2024 Cube in Review

2024 was a monumental year for Cube as a format and the communities all over the world that play it. We saw an explosion of grassroots Cube events — in no year prior were there more than a handful of publicized, open-registration Cube events, but in 2024 there were seventeen. These small, local events reflect the scrappy, homegrown nature of the format itself. Most are weekend affairs, with ~64 players cutting to a top 8 draft to determine a winner. They are labors of love, put on by Cube designers that want to celebrate their local scene and elevate the format. For this year’s annual Cube in Review, we’ve invited the organizers of these Cube events to share their reflections on the year. Before we meet them, let’s review what Wizards of the Coast gave us in 2024:

• Murders at Karlov Manor and Murders at Karlov Manor Commander
• Ravnica: Clue Edition
• Fallout
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander
• Modern Horizons 3 and Modern Horizons 3 Commander
• Bloomburrow and Bloomburrow Commander
• Duskmourn: House of Horror and Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander
• Foundations and Foundations Jumpstart

Introducing our respondents — the grassroots organizers that helped make 2024 the year of small Cube events:

​Joe Anderson is the head organizer of California Cube Champs and the sole host of a raw and authentic podcast about his life, both playing Magic and otherwise, but he is probably best known for pioneering the now ubiquitous ‘top half of your face in the bottom of the frame’ Cube selfie.

​Greg Cortazzo is the organizer of the Vertex Cube event series, which ran its first event, Steel City Cube, in 2024. He is well known for his Companion Cube and can be found discussing Cube in online spaces under the moniker ‘dinrovahorror’.

​Keldan Campbell is a Cube designer known for his experimental and innovative draft environments. He is the co-organizer of Washington Cube Champs and has been proactive in helping others run grassroots Cube events in their areas.

​Jeff Green is co-owner of The Mana Vault, a game store in Wisconsin, and the designer of the Old Border Foil Cube. He helps organize two Cube events each year: The Ice Cube in the winter and The Bar-B-Cube in the summer.

​Ollie Davis is the driving force behind Boston Cube Party. They are the designer of The Creatureless Cube and Doubleton Synergy and are known for their scalding hot takes and gorgeous tattoos.

​Anthony Adams, better known as Uber Bear, is one of the hosts of the long-running Uber Cube Podcast and organized Ubercubeathon 2024 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina this past year. He is a 10-year veteran of the format and a prolific Cube designer.

​Scott Mirtsopoulos is the founder of Upkeep New York, which is responsible for Cube For A Cause: a semi-annual cube event for charity and weekly drafts every Wednesday at Brooklyn Game Knight. He is always the most stylish Magic player in the room.

​Lincoln Davidson is the organizer of the Capitol Cube Championship, an annual cube tournament in the Washington, DC area, and the designer of the Penrose Cube.

​Joe: Small cube events! I absolutely loved my time at CubeCon in 2022, but my first thought when heading home was “That was a lot of money and far away, I bet I could host a smaller local one,” so I did just that in summer 2023. Seeing the proliferation of these over the course of 2024, and attending Washington Cube Champs in spring of 2024, was a wonderful highlight of my year. More than just getting to play new cubes, meeting people I talk to daily on the internet is a wonderful way to tie the digital world to reality.

Hosting California Cube Champs again this summer allowed me to introduce a ton of my cube friends to my husband, and celebrate Pride with a beautiful multicolor crepe breakfast. Staying up ‘til 3 in the morning laughing with my friends playing my favorite cube of the year — the ridiculously silly Shepard Cube — was the best way to celebrate my birthday I could imagine.

​Greg: Easily the surveil lands from Murders at Karlov Manor. These come pretty close to my favorite cube cards of all time. I have long loved breaking singleton on shocks and fetches in Atomic Cube, and having access to sidegrades for shocklands — that, like the shocks, ask a strategic question every time they’re fetched — has added so much texture to drafting and gameplay at the impossibly small cost of swapping a cycle of dual lands for a cycle of slightly different duals. I’m absolutely in love with the effect the Surveil lands had on my cube.

​Keldan: Surprising no one, the explosion of local cube events absolutely highlights this year. Inspired by CubeCon and the subsequent Cali Cube Champs, a host of events have marched onto the scene. I am constantly excited to see the web of organizers sharing knowledge and putting in effort to run these events across the country. Personally, this year and these events have felt like a community milestone, and I hear many people echoing this sentiment. Amongst all the difficulties we have experienced in recent times, I am incredibly thankful to be part of a group of people who are dedicated to building up community and each other, making the positive changes they want to see in Magic.

