National Cube Festival, the best way to play Magic: The Gathering

On Sunday, April 20th, while the rest of the world was celebrating the global day of cannabis worship, in the town of Caseros there were 32 Magic: The Gathering players who decided to postpone the ingestion of chocolate eggs and Easter Sunday sweet bread in pursuit of celebrating a greater milestone, a foundational date in the history of the nerds of Magic on Argentine soil: the first edition of the Fiesta Nacional del Cubo.

The spirit that brought everyone together was imbued with love for the game, but above all with the enjoyment of the format itself: Cube is a format created by enthusiasts of limited Magic, aka Draft --consisting of picking cards from different packs among 8 players and building a deck on the spot to play with-- which over its nearly 20 years of existence has only generated a growing avalanche of popularity at the heart of the community, captivating both old veterans of '90s Magic and new players who are discovering this TCG from their PCs, thanks to MTG Arena.

What started as the exercise of building a set for drafting that gathers "the 360 best cards in Magic" according to the community of players, ended up becoming the definitive way for many to engage with this game, mainly because of its design philosophy that blends the creative process of card selection during the draft with the power level of the cards that make up a cube, resulting in decks with well-defined strategies that recall the gameplay of constructed format decks evoking different eras and powerful combinations from the game's history. With the passage of time, and in step with each person's whims and preferences, it's worth noting that there's a unique cube for every group of friends that gets together to design and play it.

The thing is, Cube is a format in constant evolution. Quoting Parker Lamascus in his role as historian of the format, "Cube draft isn't a monolith; it's a tapestry. A Magic format created by fans of the game that constantly reinvents itself, interweaving the missteps and brilliance of the designers and players who have collectively shaped it. These game design threads contribute to the format's diverse expression, each in different yet equally important ways of loving and enjoying Magic, creating an interwoven fabric that defines, constrains, and enriches the format we all love".

"The best game of all"

In 2007, I was lucky enough to read this article by Evan Erwin, which opened with the premise of delivering "immeasurable joy, like you've never experienced playing Magic." Until then, I had been an enthusiast of the game, but without actively participating. The 2001 crisis had obliterated any attempt to compete with physical cards, and the only thing keeping the Magic flame alive was playing on the PC with my brother and reading articles on the internet. In that piece, Erwin declared: "Cube draft is the best game of all. For many Magic players, it's the only way to play that exists. Many veterans have come back to Magic just to play Cube." And I took the bait.

Discovering Cube marked a definitive before and after in my relationship with the game: it made me revisit Magic stores in search of the cards I was missing to build my own cube, turned me into an evangelist creating content to popularize the format, recruiting friends who had quit Magic years ago and making new friends among active players. All to form a group of 8 players, the most important asset for the format to work. Cube gave us an excuse, my brother and I, to reignite the passion for the game.

Pursuing the same conviction that Cube draft represents the best of getting together to play Magic, Nacho Barbero and Juan "Juanro" Rodriguez decided to build from scratch the Fiesta Nacional del Cubo to give a formal framework to the gathering of format enthusiasts: to draw the Cube draft devotees out of their caves and offer a meeting point, a neutral dojo where any player could experience the adrenaline of encountering new cubes they'd never played before and battle with (meet) other players who are fanatics of the format, to reaffirm two things: that there is no better way to play Magic: The Gathering, and that they're not alone in that feeling.

How the first Fiesta Nacional del Cubo went

The cathedral chosen for the first edition of the event was Bazaar of Baghdad (or just Bazaar). Nacho explains: "It was ideal because it has capacity for 70 people, it's one of the nicest stores in the country, it has good food, and it's very clean and tidy. And above all, the owner (Fer Gonzalez) is a friend and a mega fan of Cube draft." With the holy see chosen, they launched the website and created a Discord server for their pilot project, inviting all the faithful of the format to celebrate this inaugural edition of the Fiesta with a maximum capacity of 40 players. At a rate of 8 players per cube, five cubes were needed.

