2. juniper order meetup i, november 15, 2025

Hey folks! Welcome back to the Juniper Order Library. I'm happy you're here. The Juniper Order Library is a relatively new publication, but I plan to write about games, Magic: the Gathering, being a gamer dad, and learning to have fun whether you are a novice or an expert. I hope you enjoy what I do and maybe give a follow if you like it!

About the Juniper Order

Looking back on my 30+ years playing Magic: The Gathering and also looking towards my future with the game as a family man, I made the Juniper Order to cultivate the Magic experience that I want to share with my friends and family. Instead of cards sitting in boxes and binders, I want my collection to become an interactive library of different Magic experiences. Even though this is the first Juniper Order meetup, the spirit of the Juniper Order has it's roots in a pandemic project to build a physical copy of the Magic Online Vintage Cube.

About the Daybreak Games Vintage Cube

What is cube? Cube is a way to play Magic that is part board game and part fantasy football. As part board game, Cube eliminates the barrier to entry for the typical Magic experience--no collection required. As long as you know the rules and someone in your play group has a cube, you're in! As part fantasy football, you'll be drafting your deck from a stack of cards (the cube) that is curated by the owner.

Ideally, you and seven other players draft, each of you with three packs of fifteen random cards from the cube. Look at your first pack, pick any card you like, and pass the other fourteen to the person on your left. You'll get a new pack of fourteen cards from the person on your right. Look at those, pick any card you like, and pass the rest. Repeat until you have drafted fifteen cards. Pick up your second random pack and repeat this process, except pass right instead of left, and then again with your third pack, passing back to the left.

You'll end up with 45 cards to build your deck, along with any number of basic lands you want. Generally speaking, you'll want 17 mana sources and 23 other spells.

What is vintage cube? Vintage cube is a collection of 540 of the most powerful and iconic Magic cards ever printed. Almost every card in a vintage cube is powerful enough to be a first pick in a "normal" retail set booster draft, so the 45 cards you end up with will be flush with playable cards. Drafting a pool of powerful cards and building a deck with them is the draw of vintage cube. It's a near infinitely replayable experience, no two drafts will be the same!

"Powerful" is both subjective and contextual, so curating a vintage cube is both an art and a science. Some designers select for raw power over everything. Some prefer an approach that focuses on historical relevance, focusing on one era of Magic design over another. And others try to focus on the best possible gameplay at the expense of power or historical significance.

Daybreak Games, the company that currently manages the Magic Online client, maintains what I consider the "canonical" vintage cube, on the merit that it's probably the most played vintage cube in existence. Ryan Spain and Chris Wolf, in my opinion, do an exceptional job maintaining the cube and focusing on good gameplay. I also appreciate that they take some shots to try and sneak in some unusual archetypes.

Even though I'm not making decisions about the contents of this cube, I do get to flex my creative muscles aesthetically. The style of my cube is currently in flux, shifting from a preference for old borders and original prints to a more modern, full art style. I'll also be leaning into some Universes Beyond and Secret Lair treatments. From my experience, this is an unconventional take on vintage cube aesthetic. The Cube Cobra link below is what I'm building towards.

Cube Cobra Overview: MTGO Vintage Cube (The Spider-Man Update)

This is my personal paper copy of the MTGO Vintage Cube. I'm not curating this cube myself, but I am putting one unique spin on it: I allow the cube draft winner to temporarily add a card to the cube. There are ten slots for these cards, at which point they will get to choose which card to replace. Here are the cards that have been added so far: <<[[!/Booster Tutor]][[!Clocknapper]][[!Cogwork Librarian > The aesthetics for this cube are to use full-art/booster-fun versions wherever possible. As such, there are some proxies for cards that don't have a modern design feel. The basic lands are the DMU stained glass lands. I am also collecting copies of every card that has ever been in a version of the Magic Online Vintage Cube. [Here is my progress.](https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/MTGO-Alumni)

