Gadinolite Powerstone
Power 8
Design 6
Gaea (sidelined)
Power 4
Design 7
Comically this is a bit of a trap card despite not being designed as such. I wanted a big flashy draw to green and this is that. The problem is green did not need any of these things, green needs a Craterhoof! Gaea doesn't do a very good job of closing out the game. You need threat and not value at this sort of a cost. The way this played out was a big tempo less for convoking it out and then either an answer landed and put you behind, or just powerful cards killed you while you desperately dug for something relevant to do with all your mana and draw! Not entirely sure what to do with this one. It was fun and popular but generally unsuitable. It already has a bunch of text on it too so if we are adding things we are likely also in the market to take stuff away. Ultimately it is either winding up reworked or cut, I want the former rather than the latter but have no real notion of the direction to go in so am just not doing anything!
Gaea's Chosen
Power 8
Design 6
A really dangerous green ramp dork that will take you from 2 to 5 on the curve all by itself. Or how about a pair of 3 drops on turn 3? A Devoted Druid that just keeps on giving. The caveat? That you need to be fairly heavy green to make it work which is enough caveat to keep it fair. Akin to a calmer Rofellos.
Galan Duke
Power 7
Design 6
Reasonable threat come sac outlet. You cannot play this and have it be at all good outside of a deck with a decent supply of disposable dorks, and that keeps it nicely fair. Indestructible still seems to hose red and green a whole lot more than other colours. Much as this card is good it really lives and dies by the strength of the housing archetypes. In a good aristocrats deck this is premium. In a midrange deck this could just as well be filler.
Galan Knight (cut)
Power 4
Design 4
I was a little surprised and how little action this got. This is a bit too easy to answer while also having a larger than desirable opportunity cost. This can sit dead in hand if you can't get your bin up and running. It can also consume valuable resources that could have gone into escaping a card. The final nail in this guys coffin is a lack of home. This is not substantial enough of a threat for a control deck to try and ride, nor does it have a self mill aggro deck that might want to house it.
Galan Underclass
Power 7
Design 5
This is a black Insolent Neonate esque card that provides some excellent support options. My gut says this is too much for a one drop but the reality is that no one is getting excited by a 2/1. There is not the hyper aggressive archetypes to really abuse a cheap dork with a lot going on. Equally there is not a deck in demand of looting so much that helps to empower this. It is just a nominally low powered card in a format where the power you can milk from each bit of card is important. Much as I have been impressed at how this card is able to fairly contain so much I still find it a little messy somehow. If I had more blood themed cards perhaps this would be a good candidate for a simple sac a blood to get a +1/+1 counter card. I am now just wondering if what is off about this card is the rarity, it is a bit much for a common.
Gaseous Marsh (cut)
Power 6
Design 1
I thought I was being all clever with this and finding untapped design space. In practice these cards are a mess. They function fine enough, arguably they have some interesting choices surrounding their use, however, mana base is not an area we want to be using our mental energies. You just want your mana to be there and you want to use your brain space on the other elements of the game. These are not fun to play with and that is that. Fun trumps all else and so despite falling within an acceptable range on the power front these all had to go. You just spend way too much time messing around with these and that takes away from the game. These were pretty good fixing too, and a rarer example in my format of a land that favours the aggro player. It doesn't matter though, you can have a whole long list of positives and if you are tedious to play with you got to go.
Getting Gitaxian
Power 7
Design 6
Sidegrade on Preordain. Turns out there are a lot of cards you slap a Phyrexian Mana on and make more interesting or more balanced. In this case it is a way to justify making an already top tier spell instant! This is only a 7/10 card in terms of power because there is plenty of good card quality, card draw, and consistency providing effects in my homemade cube. This is one of very few cards I designed that would actually perform better in existing vintage and legacy cubes.
Ghost Train
Power 8
Design 7
A fairly shameless rip on Night Scythe, a card that has played really well in other cubes. This one wasn't really planned, it just came together. I don't normally like hybrid mana in card costs. Mechanically it is great for limited but in terms of aesthetic I am not normally a big fan. Somehow this oddball just came together. I even feel like I got away with calling this very clear and obvious carriage a train! This card is a great all rounder. It is reasonable threat diversity against control. It is loads of bodies for a white anthem strategy or a black sacrifice one. It is a reasonable pile of stats and abilities for the mana and will let you engage in combat with a lot more options that your typically three drop threat. I fully don't object to this being the only non-companion with a hybrid cost in the set. It doesn't feel odd or out of place because it feels so like a real card that should already exist!
