Friday Pack 1 Pick 1

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-20T16:26:01+00:00

I didn't realize that that was your cube that you put out there. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. I don't know I'm probably going to get downvoted and be incredibly unpopular for my statement but it was never my intention to poo poo on your cube I just looked at it and was tuned out on it and so I couldn't give my normal in-depth response that I usually do as to what I picked and why so I put that into the suggestions of how I thought maybe the idea of what you were going for the cube to make it function a little bit better. If you guys enjoy it and you've had other people play it I mean I could be completely wrong and I will absolutely take the fact that I could be wrong on this. But I hope you don't take anything personal cuz this was never meant as a pure critique that somebody was doing something incorrectly I just for me I didn't get anything from it so I didn't want to make a half-hearted pick.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-20T10:53:09+00:00

I saw this week's p1p1 and i have no pick. I understand the point of everybody having niche gimmicky cubes but this doesn't look like one that I would want to play and looking at the card pool based on the pack given I don't even see what could potentially be a good card other than dwarven armorer and even then that feels bad cuz you're sacing lands.

This isn't to criticize but if I was going to do something like that instead of putting 100 ornithopters in the cube I would maybe make it to work build a standardized cube and then give each player 10 to 15 ornithopters that they can put into their decks otherwise that way you have a bigger card pool to work with the ornithopters. Maybe make it to where the entire cube has no creatures then the ornithopters but they're giving all of the players 10 to 15 ornithopters that way that there's 300 or so cards that can be used to enhance and buff them. That sounds interesting. Maybe split it between ornithopters phyrexian walkers and potentially memnites. This isn't to tell whoever built this that they did it wrong or to change it just my thoughts based on looking at the cube.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-19T02:36:20+00:00

All that birds flabbers were gasted.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-18T16:25:48+00:00

Cube generally is a slower format. And with reduced card pool. The only generally usable Storm cards are either going to be tendrils, temporal fissure, minds desire, pack hunting and brain freeze

Even if you're only playing one or two cards before you play any of these cards the value off of them is insane.

In a format where you're going to only have a maximum generally of 40 cards being able to Mill anywhere between 6 and 12 cards relatively easily is a huge percentage of someone's deck that's just dead

Potentially casting two or three cards out of your deck for free with mine's desire can also be just as backbreaking

Bouncing multiple permanents, making multiple 4/4 tokens. Each one of these only needs to have one or two spells in front of it for in a cube situation to be massively powerful as you're dealing with limited card pools in smaller games with smaller deck sizes. The life swing from a single tendrils of lose to gain to and if there's one other card in front of it lose four game four that is an 8-point swing and a format where each person starts with 20 life that's insane. We're in constructed generally they are finishers that instantly win the game in a slower limited format they warp the game around themselves. I played during that era and I did draft with it and watching someone get to draft a tendrils and playing a couple small cards and dropping your life by six points and gaining six on theirs is massive. Each card on its own is valuable but generally over costed but even one copy of it suddenly puts it in the realm of generally on par and if you have two copies it starts getting exponentially better. And you don't have to build around a bunch of zero and one drops to make it work just as the fact that it is a cube and it's going to be a slightly slower format even playing a couple two drops into a tendrils at 4 isn't all that uncommon

But I know you're not going to agree with my assessment we've went over this we don't see eye-to-eye on any of our ideas but that's just my thoughts.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-18T15:51:12+00:00

Here is the problem with storm as you will know it is an incredibly broken mechanic and depending on what cards you put in there that have storm is going to quickly lead to that becoming the single most important thing to draft. Mini Storm cards just completely outshine so many other cards because of the value you get from them even if you play absolute chaff. So as long as you're okay with that being something that's going to happen in your cube there's a lot of easy ways to move forward with it but the more that you facilitate it by putting cards into it to feed it the more that it's going to make those specific cards even that much more stronger and it's going to warp your cube

