Winston Draft: Rules and Strategy for Two-Player Cube

Winston Draft is a simple way to draft your Cube with one other person. Shuffle a card pool, deal out three face-down piles, and take turns deciding whether to take each pile or pass it and move on.

There are no boosters to prepare. You see less of the Cube than in formats such as Pancake Draft, and the two players may finish with different pool sizes.

The format was created by Richard Garfield. This guide covers the rules, a few strategy points, and how to set it up on CubeForge.

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What You Need

The classic setup uses 2 players, 90 shuffled cards, and basic lands for deck building.

CubeForge uses a 90-card pool by default, but lets you adjust the pool size to suit a smaller Cube or a shorter test draft.

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How Winston Draft Works

Setup

1. Shuffle the cards and keep them face-down.
2. Deal one card into each of three face-down piles. The rest form the shared draw stack.
3. Randomly choose the first player.

Take a turn

Every turn begins at pile 1.

1. Privately inspect pile 1.
2. Take the entire pile, replace it with one face-down card from the draw stack if possible, and end your turn; or decline it, add one face-down card if possible, and inspect pile 2.
3. Repeat the same choice for piles 2 and 3.
4. If you decline all three piles, add a card to pile 3 if possible, then draft one unknown card from the top of the draw stack.

The other player then starts again at pile 1.

Finish the draft

Continue until the draw stack and all three piles are empty. Once the draw stack is empty, stop adding or replacing cards and continue drafting the remaining piles until all cards have been taken.

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Card Counts

All 90 cards are drafted, but they are not necessarily split 45–45. A player who takes several large piles may finish with a larger pool. After the draft, both players build 40-card decks using basic lands.

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Strategy

• A 90-card pool shows only a small part of most Cubes. Stay open early rather than committing to a narrow archetype or combo.
• Flexible cards and fixing matter. Cheap removal, modal spells, colorless cards, and fixing make more piles usable.
• When a pile grows, count the playables rather than focusing only on its best card. Several useful cards can be worth more than one premium card.
• Keep track of cards you have seen. They stay in a declined pile, but each new addition is unknown.
• Passing a good pile just to see more also improves an option for your opponent. Taking the unknown top card after pile 3 is the least predictable option.

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Winston Draft vs. Pancake Draft

	Winston Draft	Pancake Draft
Cards used	90	198 in the standard setup
Final pools	Variable sizes	45 cards each
Best fit	Flexible cards and overlapping archetypes	Focused archetypes and combos

Winston is quicker to prepare and uses fewer cards. Pancake exposes much more of the Cube and produces more focused decks.

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How to Play Winston Draft on CubeForge

1. Open Draft Setup and choose your Cube.
2. Select Winston Draft and keep the standard 90-card pool, or adjust it if needed.
3. Invite another player or use a bot, then start the draft.

CubeForge handles the shuffled pool, pile replenishment, turn order, and end-of-draft cleanup automatically.

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Reference rules source:

Wizards of the Coast, “Winston Draft”