Dom Harvey
Contributor
DRAFT REPORT - MAY 2026
Another packed house and pod of 10 - for this one I tried giving everyone a Cogwork Librarian to start since I've enjoyed that in other Cubes and it makes a lot of sense in a heavy synergy format. I'm a bit frustrated with myself for not carving out time to actually update the paper list properly; my CubeCobra bot drafts were a bit disorienting since my decks seemed so much less coherent than the decks from paper drafts but when I checked the bots' decks they were surprisingly good and well-defined so maybe I'm just being brutally draftmogged by AI
Anyhow, some cool decks:
The tricksy GW deck that has been a staple of my Cube since the first post in this thread 10 years ago plus some nice Nadu limit breaks. I really want to highlight Practiced Offense - this wasn't on my radar at all during spoiler season but it's the best Limited card in the set and I've had a great time building around in Standard. It's obscenely powerful in any kind of creature deck, rewards going wide and going tall at once and 'flashback spell that puts counters on things' keys off so many synergies. Easy to imagine a WR deck with a ton of Looting etc or a blue Prowess deck using this as the coup de grace, or a WB deck going super wide and digging with Umbral Collar Zealot to find it (or just Entombing it directly!) etc
I 3-0ed again with my usual fare (intended to branch out but used my Cogwork P1P1 on Frog + Animate Dead and was off to the races) but I was pleased to see the small splashes worked so well - Abundant Countryside was as good as hoped here! Got to do some nice Animate Dead -> Yorion loops and it was great to see Reveillark still pulling its weight in the grindy matchups. Collector's Vault continued to be a solid workhorse here
This pod managed to support three very solid Ux Control decks with varying levels of purity:
A solid illustration of the URx deck that controls the game until it swiftly transitions to Big Spells or some two card combo. Opening Ceremony is Booster Tutor meets Mind's Desire - against me he hit Metamorphosis Fanatic + Chromatic Star to cast it and bring back a lifelinking Pyrogoyf!
I had to win a tough match against this at 2-0 for the pod and was quite impressed
Fairly conventional UW deck here but wanted an excuse to show off Hydro-Man, a bizarre but very fun and strong card if you don't mind the X-Men of it all
Coolest deck of the pod from the same guy who drafted the Lurrus sac/creature combo deck last time:
This can go off via Saffi + Retainers (+ Meathook/Roots etc) but has so many tutors and build-arounds that it will find a way to do something sweet all the time
Another packed house and pod of 10 - for this one I tried giving everyone a Cogwork Librarian to start since I've enjoyed that in other Cubes and it makes a lot of sense in a heavy synergy format. I'm a bit frustrated with myself for not carving out time to actually update the paper list properly; my CubeCobra bot drafts were a bit disorienting since my decks seemed so much less coherent than the decks from paper drafts but when I checked the bots' decks they were surprisingly good and well-defined so maybe I'm just being brutally draftmogged by AI
Anyhow, some cool decks:
 | | | | |
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The tricksy GW deck that has been a staple of my Cube since the first post in this thread 10 years ago plus some nice Nadu limit breaks. I really want to highlight Practiced Offense - this wasn't on my radar at all during spoiler season but it's the best Limited card in the set and I've had a great time building around in Standard. It's obscenely powerful in any kind of creature deck, rewards going wide and going tall at once and 'flashback spell that puts counters on things' keys off so many synergies. Easy to imagine a WR deck with a ton of Looting etc or a blue Prowess deck using this as the coup de grace, or a WB deck going super wide and digging with Umbral Collar Zealot to find it (or just Entombing it directly!) etc
| | | | |
| ||||
I 3-0ed again with my usual fare (intended to branch out but used my Cogwork P1P1 on Frog + Animate Dead and was off to the races) but I was pleased to see the small splashes worked so well - Abundant Countryside was as good as hoped here! Got to do some nice Animate Dead -> Yorion loops and it was great to see Reveillark still pulling its weight in the grindy matchups. Collector's Vault continued to be a solid workhorse here
This pod managed to support three very solid Ux Control decks with varying levels of purity:
| | | | |
| ||||
A solid illustration of the URx deck that controls the game until it swiftly transitions to Big Spells or some two card combo. Opening Ceremony is Booster Tutor meets Mind's Desire - against me he hit Metamorphosis Fanatic + Chromatic Star to cast it and bring back a lifelinking Pyrogoyf!
| | | | |
| ||||
I had to win a tough match against this at 2-0 for the pod and was quite impressed
| | | | |
| ||||
Fairly conventional UW deck here but wanted an excuse to show off Hydro-Man, a bizarre but very fun and strong card if you don't mind the X-Men of it all
Coolest deck of the pod from the same guy who drafted the Lurrus sac/creature combo deck last time:
| | | | |
| ||||
This can go off via Saffi + Retainers (+ Meathook/Roots etc) but has so many tutors and build-arounds that it will find a way to do something sweet all the time