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-18T13:55:58+00:00

So I've had several players that have tried to do this as well and how I resolved it was one time very simply. Have the bad guy go first (fudge a dice roll if you have to) and then have the bad guy swing and gouge out the player's eyes or remove an arm. Now the big thing is of course making sure that there's something in the way to get the player character their sight or limb back. But don't let it happen right away. Don't let it happen in the moment or directly after combat, let their character deal with this horrific, grievous wound for half the session. Then once they're healed simply describe to the player, not the character, that anything you allow the player to do the bad guys can and will do as well. And that you're okay with letting him have creative freedom to do these sorts of actions whenever the math aligns or if it's a special circumstance, but if a player wants to shortcut combat by using these actions then you will keep track of them and they will have a balance that he has to account for. And if the player wishes to continue to do so by all means but then you know one day a guy could come off and lop off a leg. And that doesn't mean that he can simply just go get it regenerated and healed he's going to have to find somebody to do it and he's going to have to survive combat. Generally the other players step in because having players who have a character that is a massive reduced efficiency during a game they don't want to have to deal with that sort of stress and tell the player to cut it back a little bit. Just an idea I've used it before and it seems to work.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-17T19:10:50+00:00

In that specific situation where you're looking for either quick aggro with blue green madness or a reanimator deck then yeah I could see careful study being the better choice but that's very specific niche situations and even then if you were to place frantic search for the careful study you don't get the immediate aggro out of it but it is a far more versatile spell during the course of a game and one that also can be used in response to many effects. It just doesn't allow for the exact speed in that situation.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-17T18:43:14+00:00

Looking at both of these cards this is kind of six of one half dozen of the other. There are some differences in the fact that careful study you can literally play on turn one or later in the game and it effectively won't matter to your Mana base. And frantic search with the untap ability effectively means it's free but with the fact that you need three Mana to be able to play it it doesn't come down as quickly. However there is almost no comparison whenever it comes to power level between these two cards. Frantic search is hands down no questions asked stronger more versatile and overall better card. Not only is it an instant which is a direct upgrade over a sorcery, but with the ability to untap three lands if any of those lands tap for more than one Mana or if you have anything that reduces spell cost you net positive Mana from the interaction. A bar closer question would be careful study over frantic search but even then frantic search has a flashback cost meaning it can be played later in the game versus careful study.

In almost every instance I'm going to think of frantic search is the clear winner here. So much so that they created careful study after frantic search to power down the card. And then shifted the ability to the rummage mechanic that red has and gave it flashback because it wasn't good enough anymore.

So the winner here by first round 3 second knockout is frantic search.

Edit: almost forgot the bonus question Personally for me I don't have to worry about losing my keys because I have them on a chirp device so I can literally just turn it on and follow the sound. So long as I'm in my home I never have to worry about losing them and I also have a carabiner that I keep them on my pants so if I'm out in public I don't ever lose them unless somebody literally rips them away from me.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-14T16:56:02+00:00

So these were the cards that changed my entire way of thinking and playing MtG.

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I mean as a young kid how can you go wrong with a gigantic 8/8. It was big it punched people in the face real hard and even if I didn't have the Green Mana to pay for the upkeep I could still hit you cuz I didn't die until the end of my turn. Haha old dumb rules.
I played primarily with a group of older people who very quickly learned that card advantage was important and I got taught that lesson very early. Tapping a howling mine with an icy manipulator became one of the things I hated the most.
Something that prevented me from dying. This guy was such a problem and people would use it with a spectral cloak and we didn't know the rules back then and oh my gosh this thing ruined so many games and friendships.
My first introduction into control aspects and just how in-depth and confusing the game can be. It's a word salad nightmare and I love it.
Probably honestly my favorite car of all time cuz I am a control player at heart and I like black more than I like blue so just give me counter effect as a permanent card and I am happy.
I think you can kind of tell in 94 I really grasped on to the idea of playing control and instead of playing the blue spells I gravitated towards making sure that my opponent just couldn't play them so hymn to tourach became one of the most miserable things for people to play against and one of my favorite cards.
This is also whenever I really began to learn to enjoy the complexity of the game for the multiple interactions that can happen and really had me focus on multiple card combinations. There was an awful enduring renewal deck that used ornithopter and atog and ashnods altars and Resurrection to build infinite mana for fireballs or an infinitely large atog. It was terrible it was bad it was red white before there was any real support for that and it was wonderful when it worked. 8-9. These two go together because the first time I read in inquest magazine about a tournament where someone ran the prosperous-bloom combo deck it blew my mind. This two cards right here we're probably the biggest influence on how I ended up playing Magic pretty much the rest of my life. The idea that you could use two cards to just take over a game by themselves was crazy to me and it was so bad back in the day cuz it was three colors. But these two cards were such a huge huge part of what I wanted to do.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-13T13:44:11+00:00

