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:

Cube as a Personal History with Dom Harvey Aug 29, 2022

Show notes

Andy and Anthony are joined by competitive grinder, latent Cube content creator, and actually good Magic player Dom Harvey to talk about his relationship with the game. Together, they discuss Dom’s storied competitive career, the early days of Cube, how a Cube can serve as a document of your personal history with Magic, whether or not experience with constructed Magic can inform playing and designing Cubes, and how to think about combo as a strategy.

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

This week’s pack 1, pick 1 is from Dom’s Cube — a Legacy style Cube with a few novel twists.

Timestamps:

3:51 — Pack 1, Pick 1 from Dom’s Cube
17:54 — Dom’s Background in Constructed Magic
20:51 — Dom’s Introduction to Cube
27:50 — Cube as a Personal History
39:10 — Dom’s Approach to Designing Cubes
41:00 — Can Competitive Constructed Magic Inform Cube
1:05:28 — Combo in Cube
1:16:18 — Three Time SCG Open Champion Dom Harvey DESTROYS a Casual Cube Designer

Discussed in this episode:

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

7 weeks to Cube Con!

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. Send in questions to the show at mail@luckypaper.co. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

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.

The Texture of Removal Aug 22, 2022

Show notes

Having discussed the impact of different densities of removal ad nauseam, Andy and Anthony turn their attention to the different types of removal spells and how they play differently. They examine the costs of playing too much unconditional removal, wax poetic on their love of "small" removal spells like Portable Hole and Disfigure, and discuss how given two removal spells with equal costs, sometimes the one that hits fewer targets is actually better. They recorded this episode before Cut Down was spoiled from Dominaria United otherwise you bet they'd be talking about it.

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from Iain’s Vintage Cube.

Timestamps:

2:25 — Listener Submitted Pack 1, Pick 1
7:17 — Main topic
10:24 — Unconditional Removal
15:45 — Removal with Downside
21:46 — Removal with Additional Costs
26:27 — Removal that Can Be Undone
30:34 — Soft Removal
33:13 — Conditional Removal: Scale of Threat
39:25 — Conditional Removal: Other Card Attributes
47:22 — Conditional Removal: Board State Dependent
52:16 — Our Overall Approaches to Removal in Our Cubes
55:47 — Timing and Efficiency of Removal
1:02:02 — Quantity vs. Quality: Which Matters More, Number of Targets or Quality of Targets
1:05:53 — Potpurri

Discussed in this episode:

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

8 weeks to Cube Con!

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

If you have a question for the show, or want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube, email us at mail@luckypaper.co or submit your cube. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

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.

Tarmogoyfs & Elvish Visionaries Aug 15, 2022

Show notes

Andy and Anthony are back at it again, returning to the font of endless Magic discussion: Baneslayers and Mulldrifters. After years of not consciously thinking about this dichotomy, Andy has discovered that his primary cube has skewed heavily towards “Baneslayers”. The boys get into why this descriptor is so often used derogatorily, some reasons why “Mulldrifter” maybe should be used derogatorily, and how people’s perceptions of the difference between these two iconic cards changes when you choose different examples lower on the curve.

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week is a grid draft pick from 123jhd’s Crimson Hunt.

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Timestamps:

4:04 — Listener submitted pack 1, pick 1
12:09 — What are Baneslayers and Mulldrifters
14:25 — Why is “Baneslayer” often used in a derogatory way?
16:06 — How Andy’s thinking about this dichotomy has changed over time
36:55 — Near-Baneslayers
41:56 — How good are these namesake cards in Anthony’s ‘Regular Cube’?
44:35 — Andy’s top 5 Baneslayers he’s added to his Cube in the past 12 months

Discussed in this episode:

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

9 weeks to Cube Con!

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.

State of the Game 2022 Aug 08, 2022

Show notes

6:35 — Listener submitted pack 1, pick 1

14:45 — Overview of the State of Design article

19:06 — Complexity in Magic in 2022

26:40 — Adjustments to the color pie, how that reflects high-level changes in Wizards’ approach to design, and how good game design does or does not have an inherent tension with success under capitalism

46:57 — Feedback Andy was surprised by from CLB

48:36 — Our favorite things from the last year in Magic

56:18 — Closing thoughts

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Andy and Anthony talk about the state of Magic in general. Starting with Mark Rosewater’s annual State of Design article, where he shares his perspective on successes, lessons learned, and his general observations on the state of the game. Our hosts respond to his points and go on to discuss their own feelings on where the game stands.

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from metaldracolich’s Cube of Stuff I Already Had.

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 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.

Cards That Are Cool Aug 01, 2022

Show notes

Andy and Anthony compare their main cubes, Andy’s unpowered Vintage Cube that emulates the gameplay of Legacy and Anthony’s comparatively low powered Regular Cube which is more akin to a masters set draft. They compare the cards shared between the two and how they function in these very different environments.

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from michaeldkarp’s Box of Cards.

Timestamps:

3:59 — Listener Submitted Pack 1, Pick 1
8:40 — Main topic
9:25 — Green
13:47 — Black
18:30 — Blue
25:34 — White
35:32 — Red
41:55 — Lands, Colorless, and Gold Cards
50:00 — Overall impressions of the overlap between the Bun Magic and Regular Cubes

Discussed in this episode:

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

10 weeks to Cube Con!

