#41 - Talking Vintage Cube Live

In this episode we discuss the Vintage Cube Live that happened at MagicCon Vegas, probably the highest stake cube of all time!!

00:00:44 - News
00:36:40 - The Vintage Cube Live

The Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/691d6a9b-d67a-445f-ab39-0f1c4919db3a
Player Profiles: https://ultimateguard.com/en/blog/vintage-cube-live?srsltid=AfmBOoqY8qxG0FzcvXjt1zdHsUt6uEBtLkFrOpfii14sVc2AoqXQxdEV

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

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Chapters

• 1:05 News
• 37:01 The Vintage Cube Live

Transcript

0:24

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, I know nothing that is too sweet MTG. And as always, I'm joining my co-host James. How's going Manuel? Yeah. Pretty good, pretty good. Can't complain. Wait. Well, we have an awesome episode for everyone today. Today we're going to be doing a bit of a review on the Vintage Cube live powered by Ultimate card to give it its full title, I think, which is quite possibly one of the most impactful cube events, and possibly for the highest stakes, maybe ever. I don't know how much the pros really, really gamble for behind the scenes, but this seemed. But there was a lot of spice going on in this tournament, so. So we're gonna be talking about that as our main topic today. Time cards will be down in section below if you want to jump around. Before we jump into that, let's talk about some news. And because we're coming off of the back of magic on Vegas, there was quite a lot of news and this quite a bit for us to get through today. So we have a bit of a list. Let's start going through them. So firstly is that they announced that from 2027 standard rotation is being changed. So currently I think it's like the third or fourth set of the year. It's not unlike August September when rotation normally is on 2027. Standard rotation is being changed so that it will update and cards will rotate when the first set of the calendar year is released. This does kind of make sense, as they're trying to use standard as the way of onboarding new players into into competitive magic. Having it that it's just easier to explain to people. That kind of assumes that this is set in the new year. That's when rotation happened. New year, new changes, that kind of thing. I think that kind of no one's going to be really angry at this change. There'll be probably like a there'll be one rotation where it's delayed by effectively like one set. So rather than that being the winter set, it'll be the first set of the new year. But I think generally everyone's kind of okay, everyone will be okay with this one. But an important bit of news for standard players. James thought, yeah, this this makes complete sense to me. Just making it a little bit more intuitive, so. And say it's not something you have to look up every time. Sounds like a positive. I will say, I hope that if they have a rotation on that first set slot, they also have a standard protocol sort of 2 to 3 weeks after it, because those are always some very interesting events. I think they be immediate post flotation protocol where you have all new decks or even if not a protocol like a GP or something, you know. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That always the fun ones where kind of like the format still a little bit new when people are working out like the best thing hasn't been decided yet. Yeah. That's always fun. The next bit of news is that mSRP is coming back. For those unaware, they effectively took the suggested retail price offer products a couple of years ago, and effectively it's a reason why magic has kind of got more expensive. So with foundations, products are being released with mSRP. So I mean, for context, a play booster is now $5.25. Oddly, from eighth address, they've already announced that the price of the products is going up. So a play booster is going up by $0.25. The rest of that's kind of seems to be in line with what it was before. Oh, no, hold on that the bundle is going up by $4. So yeah. So so we they've already in that they've immediately announced it's coming back and immediately announced is getting more expensive in Q1 next year. So that's nice of them. Yeah. I mean I think just having an mSRP again is broadly a good thing. Listen, it doesn't mean products will never cost more or less than that. Supply and demand still applies here. Very like low and high demand sets will still go for more than mSRP, but at least you're kind of aware of that when you're buying it by if there is an mSRP. Why this and the system we've had for the last few years where I've just haven't been that mSRP at all, it's it gives you a little less transparency, at least when, when they release their mSRP. You know how much Wizards thinks you should be paying for this product. Yeah, exactly. And kind of, my guess is this actual changes generally affects like specifically with things like booster packs, but kind of like, a lot of things here. I'm looking at things like, like mini prices for like collector boosters and like jump start boosters and bundles and beginner boxes like, I don't know about you, James, but I the actual product I buy from Wizards as a relatively, franchise player is just going down and down. Like effectively, the money Wizards get from me is like a prerelease kit. And then I buy singles. That's generally how more franchise players will generally interact with magic. And so it's kind of like things like people picking up boosters. Yes, yes it will. It will be people at game stores buying boosters because they like it. But like if you're drafting a lot, you generally like people generally buy booster boxes, that kind of stuff and draft with friends that kind of thing. So I kind of like specifically like like like like the gouging of kind of like booster backs on the booster backs and costs is generally something that that that will affect less enfranchised players. So they don't really know the how much things cost, that kind of thing. So there being a price back on the product I think is good because it will just effectively means mean people. I'd like to feel bad about that purchase because they know roughly, it's in line with how much it should be when they buy it. Exactly. And it it gives you a lot. Yeah. If you're a fan, new player, I guess it gives you a little bit more transparency as well. About now if I'm signing up for a draft. The draft cost myth much. That sounds about right because the booster packs each MSP at this much. Then I pay that for Facebook. Like, yeah. I think there's no downside to having having advice. If I don't try. I think this is a positive for players. Yeah, 100%. All right. So the first two I think we're kind of both on board with Oh the next one could be a bit more spicy. So they've also announced that universes beyond will be legal in all formats going forward. So importantly, this now includes standard and pioneer here. So I have some notes. But James, I know that you've actually played these formats more recently. And and you generally play among I'm uncommitted where this is going to be more likely to be a thing. What's your thoughts? So there is a bit more news to this, but specifically on universes beyond being legal in all formats, how would you feel about that? So I think there's two bits of this to, to affect. Right. There's a bit of we are shifting these universes beyond products from Director Martin to standards. For direct modern stuff, for universe Beyond. We basically just seen a lot of things so far. But guessing fallout, Assassin's Creed was modern legal for what? That it's that the ones aimed at competitive play seems like these are going to be a standard set that people draft and are part of that standard rotation. Shifting, nonstandard, I think purely from a gameplay point of view. I'm not I'm not specially worried about power level. Like obviously now we associate universes beyond with like one thing or info master stuff, but these were sets designed for standard. I still have just about enough sim wizards that the cards aren't going to look like that. So I think there is a bit of a concern that I think with universes beyond that, sometimes a bit of an external pressure to push certain cards to be competitively viable. Like they're really going to want Spider-Man to not suck, right? But yeah, yeah, if Spider-Man is not standard playable, I think that that's that's probably a negative for Wizards. And we've seen before, I think when they try and make a cards like good enough format, then they overshoot a little bit. Then it's a really big problem, right? Whereas if they're aiming all the cards at that sort of potentially playable power level, then the natural variations are kind of okay. Whereas if some of them are aimed at that higher, then when they overshoot, it's really, really bad. Yeah. And the ones they tend, they do tend to. So, so I'm just thinking of like examples of like universes within cards. So, so so sorry, normal magic cards, like when they have overshot, they do tend to be a bit slower on banning them when they are cards that are kind of like signature cards of like set. So like, say it was Spider-Man, like realistically, there isn't going to be just one Spider-Man in the universes beyond Spider-Man. So there's going to be like 20 of the buggers, but like, was it like shadows over in Ystrad where, like it was Liliana and M recall what kind of like the signature cards in the set, and M recall was I was I was a very broken deck because of, what was the card that cheated it into play? James. If I marvel, that would be it. Yes. You could cheat in the big N recall with much Marvel, which is not something they planned. And it was a very good deck, but they effectively delay that. That is an example of them delaying the banning because it was a signature card. They basically delayed it until after a big tournament where it where where where it could be displayed. My worry I guess, is something could happen kind of similar to that with this, with these kind of universes beyond says we're kind of like, say that, say there is only one Spider-Man. Like if it's busted, they they will not want to ban it. Anyone knows what it looks like? In the same way the One Ring hasn't been banned in modern yet as an example. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's the, the I think I like the one thing they were clearly trying to make into a powerful modern card. And then you only need to overshoot a tiny bit and you're in the spot we're in right now where the one thing is played in like 60% of matter. It's kind of miserable in my opinion. So yeah, I think that's that's certainly a risk on the competitive side. I think there's also it's also I'm not normally a big guy for the whole like an argument in the game. I like it didn't massively bother me having this stuff in motion or whatever, but, this is going to feel very jarring, I think, when we first see these cards crop up in standard, in a way, the other universes beyond stuff haven't, because the other universes beyond stuff has basically been even the stuff that's only played in commander, which is commander, I think you expect anything, right? Oh, it's Lord of rings and the Lord like and Magic gathering being a fantasy universe is like 40 to 5. Tolkien and, the larger picture sense anyway. Right. So it like these cards could have just been printed as magic cards and then they start. Yeah. Where there's it's going to feel quite different, I think, when it's Spider-Man and especially when this isn't just in the cards, it's going to be decks, because that's how standard works. Right. So there's a smaller number of sets. You get whole decks built, sort of built out of 1 or 2 sets in terms of if you have arching themes. So, you know, it's going to be quite, it's quite a different having. Oh, there's an arc. It's very masters in the modern deck versus like, I'm playing Spider-Man control versus X-Men Nightcrawler, you know, like Jesus. And that is kind of what it's going to be. The game will be. That's going to be. And there'll be some Final Fantasy in there as well. James. Yeah, I didn't know anyone was called in that, so I couldn't say. But yeah, there's a character called Sapphire off, I believe, but I might have. