Selecting Cubes to Draft at Cube Con

Ryan Overturf goes over the Cubes that he is most hoping to draft at Cube Con this week! 

Full list of Cubes on offer at Cube Con this year: https://cubecon.org/cubes/2026

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What's up, gamers? Welcome back to 180 MTG. My name is Ryan Overturf, and this week I'm going to be talking about the cubes that I am hoping to draft at this year's KubeCon. This is actually my first time participating in KubeCon as a player. I did commentary for KubeCon a couple years ago. Really excited to make it out and just draft some stuff that I am not used to drafting, which is going to be the framework I'm operating under here today. This is not a list of what I think are the best designed cubes in KubeCon, the ones that speak to me the most closely, any kind of statement of anything being better than anything else. Rather, my selection criteria here has more to do with drafting things that are dissimilar from my own sensibilities, stuff that I wouldn't normally draft. I want to broaden my horizons and experience more of what is happening in the cube world. That was actually something that was really vitalizing for me about playing in Shoebox this year. The weirder cube, the stuff that was more out there, I really drew a lot of inspiration from and had a lot of fun exploring. When I did commentary for KubeCon, I actually had a hand in selecting the cubes that we were going to use for coverage, and some of my biases there was I went through all the cubes and really was looking for things that were, I'm gonna use the word legible. I wanted cubes that was relatively easy to look at a board state and determine what was going on in the game and then to convey that to an audience at home. Whereas my criteria here is going to be very much the opposite. I want stuff where I take a glance at the cube list and I just really don't know what the games are gonna look like. Probably have a number of cards that I'm not used to playing with, just to see what other people are doing in the space, to see if maybe there's something that I haven't thought about that would be compelling to me, or just to engage with someone else's creative projects. So this is really going to be more a mission of curiosity than when I was trying to present something in kind of a more professional, digestible way. I'm looking for the weird stuff today. And truthfully, if I did have the opportunity to do commentary for another cube event in the future, I would want to cover weirder stuff because that really is the draw for these events, going out and playing cubes that are so different from what you are used to. I think that as a caster, that involves some amount of maybe getting in early, actually experiencing these cubes first, so you can actually talk about them in a way that's worth anything, but I'm getting away from today's topic a little bit there. I'm recording this a little bit out, but the plan is for this to go live the Monday leading up to KubeCon, the week of the event. I'm going to be talking about KubeCon a lot. I'm going to be talking, you know, today about the cubes that I hope to draft. Eventually, I'll be talking about the cubes that I did draft, my experience having one of my cubes in the main event. So you're going to hear a lot about KubeCon. You're going to hear a lot about Weird Cube. So I hope there's an appetite for that, because that is certainly what is catching my attention right now. I'm very much looking forward to KubeCon this year. I'm going to have a link to all of the cubes in the KubeCon main event in the show notes here, and that's going to be every cube on offer. You'll be able to find any of the cubes I'm talking about today if you want to take a closer look at any of these, as well as just peruse everything on offer. There's likely something that would be more appealing to you that would be more in the space that you're interested in. It is useful and interesting and fun to kind of look over all of the cubes here, especially if you're not making it out to KubeCon just to see what's going on. Maybe there's something that strikes your fancy, maybe something that gives some inspiration to you. I'm going to be talking about a lot of the cubes on offer, but not at tremendous depth. This is before drafting any of them, and I'm certainly not talking about all of the cubes. And part of why I wanted to do this kind of preview episode for KubeCon and talk about what I'm hoping to draft. I guess I have a couple goals with this. One, you only get to draft so many cubes in the main event. There's one preview draft Thursday, Friday, Saturday, there's two drafts each. And then if you make top 128, you get a third draft on Saturday, and then there's two drafts on Sunday if you are doing very well in the event. Then I think that you can just play drafts as part of the main event on Sunday if you don't make the top cut. But even then, that's what seven total drafts, eight drafts. If you make it all the way to the top eight or otherwise, like seven or eight drafts, I'm talking about more than seven or eight cubes today. And so I want to talk about some of the cubes that I don't end up drafting, just to state, you know, kind of some stuff that's going on here, some stuff that's piquing my interest, some stuff that I'm curious about, and that is both to kind of highlight some cool stuff happening in the cubes, and also to express if you are one of the curators of these cubes, if you're gonna be at KubeCon, if you are looking to draft one of these cubes and you got a spot for a pickup draft at some point in the weekend, I'm likely interested in joining some drafts. You know, I'm gonna be there to cube all weekend, and I might be burned out at various times. You know, it can be a lot of mental load, especially going in drafting a lot of cubes, specifically because they are unfamiliar. But I'm gonna be down to draft a ton. I'm gonna be at the hall, I think, most of the weekend, and just trying to draft as much as I can. So if you are the curator of one of these cubes, come find me, at least to talk about it. You know, I would love to pick your brain and hear more about any of these cubes. But for now, let's kind of just go off of my first impressions and what I am looking forward to drafting this week at KubeCon. I'm just gonna be going in order down the page here today, and that happens to be alphabetical order, which means I'm talking about one up first. This is a rules modified cube that has exactly one rules modification. I do love keeping it simple. That rules mod is that players start the game at one life. There's some other stuff in kind of similar spaces. I'm gonna be talking about some of those cubes today, but these