With Thanksgiving breaking up school and work, we had time to play through the collaborative cube again! Thank you to Derek for hosting, and to Nick, Noah, Jason, Kyle, Alan, and John for attending and playing. Let’s look at the results!
Congratulations to Alan for winning first place! Alan went 3-0 with a nearly mono-red () aggro deck. While the deck could certainly apply pressure quickly and consistently, it could also kill out of nowhere. The highlight must have been when he dealt 16 damage out of nowhere using Goblin Lightning (Goblin Legionnaire in the list, 4 mana red instant) + Devious Calormencor (Kami of False Hope in our list, a Boros 4-mana play) + Incendiary Exposition (Kaijin of the Vanishing Touch in our list, one mana red instant) to cast Goblin Lightning, copy it with the Calormencor, then sacrifice the two goblins and two other creatures to Exposition (or just have two more lands to tap) to cast and copy Goblin Lightning once more. We hadn’t seen this explosive combo before, and we’re looking forward to what else Alan can show us.

Jason finished 2-1 with his Gruul () midrange deck, which was good enough for second. He highlighted cards like Hoarding Ogre, Pontificate Action (Scour in our list, under Gruul), and Sylvan Sentinel (Blademane Baku in our list, one mana green creature) as ways to apply pressure while getting value at the same time. It felt like Jason’s deck was well-oiled with all the treasures (from Ogre, Beamtown Beatstick, or Power Facilitator [Power of fire in the list]) fueling a constant stream of threats. He lost only to the overall winner, Alan, and hopefully feels good about his results.

Nick finished 3-1 with an Orzhov () control/combo deck, which was good enough to secure third. Since Jason beat Nick in the head-to-head matchup, it didn’t feel right to have Nick place over Jason just by virtue of getting a fourth game. He described his deck as “trudging through mud; sometimes you get somewhere, and sometimes you don’t.” I imagine his opponents felt similarly. His deck had only one card that cost less than three mana (Zulaport Cutthroat), so it was very susceptible to early aggression, but once his various engines were set up, it was nearly unstoppable. While he made decent use of the Ice Goblin Tunnel (Ice Tunnel in our list, 5 mana colorless artifact) tokens to stall games and get value from cards like Imperious Shadowlord (Child of Thorns in the list, 3 mana black creature) or Bastion of Remembrance, his most notable combo involved recurring an evoked Shriekmaw using Veinwitch Coven triggering off of the aforementioned Bastion of Remembrance or Zulaport Cutthroat. In the last game against Noah, he managed to gun down three giant green creatures in one turn just by recurring evoked Shriekmaws!

Derek finished in fourth place with his UB() mill deck, going 2-2 on the night. Derek has only played the cube twice, and each time, he has played UB mill. And, frankly, it’s worked pretty well for him. Unlike some of our more disorganized mill decks from previous weeks, Derek had all the heavy hitters: Folio of Fancies, Ruin Crab, Fractured Sanity, and Maddening Cacophony supported by counterspells like Essence Scatter and Neutralize. Just like last time, his deck had the ability to mill an opponent out in a snap, and he managed to gather a few wins and some very tense losses. Oh, and he also got to play with Black Lotus; lucky guy!

Kyle went 1-2 and finished in fifth place with an Abzan () value deck. He played Emissary’s Ploy and a suite of quality two-mana creatures like Cardinal of Autumn (Blessing of Leeches in the list, 2 mana white creature) or Blightland Scavenger (Ink-eyes, Servant of Oni in the list, 2 mana black creature) to accrue value. However, his deck really popped when he managed to put together cards like Vivacious Docent (Silverstorm Samurai, 4 mana Selesnya creature) and Tree Fox of Lumina (Soratami Mindsweeper in the list, 2 mana green creature) for a positive feedback loop of lifegain, card-draw, and token creatures, Embodiment of Solidarity (Grizzly Bears in the list, 4 mana green creature), for value and protection/disruption, and Vicious Inevitable (Kodama of the Center Tree in the list, one mana artifact creature) as a huge beater that scales well as he draws the games out. Ultimately, it was mana issues and unlucky pairings that led to Kyle’s downfall. But it’s nice to see him get his first win of the season!

John, another new player, went 1-2 with an interesting UR () deck. His deck included quite a few small combos, including Deadeye Navigator with a slew of creatures with valuable enters-the-battlefield effects and Narset, Parter of Veils with ‘symmetric’ draw effects that only John got to use. I also recall seeing Geist of Otherworldly Visions (Geist of the Lonely Vigil in the list, under Jeskai) creating a ton of fever tokens across the games. That will certainly put the game to a feverish pace!

Poor Noah continued a rough season with a disappointing 1-3, picking up his lone win on the bye. I don’t think Noah’s Gr () deck was particularly bad; this may have just been variance. Noah tried to relive his previous trophy with a nearly mono-green deck centered around ramp like Rampant Growth or Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary into huge monsters like Warden of the Wilds (Blinding Powder in our list, six mana green creature), Cultivator Colossus, or Roar of the Wurm ahead of schedule to pummel the opponent. Unfortunately, he had a few too many games wherein he was all mana, no plays. All ramped up with nowhere to go is a rough place to be, and hopefully Noah can rebound with his next event.

This means that Alan gets four changes, Jason gets two changes, and Nick gets one change. A “change” in our cube is a one-for-one swap of cards or editing/errata’ing two cards currently in the cube. Remember that each of these top-three finishers also gets a free land change in keeping with our season two theme: they can each swap-in a land for any card without needing to use on of their other changes for it. Moreover, since Garrett did not use his land change from last time, and Miller did not use any of his changes from last time, those pass to the winner of that session: Nick. Thus, he will get an additional two land changes and two general changes to be used before the next playthrough.

