Drafted Call a Judge cube again. Cube is all about crazy rule interactions. I’ve been trying to get outside of my comfort zone when drafting. I drafted a neat UB reanimator deck splashing a couple of red cards. Had some very cool interactions and some silly ones too. 3-0

Ran back Metalworker cube the next week. Instead of drafting an aggro deck I actually built a time sieve deck which popped off. Misra’s self-replicator was the fuel for the extra turns, having access to a three mana historic spell was strong, and then those metalworkers made mana for copies. 3-0 6-0

I submitted my own cube for CubeCon for the champions choice. I did ask like three people if that would be gauche and they all said no, so I went for it.

Drafted the Metalworker cube earlier this month. Special rule, you can cast a gold-bordered metalworker (GBMW) any time you can cast a sorcery. And mana from your metalworkers cannot be spent on metalworkers. Cube was very cool, had 20 artifacts and good interaction. 3-0 6-0.

Drafted the Ethical Synergy cube. Drafted a UW tempo-ish deck after seeing an 8th pick remand. Didn’t value fixing high enough, ended with some small mana issues. Very much enjoy this cube, lots of strong but not broken game pieces. 2-1

Drafted the Kindred Cube. All cards (nonlands?)must reference a creature type of some kind or are changelings. I drafted a goblin deck with some powerful other typal bombs. Deck felt pretty strong. Might be my first time playing skirk prospector, card was pretty good as just a sac outlet. 3-0

Draft of the EPA cube, drafted BW splashing red for mayhem devil and chainsaw. The shared smokestack/RoL object had been retooled to start as rule of law. Vastly improved my enjoyment of the cube, and many of the cheap ways to flip the object had been removed. Deck was very strong. 2-0-1 (3-0 imo).

April 1st we drafted Hells Cube. Every card is custom with an absurd twist. A lot of cards will just say “Do a thing that doesn’t work (it works)”. I found a lot of the cards very funny and the draft was fun for the first 1/2, but the amount of reading gets tiring. Gameplay was alright. 3-0

Drafted my Mardu desert 3/25. I’m so behind. So I just drafted a mediocre value pile and went 1-2. I needed to commit harder to the greasefang plan. I’m actually quite happy that value piles are a little less good now in the cube. Focused aggro/combo/control decks are now much better.

Drafted Life, Death & Undeath 3/18. Drafted a bad BR pile splashing Grist & Resto. Graveyard focused cube with a fairly high power level that I have greatly enjoyed. Afterlife insurance is a wild card, never played with it before. Had a blood artist and sac outlet and my opponent was just dead. 2-1

Drafted the Mana Flare cube March11th. There’s a mana flare emblem, and just one since it’s symmetrical. Drafted a BG rock deck that had trouble dealing with the threats my opponents could put out on turns 2,3, & 4. The draft was fun but the deck felt pretty clunky. 1-2

Behind on posting, but Shoebox was a few weeks ago in St. Paul and had a pretty good time. “Made” Top 64, but the snow was so bad on Sunday I couldn’t make it to the venue. The setup was pretty cool, the top 4 of 6 drafts were counted so having a could you could throw was kinda liberating.

Renegade Platinum is so difficult for a casual Pokemon player like myself. I keep getting rocked by surprise trainer battles, so I haven’t even gotten to the really hard fights at the end of the game.

Took part in a game of “Assassin’s” this weekend. The goal is to make your target do something they would not normally do, then you “get” them and eliminate the from the game. My objective was to get someone I didn’t know to do a cartwheel. I lost because I wasn’t supposed to talk about the weather.

Drafted the OG desert cube a couple weeks ago, and drafted the wildest deck I think I’ve ever had. The cube has 20 copies of kindle, we drafted it with 7 and I still got my hands on 13. With 7 we just played as people became free with the one sitting out. The format is growing on me. 5-0

Drafted the Call a Judge cube a couple Sundays ago. A cube that was overloaded on complexity on purpose. Drafted BW Death&Taxes sorta, its archetype was supposedly a little less defined than the other color pairs. Cube was very fun but the lack of wraths made it feel like you couldn’t claw back. 2-1

Three cube drafts in one day is a lot, but a good time.

