I do like deck construction. It’s a side of ccgs like MtG that I get immense enjoyment from.

However I have over the more recent months come to appreciate more the other aspects of game formats offered by this type of game. Such as preconstructed decks and draft.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy these differing ways to participate in a game before. It’s just my preference was for playing with decks I’d constructed.

But as I took an extended break away from the competitive side and the constant very expensive arms race. I wanted to return to playing these types of game casually with my friends and without the expense.

As I’ve documented in previous posts I’ve found official MtG precons for Standard/Pioneer/Commander/Game Night Kits and the Card Kingdom Battle Decks great as casual pick up and play sessions with friends.

Now I’m trying to bring that casual side to Dice Masters. Particularly using cards from sets that I already own.

Sadly in the Dice Masters world there are no precon products apart from starter/learning sets that do not give the full blown Dice Masters experience. But are great for teaching the core ebb and flow of the game.

Which is how I fell into and loving the draft format with the draft packs.

But at £10 a pack purchasing two packs a time can soon mount up. I needed a way to get more value out of any draft packs purchased, and my dated collection.

Luckily the MtG community had an answer. The cube. I’ve already written about constructing a cube for Dice Masters.

So at the moment draft whether using official packs or a cube is my preferred way to play Dice Masters with friends.

Which brings me after that rather long introduction and justification to the fact that once again this Tuesday Dave and I played Dice Masters by drafting the two Dark Phoenix Saga draft packs.

I’m enjoying our two player draft experience but in an ideal world we’d have three or four drafting and playing their teams against each other.

The first two games I was royally beaten by Dave. Game one saw me purchase two early explosion basic action dice. They helped whittle Dave’s life down but I wasn’t able to capitalise on it.

Game two I just wasn’t able to get anything going to container his bloody doubled up attacks or overcrush.

Our third and final game of the evening saw me get a consolatory victory so it wasn’t a complete white wash. My key to victory in this game was my Mystique Freedom Force comboing with Madelyne Pryor Sisterhood.

Basically I kept throwing Mystique in to chump block and pump up the loyalty counters on Madelyne Pryor, and when a suitable character die was in the used area move it to the prep area.

Madelyne at the end was getting pretty pumped at the end +7A and +7D iirc.

The three games were all we had time for before the early closing of social club (our hosts).

Did I pull a Master Mold?

After all that’s the thought that was eating away at me whilst the two draft packs remained unopened. The temptation to find out in the days since their arrival excruciating. But I managed to resist.

However we pulled no Master Mold between the two packs.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed. But that’s the major drawback of the ccg model that you live with.

Now for the bit related to the post title…

So I now have my first cube.

It’s probably the laziest one you can do. I just threw the four draft packs together. It really doesn’t get simpler than that.

It’s a modern cube.

Which means I used draft packs from Modern legal sets. In this case two draft packs from The Dark Phoenix Saga and Secret Wars.

So it’s kinda a chaos draft experience due to the fact I’m using two sets.

Nice thing is this all fits into a MtG Commander deck box!

However the play testing of this cube will have to wait until our next Dice Masters session due to the evenings time constraints.

The nice thing is that once I get more draft decks from these sets I can curate the experience better, like including a Wolverine. There were one or two cards that had abilities that triggered if Wolverine was present. But those thoughts are for another day.