#47 - How To Proxy A Cube

This week, our main topic is talking about a method that means you can get a high quality proxy of any cube, for less than $200.

We also catch up on Magiccon Chicago, and talk about drafting Aetherdrift.

MPC Fill: https://mpcfill.com/
Instructions: https://github.com/chilli-axe/mpc-autofill/wiki/Overview

00:00:46: The News
00:27:01: How To Proxy A Cube
00:36:52:  What are the morals of proxying a cube
00:41:10: The process
01:06:47: Aetherdrift Limited

My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

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Chapters

• 1:07 The News
• 27:22 How To Proxy A Cube
• 37:13 What are the morals of proxying a cube
• 41:31 The process
• 1:07:08 Aetherdrift Limited

Transcript

0:24

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan Ben. And on this is a two week mtg. And as always I'm with my co-host James James. How are you doing this week? Well, yeah, I'm pretty good. Some pretty good. It's it's we don't normally record these things in the morning and I'm still deciding how I feel about that. It's, it's quite distressing to me. And and Saturday morning, I'm not normally talking to people at this stage of the day, but we're going to see how it goes. The good is going to be good. We have a cool episode for everyone today. Some of us will be down below if you want to jump around. Our main topic today is going to be one that I think hopefully people will get quite a bit of use out of. It's how to proxy a cube. But before then we have some news. Let's jump into that first. So at the last weekend, the time of recording, we had Magic on Chicago. There's a bunch of stuff that came out of that, including some quite big spoilers that went on to in a moment. But at Magic on Chicago, we obviously had the Pro Tour. The Pro Tour, this time around, had, had standard in it. The Pro Tour was taken down by madness. And we want to touch on some of these kind of decks because some of them, there's a lot of colors in these, I'll say at a minimum. James. But let's kind of jump into them. So a deck titled Domain Overlords looks to be the most winningest deck. Like the top three decks of the weekend was domain overlords. James, do you want to explain this deck a bit to me? And as I am seeing four colors. Yeah, there's no tri homes. There's no fetch lands. How are we making this work there? Sure. So, Overlord of the woods is doing some fairly heavy lifting here. Yeah, that's the, the five drop overlord, a free manner. You do you plan to get an everything lands. So all basic types. So obviously enables your full domain and just gives you access to all the colors, but really in a lot of colors and some of the cards. But in terms of our base plan, what green white's here, right. You've got the, you know, cheap whites interaction along with like expensive stuff like that. They've got, up for Beanstalk also doing, doing God's work here. Very nice addition from the new sets actually. Further Beanstalk that was vides and this is for the white, exile target creature vehicle, but it costs three less if it targets attached permanent. So it's a two mana removal spell, but it can trips off your up the beanstalk. So that's kind of nice. And similar with ley line binding. I mean, ley line binding is a great card for to make decks. Or it has been we love it and cube and it does great work here too. But yes, nice engines and, xur a turtle schema is kind of a very nice late game plan here. So this is the, esp, mana as a free mana fell on for fire enchantment creatures you control have death touch lifelink and hex proof. And for one for white you can have target non. All the enchantments you control become a creature in addition to its other types and has base power and toughness equal to its mana value. So it's like turns your ley lines binding into A66 with deft touch. Lifelink. While not that also works on the Overlord. So for example, if you play the you play the white Overlord for four mana, the next seven you wake it up with, you're hitting, you're making multipliers, and it's huge. Yeah, that actually seems pretty good. I'm kind of it's awesome that like on the face of it, James, this does look like I'm going to respectfully use the use the phrase janky brew here. But, yeah, this does look say like, yeah, animating all of your enchantments with this, this is saying that's pretty hot. And like, I'm just I'm assuming this works the way I wanted to game, so. Oh, so the overlords, they have that no matter, no amount of cost and that impending cost, if we have up the beanstalk out and we impending AI overlord, do we draw a card? Yes. You do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sweet little CMC on the stack. It is for one of my top five. I say, yeah. Okay. You had fun a lot of Beanstalk cards in this stack, I think. Yeah. That seems this seems busted. I got like, we had three of these. Yeah. As you mentioned in the top four. Were there any real difference between these decks, or was it all, like, I can see one of them is playing in a track, so I'm assuming just because it's in the colors to play in a track. So, Yeah. Are there any kind of major differences between these kind of decks, or is it kind of like it's that the main game plan is like abusing value with overlords up the beanstalk and, is that the kind of the main vibe between them? And then and then it's just a bit of like personal preference or flavor between them. Yeah. I think for, I mean, this was like a fairly no narc type going in in terms of this stuff. I think the major difference I'm seeing and, as is the addition of the full four lines and in in Magnus's list, which seems like pretty good tax. That's obviously like a new card, I guess. Yeah, I think there was a very similar card which just destroyed previously, but I guess that exile might be puts it over the top 100. And then I said, yeah, I can see it in some of the other ones. They're running things like Get Lost and Elspeth Smite. Deal. Sweet damage to target attacking the blocking creature. I think what you would on it, but I guess they kind of hate the, the mountainous version. It seems like the right end, it exiling that permanent does seem like does seem a bit better at answering other overlords, if that makes sense. Where it's kind of like the other cheaper removal might struggle a little bit because just get lost doesn't. Does that work on overload? Get lost is destroy target creature enchantment or Plains all controls makes to map tokens. So yeah so that would get rid of an Overlord. But I guess maybe the map tokens is more relevant than we thought it was, but just having the synergy to draw a card with effectively maps that looks like up the beanstalk deck, and that seems cool. We like that. Yeah. For sure. I mean, I didn't watch a ton of it, but I did see a little bit of it and it does seem like the games go very, very long in this format. And a lot of match ups, I think something like get lost giving opponent the map tokens like those extra cards do add up. Like all these little edges matter, and you can play something where you just get that clean exile fan. But that seems pretty strong. It's going down the list. I'm looking at the other fourth place finisher. James was gruel mice was not something I was expecting to see on a standard on like a laptop for top a winning deck layer. So I'm just have a quick look at this. Why are we running. It's on how many there's. There's ten mice in this. I think that's a bit of a stretch goal. I get like yeah, yeah, no it is. So yeah, it looks like it's kind of beating down with like, hot fire heroes. That's a one man of one. One with valiant. Yeah. A bunch of stuff from what was the, bloom. Burrow, actually. And topping up with the screaming nemesis. This looks pretty good. It doesn't look like a ragged deck. I kind of what? I'm looking down below, actually. It's good to see that there's some actually relatively budget decks in this, like, like the domain overlords that look to be around the 450 to $600 mark, but grew ley line and moderate aggro are less than $200. Like like like like I like Drew Ley line. That's all like that because there's this looks to be like $135, which is pretty good for down the deck. Like that's cheaper than, like any command. The deck I built in the last couple of years, like, just in terms of just raw bits, but like, oh my god. Yeah, it's just running a lot of the most expensive card is slick shots show off, but it's running things like cacophony scamp, which is a uncommon hot fire hero, which is uncommon, mostly Mentos. The uncommon kind of sell. So that's coming. That's I'm I think standard should always be standard is in a good place where a aggro deck made out of uncommonly red and black cards. It's strong. Like, I think that's a safe place for it to be. So that's nice to see. Yeah, for sure. I think I think the, the that pumps the whole stack to do some decent, strong work. Like they have a lot of struggle match ups in the format. I think and the hot challenger in kind of both of these decks is really doing a lot of the heavy lifting. That's for, one of for the two to ace fours and valiant. So when it comes time to spell all that, they let you, like solve a top card of your library and you can play this then. So, I mean, 2 to 8 powers is already pretty strong, right? That ability actually kind of lets these decks grind out a little bit better than you would expect them to like. That's fair. You know that they're aggressive decks without planning to play a long game. But I mean, it's not like, oh, you had some removal spells and I didn't run you over, so I have nothing left by a, have that little bit of card advantage built in, especially triggering also deltas as well. It's nice. It has the in the groove my stack. It has the and keep the silent guns that I sort of luminol faster than TI type enchantment. So that that triggers your mouse every return as well, which is quite cool for value. That's pretty hot I like that. