MTGO
ARENA
PAPER
Vintage Cube Draft Quick Starting Guide
Welcome to Vintage Cube
Welcome and thank you for taking your time to click this article. I'm very grateful not only because I have your attention, but also because MTGDecks liked the idea of giving this beautiful format some time in the sun. With Vintage Cube and the awesome return of 64-player draft on Magic Online, there's not a better time to brush up on the best format in Magic.
Let's get going!
What is Vintage Cube?
Vintage Cube is a limited format with a 540 card cardpool and eight players in the draft which means only 360 of the cards are in the actual packs you open. This is relevant because it adds some variance to the different combo pieces you have the potential to see in the draft and helps balance out the power level of something unfair vs. the fair strategies. Worth mentioning is that Vintage Cube does include the power 9 which are at a premium.
To start out, here's a link to the complete decklist of the current iteration of Vintage Cube on Magic Online: https://www.mtgo.com/vintage-cube-cardlist
Vintage Cube has been loved by thousands of players for many years. Just like various Commander iterations, it's a place where old cards get to be played alongside newer printings which always creates an awesome dynamic between nostalgia and fierce competition which are two of the primary reasons why I play Magic personally.
I have spent most of my free time the last month or so playing Vintage Cube daily with a dedicated group of Magic pros, grinders and passionate players. The best of them all, not to mention the most passionate of them all, is Luis Scott-Vargas who has agreed to chime in on a few of the topics today. I'm super excited that he agreed, so make sure to give Luis a warm welcome.
If you want to watch daily Vintage Cube videos, I suggest you go directly to his YouTube after reading this article.
Picks, Archetypes & Strategies
I'll try and cover the top cards for each color including artifacts and what the 10 color pairs offer.
The 6 "colors"
Blue
Key Cards
Quick tips
Blue has extremely high card quality and often supports 4-5 drafters at the table. Blue is good for drawing extra cards and countering opposing key spells, and the actual win condition is less important. For obvious reasons, Ancestral Recall and Mana Drain are better than the cards I highlighted, but I wanted to give you an idea of some solid cards that will make you want to play blue. Playing Mono Blue is possible, but pretty rare.
Green
Key Cards
Quick tips
Green is all about having a good mix of mana acceleration and payoff. There are lots of "mana elves" in the Cube, so those are your bread and butter alongside 4-5 mana planeswalkers. Natural Order and Craterhoof Behemoth is the ideal endgame.
Red
Key Cards
Quick tips
To the surprise of exactly no one, red is composed of burn and hasty creatures. A very short list of cards makes you want to jump straight into Mono Red, but the above are acceptable reasons to out of a bad pack. Usually you want to identify that it's open and then move into Mono Red as a deck.
White
Key Cards
Quick tips
White offers both a White Weenie strategy with fast creatures with disruptive elements attached and the more midrange-y planeswalkers. Armageddon and Ravages of War will be a nice top end for your aggressive deck while playing a slower deck with powerful three and four drops is also a viable strategy.
Black
Key Cards
Quick tips
Black is all over the place, in a good way, in Vintage Cube. Historically, the color was mainly used to facilitate combos like reanimating a huge creature or storming out big Tendrils of Agony or Brain Freeze, but these days the color has a lot to offer. Hand disruption and creature removal with solid creatures like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Ophiomancer and Dauthi Voidwalker are super valid reasons to play black.
Artifact
Key Cards
Quick tips
Getting to cheat on mana and power out a huge robot is a great strategy if you can get the cards for it. Aside from Urza's Saga which is playable in "all" decks, I suggest you pick these cards later in the back and slot into the archetype that way. Roleplayers like Emry, Lurker of the Loch can make for some really fun and explosive decks.
The 10 "guilds"
Izzet
Key Cards
Quick tips
Red and blue supplements each other great if your strategy is to put together two-card combos like Deceiver Exarch + Splinter Twin and Sneak Attack + Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn. The glue being cantrips like Ponder, Preordain, Impulse, Brainstorm and red burn spells to buy time. Dack Fayden performs extremely well in particular because the Cube has many artifacts to steal.
Dimir
Key Cards
Quick tips
Dimir is my "good stuff" color combination of preference because it just plays solid cards and has access to both discard spells and counterspells to disrupt the opponent's gameplan. I particularly enjoy the "thieves" cards like Thief of Sanity, Bribery and various Control Magic variants and beat my opponent with their cards. Oftentimes you can have a small reanimation package with a few fatties, a few ways to put them in the graveyard and a few ways to reanimate them. Tutors and cantrips will be your glue to find the right combination.
