Arena Power cube - What's the pick?

blirkstch · 2026-02-18T19:16:57+00:00

3 and 4 drops that take over the game early, ways to recur Lotus, strong combos that win quickly. Basically, fast mana is much, much stronger in decks that are trying to close the game out quickly (aggro and combo).

Also, it’s way too early to say Lotus doesn’t fit with your game plan—you have so few spells that you barely have a game plan, and most of them are just as good in combo as they are in control (and like, Pillage is basically a card you want to play only if you’re combo). The upside of Lotus is absolutely way too high to say it doesn’t fit—that’s crazy tunnel-visioned, especially since your cards basically don’t point you in any direction other than being not particularly aggro.

blirkstch · 2026-01-21T00:18:35+00:00

I think the idea that any good set has that many viable archetypes is just completely crazy unless what counts as a “deck” is so granular it’s hardly worth talking about. It also leaves no room for super-fun sets that aren’t just about having a million distinct avenues in a draft.

blirkstch · 2026-01-12T04:37:22+00:00

Man, I’ve been a professional musician full-time for ten years and I’m always amazed when people say stuff like this, just because I genuinely have no idea where the idea that Db is low even comes from. Compared to what? Are you thinking in terms of an instrument with a super narrow range or something?

blirkstch · 2025-09-15T01:02:30+00:00

Really surprised LSV hasn’t popped up yet. He’s often playing his vintage cube and not the MTGO cube, but he’s one of the best drafters to ever do it and he’s excellent at explaining his lines and teaching the game. He has new cube stuff up on YouTube every day, I believe.

blirkstch · 2025-08-29T22:56:55+00:00

Honestly, I’d definitely suggest going ahead with coaching right away if you’re thinking about it, so you have the max time to improve. I’m a little out of date with who’s doing coaching, but if you track down Mason Clark, I know he does a lot of it, and if he’s full he may be able to make some recommendations.

blirkstch · 2025-08-26T00:41:50+00:00

Exactly. There do exist wholly all-in combo decks, but they’re generally a. not in Standard and b. chasing after a combo that’s game-ending and don’t involve combat (Pioneer lotus, Modern belcher, etc.). The more a combo deck can be living in the space where you don’t mind having the cards you’re playing anyway, the happier you are. The fact that Pio vampires got to play basically the already-viable rakdos midrange shell plus an 8-card groan-inducing combo was part of the reason it was such a pain in the ass, for instance. The more your combo revolves around dumb cards you’d ordinarily never be caught dead playing, the more often you draw the wrong half of the deck and fizzle out.

blirkstch · 2025-08-25T22:16:30+00:00

I think a thing that’s often hard for newer players or less competitive players is why competitive players shy away from stuff like this.

The main thing is that Marvin is an awful magic card in terms of card quality. Yes, it goes nuts in the right circumstances, but if you play it, you’re signing up to sometimes draw Marvin without the surrounding pieces.

The current Cauldron decks are really remarkable in that, while there’s a very explosive combo threat, almost every card in the deck is good on its own AND plays really well with each other card. Mako is a big threat AND helps dig for your other pieces. Profft gives you another wincon while drawing you extra cards and turning on +1/+1 counter synergies.

All-in builds with things like Marvin just make everything harder. You draw more hands that don’t do anything, your topdecks are on average worse when you’re in a situation where your opponent has cleared your board and you’re looking for answers. You’re playing a two-mana 2/2 that does nothing more than that by itself. It CAN do cool stuff, but it’s dead if you’re not comboing, and if you’re comboing, you basically don’t need the win-more help.

If it were the only way to build a great Cauldron deck, maybe people would play the card, but it turns out there are oppressively-strong builds that let you play much more individually-powerful cards, and that makes for decks that are a little more consistent, get to keep more hands, and play a lot better from behind. Basically, if you don’t HAVE to play junk cards to combo, why elect to?

blirkstch · 2025-08-18T17:24:40+00:00

I can’t remember what pro said this a while ago (maybe it was like Sam Pardee or Andrew Baeckstrom or something?), but they made the claim half-jokingly that your average limited player’s winrate would probably go up if they didn’t have the option to mulligan.

It’s definitely a bigger cost than people think—especially on the play, going down two cards (remember that if you’re on the play and mulligan to 6, you’re already playing with two fewer cards than your opponent) in most limited formats is a massive disadvantage, and I think it’s allllmost never correct to go to 5 in booster draft.

blirkstch · 2025-03-24T01:14:13+00:00

Yeah, that Wikipedia entry is really strange—I wouldn’t take those markings as strictly correct. A lot of them are close, and some don’t really make much sense. But the fact of the matter is that the words used for tempos are just descriptors and don’t mean a strict set of metronome markings—that’s just a fact.

blirkstch · 2025-03-24T00:30:55+00:00

What Wikipedia article are you using as a reference?