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Off tempo. Well so in that as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that is going to feel weird. Right. And I think there'll be players who love, there'll be players who absolutely hate that. And I, I'm sure I'll end up probably. And that's been probably a slight negative for me. Yeah. What, what's. Well, this weekend I was like, yeah, actually, this would be less cool if it was like a bunch of random comic book people that I don't care about because I think at some point it's if magic continues down this road by where then we first got Universe Beyond for like three, four years ago and they're like, oh, it's just going to be secret. There's nothing competitive. And then it's, oh, it's just a modern. But you know, the solve up for will have to have all these other formats. It's not going to be for standard now. It is for standard. Yeah I think that's a risk. But at some point magic starts to feel like kind of just a disparate bunch of brands and entertainment franchises trying to sell stuff to you. Are you just describing Hasbro that James. Oh. Oh yeah, we got him. That hasn't been what magic has felt like. That's fine to me. And, like, generally I'm someone who I just want the game to be good and I don't really care that much about the other stuff. Like, it's cool when the flavor works, but it's not normally a deal breaker for me. But I, I think this is I think this could make magic feel as cool as a game, and I think that's a shame. Like, I think from just from my point of view like they it on this. So, so this kind of leads into some news. But when we move on to a moment just in terms of the quantity of the product, we're going to be getting, but like, yeah, I do worry that magic will lose its identity. And it's I am not saying like like if you like the magic storyline, like the products they release, like the stories are released and awesome. I love that people like it. For me personally, I like the idea of the magic storyline, but it's never really hit me. Like, like, I don't know if anyone's ever tried reading any of like, the early lore books because dear God, they are woeful. Like they're kind of like they're super high fantasy, but they're kind of ballocks like in terms of, like, what happens in that kind of stuff. But like, I like, but like, there is so much room there for it to be cool. Basically. Like at some point I need to do a video about this because like, like effectively what they need to do is just do what Warhammer have done and just give and just basically just pay a bunch of really talented authors to just write books in the world of magic. And that's that's what I want them to do. I want to hear, just like a random story about someone on on an abstract, because there's so much cool stuff. You can do that. And if you're not tied down by like, oh, it has to tie it like, like I was kind of veering off into my issues with the magic story, but like some of it is like that. They're kind of like, we have to like work in set mechanic. This key point to kind of get us into a multi like everything has to be a multi year story, all that kind of stuff. Just like just give me a couple of good stories on different planes because there's so much there's so much potential there. But my worry with all this, my worry with, you know, this to be stuff is that it just becomes like effectively that becomes the storyline. Like, are we going to have a giant Marvel crossover? Potentially. But is that like that could just be where they're going with it. Although effectively it gets to a point where they've kind of, oh, we don't need to bother with the storyline at all. We can just take an IP from somewhere else and the storylines already pre-baked into it. We can just do references in the cards, that kind of stuff, and we don't even have to bother with having a writing stuff. And I thought, that's kind of, I guess my main worry with this. Yeah, the universe is beyond stuff that there isn't even a storyline, right? Like, obviously Marvel has a storyline, but they're not trying to convey any one Marvel storyline through the cards. So I just here's some stuff for Marvel, basically. And I think it's I'm the same. I, I tried reading one magic book once it was on. People have told me I just want to forget once and they're like, that was bad. But I think one thing magic does do quite well is even if you're not really paying attention to the story, it conveys some amount of it to you. Just the cards, right? Yeah. Like you couldn't play, for example, the, like shadow. So finish that thought without getting the general vibe, that freaky stuff that's happened. That's some tentacles. We're not sure who it is. Oh, look at Sam, the cool, big, big El Jose invasion. Like they can get stuff across and sense and do a bit of character development through just for magic cards, which is actually quite impressive. And yeah, that's you know, I know that it can be doing that, like with university and stuff. It's just, popular character two people like on the magic card. Exactly. And I think for for context, we should this is the next bit of news we're going to get to. We're going to be burying the lead a bit by me and James giving out about it a little bit. But, they've announced that kind of from next year there or for next year that they announced the lineup for the is off that. But for next year we are going to be getting six standard releases, three are going to be magic themed and three are going to be non magic themed. And that basically means it's going to be a new set every two months. And it's going to average out. That one will be in the magic IP and one won't be. So already that's 50% of our magic, isn't I don't sound like a boomer, but like it 15 of our magic is not magic, if that makes sense. James, how do you feel about this? Yeah, it's just kind of wild. So this is six. This is a set every two months before you get to any supplemental product phase. And ten standard. It's kind of wild. And I think it's actually a shame because that I think, I think what they have tried to do with some of this stuff is to get some type of standard back into a better place where people actually player. And I think this is a massive step backwards for that, actually. Because just the efforts needed to maintain they didn't stay up to date pay for standard now is going to be ridiculous. Like you're going to you're going to have bought it back, played it probably like 3 or 4 times and then it will be out of date. Realistically. It's kind of wild and I yeah, I, I've quite a lot of issues with this. What about us, James? We have to do set reviews on these buggers. Well, that's another issue. That's that's a conversation for Christmas. But we'll work that out then. Yeah, I, I think now I think yeah, if you're trying to play a bunch of paperbacks, for example, this is going to make it pretty tough. You kind of get in like three arcs and that is that comes out and then and then your deck's out of date. Right. And like, sure, not every set release is going to invalidate your deck, but like actually a decent amount of well, in standard, it also means the standard formats can end up being really big because they're on fire rotations now, right. So that's going to be 18 set standard. Yeah. Just kind of insane. With between kind of more extended fairly than anything else. And that's going to mean it's much harder when for new sets to actually make an impact on standard. But they want every set to make an impact from standard sets. A large part of what sells sets and then they push cards because it's like now, oh, we've got a, you know, a DV unholy. Our next card is something we need to make something better than the unholy Anna. So if I can go into that and that is how you end up with power creep, right? And a lot of ways standard has got three that is that it doesn't get bigger than a certain number of sets. And then it rotates so it stays impactful. And that that's just not going to be the case anymore. I'm I'm looking at the schedule. I'll go through it in in like the full schedule in a moment. But there is one block in the middle where there's seven weeks between sets, between standard legal set, seven weeks. So on the 14th of February, eighth, adrift is being released. I'm actually kind of up for this set. It's the race set across multiple planes. I like the concept. It could be cool. On the 11th of April, we have talk here. Dragon storm, this is our turn to talk here. I just got the about Dragon Storm in the name. I'm kind of up for that. On the 13th of June, we have the Final Fantasy set. So that's our first universe is beyond set on the 1st of August. So this is the seven week gap between them. We have Edge of Eternity. That is the, that is the magic themed, but like, space opera style of set then TBA. So sometime in Q3, I would guess, 2025, we have Marvel's Spider-Man and then at an undisclosed time. So sometime after Spider-Man. So from between August and December we're going to have two releases. Is an unknown universe is beyond set, and this is Warhammer. I'm going to take back everything I say and love it, but otherwise, my guess is there'll be another Marvel set, if I'm honest with you. But, yeah, that is a lot of magic sets coming up next year. Again, on top of miscellaneous commands. So so so actually from next year, that will be if the, if they release come on the next month. On top of this, there will be more non magic stuff than magic stuff themed wise anyway. Yeah. Yes. Isn't there enough Marvel stuff involved. Just just putting it out there feels quite hard to not engage with Marvel. I mean, I've done a pretty good job of not engaging with it since end game, but I think that's why, like a lot of people. But, so, so I don't so worth mentioning. There are I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. If you love Marvel, then crack on with this. And, and I don't think we're just here negging on a particular fan base or a particular like IP. Like just because when, like, I'm not the biggest fan of Final Fantasy, it doesn't mean I don't want people to enjoy it. There will be stuff in there for me to like. I think part of it is part of the thing that got me into magic as a kid or got me into magic, was the theming, and I'm just a bit worried that we're going to lose its identity with some of this. Yeah, for sure, I was I know this is like a gray area and I didn't. Maybe this argument doesn't make much logical sense, but I felt more okay for universes beyond stuff when it wasn't in standard. It felt sort of obscene and like there was still, version of magic. That was the magic. We sort of got into and that made us fall in love with the game. And, it sort of feels like this announcement has the news that, like, it's no longer locked in and the universe is beyond stuff, is now just basically what magic is. I do agree, I like I'll play devil's advocate a little bit here. There. Kind of like it does bring new players into the game. And like my best friend got into playing like we're kind of tempted by magic. And then the Lord of the rings that came in, that's what we loved as kids. We used to play Lord of the rings. Like how we became friends was, I think, like one of the main reasons was Lord of the Rings Warhammer. That's that was kind of like that got him in and now he's hooked. Playing magic like Marvel will be a big one for people as well. I know a bunch of people who have not played magic yet, but love that, but, they have been magic adjacent their whole lives. But I've never had that little push. The Marvel will be the push. So that could be a world where I get to play magic with that, with a whole group of friends. But I've not been magic with before because of the set, so that could be cool. But I guess it's kind of it's it's finding the balance and my worry is that Hasbro specifically will not be looking at finding a balance. Like like my, my biggest fear is that I felt that and like we're looking back at this point in like ten years and the excitement is when we get like, the universe is beyond is like magic themed. Yeah. It's like an aria themed like universe is beyond magic. The Magic the Gathering Presents universe is beyond magic. The gathering is like the secret lair magic. Is that. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. No, I mean, the thing is. Right? And you're right, it does bring in new players and that's really good. And that's that's good for all of the playerbase. If more, more people join, that the, the thing that this leads to because if you're wizards you're just looking at the numbers. And also they feel has value just looking at the numbers. And they'll see a lot of things. Biggest selling stats ever. Universe is beyond stats always do great. And the reason is fight facts. The universe is beyond the magic. People will buy them because they like playing magic. And the people who like Lord of rings, will buy from two who went, oh, I survived the Falcons. You got two fanbases. I think if you go back to that, well, too many times, you start to drive away some of the existing people potentially, and listen, maybe, maybe that is just the direction it goes in. And, you know, this is how games evolve. Magic is has been around a very long time. The things that you do for your fan base, if your game when it's 30 years old, you know, it's not just for game that changes for fan base changes. But I think for me personally, I feel like this, this doesn't improve my experience of the game. And yeah, maybe, I don't know, maybe I would be feel differently if this was like an IP that I cared about. But I kind of think actually, I was I was cool if it were there, I was like, give me a secret lair or something. Fine. Yeah, great. But, I don't need this to be all of magic. But on the plus side, James, this is a cube podcast, and I guess it is. Yes. Thank you. If we can control what we want. So that is the silver lining with this. If anyone is least likely to be affected by this, it's potentially us. So I do love that. And that will play into our main topic when we get onto the magic online. But there's a few more bits of news. Let's crack on. I know we kind of stuck on that for a while, but it's something I think we both want. I wanted to have a bit of a chat about. One other bit of news, and this is kind of one I wasn't really expecting, but they change the way that damage is dealt. So I'm going to Hamfisted Lee, go through this and go through this, and then I'll get James to correct me when I bullshit up a little bit. Right. So the gist is they've removed the, the assign damage step. So they are changing the way that you are assigning damage. So previously, if you attacked, and your opponent blocks with two creatures, you could assign damage to them how you wanted to. You had to assign lethal damage to the first one before you could do that to the second one. But that is how damage worked. And in that step, someone could respond to how, blocks were assigned. So say my creature was swinging in and I dealt the damage to one creature, but the opponent wanted to survive. They could play a combat trick, boost it up, and but basically, they can wait to see how you are dealing damage before both players can wait to see how damage is assigned before responding to it. As the attacker, you choose the order in which creatures will be assigned damage. The first creature still has to be assigned lethal damage before you assign any damage to the second creature, but you alter this creature first, first creature second, and a double block. And then there's the possibility for opponent to take more game actions. Yeah, and that is the part they are getting rid of now. There is no now effectively that all the assigning damage happens in the damage step. So now there's no so there's no way to respond to it. So so if you want to cast a combat trip to try and save the creature, you have to do it in blocks. You can't do it. You can't wait for damage because by the time damages you get to the damage step, the damage will have been dealt. But it's in the damage step where it's kind of being designed. Where where it's kind of being decided. Yeah. It's like that getting rid of a step of ordering blockers specifically like that damage was actually always a separate step of, because if you in the previous system, if you ordered a one creature first, one creature, second attack of some response, you would then go to damage after they'd had a chance to respond. And you did have the option to, say, assign all the damage to a first creature and onto the second. If that was what you want to assume, that wasn't something the opponent could respond to, but they could respond to ordering block at certain. Yeah, that is that is something that has been removed. Okay. Nice. So they've done this as a way of kind of simplifying. Then I think, simplifying things. They said they've been playing this internally for about a year. I think the tldr with this is it effectively makes combat tricks slightly worse because there's less opportunity to kind of get someone. One thing that has got slightly better is that like things like pirate lessons. So effects that deal damage to multiple creatures have got better, along with effects that minus power toughness of a multiple creatures. Because one thing that you can now do with this rule changes you do not have to assign lethal damage to a creature before you move on to the next creature to say, I have a fourth wall that's swinging in to two four fours and and they block with both for force. I can assign two damage to both creatures. I won't kill them, but I could then follow up with an effect that deals in two damage. And then I. In theory, I would. They already have two damage marked on them for the rest of the turn, and that kind of thing works. So, my guess is this won't affect games a vast amount, especially as kind of combat tricks are kind of less like that. They're less bread and butter when it comes to standard sets nowadays. But, yeah. What do you think of the rule change? Yeah. I mean, as with all combat interaction stuff, the format this affects most is limited, right? That's the format where you can be seen for weeds with lots of double blocks. And combat is the thing that really matters most of the time. I think it makes combat tricks slightly worse. It's worse specifically on defense, which was generally not how you ideally wanted to use your combat tricks anyway, but it it was a real part of their range. And, yes, the thing you really can't do anymore is, I block your four four with two free threes. You put one in front, I cast a giant grove to save it. Because if you have to, cats, you're trying. Very. I'll just go. Okay. I'll find three damage to the other three. Three. So that's like my initial reaction on on reading. This was kind of ambivalent. I didn't really mind either way. I saw a Twitter thread where people were talking about it, and the thing that really jumped out to me was how many people seem to have a very imperfect understanding of the current system and how that works, and how you see, how did I do, I do yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good. And I know you understand how that works, but but that does five by. So if I've definitely had like an events with players who've been playing quite a long time, quite a few times been like yeah, they line up multiple creatures, I'll be like, okay, a sign of damage for the first one has a death trigger or whatever. And people be like, surprised that you could do that. And I think if players who have been playing your game for quite a long time don't fully understand the system, then probably the system is too complicated. And I think that probably makes this broadly a good change. Yeah, yeah, I go along with it. Yeah. If it like it takes away a bit of edge cases, but to an extent, if it makes it simpler for everyone, then it's probably going to be fine at the end of the day. It will won't affect it. It will change the way games are played especially. Yeah, as you mentioned in limited. But yeah, the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's going to be a change for the worse. Basically. Yeah for sure. All right. One more bit of news and then we move on to the Magic Online Vintage Cube Live. So in the same weekend as all of these announcements and changes, we also had magic on Vegas and Magic on Vegas. We had the World Championships. So it was taken down by Kevin Dominguez winning for the second time. James, I know you. I managed to catch a little bit. How was the world championship and what did you think about it? Yeah, I, I really enjoyed watching this. This actually I watched like the first, first couple of rounds of track, which is normally my engagement because I intend to play a ton of standards. The track was great, this one just great. I enjoyed that, and I actually tuned in for the top eight as well and really enjoyed that. It's the standard format. Looks pretty fun. I said tune in. I was so catch up because, you know. Yeah. What was that? Yeah. Well, in the UK, there is not a time of the day where Vegas Day works for us. Yeah, that's not happening. But no, it was really cool to watch back, actually. Yeah, I absolutely crushed it. Second world title, playing a very sweet tech. I thought it was like, the Mirror Demons with the, the annex, which was that for me? I love that card. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had two of those at prerelease, and it was a house. Oh, yeah? Yeah, the cards messed up. Yes. You have, and a bunch of additional demons. So you still get the drain. Even if I kill the token you make. And then it kind of has, like, a combo finish as well with the doomsday. Excruciating. But actually the the mad lad. Cast it. James. Yes. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah. It's a blue black deck, but, every, every land taps the black and, has a cast in the James. That's true. But I'd be like one long phantom thought to be fat matlab. So. But yeah. No, it has, like a cool combo finish with doomsday. Excruciating. So which like six black banner. Can you feel keep you draw a card and wait. It answers. Each player exiles all but the bottom six cards for that library. The chair case. You cast this, and then you play the Jace familiars and you smell them out. Which is quite good. You also have a couple, I think, four copies of Restless Thief, which is like a blue black creature land where when you attacked you, Melvin for four, that that also works. Yeah. Jesus. That is in this deck. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it and I love it. Yeah, it's just a really nice, like, finish deal. Believe that control deck. Right. But mostly it's about unholy Amax being messed up. Because when you reliably get the train off that rather than losing like, it, it's really dumb. Like, draining for two and involving an extra card each ten for three mana is is pretty offset. So yeah, they need to keep the demons off the board and you have quite a lot of them. Is is largely the plan here. Yeah. That looks like a fun and very stupid deck. Sure. I should just say if you only want to watch one match. Fun worlds. Having a semifinal versus Jeff Manfield was. It's an absolute banger. Did you see any of any of the other decks major on? So, yes, there was, there was some crew force using the ley line and some pump spells set up of fuel pump spells. Took down some games. I think this decks a lot. It does almost always get quite a lot worse. Pasteboard is the thing. Because if people are in any way for that fit, they just bring in some some additional cut downs or whatever. Then. And it's kind of tough there. I mean, I'm sure it was a fine choice for a tournament, but, yeah, I think I know it's like problematic and best of one and got banned. But I think in, in best of three it's, it's almost certainly fine. There's some, some good like old Garvey mid-range vamp stuff with the green overlords. And that, that seem to be working pretty well using Magnus multiple overloads and, up the beanstalk. Because when you do the alternate cast, if you overload of. There's still a spell with CMK five or greater for the purposes of Up the Beanstalk. So you just get the load off on cards that way and grind mount. Yeah. And then I think that would, that's great for a they have decks in the tournament. That's that's the main one I actually saw on the field. But yeah, something there's a lot of them, various