Uberwurm
Power 6
Design 6
I had pretty much stopped making cards at the six mana spot but always felt like green needs to go one further. As such I tried to step up the power level and provide green a seven drop option. This is quite old schhol in that it has quite the high upkeep cost, but in practice, this is going to close games very fast. Unless you walk into a Wrath with too much enthusiasm you are going to be all good. This is 22/22 total stats if they want to kill in in combat. That will have cost you seven mana and two lands. Your first attack is for 12, most of that trample. This is super green feeling. It is a bit of a Grave Titan but pumped up and given a little bit of protection against sweepers. The main thing holdign this back is that you really want to be using it in a deck capable of powering out seven mana from about turn five. And you want to have lands to spare. This is absolutely the kind of card you can get yourself killed with if used improperly. That being said, it is one of the most effective finishers in the format and gets play to reflect that.
Uktabi Hydra (reworked)
Power 6
Design 6
This now only hits things with mana value less than or equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on it. It was being used too much as a recursive 4 mana Naturalize with a meagre cost of escape 1. That was not the intended purpose and was egregious. Or at least could be if you were packing enough targets. The simple fix has this working as intended and has resulted in a useful and rounded card. Not over powered but offering a lot of flexibility. Lovely to have a mana sink card that is useful at so many stages of the game.
Unconventional Trapper (retuning)
Power 4 (apparently!)
Design 5
Tappers did good work in cube for quite a lot of its history and so I thought a very minor buff is all they required to get love again. Somehow this guy didn't get any love. Probably a bit too slow acting and easily answered but even so. It is more than a bit better than a Gideon's Lawkeeper... I am not even sure making this a 1/2 is going to be enough. If people don't want a tapper then making it a tiny bit more durable isn't changing much. I did think about a 2/1 tapper for 1 but concluded this was a more interesting way to include a cornerstone card. Turns out the 2/1 might be necessary, although at that point we are probably letting go of the Phyrexian mana. I'll try the more potent version first of course!
Under the Sea (banned)
Power 8.5
Design 1
Oof. Not quite sure what I was on when I made this. I think my brain was just blank with me singing this away to myself. Anywho, a cloggy mess of a card. Far too powerful to start, but plenty wrong with it beyond that. Too many different tokens. Too much complexity in the creature tokens. Overly slowing the game down. No real saga theme, just an onslaught of stuff. I started trying to rework this and gave up fast. Just going to leave this as a note of what not to do. It is a delightful card in look and feel at least! Playful and bright.
United Defiance
Power 7
Design 8
I really like this one but it is a little dangerous. If blue small dorks ever get good enough, or there are enough decent blue token generating EtB dorks that will let you paly this off the back of them with ease then this will quickly scale up. It is already great in blue tempo decks and feels better than Force of Will! It is just that blue tempo decks are a bit sucky and this doesn't pull them up quite enough. Thematically I like counters that you need dorks to play with. The new blue Flare from MH3 is a great example of such a card. I just fear I am going to need to be more careful with my blue dorks going forwards. Cards like this make the tipping point on things rather narrower! Going 1UUU in cost is a reasonable way to protect this against getting too good too fast but the situation with suitable blue dorks to support this is presently a fair way off.
Unrest
Power 6.5
Design 7
Recoil is such an elegant card, it is soft removal but it does the thing and does so at card parity. It is highly playable while nice and fair. Unrest is simply Wrath but given the Recoil treatment. Mostly Unrest is lower power than a Wrath, aside from being more colour intense. Unrest simply fails to always answer a specific problem (unless they are hellbent) and can be annoying for allowing opponents EtB trigger reuses. There are fewer situations where this outperforms a Wrath. One of those being when you can preserve or reuse a key card of your own through this. The other being when you get to take out indestructible dorks or those otherwise resistant to destroy effects. On average this is just a fraction less good than a Wrath but this is still a Wrath at a reasonable rate. It clears the dorks, and often gains mana and card advantage while doing so. All the key features of a playable mass removal tool.
Unusual Growth
Power 5
Design 7
How to make Rampant Growth cost one mana. Or have echo. On turn one this is great. After that it is not so great. This isn't all that powerful. There is not a huge advantage to splitting the cost of Rampant Growth into two lots of one. You might as well make the one mana play on turn one and a normal Rampant Growth on turn two. The only real perk this has is the cycling, which you are somewhat forced into using most of the time if you can fire this off turn one. Cycling on ramp spells is great, better than on most other kinds of card, but 3 is a lot of mana. It somewhat traps this in your hand for a long time and ties up resources. Overall this is a pretty low powered card but it is surprisingly suitable all things considered and so gets probably more play than it deserves. It is also pretty interesting as far as Rampant Growth cards go and that is quite the achievement. Typically ramp is not complex or interesting or anything like that.
