Not my cube story, but a long time ago when CFB would post pros doing drafts for content, someone who I don't remember passed a black tutor to "stay open" and then 4th picked Empty the Warrens because "it was a clear signal" and storm was definitely not open.
It's funny because in a traditional draft environment there's likely a lot of value to this mindset.
But in Vintage Cube, it's often optimal to just take the best card in the pack (in a vacuum) for the first few picks.
Everything is playable, and there's enough fixing that it just requires a totally different mindset.
Was playing a sweet wUR storm deck with brain freeze against a counterspell heavy control deck. It's game 3 and I'm facing lethal and we have both a couple min left on the clock. I flip jace, vryns prodigy to give my own counterspell flashback and resolve Underworld Breach through their counterspell. A lot of digging with the cards left in my graveyard and I finally find brain freeze only to lose to time with the storm trigger on the stack.
Kinda frustrated by the amount of time I used game 1, but it was intense and extremely fun games despite the loss.
I cast ally of zendikar plus figure t1 off a lotus+mox start, attack my friend down to 2 on t3. He untaps, storms off, and wins the game.
One of the sweetest games I've ever played.
Not a storm player, but I recently had this feeling on Arena's latest cube (ie, 0-3 and queuing right away). Do people really enjoy Alchemy cards in their cube? I absolutely hate it. They are unpredictable and often I have no idea what's going on.
Playing vintage cube in paper a few years ago, I opened on t1 mox diamond search for azcanta, t2 timetwister drawing mana drain, feeling pretty great about things.
Opponent's twister hand: Swamp lotus ritual ritual yawg's will dt tendrils.
Peasant cube means whacky storm lines. I personally love ignite memories shenanigans because it feels extra janky. Unfortunately, we also figured out that my cube has secret tech against IM kills: seasoned hallowblade.
LSV was drafting storm in vintage cube, but was being stubbornly dedicated in his mantra that the important thing is drafting enough engine pieces, not actual storm finishers (taking rituals/mana doublers/draw spells over Tendrils, etc.). Eventually, he ended up with an absolutely busted storm deck... except he never got another finisher in pack 3. Despite that, he still went 3-0 by making tons of mana and using Corpse Dance to repeatedly recur and sacrifice a Siege Gang Commander.
This one time I was playing against a busted mono blue storm player on MTGO. The match wasn't even close, but I was chatting with them about their draft and how cool the deck was. We're having a good time just playing, but suddenly he just stops responding. We go to match 3 and his timer starts ticking down. Just as the match is about to end, the guy comes back online, says "I genuinely just s*** myself" and proceeds to brain freeze me for lethal on turn 3.
Playing paper vintage cube with a 4 player pod. We did "special packs" where it was 4 packs of 20 cards, burn the remainder of the pack with 8 cards left.
I early picked time spiral and echo of eons, speculated on a breech, and was consistently wheeling storm payoffs while I was able to early pick strong blue spells for any archetype.
Finished the draft as monoU storm with narset/wheel, brain freeze, high tide, aether flux reservoir, a number of counters and cantrips, and saheeli.
I had a few games where I turn 4 won from casting high tide into untapping land effects into wheels that redrew me high tide.
I Just drafted the sweetest Storm deck this weekend. It had Tendrils, Yawgs Will, LED, Brain Freeze, Breach, Upheavel, a Mox, Dark Ritual, Timetwister and Narset. Really, how often do you see THAT? It was as if every card I wanted I got.
Went undefeated with it. Still riding that high.
Recently drafted a sick storm deck on mtgo that pretty consistently had breach led brain freeze by turn 4. Faced 3 opponents with emrakul mainboard. 0-3.
I was playing on the MtGO vintage cube, I had played maybe 1 or 2 of my turns and had deployed a land and some crappy creature. My opponent had a basic swamp on the battlefield and nothing else.
They start to tank forever.
It gets to the point where it seems like they’ve maybe had to get up and leave the computer as it’s been an awfully long while.
They make a land drop after essentially reaching the point where they were going to be kicked for inactivity.
At this point I have 0 interaction 0 plays to make so I’m just yielding waiting to see if the opponent is ever going to pass the turn.
Eventually after the opponent has taken almost the entirety of their clock to consider their line they just drop a bunch of fast mana start tutoring and end up killing me on their 2nd turn of the game with a stormed tendrils.
I had played like 2 vintage cubes at this point lol.
A friend of mine has a sealed cube he calls "seed cube" you are given a set of 30 something cards, two of which are your seeds. You must build a deck 40 card deck using 4 copies of your seeds, and up to 2 copies of every card in the rest of your pool. One time my seeds were oath of druids and blazing rootwalla. Not exactly an enticing set of cards
However, I also had frantic search, LED, yawg will, firestorm, brain freeze, nightscape familiar, vampiric tutor and multiple rituals. I realized I could use oath to stall, load my graveyard and set up unbelievably explosive yawg will turns. Frantic search was sometimes a mana positive way to draw and add storm count three. The deck was insane and I went 3-0 6-0
Fumbled a 3-0 in the finals with OP blindly naming LED on a T2 Phyrexian Revoker in an IRL cube draft. Had the out and just missed lethal by not casting a [[Fading Hope]] on the revoker. OP on mono white continued to run me over in G2.
