabase consists of lapped duals, including a surveil or scry land for each color pair. There are 10 copies of evolving wilds and 2 copies of demolition field to help enable landfall synergies. So, fixing is abundant, but there is a real cost to playing off curve. 

A lot of times folks will tank their manabase or warp their draft around cards that are just too good not to play. However, as we lead into the rares, most of the rares are synergistic and need some support to really shine. So, I hope that these inclusions will lead to better draft navigation and really reward folks that find their lanes. 

Rares that do work in a lot of decks: 

Collected Company - Basilisk Collar

These are generically good in most decks. Company was an include for Flash, and Collar for modified strategies, but either of these cards can be impactful on their own. Company is a powerful one time effect, so I am less worried about it taking over a game. Collar could warp a game and make combat very difficult, so it is something I will keep an eye on. 

Notable rares for each color:

White: Avatar's Wrath - This is a unique effect in this cube. Outside of Black, this is the only mass removal effect in the cube. It also requires the drafter to build around it to make the best use of it. White is able to buff creatures with auras and heroic stuff, so the ability to have your one pumped threat stay in play is the ideal scenario for this card. Bonus for rebuying ETB creatures in white.

Blue: Bident of Thassa - The card draw is very much a blue thing and leans into the evasive threats in the blue archetypes pretty well. I like the powerlevel of this card vs something like Enduring Curiousity. Being Sorcery Speed and not attached to a creature that comes into play after being removed makes this a powerful, yet fair piece. 

Black: Deadly Cover Up - The mass removal is a thing that will only come up sometimes due to the size of the cube, but I like the added benefit here of removing key commons and uncommons from your opponent's deck. This won't come up in many other cubes, so it's something I wanted to take advantage of here. Great card, and very much a black thing. 

Red: Emberheart Challenger - Exactly the type of engine and powerful creature Red wants. Creatures can be dealth with in a lot of colors, but the haste and all-in nature of challenger is very much a red trait and I am happy to say this is a power outlier in this cube. 

Green: Scythecat Cub + Nightpack Ambusher - I am calling out 2 rares here. Cub is a generically powerful card that doesn't require much to pop off. However, this cube doesn't have ways to play multiple lands per turn without an investment of a card. So, I am ok with it being here and playing a similar role to Emberheart Challenger in Red. Nightpack Ambusher is the main reason to play Flash, outside of tempo/control proclivities. Ambusher just sits there and generates value every single turn. However, it is a creature and there are plenty of ways to interact with it. 


That is my overview for the cube. If you are reading this and have access to playing online, I want to encourage you to check out the list and hit me up to jam a draft sometime. I am looking forward to future iterations and changing the format on the regular. I go by Last Abzan on Discord and BlueSky 

My 1st Roto Draft - The Conclusion

Welcome back! This is  the final post about the SamP Arena Cube - Roto draft. I feel I could go on even more about the experience because there was so much time to focus on it, so many games to play and banter to be had in the Discord. 

   The sacrifice theme that's fully supported in this cube is a little bit higher on the curve than a Lurrus deck can play. Noting Mayhem Devil, Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.

 

I didn't actually end up with like the best version of either the sacrifice deck or the artifactr deck. My deck was in between both. I had a lot of really cool synergies and I'm going to be posting a deck list down below for people to take a look at it. I'll just kind of go through the last pics in the draft and then we'll talk about the matches and how that went. 

So I did end up taking Hangarback Walker, and Inspiring Vantage(R/W) next. Vantage comes into play untapped by turn three. My curve is so low I'm okay with it. I am very rarely going to miss having a tapped land on turn 4, especially with the curve and artifact ramp.

I picked up some hand disruption next with Inquisition of Kozilek. I also picked up Kolaghan's Command because I feel like it would absolutely hose my deck and so I didn't want to play against it. I then found myself leaning into the Lurrus strategy a little bit more with Pyrite Spellbomb. Scavenger's Talent is another card I picked up which can be an alternate win con. It works really nice with my theme.

