Icatian Charm (cut)
Power 7
Design 5
One of the few charm cards I pushed enough so as to see a lot of play. This is just a very brutal interaction card with a bit of bonus removal tagged on. Mini Overrun at instant speed puts in a lot of work from the humble combat trick to the alpha strike. Undying also puts in a good stint being a powerful counterspell for removal, allowing EtB effects to retrigger, and trading nicely in combat. It is rare not to be able to put this card to use and when you do it ranges from powerful to game breaking. Ultimately I cut this as it is a bit homogenous, it adds too much situational swing for too little cost. It also doesn't feel all that white. It isn't that the effects don't feel white, it is just a vague card as with most modal cards. An issue I have found with trying to make for a really consistent set is that I have priced out Charms. Modal cards are there to offer a bit of consistency. If you have a more consistent format the Charms need to be more powerful that usual to compete. Passed a point they simply become too powerful and never get left out of decks. My home made cube seems to have the point at which they are too powerful to see anything other than ubiquitous play reached before the point they are powerful enough to see any play at all. To any chemists out there it is like the states or phases of matter graph by which at certain pressures/temps you can bypass certain states all together and go direct from solid to gas without having to go via liquid.
Icatian Constable
Power 7
Design 7
Thraben Inspector given a little rejig. I like how adventure cards play out and I love Thraben Inspector. This guy is about as close as I could get to Thraben without it just being another one. I quite like the tension in this as an aggressive card, do you deploy this on turn one as a 2/1 or do you deploy the adventure first to ensure value?
Ignorance of Bliss (reworking)
Power 5
Design 5
This sits right in the middle of this cycle neither being scary like the black or green, nor unsuited like the white and red. This is a very powerful and effective threat that it is hard to meet the necessary support for. Blue is not an easy colour to get devotion in. With a few more good blue enchantments that you would want to play with this the card might well become oppressive. As it stands the card does not have devotion very often and it is easy to turn off by killing a weak blue dork. I suspect that this will ultimately get cut unless I somehow manage to get a working blue based creature deck that also wants five drops. That or I try it scaled back a bit to a four drop with lower stats as seems the best solution to getting the red one to work.
Immobile Dead (cut)
Power 3
Design 3
I wanted a Gravecrawler style card that was both cheap enough to recur and didn't have overly narrow prerequisites. No one is paying 3 mana for a shit 2/1 in cube and winning that game. Equally, it is not often you have sufficient zombies in your deck that Gravecrawler is everything you hoped and dreamed it would be. I decided to make this a 1/1 to allow for a rather lower burden on recursion which feels balanced but sadly also makes it not all that desirable. This just doesn't do enough by itself. There is no Skullclamp here! Initially this saw no play as the Blood Artist style deck was just a long way from viable. As that archetype has now received love this probably would stand a better chance of getting some play but it is still a low powered card that only goes one place and fails to stand up well on its own. That is a fully parasitic limited card and not worth the trouble. I will try and find a sweet spot where a recursive dork can be played in a wider variety of archetypes but it feels like a relatively tall order.
Immutable
Power 6
Design 7
I like the way non-blue colours can get on-pie feeling spell disruption through this sort of effect. This is counter a removal spell with a little side dish of combat trick. These are effects I want a smattering of but are hard to provide due to them being pretty unplayable stand alone cards. Just way too situational. And we all know how to fix situational cards - we give them landcycling and effectively make them MDFCs! White and green both got one and they both play pretty well for such things. I should perhaps have given this one to green, mostly because the hexproof one can be applied to yourself and that feels rather more white than green.
In Absentia (cut)
Power 7
Design 5
Some where between Declaration in Stone and Get Lost lies this beast. It is actually closest to Baleful Mastery once you peel back the dressing. This is a nice clean iteration of the "powerful removal spell that concedes something" camp, which in turn tend to be some of the most interesting options out there. This was cut because I wasn't short of removal and the catch-up experiement failed. This card is however quite reasonable. I think I might simply remove the catch-up and either add exile or an additional target option to the card and call it a day. I might not need more removal but I think this is probably one of the better playing ones. Direct and thus playable but also rather more interesting than your typical direct removal.