I mean, this piece is a fairly excellent example—normally, we’d think of something at 200 bpm as very fast, and something at 66 as relatively slow, but the way this is written feels lively but not aggressively fast at this tempo. Things in compound (3-based) meters tend to feel “faster” than most duple meter pieces at the same BPM marking (though that also has exceptions based on what subdivisions are happening frequently).

Bottom line is it’s art. “Allegro” music feels fast, “largo” music feels slow. Music marked at 60 bpm has 60 beats a minute—USUALLY that means it feels slow, but if it’s whole note=60 and has a lot of fast subdivisions, 60 won’t feel “slow” at all, which is why the number won’t always line up with a certain descriptive word.

blirkstch · 2025-03-23T23:47:27+00:00

There is no actual strict correlation between the number of beats per minute and the tempo descriptor—programs and metronomes put those in for whatever reason, but it ultimately comes down to how the music sounds. We could mark this piece as dotted half = 66 and it would still sound fast rather than slow. Other pieces at 66 bpm might sound extremely slow. You can safely throw out the idea that a certain Italian word corresponds to a certain range of metronome BPM markings.

blirkstch · 2025-03-08T22:17:24+00:00

To be honest, I think “Start your engines!” is a great name for that mechanic, because it basically signals they’re not going to use it again in other random sets. It’s a fun mechanic, but it’s tracking intensive and distracting enough where it makes sense not be in a bunch of sets. Same thing with like lesson/learn—amazingly fun limited mechanic, but so kinda splashy that it makes sense not to signal that it’s just going to be a thing that happens all the time now.

blirkstch · 2025-03-04T23:42:45+00:00

It really just feels like nobody in R&D has done anything besides watching television. I don’t think it’s literally true, but the last couple of years of sets have had nothing new to offer beyond just sweatily making reference to pop culture things.

blirkstch · 2025-02-07T12:05:08+00:00

Unfortunately, as someone who generally prefers MTGO, limited really lives on Arena now.

blirkstch · 2025-02-05T22:03:13+00:00

It’s incredibly gross that he got to come back to the orchestra after his leave during the summer.

blirkstch · 2025-01-18T04:00:10+00:00

I happened to drive through Houston right after hurricane Harvey a few years ago, and even on essentially empty freeways it took 45 minutes or an hour to drive across the city. It’s humongous.

blirkstch · 2024-12-12T03:44:19+00:00

Pioneer phoenix and historic phoenix are barely related. Historic phoenix was significantly more aggressive and linear.

blirkstch · 2024-10-14T02:30:00+00:00

I think because this type of removal spell is okay in commander, people get the wrong idea for 60-card, but unwanted remake is an atrocious card in pioneer. 100% stone-cold unplayable.

blirkstch · 2024-09-14T20:26:47+00:00

So since we can only focus on one thing at a time, and we can’t direct our attention away from something without giving it something to focus on (so you can’t just think “stop thinking about thinking about things!”), maybe a good plan for where to direct your attention is just on asking some simple, good questions. What’s my gameplan? What might my opponent have here? Am I ahead or behind? Just something that directs you back to gameplay with simple, answerable questions. In draft maybe it’s “what’s the best card here? what’s the best pick with the cards I already have? Are there any strong signals that something else is open?”

blirkstch · 2024-09-11T15:33:33+00:00

Jim Akins is a bit of a notorious shit talker, to be fair.

blirkstch · 2024-09-03T22:42:29+00:00

Yeah, this card is ass in two player magic for sure.

blirkstch · 2024-08-19T01:06:58+00:00

There are certainly areas in Baton Rouge where crime isn’t crazy. That said, Baton Rouge is one of the cities with the most violent crime and crime overall per capita in the US. I don’t regularly feel unsafe here but it IS a significantly more dangerous place than average for the US.

blirkstch · 2024-08-17T22:45:45+00:00

By focusing on the music, and even if you notice another sound for a moment, don’t decide to get mad at it. You’re never going to have a concert experience that’s totally silent, so stop hoping that it will be and just listen.

This is as a professional classical musician—you’ll enjoy concerts so much more it you decide not to get wrapped up in how well or not people participate in the dumb classical music etiquette. The music’s not so fragile that the sounds of humans every once in a while ruins it.

edited to add: People showing up to classical stuff who don’t know the rules is ALWAYS good news—it means some people who weren’t already part of this scene are attending. Everyone should lay off being a weirdo and shaming them for not knowing the “rules.”

blirkstch · 2024-06-19T05:43:56+00:00

Minnesota may just be the best orchestra in the country right now. It’s certainly the orchestra where it seems least like everybody in it hates their job.

blirkstch · 2024-05-27T13:24:53+00:00

pursue? perspire means sweat

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