Unweave (cut)
Power 6
Design 5
This I made because I was surprised it didn't already exist. It just feels like this will exist for real at some point and so that compelled me to make it. I never really intended this to be part of the cube, it is a gold Disenchant, all the narrow and situational. If you need more of a thing in a format this isn't the way to go about it. Always nice to have that confirmed experimentally though! Also nice to have this made up ready for when wizards make it and I get to feel all big and clever. A card I am very happy to have in the format for constructed style events too.
Unyaro Elf
Power 7
Design 7
This is a reworked "Lion's Eye Elf" that moved away from the name and art purely for flavour reasons. This no longer adding three means it has little to do with Lion's Eyes. Basically I love the concept of the pay X mana to add X+1 mana cards but on a one drop mana dork pay 2 and gain GGG is really cumbersome. So much so that the card was pretty bad and was limited to being a mono green card. This iteration is much cleaner and easier to use. Generally still worse than a Llanowar Elf however situationally better being able to effectively convert other kinds of mana into green. The thing I like most about this kind of card in my format is the way they work with Powerstone tokens in converting them to real mana output. That pushes this card above where a Llanowar Elf would sit in the meta.
Urborg Confluence
Power 8
Design 6
Quite the odd card but a pretty effective one. Triple proliferate on a card interests me, you can do some wild things with it. The most wild would likely be super surprise ultimates on planeswalkers but given that I didn't make too many of those that is rather less of a thing. Give two things -2/-2 with the utility of two proliferates is quite juicy but it is situational. Instant has made this quite the scary combat trick. Should this start to feel tedious I would be inclined towards making it a sorcery. It looks like a sorcery and feels like it probably should be just because of the various scary potentials a card that can triple proliferate has! Comically it is the triple Raise Dead mode that is most devastating. It is several serious scary threats back, it is card advantage that doesn't consume nominal deck power, and it is super easy to ensure you have targets with so many cyclers. As yet this has won several games by getting back three dorks and just having massive power and value to overwhelm. It has not dominated games using the other modes yet. When used as removal it feels pretty fair, if anything a bit over cost and restrictive in what it can do, making it rather situational. It is the Raise Dead that is carrying it. That all being said, it is on a watch list for being a potentially sketchy card capable of being tedious or unenjoyable.
Ursine Spirit Guide (retuned)
Power 7
Design 6
The original was a bit over powered, just adding a mana to the scavenge mostly sorted that out. Really this is just a versatile and pushed combat trick. You almost never make it in Bear mode. Possibly I should lose one of the discard options to neaten the card up. This has led to some quite swingy plays, which is to be expected for a combat trick. What is less expected is how playable the card is and thus the frequency of those swingy plays. The card is fine, it is the sort of thing green needs given the general lack of removal. I like the feel of the card and I like how it plays for a single target creature buff tool. It is hard to get anything of that nature to stick in cube settings and so this being playable feels like a win.
Upend
Power 8
Design 6
Arguably a little too playable. We finally found out what it takes to make a three mana hard counter cube worthy. This has significantly out performed the Cancel that gives you a treasure. Most of that comes from how splashable this is with single blue to cast and the option on cycling when you don't even have access to blue. It feels a bit off somehow. Easily fixed by making it 1UU or slightly lowering the scope on what it can counter. The former change would probably kill it, the later sounds like a tough balance to strike. This card is certainly on a watchlist for turning up too often and rather over performing. While never broken I do see more of this card than I would like to.
Useful Dead
Power 8
Design 8
This is the Phyrexian Rager we always needed. Black always got stiffed when it came to utility dorks. Green laughing away with Elvish Visionary and Young Wolf while black has Dusk Legion Zealot and Butcher Ghoul etc... Anyway, in a more kind and equal world, this is the card black deserves. Wildly playable but delightfully fair. It is rare to see these left out of a black deck but as far as universal cards go, this is how I want them to look. This is just a good card for the game generally and the kind of way and place it is fine to let a little more power leak out.
Vanadinite Powerstone
Power 8
Design 6
Vandals
Power 6
Design 8
Red has loads of these cards throughout history but we don't have one at an upto date power level, or certainly not a clean and simple one. This is the perfect sort of card to have clean and simple. Great for the format but always a supporting role, never a main character. This looks like a card that should have existed already in magic.