Incendiary Device (reworking)
Power 7.5
Design 3
A serves all Powder Keg come Ratchet Bomb type thing. I overdid this in functionality and consequently power. It looks a bit messy and it is an overly versatile and powerful control tool. Very much going to start chipping away at the power of this one, ideally in a way that also reduces the number of words it has on it. Increasing the untap cost will do a lot to sort the power level but it doesn't reduce the complexity satisfactorily.
Induce Apathy (cut)
Power 4
Design 4
A cute but ultimately failed attempt to add more planeswalker removal to the cube. This doesn't hit enough targets and so so the low cost and cheap cycling are not even enough to get this action. This is also a rather unprintable card due to naughty things like Dark Depths. I am OK with making cards that would be problems in real magic meta if they are bringing a lot of the table in my meta. This however is not doing that and so got cut.
Induce Dementia (banned)
Power 8
Design 2
Yikes does this play badly. Thought I had solved this issue with discard spells by slapping on the cycle. What I had infact done was make them oppressive. When this was dead, no problem, happy to cycle away for little cost. When this was not dead it was just a bit of a free win at great expense to your opponents enjoyment of the day. You simply can't be putting such feel bad effects on cards that are so free to play. This has to hurt everyone a bit to be closer to fair and not quite so much of a soul destroying experience. In terms of objective power and play pattern this was within the right limits but cards are not just about that it turns out. The net enjoyment this would bring to the games was one of, if not, the lowest, of all the cards I made and that alone is more than enough to see it gone. I could try and fix it but I am not sure there is much point to that. The fix would be something uncomfortable such as adding a hefty life cost to the cycling mode or something.
Infection
Power 8
Design 7
The overload removal spells have performed well in cube over the years. They really help bridge the gap between the aggressive and the control decks. My one gripe with them is that they are too polar. They are fine mostly and occasionally they win the game. This is because they are one sided mass removal in overload mode. This offering is a much more reasonable and symmetrical effect. Very happy with how it is playing and the power level of both ends. While I certainly ripped it off I would at least argue that I also managed to improve upon Mizzium Mortars.
Infirm (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
I thought this was clever design but in practice this is just an overly restrictive removal spell that fails to do what you want removal to do for you. The various cards that remove things that only just entered are terrible so I figured flipping that downside would leave mostly upside. Sadly, leaving problems tends to make them worse and that is what we have here. While there are no horror stories like Sheoldred in my format there are still haste creatures, things with effects and abilities. Infirm forces you to let someone "untap" with their fresh summon, and should that summon have a tap ability you cannot now avoid it being used. This could cost one and I suspect it would still avoid too much play.
Into the Long Night (cut)
Power 4
Design 4
This is the perfectly balanced removal spell. Sadly, it is not clean. The wording confuses people and that isn't good design. It should probably be worded with an X+1 in there to make it clearer, and ever messier! This is a great example of where suitability isn't always what it is about. This card isn't very fun. It isn't very powerful either. You play it when you need to, and that isn't very often as I made a lot of removal spells. Perfect balance, certainly in this case, equates to a very boring card indeed!
Insatiable Troublemakers
Power 7
Design 8
Really happy with how this card plays but I kept getting it a bit wrong with the power level. It has already had two nerfs! This card has all those lovely scaling synergies at play that so tantalize the deck builders out there. This works with food, with sacrifice, with self mill and discard. There are a lot of ways you can put this to good use while it is just generically fine and useful by itself. A persistent cheap threat that imposes disincentives on the opponent is welcome as an aggressor. Equally a recursive value producing blocker than can supply ongoing life gain sounds perfect for the defending player. All in all this is one of the more interesting and unique cards I produced. Hopefully I will find the right balance of stuff that allows a self mill Golgari archetype to exist, in which this can have a place of prominence.
