Many drafts to catch up on. Drafted a fascinating cube called Booster Tutor Desert. You are forced to include 3 booster tutors in your deck, and then when you cast them, you crack a pack and that tutored card replaces that tutor for the rest of the draft. Very interesting idea, I have many thoughts.

Made a new cube built around my favorite land – Drownyard Temple. The biggest obstacle for the cube was that drownyard temple is terrible. I was faced with two choices, a huge number in the pool, or they’re in the basic land station. I went with the basics box since they would feel terrible to pick.

Drafted Spy Games for the 2nd time now. A mono-U cube based around learning hidden information. The previous draft I played cards that were good on rate and ignored the theme of the cube and was successful. A lot of those cards got cut. I drafted Tolarian Terror.dek and ignored the theme again. 3-0

Drafted the Mardube in anticipation of CubeCon. The cube feels like it’s in a very good place after cutting the broken PWs. Only a couple changes to make before the ‘26 con. Went all-in on Kaalia after seeing it P2 and it sorta worked. Three color is not nothing and I got beat by aggro 2-1.

Team drafted the Kindred Cube. First picked Orah and was able to go all-in on Clerics. I find this cube pretty frustrating, changelings are absurdly strong and my deck was pretty functional with only 2. Another cube that’s allergic to wraths, which is annoying but not a dealbreaker. 2-0

For the semiquincentennial I drafted Breya’s scrapyard, a 4-color artifact cube. Drafted a classic RB shitters deck that pressured early then ended the game with aristocrat stuff. 3-0 I do wish there were more wraths and mass removal.

July 1st was oppressively hot, so we drafted the OG desert cube. Drafted a bunch of 2 mana 2/3s and a few kindles. Had a cool play where I needed to diabolic edict myself to unearth my anathamancer.. 3-0

Drafted life, death & Undeath, I’m a fan now that I know how to draft it. Deck was very good against fair decks. Had issues with unfair decks. 2/3 matches had persist and worldgorger combo. Dunno if I should have anticipated that, having more instant-speed removal would have helped immensely. 2-1

Went to CubeDungeonCon. A small 32 player cube tournament in Madison. Drove to Madison and immediately once I got there drafted Treva’s Ruins, a Bant old-border desert cube. I don’t like old-border cubes much, but I think this draft went pretty well. Lost in the finals to a much better deck. 2-1

Drafted RG Dinos in Kindred cube, all cards must reference a creature type. I find this cube frustrating. The cube is all typal payoffs and changelings as the enablers. Changelings are so strong, but also awful if drawn without a payoff. The payoff cards will often not synergize with each other. 2-1

Drafted Life, Death, Undeath. A neat 4-color Assertive deck with Thopter Sword combo thrown in. Going into a 3rd and 4th color actually paid off this time around. Ledger Shredder was quite good, I can see why it’s a good card. I included Deep Analysis as my 23rd card, but it performed very well. 3-0

Let this be a lesson to me. Drafted my own Peasant cube (with strong rare lands) and drafted a very bad 4-color field of the dead deck. I spent many picks on lands, but the consistency of mana to cast medium spells does not lead to a good deck. My games were close, but got beat by 2-color decks. 1-2

Drafted Spy Games, a mono blue cube revolving around knowing your opponents cards, top cards of library, stuff like that. Eddymurk crab and levitating statue implied a solid spells deck in the cube so I went down that path. There were so, so many interesting decisions during the draft. 3-0

I’ve discovered a great motivator for finishing my cube. I just spent a bunch of money on the central cards and now sunk cost is working in my favor.

Drafted the Design Mistake Retirement Home cube. Vintage cubes are not my forte so I decided just to first pick academy and just hard commit. Got quite lucky with my first picks with two mox. I don’t really know how to drafts these decks so I went for every artifact that looked good and ended up 2-1

Drafted Call a Judge cube again. Cube is all about crazy rule interactions. I’ve been trying to get outside of my comfort zone when drafting. I drafted a neat UB reanimator deck splashing a couple of red cards. Had some very cool interactions and some silly ones too. 3-0

Ran back Metalworker cube the next week. Instead of drafting an aggro deck I actually built a time sieve deck which popped off. Misra’s self-replicator was the fuel for the extra turns, having access to a three mana historic spell was strong, and then those metalworkers made mana for copies. 3-0 6-0

I submitted my own cube for CubeCon for the champions choice. I did ask like three people if that would be gauche and they all said no, so I went for it.

Drafted the Metalworker cube earlier this month. Special rule, you can cast a gold-bordered metalworker (GBMW) any time you can cast a sorcery. And mana from your metalworkers cannot be spent on metalworkers. Cube was very cool, had 20 artifacts and good interaction. 3-0 6-0.

Drafted the Ethical Synergy cube. Drafted a UW tempo-ish deck after seeing an 8th pick remand. Didn’t value fixing high enough, ended with some small mana issues. Very much enjoy this cube, lots of strong but not broken game pieces. 2-1

Drafted the Kindred Cube. All cards (nonlands?)must reference a creature type of some kind or are changelings. I drafted a goblin deck with some powerful other typal bombs. Deck felt pretty strong. Might be my first time playing skirk prospector, card was pretty good as just a sac outlet. 3-0

Draft of the EPA cube, drafted BW splashing red for mayhem devil and chainsaw. The shared smokestack/RoL object had been retooled to start as rule of law. Vastly improved my enjoyment of the cube, and many of the cheap ways to flip the object had been removed. Deck was very strong. 2-0-1 (3-0 imo).

April 1st we drafted Hells Cube. Every card is custom with an absurd twist. A lot of cards will just say “Do a thing that doesn’t work (it works)”. I found a lot of the cards very funny and the draft was fun for the first 1/2, but the amount of reading gets tiring. Gameplay was alright. 3-0

Drafted my Mardu desert 3/25. I’m so behind. So I just drafted a mediocre value pile and went 1-2. I needed to commit harder to the greasefang plan. I’m actually quite happy that value piles are a little less good now in the cube. Focused aggro/combo/control decks are now much better.

Drafted Life, Death & Undeath 3/18. Drafted a bad BR pile splashing Grist & Resto. Graveyard focused cube with a fairly high power level that I have greatly enjoyed. Afterlife insurance is a wild card, never played with it before. Had a blood artist and sac outlet and my opponent was just dead. 2-1

Drafted the Mana Flare cube March11th. There’s a mana flare emblem, and just one since it’s symmetrical. Drafted a BG rock deck that had trouble dealing with the threats my opponents could put out on turns 2,3, & 4. The draft was fun but the deck felt pretty clunky. 1-2

Behind on posting, but Shoebox was a few weeks ago in St. Paul and had a pretty good time. “Made” Top 64, but the snow was so bad on Sunday I couldn’t make it to the venue. The setup was pretty cool, the top 4 of 6 drafts were counted so having a could you could throw was kinda liberating.

Renegade Platinum is so difficult for a casual Pokemon player like myself. I keep getting rocked by surprise trainer battles, so I haven’t even gotten to the really hard fights at the end of the game.

Took part in a game of “Assassin’s” this weekend. The goal is to make your target do something they would not normally do, then you “get” them and eliminate the from the game. My objective was to get someone I didn’t know to do a cartwheel. I lost because I wasn’t supposed to talk about the weather.

Drafted the OG desert cube a couple weeks ago, and drafted the wildest deck I think I’ve ever had. The cube has 20 copies of kindle, we drafted it with 7 and I still got my hands on 13. With 7 we just played as people became free with the one sitting out. The format is growing on me. 5-0