Ghostly Knights
Power 7.5
Design 6
I really like interesting interactions between key words and that is where this dude came from. This card is very hard to handle in combat and scales very well with buffs. This makes him pretty dangerous and pretty polar as he is pretty easily removed one for one, and in a mana positive way. I have tried him out as a 2/2, for the ability to reasonably trade in combat. It doesn't do too much to weaken it in the face of spot removal and hasn't changed much about how the card performs. I think I like the 2/3 version more overall but I am keeping a close eye on this one as it is a clearly dangerous card.
Giant King
Power 7
Design 5
The jury is still out on this one. The card gets a lot of play and is well liked, but it rarely impresses. A bit like Gaea this is all value at the top end not threat. I think the confusing aspect is how off colour it is. White is the last place you would imagine this card. It is a bit of a scaled up Mulldrifter but without the flying the body is arguably less useful. As such it is more of a card draw tool, a Harmonize, with a bit of a late game kicker. Certainly flicker synergies can push this dude, but then he is scaling more with the merits of the rest of your deck. A removal spell EtB is generally a better, more threatening thing to try and abuse. It is one of those cards that isn't doing what you need a top end closer to do. That is fine, it doesn't need to be because of the evoke. It seems like it is therefor a perception thing. Mostly people try and make this for six and when they do they expect to be really ahead from it and they just aren't. The 4.4 body really doesn't do very much.
Giant Lobster (cut)
Power 2
Design 1
Not at all blue feeling mechanically as well as being real aimless. Like, this is an OK dork on the board but what are you doing with it? It lacks the power and value of a midrange card or the tempo of an aggro card. I am suitably averse to this card that I am tempted to sling it in the banned pile but functionally I think it makes no difference, the card is not getting any play regardless, in any format we might use this set for.
Giant Octopus (reworking)
Power 10
Design 1
Easily one of my biggest misses simply because I wildly over powered it. This was attempt one, and it was egregious. Attempt two was a 3/4 and cost 3U to produce more tokens, and it was still pretty dominant. I am going to further take it down to coming with just the single tentacle in addition to the first set of changes. This is exactly the sort of tool both midrange and control blue decks need to stabilize, while being more than capable of helping out with the win as well. I am going to have to slightly under power it for the optimal pegging of power level with it being such a mechanically well suited card. I got a lot of cards wrong at this mana value range because of the power to mana curve. Each format has one and in each format there is a point at which the line suddenly tends towards infinite. I misjudged the start point of that sudden steepening of the curve and so magnified that misjudgement. I was also just chucking out some generic top end looking bodies for the second print run to plug a gap I had discovered in the first. This over powered octopus managed to stay somewhat obscured among many other similar looking high powered top end.
Gifting Melissa
Power 6
Design 6
Cute little beater. Flying helps keep this relevant all game and the treasure makes it interesting and supposedly fair. Obviously this is the kind of thing that would get instantly abused in a constructed combo deck of some form or other in the real world of magic but in my little homemade world it is all quite contained and reasonable. Blue isn't that much about the beatdown and so this little lass doesn't get a tonne of action. I can imagine a world in which blue tempo or even aggro has a presence in the meta where this would then have a firm home. Until then this is in real risk of getting cut.
Gifts of the Dead (cut)
Power 7
Design 4
I'm sure this should be Command of the Dead for the mechanical pointer. This is all the protection and combat trickery you could want, a swiss army knife of a thing you use on a friendly dork. You cannot get much more versatile and cost effective than this short of being unreasonable and/or free. It seemed a bit much in design and yet it gets no play. People don't want situational and conditional stuff. Any more punch than this isn't going to be fun to face off against and this all all things weaker are failing to get attention, which is kind of the death sentence for things that trigger heroic... I am not entirely sure how to open up design space in a format such that things like combat tricks can be designed reasonably and still see some action.
Gilded City
Gishath's Nesting Ground
Power 9
Design 6
Giver of Glyphs
Power 5
Design 4
My imagination knows no bounds.... This is simply a worse Giver of Runes, which in turn is a fixed Mother of Runes. White feels like it wants such cards so this was my best effort at a reasonable, clean, and unique iteration. This underperforms in my cube and I am not yet fully sure why. Mostly I think it is how much mass removal is floating around and how much it gets used. Even though this feels emblematic of white it is a card I have on my radar to cull. It just doesn't play all that well nor do enough.
