Gavin Verhey brought David McDarby on for today’s episode of Good Morning Magic to talk about his Live the Dream cube and go over some Pack 1, Pick 1 selections.
They started the episode with McDarby, a longtime content creator and Wizards of the Coast (WotC) employee, going over some his favorite cards he helped design in Zendikar Rising. McDarby highlighted Lithoform Engine, created from his love of copying things, and Leyline Tyrant, as a fun way to use a lot of mana in the “best creature type in Magic.”
From there, McDarby went over how he created the Live the Dream cube (now playable on Magic Online) and the inspiration for it. McDarby loves Cube and Commander and wanted a way to fuse the two. While the format still plays like normal Magic with 20 life and a 40-card deck, the cube is all about wacky combos and ways to bring together difficult to assemble synergies. His goal in Magic is to have fun and tell stories, so this cube does that with plenty of gold cards and build-around engines. The format is slower than normal cubes, but not as slow as typical Commander.
Verhey and McDarby went over three Pack 1, Pick 1 options with the two breaking down combos and synergies surrounding their picks. McDarby also touches on some of the eleven archetypes in the cube like Five-Color live the dream, Selesnya Populate, Dimir Ninjutsu and play your opponent’s cards, as well as Rakdos Discard Matters.
The Live the Dream cube is live now on Magic Online and you can read all about it and the eleven archetypes in the Cube Spotlight article from Monday.