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm looking at that. Absolutely. The grow ley line deck that Lucas to show or duck out probably to show up late. But yeah, it's all like ones and two drops apart from ley line of resonance, which in theory might be free a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah, this seems cool. What I do, like, are there any other decks that stand out to James that just, I see a note here. Go, Gary. Graveyard up the beanstalk. Brew. You want to talk about that one? This looks pretty vibey. Yeah, this looks spicy. And I think this was. This is certainly not a deck I'd seen before, but I think this was this is, a nice little booth and, Zevon. Foust. Sound and say that name. Apologies, C7 if that was wrong. So basically, what we're doing here is acknowledging that there, a tremendous amount of, of cards and standard that say they cost more or less for each creature in your graveyard. Reasonable. Okay. Yeah. And combining that with up for Beanstalk again. So, Yep. Okay. Yeah. We've got, for example, chips and great stock from a new set, six mana, five and a black for a five for cost. One last for each creature. Artifacts in your graveyard. So once we've milled ourselves a bunch. Wait, this is going to be, like, one mana five for a card with my up the beanstalk. So if you find the beanstalk, that seems great. And to mill ourselves, we've got the the Black Overlord, which is is obviously great here, and it's just really powerful card. But I'll say things like malts tend to be kind of rubbish that fight shaman, but it does also mean, knowing them. And there's is not a very good card, I would say, looking at it, but, you know, it sure does smell you. So you play what you've got to play, I guess. I know if you find the beanstalk in the middle yourself, it seems like a cool little engine that this looks awesome. Like. Like, I will say that just looking at looking at the current prices, the deck, half the cost of the deck is just the overload of the base mark. The rest of the deck does. I'm again, I don't wanna be harsh here. It does look like, but draft chat tribal, like everything is like a common or uncommon from a set, like. Yeah. You mentioned chit chat. Great. Okay, that's a common. You can get two of them for apparently £0.38, like, everything is like less than 20, but like, I think with a lot of these cards, you are paying more for the effort for someone to get them out of the box than you are for the cards themselves. If you're buying this, yeah, that is probably true and a lot of the time. And that's why I say, you know, you can probably play something else instead of V, Overlord, which is like £50 or whatever. I think that's really true. Yeah. I feel like I could only get cards badly overloaded up the beanstalk and everything else is, is draft staff, but we work quite hard to enable, so I think they have a lot of data. Quite a lot of heavy lifting has. No, I'd agree. No. I'm currently working on picking up. I didn't actually pick up any of these when they come out because I thought, oh, that they might go down in price, but they've been holding strong. So yeah, they sure have. That's a that's a quite a popular modern black white tech featuring outside. It's going anywhere soon. Yeah I think I yeah it's not gonna get a rebrand from it. Yeah. My wife is currently in Italy talking to vendors, trying to find me a good deal. A good deal is nice. Yeah. Let's chat. If my phone goes off, we might get an update on if I've bought about an overload of the bale market during this recording. Yeah. The only other deck for very stood out out to me, from this tournament was though quite a few players. I think there's a small team of players who played blue y control and also slightly crushed in standard, just like unleashing back. Charles Wong twice was one. Is that Esper pixie? Is that it or, Jesse Hampton. Hampton. Yeah. Yeah. So went like 728191, very strong that card not that successful on draft, unfortunately. So none of them made top eight. But the deck had like an absurd win percentage from the tournament and, like, basically had no bad match. It's like, obviously it's a smallish sample size. So, there's a bit of noise in the data, but I didn't have a losing record in any match ups as well. So, that's, that's, a pretty strong showing. Very, just very much, sort of tap out control rather than, than Draco. So it's playing the full, full four copies of Stock Up. That's for, for new cards myself. Yeah, yeah. From each address, along with stuff like, the wellspring, which the topic timely reinforcements on the stack, by Overlord for copies of Chase the Perfected Mind so you can mail them out if you want to. And just, like, a little bit of permission with, like, very cheap permission with no more lies, the gate and then a ton of them be available and and Day of Judgment sevenfold and temporary lockdown as, can do a lot of work against Facebook. All my stacks. Yeah yeah yeah. But again like similar to how I'm always here for, mono read deck being viable and standard, to be fair and as always control that should probably also be available and standard. It's just what those archetypes are kind of like. I get it's like if you can kind of do these big over overarching like that, that people can like, like the bits change how you play, the deck stays the same. That's how kind of you keep players going over. If they like a style of that kind of stuff. One go you mentioned stock up. We could talk about that on our set. Review this cards $5. James. Yeah I'm it's it's it's yeah it's a full dolphin and multiple challenge winning vintage stack list. So it's kind of hard on what I mean. I say that's just where they go for it. So it's, But Josh can win. He just went with the hand sandwich. That's all. That's, Nice thing. Well, if there's some, like, nonsense, I believe that paradoxical outcome that playing for stack ups. Along with like you paradoxical outcome back fun, the trap trainer and your weird enchantment that detects them. It it doesn't make sense to me why the stack would be good, but apparently it has. But I, I'm not sure. Vintage. Apparently I know what side and vintage is because Treasure cruises restricted. There we go. Trajectories this restricted so. But, you know, I have a card, so I think stock up is pretty legit. Like it's basically deck through time, right. The cost free manner. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I again I, I think from a set view I think we both liked this card. I do think I was a bit more I'm gonna say more mid on it. But yeah I to be fair I can't argue like if, if a card is putting up numbers in. Yeah yeah. Deck using a stock up standard vintage standard modern legacy. All right. It's played in every competitive format. I will accept my hot take might not have been on the mark on this one, but cool. All right. A couple of other bits to touch on. So the other big bit. So so there were a bunch of spoilers that came out from Magic on Chicago. Specifically about Torque Head Dragon Storm. That looks pretty cool. That was pretty. There will be a set review of that when it comes out. We don't want to kind of, spoil that ahead here by talking about any of the spoilers, but they are online if you wanna go check them out. The other big announcement is we had it confirmed what the last set of the year is going to be, and we already knew it was going to be a universe beyond set, but we found out that it's going to be Avatar The Last Airbender. I don't have anything to say about Avatar The Last Airbender James IV. I know of it. I've never really watched it. I mean, I can read the Wikipedia article with people if they want, but, this is another one. So this is kind of like the world we're in now where basically if this hits, I think it'll really hit for you. If this doesn't hit, then and like, like it's unlike other magic sets where, where it's in the universe, then there's more of a likelihood it'll find a middle ground and people will kind of be here for it with this. Like from a thematic point of view, I don't care. But like I've been saying this with like stuff about Final Fantasy, they're kind of like, I might not be a Final Fantasy fan, I might not be a Spider-Man fan, I might not be an Avatar The Last Airbender fan, but I am a magic fan. And if there's cool cards that just are cool and awesome and come out of it, then I'm kind of here for it from a schematic point of view. Like like like that. Like this doesn't hit for me the same way as, like Lord of the Rings or Warhammer did, but I think I just let's just the era of magic we're in right now where some of it just doesn't excite us as much as it used to. James, what what's your thoughts on this? Have you ever watched Avatar The Last Airbender? The original cartoon, or the bad M Night Shyamalan movie? I honestly what I saw on television, this was the next secret laugh. I thought they were talking about the film with the blue people. James Cameron's avatar. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's a different thing, apparently. That is not there. That is not this that we're guessing. Yeah, I don't care about this IP. I've never I've not engaged at all. I mean, I've had a rant on this podcast about secret labs, about, universes beyond before, but to me, this seems like something that would have been a cool, like secret lair or supplemental product so that, like Commander Dax for commander. That's perfect. Right? Because then it's like there's actually four elements in this, like, yeah, I'd want to get involved. Can go and buy it and engage from it, but it's not something that everyone has to engage with because a lot of people aren't really going to be that invested in this IP. VI and, you know, to me, I think a lot of people would much rather have like a in the universe magic set versus this. I don't want to make you feel worse about this, but that they pushed low in back for this. Yeah. No. When you go in sick as well, like, how about it's universes beyond battle plan? And I think when they said kiwico. Okay, wait, it's it's when they said that they were pushing low and back to make room or something like that, they'd made me think, we're getting something like something big, like Game of Thrones, like Star Trek, like this. This is no disrespect to Avatar The Last Airbender fans, but like, I'm it's coming off the Marvel. I'm going to use the term a proper IP. And again, no offense to avatar and the last I thought The Last Airbender fans, you are valid. You are saying we love you, but it's when they push like every time people have been wanting for years back to make room for something I was expecting something that I, the vast majority of people will want. And and there was a world where where I don't realize how big the last avatar oh, Avatar The Last Airbender fan ship is like it was like a Nickelodeon cartoons. There will be a lot people who grew up with it fully appreciate that, but yeah, it's it's it's it's much more the Marmite thing right now. It's people will love it or hate it rather than kind of be like interested just because it's the current magic. So I would say just from a theming point of view, like the fact that it is based around the, four elements of fire, water, and but like that does feel a bit more magic than something like Final Fantasy. I think it will fit in easier because it will be like, I mean, like lightning bolt, but, you know, not not though there isn't lightning. So. So fireball, for example, could be in the card or like that kind of stuff like the question is have a, lobbied for Avatar The Last Airbender of Vice as to retroactively add, oh, this to that element? That's one. Yeah, yeah. Annoyingly it is. Yeah. From from a game point of view, it's like like it's it's probably better from a gameplay point of view that it's not just like a mono colored set. Oh no, you just green will not be appearing in the set. Are you like, no, no I guess green is earth, right. So what are we missing? Well, planes could also be oh, it's planes, wind, I guess planes just wind. Mountains fire. So? So black. So swamp thing, right? Yeah. Okay. We need so. I don't think so. Yeah. So like that, like I've, I've heard some bits of, like, people talking about avatar and there are some things that are cool because like, again, I've already said that this isn't a real IP and I feel I'm, I'm allowed to put my foot in it more with the Avatar The Last Airbender fans. And I apologize this, but what I've heard is that the general consensus for a long time was that water was the worst one, that it's like, oh, you can do water, what's that? But apparently the evil people in Avatar The Last Airbender, I think, called water because you can do stuff with blood. And that's kind of weird. So like, like like that, there could be stuff there. And I think I'd like, like the fact, like the vibe of avatar that I've seen does look a bit kind of like just guy from Colin's. Anyway, we are getting that this year, so I don't know, like, it's as always, we'll see what the cards do. Hopefully there'll be some cool ones for cube that's at that end of the day is kind of why we're here. The fact that these universes be on our standard sets now does give