Chateau Cube artwork

Chateau Cube

32 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago -

Château Cube is a series of wide-ranging conversations about Magic the Gathering mtgcube design, play, and theory, hosted by John Terrill of YouTube's Cultic Cube. Episodes are released on roughly alternate Fridays! Come join us for convivial and high-level mtg cube talk.

Games Leisure
Homepage Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Episodes

28. March of the Machine Cube Review

May 08, 2023 03:27 - 38 minutes - 35.6 MB

The Phyrexians are everywhere! Let's take a look at the MTGMOM cards that make the cut in different Cube environments! Video version of this podcast: https://youtu.be/je0IElaKsGs CUBECON!: https://www.mtgcubecon.com/ Cubes Referenced: Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube Projects Referenced: Cultic Bestiary tokens: https://culticcube.etsy.com/ Redbubble: https://culticcube.redbubble.com/ Threadless: h...

27. Dominaria United with Stephen Konefal

November 23, 2022 03:06 - 2 hours - 138 MB

Avid cube designer and friend Stephen Konefal returns to guide us through Dominaria United! Join us as we evaluate cards and chat about CubeCon and more! For a video version of the podcast with cards displayed, visit https://youtu.be/GbhzOmSrQUE! Special thanks to all our Patreon members and to super patron Cube Cobra for their support!   Guest Resources: https://twitter.com/cubedraft https://www.instagram.com/cubedraft/   Resources Cited: CubeCon: http://www.mtgcubecon.com/ Cut Do...

26. New Capenna Cube Review, pt. 2

May 20, 2022 03:32 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MB

Magic visits a world of bootleggers and art deco! In part two of my MTGSNC review, we look at those New Capenna cards that I'm adding to my lower power, Jenny/Johnny-oriented environment. YouTube version of podcast (with card visuals): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRD1j1shb1M CUBECON!: https://www.mtgcubecon.com/ Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Projects Referenced: Cultic ...

25. New Capenna Cube Review, pt. 1

May 06, 2022 00:00 - 39 minutes - 45.8 MB

Magic visits a world of bootleggers and art deco! In part one of my MTGSNC review, we look at those New Capenna cards that I'm adding to my higher power, vintage unpowered environment. YouTube version of podcast (with card visuals): https://youtu.be/D1F8ikLE87I Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Projects Referenced: Cultic Bestiary tokens: https://culticcube.etsy.com/ Redbubble:...

24. Neon Dynasty Cube Review, pt. 2

March 20, 2022 20:57 - 40 minutes - 45.9 MB

We're back in Kamigawa! In part two of my MTGNEO review, we look at those Neon Dynasty cards that I'm adding to my lower power, masters unpowered environment. Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Projects Referenced: Cultic Bestiary tokens: https://culticcube.etsy.com/ Cultic Bestiary apparel: https://culticcube.redbubble.com/ MTG Flavorbot: https://twitter.com/Flavorbot1 Support...

23. Neon Dynasty Cube Review, pt. 1

February 10, 2022 14:17 - 35 minutes - 40.2 MB

A return to Kamigawa brings a raft of cards that look awesome for all sorts of cubes. In part one of my MTGNEO review, we look at those Neon Dynasty cards that I'm adding to my higher power, vintage unpowered environment. Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Projects Referenced: Cultic Bestiary tokens: https://culticcube.etsy.com/ Cultic Bestiary apparel: https://culticcube.redbubb...

22. Innistrad Crimson Vow Review

November 23, 2021 13:42 - 34 minutes - 39.4 MB

Let's take a tour through the VOW cards that make the cut for my higher-power and lower-power cubes! Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Projects Referenced: VOW Preview Card: https://youtu.be/C0wlfNKGH60/ Cultic Bestiary tokens: https://culticcube.etsy.com/ Cultic Bestiary apparel: https://culticcube.redbubble.com/ MTG Flavorbot: https://twitter.com/Flavorbot1 Support the Show...

21. Artist of Dragons with Joshua Raphael

November 08, 2021 13:09 - 28 minutes - 32.9 MB

Magic artist Joshua Raphael joins us today! Podcast listeners may wish to tune in on YouTube in order to see the art we discuss: https://youtu.be/pFSKYxordaA. Josh illustrated our preview card from Crimson Vow, and besides working on MTG, he has worked on Dungeons & Dragons, Eternal, and Flesh and Blood, and many more IPs. Come hang out and learn about Josh’s style, process, influences, and a case study of how he developed art for Sawblade Slinger. Special thanks to all our Patreon members ...

