An Ode to Mishra's Factory

 

Mishra's Factory is pretty iconic. It was the first card to do what it does and remains remarkably reasonable at doing it. A kind of benchmark for what a manland or creature land can or should be. What is most remarkable to me is quite how viable this card has remained over the years. This is especially the case given that creatures are the main focus of power creep over the years. A Grisly Bear might have not been laughable in the nineties but in more recent times such things don't hold much water. How is the simple notion of being able to hide as a land able to transform a 2/2 vanilla dork into a relevant asset? And perhaps more vexingly, how has this first iteration manage to keep up with newer cards that hide better dorks or offer better lands?

The strength of the land one can animate is well appreciated. Land is pretty hard to interact with affording you a safe place to keep a threat. Having a mana sink on a land is a great pairing of early and late complimentary utility pairings. It is a very low cost inclusion to a deck letting you cram in extra value to you deck. 

Aggro decks of old couldn't pass up on those resilient extra threats and the control decks couldn't pass up on the free value on mana sources. Magic in the early years was rife with the Factory. Then after 5th Edition I think it was they stopped printing it for a while and we got a smattering of other animatable lands to play with from the Treetop Village cycle to Blinkmoth Nexus to Mutavault and eventually the duals in the first Zendikar, upon finishing and adding to that style of cycle we are now beyond spoiled for choice on lands that can attack. All of these historic cards were good and all got play, and all of the newer ones would have if they came before the glut, however none have properly unseated Mishra's Factory. Throughout that period the Factory has mostly been in the cube and been getting enough play and activations to be a worthwhile inclusion.  

A couple of factors are I think at play helping the Factory to compete in a world of ever increasing creature power and utility land variety. The introduction of planeswalkers helped to increase the relevance of anything you could do to boost an attack with on an immediate basis. Simply having a land sat in play you can animate greatly changes an opponents ability to deploy a planeswalker. This applies to all manlands as well as creatures with haste and things like vehicles. What specifically about Factory lets it still compete in this wide field? Simply put, it is the cheapest on offer. On all fronts. All colours can play it. It is a single mana to animate and there is no tempo cost to deploying the Factory, it comes in untapped. Assuming you can stomach the colourless mana it has no other real cost. 

You then only have to pay an effective two (colourless) mana to get in two extra power of attack at any future attack. Not only is that one of the cheapest you can get an attack in with a land but it is also still one of the most efficient damage output per mana invested. The strength of the land that attacks is being able to attack when needed and do so efficiently and Factory is still absolutely one of the best in the business for that. It isn't so much about sustained threat, it is about being able to have that extra couple of point of damage or have that extra body to go wide with on that key turn. No utility land is efficient when activated over and over again, it is about being able to do so when it matters and Factory is just a card that is there for you more than most. Sure, Mutavault has those same key traits and is a very comparable card but artifact synergy in cube has been vastly more relevant in cube than tribal synergy. We haven't even touched on the 3rd ability that Mishra's Factory has. It is the least relevant of the three but it is still a good one, and enough to carry it about Mutavault by itself, even in singleton. Factory can pump itself to block as a 3/3 when not summoning sick, or it can use a cheeky untap effect to attack harder or be a surprise combat trick. It can even pump Mutavault if it really wants to rub it in!

Over the years I have done a lot of cube style constructed events too, usually epic rotisserie affairs allowing any cards to be picked. Suffice it to say I have played a lot of 40 card singleton affinity decks. Yes, the flying on Inkmoth and Blinkmoth Nexus make them the best utility lands in the deck. But no, that doesn't take away too much from the fact that Factory is still a really top rate card in that archetype. Able to turn on and power things up without attacking, able to hold modular counters like a legend, or just be another piece of sacrificial fodder. Hard to go wrong with Factory in affinity. Not many other cards have played alongside Cranial Plating and Arcbound Ravager on the one hand and Counterspell and Wrath of God on the other!

Few cards have such a historied resume, let alone such a broad, diverse, and active one. Yes, in the early years you could make a case that the card was over powered. But then, lots of cards were. And you could equally make the case that creatures were underpowered in 1994 and the power level pegging of Factory was pretty on point for a mover averaged notion of power level across magic. Indeed that is how I view things and in that light you find one of the very best designed cards of all time. A card that is playable in multiple different archetypes and formats over multiple decades is already an impressive feat. Doing all that without ever really being that oppressive or broken elevates you to a pretty special tier of card. As far as design accolades can get, I think few can be more deserving than Factory. It is very likely up there in the leader boards of cards I have won or effectively won games because of as well, not because of power but because of that seemingly omnipresent quality it has, just there to tip the scales in your favour.

HMC 4th Printrun Reviews Part V

 

Hopefully this at least works outside of UK, no clue what this looks like now as Imgur has ceased operations in the UK. 

Stone Wall

Design 4

Balance 6?

