Morning wind hisses through the leaves of an oak tree. Below, mottled sunlight blankets a two-story Colonial at the entrance of a cul-de-sac. It’s an archetypal American suburb, with shingled roofs, street parking, and Green Bay Packers flags. It’s Friday, July 18th, 2025. In 24
hours, 24 people will fill the living room and kitchen of the vinyl-sided house. As with all players meetings, some will arrive late. They’re coming for an entire day of Cube, Magic’s community-run format for custom draft experiences.
An event like this could happen anywhere people play Magic. But this is Madison, Wisconsin, the city between two lakes, and the source of gravity in the American Cube scene. This is the place where locals say it’s harder to 3-0 a cube draft than win a PTQ.
This is CubeDungeonCon: Madison’s indie Cube event which draws Magic players from across the country.
Day Zero: A Quiet Dive
“This is about as Madison, Wisconsin of a place you could get.” says Noah Mickel, scanning the interior of Pitcher’s Pub. The green velvet of pool tables emerge from the dark like phosphorescent fish. Sugary colors flash from digital slot machines. A few locals cluster around a bartender, underneath a TV showing Maury Povich reading out paternity tests.
Noah has dirty blond curls, dark-rimmed glasses, and a beard which frames a broad smile. He speaks with a kinetic energy, winding up like a coil and releasing through hand gestures and vocal inflection. Noah is the creator of CubeDungeonCon, and my host this weekend.
Pitcher’s Pub is a bar pulled from a Bob Seger chorus, crackling through the radio from a station almost out of reach. The place for saints and sinners to come together over fries served in red plastic baskets. The bones of this building have their stories to tell, from Super Bowls to presidential inaugurations, but this is likely the first time they’ve heard the words “Mystic Enforcer” and “Lightning Angel”. 
Over a game of Premodern, we discuss the days ahead, between food options and event management. In file Fritz, Stav, and Sparrow, three regulars of the Madison Cube scene. Nylon backpacks thud underneath the high top table, no more than an arm’s length away. Conversation drifts between books and the worst game stores we’ve ever been to, landing at the pool tables nearby. Being able to recognize draft signs is a skill, but none of it translates into judging a bank shot from across the table. Friday morning means no pool sharks in sight, so our missed shots go unnoticed.
Day Zero: Delta Beer Lab
Down the street from Pitchers Pub, in an office building styled like a window AC unit, a glass door opens into a cavernous, modern brewery. Two-story ceilings with exposed pipe hang over a triangular bar. Laboratory glassware is displayed behind the taps on the wall, each filled with a different color of water, making a rainbow.
By now the group has swelled in size, taking over two sets of tables with small paper signs that read “reserved”. Noah planned ahead. The formality stands out in a brewery which communicates through a chalkboard on the wall, but if you’re going to host a cube draft, you need those eight chairs together.
Players take seats, stow backpacks beneath the table, and pass out stacks of identically-sleeved cards. A player in the center begins explaining broadcast shuffling. Some stand up to order a drink, while others turn their attention to the Costco cookies nestled in a clear plastic box.
They’re drafting The Gizmo Cube, designed by Sparrow. It’s an artifact and counters-heavy environment, meant to inspire those who go trinket hunting in every pack they open.
More Magic players enter the brewery, gathering at the half-empty table. Each place setting receives three stacks of cards in red sleeves. This time it’s my turn to dive in. On the docket is El Classico, by Triske, a cube meant to feel like a well-designed Limited environment.
The chatter melds into the hum of a brewery as people sift through their cards. Each player with two more packs arranged below; the unseen potential of a better future. A first pick Yavimaya Coast turns into a Meria’s Outrider halfway through Pack 1. Lands of all colors end up in my draft pile, turning into a five-color Lotus Field deck. Kird Ape sits on the table next to Dovin’s Veto and Tomebound Lich. I’ve never been a skilled drafter, but if you spend half the time siphoning lands from other people’s pools, then you get to play whatever you want. I’m an iridescent leech.