Vanquish
Power 8
Design 6
Much as this is fairly dull it plays real well. It is one of the gold removal spells I am most keen to keep. I made a load but found them to be generally hogging slots. The cards were fine but the cube as a whole was healthier when I cut them in favour of mono coloured options. The clean directness and high effectiveness of this one in the removal colours makes it feel really on point. In the real world this would be even cleaner and wouldn't come with the cycling but that is what makes it play so well in cube. You can't play too much removal in cube, you always want a bit more. Play too much though and your deck is inconsistent. You sit there doing nothing a lot and wasting time and advantage. A real hidden strength of Vanquish is that you can play it on top of other removal. The cycling makes it somewhat of a free include. Feels mad cycling away your most powerful removal spell but it is surprisingly often right in the slower matchups.
Vatmonger (retuning)
Power 7
Design 7
The adventure has been made sorcery speed as it was quite unreasonable otherwise. Now the card is generally pretty fair but quite interesting. Incubate is a versatile mechanic allowing you protection against mass removal and has both counters and artifact synergies. The typical case for this guy is Spawn with X = 1 on turn two then flop this out turn three with an attack the following turn making you incubate token at least a 3/3. This still isn't wild value, seven mana for a 2/4 and a 3/3 is nothing to write home about, even if that 2/4 is a bit proliferaty. What makes this card good is not the raw power level but the versatility. You can curve pretty well with a single card. You can save the incubate token for a long game. You can skip it altogether should you have a better selection of things to key off the proliferate. Later on Spawn simply acts as an impressive mana sink. You get a sizeable threat and that keeps the card pretty relevant and useful throughout. Not a bomb but a card with a lot going on.
Vernal Vernon
Power 7.5
Design 8
I didn't have many depictions of treefolk I wanted to use and I had a surprising number of treefolk designed. This art has such a silly face I think it commands a somewhat silly name. Although verging on an Un-set aesthetic I am very fond of this one and I certainly love playing it. Of all the cards to have this is the one making me keen to go mono green. Double mana is just a great time. There is enough ways to draw and sink mana, and green is already looking to do that sort of thing as it is a typically rampy colour. Vernon is just a natural fit in green. He is also the most flavourful of the mana doubling cards with the likes of Vernal Bloom and Nissa Who Shakes the World providing precident. I wanted to give them all a reasonable chance of living and so this wound up as a 2/5. I am not sure I care enough to tweak it but I probably would make it a 2/4 if I were to make it again. It is powerful enough and a 2/4 reach is so much more iconically green.
Visions
Power 6
Design 5
Strictly better Sleight of Hand, a card I rate and play highly in all other forms of cube. Despite being better than a good card in a higher powered format this got very limited play in my homemade cube. There was just enough consistency baked into stuff that this sort of thing wasn't bridging a very large gap. I had used various forms of cycling and bolted on enough scrying, enough Lay of the Land effects, that a little bit of cheap cantrip card quality doesn't offer a lot. Where total power in a deck actually counts for something there starts to be a more real cost to playing card quality effects. I like the look and feel of this one and so would like to buff it to playable. Blue is a touch shorter on instant card quality than I would like and I think this is the most reasonable candidate for that buff. I am just not entirely sure I am comfortable making a card so obviously above the power level of where real magic is at.
Viti Levu (cut)
Power 5
Design 4
Vizier of the Flicker (banned)
Power 8
Design 2
This was really tedious and powerful. It had to be killed, twice. It was like a Mother of Runes but proactive as well. Not only does this protect other dorks but it is giving you endless EtB triggers which can all but lock people out of the game. This was not a good candidate for a card to give embalm. I heavily reworked this into a companion with a whole lot less power than this. It still wants killing but you only have to do it once and you have a lot more time and usually warning before doing so. This was too powerful while also having a less than favourable play pattern. Easy and welcome ban. Didn't like the flavour of the card much either, lazy naming harmed the likability.
Void Muncher (reworked)
Power 6
Design 6
I felt compelled to try for a big Eldrazi. They are kind of the poster boy for magic in that department. While not wild as far as Eldrazi go, this is the biggest thing in my cube. This is the original design and it was fine but a little too hard to include sensibly. A rework allowing it to be cast more readily and a little down turn in punch to go with that and the card is surprisingly in quite a healthy place. The main change was adding a forecast mode that produced Scion tokens which in turn would fix the colourless on the casting cost for you. That makes the card playable in any mana base. A fine card for a top end control finisher or a ramp deck. Likely passable in a recursion based deck too if I decide to make such a thing an option at some point down the line.
