Cube Draft Reports - January 2026

My family coming to visit for Thanksgiving, then going with them on my first international trip, followed immediately by the winter holidays and end of the 2025, all meant I basically didn’t cube for a month and a half. Not to say I didn’t think about cube during that time period, as my latest project clearly indicates, but I didn’t get any games of cube in. However, with the new year came a return back to the cubing routine, so let’s get into it! First, the usual caveats:

• I purposely don’t look at cube lists before drafting. The mystery and surprise of it all and having to piece together the puzzle on the spot is one of the main draws of Magic for me, and some of that is spoiled by knowing the shape of what is there in advance. I only really go in knowing what the cube owner says in their pre-draft setup spiel, and any loose memories knocking around from previous drafts.
• These draft reports are first and foremost for me, but format and level of detail about certain aspects are something I’m interested in experimenting with. If you want to hear more about say, my thoughts during the draft or my feelings about XYZ, let me know and I will almost certainly take it into account, even if I don’t seem to actively do anything about it.

And, as a nice surprise for the new year, another caveat! Over the holidays into the new year, I’ve gotten a chance to participate into some more protracted^[1] cube activities: a rotisserie draft over the holidays with some friends throughout the Bay and a stone soup draft at work. However, I haven’t gotten to play or finish up the games for either of them, and I’ve decided to preserve my usual style of writing up the cube recap of the draft and games all in one, so you’ll have to stay tuned to a future one of these after I’ve finished playing all the matches to hear more about them. Instead, let’s get into what I did get to both draft and play in the month of January.

Cards that Make Me Feel Something (January 7, 2026)

^[2] For the first draft of the year, we had a smaller pod of 4 and an old classic of the group: Cards that Make Me Feel Something, a Legacy-esque cube packed with combos.

In the past, with smaller groups, the cube owner has gone through the cards that didn’t make it into the packs and announced any combo cards: e.g. mentioning that Dark Depths didn’t make the cut, so maybe think twice if you were planning on drafting Thespian Stage. This time, however, the owner took the approach of just cutting all combo-only cards entirely, and also fetchlands, because why not. We were still doing 3 packs of 15, so cards were pretty free to wheel and we all mostly knew what each other was playing (or very much not playing). It was a lovely time full of table talk and felt like we all were easing back into cubing post-holidays. This especially casual environment that very much lent itself to what I drafted. I first-picked Dismember and then saw Blood Artist in the next pack and decided I wanted to do Mardu aristocrats, an umbrella of archetypes near and dear to my heart. So, that’s exactly what I did.

My first game was against a four color lands deck. In the first game, a well-timed Zealous Persecution wiped out most of my opponent’s board of Plants courtesy of Nissa, Voice of Zendikar plus a Yavimaya Dryad, while Bitter Triumph took out Nissa, Voice of Zendikar herself. My opponent was still left with a Questing Beast that safely ignored my army of chump blockers, plus Zuran Orb to pad out their life total, but Blood Artist and Skullclamp ran the show for me, giving me enough card advantage and life swings to outpace my opponent and lock up the game. The second game I had one turn to kill my opponent before they could untap and draw the Titania, Protector of Argoth we could both see was on top of their deck thanks to Courser of Kruphix. The Crucible of Worlds plus Urza’s Cave plus Wight of the Reliquary my opponent had in play meant they would be more than capable of making enough Elementals to murder me. The latter two also presented some bonus instant-speed lifegain with Courser of Kruphix, but a top-decked Kolaghan’s Command proved just enough extra damage for me to seal the match alongside sacrificing my entire board to Goblin Bombardment. I was extremely fortunate my opponent had Glacial Chasm already in the graveyard at that point; if they had chosen to play it with Crucible of Worlds the previous turn, or it was still in their library and they could tutor it out at instant-speed, that definitely would have been the end of that game for me.

The second match was against a Boros aggro deck. The first game Skullclamp did work as it always does. My opponent blew it up at their first opportunity with Abrade, but not before I had racked up a bunch of tokens from Nested Shambler^[3] and Lingering Souls. With a Blood Artist to back them up, my opponent was faced with my favorite impossible choice of take the beatdown and die or block, get drained out, and die.^[4] In the second game, I had some small creature that were promptly removed and then I ran out of cards, probably because I didn’t have Skullclamp, and thus had no way to beat a 5/5 menace Carnage Interpreter. My final game I kept a sketchy hand after a mulligan: it did feature Skullclamp to repair the mistakes of the previous game, but also zero creatures, just a Dismember and a Bitter Triumph. After like 5 turns, the only creature I had drawn for my troubles was a Wall of Omens and I died.