The games roll by as the brewery grows louder. Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner untaps Lotus Field. Opposing creatures get stomped by The Gitrog Monster and Hydroid Krasis. I reach 1-1 before the familiar question comes up. “Do we play a third round, or draft again?” By the time a cube group asks that question, the answer is already decided. Cards are returned, and the dance begins again.
Next on the docket is Bailout Cube, a creation of Madison cube regular Fritz Hofmann. The 360-card list covers the space from Mirrodin to Shards of Alara. The cube’s namesake comes from the famous bank bailout, signed into law on October 3rd, 2008, the day Shards of Alara was released in stores.
Drafting Bailout Cube is a step through the omenpaths, if the portals opened up to suburban America of the mid-2000’s. Thoughtpicker Witch, Serra Avenger, and Electrolyze float by as 2025 fades from the periphery. Chunky skate shoes pile by the door, unsleeved cards are dealt on the carpet, and a coffee table holds lukewarm Slurpees in Halo 2 cups. A screensaver runs on the family computer, and no one on earth has uttered the phrase “I asked ChatGPT to…”
A blue-green ramp deck comes together as smoothly as the soundtrack of Need for Speed: Underground 2. One by one, opponents fall to cards like Cloudthresher, Razormane Masticore, and Meloku the Cloud Mirror. The brewery sends out the last call, pulling us back through the omenpaths and into 2025. The elusive Madison 3-0 slips away as the group packs up before the third round.
We can’t go back to 2007, but the cards are there whenever we want them. Most of them have flavor text.
Day Zero: Afterparty
With Day Zero at a close, we gather in the living room of Noah’s house. On the TV is a rotating list of in-person Pro Tour deck techs, one of the many artifacts revisited in the past twelve hours. Brian David Marshall and Caleb Durward stand over a table with paper cards strewn out. No stream music, card overlays, or Twitch chat, just a Magic player hoping we understand why he put Sword of Feast & Famine, Koth of the Hammer, and Razor Hippogriff in the same deck.
It’s easy to laugh at choices in 2012, whether it be a Boros deck with 27 lands or pairing Aether Vial with Snapcaster Mage. But they’re the ones doing it at the Pro Tour, not us.
Day One: Draft
Sunlight pokes through the curtains of an office-turned guest room, brightening anime statuettes by a windowsill. Footsteps rumble on carpeted steps. “Good morning, nerds!” Noah cries out, his voice carrying through the walls. I emerge from the darkness to find a crowd gathered in the living room, with a small mountain of shoes at the door.
The players meeting educates us on the Hedron network app, Noah’s platform for the event. It’s one of the few digital aspects of a mostly unplugged weekend. The platform allows players to report match results, check in for events, and upload photos of their draft pools.
Photos of the card pools help accountability. If the cube owner is missing a valuable card after the draft, pool photos show who had it last. The pool photo is a lens into a player’s personality. Some deal their cards out in frantic piles, deciding on length and width as the deck runs thin. Kyle Fouchey, an architect by trade, arranges his in a seamless 5×9 grid; slow, intentional, not a card out of place.
Before the event, each player has been given a digital ballot to do ranked choice voting. This system allowed players to pick the cubes they wanted to play the most, with backup choices. This is how players are divided into pods of eight, on an individualized journey through the day.
I sit down for Noah’s Vintage Cube. The picks go Timewalk into Channel, morphing into a five-color monstrosity powered by Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. The deck looks like if you gave a kid $100 and 20 minutes to buy whatever they want at a Buc-ee’s gas station. The games play out like a dinner of gas station food. Sometimes Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy turns Hexdrinker into a baby Progenitus. Other times the cards stumble over each other due to the pilot holding them. Just like walking into a gas station, you never know what you’re going to see in a Vintage cube.
The second cube is Cube Save America, another Fritz Hofman creation. It pulls from 2008-2014, the era of Splinter Twin, Grave Titan, and Polukranos, World Eater. The omenpaths open again, this time with interplanar travel set to “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. We land in the world of shutter shades, Millennial Optimism, and the Valencia filter for Instagram.
The draft is quick. It moves with an elegance borne from group familiarity. Yes, we know every mode of Liliana of the Veil, and how often Augur of Bolas is just a 1/3. In this environment, a good card can still have flavor text.
