Magic: The Gathering will host its most amazing high-stakes tournament ever, with $65,000 worth of the most valuable and powerful cards up for grabs. Later this year, Magic: The Gathering Online Developer dawn Partnership with TCG accessory manufacturer Ultimate Guard We will be hosting a tournament centered around the iconic Vintage Cube format, concluding with a live “Four Keep” draft using booster packs filled with extremely rare cards, including actual cards. Black Lotus.
Online qualifiers for the tournament, called “Magic Online Vintage Cube LIVE: Powered by Ultimate Guard,” will begin later this week. MagicCon: Las Vegas In October, the top 8 players will play in-person in a final Vintage Cube draft and keep all of their selections. Ryan Spain He explained that the concept was to make the “dream come true” cube draft a reality, but Ultimate Guard Martin JuzaThe event’s project manager and the person who originally came up with the idea (and who is also a member of the Magic Competitive Hall of Fame) says he really just wanted to create “the coolest event we could do for the community.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept of a cube, it’s an alternative way to play Magic where someone puts together a curated list of hundreds of cards to create a custom draft experience of their own design. Unlike a typical draft at your local store, players don’t keep the cards in their decks after the match is over. Building a cube and tweaking it over time can be an incredibly involved process for the creator to tune it to exactly what kind of play experience they want to provide. That could mean enabling a specific strategy or playstyle, including their favorite cards just for a laugh, or collecting all of the most powerful options in the game’s 30-year history.
MTGO’s Vintage Cube is considered by many to be a kind of benchmark list due to its official status and availability, but this means a mix of flashy new cards and some of the most infamous cards ever printed. For example: Power Nine If you’re lucky enough to open one, you can get it in a draft, and Magic’s infamous Reservation List.
That’s why a “keep-and-forget” Vintage Cube draft, where you can go home with whatever cards you choose for your deck, is such a unique and exciting event. The card list for the tournament hasn’t been released yet, but Daybreak has already decided on some requirements, such as including the Power Nine, the original dual lands, and every other card that’s been in each version of MTGO’s cube over the years. On top of that, the goal is to create truly compelling versions of those cards, rather than cheap reprints or terrible reproductions.
“There are many versions Llanowar Elves “It would be easy to find a card that no one is excited about,” Spain explains, “but it’s an iconic card beloved by a lot of people, myself included, and it would be a lot cooler for everyone if that card flipped over and was the Beta Llanowar Elves instead of the 2015 one.” In fact, Spain says that any card of common or uncommon rarity originally printed in Magic’s first set will be the Beta version at the latest, which would greatly increase the monetary value and nostalgic appeal of the cube as a whole.
The final list is not exactly the same as a typical Vintage Cube list on MTGO, as Vintage Cube lists tend to experiment with new cards and strategies. Last year’s article He said the MTGO cube is meant to be “not a card museum, but a curated, compelling play experience.” teeth It’s intended to be a mix of both. Similarly, Jůza says, “We’re aiming for the oldest version of the cube possible, so in a way we’re showcasing the last 30 years of Magic.”
They don’t just do it, they make an effort to do it. rightare cubes worth at least $65,000 in total. The top eight contestants will each only take home a portion of the pool, but it’s still likely to be a significant amount. 2023 Magic World Championship The total prize money won in the tournament (of a total prize pool of $1,000,000) is $20,000, although the value of the Black Lotus in this tournament alone could exceed this amount, depending on the printing and condition of the cards. Each player drafts 48 cards directly (three 16-card packs each); however, not all of the 540-card cube lists are opened in this manner, so if you win a match with your own deck, you also get a larger share of the remaining prize money.
For the community of Cube enthusiasts who are used to returning cards after every draft, this event will undoubtedly be a shock. I had the opportunity to ask Twitch streamers Caleb Durwardthe first Cube Con The 2022 tournament host and best known for his vintage cube content online shared his thoughts on the event ahead of the announcement, saying it was “special for sure.”
