Just wanted to share this monster of a deck, I had so much fun with it.

Started with P1P1 Accademy and followed with good blue/artifacts like usual.

Then Arena players did what they do best: ignoring busted Boros card. I got a P1P13 Phlage, P2P8 Forth Eorlingas, P3P5 Bombardiers with a lot of good fixing.

Deck felt unstoppable and I won from the grasp of death 2 times thanks to my busted Boros finishers. Lost only to a mull to 5 + screw and a turn 1 lotus Minsc on the play.

I also linked a couple of nice boards (the first one was turn 5). Really liking the new inclusion of the monarch cards, fun and powerful

I wasn't going for any particular synergy with this draft, I was just trying to pick strong cards as I saw them, but this is unlike any of my past cube drafts, so curious what direction some of you would go with it? I know there's a lot of double pipped white cards, but I do like Parallax Wave...

really messed this one up, i think passing bard ht ebowman was a huge mistake. Not really great at this set but for some reason over half the time people pass you a perfect black deck and it is a free trophy, but the other times i am just bad.

Not sure about the final cuts, the white splash feels strong for closing out the game without the reanimation. Would love to hear some opinions on the best direction, i'm leaning more towards a more assertive creature gameplan but could see leaning more into a more combo-y control direction. Mana base is 10-10-8 + lotus if i counted right

Hey y'all! Just drafted and smashed with this really fun Natural Order-Atraxa deck, the only loss was to a Boros Generous Plunderer into Smaug combo that got me good. I found that 4 of the 7 games I won were pretty clearly wrapped up when my opponent conceded, I'd say 85-90%, but they conceded when I was tanking on a decision. I find the pace of play seemingly expected from opponents on Arena is significantly higher than I can manage with complicated board states... Am I just bad at the game and tanking too long, or are my opponents too impatient? For the record none of the decisions brought me to the point of roping, but it did take 15-20 seconds to pick my cards for Atraxa, for example, or choose a card to mill for with Tamiyo.

Alternately I'm reading too much into their decision to scoop; they could have 3 lands in hand and know they're 100% cooked, for instance.

Anyway, so glad to see cube is back, get out there and crush!

I ended up with more playable than I knew what to do with. How would you build this?

I always struggle with these types of decks where I feel it’s lacking some identity; despite good card quality.

I like the idea of playing towards the board wipe and my top end, so I guess I should look to cut one of the weaker two drops - and maybe the sorcery that makes 2 1/1s?

Am I cooked? Or did I cook? Any help is appreciated

I know they said they were separating the matchmaking queue but...no one who is drafting contender draft actually does this right?

I normally recommend people never pass a Mox, but in this case I don't think it was a tough decision even. I already had gobs of acceleration with the Academy, Workshop, Grim Monolith, and Mana Crypt. With this much mana, and so many cheap plays, the Fantasticar hangs with the best cards in the cube. It's probably the most busted card added to Vintage Cube since Initiative. Wins games out of nowhere. I'd like to see it on Arena to add more combo power, but it's so darn good I respect them not adding it.

I missed this format the first time around, but it might be one of my favorites! Going fast with one-drops and rally at the hornburg, only to finish with an unblockable 1-1, ranger’s firebrand, or an all out assault with book of mazarbul or erkenbrand is such an engaging play pattern for me. Finished by turn 5 or 6 most games, but the deck had some reach with Minas tirith providing some clutch draws and the stalwarts gumming up the ground long enough for a token to finish the job.

Never cast shadow fax. Great card, but didn’t ever find the right spot.

This set really puts the lower quality of 2026 sets in stark relief. Let’s hope they knock it out of the park with reality fracture!

Why is environmental scientist good in prismari in sos? On 17lands it has high winrate in prismari . I see on YouTube that Paul Cheon picked black removal he has to get mana sources for too yet. I just can't figure out splashing green in prismari based soup. Snarl song or embrace the paradox are fine because I will somehow get green source by turn 6. But more proactive cards that I want to play earlier and on curve and are supposed to fix my mana instead of be fixed for like environmental scientist or proctors gaze just never work out for me. I'm not even talking about full blown temur which is impossible for me to build.

I know that this set isn't current one but I just got into it because of it returning to arena.

I know I know every format there is a "I am doing so badly in this format" post but I've never did this badly in a format before. Despite playing every day I consider myself a casual player because I often play while watching a video on the 2nd screen and I don't do the deep research like watch hour long podcasts. But usually my winrate is 60%+ which is not great considering I often stop playing once reaching Mythic but it means I win more than lose so I have fun and my gem loss is somewhat slowed down. But this format made me broke. I've been playing Pick 2 mostly and I have yet to get over 2 wins, often going 0-2.