tend to involve additional rules modifications. Something that really speaks to me about the design of one up is because there's no additional rules, it's just a lot of cards that are selected specifically off of this criteria. It's less recontextualization of cards that are familiar and more recontextualization of the game of magic. You change one rule, it changes the kind of cards that make the games more compelling. This shift in context from a 20-life game to a one-life game makes it so many cards that you would normally cube with happily just are not interesting here. Like you can't just put Mog Fanatic in this cube, you can't just put lightning bolt in this cube, they just end the game immediately. So a lot more going on with turtling up, and so you see a lot of defenders here, a lot of walls. And walls is a space that I've been interested in playing with. I haven't really been able to make it work. I did try a wall package briefly and the Eldrazi tuber, they were tremendously unappealing. But when you are trying to set up a game where players have one life and you're trying to engage in combat and get through for one point of damage, some defensive creatures allow you to turtle up and try to play a longer game where you have multiple turns of combat trying to deal that one damage. So this design here is really interesting to me. I haven't gone through the list with a fine-tooth comb. I'm kind of trying to experience these more, being familiar with the concept more than the cube list, and just kind of take it in. I do like reading drafts just kind of based off of what I see in packs and just kind of following the signs that are presented to me. That's an aspect of cube that I think cubes at its best when there's a mutual trust between designers and players. And you know, everyone's at a different place with magic, so maybe the signals that are presented to me are not the ones that I perceive if I look at a given pack, but I do just want to engage with a cube, believing in the designer, and then following my own sensibilities about the draft and just kind of seeing what shakes out as I engage with all these environments. Cubes grow and change over time. As a curator, you learn stuff about balance, stuff that you have in your cube that maybe you shouldn't, and it's always fun to kind of look back at that, but I'm not going to go into any of these trying to take advantage of any issue in the design. I'm not going to be looking to force any kind of archetype that looks specifically strong. If I see a power outlier in a pack, I'm going to draft it, or at least what I perceive to be a power outlier and kind of explore that. I'm going to try to win. I'm going to try to do something coherent, but more than that, I'm going to choose to blindly trust the curators here and just engage with the experience as it's presented and just take it on earnestly and try to have some fun. As somebody who generally enjoys attacking way more than I enjoy blocking, one up features just a ton of cards that I just normally would never play with, so I'm kind of eager to figure out what speaks to me and how I end up drafting that environment and how my plan comes together. That one should be a fun one. Next up is possibly the most normal cube I'm going to talk about today, but this is a design constraint that I just find so charming. This cube is called Alpha Reimagined. And the concept here is this cube utilizes kind of the history of magic and approaches just redesigning the set Alpha, but using kind of designs over the years that really speak to the general vibe, the general aesthetic of Alpha. The cube still maintains a number of cards from the original Alpha set, uh just I think 51 according to the Cube Cobra page here, but then it kind of adds stuff that just kind of fits into the world of Alpha. And there's some changes here, like it has shock lands over original dual lands, which I do think are better game pieces. But there's a lot of stuff that does just kind of capture the whimsy and the weirdness of Alpha. Like this cube has necropotence and phylactery lich, like lich being a really flavorful, but also just god-awful card from Alpha. So kind of stuff that really does directly speak to designs, stuff that calls back to Alpha, but maybe more playable and more approachable, and some stronger designs in the case of Necropotence. That one is from early magic, but it is one that is stronger than a lot of what's going on in Alpha. Alpha Reimagined is not a powered cube, it does have some stuff that does speak to some of what's happening in Alpha. So you don't have Moxin and Black Lotus, but there still is some really strong artifact, mana acceleration. You have Basalt Monolith still present in the spread here, obviously not the same power level, but doing stuff in similar spaces. There's medallions here as cost reducers instead of Moxin. So stuff that really is kind of speaking to the space, but informed by the game's history and how it's shaped up over time. There is still some stuff here that generally you would only see in a powered cube. Like this cube has balance and it has mind twist. Like there's some really strong stuff here from Alpha, so it does really speak to the game's rich history and some of the strongest stuff that has ever showed up in the game, but it's not trying to be like a busted powered cube. And I think Brain Geyser is probably like one of the stronger cards here. It's kind of drawing extra cards in these cubes where a lot of the stuff is modest, tends to be strong. I think that in terms of gameplay, like this one does just kind of look like an ordinary cube, but just the aesthetic notes here, just kind of being referential and just kind of updating alpha, doing a core set, but speaking to the weirdness of the history of the game and how alpha just took kind of swings in every direction because it was just trying to establish an entire game, not just have a bunch of ordinary nuts and bolts stuff. So this is not one of those cubes where it's like all the cards are really simple and elegant and approachable. There's a lot of that going on here. It has that kind of corsetti feel, but also kind of the alpha big swings, weird stuff. And I I love this idea. I I would like to draft this cube for sure. Next up is the Bear Claw Changeling Cube. So there's a few different changeling cube stuff in this space. This is a rules modified environment where the rules modification, once again, there's just one rule, and that's that all of your creatures have all creature types in all zones on the battlefield, in your hand, in your library, in your graveyard, wherever. All of your creatures are all creature types. And then there's a ton of stuff here that calls out specific creature