The third match against the third player was against a Dimir tempo deck. This game went so long. After the opening turns, the board state ended up with my opponent’s flipped The Modern Age and a Delver of Secrets that refused to flip against my Isamaru, Hound of Konda. I was trying to set up some good blocks to wipe out both, but my opponent Thoughtseized me, cast Snapcaster Mage, and Thoughtseized me again, ripping away my only spells of Kolaghan’s Command and Zealous Persecution and leaving me with only lands and making favorable blocks an impossibility. I started to put something together with Blood Artist and Knight of the Ebon Legion with enough mana to pump the latter. My opponent, down a fair chunk of life thanks to chipping in and the Thoughtseizes, killed my Blood Artist and then stole it with Reanimate to try to swing the life totals in their favor, but the next turn I used Dire Fleet Daredevil^[5] to cast their Reanimate on their Snapcaster Mage so I could flashback Zealous Persecution and deal with their board, including Blood Artist, as we both went into top-deck mode but I had a board. The timing of the Zealous Persecution seemed unfortunate a turn later, however, when my opponent top-decked True-Name Nemesis and slapped an Umezawa’s Jitte on it. They spent the Umezawa’s Jitte counters immediately to get rid of my Knight of the Ebon Legion which I now had enough mana to double-activate, but a top-decked Skullclamp on my end let me churn through my deck to eventually get to Hangarback Walker for X=4. With Skullclamp equipped, the 5-power was exactly my opponent’s life total, forcing them to block with their True-Name Nemesis and explode my Hangarback Walker into cards and Thopters. My opponent was then forced to spend their Umezawa’s Jitte counters to kill off my Thopters and later Lingering Souls Spirits before I could Skullclamp them away myself, while I continued to grind through my deck trying to find something to lock up the game. I at some point flipped Liliana, Heretical Healer to get back my Blood Artist, and finally drew Falkenrath Aristocrat to sacrifice my entire board, including itself, before Bitter Triumphing my Blood Artist for the final point of damage. At this point, we thought we had played two games, ending in victory for me, and just started chatting, but upon reflecting like, twenty minutes later, we thought we had probably only played one. Whoops. It felt like a 5-game series.

It’s fun trying new things and playing around with different archetypes, but it is also very fun just playing what you know and love and getting to pop off with it. The no-combo version of what I primarily think of as a very combo-heavy cube (especially in comparison to most of the cubes in the group) was a very interesting twist, too. Also, it made the cube creator think about getting rid of fetchlands permanently, which is a huge win in my book.^[6]

Forgotten Monument (January 14, 2026)

The week after was a dive into a very unique cube: the first larger-pod outing of Forgotten Monument. This was a cube I had closely followed the design of and had gotten sneak previews of different aspects of its aesthetic design, so was especially excited to be part of its first outing. The central gameplay conceit of the cube is all of the lands are Forgotten Monument and players start with one on the battlefield, so card color doesn’t matter, but paying for colored pips are painful. There are also no creatures in the cube, so you need to figure out some other way to string together a win con. My favorite thing about the cube however, is the aesthetic touches: cards are sharpied to extend the black border and mimic the feeling of a cave closing in, and life is represented by little clear beads to make life loss a tangible thing.^[7]

Since we had a pod of 6 and the cube owner wanted to see more of the cards in the pool, we drafted 50-card decks via 5 packs of 9 cards, burning the last 3 cards, so 30 cards in the pool with no wheeling. Then, we just got 20 Forgotten Monuments added to our pool to create our deck: no extra deckbuilding required. I had one mission going into this cube: life gain. There were several reasons:

• I knew life gain was pretty good and a very plentiful effect from discussions with the designer.
• I have a personal fondness for life gain: it was my archetypical gateway deck archetype when I started playing Magic. I understand why it doesn’t pop up in a lot of more traditional cubes, but I adore it dearly.
• I didn’t want to worry about having enough life to cast my spells.
• I figured even if my deck was bad, I knew I would have tactile fun just moving beads around and getting to horde them in a little pile.

I thought about doing a burn plan too, but I didn’t see too much direct damage going around, so I figured someone else was in that deck. At the beginning of pack 2, I picked up Sanguine Bond, so my life gain plan had an actual win con attached, so I felt okay about picking up a ton of life gain spells, plus some tutors and recursion because I had no other real win con until I grabbed Leyline of Lightning in pack 4 and was definitely screwed if I didn’t find Sanguine Bond. By the end, I felt okay, but definitely wished I’d picked up some removal as well, because I didn’t really have any way to interact with my opponent.