Oddly enough, after mono-color decks dominated the first five playthroughs of the cube, they had nearly disappeared from the recent sessions. The old specter reared its head again today as Alan won with the only mono-color deck in the field. While mono-color decks may not be as prevalent as once they were (since we removed/toned-down the payoffs, improved the fixing, or got better at drafting together? Who knows!), I suppose my adage from after session five is still true: if you want to win, find and play the open mono-color deck.

There was one other thing to point out from this session that may be worth watching in the near future. As of this writing, 143 out of 540 (about 26.5%) cards in our cube are custom cards (you can see these highlighted in orange when you look at the cube list). However, of cards the players deemed especially noteworthy (that I highlighted in the writeup), 16 of the 36 highlighted cards were custom cards. It doesn’t take a statistician to tell you that that is disproportionate (but if you want a statistician to tell you, at least 16 of the 36 highlighted cards being custom cards has a p-value of .0151), which means that the cards being highlighted as noteworthy are not being selected at random from the cube. In other words, custom cards are overrepresented among the cards driving the decks and dictating the games. Have we pushed our designs too far relative to the rest of the ‘traditional’ cards in the cube? And is that something we care about fixing? Food for thought. Until next time, bye for now!

Note that Garrett, Nick, and Miller finished top 3 for two consecutive sessions, so we’ve decided to combine their changelogs into one blog post. Since Garrett got 1st then 3rd, he gets five changes, plus two free land changes. Nick got 2nd then 1st, so he gets six changes, plus two free land changes. Miller got 3rd then 2nd, so he gets three changes, plus two free land changes. Let’s see what they changed!

Archway Angel -> Noggle Ransacker I’ve modified Noggle Ransacker so that it costs one mana less and makes both players discard two cards instead of one. I want to try it as a potential early disruptive creature against fragile hands that also intersects with the “opponents draws more than one card in a turn” strategy and any graveyard mechanics that may be implemented in the future. Archway Angel wasn’t seeing much play since the gates theme missed a little.
Assassinate -> It’s Big Brain Time (Your Puny Minds Cannot Fathom in our list). Assassinate is a little low power for the removal in our cube. I thought Your Puny Minds Cannot Fathom was an interesting card design, so I wanted to try to implement a card like that could be played outside of an Archenemy game. We’ll see how long it lasts, but hopefully people enjoy it.
Daggerback Basilisk -> Windswept Heath For my land change, I’m removing a middling green creature and adding a fetch land.
Dragon Bell Monk -> Collector Ouphe You’re playing equipment or treasures when the opponent drops this? Big oof.
Azorius Guildgate -> Flooded Strand
Orzhov Guildgate -> Marsh Flats
Dimir Guildate -> Polluted Delta
Boros Guildgate->Arid Mesa (Land changes) For my remaining three changes plus land change, I am removing a guildgate and adding the fetchland of the corresponding color. I don’t like needing to use so many of my changes on lands, but if the other winners don’t use their land changes, the mana-bases will never improve.

Inevitable of Keldar -> Maul of the Skyclaves
Parallax Wave -> Sword of Sinew and Steel
Gray Merchant of Asphodel -> Sword of Body and Mind
Garrett wanted to promote stronger equipment in the cube with his first three changes.
Incandescent Lance -> Booty Chaser (Boots of Speed, 3 mana blue creature, in the list) Garrett was not a fan of Incandescent Lance’s heavy red requirement, ( to equip and sacrificing a mountain mean that Garrett tagged it as effectively a mono- card). He also was not a fan of so many treasures floating around, so he decided to address both of those with this swap.
Slumbering Priestmount (Eradicate, originally under Selesnya, now under green) errata’d to cost 1 from its previous 1. This returns that card to its original design and removes the possibility of getting a 3 mana 4/5 with vigilance and tap ability in mono-white.
Cliffside Lookout’s ability errata’d to cost ,: from 4:. This will take the card from basically unplayable to a legitimate one-mana play with long-term upside in creature-based white decks.
Garrett didn’t make use of his free land changes.

Nothing submitted.

We’ve had a rapid succession of plays recently, and our seventh session is already over. Special thanks to Nick, Kyle, Noah, Miller, Joah, Tavish, and Garrett, who all gathered to play another draft. I asked each guy to write some notable cards from his deck before leaving for the night. Let’s see the standings and what the lads highlighted.
Congratulations to Nick for taking first place! Nick played a very strong Jeskai () deck with a host of removal, an exile/processor theme, and a spirits theme. Both Parallax Wave and Ulamog’s Despoiler did great work for him, but those were only the top-end of what was a deep and effective exile package. For spirits, he had cards like Like, Really Angry Spirits or Triplicate Spirits paired with lords like Drogskoll Captain or Patrician Geist. He also had the fortune of casting a turn 3 Mantis Rider four(!) times. And as a backup, he had Ruin Crab to pressure the opponent from an alternative angle. Finally, he wanted to give a shoutout to Boros Guildgate for holding his mana together, saying “I know if anyone got me, Boros Guildgate got me.”

Miller took second place with a fun RB () aggro deck. Miller has made quite an impression since joining at the beginning of season two, and he has now finished in the top three twice in a row. He just barely edge Garrett out for second place based on Opponent’s Match Win %. Miller’s deck was fairly straightforward as far as RB aggro goes, but he did have some aggressive draws that combining Hateful Deceiver (Aura Bards) with Untamed Hunger to swing for five damage on turn 3. It’s high-risk, high-reward, but most of the time, it worked out.