These minor fortifications that give a land a new tap ability are kindof like utility lands, and as such you somewhat need them to go get a land, or at least do something comparable on EtB to be worth playing them. Sadly even with finding you a Mountain, and thus costing very little in real terms, this still doesn't lure people in to playing it. I do wonder if there is an element of this being sufficiently different as far as conventional magic cards go that is stopping people from playing it? Unfamiliarity being a barrier to entry rather than power or suitability. Perhaps it is more that red is not overly looking to play Maze of Ith style effects. This is a control card but a marginal one. It costs valuable deck space and so you want it to be more significant than it is. I like the flavour of the card but don't love the nature of it as a red card. Nor how fiddly it is for a low key common. I will continue to give this a chance as it seems a lot better than the attention it is getting would suggest but I don't think I can offer much in the way of suggested changes to the card when it seems so on point and I have so little testing information to go on. Realistically the best this is ever going to be is as a way to develop a board at low all round cost, and not doing the thing it looks like it is supposed to do. Devotion and affinity decks both are rewarded for casting this and they never have to mess about with fortifying!

Stromkirk Scavengers

Design 6

Balance 7

Graveyard disruption is one of those things you need for a healthy format but that you cannot afford to pick and play in its own right - often like Disenchant effects in a cube. Designing these tools becomes tricky as you need to have a card that is effectively playable without the disruption aspect, but not that much more improved when it is useful. The Scavenging Ooze model worked very nicely. It is a dork so it is always doing something and it is always interactable. The yard disruption costs mana and thus cannot just be used with impunity. The exile ability also provides perks beyond the yard exile meaning you will sometimes want to fuel it yourself. The exile is sometimes a cost you are paying like escape for the effect, and sometimes you are using it for the disruption to the opponent. This formula is one I have used multiple times across all the colours so as to ensure there is a healthy amount of graveyard interaction. This little dude is pretty low key but it ties in to Blood synergies giving it a pretty wide range of potential uses. This guy rocks up plenty and does OK work. A lot of this is simply thanks to being cheap and useful. I wouldn't call this a good card or an elegant card or a beautiful card. I consider it more of a necessity. It does its job well and earns its place but it is the total opposite of a main character or leading role card.

Supply Lines

Design 2

Balance 5

Much as I have long since learned that cards like his are dodgy design I do still indulge myself now and again. This is a shocker in multiple ways. Firstly the excessive use of the word "or" is enough to turn the stomach and land this a low low design rating. Secondly it is just spewing out far too many different tokens and messing up the board no end. Everything about this card screams clutter. It was a top down design trying to do rebellious seeming things that were not creatures. I do rather like the flavour here. It is also the kind of card I like playing with, hence the indulgence. I figured rebels was at least a safer place for a card like this as its fate is more tied to theirs. I am sure I could tidy this up but I'll have to play with it a bit more to understand which aspects are the desirable bit. It is such a mess of a card because I was trying to design a card that was good with Rebels without being unplayable outside of that one archetype. This is about as far down the priority list as is possible to go but if I manage to fix the rest of the rebels somehow I may well get to some more self indulgence with a rework of this.

Svyelun's Saga

Design 7

Balance 5

My green riff on Urza's Saga proved sufficiently successful that I have been slowly expanding the cycle. This is the blue offering and it has mostly performed admirably. The only significant failure with this card is not actually having a blue mana symbol on it anywhere resulting in what really should be a colourless land. I have remedied with by changing the bounce cost to 1U since this printing and it suitably sorts the issue. While not overpowered the card is certainly on the strong side so a little nerf is no problem. The power of this card, while very high is all safely locked away behind 'if' clauses. Do you have good mana sinks for Powerstones? Do they have relevant things to bounce? Do you have targets in the bin to flashback? You need a healthy amount of yes for this card to be playable but you don't need all yes by any means. It is also noteworthy that it is rare that you can usefully target countermagic with this and so your blue targets tend to be value ones rather than disruptive. When you can usefully fire all three modes on the saga is where the card starts hitting the too good mark! This form of card design - saga land, is a real win as it applies a new kind of tension we don't get in other types of cards. The limited lifespan of a saga land leads to crippling yourself should you use it to early even if the low mana costs are tempting. That beign said, in the heavy artifact deck this thing acts a bit like a Mishra's Workshop as it can dump out three powerstone tokens.  In that situation is a very strong turn one play, something the other saga lands thankfully cannot be. The power level of this saga is both able to be higher than I would like, as well as more fluctuating in performance than I would like, but the card is sufficiently fun and enticing that it gets away with these minor grievances and feels like a big win.

Swineherd

Design 8

Balance 6

This just made itself as soon as I stumbled upon the art. This is perfect filler. This is what Portal cards should look like! This is on point for power and for flavour and has real good clean design ensuring minimal mental loading. It is everything going for it bar one critical ingredient - excitement. This isn't fun at all. This is just a boring filler dork. It isn't even really fun if you scale it somehow. This is a mono red Watchwolf level of stats that has double scaling with Glorious Anthems, Blood Artists and all that jazz. It also works nicely with flicker effects. There is a lot of potential to do stuff here but none of it gets the juices flowing. I'll happily use this to even up the ratios in cube curating or deck design but I'll just as readily cut it for anything with the promise of doing something threatening to be interesting. 

