Magic: The Gathering Cube Tournament to Put $65k Worth of the Most Powerful Cards on the Line [IGN]

Called “Magic Online Vintage Cube LIVE: Powered by Ultimate Guard,” the online qualifiers for this tournament will start later this week and run through the lead up to MagicCon: Las Vegas in October, where the top eight competitors will do one final Vintage Cube draft in-person and keep all the cards they pick. MTGO Creative Director Ryan Spain explains to me that the idea was to make this “dream come true” Cube draft a reality, while Ultimate Guard’s Martin Jůza (who is also in Magic’s competitive Hall of Fame) says they truly wanted to come up with “the coolest event we can do for the community.”

If you’re not familiar with the concept of Cube, it’s an alternative way to play Magic where someone puts together a curated list of a few hundred cards to make a custom draft experience of their own design. Unlike a typical draft at your local store, players don’t keep the cards in their deck after the matches are over, as building a cube and tinkering with it over time can be quite an involved process for its creator as they dial in exactly what type of play experience they want it to provide. That could mean enabling specific strategies or playstyles, including your personal favorite cards just for a laugh, or gathering all the most powerful options across the 30-year history of this game.

In the case of MTGO’s Vintage Cube, which is seen by many as a sort of benchmark list due to both its official status and its easy availability, it means a mix of flashy new cards alongside some of the most infamous ones ever printed. For example, the entirety of the Power Nine is available to draft if you’re lucky enough to open any of them, and there are plenty more cards that have never been reprinted thanks to Magic’s infamous Reserved List.

That’s what makes the prospect of doing a “for keeps” Vintage Cube draft — where the cards you pick for your deck are yours to take home — so unique and exciting. While the exact card list for this tournament has yet to be revealed, Daybreak has already committed to a few parameters for it, like including the Power Nine, the original dual lands, and all the other cards that have been in every iteration of MTGO’s cube over the years. On top of that, the goal is to make them all truly desirable versions of those cards, rather than cheap reprints or copies that are in terrible condition.

“There’s so many versions of Llanowar Elves it would be trivial to find one that excited nobody,” Spain explains, “but it’s an iconic card beloved by many, me included, and it’s going to be much cooler for everybody when that card flips over and it’s a Beta Llanowar Elves instead of something from 2015.” In fact, Spain says any Common or Uncommon rarity cards that were originally printed in Magic’s first set will be versions from Beta at the latest, which will substantially increase both the monetary value and the nostalgic appeal of the entire cube.

The final list won’t look exactly like MTGO’s typical Vintage Cube lists either, as those frequently tend to experiment with newer cards or strategies – Spain even stated explicitly in an article last year that the MTGO cube was about “curating an engaging play experience, not a card museum.” He says this cube, however, actually is intended to be more of a mix of both. Similarly, Jůza says they are “aiming for pretty much the most old school version of the cube possible, so in a way we’re showcasing the last 30 years of Magic.”

The result of their dedication to not just doing this, but doing it right, is a cube that will be worth at least $65k in total. While each of the top eight competitors will only be going home with a slice of that pool, the odds are good that their cuts will still be worth a substantial amount. For reference, placing in the top eight of the 2023 Magic World Championship (which had a $1,000,000 prize pool) earned you $20k, which could hypothetically be surpassed by the value of this tournament’s Black Lotus alone depending on the card’s printing and condition. Every player will draft 48 cards directly (three 16-card packs each), but not all of the 540-card Cube list will be opened this way, so winning matches with your deck will also earn you a bigger chunk of the leftovers.

For a community of Cube enthusiasts who are accustomed to handing their cards back after every draft, this event is sure to make a splash. I had the chance to ask Twitch streamer Caleb Durward, the winner of the inaugural CubeCon tournament back in 2022 and best known for his Vintage Cube content online, for his thoughts on this event ahead of the announcement, and he says “it’s a special thing for sure.”