Garrett took third place with a fascinating UB () artifact/mill deck. After first-picking the Inevitable Primus (Kumano’s Blessing), Garrett shifted into a mill subtheme. The deck was capable of winning through artifact beatdowns or turbo mill, which made it very effective until he ran into Nick’s Jeskai tempo deck in the finals. With 40 card decks, cards like Maddening Cacophony or Fractured Sanity eat through the library quickly!

Tavish and Joah both finished 1-1-1! Joah played a GB () Value deck that he described as “The Rock.” In particular, cards Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary let him power out his threats, cards like Ulvenwald Mysteries allowed him to grind out games, and cards like Treesoul Elite (Callow Jushi in green) allowed him to pressure opponents out of games if they stumbled. Tavish played a Temur () draw/mill deck with cards like Folio of Fancies or Fevered Visions to pressure the opponent’s library with resiliency. Tavish was also the first player to cast Xyris, the Writhing Storm for its actual mana cost (instead of via Unexpected Potential.) Considering his deck, it looks fantastic if it stays on the board.

Finally, both Kyle and Noah went winless with gates decks ☹. Yes, you read that right; the first time someone decided to build a gates deck, two players build it on the same night. Kyle described his deck as Four Color Gates, whereas Noah described his as “Bad Gates Control.” It turned out that the gates payoffs were too weak to warrant the various colors and the tapped lands. Kyle gave credit to Slumbering Priestmount (Eradicate under Selesnya) and Lentic Glade (Takenuma Bleeder under green enchantments) as his best cards. Noah listed Maze’s End (even though he only had 8 gates, so he couldn’t win with it), Infinity Elemental, Ulamog’s Crusher, Mox Pearl, Azor’s Elocutors, and Genesis Hydra as his standout cards. You’ll notice that, among two gates decks, only one card that cares about gates (Maze’s End) was noteworthy.

As a result of the finishes, Nick gets four changes, Miller gets two changes, and Garrett gets one change! Remember that a change can be a one-to-one substitute of cards (e.g. Oaken Brawler becomes Helpful Pirate) or modifications to two cards in the cube without replacing them (e.g. Nick’s errata of Blighted Thoroughfare after session 5). Moreover, remember that, keeping with the theme for our season, the top three finishers also get one free change as long as the card added is a land.

Finally, just for anyone keeping stats, I wanted to include the results. Plus, this way you can verify the tie-breakers. We’ll get some changes published to you shortly. See you soon!

The sixth playthrough of the collaborative cube is in the books! We had some new additions featured, both in cards and in players. We also did a sealed playthrough this time, so expect to see some bomby decks. Let’s get into it!
Congratulations to Garrett for winning first place for the first time! Garrett went 3-0 (6-1) and claimed first place off opponents’ match win percentage with a novel RG () voltron style deck. As far as I know, this is the first time someone has tried or succeeded with this archetype. Garrett’s deck featured creatures such as Longtooth Packmate (Nezumi Shadow-Watcher in the list) or Domesticated Ridgebeast (Mark of the Oni) buffed by effects like Karplusan Endowment (Oyobi, Who Splits the Heavens) to explode for damage.

Nick took second place with a 3-0 record (6-1), losing out on first based on opponents’ match win percentage. His deck was probably the most powerful that we’ve seen in the sense that it contained Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, and Black Lotus. In what has become a permanent fixture, Nick played a RW () midrange deck with an aggressive bent. With all these mana accelerants, Nick was able to land threats ahead of tempo and bury opponents before they could stabilize.

Newcomer Miller took third place with a 1-1 record. He played a RB () aggro deck featuring some drain effects (e.g. Gray Merchant of Asphodel) to finish off the opponent. The centerpiece of Miller’s deck must have been his Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, which is my nomination for the most powerful card in the cube. I’ve seen that card win multiple games by itself.

Greg scored his first win of the cube as he finished in fourth place with a UW () control deck. In classic UW style, his deck featured instant speed interaction like Counterspell paired with value engines like Spritehome (Genju of the Fields). Unlike the traditional builds, it featured Weight Advantage paired with cards like Ruin Crab or Sailor of Means to develop real board presence really fast.

Kyle scored fifth place with a GB () graveyard-based value deck. Unfortunately, he needed to leave after round two, so we didn’t quite get to watch his deck realize his potential. He’s always a threat to take down the whole draft, and I’m sure we’ll see him near the top of the leaderboard in the coming weeks (he is tied for the trophy lead, after all).

Finally, newcomer Mack had an unfortunate night with his RB () aggro deck. The deck was very low to the ground and had the potential to apply strong pressure early, but, as often happens in sealed, it struggled to close the door before the opponents’ bombs started hitting the battlefield. Hopefully he’ll have better luck on his next attempt!

Since we did sealed, we ended up using all but about 15 cards in the cube! When nearly every card is in play, what colors were most played?

2	1	3	4	2

Note that, for 6 two-color decks, the expected number of decks playing each color (assuming equal representation) is 2.4. Thus, we can see Red was a little over-represented and Blue was under-represented. I don’t think this is necessarily indicative of a power imbalance in the colors – we have seen oppressive blue-based decks in the past. Rather, it may reflect that the Red cards are more universally/generically powerful, whereas Blue cards are more synergistically/conditionally powerful. Since we played sealed, synergy was likely taking a backseat to raw power. Of course, any statistician could tell you the discrepancy could also simply be due to random variation, and that there isn’t anything significant here. That’s my impression, as well.

Finally, in keeping with our new policy for updating the cube, first place can change four cards, second place can change two cards, and third place can change one card. A ‘change’ now counts as replacing one card with another or revising up to two cards. We also have a theme of ‘lands’ for this season, which means players changing a card (i.e. first, second, and third) can also swap a land into the cube without using one of their allocated changes.
As a result, we can look forward to four changes (plus possibly a land) from Garrett, two (plus a land) from Nick, and one (plus a land) from Miller. See you next time!