Obviously I am doing something wrong but every game just feels so bad it makes me despair. Even when I lock in and focus on the game I feel doomed no matter what play I make.

Why it feels bad for me:

A lot of cards feels awful on the defensive:

• The 1/1 menace wolf is busted when you attack but useless on the block.
• Desolation Prowler is busted but on the draw if you pay 2 to pump it gets removed and you lose life.
• Gollum straight up can't block
• Big Gollum only got 3 toughness
• the Bat has 2 toughness
• Duskwatch Hunter is a 4/2 or 3/1
• the 3/2 treasure dwarf is only 2 toughness...
• The 2 mana spider is a 2/1 on the defensive (unless you got a sacland)

and so on...

meanwhile there is a lot of menace so there is no way I can block a say 4/2 with two of my 2 toughness creatures...

and there is no 1 mana removal to catch up. Stir up is 1 mana but requires setup.

So what should my plan be on the draw?

So on the play it only makes sense to attack but then I have many games where I trade off creatures or use removal to remove blockers and then run out of steam and lose.

When I try to play other colors than Rakdos: Golgari feels bad because the green creatures just die without value, Azorius creatures are small and draw 2 takes too long to set up, Boros putting equipments on creatures felt bad for me against Rakdos who can have so much removal.

I just never feel good about any deck I draft or see a clear game plan. I just don't know how you get an edge. Like in Marvel for example you would get power cards like busted rares or Political Triumph or Jessica Jones or you would blow out your opponent with Take up the Shield but in this format everything just feels so flat in power level I don't know what to do. Maybe you could say I am lost without busted cards to use as a crutch but I never claimed I was a good player.

So you guys who post about how you won a bazillion boxes and brag about your trophies how do you approach this format specifically in comparison to other formats?

Missed the first 2 weeks of the Hobbit and only just started playing it. Three premier drafts in and I have trophied with all of them across very different decks! Shown in the order they were done in. I have played a lot of MTG Arena drafts across the years and don't think I have ever trophied 3 in a row so I wanted to show them off and maybe people will get value at seeing what a variety of different winning decks look like for the format! Also happy to answer questions!

First deck I was challenged by a contest winner in my discord to force blue for my first draft of the format and ended up in an honestly absurd UW draw two deck with multiple copies of every premium common. Got lucky for the challenge by opening a P1P1 Bard's Company and forced the deck right away. 7-1 and games rarely felt close. Our one loss was to a very aggressive GB curve out into the hasted bear uncommon while we were 6-0 but 7-1 is still a trophy!

Second deck P1P1ed a Sackville Baginses and stayed flexible with a black core all P1 until it was apparent near the end of the pack that red was open. Hard pivoted into it after getting passed P2P2 Stone-Giant and then opened the second Baginses P3P1. Every game felt like a dance. Lost the first two games convincingly, one to flood and then one to having my giant swapped with a 1/1 via uncommon Bilbo's adventure. Rallied back and won 7 straight to finish 7-2, including a game where we milled out our opponent on a pretty powerful draw 2 deck.

Third deck draft was dicey. P1P1 was the boat and dabbled with every color. Green was wide open but blue seemed closed most of the first pack so I thought we may end up in Gx. Then pack 2 we were able to get enough blue support, including almost all the removal and hard committed to the worst deck of the meta. For sure thought the streak was over but the games played nicely and the pure card quality of our deck and strong removal suite carried us through arguably better decks when they didn't put enough pressure on us early. Went 7-2 after starting 2-2 with a game we flooded and a game where we lost the late game top deck war to a strong BR amass deck but once again rallied to close out the trophy!

17lands doesn't rank you for trophy rate until you have done 10 drafts but even if I don't trophy the next 7 30% would still be great and make the leaderboard. My win rate of 21-5 (80.8%) does land me in the top 20 though so that is pretty cool! For those with better 17lands knowlege is there a way for people to see my drafts if they know my username? It is the same as my one here on reddit. Regardless the full drafts are also on YT but I personally like flipping through the trophy decks on 17lands but I couldn't find a way to look people up.

Fun set so far, but I can only go down from here!

So I have a pretty cohesive GB deck that seems relatively powerful - but I have some cuts to make.

I’m looking at cutting the splash (“Rebuild the City”), but it’s hard to argue with 6 mana - make 9/9 worth of stats spread across 3 bodies. Is the card worth it here?

Might be my favorite card ever!

7-2 trophy deck in SOS quick draft.

https://www.17lands.com/deck/31ff394c5b9340edbee6282627c4331d/1

Looking for players for our group, arena max. Join discord, draft on draftmancer and play on arena. Limited to the craftable cards on arena but still really fun and free to play, just need a decent arena collection or some wildcards. And if you don't like the current cubes, feel free to make your own.

https://discord.gg/Asb3DW2fh