control decks and and some, some good, good read beat down stuff as well. Nice classic. Love it. All right. So with all the news on the way, let's move on to our main topic of the day. So today our main topic is we're going to be kind of reviewing the Magic Online Vintage Cube Live. So this was one of the highest stakes cube drafts ever. So this was a cube draft in person using a real cube for keeps last weekend. How did we get to that point? James. Yeah, it was not not an easy vote for these players. So to qualify anyone could enter, which was really cool. And it was like $6 to enter. So they're very, very attainable. But you had to win your, you know for Italy, which was you know, six, seven. And that was let's go for though. And then that point you went into A64 player event. You had to win that. So, win the Swiss and then, and then three over top eight fact. And then that would qualify you for a final eight man draft. You got to win that draft to get to Vegas. So there's a lot of stages Scott got through there that the players who have who've qualified have done a lot of winning to get here. So let's talk about the players. So so congratulations to the eight players who managed to get here. So first of all, we in week one we had Munson Jenkins, otherwise known as Matthew Abrams. We had, week two, we had Foolish Puppy, otherwise known as Christopher Bruner. On week three we had fur mtg, otherwise known as Fernando Palmeiro Garcia. On week four, we had Luca Jaques in real life known as Luca Jack Ovitz. In week five, we had slacks, otherwise known as Jesse Hampton. In week six, we had Rex checks, otherwise known as Rex Jack a bit. You might have noticed a pattern in the naming that, in week seven, we had Lenny, otherwise known as Daniel Prussic, and in week eight we had chef an otherwise known as Oscar Christensen. So yeah. So as we mentioned, the amount of magic or the amount of high pressure magic there took them to get there was kind of kind of wild and I think they actually published their, win loss records on the on go vintage YouTube before, before the tournament and there are some people damn like, like, so, some people had played a shockingly small amount of like, go win. Oh, that may go in general like this definitely shows they kind of this got people into playing Mego which, which, which if that was like go out really work. But like someone like, Munson Jennings, Matthew Abrams, he had played 21 games before this in limited play. His win loss record was 100%. That's kind of wild, but like, that's the small number. On the other end of the spectrum, you have, Foolish puppy. Who, who? Christopher Bruno. Who who won? Who won? The second week he played Jesus. All time 1087 vintage cube wins. Like, like, like matches of cube one. Those are wild numbers. Like you have MTG with 900 and 911 all time game wins on Goat. Like, those are some serious, serious numbers. James. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't know that I want to know my numbers, to be fair, but, pretty good. I know I want to never win percentage. I don't know, I want to know lifetime games played fair. That's fair. Yes. I'm terrified. That's been around a long time, then. Siskiyou. But, Yeah. No, it was. I did think it was cool that it wasn't just cube grinders showing up and playing these events. It was everyone playing, seemingly, who likes to. You can play at it. I didn't at all. I think a lot of these people like some of these people like magical online accounts to play this, and that's really cool. And it's cool that some of those people made it here. Like, I think it would actually be a shame for the event if you looked at the top eight, and it was just all the people who spent loads and loads of time playing playing make Vintage Cube. Is that worth mentioning? Like kind of, a lot of these players spent a lot of time playing it. Some people, I think two of these players I can remember which two, but only ended once. The two players put in $6 and just ran the table and got to Vegas. But it's not bad for, is it, that 6009? Yeah, that's a very good investment I guess. But I but I like better so yeah yeah yeah. The fact that was open to everyone is is awesome. And like yeah I hope they do something like this again in the future. It's going to be a couple of years. I think. But so those are the players. What are they playing for. So what they were playing for was the cube itself. So this is a powered cube. We'll move on to the breakdown of the cube in a little bit. But basically this is this was this cube had power nine in it. If you open the Black Lotus you've got to keep the Black Lotus. How the prizes worked is I think the prize was the to a large extent, the prize was the draft. You got to play in this tournament and you got to, keep what you drafted off of that. So. So there were 360 cards drafted of this 540 cube. Afterwards, each player got to pick one card based on the order that they finished. So, whoever finished first got to pick one card from the remainder of all the undrafted cards that went down from 1 to 8. Then after that, the remaining 100 and 172 cards just went to the winner. And I know you're thinking like, oh yes, yes, the power is expensive, but like, how expensive is a lightning bolt? That kind of stuff. They put like they found the best versions that they could. So there was like there's, there's like beta or alpha lightning bolts in there. There's a, there are signed cards and, and I literally one of one cards in here. We'll get onto those as well. And little bit when we kind of talk about the cube. But yeah as a prize nothing like we've, we've seen nothing like this before. Yeah. It's pretty cool. There's. Yeah. But it, it's, it's modo powered, cube based I guess, but with a much heavier emphasis on older cards. I think this is a, I think it was a pretty similar version of the cube up on Magic Online right now, and it's, it's sort of feels like a cube of five years ago in, like, a really good way, I think. Like it's got some really cool new cards that there isn't like Maneskin, VU and comets and all that stuff. Right. And then it means I think it's shifted a lot more like a twirl and combo, Volvo than actually being quite pushed. Which is, I don't know. I'm not saying it's a good of a bad thing, but it's cool that it's like a bit different. And it's, I think if you're going to do a, you know, one vintage cube probably for like this fight and paper, then it's cool to have it be like, this is what Vintage Cube is thought of. And, this is like just the current evolution. It's got a lot of like, stuff that maybe isn't quite good enough anymore. But we associate ice cube staples like consecrated sphinxes in here, and I think probably pretty good, splinter twins. And then they actually get wears. These cards have kind of got pushed out of of current mode. Oh, cube. Of a, that version we had with of her recent cards. So, yeah, I think it was a nice bit of, cube design to pull that off. Yeah, I really like it. Yeah, it's kind of wild, but kind of like, there are, like, there are versions on, like, there are links on if I can find it, I will put a link to it in the, in the show notes, where basically someone has collated, like the annual updates to the Mega Vintage Cube from like 2010 to like 2024. Effectively, they put it on and like they put them all in there and effectively put about up until about 2020, the cube looked relatively like this. It is the last couple of years where there's been a bit of a push for just raw power level of cards, and that feels like the. So it's more kind of like it feels like if someone real like there's kind of like the average cube over the last 15 years, but the outliers I'm just single card power level haven't been included. So and I did quite like that. So yeah. So you mentioned no mention like the Running Dragon or the taco instead of that. I love that. But like, there's no shield red, there's braids cabal minion in there. I love that. Like there's no foretelling is there's no one ring. It really reminded me of when I started playing like Power Cube and like, yeah, like like there's very little monarchy. There's no initiative. There just some cards that it wasn't running like. Are there any card that sits out to James is kind of like, maybe not like power level. This is a banger. But like, you were kind of glad to see included. So, I've done what is sent as a cube on Mako, which I now, which is Sylvia's place. She's 50. She says you can get on that go. So obviously you can't have a unique card, which we'll talk about later. But, in that draft I play played like Snake Stack and Tangle Wire. Oh, and James actually not awful. It was. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was good to see those. Kind of like some of the ones that stuck out to me was like, I like pack rats in this, James. I remember when, like, I started playing every, like, pack rat was like the one of the most powerful cards imaginable. And it was just like other games. And there was a, there was a bit in coverage where if it had survived, it would have it would have done a hell of a thing. But yeah, it was good to be back, right? I my heart skipped a beat. James, when I saw Jackal Pump. Oh, I'm going to read Jackal part for those who've only been cubing in the last couple of years, because, dear God, you will have not seen this card. Hey, it was in the. It was in the power cube. In an image cube for quite a while. I will say longer that it probably should have been, but Jacob is a single read for A21. Whenever Jacob is dealt damage, it deals that much damage to you. This got power crept like well, a decade ago. Because that is a because that is a downside on a one man or two one. But I love like that is proper magic. James. Oh, yeah. That button used to get too powerful on that. You know, this was this was a revolutionary card at the time. I'm sure. Yeah. No, it was it was cool, but it felt like sort of the history of it. Go vintage cube in one place, you know? Yeah, it was sweet, if I'm honest. There's a couple of other cards I just want to talk about because I like them. If you'll indulge me. James. Yeah. Go for like, Oh, it was good to see skirt Scroll make a comeback. I love that card. I had that in, like, a gold board, a deck when I was a kid. And, I almost put my wife off playing magic because of cash scroll. I was just getting her into it. And then we went on holiday, and I had a deck, like, we were kind of doing, like, a drop thing and just go. Rack is kind of unbeatable when you only ever have, like, one card in hand, you just deal to damage every turn to the best way to do that kind of stuff. Then, like there's a point where if I hadn't taken out of that cube thing we were playing, that she might not be going to America to play in the weekend soon. So I love always good to see things like, like Gideon Jura and Elspeth Suns jumping. Those are still very strong magic cards, but there's just other. There's just cheaper, more efficient things now, which is kind of a shame. But like they are just like getting joy. It must be one of the best cards that is like £0.20. Yeah, yeah it does. It does some stuff. It's the best. It is five matter. I know it's very five mana. That's fine. That's not. And it doesn't kill them that quickly, but it feels cleaner than, like it doesn't have the initiative. And I think I like that. Oh, yeah. No, it's. Yeah, I do like it. It's cool. Yeah. No, this is an outfit I love. But opposition was back in, opposition to ranged hermit and deep forest. They were both in support it as well. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you can I mean I think you like, you can make opposition work in a lot of colors, you know, like, I like, you know, esper opposition with like some lingering souls and some, like, token stuff before you can do it in like, bricks. It's even, you know, you've got like the direct or whatever to make one one. So it all kind of works. I love that cause, the other card, which I actually think is still good enough for me, given to Steve, I really want to put it back in all the time. Is skills a trick? I think that card so far. Yeah, yeah. She's just combined services for people who aren't doing enough to know a skill to trick is it's command to players. No guild directory. Yeah, we just don't own one. Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's two mana 33ft player. When the ETB is, you exchange control of it and target creature. Your final controls. If you don't, you suck it. So the main thing you want to do, a filter tracking cube, is combine it with a bunch of bounce effects. So you get like Gilda Drake, steal your creature, then like three minus fairy, say, bounce my Gilda Drake to my back to my hand. Play it again. Steal another creature. Keep going. I always find very sexy fun. But, yeah, there's there's a ton of cool stuff in here. That's, It's got some good, nostalgic value, I think. Steve. Yeah, there was a lot of cards. I was happy to see some other cards that were very cool to see where the specific like one of effectively one of one cards was affected. These other cards that people have given from personal collections to the tournament. So, for example, like LSV signed an alpha Lana what else? That's like$100 compared to your normal 20 normals because it's alpha if you can even get one because there were so few of them actually printed. Reducing the Lillian Vale kind of like card is synonymous with one of the cool ones was that Gabrielle Nassif, signed a cruel ultimatum. Not just any cruel ultimatum. It was the cold shot call ultimatum where an approach or quarterfinals on coverage, he needed exactly a cruel ultimatum to win a game. Otherwise he was out of the tournament. So he draws a card face down, says cruel ultimatum, starts tapping his man and flips the card. And it's cruel ultimatum. That exact cruel ultimatum he signed. And it was in this cube for someone to take home with them. That's really awesome. Yeah for sure. I thought that whole collection of side cards was really sick. Actually, that was one as well. From I can't remember who now, one of the American plays, but it signed a duress and it was a duress he to use to win two sets. That photo is like ten years apart and I've seen him satisfy like that. That's just like a really cool way of adding a a character. That's for cube, right? Yeah, definitely. One of the thing they did is that they put in some mystery booster two cards and these were two cards that. So. So we're going back a bit now. So basically if you don't currently as well as previously it was the invitational, if you won that one of the prizes was you would get to submit a card for them to print. And there were two cards, one from John Finkel and one from Q, but that effectively were too good for them to print in actual paper at that time. They printed other things to. The card that actually got printed for John Finkel was shadow Mage Infiltrator, which we probably which people have seen is a very cool card. The card they added to the cube though, and he signed. This was Wrath of Likeness. And James, if he thought you were getting away without doing a set review this month, you are wrong my friend, because we are going to review this card. This kind of broken wrath of like this is one white, white and a blue for a sorcery. Destroy all creatures. They can't be regenerated. Untap up to four lands. You can draw in a control deck. This is wild because normally with normally the downside of wrapping the board is that your opponent gets to redeploy their threats first, because they're the ones I'm tapping with their matter. In theory, you're taking your turn off to wipe the board and then your opponent gets to redeploy the threats first. This lets you redeploy your threats first because you are on tapping your lands. I'm assuming that some stolen powers with this, as well probably put it on tap, and that's good things with that. This seems like one of the best cards for a control deck maybe, maybe ever printed. I'm going to say printed because it is in paper. Now you can get it in History Booster two. I'm hoping to pick one up. James, thoughts on this card? Would it make your cube? Oh, yeah. This cards. This card's incredibly messed up. It's really, really strong. For just for play pattern of a four mana, like, wipe your board, say, a planeswalker, a white peel board, hold up position is so, so powerful. Yeah. You said the downside of graphite is, you clean the board, they play the first fret. Sometimes you think it feels like you're already playing catch up again. You just don't have that issue here. You want that? This is how you. This. It's both keeps you alive and turns the corner effectively. It's. Yeah, there's there's not another card like this in magic. It's. Yeah. Basically a zero amount of that. Obviously you can't play it until you have four mana, but it, it feels like a zero mana breath and, and that was going to win a lot of games of magic. Imagine like ten four. You kill that creatures and cast your mind sculptor. Like, that's insane. But, Yeah. No. Oh. It only goes in one deck, I guess is the only downside, because, like, you can't really splash this in an otherwise nonwhite stack. And sure, you could splash the blue parts of it, but realistically, you want this in a control deck anyway. So, you're probably going to be blue regardless, but in that deck, it's going to be like one of your best cards for sure. But I might have to take back what I said about Gideon juror earlier. Although it is only ten b currently, this card is only is only like $1.50, so I'll probably be picking one up. The other card that was not included for being too good was Kai Buddhas. He ended up getting Void Mage Prodigy. The card in this cube is wise draft as well. Is a single blue for an enchantment. This has your opponent's play with their hand revealed for a single blue, you can sacrifice it to draw a card, or you can pay a blue blue to sacrifice it to counter target spell. This also seems exceptionally powerful, if I'm honest with you. The fact that yeah, it's a it's a permanent peak effect. So you get to see what your opponent's playing on this account to spell from then on. That's not like. Yes. You might slightly to draw a card at some point, but yeah, the Counterspell likes having it on board. This seems broken gems. Yeah, it's really strong. It's I mean, I guess the sort of downside as much as one is, if you want a player to encounter something in the same turn, it's triple blue and you are paying three mana fail counter, but you kind of care more about what's in their hand when when you have counter spells, right? Like you. Yeah. If you're just playing playing out threat, this might not be as important for you to know in the hand, but this, this lets you know if the cards they've put on the stack is for bait or not, right? Yeah. If you are guaranteed to counter the good spell with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, and there's a huge, like, threat of activation thing here, right? Like, you know, even this out, they'll play like that. Weaker cards if you like. Yeah. Find that. Okay. And then you do something else for mana. It's also five way. The mana might be tough to make this work and that. Invest in a lower stack. Cheeses. Yeah. You just get it back. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doesn't exile itself. Just. It doesn't. This itself. So that could be. That's some good, clean fun for, exactly one player. You can have a loose companion deck with wise draft as well, and Wrath of Blackness as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Okay. Sounds great fun. And for what it's worth, this is currently $0.76. So also pretty good. For what it's worth. The only reason I might not put the, wise profit as well in my cube is I don't love too many peek effects. I feel like magic is just more fun when you don't know what's in your offense, and I think it's like a gift. Forget probe is fine, right? You get a snapshot, a discard spell that having this around for, like, the whole game, I think could kind of not be that fun. Actually, my guess is if if blue base combo is not good enough in your cube and you want it to be better, this would be quite good there because this effectively lets you. This really lets you protect your combo, because you can see when their thing is when they're removals. But also one of that is coming unless you counter it as well. So that could be a thing. But like the fact that this is just so free to just play on turn one. Yeah, I think this is being miserably broken and it's the thing of fate once it's in play. It's not just countable, uncountable counterspell, right? Yes. It's not on itself. And one they can't counter back when you activate that must have like a stifle or something. Maybe like Soul Ring is an example of a cheap but broken card. You shouldn't run in your lower power level cubes. Maybe we test it. Maybe if I get my hands on some mystery boost to two product, maybe we'll give it a go. So right. So set review a bit out of the way. Sorry about that, James. Right. So let's move on with the video. So yeah. So as we mentioned there's a lot of expensive cards in this cube and a lot of luck. Yeah. The effort of getting the one on one the one of one cards. And also like part of the price point is that they flew the people out to Vegas and put them up in the hotels. They paid for that travel and accommodation on top of the cube, like just James. Like, do you think they made their money back? And I'm like, how successful do you think this event has been? This event was a phenomenal successful for them, I'm sure. Like it not I'm saying they made a ton of money, but they made as much money as they could possibly have expected to make because they had to limit how many people could enter the feeder leagues. Every single weekend because they had title five too many. Yeah, because that's like a hard limit on how many they can run, right? Because there's only so many 64 man events. And it would be a real feel bad if people couldn't use their tokens that they'd got to, to play those. So yeah, every weekend, basically what happened was they put feeder leagues up and when X number of qualification tokens had been given out, they were like, right, that's the end of entries for feeder leagues. But so they every single weekend they got, they fired as many feeder leagues as they had allowed themselves to do. So yeah, they, they certainly made as much money as they could have hoped to make each year. Be honest, I've just done a bit of math on this. So if we know the cube is worth about $65,000 like you think, travel and accommodation they can do for all of the players for like $35,000, you'd assume. I guess I'm ballpark ING 100 grand for this whole thing covered just a little bit more. I guess. Even if we say enough, 20 K for the coverage, that's like. So that's when you add 120 and that's what like 20, 20,000 entries, 20,000 entries over eight weeks. That's only 2500 people entering this a week. Yeah, that seems incredibly doable. Oh yeah I think I made money all right. Sick. I'll be doing again next year then. You heard it here first. My benefit. I'm. I'm. I will give them all my money. I will learn how to use go by this time next year. Not it's not a promise. That is not a no. Let's get it wrong with the podcast. Let's talk about the draft. So specifically with this draft, it was Rochester draft. I'm assuming they did that. So you could see every card. There's the way you watch the draft works is all eight players, sat in a circle and effectively a pack is opened and put on the table. Then the player in position one takes a card and then goes round the table. So the position at 2008, who takes two cards and it starts going back the other way. Then the person two I'm assuming the left of who I was in position one they are now the first draft for the next pack that is laid out on the table. So basically you repeat that process for every pack. So, a time duration point of view, it takes a lot longer. This, this draft was like an hour and a half, something like that. I want to say like like maybe with some intros and that kind of stuff and with like a break, but like basically this draft for like an hour and a half. The flip side of that was that we got to see every card that was being drafted. Importantly with this, and I think this is why they did this, we got to see when the power was drafted and if we are giving someone a Black Lotus in this