Bladebrand -> Bastion of Remembrance
Bringer of Agonies (Cunning Bandit) -> Prideful Dead (Pride of Conquerors)
Errata Blighted Thoroughfare (Patron of the Kitsune): “Whenever a nontoken creature you control is put into the graveyard, target creature an opponent controls gets -1/-1…”

I want my combo back. Before Son of Dao Eshram was removed after the second playthrough, there was an infinite combo. I’m now reinventing it: Blighted Thoroughfare + Prideful Dead + Bastion of Remembrance or a buffed Zulaport Cutthroat + another creature to start is a win. Sacrifice a creature to Thoroughfare to give Prideful Dead -1/-1, killing it (since Thoroughfare already gave -0/-1). You get a 2/1 (a 2/2 with -0/-1) zombie from Thoroughfare to the creature dying. Prideful dead returns to the battlefield. Sacrifice that zombie and target Prideful dead with the -1/-1 from a creature dying, killing Prideful dead and creating a zombie. Prideful dead returns. Every time you do this, you drain twice from Bastion. Repeat until the opponent loses. Since this is a three-card combo, I think it’s safe to seed into the cube.

Oaken Brawler -> Helpful Pirate (Pirate)
Words of Wisdom -> Helpful Zombie (Zombie)
Souldrinker -> Helpful Machine (Machine God’s Effigy)
Yuki-Onna -> Helpful Guard (Guard Duty)
Centaur Battlemaster -> Helpful Bird (Bird)
Go-Shintai of Boundless Vigor -> Helpful Beast (Beast)
Noah leaves us a Helpful parting gift 😊

Foment of Fecundity (Takeno’s Cavalry) -> Papa Muy Caliente (Red-Hot Hottie) (You've got to see the art on this one; check it out in the list!)
Sentry Oak -> Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
Immolation Protocol (Akki Raider) -> Twinferno

On July 27, we reconvened for the fifth draft of the collaborative cube. Thank you to Garrett, Nick, Kyle, Tavish, Noah, and Derek for playing, and thank you to Derek for hosting! As the title suggests, mono-color was the place to be this draft (more on that later in the blog), so let’s look at how things played out.

Congratulations to Noah for his first draft win, going 2-0-1 with a powerful mono-green () deck! His deck was marked by crazy acceleration like Mox Emerald and Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary into some powerful finishers like Ulamog’s Crusher and Warden of the Wilds (Blinding Powder). The most notable moment came in the deciding game of round 3 against Kyle when Noah dropped a turn 2 Rofellos into a turn 3 Warden of the Wilds to clear out Kyle’s fast start and stabilize into an easy win to seal first place.

Nick took second place on tie-breakers with a 2-1 match record (5-2 game record). He piloted what he described as a RB combo deck focusing on the Haunter of Bones (Fumiko the Lowblood) and Blighted Thoroughfare (Patron of the Kitsune) combo plus a touch of Smokestack thrown in for good measure. With a curve stopping at , Dark Confidant also slotted perfectly into his deck to grind opponents down. He also played the new Power Facilitator (power of fire) that Kyle added last time!

Kyle took third place with a 2-1 match record (5-3 game record) with his mostly mono-Red () treasure deck that was probably the most contentious deck of the night. Kyle proved the effectiveness of most of the treasure cards he added recently (like Professional Face-Breaker) or Beamtown Beatstick) as he rampaged his way to accelerated victories. Despite not having any blue or black lands, Kyle managed to cast the Nicol Bolas, God-Pharoah that he had put into the cube off of only treasure and Majestic Cataracts (Walker of Secret Ways). His additions from last time certainly made quite the splash (get it?)!

Noble Tavish took fourth place despite going 4-3 in games. How? He conceded his round 1 match to Noah after winning it based on an improper interpretation of the process mechanic (reminder: to process X, put X cards an opponent owns from exile into his graveyard). As a result, Tavish went 1-2 (4-3 in games) for the best fourth place finish we’ve seen. He played the RW () exile/delirium deck (this deck seems to be a mainstay at the tables recently) highlighted by enablers like Conclave Tribunal or Descend upon the Sinful into the biggest, baddest processor payoff, Ulamog’s Despoiler. As for delirium, we saw Lorehold Excavation, Gibbering Fiend, Sin Prodder, and the aforementioned Descend Upon the Sinful as delirium value packages that could grind out games.

Unfortunate Garrett took another 1-2 with a really interesting BGr () Call of the Wilds deck. He ran Nick over in match one with turn 2 Rishkar, Peema Renegage and turn 3 Deadbridge Goliaths or Kruskan Terravores (Throat Slitter) in multiple games backed up by Elvish Visionary, Blightland Scavenger (Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni in the list), and Journey to Eternity in case his blazing start didn’t finish the opponent. Unfortunately, his lack of interaction (this deck could have used the shriekmaw or a ravenous chupacabra really badly) meant he couldn’t quite keep up against Kyle or Tavish’s red and white decks. This is my pick for most interesting deck of the week, and I think it embodies what is best about our cube.

Finally, Derek managed to secure a 0-2-1 in his first playthrough (and first magic in nearly a year) with a fascinating UG () turbo-mill deck. His deck was highlighted with heavy-hitting mill cards like Increasing Confusion, Folio of Fancies, and Startled Awake backed up by Hard Evidence for survival or Rashmi, Eternities Crafter for value. Despite going 0-2-1, Derek had some very close games; there were two games (one against Nick, one against Kyle) wherein he was simply half a turn cycle away from milling the opponent out from over 14 cards. These bottom two finishing decks may not have been the most successful, but they were certainly the most novel/interesting builds of the week, and I hope all of our competitors feel good about their deckbuilding and playing.

