The Vintage Cube is recognized as one of the highly popular cubes on Magic Online, the premier digital service for playing Magic: The Gathering before MTG Arena came into existence. Now, Arena enthusiasts will have the chance to encounter immense strength when the Powered Cube limited event launches on Oct. 28. As per the official description, "This exciting event is unlike anything else on Arena and will showcase some of the strongest cards from throughout Magic's history, including the legendary Power Nine."
What Is the Classic Cube?
As experienced Limited players know, a cube is a distinctive form of draft format that does not pull cards from one or more specific sets, but rather from a pre-selected collection. The Vintage Cube has long been a enjoyable and widely-used way for Magic fans to experience the thrills of using some of the strongest cards in the game's history without having to pay the significant money required for physical Vintage play. MTG Arena introduced something similar with its Timeless play style, but it excluded cards such as the Power Nine — MTG's classic powerhouse cards, such as Black Lotus, the five Moxen, Time Walk card, Timetwister spell, and Ancestral Recall ability.
Features of the Arena Powered Cube
The Arena Powered Cube will include 100 new Arena card printings, but not all of them will be collectible at the release of the event. This allows for the addition of a larger card pool, as some of these extremely strong cards could create imbalance issues in Constructed formats. Based on the announcement, this also facilitated the launch of the new cube quicker. Online community members are already speculating that this decision was a response to the poor reception of Through the Omenpaths — the Arena version of a Spider-Man themed set and the least-played Arena set to date, as indicated by various sources.
Event Structure and Entry Details
Introducing a iteration of one of the top draft formats ever will surely increase engagement in MTG Arena, but there is an key point to add. The Powered Cube will use a reward system and access cost similar to the Premier Draft tournaments, thus being costlier to play than previous Arena cubes. The event structure will be the following:
- Event Start: Oct. 28, 8 a.m. PT (15:00 UTC)
- Registration Ends: Nov. 18, 8:00 AM Pacific Time (15:00 UTC)
- Participation Cost: 10k gold, or 1,500 gems, or one draft token
- Format: Phantom Player Draft (Players do not keep the event cards)
- Single Game Mode: 7 victories or 3 defeats; with ranking
- Best-of-Three: 3 matches; unranked
Rewards and Extra Information
The Cube Prize Packs issued as rewards can include nearly all cards legal in the Timeless mode, along with cards from a unique bonus card list. For more details on the rewards and the cards present in the Arena Powered Cube, interested players can review the official announcement. Also, on Oct. 22, MTG pro players Luis Scott-Vargas and Paul Cheon, experienced cube format experts, will share further insights on their video platforms.
