Using Magic as an excuse to learn new things, meet new people, and try to make something cool. Mostly Cube and other casual formats.
@andymangold
for non-Magic.
Incredibly honored to be joined on the show this week by none other than Richard Garfield! We talked at length about Richards philosophy of games and relationship to Cube. I hope everyone gets as much out of the conversation as I did. Link below! ⬇️⬇️⬇️
We've opened up pre-orders for our first playmat! I've been working really hard on it for a long time and am glad to finally be able to share it with everyone.
Ended up on a very fair, almost controlling GW deck that I don’t think is maximizing its best cards. I think it’s a little bit of a miss, but we will find out! Really excited to see what everyone else did.
21 total for
#cubetuesday
I have a ridiculous “problem”. I keep ordering damaged and HP copies of Time Spiral for my unsleeved cube and they keep arriving looking great 😅
I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good RL card, so looking to trade 1-for-1 for someone’s trashed copy.
@rmorganslade
They’re going to get tally marks for kills and winner of the draft gets to give a proper name to one in their pool!
Thanks for inspiring this, ha.
It's abundantly clear that the CubeCon committee was profoundly dysfunctional — all the members need to own that. Sexual harassment never should have become a proxy war for internal disagreement. Childish, public finger-pointing should not have forced the victim to share publicly
@ahmattox
@fourfourforfour
And
@ahmattox
brings home the win, naming Ornithopter 55 “Mr. Burgers”, eternalizing his god awful chicken scratch on the cube for all time. He’s trying to do something!
Every time a skilled, competitive player posts their "top 50 cards in the MTGO Vintage Cube" list it very starkly highlights that a good player can pretty much do whatever they want (within certain limits) and find success.
LGS was unexpectedly closed for Cube night, so we set up at an outdoor beer garden. As we were shuffling up someone at our table leaned over and asked "hey is that a cube?" He ended up taking a slot in the pod and played with us all night with a huge smile on his face.
I am so disappointed that the CubeCon committee did not have procedures in place to handle this situation when it arose. I am so disappointed that it turned into a dramatic, public, he-said-she-said that effectively forced Jenn to share publicly. Just so disappointed.
We're excited to announce that we worked with the organizers of
@MTGCubeCon
and the designers of all of the featured cubes to create an exclusive print of the Cube Map to commemorate the event!
I’m glad Triome fans are getting their cycle completed in New Capenna, but I’m over here just dreaming of completed bicycle lands. They’re such perfect game pieces.
It's so awesome to see a huge, mainstream introduction to cube that doesn't assume the context of Magic's most powerful cards. It's also amazing to see ideas like double fetches (s/o
@Trunkerss
) trickle all the way up to TCC! Bravo.
Cube events per year:
2022 - 1
2023 - 2
2024 - 15 and counting!
If this trend continues we'll all be attending a Cube event every hour of every day of 2027.
It’s
@ahmattox
’s Birthday! 21 players, 3 pods of ONLY Anthony’s cubes. Extremely unadvisedly forced UG curiosity in the Regular Cube and about to queue up against someone who has never drafted before in round 1
Ok so I am officially building 100 Ornithopters in paper. Decided to go with the Mirrodin printing because it's the best canvas for alteration. Going to number them soon, and
@UberCubeMTGPod
had the _VERY_ cool idea to number them with Roman numerals...
Flat tire 100 miles from home on an 850 mile driving day? Not good. Drafting the Neoclassical Cube at the Flying J in Hancock, MD waiting for the roadside assistance? The spirit of Cube Con
@MTGCubeCon
Was away from my computer most of the day after this morning's poll closed — thank you everyone for voting for my Bun Magic Cube! I will be hard at work refining things between now and October to make sure I bring the best possible version of this cube for everyone to play <3
#CUBECON
#CubeOff
polling begins NOW. Round 1 features a bunch of heavy hitters in the
#mtgcube
community. Vote for the Cube that YOU would like to see in the Main Event! Links to the Cubes follow.
1/5
TFW you have SEVENTEEN people come out for Cube night on a TUESDAY. We’ve been putting in the work by being consistent and spreading word through our local Magic community and it’s paying off ☺️
We welcome
@RhysticStudies
on this week's episode to talk about why Cube is his "end game in Magic" and to bask in that just-before-the-first-draft-of-a-new-Cube glow with him.
We don't share a lot of our metrics publicly (they're not that important to us and I think posting about them is a recipe for a few kinds of feel-bads) but very honored that 365 of you, just on Spotify, listen to our podcast more than any other!
Had to make up some special tokens for my old-border Urza EDH deck. The original Beast of Burden art by Ron Spears and the flavortext are a perfect fit. I know the rules text isn’t technically correct, but I had to keep that old school */*
The Cube Community owes Austin so much. These opportunities to meet in person are critical to solidifying online friendships and building a real, actual community, and there is zero reason for him to do this other than he wants it to exist.
Had an absolute blast in Boston this weekend! Here is the (now traditional) staff photo, and my growing collection of large-cube-event trophy pins. Gwen and Ollie (and Gia!) did an incredible job on the organization side, and my floor judges Andy, Ben, and Justin were fantastic!
Many cube designers seem to feel the need to justify their inclusions with overly complicated, theoretical language, when the vast majority of the time it just comes down to "I like this card". Over-intellectualizing is really off putting!
Picked up one of my non-card Magic grails this past week after a couple years of patient eBay trawling. It's in perfect condition, I *almost* feel guilty using it.
