Looking back at the 2016 MTGO Vintage Cube - #80

In this episode of Powerful Nothing, we take a look back at the MTGO Vintage Cube from 2016, to see what's changed, what we miss, and what we can apply to our cubes today.

Comparison - https://cubecobra.com/cube/compare/638c85c89422220c310a94ea/to/modovintage

2016 - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgo-vintage-v1

2026 - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

Card Gallery: https://moxfield.com/decks/T3FmYluQqkmYN-ZI41vMMQ

Video Version: https://youtu.be/vJxk8ULr7co

Timecodes:
1:38 - Introduction
26:12 - Decks We've Lost
50:45 - Decls That Are Very Different
1:03:19 - What Would We Change?

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

Social Links: https://linktr.ee/toosweetmtg

Runaway by Diamond Ace | https://soundcloud.com/diamond-ace-music
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

Chapters

• 1:38 Introduction
• 26:12 Decks We've Lost
• 50:45 Decls That Are Very Different
• 1:03:19 What Would We Change?

Transcript

0:03

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James. How are you doing this week? Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. We're going to talk about some, about some cube cards from ten years ago, which is just just my favorite thing. You know, we are. Yeah. The current hotness in the world. Or by that, I mean the hotness from about a month ago was that everyone was comparing things, comparing images of themselves and such with things. From 2016. So from ten years ago. So today's episode, we're going to do that, but we're going to look back at the go vintage view from ten years ago and compare it to today, how it's changed and what we can kind of what we can learn about how cube has changed, but also how we can apply that to cubes in terms of, making cubes either faster or more powerful. Or on the flip side, if we wanted to go back to a time where cubes weren't so, efficient, this would be helpful for that. And also is going to let us reminisce about some cool cards before we delve into Ninja Turtles. Before we jump into the episode, please consider giving the podcast a like a thumbs up and a five star rating. All that really helps us out. Or so a link to all the cubes we talk about will be down in the show notes below, and we're also going to try and read out any card that, isn't a cube staple or isn't the most obvious. But for every card we do mention, there will be a link to a card gallery which will have a nice shiny picture of every card we talk about today. If you want to, look at that as we are talking about them. And also, that'll be time, guys, if you want to jump around. So yeah, as I kind of touched on James, this I'm not going to say is an indulgent look back for nostalgia, but I did just enjoy looking at the 2016 cube. Like there's a lot of very cool cards, a lot of cards that I missed playing with in there, like. But before we jump into the episode, did you have a similar feeling, James, when you had a look at at the Adichie because this would have been around the time you got into magic, if I'm not mistaken. Oh yeah, for sure. You sent me some notes, I then I got like a third of the way through the notes and then just looks at cue cards from 2016 for like 20 minutes. That was great. Yeah. It's, this this for me was, when I was really into this cube. It was a lot. It was a ton of fun. I think Vintage Cube around that time as well, had VPL of it wasn't up very often. Also very long. So it kind of felt like an event when it was there and you got to go and play it, couple of weeks, you know, that was cool. Whereas now it's it's up all the time. Which is good. I've not I'm not against that. But it is a different vibe from them when it was, you know. Yeah. It's like it's up for two weeks. I'm going to like, clear, clear a couple of evenings in my calendar. And what I'm doing on these evenings is drafting Vintage Cube, you know. Yeah. Exactly what you kind of like to set the scene as well. Of where? Kind of like we are in 2016 with this cube. It is a different time to now. Like as James mentioned, like now there's the mega Vintage cube, there's the arena powered cube. One of them is, it's fair to say, like on average one of them is up most of the time. Like like you can Power Cube now digitally as much as you want. And we get a lot more quicker feedback on cards. One thing we'll definitely see when we flash ourselves back to 2016 is that, the cube was only really up around Christmas time, as James had mentioned, like up until this point, the vintage cube mic go was known as the Go Holiday Cube, but the version where the version we're comparing it to today is the one is the cube that was live ten years ago. So it was live for Christmas. So end of 2015 into the start of 2016. And this is the first one that's actually known as the Go Vintage Cube. Before this it was the Holiday Cube. Now it's the Mega Vintage Cube. And just with that, like because the cubes are up kind of like annually or every six months, at this point, it takes longer for people to work out what's strong. So there's still some holdovers from days of yesteryear in this game. There's cube like there's like there's manor wall and stuff like that in this cube. Like, like one thing I found from comparing it to other ones is like from a power level wise point of view. Savanna lion was only cut 12 months before this. I mean, arguably, the difference between savanna lion and soldier for pound film, it's not that great. You know what the it's got more words down, but like, but like like like specifically that there were three vanilla one drops in the cube in at the end of 2014. Going into 2015, when we get into this cube, the cube don't say there's only one, it's Amaru. But, I think it's missing, like in terms of like strongest powerful cause the on like the obvious power, like we are talking like just like just the mind sculpt, grizzle brand and like, big M recall are like the, the biggest and strongest things you can be doing. Is that fair to say, James? I think for they're not the most vocal and unpowered cars that maybe like the most for us. Mab that is some of the best fats. Yeah, but a lot of the power is in for a lot more for power is in the condo sci fi in the same hour or in the interaction. So, you know, we don't have any of the best fats that we think about the fat now, right? We don't have, Ajani or Sulfide for failing us, but we do have like Tinker, for example, we have an Toome that animates and animates that love. All these cars haven't been power crops out. Right. Like we've got, the stomp stuff is found. It's good as is fairly powerful. And you've got things like, sneak attack, you know, channel even channel was very good than this time. So a lot more of that power, I'd say, is in the, is in the combo cards. I think they're very good interaction. Right? Things like mana trade and things like salsa, plowshares. Not so much in the cards, which is just a big fat on their own. Yeah, we'll definitely see kind of where the power level of those lies as we go through the episode, but kind of like to continue to, to to set the scene for everyone. The set that is currently live in standard is battle for Zendikar. This is before out of the gate watch. So like the most recent cause to be added to this cube are ultimate the ceaseless hunger. That's the ten mana, 1010 one that if you cast it exile to permanent indestructible and you put an extra card when it attacks. We've also got Hedren Archive, which is a full amount of rock that makes two mana. Or you can pay to tap, and second, to draw two cards and bring to light, which is a five minute you did that searches for something with mana value less than or equal to the amount of colors spent to cast it, but before you could do anything really broken with it, I believe like like this is before. This is before the Tybalt combo where you could flip the planeswalker whether it was printed. This is just for value. And also importantly, at this time, currently the only nonstandard sets that have cards in this cube, things like the portal start a dex, which is given us, cards like burning of Zinzi. I probably butchered that, but that's another wildfire effect. We have conspiracy, one which is given us cards like Dark Fate, Edric, spymaster, tryst, Bravo, King Eternal, and Council's judgment. Some great magic cards there. And on top of that, the yearly commander product. That's like up to the 2015 release, which is the one with the enemy colored ones, like the marine Dex with experience counters, that kind of stuff. But it's mainly things like, directly Scrap Savant, Toxic Deluge, and True Name nemesis. Those are kind of like the the only nonstandard cards really in this cube off from those type of sets. And importantly as well, this is six months before conspiracy to brings the monarchy into the game, which is like the first in the multiplayer, mechanic not meant for one on one formats. Racking one on one formats allowed the initiative and some of the others. So kind of like as a card pool. It's very pure in terms of just like, oh, well, it's very standard based with a couple of more build around cards than just true power out lies outliers, maybe with the exception of Toxic Dilution, true and nemesis just being incredibly efficient for the time. Yeah, for sure. I actually hadn't realized toxic dilutions from the command series originally. That's cool. Yeah, but very much, I think one thing I quite like about this cube is that, yeah, basically everything had been through standard. Right? So there weren't really cards that were, above standard power level by design. There was definitely some that were accidentally above standard power level. But generally because it can have varied designs, you sort of have to do some work to make them exceptionally powerful. Right? Yeah. No. Exactly. We're going to put links down in the show notes for the cubes that we're comparing. But let's jump over some stat. So I think this will really kind of show not just so. So obviously over time cards get power cramped. But I think the stats on this will kind of show how much power we've had over last couple years. And also where that power crap has kind of has come. So both cubes, importantly, are 540 powered cubes. And these are trying to give you the most powerful environments you can. At the time of the 540 cards, only 168 cards have remained in both cubes, so we've kept 31%. 