A Boy and His Cube: Land

So, to start off my writing more regularly, I thought I would post the lists of cards in my cube by category, and explain some of the choices that have gone into it. Please note that, for the most part, I am working with a collection I started just a few years ago. Clearly there are many awesome cards I could have, but simply don't. We work with what we have. So, without further ado let's meet the backbone of any good cube; the nonbasic lands!

Temple Garden

Sunpetal Grove

Stirring Wildwood

Graven Cairns

Dragonskull Summit

Lavaclaw Reaches

Raging Ravine

Stomping Ground

Grove of the Burnwillows

Mystic Gate

Sejiri Refuge

Celestial Colonnade

Drowned Catacomb

Watery Grave

Creeping Tar Pit

Caves of Koilos

Marsh Flats

Murmuring Bosk

Tainted Wood

Verdant Catacombs

Shivan Reef

Steam Vents

Scalding Tarn

Arid Mesa

Rugged Prairie

Sacred Foundry

Yavimaya Coast

Bant Panorama

Seaside Citadel x 2

Arcane Sanctum

Crumbling Necropolis

Savage Lands

Jungle Shrine

Ghost Quarter

Tectonic Edge

Reflecting Pool

Rupture Spire

Terramorphic Expanse

Mystifying Maze

Urza’s Factory

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea

Mutavault

There you have it! First things first, I am fully aware of how ugly that second Seaside Citadel is, along with the Panorama and the Tainted Wood. I am working on my collection of fetches and shocklands, and U/G happens to be a major weakness in my folder. Due to the current top decks in standard either being green or being blue, Misty Rainforests are difficult to convince people to trade away. As soon as I have a chance, these cards will be changed. I am sticking to a pattern of three of each color pairing, and then one-ofs otherwise. The Grove of the Burnwillows is in because of the combo with Punishing Fire. The Worldwake creature-lands are invaluable.

Some notes on the colorless lands. Rupture Spire is a pretty quality card, but it could very well be that a better option would be the Vivid cycle from Lorwyn. I just don't care to try and dig through the junk box at the local card store for them. Urza's Factory is great for attrition battles, or just as an alternate win for control decks. Mystifying Maze is clunky, but until I win the lottery and get a Maze of Ith it will have to do. Finally, Mikokoro is a card I had long stored in my "Reject Rare" bin, hoping to someday see play if I ever get a reject draft going. On a whim, I stuck it in the Cube one day when I discovered I had misplaced an Evolving Wilds (which is now gone because I try to avoid running functional reprints of cards already in the cube). That evening, a few friends came over, and we decided to play Two-Headed Giant Cube Draft. From that moment on, Mikokoro has been a beloved card amongst my group, and I will likely not be allowed to remove it unless I can manage at least a Library of Alexandria (note: HA), which Mikokoro is clearly a 'fixed' version of.

This list comes to 43 of the 360 cards in the Cube. I hope to someday get it to an even 50, because that seems like a nice ratio. At fifty, there is a large chance that each and every booster pack will have 2 lands in it, which will make sure mana fixing is available to anybody and everybody drafting. Cube decks are routinely three colors or more (a friend I will call Koolzo, who owns as much of the Cube as I do, made a name for himself drafting five colors at Alara limited events, and can usually be counted on to bring this mindset to Cube). Because of this, even if the number of actual multicolor or 'gold' cards is relatively small, mana fixing is a priority for the construction.

There you have it, the lands! I will have artifacts up soon!

Babbs

*edit: Procured a City of Brass this morning, which replaced Rupture Spire so fast I nearly ripped a sleeve.

General Update

Wow. This time I really fell off the writing wagon.

It has been almost five months since I posted, during which plenty of interesting things have happened. I attended Grand Prix Portland with a close friend, and we both played deep into the night of Day One before being eliminated from Day Two Contention, however I did get paired up during my final round with somebody who would make Day Two if he beat me. As I had no chance of making Day Two, I conceded to him as soon as he promised to play a few games afterword. It felt good, and at that point I have never been more tired of Magic. Fourteen hours is a long time to do any given activity, and trying to maintain mental acuity as well as a certain element of fun becomes a chore after about six hours of continuous play.

Day Two, however, was a blast because my friend and I did nothing but enter Two Headed Giant cues and watch our friends battling on whenever we got the chance. Two of our local group had made Day Two, and a few entered in the PTQ. Sadly, none of them had a particularly good run on Sunday, though one finished just outside of the prizes in the main event. Two Headed Giant, as ridiculous as it is normally, was especially dumb for my team because we opened three Day of Judgments over the course of two drafts, winning one of them on the back of a 10/10 flying Scroll Thief that very nearly killed me because our opponents were playing a mill deck. All things considered, the experience was a lot of fun and the next chance I get to come to a large tournament I am stuffing every Magic player I know into a van and entering the lot of us. Also, the promo card happened to be Umezawa's Jitte, of which I had zero copies due to it's age, rarity, and worth. So that was really sweet.

I also took part in both of the release parties for Scars of Mirrodin, and top four-ed and top eight-ed them respectively. For various reasons, I haven't played in any tournaments since then, though I still have enough store credit from those two performances for a few "free" entries. I plan to do a few drafts in the not too distant future, so I won't wax eloquent on the format too much here, except to say that this set has caused more confusion in limited than I have seen in a long while. At first, it seemed people were taking it to be another Zendikar, full of aggressive strategies and punishing control players. However, as people learned the format, they found that there are quite a few defensive and midrange strategies with which to shore up the red zone. As such, this format is the most wide open I have seen since Alara, and drafting it seems like a blast.

Finally, my Cube has undergone some drastic changes, most of which I won't bother to explain. I expect my next post will have a lot to do concerning it, so I will just leave things as a cliffhanger on this front.

I want to take this time to explain how things are going to be done on Noggin Whack now that I am back from my Journey to Nowhere, or wherever I went when I stopped updating. Posts should be resuming on a weekly (give or take) schedule, and I will title them with the category they concern. Cube construction, theory, card lists and updates will have the post title "A Boy and His Cube". Comments on constructed decks will go under "Slinging Sixty". "Tournament Report" will encompass any competitive events I personally attend. Other categories could include limited advice and discussions of professional Magic events (such as the World Championships, which finish up this evening).

My goal is to make Noggin Whack a place where I can discuss Magic and the things about it that are important or interesting to me. I would like it if it became a place my friends could use to discuss our own Magic games and theories. It would be my dream that other people would read these posts and enjoy them. Until next time.

Babbs