Voidsphere (retuned)
Power 8
Design 4
You never don't play this at two mana and so I have upped it to cost three. I may come to regret that but it certainly commands testing. While Disperse is never broken, it is very useful. A bit like a combat trick, you don't always want one, but when you do they can be pretty great. The island cycling takes away so much of the risk and adds a great deal of overall consistency. I am not averse to any of these things. Disperse is pretty fair, as is the land at a mana cost. It is just not ideal to have a card with 100% play as far as I am concerned. That being said, if it plays well what is the problem? Hence the need to test this at three so as to compare and contrast how I feel about the two mana version.
Volcano
Power 8
Design 7
Volcanic Stream
Power 8
Design 7
Volrath's Garden
Wall of Memories
Power 7
Design 6
Somewhere between Snapcaster Mage and Eternal Witness. A little better than Mage because it doesn't end up exiling the spell, and it lets you split up the cost of it and said spell. That being said, no flash nor ability to output damage, and even the self exile are all marks against it. It has to self exile to stop loops with the likes of Time Walks but it does make the design less elegant than Snapcaster. This may well wind up getting cut mostly for that inelegance. It isn't a card that brings something new, nor something needed, nor even something all that fun overall. Nothing wrong with the card but certainly not something I would use to advocate the set.
Warmachine Factory
Power 7?
Design 6
My initial cycle of manlands had all been a little impotent. They were small utility dorks able to nibble rather than real threats. As such I made this thing to fill that void. It gets a healthy amount of play but has yet to do too much in game. That is sort of where I want it to be. I may tweak the numbers a little if the power isn't quite right as and when I see it doing stuff in game, or indeed if it continues to not do so for a long time! Mostly I will keep it in this larger size of dork to give it relevance and contrast to the duals. I want this the kind of card you need to be aware of once it hits the board.
Will of the Phyrexian
Power 7
Design 8
Very happy with this counterspell. The two life cost is real. As is the blue intensity. This can be the best hard counter in the format, it can be worse than cancel. I like the way this pays homage to counterspell, remains super clean and simple, and does all this while having impressive balance. One of my favourite uses of the Phyrexian mana in the casting cost of a spell. Love the text box here too. Mmm.
War Song (cut)
Power 7
Design 5
Oddly this is a card that is a bit dangerous on the one hand but also a bit narrow for cube. I was somewhat shocked how little this got played and how inconvenient it was what it did get play. It was usually just cycled away at first convenience, which usually wasn't convenient. You were forced into having hand slots tied up, then mana tied up, and for relatively little payoff. It just pushed a game the way it is already going. People want threats, especially in the kinds of deck this is good in. My format was too consistent and too power hungry to use up slots on stuff like this apparently. I can't however see this being any thing other that scary dangerous in a constructed setting where you can somewhat build around it, or at least scale it up nicely.
Warrior Class (cut)
Power 7
Design 6
Goad is mostly a flavour thing here making this more of a four mana card than a one drop. The concept is modelled on a classic World of Warcraft warrior but I do like the end result as a top down effort. I think it is really flavourful and cool. It really made me want to have the ability to equip and attack with yourself in the game! Much as I like how this card plays it is all a bit much. I am not sure it is worth the text. I think really, I should just have level 2 on an enchant of that cost and have done with it. The rest is window dressing. This is great but for a set of cards you are going to have to learn, this sort of text heavy thing has to be really worth it. This is just cool, not core.
Waspsprite
Power 7
Design 6
Any fans of sibilance out there? If so, this is a name just for you. This was an experiment that worked out well. I had made rather a lot of token stuff and I wanted to calm the power of those things as well as the power of planeswalkers. Protection from tokens feels like a legit magic thing. This card is pretty good. Comes out easily then slaps pretty hard. It does do a reasonably job of battling planeswalkers which earns it a spot in a variety of lists. Not 100% sure how on colour-pie the firebreathing is but I have had no objections as yet.
Wasteland Nomads
Power 5
Design 4
I thought I would try and give Boreal Elf a bit of an upgrade. I could have gone further. This is still one of the last mana dorks you play. Cycling is nice but less useful than you might think. Even into the late game there is a reasonable chance you still want more mana. This could well have been a 1/2 and had cycling for just 2 or even G. It isn't popular because it doesn't help you cast spells as well as other mana ramp cards and that is what they are for. Yes, this ramps just as well but that is only relevant when you are able to use the extra mana. It feels real bad when you can't. In a world full of ramp and fixing, you have to really want that cycling option to forgo the fixing. There is also something a little messy about this card, the cycling probably should just be 2 and the stats probably 1/1 and that would all feel a lot smother and neater. I was trying too hard to make this distinct when all it needed was to be Boreal Elf with simple cycling.