20. Innistrad Midnight Hunt Review, pt. 2

October 09, 2021 12:44 - 28 minutes - 32.4 MB

Prerelease is upon us for a return to Magic’s beloved spo-o-oky world: Innistrad! I’ve been pouring over the Midnight Hunt spoiler, picking out cards I want to run in my cubes. Today we’ll take a quick tour through the MID offerings that I plan to add to my vintage unpowered environment. Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Projects Referenced: MID review pt. 1: https://youtu.be/L5x...

19. Innistrad Midnight Hunt Review, pt. 1

September 18, 2021 22:59 - 39 minutes - 45.4 MB

Prerelease is upon us for a return to Magic’s beloved spo-o-oky world: Innistrad! I’ve been pouring over the Midnight Hunt spoiler, picking out cards I want to run in my cubes. Today we’ll take a quick tour through the MID offerings that I plan to add to my vintage unpowered environment. Cubes Referenced: Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Support the Show: ►Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/culticc...

18. Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Review

July 20, 2021 20:35 - 1 hour - 71 MB

Wizards' Dungeons & Dragons Magic set is entirely spoiled, and it’s time to update the cubes! This episode combines both sections of my video review on Cultic Cube, where I run through the AFR cards that I am adding to my vintage unpowered and to my masters-level unpowered cubes. Video Reviews: Part 1: https://youtu.be/-Ke1BOWvXz4 Part 2: https://youtu.be/_2yX-nor7vg Cubes Referenced: Eleusis: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/p...

17. Modern Horizons 2 Additions, pt. 2

June 16, 2021 03:37 - 39 minutes - 45.3 MB

Modern Horizons 2 is more or less out now, and it’s time to update the cubes! In the second of a two part series, I run through the MH2 cards that I am adding to my lower power, synergy-driven cube. Cubes Referenced: Video version: https://youtu.be/sNfCnM-QTN8 Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Sources Cited: Derek Gallen: https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/author/derekgallen/ Support the Show: ...

16. Modern Horizons 2 Additions, pt. 1

June 09, 2021 02:50 - 41 minutes - 47.9 MB

With Modern Horizons 2 entirely spoiled, it’s time to update the cubes! In the first of a two part series, I run through the MH2 cards that I am adding to my unpowered vintage cube. Cubes Referenced: Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI1-QN2jI6I Eleusis Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/culticcube  Petty Nobility Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pettynobility Support the Show: ►Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/culticcube  ►TCG Affiliate: http://bit.ly/2QdJxdg  ►...

15. The Secret Life of Mana: Strixhaven Symposium lecture

May 07, 2021 07:00 - 27 minutes - 31 MB

I participated in WOTC’s Strixhaven Symposium live on Twitch, where I represented Quandrix College! My talk: “Manamancy: The origin, application, and exploitation of Magic's fundamental resource.” For those who didn’t catch the live lecture, I reprise it now on the Cultic Cube YouTube channel and on the Chateau Cube podcast! The YT video version of this episode is fully transcribed (turn on closed captions): https://youtu.be/74ndpWv7dkE Quandrix Lectures VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1...

14. Streaming Cubemmunity with Floopy Minx

February 26, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutes - 58.4 MB

Magic streamer Floopy Minx joins us today! Floopy got her start in our beloved game by playing paper Vintage Cube. When she began her successful professional streaming career, she naturally gravitated toward Cube even as she embraced other formats. She explains today how building a community around her stream fosters goodwill and supports the visibility of non-cisgendered men in Magic. Special thanks to Patreon members and to super patrons Djake Noose and Dylan Quern for their support! Gue...

14. Streaming Cubemmunty

February 26, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutes - 58.4 MB

Magic streamer Floopy Minx joins us today! Floopy got her start in our beloved game by playing paper Vintage Cube. When she began her successful professional streaming career, she naturally gravitated toward Cube even as she embraced other formats. She explains today how building a community around her stream fosters goodwill and supports the visibility of non-cisgendered men in Magic. Special thanks to Patreon members and to super patrons Djake Noose and Dylan Quern for their support! Gue...

13. Archenemy Cube with Andrew Magrini

February 12, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 103 MB

Andrew Magrini, jankmaster extraordinaire and stalwart of the New York City cube scene, joins us to talk about how he conjoins the high-powered and the broken with the intricate and the idiosyncratic. We discuss Andrew’s vintage cube in the first part of the conversation, then move on to his new passion project, which brings 3 vs. 1 Archenemy game play to cube draft. Special thanks to Patreon members and to super patrons Djake Noose and Dylan Quern for their support! Guest Resources: http...

12. Two Player Cube Design with JJ the ManCub

January 08, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 92.9 MB

J.J. the ManCub, cube design streamer and lover of cube curiosities, joins us to chat about his approach to creating cubes that express one’s own personality, interests, and principles. He shares joy he has found in bringing the community into his design process as he develops cubes live on stream. Then we chat about the advantages and disadvantages of many different approaches to cubing for two players. We share the methods with which we have had the most fun and success. Special thanks to ...

11. Degenerate Micro Cube feat. Andy Mangold

December 18, 2020 08:00 - 48 minutes - 55 MB

Andy Mangold of Lucky Paper joins us for the conclusion of the conversation that we began last week. Today we focus on the Degenerate Micro Cube, a powerful cube environment that Andy pioneered and that has been his quarantine passion project. It has a novel mechanism for bringing Vintage constructed-level consistency to a limited environment. Special thanks to Patreon members and to super patron Djake Noose for their support! Resources Cited: Andy’s article introducing his new cube format...

10. Architect of MTG Cube feat. Andy Mangold

December 11, 2020 08:00 - 40 minutes - 46.4 MB

Andy Mangold is the founder of Lucky Paper, a blog devoted to cube, battlebox, and other such sandbox environments. He co-hosts the Lucky Paper podcast, which has quickly proved itself a must-listen resource for cube enthusiasts. In this first segment of a two-part conversation, Andy and I set out to talk about cube in schematic terms, discussing how we approach cube curation largely without focusing on individual cards or strategies. Tune in next week for part two, when Andy will introduce ...

09. #Winning in MTG Cube feat. TeamJBro

October 10, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 69.5 MB

Jonathan Brostoff, a.k.a. TeamJBro, is a popular streamer and peerless master of cube play. He won the SCGCon Winter 2019 cube championship, and he is by far and away the most consistent trophy leader in MTGO cubes. CUBECON is very much Jonathan’s initiative as well, and I’m excited to be part of the team that is putting together a big, real-life competitive cube event. Jonathan sits down with me to chat about features of his favorite environments, how he analyzes cube lists when preparing t...

08. Reimagining Magic Art feat. Beyond the Machina

July 31, 2020 14:26 - 58 minutes - 66.9 MB

Drew Pierce, a.k.a. Beyond the Machina, is an awesome artist and graphic designer who produces Magic-related work. He is also a cube aficionado and designer of a budget-friendly pauper cube. We discuss Drew’s affection for the madness mechanic and how he sculpts an environment around it, cycles and the New Phyrexian shrines, pack one pick one, different ways with heroic, how to value gold cards in draft, uses of auras, the origins of sagas and designing one’s own, pauper bombs, breaking boar...

07. Competitive vs. Casual Cube Design feat. Thomas Krone

June 26, 2020 07:00 - 59 minutes - 67.7 MB

Thomas Krone has what is, to my knowledge, the longest-running competitive cube event in history: Cubevitational, founded in the Netherlands in 2010. He and I sit down to explore a host of issues: Testing cards, vagaries of pronouncing Garruk, D6 game (Gruul!), Spell punishing mechanics, Green sections, why Thomas began cubing, benefits of different cube sizes, desirability of redundancy for archetype components, differences between designing for competitive and casual cube environments, his...

06. Better Design with Cube Cobra feat. Gwen Dekker

June 12, 2020 07:00 - 1 hour - 71.3 MB

Gwen Dekker teaches us all about advanced features of Cube Cobra and the behind-the-scenes effort that makes the cube management platform tick. We share stories about the sometimes surprising uses that we have found for Cobra tools. Here we do a p1p1 of the Dekkaru cube, talk about how the two of us met, discuss the ELO system of card ranking for draft AI, Ryan Saxe’s recommender model, hypergeometric analysis, multiplayer drafting (in the future!), Zach Halpern’s dr4ft.info, and as-fan anal...

05. Aesthetically Unified Cubes with Stephen Konefal

June 05, 2020 07:00 - 42 minutes - 49 MB

Stephen Konefal has designed many cube environments with the overarching goals of creating aesthetically unified spaces, whether by crafting environments based on place in the multiverse, moment in Magic history, or artistic impulse and style. We discuss lessons that Core Sets teach cube designers, ways of limiting new product overload, knitting together environments mechanically, the artwork of Magic that moves us, the value of cycling, starting one’s first cube, cube’s place between limite...

04. Make Cards Work for You with fleish_dawg

May 15, 2020 07:00 - 1 hour - 72.6 MB

Ben Fleisher, alias fleish_dawg, is brimming with ideas about how to modify existing Magic cards in order to better fit his design vision. You may have heard me mention Ben’s innovations in Cultic Cube videos. Ben and I discuss errataing cards, the value of diverse cube fora, the importance of empathy in design conversation, Ben's boardgame theory of cube, the best Star Trek series, advice for new designers, and our favorite Magic memory. Much love to super patrons Dylan Quern and Andrew Qu...

03. We're on MTGO! With guest Gwen Dekker.

May 09, 2020 01:54 - 49 minutes - 68.5 MB

Here’s a bonus episode that brings exciting news! WOTC is featuring one of my cubes and my guest’s cube on MTGO from May 13-27, 2020! Wizards is using two of the ten cubes that will be played in the main events at CubeCon, an event for which I am an organizer. The spotlighted cubes are legacy environments by me and by our guest, Gwen Dekker. Gwen is the creator and lead developer of Cube Cobra, which is an awesome cube management web platform. Gwen and I sit down together to talk about our d...

02. Designing like a Spike. With SirFunchalot.

May 01, 2020 07:00 - 46 minutes - 63.3 MB

We welcome SirFunchalot, co-host of the MTG CubeCats podcast, to Château Cube. Dan and John talk about how Magic compares to other TCGs, the place of game theory in Magic, data collection in cube draft, the role of sideboard cards in cube design, Dan's radically different approaches to designing vintage and legacy environments, and a novel approach to supporting midrange. Come join us for convivial and high-level MTG Cube talk! Guest Resources: MTG CubeCats podcast: https://m.youtube.com/c...

02. SirFunchalot

May 01, 2020 07:00 - 46 minutes - 63.3 MB

We welcome SirFunchalot, co-host of the MTG CubeCats podcast, to Château Cube. Dan and John talk about how Magic compares to other TCGs, the place of game theory in Magic, data collection in cube draft, the role of sideboard cards in cube design, Dan's radically different approaches to designing vintage and legacy environments, and a novel approach to supporting midrange. Come join us for convivial and high-level MTG Cube talk! Guest Resources: MTG CubeCats podcast: https://m.youtube.com/c...

01. Cube Boomers. With Usman Jamil.

April 17, 2020 13:27 - 56 minutes - 77.4 MB

We welcome Usman Jamil, godfather of cube, to Château Cube. Usman and John talk about testing new sets for cube, new card overload, the origins of cube, design level-ups, the "problem" of the 5 color cube deck,  multicolor sections, interpreting testing data, cooking creatively, Picasso, Freud, and Heirloom Blade (of course!). Come join us for convivial and high-level mtg cube talk! Guest Resources: CoolStuffInc articles: coolstuffinc.com/a/?tagged[]=usman%20jamil Third Power podcast: the...

01. Usman Jamil

April 17, 2020 13:27 - 56 minutes - 77.4 MB

We welcome Usman Jamil, godfather of cube, to Château Cube. Usman and John talk about testing new sets for cube, new card overload, the origins of cube, design level-ups, the "problem" of the 5 color cube deck,  multicolor sections, interpreting testing data, cooking creatively, Picasso, Freud, and Heirloom Blade (of course!). Come join us for convivial and high-level mtg cube talk! Guest Resources: CoolStuffInc articles: coolstuffinc.com/a/?tagged[]=usman%20jamil Third Power podcast: the...

00. Welcome!

April 17, 2020 07:00 - 32 seconds - 753 KB

Château Cube is a series of conversations between me, John Terrill of Cultic Cube (youtube.com/culticcube), and cube designers and players. Topics are free-ranging, but the heart and soul of the conversation is cube. Episodes are released every other Friday. Come join us for convivial and high-level mtg cube talk! Support the Show: ►Patreon: patreon.com/culticcube ►TCG Affiliate Link: bit.ly/2QdJxdg I have partnered with TCGPlayer, so if you purchase any cards via the link above, I will ...

Twitter Mentions

@culticcube 18 Episodes
@flavorbot1 6 Episodes
@gwendekker 3 Episodes
@luckypapermtg 2 Episodes
@felish_dawg 2 Episodes
@cubecobra1 2 Episodes
@cubedraft 2 Episodes
@mtgcubecats 2 Episodes
@usmantherad 2 Episodes
@andrewmagrini 1 Episode
@jbrostoff 1 Episode
@cubevitational 1 Episode
@cubeoddity 1 Episode
@beyondthmachina 1 Episode
@sierkovitz 1 Episode
@rcsaxe 1 Episode
@fleish_dawg 1 Episode
@jsraphael57 1 Episode