Sword of Change

Design 7

Balance 3

This is one of the more interesting Rebel cards I made - not to mention one of the few that doesn't recruit... This was pretty busted with other rebels but rather more interesting and reasonable by itself. There was a bit of an Esika's Chariot vibe to the card. You can really go quite all in with it which is interesting. On its own it is a four mana 4/4 with some residuals. Not overly impressive. If you want to start throwing your lands away however you can generate a 2/2 and a +1/+1 to the equipped dork for every turn plus two lands you use. As such, if you make this on turn four with four lands, immediately toss two in your turn and then do so again in their turn with the last of your land you will start your next turn with a 6/6 and a pair of 2/2s all ready to attack. Ten power over three bodies for a mere four mana feels like it is probably a bit much even if it does cost you all your land. It is very all in but it isn't too easy to stop. I think that makes the card dodgy even if it doesn't stop it being interesting. I've not put too much time into solving this card as I don't entirely know where I want it to end up and thus how best to balance. It could be a stand alone card with nothing to do with rebels or it could be predominatly a tribal synergy tool. Interesting but incomplete. 

Take Note

Design 8

Balance 8

A card quality tool aimed at supporting prowess decks. In general, the cleaner the support card the more welcome it is. This is a long way from the most powerful of the support cards I have made but it is super easy to appreciate what this does and so it has been getting plenty of play. It is really versatile and allows you to setup big storm, prowess, or card draw trigger turns. None of those things are that heavily supported in my cube in a way as to make this kind of payoff anywhere near as exciting as this card would be in the real powered cube. Doesn't seem like that matters too much given the play it is getting.

Telim Tor, Rebel One

Design 1

Balance 1

Just in case the rebels were not good enough to beat you first time round they get to have another go at doing so thanks to this dude. I wanted more big top end payoff dudes and already had a lord. This was something different and so I did it. Turns out it is pretty egregious. Both parts as it happens. The haste is somewhat of a colourpie fail too. This will get some kind of full rework before he is allowed out to play again. And he won't be getting that until the rest of the rebels get fixed.

The Dowager Sengir

Design 4

Balance 4

Here we have a bit of a leftovers card. I had a few ideas I wanted to explore that I didn't manage to fit elsewhere in designs so I just made this card and stuck them on. That is why it is a lifegain card and a blood card and a vampire tribal card.... There are a lot of potential synergies on the go here but nothing at all just by itself. For a legend this feels like it should do a bit more, the floor is just a bit too do nothing.

The Frog King

Design 6

Balance 4

This was an attempt to make an interesting +1/+1 counter card that could do some really cool things with proliferate and other synergies. A bit like the Dowager just reviewed, this needs to be a bit more by itself. Perhaps just like a 3/3 reach might be enough, it is just all a bit limp if you haven't got the appropriate other stuff going on. I will likely revisit this both with a bit of mild buffing but also as and when I manage to design a more critical mass of support and payoff for this. It is inline with the kinds of synergy that are lots of fun it just lacks the external support and the raw power itself. 

The Spaniel King

Design 6

Balance 3

Another one of many cards which I somewhat broke by allowing unconditional use. Things without a tap, a mana, a number of uses, or a timing of use restriction all get dangerous real fast. They get dangerous on a power level but also on a logistical one. They provide so many extra options that the game gets hard and slow and draining. Errors creep in to peoples play. Obviously this card is problematic because always all goats. It was like that Elk problem back in Eldraine. You attack, suddenly goats blocking. You pass the turn, suddenly an army of goats there to enjoy Overrunning your face. You can fix this card by slapping on a G to use the ability, making it once a turn, making it only sorcery speed. You could completely ruin the card by making it a tap ability instead if you wanted to! Conceptually I like this, it is food and graveyard synergy overlap and has the kind of scaling I like. On turn three this is very Grey Ogre. Late game and this is rather more card. I think this will sit very nicely for both balance and design once I have settled on the best fix for the forage ability. 

Thraben Conscripts

Design 3

Balance 5

The next four cards are a little package I made in an attempt to give white more fun things to do. Pretty sad that this is as fun as I could manage for white. Pretty desperate that this counts as more fun than what is already in place... The idea was a kind of human soldier tribal synergy support package. This is a low key Savannah Lion that gets the ball rolling. It ensures you have follow up of some sort if you want. Consistency but ultimately just a narrower and wordier iteration for the 2/1 white dorks with scry or cycling that already exist in the meta. This wound up just being a dull card that is narrow and on the low end of power with too many words.

Thraben Leuitenant 

Design 4

Balance 5

A bear that dies into a bit of value that is similar looking. Potent but pretty boring. Human is sufficiently common that you can play this anywhere pretty safely. Indeed, it is probably better in the more control shells where you will have less targets. They will tend to be more specifically useful and knowing what you are more likely to hit helps with planning. While the card is OK it failed the design brief fairly impressively! Both being better outside of the cycle and the intended archetype, all while not managing to avoid being dull, or even being all that well balanced....

Thraben Captain

Design 3

Balance 6

Yet more dull filler. This is a two for one but it is such low steaks value that it might as well not be. A 3/2 is not making the difference in most games, it is barely going to be relevant in most games... For a three mana card there needs to be more threat. Either ongoing potential for value or a more relevant beater of a body. Double white in the cost makes this narrow as well. That is the first thing I would change here, reducing the colour intensity. Filler wants to be broadly applicable. Given that this somewhat failed on all fronts I doubt I'll be rushing to apply any fixes here. 