Glimmer
Power 8
Design 7
Very happy with this one despite clearly being pushed. This is above curve at instant speed Divination in most contexts. Adding flashback is quite the boost, especially or this kind of spell. Then add to that all the energy synergies and you have quite the potent tool. It is a solid playable outside the enrgy deck but in one it offers an instant energy ritual to surprise an opponent, or a massive sink to draw a load of cards at a good rate with a pile of spare energy. Drawing cards is one of the most universally enjoyed aspects of magic and so making a lot of them and pushing them is one of the things I am most pleased about having done. This has drawn a lot of cards and made a lot of energy so far and I think most would agree that is a good thing. Although a really blinged out Divination, it is still at heart a super low tempo uninteractive two for one. A very fair card hidden within a very pushed looking card.
Globetrotting Goblin
Power 7
Design 7
A really nice way to kick off your game. This is a nicely red way of getting some rather non-red effects into the colour. This does what a Bant card does! It should be called the Bant Goblin... What I love here is how well the components key together. Really easy with this to get what you need and spend your mana. You can go aggressive and skip Plan in favour of a one drop with stats and then just raw dog the goblin for maximum tempo. You can do the one two punch fully occupying turns one and two for that nice rounded value and consistency. Or you can power it out as a three drop and have the best control over the explore outcome. This pretty much synergizes with everything being such a generic setup card. It is also a fair whack off being something you would call too powerful. It is just super playable and pleasantly fair. A more reasonable iteration of the Freebooter adventure pirate card.
Gloom Charm (cut)
Power 3
Design 7
I loved the design challenge of making these. Finding useful abilities that are on colour pie and appropriate for the cost was tough. I think the process was informative. Sadly the results were pretty universal. I made a format where you don't want/can't afford many of these little piddling about spells and I absolutely flooded the market in them. The floor on this card is solid and on top of that is is cheap, versatile, offering scaling, all things that sound like a slam dunk and yet no dice. This is one of my favourite of the many cheap Charm style cards I made but it is not a card I can really justify running.
Gloomfall
Power 7
Design 6
It is always a bit suspicious when you come across a seemingly simple design that otherwise doesn't exist. I assumed this was fine because Earthquake is fine but there are some subtle differences at play. This doesn't damage you for starters making it a more appealing control tool. It hits all dorks (rather than just the walkers) and does a better job than damage of killing them, also both appealing attributes to a control player. Black is in possession of a higher degree of toughness dorks than red allowing this to be one sided. And that is the real rub. This is mass removal you can play in all sorts of decks. The control you have over it means it can be a Wrath if you are behind but it can also be removal while you develop a board and that can be terrifying. It is work to achieve but when you can pull it off it is game winning. In a format where winning games is hard a card like this is full of worth.
Gloomy Altar (reworking)
Power 4
Design 4
Charcoal Diamond meets Phyrexian Tower. I thought this would get more play than it has, turns out slapping coloured mana onto mana rocks really hurts their appeal. And for some reason black is less in the market for such things. I think this isn't need for the sac decks and sub par control decks. I plan to fix this by making it colourless to cast and perhaps even add another mode of sacrifice that you can use.
Glorious Harmony
Power 8
Design 5
Can't take too much credit for the design here, stuck a little bit of negligible cost on Glorious Anthem and gave it flash. A double whammy on that type of card for all the normal good flash reasons combined with making it a bit of a combat trick. Certainly a card you want to be aware of in the format. Not as back breaking or overpowered as you might think but equally a pretty cornerstone card for the aggressive white decks. I have gradually gone off the phyrexian mana symbol being used in as many places as I have entirely for the flavour of it. This card is not at all phyrexian and so the mana on it feels off. It is also not the best implication of it, this is a tempo card and thus two life is mostly irrelevant. This should have convoke or some other cost reduction you have to work towards that helps make it interesting.