Drafted The Mana Vault’s Mono-Red cube two weeks ago with 7. Drafted a bad red deck with some burn and some individually strong cards. Got beat by a lower to the ground aggro deck and another player playing toralf’s disciple. Since we had 7 we started new matches rotating the person waiting. 3-2

I love the word dearth. Dearth dearth dearth.

Drafted the Cream City Cube with 6 last Sunday. We started at like 8pm, so I wanted to do something a bit different and I P1P1 Flash and ended up in a janky BGu reanimator deck splashing flash. Deck performed okay, but one of the drafters took every fetch so my fixing was iffy. 2-1

Drafted the All A’s no B’s cube again this week. We had 2 pods of 6 and teamed drafted. Drafted a mostly green, 1/2 broken (good), 1/2 broken (bad) 5-color pile. My mana was interesting in a bad way. No green fetches, thought I had taken misty. Each fetch had a green shock tho. 3-0, team won 6-2-1

I know I don’t play commander, but people on the r/custommagic subreddit are so bad at card evaluation. This custom card is broken with the combination of dramatic reversal, isochron scepter and two mana rocks. No it is not. Come on.

My wife and I do a traditional Valentine’s dinner outing the week before/after the actual day. I’m able to book a reservation at a nice restaurant a week beforehand rather than 12 weeks. On the day proper I spend a few hours making a nice meal. It’s been a nice tradition. Making pazole today.

Drafted the Heavy Metal cube on Wednesday. An extremely proactive artifact heavy environment w/ poor fixing (which I love). P1P1 was steel-cutter, never played it before, card was quite good, but not absurd. Nothing in the deck felt super broken, and RB has been powered down before in this cube. 3-0

Got to play one of my favorite board games on Saturday. Argent:The Consortium. It ran 4 hours instead of the expected 3, but there was a new player and a lot of drinking involved. The final score can be so funny since it felt like a very close game but the final scores were 7-2-2-1-0.

Playing this Nuzlocke and got an eevee. Looked at its stats and it has a +Def nature and 31 SpeD IVs. I turned it into my favorite Pokemon (Umbreon) and it is just the chonkiest thing in my box. I got so lucky 🥲

Drafted my own cube, the Lich get Licher yesterday. Haven’t made many changes since the initial build, still wildly unbalanced. You start with a Lich’s mastery in play, and games devolve from there. Drafted BW clerics and got completely hosed. The last player to draft BW also had similar issues. 0-3

Nuzloking Royal Sapphire right now and it is incredible fun. I’m not a seasoned Pokemon player, so the difficulty feels perfect.

Drafted the All A’s, no B’s (working title) cube on Wednesday. Has Kiki no pestermite, Hulk but no Flash, etc. I got to draft a Ketramose deck, which would have probably popped off if I ever drew it. Never played the card before. I loved the deck, the draft, the games, everything was fantastic. 3-0

Second Ice Cube 3 draft was old border foil. Opened pack one and saw bolt, piledriver, and spiritmonger. Was sitting to the right of a drafter I suspected would move into red no matter what I took, so I grabbed spiritmonger. Drafted a really fun GB rock deck. Had an absolute blast. 2-1 lost finals

First draft of Ice Cube was way worse than the one I did the day before. First picked what looked like a pretty solid green rare but then got passed a pyre zombie which looked pretty powerful and moved into BR. Deck was kinda mediocre, lost to an aggressive deck in round 1, flooded a bit game 3. 2-1

Ice Cube 3 was on Saturday, so last week I discovered I put my preferences in backwards and got my “#1” and “#2” picks of an Invasion block cube and Old Border Foil. Thankfully I got to practice the IPA cube the day before the event.