types, but because of that rules modification, there's going to impact and play with all of your creatures. I have never drafted a cube with this modification, though I've been familiar with them. This is something, there was a cube called the Changeling Cube, that is one of the cubes that was covered two years ago at KubeCon. That one was covered by Rondez Green and Ethan Sachs. It's one that I did not have on my list as cubes that I would like to cover, because I do think that this conceit here, all creatures or all creature types, is just so fundamentally broken. And then also it's going to lead to some weird interactions, some rules questions. I think that like the saving grace for this rules modification is that it's so broken that the games just likely just don't last very long because invariably you get a couple different creature type matters things, and there's just so much value that you can just deal tons of damage and even explore some infinite combos in this space. And I'm not really like looking over and trying to see, you know, what exactly am I trying to do here? I think just kind of reading some of these cards. Some of them are so loudly strong, like Muxus is in this cube. And Muxus is strong enough when it only is doing goblins, but you have Muxus and like Haste Lords and Kranko, and this is just stuff that was part of like a really broken arena-only format, whatever that was called is a historic. I don't remember, but Muxus is broken, I remember that much. I enjoy playing with some creature type matter stuff in cubes, and I do like going to an extreme, like an aspect of spooky cube that I really like is just having the human module where all of the creatures are human, and then going into the monster module, humans do heavily permeate that space as well. So if a card says humans matter, it's going to play with most of your creatures. I like doing that in card selection more than a rules modification. So kind of for that reason, and because I think that so much of this stuff is so broken, this is not a cube space that really speaks to me. But like I said, I'm trying to broaden my horizons. I am interested in drafting some stuff I wouldn't normally draft, and we'll see exactly how it feels with the table and just kind of how other players are engaging with it. That's part of it too. You know, when I draft this cube, I expect to draft a broken deck. Like at the end of drafting a cube where there's a bunch of creature type matter stuff and every creature is treated as a changeling, I expect to have a broken deck. I expect to be trying to assemble something in the early turns of the game that is just like insurmountably strong. And I'm kind of curious to see how other players engage with this as well. It's kind of how resonant it is. Like how loud is it that this cube is broken. So I'm kind of interested to see how this one goes out. It's one that normally would not fall under my essentialities, which is exactly why it's on my list as potential priorities for CubeCon. Next up is Breaking the Oath Cube. This is a cube where you draft the deck and you play the Oathbreaker format. Oathbreaker is a format that I have never played. I've heard about it for a few years now. It's kind of in the commander space. You start with a planeswalker and what's called a signature spell in your command zone, and they follow the regular rules of commander, where when they leave the battlefield, they re-enter the command zone, you can recast them for the additional two mana commander text for every commander tax rather for every time that you have cast them from the command zone. So you get a planeswalker, and then you get an instant or sorcery that acts as the signature spell for your planeswalker, and they just follow the regular commander command zone rules, and then your deck instruction in this cube does follow color identity rules. My least favorite aspect of commander, though having played some Canadian Highlander uh the week of recording here, I will say that uh when you get into Phyrexian mana, I I do see how stuff gets really broken and weird, and how that uh color identity rule can at least kind of brace you for the specific experience and the output of a given deck. You don't have to worry about dismember out of a blue deck, for example. Uh, but anyway, I've never played Oathbreaker, I've played a decent amount of commander cube. My friend Andy maintained an awesome commander cube for a number of years. That was a ton of fun to play, but that we played with four players. So I've never done a 1v1 command zone type cube environment. Uh, this is one where you can definitely engage with how you present players with their command zone stuff in different ways. In this cube, you do just have to draft that planeswalker and the signature spell. So as you're drafting, you're kind of feeling out what you want your deck to do fundamentally. It'll be interesting to engage with, you know, how deep into the draft do you have to prioritize that planeswalker, that signature spell? How deep into the draft does that maybe change where you have one where it's like a placeholder and it's like, okay, this is my color identity, but you open yourself up to finding something stronger later. So that is kind of interesting. I do know that Oathbreaker constructed is something where players really try to line up stuff maybe a little bit into the combo or prisony- space where you have a signature spell that can really dictate the game. I believe that this Oathbreaker Cube, breaking the Oath Cube, is kind of more in an interactive kind of magic space, trying to get players to cast spells and engage on the battlefield. I don't really know. Again, I'm not really going over these cubes with a fine-toes comb. I would expect a lot of mid-rangey stuff to be happening here. You know, fundamentally, you have a nine-card hand, you always have access to a planeswalker, so that's what a lot of the games are going to be about, I have to assume. But the only way to know is to actually play it. So I'd be curious to try this one out, even if Oathbreaker is not a format that necessarily speaks to me normally. I think playing around with that command zone space, like commander isn't the only way to do it, and having this riff on it is very cool. And like a planeswalker for a two-player game, the fact that you can attack down a planeswalker, which makes them generally more interactive than creatures, uh, depending on what the interaction presented in the environment is. I do like being able to attack down the marquee card for your opponent's command zone. So that's a pretty cool aspect as well. Next up is a very weird one. This cube is called Bridges Over Troubled Water. This is a cube, once again, with one rules