r/Oldbordercube

I won a 7pt game with this card last week and it stuck with me!

What's the best art for Spirit Link?

It's time for This or That Tuesday. I will show you two or more cards with similar effects and power level and you tell me which one you'd pick if all of them were in a pack and/or which one you'd run in a typical old border cube. I try to avoid cards that need strong synergies to be good since you don't get any context in form of a specific cube, but for the sake of this thread just assume you have a typical old border cube that runs all of the best pre-Mirrodin old border cards, but no overpowered retro frame cards.

Today we'll talk two colorless mass removal cards - Powder Keg and Nevinyrral's Disk. While they don't really do exactly the same I believe their effects are close enough to each other to compare them and pick a favourite. Powder Keg is cheaper, can be nightmare for token decks and you can make it one-sided more easily, but Nevinyrral's Disk resets the board completely for a very reasonable cost if it doesn't get removed before you can untap with it. Which one do you pick more often or which one is your personal favourite?

Bonus question: What is your favourite mass removal spell?

I try not to call out specific color hosers here but I think this one has some potential in the OBNCCC

So whatcha got? How do you make Wrath of Marit Lage work...?

Friendly reminder, please ensure all recommendations have an old border printing and they apply to the cube format. Failure to do so will result in a Grizzly Bear coming your way!

Today we are picking from "POWERED OLD BORDER." Cube

From the curator:

This is a brand new cube! - Rough....

Cube can be found here: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/7624df59-c5a0-40f8-84e8-c7642c223406

Would you like your cube featured? DM me!

I have been refining this list now for a few weeks after getting input from several members of our community! I got the proxy order today and was able to sleeve it up and it's ready to draft!

This is my first attempt at a waste cube and at 8 players this is also a desert cube meaning that lands are drafted as the packs are passed and there is no land station.

Each eighteen-card booster contains:

• 12 nonland cards
• 6 lands

The complete cube contains:

• 288 nonland cards
• 30 unique non-basic lands
• 114 Blasted Landscapes
• 432 cards total

Blasted Landscape has been errata'd to function as a basic Waste, providing a reliable foundation of colourless mana while retaining the cycling mechanic. Every coloured source carries a cost and there are no "standard" colored lands. To reinforce this philosophy, no spell in the cube requires more than a single coloured pip in its casting cost.

Would love thoughts on the list now that it is complete prior to the first draft!  

EDIT: Should probably link the cube!

https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/GLMDW

I didn't realize this card had a third printing!

What's the best art for Ball Lightning?

It's time for This or That Tuesday. I will show you two or more cards with similar effects and power level and you tell me which one you'd pick if all of them were in a pack and/or which one you'd run in a typical old border cube. This week we will have a slight departure from our normaly scheduled program as I have had a specific request from one or our members, u/Aquacode2 to show two Dragons they are evaluating for inclusion into their cube!

Today we'll talk about two bigguns, Nicol Bolus and Crosis, the Purger! The choice is based on the following cube: Old and Unpowered. Which one would you add based on the list?

Bonus question: What are two cards you are debating between in your current project(s)?

I really like symmetrical effects like this, so how do you abuse this well since it needs to be one sided?

So whatcha got? How do you make Liability work...?

Friendly reminder, please ensure all recommendations have an old border printing and they apply to the cube format. Failure to do so will result in a Grizzly Bear coming your way!

Good evening fellow cubers!

Once again I am asking for your opinions about certain cards for my cube. Here are the contenders.

[[Goblin trenches]] or [[goblin legionairre]]?

[[Void]] or [[terminate]]?

[[Wall of tears]] or [[fog bank]]?

[[Spiketal drake]] or [[ silver wyvern]]?

[[Spiritmonger]] or [[pernicious deed]]?

[Fallow wurm]] or [[fierce empath]]?

Here's a link to the cube:

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pmod

The idea was to make gold cards as unique as possible, and cut out cards with similar effects, so everything is unique in its own way. Terminate is powerful, but void is such a unique effect, for example.

We have all been there: mana flooded or turn after turn without drawing one land. There are some fancy schmancy shuffling tactics out there but no matter the shuffle or the build, there is always that one player who loses because they just cannot play the game. In general, I am against house rules but I was wondering if there were solutions our community has found that offers a handicap to players who miss land drops? I am looking for a solution that does not completely alter the physics of the game and lands have to be included in the deck build.