​Jeff: Local cube events! Mini CubeCons sprouted up this year all over the world, including in Milwaukee, where my store hosted two 64-player drafts! All of us event organizers are trying to replicate the great vibes and casual-competitive spirit of CubeCon while growing our respective cube communities. With The Ice Cube in winter and Bar-B-Cube in summer, fun was our priority: leaning into the weather-related themes (we gave out custom-made ice cube trays and spatulas!) and driving the hype with special guests like CubeCon Founder Jonathan Brostoff and Pro Tour competitors Sam Black and Patrick Sullivan. We’re featuring normie cubes and unique ones (Oathbreaker, anyone?), and I’ve tried to push our designers to hone their concepts. On a personal note: my best friend Sam seldom plays Magic these days (he’s more of a DND guy). But he made the drive out for both of our cube events this year, and had a total blast playing in them. These things are a lot of work to put together, but boy, are they worth it in the end!

​Ollie: As much as it pains me to say this, both because I hate looking like a brown-noser, and because Andy doesn’t need the ego boost, 100 Ornithopters is my cube hit of the year. When I built my first cube, Creatureless Cube, I wanted to create an environment where there were no special rules, yet combat was deemphasized, shattering a core assumption of most Magic formats. Through my cube design, I encourage creatures to be used as pieces of a synergy engine, but as long as a creature has a power greater than zero, players have the incentive to just attack their opponent instead.

Coming from that context, the first time I drafted 100 Ornithopters, I was dumbstruck: every creature had zero power, but the format overall was still fast, high power, and combo-oriented. Exciting combos appear immediately during draft, and the play experience of the cube is engaging, surprising, and even amusing every time. I felt like a kitten dropped into a mound of catnip. 100 Ornithopters is a different niche than Creatureless, but one of the best examples of how much design space is still unexplored in the Cube format.

​Anthony: Murders at Karlov Manor provided an unexpected beacon for cube curators. Initially overlooked by some, Surveil Lands granted much-needed tech for cubes ranging from Vintage to thematic. What’s particularly interesting to me is the utility these lands provide, as seen in Boros’s Elegant Parlor. Traditionally, aggressive strategies would avoid “enters the battlefield tapped” lands, but the card selection actually ensures consistent lines of play, and the Surveil even fuels the players’ “secondary library”. As a deckbuilder, Surveil lands provide awesome card selection without impacting spell density or card slot equity.

​Scott: Our community taking matters into our own hands with local cube events was an incredible manifestation of Cube’s punk spirit. Specifically, running Cube For A Cause was my year’s highlight, bar none. Folks from all around came to Brooklyn to join us in raising nearly $1,000 for Palestine, jamming games, connecting and building ties with one another. I saw friends old, made friends new, and connected people all along the way. I know this will be my answer year over year, but for me Magic is still about the Gathering.

​Lincoln: The cube hit of the year is unquestionably the rise of the interstate cube crew. As regional cube events have popped up all over the country, it’s been increasingly common to see some of the same folks bouncing from event to event. Think of it as a modern day Magic jet set for the era of Baltimore Singleton¹ and 3x16 drafts. The only thing more fun than making new friends at a cube event in your city is running into them again at another cube event in a different city a few months later. The era of the GP grinder may be dead, but the dawn of the regional cube circuit warrior is at hand.

​Joe: Starting with Murders at Karlov Manor, the price increase of Play Boosters made regular retail draft at my LGS jump from $15 to $20. Additionally, the sets of 2024 continued the massive increase in complex mechanics (for example, three new facedown card mechanics, or wordy mechanics like Plot, crime and outlaw lacking reminder text). Under these combined factors, I and many others in my area drafted less retail Magic this year. The major decrease in draft and higher barrier of entry for brand-new players leads to fewer cube players in the future, making me worry for the Universes Beyond-laden future.

​Greg: A cliché answer, maybe, but Outlaws of Thunder Junction. I was pretty psyched about every major set mechanic during the first few days of spoilers. But by the time the set was out, I had cooled significantly on the flavor of both Crimes and Mounts, ended up disliking the diner-menu execution of pretty much all Spree cards, and, worst of all, found that very few of the Plot cards were exciting for my cube, despite the fact that Plot was practically the only part of the set I remained excited about by the set’s release. I’m currently playing only four cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, less than half the representation of Murders at Karlov Manor, Modern Horizons 3, or Bloomburrow.

​Keldan: Modern Horizons 3 was the miss of the year for me. Wizards created something special with the first Modern Horizons set. Modern Horizons created a unique blueprint for card design, repurposing and recombining old mechanics with modern design sensibilities and power level. Modern Horizons 2 expanded the design scope even further, and especially at lower rarities, it gave unique new tools to cube archetypes in a wide variety of mechanical spaces.

For me, Modern Horizons 3 stumbled in this regard by focusing on more narrow mechanics. Energy and Eldrazi cards took up a dominant portion of the set and locked many of the inventive designs behind inaccessible flavor or mechanical aesthetic, while the overall power level was too high. Even at lower rarities, many cards were immediate power outliers in the Cube formats that most wanted them. I have had to avoid so many cool designs when the interesting part of the card is obscured by dominant stats and efficiency. Despite many individually cool cards, Modern Horizons 3 overall falls short of its predecessors.

​Ollie: For me, the cube miss of the year is overcomplicated mechanics with inadequate reminder text, creating unnecessary mental load. I know, we didn’t get any new dungeons or battles this year, but I’m so tired of cards that can’t be explained by reading them once.

If most players came across a card with rad counters in a cube, they would have no idea what it does, because for some bizarre reason, not a single card with the phrase “rad counter” on it has reminder text for rad counters. Missing reminder text isn’t the only issue. Rooms took me way longer to understand than they should have because the reminder text doesn’t fully explain the mechanic. Meanwhile, I’m still catching up to what The Ring tempts you means! I’m not against all new mechanics, but they should be intuitive, easy to understand (including ample reminder text), and quick to explain.

​Anthony: It would be easy for me to attribute my cube miss to “cards with funny hats” or a murder mystery that was solved before the set released, but the constant influx of products was both a gift and a curse for me personally. The gift is that it forced me to step back and choose what matters for my players and environments. The curse was the FOMO, specifically regarding chase cards or secondary market prices. Ultimately, the constant flow of product returned to me the power to make critical decisions about what matters. More products equated to more options, but the toll was the loss of lore or storytelling.

While I am admittedly not a lore-focused person, something about the plane set in a cinematic universe has been lost, and I would love to see it return. Cracking packs was exciting when the story or idea carried me away to a magical plane — the stories can provide inspiration for cube curators in a way much like an author can transport you to another world as you turn the pages. While this may not be 100% a miss, it is something that I feel we all share and has been voiced by the MTG community.

​Scott: My biggest personal struggle with Cube this year was a creative drought. Throughout the year, I’ve been stuck on one project that’s now gone through over five different versions, as well as 10 other half-baked concepts that’ve ended up in the wastebasket. I admire the raw creativity of my cube design role models like Zach Barash, Dan Schneider, or my friends here at Lucky Paper, so I wish I was a little better at forming these vague ideas I have. I’m working on it though! …and that’s okay. Maybe inspiration ebbs and flows, maybe this is temporary, and maybe next year holds a set or card that lights a spark for me. But for now? That stuckness is my miss.

​Lincoln: For me, the cube miss of the year was the death of the set cube. While I’m being a bit dramatic, I think it’s fair to say that we won’t be seeing a deep pocket of Thunder Junction or Duskmourn set cubes appearing on Cube Cobra anytime soon. Two out of three of this year’s introductions to new worlds were huge whiffs from a flavor perspective. Iconic settings like Innistrad, Ravnica, and the Dominarian time crisis have long inspired players to design thematic cubes. The shallowness of worldbuilding in both Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Duskmourn: House of Horror makes it hard to imagine anyone feeling similarly compelled.

​Jeff: Losing Jonathan Brostoff, CubeCon founder, to suicide. Jon was my friend and an inspiration to so many in this community. I’m still grieving and lack the proper words. But two things:

1. Let’s talk more openly about mental health challenges (be they depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or other) in the gaming community and support one another.
2. Let’s channel the best of Jon — his positive energy, love of Cube and Magic — in all that we do in 2025.

