Why I'm Selling My Legacy Cube

The nagging doubts started with Orcish Bowmasters. How much longer, really, will I enjoy curating a power-motivated cube from Magic’s entire history? The answer, as it turns out, would be “less than a year,” and then a slow process of acceptance. After nine years, it’s time to sell my Legacy cube.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind the clock to 2017. A different era in Cube design, and one that I had just begun to learn firsthand.

Cube is something to fiddle with

With the seemingly infinite free time of a college senior in autumn, I scoured the Internet for every Cube article I could find. Armed with my high-school cards, a full cycle of Genjus, a fresh box of Ixalan, and a Cube Tutor account, we ran our first dorm test-draft on a snow day with cookies in the oven.

I didn’t yet consider myself a “cube designer,” because that would imply an awareness of the broader Cube world that I did not yet possess. That wouldn’t come until I had graduated and moved cross-country where, on lonely days at a lonely job, I clung to Cube Tutor test-drafts like a life preserver in a stormy sea. At one of my low points, I even created a Reddit account specifically to reply to somebody’s Unstable question on r/mtgcube.

Looking back, it’s obvious that talking about, looking at, and fiddling with my Cube kept me sane. I needed that community, fleeting as it was, and the cardboard particulars were totally irrelevant. The groupthink was obsessed at the time with old-school classics like Wildfire and Opposition, so that’s what I talked about too, but I would have displayed equal excitement for One With Nothing if it would let me gather around the watercooler with the homies. (Here’s the list I had from around that time.)

We didn’t realize, as Guilds of Ravnica block escalated into War of the Spark, that Magic was about to undergo years of power-balance upheaval, or that Eldraine’s Project Booster Fun was less than a year away, with Universes Beyond lapping close at its heels. I wouldn’t have known better anyways – I greeted the harbingers of power creep gladly, because it drove down the price of high-status “cube staples,” allowing me to splurge on a $13-Bloodghast reprint, or my first shockland, or multiple copies of the "best Selesnya card ever printed". The dopamine of collecting cards was an effective, if inadequate, substitute for the joy of playing the games themselves.

Cube design was how I created online community in an isolating job, and powerful cards were the lingua franca of that group. It was a strong solace, for a time. Then came the pandemic.

A Pandemic Project

The COVID lockdown’s combination of collegiate levels of unexpected free time and unrelenting solitude was a doozy. Add in the brand-new Secret Lair project, Magic Arena’s introduction of human draft pods, and the huge glut of overpowered cardboard flowing eastward from Seattle, and it’s easy to understand why powerful cubing was so attractive in the early 2020s.

Quarantined in Philadelphia, I was especially attracted to the bold new directions of Magic’s art, and began treating my Legacy cube like an art museum, breaking singleton heavily on my favorite cards to display multiple illustrations. After all, these Magic cards sure weren’t getting played, so I might as well maximize their other attributes, right? I even tried to cube at least one of each new showcase frame, though that particular quest would soon become obviously infeasible.

But powerful cards weren’t in short supply, either. The once-mighty Tarmogoyf fell below $10, brought low by Fatal Push and Modern Horizons. Commander precons, reliable sources for underdeveloped threats, saw an increased pace of release. The r/mtgcube water-cooler talk had migrated to Discord, but the topics remained similar. Lucky Paper Radio was in its infancy, so “regular cube” still meant “a power-maximizing Legacy Cube that cheats for Sol Ring and Balance.”

Between art and power, there was so much churn in my Legacy cube that I began calling it ”The Ship of Theseus,” or sometimes just “Theseus” when my design goals felt as lost as our hero in Minos’ Labyrinth. The name was always a little tongue-in-cheek, because the truth is, my cube was a cherished creative outlet for hard times. As the world thawed, a healthy Retail Limited scene grew at The Philly Game Shop, I put Cube on the back-burner, but that would change as soon as we began cubing in person.

About Community All Along

In January 2023, I hosted a Cube meetup at my West Philly apartment, apple chili and seltzer in the kitchen. That little group of six decided to make it a weekly occurrence, and we’ve been meeting ever since. We outgrew my apartment fast, and now launch two or three drafts every Wednesday from among the 20-30 cubes in the group. At each of the local cube tournaments that have sprung up on the east coast, Philly always sends a contingent of stone-cold killers and home-grown chillers. We hang out for non-Magic things, too, birthday picnics and solidarity marches and late-night movies and winter collaging circles.

Of the last 156 weeks, Theseus has only made it to the table in eight. I love playing other folks’ cubes, and I now have two lower-power cubes to share my attention, so I have zero regrets. But the contrast has been stark as I’ve gone from thinking about Theseus on a daily basis during the pandemic, to less than once a quarter now.

Once you debark the power train, it’s obvious how much the engine is accelerating. Power-induced churn in Magic is more prevalent than ever, and often comes at the expense of the nostalgic icons of yesteryear, the Wildfires and Winter Orbs that r/mtgcube loved to debate and rank. The cumulative impact turns eternal staples into ephemeral memories. I didn’t realize this until about the time Orcish Bowmasters crossed my desk: the cards won’t stop coming, in ever-greater quantities, with ever-bigger statlines, and with ever-more-mismatched aesthetics. I needed a new paradigm, one that I knew all along without realizing it.

Long Live Cube (Just Not Mine)

It took awhile, but I finally realize that community has always been the central appeal of Cube. Even when I talked about powerful cards, it was as an excuse to gather and chat and enjoy other people. I see this feeling echoed in the resurgence of all kinds of community-run Magic events and formats. Premodern; local cube tournaments; weekly cube meetups; Magic streams for union strike funds.

I’m now privileged to live in a city where that community happens in person, and I plan to make the most of it. Philly, after three years of cubing together, I literally don’t care what game we play. I will be just as happy playing Inis, Mario Kart, Star Wars Unlimited, or heckin’ Crazy Eights. Or forget games altogether – let’s watch a movie, or lounge around your living room while trying to lure your housecats within petting range.

So, I lied a little with my article title. I’m not selling all of Theseus. Some cards, the Genjus and other formative pillars of this nine-year project, will retire to a memory binder. Others, the lands and maybe a hundred of the spells, will become the backbone of a new cube.¹ But that cube’s goal won’t be to pursue power upgrades, or eye-catching art, or self-medication for isolation. This cube will be a vehicle for weekly, in-person community. I can’t wait to see the faces they’ll make when someone casts Flash for Myr Superion, or Doomsday for Shelldock Gisela, or Unearth Ball Lightning. Long live cube. Just… maybe not the one I started with.