372 cards are different that 69% of cards are different. That is quite a large change over ten years. Yeah, of those 168 cards that have remained the same, it's wild that only 29 of them are creatures. Yeah, that's that's kind of crazy. And then, I mean, it kind of checks out, but also like a bunch of creatures are going to be, you know, like gristle fans and cool and stuff, which I nicely meant to be casting anyway. But yeah, I mean, you look at the, you know, especially the cheap creatures in this cube, like. I covered in the white ones. They're fairly bad, like, compared to what we have now. Like, oh, but I like them all. But yeah. No, no, I'm not saying it's a negative, but yeah. Like is if you read go House chain Walker. All right. That's not a good one I'll give you that. Read it for the for the for the let's. Is that one the red. Two one with unleash. So unleash is you may have this creature and to have a plus on so on counter on that it can't block as long as it's got a counter on that. Yeah. That's it. So it's, it's a, it's a two mana free to unlock a white for can't block or it said Goblin pica. It's a pica with upside. What do you want. Pretty tough for like full. This is a fun that with Tinker and Mana Drain. And, it's going to be tough for me to register gold House chain walker, to be honest, you know. Yeah, I'm not surprised. It's it like. Yeah, when you go through the numbers, like, there will be a link down to the cucumber which compares the two cubes. I honestly click on it if you're listening to this and just see the comparison. But when you go to creatures like it's, there's three white creatures that have maintained that have kept over from 2016 mother of rune Stone, Forge Mystic, and Flicker Wisp. Every other creature from 2016 is different. That's wild. Like blue has kept five. Black has kept three incompetent, grave, Titan and Gristle brand. Red has kept one. Grim lava monster is the only creature from 2016 that remains in the cube today. That is crazy like green has the most because we've got birds. Elvish mystic land or elves. Sylvan caryatid, Tamagotchi of course. Eternal Witness, Venge vine and wood for Primus they've kept over from 2016, and some of those are only because we're doing like a graveyard deck right now in the Mega Vintage Cube. Like you could argue Tamagotchi fan Venge vine wouldn't be in unless there was an archetype for it nowadays. I mean Tamagotchi, if it's really bad for me, well, I'll tell you that you should not be registering that card. I hate to say that defines a banger like but yeah, no. But again, that kind of translates for point five. They're not for they're not for facts. I really value the, that the docs have a good one. So we've not poor craft fairs of Paradise and Lava elves, of stuff like Venge Vine, which is doing a very specific interaction. No, exactly. And things definitely pick up when you look at the non creature spells. However, like of the changes, 139 non creature spells are the same in the old in the 2016 due to the version today. Yeah, what that's telling us is that as we talked about, the creatures have got dramatically better. Like the fact that we're keeping one red creature means that every in the last ten years of magic, we have had 31 better red creatures printed than in the 20 years before that. That shows you where the focus has been, I guess more in the last like decade. Like, is that fair to say? James? Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, you look at for red creatures and, you know, some of them, we have it in a very strong cleric noble, for example. We have like multiple parts creatures, fans have combat every side. Now we have common. So to them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Stone got noble a single red one. One vampire can't be blocked by humans. Could be relevant whenever it deals combat damage to a player. Put a counter on it. There's A11 that gets bigger if they can't block it. Oh, no. Oh, no. If I take A22, my whole game plan is. And then we get like one mana, two ones that are common or uncommon nowadays. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of tough, isn't it? Talking of fire drinker cider and Jacko pepper in this cave, I have no notes. It's perfect. Yeah, but you can't cut chocolate candies. You know, it's classic. It is a vibe. Yeah, I we all know that creatures have got better, but, like, like it does really show the kind of like. And this will make sense, I think in the powered cube, that kind of like creature spells have been power kept quickly, whereas non creature spells haven't, especially in a powered cube where things like jewel lands and fetch lands they're going to be in no matter what. Like you can't improve on dual lands when you you can. But there might be a lawsuit. You know what I mean? Like I'm saying, with like, power with, like, mocks and and that kind of stuff and like the rest of the power nine because of the reserve list, they can't legally print cards better than the. So therefore that's where the power level of the top end is going to stay. Effectively, it is the age old thing of like in early magic. The creatures were terrible and the spells were awesome. Basically, that really shows in the last ten years or so of kind of like like they can't really they, they, they haven't able to do as much with the non creature spells as they have with the creatures. Yeah for sure. And it's and that is like a valid design choice I think. Right. Like if you play. Yeah, you play games of like pre-modern for example as a format and that's you know, it's not a bad experience, but it's a very different experience to how magic is now because, you know, the the balance between like, sort of plowshares is a card and the fats that exist in old magic is, is just kind of very wild, you know, and for that reason, you know, creature decks were like, good in this cube. And they were a big part of that. But it certainly wasn't every deck for was interested in casting creatures and in these older cubes, you know, and for that reason, like the, the efficient removal, which is great now is even though most it was was around fan, it was in this cube that you've got. So as far as we've got lightning bolt actually wasn't as important as it is now because, because you just play against like 30 or 40% of your opponents. So I actually wasn't very good against them because they had like 0 to 2 features. Yeah, it definitely feels like so. So there's less slots for that cheap, efficient removal in this cube as there is in the modern cube. Because again, you don't have to answer as many or as as many threats early like cause like oust and like the spell bomb have really gone up in importance the last couple of years as ways of answering threats. But they don't need them in this cube because the threats aren't like the threats aren't good enough to warrant going as deep as oust in my one drop removal. If it if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it was yeah be the one and two manacles just weren't killing you that quickly. You know, like it was threatening if I went one drop into two drop into three drop. And you hadn't done anything, then. Yeah, you'd die. And like, for that reason, the red and the white decks were still good in this cube. But that wasn't killing you on. It's out. You know, not very quickly. And the things that were big threats and could kill you on your own. Three is cost four and five manner cube. And that's why I say if you wanted to lean more on the I'm going to play some interaction and then kill you with one for that because that fair cost a lot more. And then the things like Signet's were very powerful. There is a point. The whiskey was very happy, like first picking a signet, you know, and there's just like both light and pliable. Now I again like and I still have to keep lightly you to put. But you might put them in your artifact ax that the nice respects aren't interested. Whereas in this two, you know, ten to sigma turn three say just for main sculptor or, you know, tight early on your glam landshark mage, for example. Yeah, these were the cards that actually mattered. I even even earlier, you look things like Oracle of Moldavia. Like this is the. These are very high impact cards. And for cubes, I think they just didn't exist at the cheaper mana cost. The cheaper cards were either trying to overwhelm you by playing a bunch of them, or they were setting up for your laser stuff. Now, definitely. I think that's really highlighted when you compare the curves of the cube. I think let's do that now. So in general, the curve of the cube between 2016 and 2026, the curve of the of the 2016 cube is much higher. So like, oh, we got some averages just to kind of give you an example. So the average cost of a white card in the 2016 cube is 3.17 CMC mana value in 2026 is 2.85. So it's dropped. And you see that across the board. Everyone is every. The amount of value on average in every color has dropped in colorless. It's plummeted. It's like 3.66 down to 2.34 in 2026, which basically means that every card on