Team drafted the Heavy Metal cube on Wednesday. A great artifact-heavy proactive cube. I drafted a classic Shariq Deck of a bunch of 2-drops and removal. In retrospect I think I needed a bit more top end against one of my opponents. My team drafted RB/BW/RW vs UG/UG/U. Ended up 2-1, team won 5-4.

I’m sure it was just a coincidence for Himmel that he spent every day of his journey with Frieren, and that the quest was drawn out to be 10 years long.

Drafted the Environmental Protections cube on Wednesday. Shared game object that massively altered gameplay. Games were either incredibly interesting and complex or tedious and annoying. Drafted a bunch of cards to interact with the shared object, but any that didn’t cost <=1mv were garbage. 2-1

Been in a Roto draft of a graveyardish cube and drafted a very strong cloudpost deck (6xcloud,2xGlimmer, 2xNexus). I achieved a mindslaver lock on Turn 4. T1,2&3 cloudpost, T3 solemn get island. T4 nexus play mindslaver. T5 Academy Ruins put mindslaver on top. Proph Prism to draw and play it.

First cube of 2026 on Wednesday. Drafted my Mardu cube. Mana was bad. I ended up playing one of the 1-0-1 players in the finals, probably would have lost to the other 1-0-1 player. Need to make changes before Ice Cube. Going to cut the artifact stuff and buff aggro. Wake the dead was awesome. 3-0

Having possibly my worst week of the year this year. Came in right under the wire, crazy.

We had 9 for Wednesday cube this week so I volunteered to sit out this week. Helped a newer drafter draft a sick RW aggro deck in a lower-power Old-Border cube. It was fun explaining that Exalted Angel and FTK are some of the best cards in the cube since we’re grading creatures on a curve here.

I was a little down on Glass Onion after watching Wake Up, Dead Man. But I rewatched it tonight and after three years it still holds up. Maybe I’ve changed more than the movie has.

Drafted twice on Saturday for @stav.gold’s birthday. First cube was the Gizmo cube, one of my favorites. Drafted this bad-ish Abzan control pile with Thopter Sword as the win con. The biggest mistake I made was prolly picking Foundry over Damnation. I think I needed to wheel it. 2-1 Lost in Finals.

❄️ THE ICE CUBE 3 IS COMING! ❄️ Join us January 24th for our next 64-player Cube Tournament featuring special guest Stephen Menton (@aquaone.bsky.social) 🧊8 unique cubes 🧊$2500+ in prizes 🧊Lunch included 🧊$65 entry (58 spots left!) Sign up below! ⬇️ 1/X

If Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig could just keep making these for the next 20 years, that’d be great.

Drafted a 10-person vintage cube. Drafted a Jund breach shallow grave pile. The last pick survival was pretty clutch. Combo decks are not my forte, so decks that need specific card pairs feel absolutely horrendous to me. Mind twist was playable with vault, tomb and lotus cobra. 3-0

Drafted the Clean Evergreen cube on Wednesday. No tokens and only evergreen keywords. Felt like I drafted my seat pretty well, but had some issues dealing with stuff like future sight. I liked the cube a lot, the power level of the cube is quite low, and the power outliers make it great fun. 2-1

It occurs to me that in Frieren, Heiter gave up alcohol to raise Fern for as long as he could.

Drafted my mardu desert cube again last night. 4-mana Gideon is incredibly strong, I was not planning on cutting it, but I’m likely going to add some more planeswalker removal. I think I need to fix up the Greasefang archetype a little, there might not be enough ways to bin the vehicles in BW. 2-1

Drafted the 1-UP cube on Wednesday, where you start at 1 life. My deck was kind of a pile, it didn’t really do anything. The 4 mana 6/5 that winter orbs you was mostly a trap. 2-1

Been a pretty good month lol

Just moved the cat from my place to the new marital home. She’s not having a great time, but better than I feared.