5. juniper order meetup iii, february 21, 2026

juniper order meetup iii

The format for Meetup III as chosen by Meetup II winner tallbeard was my Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty set cube. The cube is nearly completely foil, with four copies of every common, three copies of every uncommon, and one copy of each rare and mythic. Packs are collated to (nearly) match the retail product, with one rare or mythic rare, three uncommons, nine commons, one common or uncommon flip saga and one "enters tapped, gain one life" dual land.

Cube Cobra List: Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty set cube

Build, playtest, and share your Magic the Gathering cube!

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is my all time favorite Magic set. I have a deep fondness for old Kamigawa, the cyberpunk reimagining/timeskip really delivered, I love the booster fun anime cards, and draft is top-tier. This was the one set that inspired me to put the time in and make Mythic rank on Arena, topping out in the mid 200s.

This meetup had four participants: elendale, tallbeard, watts1500, and myself. We are not believers in "pick 2" draft, so much like Meetup II we decided to draft five packs of 15 cards, but to burn the last 6 cards in each pack. More first picks, less chaff, hopefully more interesting decks.

Pack one pick one is the best part of any draft, when hope springs eternal, when anything could be there, and your deck's sweetness is limited only by your imagination.

I opened up the waifu.

aside on the wandering emperor

I think the Magic storyline is as good as it has ever been. They've really been knocking it out of the park with the published pieces and the world-building. So no shade from me about the direction they took. I will say though, there was a missed opportunity. I think The Wandering Emperor's gimmick of an unstable spark that causes semi-random planeswalking is a great hook for the Magic story through-line, especially when blocks don't exist and every new set has to be a different setting.

Specifically, I wanted her to be on Thunder Junction. The connection between Japanese Samurai cinema and American Western cinema was right there. A magical samurai showing up to a gun fight with a katana? How could they not do this?

I was really disappointed they de-sparked her. It's great that she was on Duskmourn, which gives some props to Japanese horror in the "modern horror" set, but there's a part of me that just wants to see some cowboy shit.

I also just love this card in particular. It's one of my favorite designs.

back to the program

Pack one, pick one, The Wandering Emperor is a nice place to start. I was already imagining multiple copies of Imperial Oath in my controlling deck. The next couple picks had me bouncing around a little, but it was very clear that blue and the ninja archetype was open. It was bittersweet to leave my beloved Wandering Emperor in the sideboard, but my deck ended up pretty nice.

My main concern was that I only had one copy of Okiba Reckoner Raid and none of the other good flying enablers like Network Disruptor or Searchlight Companion . The lack of evasion could potentially hurt. This ended up not really being too much of an issue. I had an A and wanted an A+, which admittedly isn't the best look.

round 1

I was matched up against elendale to kick off the event. elendale had a black/red/green shrine control deck with lots of removal. In game 1, I flooded out pretty hard but I also drew enough cards to get through it and win a close one. Game 2 did not feel particularly close, but I did have to fight through a lot of removal with my card advantage.

In the other match, tallbeard defeated watts1500 two games to none.

round 2

Winner's bracket! Matched up against tallbeard and his pretty solid looking green/white enchantments deck.

Even had Jugan Defends the Temple , which is one of the winningest card for any set that has 17lands data for Magic Arena. 73.5% win rate among top players is a big number. Hopefully he doesn't draw it.

I remember the games feeling particularly stressful. My deck doesn't handle large creatures very well. Once they hit 5 toughness I can't really fight through them, and I don't have the evasion that these decks usually have. In game one, there was a point where he attacked, mentioning that he wasn't sure if he was the beatdown or not , and if he just never attacked me I don't know how I could possibly win. Game two felt very close as well, I just happened to draw like a maniac in the last couple of turns making it look more like a blowout. It was a hard fought 2-0, I don't know if tallbeard realized how close it was.

elendale and watts1500 squared off in the other side of the bracket, elendale taking the 2-0.

round 3

The last matchup in this round-robin afternoon was myself against watts1500. He was on a white/black midrange deck. Game two got pretty close as he put together a beefy board state that I was having trouble punching through, but I managed to win the 2-0.

tallbeard dispatched elendale in the other bracket 2-1.

the winner...

...is me! Last time I came out on top, I abdicated, but since my birthday is coming up, I want to play some good old fashioned Vintage Cube. Looking forward to that in a couple weeks.

the juniper order elo project

I've been wanting to track the results of our meetups for posterity, and I came up with the idea a few weeks back to see if I could set up an Elo system for us in a spreadsheet. I have a math degree, taught math for almost 10 years, and yet somehow I barely know how to use Excel? But a little bit of Google searching and some trial and error has resulted in something that is at least functional.

There's a lot of different ways to set up an Elo system, but I wanted to end up with something that is like the old Magic DCI ratings system. 1600 is the base, and you move up or down from there based on the difference in players ratings. Losing to better players and beating weaker players doesn't impact your rating much, but beating a good player and losing to a weaker player affects your ranking much more.

I'm not going to put our ratings in every write-up, but for the first time, here it is:

1) nickelbolt (me) 1695
2) tallbeard 1641
3) winter (rip) 1629
4) elendale 1598
5-7) adam, animal, MacUserJoe 1584
8) watts1500 1485

That's it for now. Catch you at the next one.