me a bit more hope that if you don't like, like, like like cousin, like Lord of the rings, we've been, like, forced to like. Like if you like of things or not. If you want to cube, you probably been forced to kind of like include some of them just because a power level like one ring, that kind of stuff with these, because they're standard sets, there is a world where they don't make that much of a splash. Like like I don't think I've added any ether drift cards to my main cube, which is a sign that kind of like standard sets don't always have to have those kind of just raw, impactful cards in them. So there was a world where maybe avatar doesn't have that kind of stuff, like, like, like like it would be nice if they say, if you want to interact with it, cool. You can. It's not you don't have to as much different if you're playing standard, because it's going to be a pillar of the format for quite a while. But as I said, hopefully they don't just vex standard by trying to push the universes beyond stuff too much because I don't play standard in a long time. That's what's watching a baby's fairy tales. She looks quite cool. Maybe I'll write off reader and, I'll give it a bash by the end of the year. James, you know that Spider-Man meme where it's two Spider-Man's pointing at each other? That will be standard. That will be accepted. I'll be the dude with the arrow on his forehead from, that that that I just saw on the last seven. That is that not avatar? Now, I know it's not. I know it's not avatar. I think his name is Aang, but I could be mistaken. All right, last bit of news before we jump into, on my topic for today, I'm just a quick one. So one thing they announced there wasn't that much gone, but it was on a investor call, which is always a good way to get your info on this. The Spider-Man set was coming out. It's like the I wouldn't say it's in Q3 is like the second last set of the year. So the fifth set of the year, the Spider-Man set is not going to have any command X, which I think is a little weird of any of the sets where you would assume they're going to ram it with command, or where there's room for command. The decks, you would assume it's the Spider-Man set, like I it's weird. I'm kind of like like I, I'm kind of fine with them only printing like, two. Yeah, like like like. But make the drift. We only had two command that actually didn't have the full four and that felt five. Me there was a nice like smattering of calls and just two cards that you could look at, for your cube and your command. The next one is like four commands every set. That does seem a bit much, but to go down to zero does seem a little bit weird, especially because you're spending all the money on the Marvel IP in the first place. Like, I'm assuming there must be something in the contract that that means they can't do this yet. Or maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there will be a just a generic marvel. Come on the decks at the same time we haven't announced yet. Maybe that's what they're doing, but I yeah, they seemed a little bit weird to me. James, what do you think of that? Oh, no. Come on. The decks with the Spider-Man set. I honestly think it might just be the. They've releasing so many products, they didn't have enough developers to make Commander hacks. Well, I don't know. That seems very fat. Yeah, yeah, maybe we should just have fewer standard Lego sets and then universes beyond. Just spitballing here. I mean, did you also have universes beyond that are going to be more expensive than standard sets as well than regular standard sets, even though they are standard sets? Oh yeah. Yeah, that sets too. Yeah. That's miserable I think. I yeah, I didn't have that one in the note because it just bummed me out a little bit. But which means the singles will also be more expensive, which means standard will get more expensive and rotate more often. Yeah. Cool. Well, not only takes more often, but have new cards more often. I think that's a lovely segue, James. We just went from talking about how standard might be getting more expensive to how you can make your cubing experience cheaper. My topic today is today we're going to be talking about how to proxy a cube. And this is something that me and James have both done. Oh. That's come with you guys to help us out and put off cubes together. Today, we're going to be going over the steps to do this, and also kind of like why you would proxy a cube. I of the ethics behind it a little bit. One of those things is easier to go over. So you might just start there. So let's start with like why would you proxy a cube. So for most people this does this because this does come down to cost. Cubes can cost thousands of pounds. And that's a very high cost to entry that I think puts off a lot of people. A lot of people play Cube on Mitko and things like that. But they don't. But, but but they might not they may not necessarily have one in that playgroup just because of that cost of entry. I mean, when I say so, I now have two full cubes that I maintain all the time. The second one was 90% proxy. When I proxied that cube, the sleeves cost almost the same as the cube itself, and that's kind of like the the. I'll get into more specifics in this episode, but like, that's kind of like the ballpark that we're working with. It really does just lower the barrier, lower that barrier of entry. That means more people are able to keep. So, James, you also put together your cube last year, and do you think you would have been able to do that without proxies? I'm just looking on cube cap for now. My, the cheapest, like it says I could buy that cube for in paper is $21,600. Yours is powered. So that's exactly why even even mine is unpowered. I think there's like is nine. So I made this really foolish decision where I use that money for deposit for a flat instead of instead of I proxy to my power cube instead of, instead of getting the actual cost, you think of what you could have hoped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, it's found. So I don't think I would have built that cube, without viability proxy. And, like, maybe I would have built, like, a budget cube or something instead. But honestly, a lot of the reason I built that cube was like, I really enjoy Power Cube, and I thought it'd be cool to be able to do that with my friends in the pub. So yeah, I think probably I just wouldn't have built a cube if I, if I didn't have access to, to like, good foxes because I said, we are talking here about good, high quality foxes without like, I don't want a cube where. So I don't really want to play a cube where someone's just written black lotus on a basic island that much like, I mean, there's it's fine if you're, like, testing stuff out or whatever. I have a bad fat that's, like, you don't want the whole cube of rubbish quality foxes, in my opinion. So, yeah, having access, like, very good quality foxes is very nice. Yeah, yeah. And the process for that is what we're going to be going over today. But also like from my point of view as well, just like there is a piece of mind element, I kind of like as you mentioned, like we, we play in the pub or we play at people's houses, that kind of stuff. And there are like generally are there, but like, especially if you're out in public, there are other people in that environment. They're kind of like also accidents happen, like drinks get spilled. That kind of said, like there is something to be said about not bringing cards worth thousands of pounds to a bar or to the pub and not have having them like having the worst case scenario of like something go missing or like a car get lost like, but like like like like natural acting. So I'm not even talking about like like like like like people I like, I like someone random coming by and swiping a card. Just like I can't get knocked on the floor and get missed and get lost. And if that's a real card, that could be hundreds of pounds. But if it's like a proxy jewel land that's worth like 30 be, it's more annoying that you have to then proxy it again. It's not like, oh well, I just lost a couple of hundred quid like that thing's kind of back breaking. Kind of like, as a cube owner, like James, like, how do you think having expensive cards being proxies, as I think these are, like like, how you out the draft? I like personally, I feel kind of like less stress. I don't worry about, where my cards are, like. Like I'll still count. Everyone gives me back the right number, but that's kind of more from an admin point of view rather than, oh, no, my money point of view. Like, are you going to have one? Yeah for sure. I mean, maybe I should start doing that actually, because what keeps happening is that people take that deck apart for basic clans, for for basics and the spells and the spells box. And forget about the sideboard and take the sideboard time with them like that. Yeah, that always happens. And, if those are real expensive cards, that is now like a slightly stressful situation for me, right? Like I'm sorry, I just because I didn't I wouldn't like having like all the expensive stuff like randomly not in my cube. So yeah, it just makes, the whole thing a lot more chilled, I think. So yeah, I think, I mean, it's affecting, it's just like stuff as cheap. I don't really use the real thing, but, but yeah, I'm. I'm just not out that, go and spend thousands on, on a cube because I think it does to me, it doesn't enhance replay experience. And, it is going to add more stress and obviously the expense and everything else. And like, obviously the some people have like a goal to own a fully nontoxic version of one of a cube. And I think that's really cool. Typically, I like I'm also it's like not a thing that drives me because I'm just not a collector in that way. Like that isn't that's never been a part of magic that's actually appealed to me that much. I've always been more for the gameplay from the collectibility part. I don't see that's very different for different people. That's about your personal relationship with magic, and this isn't to, to say that that aspect doesn't matter. And I think, it's just to say that if you just want, if you're also not in it for the collection part, you're just in it, to have a cool gameplay experience from your cube. Like this is a very good way to do it. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that. The last thing kind of on on this part or on this section, it seems like, one thing I've also gotten out of proxying a cube is that. Yeah. Because that cost of entry is so much like, I know, and and like, like even, like budget cubes. Kind of like like like like like like it's one of the reasons why on this channel, I've not really like or we haven't really done episodes on like how to build a budget cube because like, like even a budget cube, it's still going to be like if you want it to be like, have cars like Lightning Bolt and counts have like cards that people know it's all going to be about $500 once it's all come together. And kind of like, are you personally wouldn't like I again anyone like like like how people spend their money is how they people spend them. Like spend your money how you want. But personally I can't recommend to someone going spend $500 on a like budget cube when you could proxy absolutely anything for half that cost er, including sleeves in a box. Like the main thing I've got out of proxying is that it's let me have multiple cubes. So my first cube was mostly real cards because like the ordering from the, the process we're going to go through today wasn't as X as accessible. When I put my cube together about five years ago. I proxy like at the time that every card over, like the £50 mark. But my second cube, I buy it. I put it together. We will do an episode on it in a few weeks, but kind of like, like every card worth over 30 B is a proxy unless I owned it. And if I'm honest with you, I own, like, a spare copy of it because I do have causing the amount of decks. It was just that easy. I made my list and I ordered and yeah, it's just like it means that a cube now costs like 200, £250 for the whole thing, including like boxes, leaves and stuff. And that's just such a lower cost of entry that not only does it mean people can have their first cubes, it means after a while you could have your second cube or your third cube. You can do different things like that's very cool. And it's really something that as someone who likes cube enough to have a podcast about it, I don't know how you feel about the James, but like that, just having that ability to like, just do something new and cool is really interesting to me and is something that kind of like gets me excited. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it just gives you more flexibility in how you build your cube as well. So for example, I'm putting together for moment in paper a one eight card. So like 2 to 4 player version, for $100 for the cube, which I'm pretty psyched about. Again, shout outs. Not sharing me for the on the webcam love set. Shout outs. Let's take for eight hours all five life. Coming up at cube, I keep sick. And most of the cards are very cheap. It's going to be most. So it's going to be mostly real cards that also value the cards. I would just have to cut if I didn't have access. Foxy's like, I'm not going to spend £150 on that craft pledge. Don't need to do that. Yeah, but that card is really cool. And the cube. Right. That's like one of the most I have to me like one of the coolest combo things you can do is the craft deck. I think it plays really well. So yeah, like if I didn't have access to this, I would just have to cut that card and that would be a real shame. This just lets you get. So it just gives you access to a broader range of things. Right? Because something like craft, that's not really a card you can sub into at first craft, it's a very unique no, it's very unique. Yeah. I mean there's, there's a lot of worth much, much worse. Like oh we get Springleaf drum. No, no it's not the same thing. It's not the same guy. Yeah. No that's it. Yeah yeah I yeah doing this kind of proxying will just let you try more things. It just makes things more attainable for everyone. And that's awesome. Before we get into the how to do it, we all we should probably touch on like, what are the moral implications of proxying? A because one thing that's important, and I do want to stress it, is that we are talking about proxies. We are not talking or supporting in any way counterfeit cards. And there is a massive difference between that, because proxies, cards that look like magic cards, but they cannot be mistaken for for a real magic card. So for example, like in this method that we're doing, you are going to get high quality proxies. But there is 100% no way of making them look like magic cards or be confused fully. Like for example, all of the cards that come out of this method, will have in tiny writing on the bottom, this is a proxy or on the back will have a different magic bag. Like like like like like it'll have like maybe the magic back, but but without the Magic the Gathering logo on the back. So so so there isn't a fear that you can confuse them with real magic cards. So like, we are not supporting counterfeiting here. We are not trying to trick people into thinking that we have these real cards. We're not trying to get magic cards to then sell to other people because that's really shady and shitty. We are trying to get proxies, high quality proxies, so that the game experience works like a regular draft, and so that and so that the cards can be played along with real magic cards. But we're not trying to trick anyone into thinking that these cards are real. Like from a personal point of view. As I mentioned, my wife is in Italy right now playing eternal format. She's playing legacy and vintage. I do not want her going like like she borrows cards from me. I don't want her going through the queue and be like, oh, you have this jewel land now. Cool. I'm going to use this. And then it's a and then it's a counterfeit. And then you get dude from a tournament. I don't want that. That would be incredibly bad. So all the cards are quite like like like they are high quality. They look good, but they are not confused with real cards. And I do think that is an important distinction when we are talking about this. Like we are not pro counterfeiting in any way. Yes for sure. And if you do get these proxies, don't play for them in sanctioned events like do not do that. Yeah. If you're. Yeah. Even if it's like a lot of Nephilim or something and you're like oh I don't it's that son. Just don't play with that. So I'm like, don't, don't try and play the proxy one. You will get kicked out of the store because that's not sanctioned events to work. It's fine, but not we're not railing against that. For sanctioned events you need for real cards, which has got to make that money somehow. That's fine. But if you are playing in a pub or your house or wherever you like to play your magic, crack on, I say get the foxes for any good you can play proxies in game stores on with his own website. I'll put a link to it in the show notes that, like they do, say stores can run unsanctioned events or support unsanctioned events. There is nothing stopping people from playing proxies in game stores. It is purely if you're using like, but like if you are promoting it, using wizards like logos and that kind of stuff. Or if you're using like the companion app, then it has to be sanctioned. But cube isn't like that. You don't do that for cube most of the time, or any of the time. Like unchecked, like like you can still play with these proxies in the game store. And also it's it's a cube. Like generally speaking, you are going to be playing with people you know, they don't care where the cards came from, but they just care that they know what they do. They look good and that you can and that you've organized it. You've gone to the effort of putting a cube together and organizing a draft. That is what they are there for. They are not there to be like, oh, the the back of this card that's behind a slave I can't see doesn't have the logo on it. Therefore my immersion is ruined. Yeah. There may be greater barriers to but, than that given the recent developments. Yeah. That Spider-Man's going to brew it much more than the back of the card. Exactly. So. But, but yeah, so so I, I do think that was an important distinction to make because, yeah, we are not broke out of it. We are like like we don't want to trick anyone. We are being open and honest with what we are doing here. I feel like this is just another tool you can use to make cube more accessible. Let's actually talk about, the process we're going to be going through today. I used a service called MPC fill, which loads cards and produces an order from make playing cards.com. Worth mentioning that we are not affiliated with the either of these in any way. If anything, this is kind of anti affiliation because I am affiliated with TCG player. So so as I've said, I guess I, I'm kind of worry about it, but James, you did find this initially as a way of like helping to put like, Canadian Highlander decks together. I kind of like, can you tell us a little bit about MPC film and kind of like how you've used it in the past? Yeah, for sure. So, mention make playing cards.com make playing. Cars.com is a company that prints like good, good, high quality custom playing cards basically, but not magic specific. And I way you just if you want to just use make playing cards.com, you upload an image to be the front of your cards and image to be the back of your cards, and that's fine. And then they print it off and send it to you and it's good. It's high quality and that works fine. The issue is if you want, it's a proxy, like hundreds of distinct cards, the amount of legwork you would have to do to go and find all those images, upload them manually one by one to make playing cars.com is not really set up to do hundreds of unique things. It is set up to do like custom playing cards with custom packs, you know, so it's not optimized for that place that it would take you many, many hours. I think to do like a big old I feel like if you were doing like a large amount of achieve that way. So that's where a piece of software called MPC fill comes in. At MPC fill is a open source, free to use piece of software, that is designed to automate this process of making magic boxes with make playing cars.com it it's okay to use like it's a bit fiddly, but it is a lot easier than doing it, manually through the make playing cards website. Basically, you download VMC fill app, you give it a list of cards you want, it will find images for those cards for you. It will let you select the artwork you want, and it will then create the order for you. Like playing cards, I'll call it will upload those images for website and create you an order. Yeah, yeah. It's it's been pretty smooth that like like we'll, we'll jump into each of those things in a bit more detail in a moment, but like, like like for, like from my end. Like, like I had used, make playing cards.com beforehand when like like like like a few times I've made like Christmas cards. Like like like made like made my own magic cards to give out to people for Christmas. I use make play. I used make playing cards for that. Like, the quality is pretty good with these and that. Yeah. Yeah, the I just kind of takes off the LED work because like when I was doing like those Christmas cards, there are things like, like, like print borders, NPCs, people will take care of that. Like, if you uploaded your own artwork to, make things that you need to add, like bleed lines. So, so you need to add a bunch of black space around the edge of cards so that, when they cut it up and when they print it, that that the artwork is as it should be. Basically, NPCs will just takes care of all of the background faffing that is there. That's kind of James mentioned. So kind of like let's go kind of step by step a little bit. That's right. James, but kind of like, so the first thing you do is you go to the NPC site and you make a new project and you enter in your list. This is this can be copied from cube Cobra. It can be a list you've made your cells. Or if you wanted to, you could just take the current go vintage list. Or they make Go Vintage cube list. Copy and paste it in and that will start generating your order. The list, the capsize order is 612 cards, so you do have a bit of flexibility. You can put some more on as well. The choosing your artwork part. So so so once you've got your list, then it will show you all the cards that you can then cycle through a bunch of preexisting artwork. So some of it is, high res scans with like, this is a proxy written on the bottom right hand corner. There are altars on there. You can get different frames. I would personally spend it, but it's like if you just want something to be functional and work, you can just click submit and it will work. But it is worth going through and just just clicking through and finding artwork that you like or that you think is good. I know James, you've had some comments on one of your like, was it your