We play kitchen magic, and we almost never have enough time for a proper cube draft. With all preparation, deliberation, deck building, it takes forever to even start playing, and I often have some 30-40 minutes only, especially on weekdays. So we often opt for battledecks instead, while the cube just gathers dust on the shelf.

As I thought about it, I realized that it is almost a "pick any 2" situation: with cube, one can build clever decks, and it's a creative process, but it is slow. Battledecks are fast and clever, but not creative. Battlebox is fast and creative, but the resulting decks are chaotic and flavorless.

So last week I came up with this alternative format, and based on some early tests it seems to work really well! I think it lies somewhere in between: it's creative, reasonably fast, and, for a good cube, roughly follows deck archetypes. Here are the rules:

1. You take your cube and split it in two. These halves become two decks, for two players.
2. As in Battlebox format, there's a separate set of lands (in different sleeves probably), and each player can play one land a turn. However, unlike in Battlebox, each player gets not 15, but only 10 lands. The match starts with players agreeing (or randomizing) which pair of colors they will play, with no intersection between the colors. Say, player one agrees to play WU and player two picks BR. In this case player one gets the following lands, two of each: U, W, UW, WG, UG. Player two gets these lands, two of each: B, R, BR, BG, RG. So the fifth color is kind of shared between both players.
3. The original "draw 7 cards" in the beginning of the game is replaced with "draw 14, burn 7". Later in the game, every "draw X cards" is contextually replaced with "draw 4 X cards, burn 4 cards". For example, during the draw phase, you draw 5 cards from your "deck", pick one, and burn the other 4.

You can probably imagine how this game would develop. Because of the battlebox-style lands, you are never screwed on mana, and you get to play a land every turn. However, unlike in battlabox, you start with 2 colors and only later expand into 3, which gives your initial hand and your first picks a flavor of a 2-color deck, making the game much more pleasant. And because drafting is now "embedded" in the process of drawing, you almost always have something to play! The probability of not getting a card in your 3 colors out of 5 cards is approximately 1%, so it may happen, but it is a rare event. And if it happens, you can always draw a mana fix from the cube later, and play it. It's quite possible to start in 2 colors, but finish in all 5, if you wish so.

Moreover, as you micro-draft every turn, you can always pick a removal over a creature when you need a removal, or the other way around. It makes the game very pointed and dynamic, as if both players had a great deck and also lots of luck at every turn!

Another cool improvement, compared to the battlebox, is that you can play with a normal cube. For a battlebox, you have to build a separate set of cards that excludes land removal, and cards that scry. In this new format, land removal still kinda works, if it's not overdone (as most cubes have a few dual lands and mana-producing artifacts), and scry also kind of works (though it becomes less precious). Most cube-worthy tutors would also work. But then again, you can always choose not to micro-draft scrying or tutoring cards if you don't want them.

Moreover, if you already have a set of 30 sleeved battleboxed lands, you can just use 20 out of 30 for this format. That is, you don't need to create a third set of lands for this kind of play specifically.

All in all, I am pretty proud of this format, and after some brief googling I could not find it describe before. Even though "micro-drafting during card drawing" seems to be a pretty obvious idea. Have you heard of something similar? Have you tried something similar? Do you have any advice or comments on my format? I'll be glad to get some feedback.