modification. Both players start with two copies of Bridge from Below on the Battlefield. Bridge from Below, a future site, really weird design, famously banned and modern. When it's on the battlefield, it does nothing. So they are just enchantments in play. This card does stuff when it's in the graveyard. When it's in the graveyard, it says whenever a non-token creature is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, then you create a 2-2 black zombie creature token, assuming that the bridge is still in your graveyard when that resolves, that matters. Uh, and then also when a creature is put into your opponent's graveyard from the battlefield, if bridge from below is in your graveyard, you exile it. So there's kind of a built-in answer to it in your graveyard. Uh, common thing and constructed with this where this card was relevant was creatures with sacrifice abilities. Uh, an old extended dredge decks, like Sakura Tribe Elder, got a lot of mileage because it could sacrifice itself and get rid of bridges from below with that ability. But this premise where both players start with two bridges from below on the battlefield, I've had bridge from below in a number of my decks over the years. Like, I've I've dabbled in the dredge space. I've never had a bridge from below on the battlefield. So, like, this concept is just so wild to me. And there's a lot of cool stuff you can do there. You can give players access to these as just permanents or just rectangles on the battlefield. You can do something with an enchantment, be it sacrificing them or some other kind of enchantment synergy, maybe. I have to imagine you're gonna want to prioritize creatures that sacrifice themselves both to power your own bridges and to ecclile your opponents if they're trying to get their bridges into the graveyard and make a bunch of zombies. Um, this is one that is just so out there, and I'm not really gonna spend really any time looking at the card list here. I'm strictly just looking at the primer page. This is one that I think I just have to experience. I want to read cards. It's a feeling it's really difficult to capture magic, definitely if you've been playing as long as I am. When I first started playing, like you would open up a pack of cards and it would be really exciting, and you wouldn't know what even exists. And while it is true that I definitely don't know every magic card, not by a long shot, I just generally have a very good idea of what is happening in aggregate and magic. And this is a recontextualization of the game that's going to cause me to open booster packs and really think about how this change in the rules is going to impact when to play these cards. This is one where even familiar cards are going to do pretty different stuff here. So this is a high priority for me. I definitely want to draft Bridges over Troubled Waterat CubeCon. Next up is a cube called the Circle of Life. Once again, another cube with one rules modification. That is, players start the game with an emblem that reads, Each creature spell you cast has emerge, the emerge cost is equal to its mana cost. So if you don't know emerge is an ability on creatures, when you cast them, you can sacrifice a creature to reduce their cost by generic mana equal to that card's mana value. This mechanic was really broken in the standard. I guess it's less the mechanic is broken and more cards that featured it were very strong, and there were other synergies going on there. This was a way to cast something with seven or more mana value for less than seven mana by sacrificing creatures to reduce the cost, and then Elder Deep Fiend could like lock your opponent out by tapping down mana sources, whatever. Um, then there were synergies with casting stuff that cost seven or more. But this is just taking that mechanic and saying, What if just every creature could do this? And this is an idea that I never would have come to on my own. I'm pretty interested to see why you would do this, what you want. To do in this space. This emblem absolutely makes any creature with a large amount of generic mana in its casting cost more appealing, just being able to emerge it out and just kind of changing how the game is played there. And it certainly is going to make it more interesting to engage with how you spend your removal. Like how much do you need to prioritize killing small creatures? There's going to be an expectation that your opponent is casting larger creatures. A lot of expensive creatures in the cube list here enabled by this emerge rules modification. And that does kind of make it interesting. Do I want to wait to use my removal spell on the big creature, or do I want to remove this small creature that's really going to limit my opponent's mana production? Because the smaller creatures are often going to be fodder to emerge out of larger creature. So it does change the texture of games. It of course changes the texture of the cube composition and how you want to draft and construct your deck. It makes it so you're probably going to play more expensive creatures than you normally would, even if you were going with a normal creature cheat strategy. So there's some cool stuff here, some real recontextualization of some familiar cards, some cards that have fallen by the wayside, and some cards you would just normally never cube with. So some pretty cool stuff happening with the circle of life. Next up is the Death by 10 Cuts Cube, another rules modified cube that just changes the starting life total, this one to 10 life instead of one. And unlike one up, this is going to have a lot of cards that do deal one damage, a lot of small creatures. And in addition to this change in the rules, just the one rules change, this cube also follows some specific design parameters for cards that can be included with that 10 point life total. Then all the creatures in this cube are only 0-1s or 1-1s, which does simplify the kind of effects that you're going to see in this environment. And then nothing costs more than 3 mana. So really load of the route games, you're just trying to deal 10 points of damage to your opponent before they can deal 10 points of damage to you. Looks like a lot of interaction back and forth. This does play in a similar space to some stuff that I have worked on. And actually, with uh the cube that I have submitted for KubeCon Stadium Stampede, where you're trying to get the 10 point counters on it, there are some aesthetic similarities between these two cubes, and the mana curves don't look all that different, and there's probably a decent clip of cards that do overlap as well. But this one does kind of just deal with the core game of magic. It doesn't add any complexity with a game piece, uh, starting with the