underground? C is kind of egregious. Oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. It's not even a real magical work. I don't know where it I don't know, I was, stuck on that list, but I was getting annoyed at felt by this stage that used to be a little bit less smooth, for that is now at. I didn't check all the back to. Yeah. To a satisfactory level. As it turns out, I don't. Yeah, the underground C does bother me to be honest. I mean that's one. Yeah. But the last thing. But yeah so so I don't I mean I listed it for, for my, I think I posted recently, I think it took me about like half an hour, an hour just go through and just like this, because you can either click the next button to cycle through them, or you can click on the artwork itself, and then it'll show you all ones that are available. It generally takes like a couple of weeks for new sets to come up, but like, what we are like three weeks after the just come out, that will definitely all be on there by now. Just a thing on some of the, some of the, technical lingo. So the higher the DPI, that means the higher the resolution will be. So all of them have a DPI number next. The higher the number, like that's I think dots per square inch. The higher the number it will be. You also pick the art that will appear on the back of the card. There's a couple of you you can cycle through. Obviously, the website does also take care of double face cards automatically, which is fantastic. Otherwise you would have to do that manually and in like pango.com. And that kind of sucks. But it takes care of everything for you. It's all pretty good at. What then happens is the website will explore the whole project as an XML file. You save that into a folder, and then you download the NPC auto app and save it in the same folder as the XML file. You then open up the NPC autofill app, which will start processing everything, and basically it does it just for a little bit weird because it does take control of like a browser, but it is using, the open source software that is generally used for this thing. It feels a bit weird, but it is all good. It's all above board. Everything's fine. Effectively, yeah. It opens up your default browser and will start, like, dragging stuff along. But like this process used to take. I think the first time I did this, it took like eight hours to do like a full 612 cards. Last time I did it, it was like half an hour is improved dramatically over the last like 6 to 12 months. And it's now much smoother. But basically what it does is it opens up a browser and opens up make playing come and makes you your audit starts manually filling in the whole order for you. And then basically at the end you are left with your order and then that's when you just click like, you just add it to your cart and you click buy and you enter your shipping details and effectively that is it. Like the set up is uploading your list to it and then it'll make the whole thing for you. It's pretty. It's pretty smooth I like that. Apart from the times getting a bit quicker since last time you did it times, is that basically your experience of it as well? Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's and like this is all documented as well. That's that's pretty good guide. I think we can maybe put in the show notes. Yeah. Why the, the, the it's pretty nicely set out the process. It's. Yeah. I mean, obviously this isn't like, you know, some commercially produced piece of software where it's going to be all beautifully laid out for you. And, like you do need to vacate and, copy things around your PC a little bit, but it's nothing that would be technical. It's nothing terribly challenging. And, Yeah. And I gave I'd say like, you're giving this piece of software the ability to open up that window, do stuff on your PC, which feels weird, but, I know you can seal the code on GitHub yourself if you're so minded. And, I think there's there's particularly an issue with it. Certainly. I've never had an issue with it. Personally, that's, I think it's pretty useful tool. So. So yeah, once you've made your order, the next thing to do is to get it shipped to you. And like, with, this will generally change depending on where you are in the world. But these cards are being printed in China. And, you know, they generally there's two types of shipping. There's regular or fast. This is also something that's got better. It's generally either like, like 2 to 3 weeks is the regular or like a week or two is the fast. That is something that has got better as well. I know that kind of, you did have an issue once with this James. Where where the order got lost by it wasn't the the processes fault. It was the mailing company that lost the card that misplaced the cards. But you did get a replacement order sent to you, is that right? Yeah. If it got lost somewhere after customs in someone's warehouse at some point, and I message make, find cards for like, oh, it's been like a month, and my cards aren't here. What's going on? They sent me another order, which arrived, like, a week later. And then I think literally six months after that, the original order also showed up at my flat. Yeah, I do have it. Nice. Okay. I just randomly have two coffees, so I found a use for the other ones. Yeah, for Vasyl, I've still got them. But yeah, big time cards are fine about it. I like some kind of, another coffee. This isn't, we've got, like, obviously we're just going off our personal experience there. I'm sure some people at some point will have had issues with, like, playing cards. Yeah. It's true of most companies, like, we're just sharing our personal experience there. But yeah, mine have been been very positive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both. Oh, I guess actually I've done two proxy orders with them and I've done like two lots of the Christmas cards. Orders with them. Yeah. Mine have generally been pretty good. Like, like I can feel they're a bit weird to begin with because the tracking code only works on, like they won't work on your, like, local country's, order form. Like, like like in the UK, it would be Royal Mail. We would use to check where an item is. And it wasn't didn't update. And and it didn't update until it was in the UK. That kind of feel a bit weird, but like it is coming. It is fine. It is tracked as well, but like even the cheaper option is still tracked so you don't have to worry about that. Yeah, sure. To do just be aware of say in that unless you live in China, presumably, I assume it's go up quick at the same time as people. This will take a couple of weeks at least. Don't don't make an order and then organize a keep draft for next week. You can do that. But percent. Yeah, it I think if you're going to give it a bit of time, it's it works pretty well. Exactly. Make sense? So let's kind of talk about the main reason that we're here and that's the, the cost of the thing. So how much does it cost to proxy? Q so generally, the way it works is the larger the order is, the cheaper per card it works out to be. That's based on my printing point of view, and also a fact that kind of the shipping is like half the cost of the order. So for context, for a cube size 540 cards, including postage, the cheaper postage, it was around 150 pounds, so a bit less than $200. That's a 540 cards. That's very good. It works out around 30 per card or, $0.35 a card. And that's kind of the main reason that we're here for this is that, that is just such that really lowers any cost of entry and it kind of. Yeah, you it goes into what we talked about earlier, just like for peace of mind. I don't care if a 30 £0.30 card gets damaged. It's more annoying. I have to get another one of it, but it's like it's still a thing of like that. Yeah. It just that is so cheap. That is. It is why we are talking about this. Yeah. Yeah, just. Yeah, it's always the cost of entry and it's just pretty solid. I think more people should be aware of aware of this option out there because, like, like, I don't think you could even get a pop a cube for $200. Yeah. I mean, the other thing, when you're when you're buying the real cards, are you're not going to get all of them from one vendor. It's realistically, so you take a lot more time to have shuffling around and then you're even there. You're paying less for shipping. Because it's not coming from China. You're also playing shipping on like 1015. I'm not sure if you're if you're ordering a whole 540 cube, obviously, if you just have a lot of cards already that boost so needle and maybe then if if you have a bunch of cards and, it's a fairly budget cube, like it's a cube, whatever, then. Yeah, I think by all means get the real cards. But, oh, she just prefers to have a real cost. That's that's totally valid, I get it, but, if you're looking at a cube being like, oh, it'll be very cool to build this, but I don't want to. Yeah. Droplets of cash and all these expensive magic cards. Yeah. You can you can get a whole cube, for less than $200, which is pretty good. Less than like, like, like half the price or over half the price of the winning standard deck from the last proton that we were talking about as an example. Just just putting it out there as well. But, yeah, kind of like, a couple of things to just be aware of. If you think of doing this is like, every country's import fees and tariffs are different and changing all the time by the news anyway. So, so I think places like the US and Australia are kind of vying for this. From their own website, it says there's no import tax. That is correct. As of the 1st of March 2025. Check the website. When you're doing this, check your government's import tax information. Like like like in the UK, for example, we have to pay you VAT on every order that's worth over 130 pounds. And that includes shipping. So like I did a I didn't order like about six months to a year ago, that was like £200. I got a VAT bill after on top of that, my last order, I made sure was less than 130 pounds, but I didn't have to pay you back. That is a lot like that's a thing for the UK. I think there are some countries like like like for Europe and Canada where this might be more relevant. So just Google your own countries, import tariffs and just work that out basically because like the last thing we want is for people to do this method and be like, cool, I got a cheap tube and then they get a bill from their version of Royal Mail six months later for £50. Doesn't feel doesn't feel nice. But yeah, just worth worth mentioning and yeah. But as per the website, America and Australia have no issues with this whatsoever. So crack on and I would assume. Yeah, mainland China as well. I hope you have some, viewers and listeners in mainland China. I'm assuming. Yeah, it's cheap for them to get it posted because going to be a little bit closer. And also actually, again, when we said the shipping costs were was half the cube, we are basing that on shipping it to the UK. Actually, we are probably as far away from China via for shipping means as you can get. So again, if you're in Australia or maybe South America or North America, it'll probably be cheaper just like that. So so this could actually be way cheaper actually just just because shipping does take up generally for us about half the cost. But even for us it's still very attainable and very reasonably priced. So yeah, just did it. Just have a look, something to consider as well. Nice. And the other thing just just to kind of mention and keep it with like like again so like so like you can like like if you just want to proxy the whole list and just have it