If you have a question for the show, or want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube, email us at mail@luckypaper.co. Please include how you’d like to be credited, your pronouns, a link to your cube if relevant. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

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.

How Many Lands Should You Include in Your Cube? Jul 25, 2022

Show notes

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Read Andy's article informing this episode! Andy and Anthony talk about how many lands to run in a Cube. While Cube design is subjective and largely a matter of taste, our hosts discuss things we can objectively measure about the proportion of lands included in a Cube, and precedent from other Magic formats. Andy breaks down data from Cube Cobra from his new article on the same subject about how Cubes are generally constructed.

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from The Strictly Worse Cube

Timestamps:

7:03 — Pack 1, Pick 1
14:45 — Where does the current average number of lands in Cubes come from?
18:30 — Precedent set by retail limited
24:00 — Precedent set by constructed
34:10 — Precedent set by Frank Karsten
37:48 — How many lands is too many lands?
43:19 — Design considerations on land density.
47:25 — What about five color good stuff?
55:21 — Concluding thoughts

Discussed in this episode:

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

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

11 weeks to Cube Con!

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.

Commander Deck Building Inspiration, Self-Imposed Restrictions, and Guidelines Jul 18, 2022

Show notes

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Andy and Anthony discuss Commander and their personal approaches to deck building. They talk about some of their favorite decks, what they look for in the format, and what motivates them to brew.

Discussed in this episode:

Timestamps:

3:17 — On Commander “Deckbuilding Templates”
7:23 — Using a Commander as your nucleation point
9:29 — High level approaches and thinking of your deck as a vote for what game you’d like to play
17:57 — Setting restrictions for yourself then optimizing within them to avoid making overpowered decks
24:41 — The merits of including at least one infinite win-the-game combo
28:11 — The advantages of a low mana curve
34:21 — Our current Commander decks
43:13 — Our old commander decks we miss the most
45:55 — Outro
48:49 — CubeCon Info with John from Cultic Cube

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.

Scholar of the Game Jul 11, 2022

Show notes

The show notes for this episode are too long to fit in the RSS feed, so check out our website for linked timestamps, cards mentioned, and the full list of links.

One of the great aspects of Cube is that it is somewhat all-encompassing — anything you like about Magic, whether it’s part a Commander deck, the Legacy metagame, or a specific sideboarding strategy in Pioneer, can inform how a cube is designed. On this episode, Andy and Anthony share all of the Magic podcasts, videos, and articles that they follow and why, talking about what they value in Magic content and how it shapes their experience of the game.

They also go just a tad off topic in Telescope Corner: talking about the newly operational, monumental James Webb Space Telescope releasing it’s first scientific photos the day after this release!

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from Redbay’s Uncurated Cube, an experiment in starting a Cube from a random list, inspired by a conversation on our previous episode.

14 weeks to Cube Con!

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.

Introducing the Commander Map Jul 05, 2022

Show notes

View the Commander Map!

Andy and Anthony are joined by Jett to talk about Lucky Paper’s brand new project: the Commander Map! The map visualizes the wide world of EDH showing every deck on EDHREC organized in 2d space based on the cards they contain. Like the Cube Map, the Commander Map algorithmically organizes every deck, (all 1.2 million of them!) into an interactive visualization showing patterns in the way people build decks.

They discuss how the map was made, what else the dimension reduction is used for by data scientists, their own relationships to the commander format, and just a little bit about why triangles are important in computer graphics.

Timestamps:

3:09 — Introduction to the Commander Map and the math underpinning it
10:18 — The hosts backgrounds with Commander
15:10 — How the Commander Map is Made
20:21 — Commander Map frequently asked questions
22:43 — Submaps
29:04 — Some of the cool things we’ve found on the map
40:53 — Triangle corner

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Discussed in this episode:

If you have a question for the show you can email us at mail@luckypaper.co. You can also find Andy, Anthony, and Jett in the MTG Cube Talk Discord.

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.

Deciding Which Cards to Cut from Your Cube Jul 04, 2022

Show notes

View all cards mentioned in the episode →

Most Cubes are ever-changing, with a constant stream of cards being added as new sets are released and the designer’s sensibilities evolve over time. There is a dark side to the joyous, Christmas-morning feeling of putting new cards in one’s cube, though: making cuts. On this episode, Andy and Anthony talk about how to find cuts from a cube, tackle some common pitfalls newer designers often fall into when removing cards from a Cube list, explore high-level theory around Cube curation, and take a walk down memory lane, defending some of their more contentious cuts from their own environments.

Our listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week comes from wowitsarlo’s Fair ‘Nuff Cube. Thanks, Arlo!

Timestamps

2:59 — Pack 1, Pick 1
10:19 — Don’t take cuts too seriously
13:31 — Avoid like-for-like cut mentality
17:16 — Ask yourself — do you actually NEED to make a cut?
20:37 — Don’t only cut the “bad” cards
25:56 — Make cuts based on your overarching goals
34:17 — Cut known quantity cards to maximize information gleaned from play testing
37:17 — Cut power outliers to activate lower powered cards in your cube
39:20 — Walking down cut memory lane

Discussed in this episode:

If you’d like to support the show, we’re looking for people to help annotate old episodes.

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

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

15 weeks to Cube Con!

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.