Grfrfll (cut)
Power 6
Design 6
Companions are the hardest cards to design as they are almost creating a new mini game within a game. I tried to follow suit with wizards and made 10 hybrid companions with this being the Izzet option. The deck building challenge ones are the most interesting of the prerequisites but this was the dullest as it just felt like the "none of that" style. Just make a deck, cut out the threes and see if you can make it work. Grfrfll is a two for nothing but he is six mana total, for a random cheap card and and a 1/1. That is some low rate value right there and utterly shitting on any notion of tempo the cascade might bring. Cascade is one of the most fun mechanics in the game and I managed to suck all that out of it with this design. I am not even sure if I am pleased with myself or disgusted for doing so! Cascade does not have being a good mechanic to give it any sort of moral high ground in this. The real issue with this card is that it had no direction or synergies. I wanted the companions to help with the more niche archetypes. It is hard doing cool synergy decks in a limited setting and so having access to a good support or enabler card at all times, aka a companion, seemed like a good idea. I didn't want to waste that opportunity to slowly set about reworking the companions to do so. There was no real problem with this card but equally there was no real point to him. The only interesting question this card ever asked was "is having him better than having none of the three drops in your pool?" and the answer was generally no.
Grfrfll, Tinkle-Winkler (sidelined)
Power 5
Design 6
This is the reworked character. For some reason I grew attached to this little guy and so after cutting his card I wanted to reintroduce him. In what felt like a neat tying up of lose ends I gave this a reworked set of mechanics from another failed companion experiment. Sadly this is also on the narrow side. Given the Seal of cards were generally bad my enchantment count dropped significantly which in turn made the various enchantress archetype support cards, to include this, all pretty poor includes in the cube. I really like this dude and hope to be able to bring an enchantment synergy package to the format for some testing and experimenting but that is a long way off presently.
Grizedale
Power 5
Design 4
Grizzled Goblin
Power 6
Design 5
This is a very dull card and so I have docked myself points for that. It is however a fine and versatile beater than it fully on brand for red and aggressive red decks. This should get in a healthy amount of damage if not handled and it does so while leaving behind a decent body. Hit once for 2, once for 3 and push through another 2 power dork and this is adding up to a real impressive return on your card and three mana, especially given you still have a 3/2. Very convenient card when it comes to helping with mana efficiency too. Red has a lot of cards that can spend your early mana all by themselves and that is really good for tempo consistency. Something rather harder to achieve through direct card quality cards.
Grove Armada (retuning)
Power 9
Design 6
Well, I certainly managed to effectively push the mono decks with the various cycles of cards that provide payoff for such things. This card is just waaay too good. Seven potential power on turn three, spread out over multiple bodies if required, and sometimes scaling with other abilities, and then the late game potential to be the most stats per card in the format? That is above curve not just in this cube! I will be nerfing this down at least to a 2/2. I may also only allow it to put counters on one thing. I don't want to hit it too hard with the nerf bat however as I want non mono green decks to consider it as well, while remaining a temptation to venture in the all in world of the mono green player.
Gruul Command (retuning)
Power 9
Design 6
I love the way the various gold commands and confluences play when given a little key word. Fork this thing and you go absolutely nuts on options for modes! This has played really well in testing but has one massive but fixable problem. It needs to just get basic lands, finding any old land is rather oppressive when you can get two of them for just three mana! Even in my cube where the non-basics are a long long way less dangerous than in real cubes. With that small change the card will remain very powerful and quite a pull into Gruul. It is a fine card to play without conspire but gains a lot from it and is relatively easy to do pretty quickly in Gruul. Perhaps too easily? There is a world in which this goes to four mana. It is pretty nuts when you get to do a fully one sided Wrath for three mana while also getting a couple of free lands. This is not a card you can afford to walk into blindly.
Gnomish Jujunort
Power 6
Design 7
Somewhere between the original Juggernaut and Eskia's Chariot is this thing. Flavourful and fair. This is a good tool to work with some synergies because of the many things of many types. It is also just a good card by itself. It is a nice threat to pressure control decks as is the case with all vehicles. It turns out that any reasonable vehicle that comes with crew plays pretty well and so I have made a healthy chunk of those cards.
I do not watch watch very many content creators in the magic world. Five at most these days. One of those is Andrea Mengucci. Great guy, great magic player, great content creator, and most importantly, some of the greatest pronunciations going. I respect that when he sees one of our daft, entirely un-phonetic English words he just has a go. On more than one occasion the resultant sound/word is so good that it needs making into a card. A Jujunort is a phonetic translation of Mengu having a shot at Juggernaut. Every time I see this card I hear Mengu and that brings me joy.