Thraben General

Design 2

Balance 3

And the big Thraben series payoff? This idiot... I thought this was a cute lord but no, absolute shocker of an effect. If you have this active and they can't disrupt then it is such a massive pile of extra stats that you just win. That happens too often to be healthy but not enough for this card to be good on average. Not helped by being a 2/3 for 4 when not active which is well below an acceptable floor. What is even worse is that there is still lower you can go with this big turd. You naturally want to get stuck in when you have a big old board advantage. The thing is, it is very easy to turn this off mid combat with almost any instant removal spell. Turns out that results in a pretty blowout combat. This card has a range where it is a total blowout for each player at the extreme ends making it about as polar as possible. Bad pump effect, bad creature, bad card.

Tome Owl

Design 8

Balance 6

This is one of my preferred prowess adjacent dorks. I love the various self balancing feedback situations as well as the way it scales. It just feels very blue while also being a fairly viable cheap beater. At worst this is hitting for 1 in the air or chump blocking. Toss in some cycling or some card quality effects and this will start to slap a bit harder a bit more consistently. The odd big draw spell lets you do a sizeable hit as well, balanced by the fact that you are not adding further tempo or immediate pressure to the game when you use these kinds of effect. Do blue stuff and make this guy good. Support this guy with dorks and other attacking less blue stuff and suddenly this hits a lot softer and fairer. While both scale very differently this feels like a balanced Delver of Secrets and hits with a comparable punch, just in a much more controlled and reasonable way. As far as flavour and balance go I should probably have this be just a power buff and not both ends. The potential to turn Ancestral Recall effects into Giant Growth combat tricks can be a bit blowout. You will be forced into trying to block this eventually and that can be dangerous. That will sometimes let card advantage turn into tempo as well.

Trade Caravan

Design 6

Balance 6

Top down design akin to the blue Merchant Ship I also made in this set. I like these in both concept and flavour but find them to be quite unlike actual magic cards. There is something just a bit off feeling about them. Perhaps they are the wrong pacing for magic which feels more like a dual than a long term thing. This is more the pace of (Sid Meier's) Civilization! Perhaps it is the stretching of what the colour pie allows for that is what is off with these? Perhaps it is just that they are different cards and thus finding out how and where to use them optimally takes significantly longer. Perhaps it is just that this is a low impact card that, while balanced, can offer more to the opponent than you and as such is a high risk card with more unknowns than one is comfortable with. Both this and the blue one got play. This is probably the better of the two as white can put small bodies to more aggressive use and has more capacity than most archetypes to expend resources. This just works with what you want to be doing, and with itself. Even so, I think this is one to retire. Interesting but not for now.

Traumatized Summoner

Design 6

Balance 6

Bit of a wierd one here. Blue is not at all a colour I would associate with this sort of token generation but somehow, likely thanks to Simic, this one feels reasonable. It also took some fiddling around with so as to get it working how I wanted. Turns out evolve on a token producing dork can go infinite real easily. I could probably remove the on death trigger and neaten the card up but I wanted to make it playable. I feared blue wouldn't have enough dorks or enough dork based strategies to fuel this sufficiently without a bit of insurance. So far all has seemed well with this one. It plays fine. It isn't that quick or threatening in what it does but it does do it quite well. My main concern is that this isn't a card with a great play pattern if used defensively. This can pretty much make you a chump blocker for every dork you make and just clog up the board safely and cheaply. If that becomes an issue I'll look to make the token dorks unable to block. Presently it is just winding up in the more proactive blue decks, and in those it is quite a cute alternate Young Pyromancer. It is to Young Pyromancer what Cloudfin Raptor is to Delver of Secrets, or even Dragon's Rage Channeler and that is a nice place to be I would say.

Vengeful Summoner

Design 7

Balance 6

Inspired by Vengevine and the return trigger it has. This card is hard to fuel and even harder to abuse. If you are playing two dorks in a turn then recurring a dork with yet lower mana value then there is a good chance you are getting something small, even late game. The only real way to game the system here is with cost reduction dudes. There are a couple of these but it is all sufficiently rare that is just makes this a bit fun and spicy. It is a lot worse than Vengevine both in that you have to cast this to get any value from the trigger, you can't just toss it in the bin. And secondly, because it is a Grey Ogre at base and offers pitiful tempo. Even the ward doesn't do too much to offset the risks of playing a Grey Ogre. With this all in mind I need to be playing a creature heavy deck with some graveyard support, and perhaps some sac synergies, before I am too interested in this. I could probably afford to buff this a little. It doesn't need it but it is fun and it would help it to be less narrow.

Vodalian Soldier

Design 5

Balance 6

Fine but a bit safe for the kind of card it is. Probably this needs to come in tapped or be a 1/1 or something. There is just too much free tempo to be had here for a blue card. This is great offensively and defensively and thus winds up getting pretty universal play. It is really is just the kind of card that elongates games. Consistency like this is what I desperately want more of in real magic and so I overdid it for the homemade cube to the point of having the reverse problem. Games that go on too long and are just full of minor incremental edges like those Vodalian Soldier offer are hard on the brain and not what you want too many of. 