easy and done nicely, then by all means do that. One thing that I did with the last, but with the last queue by proxy, which I mentioned earlier, is I did any card that was worth less than the cost of a proxy I purchased and I didn't use. And I also checked for cards I already owned. The reason I did that is because actually I got the proxies for two cubes in one order. I got this 540, cube that I was putting together. And also I got a four player cube as well out of one order. And that's something you can consider as well. Like you, you can do multiple things or one thing I did with the larger order is just had a word with my friends. Are there any proxies that you want, that kind of thing. And the other thing as well to keep in mind is that this obviously gets you over that initial cost of entry for a cube, but if it's updates, you're not going to be doing this kind of big proxy order like every month. Just just because of the cost of shipping is generally going to be too high. So one thing that can be worth doing on your first order, if you're going to do, is it's just if there are any other cards that kind of blow either like expensive or that you kind of like thinking you could play in the future, maybe just add them to the order as well so you have them available to you so you don't have to like, buy them in real life. It's kind of like like say you wanted to like like say you think Talon Academy could go in your cube, but you're not sure if you want to try it out straight away. Maybe try and just add it to the order. It's £0.30 that's much better than $100 later down the line. Basically, it's kind of what I'm saying with that. Yeah, for sure. I think for V, set by updates for your cube of C. Yeah. So you're not doing a big order every time. So what I would do is if they're cheap and you want them invite away, just five available copies. And if they're expensive, then let's just maintain a list of cards, but, that you want to get. And maybe in six months time, a time you might want to do the following. These proxy orders. Or maybe you're building another cube or something, or you want proxies for something else. And, and then you can just you have that list ready to go, and you can get a bunch of updates for your cube at the same time. Yeah, 100%. And last thing to kind of well, another thing I do want to touch on is the quality of the cards. So we wouldn't be recommending this if we didn't think the the quality was good. So an inner sleeve. I don't think you can tell the difference between one of these cards and a real magic card. If left out of a sleeve, they will curl slightly quicker than at least an older magic card, probably a little bit quicker than a new magic card. It is a different core on the inside, so if you rip them open, I think it's black core rather than blue coral or something like that. There's some weird printing method there, kind of like the actual magic stock. It's harder to get hold of, but it is inner sleeve. I do not think you can tell the difference. And like, yeah, I've had some in sleeves and boxes for a couple of years and then I've had no issues. Everything is completely fine. Like like would you I think with the games in terms of quality. Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean they look great. They. Yeah, they look like a real magic card. Except it says Foxy Dot for sale in the bottom right. And, yeah, I've not had any issues with curling. And this is why we're recommending you. I mean, recommending you can do what you want. We're just jamming out fancies, right? But, this is why where we go and spend£300 on a ordering some Foxy's off a van, just printing them off on a printer. Right. They, Yeah, they do look like pop magic cards in the way that if you're playing with, then you feel like you're playing with Fox is really no 100%. Yeah. It's almost become to a point where like like like like when you're playing with them, you do not think about them as being proxies. It's literally when you make the order that is the period where they are proxies, then they are just the game. They are just part of your cube. They are game pieces we're talking about. I say, because we do recommend this as a service, it is good. And if you can get use out of it, that was kind of the point of the day. There is like one little thing I kind of want to finish up on and that's kind of like, like we I generally found people have got more open to proxies in general. I don't think that they're there for commander yet, because there is an element of like, where is the kind of line in commander? There's a kind of social contract that's a bit more there in commander than there is in something like Cube or Canadian Highlander, where I kind of let you know where you where you said, you know what you're doing when you're sitting down. It's kind of like there isn't that pre conversation of like, what power level are we at that kind of stuff that's a little bit pressing. Commander. Kind of like like like like like if you proxied a dual land for a cube, no one's really gonna care about that because anyone who's cubing could have access to it. If you kind of proxy some lands to make your mana base in a command, like a bit more tuned, that people are more likely to have an issue with, that is, you know, fine. But like, that issue isn't going to be with the proxy itself. It's more with the use case of it is generally what I found with things. Yeah. I think this is why cube is the perfect place for proxies, in my opinion, because you're not getting some sort of competitive advantage out to having proxies right in the way that you would in a commander deck. If you're playing a fetch land to land at a pace because you proxy it at all and your opponent's playing back guild gates, yeah. And like that, like personally with Commander, I tend not to proxy very much. I have occasionally one. I just haven't been able to get the cards. And that was a very cool card. I wanted to try. Basically, I don't care if my opponents do, but. Yeah. So if it's for, like, educate, like, yeah, it's like, I want my deck to do this cool thing. I couldn't get the card for whatever reason. I don't care if you proxy it. But one time it has felt like, kind of feel bad to me is when my opponent. Yeah, it's actually for a base thing where it's like, yeah, you're not making your deck cool. The fundamental part of. Yeah, Kim, the finger deck is trying to achieve. You're just raising the power level by having a better mana base than I do, and then anyone else at the table does. So that's like, you're getting a competitive edge over everyone else at the table by proxy. And obviously as a competitive edge, like it's command, it's not competitive. And which is why like I'm not going to make a massive issue out of it if someone does that. That's that is sort of where I would draw the line. Yeah, I yeah, I am not a proxy for commander, but this is very much a thing for your playthrough to decide exactly, exactly what in the. If I was going to go and play commander in the wild. Frankly, I, I think I've still not played a game of commander in the wild. Now it's. I think that James. It's not. Yeah, it it might come back to it. I'm quite fine. I don't want to have. Oh, like, I don't want to have all the conversations. I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with people getting salty. I like ops. I agree for a lot. Yeah, I like that dynamic. I'm just going to keep my commander there. But, yeah, I probably would recommend not showing up to a game of commander, I guess, because it's something. Yeah. And another thing we are talking about this into, like, like for for today. We are talking about it in the constructive cube. In cube. We do think it's fine. Like like. Yeah I've basically since I folks eat for commander, it's just been like I didn't have access to a card right away and I so if building my deck of a last minute and I just want to put the card in the the most egregious one was I had it that quick, like a shriveled, wrist janky combo with like a mastery and following a bunch of cards. I realized I couldn't escape the loop because I could draw my deck. I wouldn't lose the game, said let's just mastery and play. But it was in an inescapable loop with, where that keeps being a lose the game trick I get on the stack. And then it resolves and you don't lose a game. So that's just massive and just goes on the stack again. And I need to have an instance be disenchant for my deck, and I couldn't find one in my do. So I proxy the disenchant, which is I will say no. No, that's pretty busy. Nice. Now be the I'll say, the only other form that is C4 is Canadian Highlander, because again, we just play offensive I it's not sanctioned and I've like zero interest in spending that amount of money on the depth Canadian Highlander that I could imagine said being similar just because it's like it's I haven't I've not really played it, but I do respect the fact that it is just I'm sitting down to win like it's everyone knows the playing field that you're walking into. And that's kind of the, the, that's the that's the comparison with Cuban, with Khan. Lando. It's formats. I want to run a bunch of really broken, powerful cards that are very expensive. And you want to have access to them, but you are sitting down to win. You are like, it can be social. It can be chill and relaxed, but you are that. That is the goal of the game with commander there is there just more the social aspect and just like not knowing and like like like there's already struggles to find and even playing field in the first place. You don't need to add proxies to that. I think unless you play group is cool. If you want a proxy and you're playing a crack on, use this video as a way to proxy a bunch of them on the decks because like that is also common is not cheap either. If your whole playgroup is cool with that, then by all means crack on. Like like like I, I the end of the day, you do you. If you are enjoying how you are playing magic, then you are doing it correctly. Yes, for sure for sure. But yeah, it's like we're just sharing our experiences. How how we how we approach fish. You I think you take away from it what you want to and yeah, hopefully this is at least a useful guide on how to proxy if you decide. But you do want to. Phenomenal. Right. So I think that's going to where we're going to leave it for our main topic today. We do have a little bit more to touch on. We're going to move on to what have we been playing. There's a new limited environment out James. You've been enjoying the drift, limited by the sound of things. How has it been and what has been your experiences with the format? Yeah, it's been really cool, actually. It's quite a refreshing change of pace. The version of pretty fast limited formats we've had recently. Ironically, the racing set turns out to be the slowest format we've had said, let's go. Yeah, I love that. Okay, great. So now I'm really honestly. Yeah. And there just you really want to be planning for the late game and giving yourself the most tools you can to, to to win that late game, because you will get there quite a lot. Yeah. My space is I drafted a ton of, you know, the first couple of weeks that came out, had a lot of success right away. I think I was up to, like, number five mythic after a couple of weeks, which is cool. James. I've been there for a while. I was I was sweet, when people started taking the good cards out of the packs, which. Yeah, very, very disrespectful, I fell, I just, I wanted to apply for a refund, so I didn't get past to good cards, but apparently that's not a