"Cube is only for you if you enjoy pure, great Magic with inifinite replayability." - Luis Scott Vargas, cube aficionado

Meetup Report

The Juniper Order is about taking control of your gameplay experience and learning to have fun. If you're at a Juniper Order Meetup and you see a card that makes you feel something, you should pick it and play it. But some of us do like to have fun by being sweaty try-hards, so I also have some words of wisdom for the people at our table. Cheap cards are a lot better than expensive cards. Every 5-drop is going to look insane, but there's always going to be an insane 5-drop if you want one. There's not always going to be one-mana interaction or a good 2-drop. You have to do something every turn to not die, so give yourself the best chance to live and have fun!

Pack 1 pick 1 is the moment that dreams are made of. As much as the experienced player knows not to be overly tied to your early picks, the pack 1 pick 1 influences the texture of the draft. Do you open your favorite card and try to force an archetype or do you stay open and see what comes later? As I fan through my pack, there's none of the truly broken cards that you dream to start a draft with. One card speaks to having fun though: Hullbreacher.

Hullbreacher punishes opponents for drawing extra cards, and drawing extra cards happens fairly often in a typical vintage cube game. The treasures that Hullbreacher gifts you are artifacts that can be sacrificed for mana, incremental bursts that can catapult you ahead in the game. But Hullbreacher really pops off by breaking the symmetry of cards like Timetwister.

With Hullbreacher in play these symmetrical draw seven become zero-sum fun! You shuffle your hand and graveyard into your library and draw seven fresh cards. Your opponent shuffles their hand and graveyard into their library and... they draw zero cards and you get seven treasures instead!Winning with a new hand and a bunch of mana against a player with no cards in hand is not too difficult.

And just like we drew it up, the first pack I'm passed contains exactly Timetwister! Easy pick! A quick thumb through the rest of the pack... oh no. There's a Sol Ring.

This is kind of a disaster. It's hard to say exactly what the best card in the entire cube actually is, but Sol Ring is one of those cards. Taking Sol Ring really puts me in a tough spot. There are other cards like Timetwister that Hullbreacher can combo with, but Timetwister is the best one, and a lot of them are desirable in many decks, not just the Hullbreacher deck. There is only one card in the entire cube that I could have in my deck that would make me pass a Sol Ring as my second pick, and that's Hullbreacher. I think Timetwister is the pick, but I'm very sad to pass such a powerful card.

Starting off the draft with a game ending combo like Hullbreacher plus Timetwister, my plan was drafting a deck that can "tutor" (search my library) and draw extra cards in order to assemble the combo consistently. Like most cube decks, I also want lots of cheap spells, especially interaction. Another way to break the symmetry of Timetwister is to empty your hand faster than your opponent. If you Timetwister when you have two cards in hand and your opponent has five cards in hand, it's like you drew five cards and your opponent only drew two.

I stayed pretty open in pack 1, picking various Grixis lands (the short-hand name for blue, black, and red) to solidify my mana, some cheap creature removal, as well as picking up a late Animate Dead. Timetwister is a little awkward with Animate Dead since it looks at creatures in your graveyard to return to the battlefield and Timetwister shuffles your graveyard into your library. But drawing seven cards is a lot of cards, and a fresh hand should help set up another combo. I think Torsten, Founder of Benalia came around 13th pick, which is unexciting but serviceable. Maybe I'll get Flash.

Just like we drew it up, Flash showed up in the middle of the second pack.

Flash is an extremely messed up card that maybe doesn't even look that good. Sure you get a creature at instant speed but you're still paying for it, is that even good? But the key to Flash is that you were never planning paying the mana cost in the first place, you're always just immediately sacrificing the creature you cast. Look at our buddy Torsten, Founder of Benalia.

You still get the enters triggers from Flash-ing it in, and when you can't pay the mana cost minus two and have to sacrifice it, you get the dies triggers too. If you Flash Torsten, you spent two mana and two cards at instant speed for three or four cards from the top seven of your library, plus seven 1/1 soldier tokens. That is an extremely good deal for 1U at instant speed. Then Torsten is in your graveyard for Animate Dead. And Flash itself doesn't care about graveyards, which makes it a really nice card to Timetwister into.

