Powered Cube: A Data Deep Dive
Three runs, declining attendance, and a Boros archetype under the knife. Here's what the numbers reveal about Magic Arena's most powerful limited format.
1. Runs by Total Volume
Is Powered Cube growing in popularity? Is Traditional Draft becoming more popular within it?
Run 1 produced 578,517 games over 22 days (26,296/day). By Run 3, that daily rate had fallen to 12,447/day - a 53% decline. Runs 2 and 3 are roughly equivalent in total volume despite Run 2 being 7 days shorter. Traditional Draft peaked at 13% of games in Run 1 and has held at about 10-11% since.
2. The Excitement Curve
Does the beginning of each event have more momentum than the end? Is the pattern changing across runs?
Run 1 opened with a quiet launch day (~20k games) followed by a spike to 46,064 games on day 2, then declined steadily over two weeks. Runs 2 and 3 show progressively flatter profiles. Run 2's peak day reached ~22k before settling to a plateau around 16-17k. Run 3's peak came on day 7 (a Sunday) and the rest of the run held at 11-13k/day with almost no launch spike.
Day 1 in all runs reflects a partial-day launch. Run 3 Day 1 (Feb 10) was also the final day of the Lorwyn Eclipsed 21-day draft window, which likely suppressed Powered Cube uptake.
3. Boros Gets Nerfed
How did RW and RW+Splash total games and win rates change across the three runs?
Absolute Boros game counts fell sharply between Run 1 and Run 2, and continued falling in Run 3 - pure RW went from 53,610 to 10,491 games (-80%). Win rate tracked alongside it: pure RW dropped from 61.2% in Run 1 to 59.4% in Run 3. The splash variant held up better in games played; its win rate dipped to 59.8% in Run 2 before recovering to 60.3% in Run 3.
4. Meta Share, Controlling for Event Size
Adjusted for overall event size - are players drafting RW at the same rate, just losing more?
Pure RW's meta share fell from 10.7% (Run 1) to 4.5% (Run 3), roughly halving even after accounting for the overall event size decline. Splash RW declined more modestly - from 12.3% down to a trough of 9.0% in Run 2, then recovering to 10.4% in Run 3. In Run 3, 70% of all Boros games used the splash variant, up from 54% in Run 1.
5. Win Rate Across All Four Runs
How has pure RW and RW+Splash win rate moved as the cube has been iterated?
Run 4 data is early (970 pure / 1,847 splash games as of April 1, 2026).