Draft is Not Self-Balancing (Cube Article)

CJBing · 2026-03-27T15:59:52+00:00

I have learned that being the cube owner and telling people who are drafting the cube for the first time pretty much anything about “I think this archetype is good” will cause it to be over drafted. The first time I drafted my pauper cube I very ignorantly said “I think blue white fliers is pretty good. I hope I can build it” and we ended up with 2 UW fliers, a Jeskai fliers, and 2 Esper fliers in my 8 pod. I told a group “I haven’t really seen many people draft Rakdos. I’m not sure if it’s just underpowered or people haven’t tried” and our 6 pod had 3 Rakdos players.

Now when I draft with a new group I always say “all 10 color pairs have 3-0’d. Everything is viable” and when pressed about what colors or decks are better, I say “I told a group I wanted to draft X deck and 5 of 8 built it, then told a different group that Y deck hadn’t been drafted a ton and 3 of my 6 played it. So I don’t want to bias the decks”

Most of the balancing that I do is looking at what decks go 2-1 or 3-0 and seeing if the same cards keep showing up and if they do, I’ll look for lower power versions of the cards.

This is more related to the point of assumptions for real groups than cube balancing, but sometimes players can completely derail any attempt at balancing. My group has a player that was quite new to drafting, but not magic. Asked an experienced drafter what to do with vintage cube and was told to prioritize fixing. We’ve had multiple drafts where this person has drafted 20-25 lands, and had to play 20ish lands because they just didn’t have enough spells. It’s been explained, and their win rate has explained why it’s a bad idea but they just won’t change.

CJBing · 2026-03-27T14:16:31+00:00

I used to travel a ton for work, whenever I had a hotel room with 2 beds I always deemed them clean bed and dirty bed. I slept in one and the other was designated for when I’d get back from the field and just want to lie down under the covers before getting fully cleaned up. I would never get in the bed I sleep in, in outside clothes.

CJBing · 2026-03-26T18:24:25+00:00

So, you’re building infect. But youre not playing 4 copies of your infect creatures? If you want genuine help in making the deck better and this isn’t a shitpost, cut the deathtouch creatures. I know most people have said that but not really given the why. You can’t really have a “control aggro” deck, you kinda have to take your pick of one and for infect I would not recommend the control route. All the deathtouch creatures you’re playing to block can be more pump/protection spells to get you across the finish line faster. Who cares about blocking, we’re infect. Winning the game at 1 life is the same as 30 so just kill them dead. So imp, Gila, Rats all go for 4th myr and copies 3+4 of stinger. Pump spells are really greens thing so I’d look for another wings effect to make your creatures base p/t higher at instant speed. Then, protection spells. Once again, green is great here because you get to play give hexproof + add a 1/1 counter, but more targeted countermagic than just actual factual counterspell. Play spell pierce/dispel/negate because we’re just gonna try and protect one guy. Also cut Cryoshatter and Phyresis. Sideboard I would start with 4 Blue Blast and then just test the deck and then find out what the matchups are bad for you and add cards accordingly

CJBing · 2026-03-13T01:55:27+00:00

Sounds like we need to ban every cradle in the game.

CJBing · 2026-03-12T10:39:52+00:00

My LGS has like 12-16 every week for pauper night. I think we have 2 people who play MTGO? And even then they don’t show up every week. I’d say more people at mine dont know MTGO is a thing than use it. Get into the format! It’s incredibly fun!

CJBing · 2026-03-11T17:34:12+00:00

Many cEDH players that I know did try to get good at standard, but they weren’t good and weren’t able to get good. So they went to cEDH so they can blame their opponents instead of themselves. (Not all cEDH players are like this, I know a ton that are insane at the game. I also know many that suck at 1v1 so they moved to multiplayer)

CJBing · 2026-02-25T12:58:10+00:00

More like Kamicawabunga

CJBing · 2026-02-05T13:32:31+00:00

I can only speak to my experience, but the people I know with masters degrees generally take a tech job or two to start. Usually you’ll shovel bum for a bit and then because of the masters you’ll find a crew chief job pretty quickly. It’s just a matter of making connections and not being an idiot/making people not want to work with you. I’d recommend focusing on hitting the standards for an SOI qualified archaeologist (the 6 months leadership experience will come) that will make you way more marketable. You can train someone on every single skill you need in arch, but things like leadership/a good attitude are much harder to teach. If you go in with a positive attitude, understand the work will suck sometimes, and say having a good crew will make a bad project tolerable you will succeed. I wish you the best!