As the picks roll by, I’m too blinded by love to make sound decisions. Monowhite Humans turns into Boros. Hero of Bladehold lines up beside Hellrider. The curve is as lumpy as an unmade bed. In another life, this deck would cause you to flame out of a PTQ in 2012. But here on a folding table in an unfinished basement, you’re playing Magic as you hoped it would be.
The final cube of the day is Bourbon Cube, designed by Noah. On the CubeCobra page, Noah has an erudite description about the tempo axis of Magic. This is a cube lover’s cube, home for people who debate red one-drops with others over the internet. But being that it’s the third cube of the day, it’s a chance to fall for the familiar cube drafting trap: force blue and get crushed because of it.
Out of the draft comes a Sultai Delirium pile, aspiring to fluid lines with Tainted Indulgence, Life from the Loam, and Torrential Gearhulk. The deck is my defiance towards what’s best for me; a full-throated scream into the rainclouds as my shoes get soaked in a puddle. The games play out like a summer rainstorm. I run, but can’t hide from being washed away by opponents well beyond my control. The cards are returned, the sanctioned cubing now complete.
One party ends, another begins.
Day One: Slosh Pod
With most players out of the house, our focus turns to the haven of biggest laughs and worst ideas: the garage.
Our group settles at the folding plastic tables set where a car would be. Drink coolers are within arm’s reach, but several players are already well along thanks to the bottle of bourbon opened earlier. Noah produces a cardboard box of unsleeved cards. They’re dealt out in draft packs, standing much shorter than the sleeved stacks we drafted earlier. Unsleeved packs in cube look like a poodle that just stepped out of a bath.
Due to varying levels of sobriety at the table, we decide to team draft.
Sitting next to me is Sam, one of the Chicago Cube regulars who made the two-hour drive north. With a backwards cap and ginger beard, he leans in with the confidence of an older brother watching you attempt a boss battle in a video game. He’s a few deep and I’m as sober as a judge, so our mental states work to find a middle ground over the cards we see. We assemble a Bant midrange deck based around ramp spells and payoffs like Drogskol Reaver.
Most everyone at the table is younger in age, and within minutes the conversation veers into slang I haven’t heard outside the internet. The term “mog” comes up, which sends the mid-30’s brain to Mogg Fanatic. Once you reach your 30’s, slang is an ocean wave to a surfer; some you choose to ride, some you watch roll by. I begin using the word in nearly any context, the equivalent of surfing with your eyes closed. Mogging this decision, mog up the board as we mog each other. Each use is like hitting a laugh button for a studio audience.
Everybody wins in Slosh Pod.
Like a casino, there are no clocks in the garage. The hands of time spin faster as the games go long, as the laughs grow louder, as the colors get washed in the daylight punch of bulbs overhead. Some teams are winning, some losing, but a match record means nothing when held against the excitement of drawing your card for turn.
The garage hums with life as the neighborhood goes to sleep. A moth dances under a streetlight as a sprinkler system turns on in the darkness.
Day Two: Morning
The morning sun blankets the street as Madison begins its Sunday. Players have gathered at Noah’s for another day of cubing, albeit with a different angle today. Those who have been winning the most will go on to play in the Top 8 of CubeDungeonCon.
The winner receives a sculpture which Noah dubbed to be the trophy for the weekend. There are no financial stakes for Top 8, but after a weekend of high-level play, those who remain have something to prove.
“This can count as your product placement!” laughs Noah as he ties on a black apron with the logo for The Mana Vault, a game store from the south side of Milwaukee. No one asks why a game store made an apron, because the kitchen is sizzling with the sounds of breakfast.
Just beyond a box of croissants, the Chicago Cube team pulls out a vintage Pokemon cube for the kitchen table. Players standing nearby take sips of coffee while a conversation about Gust of Wind occurs.
The crowd gets their assignments, and we move into the final stages of the weekend.
Day Two: Top Eight
In the basement game area, next to the boiler and a magnetic dartboard, the Top 8 of CubeDungeonCon take their seats. They’re here for a cube brought specifically for this moment: AquaOne’s Powered Vintage Cube.