Water Elemental (reworking)
Power 7.5
Design 5
Another Hearthstone inspired dork. For some reason I slapped on both islandwalk and ward, the former for flavour, the latter because cube has trained me to avoid any creature card that costs four or more and doesn't do anything right away. This dude probably could have gotten away without either. This is a lot of stats and a lot of board control. It is the sort of tool blue needs to stabilize a game and thus reasonably well sought after. The theming is good but I am not sure how mechanically apt it is. It doesn't play horribly but it would be hard to credit it with more than that. I have removed the Islandwalk and the card is less randomly tedious but it is still very potenent.
Waterfall
Power 8
Design 6
Watermills
Power 7
Design 7
One of the best energy sources in the format. Also a fairly good way to make a land into a "storage" land should you have a big old mana hungry deck that wants to fire off some big turns. Mostly this is providing energy and not mana which surprised me a little. I was wary of giving blue such a reasonable looking way to stockpile mana but it isn't off pie by any means, nor has it ever been a problematic mechanic. Thankfully it remains that way and so this can do a lot of good work supporting energy builds. I am keeping an eye on this one but it is presently a lot of fun and seemingly not a problem.
We Are Legion
Power 5
Design 6.5
A really popular top end pile of stats. You get 12/12 here with seven bodies and a smattering of abilities to improve those bodies. While this is a lot of stuff I have yet to be impressed with what it does. It is hard to push through a win with this kind of card. If these tokens were going to win then you were probably winning already with the random junk you made leading upto the six mana mark. Sure, the angel is relevant but it is easily answered and is so late in the day. The 4 power thing two turns after your six drop sounds like a small problem away in the distance. I am always intrigued by a card that is popular but lacking in power, or at least underperforming. Especially when it is six mana. I am hard pressed to put powerful game winning six drops in and yet this one keeps showing up! I am not going to cut it while people play it but I don't see the fortunes of the card turning round, and as such I think people will steadily play it less to a point where I will cut it in favour of a card with more fun and more effectiveness.
Weapons Trainer (cut)
Power 5.5
Design 6
I thought this was push the boat out a bit. This is both a useful utility dude and a perfectly decent one drop beater. Also a rare example of a card that scales well with vigilance! I figured this would be a staple one drop for white aggro but the card saw very little play and did very little beyond being a generic one drop beater. Turns out that the way to compensate for my format in your aggro white deck is to not over do it with weak cards. As such, this sort of thing gets edged out in favour of things that do a bit more. I like everything about this card. It is option rich. It is mechanically and thematically on theme. Mostly what it does is a poor job at reaching my expectations of it. I made too many one drops, and needed fewer than I was expecting. The result is that cards like this don't perform and they don't excite. Most of my cube career has been under the yolk of a one drop bottleneck. The best way to draft a white weenie deck was to pick threats by curve and aim at the cheapest thing possible. One drops were the jackpot and consequently excited. How quickly and easily one can undo that!
We E'est Compleated
Power 8
Design 8
A versatile and powerful planeswalker. Originally it was easier to produce birds and the card was a bit too threatening. The quintessential walker is; draw a card, kill a thing, or make a thing. This is essentially that with a few added 'all' and 'each' terms to make it a bit more interesting. The only means to grow loyalty helping the opponent is a nice extra quirk. This design of compleated planeswalker is pretty cool in general as it allows a multiplicity of modality which scales up that option density all sorts of quickly. A real hit of a card and one of whites most interesting. While this one is performing a little above where I would like it that is something I will slowly and gently fix via the meta rather than changing up this card.
Whale Serpent (reworking)
I have managed to repeatedly get this one wrong. This was attempt one and it was foolishly broken. It was just such a wild swing. It didn't last long. The first time it was flickered it was clear that a monster of unreasonable gameplay had been created.
Second go at this one arguably more of a cockup. Sure, pound for pound this is worse than the first go at six mana, but this wins the game at big mana and is a perfectly reasonable play at 4 and 5... I turned a broken card into a more versatile bomb! Currently I am scaling this back in power.
Whalefish (reworking)
Power 8
Design 4
This isn't a wholly unreasonable card for another colour but in blue it does too much to plug their short comings. This is just a pile of relatively cost effective "free" stats. The clue ensures the card cost is minimal and so this gets chucked into most places. I need to make this a less appealing tempo play. Big is fine but big and cheap is problematic. A colour can have cards like this or counterspells, both and it gets ugly. My present concept for a rework is slightly more stats but last strike to go with them.