average is what is over a mana cheaper in colorless. The colorless one specifically might be partly to do a fair number of outsourcing deals for buyers. To be fair, true to oh like 1256 colorless cards, the cost set of all. Which is good. Get a effect from me in quite a lot. But the overall point. Absolutely. Sans. Yeah. It's, you did just have a lot more time and beats all the cubes, right? Yeah, definitely like it definitely felt the older cubes were slower. You had more time to do your thing. I think that's also shown in terms of, like the number of card types that you see in the cube. So like comparing the two, like the number of creatures is actually pretty the same. There was 204 creatures in 2016. There's 203 in 2026. The big drop is in 2016. There was 35 planeswalker in the cube, which is feels so many. In 2026, there are 21. That is noticeably less. That's a big drop in terms of the number of planes workers. The other thing as well, that's instance is comparable. So so it's did drop by 11. Just showing that instant speed interaction is more important than saucer. It's been interaction artifacts of similar enchantments. However, there are ten more enchantments in 2016 as there are in 2026, and most of those enchantments that have been cut are the I'm not going to say do nothing enchantments, but they are cars that come in and don't affect the board. It's kind of showing us that cards have to be doing something immediately. You're getting your value out of them straight away. You have less time in 2026, whereas in 2016 you had time to uptick your planeswalker to get a bit of value, to play an enchantment and not die as quickly. That's kind of like it's it's just a different play pattern basically. Yeah, for sure. By 2016, right. I could go ten free Awakening zone ten for opposition. And how would I ever win? You know, Awakening Zone for those who don't know it to an a green enchantment, never getting a feel of keep you make 201 colorless ultra lazy spawn. You can sack for a colorless kind of if you don't know what position does. On the other hand, you go back and listen to a lot of, Savage. And on that card does. I'm not reading it. It's a very green card that gem likes. But one area that I think is worth touching on, where there has been a big rise since 2016 to 2026 is land in 22. In 2016 we had 68 lands in the cube. Now we have 103. So basically a fifth of the cube just under is now lands. And that isn't just fixing. Like in 2016 we had jewels, shocks, fetches and then they had Czech lands and temples. Now running temples in any cube is a choice. I think we can agree we can do better, but in 2026 we now have more of a mix of lands. It's not a full cycle of everything. Like, like like in 2026, we have like fast lands, we have civil lands, we have canopies, we have the ones that tap for one color or tap for two. If you have like one of the colors in play, like I get tap like the ones from the drift, for example. And on top of that we also have trims. We have more options for lands. Agro has got more options of untap lands, which is a very big deal for the aggro decks. And we can fix all our colors because of triumphs. I think that's very important. We've seen that of like the four color soup decks are becoming much more of a or have become much more of a thing over the last decade because we have more options with lands, but also there's just a higher density of utility lands, there's more utility lands run in the cube nowadays. And there was back then, like we still have some of the really powerful ones, like Ancient Tomb and Bazaar Baghdad that were printed many, many years ago, but we're just seeing more of them being run, but also things like as a saga, like with like Talon Gates of Madara, like Starting Town, prismatic, Mr., which is generally seen more like five color better versions of evolving worlds printed over the last like decade as well, which just added to the land count, just generally made like the way you think about your decks and the colors of your deck. It's going to be drastically different in 2016 than it is in 2026. Like, what do you think about that? James? Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of this happened when Triumph's came out because if you compare the, the land counts class five, they both have four lands of each color pair, but then they sort of added for firearms this ten extra fixing lands, and obviously them being three color lands, that just makes for, you know, playing 4 or 5 color in some ways for possession. You did do such work a lot harder for it. Although I think the thing that kind of counteracted that a little bit was because the thickness was so good to build. And that sort of spot see some fixing, you know. Yeah, that is a big switch that there was that kind of transition period where we went from all cubes having cygnets, which were better for splashing, but less better for efficiency. We swapped over to talismans. We're kind of now somewhere of you run like you don't run. Or like most people I don't believe, run all ten talismans. They'll run the ones maybe in the in the colors that care about the artifacts more. Basically, that's more where you see them if you want that kind of wrap nowadays. Yeah, for sure. But I think even bigger than that. Yeah. Switching thickness to talismans is just the thing that the notes were good fun. So you could put them in your deck, you know, and you sort of got the fixing for free because it was good to just go from 2 to 4. Whereas now two mana ramp just is not is not something you can be running most of the time. It's like no exceptions to that. So especially in the artifact acts. But your average Dex just doesn't want a two mana rock. So, and because they're not well positioned cards in the cube, you actually solve these access to all of that fixing you? No, no, no, definitely I don't agree. I think that's touched on some of the decks now, like diving into it into what we have. So let's run through some of the decks though. Yes. The year that we now the aren't really are supported anymore. If they are, that is nowhere near as strong or they're not in the higher power level cubes. So mono green ram is a thing. We've talked about a bunch on this podcast where in 2016, I think this deck is probably still fine. It was ink powered use for longer than it was meant to, but I think in 2016, the mono green ramp deck was trying to ramp and cheat something big into play. I think is probably still fine here because because you do have power outliers like channel, like natural order. These are good ways of cheating big things into play. That is probably about as fast as anything else apart from like, the not so Re-Animator deck. The mic. And because of the colorless aspect of channel, meaning you can bring in like and recall analog and that kind of stuff, and you have so and you have there are so many creature tutors here that puts up into play. That is real, green sun, zenith, Genesis wave. That's not a tutor, but it does the job. Your eureka puts things into play. Natural order, put things into play. I'm assuming Primal Command does. I'm not going to read that again. Tooth and nail. Oath of druids. These are, pattern of rebirth. These are all cheating creatures into play. Green does seem quite good at that in this cube. Yeah, it can cheat sheet features into play. It can also just make loads of manner and cast giant creatures. It was a good strategy at that point. It just it goes big of an all of the Fedex and you can't you can't normally kill the green deck quickly enough, with your little creatures because the little creatures aren't good enough. So, yeah, the minor green ramp was very good in this cute, there was very massive difference between monster green with with a crater of behemoth and not a green without creator of behemoth, because, yeah, you have lots of ways to make lots, many. You have lots of ways to access. And basically modern traits of behemoth killed, the turn you cast it and all the other ones from the turn after you cast set. If I hadn't dealt with that. So that that that was a huge, that's huge difference in the monograph. But within the nano green dex was wherever you left. You saw that card? But, yeah. No, it was, it was just fun strategy. The role of Mana docs is is pretty different in these old cubes, right? It's, it's not so much about casting your feet up on turn two. It's it's more about playing a bunch of them and casting your air off on turn five. Yeah, I think that sums up massively. And that's one of the main things that if I did want to green, is that the pay offs aren't eight mana anymore. They're like 3 or 4 and that kind of stuff. And the colors have access to them basically. So that's why that this traditional elf elf elf over, doesn't work as well. Another deck that I am a big fan of. I'm glad that it's in my, old board it cube and is still hanging around. Here is the wildfire deck, so it's wildfire. But that's the card. We kind of mentioned it when I'm talking about burning of Genji earlier. They both have actually the same thing of four red red sorcery. Each player sacrifices four lands in wildfire deals for damage to each creature. The gimmick here is you ran this. That was earliest possible. You have, but also you have a bunch of artifact ramp. So you reset the game. Think of this like an Armageddon, but you have artifact manner, so you can still cast spells afterwards. Basically. That's kind of the gimmick here. I love this deck. I'm that I can still play with it in a queue, but like, this must be kind of like towards the end of this deck being viable in in cube. James. Yeah, well, five. That was really cool. I really liked that one. I wasn't like amazing, I think by this stage of a cube. But you could so