​Joe: Surveil lands! While I was initially doubtful of these (and even sent two to my friend because I thought I wouldn’t use them), I was very wrong. I first played them alongside fetchlands in a local Vintage cube I hadn’t drafted before, and was immediately impressed. I’ve played and enjoyed them extensively since then in my cube, the MTGO Vintage cube, and every cube that combines them and fetchlands.

​Greg: I spent a good chunk of 2024 working to give every color pair in Atomic Cube some amount of flexibility in terms of deck speed. I disliked how, in many cubes, ​

​Keldan: One of my favorite features of new sets is getting access to new versions of long-standing effects that have been on underpowered cards. Splendid Reclamation has been such a cool effect for such a long time, but has simultaneously been wildly narrow and difficult to include even at low power levels. Aftermath Analyst gives cube designers access to the first broadly playable version of this effect, one that scales based on the environment with multiple design knobs. What you see is what you get with your non-fetching mana bases, but with higher power levels boasting a cycle or multiple cycles of fetch land players can push the card to exciting heights. Most importantly, the effect being stapled to a creature means the Analyst can play a defensive role while setting up, be flickered for additional triggers, or rebought with Gravedigger effects. Aftermath Analyst has gone in every cube I have with green, and I have been happy with it across the board.

​Jeff: Undercity Sewers and the other Surveil lands. The Cube Cobra stats don’t lie! Undercity Sewers and its brethren are the most played newly printed cards from 2024. And for good reason: they’re busted! And they make great additions to cubes of varying power levels. We all love a good land cycle, and this one really hit the spot. Whether you’re fueling graveyard shenanigans or digging yourself out of mana issues, seldom are you sad to have a Surveil land (or two, or three) in your deck!

​Ollie: The cube card of the year was an easy one for me. This little fella is named Party Thrasher, and I think he’s going to be a cube staple in 2025. A two mana 1/4 may seem mopey, but we’re playing cube — there are so many strong 2/1s for

The most exciting part of Party Thrasher is a free cast of a slightly better Tormenting Voice each turn², and if it’s a noncreature spell, it has convoke! In 2024, Wizards has printed more cards that say “you may cast/play this from exile” than the rest of Magic combined, so the fact that Party Thrasher grants convoke to all noncreatures cast from exile will only become more powerful with time.

​Anthony: Marionette Apprentice was, in my opinion, the card we didn’t know we needed until we had it. Combining the best of aristocrats and artifact synergies, Marionette Apprentice has found a place in a large range of cube environments. It is always special when a card can serve as a linchpin to multiple strategies in multiple cubes. Our group has added it to Uber Bear’s Artifact Cube, Femme Cube, and Sammich’s Peasant Cube, and each introduction has served multiple applications, providing an aggressively costed creature with significant utility.

​Scott: I think the simple answer is the Surveil Lands, but the card that did the most for my personal cubes was Metastatic Evangel. It brought counters and Phyrexian decks natural synergies in a clean, well-statted package for one of my main cubes, The Curio Cube.

​Lincoln: Shoreline Looter. Merfolk Looter, while classic, struggles to find a home outside of old-border or extremely low power level cubes. Looter il-Kor has been showing his age for a while, and forces you to explain Shadow to new players. Suspicious Stowaway brings along her baggage of day/night and dual-faced card silliness.

Shoreline Looter came along as the perfect replacement. It gets rid of the fiddlinesss of having to explain what Shadow does or worry about the one-in-a-thousand games where the opponent has Dauthi Voidwalker. It gives you something to aim for with Threshold (and we all know Magic players love a good side quest), becoming a real beast of a value engine once you hit it. On top of that, it lets us relive our childhood escapes to the Redwall universe, while paying homage to a 25-year fixture of the game. Looter il-Kor can finally take a load off and settle into his shadowy La-Z-Boy.

​Joe: Personally, it’s an easy Modern Horizons 3. When Modern Horizons was first announced back in February 2019, I was incredibly excited. Cards like Dragon's Rage Channeler or Fanatic of Rhonas that combine multiple set mechanics always get my synergy gears turning, and the power level we’ve come to expect from Modern Horizons sets pushes the gas. While the power level of MH3 is definitely a bit much for some cubes (or even Constructed formats), there’s so many interesting designs like Springheart Nantuko, the Lhurgoyf theme, or Shifting Woodland, in addition to the obviously powerful planeswalkers and the Phearful Phrog.