thing. So. Yeah, since that and, what I've been playing, I've been. Yeah. Sort of trying to find the edges. You can still get it now. People have caught up a little bit, and I think made some pretty good progress in that. Because there is more of a format than just the level one deck, which is it's always good to see, yeah. It's been, it's, it's been a fun format to play, actually. I've had a lot of fun. I think the gameplay is really good. You think it has been slower, like, but I again, because I don't I'm mechanics in that like like max speed but which oddly is a mechanic that I. Well from prerelease anyway. Didn't seem like you were getting off that quickly. It does seem more something that kind of you accrue value over time. I'm like, yeah, what do you think has has caused it to be slower? Yeah, it's it's interesting. You see it's not what you default by looking at from mechanic. Right. But a combination of things I think there's really strong defensive creatures across all the soul colors, basically. Nice. Good. The may sound green, but I've got a class of assault rifles. Rarely things battlefield like the cheap death touches and and they've green and black and green has an incredible array of wave creatures at common, like sleeve. Hazard of the dunes. That's like for Manafort for. Yeah. Like he spends beach trampled. You can make it big. That giant spider and and the, the catch it on this insane as well. That's, six mana, six, six lives each. And when they eat two bees, you gain four. And it has cycling for some of these. And, so these are, like, really good tools that you to a late game. And then the, the cat things like eye catching can stabilize you and then combine that red and white which would be traditionally the most aggressive colors in draft, don't really have the tools to punch free that a lot of the time in the game. Like I think very is aggressive XP good for tricks, probably needs it to be a little bit better in those colors. I feel like the best trick in the format. You're in black mostly. Okay, so, yeah, I'm. I often just don't quite have the, tools to push as much damage as I need to in the early game. And then once the green decks managed to stabilize something like a catch down comes down, then it's really tough to be aggressive that, to really get back into the game. So what I ends up with, I think, is said the dynamic, because you need to place and it's not I can do nothing in terms you do need to play hard to affect the board early, but you really want these cards to do something in the late game as well for the dynamic, because you really need to continually to have ways to spend your mana into the late game. I think we can still go long and the ten menu for out of stuff to do, and then you just don't do anything with your mana and your opponent is doing something with their mana because they have a mana sink. That's often like very hard to come back. So yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. There are things like like like there's cycling in the set, which kind of helps with smoothing. But but it does mean there's kind of things that you want turn to and like there are like like a lot of the cycles are on things like six and seven and eight drops, that kind of stuff. But also I guess like exhaust is, mechanic. They're kind of it's good. It's like, is that what you meant by managing basically kind of like, is it something to do with your mana? Because like, yeah, I, we played some gameplay at home, which is on the, on the channel actually, if you want to check it out, we, made a lot of them and they're just some of them get really big, quite efficiently, like there's like a two man one one that becomes like A55 very easily and then like, yeah, yeah, that does seem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A good use of your mana late game I guess if you're doing more things. Yeah for sure. For sure. The exhaust stacks play very well. I think it's a very good mechanic. Well so I think we've seen similar things. Just mechanic for, for have been sorcery speeds. I think getting to do it at instant speed is it's a fairly big edge fix all the it plays really, really well. And yeah it is that thing of just, trying to find your mana. Even cards like, beast, Strider, Vanguard I think is one that's still pretty underrated, actually. That's the one clean common for A22. You can spend four on a queen to look at the top three cards your library, reveal a permanents in the long term and put it into your hands. So it's got it's it does something early if you need it to trade on turn two, then it trades on turn two. But if you end up in a board still later, yes, we'll put you up to the big advantage. Because if you keep spending on mana takes more action. So I that I think plays a lot better than just for example, the two mana three, two and Queen. Yeah. Now that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From from my experience, of the form mainly from sailing, which I know is a little bit slow, but like, like I had plenty of games where, I was able like, like it like this. My opponent was slightly more aggressive than me. I definitely found that there was times I kind of like, stabilize and turn the game around by kind of building up to something or just doing slightly bigger things on them as like transverse over, just, draft as well. Yes, for sure. Like both stalls are a very real thing and on that I, I like I also feel like we haven't seen a board stall in them since 2019, you know, but, it, it really just happened to me. It's not like because of all of the real hard to punch them sometimes. And so, yeah, having a way to get an edge when you can't attack is really important. And just it's actually I think a skill that is very important in this format is when the board gets stalled out, you feel like you're a little bit ahead, you have a little bit more on board, but you don't have the your attack still doing okay. Easing like figuring out which creature can I start sending to get some trades in that are a little bit okay for me. Like maybe another trade I'd be excited to make normally, but it it clears out enough for the attack for next. I think that's actually like a, a bit of a learn skill. I think that's something that, that some that if you're not used to playing in b spot stall scenarios, I think you can you can lose a few points there. Right? Because you just look at it and it's like, well, I really don't want to trade. I catch it on flat, but I'm not a deft touch feature of I there's sometimes you have to do that because it's going to unlock an attack with your seven seven hazard next stat, right. Oh yeah, something like that. I think one thing I think that kind of signal is, is pretty wise. I know that, there's a card that you put in our group chat. River Chan monument one on a blue, pay one tap any number of target players, each male two cards, and it has an exhaust ability for to blow blue. Any number of players. Each male cards equal to number of cards in that graveyard. So when I looked, when I was doing a video just on building, set cubes like the drift, this is one of the lowest rated cards on something like drafts and. But you actually make this card quite highly. Don't you? Because, like, because you found games have been going longer than you've expected and like actually being able to mill out an opponent seems viable. And like, it's not like there is that much reanimation or graveyard matters stuff in this set. So it's not as much of a like bonus for an opponent to be milled. Is that kind of fair? Yeah, I think this is actually like amongst the best draws in the set. And limited because the we save a game and stall out naturally sometimes. But if you have this card in your deck, you can build your deck to solve a game, right? Because you don't need to attack. At some point you will find this card and it will end the game outside of combat, which is very, very powerful. If you draw it. Because if you draw it early, right, you see, you're not going to use your mana every single turn on this. You will need to affect the board some time. But, the turns where you have a spare mana, you just Melvin for two and, it does put a very real clock on them because of that exhaust ability. If it didn't have the exhaust built, you would be far, far weaker than it means. Even if they don't put any cosmic graveyard, you need to kill them off. That's an attack, right? But, and then you just exhaust them when. But people milled themselves a ton in this format. This thing's like putting all the, trenches inside. These are very, very commonly played cards. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of that. So just oddly on on Kong Commons and stuff in the set. Yeah, yeah for sure. And when they build themselves, it's kind of doing double duty because they're both taking cards out of it and putting them into that graveyard for that exhaust ability to then mill even more cards in the future. And yeah, you just get to a stage where, like, sure, maybe they're getting a little bit ahead of board, but you only need to survive like two more fans, so you can just make some jump blocks and and that's enough. And then you just kill them with the exhaust. And often even if they find a removal spell for this, if you can like exhaust in response for removal spell, you're like, well, I didn't quite get you for all the cards in your library, but you have like six, six cards. That kind of went pretty quickly. And they. Yeah, now that's what you let's go. And what have you generally found to be the best colors you mentioned soul tie. Is that kind of where we are or what are you liking it in this format. Yeah. I mean if you can get it, green is the best color and it's it's sad. Yeah. Not happy uncomfortable. But just because of the depth of the commons and green is kind of phenomenal. Like there's like 4 or 5 green commons that I'm not found happy to first pick. And that's just not true of the other colors. Except that green is now very contested. Because if that's okay. Yeah. Like perfect. So you'd get that great and catch it on, for example, you'd get that like seven. That's just not can happen anymore. And those tables where people know what's going on. But yeah, when you can get them I think especially like green blue and green black. So green blue exhausts and that green black graveyard self meld that could be very, very strong. And just give you that like game engines which, which can take over, when green isn't available. I found, Esper artifact to be quite strong too. So, I mean, like, pack sell terror has really overperformed. That's for, free and a black for a free fall to that creature. When I signed up for that fact and says you train them for one. This is nice because, again, helps you progress for game without having to get into combat. But also she gets you to, max speed pretty quickly. Even if you don't have good attacks. And there are some powerful max speed payoffs, specifically in black. The way that max speed plays out is actually kind of interesting because, generally the good payoffs where you really care about max speed, the more expensive max speed cards, but it's not that good to play. So for example, the this and that formation, right, is for the black five ball creature beginning of your at start your engines at beginning of your and stops. You have max speed to make two to that's a very strong payoff, but it's kind of not a good approach to just play that and start your engines on turn five, because then it's going to be so late by the time you get to max speed and the ball's already stalled, so you