When our 17th episode topped the Magic subreddit, I thought for sure we would never get our regular listener base higher than that one week spike. Approaching our 100th episode and getting closer and closer to overtaking it. Onward and upward!
Man it is so triggering to listen to people talk about a very specific and narrow kind of vintage/legacy cube as if it were the objectively most powerful kind of Magic. Some people have been playing the same Cube for 10 years and can't conceive of other powerful alternatives.
One of my goals for the year is focusing on improving as a player, which can be challenging given that I basically only play paper Cube drafts. Anyway here is 2 hours of
@BoshNRoll
coaching me on a Cube match!
Did you ever want 4000+ words on how many lands you should include in your cube? Because here is 4000+ words on how many lands you should include in your cube.
Magic often feels predominantly white, male, and cis. Has anyone written anything on building a local, paper community explicitly trying to address this all-too-prevalent lack of diversity? Anyone that has had success themselves?
It’s
@BostonCubeParty
time! I’m letting it ride in round one and not ranking any cubes, ended up playing
@GwenDekker
’s Tiny Leaders list. Currently 1-0 with an Esper Deck with an off color leader because I didn’t see a single Esper leader 😅
Excited to announce that we will be doing a panel at MagicCon Philadelphia with myself, Parker,
@ahmattox
,
@JParnell1
and
@GwenDekker
all about — you guessed it — Cube! Parker has done a ton of research on the history of the format you won't want to miss.
When we started the podcast I never expected the most rewarding and impactful episodes we would make would be the ones focused on community. The discussions we've had about growing your local playgroup and finding people to Cube draft with have really resonated with people.
To clarify something I said earlier today. We do a lot of future forecasting. Had trends continued the way they were going, we believed the draft booster were in danger of going away due to market forces. No one in Wizards/Hasbro was trying to get rid of limited play.
#WotCStaff
On this week's show,
@ahmattox
and I are practicing what we preach and walking through how we would use a single card as inspiration to lay the groundwork for a whole cube. It's emergent Cube design by example!
LGS owners/managers: if someone was trying to organize a regular Cube night in your store, what would you want them to know? What would it take for you to support or endorse that effort?
Those of us designing cubes, battleboxes, and other sandbox Magic formats should take a lesson from Dandan: branding and messaging has a big impact on how your environment is received.
Is $160 for access only to Magic 30 for the weekend, plus more for entry into individual events, a little steep for you? Did you know that for $125 you can get full access INCLUDING as many Cube drafts as you can manage at
@MTGCubeCon
, one week before Magic 30?
@CubeApril
I think anyone who loves or even likes a “company” is being misled. I love Magic the game and I’m thankful for all of the creative people that make it, but the company is just an intermediary extracting value on both sides. Companies are not anyone’s friend!
For some mysterious reason I've gotten a ton of comments from people saying they started listening to the show recently and are now binging the back catalog, and I cannot tell you how genuinely happy that makes me.
Lots of people think that building a cube is really expensive, but in reality it's one of the most affordable ways to play Magic. We're offering up some tips on how to keep costs down in this week's episode:
A perfect 16 for
#cubetuesday
! Drafting the Bun Magic Cube and have a UW control deck I really like. I think it’s one Treasure Cruise away from perfection.
20 for
#cubetuesday
! I am drafting a brand new unsleeved cube where you get to start with one land from your deck in play. The designer introduced this because the curve is high, I intend to demonstrate that it is broken!
I set a ridiculously aggressive download goal for the podcast to try and hit by the end of the year, and we didn't get there, but we got way closer than I thought we would. Thanks to everyone for listening and sharing the show ♥️
It’s
#cubetuesday
, and we’re drafting the Bun Magic cube to do a dry run of my
@MTGCubeCon
setup! I may or may not have made little envelopes containing all the tokens each card produces and labeled them with the card art
@RhysticStudies
I would first identify what your true goals are: is this an exercise in game design for you? Just means by which to cube draft with your playgroup? An expression of something you love about the game that isn’t elsewhere captured?
If you really want to cultivate a play experience that achieves aesthetic, mechanic or nostalgic goals - y'all should consider building a Cube to play.
Its one of the best ways to pick what you like about Magic the most, and share that with people.
Exciting news! Thanks to a new feature from YouTube, our entire podcast back catalog is now up on our channel and new episodes will be automatically added there in the future!
Modern is the new Legacy.
Pioneer is the new Standard.
Standard is the new Extended
Commander is the new Draft
Draft is the new Magic Online
Oathbreaker is the new Pioneer
Pauper is the new Canadian Highlander
I will not be taking any questions at this time.
Everything else aside, it’s pretty surprising to me that
@SheldonMenery
suggests that Elesh Norn is not good for Commander and was not designed with Commander in mind, because I am pretty sure everyone else on the planet saw that card and thought, ‘ah, obvious commander card’.
I am one trashed Volcanic Island away from completing my set of duals for my unsleeved cube! I know someone out there has a water damaged, creased, stapled, stained Volc for me. Slide into my DMs! Let’s finish this thing!
I love these "behind-the-scenes" photos. Lots of work goes into making cube content and these photos show a portion of that work and passion.
Listen to the Uber Cube Pod here:
Played a ton of cube this weekend. Also picked up a bunch of treats for the Neoclassical Cube! Without trying I am racking up quite a few Rob Alexander signatures. Why are so many of his signed cards totally trashed?
Was feeling more and more weird for my PFP here to be our logo. This account is not and has never really been a 'brand', just me, so making that more clear now!