I then picked up Michiko's Reign of Truth. I incidentally have a lot of artifacts and enchantments in this deck, so it could be a 2 mana 5/5 most of the time. It also pairs well with another card I will mention shortly. I picked up some more solid removal; Sheltered by Ghosts which is something that I can recast with Lurrus if it gets answered at some point. I picked up some more premium removal with Bloodchief's Thirst and Damnation. 

Damnation is the one card I was really tempted to take earlier because it works so well with Selfless Spirit. I can just imagine sacrificing the Spirit, giving all my creatures indestructible and then casting Damnation to make my own Plaguewind. I can even rebuy it with Soul Cauldron to give another creature the effect again as well. 

We then have Chromatic Sphere, Legion Extruder, Chainsaw and a really late pic Gingerbrute. So Gingerbrute is a one-mana artifact that I use ASC's ability to make any creature unblockable. So my thought is pair it with Chainsaw or Michiko's Reign of Truth and swing in for the win(Which did happen several times in the matches). 

I also picked up Caustic Bronco, Pile On, Phyrexian Tower and another utility land: Spymaster's Vault which I found very good. The last card which is actually ended up being really great was Sorin, of House of Markov. There's so many aggressive decks. I've been playing test matches and my deck has felt like it needed something that could get on the board and kind of hold back some early aggressive threats. 

Okay so let's go through my deck and my sideboard plan for the matches.

So my game one build, the one that I'm submitting is a B/W deck that's built around Scavenger's Talent, Agatha's Soul Cauldron and drain effects using Meathook Massacre and Marionette Apprentice. I've got cheap interaction with Inquisition of Kozilek, Portable Hole and Bloodchief's Thirst. I also have a load of great two drops with Bitterblossom to pressure opponents, Caustic Bronco, Cathar Commando and Selfless Spirit. I've got my engines that allow me to gain long-game card advantage with Staff of the Storyteller and I got ASC and of course Lurrus. I have my good top deck cards like Massacre and Hangerback Walker to just gum up the board. It's looking really fun. I love all the different synergies and I'm excited to share kind of like how the how the games went as well

 

So sideboard plan I felt like I wanted to have a total switch with a different deck that's more built around artifact aggro. So this deck is mardu and it utilizes Max Opal, Galvanic Blast, Chainsaw and Gingerbrute to push damage. I think is going to be really good to sideboard into versus other slower decks. 

So moving into the matchups I'm looking at the opponents and I've got four decks that I think the artifact deck is a little bit better and five decks where I think the Scavengers Talent plan works out in my favor.

The first couple of games go pretty well I start off with three or four wins right away and I'm happy with kind of how the deck performed. 

I fired off matches super quickly and like I said that initially went pretty well. Then we stopped playing some matches for like weekends and work and stuff like that and I tried to pick up matches kind of anytime others could. So if I'm like busy doing something else but I want to jam a game you know I'm trying to make that happen. That was a little bit of my own downfall with this deck. 

  I forgot to pull up my sideboard plan and didn't actually SB versus one matchup and I ended up losing 2-0 when I definitely should have like been more competitive with the other version of the build. I also got really greedy and had a board state where I had selfless spirit and Damnation in hand, but I was way behind on board. So I waited to cast Damnation and got totally run over by a couple of timely combat tricks. So I ended up coming all the way down to the end and I did win five matches and lost four. It was a very fun deck to play but it's not something that you could really pilot well in a distracted state. You need to be really engaged, and thoughtful of every interaction to play the deck well. 

It did exactly what I thought it was going to do versus some decks. Vs. the blue the mono blue player I was just able to get underneath their counter Magic and pressure them pretty well. I did lose to the green deck after beating them around the time the draft was wrapping up. That matchup was one of the ones I was kicking myself for. I think I didnt take the ample amount of prep to get my SB plan pulled up and look through the differences in their build from our scrimmage. I wanted to actually step on the gas vs them and I ran out of time trying to pull up my SB plan. So, that's on me again. 

So many cool decks at the draft. I was super impressed by everyone's builds and want to thank Sam for putting this together! If you havent already, please go listen to his podcast: Rough Drafts. It's a fantastic limited focused pod. 

Rough Drafts

I'm proud of the deck I had a lot of fun playing the matches and I would definitely do this again and  recommended to anybody that is interested.

Roto Drafting SamP's Arena Legal Cube Part 4

Welcome back! Let's recap what we have in the deck so far: 

1. Demonic Tutor 2. Currency Converter 3. Mox Opal 4. Deathrite Shaman 5. Lurrus, of the Dream-Den 6. The Meathook Massacre 7. Marionette Apprentice 8. Chthonian Nightmare 9. Bitterblossom 10...

.....Agatha's Soul Cauldron 

We're now in round 10 now of this rotisserie draft. Once you get to the round 21, you get two pics per round. Just something to pay attention to as we move into the next couple of days. 

    I'm having a great time and the cards that I've identified that work well with my strategy are kind of pushing me in certain directions which I think is pretty cool. I'm trying to find the best synergy pieces while also making a functional deck. After Agatha's Soul Cauldron I realized no wouldn't had taken Staff of the Storyteller. Staff is a newer to Arena card and I played with it a bunch, so I know how strong it can be. It obviously plays really well with my first couple of pics. I can just imagine being able to put out a staff and a bitter blossom. That would be amazing. 

 

Right after I took Staff the other card that I was hoping to wheel in the next six pics got taken and so a little bummed about that and that was Voice of Victory. Voice and Staff go really well together and also works really well with my sacrifice plan. So on the way back a lot of people started taking lands and I decided I really needed some good hard interaction. It also worked with my game plan of graveyard and so I ended up taking Bitter Triumph which I feel like is one of the best black removal spells in this environment. It hits creatures or planeswalkers, it's instant speed and it's only two mana. 

    After that it looks like we had some people decide to move into a little bit more into black in the next couple of pics. Someone ended up taking unearth and it looks like they're playing a good Jund game plan. The mono red player decided to start taking some blue cards with Spell Pierce which was really a smart pickup. The mono blue player pretty much has all the answers that he would ever need, but Spell Pierce is a really nice card to have access to versus that kind of a deck. 

    Toxic Deluge got taken, followed by a couple of nice white cards and the mono blue player is kind of sticking with his game plan. There's also a Wrenn and Six / Strip Mine player is pretty much mono green at this point and over the next several pics he gets a lot of really strong payoffs like Rofellos, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Endurance. That green deck in the mono  blue deck look really good so far. A lot of these decks look fantastic, but I'm just calling out some notable decks that are in the pool right now. 

    After the Bitter Blossom + Staff pick, the person that I'm passing to towards the top end of the draft has two pics. They ended up clearly going into an Aristocrats deck with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Priest of Forgotten Gods. I have to be really careful about passing too many Aristocrats type pieces that way. Token makers especially, because I feel pretty confident that they're going to contest some of those cards. 

    After I take Bitter Triumph I started thinking about my fixing and also my Mox Opal is looking a little lonely. I have the Agatha Soul Cauldron but I didn't have much else as far as cheap artifacts to go with it and so I ended up with Chromatic Star to pair with something like Umbral Collar Zealot, which is a new card from Edge of Eternities. It works with my game plan of draining people out with Marionette Apprentice. Chromatic Star says, whenever it leaves the battlefield you draw card, so if I sac it with the Zealot for free, I just get to draw card and I can play it back with Lurrus every turn. If the Zealot gets answered or gets put into the graveyard, I can use ASC to give any of my creatures that same ability which I feel like is just super strong synergy. 

   

After that, I ended up getting my first fetch land and unfortunately the only one left at this point which was Prismatic Vista. I followed up Prismatic Vista with some more cards that work well with Agatha Soul Cauldron and Lurrus; Cathar Commando, Selfless Spirit. I feel like Selfless Spirit  and Bitter Blossom is going to be really really nice. Cathar Commando to be able to deal with my opponents artifacts and enchantments is important. There's a few of the Overlords in the cube, there is Retrofitter Foundry, Smuggler's Copter, Fear of Missing Out, Esika's Chariot just a name a couple. These are the types of syngeries that also advance my game plan. I want to be able to one for 1 or 2 for 1 my opponents, stall the game out and pull ahead with card advantage using Lurrus or land a Bitter Blossom early that continues to pressure even after the dust clears. My threats are cheap, interactive and difficult to remove without graveyard hate(which there isn't as much available after Deathrite and ASC are taken). 

