If I was playing Cube for thousands of dollars, I’d probably pick Sword [of Fire and Ice], but since I am not, give me that Repeal  please…

–Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa in a recent article about Cube Drafting

The winds of change are swift, aren’t they? Brain David-Marshal broke some of the most awesome news that the Cube community has heard since, well, about four weeks prior when we found out Cube was coming to Magic Online.

I was perusing Twitter before I went to bed around midnight when the news broke. I saw a couple posts of, “Cube! Wvuyfvwtg!!!” and, “Holy S***!” with links to BDM’s article, but none that immediately reflected the OMG-ness of the contents. So I started reading it like everyone else, and when I got to the juicy part, I reacted just like it was written.

…they will switch to Limited for three rounds of Cube Draft. Then on Thursday they—

WHAT?!?!?

I honest to goodness reread that sentence three times to make sure that my eyes and brain weren’t playing tricks on me to see what I wanted to see. Considering when my mind is on Magic Cube takes up about 90% of thinking time, I certainly could have willed some ridiculous announcement into a misreading of a tournament format late at night.

But I didn’t. One of my wishes for the game I love is imminent: Cube Drafting is going to play a part in a major Magic tournament! I can hardly contain my excitement—this is clearly going to be the highest profile Cube Draft (and Cube list, getting ahead of myself…) of all time, with quite literally the best players in the game being forced to answer the age-old question: Armageddon, Sulfuric Vortex, or Survival of the Fittest?

You might be wondering why I feel like this is such a landmark day for Cube. Let’s break it down into three points.

Legitimacy

I feel like Cube Draft is getting called up from the D-League to play with the big boys. Sure it had a run in the now-defunct Invitational, but that was more intramural than serious competition (didn’t mean that it wasn’t awesome and people didn’t want to win it, though.)

Over the last three years, Commander has been getting tons of love from WotC. Now I personally don’t like Commander (understatement), but I do understand that from a business side it brings in players to purchase WotC-made products, which ultimately leads to more dollars being put back into the game. Cube is similarly a “casual” format, so extra funds from another, begrudgingly, more popular format is going to help push all casual formats. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

For all I know, what they were able to gain monetarily from the Commander decks could have gone towards implementing Cube into Magic Online, so I certainly have no complaints when a company I love does well and keeps putting their resources to good use. This is important because where in the case of Magic Online Cube they were able to be a little loose in card selection (and in absolutely in no way, shape, or form am I bashing Tom LaPille, Max McCall, Zac Hill and everyone else who put their time in to helping that project move along on any card choices), they will not be afforded the same luxury when they’ll roll out the final cube list used for the Players Championship.

I don’t doubt that Wizards can—and should—strive to make this a unique and balanced cube environment, but there is going to be a time difference involved to make this the absolute best they can and what was able to go into the Magic Online Cube. Time is a significant factor, as there isn’t any reason that they can’t make this cube list 99% of exactly how they want it. They do have an excellent launching pad in the Magic Online Cube, so I’m sure they’re going to go over the data they got from a couple of weekends ago and this week to help them mold the environment to how they see fit.

Inclusion in the highest profile tournament possible with the most coverage means that in Wizards’ eyes Cube Drafting is a legit format that people want to play, see, and read about. I know many feel like it already was, but this is concrete evidence.

Commitment

Mark Rosewater recently asked on Twitter whether or not anyone thought they could design cards with Cube in mind. The answer to this question isn’t as important as the fact that it was talked about by Magic’s Head Designer. (His answer was no, which is similar to my answer of they don’t need to. We’d be thrilled for you to continue making sweet cards every three months, coupled with FTV and special products like you did for Commander.)

The recent uptick in Cube oriented stuff across the board from Wizards tells me that they are going to continue down this road of Cube support, none bigger than this inaugural Players Championship. The fact that this is the first ever event of its kind is certainly important in determining what happens with Cube Drafting as a real competitive format in the future. Now I’m not imagining that there would be any kind of lower level cubing done at DCI sanctioned events (waaaaaay too hard logistically), but how awesome would it be to have Cube Draft determine the Players Champion every year?

As just about everyone reading this column knows, most cubes are constructed to be fun but also skill testing and challenging. This is basically the perfect Limited format for high-level Magic because of that, not to mention the (very relevant) fact that it will be obscenely entertaining to watch with the new amazing coverage. How awesome will it be for Rich Hagon and BDM to do commentary on that!?!?

To me, this move sends the message that we as cubers are being better recognized as a community, much like the Commander community was recently as well.

Growth

Increasing exposure for Cube from Wizards has already gotten thousands of new people excited for the best format in the world, and there is no reason for that to stop anytime soon. It warms my heart to think there will be thousands if not millions of people who haven’t played Cube before watching the sure-to-be amazing coverage for the first DCI sanctioned Cube Draft and thinking, I want to play that format!

More interest for the format means more articles, easier cubing at events, and more people with brilliant minds that can bring new ideas and theories to the table. I love being a voice in the community, but the best thing that could happen to me is getting drowned out by the sound of millions of people talking about and having opinions about Cube Drafting. That’s not to say that I won’t try to make my voice heard, but I never get sick of talking about it.

Who knows what this could bring in the future? Widespread Cube tournaments at local game stores? Daily scheduled Cube events on Magic Online? Maybe even Cube Draft Opens at SCG Open Weekends (nudge nudge)?! At the very least, WotC could figure out how to get us some of those sweet alternate art cards from Magic Online Cube.

Speaking of Magic Online Cube, how will Wizards use that to decide on what the Players Championship cube will look like?