Strix Haman Stadium is certainly a big difference. This one is just saying, you know, let's play with 10 life. It's almost like making regular creatures have infect, uh, you know, because you have that 10 threshold instead of 20. And it is one that is a relatively simple and approachable rules change. I like the way that this uh changes the sensibilities about cards to include in the cube. Looks like a fun one to try out. And that brings us to the endless cycle. This is a cube that is relatively normal. There's no rules modification, it just goes really deep into a theme, and that theme being cycling. Ton of cards in this cube have cycling, and there's a lot of cards with cycling matters. You're gonna be playing with the classic onslaught cycle with astral slide and lightning rift, big payoffs for cycling. I see Drakehaven, a card that I really loved, but ended up being kind of too strong or disinteresting and spooky cube as I fleshed out that environment. And this is something I have mapped out. I can't remember when I would have worked on this, but I did try to look at a cube that just went really long into cycling, a ton of cards with cycling and cycling payoffs. I couldn't convince myself that I wanted to put it together, so I'm glad that other people are playing in this space. And I would like to try out a cube that just leans really heavily into cycling. Astral Slide is a card that was seeing a ton of competitive play when I first started playing Magic, so it was like one of the first decks kind of actively being played while I was playing Magic that I was aware of on the competitive scene, so some cool nostalgia for me there. A lot of really sweet cards. It is kind of interesting the way that Astral Slide is just whenever a player cycles a card, same with Lightning Rift, whereas Drakehaven and newer cards are only going to key off of you discarding and cycling cards. So I'm certainly curious to see how this environment actually plays. It's space that I had previously been interested in, so the endless cycle becomes a higher priority for me to check this one out. Next up is 15 card Highlander. This is a 200 card cube, but is to be drafted by eight players, and you draft two 10 card packs. And then from that you build a 15 card deck. You do get a basic land box, so you have a 15 card deck, you can add as many basics as you want. Unclear how many basics you're gonna have room for, how much you do in that space, and then there is another rules modification here. If a player would draw from an empty library, instead of losing the game, they just don't draw. So the game does continue once a player runs out of cards in the library, and that really informs the design here. I'm not digging into it too deeply, but there's clearly some value engines way to loop through decks, redraw cards, get access to cards multiple times. Looks to be a lot of what these games are, and trying to navigate the fact that a 15-card deck just isn't a lot of cards. And how can you win with those? How can you uh continue to play the game and be competitive, even if you draw through your entire deck? So reusing cards and finding ways to loop and kind of build a value engine with a very small number of game pieces seems to be the conceit here. Very different from anything that I've played, and I want to check it out. It has some stuff that doesn't really speak to me, doesn't really appeal to me generally, but because it's so different, I am willing and interested to give it a try and to play in a very unique space. And so 15 card Highlander does become one of the cubes that I do want to try to draft at KubeCon. And that brings us to maybe my favorite cube name among submissions for KubeCon. This is in all caps, the floor is lava. If I gave you a hundred guesses, you probably wouldn't come close to what this cube is. Uh, this has another rules modified cube where each player starts with an emblem, which is the card the Sib Sig Ceremony. This is a card from Tarkir Dragonstorm. I'm sure that I read it during preview season and then immediately forgot that it existed. Uh so this is black, black, black, but it's an emblem here, so you're just gonna have it in play. Legendary enchantment, creature spells you cast cost two less to cast, and whenever a creature you control enters, if you cast it, destroy that creature, then create a 2-2 black zombie druid creature token. So the idea here is there's gonna be like a lot of value creatures, you get some enters effects, then your creature, if you cast it, it was discounted, but then it's destroyed immediately. So you get a 2-2 zombie, so you kind of treat creatures as 2-2 zombies with whatever enter ability they have. And then there's stuff like blink and reanimate, where that destroy trigger only happens if you cast a creature. So if you're able to blink them or reanimate them successfully, then you do get the base text box on the creatures. No idea how this one plays, seems like a really wacky out there environment. Sib Sig Ceremony, like I said, is a card that if I ever registered that it existed, I immediately forgot. So this is space that I would never personally explore on my own, and for that reason, I do want to try out the floor is lava, and I would probably be hooked on this cube on the name alone. And this this, as far as I understand it, this rules modification has nothing to do with that name. Like I guess I kind of get it. The creatures touch the battlefield, they die, the floor is lava. I don't know. I really don't know, but this one looks kind of wacky and fun. Next up is Ginger Cube. This is another rules modified cube. Couple things going on here. You draft three packs of 12 cards, and then you may add any number of the card gingerbreot to your deck during deck construction. And the most important rule, the winner of the draft gets to sign a gingerbreot immortalized in the ginger cube. If you're not familiar, ginger brute, a one mana one one artifact, food golem with haste, you can pay one, and gingerbreot can't be blocked this turn except by creatures with haste, and for two, you can tap it and sacrifice gingerbreot, you gain three life. I have to imagine that the one mana ability there does not come up too much in a field full of gingerbrutes, but ginger brute having haste uh for one generic mana, and then also being able to sacrifice it to gain three life. There's certainly texture on this card that makes it unique. It's slanted for an aggressive deck, but you do have that ability, that food ability to help enable games going along and have maybe some sacrifice or graveyard synergies. I'm not really looking at the list here, I'm just kind of looking at this conceit. This is something that I've been aware of cubes that have experimented with