My first game I had Leyline of Lightning in my opening hand, so I obviously kept it without zero regard for what else was in my hand. Survival Cache proved excellent as consistent card draw, and was probably my standout card of the night. I did get obliterated by a combination of Whirlwind of Thought plus Shadow of the Second Sun card draw value and eventually died to Sphinx-Bone Wand, but it was from a life total of 33, so mission accomplished all around. The second game I used Mythos of Brokkos to tutor up Sanguine Bond, and had plenty of life gain damage in the form of Renewed Faith and Chaplain’s Blessing to get my opponent dead before they could assemble their terrible machine (affectionate). In game 3, I had neither wincons nor tutors nor nonland spells, so I didn’t even get to spin my wheels doing nothing game-actions before eventually died again to Sphinx-Bone Wand. I did have about 9 lands in play, so that’s something.

The second match was against a heavy spells deck that had basically no ways to recover life from casting their colored pips. My first game I chipped my opponent down with the completely vanilla Retreat to Hagra and Kaleidoscorch as they took some self-inflicted beats to put out some engine pieces. With nothing in their hand, my opponent was forced to Wheel of Fortune, trashing my lands and letting me put together enough damage to kill them before they could untap again. The second game, I flooded out again and racked up 11 of my 20 lands this time while my opponent popped off with a combination of Geistflame Reservoir, Firemind’s Research, and Sentinel Tower to cast basically any three instant or sorceries and kill me. In game 3, I kept my hand off the back of Sanguine Bond, but my opponent had an absolutely ridiculous start: casting Faithful Mending and flashback’ing it, dicarding two lands each time, then casting Splendid Reclamation to ramp those four lands they had pitched, and following it up with Bootlegger’s Stash. We then proceeded to stare at each other, both drawing absolutely nothing for about three turns, until my opponent drew into Wheel of Fortune and had accumulated about 35 treasure to easily kill me with.

My last match was against a capital C Control deck. I once again got an opening hand with Leyline of Lightning, which I used to chip my opponent down to dead as they got stuck on three lands, despite drawing 11 cards in the first five turns. The second game was a grind out; Pulse of the Forge hamstrung my life gain strategy while also breaking both of our brains as we navigated the fact we could both tap our lands to change our life totals in the context of this card. I managed to just about hang on for frankly longer than expected including through a stack war to gain enough life on top of Call In a Professional, but eventually I couldn’t keep up nor deal with the sheer amount of value my opponent had and died to a thousand cuts from Faerie Tauntings.

RIP to my Demonic Tutor; sure wish I saw you at some point. My deck, objectively, was not particularly well-built, but given I had like 9 lands every game without that much card draw in my deck I’m choosing to lay some of the blame on getting Magic: The Gathering’ed too. But I had fun moving beads around, so it was all worth it.

Blaster Cube (January 28, 2026)

A brief illness made me miss a week, which was extra tragic as it was shaping up to be one of the most populous Wednesday cube nights in my memory. That meant I was extra excited the next week when I could go again, and we reached 10 players for the night. The large number of players perfectly suited Blaster Cube, a Vintage cube clone of wtwlf123’s cube, which could accommodate the crowd with cards to spare with its 720 card count.

My one inclination was to not play Boros aggro: that’s pretty much what I do every time in Vintage cubes because I’m not super familiar with them but its a strategy I know works, but I wanted to push myself this time. Then I opened Gut, True Soul Zealot in my first pack, immediately changed my mind, and regressed back to Boros aggro. I didn’t fully commit to aggro in pack 1 though, as there weren’t a lot of cheap aggressive drops going around. Instead, I was unusually responsible with my fixing land pickups, not not to avoid committing. I thought about maybe going for a more tokens-based, grind-y package based off a pickup of Lingering Souls, as that would work as Gut, True Soul Zealot fodder. A Strip Mine my first pick of pack 2 continued the hedging but was admittedly just a good, hateful pick too. But then a pick 3 Mox Pearl in pack two really solidified the Boros of it all, and then back-to-back pickups of White Plume Adventurer into Seasoned Dungeoneer, plus a City of Traitors, made me lean into a slightly more midrange angle. So, mission kind of accomplished on not playing Boros aggro, I guess?

My first match was against an Esper artifact deck, not to be confused with the mono-brown artifact deck also in the pod. The existence of the latter may be why my opponent admitted their deck was a bit disjointed. In both games, Kinscaer Sentry was as insanely good as it had seemed when I saw it spoiled and let me run over my opponent in short order. In the second game, my opponent played a Hedron Archive into Tezzeret, Cruel Captain as their turn 4 play, to which I played Knuckles the Echidna and, on attacks, used Kinscaer Sentry’s trigger to put Rampaging Raptor into play, doubling my damage output that turn from the on-board 8 to 16 damage and getting to kill their Tezzeret, Cruel Captain with Rampaging Raptor’s triggered ability for free. It felt unnecessarily win-more, honestly. We finished in such short order that eventually we started a for fun game 3, in which my opponent got down turn 1 Sol Ring and used it to cast a good number of mana rocks into Batterskull that suited up an Ancient Stone Idol^[8] for an insurpassable amount of lifegain for me.