With these finishes, Noah will change out 4 cards, Nick will change 3, Kyle will change 2, and Tavish, Garrett, and Derek each get to change 1. It’s becoming too much to track unspent changes, so I’m going to do a reset; any unspent changes not submitted by August 3 will be forfeited. Based on my count, the unspent changes available are:

These 21 out of 540 cards represent nearly 4% of the cube (roughly 10.5 cards per 6-person draft), so this is a chance to make a substantial change going forward. We saw how Kyle’s 7 swaps from last time effectively created a new archetype (red treasure) that immediately came to prominence, so Noah especially has a chance to seed an archetype should he desire. Hopefully everyone decided to collaborate on our cube 😊

In lieu of a color breakdown, I want to address a topic of debate among the drafters from this past week: the prevalence of mono-color decks. Given that two mono-color decks were playing for first at the end of the night, some statistics regarding mono-color vs. multi-color were requested. For example, I’ve mentioned that RW decks seem to be a mainstay at the tables nowadays, but how do they compare to going just mono-red or mono-white? Well, for mono-red or red with a splash, drafters have gone: 2-1 (Kyle session 5), 3-0 (Kyle session 3) for a total of 5-1 across the drafts. Nick went 3-0 going mono-white (with a miniscule red splash) in session 1. However, when looking at legitimate red-white decks (not just mono-color splashing a few cards), drafters have gone: 0-3 (Garrett session 3), 1-2 (Garrett session 4 (RWb exile), 1-2 (Tavish session 5) for a record of 2-7. It’s not uncommon for RW decks to be worse than mono-red or mono-white decks; the vintage cube or arena cube both follow the same trend. However, it is uncommon for them to be that much worse.

This leads to the question: are mono-color decks superior to all other deck choices? I won’t get into the philosophical or theoretical advantages of mono-color decks, but empirically, in this cube, they probably are superior. For five consecutive drafts, the top finisher has been playing a(n effectively) mono-color deck, and it hasn't always been the same person or same color:
Session 1: Nick goes 3-0 with Mono-white
Session 2: Kyle goes 3-0 with Mono-blue
Session 3: Kyle wins with mono-red mountain value
Session 4: Nick wins with basically mono-U splashing a little white (something like 17-6 breakdown; this is the most diverse 'mono-color' deck that has won)
Session 5: Noah goes 2-0-1 with mono-green
Not only are the mono-color decks topping the results, but they are also the most consistent archetypes:
Overall: 21-4-2 (for a win-rate of about 81.5% counting Draws as half a win)
Mono-white: 3-0
Mono-blue: 8-0-1
Mono-black: 3-3
Mono-red: 5-1
Mono-green: 2-0-1

The mono-red loss was to mono-green. One of the mono-black losses was to another mono-black deck (in the same draft). When paired against non-mono-color decks, mono-color decks are 19-2-2 (about 87% win-rate).

Out of nine mono-color drafts (across five total drafts so far), only one has gone worse than 2-1 (and that was the second mono-black deck at the table going 1-2). When we look at the numbers, it's clear: if you want to win, find whichever color isn't being drafted by more than one other person and draft that. If we don’t want the cube to continue to be dominated by mono-color decks, we need to make concerted efforts to nerf the mono-color payoffs or improve the incentives (e.g. fixing) to play multi-color decks. On the other hand, if you enjoy throwing 15 of the same basic land into your deck and calling that a build – well, welcome home.

A little while ago, we played our fourth session of the Collaborative Cube. Thank you to Dan, Noah, Kyle, Garrett, Tavish, and Nick for attending this playthrough, and congratulations to Nick for his victory! We had a variety of interesting decks, so let’s get into the breakdown.

Nick won the day 3-0 with his Uw (but really, mostly mono ) Tempo control deck focusing heavily on counter magic like Force of Will (since removed) and Counterspell. The deck had something like seven instances of counter magic paired with some flash creatures and a minor spirit sub-theme (e.g. Drogskoll Captain) to disrupt and pressure the opponents.

Kyle went 2-1 and took second with a 5-color () Worldknit deck. He played most of the off-color basic cycle (e.g. Wight of the Crimson Order [Crawling Filth in the card list]) to good effect, losing only to Nick in the final round. Another nice showing by the maestro!

Newcomer Dan went 0-0-1 and took third on first foray. Unfortunately, he had to leave before I could get information on his deck, but I think it was a UB-based control deck. What an ambitious choice for a newcomer!

Garrett went 1-2 and took fourth with a Mardu () exile deck. Despite being plagued by consistent mana issues, he managed to scrape together a few good games, such as the one wherein he managed to drop a turn 5 Ulamog’s Despoiler with processor to Armageddon the board!

Tavish went 0-2-1 to claim fifth place with his GRw (mostly splashing ) Token value deck. Cardinal of Autumn (Blessing of Leeches) and Sproutback Gladekeeper (Skullsnatcher) were the two cards that most stood out from a deck that could attack from multiple angles. I’m surprised his record wasn’t better given what I saw from him.

Finally, Noah went 0-1 with a BW () midrange deck after losing his first match to Kyle and needing to retire early.

As a result of these finishes, Nick will swap four cards, Kyle will swap three cards, Dan will swap two cards, and Garrett, Tavish, and Noah will each swap one card. As of this writing, Nick and Kyle have already made their swaps, so only Dan, Garrett, Tavish, and Noah will make further swaps from this session.

No writeup this time, but we have some changes from prior cube runs that have been submitted.