Voldaren Vampire

Design 6

Balance 8

Boring but fine. Acceptable stats with pretty broad utility thanks to the flying. Blood is looting as a floor making this card a great support tool in and out of Blood decks. This is a pretty perfect level for a low end common support card. It is clean, easy to parse, and yet offers a reasonable amount of card and game. In the real world this is a bit good for a black common and would likely need to pay a cost to gain flying or be unable to block or something. Power level wasn't a significant factor in my selection of card rarity. Neither did I put too much effort into getting it right! I have noticed it being more off in the later printruns. What I really like about this kind of cheap card is that it will tend to gain ongoing value if left in play but will tend to put you behind if answered quickly. It is very easy to answer but then it is also still cheap enough to not be too big of a risk. A gamble within ones means but that has significant potential payout.

Wake Celebrant

Design 5

Balance 5

Speaking of Blood payoff cards... This one is one of my larger concerns. It has real "Carrion Feeder but blocks" vibes. This sits around getting value or becoming a threat or a bit of both as required. It works well in a variety of places, really only needing creatures to be supported. It does however excel when you pair it up with other blood cards or sacrifice strategies. Being able to grow this in size at any speed and without any cost beyond the blood is possibly a problem here. I think I need to add a cost to it or make it sorcery. It might be acceptable if this was a 3 or 4 mana card (with a bit more starting stats) but as a two drop this is doing a bit too much. Always active effects like this end up taxing rather more mental resources than is ideal for a cheap support card. Regardless, it has yet to be a problem despite plenty of play so perhaps I am worried about nothing. 

Yawgmoth's Saga

Design 9

Balance 8

This style of land saga is great and so I am exploring them. They entice and intrigue and they don't even need to be that powerful to do so, as demonstrated by this little card. This does a fairly disparate array of black things but without any real cohesion in the effects. If we were describing this card like a wine connoisseur then it would be the body of Phyrexian Tower come Lake of the Dead with notes of Edict and Entomb. I love the tension land sagas offer between getting them out early to get the goods quickly and staving off deploying them so as not to hamper your mana development too severely. This one is especially uncomfortable as the first phase requires you to further sacrifice development to put to use. You can wind up a lot of lands down through using this! I have often enough just skipped using the first phase. It is rare to find all aspects of the card to be highly useful in any given build, let alone any given situation. Luckily the card is versatile enough and sufficiently potent that it gets play in spite of this. Much as this is an unexpected design triumph it is one I can only attribute to luck. I ignorantly threw some appropriate looking effects on a land saga in an attempt to be flavourful and playable and the result is much greater than the sum of its parts.

Zoological Expedition 

Design 4

Balance 3

The setup for this is not at all difficult but it is enough to keep this from being exploited. You will get mana advantage out of using this but not so much nor so quickly that is overly impacts the game. You may well be choosing to pay more to use this so as to retain things in the yard for later escape costs. Where this card falls down is that it plucks a powerful card out of your deck. When you are as in need of support as this card you might as well just play another threat in its place. The total amount of threat you can cram into a 40 card cube deck is important, more so in the homemade cube than other cubes. This might be a great tutor for a combo deck one day but it is no general use card in the meta I have created. 

HMC 4th Printrun Reviews Part IV

 

Prolific Mage

Design 4

Balance 4

Basically just a Thrumming Bird. Proliferate is just a mechanic I love and so I was pre-emptively designing support cards in the hope I one day make something work with it. This was open design space for a nice clean card so I took it. This needs to be a bit more card to get any love in the homemade cube meta presently but with good enough design surrounding proliferate synergy this card might get there. 

Quarry Taskmaster

Design 4

Balance 6

This is the sort of rounded generic design that goes a long way in cube. This is pretty safe, both in terms of tempo and in terms of facing off against removal. It is hard not to get some value out of this. Equally, it is hard to avoid getting utility as well. You can play a card like this anywhere and it will be fine. You can play it with synergy stuff and it will elevate everything. It might sound like I am bigging this up a lot but I am actually not that enamoured by this card. It even does some work as an overlap card that ties some synergies together which is somewhat the holy grail for limited card design. My main issue with this card is how generic it feels. It is just so middle of the road. The design is entirely through the lens "what will make this cube playable" and it shows. There is a sort of inelegance here that you only get when you try and do art and come at it through AI or capitalism. This is that tepid unsatisfactory card that is never bad but also never that good. It is filler but rather than being that good supporting cheap clean filler we find at one and two mana, this is a four mana filler card that just gums up games. This gives loads of minor options which eat into peoples thinking time all the time. It is also good healthy game progression on all the fronts sufficiently that this is generally extending games. It is putting up a fight without being much of a threat. It is refusing to roll over and die while also refusing to put anyone else out of their misery.  Really cards like this should be contained to the three slot where they don't pack quite so much punch and thus don't add quite as much drag to the game. This is a very similar sort of card to Seasoned Pyromancer but at the wrong point on the curve. In isolation there is nothing too wrong with this card, arguably it is helping the format by being a crossover tool, but in practice I need to try and steer clear of making and including cards like this. I overdid modal cards, then I overdid sagas, and now I see I am just hiding that sort of jazz in cards like this.

