Our letters

<3

I love you. For years I have sad that red aggressive decks in Magic Online Vintage cube became a scam. Red Deck Wins was a staple in Power Cube for many years, from when I first started playing Power Cube back in 2008 until fire design in 2019. In those days seeing a turn one Goblin Guide told you the fun police were there to seal your doom. But after fire design the creature cards got better and better and we saw a shift away from red aggressive one drops in Power cubes. In 2024 we hit the low point when there were a total five one mana aggressive creatures in the Magic Online Vintage cube. I will list the five for you:

• Blazing Rootwalla
• Dragon’s Rage Channeler
• Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer 
• Voldaren Epicure
• Figure of Destiny

Five cards on 540 cards means on average 3.33 red aggressive one mana creatures in a draft. In 2024 I thought, red aggro is dead in Power Cube. 

At the time of writing this, in 2026, there are nine aggressive one mana creatures available to red in the MTGO Vintage cube. Still not enough for mono red aggro, but it is a testament to the aggro players that they still have a place in Power Cube. Especially in Boros. Because after the 2025 release of Power Cube to Magic The Gathering Arena, 17lands data proved that Boros aggro was by far the best performing strategy in that version of Power Cube. Red aggro was alive and how!

And even though in that data you don’t show up as one of the higher win percentage cards, I do think that red aggro reclaiming a top spot in Power cube is thanks to cards like you. Because you are so much more than a red aggressive one drop. So much more than Goblin Guide could ever be. You provide an artifact for the Blue and Red Tolarian Academy decks. You provide a discard outlet for Black and Red reanimator decks. And you are a good enough way to start applying the pressure when playing a red aggressive deck. I love that red aggro cards have evolved away from singular cards like Goblin Guide into such much deeper cards from a design perspective like you, Voldaren Epicure. And I love you for that. 

And personally, when I get to draft you in a Power cube, you take me back to those sweet old days of doing what I love doing: being the fun police. 

With love,

Hanjo

<3

I love your design. Back in 2004, when I was 15 years old, Champions of Kamigawa was released. With it one of the coolest mechanics till this day was released: Ninjutsu. I, like everyone else, adore Ninjitsu. It is a mechanic that has been in my first cube, my Peasant cube, and hasn’t left that cube since its inception in 2009. And you Urban Retreat, are like a land with Ninjutsu, and I love you for it. 

You are part of my Gimmicky cube. A synergy cube where I try to tempt the drafters to have a taste of the gimmicky sweetness Magic has to offer. You are the chosen fixing land for the Bant faction. Because you are so much more than a fixing land, you are secretly a split card. You could be a three color fixing land, or you could be a Ramp spell on turn 2, or you could be a value effect. Or you could be all those things combined into one. The taste of gimmicky sweetness I try to offer my players, the dream I offer to them, is this: playing a one drop with an enters value ability and then on turn 2 getting their 3 color fixing land, ramp spell and value effect all at the same time. Cards like Thraben Inspector and Spyglass Siren offer that dream. And then I am not even talking about the value dream that a mere land offers when returning a Reveillark to your hand. 

As a cube designer I love the dreams you offer the drafters of my Gimmicky cube when they see you in a pack. And one day, as a player, I hope to live that dream myself.

With love, 

Hanjo

<3

Seeing fellow Dutchman Frank Karsten tear worlds apart together with you in 2005 made me fall in love with you. The play patterns you offered, the sheer power you offered, the smiles you put on faces. I played against you a lot at the local Friday Night Magic tournaments following Frank his impressive run and I always enjoyed playing against you. You were even fun to lose against. 

I have been organising Cube Invitationals for over 10 years now. Semi-competitive cube tournaments on an invite only basis with some of the best cube players the Netherlands and Belgium has to offer. I’ve organised 2 Cube Invitational weekends now. One of my very good friends and old pro tour competitor Leon played both. Leon only plays magic when I sit him down to play cube every now and again. The first weekend, last year in 2025, with 16 people he made the top 8. This year with 20 people he wasn’t having his best weekend and on Sunday morning he told me he was loving the weekend I organised, but wasn’t loving the feeling like he couldn’t compete with these guys anymore. And that he was starting to question whether these Cube Invitationals I organise are still for him. 

One hour later he was sitting down to draft my ‘Gimmicky Cube’. A synergy cube where I try to tempt the drafters to have a taste of the gimmicky sweetness Magic has to offer. And Leon drafted a really fun Green and White based control deck where he got to pair you, Greater Good, together with your old buddy Yosei, the Morning Star. And you filled his heart with joy. With your awesome play patterns, your sheer power. You’ve put a smile on his face. 

After the draft he walked over to me and told me about his deck, about how much fun he had. And his conclusion was that maybe, just maybe, these Cube Invitationals are still for him. Thank you for doing that Greater Good, I love you now even more for that.

With love,

Hanjo

<3

I love you so fucking much. I own 19 cubes and they are my babies. I spend so much time working on them, nurturing them. And as a true parent, I don’t pick favourites between my cube-kids. Those 19 cubes hold 3705 unique cards. That is such an insane number I am going to write it out fully: three thousand, seven hundred and five. And between those three thousand, seven hundred and five cards I do pick a favourite, it is you. 

