Heuristics for Having a Good Time

In the wake of CubeCon 2024, Andy and Anthony talk about how they approach drafting new Cube environments. They talk about their general draft strategies and heuristics they start with to get a sense of what’s going to be important in the environment just by looking at the packs being passed.

View all cards mentioned in this episode

Discussed in this episode:

• Anthony’s Big Bottle Opener
• Episode 48: Playing to Win: Evaluating New Cubes
• Episode 215: Using Little Pieces of Paper as a Supermassive Random Number Generator
• Anthony’s Fire Swamp and C/Ube Decks
• Game Objects Cube
• The Fire Swamp
• Keldan’s Simple Cube
• Streisand Effect

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

6:09 - Are we good at Magic?

8:56 - How do we approach drafting a completely unfamiliar list

19:29 - Should you look at the available mana fixing in a cube?

26:08 - The categories of cards to pay attention to in the draft

30:25 - How often should you end up playing your pack 1, pick 1 in Cube draft?

31:59 - The importance of recontexualizaion

40:26 - The Value of Having a Plan

48:04 - How much do you trust the Cube designer?

57:24 - Heuristics for having a good time

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

• Andy’s “Bun Magic” Cube
• Anthony’s “Regular” Cube

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. You can find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord. Send in questions to the show at [email protected] or our p.o. box:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

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Musical production by DJ James Nasty.