“Not only is this a prestigious cube event that you have to qualify for in order to get in, but it’s something that’s rare in the community,” he says. “The feeling of actually drafting with old cards is not something that everyone gets to experience these days.” Though he’s had the privilege of drafting with a paper cube containing real Power Nine cards before, Durward says it’s still exciting, and just watching others draft with real cards for the first time is pretty cool.
This tournament also seems like it couldn’t come at a better time for the format. While the concept of the Cube is by no means new, it has experienced a bit of a renaissance in recent years. Daybreak has been iterating on it more aggressively, cube-focused community events like CubeCon have emerged, and some content creators are focusing on the cube more frequently. Even Magic’s original creator, Richard Garfield, said: Recently announced His love for the format.
Durward attributes this boom to a number of factors, but credits Daybreak for being open to feedback since taking over MTGO’s development two years ago, while Juza points to the popularity of fellow Hall of Famers. Luis Scott Vargashe started posting videos of Cube every day. YouTube Channel About a year ago. Spain, on the other hand, is wary of getting too hyped for anything, as Cube is a lot of fun in its own right, describing it as a “Limited version of Commander” that brings big, exciting play to the draft experience.
Durward told me that one of the reasons he enjoys Cube so much is because it’s an “expressionistic” way to play Magic. “There are no bad cards in Cube because every card is designed for its environment and has very high power levels,” he explains. “You can do different things with the game every time you play.” He likens drafting a Cube deck to painting with a brush, saying that Magic’s drafting scheme allows him to follow whatever mood he’s in, in a unique way.
That said, Daybreak product manager Tony Mayer said that, at least for MTGO’s Vintage cubes, “you can’t underestimate the curation element” as a factor that’s helped the cube flourish. Typically, they can only be played during timed windows so as not to clash or interfere with Magic’s main set releases, but the downtime has been getting shorter recently. Spain said this is in part due to the fact that the cubes are more flexible and have more flexibility. MTG ArenaMagic’s more recent digital client. It’s a much more user-friendly platform and is appealing for things like drafting the latest sets, but its card pool and offerings are much less comprehensive, making it less suitable for something like the Vintage Cube.
“Previously [Cube] “It used to be a filler event, and now it’s the main event,” Spain said, acknowledging that the ecosystem has changed as Magic continues to grow. Mayer added, “We used to say, ‘Is it a McRib or a Big Mac?’ Now the answer for us is somewhere in between.” This philosophical shift has undoubtedly impacted the growth of Cube, and we might not have seen tournaments of this magnitude without the newfound enthusiasm Daybreak has put into the format.
To qualify for the final Magic event, you’ll obviously need to play a lot of cubes on MTGO (as you might expect). More details here. Official Blog PostBut over the next few months, there will be single-elimination qualifiers, starting with a “feeder league” that requires six event tickets (about $6 USD) or 80 play points to enter, and three wins there qualify for two 64-player draft events later on. that You can take part in the final qualifying draft to determine the final 8 in Las Vegas. Anyone with a little money and a client installed can try their luck, but to make it into the top 8, you’ll need to win 12 consecutive cube matches across four different drafts leading up to MagicCon.
It’s no easy task, but the prize amount compared to the low initial entry fee makes it surprisingly accessible to those willing to give it a try. Since the opportunity is likely to attract Magic players of all kinds, we asked Durward and Jůza if they had any advice for newcomers to Cube hoping to win a Black Lotus.
Jůza recommended researching the Cube beforehand, watching draft videos of experienced players, and when in doubt, don’t get too fancy and just draft a simple but reliable strategy like Mono-Red or Mono-White Aggro. Durward’s advice echoes this last thought, though perhaps in a more direct way.
“It’s always good to attack. Just attack and kill people.”
Tom Marks I’m IGN’s Executive Games Reviews Editor and I love card games, puzzles, platform games, puzzle platform games, and more.