you could still make it work, you know? Planeswalker. So if you have a big thing with wildfires as well, this is a very walker heavy cube, as you said. And, yeah, wild kills kills most of the creatures don't kill plants. Workers. Nice. That's a good point. And. Yeah, yeah, this is still in the era of people remembering the world championship decks with some of these cards. That's why some of these will still be included. And such as? Well, for for the nostalgia value. And because there isn't as much an efficiency debate, you can still have room for nostalgia cards in in the cube. At this point, I feel. Next up, I want to touch on like an all the odds of death and taxes style of deck. Like I'm assuming that's what it's doing because there are just so many black cards that come in and make players discard cards from their hand. Or like when they do combat damage, a player make them discard commands like I'm looking at like, life bane zombie one black, black for A31 with intimidate when it enters, target reveals his own hand. You choose a green or white creature card from it and exile that card. That's incredibly niche, but I'm assuming they thought this was one of the best 29 black creatures in magic at the time, so therefore it must have a place like. You also have cards like, like like the classic, like hypnotic specter we have like mesmeric fiend and gatekeeper of magic here, one that I've not seen for a long time. Black, black for a tutu with kick it for a black when it enters the battlefield. If it was kick target, play a sexy creature. And there's a lot of this. Kind of like trying to control the board with your creatures, if that makes sense. And like, make him discard that kind of stuff. But I guess kind of, what do you think of this, of this kind of build? Like, it might flow into the next deck. We're going to talk about a little bit, I'm guessing. But what do you think about these creatures in that kind of shell of, like, muck around with your opponent's resources type deck? My memory of these a very mostly pretty part, honestly. Like, I think the black removal and discard was really good for the animation stuff was really good. I never liked the chief creatures that much. I mean, dark confident was good pack. That was okay. For VESA for like for, have a lot of nonsense stem like, you know, he. Vampire Nighthawk is is a cool card there game evolved and it's, you know, it's an absolute banger. Three words. You know, this is when I'm talking about how you have a resistance level with today's attitude, but this is still a very powerful cube. You know, this is a cube with, which can, but the spells are really good. So I, I always struggle with the idea of playing something like vampire Nighthawk. Like it would be. Okay. And if it was in white or red, right. Because you can that's part of the strategy is play a bunch of cheap creatures and Kelvin quick and kill them quickly. But black doesn't really have that like valid enough aggressive ones, to really make something work I think so. So I think with this. So so I've looked back at previous versions of the cube before the 2016 edition that we're talking about, and it does seem like it's in this weird spot of time in 2016, where beforehand there was like the mono black aggro, like kind of phage and vampire lacerated, where in like the previous year's edition, this is definitely a period where they're not sure what to do with black. Because like, this is sort of around the sort of time where this is just after mono black was the deck in standard where, you had like gray match and advancement as well. So there isn't. I, it's in this weird place where there's like leftover aggressive creatures, leftover mono black devotion creatures, and not really a way of like, I think the way they're trying to pull it together is the next thing I want to talk about, which is stacks. So there's these cards that we've mentioned that are kind of like removing your opponent's threats or mucking with the hand as well as token makers in white, and some in black with like things like answer. And then you have cards like Lillian of the veil, braids, cabal, minion, smokestack and The Abyss, which is not a card I've seen in a while. I'm going to read The Abyss. As you know what? I'm going to read the errata to the abyss because that's this is an old magic card. So the abyss is three and a black for a world enchantment, which is different. You can only ever have one world enchantment in play at the beginning of each player's upkeep. Destroy target non occupy creature that player controls of their choice. It can't be regenerated. So what do we think about so so stacks are a lot of people miss stacks. It definitely feels like something that's been power crept over time. Like like these kind of strategies don't work nowadays I feel because most people are getting the value immediately. Like like your cards have good ETB, so you're getting value from them on their way in or they can attack quicker that kind of stuff or that is more efficient, like cards like Lily on the veil, braids and smokestacks and the abyss. Like need time to get going to control the board. Is that fair, James? Is that the reason why you think why this deck has been kind of left in the dust? Yeah, it's a real shame. I like I like a lot of this stuff, especially like smoke stack is such a cool card, but it just doesn't work in nice cubes. Now, the problem is for, if you play it on turn four, it's too slow, right? It takes a couple of seconds to really get going. So you need to get it out quickly. But even when you do, there's so much stuff your opponent can have that makes it ineffectual. Like, so many cards. Just make some treasure. I'll make some blood. Tiara and chance. Good for you to do that. Also, your opponent is just going to have face cosmetic because they're just powerful, you know, it's fun to face cards make suck where you convince yourself you've got an amazing snake sack attack, and then and you sit down for round one and your opponent, like, makes bonus tokens, whatever. That doesn't do anything. And you're like, I was just really unlucky. Like, I played against the one guy last, like Cyclops, and kind of he gets and, and next, next, next round it'll be great. And then. And then it happens again and then, and then you run that back a couple of times, and at some point him that maybe, maybe spike sack isn't actually where it's at, you know, unfortunately, but this was this was I mean, even back in the day, I think this was kind of tough to get work, but they were cool cards. I like their best. Their best. There's a funny interaction. And this cube wave, if you have their best, you can play true name nemesis and give it protection from yourself. And that is rad. Yeah, I really like that because it's worded in such a bizarre way that I like. If I finish it now, I would just say a few names. You have to sack a creature, but if I didn't, I don't know. Maybe if I forgot about who had sacrificed. So instead you have to target it so you have protection for yourself, for true name. You can't touch it and you can just kill them with a true name. That's really funny. Also, as a not a point that's come up yet, but this is also about a year and a half before treasures were printed. This is 2016. Treasures came. I believe in excellence, which is end of September 2017. So a good year and a half before the start of additional cards, making more stuff basically. Yeah, for sure, I just been. And then we continued from treasure chests. Blood and blues stones. Oh, man. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Actually, I guess this is before clues as well. Clues I think is like the end of this year. Clues is, return to Inner Strat, which is coming, which isn't out yet at this point. Yeah. They sort of invented the non creature artifact token on. Excellent. And I have gone home with that said. Exactly like let's keep it rolling. In terms of decks that don't see as much play, an obvious one is twin combos. Then the twin, I think, is one of the better things of from my experience of playing on this time spent in twin, was it. That was a real deck. It was very strong. It was great. At this time, it's just been crapped out cube nowadays. Again, it it has a place in cubes, but it doesn't have a place in Power cube. So, like, with, from your memory. James, how good was twin at this time? Yeah, it was really powerful. It was, Because it didn't ask for many deck slots. You just got to play blue and red. Good interactive spells killed all the creatures you had some mission. And then when was the, Are you tapped out? And now you're dead, you know, and you could listen. You could play, like, a good blue red control deck anyway, but the regular blue, if you didn't have the twin stuff, you sort of had to be able to deal with everything. You know, where this twin just lets you, lets you close the game. On the just always of magnitude quicker, you know, and it, it means I have to keep I have to respect it. Right. And they have to keep man open. And you can often fight through and kill them anyway. Yeah. It was really powerful. It doesn't really work anymore. Part of the issue is we mentioned earlier that the removal wasn't wasn't as important back in the day, creature removal. And now everyone just has so many creature removal spells and Madoc fights. It's much easier for them to fight something like Splinter Twin. Plus, yeah, like the other things you can be doing for 3 or 4 mana. Just so much more impressive now, right? Yeah. But like, you don't need to be playing cards like to see effect stock and spell spend in your deck, which only do something in combination when you could just be playing both side bombardiers and Gus in your deck. Yeah, exactly. And