Wheel of Madness (cut - probably banned)
Power 7
Design 6
A slightly more dangerous version of the black Ancestral Recall that uses this mechanic. Both are a bit dodgy later on as the mana cost is so high however both perform very well in the first turns as a very potent card quality and setup tool. This one provides immense graveyard support on top of the various other perks making it something I will almost certainly end up banning. It is not there yet for limited play but I am actively trying to make the graveyard plans better so it is only a matter of time before this becomes too good. The good early, bad late play pattern of this will also then lead to it being far more polar than I want any card being. So, while this is quite cool and impressively fair for a powerful one mana card, it is all a bit dangerous and extreme. A very close experimetnal card.
Whim of the Gods
Power 8
Design 6
The other way one could interpret Supreme Verdict. Blue gives flash right? This is arguably a bit much. It answers many of the things that are typically problematic threats for control decks to handle. This was conceieved in a world where control decks were struggling but arrived in a world where control decks were dominant. I am hopeful I can turn the tables somewhat and get this to a reasonable place. I think it would be a 7 in my unpowered cube and only a 6 in the powered one.
Wild Incantation
Power 7
Design 6
Red has a load of card quality in the homemade cube. If we are looking at one mana effects it outdoes green and is the number two after blue. However, a lot of this is exile and play soon or involves discarding. There is little in the way of the classic, pay one mana, get a choice of some cards in some way and get that chosen card into hand. This is less powerful than a lot of red card quality on offer but it is more playable than most. You can freely toss it into the bigger red decks that want this kind of thing more without fear of exiling or discarding away big key cards. Convenience is typically what you want from your support cards and so this highly playable offering is doing well for itself.
Windmills (cut)
Power 5
Design 5
The white take on Watermill and a rather significant downgrade in power. White isn't really into Food. It doesn't need lifegain and has little that interacts with Food, that is more of a green thing. Flavour wise this is a big win but white decks just don't want or need what this offers. Some mana sinks and some Food synergy cards would change that but I am not intentionally working on that or anything at present. This is a card that is fundamentally fine but just isn't in a meta that has any need of it.
Wild Bog
Power 6
Design 6
This is the cycle of saclands I created. They are a bit on the cumbersome side but they do achieve all the things I was trying to do with them from a mechanical point of view. The power level of these is very reasonable, arguably too reasonable. As is generally the case with these sorts of card, the fixing is top rate. It is the tempo cost that makes these harder to stomach. Especially as most of the non-basic targets are coming in tapped themselves.
Wild Crag
Wild Isle
Wild Meadows
Wild Wonder
Power 6.5
Design 7
A very early design of mine that foretold much about my design philosophy. This card is pretty iconically the sort of thing I love to make. This is super green, super playable in green, and just a kind of generically good feel good filler card that lets you plod on with playing a game. The density of this sort of thing is a big part of why so many games end up nearing the end of their libraries.
Wild Wood
Wildfires (reworked)
Power 7
Design 4
Much like the blue Time Walk with land cycling this is just a bit powerful to be so free. You don't often cast it but when you do it feels pretty unreasonably. A Wrath that happens to Stone Rain them a couple of times for fun? Not so fun it turns out. I was trying to represent some classic big red spells like Inferno and Wildfire but failed to keep it as symmetrical as I should have. The rework is simply that, symmetry on all aspects of the card.
Wildseeking (banned)
Power 7
Design 2
Over powered at one mana and underpowered at two, by a larger margine than most of these catch-up cards too. Although I like the effect of this card it is a shocker of a design. You want to know what your card quality costs so you can build with that in mind. There are not many decks were I would happily change a one mana card quality spell for a two mana one and just leave it at that without any further thought or changes. I may rework this into more of a Malevolent Rumblings affair as I want to support green graveyard synergies more. I like the art and the name is fine so it seems a shame to have thrown it all away on the terrible catch-up cards.
Wildspeaking
Power 7
Design 6
Garruk Wildspeaker's saga card. I couldn't sensibly put an Overrun on this so it became a single target buff. I loved this card enough to be happy with that compromise! This is one of my all time favourite pictures in the game and I love the overall feel of this card. Untapping lands is always a pretty good time, and in a world with fortifications kicking about it has some extra zing. This card is a little on the free side, it costs at most one mana, is very easy to slot into any sort of deck, and is well worth that card and mana investment once all is said and done. Phase III is hefty and does a great job of threatening walkers, forcing something relevant through, or just providing a substantial tempo swing. There is an argument this needs to be 1GG but it has gotten a pass on that so far by being so lovely to behold and so reasonable to play.
Winged Colt
Power 7
Design 6
One of the hardest things to do was making generic beater dorks. Just stats and keywords. Cube is one of the most hostile environments to such things and requires only the most pushed of cards. Tarmogoyf has ever been the posterboy of stats for mana and he has struggled to be relevant in cube for a long while. I managed to get this one action by piling on those most relevant of key words. Healer's Hawk is good, keeping that efficient model but scaling it up such that is it more significant was always going to work out well. This card is hard to race and a relevant meaningful threat. A nice thing to buff up as an aggro deck or to deploy early as a midrange deck and take control of the game. It is dull but it is effective and playable.