“It’s not only a high, prestigious Cube event that you have to win a qualifier for to go and play,” which he says is a rare enough occurrence in the community, “but just the feel of actually drafting with those old cards is not something that everybody gets the chance to do these days.” Durward says even though he’s been privileged enough to draft paper cubes with real Power Nine cards in them before, it’s still exciting to do, and even just seeing others draft with the real cards for the first time can be very cool.

This tournament also feels like it couldn’t be coming at a better time for the format – while concept of Cube is by no means a new one, it has been going through a bit of a renaissance in recent years. Daybreak has been iterating more aggressively on its cube, Cube-focused community events like CubeCon and many more have been springing up, and some content creators are turning their focus toward it more regularly. Even Magic’s original creator, Richard Garfield, recently expressed his love for the format.

Durward says there are a lot of factors to this boom, but in part praises how receptive Daybreak has been to feedback since it took over development of MTGO two years ago. Jůza points toward the popularity of fellow Hall of Famer Luis Scott-Vargas, who started posting daily Cube videos on his YouTube channel about a year ago. Meanwhile, Spain is wary of taking too much credit for anything when Cube is just so much fun on its own, describing it as “Commander for Limited” in how it brings big, exciting plays to the Draft experience.

To that end, Durward tells me that part of why he enjoys Cube so much is because it’s an “expressionistic” way to play Magic. “Because there are no bad cards in Cube, because all of the cards are designed for that environment and the power level is so high,” he explains, ”you can do different things with the game every single time you play it.” He compares drafting a Cube deck to painting with a brush, letting you follow whatever mood strikes you in a way that’s unique in the scheme of Magic drafting.

That said, Daybreak Product Manager Tony Mayer says “the curation element can’t be understated” in terms of what has helped Cube flourish, at least when it comes to MTGO’s Vintage Cube. It’s typically only available to play during timed windows so that it doesn’t conflict with or distract from Magic’s main set releases – but the downtime has been getting briefer lately. Spain says that’s been influenced partially by the success of MTG Arena, Magic’s more recent digital client. It’s a platform that’s far more user friendly, making it appealing for things like drafting the newest sets, but it’s also far less comprehensive in its card pool and offerings, which leaves it unsuitable for something like Vintage Cube.

“Whereas before [Cube] was a filler, it’s now our main event,” says Spain, recognizing that the ecosystem has changed as Magic continues to grow. Mayer follows up by saying “we used to compare it to ‘Is it the McRib or is it the Big Mac?’ And the answer for us right now is something in between.” That philosophical shift has certainly impacted Cube’s growth, and without the newfound enthusiasm Daybreak has put toward the format we likely wouldn’t be seeing a tournament of this scale at all.

It’s fitting, then, that qualifying for the final event at MagicCon will involve (you guessed it) playing a whole lot of Cube on MTGO. More precise details will be shared in an official blog post later today, but a series of single-elimination qualifiers will take place over the next few months starting with a “Feeder League” that costs six Event Tickets (about $6 USD) or 80 Play Points to enter. Getting three match wins there will qualify you for a 64-person two-draft event later on, and winning that will get you access to one last qualifier draft to find the final eight for Las Vegas. So while anyone with a few spare bucks and the client installed can try their luck, reaching the top eight will essentially mean winning 12 Cube matches in a row across four different drafts leading up to MagicCon.

It’s by no means an easy task, but considering the prize on the line compared to the low initial entry price, it’s a remarkably accessible event for those who want to give it a shot. And given the opportunity is likely to attract all kinds of Magic players, I asked Durward and Jůza if they had any tips for folk who might be new to Cube that are hoping to win a Black Lotus of their own.

Jůza recommended doing some research about the cube ahead of time, watching videos of experienced players drafting, and when in doubt, drafting simple but reliable strategies like mono-red or mono-white aggro over trying to get too fancy. Durward’s advice echoed that last sentiment, though perhaps in a slightly more direct way:

“Attacking is always good. Just attack, just kill people.”

Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor for games. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.