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.