​Greg: It’s easy to say something like Murders at Karlov Manor or Modern Horizons 3, sets that brought us many incredible cards like the ones I’ve been raving about above. However, I think the sleeper hit might just end up being Foundations: I’ve already started to hear about plenty of players excited to sleeve up the starter kit and use it as their first cube, people who are teaching their loved ones Magic using the beginner box, and entrenched Magic players discovering the beauty of drafting for the first time. This is only the start of a long list of ways in which Foundations has increased accessibility to Cube and Magic as a whole, and I think it will represent an influx of cubers along every part of the layperson → Magic player → drafter → cubehead pipeline!

​Keldan: My vote for best cube set of the year is Murders at Karlov Manor. While on a card-by-card basis, Murders at Karlov Manor may have fewer high-power options than the average Standard set, this shortcoming is completely overshadowed by Wizards’ decision to print the full cycle of Surveil lands, the most interesting lands to play since the printing of the original shocklands. This inclusion is enough to make Murders at Karlov Manor the most impactful set for cubes this year, but I want to highlight some other neat additions. We got an exciting variant of Thrill of Possibility in Demand Answers. Cryptic Coat created a card that fills the True-Name Nemesis role with more synergy and less polarization. Worldsoul's Rage is the coolest take on a Fireball in recent memory. Proft's Eidetic Memory, Pick Your Poison, Insidious Roots, and Warleader's Call are a few other exciting additions to cubes of mine. And of course, Aftermath Analyst is my card of the year.

​Jeff: Cube can be whatever you want it to be, so old sets are no less relevant than new ones. My vote goes for Onslaught!. Released in 2002, this set gave us fetchlands, morph and cube bangers like Arcanis the Omnipotent! Featuring a whopping 45 cards in the Old Border Foil Cube, Onslaught has it all. Including the Voidmage Prodigy himself, Kai “never loses on Sundays” Budde, whose name is now associated with the Player of the Year title!

​Ollie: For me, the best set for cube this year was Modern Horizons 3 by a long shot. My complete list of the cube all-stars from MH3 was over thirty cards, so I’ll only mention a few.

Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd is quite possibly an instant all-timer. Phelia’s combination of flash and “when this attacks” adds such a compelling texture to games, devouring the opponent’s tokens and going nuts with a Containment Priest. But if you don’t start blinking your own permanents, Phelia’s stat line can become outclassed. Ideally, you’re close to ending the game as Phelia’s window to safely attack wanes (you wouldn’t send your puppy to her death, right?) but with the ubiquity of creatures with enters abilities, even removing a blocker can come with its own set of interesting decisions.

Ocelot Pride is another minigame masterpiece. You have a self-enabling card, but to generate the payoff, you have to find a way to either clear a path or protect it through combat. Ajani, Nacatl Pariah plays in a similarly engaging space. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to talk about all the other instant classics from Modern Horizons 3. Apologies to Six, Wight of the Reliquary, Phlage, and countless others.

​Anthony: Duskmourn: House of Horror was the homerun of 2024. Speaking to fans of the horror genre, this set found a way to distinguish itself from the typical gothic horror aesthetic of Innistrad. No simple feat, as Innistrad is considered one the most beloved planes in Magic.

Most notably, and to the chagrin of packs of werewolves, Duskmourn introduced cosmic horror, providing a means to integrate Manifest Dread or eliminate antiquated MDFC tech. While I chose to look past the “Scooby-Doo” stylistic art, I focused on the blood-curdling villains for a darker, more atmospheric tone.

Not only did this set differentiate itself from Innistrad, it also provided high-powered tech to Vintage and thematic cubes. The Overlord cycle provided a fresh and powerful “Titan-esque” cycle and introduced Impending as a mechanic. Impending promoted powerful lines of play, combining enchantment creatures with an intriguing twist on Suspend. Open-ended abilities and creature types such as the Overlord cycle can create new avenues for emergent synergies in a wide variety of cube curations.

​Scott: It’s so hard to say, but when there’s a Modern Horizons set, it simply takes the cake. Modern Horizons 3 did as much for synergistic environments as it did for straight up powermaxed cubes.

