Limited deep dive8 min readUpdated: June 2026

Limited Beyond the Pod

The 8-player booster pod is just the default. Cube replaces the packs, Rochester replaces the hidden information, and Winston, Solomon, and Grid get a whole draft out of two players.

Meet the variants What is Cube?

Variants: 6+
Smallest pod: 2 players
Packs needed: Zero (Cube)

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Player A — a columnPlayer B — an intersecting row◆ shared card

In this guide

01The variants at a glance 02Cube: the curated draft environment 03Drafting with exactly two players 04Want Limited from a single pack?05FAQ 06Sources & credits

The map

The variants at a glance

Six ways to draft that change the player count, the information, or the cards themselves.

Variant	Players	How it works	Best for
Cube	4–8+	Draft a curated, reusable card pool instead of sealed boosters	Repeatable drafting with a designed environment
Rochester	8	Each pack laid out face up; players pick in snake order with full information	Maximum information, maximum table talk
Winston	2	Take a hidden pile or push it (sweetened) onward — three piles cycle	Two-player drafting with real tension
Solomon	2	One player splits each pack into two piles; the other picks a pile	Pure “I cut, you choose” evaluation duels
Grid	2	Nine cards in a 3×3 grid; take a row or column, pass the rest	Fast two-player drafts with spatial pick decisions
Team draft	6	Two teams of three draft in one pod, then play cross-team matches	The classic competitive side-event

Draft variants beyond the standard 8-player pod.

They split into three families: variants that change the cards (Cube), variants that change the information (Rochester’s face-up picks), and variants that shrink the pod (Winston, Solomon, and Grid all produce a real draft from exactly two players).

The big one

Cube: the curated draft environment

A cube is a draft format you design yourself — and for many players it becomes the whole game.

A cube is a curated pool — commonly 360 to 540 cards, traditionally singleton — built to be drafted again and again. Shuffle it, deal fifteen-card “packs”, and the standard draft rules apply. The designer controls everything sealed product randomizes: power level, archetype balance, color depth, and how fast the games play.

Why Cube earns its devotees

Zero marginal cost — no sealed product is opened; the cube is reusable forever.
Designed environments — from budget commons cubes to vintage-powered cubes with Magic’s most broken cards.
A living project — cube owners tune their lists with every set release, and the cube community treats list design as the hobby itself.
Rotated Standard cards are classic cube material — a deck’s end is a cube’s beginning.

Starting your first cube

Start with one guiding question — “what do I want games to feel like?” — and 360 cards (enough for an 8-player draft). Balance the colors, keep the mana fixing generous, and let the list evolve after every draft night.

Small pods

Drafting with exactly two players

Winston, Solomon, and Grid solve Limited’s biggest logistical problem: finding seven friends.

Winston draft cycles three hidden piles between two players — take the pile or sweeten it and push it onward — turning every decision into a small bet about what your opponent wants. Solomon is the “I cut, you choose” draft: one player splits a pack into two piles, the other takes one. Grid draft deals nine cards into a 3×3 layout and players alternate taking a full row or column.

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Player A — a columnPlayer B — an intersecting row◆ shared card

Grid draft: take a row or a column, and what you leave shapes your opponent’s pick.

Keep going

Want Limited from a single pack?

Where the draft variants end, the booster micro-formats begin.

Every variant on this page still assumes a stack of packs or a curated cube. There is one more step down the ladder: formats that extract a full game from a single unopened booster per player — no draft, no deckbuilding, just lands and chaos. That is the Pack Wars family →

FAQ

Common questions

Do draft variants need their own card pool?

Only Cube. Rochester, Winston, Solomon, Grid, and team draft all run on ordinary sealed boosters — they change how cards are picked, not where they come from.

How many cards should a starter cube have?

360 supports a full 8-player draft (45 cards per drafter). 540 adds variety so consecutive drafts feel different. Singleton is traditional but it is your cube — house rules are the point.

Which variant is best for two players?

Winston is the community favorite for depth, Grid is the fastest to teach and play. Both beat splitting a pod-sized pile of packs between two people and pretending it is a draft.

Sources & credits

The creators who documented these formats

Pack Wars is community-built. These are the writers, wikis, and Wizards of the Coast references that originated and documented the rules summarized here.

Keep going

Related guides and tools

Pack Wars: the booster micro-formats

Limited from a single pack — Mini-Master, Type 4, Pai Gow / Booster Blitz, and Mental Magic.

Open

Limited overview

The hub: Draft and Sealed, the Play Booster era, and the 40-card math.

Open

Booster Draft in full

Pick mechanics, signals, staying open, and the Arena draft modes.

Open

Variant

Players

How it works

Best for

Cube

4–8+

Draft a curated, reusable card pool instead of sealed boosters

Repeatable drafting with a designed environment

Rochester

Each pack laid out face up; players pick in snake order with full information

Maximum information, maximum table talk

Winston

Take a hidden pile or push it (sweetened) onward — three piles cycle

Two-player drafting with real tension

Solomon

One player splits each pack into two piles; the other picks a pile

Pure “I cut, you choose” evaluation duels

Grid

Nine cards in a 3×3 grid; take a row or column, pass the rest

Fast two-player drafts with spatial pick decisions

Team draft

Two teams of three draft in one pod, then play cross-team matches

The classic competitive side-event