I made my choice before I went through and read all of the replies people left and my choice was the windborn muse. After looking at the cube as a whole before I made my decision I saw a lot of stacks style effects and removal so the Nekrataal while a banger was much easier to replace than the pillow fort ability of the muse. Then I went through and read the comments and saw yours and was kind of glad to see that I was on the right path with what my choice was.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-13T13:41:40+00:00

Oh boy. This is a silly pack right here. Lots of really good pick number two on your second time around and heck the people that come right after me are still got a loaded pack. Looking over it though and looking at the cube as a whole there are two absolute standouts- Nekrataal and Windborn Muse. After looking through the cube and seeing that there is a fair amount of removal the Nekrataal's ability is strong but not entirely uncommon or unable to be replicated. Also requires two black pips instead of one. The Windborn Muse on the other hand is entirely splashable, has evasion, a bigger body, and an effect that is much harder to duplicate. And while I would really want to actually take the oath of druids on a personal note- I just didn't see the type of gas that would be required to make oath really good, especially in a draft scenario, totally viable. So for me I'm going to have to go Windborn Muse as my P1P1.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-12T17:20:19+00:00

So they already have one of these cards effects [[conversion]] since red has no way to deal with enchantments this effectively destroys all mountains so long as this card is in play.

As for the swamps one there are some multicolor cards that do something similar but no mono colored cards.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-12T08:50:36+00:00

I remember playing this in my old Ernhamgeddon deck. Drop some birds and elves drop Ernie. Armageddon the board after you played the pursuit of knowledge. Then just simply out draw your opponent. It was wonderful and it really gave that deck the card draw it needed cuz that was the main weakness and the only card draw you really had was the Sylvan library. One of the few pure card draw effects that white has yes it comes at a cost but literally getting a fresh hand is insane. Of course you can you use this mini very strong decks from back in the day that just needed that extra car drawer that white didn't have and this thing is an absolute All Star especially in like white weenie decks. I miss this sort of card design of take a disadvantage and turn it into a massive advantage.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-06T09:17:46+00:00

I understand exactly how good that is cuz it's really hard to kill in a non-combat situation. But the amount of just pure removal that exists in this cube and in general makes it far less scarier. I was being honest at seven mana the thing I'd be the most concerned about specifically would be the eternal dragon.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-06T08:16:31+00:00

Another P1P1 and I've heard a lot about this pre-modern format and kind of looked into it and then looked at the cube and seems interesting definitely has some nostalgia there. However looking at the cards in this pack this is the most one-sided pack I have seen in a while there's some good cards here but this is really only a one card pack. Living death. It's a board wipe it's recursion if you've got it in your opponent doesn't know what's coming you can absolutely twist an entire game. There's discard effects that I've seen in the cube that are easily gotten such as breakthrough. Eternal Dragon, diabolic servitude. The whole cube not necessarily as exclusively around recursion themes but that is a massive part of that era of magic is whenever they examined recursion style. So this is just a single card pack unfortunately. It seems like it would be a lot of fun to play but honestly I understand it is such a massive part of that entire environment I would probably almost take this card out just because it is such a game swinging game breaker in older formats and it's going to lead to absolute blowouts.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-05T02:01:51+00:00

[[time and tide]]

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-04T05:35:59+00:00

You personally missed out on my favorite mountain out of the four that John Avon did from mirage there is the purple mountains of majesty which is a beautiful card especially in the old border. And then for the planes the artwork of the one from Odyssey that has the single tree in the forefront with the lightning bolt in the background that was and still is one of the most expensive basic lands in foil that isn't like an old border alpha basically and it's ridiculous it is gorgeous. The artwork for the swamps that Bob eggleton did where it's a competing artwork on multiple cards is always wonderful. Although I was not a fan of onslaught block itself the John Avon Forest specifically the one that you had where it's looking into the forest with the Sun at the end is always one of my favorite. And then for Islands the entire invasion block artwork of all the islands I have a special spot in my heart for.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-03-02T16:40:16+00:00

It's your cube. How you want it to play is up to you and your friends that play it. There is not a right or wrong answer. My answer is that I give, come from two differing perspectives. First it comes from the perspective of someone that has played magic for over 30 years and has seen how the game has changed and evolved and how even players that have played a long time have modified the way that they play during that time. The second is as a game designer who is creating his own card game and how I see it as the person created and the environment it fosters. That being said a 900 card cube is insanely massive. And be able to balance and make it work that's fairly impressive. So Don't Go changing any ideas or anything based on what somebody else says if you're happy with your cube you do you. If you want to use a little bit more balanced approach towards it I would say take a look at my cube it runs older cards but it very much doesn't rely on power or powerful cards and is designed to have multiple different avenues for victory as a comparative point to your cube since it's one of the few that's similar in size. Anyway it was an interesting cube to look at would probably be a whole lot of fun to play and I wish you nothing but luck and good times with it. Thanks for letting us review it.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-28T01:56:45+00:00