draft, we want to see the moment where they slam the hand on the table and bring it over towards them. If you did it normally, you wouldn't see that as a concept. I thought that was cool. James, what do you think of what is a draft? And also what was your thoughts of the of it as a viewing experience as well? Just a draft is interesting. It's the whole thing of it being face up sort of adds a bit of a, another dimension. Right? So you can see what everyone else is drafting. Obviously there's two sides to that. Like you can sure, you can pick if you want, but you can also it's also sort of easier, theoretically, to get in your lane. The other thing I'll say about versus the draft, but except for that couple of times it's really difficult. Especially with, like this. Now, it's not just that, they normally take much longer than that. This was with pretty tight time constraints they had before each. Patrick had like a minute to look at the pack before anyone picked a card to sort of process. But then once someone it picks a card at five seconds each. Patrick. Versus the draft, there's so much information to process because you're processing everyone else's backs, you're processing your deck and you're thinking about, yeah, if you're considering in that one minute and you're going like six, you have to think about like, what cards might I be choosing for between now five seconds when it's actually on me? And that's really difficult because, there's always going to be spots where you, you have a choice you hadn't considered and you have, like, no time to make your, to make your decision. I think that was five. Why? We we saw some picks. That looks very weird. Even outside of for money drafting stuff like that. I think that was a lot. Why? Because for chess, surviving is just harder in a lot of ways. In other drafts, is you're listening Spotify way like. Well, I know no one else wants this card, but I kind of want out of this pack. So maybe I don't need to take it. Plus, I might maybe I can get it on the second one. True. But also, if this is like. But y'all come as well, then my whole deck is built. Is that needs, say, like, someone might just take it for me because they don't really have anything else. May I want to I got some really good stuff on deck. Yeah. Or they could just take it because it could be the most valuable card. Because because again, this has the additional element to it, element to it that the players were keeping the cards. So we did see a lot of the first player picking from a pack, picking just the most expensive card rather than the one best for that deck, because there's card that was cards in it, like there was a Black Lotus opened. Obviously that person's like, that's good in any deck. But like there were some players who took like lesser power level cards, but they were worth like £500 a grand, that kind of thing. Taking that firstly because it has a longer impact on your life than in one draft, I guess. Makes sense. Yeah. For one that really made me laugh was note, which was in that, yeah, I go, yeah, but like first or second take note, which is, I don't know. I said it's not really a flavorful card to queue it. That's up to you. But yeah, I think it's worth like close to a grab, so. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Take it. But yeah. No, I think Rochester draft is an interesting fast format. It's hard to get done in time, which is why they were they same constraints. Yeah. I think that makes it tough to make like, optimal decisions all the way down. Yeah, it was something they used to do a lot more like I think back in the day. What's the draft was they draft style of choice for like for limited events. And one of the reasons they got rid of it was because of the timing with restrictions, but also because it meant people. It's because there's the face of adamant people in like from teams or working with each other. It is easier to kind of like control the table a little bit. That used to happen a lot with kind of like the older pros who knew what they were doing. Like it'd be like, okay, I'm gonna take all this color and I got that color. I'm going to set you up that kind of stuff. So but for for this, I think it made the most sense. I guess one negative maybe I would say, is that, yeah, there is a lot of information to keep in place. And it was really cool to see people open these cards and get, basically open. I get to keep power because that's wild. You do not get to see that ever nowadays. It did make keeping track of everyone's deck a little bit tricky. Like, even like it was Marshall Sutcliff and Reed you commentating on this? And outside of maybe LSV, there aren't really two other people who could comment on vintage for you. Probably as well, with the amount of casting experience that they have. And they had a trouble, they had trouble keeping track of who had what generally. So we will go over the decks, in a moment, although we'll pick out some some kind of interactions. We'll pick up some decks that we thought were cool. What kind of the feeling of the draft was that? We kind of roughly knew who the best deck was, because Luca Jack events ends up with three bits of power. He ended up with a time warp and ancestral recall and a Mox jet. Three bits of power is a lot of power. So kind of generally off the day when we assumed he would have the best deck meeting anyway was the second best deck was his father's deck rec Jack a bit because he had the only actual, the only real aggro deck on the at the table. He wasn't really being fought for it too much, and he had a Black Lotus with that. And obviously that's a very prized, most expensive card in magic in a Niagara deck. It can like like in combo decks, they can do very broken things in like like even if this is just casting a table of the better break on turn one, sometimes that can just win you a game of magic like these are still very broken things. Outside of that, it was kind of hard to keep track of what decks were with what. Those kind of an idea that some people had, like bits of a Re-Animator package. Some people had a bit of an aristocratic deck, and the other one we we saw was that someone did end up with, like, show and tell. Eureka Channel and recall, I think, which is kind of vibes. That was that look that looked like a very cool deck, but kind of. So that was kind of the draft. Let's move on to actually breaking down the decks a little bit. So obviously there are eight decks. We're going to kind of go through the ones that we thought were the most interesting. So let's start with Luca Jack events. As we mentioned, he had three bits of power. He kind of ended up in like an esper. Esper control deck, but his top end was kind of stacked. He had things like Elspeth sons champion. He had Elspeth Knight errant. He had the scarab guard that is a very scary card, especially in this format. Combine that with a bunch of removal. There's, like a vendetta. There's a source to plowshares as a toxic dahlia. Just vindicate. He basically had a pretty good esper control deck with importantly, time walk, ancestral recall, and also having cards like Snap Testimony as a way of recasting those bells and even had the spell. So he had to go and find two of his bits of power. I guess the one downside is that the fixing on his deck was a bit ropey, but, on an ancestral recoil kind of, kind of the multitude of mistakes. Yeah, obviously the power level of a spell is off the charts, but I think you're being very kind to his manor base with a bit of AP. It's a watery grave and a celestial pole, and it's a seven, seven, six. That's a Mox. I was including the Mox, where you set up seven, seven, six is not okay when you're trying to craft, like, sky clay evaporation. What do you guys. Double white? That's double blue. It's, It's it. Yeah, it's really it's. I feel like you need to hive all very well with this manor. It seems like you would have a lot of games where you don't cast your spells. I don't know, it felt to me like I'd say I didn't see, like, the whole process of the draft from his point of view. My guess is here. He was kind of trying to be blue white and didn't gets enough cards to not flash for black. Because if you don't splash for black, it would be fine, right? But, ends up playing black for like, hostage taker, scarab gods reanimate, vendetta, dialouge. Which obviously like powerful cards, but, Yeah, this this man is fairly tough. When the mana works, this deck is going to be great. Yeah. Works on an insane card already, but it's sort of at its best with plains walkers. Ancestral, obviously. Like busted in a textbook and one for one, which for Scott can do very well. Yeah. If if a mana, if a manner works, there's there's nothing wrong with this stack, but, I guess you could argue you're a bit vulnerable to aggro with, you know, you'd love to have, are you other sorts as well? Actually, I don't even see the solid. There's two board whites. There's, wings of abandon and and deluge. Yeah. Just nice winds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's. They can be a. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But, Yeah, the I think the main challenge here is just for mana another night. James. All I'm hearing is I don't need to draw plans anymore. Let's go. I'll get that 15 thing. What? Celestial calling made an unfortunate thing first. Nice. So the next one we wanted to talk about. Let's jump ahead. Let's talk about Jesse Hammond. And you mentioned you wanna talk about this one, James. And this is is it purely because there's an opposition and a retrofit to foundry in here? Unsafe, surely. But it's it's really. Yeah, yeah, this is again, I, I think you're seeing a lot of these decks. They are a bit crappy. I think a lot of that is to do with a the format of war chest to draft and be money drafting, like money drafting. You're just going to burn a bunch of picks, cards that don't go in your deck. Yeah. I think it's worth worth mentioning from the draft. He actually had a lot of black cards in his pool. But didn't run them in the deck, I'm assuming, just because, like, yeah, he's probably being more sensible with his mana. The I can see we have, like, a flooded strand here. We have a tundra, we have a scrubland. So he has these kind of, and we have a hollowed fountain. So here I see more. He has gone with the more consistent deck rather than just like, running a bunch of powerful ones. But there's still some good stuff in here. Like, yeah, we mentioned the opposition, but there is a fractured identity, which in this slow, kind of cube where there's a, there's a bit more grind, something like a fracture that seems very, very strong. Yeah. For sure. For everything he's got going on here is the Clarion Academy, which is and he said, so med Academy dec otherwise. But Flowering Academy, that trifecta is, is fairly messed up. And he's got the, trinket mage to go and find for macho faces. When you draw your academy, you're going to be able to put that together quite a lot. It's also Manor Crypt in here to get you into manor early. This is yeah, obviously a bit of a scrappy one. I think he did quite a lot of pivoting in the tracks, as you say, but I, I think comes together to something which, I could definitely see working here and. Yeah, did did did spend face takes on manor which which punched through have worked quite well. The one thing that's a shame is if he'd ended up with a walk, it would have been an incredible because he has the, he has the Grove eternal witness and even asked the ephemera to go for a settlement. And that's and, ephemera eternal witness time walk is just infinite tense. But yeah. CV fest. That's. I'm you're familiar witness to get back for walk. You walk some rebounds. When you rebound it, you send a witness back for your right and go again. So. Yeah. You. So he missed on the wall. He'd even have, I'm sure played like for some of the five minute walks and he missed some of those, which is a shame. But yeah he's got like good plains walk is good top end and good manner. Yeah. Also worth mentioning there is a manuscript in here which is it. Yeah. For times of fast manner. Probably better than all the boxes, but not what you want to open in this given its recent price issues, shall we