You embody me as a player. You are the perfect Magic card to me. The way you can temporise the game has me mesmerised every time I play you. When I was 16 years old we first joined forces in the standard Heartbeart of Spring combo deck back in 2006. I qualified for my first Dutch National Championships with you in that year. The next standard rotation we joined forces in a blue and green tempo deck. And in that deck I learned why I really love you. 

In a combo deck you are basically a Time Walk. Buying the combo deck another turn to assemble the win. So efficient. But in a tempo deck you take different roles. You either slow the opponent down to race them, or slow them down to gain control over the game. The reason I love tempo decks so much, because the player can always switch from aggressor to controller to aggressor in any turn. And timing these switches makes tempo decks for me the most challenging, and therefore, most fun decks to play. And I just love playing them when I get to do it together with you. My one true Magic love. 

While counting the total number of unique cards between my 19 cubes, I also counter the number of cubes containing certain cards. 8 cards shared the second place with a total of 8 cubes they are represented in. And one card stood alone, isolated on an island, with 10 unique cubes. And that card was of course you Remand. 

It has always been you. I love you.

With love,

Hanjo

<3

For the past 2 days I proclaimed my love for Polluted Delta and Elixir of Immortality and the roles they play in my Peasant cube. The only problem with my love for both these cards is that they don’t play well together. 

The thing is with Elixir of Immortality is that you only want to shuffle back cards back into your library you actually want to draw. And fetchlands are the worst thing to be shuffling back. Elixir of Immortality perfects the art of not losing by gaining 5 life, making sure you can’t deck yourself, but also by upping the card quality of your draws so it is inevitable you take and keep total control of the game. Before I added the fetchlands to that cube the occasional Mana Leak was a bad card that was shuffled back. But now the fetch lands posed a threat to my favourite archetype, and card, in that cube: 4/5 color Elixir control. 

Don’t get me wrong. Fetchlands are premium fixing and 4/5 color control is happy to play them. And they also help smooth out the games when 4/5 color control gets to draft a Brainstorm, Brainsurge, Sensei’s Divining Top or Sylvan Library. But the thing is, activating Elixir of Immortality and shuffling back all those juicy removal and card draw spells is the best feeling in the world: feeling immortal. But drawing a fetch land you also happened to shuffle back the first draw step after, is the worst feeling in the world. And on the 27th of November 2025 I found out there is a remedy for this worst feeling in the world.

On Thursday the 27th of November 2025 I did a cube draft with my Peasant cube at my good friend Tom’s house. And my friends there were very kind to me, passing me quite a late Elixir of Immortality. And I knew it was going to be one of those great evenings of not losing. And when I got to draft you, Cling to Dust, I knew I found my new missing puzzle piece. You solve some very nasty problems 4/5 color control sometimes runs into: graveyard interaction. But your Escape mechanic solves an even greater problem: unwanted cards in my graveyard like those fetchlands. 

On that night I discovered my best new ingredient in my Elixir of Immortality. You, Cling to Dust. And I love you for it.

With love,

Hanjo

<3

I love you so much. From the moment I met you I knew what you were going to mean to me. I knew you were the missing puzzle piece to my favourite strategy in my, back then, only cube. 

Back in 2009 I built my first cube, a common and uncommon only cube. And being the control player that I am, I naturally started exploring the different control strategies in that cube. Soon I realised that my favourite control strategy, and one of the better strategies in the cube, was 4/5 color control. Just drafting a lot of fixing, preferably so much that I didn’t even need any basic lands, and drafting all the left over strong gold cards that the other players didn’t want. I was having a blast with these 4/5 color control decks, but there was one challenge. How to win. 

What I enjoy about control in Magic is that winning is a logical consequence of not losing. And I was at my best when I was trying not to lose. In my common and uncommon only cube, winning with 4/5 color control usually meant beating down with 2 power value creatures, having this one big flyer or saving that Fireball for one big swoop. A fun challenge, but also an exhausting one and it didn’t always work out. So when you were released into the world July 16 2010, I knew you were the missing puzzle piece for my 4/5 color control decks in that cube. 

Because with you I never needed to win anymore. I didn’t have to prioritise drafting a win condition, I didn’t need to play any creatures, I did not even have to care about Fireball anymore. You perfected not losing.

With love,

Hanjo

<3

You were released into the world on 7 October of 2002. People immediately fell in love with you, because you could fetch up the original dual lands. On 7 October of 2005 the people of Extended fell in love with you because the landscape of that format changed completely with the release of the Ravnica shock dual lands. And people fell in love with you all over again when on the 9th of Februari 2024 the Surveil duals were released. But I didn’t fall in love with you on any of those dates. I fell in love with you on the 4th of May 2025. Let me explain. 

