Games

Lucky Paper Radio

Lucky Paper Radio is a podcast about Magic: the Gathering hosted by lifelong friends Andy Mangold and Anthony Mattox. Focused primarily on sandbox formats like Cube, which are free of banlists, rotation, and net decking, the show is about the best parts of Magic and how to get the most out of the game.

Latest Episodes:

It Feels Good to Riffle Shuffle Duals: Preparing the Neoclassical Cube for Steel City Jul 15, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony talk about Andy’s Neoclassical Cube. They talk about some of the changes Andy’s been making leading up to it being played by a wider audience at Steel City Cube. They talk about how the design philosophy has evolved and their recent experience playing the Cube.

View all cards mentioned in this episode.

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction and Airplane Corner

6:04 - Overview of the Neoclassical Cube and why old school Magic might appeal to players due to its simplicity

10:44 - The Beauty of Games Book Club Check In

12:15 - Lucky Paper Mail Bag: bird p1p1 and custom cards in cube

20:07 - Deep-dive on the design of the Neoclassical Cube: what defines ‘old school’ Magic?

27:16 - Dialing in the right quantity and quality of powerful enablers

32:41 - Storm in the Neoclassical Cube

38:37 - Resource denial, creatureless decks, and other aesthetic departures from modern Magic

47:46 - The Kiki Jiki Question

52:41 - The state of Reanimator

55:07 - The death of the cycling deck

57:37 - The state of the Burn deck

Discussed in this episode:

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. You can find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord. Send in questions to the show at mail@luckypaper.co or our p.o. box:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Modern Horizons 3 Cube Community Set Review Jul 08, 2024

Show notes

Andy, Anthony, and Parker review the results of the Modern Horizons 3 Cube Community Set Review. As usual, we asked the Cube community to share what cards from the set they’re interested in trying in their Cubes, for whatever reasons that are relevant to their own curation goals, and how confident they are the cards will be hits. We compiled the results and our hosts talk through the top cards, as well as some trends and interesting patterns in the communities expectations for the set.

View all cards mentioned in this episode →

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

4:03 - Overview of Set Review Structure

5:23 - Broad Modern Horizons 3 survey facts and figures

9:21 - Headline mechanics that didn’t crack the top cards tested

17:29 - Individual Card Discussion

17:53 - 11. Emperor of Bones

24:38 - 10. Brainsurge

27:34 - 9. Reckless Pyrosurfer

30:20 - 8. Wight of the Reliquary

33:21 - 7. Warren Soultrader

37:59 - 6. Phlage, Titan of Nature’s Fury

42:48 - 5. Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd

46:05 - 4. Six

49:23 - 3. Nethergoyf

55:32 - 2. Psychic Frog

1:00:24 - 1. Marionette Apprentice

1:03:48 - Honorable Mention: The Landscape Cycle

1:06:26 - Honorable Mention: Accursed Marauder

1:08:01 - The powerful cards people are mostly not testing

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Boston Cube Party Tournament Report with Patrick ‘Dirt’ Doherty Jul 01, 2024

Show notes

Fresh off of Boston Cube Party, Andy, Anthony, and Patrick recap their weekend of Cubing. They talk through highlights of the event and the Cubes they drafted over a great weekend of Magic.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

5:39 - Boston Cube Party Tournament Report

9:33 - Neoclassical Cube Train Draft

14:55 - 100 Ornithopters Cube Draft

18:00 - Saturday Morning Draft

27:44 - Saturday Afternoon Draft

37:55 - Sunday Morning Draft

49:15 - Sunday Afternoon Draft

1:05:49 - Top 8 Draft

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Lucky Paper
PO Box 4855
Baltimore, MD 21211

The Joy of Gaming with Richard Garfield Jun 24, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony are joined by Richard Garfield, legendary game designer and the creator of Magic: the Gathering. Richard talks about how he got interested in modifying and tweaking games, his concept that players can be loosely understood as either ‘honers’ or ‘innovators’, and why some games with great mechanics have no soul as a result of overdevelopment. Andy and Anthony also take advantage of this opportunity to ask Richard about his relationship to Cube, getting insight into how he designs his own and what he values about the format. They cover all the most salient Cube topics, including handling feedback from players, how to approach power level outliers, and how to manage complexity.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

1:49 - Welcoming Richard Garfield to the show

3:31 - How Richard got started modifying games

11:12 - How do you know when a game has gotten too complex?

