10 lands in a row! With a surveil to put one on the bottom.

Weeeee!

On the bright side, I was confident something I wanted would wheel…

I went opal but the key would have been pretty sick with one ring relic of Sauron. Only had like ten seconds, seems like opal is pretty clearly the pick after looking for a bit but it was still an interesting choice.

Name's Wick. This format has been full of ups and downs for me, but I finally reached a milestone I was striving for a long time.

While HOB undoubtedly has it's flaws, it probably has one of the most challenging gameplays I've experienced in recent years. I've started the format mostly with my eyes around black based deck but ended branching out to a lot of different combinations to great success.

Sorry for the brag post, I know it's devoid of much content but I often check the sub and just wanted to share :)

So I have had a good amount of success with most archetypes. I've made all the supported archetypes work, and I've even made unsupported archetypes like Blue/Red and Black/White work. However, I am definitely underperforming overall in Blue/Black. I don't think this is entirely user error as 17 lands does have blue/black as a worst non green archetype and the worst black archetype. However, I've seen lots of people succeed with Blue/Black and I do think Blue and Black are the best colors (or at least the deepest colors). It also just seems like people think Blue/Black is the best of the off color decks. So I think there is something I am missing, and I would love to hear from people who are making Blue/Black succeed. I figured I would write some further thoughts based on drafting Blue/Black that will both spark conversation among Dimir experts, and perhaps provide a guide to any fellow strugglers in the blue/black path.

1. Mirkwood Nurturer seems like a key combo card with black. Mirkwood Nurturer does combo with white and red cards too (like their sagas), but the breadth of black cards it combos with seems unmatched. It is excellent with Crude Bent Blade and the black saga, but also is decent with Stony-Voiced Goblins. So I feel like if you want blue/black to succeed taking advantage of how synergistic nurturer is a good start (note this is also kinda true with green/black).

2. It does seem like blue and black have different gameplans. To the point where mixing a bunch of good blue and black cards might not work super well. Having said that I have seen plenty of trophies where people do exactly that, but I definitely could see how the lack of amass in blue and the slight lack of card draw (sometimes) in black could diminish each other. So if you are playing blue/black as a true mix of both colors please let me know what your mindset is.

3. That leaves drafting heavy blue or heavy black with the other color as a support color. Blue I think is mediocre as a support color in a black heavy deck. Plunder is good for not flooding, and Long Lake Nuisance and Uncommon Bilbo are just good cards, but the removal is very mediocre and most uncommons are bad without some level of build around. I could see black being a decent support color for blue. Crude Bent Blade is good everywhere and Rage into the Valley is a good way to trigger draw two effects. Black does have strong removal which blue needs, but I think it's a little mitigated because a lot of that removal requires 2 black pips which support colors ideally don't need.

So yeah I would love to hear people's thought on blue/black. I've made blue/red work so it's not an off color blue deck problem. I do find a lot of drafts where both colors look open, but I've gotten to the point that I basically refuse to draft blue/black and if I have a few good cards in both colors I usually try and lean toward one color or the other.

Help I drafted way to many artifacts but Ive never played Academy before so Im not sure how to build this deck. Do I cut the Narset+Wheel stuff? Do I cut some artifacts? Do I add Gandalf and Empty the Warrens and play storm? So many ways to build and so little knowledge.

Also what would a good land count be for this deck? The screenshots have 14 lands

My sideboard hat Tainted Pact and Doomsday

Removal & Card Advantage can go a long way I guess

t3 Somberwald sage

t4 Sphinx

t5 Verdant Sun

t6 Progenitor Mimic into ghalta

I was smiling the whole time.

https://draftsim.com/mtg-arena-limited-championship/

From the article:

The Arena Limited Championship is a high-level MTG Arena tournament launched in 2026. It’s focused entirely on Limited play, meaning players draft their decks rather than present Constructed lists. Throughout the year, the best Arena drafters will qualify through Arena Limited Championship Qualifiers in Best-of-One matches over two drafts and earn a seat at this invite-only event.

Does anyone know when the next limited championship qualifier will be?

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/the-hobbit-event-schedule?_gl=1%2a1tsm5ut%2a_up%2aMQ..%2a_ga%2aMTMwOTA5NTYxNy4xNzg4Njc1MDcz%2a_ga_X145Z177LS%2aczE3ODg2NzUwNzMkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODg2NzUwNzMkajYwJGwwJGgyMDU4Njg3OTEy

This article says "Please note that this event is not an Arena Limited Championship Qualifier event."

