Rocky Mountain Yetis

This is a post that I have been thinking about for several months now and I have been somewhat afraid of reaching the day that I would write it and publish these thoughts to the group of friends that have become a large part of my life and have brought so much to it. On November 28th, I will be leaving this country permanently and moving back to Scotland with my wife any my daughter. We have thought about this decision off and on for a few years and never seriously gave it credence until several life changes happened in April this year.

There are a lot of really good reasons for us to make this move and overall, I am excited about the opportunity to return to the UK and live a very different life than I have become trapped in here in the US. Regardless of the number of good reasons to go, there has been one that has caused my heart to hurt every time I think about getting on the plane to Glasgow in a few weeks. That reason is the Rocky Mountain Yeti’s. For those of you reading this that don’t know the origin story, here it is:

When COVID hit in 2020 I had just moved back to Colorado from Southern California. I was giving up so many things in my life that had defined me as a person – 365 day motorcycle riding, lane splitting, surfing, the ocean, skating with successful adults at The Cove in Santa Monica, etc. Returning to Colorado was really exciting but at the same time had left a void in my that I wasn’t sure how to fill, and with COVID closing the world down, I had plenty of time to think about it. Enter my brother. When I left the US in 2004 to move to the UK the first time, I had left with him so many of my childhood possessions like my KoDT comics, my AD&D books and my Magic cards. Once I arrived back, he came over opened up his trunk and unloaded all of these memories that I had left behind back into my basement. As he closed the trunk and got ready to get back in his car he turned around and said, “oh yeah, I almost forgot, you left these here too.” He handed me a large box of Magic cards, nodded at me, got in his car, and drove away.

Having nothing to do, I opened the box and was overwhelmed by nostalgia as I looked at the cards I had spent so much time and money collecting and hiding from my parents as a kid. What do you do when you find yourself here? You build two decks and start playing the game again to see if you still remember how to play! Along the way alone in the basement I discovered the 93/94 format through Timmy Talks and other YouTube channels which showed me that I wasn’t the only one that still enjoyed playing with 90’s cardboard.

Fast forward to a few months later after we had moved into our new house in Parker, I was tired of playing with myself (pun intended) and wanted to see if anyone else wanted to play with me. Putting aside my disgust of social media, I posted what has become known as “the lonely hearts reddit post” and called for any fellow Coloradan’s that wanted to jam some games to come together.

This group today is the result of that reddit post and the people that came forward, interested in building a community, playing some games, and reliving an important part of their childhood have become my best friends. Each one of you has touched my life in a way that words cannot describe and I am terrified to leave that behind; but hopeful at the same time that I can possibly do this again and expand our footprint into Europe. We will be the largest international old school community, no question!

For those of you that have read this far, thank you for the memories and the joy that you have brought to my life over these last three years. You have made so many hard times bearable and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Now, on to the draft report!

This is every cube curator’s dream…. You have too many people showing up to draft your cube. This draft had 10 people drafting a 360 card cube. When I first began this journey, it was me and one to two other Yeti’s that got together to grid draft small parts of cubes we had created with the hope of building to a full pod.

After a year of consistnetly showing up, we have been firing one to two cube drafts every month across our groups multiple old school/premodern cubes with full pods each time. Watching this grow has been a labor of love and the group of people that have shown up consistently have shared some amazing times.

This draft was the last “official” draft that I organized in preparation for leaving the country. In this vein, a special draft requires a special cube. Growing up, the gold cards always seemed like such cool concepts yet I was either not skilled enough or not bold enough to really use them in a meaningful way. The same was true in my cube design up to this point. I never included many gold cards or eliminated them completely from my designs. With this cube, I set out to change that mindset. With that, I give you, the TLDR: Old Frame Gold Cube. This cube includes almost every gold card printed from Legends to Scourge and includes the modern old frame gold reprints.

Like many other gold cubes, each player starts with a Pillar of the Paruns in play (I had special old frame proxy versions made to fit the theme) and several color fixing lands to smooth out fixing. In short, drafting and playing this was a blast. I heard consistnetly things like:

“How have I never seen this card before?”
“I need to read that again.”
“That does what?”