​Lincoln: I really don’t think there was a single best set for cube this year. But as a lover of graveyard synergies, 2024 was a great year for new cards for cube! Across almost every set, we saw lots of interesting graveyard designs: with the Surveil duals in Murders at Karlov Manor, Threshold showing up in

​Joe: For a very long time, cube has been known as a singleton format. Despite the proliferation of unique cubes, and the long term insistence of designers like Parker LaMascus to just double or triple up on cards you want your players to have, Magic players love rules and spreadsheets. However, in the last year, I’ve seen many designers maintain singleton in the nonlands while doubling up on land cycles, emulating Andy Mangold’s Bun Magic Cube. The duplication allows for more consistency, while increasing the cube’s land synergy. At Boston Cube Party this year, Ryan Saxe sat down to draft a cube from Baltimore that he had never played before. He asked the designer if the cube was singleton, and he was assured it was, so Ryan was surprised to see a second copy of a specific fetchland in a later pack. When Ryan protested, the designer responded, “well, it’s Baltimore Singleton!” I love both the silly terminology and better manabases. While I am still a singleton stickler in my main cube, I did build a cube that is full triplicate — Trinity — and have had a great time with it in its nine drafts or so since. I’m looking forward to seeing more cube designs with “Baltimore Singleton” mana bases in the upcoming year.

​Greg: Being behind the scenes of a cube event provided a lot of interesting insights into both event organization and cube design. I’ve learned what types of cubes players want to play the most (usually well-known rules-change cubes, followed by powered cubes, followed by “fair” high-powered ones), what kinds of cubes are challenging to fit into a structured event (Judge! We didn’t realize we were supposed to draft two cards every pick. Am I supposed to write on this Letter Bomb? Which rules for Chaos Orb is this event using?), and how to incorporate these types of insights into preparing event cubes and making events a success for players. At the end of the day, I think my biggest personal level-up is simply learning that I love running Magic events, and that I want to do a lot more of it! Looking ahead to 2025, I’m excited to participate in even more events as a player and as a TO, and I hope to see you at them, too!

​Keldan: I am locally known as a bit of a cube snob and a hater of classically powered Vintage cubes. While I still am these things, 2024 found me examining how I engage with those opinions. A friend once told me that “hating things is all downside” and, as a Magic player, I want to avoid downsides. Even if I hold a negative opinion of a cube’s design, I should control my reaction and enjoy my time with the environment and the people playing anyway. This has been an incredible boon to my cubing time. It is so challenging and rewarding to draft and play well — and more importantly, enjoy myself — in environments that don’t immediately click with me. At the end of the day, our hobbies are excuses to bring ourselves and our friends joy. I want to spend my time with my hobbies as constructively as possible, and I feel this year has been a big step in the right direction.

​Jeff: I designed a new cube — The Mono Red Cube — with The Mana Vault cube community and my partner Adam and it has become a very good draft environment! When I design a cube, I try very hard to achieve power level balance across archetypes, and I think we’re really getting there with this one. Welder, Big Red, Burn, Goblins, Ponza — all are viable and all are great! Also, if aesthetics are what I’m most known for as a cube designer, we did not disappoint with this one: our team’s mountain choices are S-tier, as are the original nonfoil printings of the cube. Get in there, Beta Wheel of Fortune!

​Ollie: Recently, I’ve started some discourse on Bluesky about what I call emblem cubes, cubes with altered rules or cards that begin every game in an unusual zone. Because of their catchy names, emblem cubes tend to get a lot of online buzz, but the rules overhead can cause headaches for a small tournament. As I organized Boston Cube Party, I analyzed a lot of popular emblem cubes, assuming that if an emblem cube is in high demand, it must be spectacularly balanced. Surprisingly, I found that wasn’t always the case. Yet even among the cubes with several power outliers, people are fanatical for them. Why? The answer to that is my cube level-up of the year:

The most important part of your cube is the promise you’re making to your audience.

When people sit down to play Loam Cube, they aren’t promised perfect balance, they’re promised four hours of dredging and casting Life from the Loam! When people sit down to play Companion Cube, they’re promised the opportunity to draft a functional Aether Vial or Counterbalance deck. Non-emblem cubes simply can’t make those promises. That is what makes emblem cubes worthy of inclusion in conversations about the best cubes of all time.