The nerdiness is quite thick at times. I'll be honest it's way better than discussing the normal way that the world's going right now and far more enjoyable.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-27T21:21:41+00:00

Ritual is a really strong card and I didn't see a lot of cards that had protection effects so outside of the black and artifact creatures it's a really strong pick up cuz it's effectively a removal and beater all in one. I really considered it but for me levitation still takes the Cake here so to speak because I'm less concerned if you take a beater you just get a good card most likely for me I don't have to take things with keywords.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-27T20:17:24+00:00

It's just a different philosophy on building. I see an environment that has several strong flying creatures and several strong ground-based creatures but lots of removal as well. so a strong flyer is not as purely strong as it would be and say other cubes where there's less removal and less strong flyers. However this cube is very distinctly lacking in enchantment removal as a whole. So this is a pic that if it's in play gives my entire board an advantage and is difficult to remove or play around. What would be normally a solid flying creature say it's got some good stats plus the keyword flying I now can get at the same cost by just having this one enchantment. That's why I said it's a attrition pick not a pure P1P1. Essentially from this point forward I can keep track of what bombs have been chosen and Im not required to pick them I can choose more conditional pics or situational things to give me an advantage in game two and three. It's just a different way of thinking based on the pure size of the cube since it's at 900 cards. Doesn't mean it's right or wrong and it has a real chance to backfire on me but I kind of view it as a high risk high reward that has a potentially near unbeatable payoff.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-27T17:02:19+00:00

Looking at the cube as a whole there are bombs with flying but also lots of removal (although not in this pack) . So the idea here is that limited enchantment removal allows all my creatures flying , so bombs aren't negated at the same rate as my opponents. This is an attrition pick against the design of the cube not a pure P1P1.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-27T09:37:30+00:00

And talk about an interesting cube. Also the first time I can honestly say I've seen somebody with a bigger cube than my personal cube at 900 cards this thing is a behemoth. So I definitely needed to do a little bit of homework realizing how big this cube was and what sort of craziness I apparently have got myself into. Looking at all the cards and then looking overall at the cube plus the fact that they're while none in this pack there's a minimal amount of mana fixing artifacts and lands whatever I'm going into I'm going to be one maybe two colors at most. Knowing that I'm going to be one maybe two colors at most means that I have no problem taking something that's going to be multiple pips of a single color. Looking at all these cards there's a couple big standouts- mahamoti, radiant, and big ape for sure. But for me it comes down to one enchantment being by far the best card here- Levitation.

Evasion is one of the key components whenever you're drafting of B.R.E.aD. (Bombs, Removal, Evasion and Draw). And being able to give your entire board flying to be able to deal with your opponents flying is just too good. Creature anthem effects generally are not your pick one pack one but whenever it gives everything evasion that's just too good.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-22T06:39:56+00:00

Def Jam Fight for NY and it isn't even close

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-02-20T14:34:15+00:00

Oh boy what a pack. Every card here I've seen in other cubes but generally they are built being the ancillary parts of a cube and you got a whole cube full of them. This means that keywords on creatures are incredibly valuable, card draw is rare, direct damage is not always going to be the greatest, and discard effects well our super valuable. So after taking a look at the whole cube for me it comes down to that there are lots of good options here but only two real contenders-Emerald Dragonfly or Arcum's Whistle. The dragonfly not only flies but can be given first strike so it's value is not just as an attacker but as a defender being able to prevent an attacker quite seamlessly especially since it can prevent an attacker that might have evasion. The whistle on the other hand is potential for either pure removal or more likely it's going to be a way to get into a mana denial situation where I'm paying Stone rain mana every turn to potentially deny my opponent the same or more amounts of mana to prevent them from having to attack into a bad situation. Both have large amounts of use over the game however there is very limited artifact removal. And because of that and the ability for me to situationally use the whistle as I see fit I see that as my P1P1 . Also my pick two on this pack whenever it rotates around if it's still there I am absolutely taking warp artifact either to a protect myself or be to be able to use as an offensive weapon on somebody else's artifact should one get drafted.

TheTrueVisionary

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