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This week on Limited Resources, Ryan and Marshall welcome Usman Jamil as a guest on the show to talk about everything related to Cube Drafting!
Links from Usman about cubing:
http://www.mananation.com/sides-context/ (article that I did on context and how it plays a part in cube)
http://www.cubedrafting.com/2010/09/19/draft-walkthrough/ Thea Steele article on Winston with her husband (well, fiance at the time)
http://www.cubedrafting.com/2010/05/05/cube-design-theory-aggro-in-cube/ Article that I did regarding aggressive strategies in cube
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=349 MTGS cube forum
http://www.cubedrafting.com/what-is-the-cube/ Page on Erwin’s site about Cube Drafting with his videos about the format.
http://idratherbecubing.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/welcome-ltd/ A special Cube Crack-a-Pack 
Here is how you can find Usman on the internet:
http://idratherbecubing.wordpress.com/ Blog.
http://twitter.com/UsmanTheRad Twitter.
Email (which I forgot to post!) – UsmanTheRad@gmail.com
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Your Host(s): Ryan and Marshall
Hosts’s MTGO Names (Ryan): Godot
Hosts’s MTGO Names (Ryan): LR_Ryan
Hosts’s MTGO Names (Marshall): malachiconstant
Hosts’s MTGO Names (Marshall): LR_Marshall
Show’s Email: limitedresourcespodcast@gmail.com
A few things that I forgot to mention:
1) Once you use resources like online cube lists to find cubeworthy cards, the next step is to create a pool of cards from it for consideration in your cube. It’s better to be overly generous in pool consideration than overly critical, since you’re essentially brainstorming for cards to include. After that, you pare the list down to the size required – if you’re running 60 white cards, your pool that started at 100 cards will be pared down to the final 60. But, keep those other cards in mind since when you’re editing the contents of your cube, some of those cards may end up being better than cards that made the cut.
2) With regards to cards like Buried Alive – some people run cards like Entomb and while I personally don’t run that particular card, it’s not a bad card to run. It’s a powerful enabler for decks like reanimator, even if it can’t be used in decks like “standard” UB control decks. It has other uses like getting a Squee or Life from the Loam into the graveyard. Cards like these, at least in my opinion, need to bring a good amount of value to the table (Loam can do things like feeding Masticores and Stormbind as well as getting back fetchlands) as opposed to being only playable with a few cards such as Darksteel Colossus, which essentially says “If you’re playing Tinker, play me but if you’re not, put me in the sideboard ASAP.” This ties in with the discussion on Stoneforge in that you need to be realistic when evaluating how well a card will play out, in that you can’t think in terms of BCSM (best case scenario mentality) but you can’t in WCSM (WORST case scenario mentality.) The truth of how the card performs lies somewhere in the middle.
Also,
This was the first video in the draft where LSV drafted a blue-white (splashing red) control deck featuring Lorthos, the Tidemaker. The analogy is just because the deck is drafted, that doesn’t mean that it’s a healthily draftable archetype. You want decks like RW beats to be draftable, a healthily draftable archetype and a part of the metagame and post importantly, an archetype that WINS (because if it’s an archetype that just loses, those archetypes still need help.)
About the cost of cubing:
I am playing a 450 cards regular cube and still about half of the cards are <1$.
There are currently only 37 cards (which would be still 10 bucks and it is not like you would necessarily have to invest into Jace2 or Survival of the Fittest to have fun with your cube.
Multicolor:
You should consider the average number of drafters when you decide how many gold cards you want to run, since with 10 person draft, all gold cards can find a home in a 2c deck, while about half of the multicolor stuff will be dead cards in a 6 men draft.
For me personally, I wanted to create a cube because I LOVE to draft and it was hard to always convince friends or other people in the shop to shell out $10-$13 bucks on drafting (everytime I wanted to).
While you can build your cube to be pauper or power, I enjoy the freedom of not setting any restrictions on my cube (in terms of rarity, power, X amount of commons, uncommons, rares) and just tried to focus on building the most fun and enjoyable and balanced # of cards. The majority of the cards are good limited cards, and every color only received a few “bombs,” all the spells were generally very playable with only about 5% of the spells having a very narrow focus (but it makes for fun and unexpected situations, and sometimes decent sideboard cards).
If you’re one of those complete set collectors or just get them through MODO, you can easily use those for cubing. This might be especially interesting for revisting past draft formats like oh I don’t know, Rise of the Eldrazi. By its very nature this will also mean that mythics will have the same rarity as commons and there will only be one of each card, a challenging mix of new and familiar.
WIth smaller set sizes it won’t be enough for 8 people but I’ve had a 4 player cube in the past and it did okay, of course you can also put sets together, Ravnica block cube much?
“Passion is good!”
-Ryan from Limited Resources
That’s why I love this podcast.
BTW, when you search for MTGcast on google, “mtgcast limited resources” is the second thing that pops up after “mtgcast monday night magic.” Good job guys.
The 3rd movie of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy is “Return of the King” … Not Twin Towers.
Twin Towers is not part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Awesome episode, guys. I am a huge cube fan, and I think you guys did a great job at painting the picture of what the various cube formats look like. I am looking forward to more episodes on cube and other limited variants/formats.
I also got a chance to listen to EP 58, so I am crossposting this comment. I really like the crack a pack feature. I did a draft on modo just this morning and was faced with a very similar print run as the first pack. I would have not normally picked the Hippogriff, but I did and it ended very well for me. Also, I want to give a thanks for the shoutout to our podcast (In Contention).
Keep doing what you guys do!
[...] I said on my appearance on the Limited Resources podcast about cube drafting, there are only so many spaces in a cube for higher-casting cost cards because midrange and control [...]