From Friday Night Magic to the Pro Tour, Adam Prosak loves all types of tournament Magic. Currently, Adam is working in R&D as a developer.

Hello, Magic Online players!

The Vintage Cube is great. Within R&D, we are really happy with how it's doing, and we don't think there are any particular overhauls we want to make. We like the themes and we feel that the game encapsulates the feel of Vintage Magic—which includes the strongest cards in the history of Magic.

That being said, there are still opportunities to tune and improve. First, there are new cards since the last time we've run the Vintage Cube. Cards from Commander (2015 Edition), Oath of the Gatewatch, and Shadows over Innistrad have found their way into the Vintage Cube.

One of the big additions from Oath of the Gatewatch is the completion of the cycle of creature lands, begun in Worldwake and continued in Battle for Zendikar. As a rule, we don't like to include incomplete cycles of lands, as it unbalances the color fixing available. We've always wanted to include the Worldwake lands, but until Oath of the Gatewatch, the cycle of ten creature lands was not complete. Now that they are, you can expect to see the creature lands in most iterations of Magic Online cubes.

The other subtle shift we plan on doing for our cubes has to do with the color identity of cards. While we have Lingering Souls listed as a white card, in practice it only goes into decks with both white and black cards. We've moved cards with off-color flashback to multicolored. In addition, we've found that cards that require Phyrexian mana often go into decks that are not of that color. You'll see Dismember in a blue-white deck or Porcelain Legionnaire in a mono-red deck fairly often. We've decided to make these cards count as colorless cards. For quite some time, we've counted Vedalken Shackles as a blue card and Shrine of Burning Rage as a red card, even though they are technically colorless artifacts. Expanding this to include off-color flashback and Phryexian mana helps us get the right color balance from a practical standpoint, and not just a technical standpoint.

That's all for now. We'll continue to update the Vintage Cube with new stuff, and we hope that you continue to enjoy playing the Vintage Cube.

I'll see you in the queues.

—Adam Prosak

Vintage Cube Events run on Magic Online from July 8 at 10 a.m. PT/5 p.m. UTC to July 29 at 10 a.m. PT/5 p.m. UTC. Vintage Cube changes and the full cube list can be found here.

Event Details

Vintage Cube Single Elimination Draft

Start Times: Friday, July 8, 10:00 a.m. until Friday, July 29, 10:00 a.m. All times are Pacific (UTC -7).

Location: Play Lobby -> Limited Tournaments -> Queues

Entry Options:

Option 1: 10 Event Tickets

Option 3: 100 Play Points

Product: 3 Vintage Cube booster packs

Size: 8 players

Play Style: Single-Elimination

Format: Draft

Duration: 10 minutes deck-building time. Three rounds, each round up to 50 minutes

Prizes:

Place Prizes QPs 1st 220 Play Points 1 2nd 160 Play Points 0 3rd-4th 100 Play Points 0

Vintage Cube Swiss Draft

Start Times: Friday, July 8, 10:00 a.m. until Friday, July 29, 10:00 a.m. All times are Pacific (UTC -7).

Location: Play Lobby -> Limited Tournaments -> Queues

Entry Options:

Option 1: 10 Event Tickets

Option 3: 100 Play Points

Product: 3 Vintage Cube booster packs

Size: 8 players

Play Style: Swiss

Format: Draft

Duration: 10 minutes deck-building time. Three rounds, each round up to 50 minutes

Prizes: