Reuben | beatsandskies

Good call! Seems you’re right, I’ll have a bit of a play around with it.

I mean compared to 5th Edition and Visions Rochester, or Tempest (the set) only Block Constructed though…

Let’s say I know the exact contents of the 24 boosters drafted in the Top 8 at PT New York 1998. Because I do. Is there a way of loading these into a draft sim tool (like the one on @cubecobra.com) to prove once and for all that I’m better at TE/TE/ST booster draft than Jon Finkel?

YouTube video by The Tranquil Domain Magic History: The Cube

The Tranquil Boys coming in with some #mtgcube history this week! Good stuff. :)

1998 Pro Tour Los Angeles Standings

Good news for everybody who has been waiting for the full standings and pairings for 1998 Pro Tour Los Angeles in one (helpfully rainbow coloured) spreadsheet!

So I didn’t win a promo ocelot this weekend: I got something better! An absolute rarity in 2026, a normal Magic card.

Second place in the LGS Pauper monthly. I got smoked by the Champ Boggles player (can’t be too sad about losing to Armadillo cloak beats), but beat the Bye, Dredge and White Weenie.

I got the first round bye at Pauper today, because of course I did. Took the opportunity to break out Finkel vs Garfield against the 6 year old. He got his revenge for T1 Ritual/Necro with Jokulhaups. He’d probably have won, too, if he’d attacked more aggressively. Had to go down to 3 to find lands.

The colours make sense but no Blessing? Has someone checked to see if the dude is feeling alright? Could have got at least two on there no problem.

Unless you played Extended at the time or have actually tried Premodern then you absolutely wouldn’t. If it was only nostalgia that people were in it for… well, it wouldn’t be constantly growing year on year.

After game one I didn’t have any expectations of getting a third anyway, so can’t be too bummed it happened in that particular matchup. Winning the fight to kill the first dreadnaught got me a moral victory at least. It was just a shame I didn’t have one more creature than he had swords.

Yeah I had a game like that in the last APAC league. One in hand, drew one early and another on my second to last turn. A Pup or Scroll would have won me the game if I’d got either instead of one of the first two blasts. Though it was also a game two (against WU 12/12) where I had two Overloads too.

Pauper lists tend to play it only as a singleton as well! I mean, they probably know more about the format than I do but even so. I can’t take any list seriously that doesn’t have at least three, and I’m considering adding the fourth. (I realise I probably don’t have enough spells for Flamebreather)

Playing pauper tomorrow. Couldn’t find a red decklist that spoke to me — wanted something which has the flexibility of Premodern Burn — so I threw together something myself. No doubt it’ll be way worse than established variants, but whatever. I’ll play monthly and tweak it each time to better suit.

How about “Switch to Random” too for full chaos?

Since Moxfield essentially uses Scryfall’s functions (I think?) making use of “is:normal” to have the newest nonUB, nonSLD, nonFull-art option could be cool too.

I am suddenly in love with this set.

The Pauper Cube The Pauper Cube is a 450 card Cube originally designed by Adam Styborski, but now maintained by a players' committee[1]. It is singleton and adherers to (common-only) Pauper format legality.

If playing with a Cube seems interesting, but the scope of creating one is intimidating, consider grabbing a list online! As with more traditional formats, you can netdeck a budget build, like the very popular Pauper Cube: 450 commons, at about $0.50 USD per card! #mtgcube

Ok. So I’m going to have to create a wildly successful variant format of my own to earn a trophy like that. Wow.

I don’t think this bash is gonna work eh. I just assumed that ancient soulgrinder kit and the metal demon prince kit would be a similar scale. Clearly not.

30 years ago to the day Michael Loconto won the very first PT against Bertrand Lestrée in the final.

Fittingly we just deployed a nice "little" update to gatheringstats.com

You can now filter player rankings by season and of course we added a bunch of recent tournaments.

Michael Loconto Michael "Mike" Loconto is a former Magic: The Gathering player. As a social worker from Grafton, Massachussets, he won the first ever Pro Tour (New York 1996).[1]

Mike Loconto, who'd been enjoying liquid refreshments at the reception of PT New York, went up to Richard Garfield and told him that he'd be handing him the trophy on Sunday. True to his promise, on February 18, 1996 - 30 years ago today - Loconto became Magic's first ever Pro Tour champion.

Why do I not live in Auckland? This was a massive miscalculation. How amazing are those tokens!

YouTube video by Brian Schneider S1, E11: Mike Turian Puts the MT in MTG

This has to be my favourite Magic related content coming out at the moment. And boy is it coming out! Two hour long video interviews, and this must be the third in the last week? I guess Brian is just having a casual chat with his buddies but even so… utterly fascinating stuff. Highly recommended.

Nah. Take it back to 1996 where nobody shared decklists at all and why would you even want to see someone else’s deck anyway you should be building your own decks you scrub.

Oh, I forgot I had this lined up.

1997 World Championships The 1997 World Championships for Magic: The Gathering were held at the Wizards of the Coast Game Center in Seattle, United States, between August 11–17, 1997. It was filmed and coverage aired on ESPN ...

Ok, then. The 1997 Worlds page is now considerably more useful/interesting than it was before. (Forward to 1998 to see the difference) But if there’s something I’ve missed, or mistakes made then feel free to shout out. Or even better: just jump in and make any necessary edits yourself! I don’t mind.

Story of my teenage years. I understand she went for a reduction when she was in her mid 20s, and good for her.

Waters is another solid option. A minor annoyance for me is that he didn’t illustrate an island until Ravica block. It’d have been amazing to be able to pair his Saga Forest, Treetop Village and Yavimaya Coast together in my UG Madness deck. (I’ve gone for Rob Alexander Odyssey basics instead)

Ok. I’m thinking Douglas Shuler. He’s got a good selection of basics, his spells are fairly balanced across all 5 colours, and it’d have a super janky old-school vibe to it. Genuinely, Serra Angel or Hypnotic Spectre would be P1P1s and that’s something which would make me super happy.

Yes.

True, but it feels fitting to have the matching basics to use. And there’s definitely artists on my potential list who meet that criteria: Rebecca Guay for instance.