Withering (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
I was hoping to have a bit more of a theme with counters and proliferate but it should come as no shock that a little bit killing all of their guys then ticking that up slowly across the board is woefully ineffective! As single target removal this is a shocker. Over the course of a game this can do a bit more but you will lose the opportunity cost of the yard stuff. Most other escape cards offer more bang for the buck on resources they consume and so this guy gets the boot. Either you want to play good spot removal, or you want graveyard value and as such you should never want this card. It might look like it does both but it does both badly and so work out what you want and find a card that does that well!
Wolf Pack (cut)
Power 5
Design 6
Another highly popular but simple and dull token producer. This just chucks out wolves. It looks like it should be great. Value, threat, and even ultimately tempo. You might be down the first couple of turns but from wolf three onwards you should be well up on tempo. Despite looking great this continues in the rich tradition of underperforming. Vanilla tokens drip fed just don't do enough.
Wood Elf Elder (cut)
Power 5
Design 4
A reworking of Tribe-Elder that makes unreliable and somewhat undesirable. In theory this should be better as you save a mana. In practice you just want to ramp reliably. If you are playing this you might as well play a dork that just taps for mana and ramp to three. I could easily have given this a power to make it look even more like the Sakura inspiration, it wouldn't have done much to improve the card. This played OK but it just didn't ever feel good. You really felt it not being Tribe Elder and that comparison soured this card too much to want to keep it about.
Wood Goblin (cut)
Power 5
Design 6
This is another card I designed because I thought it should exist rather than because I felt it would go well in my meta. I could have designed this in a way that would make it rather more playable in a limited setting. This is a conditional gold card as it stands, and, while a mana dork is rare in red, it isn't in green and the need of having a forest means you might as well just play green mana dorks! This guy isn't really servicing a need nor is he doing it all that well. He does however feel loads like a real magic card. I probably should have simply given him the Arbor Elf templating, that would have been even cleaner of a design. Regardless, I have cut this card from the cube but I do hope to one day use this in a more constructed setting.
Wood Troll
Power 6
Design 6
This was a design to order style card and it shows. I was trying to make a generic resilient green threat in the mid mana value range. A kind of Thrun card. A tricky starting place as resilient often means uninteractive which in turn tends to mean not fun. This card certainly achieves that! While it is hard to kill it is mercifully low tempo and pretty mana intensive if it is in the mood to get threatening. Ultimately this works because it is a late game card masquerading as a three drop. At three this is mostly a Grey Ogre that you ignore because of the ward. It is not till they have mana spare and your life is a little thinner that this thing starts to look real scary. Means to give this trample turn it from annoying to terrifying. Much as this is a fairly boring card, given what I was trying to make I am pretty happy with how it turned out. It plays fine and provides a desired service.
Wooden Sphere
Power 7
Design 7
The answer to what a green mana rock should look like - a Llanowar Elf. This is one of my favourite examples of upcycling a card. This is an art I love with a real flavourful feel to it as well. Sadly the name and pic were origionaly squandered on a complete waste of a card mechanically. Given the name was so spot on and the card was so dud I felt reasonable in stealing and giving a more desirable text box. This really is a side grade to Llanowar Elf and for such an obvious and simple card I am really happy with that.
Woodsman Spider
Power 7
Design 8
You got to have a Giant Spider. That card is heroic in almost all ways. Giant Spider is such a good magic card that I am happy giving this an 8/10 design! Everything comes together nicely here. The nostalgia, the balance, the consistency.
Wurm Calling
Power 7
Design 7
One of the premium energy payoff and win condition cards. Viable win condition in land heavy lists too. So much so that the activation got made sorcery speed only. Having an army of 6/6 trample dudes show up at and dodge all sorcery speed interaction before slapping you was unreasonable. I am pleased with how so many aspects rolled into one neatly here. It is nice to have some lynchpin cards giving you things to work towards.
