Andy and Anthony talk about Cube restrictions. As they often say, restrictions breed creativity, but they can also provide an identity and structure to Cubes. Our hosts discuss how and why players choose design constraints, the advantages they bring to the table, and when to loosen up on them.

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Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - Oppenheimer Review

6:23 - What do we mean by restrictions and why don’t we talk about it more?

17:37 - Rarity restrictions

22:45 - The “no Planeswalkers” restriction

26:57 - On Color Restricted Cubes

34:22 - On Mana Value Restricted Cubes

37:56 - On Aesthetically Restricted Cubes

39:30 - When to ease your own restrictions

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Andy and Anthony talk about Wishes! Wishes are a special class of cards that let you access cards from outside your game. In competitive play and drafts, this means any card from your sideboard. In casual play anything at all from your collection. Andy talks about why it’s interesting to him and the challenges he’s faced trying to design a Cube focused around the wish cards.

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from Deinonychus’s The Bodleian Cube. Thanks, Deinonychus!

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Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction

3:15 - Draft Weekend Recap

7:37 - Andy’s Exploration with Outside-the-Game Mechanics

19:53 - Andy’s Goals for and Challenges with his Wish Package Cube

40:53 - Lessons Learned from the Lesson and Learn Cube

47:45 - Listener Submitted Pack 1, Pick 1

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Andy and Anthony dig into two kinds of cheese: “cheesing people out” in games of Magic and how to serve it up when hosting game nights. They talk about moments in games where it feels like one player steals a game that they shouldn’t have won. Are these positive or negative experiences and how can we curate Cubes to enable to discourage them?

Next they talk about how they approach hosting and cooking for groups, discussing the things to consider and some of the meals and approaches that work best.

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Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction

3:33 - Anthony’s Personal D-Day

7:10 - Cards that can “cheese” or “steal” a game

33:16 - Tips for Hosting a Meal for Eight

48:07 - Suggested Cube Draft Meal Plans

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Andy, Anthony, and Parker review the Cube community response to The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. Magic’s first full, draftable crossover set comes with plenty of opportunities, and some surprises, for the Cube community.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

This is your last week to fill out the Lord of the Rings and associated commander deck surveys! Share your own perspective on the new set.

Andy and Anthony take a first look at Magic’s first, full crossover set: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. They talk about the mechanics and their first impressions of the set. Share some of the cards their interested in trying out in their own Cube environments.

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction

7:20 - The Mechanics of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth

8:18 - The Ring and The Ring Tempts You

17:32 - Amass Orcs

19:49 - Food

21:35 - Typed Landcycling

23:53 - Sagas

24:52 - Legends Matter

26:53 - Scry Matters

27:24 - Creature Type Matters

29:34 - Is this a “Commander” set?

31:58 - Personal Cube Inclusions: The Neoclassical Cube

35:29 - Personal Cube Inclusions: The Regular Cube

35:40 - Improvised Club

36:25 - Shower of Arrows

36:51 - Stern Scolding

42:14 - Legolas, Master Archer

46:23 - Personal Cube Inclusions: The Bun Magic Cube

47:06 - Anduril, Flame of the West

51:29 - Flame of Anor

54:17 - Stern Scolding

57:19 - Orcish Bowmasters

1:04:23 - Reprieve

1:10:55 - Personal Cube Inclusions: The Turbo Cube

1:11:09 - Wizard Rockets

1:13:38 - Boromir, Warden of the Tower

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

After tracking his wins and losses across all of his Cube drafts for six months, Andy is reviewing the results with Anthony and discussing why he is abandoning this practice. But, if he’s not tracking the results of his Cube matches, how does he know if he is growing as a player? What actually matters, and how do you measure it? Plus, our hosts ask an important question: is playing Magic fun?

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

3:48 - Introduction to topic

5:18 - Overview of Andy’s stats

19:31 - Why Andy is no longer going to be tracking this information

30:51 - If win rate doesn’t matter, what does?

44:46 - How to actually record what matters?

59:49 - Outro

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

After a long weekend of Cube drafts, Andy doesn’t have time to edit a proper episode of the show, so instead he piles four of his buddies into his cozy little basement studio to talk about a recent rotisserie draft of his Bun Magic Cube. Which deck came out on top? Are newer, more committal and synergistic cards pulling their weight? If Andy finally adds Scrabbling Claws is everyone going to draft it and put it in their decks like they say they will?

Unfortunately there are no timestamps for this episode, nor is there a cards mentioned page, as it is unedited.

Discussed in this episode:

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Andy and Anthony are joined once again by the legendary Ryan Saxe to talk about his approach to drafting and how he applies that to Cube. Building off the approach Ryan describes in an episode of Limited Level Ups they discuss about how and when it makes sense to ‘force’ a draft and focus on optimal outcomes over investing in reading the table.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Andy and Anthony talk about custom rules in Cubes. Cube is a unique Magic space where designers truly have full control over the game and can change it however they like. Beyond just choosing the cards they include, designers change the game fundamental with plane-like effects. Our hosts discuss the very substantial risks of custom rules to accessibility and even fun for enfranchised players. They talk about some of the rules they’ve experienced that didn’t work so well, and the successful ones, which tend to create an experience built around the changes that get players to buy into the novel experience.

They end the episode with two pack 1, pick 1’s from two custom-rules Cubes and do their best to asses cards in two subtly, but importantly different environments. First up, Dragonm137’s Channel Cube where players can spend life to generate colorless mana, a la the card Channel. And secondly Crvnch’s Infinity Cube where players have access to free colorless mana without the high cost of life.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Dumpling Corner

3:14 - Introduction to Topic

6:24 - The inaccessibility of custom rules

11:35 - The comparative costs of different kinds of rules modifications

21:43 - Why it feels uniquely bad to lose to a custom rule

29:00 - Successful examples of Cubes with custom rules

42:34 - Some Custom Cube p1p1s

44:14 - Channel Cube p1p1

52:34 - Infinity Cube p1p1

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Andy and Anthony talk about “Xerox Theory” a strategic Magic concept involving cantrips, land count, a balance of resources. Andy explains the history and origins of the idea, as documented by Mike Flores’s 2005 article. They talk about how the concept applies differently in early and contemporary Magic and how it’s relevant, or not, to different types of decks. They also talk about Gunk Slug for some reason.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

2:27 - Introduction to Topic

6:27 - What is Xerox Theory at its core?

10:08 - What is a cantrip?

13:44 - The baseline of Xerox cantrips and the case for Reach Through Mists

17:25 - The sometimes unstated context to make Xerox Theory work

19:45 - The power of a smaller deck

22:08 - Going beyond “UB Trippin’” — the ramifications of cantrips on the tempo of reactive decks

31:57 - Modern Xerox “Payoffs”

38:29 - Review, conclusions, and abstraction

48:47 - Gunk Slug Corner

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at [email protected]. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.