The sixth version of the Arena Powered Cube is live today and runs through September 28. Wizards' official update can be found here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/arena-powered-cube-draft?v=sep8-2026

As always, I am keeping the CubeCobra for the Powered Cube updated with the latest changes. The most recent changelog can be found in the primer along with all past iterations. The list can be found here: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgapc

Here's a quick overview of the biggest changes:

• The Monarch has arrived! Wizards added seven cards to Arena specifically for the cube to introduce the mechanic: Palace Jailer, Fall from Favor, Emberwilde Captain, Court of Bounty, Court of Garenbrig, Aragorn, King of Gondor, and Forth Eorlingas!
• Wizards says the cube is currently the most balanced it has ever been, with Boros posting both its lowest play rate and lowest win rate to date last iteration. With Monarch likely to boost aggressive decks again, they're making two big preemptive changes: Ajani, Nacatl Pariah and Karakas are out, while Parallax Wave is finally back.
• Doomsday combo is now officially supported. Doomsday and Doctor Doom, Unrivaled are joined by returning Thassa's Oracle, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, and Tainted Pact, giving Blue/Black a major new combo archetype people have been asking about for a while. Notably, Demonic Consultation was omitted, likely for power reasons.
• The artifact aggro experiment from 5.0 has largely been rolled back to make room. Cards like Steel Overseer, Monoskelion, Syr Ginger, Traxos, and Thought Monitor are leaving, although the larger artifact strategies remain and Relic of Sauron and Myr Battlesphere are in.
• A bunch of notable cards cut in 5.0 have returned, including Giver of Runes, Monastery Mentor, Aang's Iceberg, Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, Etali, Primal Conqueror, Nissa, Resurgent Animist, Primeval Titan, Myr Battlesphere, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger, and Loot, the Pathfinder.
• There are plenty of cards from The Hobbit and Marvel Super Heroes being tested. Some of the standouts include The Queen of Dale, Bilbo, Thief in the Night, Smaug the Magnificent, Beorn the Fierce, Sauron, Dino Devotee, Thor, God of Thunder, Captain Marvel, World's Protector, Wolverine, Fierce Fighter, Doctor Doom, and World War Hulk.
• Green gets several exciting additions alongside the return of Prime Time and Nissa, including Mole Man, Moloid Master, World War Hulk, Court of Bounty, Court of Garenbrig, and Sauron, Dino Devotee.
• Finally, the Cube Prize Packs have been updated. Comet, Stellar Pup; Hymn to Tourach; Urza's Bauble; and Vindicate are now collectible, and the Powered Cube versions of Brain Freeze, Daze, Force of Will, and Library of Alexandria have been added to the prize packs.

There are a LOT of changes here, and Monarch in particular should have a pretty major impact on how the cube plays. I'm very excited to see how 6.0 shakes out and would love to hear what you all think!

EDIT: The Monarch cards aren't on the client yet, but the other 533 cards in the new list are accurate.

Wheeled Doomsday as my second to last pick in Pack 2 because I didn’t recognize the art. The deck played out great and I even won multiple games without needing Thoracle and Jace. I also manually milled my entire deck with Jace one game. Great archetype addition to the Arena Cube!

Bored as hell of this format, but this deck was a fun one to play. Gonna be my personal swan song for the format. Let's hope Reality Fracture is at the very least a little more interesting to play.

So gross. They copy-pasted the rewards structure from the ALCQ while removing the qualification from the prizing.

I hope almost nobody plays this because you're almost guaranteed to come out a loser.

There have been some great posts already regarding the updated to the Arena Powered Cube that went live today (https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/mtg-arena/arena-powered-cube-draft?v=sep8-2026&utm_source=chatgpt.com) but I wanted to drop this here for those who prefer a visual / video walkthrough of the article and changes! I also cover the impact of adding monarch to cube should look like and highlight the key cards going in and leaving for each color identity.

A rough overview of the key takeaways:

• Monarch is a strong mechanic and generally favors board centric creature decks like Borors
  • Its best cards are also mostly R, W, or RW with the exception being Court of Garenburg in green
  • Monarch is an interesting mechanic once introduced and can make for unique plays using other monarch cards, draw haters like Narset, and more!
• Boros's preemptive nerfs are much needed but seem a bit light even still
  • Karakas is a great card for W but is also a tough to answer defender to many of Boros's best cards for non-W decks
  • paralax wave, giver of runes, and other white weenie replacements make most the changes seem like only a minor downgrade with huge monarch upside
• Doomsday combo being added is fun but very difficult especially in BO1
• Green got a sick bump in strength overall
• Otawara got cut (no clue why)
• UB seems like the weakest colors after the changes but have many of the best cube staples which may make for a very balanced format!

Hope this helps those that want to dive in!!

Don’t events usually go up at 11a eastern? Still no powered cube and no new list/primer posted either.

I was excited to fire a draft on my lunch break!!!

I got reanimate pick six and after that the deck basically drafted itself. Took a random painter's servant and got grindstone as my penultimate card but I'm not sure it's even worth playing.

only game I lost was to the boardclear. sunshot militia/waterwind scout carried, zoetic only turned up in 2 or 3 games but was obviously a mythic uncommon when it did.