adding any number of a card for many years. This is kind of like a category of rules modification that is not close to new. However, uh the card Ginger Brute, this is something that does play pretty uniquely. More recently, I have been enamored with the breaking singleton for a specific card, and then you draft and you have to navigate how many copies that you want to play during the draft, like 100 ornithoptures, and then my cube inspired by that, 30 to 50 feral hogs. I really love that space, and for that reason, I'm I find the conceit of adding any numbers of a card during deck construction less compelling, but I do want to give this its fair shake. I do think that the card Ginger Brood is interesting, and because this is different than the space that I've been currently or more recently playing in with like the drafting a large number of draftable copies of a creature, I am curious to try out the ginger cube. And that brings us to the Grixis Desert Cube. This one certainly speaks to me. My Grixis Cube was the first color restricted cube on Magic Online back in 2019, so that was pretty cool. Of course, I do love Grixis, and desert cubes are something that I have been interested in lately. So this is a desert cube, it means you have to draft all your basic lands, there's no basic land box, so everything you play you do have to draft. And this cube is drafted in three 18 card packs, and of course, there's no green or white cards. So this is one of those desert cubes where the packs are a little bit larger to kind of finesse the fact that you have to draft lands. That doesn't speak to me as much, but because I haven't drafted one of these desert cubes where you do get to draft extra cards, I of course want to try it for that reason. And I played the Fire Swamp at Shoebox. That was a partial desert. You can only draft, you can only add swamps to your deck after you drafted any other basic land you would have to draft, but then there wasn't really blue or white cards, and then red or green were present, so it was kind of jundy, but this is just fully Grixis, so it's kind of any color restricted space, and this is fully a desert instead of the partial desert. You can't add any basics during deck constructions. So there's some stuff that's familiar and that would speak to me normally, and that's stuff a little bit different than I would do myself as well. So the Grixis Desert Cube is not too much in spaces that I haven't explored in some capacity designing or drafting, but yeah, always have my attention with Grixis, and the Grixis Desert Cube is certainly one that I would like to try. Next up is a really wild one. This is called How Bizarre, How Bizarre. It's a 360 card cube. You do draft three packs of 15, but for whatever reason, the deck construction minimum for this cube is 35 cards. This is a desert cube of sorts, but it's actually a fully mana-less cube. There's no land box or lands in the cube, and that's because every player starts the game as an emblem where in the first upkeep you get a Bazaar of Baghdad emblem. It's just an emblem where you can tap it to draw two cards and discard three cards. And then this card heavily breaks singleton. There's no one-ofs anything. There's even some 10x's, 14x's? Looks like 14 is the most copies of a card you get here. And this is just stuff that plays largely in like the vintage dredge space, the four Bazaar of Baghdad style deck. So this cube is just trying to have you assemble some wacky pile of using Bazaar of Baghdad, generating no mana, and finding ways through drawing and discarding, dredging, whatever, to generate some creatures on the battlefield and play a game that way. I don't how much know how much play this cube really has. It's certainly way different than anything that I've ever done, and that's why I do want to try it. Um, there's a lot of cards here that I do really like that I have played in various constructed environments, that I like in certain cube environments, and that I do like how they play differently here, and how breaking singleton for them can lead to more explosive things. Like this cube has four hollow ones and four venge vines. I bet that this one leads to just some really outrageous stuff. I'm really not certain how much depth there is to like these vintage maniless dredge mirrors, but I want to find out. So how bizarre, how bizarre is getting ranked by me. And that brings us to something in kind of similar space, a cube called I Loot the Body, another rules modified cube where every player starts with the harvester hero role token to play. This is something that was kind of a weird thing they did with the release of Theros. These are just kind of cards that were part of a rules modified thing that Magic itself rolled out. But it's just a card that's going to be an emblem here that you can't interact with it, and it just taps to draw a card, then you discard a card. So I loot the body. Both players will start with this the harvester once-a-turn looting hero role in play. This is a desert cube, so you can't add any basics to your deck after the draft. All basic lands in the cube are swamps, so you can already tell there's a heavy graveyard slant here with looting every turn, and black being the most prominent color. You draft three packs of 18, so another uh cube that finesses that land count there. And also the harvester itself, being able to loot every turn, also kind of does kind of finesse the uh difficulty of needing to draft all of your mana sources. And then beyond that, we have some ostensibly normal magic going on. There's breaks in singleton for mana producing lands. The cube looks to be singleton otherwise. There's a lot of graveyard stuff going on here, a lot of card overlap with my spooky cube, which is a cube that I really enjoy the normal gameplay of. So I'm interested in trying out I Lute the Body in terms of modifying the rules to really lean heavily into this graveyard space. Also, once again, just checking out a desert cube. This one kind of uh has some unique slants there with only swamps in the cube, and then the three packs of 18 thing. Also, kind of just trying out, just seeing what the feel of that is. And to the extent that it's very similar between I loot the body and how bizarre, how bizarre to have some kind of looting emblem effect in play on the first turn, these two cubes are doing something that's kind of similar in the rules modification, then otherwise in the execution are so radically different, where you have one of them trying to give you like this really busted all your stuff is free, and you have to figure out how to actually cast spells and assemble a battlefield, versus one that's okay, you're you're looting and it's free and it's extra, and that's very