also, just the thought of playing a four mana or, in 2026, in a powered cube as bad as two for one. Me more blatantly than I think ever. But yeah. Yeah. Like still definitely one for lower power level cubes. Like, I don't even like, like relatively high powered level cubes that just aren't running the most efficient, like that, aren't running broadside and like, gotten that kind of stuff. But if you're if you're just turning down the power level just a little bit, that means that removal isn't there. I still think twin's probably going to be a solid deck. And if you like it, run it. Yeah, people will still draft and have fun with it. Like it might not win as much, but like, there's plenty of people in our play group that would that if I put twin back in my unpowered vintage, you would still draft it because they like it. And that is important for playgroups as well. I'm pretty sure the last version of my Power Cube we drafted still has its twin and tight. But anyways, let's go. It was politics. I thought it was really funny to have, have, you know, past my untap for Time vault. You know, nice. All right, let's keep going. There's two more ones I want to touch on in terms of decks, that kind of. I've kind of been taken out. This one is. It's called recursive sac pod. It's based around. It's a creature value deck using recurring nightmare, survival of the fittest and birthing pod. It is very much. It is grindy, slow value with creatures. Now, some of these, like recurring nightmare and survival, are still in the government age group, but they're doing different things. They're not. It's not about in this cube. It's more about like sacking. Like, oh, like invoking a shriek more getting the shriek more back, killing another creature, sacking it, getting an eternal witness back. This kind of stuff, like replaying your threats and like it's about it's a grindy value mid-range deck. And if there's one thing the mic good vintage cube is not is grindy value mid-range nowadays. Like, would you agree with that? James yeah, for sure, for sure. It's yeah, I mean it was it was always like not a tier one strategy, but it was, it was definitely a thing you could make work, you know, you had fees. And then this was more like of the power within this sort of creature a little bit. Right. I think, honestly, if I was in some ways, the mid-range stuff has got better invest. The because the cards stand on their own for now. That leads to a more mid-range game style, right? You can just be, like, just enough to kill your thing. Just you. I've got a fat. The fat kills you, right? Whereas, in Alt Cube, you really needed to be doing something more powerful than that, you know? Because the threats weren't very good on their own. You needed something better than just kill your guy. And then here's my free drop. I would so you know where it used to be for, the as of, like, the first faffing cube. This is draft day. Like green clack. Mid-range stack. Yes. You dropped some creatures. Oh, you dropped some ramp. You dropped some removal because these cards are independently good. And then you get destroyed by someone doing the broken thing. This is. Yeah, this is the peak of that time, I think. Exactly, exactly. Because, like, if you were casting creatures, you had to be about casting creatures from turn one, you know, and killing them with them. Or your creatures had to be doing something very specific, like a buffing pod. Chain type thing. It couldn't just be like some dudes. And now it can kind of just be some dudes, because the dudes are powerful enough, you know? Like, you know, here's a psychic fog. You don't need to do anything else. No. It's fine. You've just played a you've played a psychic fog. I should probably have worked out how far away in a day this was from Modern Horizons three. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's just a few other kind of packages or decks. Kind of like Azure is doing like a flicker thing. I think in this I don't like this might just be like the flavor of the month because you've had cause like Baraga invents of the planeswalker printed. But like that does seem to be what kind of blue is doing in this, like, blue way doing because like flickering a manor manor wall is a strategy, I guess. You still see, as always, flicker in, in plenty of games. It's probably one of the more that go like flicker and fly, as I like to, to go to a serious mechanics for a lot of kind of, entry level cubes and that kind of stuff. I'm assuming this was okay here, but not again. If you're a blue white deck in this game, you probably want to be doing something a bit more broken. Yeah, I think it was kind of tough I think for the upgrade five mana planeswalker as friend. But then the corner and in 2016, it's a fairy here. I've done that. Obviously it's a pretty big gap. Yeah, that's a massive one. And then, yeah, that the stuff that, that you don't see in high powered level games like, like, but but again, I think if you're right, like there is some light life game combos in here, which, which is fun as arcane lived spoon kitchen things in the sack outlook which is infinite death triggers infinite life and an infinitely big archangel of fortune. I think again, that's pretty solid. Like like it's like again, it feels like it's in a place where somewhere recently Spike Feeder was in this because. But there is a world where it's Archangel turn might just be the second best Bane Slayer, and that's fine at this time. Therefore we're running it. Yeah, yeah. And it's like something to suss out with your birthing pathway. Yeah, I think it's decent. So the final one I would put on this list of decks that were there in 2016 and, now and I don't know if this is controversial, but I would kind of put some on that list. As we know it. Yes, I, I, I, I would agree because this is the build in this is like like a lot of the cards are still in the modern queue, but the viability of it is entirely different. Like this is like ritual storm, like at its like peak into I'm guessing in terms of strength. Would you go with that? Like, yeah, there's kind of like multiple different storm decks available even. Right within this queue. Vis-A-Vis like Dark Ritual, Yakima Swell. Tendrils, Storm deck. And then there's also this, like hot beats of spring, time spiral untap my land. Turn about top storm deck. Which is a pretty distinct thing, actually. Which which is also in amber and and was really good, actually. And you can and yeah, you can still be doing the, like, fast vault of her wheels, the fast one stuff. Whereas now really the storm ferny sort of quote unquote storm decks, which are actually very good. Do the underworld pre train fees. Fang is very powerful. But really that's, you know, that's a 2 to 3 card combo. It it's not it's not a storm deck. Fairly honestly. A deck which sees lots of cards and kills, I think, and then combos off. And there's the, the, like, wheel stack can kind of do some storm adjacent stuff, but it's not storm in the sense that it existed in vault, cuz, you know, yeah, it is a thing of like the versions of that we were looking at. Both of them have tendrils of agony in, but I get the impression from the 2026 version it's more fanservice. I want to say like, yeah, that's the nice way I'm going to put it. It's more to appeal to people who like it and want to draft it, rather than there for efficiency and quality like I it's just like a 2016 is going to be higher on the tier list compared to nowadays, where it's going to be lower. Yes. Yeah. It's really tough to make for the sort of non brain freeze, non hold, solvent decks where can and can't keep you really need to have quite a compact. This is the stack of cards which I'm going to kill you with. Whereas in the old cube, I used to be very much. You could just convention where you generate so much manner and cards that it's kind of it's not actually that important what you were killing them with, you know, like it can be even if you miss under some cards, it could be very janky stuff. Yeah, it could be like and have a on in a heartbeat. And that's going to be infinite of mana. Then I'm going to like cast villainous well for 25. And that's what's going to kill you. You know. And it didn't actually matter that much. You know, it was it was about the, it was about that sort of cards, the number of cards you could see and the amount of money you could generate. And, that. Yeah, you can't really make those stacks work. And that makes no time anymore. Yeah. No idea that I don't remember how we did it, but I definitely watched less of a video, like in, like around this time where his storm when Khan was siege gang commander, phenomenal. Like, it was like, basically you were just you had infinite mana and he was able to flicker it basically. So it just pinging them out, just paying them with goblins. I don't remember what it was, but that was definitely it. Yeah. There was a wink on that involved flickering siege gang commander to make more goblins, to just throw it at your opponent. Yeah. This is the only way you can do that. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. And I regret to inform you that in 2026, Siege Commander is not a starving condition. Oh, dreadful. Dreadful. Well, as for. Well, it's going to. So those are the decks I kind of have been like, effectively that we just don't see really anymore. There's a bunch of decks that I want to touch on that are just that feel very different. Like we're kind of run through these, like the 2026 version of Mono White, but is alarmingly different as we as we've mentioned, only three creatures remain. But this is the era where, when guns are things like Armageddon and ravages of war, the things that get rid of lands, or we're running things like Spear of Helion or Honor of the pure, like one of white, white creatures you can all get plus one plus one. Like we're in this era of monolithic like. Like we're actually in the period of time before they realize that Gideon, ally of Zendikar, was a good card because it's been released. But it's not in the cubes, which is kind of funny. I would make that change in fight with them, but Mono White is it's I'm going to say it's more white weenie than mono white as we know it today. And by that I mean it's just we are going to turn one in turn to model. Whoa. Reaper and sold of the pantheon. Then play a Lorde effect and hope we get there that way. Or blow up the lands and stuff rather than failure. Ocelot pride, all this kind of act, all this kind of makes really, really good value, if that makes sense. Yeah. The the big difference between how why decks played then and now is. Yeah. Then you generally want it to be mono white or very close to if you can. And you weren't as interested in playing a long game for the white decks. Now for white creature decks can really grind, you know, for, they are not necessarily disadvantaged going into, going into a long game. This for, the interactive interactive decks where there's at this point, if you played against a blue deck, we feel like we need deck. And it was, you know, ten, 6 or 7 and you didn't have an immediate route killing them. It was probably going to go poorly for you, you know, because you just weren't going to be able to keep out of that culture. Yeah. And you also didn't really have a top end, like it's like hero of Blade hold is like the most aggressive thing you can do. The format of three four with battlecry that when it attacks, you make two soldiers, there's a cloud go Ranger if you want. Man Jesus, that when, when was the last I think on the last time I played the Cloud Ranger, I guessing was a peasant cube. Yeah, it's kind of a tough thing to get. Both said it's not the cloud, but Ranger is three. White. White for A33 giant warrior. When it comes in, you make three white kitchen soldier creature tokens, and you can tap three on tap kiss skins. You can try to give the cloud at Ranger plus two so and fly until end to turn. This feels like the worst mere battle sphere I've ever seen, but at the time, probably, I know that. Oh, chickens are back in back in hotness now. James. Yeah? When was the most recent set of time of recording? There's this kind of a callback to this of, Glow and Saturn. Our is called like Kick elemental or something. Okay. Yeah. So elemental that makes some chickens and then you can tap them together. Plus, it was a nice, Yeah. Another deck that I want to touch on that is again, very different is artifacts like in this era. It is a it's more about making as much manner as possible and casting a colorless pay off like con like Ergon or a big L drowzee Vana is having a number of artifacts in play. The decks nowadays are basically I, I'm going to say, since, the saga was printed the moment I just printed, the decks have transitioned into having more artifacts in play rather than making as much mana in colorless. It's like, would you go with that, James? Yeah, for sure. This was fit that where you want. I'm no of the decks wanted Signet. It's to I mean, except for the attacks but this stack fairly one two things like one power Stone and fan Dynamo. You want to get through a lot of mana very, very quickly. They have a bunch of different stuff you could do with that. Upheaval was probably at its best here. That's very, very powerful card by. One of the best things you could do would be the artifact ax. So upheaval is fee for blue blue sorcery. Return all payments. Phone is hand. But what you do on to this, you don't want to cast this when you have six manner. You want to cast this when you have 8 or 9 mana. And you can, place a bunch of land mana cast upheaval player mana rock to oh place upheaval tap at play enough mana arc and then you get a partizanship item back into play like one hand discard to hand size, and you're just gonna be so far ahead on mana that I can't really do anything. That was very good here. The wildfire stuff, as you mentioned, was, was very good in the artifact decks. But, yeah, you could even get do stuff like mine. Slaver was cool. Yeah. There is actually, the mind slave. A combo was in here, like mind slaver with academy ruins. Is that infinitely control that turns? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see, you take the next turn when you put nine slave on top with Academy ruins, and then you do it again. So that was a lot of modifier six six. So six to play main saver four to crack. It is ten. And then basically free to put it on top for for ruins spikes is two. And tapping the ruins itself. So you just needed a casual 13 mana to get it rolling. Yeah. But once you have I was very good. You know, this is the time where you could do that, I feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was cool. Yeah. Another deck that I think is quite different is the lands deck. Like we mentioned how there's just less lands in the cube. Like, there's no like this is years before, like the full on math or like Doulos or any or any of the land based pay offs for having different types of land or different colors of land in play. There will have been some mechanics printed, the chi about types of colors printed, but none of none have really made a big splash enough to make it a whole multicolored like five color deck yet. In this like, we have, like the land deck that exists is more kind of like we have XR and orb and fastball and and like course of crew fix. So then with effects land, you can infinitely you can get all the lands out your deck, all that kind of stuff make infinite life. And obviously like strip mine is in because it's an old cube. So, so we can do that kind of stuff with it. But when, like, we're not doing, like, the tinier stuff that we can do nowadays, like the tiniest print, it is legal or it's been printed at this point we could do it. But maybe the fact that there's only one crucible of world effect means that that kind of deck doesn't really come like that. That deck doesn't come together either. Yeah, I feel like titanium probably would have been good effect for that. And honestly, I think that was maybe just nervous. I, I mean, I guess it was probably less what green was doing at that point. I, it was more about casting giant stuff, but, it's yeah, I think there's the thing with the land stuff, though, was that at that point of time, just crucible strip. I was kind of enough on its own, right? You can grind for map of lands for fat because the cheap stuff wasn't killing you. That quickly. I guess that's the other wink on for the white check I forgot about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done that. Yeah, yeah. Why has now it's like inside of pure crucible strip that they, you know, if they have a creature in flame, a creature is gonna kill you way before it overnight flattens you. No, no, I agree with that. This last one leads us on to another topic. But I did want to touch on. Is that kind of like some of the color paths it has what I would describe as just generically good cards rather than cards telling you to do something or leading you down a route like they get, like this is before Domino area as a set. And that was a kind of a set where they really kind of nailed down like gold bordered cards or signposts, which is like not as much of a design decision that the vintage cube has gone down as much. It has gone to ways of doing that. But like most like limited environments and like cubes that people build themselves will generally follow that design principle of gold board. Goldwater cards are kind of a signpost and like we see it a little bit in this, but in general there's a lot more, just like generic cards that are replaceable than you would see normally. Like like in reactors, for example, we have dreadful rack dust return and terminate like oh glory is abrupt decay, maelstrom, pulse, and pernicious need like in cubes. Nowadays we do not have the room for just generic cards that we could get in the monocle. It like we're not going to run abrupt decay, or like we're not going to run all of Reaper, but the K maelstrom pulls and punishes. We might run run one of those, but we'll just give black more options if that makes sense. Like this is definitely a period of time where just like I don't say they didn't know yet, but it's like from a design principle point of view, we're still fine giving generic cards to gold rather than using gold as like a here is some cool, powerful stuff. But maybe that is a that is what magic looked like at the. On the flip side, this is also a world before Modern Horizons commander, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that the Vintage Cube has always done fairly well is that the, the color pairs, sort of a narrow predefined thing. And this is what this color is doing, right? It's always been fairly open ended. Like, yeah, even now, like what Samir doing in the back, I think I can do a bunch of stuff, you know, it can, can be a bit fringe. I can do some legacy stuff. It can be a Vietnamese attack. I think that that is also true of the old one, that the, But, yeah, I think the general point about the gold cards being very generic is kind of true. And a lot of them are not even, you know, super powerful. Right? There's, you know, you look at like the so the one example like that's a Kazaa lead fight mage and a very mixed command that's, like the zombies way. It's a cool card, but it's not, it's it's not a very good what I this cuz, you know, I think that was partly we had a real shift in design approach and magic in general. I think at some point