##Nick Decided to Change
Reaper of the Tangle (Gnarled Mass) -> Sarkhan, Caller of Dragons (Sarkhan, Soul Aflame)
Riddle of Bala-Ged (Riddle of Lightning) -> Eomer of the Riddermark
Sovereign's Realm -> Rabbit Battery
Worldknit -> Nahiri's Warcrafting

Riddle of Bala-ged did a poor balance imitation since there would always be at least one creature on the battlefield, and it was too underwhelming as a 2/2 as well.
Sovereign's Realm and Worldknit can be fun cards, but they have been played almost every draft now, and it feels too disruptive for the draft portion to have one player going 5 color every draft. We might bring them back in the future, but I want to try the cube without them for an iteration or two.

##Kyle Decided to Change
Force of Will -> Professional Face-Breaker
Battle-mad Ronin -> Beamtown Beatstick
Battle Rampart -> Power Facilitator (Power of Fire)
Slag Strider -> Flame Slash
Smelt -> Hazoret the Fervent
Crushing Pain -> Ulamog's Crusher
Trolls of Tel-Jilad -> Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Kyle wanted to grant red some power surrounding treasure generation while cleaning out some of the lower-powered red cards. He also wanted to give a large colorless payoff or a large treasure payoff while reducing the density of counterspells in the cube.
This includes his batch 3 and batch 4 changes, which is why he gets 7.

##Tavish Decided to Change
Razor Swine -> Giant Cindermaw

You’ll need to hold your breath a little longer, as not all of our competitors have listed their suggested changes. All the same, here is what I have so far:

Two-headed Cerebus -> Ruin Crab: Two-headed Cerebus is just a bit below rate, and Ruin Crab will be a premium card for our fledgling mill theme.
Better Duress (Duress) is errata’d such that if a player does not discard a card rather than reveal a card, the casting player gets to scry 1 and fateseal 1. Our players were playing with it like this anyway, so this change brings the cards rules to align with its de facto functionality.
Unnatural Siege (Unnatural Speed) now costs instead of . The mana cost was simply too ugly, and it probably isn’t too strong at 2BB.

I’ll update this announcement as more of the swaps come through.

On May 11, we had our third playthrough of the Collaborative Cube! Thanks to Nick, Garrett, Noah, Charles, Tavish, and Kyle for participating. After another long draft period (again, there are a lot of new cards to read), we had a three-round tournament full of close and exciting games!

At this point, it’s fair to say that it’s Kyle’s cube, and we’re just playing in it. Kyle claimed first place for the second consecutive session, once again going 3-0. This time, he played what he described as a “Mountain value” deck focusing on Mountains entering and leaving play and a heavy devotion to red (while also splashing a little white). Kyle has had great success with three very different archetypes; congratulations to Kyle for his mastery!

Nick secured second place with a 2-0-1 playing a Uw tempo/control deck centered around Spritehome and Brineborn Cutthroat when ahead and Farewell and Descend Upon the Sinful when behind. Supported by cards like Counterspell, Logic Knot, and Dig Through Time, it was incredibly disruptive. It was also incredibly long, which resulted in a round 1 draw with Noah. Our boy even sided in Smokestack for a few matchups, so kudos to him!

Tavish came in third with a 2-1 record, losing only to Kyle in the final round! Tavish had continuously improved across prior playthroughs, and we’re all happy to see him find the success we knew was coming! He leveraged a Weight Advantage in a ‘Butts’ deck to great effect, improving what are already universally strong cards like Life Crafter (Genju of the Falls in our list) while also taking advantage of cards no one else really wanted like Seraph of Dawn (how does for a 4/4 lifelink flying sound?). Well done to Tavish for finding and utilizing an open lane!

Noah came in fourth with a 1-1-1 record by piloting a ramp/stompy deck that accelerated out massive threats like Genesis Hydra and Warden of the Wilds (Blinding Powder) ahead of schedule with Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Fyndhorn Elves, and Mox Emerald. His deck had a really nasty combo of Genesis Hydra and Fecund Tombs (Split-Tail Miko) that really only needed two forests to go off. He also has the distinction of dealing all twenty damage in a game against Nick with Lightning Shrieker found continuously off a recurring Genesis Hydra.

Garrett had a rough night, going 0-3 with a Boros () Aggro deck. In an interesting twist, his aggro deck had a strong delirium component, taking advantage of cards like Dragon’s Rage Channeler or Gibbering Fiend as payoffs and Lorehold Excavation and Incandescent Lance (Genju of the Spires) as enablers (along with the aforementioned Dragon’s Rage Channeler). Garrett went 1-2 in each of his three matches (against the top three finishers, as well!) and probably could have had a much different record with a few more opportune draws.

Our newest player (or most longstanding if you count his Magic experience from the 90’s) Charles was baptized with an 0-3 record and finished sixth. He piloted an interesting recursion deck with cards like Mnemonic Wall, Entreat the Dead, Bone Splinters, Master of Death, and Sin Eater (Hundred Talon Strike), topped off with Lord of the Void. The deck also had some disruptive elements like coupling Baral, Chief of Compliance with Essence Scatter and similar cards. On the whole, the core of the deck was intimidating, but there was some extra chaff gumming things up, like Tormented Soul or Untamed Hunger. I think Charles had some nice ideas, and with a little more deckbuilding experience, he will find himself winning with regularity. Also, poor guy got Smokestack’d in his first cube draft.

As a result of these finishes, Kyle will swap four cards, Nick will swap three cards, Tavish will swap two cards, and Noah, Garrett, and Charles will each get to swap one card. Noah also deferred his swap from the last session, so we may see two changes from him in the upcoming writeup.