Ramosian Champion

Design 2

Balance 4

Because rebels went so well when Wizards did it.... I was looking for fun things I could do in white and I have enjoyed trying to fix bad mechanics. Well, let me tell you how hard I failed to fix anything with this little experiment. Easily the fastest selection of cuts I have made to the homemade cube. I drafted them on outing number one and immediately cut them. Normally I at least let other people have a go on busted stuff I plan on cutting if I discover it first but these were so bad and in so many ways. I made rather too many and a lot of them were problematic. This is one of the most reasonable of the rebels. It is one of only a couple I would even consider returning to the cube unchanged. Sadly the rebel mechanic comes as somewhat of a package so the failings of the others are passed onto this. Regardless of how playable this may be, without the appropriate support (neither too weak nor too potent), it cannot receive play. That might well be no bad thing as this is probably just an inherently parasitic and bad mechanic that I should hope to exclude its like from the cube. This particular card is fine because it isn't assured threat or value and is fairly easily answered in tempo efficient ways. It isn't great design. It isn't exciting but at least it isn't directly problematic. Moving on and we shall see some that are...

Ramosian Engineer

Design 3

Balance 4

Another of the better attempts. I like how the powerstone feeds into the ability and how this is clearly one of the weaker cards in isolation but becomes a reasonable support card when you get appropriate pieces. If I somehow manage to fix this little package of recruiting rebel cards then I will certainly look to have one that creates some helpful powerstones and will likely not stray far from this as the design, if at all.

Fighter

Design 2

Balance 2

There needs to be a Savannah Lion within the rebel series and this is it. Not egregious by itself but certainly very dangerous. A reasonable low drop beater that turns into a potent card advantage engine as soon as required. This card kindof does it all just so long as you have playable Rebels to find. As such I need to either tone down the recruitment mechanism entirely or have it be different on different cards. The latter widens the design space but will also tax the players a bit harder and require clear differentiation else there will be loads of little mistakes in game. 

I wanted to mimic cascade as closely as possible as it is a well loved thing to do. The problem is that you know roughly what you are getting rather detracting from the excitement. It is also a little too powerful as it stands. Typically you just work your way up the curve extracting the cheap rebels from your deck and ensuring your most mana efficient. Done like this you are effectively just paying W to draw a card, not to mention adding flash and uncounterable to the thing. The difficulty I am having with working out a fix for the Rebels is that they have to be viewed as a whole. Rather than keeping a card in mind I have to keep a whole load of cards in mind at once, and I am not very good at that! I will try and fix these but they are pretty low priority due to my low expectations, the size of the task, and the high chance that the mechanic is fundamentally flawed to begin with and not worth pursuing!

Ramosian Grappler

Design 1

Balance 2

This one felt wrong in several ways. One I think is just the general unease at the rebels. The other main issue I think is the statline. This just feels wrong as a 1/3. It makes the card more suited to task but that probably isn't too important. The card is mostly supposed to be flavourful rebel filler. Tappers are not the most fun to play against. Especially ones that don't have a mana cost to use. This is the sort of snowball card that can take over a game. Equally it can be one of your weaker hits on the rebel recruitment plan. This should be less robust, or less cost effective. Not to mention having the recruitment mechanic calmed down. It is very possible it just shouldn't be a card at all.

Ramosian Informer

Design 3

Balance 3

A bit too much value here. The fighter was too good because it was pressure into value as and when. This is too good because it is pretty raw value and is reliable on that front. Kill this an you are behind. Don't kill this and you are liable to start falling further behind. I love the flavour on this one so I'll try and keep something resembling this but sadly it will be rather calmer. Perhaps a clue instead of a draw. Perhaps only a single shot recruitment, or otherwise nerfed recruitment.

Ramosian Martyr

Design 1

Balance 1

This was the biggest mistake of the lot. It would likely still be unreasonable even if it couldn't recruit itself. I thought I was just making a cute little take on Selfless Saviour but no, this is far far worse. The main issue is that this is a one drop and the recruiting mechanic makes it very easy to specifically find this if it is in your deck.  That basically means all your active rebels have two and tap to get protection. It is pretty effective protection too being able to get passed colourless effects and become unblockable through creatures of multiple colours. It is typically a game breaking play either countering their critical removal or forcing through a big swing. So many things about this card need to change for it to be close to viable. It is probably easier to start from scratch and I very much doubt I'll try either. This was such an egregious card that no one is anticipating its return in any form. I would describe this as oppressively not fun.

Ramosian Reinforcements

Design 3

Balance 3

In principle I really like how this fits in with the rebels. Something about the card just failed though. Perhaps it is the way the recruit mechanic makes flash seem a lot less valuable? Perhaps it is just an aesthetic thing and I need to do better art and flavour for the card. More likely the failing is having all of the cards trying to be a thing and a rebel recruiter. This is the problem with cards that are so intrinsically linked - it becomes really hard to clearly focus on the issues with any one card and see what they are and their causes.

Ramosian Scouts

Design 4

Balance 3

In principle I like this too but I think that is mostly just being a big fan of relatively vanailla dorks that come with maps. They just seem to play really nicely. I would prefer this simpler and cheaper and without the recruitment mode, or even the scaling option. It is all just messy and overly redundant value as it stands. The only concern I have with all these changes is that they then just start getting in the design space of the other map dorks I have designed. I like cards to occupy as distinct a design space as possible where no redundancy is demanded. Whatever the result, if I do end up reworking the rebels, there will be a map rebel among them.