where they decided that the gold cards were willing to push way more mono colored cards. I think that maybe came after this. So we just didn't have that density of gold cards to draw upon, but were very powerful. No. That's right. Yeah. It is a thing of the dual color pairs do have like they each have five and I know it's from an earlier time period, but like when I was building my old board cube, I was really struggling to find here. So mate. So I can see a world where the best thing that Oz of can do is run a vindicate, run as intellect, and run a run on us end like those. This might be the most efficient things that it can do at the time, I did think other hand was a bit of a low points for others. Oh man, no removal for a man. It just kills something. You know. Not I remember so. So this is not soon after, hero's downfall was printed, and that was like a the best removal spell. Like one black, black, instant destroy target creature, a planeswalker like, when it was printed, it was a rare in ass. Is this a common now in carrying samples been uncommon? I don't know, it isn't uncommon. Okay. It's it's still an uncommon. But, like, I wouldn't be surprised if that became a, like a if we just because the planeswalker part isn't relevant to Popa they haven't downshift it. It would be my go. Yeah. I mean like ultimately has downfall is just a murderer. It's planeswalker. Right. And planeswalker is a kind of less important than they used to be in lots of ways. But yeah, kind of with that in mind, in terms of like, like, I guess kind of how design principles unchanged, I think one thing I do I want to touch on before we finish out here is that because we're in the future, we have more information. In hindsight, some of the things that this cube doesn't have. So one thing that I think is interesting is some of the things and cars that could be run in this cube that they're not like we touched on Gideon Alloy of Zendikar isn't in yet. That's a very strong card that I'm that had just come out and they had missed. But like, one thing that I've seen that's not in this is flash. And flash really is an archetype that's kind of like come to the fore the last like five years or so, but this feels like the time where there was still enough cards for it to be good. Like, James, like like we don't have a tracks, and some of the other, like, cards or cards or some of the redundancy cards, like Torsten, but like, do you still think that there's enough to make a flash package work in this cube? Oh, yeah. For sure. I mean, we've got Waterfall Famous, which is already kind of a best one, right? Because he's already in, we've got, you know, because it's not just flash, you've also got sneak attack, which works for similar stuff. And that's in and. Yeah, well, well, Spine Worm is fab. I could certainly put in fashion world spine. Well I mean I think it'd be very big. I think that'd be good. Yeah. Like like the classic one with flash was Protean Hulk, which has too many different lines to for me to kind of think about. But I know that that because of the recursive pod stuff, there's like, we probably have a lot of elements like effectively you go and get, the gimmick with proton, as you say, you flash it in and on turn two, you can go assemble your three card combo pieces, like with a blood artist, a scalpel, and like something else that kills them. That could be a bit too niche. But getting value stuff is kind of what decks in this Q but doing so maybe there's a world there. Protein Hulk is okay, but I think specifically like adding a flash. I know. Well, it's going well. I think you probably got a deck because because beautiful promises already in. Yeah, I think version Hulk is kind of tough and cube because I want to put my flash and my, like, sneak attack the combo deck. Right. I don't have small creatures to go and cat, you know, they're not that I don't want to also have to run a murderous red cap. And, whatever, you know, and it's kind of tough also that you, you know, even if you do all the work and you have like a little poke pile to go and get in your flash stack, like, but then, you know, you fall in one of the pieces or that's gone through exile or something, and then all of a sudden, your Hulk doesn't do anything, you know, that's very fair, I guess my point. Yeah, I guess I was thinking just flash algo I know is a thing, but that's probably. Yeah, I'm assuming peop people would have tried it at this point. And that's probably why it's not there a lot of why. So black folk is busted in like command and then like Canadian Highlander and formats like that where you have this big toolbox stack and you are playing 100 cards, singles invite. So it's fairly cheap to put in these other little combo piles. And, you know, you have redundancy for everything, whereas because your deck is, you know, this perfectly constructed, fine tuned machine and yeah, cube deck, some like that, like, that imperfection there a bit messy and it's just kind of tough to have a plug file with redundancy and your flash stack. No, I think that's fair. Some other, more obvious changes, though, that I think we can agree on. Is that the fact that there is a cycle of tempos in this cube and the Pinelands are not is wild. I know that, like, this must have been a case of that. This was probably like the the year before this. So therefore current hotness. But pinelands are much better than temples run those instead kids. Some other ones. And again, this is very early in the period of time where they are thinking about command cards in one on one formats or multi-player cards, like, like we have a couple that we've kind of mentioned, but like cards like Mystic Confluence or Fiery Confluence. They are both legal at this point. And I think this is, this very much feels like, the period in time where they are kind of like, oh, but those are big, expensive spells for commander. Why would they be good in a one on one format? And then you try them and it's like, okay, damn, these cards are actually quite good. This feels like kind of an inflection point between, like, there's only been a little bit of commander product at this point or a little kind of nonstandard product getting printed. It's about to ramp up a lot, but this feels kind of like the time where I'd like they haven't noticed or aren't fully testing those cards yet, or because I guess tonally said like like there isn't like there isn't like they're not being tested in standard. They're not being like they're not read like maybe they're being played in legacy at this point, or vintage or something like that. Like maybe that's where they're getting their data. But like effectively, we're not at a point in time where decisions are being made as quickly because people aren't testing these cards in cube formats yet. Whereas nowadays, if there's a commander guide printed like we will do a set review on it, we will look at the lists and we will just work out if we think it's good or not. And if it is, we'll test it like that kind of stuff. Whereas at this point that isn't how they're thinking. I guess. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I've I've had much fewer stats to keep up with back in those days. I think they should have worked harder. You know, I'm, I'll be honest with you at this point where it's like four sets a year, that is a dream of content creation. I would still be doing weekly deck texts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, like, oh, still doing more regular content if if the release schedule was that and it was nicer to keep up with. I think the other thing that's interesting that you could do with this cube, I would be quite a big, a big departure of the 2016 one. But, coffee. I want to save a problem. But, while the velocities of the vintage cube back in those days. Right, is that blue is just way stronger than the other colors. Blue actually has ten more cards than all the other colors in this cube as well. Yeah, yeah. Which kind of checks out. And I would I think one approach you could do is leaning into that even more. You know, you could just say, okay, everyone wants to draft blue. Blue's like the blue cards of all bangers, all the way down. We're scraping around with other colors, putting in life paint, zombie and, and whatnot. What if, I just like, you know, 90% cards and 60 for rest, and you say, okay, everyone wants to have blue, and I have more people want to draft blue. It's more good cards. Let them and, you know, we don't have to pad for other colors as much fan, you know, keep all the good cards from the other colors, but the other colors do all like have a few stinkers, you know, and it kind of feels like they are scraping the barrel a little bit with some of them. It it does. And I think that's for me, that's one of the charms of this cube. And part of that is, is looking back on it and rose with rose tinted glasses. Is that, yeah. Not every card is in its final form, if that makes sense. Like you don't have the most efficient card. Like to run like, like like there are weaknesses in colors, which I think is quite nice. Like this. Like it's like like I touched on earlier, but like, yes, Red has the aggro deck, but you're running Jack or pop and fire drinker say, turns Virgo Belle Striker into your sulfuric vortex. So you can probably still and you can still win games with that. But it's not as efficient. Yeah, I mean, it was really a burn that to that point, you know, it was it wasn't that the creatures were kind of kill you. It was fat. My tracker club was gonna get in full damage and that was more than 50 damage. But my fault does say sometimes Jackal part is better, you know? But, like, it was very much me. I'm going to draw this many cards in the game. It failed. Two, three