17:37 - Honers vs. Innovators

22:48 - Richard’s relationship to Cube

28:46 - On “Overdeveloped” Games

31:22 - The virtues of a wider power level band

43:09 - How to process feedback from players

46:58 - Is getting into nature an important part of Richard’s creative process

49:15 - The role of visual and narrative elements in games

55:00 - Designing a meta vs designing a game

58:10 - Richard’s current favorite games

1:02:56 - Richard’s game design book recommendations

Discussed in this episode:

MH3 Community Review Survey and the Commander Set Survey
Episode 202: Reading Series — The Creator of ‘Magic the Gathering’ Knows Exactly Where it All Went Wrong
Stratego
Dungeons and Dragons
Algomancy
The Encyclopedia of Chess Variations
Balatro
Founders of Reyvik
Finkel vs. Garfield
Deckmasters Garfield vs. Finkel Product
Slay the Spire
Spectromancer
Munchkin
Innovation, by Carl Chudyk
Quadradius
Gamut of Games, by Sid Sackson
New Rules for Classic Games, by R. Wayne Schmittberger

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Lucky Paper
PO Box 4855
Baltimore, MD 21211

Full Vintage Rotisserie Draft with Alex and Aran Jun 17, 2024

Show notes

Anthony is taking a break this week and it takes no less than two other people to fill his shoes, so Andy is joined by two other friends from their Baltimore playgroup to discuss two recent roto drafts of the full vintage card pool. They share their strategies surrounding this complicated draft format and talk about whether or not it led to actually fun games, while also touching on how this exercise informs their own Cube designs and why some cards from Magic’s history are just miserable to play with and against. Is full vintage roto the future? Or just an overwhelming way to ineveitably get Strip Mine locked?

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

0:00 - Introduction

3:12 - Overview of Rotisserie Draft

4:54 - Our experience with Full Vintage Rotisserie Drafting

31:35 - Does this draft format actually lead to fun games?

37:35 - Observations on which cards got drafted and which didn’t

43:51 - Andy’s rant against the Initiative

51:10 - The way full vintage rotos impact cube design considerations

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

A Review of All the Coolest Cards from Modern Horizons 3 Jun 10, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony take a first look at Modern Horizons 3. The latest installment of this Time Spiral-esque series continues the tradition of a huge range of cards and an abundance of callbacks and remixes of classics. Our hosts talk about their overall impressions of the set and go into individual cards their interested in generally and for specific Cubes.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction and Admin

8:07 - Card by Card Discussion: Regular Cube

8:23 - Mandibular Kite

9:40 - Expel the Unworthy

12:24 - Indebted Spirit

13:41 - Brainsurge

15:16 - Lethal Throwdown

18:14 - Retrofitted Transmogrant

19:37 - Mogg Mob

20:48 - Molten Gatekeeper

21:14 - Fanatic of Rhonas

22:13 - Kudo, King Among Bears

24:44 - Wight of the Reliquary

27:30 - Pinnacle Monk

29:56 - Deceptive Landscape

31:41 - Card by Card Discussion: Turbo Cube

32:00 - Vexing Bauble

33:38 - Disruptor Flute

35:07 - Fanged Flames

35:51 - Glimpse the Impossible

37:04 - Molten Gatekeeper

37:57 - Warren Soultrader

39:42 - Urza’s Cave

41:21 - Glaring Fleshraker

43:24 - A diversion about lands in the Turbo Cube

47:23 - Monumental Henge, Arena of Glory, and Shifting Woodland

51:25 - Glyph Elemental

52:29 - Guide of Souls

57:57 - Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd

1:00:35 - Consign to Memory

1:01:49 - Shadow of the Second Sun

1:04:01 - Nethergoyf

1:05:50 - Detective’s Phoenix

1:07:47 - Reckless Pyrosurfer

1:08:33 - Skoa, Embermage

1:09:47 - Birthing Ritual

1:11:41 - Six

1:13:49 - Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury

1:17:23 - Fell the Profane

1:18:08 - Waterlogged Teachings

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Lucky Paper
PO Box 4855
Baltimore, MD 21211

A Cube is Like a Building Jun 03, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony talk about the history of architecture and the design of the physical spaces we inhabit. They draw parallels to design more broadly, the design of games as mental spaces, and specifically Cube design.