Mercadian Atlas is the closest card I have been able to find in my travels that offers something close to what I am looking for. I am imagining that games can start off with one of the field (cannot be targeted or destroyed); if it causes a player to have over 7 cards, the cards discarded at the end step are removed for the game. I am trying to prevent to prevent abusing add cards to the graveyard for gain. I feel the card solves flooding issues as well when a person chooses (honorably) to skip playing a land in order to draw an extra card and break the land clumping. Not perfect but this is why I am posting.

Thoughts on helping to prevent land flooding/drawing issues?

Today we are picking from "WyldStallynz Powered Pre-Modern Cube."

From the curator:

This is a brand new cube! - Rough....

Cube can be found here: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/WYLD

Would you like your cube featured? DM me!

Back to London for more consulting, had the opportunity to draft with my favorite London Cube Crew and we gathered together on Monday night to crack packs of the Never Cube. We had six drafters (plus me, for the dreaded seven) show up to our reserved table at the famous Mythic Goblin to look at a cube full of cards none of them had seen before! Magic’s early years left more behind than what was printed. The Never Cube brings those pieces together through infamous sets like Spectral Chaos and other amazing fan made old school sets from across the current community. It offers a way to explore them as complete works, to see how they function in play, and to experience a version of the game that exists just beyond its recorded history. Some of these paths were never taken; here, they can be. This will be a tougher report to read as there is no cube cobra page for this project and the photos are the record of the cards played.

The Cube Overview: The Never Cube

Onto the Decks!

Reading Rainbow - Rainbow Connection is one of the coolest cards in Spectral Chaos. An emblem before they were a thing, and symmetrical, it gives all players the ability to tap lands for any colour and if you cast it once, it starts in play for the rest of the night. This is silly but a really fun play pattern. This was a P1P1 and the pilot then built his sideboard to be transformational after game one to end up in five colour good stuff. This deck played very well and only dropped one match to a largely mono coloured brew!

Black and Blue and Red All Over - This was the 3-0 build this evening and Book the Dead proved it's amazing card draw capacity in full as the ability to essentially cycle dead cards in hand was really key to help find the right mana sources and bring the right cards to the top of the library. Protection is a really powerful mechanic in all of these sets so many games were a riddle of moving parts with these creatures running past one another to deal damage.

The Band and the Bard! - Banding is a really strong mechanic in Magic (especially for those who understand how it works) and this deck made use of white for removal and preventing damage in combat. This is really strong with banding as you can start to make really advantageous blocks and attack's that end up netting you board state as threats are removed on the opponents side.

Don't Mind if I Orc - This was the most fun deck of the night that had Orcish Informant giving the opponent the ability to arrange the top three cards of your library each turn. This is just bad as there was not a lot going on for the pilot to get a new three to surface after the shuffle had happened so you basically get to draw what your opponent wants each turn. The deck also had walls that helped slow combat down to work through the slower draw phase.

Island Walking Board Wipes - This was a great deck to watch get piloted in the few games I got to watch. The island home/island walk threats were very real but required some serious setup to make work. This includes the Slave Ship that ended up acting as a Noah's Arc after the Great Flood would wash the board away and allow big swings for lethal. The Ship also gave this pilot the ability to pull threats out of their opponents deck which is always a fun bonus!

RG Beats - It turns out RG beats is good across both the existing MTG universe and those that never saw print! This deck used the Crow Whisperer that has a bolted on [[False Orders]] to move blockers aside and get in for damage all the way through the game. The Mazer mini lotus and other great tools like creature tutors helped establish a board very quickly and the custom triomes in the cube that prevent you from playing lands are easily played around with Mushroom Forest that lets you put lands into play from your hand each turn.

My Deck Misadventures - This was my deck and it broke ALL the rules of good limited construction. It splashed cards with multiple (LOTS) of pips but my P1P1 of Animate Lands forced me to go wide and force the strategy to work. I forced the deck and man it was bad. BUT, it was fun to create demons from my lands, pump them and send them in as banders, until the enchantment was removed which killed all my lands and my boys.. Other than these large mistakes, the deck was superb!

Thanks to Mythic Goblin for giving us a place to play cube in London!

If you ever find yourself in London and looking to cube, look up the Central London crew!