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!