Speaking of swaps, how did our most recent batch play out? Pretty well! Kyle was Lightning Bolting people, Garrett was playing Robin Hood with Robber of the Rich, Tavish played the Go-Shintai of Boundless Vigor, and Noah rocked the Mana Geode in his ramp deck. Nick had Carnage Priest as a sideboard card for when he would swap into black, an option given to him by Sean’s change. Despite playing RW aggro, Garrett chose not to play Legion of the Faithful (the same card Chris ‘splashed’ in his mono-black deck last time), so maybe that nerf came down on it too hard. All in all, I think many of the changes from last time were shown favorably. Good job, team!

Finally, how are the colors? Thankfully, we had no one running a five-color Sovereign’s Domain deck this time (first time that’s happened, by the way), so we can get an authentic read on the color breakdown:

with Kyle playing Rw, Nick playing Uw, Tavish playing GW, Noah playing RG, Garrett playing RW, and Charles playing UB (note that a lowercase letter means the player was only splashing it; for example, I counted Garrett and Tavish as both playing and counted Nick’s and Kyle’s very minor splashes (roughly 2-3 cards apiece) as half a white player combined). What a Stunning Reversal! Black went from the most played color the past two times (including two players playing effectively mono-black in the same draft) to only being played in one deck! Alternatively, Red went from practically nothing to the top-played color. While a great deal of this is going to be natural variance, it does offer the gentle suggestion that efforts to balance the colors are paying off. Everyone played two-color decks, all styles (aggro, midrange, and control) were represented, and every color but black had solid representation. If we want the cube to be more ‘standard,’ this is how that looks.

The next writeup will be detailing the changes our competitors make to the cube. Until then, bye for now.

Jason has asked me to post this publicly so we can have a common point of reference and a discussion regarding some of the ideas herein. He has proposed the following courses of action to help with some of the fixing in the cube:

1. Replace one set of guildgates (=the least useful fixing) with a set of the Baldur pick-a-color gates (to keep gate synergy) plus a set of either thriving lands or (my preference) alaran panoramas.

2. Get a full megacycle of the 3-color tap lands, or even triomes.

3. Get a full megacycle of signets or talismans since they're both ramp and fixing.

4. Add a few of the common fetch lands (evolving wilds, terminal moraine, etc). Probably don't need the rare ones.

5. Add in some any-color fixing, like darksteel ingot, rupture spire, and the like. (There's 1 gateway plaza now & not much else).

He proposed that this would be a collective/collaborative change independent of the iterative changes we made each week. What do you think about the proposal?

On April 29, we had our second playthrough of the Collaborative Cube! Thanks to Jason, Noah, Nick, Chris, Sean, and Kyle for playing, and special thanks to Kyle for creating a custom travelling box for the cube! After a long draft period (to be fair, a lot of these cards were brand new to most people), we had another three-round tournament. Was it fun? I sincerely hope that everyone had a good time, but there were certainly a fair share of decks that must have been frustrating to play against!

Kyle (3-0) won first place with a mostly blue (splashing white) control deck. After seeing that blue was practically undrafted in the first draft (and through most of the first pack of this draft!), Kyle decided to move in on the color and reaped dividends for it. I heard a lot of counter spells coming from his side of the battlefield; has he finally embraced the evil ways of blue?

Nick (2-1) won second place with an attempted mono-black deck. For the second straight session, Nick attempted a mono-color deck only to fail to meet the necessary number of playables in his color. This time, he was forced to splash four white cards. Despite this, he managed to use the heavy-black cards like Hunter of Bones (Fumiko the Lowblood in our cube list) and Blighted Thoroughfare (Patron of the Kitsune in our list) in conjunction with two Gray Merchant of Asphodels to secure second place.

The rest of our finishers went 1-2, and the order is determined on tie-breaks. I determined them by win percent in games among the 1-2 finishers.

Sean (1-2) secured third place by going 1-0 against Noah and 0-2 against Kyle and Nick. Sean was the only RG drafter of the night and produced a deck that would drop massive creatures (with flying in RG?!) such as Balor or Argathya, Progenitor of Dragons (Phatom Wings in our list) consistently to pressure the opponent. Sean lost multiple games against opponents at less than 5 life, and his record very well could have been better had one or two draws of the top been kinder to him.

Noah (1-2) lost vs. Sean but beat Jason to secure fourth. He played a five-color Sovereign’s Realm deck, which marks the second consecutive session that someone played that deck. Unlike Chris’ deck last time that used a variety of top-of-the-library manipulation cards, Noah’s deck relied on cards like Azor’s Elocutors and Tree Fox of Lumina (Sortami Mindsweeper in our list) to pressure the opponent indirectly while dropping a litany of bombs. Even if it isn’t winning at an above-average clip, Sovereign’s Realm has headlined a deck both weeks.

Jason (1-2) finished fifth on tiebreakers, losing to Noah but beating Chris to secure the .500 within-tier win rate. Jason played an interesting U/B deck predicated on stalling things out with Fog Bank or Guard Gomazoa, then milling the opponent out with cards like Fractured Sanity or Startled Awake. When the deck worked, it was truly terrifying for anyone that couldn’t pressure through it or counter the mill. Unfortunately for Jason, the deck was rather inconsistent for him tonight. We’ll see if his next deck is more cooperative for him.

Chris (1-2) finished sixth by losing his one within-tier match against Jason. Chris drafted his own mono-black deck. That’s right, two drafters at the same table (sitting right next to each other) decided to draft mono-black! Chris said he noticed a lot of powerful black cards going late in the pack (Nick was trying to wheel them) and moved in midway through pack one. Unlike Nick’s mono-black deck focused on creatures dying, Chris’ deck focused a little more on punisher effects and card draw, including things like Maze’s End with a few gates, Baldur’s Gate to filter the off-color gates into black mana, Trading Post and Underworld Connections for a great deal of sustain, and, of course, his own Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Despite finishing 1-2, he did establish his superiority as the mono-black pilot by beating Nick in a mirror match, including winning game three by dealing 10 points of non-combat damage in a single turn by combining the Gray Merchant trigger with an Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted downtick. Funnily enough, he also ran a Legion of the Faithful (Ribbons of the Reikai in our list) off an Unexpected Potential. A card truly was unexpected in his mono-black deck!