Go Farm (retuning)
Power 6
Design 6
Most of that design rating is coming from the name and picture combo. Farmstead is the worst magic card of all time and so I am very pleased to have upcycled the art, which is classic in feel and very wholesome. It is also satisfying to say. Point at a dork, tell the owner "This prick can Go Farm" and it increases the enjoyment one has of the game. It is obviously homage, or an attempted fix to the infamous Swords to Plowshares. Go Farm wound up being over fixed and was a bit too much. I have halved the food it yields and while now balanced I feel as if it is less clean. I'll try and find something a bit cleaner, perhaps just a flat two food is the way. This is a pretty definitive white removal tool. Exile quality without target restriction that compensates with life.
Goat Rider
Power 6
Design 7
Just saw this art and had to use it, from then it just kind of made itself in a topdown way. It is a bit token intense but otherwise I am pretty happy with this one. Power level is great for the mana but still real low nominally. A nice little support card you can run in a lot of places for a variety of reasons. Clearly should have done my research better and called this Goblin Billyrider after the Kithkin.
Gobbo Scrap Boy
Power 7
Design 6
I love Powerstones and as such I was a bit try hard on making cards that felt like they occupied original design space that produced them for me. Pretty happy with where this one came out. A card with a lot going on. Support and even payoff for a fair number of different strategies. A kind of walking Makeshift Munitions with a fair degree of ammo chucked into the mix. I like how this comes with a free Gutshot should you need it, or indeed if they try and kill it. It means this has just that little bit of action when you make it such that it isn't just a horror Grey Orge of a play. This card offers value and options but being red these things tend to be quite direct and therefore translate pretty well into cube play.
Gobi Steppe
Power 8
Design 6
Goblin Drum Quarter (retuning)
Power 8
Design 5
A little too aggressive leaning. Really this should just have 1 toughness, or swap out haste for something worse, or at least not proactively adding tempo. Curving out with this is about the highest tempo aggro starts possible in the format. Beyond that the card achieved what I wanted to and is a fun little toy to play with. I have always like cost reduction cards, they make me want to build around them, and so on that basis this and the cycle it is from are a win. This just pushes a little too hard all in one direction and thus needs a slightly shorter leach so to speak.
Goblin Inciter
Power 7
Design 7
A versatile tool that has all manner of synergies on the go. For any sort of aggressive plan this card ticks all the boxes and has little downside. As you get more midrange and control orientated this appeals less and less, but rarely none. This is a cheap card that can provide a snowballing threat, or perhaps a sorcery speed interaction dodging threat. It can develop a board or apply immediate pressure to a planeswalker, or just cycle away for some bonus value. This adds a lot of consistency to a deck being somewhat of a modal card. The only real downsides this has are being off theme outside aggro decks, and not being that much nominal power.
Goblin Nanny
Power 6
Design 6
This is a way of making a slightly more interesting and slightly empowered Krenko's Command. An alternate take on Mogg War Marshall. The synergy support ceiling here is really high but if you are not taking advantage of that then the card is not that exciting. You need to have global buffs, or profitable ways to sacrifice dorks else this isn't getting into many decks.
Goblin Tinkerer
Power 6.5
Design 8
I think cards like this are a really elegant way to give red access to ramp in a limited setting. You can't give red rituals and expect them to get play nor can you make every card Torch of Defiance! In many ways this is a two drop Llanowar Elf in red. In green this would get laughed out of the room, but in red it is not overshadowed by swathes of alternatives, while also remaining perfectly playable. As soon as you have artifact synergies and can put powerstones to use without a the Tinkerer in play the value of this jumps up considerably. It is more of a two for one ramp dork, sort of like a Sakura Tribe Elder.
Golden Colossus (cut)
Power 4
Design 2
I reworked this into making 1/1 fliers rather than the Oblivion Ring effect and boosted him up to a 7/7 and he still doesn't see play. I likely should have just kept this design but either reduced the cost (which would then also require an aesthetic change too) or increased the stats. We could have even reduced the exile duration and made it more of a Flickerwisp than Oblivion Ring. Perhaps even venturing into a key word so as to make the body relevant. This is a very bad Parralax Wave as it stands, being six mana and on a vulnerable body no one is believing that is is actually reliable removal, and if it is the game is likely just over. If you get to answer four things with this then it is hard not to see how that leads to a win most of the time. Best case scenario this card is oppressive and worst case it is a really really poor attempt at a removal spell. There are so many subtle directional choices I could have gone with this card to make it more suitable. It is a showcase of inexperience in design. It seems reasonable for the cost, for the colour, and within the cycle, and yet it misses pretty hard. The change to 1/1 bird tokens felt like it would improve the card but it lacked power and pace as a finished for control while being too far up the curve and offering no wrath protection for the aggressor. I made a less polar upgrade to the card but that was all I fixed leaving a card that is still broadly unplayable in its place.