    Okay so my last couple pics I'm looking at the cardpool and some things are drying up. I'm interested in fixing for the most part. I'm also looking at the person next to me who is also in black/white and there's some black cards that are getting contested. I'm thinking about jumping into red for some of the artifacts/sacrifice synergies. There's several cards that I think will be really really good and so I'm going to take I take some fixing here around picks 18 and 19 with Godless Shrine and Talisman of Conviction which is the boros talisman. These are the Talisman is a really boring pic but I think it glues my mox opal pick up. Even though my curve is really low I do have a lot of mana of sinks, especially with currency converter. I do plan on playing cards that scale into the late game. So these are all things that I'm considering right now. I'm also really interested in solidifying the mana base probably taking up some more interaction to go with that bitter Triumph. 

 

 I took some time yesterday and looked at the entire list again. If I do end up getting into red a little bit, there are a lot of good removal spells Mardu colors. There is not a lot of token makers in the Mardu colors that I want per se. So I think my next couple of pics are going to be hanger back walker or Jadar. Jadar is a two drop that makes at 2/2 decayed zombie every turn. Hangerback Walker is another artifact that I can play on turn two or four that dies into thopters so it works really well with my game plan. 

  This format seems super fun to me. I've enjoyed about the cube, thinking about drafting like all day for like a week or two and I'm excited to play this deck. I feel like the deck is going to be super sweet. There's some very strong decks here so that's something. One thing I want to take into consideration is how my deck lines up against certain matchups. I do feel like if I continue to get some more removal my deck can go toe-toe with a lot of the creature based strategies in the queue.

 I'm a little concerned about the mono green and the monoblue player just because of the just because of the fact that they haven't had to take any fixing and they've got just really premium spells all the way up and down their list with a lot of interaction. Also green has a ton of graveyard interaction in the cube. Endurance was a nice pickup. The mono green player has access to Scavenging Ooze and the Bloomborrow one that exiles cards for one mana.

Secret Santa Cube: A Cube Holiday Tradition

Twas the Night before Cubemas,

               and all through the Discord, everyone was thinking of Magic cards galore. 

    I was tinkering with my Shoebox submission, while fellow cubers were dreaming of Omniscience. 

  When all of a sudden, it struck me so clear. What if Stone Soup was now and bringing good cheer? 

   So, I dashed to my PC and wrote up my idea. We shall all share archetypes and, yes, that can includes Phelia. 

    Name a card, a deck or a theme if you will. Just put it out there, for someone's dream will be fulfilled. 

   Regardless of the tradition, let's make a new cube with your favorites. Like Tree of Perdition?

    

    We draw our names, like that cringy game. However, instead of Dollar Tree gifts, we deliver 45 picks for an epic card game. 

     All right I have an idea of a new Cube Limited Format that is like my take on Secret Santa. 

   We all have our favorite decks, our favorite strategies, our favorite types of things we like to do when we're playing Magic the Gathering. 

   What would you do if we made a wish list? Just like if we had a Secret Santa. Where we put any number of types of decks or archetypes that we really love to play, and that was our wish list. 

   We build a cube where everybody that wants to participate, selected a player to build an archetype for. 

Each player donates 45 cards that they've selected to fit in the archetype for the person that they got. 

  Come the end of the year, we mash all the cards together(blindly) and we draft the cube. Would the people that really really love certain archetypes be able to get into those decks? Could they find the theme that they recognize? Would the gifter bring a new take to a favorite?

I think it's going to be very interesting, fun and a nice twist on a holiday classic. I think this is kind of perfect timing since we're right November we've got about a month, month and a half out and we can play the games leading up to Christmas/Holdays. Then, once the dust settles, we can reveal who had who at the end of all the games.