Under the mantra "If you build it, they will come," Nacho and Juanro offered the foundation stones to build the totem: Nacho brought his cube based on capitalizing on synergies between specific cards; pay attention to the introduction and structure section of the cube, a whole manifesto/instruction manual prodigiously crafted by its owner. And Juanro offered the Cubinson Cuvani, an extraordinary cube containing archetypes as eccentric as they are fun. Have you ever played red/blue coin-flipping gambler? Or drafted a squirrel tribal deck?

The organizers put out the call for other players to contribute their cube for the event, collectively fueling the best possible gathering. The call transcended the national border, crossing the Rio de la Plata and the Andes: five Magic-playing friends from Uruguay organized a meetup with two other Chileans in Buenos Aires, exclusively to participate in the first edition of the Fiesta Nacional. Or rather, International by this point, since one from that group even made it to the finals.

The announcement also made waves in other group chats I'm in, created for the occasional push to get together and play Cube. "Did you see the Fiesta Nacional thing? You can submit your own cube to participate!" The crew "Buen Fulbo," born from the most active players in the Buenos Aires Pauper scene (a casual format where you only play with common cards) submitted their cube honoring the Pauper format tradition, obsessively curated and perfected during the pandemic years, when getting together to draft on Cockatrice was the best resistance to lockdown and madness. On the other hand, the gang of friends from Caballito who get together (almost) every Sunday to celebrate friendship with fine herbs submitted their Vintage cube with the spiciest cards in the game, with the goal of generating epic games at the Fiesta Nacional.

As fate would have it (or the lack of applicants), both cubes that I play with friends and have for years were the ones selected by the organizers to crown the event. Bright and early, at 8:30 am we arrived in convoy with all the cards shuffled and ready to kick off what would end up being over 12 hours of pure Magic joy: two rounds of drafts across the 4 cubes present, where each player could rank in order of preference which cube they found most interesting or fun to play.

Writing a report of my individual matches and my tournament experience is unnecessary (* see footnote) because it was palpable that everyone present was in the peak of enjoyment and competitive excitement. Between rounds, match rivalries transformed into new bonds of camaraderie with the fraternal spirit of sharing a passion (and the fire of the joints passed around among the gladiators, in full 4/20 celebration). By the end of the event, we had already exchanged contacts with players from other groups, with the promise of getting together in the future to try their own cubes or fill an empty eighth seat at the next gathering.

After 6 rounds were played, the Top 8 was crowned, and it was time to bring out the diva of the event, the classic 360-card Vintage cube, made up solely of the sharpest cards ever printed. Thus, the Super Nintendo slogan "Now you're playing with Power" manifests itself in the form of cardboard playing cards.

The first page in the history of the collective celebration of Cube draft on Argentine soil has been written. A few days later, I ask Nacho and Juanro if the gears are already turning for a second edition: "We don't have anything very defined yet, but we're considering the possibility of doing an edition in the spring. As long as we fit in Bazaar, that will be our home."

What's clear is that the roadmap for this mission is already laid out: "We are convinced that Magic cards are the best game that Humanity has invented so far, that its future is community-driven, and that Cube is the format that best expresses that future. Because of these convictions, we feel a generational duty to turn it into a mass phenomenon in Argentina, and from here also set milestones in the history of this game and format. Just as in the early 20th century some people realized that kicking a ball around with 22 players was amazing and decided to build clubs around it, we realized that looking at 15 cards, keeping one, passing the rest, and receiving 14 is the best thing there is. It's our turn to build the communities that sustain it."

For my part, I was left happy and eager for a second edition of the Fiesta Nacional, and I want to invite the community of 421, those who played Magic years ago and still feel the itch every now and then, to come back and play. To the gladiators who play Cube regularly with their friends, to those who are into MTG Arena but have never played in person with physical cards, I invite you to join the Discord community of the Fiesta Nacional, to bring your cube or your presence when the next edition takes place. I promise you the immeasurable joy of playing the best game ever invented.

(*) Writing a report of my individual matches and my tournament experience is also unnecessary because I did spectacularly badly in terms of performance, having won only 1 match out of the 6 played. What's worth noting is that, unlike other types of competitions where such a dismal record would generate frustration and the urge to toss cards in the air, this was such a celebration of the best game in the world that it only increased my eagerness to play cube again soon (and to write this article).