Golgari Command
Power 8
Design 5
This would be a little dangerous in constructed as it can bring something back for 2 mana while doing other powerful things. I can afford to be rather more generous with Zombify effects in design as there are no dorks in the format that exceed the casting threshold and thus can really abuse that cost reduction. There are no Griselbrands here. Realistically this is getting back a dork in the four mana range and only in the late game or with some significant effort to set up. It is also effectively needing 7 cards in the bin if you wish to recur something as you can't delve that away! While you cannot cheat this card it is still a heavy hitter almost always securing both a minimum two for one alongside significant tempo. Delve is a real cost however and doubly so in Golgari which are the yard colours in this format. There is so much in the way of things like escape that exiling six card from the bin to delve this out is pretty hefty. Not only is that costing you at least an escape cost, probably closer to two, it might well have to hit some card with some kind of recursion itself. Between being gold and being a much higher inbuild cost I am OK with the power level of this. It is not stood out as problematic as yet that is for sure. That is more luck than intent in this instance. The credit I can perhaps take for this is that it fulfils its brief about being the kind of card that does pull you goldwards. It is tempting with power but is also alluring as a card to play.
Golossus (banned)
Power 6
Design 2
This was an odd miss, or at least a unique one. It was never once played as a companion as the 20 land request was way too steep. It had some other issues in that you would prefer threat to value which is not what we have here. Despite not being a companion, this card was powerful enough to see a bit of play, just in the 40. As such it seemed wise to rework and rebalance this and try again for a more suitable Simic companion. Indeed, the idea for another Simic companion came first and gave the nudge to change this guy up a bit.
Here is the 2nd go at this gay, made into a Tatyova and no longer a companion. I significantly overcooked it! As well as leaving the working title... This is very much getting nerfed as this is a joke on power level. It is a lot closer to the card I want it to be though which is something.
Gone in a Flash (retuning)
Power 8
Design 4
Too powerful and convenient for a generic card that is not fun to play against. Flashback cost needs to be seven minimum. Probably need to up the cycling cost to 3 as well to stop this being a card you see in every white deck. That would limited to being a control card, which in turn might ruin the chances it has in cube where a more rounded removal spell that works similarly in all archetypes could take its place. The initial issue here is that I significantly over compensated for this style of removal. Only hitting attackers or blockers is quite limiting, very few have ever performed in cube and so I wound up giving this rather too much of a helping hand.
Good Tithings (cut)
Power 8.5
Design 2
I took one of the most polar and egregious types of cards out there and removed the aspect of the card that keeps them balanced. Either this card ruins your day, or it is a Plains, often a Plains that bails them out. This card could be printed with a slightly larger cycling cost and it would be reasonable in terms of power and risk/reward but it still wouldn't be a good card that led to good experiences and games.
Goodness Gracious
Power 10
Design 10
This is tongue and cheek because I can't do better than Fireball or Blaze in terms of design and yet it would be wrong to have a set without a red X spell. It is iconic. Comically this is one of the best spells in the format, what with the format being slow. That in turn makes the cycling really interesting as you just don't want to pitch it unless you have to. There is a good chance that holding it is going to win you the game eventually if you can afford to. Usually you might think that slapping cheap cycling on a card that is typically only weak because of poor early game performance is dangerous, but it seems to have worked out in this case. I had to keep it simple because the card is so iconic and blaze already exists leaving relatively little in the way of design space. Regardless of the high marks I have given this, I don't feel I can really take any credit..
Gorgon Weave
Power 6
Design 8
Visara the Dreadful in "For Mirrodin! equipment" form. This is a very slow card but it does have a degree of inevitability to it. Tokens leak out of everything and so all you really need to pair with this is mana and you are going to crack any defence open eventually. I am pretty happy with this. It gets an impressive amount of play without being that dominant of a card. It wins the odd game but mostly removal is able to keep it in check and things progress reasonably. My only concern is that it is perhaps a touch underpowered and the play it is getting is due to a deficiency in that general department in the format. Living weapon and For Mirrodin! are both just good mechanics that allow equipment to be more playable in a limited setting by removing much of the inherent risk. This feels like it could equip all the way from 7 down to 5 and it wouldn't do all that much to affect the power level.