kind of need a cheap start your engines card to get it going earlier, and you get your speed up. Then when you play your more expensive start your engines cog, which is one that has to pay off. You actually care about, then you're already at max speed max, and you're already going, yeah. So you kind of need quite a lot of pieces fit come together. So you need a way to start your engines, a way to get through damage, and then a pay off. It's mostly the cheap start. Your engines, cards, the pay off. Some of them aren't that good. Like they're fine as things like the, I. There's a cycle of them where they start your engines, and then if you have max speed, you can pay for exile from the graveyard. And for a card that's finds the game value or whatever. But it's not like pay off, it's going to win your game. Right? Whereas the more expensive ones do do that, but you have to do more work to enable them. Yeah. So outside of. Yeah. So in terms of best decks I think green exhaust is great. Clean black graveyard is great. All the green decks are kind of fine just because green is so strong. But those are the two where, if available, they're kind of over the top. The artifact stack can be, I'd say if you're a two class back deck, probably blue. Black is the best one. But, you quite often end up splashing about in that deck. I found, and then of attacks I found to be. Okay. And this is where you can get a little bit aggressive, I think. Black based start your engine stacks can be quite good. Black actually has more tools to get in for damage than the other colors, because the pack helps a lot. There's some good, cheap players, like the, the witch folk for like two mana long. I think we just, set these vale to. That's very strong. And it has the best trick in the set with the common, which is the maximum overdrive. That's one the black put up plus one song counter on your creature gains def Touch and Indestructible until end of turn. So always wins combat and your creature stays bigger. So be it. Black. Start your engine to can be quite good. So I found like that black and black white both to be pretty solid in that regard. Nice. Cool. Are there any other kind of like. Cool? I don't say build arounds, but like. But, you know, I was like like, are there any I'm going to actually kind of come like I don't have like like cool build around type of decks. Like is like it's like discard a deck in this because there is that chariot that makes a bunch of cats, like, like, is there anything like, like that in the set where kind of like it's not sticking to the two color archetypes as much, but kind of like it's something cool you can do because like, like it is what, like there is sort of a cycling deck where kind of like, does appear to be kind of over multiple colors. Yeah. So like for sort of call of the discard, like I say, is, is definitely and in blue that but you can splash back further. That's complete payoffs that are the, the blue red cycling discard tac I, I've seen it be really strong, but you kind of need to get a lot of good payoffs. It seems like lot you need, like, a bunch of and mythic to make it good. Like you need two uncommon for that. Very good. Voting. Mako. Yes. That one does look fun. Yeah, yeah. Unfair as, in blue as it's basically a two man I'm awarding Mako with. I was got flying the squid guy. Right. Okay. Let's go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that race can be very cool if you get multiples of them and get that engine going, I can be quite strong. For one thing I would say with that is that the bulk of the cycling cards cost two minutes cycle. And you should not in general be putting cards in your deck with a plan, spend two minutes a cycle that's just not a good use of your mana. And because it costs two mana of a one man, the ones have, a colored pep to cycle. Yeah, you can't do the things that you did in in previous formats, which like, they were like 13 lands. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you just can't cycle from that quickly. So if you just then cycle your spells away, you'll just end up setting out on playing land. So very what you need to enable this is a very key card to enable the blue at discard. That is the thunderhead gonna, that's the most common to do a similar thing. That's the best thing at common. It's, five mana for four five reach. And once a set and you can discard a card and put a card on top. Nice work there. Yeah. No amount of involves. And this I think is actually just a that's best common. It's part of a lightning strike by a lot. And it means you just don't flood out. It meets that thing. If that thing you keep using your mana because you will discard plans and find action like game, and it just triggers, you'll make those triggers your sky ways and means that you, without having to put a bunch of bad cycling cards in your deck. But have a play off I think is is very sweet for, for this card deck that I haven't quite decided how good it is, is as a uncommon cold. I did the thing where I started talking before I looked up what the card is called. Yeah, there's an uncommon called push for limit, which is six mana for sorcery. You. That's all graveyards for all. You've eaten all vehicles from your graveyard to play. They gain haste. And yes, you get food for free. That turn assigns seven mana, in fact. So if you're very training for your deck with stuff like that gun of uncommon loot and just dump all these kind of trashy vehicles in your graveyard, and this is your current condition and it's kind of sweet. I tried it once. I think I went like 50 or something where it was. I had a lot of fun. I feel like there is something that does feel powerful and it works good. It's a cross between, like, an overrun and a living death. So there's always something there. When, when when those are involved. Nice. Yeah. They seem. Yeah, they some cool. But like, I know people have kind of worked out what the best decks are. Now we all know that kind of like green is the best color. Like. Like where? Like, what are you doing now to to win? James I like how are you finding your edge. So obviously yeah when you can still get your good two color green deck and get pass enough cards, to make it work, then you should just do that a lot of time. You won't. So ways I found to adapt first to. I've been splashing a lot more. You have time. The fixing is quite good. And you have time to play like a free mana fixes. There's, like a fellow hop bike. It's a vehicle, a speed, manner, and a color as a monolith variant. Colors as well. I mean, I just the game lands being common, like like, you know, guaranteed one in every pack, are you? But they are common. So you got common. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's all very good. And it means. And it kind of works whatever colors you're in. Because if you start off green, you start off a good clean commons and green is cut. So you kind of expect it to be. This means that you can still, you know, if it green comes a deep enough, you're going to get like a ten good green cards even if it's cut right. So video if you're willing to splash, that means that you can still get to enough fireballs and, get the quiet power into your deck by splashing. Yeah, you you burn fast at your secondary like you have a primary color is is whatever color it is most open the fan. If you have a fixing, you can splash three of a powerful cards you see and really this is a full massive. I want my deck to just have more powerful cards than yours. Like, I want to play a game where if we if we all see even five, see the majority of our deck, I want to be favored in that scenario. Right. Say, I found splashing to be be pretty good. It also works very well on the artifact decks because, that kind of across the esper colors, I'm very often I'm drafting glass fact I'm two of the esper colors and splashing the other one because there are some very powerful gold cards I like font the network. That's one that makes you pops and drains equal to number of artifacts you control of that, say a blue white vehicle then finds enough that ventus enough last fact from your deck. You can even chain those together. That's a very powerful light game of skill. That's flashing. Then there's actually a couple of green cards I think are still pretty underrated for, the Beast Rider Vanguard. I spoke about earlier. That's a very powerful man, I think. It's not a card. I'm, like, happy to first pick or anything, but you see that card going like six or seventh quite a lot still. And I think it's like a pretty powerful two top. It's a two top that still matters when you try to. Yeah. And the if one is vice from evac, I don't see this very powerful one. I don't see people utilizing it that well. This is two in a green for sorcery. You would send a creature card from your graveyard, a vehicle from your graveyard, and mount from your graveyard. And a creature with no abilities failed. Graveyard? So, like a vanilla creature. So if you can get all of these. Yeah, it's obviously phenomenally. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it's it's actually better than, like, a dwarf ally because you're getting full spells in the late game. Yeah. You don't get to get full most of the time, but you can get free quite a lot if you. It's mostly a green black card if you're milling yourself quite heavily. Oh, and you see this card, I'll actually even be planning trip five, seeing that if you can get like two of each of these types, this is that's pretty achievable and you miss yourself enough that you can often get get all of them. And there are good options for those decks in all of these slots. For example, the mounts you have for the cheap green death touches and mount, the vehicle that's of green pack gold gray, obviously. But the, the base is also pretty solid. And, even for creatures with no abilities, this is like a very slight package in this format of, vanilla creatures matter. So. Oh, yeah. This is a cycle of legends, isn't there? Yeah, exactly. And green has a common, legendary vanilla. The two mana free two. Yeah. If you can get the victory. And it's the best one of these, that's for like two. Green, green, green. So quite hard to cast. It's A97 vanilla. Yeah. Then that's just dominates the board game, you know. So getting that back is insane. But even like for black one it's like a free mana seven to vanilla. Like it's not ever getting through but it's basically a death toucher. Right. So you play a game. So if you can just get a few of these cards in your deck, and that just makes your dies from a vax very, very powerful. Like a sweet. Yeah, I do need to get a bit more rate of drifting. Yeah, yeah I yeah, I really enjoy what I play. And for someone who was complaining about not being not not vibing with universes beyond stuff, I vibe with this that I thought it was cool. So yeah, I should get into more. I you get some draft action before it rotates and before we have the next set coming soon, right. But that's gonna do it for today. James. Pleasure. Thank you for the chat today. Yeah, yeah. Been a good one. Yeah. I think we covered some cool topics today and. Yeah. Good to get that in. Yeah. Well it's a pleasure. Now I enjoyed that nice one. All right. Well I was just aiming to thank you all very much for listening. Do make sure that you give the podcast a five star review that you tell a friend. All that good stuff helps the podcast grow, helps us do cool and interesting things. That's going to leave it for us. It's good. Buy from me if you buy from James until next time. We'll see you all soon. And goodbye.