As a result of these finishes, Kyle will swap four cards, Nick will swap three cards, Sean will swap two cards, and Noah, Jason, and Chris will each swap one card from the cube. We’ll detail those in the next blogpost.

Speaking of swaps, how did the previous swaps affect the drafting and gameplay? Honestly, not very much. I saw Better Demolish in Sean’s sideboard, but I didn’t see or hear it get played. Nick did maindeck the Phyrexian Reclamation that Greg added last time to give his grindy black deck some recursion, and it was certainly better for him that Unspeakable Symbol would have been, so nice addition by Greg! Most of the other changes weren’t in the draft, so we’ll need to wait and see how well they play out.

Finally, how do the colors look? The breakdown for the colors this session (excluding Noah’s cards in his 5-color deck) were:

With Jason playing UB, Kyle playing Uw, Nick playing Bw, Chris playing mono-black (actual mono-black, unlike Nick), and Sean playing RG. Like last time, Black was the most drafted color, and Red was once again among the least popular colors. The results may be messed up by two players attempting to go mono-black. Of course, it may also say something about the quality of the black cards compared to other cards in the cube that two separate drafters were able to attempt mono-black and end up with reasonable decks while a third drafter also grabbed some cards. Two points is too early to tell, but we’ll see if this trend of black excellence continues.

The next blog post will detail the changes that our competitors have chosen to make to the cube. We’ll see you then!

On April 21, we had our first draft of the cube! Thank you to Jason, Nick, Kyle, and Chris for curating the initial list of 540 cards, and special thanks to Kyle for helping with the physical logistics (e.g. sleeving and storage) of the cube for the time being. Finally, thank you to Kyle, Nick, Joshua, Tavish, Chris, and Greg for attending the first playthrough of the cube!

After an interesting draft portion navigating such a fresh pool of cards (including many custom cards that had literally never been drafted), we had a really fun three round tournament. The results:

1. Nick secured first and a 3-0 performance with a disruptive, almost mono-white deck focused around exile effects and tempo (e.g. Skyclave Apparition).
2. Kyle got second place (off a head-to-head tiebreaker) with a 2-1 G/B deck using many of the custom cards in the cube!
3. Chris got third place (2-1) with a zany Sovereign's Realm deck that played five colors, Split Screen, and tapped into the cube's top-of-library manipulation theme (e.g. Dakra Mystic). His was probably my choice for most fun deck of the evening.
4. Joshua came in fourth with a 1-1-1 showing using an Orzhov deck that could gain a ton of life then turn around and spend it in ways to win (e.g. Souldrinker).
5. Greg piloted an interesting RBu (i.e. Grixis) deck with cards such as Nekusar to an unfortunate 0-2-1 record. Interestingly, he was the only player besides Chris to play blue. Was he a victim of rough matchups and mana issues, or does Grixis need some support in the cube?
6. Finally, Tavish built a bomby GB deck also including many of the custom cards in the cube (and Lord of the Void), but he ended up falling to 0-3 in three very close and grindy matches. He continues to get better and better, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was at the top of the results sooner rather than later.

Excluding Chris, who played a rainbow deck on the back of Sovereign's Realm, the color breakdown was

with only Greg playing a little blue and Nick splashing a little red. Everyone besides Nick (again, excluding Chris) ended up playing a black deck. Is this indicative of a color imbalance in the cube, with UR needing a buff and Black needing a nerf? We'll let time tell. Anecdotally, there were quite a few powerful blue and red cards wheeling, but most of them required a mono-color commitment that the drafters couldn't or wouldn't make.

Speaking of mono-color, Nick stated that he tried to build a mono-white deck, but he was deficient in playables and needed to splash red to get up to 23 non-lands. Can the cube support a mono-color deck if there are other players also playing that color? At roughly 80 white cards and 40 colorless cards, there are an expected 40 white and 20 colorless cards opened in a 6 man draft. If there are 2.2 white drafters and 6 colorless drafters (as in this particular draft), that would mean Nick would get an estimated ~18 white cards and ~3 colorless cards, which would leave him 2 playables short of a deck (really, it's more like 3-4 playables short; mono-color decks will usually run fewer lands since they don't need to balance their colors of mana). Granted, had Nick tried mono-red or mono-blue instead, he would have had a predicted 26 playables or 29 playables, respectively. Of course, all of this assumes that all of the cards in a color are maindeck playable, which may be a bold assumption given the amount of sideboard cards included in the cube. All this is to say that trying to go mono-color in the cube will be very difficult if even one other player is drafting your color as one of his primary colors. This may be worth considering as we iterate upon the cards.

There were also some comments by the players regarding the nature of removal in the cube. There is a lot of removal, but most of it is sorcery speed, and a lot of it is exile based. This means that games rarely change in the combat phase (e.g. very little in the way of instant-speed removal of a blocker) and graveyard synergies are hampered when exile-based removal just removes cards from the game instead. Whether this is an issue or not depends upon your own perspective, which is the fun of the cube: since we all share in the creation, you can offer your own direction with each iteration!

Speaking of iteration, based on the results of the first draft, Nick will replace or revise four cards, Kyle will do three cards, Chris can do two cards, and Joshua, Greg, and Tavish can revise or replace one card. This will change about 2% of the cube. Is this change large enough to make a difference, or will the games play out similarly next time? Only time will tell!

Our next post will be a summary of the changes made. Until next time, bye for now!