This was truly an experience playing with cards that many of us, including myself, had never used or in some cases, had even seen before. The cube was set. the local LGS (shoutout to Enchanted Grounds for being amazing hosts) had our tables prepped, and people arrived. At this point, I ran into the best problem a cube curator has ever had, I had too many people show up. We had 10 people come out to draft a 360 card cube. I quickly made some mod decisions (cut packs down to 12 cards from 15) and each person had three lean packs (in the spirit of drafting Alliances back in the day) and we set off to create golden memories.

Da Decks:

Jim’s 3-0 Gold Stuff – Spirit Monger is a beast. Stormbind is also really good. Jim crushed it….. nothing else to say. I played Jim in the finals and my deck decided to become shy at the sight of Jim’s overwhelming presence of awesome. He took the day and earned the right to wear the crown.

Brandon’s 2-1 “I’ll Take That” – First draft of this cube and I went for a combo deck with Merieke Ri Berit that I didn’t even know I had until I started playing, lol. Brian was looking at my choices and said “oh did you draft a way to untap her?” I was confused for a moment as I read the card for the tenth time and then realized, oh wow, I have a ton of ways to use this! Thus, a combo deck was born!

Brian’s 2-1 Beat em and Bring em – Adun has always been one of my favorite gold creatures and Brian used him and some heavy beaters combined with choice removal to clear a path! Bartel was the first commander I used in 93/94 EDH and to this day, these cards are some of my favorites. I did not get to play Brian but watched the Sawback Manticore do some serious work.

Matt’s 2-1 Dromar’s Embrace – The latter Dragon Legends are bombs and Dromar + Spinal Embrace was MVP for Matt in this build. I think Dromar is the best of the Dragon legends of this set and I passed him while drafting looking for some cheaper threats. He turned out to be really good and next time, I won’t let him slip through my fingers.

Luke’s 2-1 Garth and Friends – Luke drafted some of the best OG legends including Stanng and Sol’Kanar and used helpful friends like Jacques to pump them up for battle! Luke was my first match and my deck was excited to stand and deliver. The quality of Luke’s threats was challenging to deal with, especially when they create duplicates of themselves so combat was very calculated each turn. Luke has kicked A LOT of ass every time he has come to the table to draft with us. I was really stoked to take him down in my opening match with him. Going to miss drafting with you, Luke!

Jared’s 1-2 Rampy Rampterton – Ramp is not very common in this environment and the fact that Jared pulled much of it together including The First Sliver cascade was impressive. The ability to get real threats out early is a real wincon in this cube. Jared focused on getting things out quick and drafted essentially all of the ramp options available.

Kevin’s 1-2 Cromat’s “Can’t Touch This” – Cromat + Iridescent Angel is a pretty potent combination when they both touch down together. You can always drop in a Half Dane to help! This deck was such a treat to watch come together. Once the angel landed, it was really hard to get through. Great draft strategy all around.

Justin’s 1-2 “Ladies Night” – Justin pulled together some powerful ladies for card draw and brute force with a few male flunkies to do the dirty work behind the scenes. Ladies night is a pernicious deed!

Starr’s 1-2 “Watch Me Multi-Spell!” Every turn, Starr was casting something or two somethings, it was a never ending hoard of 2/2s, the likes of which have never been seen in gold. Multi-spelling in this environment is a challenge but each turn I watched Starr tap a lot of mana and do multiple things. It was so cool to see someone break a common stereotype of the meta and do something consistently that is usually not possible.

Chad’s 0-3 Lord’s Lobotomy – Anytime I see Lord of the Tresserhorn cast, I get a warm fuzzy feeling. Especially as he picks my prime card from my hand and makes me get rid of it… I did not get to play Chad but I heard common things like, “oh great, more slivers…” which is pretty par for the course in his ability to make people vocally sound off their frustration with what he does to the board. I salute your special brand of salt, Chad!

TLDR: This was an all gold cube premodern (old frame) cube that was a blast. Next step, go find people to cube with in Scotland. LET’S GO!

Parting Shots: Game day images that show some of the games and the good times had!