damage to you. You'll die. Yeah. No, that was a lot of what that was. No. Exactly. But I think we need to kind of start pulling this together because there is a danger that we just start waxing lyrical about cards, and I spend another 30 minutes talking about Jackal Club, because believe me, I can. But at James in general, like final thoughts on this cube and thoughts on how things have changed over the last decade or so. Yeah, I mean, it's very different now, isn't it? It's, I really enjoyed the old vintage cube. I think Fez, I thought the deck building was kind of more interesting in a lot of ways because it felt like like there were really powerful things to do. Right? And though you could go of off and you could do busses stuff, but you kind of had to work for a little bit more because the cards when busted on their own, you know, what is the new if new cube? Now, that vintage cube now feels to me like the experience of drafting it feels, in a lot of ways more like. Like, it sounds weird. Like the most powerful version of drafting course that you can imagine that is somehow have some times how fast you feel to me. I've once I've, I had recently, if I am trying to actually draft to obsolete because a lot of it feels more just like find the open colors draft for really powerful cards, you know, and like, not say there isn't like other stuff you can do and sometimes that stuff is good. But, it feels like I if you are good decks, you know, and more of that are just a bit soupy. And listen, it's like it's fine. It's not like a bad experience, but I think it's good to have some variety, you know? So I, I'd be in favor of, like, having a bit more variety in which cubes I put up. Because I do think that the vintage cube experience now is, is, is a little bit narrow sometimes. You know, I'm actually, I'm kind of thinking of building a sort of version 2.0 of my power to cube where it's not going to be like, you know, that fair. You get rid of all the new cards, but it's going to be a get rid of a lot of the, a lot of, powerhouse modern horizons cards, like for for Failing Ghosts in the Psychic Fog and all of those. And, kind of try a bunch of the cards that have come standard in the last ten years that haven't really, you know, had their moment in that cube because it's been about modern horizons. Some nights it's, you know. No, definitely. And like, I think for us who like, this is looking back on this is like, this is the period when I got into cube, when I first started playing cube, like in like paper and such and like a lot of what we talk about is through the rose tinted goggles and like, I, I don't be able to think that like I or James are being like super negative about like the like we're not like old men shouting that kind of, oh, the new cube is rubbish. And if you like it, you're wrong. It's not that at all. It's why I think it kind of shows is the. The point of the Mega Vintage Cube is to be the most powerful cube. And as cars have got more efficient, the speed and the complexity has risen. But what it's meant is that there's now all this room underneath it. Like like ten years ago, if you said you were doing a cube, it was highly likely you were doing a version of the power cube that we're talking about nowadays. If you say you're going to do a cube, it's, oh, what do you what you're going to do, are you going to do a put up a cube, a unpowered vintage cube, a slower, cube, a more like niche or a build around cube or like an I want to talk to you, for example. Like I guess basically the mega industry fails. This fails the point of being the most powerful cube, but I think there's now more room underneath it for the environments that we want to make. Whereas at the time it kind of catered to a little bit of everyone, if that, like, but like, like, like it's still trying to please all the players in here. Like like like there's cards in the older cube that should probably have been ripped out but haven't yet. Like we still doing wildfire decks. We're still supporting like like Master Core is still in the cube. I think at this point, no matter the core was just cut like like this, cause that kind of like, there wasn't the redundancy and depth of card pool at the time. So you could still run some nostalgia cards or still run cards to keep people happy because they like them. You can run more cards at the time that people like because there aren't. The power differential is not as high, whereas nowadays, like the design can be like, I'm going to run this card because I like it, because the most efficient version is so much more efficient, basically. And I do think that's that's just a it's a change in magic. Neither one is correct, but the fact is that you can proxy up the old one. Right? Like like the lists exist online. Like if that's one of the nice things about the world we live in now is like we have the resources to go back and rebuild these environments if we want to change them, make them what we want to. That's kind of one of the things we want to talk about and look at today. Yeah, for sure. I'm sure part of this for me is definitely also nostalgia fire, because, it was also very different in the way we got to engage with it because also the actually, for me, at the time I was, I was I was drafting in paper but not really cube very much. It's nice to draft. So for why engage with cube was like drafting this online and like for two weeks it was up and I was never able to get in enough drafts in those two weeks to get bored of it. So, so I just never got bored stiff. Whereas now, because it's stuff constantly, as some point now, I has had enough free time to get bored of it, you know? Yeah, definitely. And yeah, I again, it's like, I don't want to say sound like we're just shouting at a cloud. But yeah, it's the main point of the day was just comparing the differences and seeing how things have changed and doing a cool look at an old cube. And yeah, it definitely brought back a lot of memories and makes me want to play with a Chronos. Yeah, sure, sure. Some of these old cool cards again, that's I think one of the things the new cube is way better for Pharaoh, actually, is that, people play cube competitively now in a way that they never did back then. I bet the old one would have been kind of bad to play competitively, because it's their color and balance, I think would be would be quite a lot. And actually just there'd be a lot of you have to be not have had all modern white or mono green or open power. Oh people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like I can imagine. Yeah, I, I go back to the point of view, things being much more swingy back in the day. Yeah. Like, did you get, did you get a lotus. Because again, there was, there isn't that there isn't for failing as mentioned Booth. She'll do it to fall back on if you don't open power. Yeah for sure. Like the, Because now. Right. There's this the category of cards is like power nine plus, you know, solving and time volume on if that's in your cube. And then just below that, there's a whole nother band of cards. It's like for failing six fog. Yeah. White plume adventure if you're playing cube. Vanished. Oh, I forgot about initiative. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Which, like, obviously like a significant amount of work from the Noxon, but, still, like big power spikes, which can make your deck way better. Whereas in the old cube fight, there's, like, the power of as robust as fast mana and the power. And then there's this giant gap before you got to have something else fight like outside of for power. Like, what's the next best card for first tech in this cube? Maybe. And that's how Tenko was. Very good of the animates. Maybe I'm going to say Tinker. Yeah, I like Tinker, reanimate. I'm going to say Gristle brand, because I think if you look because there's less redundancy in terms of big things to cheat in. So if you get that, I think you're likely to, I think people are less like to take the in tomb early in this period of time. Mana drain, maybe mana trends kind of kind of drains out. Yeah. Are we at a period where snap cast of mage. We're taking that I highly, that's actually not, as good as good cards. I remember an article at the time that was like, if you don't get power, it's gristle. Bran, snap cast. Sneak attack. I think sneak attack was very good. Yeah. Jules, I think at this point not fetches jewels. The early to take. I think, but. Yeah. No, but there's. Yeah, the gap between the power and the other cards is much bigger. This is my point. So. Yeah. Yeah, they they lost the. Do you open power lottery is a lot. Oh there's a much bigger thing I think in build that's that. And that's actually an interesting point because one of the things that I why my cube is an unpowered one is because I don't like that level of power swing. So maybe again. Again, that's this is the rose tinted goggles, although tinted glass is part of it, whereas I don't remember the times where my opponent had power and I didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all right. I think that's a good place to leave it. Yeah, we could be talking about this cube for hours, but yeah, let's go to the James. Thank you very much, man. That was a pleasure. Yeah, I thank you. Marvelous. Just as a reminder. Do make sure you give the podcast a five star review. Tell a friend all that good stuff. Next week, we're going to be back with, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set review hard cutting back into 2026. But from the cars that we've seen, spoiled already, does it? Like, there's some cool cards for us to talk about. The cube. Until then, it's goodbye from me. Thank you. Bye from James, and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.