When I was 20 years old, in 2009, I built my first cube. A peasant cube, meaning it only includes cards ever printed as either a common or uncommon. I remember in the beginning playing 4/5 color aggro decks that started playing on turn 2. Because all the fixing lands entered tapped. Or 2 color aggro decks always having an 8/8 mana base. And thanks to Frank Karsten we know that aggro needs a 9/9 mana base in limited to be consistent. On the 21st of July in 2023 for the first time in 14 years I broke with my only common and uncommon cards rule to try and fix this by adding 2 of each of the “reveal” lands. Card quality in Magic became so high in those 14 years, 2 color aggro needed better fixing in order to keep competing with the midrange and control decks in that cube and only rare lands offered that. 

The reveal lands did what they needed to do. They supported 2 color aggro very well, while not being a lot better than regular tapped lands in 4/5 color control decks. Because those decks didn’t play many basics. But I also broke singleton with this change and that didn’t sit well with me. On the 4th of May 2025 I took out one set of the Snarl lands and included the 10 fetch lands. And that is when I fell in love with you. You were even worse in the 4/5 control decks, because it meant they had to include a basic land of their splash color. Which they hate to do till this day. You even cost the control decks life to activate. But for the aggro decks you did what you needed to do. Bring them closer to their 9/9 mana base. 

And as a bonus I finally got to do in that cube, what everyone really loves you for. Play you together with Brainstorm. 

With love,

Hanjo

<3

I am sorry. I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t immediately recognize you. With a couple of friends we play this game where we send each other zoomed in pieces of art of Magic cards and the others have to guess the card. And when you guess wrong, you get the same art but zoomed out a tiny bit. I didn’t recognise you with the first zoom. I needed it a bit zoomed out. I apologise, I am so terribly sorry, you deserve so much more from me. 

You were released into the world on October 6 2006, when I was 17 years old. And you and me, we were inseparable. We definitely made the most of our time together in Standard. But 2007 was a very special time for us together: Block Constructed. We played every Block Constructed tournament we could together and I loved every moment of it. There was no better feeling of casting you end of turn, finding the piece I needed to survive only to flash you back on a later turn to get a fresh new copy of you. I still dream off the play patterns you offered me back in 2007.

I am now a retired constructed player. I only play cube. And time has caught up with you. In every cube with a decent enough power level there is no place for you anymore. And this makes me so sad. At the time of writing this I own 19 unique cubes, and you featured in none of them. And I want to apologise for that, after all the joy you gave me, you deserve so much more from me than that. I have forgotten about you my old love, but now I have found you again. Yesterday in my love letter for Changeling Outcast I wrote that maybe, just maybe I should build a cube where he can shine as a Ninja. Well let me tell you this: 

I am going to build a new cube, and you, you are going to be the star of that cube. 

With love, 

Hanjo

<3

I love you. You were by far my favourite card from the first Modern Horizons set. I was so excited when I first saw you in the spoilers. I think most people liked you for either their Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow Commander deck or Legacy deck. Because your Changeling mechanic made you a Ninja, and being an one mana, unblockable, Ninja makes you a very unique card. But I didn’t care for you being a Ninja, I loved you for being something else. 

In my Hanjo Masters #2 cube I wanted to try to add a couple of Tribal strategies. Not a full Tribal cube. I have bad, very repetitive, experiences with constructing and playing Tribal cubes. But just a couple of Tribal strategies in the mix, similar to the first Modern Masters set. In the first Modern Masters set Rebels was a very popular and loved strategy, but also Goblins was a fan favourite because it could double with the Combo strategy because Empty the Warrens was very potent in both. In Hanjo Masters #2 I wanted to incorporate a 5 color Allies strategy and, more importantly, the forgotten Rogue strategy with their unique mechanic of Prowl. 

I don’t think Prowl saw much play outside of its limited format, and therefore became a forgotten mechanic. And I think that is a shame because it is a very cool mechanic. I really like Prowl. Cube is the perfect place to give a forgotten mechanic a new life, especially my lower power level Masers cube setup. The thing a Prowl strategy needs is multiple evasive one drops with the creature type Rogue. Lorwyn block offered 2 of those cards: Nightshade Stinger and Prickly Boggart. The Stinger was performing great, the Boggart on the other hand was a bit of a trap card. The problem with fear is that it can be blocked by Artifacts. And I also happen to put a big Artifact strategy in the cube, so a lot of Artifact creatures. So the Boggart wasn’t working, but there wasn’t an alternative for a long time. That was until you came. My gift from the first Modern Horizons set: an evasive one drop with the creature type Rogue. And I loved you for that. 

You didn’t just fix my ‘an evasive one drop with the creature type Rogue’. Before 2019 there were a total of 5 available one mana creatures with either the creature type Ally or the mechanic Changeling. All of them being white, except for one very bad blue one. And the Ally strategy was an aggressive one, but not having a good spread of one drops was not helping the strategy. That was again, until my gift from the first Modern Horizons set: an non white, playable, one drop with the creature type Ally. And for that I love you even more. 

Maybe, in 2026, it is time I explored the reason other people love you. Maybe 2026 is the year I should make a new cube for you to shine as an unblockable one drop with the creature type Ninja. Just maybe.

With love,

Hanjo