Flash is a card that you will first-pick in pack one and build around it, or it's a card you'll pass later. If I didn't draft Torsten in the end of pack one, I probably would have passed on Flash myself. But we've got a plan!

Here's a picture of how my deck turned out, as well as a Moxfield decklist to see the deck in more detail.

Daybreak Games Vintage Cube, 3-0, 11/15/2025 - None

A deck created using Moxfield.

For having no Power, this deck is pretty disgusting. Four good to great large creatures to reanimate, three reanimation spells, a couple ways to get creatures in my graveyard (including Flash), Mystical Tutor and Entomb for consistency, and the Timetwister-plus-Hullbreacher hammer looming in the back, and Dark Ritual for a little speed boost. All gas no brakes!

Round 1

My first round opponent was my cousin Watts1500. He really only ever plays Magic when he comes to a Juniper Order meetup, but he's a quick studyand has a background in mathematics. He was on an aggressive red and black deck with some powerful cards like Broadside Bombardiers, but he's still inexperienced in the game and learning how to play cube. I ended up winning the first game with Hullbreacher into Timetwister, and the second game reanimating large creatures.

In other games...

Adam (2) vs Elendale (0) - A true Brother's War. Elendale's Brain Freeze combo deck would have got the job done were it not for Adam's Eldrazi Titans. Adam hilariously takes the match 2-0!

Tall Beard (2) vs The Animal (0) - A grindy game between two grindy decks. The Animal's 20/20 flying indestructible Marit Lage tokens were unable to get the job done, and TallBeard takes it down, 2-0.

Winter (2) vs MacUserJoe (0) - No notes on the matchup.

Round 2

My second round opponent, fresh off the Brother's War last round, was long-time friend Adam. He was on a green, big-mana ramp strategy with some Eldrazi titans on the top of his curve. This time, I won game one with reanimation, and game two with Hullbreacher plus Timetwister. 2-0

In other games...

The Animal (2) vs Watts1500 (0) - No notes...

Elendale (2) vs MacUserJoe (0) - Looks like Elendale has Doomsday plus Thassa's Oracle too!

Winter (2) vs Tall Beard (1) - Another grindy game. I was really rooting for Tall Beard here, he's been putting in work trying to learn and get better at cube, and Winter is a tough opponent. Tall Beard's Esper (white, blue, and black) midrange deck had a lot of impressive 2-drops, but he didn't have a good answer to Forth Eorlingas.

Round 3

I'm taking on Winter. Winter is returning to the game after I want to say a 20 year hiatus. But even so, we've probably played thousands of games against each other and it's gotta be close to 50-50 lifetime. Winter is genuinely afraid of my deck, but I saw Winter blow the doors off with Forth Eorlingas. I also passed a Sol Ring his direction, and I'd quickly learn there were a couple Moxes as well. I don't have good answers to Winter's late game, I need to get these games over with.

I did manage to stick a Hullbreacher plus Timetwister to win one game. In another game, I had a turn 2 Atraxa get brickwalled by mana advantage and Retrofitter Foundry. Fortunately I had a steady stream of large reanimation targets and managed to take the match. It sounds more lopsided than it was.

In other games...

Elendale (2) vs The Animal (1)

MacUserJoe (1) vs Watts1500 (0) - MacUserJoe had to bail for family committments after game 1.

Tall Beard (2) vs Adam (0)

Final Standings

First place: nickelbolt (me!)

Second Place: Winter

Third Place: Tall Beard

As winner of the meetup, I declined my option to choose the format for the next meetup, and I'm pretty likely to always defer if I win the day. Therefore it passes to Winter, who chose Bloomburrow booster draft. Tall Beard said that's what he would have picked as well, so I think that works out pretty well.

See you next time!