Gravefeeder
Power 8
Design 5
Another of the cycle of graveyard disruption dorks. I felt black should be a touch better at it than the other colours with Withered Wretch precident along with it being more of a black colour pie effect than any other colour. Mostly this was making the ability colourless rather than coloured as was the case with the rest of the cycle. Turns out I overcooked this one even more than the Elvish Gardener. Any deck trying to care about life totals gets slapped about a bit too easily with this. It makes me wish there was an iteration of Food that was less life for lower costs to help balance cards like this. The proposed nerf to this is one off the toughness and a restriction to one use per turn of the ability. That should about do it. Plenty of wiggle room with how to tweak this one luckily.
Graveyard
Power 7
Design 6
I added the mill functionality to this from the first draft so that it was a little more self contained and interesting. This is certainly quite the late game bomb, very akin to Recurring Nightmare, which is of course the inspiration for the card. It is not great early but it does at least do something with the mill before you can afford to start tossing away land. Much as this has more lategame power than most of the cards in the set I am happy enough with that. This is a lot easier to answer than Recurring Nightmare for one, and I really need ways to close a game as another good argument for leaving it as it is.
Greed Demon
Power 6
Design 7
This was one of my first attempts at a Necropotence style card. It is very popular but rarely does it get to go wild. The mode use is absolutely 1 with this and I am yet to see more than 3 cards drawn with this. Much as it plays fine presently I think I can fiddle with it a bit and get it to play great. A 2 life kicker, a 3BB cost and a slight stats boost feel like they would push it in favourable directions across the board. The life cost and intense colour requirements limit this otherwise fair and fun card more than they need to. To start with I am just going to make it 2BB to open it up a bit and see where that leads. It is only this heavily black for flavour reasons and that is not healthy in cube.
Gray Demon (retuning)
Power 9
Design 4
Big overshoot on the power again, made this into a 4/4, lost the Treasure mode (mostly for cleaning it up as it was least used), and cut the Spawn tokens down to two. Still a great card as well... Lots of versatility, good board control, some good synergy and just a good healthy dose of power. The card is still at least a 7/10 with all those nerfs so the 9/10 grade might be under selling it...
Grey Elephant
Power 7
Design 8
I mostly made this as filler. Green didn't feel green enough so I made some cards like this. And this one is a real champ. People love him and he plays real nice. He is such a poster-boy for the colour. Bam, elephant in the trees. Good stats with trample. What could be more green. He is like the Tarmogoyf of the set. Puts in good work on the tempo front offering reliable stats and the trample to scale with things if needed. He just gets your game going in a nice real way. He gets the ball rolling real well without being underwhelming on power later on in the game.
Griffin Master
Power 7
Design 5
A shameless ripoff of Blade Splicer. That card has consistently performed well in cubes and I was lacking in that department. Beyond being a generically rounded and safe way to invest in board presence this is your go to proactive tempo card for a flicker synergy list. This plays like Blade Splicer in almost all ways except that it is a proactive version. Flying is a push through ability and that is what I need in the format to keep it healthy. At least when I rip off a card I do so with intent and in an appropriate way.
Griffin Whelp
Power 6
Design 5.5
Goblin Balloon Brigade modernized. As far as one drop beaters go this is more interesting than most but it is still a relatively dull card. You play it in aggro decks in need of the one drops and nowhere else. Flying does typically scale better late than most abilities making this one of the more well suited generic one dorks I made, which is lucky for this because it turns out I over did them and so lots had to go.
Grim Aethermancer (retuning)
Power 5
Design 6
Yet more tribuets/ripoffs as inspiration for design. In an energy deck this is pretty good but outside of one it is rather lacking. This needs three turns, two mana, and three cards in the bin to perform a Shock. Unimpressive. This could really do with a buff although it does see play as it is, even outside of energy decks. I think I just want to invert the charge ability to need to tuck only 2 cards while providing 3 energy. That should get that to where it wants to be.
Grounding (cut)
Power 4
Design 4
This might be elegant and reasonable but it is a sideboard card through and through. Those do not make for good cube cards. What you want is to take these effects and weave them into otherwise playable cards, not try and roll all these narrow effects into one. I like this card as a magic card but it is off what you are looking for in a cube card.
