Magic Cubelet
If you’re like me, you love drafting in Magic but you’re painfully aware of how difficult it can be to get 8 people together for a full draft. Did you know there are lots of two player draft variants that are a lot of fun? And you can make a cubelet that stores easily in a few deck boxes so you’re always ready to draft!
What is a Cubelet?
You know a cube is 360 or more cards selected for drafting with 8 people, right? A cubelet is half that many cards (or as few as 90 if you don’t mind always seeing the same cards) intended for Solomon, Winston, and Grid draft, or Wizard’s Tower. (see below for a brief explanation of each)
For two people to draft you need the equivalent of 6 booster packs of cards, 3 for each person. That’s 90 cards. Double that to 180 and now we get some real diversity each time we draft, plus it means another pair of players could do their own draft from the same cubelet at the same time. Swiss or round robin tournaments in this manner can be a lot of fun and relatively quick.
Solomon Draft
Determine who goes first (Player A) and who goes second (player B). The player who goes second in the draft will be first on the play for game one. Player A starts things off by taking 8 random cards from the cubelet and dividing them into two piles. The piles don’t have to be equal (they can be, but you could also go as extreme as all the cards in one pile and none in the other). Player B chooses the pile of cards they want and Player A gets the remaining pile. Then they switch.
Once you’ve done this 10 times, you will have one remaining draft choice left but this time with 10 cards instead of 8. Players build 40 card decks as in normal limited.
Winston Draft
From the cubelet deal out three piles of one card each, face down. Player A looks at the first pile and decides if they want it. If they take it, their draft turn is over and they replace the pile with a new face down card. If they don’t want it then they add a new card to the pile and then look at the second pile. Same deal here. Take it and replace it, or add a card to it and move on. If they move on then they look at the third pile and can take it and replace it, or add a card to the pile. After this, if they didn’t take any of the piles, they automatically have to take the top card from the cubelet.
Then Player B does the same thing. Assuming Player A passed on some piles, Player B can now choose to take all the cards in one pile, or pass on the pile and add another card to it. This continues until all 90 cards have been drafted. Then players build 40 card decks as in normal limited.
Grid Draft
For this format you’ll need all 180 cards in the cubelet for just two people to draft (actually you need 162 but it’s not like the remaining 18 will allow for another draft).
Take nine cards and arrange them in a 3x3 grid. Player A chooses a row or column and takes all three cards in that row or column. Without replacing any missing cards, Player B then chooses a row or column and takes all cards remaining there (which may only be two). At this point set the cards remaining on the grid aside--nobody will be drafting those. Lay out a new 3x3 grid of 9 cards and this time Player B gets to draft the first row or column.
You do this 18 times and then players build 40 card decks as in normal limited.
Wizard’s Tower
Take your cubelet and deal out a hand of seven cards to each player. Players share the cubelet as their library (this is the wizard’s tower for which the format is named). Don’t mix in any lands--any card in hand can be played face down as a nonbasic land that taps for one of any color mana.
Have fun!