Yawgmoth's Command
Power 7
Design 6
Generically powerful coverall spell. This is almost always a relevant two for one with a reasonable tempo expectation. If you cannot use this to do more than make some tokens then you are probably winning pretty hard already! Too many of these generic modal spells dose tend towards making a cube feel a bit more homogenous. You can absolutely go passed the point of it being nice to have the consistency and access to some narrower effects and roll straight into the cards and games are looking samey. With limited slots for modal cards you want the best in them and I think this is one such card. The sorcery speed and high cost stop this being a card you just auto include. It is always good, but it is always more important to have this than a juicy five drop threat? A three mana iteration of this probably does just always get run. I like how this is a sneaky Disenchant effect in black without feeling off colour pie. Indeed, quite the opposite, this card feels incredibly black. In hindsight I might have preferred the discard mode as a Raise Dead as discard plays a lot worse. This already has good interactive disruptive modes, why add another that no one really enjoys? That being said, my cube is discard light and relatively Raise Dead heavy.
Yavimaya Titan (retuning)
Power 9
Design 6
I have perpetually been on the fringes of nerfing this badboy. Infact, I have, he no longer has trample! It made little difference. Mostly this is a massive eternal Witness and that is great. Really great. Like a fair bit better than Eternal Witness great. He would still get a lot of play if he was just that. The other modes are useful and help out but are not the core of the card so to speak. This plus Raise Dead cards has been winning a fair number of games. Hard to beat the eternal 5/5 smacker, especially a trampling one.
You Fucked With Squirrels
Power 8.5
Design 6
Just Secure the Wastes but green. Inspired fully by a little clip in a Rick and Morty episode. Saw this art and it reminded me of that and here we are. I was trying to keep the set somewhat clean so that I can teach magic to others, including my kid. This will have to be side lined for such tasks, along with a few others I am sure... Despite that slightly awkward facet I do love the flavour of this one. It feels ominous, like the clip it hailed from, and like the way it plays! Despite Secure the Wastes being in a better suited colour with all the creature buffs, and not being a very strong card, in my cube it is one of the premium finishers. Certainly green is well able to put a lot of mana into this which in turn helps it be a good finisher. There is just something about the way X spells scale that results in this always feeling like quite a big swing. I am a fan of this being so premium as it is so clean mechanically speaking.
Young Knight (cut)
Power 6.5
Design 5
I did quite a lot of these one drops that you pay to get an ability. This was one of the more powerful ones but it was also pretty boring. I thought they would be a bit more dynamic with their options but it just seemed to add complexity without enhancing much. This was one of the best of those designed but over performing from a sample size that wants trimming is dangerous too! First strike is a bit of a dodgy mechanic, white has too many one drops, and there need to be fewer one drops with activated keywords. This was a very easy place to make a little breathing room for other cards.
Zalfirim Djinn
Power 8.5
Design 6
The blue five drop flagship dork. This guy started life with ward 2 and was unpopular with opponents. At ward 1 it all feels more reasonable. This is a great card that just does what you want a limited magic card to do. It is a massive presence on the board, a reasonable threat, a good use of mana, and costs no card resources. This gets a lot of play and does a good job in most places.
Zanam Efreet
Power 5
Design 6
Somewhere between Rainbow Efreet and Serendib Efreet this guy can be found. Originally I was going to make this a 3/4 in homage to the Serendib but I feared it would provide too much risk free board control to blue. This isn't much of a threat as it is only able to output two points of damage a turn. It isn't meaty enough to really dominate a board, and it has too little value to be much of a midrange card. This is somewhat aimless and somewhat homeless. Much as I like it I am not sure what to do with it nor what direction to try and take it in. I like the feel of the card but cannot really think what kind of deck might actually want this. The answer is probably a deck about 30 years back in time... I could easily reduce the phasing cost on this to 2U and it still wouldn't look all that. Perhaps the 3/4 was necessary, it just feels dangerous.
Zimzam Djinn (reworking)
Power 3
Design 5
I quite liked the idea of the condition on this one, a nice incentive to a red control strategy. Sadly I failed to make the card relevant or powerful enough to entice. A means of evasion is needed here to make the notion of a big indestructible dork at all appealing. The drawback is pointless too, really just flavour. I should probably have done what they did with Phyrexian Obliterator and just flip it. This should be pinging everything, not just you! Then we might have a card we are happy to forgo nonlands for.
Zimzam Mage
Power 5.5
Design 5
A pretty shameless rip of Soul-Scar Mage. The card has always performed well and done good work supporting one of my favourite archetypes. I wanted to harness that goodness and so this guy got made. The second line of text is yet to be relevant but I like that it is out there helping tedious cards be less tedious. I instantly want to make cards that reduce ward values! There is a lot of that out there compared to what this guy negates. Zimzam is one of very few fully fabricated places are, most other names are stolen from Magic itself or some real world thing. It is derived from the vague sound of Juzzam and stuck because it is fun to say, especially infront of Djinn. Sadly prowess has not faired all that well and is yet to do better than being a 2nd tier deck. The red aggro decks will happily play this too but it is not more than filler there.