Because my first match had finished up so early and I got to spectate the surrounding games, I knew pretty well what my next opponent was up to already: a 4-color midrange deck with value Time Walk and its main wincon being wheels like Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister combined with Narset, Parter of Veils or Hullbreacher. The first game I started extra aggressive with Zurgo Bellstriker turn 1 into turn 2 Luminarch Aspirant; the latter my opponent promptly Shriekmawed. With Gut, True Soul Zealot in hand but facing down no pressure on board and nothing I was inclined to sacrifice, I opted to Legion Extruder my opponent to the dome with the plan of sacrificing it to Gut, True Soul Zealot next turn, and Strip Mined away their Tropical Island, which they admitted later kept them off double blue for casting Narset, Parter of Veils. Instead of my Gut, True Soul Zealot plan though, I was lucky enough to draw White Plume Adventurer instead, and playing that locked up the game for me just as well. The second game my keep had lands and spells, but the more you looked at it the more atrocious the landbase looked, given it was Fabled Passage, Arena of Glory, and Strip Mine. My opponent had more blockers this time courtesy of Bitterblossom, but I still managed to eventually assemble enough of a board to flip Kytheon, Hero of Akros into a solid attacker, though I was still slightly cramped on my mana. I had the opportunity to miracle Triumph of Saint Katherine, the first time I had seen it all night, but I very sadly chose to decline because casting it would mean I wouldn’t have the mana to cast the Headliner Scarlett in my hand, which I thought I needed to pick off my opponent’s Narset, Parter of Veils, given they had Vampiric Tutored the previous turn and almost certainly had gotten some sort of wheel. The choice to cast Headliner Scarlett was correct but my attacks were not, as I correctly counted my total damage to be 1 shy of lethal and took down Narset, Parter of Veils instead, but forgot their Bitterblossom would have killed them on upkeep. Instead, we both drew a fresh seven with Timetwister and my opponent dumped out their hand, but I had wheeled into Kinscaer Sentry and City of Brass. The latter finally gave me another red source, letting me haste in the Kinscaer Sentry by extering Arena of Glory. Using Kinscaer Sentry’s triggered ability let me put in Rampaging Raptor for exact lethal.

My third game was against a Rakdos aggro deck. In the first game, my opponent was on the play, and Mox Diamond into Emberheart Challenger turn 1 into Shadowspear and equip turn 2 proved too much damage and also too much lifegain for my deck to overcome. The second game I had a Mox Pearl in my opening hand to get off to a more aggressive start, and the Luminarch Aspirant made me think I could go larger than my hyper-aggro opponent, but Mana Vault from my opponent let them play Overlord of the Boilerbilges turn 3 and put that idea to rest. I thought there was actually zero way for my deck to deal with a 5/5 picking off my creatures or doming me in the face for 4 every turn, but then, extremely fittingly, I miracle’d Triumph of Saint Katherine as a perfect option to trade and save me some life. However, I then had to sacrifice it to a Rankle, Master of Pranks trigger and failed to chain miracle it back to back and lost. Tragic.

One benefit of playing Boros aggro yet again is I got to fit a lot of games in, including a rare fourth match in a night against a Rakdos reanimator deck. The first few turns my opponent did a lot of digging for black mana, while my Luminarch Aspirant got to hand out a bunch of +1/+1 counters, and take advantage of its Cleric typing to get in some damage thanks to my Seasoned Dungeoneer. Luminarch Aspirant handed out enough counters, in fact, that by the time my opponent found the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Entombed and Necromancyed back up their Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, my creatures were big enough that none of them died to the -2/-2 static ability. Then, I top-decked Knuckles the Echidna, which picked up a +1/+1 counter from Luminarch Aspirant and, as a noted Warrior, also picked up protection via Seasoned Dungeoneer to continually chip in. My Luminarch Aspirant got removed, and I whiffed on my explore triggers so Knuckles the Echidna didn’t get any more than its single point of power, but it did give me mana to work with. My opponent had little followup as in the next few turns I had gotten them low enough that immediately emblem’ing Gideon, Ally of Zendikar to partially offset Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite was enough for me to swing in and then Burst Lightning my opponent’s face for the win. The second game Thraben Inspector provided plenty of fodder for my turn 2^[9] Gut, True Soul Zealot to run the show and murder my opponent very quickly, and I once again used Burst Lightning to pick up the last few points of damage for lethal.

RIP to the non-Boros plan, we’ll get 'em next time. Also: who needs game 3s, anyways.

Footnotes