Rocky Mountain Yetis

This was my first chance to break the ice and draft my new Ice Age cube that I recently assembled. I’d played Cory’s ALICE cube before, and written up about casting Stormbind and summoning Polar Kraken. I was so inspired I wanted to build my own ALICE cube, but I hadn’t played it yet. Brian also has a cube they drafted at Yeticon this year. 

I opted for my cube to remove Homelands and added back a few categories of cards:

• More marginal evasion and removal to help end games faster with things like Phantasmal Sphere and Tornado.
• Curve-topping threats like Chaos Lord and Infernal Denizen to reward control style decks, and give you something to do when games go long. By adding more cards that are strong later, it extends the duration of interesting gameplay and makes more choices for how to shape a curve.
• Tricolor gold cards. I did this in my A2A cube, and it adds an interesting tension and incentive to splash a third color. This played out in my draft as you can see below. 
• Enemy hate cards. I don’t usually do this in cube, but they’re strong cards here, and the cube has a weak overall power level. It’s also kinda interesting to do once in a while and it was Ice Age’s thing. None of them are backbreakers; they’re more likely to be just efficient answers. 
• All lands are snow-covered. I had to decide what to do about cards that care about this and I decided to make all basics snow-covered. The cube is supplied with ample snowy lands but also the other kind for aesthetic variety and are house ruled to be treated as snow-covered. It’s simple and effective.
• Iconic cards like Necropotence and Force of Will. Players have fond memories of these cards and are excited to play them. And while still good cards, in this limited environment they become a lot more fair.  

With my cube finally assembled and sleeved, I grabbed my two snowiest playmats and broke out some packs with a buddy. We went for 6 packs each for a sealed pool experience with just the two of us.

We played a bunch of matches. This’ll be short but here’s a few highlights. 

The decks

The Games

Game 1

I start off with a Force Void on a Goblin Mutant. That feels so good. 

Ray of Command did work. After he shot my Kjeldoran Warrior with Orcish Canoneer, I was able to Ray of Command his new Skeleton Ship and knock off the final point of toughness to kill his 2/4, clearing the way for my War Beast to take it down.

Game 2

We find ourselves in a similar situation with my War Beast facing off against his Skeleton Ship. 

When I attack this time, he pulled off a beastly Fire Covenant, burning 3 of my good creatures. 

But I got to live the dream with Dreams of the Dead. I pay 6 mana and bring back 3 dudes from the graveyard. His Skeleton Ship picked off my Merieke, but I was able to get in for a few damage and make him discard cards with my other undead. 

Meanwhile, he’s ticking my life down with Vexing Arcanix and ticking down my Drift of the Dead with Skeleton Ship, though my snowy wall keeps growing as I play more lands. To his Vexing Arcanix activations, I keep naming “Withering Wisps”, since it’s one of the few cards that will get me out of this bind and do the last 2 points of lethal damage. 

He tries to end it all with a giant Meteor Shower. I Power Sink it. He Vexing Arcanix’s me in response. I name the Wisps one more time, and draw it! Now he’s tapped out and I can play it and do my final 2 damage to win the game. Whew!

He’d been trying to cast his Lord of Tresserhorn but was down to only 2 life, so he couldn’t pay those 2 life to get his Lord in play. He really wanted to pass me the Rogue Sky Captain and then get it back to sacrifice to the Lord. It didn’t quite come together this time. So close!

Game 3

He again gets out Vexing Arcanix and starts going to town on my life total. I don’t have any way to remove the artifact in my deck. My plan is to use Merieke to steal his Orcish Squatters and steal all his lands so he can’t use Arcanix any more. But I do the math again and I’ll be able to attack for all of his 18 life before he can do the last 6 damage with Vexing Arcanix and kill me. If – if I can get one guess right out of three. I haven’t yet drawn any of my 6 Snow-covered Swamps, so I keep guessing that. 

“Snow-covered Swamp”. Wrong. I go to 4. I attack him to 12.

“Snow-covered Swamp”. Wrong. I go to 2. I attack him to 6.

He casts Orcish Canooneers to block and seal the deal. I Power Sink it. He vexes me. Last chance. 

“Snow-covered Swamp”…

And the card is…

Withering Wisps. That guess won my last game. I suppose that only works once. Good game.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg

Obviously with only two of us we only got to play a small fraction of the cube, but I was really pleased with the cards and games we did play. The art of the whole block looks fantastic and I really enjoyed the white sleeves. I didn’t expect us both to land on tricolor decks, but I think in sealed play we were both more willing to stretch our mana base to fill our decks full of good cards. It’s just a bonus that we both played the 3 color legends and their colors. How cool.