Welcome to the Pai Gow Cube!

The Pai Gow cube is a curated collection of cards specifically designed for the pack wars format known as Pai Gow (or sometimes "Booster Blitz"). Cube matches are played with a single booster pack per player, and there is no drafting involved. The gameplay is whimsical and high-variance, yet the deck building is strategic and deep. Initial feedback for the cube has been incredibly positive, and I highly encourage you to try it out! Below is a quick introduction to the format, followed by some specific notes about cube themes and card choices.

How to Play Pai Gow

To play Pai Gow, both players take a single 15-card booster pack randomly from the cube, and they subdivide their pack into five face-down piles ("decks"), each containing three cards. After building, each player randomly selects one of their five decks and plays a game of Magic with the following rules:

-Each player's entire three card library starts in their hand. Players do not lose the game from drawing from an empty library.

-You have unlimited access to mana of any color and type.

-Your starting life total is 5.

After completing the game, players will play again with one of their four remaining decks selected at random. After five games, the player with the best record wins the match. Some additional notes:

-Draws happen. Frequently. If neither player can win the game, both players can agree to a draw.

-The player who finishes building their decks first gets to go first in the first game. For the remaining games, the player who lost the previous game gets to go first. In the case of a draw, starting player alternates.

-If, after five games, the score is tied, the tie is broken as follows: Shuffle both of the 15 card packs used into one pile of 30 cards, and randomly deal three cards to both players. Play another game with your random pile. Repeat this process until the tie is broken. Yes the tiebreaker is super random, but it's fun. Before a tiebreaker game, you may mulligan your random three card pile, setting it aside and receiving a random two card pile (or one card if you do this twice).

A Note on "Duds"

Part of the skill of traditional Pai Gow with a normal booster pack comes from the fact that lots of cards do nothing. Lands, draw spells, ramp, tutors, scrying, and many other effects are completely useless in a game of Pai Gow. When the power levels of the cards are varied, the player has to decide how best to allocate their resources between their five decks. To replicate this experience, the cube intentionally contains many cards that are weak that players must figure out how to utilize when building. There are nowhere near as many as you might find in a normal pack, but if cards like Accursed Centaur, Canopy Claws, or Liquimetal Coating are in your pack, you have to include them in one of your five decks. Notably, the cube contains the entire Thornwood Falls cycle and a single copy of each basic land.

Build-Arounds

Opening your first 15 card pack from this cube can be an overwhelming experience--where do you even start? To help this, the cube is filled to the brim with build-arounds: cards that guide your deck-building process. Immaculate Magistrate likes to be paired with other elves, Guttersnipe wants to go with spells, and Briarberry Cohort gets a boost if you pair it with a fellow blue creature. Ageless Entity likes lifegain, Rosie Cotton of South Lane likes fellow token makers, and Phylactery Lich can go from completely unplayable to being a huge bomb depending on whether you have an artifact to pair it with. Naomi, Pillar of Order needs a very specific deck construction but is incredibly powerful when she works. Identifying the synergies among your cards makes sifting through your pack an exciting experience and really helps to guide your deck-building.

A Note on Turn 1 Kills

Building decks that can win on turn one is an essential part of the Pai Gow experience. For example, a pack containing Raging Goblin and Fists of the Anvil will likely win on turn one on the play. However, Lava Axe effects that can win the game own their own are not fun and I strongly suggest that you leave them out of your Pai Gow cubes. Players need to assemble their turn-one-wins, and many such packs are incredibly fragile and reliant on being on the play. The only exception to this rule is Hanabi Blast which non-deterministically wins by itself on turn one, and is a much beloved inclusion in the cube. Notably, we have even determined Lava Spike effects to be too strong, and when it comes to burn that can target players, two is the magic number.

Individual Card Notes

-In order to reduce complexity, we have prioritized iconic cards in the construction of the cube. Serra Angel, Hill Giant, Grizzly Bears, Giant Spider, Wind Drake, Doom Blade, Boomerang, Giant Growth are simple cards that give the cube a classical Magic feel.

-Serra Avatar is errataed in the cube. It's a fun card, but it's triggered "shuffle" ability is completely removed for power level reasons.

-There are two un-cards in the cube: Double Dip works incredibly well within a Pai Gow match, and Six-y Beast has lead to incredibly fun moments. Playtest cards Control Win Condition and Patient Turtle are recent additions to the cube that we think will fit well.

-Many cards in the cube are members of the "Four Club," an affectionate name for cards that are incredibly good at dealing four damage, and need a little help getting to five to win the game. Marrow Bats, Mortis Dogs, Caustic Hound and Lightning Elemental are great at doing four damage out of the five needed. How will you finish off your opponent?

-There are a few "infinite" cards in the cube. Looming Shade can be arbitrarily large, and Untamed Might is as big of a pump spell as you want it to be. Honor Guard, Wall of Fire, and Firebreathing can be used infinitely, and Hate Weaver and Spirit Weaver can be paired to give infinite buffs to other creatures.

-Some notable cards that can completely takeover games include Sylvan Offering, Hunted Phantasm, and Measure of Wickedness. If you can find a way to break these symmetrical effects, they are some of the most powerful cards in the cube.

-Morphs are a little risky, since they give an advantage to players with experience playing the cube. However, there are enough morphs that even the cube designers can't remember them all and are often surprised, and morphs lead to fun gameplay.

So you want to build your own Pai Gow Cube?

Do it. The best thing about Pai Gow is that you can play with any pile of cards, no matter how random, and make changes as you go. A varied power level works well in Pai Gow, so the format is very forgiving, and even quickly made cubes are incredibly fun. If you are making a Pai Gow cube of your own, here are some tips:

-I advise your cube to be approximately three-fifths creatures.

-In general, modal cards are excellent. The flexibility of cards like Selesnya Charm and Mardu Charm makes them some of the strongest cards in the cube. Cards like Ghor-Clan Savage and Maniacal Rage that can unexpectedly act as modal cards are especially desirable.

-Cards with non-mana costs are incredibly interesting in Pai Gow gameplay. Glorifier of Dusk and Skeletal Kathari have abilities that come with a huge cost. Anything that makes you discard a card like Frenetic Ogre gives you a way to make use of duds. Avatar of Discord is a cube favorite.

-For a while, this cube had a huge "Grizzly Bear problem." When finding build-arounds, there are tons of cards like Blood Researcher and Conclave Mentor that are 2/2s with minor upsides. If you include too many of these, every pack will just be a giant pile of random 2/2s and deck-building becomes paralyzing. With only five life points, creature sizing is restricted, but don't be afraid to vary the creature sizes, and don't overload yourself on low-impact build-arounds.

-Removal isn't sexy. Proactive threats are really fun to add, but it can be tricky to find interaction that really fits in Pai Gow. Be sure to add plenty of kills spells or the gameplay will really suffer, and sometimes you just need to add random kill spells to make sure there is enough interaction in the cube.

-From experience, build-arounds are best when they look for common attributes like color and card type. As much as I love cards like Griffin Rider, it just isn't fun when your build-around is turned off most of the time.

Special Thanks

To conclude, I'd like to extend a huge shoutout to all the many playtesters of the Pai Gow cube, especially lead play designer Andrew Elenbogen.