Ramosian Tactician 

Design 1

Balance 1

A card highlighting my inability to multitask. Simple spelling mistakes all over the shop! While not as bad as the one drop that gives protection this is certainly a shocker of a card in so many ways. Instantly being able to flop out a ward and lord dork is pretty egregious. It can mess with combat and removal and even if it doesn't, it is still a big or lord enabling you to slap real hard with your rebels. The templating is a massive fail too, all rebels including himself get the ward, the others only get the pump... It didn't need to be worded in such an unclear way that is bound to cause confusion and misplays. There is little right about this card.

Ramosian Warleader

Design 2

Balance 3

Not the most oppressive or worst designed of the rebels but none the less a pretty boring card. I was trying to hit the big fighty top end rebel who should be flashy and exciting. This guy is just annoying. He has annoying abilities but if you don't try and fight him he is just a Hill Giant. This fails as a card in its own right in addition to being part of the greater failure that was my attempt at rebels! Lucky guy. I've missed the mark with this guy so much I don't even have the first inkling of how I might even attempt a fix. I do quite like the easthetic on this one at least... Keep the art and name and rework all the gameplay elements is the fix here it would seem. The property equivalent of knocking the whole thing down and rebuilding something different on the plot of land.

Rebirthing Pods

Design 3 (execution bringing the mark down as conceptually I like the design)

Balance 2

Well, I am starting to get a bit better at making fun cards but I do seem to suck at balancing them. That in turn makes them fun cards for only one of the players.... I have managed to since rework this and get it to a far more reasonable place where the power level is acceptable and where the fun isn't too compromised. This is now sorcery speed and is unable to come back from the bin itself. I think the costs are tweaked as well. It is quite a historically black effect that doesn't feel at all out of place or unreasonable in green. We could go into the various reasons this version  as shown is a card with an undesirable play pattern but it doesn't sound like the best use of time on something so obvious and now also so irrelevant!

Reefer

Design 4

Balance 3

Lots of misses in this printrun! A cute fun little card with niche uses at best. Not entirely sure what happened to the text on this image, the card doesn't have text merging with the stats box! Technically this is a blue Savannah Lions with upside which sounds impressive but ultimately isn't. Blue isn't super weenie tempo and whenever it is it tends to be much more flash creature based. It neither has the muscle or the removal to back up small ground beaters. And the upside here is hard to make useful. It is somewhat at odds with the card. Mostly this is a mana and a card to make a Treasure or a Savannah Lions. Very few decks want both of those things and only do quite extreme decks want either half. This is the sort of thing I can see an Aluren combo deck wanting, not anything you make in cube formats! Perhaps one day I'll use this for something cool but for now this will mostly gather dust in the reserves pile.

Regrown

Design 8

Balance 7

Laughable to think about now but when I first played magic in 1995 Regrowth was held to much the same esteem as Demonic Tutor. They were premium tools you played whenever you could. Regrowth held water in cube in the early days too. The fall off since then however has been shocking. The card is unplayable in cube without combo and hardly good when it is there. Put simply, Regrown was an attempt to make Regrowth a cube viable spell. This is somewhere between a Serum Visions or Consider, and a Regrowth. Early on this is still card quality rather than a dead and narrow card. Later on it increasingly powerful card selection. Critically it is not a targetted spell and so cannot be fizzled with a bit of graveyard interaction. Quality of life spells like card selection effects become unplayable fast when they start having demands or risks of their own. I thought this might be a bit over powered but it turned out great. It probably is a bit good for some real formats and should probably only be surveil 1 if it were ever made real. When it comes to my cube however, with its already high consistency and only limited deck space that it wants to give up on cards that mostly just cycle, then this is pretty spot on. It is card quality that has a little more to offer. It has recently spiked a little in use too, being a good graveyard support tool.

Rigged Route

Design 4

Balance 7

I figured I should make some tribal non-creature stuff for the recruitment novelty. This card is fine, all be it a little dull. It has that Seal of Answer problem but it isn't the most oppressive of those by a long way with plenty of counter play options. It sits in the acceptable part of that spectrum at least. Mostly this just lives and dies with the rebels. It is playable by itself but doesn't have too much in the way of bonus synergy that it offers. It is more that it is sufficiently boring and lacking in good play patterns that ensure a card like this isn't making it in without the whole package. 

Seal of Viability

Design 4

Balance 6

Speaking of Seals that don't play well... I am actually yet to try this one out. I feel like it is as close to a balanced Seal of Counterspell as you can get. I have tried a lot of different ones and they were mostly bad, which, in addition to the fundamental notion that "Seal of Answer" cards are pretty bad for enjoyment, really isn't a good place to be. I made this as I felt compelled to "get it right" after so many failed attempts but I am in no rush to play with it. I don't think it will be exotic or exciting. I don't think players will be pleased to see it. It is probably fine, it probably out performs Negate or Mana Leak pretty consistently, but not by a lot. Not enough to edge it to the broken. It is just a little tedious. I don't find it that hard to design countermagic so have never found myself short enough to top up the ratios with this one. I am sure it will get its chance but I can't see myself being excited about that unless I get some cool enchantment synergies working.

