Frantically Searching for Tolarian Academy | Vintage Cube Draft 

Now he only picks academy 😂

Tyler Durden - they change cube a lot

Was thinking the same thing. Used to be one of the clearest differences compared to e.g. Nummy's drafting.

he probably would have picked Fractured Identity or Riftwing Cloudskate over it 😂

The cube list changes now and then. Cards like Retrofitter and Iconoclast and such made it a much better card

A "turnabout," if you will.

@@nekrataali Academy's "a fair play"

I remember that too 😂

exactly what i was gonna say. can also act as a pseudo crucible with fastbond and zuron orb, or fastbond plus Armageddon

They're honestly so good together, but it doesn't look like that much at a glance!

A couple of those games he could've won a turn earlier i think, but he definitely felt so far ahead it didn't really matter.

That also strikes me as just wrong, vault goes into any deck and timetwister is just a better card for the bow masters type deck. Plus, both vault and twister go better with academy

In a vacuum mana vault pick one is probably the pick. But I think a lot of the team drafting and meta/history he has with the draft pool makes the bow masters a pretty good pick. He always seems to get the right combo pieces because they aren’t as valued with these players. If he goes in early he can almost always get at least 1-3 draw sevens.

Same reaction as me. I love Mana Vault. Turn 1: mana vault, turn 2: ridiculous threat! Has won me many-a-cube games, but maybe I am overvaluing those early turns and undervaluing how you can draft around bowmasters and draw sevens. Maybe those are more busted, consistent decks? I'll think on it.

It's very possible LSV drafted and passed 3-0 decks making his net contribution to his team 0, though a very cool 0 for us to watch

I lean toward taking Bowmasters here as well. Mana Vault is busted, but it's closer to a Dark Ritual than it is to Sol Ring. Very powerful, but there are lots of decks where it's not the greatest. Bowmasters is unassuming, but the power level on the card is sky high, and picking it early allows you to really maximize its effectiveness. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Bowmasters over Vault is objectively correct, but the more I play with Bowmasters, the more highly I pick it, and the more I've played with Mana Vault, the less excited I am about it. I used to value it just below power, but nowadays I have it below a lot of the top tier, versatile threats like Fable, Bowmasters, Minsc and Boo, Oko, etc. Cube is a lot less about jamming 4-6 drops than it used to be, and a lot more about cheap interaction and assertively affecting the board, and Bowmasters does both of those things.

Because he had Bowmasters and academy

Zuran Orb was already gone at that point.

@@Anusien Yes, definitely, but he's seen this card before so I'm hoping he makes the connection for a future run.

academy is horrible if you don't get the artifact support.

10th. card in the Power 9 IMO.

@@nekrataali there are a ton of cards I'd put above academy, sol ring and library of alexandria to name a couple.

I don’t get the issue. Are you saying card draw shouldn’t be punished?

@@starmanda88 it could be dont better i think they pushed it too much bowmaster should have etb trigger

I think Bowmaster should just deal damage or create an army, but both on top of having flash is pretty ridiculous. They may as well have given it deathtouch and lifelink while they were at it. The card is significantly more powerful than Dark Confidant, which is saying something, since Bob had been black's best 2 CMC creature for almost 20 years.