Wrapped in Dragonshield Petrol sleeves, nestled in a custom wooden box, lives the cube with cards which seem to glow when picked up. Across the 432-card list, Aqua has adorned his cube with foils, artist proofs, artist signatures and alters. Black border power mingles with foils of every kind, with shadow signatures playing across text boxes. Each basic land is from Alpha, with unique alters done by their original artists.
Sifting through a pack is less of a draft and more of a stroll through an art gallery on a rainy October afternoon.
The draft moves forward in relative silence. Sleeves flicker in the cool air of the basement. Occasionally, a player pauses over a card in their pack. The hesitation could be for strategy, signal reading, or to hold a Black Lotus for the first time. Dever, who made Top 8 in their first CubeDungeonCon, gets passed a Time Walk with Ancestral Recall already in their pool.
Standing at the end of the table is Aqua. With salt and pepper hair, dark-rimmed glasses, and a look of silent satisfaction, he stands watch as players draft their packs. A smile plays across his face; the kind you see on a parent watching their child sleep from a crack in the door frame.
Day Two: The Drive Home
I’m on the road before the finals are played, because there’s still a five-hour drive between here and my family. Magic is worth traveling for, but all wizards and dragons pale in the face of a child who misses you. The summer air of Madison gives way to the winding, rocky shoreline of Green Bay. The pine trees of northern Wisconsin form a green blur in the periphery. Thoughts drift to the past few days and the confluence of 24 travelers from across the country.
Sitting at a plastic card table, you could have anyone from a Magic pro, a new parent, a game designer, a new player, or someone who once starred in a Taco Bell commercial. The throughline between all of us being Noah and a love for the shortest, quietest, and most thrilling moment in Magic: The Gathering. The moment when all eight players agree that it’s time to draft and they reach for their first pack. As the hand moves towards the stack of cards on the table, the mind runs through a year’s-worth of excitement over what might be waiting on the other side. It could be what we hoped for, what we feared, or a surprise to take us someplace new. But we won’t know until we’ve pulled that pack off the stack, passing through the cards with birthday present excitement. That brief moment in time, the hope found between a decision and the future, keeps cube drafters coming back.
The origin of the term “cube” is considered lost to time. Magic luminaries ranging from Mark Rosewater to Evan Erwin have offered different origin stories, with no clearly-defined answer. But there’s peace in the ambiguity. Cube draft stretches into the margins of what can be done with Magic cards, so a loose name gives it the space it needs to grow. The irony lies in the name itself. A rigid six-sided shape, hardly containing an experience which crackles with the energy of an expanding star.
CubeDungeonCon, and other indie Magic events like it, offer an experience which can’t be bought with a Black Lotus VIP badge. Far removed from the downtown convention center, the soul of indie magic events is found in analog interactions between people in basements, bars, and bingo halls. An indie Magic event needs nothing more than a reason for getting people together, but it can have as much as visiting artists, custom playmats, and a handmade trophy. Madison’s own CubeCon, or Boston’s LobsterCon, are successful indie events which grew from community instead of a marketing brief. Magic needs to have some amount of sprawling, corporate conventions to stay prominent in a competitive marketplace. But the indie Magic events are the connective tissue which fills the space between. One can’t exist without the other.
My car crosses into Michigan, the shoreline replaced by the tunnel of pines known as the Upper Peninsula. Waterfront homes are replaced by the occasional tavern with a vintage Pepsi sign hanging above the door. I think back to the conversations with Noah the Friday before. With a moment of pause, Noah explained “I just want a way to see all my friends.” For a few hazy summer days, 23 friends fulfilled his wish. All they needed were some plastic tables, a cooler of drinks, and a chance to reach for that first pack.
Travis Norman (he/him) is a writer and photographer from the wooded foothills of New York, currently living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He’ll try any Magic format, but he has a special love for Cube, Premodern, and Canadian Highlander. He has loved Magic since 1999, but champions having a healthy mental and financial relationship with the game. When not playing games, he enjoys cycling, tea, and dog parks. You can follow his exploits on Bluesky and Instagram.