Sengir Knight

Design 6

Balance 5

I love an adventure card and those where the adventure feeds into the dork in question are some of my favourite designs. There is certainly a lot I like about this card however there are also some concerns or design inelegancies that limit how high I can rate it and how excited I can be about it. Basically any instant speed X spell that can generate a load of stuff is a concern. By itself it is pretty harmless, it is just the kind of card that winds up limiting your design space. I have since made a load of blood synergy cards in my 5th print run and this dude is now set to jump from being a cute utility filler dork to an absolute support house. He can be  a high tempo play when you discount rate cast him thanks to blood generated elsewhere. Or he can be the wild injection of blood that allows one of your other blood payoff cards to get all abusive, this is the more dangerous aspect of these two now facets but it is a both thing so it is all concerning. All told, the adventure should likely just be a fixed number of blood for a fixed cost. It may even need being made sorcery. This too would help fix any future issues with your various Tolarian Academy and Disciple of the Vault style designs I might create too!

Shockshaper

Design 8

Balance 8

Grim Lavamancer walked an impressively fine line. A true design triumph of a card, one of only a tiny handful of creatures that have lived a long career in magic and have remained playable throughout. Never bad, never broken. I have been chasing that. Lavamancer has done such work that it feels like a red staple. If there are not red dorks that can shoot stuff then it doesn't feel like magic. I have a good few goes so far at the Lavamancer and this is comfortably my favourite. I think I need to word it better, pretty sure there are rules exploits in this but beyond that it functions very nicely, and indeed very like Lavamancer. A little more expensive to offset the greater ease of fuelling. Critically however, easy enough to fuel that it is a viable early tool. Perhaps I should have named him an Advocate in some way as he is very much inspired by that set of cards in Judgement.

Sky Pirate

Design 4

Balance 5

This is better than Swiftspear which probably means it is too good. Turns out committing crimes is exactly what decks that play cards like this are good at. This is robust and a persistent source of evasive damage. It isn't quite broken, there isn't the quality of finishers to capitalize on this kind of one drop beater. Equally it is quite the narrow beater, the Boros builds rarely want it. Gruul isn't touching it. It is really just and Izzet and mono tool. All those factors combine to make this a card I am not thrilled about. The evasive prowess stuff should mostly be contained in blue. The 1/2 prowess + thing one drop is a pretty sweet spot for design but this misses the mark somewhat. Wizards seem to have made the best ones by a good margin thus far and my attempts to replicate fall short.

Small Sticky Head

Design 7

Balance 4

One of those little gizmos that winds up being a great support card in some archetypes. This was made without specific purpose. It felt a bit good if made clean but it also looked unplayable as soon as you raised the mana costs from what they are here. Normally I hate fluffy bells and whistles on cards but the untap penalty somehow seems flavourful here. It rounds off the card nicely and just helps balance it a little better. I have not run this card much in the cube as yet. Partly because I am a little tight on space presently and want to use that space to test more critical cards first, but mostly because this is more of a combo tool than anything else and I have not put much in the way of combo in the cube for this to work with. The high synergy builds might use this well but if that is all that is supporting this it will likely be too narrow a card for cube play. 

Soul Chamber

Design 5

Balance 2

Oops. The search for the balanced Blood Artist is still at large. I felt like I might have cracked it with this one but no, not really. Broadly this felt like a more polar Bastion of Remembrance. Bastion is hard to remove and that makes it one of the best in slot for that kind of deck in other cubes. It is pretty horrific to play against however as it is just this looming clock. This is almost always crewable when you want it to be and all safely unmanned the rest of the time! It is also doubly oppressive being all creatures and not just your own. The crew cost needs increasing else it is in no way a limitation on the card. I am not even sure how much I want a sacrifice synergy for the homemade cube. I was mostly just using actual cubes and archetypes as templates. I have plenty of synergies in black now that I could just drop all the cards exclusively for the Blood Artist style decks. They can be frustrating to play against as well as with. When the cards are hard to get right it is often pointing to a larger problem, such as a dud archetype. I might try a larger dork with a double drain trigger but that is likely where my exploration of this archetype ends.

Soul Vault

Design 8

Balance 7

I think The One Ring is a bit of a shame in that it is partly amazing design. It is then spoiled by being far too pushed for really any format. This was my attempt to steal the good bit of the card and then properly balance it. I feel like I did a pretty good job. There are a lot of card draw tools in the format, black with a lot of those. Most of the black ones come with a life cost and so this is nothing new. I'm not even sure it is the best of the black life for cards cards, but it does seem to be the most fun. Tap draw to draw with no immediate penalty is just so alluring. And when it is three or more cards it feels like such cheats too. You need to win with those extra cards quickly or support the Soul Vault in other ways - typically ways to get it out of play before the tax hits too hard. Unlike many of the card draw tools this needs a helping hand, either lifegain or a way to get it out of play. That or at least archetypal support, say a red deck that is confident it is winning with the influx of cards before the life payment is relevant. You might then think other card draw tools are getting more love, but no. This is just too enticing and thus one of the most played. This is just as fun for you as a One Ring but it is a whole lot more reasonable for everyone else. I don't normally like it when I rip off an existing card so directly but in this case I think mine is a sufficient improvement that I am OK with it.