Emblem cubes have earned their place in my heart and in the community, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only cubes that are capable of making exceptional promises. Matt Grenier’s Stormtime, Creatureless, and 100 Ornithopters all subvert expectations and deliver on their promises, without any changed rules or emblems.

Take inspiration from both styles of design. You can create cubes that deliver unique promises without changing rules, or lean into the wackiness of emblems: but remember that above all else, you need to promise something interesting.

​Anthony: 2024 has yet again proven to be pivotal to my personal growth as a curator. I would be remiss not to mention having The Femme Cube featured at CubeCon 2024 — it was truly an honor and joy to see the smiles of players drafting this celebratory cube. This cube wouldn’t have been possible without the perspective and support of Uber Cube co-hosts May and Stu, Emma Partlow, and others. For that I am truly humbled. I’m so grateful to have had the chance to showcase my vision, and I was deeply touched by the overwhelming praise, as well as featured selection by the Birds of Paradise.

On the technical side, this year I have learned the importance of adding counterplay cards to protect fragile strategies. Cards like Snakeskin Veil, Apostle's Blessing, or most recently Celestial Armor would have never garnered my attention before. I give full credit to my good friend Chris Moore for teaching me this valuable lesson. Now that the rose-tinted goggles are removed, I can see the merit of adding counterplay outside of traditional countermagic and hand disruption. It has been truly enlightening to see cards I once considered “sideboard only” become pivotal to my curation strategies. Not only onions and ogres have layers — curators and gameplay do too. Happy cubing!

​Scott: My personal cube level up has been focusing more on the community and less on my gameplay.

On community: Focusing on Upkeep and building our weekly group and turnout here in Brooklyn has become my true focus. It’s led to me building a digital and physical space for a community that’s welcoming and celebrates different perspectives. It’s forged a completely new and very real group of friends who can talk about everything, not just Magic. It ensures that when a new person joins us, they’re met with a welcoming environment and that helps them want to come back. It offers a broad array of cubes with a diverse set of themes and expressions.

This time last year we’d have at best a six-player pod firing. One year out, we’re now regularly seeing 10 or more visitors each Wednesday. And if a weekly event and scale wasn’t enough, I managed to put together Cube For A Cause largely on my own, which as mentioned previously, brought in folks from all over to gather and game for something bigger than all of us, with some really great branding and merch to boot.

On gameplay: If you’re close with me or met me at CubeCon this year, you’ll know I struggle with myself as a Magic player. I’m not the best, and that’s okay! But I don’t know that the same sentiment floats in my head about myself when those 40 cards are in front of me. I actually know I’m really hard on myself, and that’s something I’m always trying to improve at. I’m lucky to have some really kind friends in this space that try to help me with this and I’m thankful for you all.

Maybe this time next year I’ll be able to say I’ve got better at Magic, but upon reflection, I’ve helped grow what matters most in Cube and our community.

​Lincoln: There’s a moment in life — somewhere between your teenage years and when you’ve settled into the webbing of responsibilities that constitutes what we like to think of as “full adulthood” — when you realize that you are free. There are no parents to tell you what time to go to bed, there are no teachers giving you readings and papers and tests to worry about, and the stakes of whatever entry-level job you have are so low that whatever piddling responsibilities work lays on your shoulders are easily shrugged off and forgotten.

Immediately, you are struck with the most trivial implications of your newly discovered freedom. Yes, you could just jump on a bus tomorrow to go visit friends in Richmond. No, no one is going to stop you from making bananas foster at two in the morning. Yes, it is indeed possible to walk all the way from Battery Park to East 75th Street, and you’re not doing anything for the next hour and a half anyway, and honestly, it’s been ages since you got a good long walk in, so why not?

My personal cube level up this year was having a similar realization, that I could in fact make a midsized cube event happen if I really wanted to, and then just doing it. I had this realization somewhere between attending the Uber Cube-a-thon in Chapel Hill organized by Anthony and seeing Greg announce Steel City Cube in Pittsburgh. Within a few weeks, a venue was booked, judges were identified, a call for cubes went out, and tickets went on sale. And in less than three months from when I took the first concrete step toward making it happen, 59 Magic players gathered in Arlington, played a bunch of cube, and raised a grand for charity. How sweet is that? All in all, it was surprisingly easy: it’s a cliche, but the hardest part really was that first step.