say. That's true. Yeah. And that but let's move on to I really like this stack that this was Fernando Palmeiro. Garcia is that he effectively ended up with like a it's not a it's a rack DOS stack with a touch of blue. But it was kind of like a sacrifice stack. There's a lot of cool stuff in here. So in terms of just raw power of cards, it's worth mentioning he has a Mox Emerald that he was the he got power. That looked very cool, but kind of the bread and butter of this deck. It's things like Sofia mansour's, bitter blossoms combined with things like mayhem, devil marionettes, apprentice Goblin Bombardment and the Meat Hook Massacre. Like that is an aristocrat shell, and he put it to good use in this. I really like this deck. Like that. That's kind of the bread and butter. But there's a few other cool cards on top of that. What stood out to you, James? From this one? Yeah, this looks like a very nice one. Yeah. Very solid creature removal, like Tyr Kinesis. But better try. And stuff, like, the three mana jurati I think is great here. On the plus is to make one ones and minuses, which are artifact and minuses to sack an artifact killer creature artifacts like super strong, grinding card anyway. But when you combine it with stuff like the Mayhem Devil, the Meat Hook Massacre, then he gives it that extra level. And obviously the marionettes apprentice plays really well into that Goblin bombardment is a, you've got a minute, a bit more. But like, when it works, it's really good. And you've got that better blossom you've got for performance. I think this all knits together quite well. Probably, like, looks a bit more cohesive than I think than some of the other decks we saw. Yeah. I'll top of the mock. Samuel, do you have, a dark ritual as well, which is going to get you some free wins in this small format just by like, dark ritual out, vomiting or whatever. Nice and early and, Yeah. And his manner actually looks quite good as well for, the blues. Quite a light splash. And he's got quite a bit of sexing. Yeah, there's two fetches. There's, a spiral canal, which is the fast land, but also the Zanders Lounge. So that's effectively a kind of a free splash. The top end on this day, I did really quite like shocking that like, like it was so he. Yeah. You mentioned the glory bringer, but he also has a thunder. More Hellgate Thunder, more Hellgate, a gold spam dragon, and a zealous conscripts that will just end games like if you can, like, like he has the Mox and he has the dark ritual. You can just steal games in this deck. Like like there is definitely the grindy plan. But then when you got them down to roughly like seven, I don't know, fire glory, bring a smack them with it, suck it to the Goblin bombardment, train them off the meta massacre or the main apprentice and you win like that's really powerful. Yeah. For sure. And I think when we talk about, like sacrifice as a theme and cube, we often think it has to be sort of what your deck is all about. I think in higher power level cubes, this is often more what sacrifice decks look like. If you're playing like 90%, just good cards, like good grind cards and some aggressive bits, you can get in damage. And then the sacrifice stuff is sort of your late game thing, which gets in the last 6 or 7 points or like you'll yeah, your Goblin bombardment can just control the board, right? You've got the bombardment bits blossom going, but you can kill all that creatures and then eventually you kill them. You got to mayhem Devil or Meat Hook Massacre or something. Yeah, that's a thing. Like. But just looking at this deck, it does look quite. I don't want to say linear, but it does look like play sacrifice outlets. Play token makers finish with the dragon. But, like, I'll be honest with you, like like the lines like from the gameplay, the lines out of this deck that I saw were the most interesting to me, that you had so many choices in terms of when to do stuff, how to trigger things. I hope this for me, this was my favorite deck of all of them, I don't think. I don't think it was the most powerful, which we get on to when we get to results and stuff, but I think from just a I, everything but everything in this deck looks a lot like like as you mentioned, the decks are quite scrappy. This doesn't look like a scrappy deck. There's power in here, there's good interaction, there's a top end and there's a game plan. And the manner looks nice as well. Like this. Like Fernando drafted very well with this deck. Yeah, yeah. I think that really comes across the only thing that would slightly concern me if this was like a deck I drafted and was taken to a, taken to a tournament, was that the, It's really love a bit of discard in here because you have a lot of removal to interact with the aggressive people, but you don't have any ways really to disrupt a, a combo deck of a if a combo deck isn't involving creatures or a, control deck is, you know, your control deck can just deal with your Thunderball quite, quite reasonably. And you don't have those counts. Those discard spells to attack the hand. Yeah, something like a thought, Caesar. A mind twist would be spectacular on this deck. Yeah. For sure. Even just, like, at your ass, I think. Yeah. If you could exchange like, v at night v five eyes for your ass, I'd feel pretty good about that. If you said scroll, then, James, I would have had does this and did this recording immediately Y see? Well, you can as a sock after feel cat skull, you see. So you happened and it was great. And I can scroll coming back into my cube. You love to see it. All right. But also we wanted to kind of touch on in, in like more detail was Chris Bruno's deck. He drafted I'm not going to say mono green, but it's effectively the green deck with a splash of blue. So in here we have thing we have like a bottom end with things like birds of Paradise, Lotus, cobra, Paradise Druid. We have utopia sprawl. We have some Satan. It's the early game is ramping. Also in this deck we have channel, we have show. And so we have Eureka as our big dumb enablers. And then on top of that, we have things like prime time causal, like butcher of truth or Democracy says hunger and recall the iron Stone when that comes together that this feels very glass candy. But when that comes together, that feels quite scary. Yeah, I really like this deck. This is one you don't see come together a ton and vintage cube, but it can really work when it does. Eureka is a card which I think has been in and out of gifts, but I actually really like it. I think like it's not going to get fired every draft, but when it does, it's going to do some really cool stuff. And now the fact that you can just keep going with Eureka, you're like, you know, casting Eureka is my am the cool oh yo putting thing. Oh, here's my fossil to for X. Yeah. But you're thinking yes please add some. Yeah. Felicity cut. And yeah. So Intel obviously great way works for all the same stuff. Titania, it looks like he's not an amazing Titania deck. He's got a few ways of stacking the land with, like, It's got one patch in a, wasp grove. Yeah. Really nice stack again. Like, more of a solve clear directional game plan than some of the others. And, yeah, looks like it came together pretty well for them. And you just have those three winds, right? With Ted to channel that. The cool. Okay. Slack. Awesome thing. And one thing that actually makes this deck better. And it's kind of one of reasons we're not touching on some of the other decks is because, effectively Re-Animator was split between like three players. That was three players fighting for like, the reanimates, the animate dead. Like the gristle brands, like the bit, like the icons, like the big payoffs that like, ultimately basically the whole deck. There is not a dedicated Re-Animator deck. And in that kind of environment where you where you're not worried about what your opponent is putting into play, you're much more comfortable, hitting off that show until hitting that Eureka, because you're basically guaranteed to have the biggest thing because, like, I'm going to to do the rest of the decks, like the biggest other thing in the whole cube is what, like all that's all play was what, like a glory bring a grave Titan? The one player was running an kind of cruelty, actually. But but but but but their plan with like, Daniel was. The plan was to ramp out the arc on of cruelty. He wasn't doing anything, but there was no cheating. It was a fair arc on. Seems like a bit of a push even in this kind of environment, but kind of like knowing that night, knowing that most of the field isn't going to have an answer to your big stuff is a very nice feeling. Yeah for sure. And even if they do have something scary, like at least you know about it, right? Because law Draft is all face up. Yeah. So you know what the worst thing they could put in is? And you can play around that to a certain extent. Yeah. Just being from the could definitely get you as if they put, if the mindset of a guy that's in the mind, that could be quite fun. No. But in mind cipher knights slaver you channel you said death could be could be a way you could go wrong. Yeah. No, I think that that looks fairly sweet, actually. I'd love to see a bit more of that on camera. Yeah. No, I agree, those of them that actually want to, I wanted to deep dive into. I'll kind of give a brief summary of the other Dexter. So you have just the completion isn't that so? As I mentioned, Daniel, Prospect Deck was kind of a Re-Animator deck without the reanimation stuff. So it's kind of like a, it looks like a solid blue black control deck. But the top end was things like gray Fight and trying to hide that stuff. Powerful cards were like, the white is dropped as well that we mentioned, but also the grim monolith is a bit of ramp. We then have rec Jack a bit. Stack. As we mentioned before, that's a fact. It's effectively, Boris aggro Jack. That kind of goes to for mana, for, Sean, for torture, defiance and Hell Rider. Not too much with this deck. It is kind of a straight, meat and veg aggro jack, but the Lotus being the key card there. Then we have Matt Abrams. He was kind of a nice, lands style of deck. This one seems like, as as a bunch of different moving pieces in the manner seems quite tricky. Although he has a lot of lands. But the key thing with this deck is that there is a fast bond, crucible and all stuff in here with a bit of the bunch of fetch land. So basically he can get every land out of his deck and gain infinite life. Very cool deck, but it does seem a bit even more glass. Kind of neat because effectively you're, it's a very all in combo deck. And I'm probably planning on winning with, like, a, there's a pest infestation when you have infinite mana, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's when you have infinite mana, you also have infinite life, right. So you can. Yeah, you can kind of win with whatever. Yeah. I like slashed enlightens too tough. It goes and gets all the pieces of your lands combo as well. I thought that was that was quite cool. Yeah. I think you mostly went with, like, these dumb creatures, right? Like you're questing these. The questing based on it? Yeah. That's how you actually. Yeah, yeah. Said the glare of fuel was funny to me as well. This is, I've not seen that in a while. Yeah, yeah, because opposition was so good. We need for bad opposition. This was second on let's just love that. Okay. Nice. And then the last deck is Oskar Christiansen. This effectively is the combos. So he had a bunch and oh they had a couple in here. He had things like Z a basalt monolith for infinite mana. He had he splinter Twin and Deceiver Zoc for those combos. I'm not gonna say this is all with all those things, but, like, it's it has some powerful cards. Like, there's a balance in here, there's a manager and there's a chase. The main sculptor in here. But it kind of feels like it's trying to do a couple of different things. It's kind of pulled in multiple directions. It's for a combo deck, I think. I think I want a bit more card draw, like like there's a witch called Tasman for some tutoring. But outside of that, you are looking to just hard draw your combo pieces, which does seem a bit tricky. Yeah for sure. I think the, the