Simic
Key Cards
Quick tips
´If you want to pair blue with the green ramp strategy, these are some of the best reasons to do so. The combination of double blue in some of the mana costs and the natural hunger for playing many Forests, I suggest you draft Tropical Island, Breeding Pool, Misty Rainforest and the blue/green triomes highly for this archetype. Even looking for the mana creatures that can add blue like Noble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise and Sylvan Caryatid can go a long way to ensure that splashing a color is not a liability.´
Azorius
Key Cards
Quick tips
Blue/White is the classic control color pair, and Vintage Cube is no exception. Drafting counterspells, planeswalkers and (mass)removal is a good strategy in this format. Going into Azorius usually involves picking up blue cards early and waiting for the right signal that white should be your second color.
Boros
Key Cards
Quick tips
Being both of these colors is pretty unique because both of them are best on their own, but sometimes the draft forces you to expand your aggressive deck to two colors. Boros will ideally have the stronger individual creatures from white and pair with the efficient burn spells from red. Since you will most likely have a low mana curve, drafting mana fixing is important here as well.
Gruul
Key Cards
Quick tips
This color combination is similar to Boros in the sense that you wish you were only Green, but you're making the best of the fact that multiple green drafters showed up to play. No fear, big red finishers are here! I actually like this color combination a lot where you can play the red midrange card ahead of schedule and make quick work of your opponent. Orcish Lumberjack and Goblin Rabblemaster are two of my personal favorites for this archetype.
Rakdos
Key Cards
Quick tips
Playing these two colors isn't very well defined and will mostly come down to card quality. Sometimes you'll have a sweet Sneak Attack/Reanimator deck, and sometimes you'll be low to the ground with efficient disruption and creatures that end the game quickly.
Selesnya
Key Cards
Quick tips
Green/White is very similar to Gruul because you want the ramp from green and the quality cards of white. I can't recommend this color pair going into the draft, but sometimes you're supposed to be green/white in your seat and we make the best of it. Armageddon, Ravages of War and Winter Orb can be interesting if you have enough mana creatures.
Golgari
Key Cards
Quick tips
I like trying to add an unfair angle to my green deck, and black has the ability to do exactly that. Fauna Shaman and tutors add consistency to your deck, so you can cheat out that Archon of Cruelty or Attraxa, Grand Unifier more reliably while your deck is perfectly capable of playing a normal midrange plan.
Orzhov
Key Cards
Quick tips
The combination of black's hand disruption and white's taxing elements can be a nightmare to play against for a lot of strategies. The good Orzhov decks are often low to the ground with a decent top end, so it can easily close out games relatively quickly and do a respectable job in the grindy games.
Bonus: Luis Scott-Vargas Interview
Andreas and Luis Scott-Vargas have been friends for a long time, and we took this opportunity to ask one of the major advocates of this format some questions about his favorite cards and the aspects he finds most relevant about the format.
What Makes Vintage Cube So Appealing?
"Vintage Cube is my favorite format because of how varied and deep the gameplay is. Every single draft you run into new combinations and interactions, making every game an adventure. Plus, you get to play with tons of powerful and historic cards, while combining them with new cards in cool ways."
Where do I begin if I've never played Vintage Cube before?
I'm happy you asked. We all have personal preferences when it comes to archetypes. Some are great at evaluating board states and prefer creature strategies, some are great at threading the needle with a combo strategy, some like to control the game with counter magic and removal, and some just like to ramp into big fatties. Thankfully, all of the above and more, including mixtures of multiple strategies, are viable in Vintage Cube.
What Are the Best Picks?
Lots of players have different opinions on the absolute top card for Vintage Cube. Here's LSV's power ranking:
"My pick 1 pack 1 ranking is: Sol Ring, Time Walk, Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall"
Sol Ring is the best, as two mana every turn is absurd, but Time Walk is barely second. If you pick 1 Time Walk, there are tons of combos you can build with it
To give you an idea about the importance of quality of your first pick and the power level of Vintage Cube, LSV also comments:
"My worst first pick recently is probably Ponder. I just don't like starting the draft with such a mediocre card."
What Is Your Favorite Color Combination?
Blue-Red is my favorite, because it combines control/card draw with combos or aggression, and can play really cool games as a result.
Wrap-Up
I hope you enjoyed my intro article to Vintage Cube. Two drafts are never the same, new interactions always come up and you develop so many different Magic skills that you can use in other formats by playing it.
I would love to go more in-depth on pick orders, which cards are worth splashing for, how to read signals at the table, risk vs. reward, show sample decklists from my own experience and a ton of other different stuff in the near future.
Until next time, remember we can't all open power!