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The Fall iteration of the “Modern Cube” was available on MTGO until last week. As an avid cube drafers on MTGO, I thought it was time to share my thoughts about it.

The list drew many criticisms on the internet. I will not comment on the gross mistake that are the inclusion of drake haven and exclusion of gifts, as everybody has already said that. What surprised me most is that the list includes only half of the manlands (the zendikar ones), which is very doubtful from a design point of view. There are also a lots of doubtful choices, as if the design team was running out of ideas at some points, and needed some“fillers”. The non inclusion of certain cards surprised me, but I understood the overall design goals of the team, which tried to give an identity to each color while providing balance between them (and thus greatly reducing red in terms of raw power for that reason, by cutting many one drops and low cost burns compared to the previous iteration). There are certainly a certain number of doubtful choices, like the inclusion of wildfire, which was a trap, as even if the number of mana rocks was reasonable, it was not sufficient to support such an archetype, given the lack of signets. But I am not unhappy to have seen some really medium planeswalker like Elspeth Tirel or Jace, Unraveler of secrets replaced by solid cards like Angel of Sanctions or Icefall Regent. I did not understood the criticism regarding the inclusion of a lot of standard legal cards, after, the MTGO designer are like any cube designer, they try new things.
As always in any MTGO cube, the list is packed with planeswalkers. On the good side, the team seemed perfectly aware of the planeswalker high density of the list, and provided with a greater number of way to deal with them (the latest ones added this time being Cast out, Angel of sanctions and Never // Return).

The MTGO modern cube is a « modern » cube, in the sense that much focus is on tempo, creatures and board interactions. The most important take away from this is that a deck that do nothing (or simply ramp) for the first turns in terms of board presence has little chance to succeed (compared to vintage cube, where draw go is a legitimate strategy if a sufficient density of instant is achieved). This draft from Reid Duke is a good example of what you should not do in this environment : https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-reid-modern-cube-draft/. I think this also explains why green ramp strategies were not very successful comparatively in my view. Not having access to Rofellos, Craddle or Natural Order (making the deck at least a turn slower) that puts a lot less pressure on the opponent to find an immediate solution, opponent often has a way to deal with the mana elves in the first turns and thus considerably slow down the deck. Mono green was still very efficient when lowering a bit the curve and turning into a midrange strategy, with one or two splashes for a couple of powerful planeswalkers or a few removals, and trying to bury the opponent with card advantage. Rishkar’s expertise was nuts in this kind of decks.
There were a lot of interesting “new” cards (i.e., neither in the Vintage or the Legacy cubes), and in a sense this is quite refreshing. As a drafter, I must say that I often value fun over pure competitiveness, and in a sense, this iteration of the MTGO cube rewards that (as long as you make sure to draft something that have a legitimate plan to win, and not a pile of splashy cards without any synergy). It is really enjoyable to build decks around cards that does not make the cut in an unpowered deck, like mine. There is also a sense of nostalgia, as the list offers the opportunity to play again some archetype defining cards that used to make the cut for a cube but are no longer legitimate power wise, like crystal shard, mirror entity or mimic vat. Interesting cards from recent sets that would never fit in my own list like clever impersonator or prophet of kruphix were also worth trying, and often good surprises.

I 3-0d 4 leagues over 15 I joined, and 2-1d a good number of times, but I must say that I also 0-3d a handful of them. It took some time for me to really get a good grasp of the format, and properly evaluate the power level/utility of cards I had never played with. Once I understood I should prioritize aggressive to mid rangy two-three drops creatures (or cheap ways to deal with these if I was going for control), the games went much smoothly.
As in any “modern” cube, all creatures with a ETB ability proved to be much higher picks than the other ones. I personally avoided drafting “superfriend” decks, as, after a couple of tries, I was unable to find the good balance between fixing, sweepers/removals and planeswalker themselves, but a lot of players appeared to be good at this exercise. I felt that the "super-friend" archetype was less oppressive than back in Spring. Overall, I loved that sweet archetypes like mono black devotion or non blue control were potent choices.
Having not access to some of the most cube defining legacy legal cards also made me reevaluate the power level of some cube bombs (an obvious example being craterhoof behemoth), and rethinking a pick order too much set in stone in my mind. In a way, this was a good training to prepare for future drafts when I get the chance to play outside my usual groups.

I had a lot of fun and I am sure a lot of other people had, given the attendance numbers, and despite all the hate towards the cube that you can find on reddit. In terms of replayability, I think this cube offered quite a good deal of it. There are many modern only cube lists on Cube tutor, by players who are either constrained for budget reasons or simply are younger players that no real fondness for older cards that they never played with, and I think that the Modern Cube appealed to that public.
From a draft perspective, having access to only modern legal cards was quite challenging, as power level of cards is pretty even and there are no “automatic picks” like in a powered cube. As said on many forums, it was of course possible and often right to go for a list with a good curve, good stuff cards without so much synergy but a few bombs, but I felt that thinking out of box and focus on synergies was often rewarding. Some archetypes were pretty deep. I personally have never drafted an anthem deck (and probably never will), but I saw opponents with solid lists, and with so much choices offered, all sorts of anthem decks can be built (be it the classic aggressive white weeny, the token/go-wide based ones, G/W go-big based one with +1/+1 counters generators or B/W or decks with token generating planeswalker with resiliency to wraths – the last one appeared to be a bit slow but very potent strategy when it managed to stabilize). The experience was something in the middle between cube drafting (where you try to recreate a constructed deck) and limited. From a game play perspective, longer games provide for more skill testing game play, compared to Vintage Cube where luck in draft and in opener play a huge role (hello, T1 sol ring). Cards are still powerful enough to avoid ending up in a board stall (like it may happen in recent set drafts), but poor sequencing and sloppy plays were often punished. This pushes players to make better plays and squeeze maximum value out of them, which is always good.

Thanks for reading me. I would be happy if you can share your own impressions on this cube, sweet archetypes you drafted, and good stories!

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