well does with the mind is kind of interesting angle, right? You guys have quite a lot of cheap artifacts, maybe even decent thing value. This was like an emery to melee for your artifacts. Even like a Caracas to keep meddling with you and me. So, yeah, can maybe, maybe do something with that, but it's, Yeah, it looks like you'd need to draw. Well, put it that way. No. Exactly. Cool. So those are the decks. Let's talk about the results. So the whole thing was taken down by Luca Djokovic's with the three power. So, the games of this were very cool. So they showed what we generally saw at least two games for each round apart from the final round. Where where it was just the main event because the games had finished and they'd cut to a different one. Lucas deck, he he didn't really get screwed. I if I'm honest with you, he was not really punished. There was a couple, I think if he keeps that look on of. Well, they were if he keeps. But but there's an ancestral in there. The games with this deck were, kind of punishing to watch just at times. I don't know, I don't know if that's the best way to describe it, but basically, I looked like eventually this deck looked like it was losing for all the time. It was like, there was like one for one answering their threats, answering what they were doing. And then at some point you land a scarab guard or a wandering emperor or an Elspeth sons champion. And and that's how you slowly turn the corner, like like like like he didn't really run away with a lot of games, but he definitely slowly pulled him, pulled his way back into a lot of games. And that's kind of like, I mean, it's a control deck. That's kind of what we were expecting basically. Yeah, I'd say definitely like length of power, pretty hard. In a lot of the games that I saw, that's yeah, I mean that, you know, you know, pinball cannons ancestral and that's, that's what you're going to do. And then. Yeah, I think that that's played well. Yes, I, I would say kind of cut away at that manor wise, but you know, Athens and you've, you've got a lot of powerful cards. And to me, tend have pretty well. I am never drafting a the game again. James. It's fine. I'll just open everything else perfectly and draw flawlessly. Everything's fine. Second place was Fernando, with the kind of criticism. Sack deck. I thought he played really, really well. Like, again, as I mentioned, like, looking at this deck, it looks pretty straightforward. But, yeah, there were so many awesome lines with this. Yeah, yeah, if I'm honest. Yeah. And the final game kind of just got like out powered an out resource basically, against the control deck, against this, Lucas deck that just becomes a point where you're just losing just in terms of just court advantage and just threats and, and Fernando wasn't like, Fernando wasn't able to really kind of close that gap in time, basically in the games I saw. So he came second and third place was wrecked. Jacob. It's with the aggro deck. This just curved out and killed people. Yeah. Yeah, it looked like a very solid deck. Yeah, yeah, I like I saw the deck and he was he wasn't really being fought too hard for the aggro pieces, I think, like, maybe like from the draft, like towards the end, I think he, he didn't take a like I think he took like a like he didn't take a small crew because he thought he could get it on the wheel. And then someone else just took it randomly cause they were in white. Outside of that, he basically got every like, like 90% of the pieces that were available to him in terms of aggro. And when an aggro player is left alone to go and do what they want, they're going to do well. Like, yeah, his deck has a Raghavan. It has a hell rider. You're just going to kill people. Yeah for sure. For sure. The deck was solid. We had some sketchy lines at some point, but I think gaff Kevin, the, as you say, just, power level of deck, strung out credit cards up and down the curve. The Black Lotus is going to play well, in terms of the rest of the standings, we have no idea. I, we have both searched for multiple days. That. Yeah. They're not posted. They're not posted online on the, Ultimate Guide website, and they're not on Twitter. We both go back and try to watch the two and watch the Twitch VOD, and it's not really announced. So, all players had fun. One of us had fun, got to go to Vegas, had everything paid for, and took home some powerful and expensive magic cards. And it was cool to watch it. It was very cool to watch. Let's, but we're kind of coming to the end a little bit, but, yeah. What were your thoughts overall, James, in terms of, yeah, just just as a tournament as a thing they were doing. What did you think of the Vintage Cube Live? I really liked the tournament as a not just as the thing that happened that weekend, but the thing that started a few months ago and that all the way through, it's it's just such a interesting and unique thing to be playing for. Right. And, yeah, it definitely got me like motivated to go and be spiky about cube. And I quite like that. Incentive for. The experience of watching this weekend, I thought, like I enjoyed watching it. I think there's some stuff I could have done better in terms of the coverage. Not the commentators were great, actually. Marshawn Reid did a phenomenal job and a calling. Yeah, I and even just enjoy it for, the pre-draft chat even with them. But the like the coverage of a draft especially, you couldn't really tell. It's very hard to keep track of what people were drafting. I think it would have. It sounds achievable to me. Right. Have people this whole face up anyway, have people taking notes and then pushing into a computer somewhere. This is what these players have. And then each time they have to savage pack five minutes, consider Savage Pack, figuring that it's we can look at this person's pile. This is the list of cards they have. What does this player one. Have a quick chat about where that drafter is at. I think that would have given a draft a lot more watchable in terms of like having a bit of a narrative beyond just, look at the power that was opened, which I think is kind of what they focus on a lot, which I get because it's cool and unique. And yeah, I would have lots of that. Guys stay open too, but it's like there's I also want to actually watch your draft. You know, it's not like just footage of someone putting a black like this on the table and then moving it to the hand. It's not like what I'm here for entirely. Yeah, I completely agree. Like, stuff like that is certainly doable. It's just people power basically. Like you would need a couple of people doing that. Like, yeah, yeah, I would have liked to have seen that like do at least kind of like because, we didn't really get to see like our view of people's pools was effectively a picture taken on a phone the next day. So like when they were before they revealed decks on data, they showed someone to just taken a picture of people's pools laid out, and then they went to like an actual graphic of the decks. But it would have been nicer to have that, that, that and a bit more real time basically. Yeah for sure, for sure. Yeah. But from my end I so because I do I may go this almost got me and if I do it again maybe I'll, I'll throw some money into the pockets of better players. But yeah, I, I really liked hearing, Yeah. The stories of you two of you playing in it. We have plenty of other friends who play, and that we had a friend who got very, very close to getting there. I liked hearing that better. And for me, watching it was very cool. This is like one of the first. Like, I don't really watch worlds that much, like, like standard, but like, I do a Q podcast and I talk about that commander on weekends, like it's those are the formats I like. I don't really engage as much with stuff like world, and I kind of so so this is the first kind of like live magic thing I've watched in quite a while. And I made a thing of like because it was on it, some got someone got the time in the morning for us. I literally woke up Saturday and Sunday morning like morning. First thing I did was go downstairs and make a cup of tea and put this on because I wanted to watch it and I'm glad I did and I enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, I would like like the my main takeaway from it was that I want to see more Paper cube content. Like I get that it exists out there. People bulletin that go and do cube drops and that's awesome. But this really struck home to me that I want to see Paper Cube play. And I know there's people out there who do it and there are channels to do it. I just don't I don't know if Milo The Gathering is still doing, Well, it's still doing it. He was a creator of several years ago. Some people are probably doing it, but like this level of, like, one high. I know we had a I know we both have our issues with the like the coverage, but also with the graphics the day before. But this was still a high level coverage because you have people like Marshall, Sutcliffe and Redoute doing commentary on it. It feels like magic coverage. It feels like real magic coverage, if that makes sense. I want that with, like, the best players in the world. Like basically, well, if I make Worlds Cube and I would be in and that would be awesome. Like, like make cube a competitive format and do content on it, I think it'd be awesome. Well, tennis live very authentically. I might just have to make it myself. Subscribe the yeah, I, I would look like I've been thinking though, there are things we can do. Drops is tricky, but we can definitely do gameplay and stuff. But yeah, that's a that's a thing for, for another day. And then my other takeaway was I really liked this cube. Like the actual cube that they drop in, like, not like take out the awesome one of one cards because they're awesome. I love that, but just the cube design as a whole I really liked, like, I left watching this being like I, I should make like a cube that stops at the year like 90 this up are like 2018 or something like that, like stops at like ferrous block and just have it and leave it. And it's brought out like twice a year and we drop that kind of thing. It, it would be proxy for reference. I'm not going to buy a whole key to drop twice a year. But proxy wise, yeah, I think that would be sweet. I would really like that. Yeah for sure. For sure. It was like, I'm not saying it's like better or worse than, what Pilot Cube looks like, would be up to date versions, but, is a very different experience. And it's it's really cool to have that as an option, I think. Yeah. Like, I think I, I've spoken to you before about doing a about and how it cube minus supplemental products. So which I think is a lot of the cards that make it feel very different. Right. Like if until next year, but yes. Yeah. Well yeah. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's not this stuff. It's gonna be standard in the last few years. It's, gussets for Lelio, it's for broadside bombardiers, it's Maneskin. Do you know, I think that would be an interesting avenue to explore. But, yeah, it was cool getting to see some of the filter cards. Have another day in the sun. You know, exactly. And I guess kind of like the final point I want to make on this is like specifically, they were drafting this cube on the same weekend when we had all the announcements of all the universes beyond stuff coming in into, of, and stuff. And effectively, you had like the two juxtaposition corners, you had what magic has been, and there's got to hit like like there was like again, like like just being a joke about made my heart skip a beat. It was just like, awesome. That is cool. That is magic. It's good to know that cube can always still be that. Basically. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Right. So I think that's where we're going to leave it for today James. Pleasure as always. Thank you man. Now it's good okay. Nice one. I just want to thank you all very much for listening to give the podcast a five star review. Tell a friend, spread the word. All that good stuff helps the podcast to help support us grow, helps us do more cool and awesome things. But until next time, it's goodbye from me. I skipped away from James and we'll see you soon. Goodbye.