powerful. But outside of that, you are just playing with normal cards, making land drops, and casting spells. So these are two cubes with a rules modification that does occupy kind of similar space at a glance, but then the execution is so different. I think it'd be really cool to draft both of these cubes and kind of compare the experiences of these. Next up is Like Tears in a Rain. This is an interesting cube. It's not a desert, but it is kind of structured aesthetically around an unnamed world that's really depleted of resources, and there is a land box, but you can't add basic lands to your deck. Instead, there's a cycle of lands from Odyssey that enter tapped that can fix your mana at a real cost. So abandoned outpost is the white entry. It's a land that enters tapped, taps for white, or you can tap it and sacrifice abandoned outpost to add one mana of any color. So all five of those, one for each color, are going to be in sort of a land box. So instead of basics, you can add these real steep cost, having them enter tapped, and then also to fix your mana, you have to sacrifice them to make any color. So fixing colored mana is going to be challenging here, and having lands enter the battlefield untapped, that's actually seems to be a big part of the selection of the lands in the cube, the lands that you draft or how you're gonna get untapped mana sources, and then these tapped lands are going to be maybe a little bit more in how you fix your mana. So splashing and playing multiple colors looks like it's gonna be really weird here. And I've never played a cube where you can have lands other than basic lands added to your deck after the draft. So I want to try this one specifically, just experiencing something where you add a different kind of land and you don't have access to basic land. So this is not exactly a desert cube, but like tears and rain has a lot going on tonally that's very similar to desert environments. And I haven't really played with the abandoned outpost cycle. I know that this was something that was like a big part of Odyssey Block. This was one of the many really spiky things happening there, with these being useful to build threshold or get lands into your graveyard, where in Like Tears and Rain, this is more how you actually cast your spells, but with these steep costs, it does seem like still a pretty spiky, crunchy thing to chew on, and I want to try it out. And that brings us to the six drop cube. This is a cube where every spell has mana value six. This is space that I never would have thought to explore, and frankly, a few years ago you probably couldn't have paid me to draft this, but I do want to try it because it is just so different than the any any space that I would design in, and so different from anything that I've played. Now, this doesn't just mean that you're gonna make land drops one through six and start spending six mana apiece on all your spells. There are alternative casting costs here, cycling, other ways to make use of your six mana spells without just casting them for six mana. Also, some land cycles and types of lands that don't just make one mana, ways to maybe ramp you stuff like depletion lands, but you have to sacrifice them after you use them twice. So, some interesting space to explore here, ways to enable you to play six mana spells outside of just making six land drops and casting Colossal Dreadmaw. There is more depth here. I don't know how deep it is. It's a really restrictive way to design a cube. You know, I've been working on the one bird, a cube everything with mana value one, and so I'm intrigued by limiting yourself to one spot in the mana curve, but that jump one and six are so different. Like the one bird is so similar to the tempo two bird in a ways, just a low mana value cube, but then it is more restrictive, whereas the six drop cube is doing something radically different with this high spot in the mana curve. So I do want to try this one out. It is just nothing like anything that I've ever played. And I feel like the six drop cube is really not going to be for me, but that's why I want to try it and really find out. Next up is Tiny Axe. This is a 160 card cube with a couple rules modifications. Starting life totals in tiny axe are five. Players draft two packs of 10 cards and build a deck of exactly 15 cards, so that's going to be the same as 15 card Highlander there. And players do not lose the game for attempting to draw from an empty library, so you keep playing on again, just like 15 card Highlander. So another one that plays in this really small deck space, another cube that modifies your starting life total, different approaches to all of these, different card selections, different ways that they're exploring the space. Um, and Tiny Axe, 15 card Highlanders, these two cubes seem very similar, at least totally, and the rules modifications are tremendously similar. The 15 card decks, the not losing to drawing to empty deck, those are the exact same rules. So it'd be kind of cool to compare and contrast those two experiences. And you said a baseline, those rules modifications are so different from where I normally play that these would both be pretty unique experiences for me in Magic. Next up is the Trading Post Cube. This is another rules modified cube. The one change here is that each player will begin the game with a hexproof and indestructible copy of the card Trading Post in play. This is a card that I have a lot of attachment to. It's a four mana artifact. You can pay one and tap it to discard a card to gain four life, or pay one, tap it, and pay one life to create a 0-1 white goat creature token, or pay one and tap it, sacrifice a creature, return target artifact, card from your graveyard to your hand, or pay one and tap it, sacrifice an artifact to draw a card. So a tremendously fiddly value engine that can make small tokens with no power that you can use to gain 4 life. This card is actually really good at making games last longer, so I'm really intrigued here about how this cube is going to play out. It looks like there's some stuff in kind of a combo-y creature cheat space here. Of course, there's value engines sacrificing artifacts to recur stuff and draw extra cards. Trading Post is a card that I have featured in a few different cubes. I really enjoy playing with it and kind of building decks around it. I'm slightly concerned that starting a game with trading post and play and always having access to this, this is a card that can really make games draw on. Uh, because there's a lot of decisions happening here, it's a life gain engine. It's something that I just want to see in practice. It might play a lot more smoothly and quickly than that than I expect, though I would not be surprised if this is one of those cubes that consistently has long round times. But the only way to find out is to play it. And that brings us to Triptych Cube. Uh triptych cube. Apparently it's pronounced triptych. Um, I don't know what this word is. Looks like it's a picture or a carving in three panels side by side. Or something composed or presented in three parts or sections. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I'm actually just reading that for the first time now. This actually really works with the design constraints here. There's a special rule in this cube. You can start with either a class or a saga in the command zone. So these are cards that tend to have abilities broken up into three pieces. So that makes sense. Triptych cube, there we are. And this cube mercifully does not follow color identity restrictions. So you just choose a class or a saga, and that's going to be in the command zone for you, following the regular commander tax rule. So every time you cast one of these from your command zone, it'll cost two additional mana to cast, which does play really well with sagas. Sagas do naturally go into a graveyard, so it's kind of interesting to think about whether you want a saga or a class in the command zone. I'm sure there's a lot going on with the draft that will inform it. Categorically, just having a saga that allows me to recast it, it will depend how long the games go. I think that having any kind of value-generating card in the command zone is going to do more to prolong a game than to shorten it. I think that my only intuition, I'm really not even looking at the card list here. I think that I'm going to try to get a saga, more than I want to try to get a class, but there are some classes that are quite strong. I don't know if they're in this cube. I mean, artist talent is one that has quite the constructed pedigree, but we'll see. I'm sure that there's plenty of reason to draft the classes as well. So pretty cool concept here. And there's another uh rules modification. You do draft three packs of 16 cards here, so you draft three extra cards. So a little bit more room to find your class or your saga there. This is another cool riff on how to utilize the command zone, something that I don't currently do in any of my cubes. And I will say that the wheels are turning more for me at a glance regarding sagas than classes, but I do like that aesthetic there with triptych tying both of those things together. So this should be a cool one to explore. And one last cube on my not so short list of cubes that I want to draft at CubeCon. It's What If Kurik were real. This is a cube where all black mana is treated as Phyrexian black, so you can pay two life instead of black mana. And actually the cube doesn't have any black mana sources, so you have to pay two life anytime you would pay black mana. This is enforced by not having black mana sources, no swamps in the basic land box. There's also an additional modification to the rule where if you use a treasure, you cannot use it to generate black mana. That's getting to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if somebody plays that incorrectly in game. So I think that I would maybe allow players to use treasures for black or just not have any treasures in the cube if I was pursuing that. That just is something that I would expect players to forget. You're kind of getting into too much with the rules. But anyway, really cool concept, couple other things going on with the design where the only removal in the cube is in black, so you do have to pay that Phyrexian black mana, you have to pay life to actually interact with any creature. This is one that is pretty out there. I don't really know exactly how this one would play. I kind of like this uh desert y kind of thing where it's not a desert, it's just you have this one color that functions very differently from the others, which is inspired by an existing card, Kyrix Son of Yoggmoth. So some cool inspiration. I definitely understand how you get here. It's not anything that I would have landed on myself, and I'd be really curious to try it. And I like that, you know, I've drafted the Fire Swamp where you can only add the swamps to your deck, and this is a cube where you just can't add swamps, but it does still utilize black in this really unique way. So a pretty cool riff on a restrictive, weird environment. And I would also enjoy drafting my Stadium Stampede Cube at KubeCon. I think it's really valuable as a designer to draft your cube with a wider range of players, just kind of get an idea for how people that aren't in your group, that are less used to your sensibilities really experience things. So you have the approach to draft, being at the table and seeing kind of what's being valued highly, what goes late, and really just feeling the energy at the table and being closer to seeing how the games play out. I think it is really valuable as a cube designer to do that, and it would be cool to draft my cube with people I don't normally cube with. But as you can tell, I have a long to-do list here. I have my work cut out for me if I want to try to draft all these cubes. I don't expect to be able to draft all these cubes, but this is a list. These are the things that I'm going to prioritize in the Hedron network, and I'm going to be on the lookout for pickup drafts. And I'm sure there's plenty of cubes that I've never even heard of that are going to be at KubeCon. I'll be looking to get into some weird drafts over the weekend, hopefully meeting some people, seeing some friends from all over. I think it's going to be a really good time. If you're going to be at KubeCon, by all means come find me, say hi, we can talk, shop. I'm going to have stickers for the podcast. If you're interested in that kind of thing, if you draft Stadium Stampede, I would love to hear about your experience. Going to KubeCon two years ago was so fun for me. I just got such a warm reception. I signed people's cube boxes, a couple of cube boxes, which is a really new experience for me, and that was super cool. You know, I'm always happy to sign a card, play Matt, whatever. The crowd was super chill, the event was super fun. I'm really excited to just play a bunch of magic with a bunch of people who were excited to play magic together. But that's gonna conclude my look at the cubes I'm hoping to draft at KubeCon. Thank you so much as always for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, consider becoming a patron over at patreon.com forward slash 180 MTG. Get access to the 180 MTG Discord, come talk cube with us, and if you're gonna be at KubeCon this week, I will see you out there. And on the pod here, I will be back next week talking more cube. Later, gamers.