The Vintage Cube stands as one of the highly popular cubes on the original digital platform, the premier digital service for playing Magic: The Gathering before MTG Arena came into existence. Now, MTGA players will have the chance to experience immense strength when the Powered Cube limited event debuts on October 28. According to the announcement, "This exciting event is unlike anything else on Arena and will showcase some of the strongest cards from throughout Magic's history, including the Power Nine."
Understanding the Classic Cube?
As experienced Limited players know, a cube is a unique form of Booster Draft that does not pull cards from one or more specific sets, but instead from a pre-selected collection. The Classic Cube has consistently served as a enjoyable and widely-used way for MTG players to experience the thrills of using some of the strongest cards in the history of the game without having to pay the significant money required for tabletop Vintage. Arena introduced something similar with its Timeless format, but it excluded cards such as the Power Nine — Magic's classic powerhouse cards, including Black Lotus, the five Moxen, Time Walk card, Timetwister spell, and Ancestral Recall.
Features of the Arena Powered Cube
The Powered Cube will include a hundred fresh MTG Arena card printings, but some of these will be collectible at the release of the event. This enables the inclusion of a larger card pool, as some of these extremely strong cards could create imbalance issues in Constructed formats. According to the official news, this also facilitated the launch of the new cube quicker. Fans online are already theorizing that this move was a response to the negative feedback of the Omenpaths set — the Arena adaptation of Marvel's Spider-Man and the least-played Arena set ever, according to some reports.
How It Works and Entry Information
Introducing a iteration of one of the top draft formats ever will certainly increase engagement in Arena, but there is an important caveat to note. The Arena Powered Cube will adopt a prize structure 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:
- Begins On: Oct. 28, 8 a.m. PT (3 p.m. UTC)
- Signup Close: Nov. 18, 8 a.m. PT (3 p.m. UTC)
- Participation Cost: 10k gold, or 1,500 gems, or one draft token
- Format: Powered Cube Phantom Player Draft (Participants won't retain the drafted cards)
- Single Game Mode: 7 victories or 3 defeats; with ranking
- Best-of-Three: 3 matches; unranked
Prizes and Extra Details
The reward packs issued as rewards can contain almost every card legal in the Timeless format, along with cards from a unique bonus card list. Additional information on the rewards and the included cards in the Arena Powered Cube, enthusiasts can examine the full details. Additionally, on October 22, MTG pro players Luis Scott-Vargas and Paul Cheon, long-time cube format experts, will provide more updates on their video platforms.
