It was the best of drafts, it was the worst of drafts…

Hello, I am Jesse Hampton also known online as Slax. Over the last couple weeks I spent preparing and playing in both the Magic World Championships and the Ultimate Guard Vintage Cube Live tournament. I was the only person in the entire convention who qualified for both and wanted to share my experience with the Vintage Cube Live as well as give insights into parts of the Team Handshake testing process leading up to our team member Javier Dominguez's World Championship win.

I arrived in Vegas on October 17, 2024 and was picked up by my friend Kale, a Las Vegas local to get some all you can eat sushi with him and MunsonJenkins, another Vegas local and fellow competitor in the Vintage Cube Live before heading to the Airbnb for testing.

Most of the team had arrived except for the Spanish contingent of Javier, Toni, and Adrian. Testing would begin in full force the next day when the rest of the team arrived.

Everyday of our testing began with a 9 AM meeting with a list of our plans for the day, usually with plans to reconvene around lunch. This allowed for 2 to 3 hours of focused standard testing while everyone was still fresh and ready to work.

Lunch was usually some grab and go options like sandwiches and sides which were quickly consumed so we could focus on the testing. Almost all the limited preparation was done before meeting in person so all eyes could be on constructed testing.

At this event I wanted to try to get out of the house and do some physical activity everyday and my friend Kale suggested that we could play some pickleball nearby. This was a great thing to do as it allowed some decompression from the rigorous testing process without taking up too much time.

The next few days consisted of testing, eating, and more testing. We tried tons of different iterations of black midrange decks, domain, oculus, mono white, and mono red. Our team decided that black midrange and domain were going to be our targets for deck choice as we predicted a heavy presence of mono white. Unfortunately, our prediction was incorrect as mono white was only 5% of the metagame and our deck choices suffered as a result. The Dimir Demons deck came about as we did a metagame analysis and predicted that it would be better than Golgari, a few of our teammates settled on Domain, and the others played Oculus.

With our decks submitted we had our limited meeting and did a couple drafts. Karl and I typically lead the limited meeting as we usually have the most volume of drafts and play before the events. In our limited meeting the team goes over all the archetypes and ranks all the cards as well as discusses any corner case scenarios or unique cards that people find interesting.

My event started with a Duskmourn draft where I first picked Enduring Vitality, the draft was not going well, but fortunately in pack 3 I got some reanimator payoffs and a second Enduring Vitality so the power level of my deck was decent.  I went 3-0 in the pod facing off against my teammate Eli Kassis deck in the finals. Sadly, that would be the last of my winning as I went 0-4 with the Dimir Demons deck to not make day 2.  Once I finished my last match of Worlds, I was whisked upstairs to play the Vintage Cube. I was very excited to play this event. I love cube and the novelty of playing in this high stakes real paper vintage cube with a chance to open a Black Lotus had the room brimming with excitement. Sadly, I opened up pretty poor packs and ended up with no Power 9. I thought my deck was just ok but sadly in Rochester draft when the people on your right and left are fighting for the same colors all the decks end up relatively underpowered. Even though I didn’t pull any expensive cards, just participating in the event was very fun. Martin Juza, Ultimate Guard, and Daybreak all put on a great event and I am hoping for more of these style events in the future.

We played our matches the next day and I went 1-2 with my deck. However, the day was not over as the top 8 of the World Championship was playing out… Our team’s 49% win rate with the Dimir Demons deck was not a deterrent for my teammate Javier Dominguez as he ended up winning the whole thing! The team was in high spirits at dinner as everyone was happy that Team Handshake Ultimate Guard had ended up on top again for the second event in a row, and I was personally ecstatic for Javier as I had seen how close he had come all year and to end with a top finish plus Player of the Year. I am excited for the upcoming year and hope that Team Handshake Ultimate Guard can shine even brighter.

By Jesse Hampton