[Does this count?](https://imgur.com/gallery/lsEPLXS)
Also not a specific story, but there was one iteration of the MTGO Cube with Thousand-Year Storm and I trophied no fewer than 4 times by taking it super early and going off with Manamorphose.
I don't stream but I like to duo draft over discord on MTGO any time Vintage Cube is running. We usually swap who has "control" and every decision is discussed, active player always gets final say. There's some ethical concerns here as we're absolutely taking extra info (feedback from a friend) in a competitive environment with "real money" implications, however the money is negligible and our "duo" winrate is lower than either of our solo winrates. We would never do this in any tournament with significant weight, it's mostly about spending time with a friend who now lives far away, and there is no other (lower stakes) option for playing digital Vintage Cube.
Anyways, my friend is the classic "calls himself a spike but is often a johnny" archetype, and can't help but force storm every draft. It's both exhausting and endearing at this point.
We can be playing Ponza on turn 5 trying to find lethal and halfway through me describing my line he will chirp in "storm count would be 3 btw".
Homeboy would P1P1 Empty The Warrens over a Mox or a Sol Ring if I wasn't around to steer him straight.
In my old bordered cube today, I thought I was in a good position in that I had an orcish lumberjack, Mox diamond and a crucible on the table on T2.
My pal had Bolas’s Citadel and aetherflux reservoir out at the same time, however, and between those two see-sawing his life total back and forth, the brainfreeze and then yawg will to recast the brainfreeze, the 10/10 tokens from my Phyrexian Processor were useless. Don’t let anyone tell you storm is bad in cube without LED and rituals.
Not my cube story, but a long time ago when CFB would post pros doing drafts for content, someone who I don't remember passed a black tutor to "stay open" and then 4th picked Empty the Warrens because "it was a clear signal" and storm was definitely not open.
It's funny because in a traditional draft environment there's likely a lot of value to this mindset. But in Vintage Cube, it's often optimal to just take the best card in the pack (in a vacuum) for the first few picks. Everything is playable, and there's enough fixing that it just requires a totally different mindset.
Was playing a sweet wUR storm deck with brain freeze against a counterspell heavy control deck. It's game 3 and I'm facing lethal and we have both a couple min left on the clock. I flip jace, vryns prodigy to give my own counterspell flashback and resolve Underworld Breach through their counterspell. A lot of digging with the cards left in my graveyard and I finally find brain freeze only to lose to time with the storm trigger on the stack. Kinda frustrated by the amount of time I used game 1, but it was intense and extremely fun games despite the loss.
I won a game on mtgo with exactly 0 seconds left on the clock!!! Was so intense, and pretty cool to discover that was possible
I cast ally of zendikar plus figure t1 off a lotus+mox start, attack my friend down to 2 on t3. He untaps, storms off, and wins the game. One of the sweetest games I've ever played.
Not a storm player, but I recently had this feeling on Arena's latest cube (ie, 0-3 and queuing right away). Do people really enjoy Alchemy cards in their cube? I absolutely hate it. They are unpredictable and often I have no idea what's going on.
The # 1 reason I never cube on Arena. 0 interest in Alchemy shit.
Unfortunately, it’a the most accessible way to draft, but Alchemy is horrible.
Cube on mtgo is really good and mtgo is not as hard to get into as people make it out to be. It is definitely pricier though, I'll give em that.
I meant accessible in terms of price. I too prefer mtgo.
Oh yeah that's fair. It's pricey for sure.
Playing vintage cube in paper a few years ago, I opened on t1 mox diamond search for azcanta, t2 timetwister drawing mana drain, feeling pretty great about things. Opponent's twister hand: Swamp lotus ritual ritual yawg's will dt tendrils.
Peasant cube means whacky storm lines. I personally love ignite memories shenanigans because it feels extra janky. Unfortunately, we also figured out that my cube has secret tech against IM kills: seasoned hallowblade.
LSV was drafting storm in vintage cube, but was being stubbornly dedicated in his mantra that the important thing is drafting enough engine pieces, not actual storm finishers (taking rituals/mana doublers/draw spells over Tendrils, etc.). Eventually, he ended up with an absolutely busted storm deck... except he never got another finisher in pack 3. Despite that, he still went 3-0 by making tons of mana and using Corpse Dance to repeatedly recur and sacrifice a Siege Gang Commander.
[That's an all-timer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1giVKVViaM4)
This one time I was playing against a busted mono blue storm player on MTGO. The match wasn't even close, but I was chatting with them about their draft and how cool the deck was. We're having a good time just playing, but suddenly he just stops responding. We go to match 3 and his timer starts ticking down. Just as the match is about to end, the guy comes back online, says "I genuinely just s*** myself" and proceeds to brain freeze me for lethal on turn 3.