Discussed in this episode:

The Beauty of Games
Buckminster Fuller
Tech Won’t Save Us, Episode 221: Tech’s Plan to ‘Ethnically Cleanse’ San Francisco
Cod, by Mark Kurlansky
GeoGuessr
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Nine Men’s Morris
No One Knows How to Make a Computer Mouse TED Talk — Andy’s note: as it turns out, this talk absolutely sucks, lol. It’s almost like a parody of a bad TED talk.
Toaster Made from Scratch, by Thomas Thwaites
The Brown Center
Antoni Goudy
Catenaries
Typescript

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

5:22 - Generalists vs. Specialists and Contextual Knowledge

11:55 - Andy and Anthony’s Relationship to Architecture

16:48 - The Abstract Similarities between Architecture and Game Design

23:46 - An abridged history of Architecture and how it connects to game design — Vernacular Architecture

33:05 - Architecture in the European Renaissance and the changing relationship between the designer and the building

39:23 - The Industrial Revolution and Modernism

41:51 - Andy and Anthony’s Relationship with Modern Architecture

55:51 - Summary

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Lucky Paper
PO Box 4855
Baltimore, MD 21211

Reading Series — The Creator of ‘Magic the Gathering’ Knows Exactly Where it All Went Wrong May 27, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony read and comment on the entirety of a recent article on the early history of Magic and it’s creator’s struggles with the game. The article, including quotes from an interview with Richard Garfield, explores his complex relationship to his creation. It explores his perspective on games, and why he values them. Since it’s first publication, Richard has struggled to re-create the experiences he found most valuable from the pre-publication version. Our hosts unpack the article, give their own perspective, and inevitably tie it back to their own Cube experience.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

The PDH Pod, Episode 100
The Creator Of ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Knows Exactly Where It All Went Wrong, by Nick Zarzycki on Defector
Six Man Zonk
Yahtzee
Radical Markets, by Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl
Law of the Instrument
Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert
Keyforge
Netrunner
Orange (colour)
Patrice O’Neal
Hearthstone
Shandalar, 1997 Computer Game
Uber Cube Podcast
Squares that Cube

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

1:54 - Overview of episode format

4:57 - Read Through Begins

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Commitment to the Bit — On Context Shift Cubes May 20, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony talk about novelty Cubes. Many Cubes are built around a novelty concept or design restriction. Novelty designs can be fun and light, but gimmicks can also pigeonhole cubes, making them feel unworthy of serious attention. Our hosts discuss their experience with novelty design, from its benefits to its challenging implications.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

3:45 - What is novelty in Cube design?

8:38 - How does novelty impact draft vs gameplay? What about self-imposed restrictions?

17:13 - The Monoblack Cube, The Turbo Cube, and first impressions of your themes “at common”

29:08 - A Ward Sliver Detour

35:54 - What can Dan Dan’s virality teach us about novel ways to play Magic?

49:44 - Pack 1, Pick 1 from the 100 Ornithopters Cube

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

We Can Cut This if You Want May 13, 2024

Show notes

Andy and Anthony celebrate their 200th episode!! They look back at where they were and how they approached Magic when they started the podcast vs now. Andy reverse engineer’s his Cube list from the time and talks about how his tastes in Magic have changed. Anthony goes a little off the rails as they talk about how to still get the most enjoyment out of the game at a less involved level.

⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

7:44 - The Top 200 Most Powerful Cards for Vintage Cube

13:05 - Episode Overview

15:15 - Four Years of the Bun Magic Cube

38:16 - Four Years of Anthony’s Relationship to Magic

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855