(Re)Gleaming the Cube

So let’s take what we know for sure:

There are going to be sixteen players in the event. This is the exact number of players a 720-card cube can hold at one time, conveniently the size of Magic Online Cube.

The Cube portion of the event occurs on August 29th, which is relevant because it’s my birthday. Really, it is. And I guess it’s also relevant because both Avacyn Restored and M13 will be out and tournament legal by then, and I would expect both sets to have their presence felt in the cube. Obviously AVR will, but I’ll be disappointed if M13 is absent, especially with the rumored gold card theme. That has potential of a number of sweet cards.

Here’s what I’m guessing is going to fill out the rest of the info:

There will be no power or the like in the cube, just like the Magic Online Cube. This one is pretty obvious, but I’m sure there are some that will think they’ll take this opportunity to show off some sweet Beta Power. They won’t.

The draft will have the entire cube broken up between the two eight-man pods. That means in the likely event the cube is 720-cards, every card will be used between the two drafts.

Storm combo will be taken out of the cube entirely. It’s cute and I know it “can work,” but I don’t think you want something that is super fringe on the biggest stage. This cube list is going to be out for the public well in advance of the event, and you’d be crazy to think that the sixteen people qualified aren’t going to test the hell out of it. If something isn’t easily viable, then it won’t be drafted; simple as that.

Sideboard cards are going to remain but be fewer in number. I think most people have sideboard cards in their cube without knowing it, and those should be the cards aimed at for inclusion. My definition of a sideboard card in a cube is that the card is close to being good enough to maindeck, but often ends up starting in sideboards or as the 22nd or 23rd card. Great Sable Stag and Dwarven Blastminer are great examples. This helps ensure there are no ultra-strict hate cards in the draft (Celestial Purge, come on now…), especially when a single well timed 15th pick hate card can steal a chance at five figures worth of prize money out from under your nose.

Signets and superfluous mana fixing will remain out. I love lands and playing three- and four-color decks, and I allow those decks to be easily viable in my cube. That being said, I’m not under the impression that those things are healthy for green, a color that has traditionally had difficulty maintaining an identity in tons of cubes. You can still play those decks if you want to, but you’ll have to work a little harder to do so.

The fact is this cube is going to be picked apart by everyone. EV-ER-Y-ONE. When the Magic Online Cube list came out, cube experts and forum dwellers alike shredded the list to pieces, most of them before even playing with it. This cube list is going to be part of determining a $108,000 prize pool. If you thought the ripping on the Magic Online Cube was bad, prepare for a verbal tornado sweeping across the interwebs when this thing goes public.

I have a personal belief that every cube owner should be proud of his or her cube, and because of that, I don’t judge people’s cubes unless I’m asked to. I haven’t played a cube yet that wasn’t fun, and I’m sure that whatever WotC comes up with will be an absolute blast to play with. I didn’t judge Magic Online Cube because ultimately it was largely irrelevant as far as the contents. A million people were going to play with it anyway, and I knew I wasn’t going to use it during its available time.

But…

Come August 29t, the stakes are going to be the highest that they’re ever been. More cash is going to be given out per player than any event before, ever.

That’s why Wizards has to get this really, really close to right. This will be the time to be critical. Well, critical only after playing with it of course, though that is only going to stop around 10% of people from blah-blah-blahing about why they know more about cube construction than people being paid to know about cube construction. The good news is that I trust the people at Wizards to go through all the steps they need to and make this cube adequately balanced and interesting for high-level competition.

I have a feeling that the final list is going to be quite unique, in the same vein that the 2007 Invitational cube list was unique with its hard nod towards nostalgia. I don’t mean that the two lists will be anything alike; just that the list we’ll see come out of Renton for this is going to be non-traditional to sculpt a very specific experience. Archetypes should be defined and plentiful for a sixteen-man draft, closely simulating a super powerful regular draft environment.

This is probably going to have a funny effect on cube construction in the community. This cube that Wizards is going to release will probably become the De-Facto Cube, just based on sheer coverage that it will get. So why don’t I feel that way about the cube online? The difference from this cube and the Magic Online Cube is that the Magic Online Cube doesn’t have to be a finished product. They said as much, and we get it.

Besides that, holding the cards in your hand and playing the other half of the game that you really can’t play online (body language, bluffs, judging, and missed triggers) makes for an entirely different experience, as I’m sure many of you know. The cube list for the Players Championship will carry the message that this is what the powers-that-be felt was the absolute best product they could come up with, and it is good enough to play with during our most important professional event of the year.

Once that cube is out, it is going to be built by people in the community, tested thoroughly by people that will be entered into that tournament, and probably have actual strategy written about it. Of course that last part won’t matter, as the sixteen pros that will be cubing for the championship aren’t going to pour over blogs looking for draft tech, and all around the world the lists will change from the cube that everyone started with.

What is interesting to me is seeing if indeed Wizards translates the cube list for this tournament into the official Magic Online Cube and have them one entity. How would that affect potential recursion of Cube Drafts at future DCI-sanctioned tournaments? That, my friends, is something we will have to impatiently wait and see.

The simple fact is that right now is the best time ever to be a cube owner, cube lover, or cube drafter. For those of you that have just begun to read and become interested in Cube due to Magic Online Cube, try actual, IRL Cube Drafting. If you had a reasonably good time online, you’ll have ten times as much fun when you can play with people you know, or better yet, people that are also interested in Cube at events! The more cubing the better!

Thanks for reading today; I hope my excitement for this awesome event has you guys even more excited!

Start your engines, Paulo.

Justin Parnell
@JParnell1 on Twitter
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