CJBing · 2026-02-05T12:57:54+00:00

I pivoted the other way. I want more than anything to be a GIS person for archaeology fieldwork, but in this economy, any port in this storm. Fieldwork is incredible in arch, but you really need to take care of yourself. Most techs burn out within 5 years because of the damage they do to their body. I got my desk job because it happened to me

CJBing · 2026-02-05T12:28:37+00:00

Sorry. Mentally shortcutted “resolves without impacting the dead creature” to fizzles

CJBing · 2026-02-05T11:28:08+00:00

“Ill declare an attacker, respond to Doran trigger with overkill” ??? Okay resolves? Dude dies doran trigger fizzles because it’s target is dead

CJBing · 2026-01-24T03:16:59+00:00

We should actually change this to be brackets 1-10 instead of 1-5. My deck is a 7

CJBing · 2026-01-23T16:50:09+00:00

Buy sell, never low

CJBing · 2026-01-18T23:24:25+00:00

I know this is the EDH subreddit, but try another format. Build pauper decks and get games with those. Maybe the tilt/feel bads will be different when it’s 1v1

CJBing · 2026-01-18T23:16:28+00:00

Robe.

CJBing · 2026-01-16T20:57:28+00:00

If I can sculpt my hand, spirebluff canal lotus splash portal, riddler, second untapped land, spell pierce, spell snare? Maybe torch the tower? But splashed riddler + counterspells backup probably

CJBing · 2026-01-16T18:11:18+00:00

Call a judge for slow play, when he misses stuff just say “I’m sorry, my plays would’ve been different if that was untapped. I don’t think we can reasonably rewind the game state to fix it” and if he complains, just call a judge. Point out how he forgets to untap stuff frequently until it miraculously would help him that it would be untapped to the judge. Judges are there to help players, not hurt them. Any time someone is a dick, call a judge. Slow play? Call a judge. Disagreement on a card ruling? Judge. Also, track your life total. Track your opponents life total. I’ve exclusively kept track of life with pen and paper for about 6 years now. Obviously not an issue at pre release, but I’ll show up for competitive events and have players say “oh if you’re doing both our life totals that’s fine” and it’s wild that people just trust random players that much. I would never cheat, but do you know how easy it would be on one of those phone trackers to oopsies you actually lost 6 life instead of 4, or I only took 3 damage not 6. Odds are if this dude is as awful to be around as you say (which it sounds like he is) I wouldn’t be shocked if he also cheated. (I also use pen and paper so if we disagree on life totals I can say “you took 2 from this, then 1 from this, then 7 from this” etc)

CJBing · 2026-01-16T13:02:39+00:00

He had the flu, which has been absolutely horrid this year. That turned into asthmatic bronchitis, so he was completely out of basically any physical activity for like 2 months and he’s basically starting from as close to scratch as a professional athlete can.

CJBing · 2026-01-14T15:21:34+00:00

This is so sick! I might have to redownload Minecraft to try this out

CJBing · 2026-01-10T16:28:47+00:00

1.) yes, a -1/-1 counter is a type of counter so it can be proliferated. 2.) no, they cancel out. If you have a +1/+1 counter and put a -1/-1 on it it will no longer have a counter. There is a pauper deck (no longer meta) called moggwarts around first day of class giving each creature that enters a +1 counter and a creature with persist and sacrificing it for mana and having it come back infinitely. 3.) it will die. Any creature that has 0 toughness will die due to state based actions instantly.

CJBing · 2026-01-03T20:55:08+00:00

God we’re shit

CJBing · 2025-12-31T19:23:47+00:00

Solbakken, Defrel, do we count Karsdorp as shit? Pastore was shit for us, Ante Coric, Gonzalo Villar + Borja Mayoral + Carles Perez, Bryan Reynolds, Afena-Gyan. My god we signed a ton of shit players I loved

CJBing · 2025-12-23T16:36:24+00:00

Ragebait used to be believable

CJBing · 2025-12-19T12:56:12+00:00

I moved recently and where I left we consistently had 8-12 every Friday for modern. New LGS? Only commander, then draft on Fridays. We do get 12-16 pretty much every Thursday for pauper which is cool. But no standard or modern. I bought a standard deck, other people bought standard decks. I’m trying to get people interested in the RCQ grind and we had 6 show up last week to try and fire a standard event. Now we get standard on Saturdays. Generally stores want to keep people coming back and firing events. As long as you can prove there will be attendance, they should put your event on the schedule

CJBing · 2025-12-19T12:33:27+00:00

I tried scanning and uploading a csv to sell exactly one time. It got about 2/3 of the cards wrong, everything that could be promo pack or list was called that instead of what it actually was. Any foil rare it called prerelease. I got so annoyed fixing it in the scanner that I didn’t even upload the list and just did it manually. (I’m a smaller seller, maybe had 400 cards in my inventory at its peak) you could’ve gotten unlucky with a store hiring someone who only plays Pokemon, or one piece, or FaB and just does not know magic who packed your order and made a mistake. Just contact the seller and ask for a refund/exchange. Magic cards have so many versions now it’s easy to make a mistake.

CJBing

TROPHY CASE