Instant Growth (cut)
Power 7
Design 6
Instant speed rampant Growth is a little naughty, so slapping on some bonus upside is extra naughty. This may be pushed but it is fine. The awaken is more flavour than anything else, it has to be super late game to be something you use and at that point the extra body isn't too impressive. Mostly I cut this as I cut the whole cycle of pseudo gold cards. This was one of the most playable without the second colour, while also being one of the most reasonable and playable generally. It is just a bit unnecessary. I also didn't love the way the awaken works as you can awaken other lands which feels wrong in this instance.
Inquisitor
Power 8
Design 7
Not the most novel of cards. Not even that powerful of one excepting the fact that clues are abundant. This guy is so potent at letting you cash in a big stockpile of clues that I have found myself holding him. Wait till you have like 6 mana, drop this guy and cash in four clues before they can kill him off. This guy is played everywhere, he is a free low cost body that does all the good things Thraben Inspector does. His stats make him a bit more proactive but his cost splitting makes him less convenient to slot into the curve. He would probably make the cut in most decks without other clues on the go just because he is very suitable in a limited setting. Finding these decks without other clues is not the easiest of tasks.... and there in lies the real strength of this guy. Either he is drawing you extra as you can sac twice the clues for the same exposure to tempo loss, or just a massive mana saving overall.
Inquisitive Jackal (cut)
Power 6
Design 4
I like the concept of this card, which is a subpar red beater that dies into potential value. I do not however love the execution. It just feels a bit off, most likely an aesthetic/flavour issue. Play and balance and all that sort of thing are fine, I just don't like the end result enough. I also unwittingly made another card with the same vague design premise called Junk Monkey, who is a much happier medly of stuff flavour wise. Although it is not a one in one out policy on cards like this it certainly shines a light on how much less happy I am with the Jackal. As it stands I'll either find a way to rework this or I'll just leave it cut.
Invasive Larceny
Power 8
Design 9
Accidentally one of my favourite cards from the set. The idea was to have a discard spell that shouldn't miss and that secures you through their next draw as well. It was always a bit feel bad when you clear the way with a Duress and they just beat you off the top of their deck instead. This design achieves all of those things and does so while remaining impressively fair. One mana discard is one of the hardest things to make and balance with most being unplayably bad, yet with tiny buffs to them suddenly making them way too good. Somehow this landed on power level for discard while also having an unexpected second mode. Turns out if you target yourself with this it becomes a bit of a Brainstorm. Comically, a Brainstorm which is also of a more suitable and appropriate power level. The worst part is having to reveal your hand! Needs must however. We are certainly not going to get too uppity about the Brainstorm/Thoughtsieze split card.... It is really quite even split on uses too, slightly more as disruption than card quality. I suspect if it were not for the information disparity that it would move closer to 50/50 on who it targets. Generally, if you got things to do you aim it at them, and if you are about to do nothing or stutter in someway it is aimed at yourself. A comically huge card in regards the options it provides. I wish I could take more credit for this one but it really was just a happy accident.
Island Paradise
Power 8
Design 6
Izzet Confluence
Power 6
Design 6
A poor mans Expressive Iteration. This gets quite a lot of play but tends to under perform. The average here seems to be Scry 2 into Sleight of Hand which is fine but not up to scratch for a gold two mana card quality sorcery. This is not a card you can use too early if you want to get value out of it, nor is it reliable. If you want to use it early it is probably card disadvantage. Sure, a massive pile of looting can be useful but in limited and at both tempo and card costs, not often. I like this card a lot from a technical point of view but it is a bit fair and a bit gold for cubes in practice. I might tinker slightly with it but there isn't much wiggle room in this design and I fear it would quickly jump to being too good. At lest it scales well and offers pretty good odds on a two for one, and even a three for one if you fancy a it in the late game.
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