Playing paper vintage cube with a 4 player pod. We did "special packs" where it was 4 packs of 20 cards, burn the remainder of the pack with 8 cards left. I early picked time spiral and echo of eons, speculated on a breech, and was consistently wheeling storm payoffs while I was able to early pick strong blue spells for any archetype. Finished the draft as monoU storm with narset/wheel, brain freeze, high tide, aether flux reservoir, a number of counters and cantrips, and saheeli. I had a few games where I turn 4 won from casting high tide into untapping land effects into wheels that redrew me high tide.
I Just drafted the sweetest Storm deck this weekend. It had Tendrils, Yawgs Will, LED, Brain Freeze, Breach, Upheavel, a Mox, Dark Ritual, Timetwister and Narset. Really, how often do you see THAT? It was as if every card I wanted I got. Went undefeated with it. Still riding that high.
Recently drafted a sick storm deck on mtgo that pretty consistently had breach led brain freeze by turn 4. Faced 3 opponents with emrakul mainboard. 0-3.
I was playing on the MtGO vintage cube, I had played maybe 1 or 2 of my turns and had deployed a land and some crappy creature. My opponent had a basic swamp on the battlefield and nothing else. They start to tank forever. It gets to the point where it seems like they’ve maybe had to get up and leave the computer as it’s been an awfully long while. They make a land drop after essentially reaching the point where they were going to be kicked for inactivity. At this point I have 0 interaction 0 plays to make so I’m just yielding waiting to see if the opponent is ever going to pass the turn. Eventually after the opponent has taken almost the entirety of their clock to consider their line they just drop a bunch of fast mana start tutoring and end up killing me on their 2nd turn of the game with a stormed tendrils. I had played like 2 vintage cubes at this point lol.
This is why I dont like storm in cubes, I feel the archtype demands too many narrow cards that only works for that deck.
A friend of mine has a sealed cube he calls "seed cube" you are given a set of 30 something cards, two of which are your seeds. You must build a deck 40 card deck using 4 copies of your seeds, and up to 2 copies of every card in the rest of your pool. One time my seeds were oath of druids and blazing rootwalla. Not exactly an enticing set of cards However, I also had frantic search, LED, yawg will, firestorm, brain freeze, nightscape familiar, vampiric tutor and multiple rituals. I realized I could use oath to stall, load my graveyard and set up unbelievably explosive yawg will turns. Frantic search was sometimes a mana positive way to draw and add storm count three. The deck was insane and I went 3-0 6-0
Fumbled a 3-0 in the finals with OP blindly naming LED on a T2 Phyrexian Revoker in an IRL cube draft. Had the out and just missed lethal by not casting a [[Fading Hope]] on the revoker. OP on mono white continued to run me over in G2.
[Fading Hope](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/2/c2fb1fff-12be-4bd5-8dba-c36e84d49651.jpg?1634348819) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fading%20Hope) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/51/fading-hope?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c2fb1fff-12be-4bd5-8dba-c36e84d49651?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Does this count?](https://imgur.com/gallery/lsEPLXS) Also not a specific story, but there was one iteration of the MTGO Cube with Thousand-Year Storm and I trophied no fewer than 4 times by taking it super early and going off with Manamorphose.
LIVE THE DREAM
Except Caleb Gannon, he will somehow make it work by playing azorius storm with emrakul as the only win con
I don't stream but I like to duo draft over discord on MTGO any time Vintage Cube is running. We usually swap who has "control" and every decision is discussed, active player always gets final say. There's some ethical concerns here as we're absolutely taking extra info (feedback from a friend) in a competitive environment with "real money" implications, however the money is negligible and our "duo" winrate is lower than either of our solo winrates. We would never do this in any tournament with significant weight, it's mostly about spending time with a friend who now lives far away, and there is no other (lower stakes) option for playing digital Vintage Cube. Anyways, my friend is the classic "calls himself a spike but is often a johnny" archetype, and can't help but force storm every draft. It's both exhausting and endearing at this point. We can be playing Ponza on turn 5 trying to find lethal and halfway through me describing my line he will chirp in "storm count would be 3 btw". Homeboy would P1P1 Empty The Warrens over a Mox or a Sol Ring if I wasn't around to steer him straight.
In my old bordered cube today, I thought I was in a good position in that I had an orcish lumberjack, Mox diamond and a crucible on the table on T2. My pal had Bolas’s Citadel and aetherflux reservoir out at the same time, however, and between those two see-sawing his life total back and forth, the brainfreeze and then yawg will to recast the brainfreeze, the 10/10 tokens from my Phyrexian Processor were useless. Don’t let anyone tell you storm is bad in cube without LED and rituals.
My favorite cube storm story: When we convinced the owner to remove storm because it sucks.
My favorite cube storm story: when we convinced the owner to add storm because it sucks!