Homemade Cube Part 2

 

This article is going to a look into design space and where to find it. When trying to hit a similar level of power/playabiltiy on your card design, while trying to also keep them simple, it is restrictive to say the least. As such I was milking any areas of untapped design space pretty hard. Unsurprisingly this meant that a few of the more interesting set mechanics that have not been revisited were some of the most untapped and open as far as design space goes. Things like exert have only appeared once properly so far and thus has room to expand. 

Some of the newer mechanics that are more ever green are also still somewhat open. Ward in particular is relatively new and also a really strong one that helps solve some other design issues in the game. I found I used a whole lot of ward throughout the set. It is just such a clean solution to the issue of higher cost cards that do not have an immediate effect. Without ward they are just hard to play and mostly contribute to dead design space. Sprinkle in a bit of ward and suddenly a lot of otherwise overly risky card designs become possible.

Treasure, clues, and to a lesser extent blood, food, and incubate tokens, are all relatively new to magic and are a fantastic way to tune cards. Just between clues and treasure the design space in magic grew a pretty vast amount. While these mechanics have been around for some time now we haven't really seen the surface scratched yet in terms of their potential and so plenty of that has shown up in my cube too. Add a mana cost to a card, add a Treasure to the effect. Remove mana costs and give treasure away! That already gives most balanced cards a fairly wide range within the normal casting bounds. 

Clues on the other hand are less direct. You can turn a card draw into an investigate and lop some mana off the initial cost of the spell. Or increase the power of the spell. Alternatively you can use it to make low power effects that are not worth a card but that need to remain cheap to be useful and viable. Halting Order is just a reworked Remand

Seals of Something were a surprise area of untapped potential that isn't new or linked to a set mechanic. Just taking an effect normally found on an instant or sorcery and slapping it on an enchantment of the same cost that you sacrifice to gain the effect. I am somewhat shocked Wizards has not returned to this concept since Masques block. It is clean and interesting, and because Wizards have not I went fairly heavily in on the Seal design concept with several for each colour.

Energy was over powered when released into standard with Kaladesh but it was never cube worthy being too narrow with too few powerful cards able to support it. It wasn't popular because of the power level but I really liked the mechanic, both from a design point of view and a play pattern perspective as well. Designing energy cards for a limited environment is a little more awkward as it is somewhat of a parasitic mechanic. To overcome this I made quite a lot of energy cards, contained them to three colours, and made almost all of them playable in their own right. This latter aspect wouldn't fly in a set going to standard, the cards are simply too good if you could use four copies of the ones you want. Further to that the cards are a little messier than I would like as they tend to have a means to gain energy as well as a means to spend it. This extra mess is worth it as I get to play with energy in the cube and I get a huge amount of open design space as you can somewhat do everything in terms of energy, often in several different ways. One of the nice things about designing a set in isolation is that you do not need to worry about the effect of the cards in constructed events. That lack of having to consider other formats probably opened up more design space than anything else. A lot of the cards that shouln't be printed in standard could easily be fixed for that with extra wording or powering down but those things take away from my goals with this cube and as I don't need to I didn't bother. 

Phyrexian mana is another hated mechanic but this was broadly because of how poorly it was used in design and not the mechanic itself. It is just an interesting alternate cast mode and used sensibly you can create some very clean modal cards that neither break the colour pie nor leave themselves open to abuse. The most awkward thing about the mana type was flavour. A bit like incubate tokens I felt compelled to have a phyrexian theme on cards using their mana symbols. Phyrexian Dictate is just an Infernal Grasp, which is a fine card, and Murder, which is weak but functional. This design offers a very minor upgrade to Grasp that adds a little extra interest while also cleaning the whole thing up a little. Not that Grasp is messy but still, elegance is always appreciated. More room for flavour text!

Escape is another mechanic really only found in the one set that I have tried to make reasonable use of. I wanted the graveyard to be a more general resource rather than a specific one for big bombs like Treasure Cruise. As such I have carefully added a bit of general delve and escape to ensure yards are relevant and in need of management. I found I was using it on build around cards as a way to make those effects more available to decks wishing to use them. This Bloodseeker is a weaker Zulaport Cutthroat however it adds more to that sort of a deck by being more available. 

So there we have it, the places I managed to find room to do simple clean stuff without having to innovate massively. I am sure there are some more untapped areas and mechanics one could do more of this with should one be so inclined. Quite impressive for a game that has tens of thousands of unique cards and that has been going for thirty years! I did an article recently wondering if magic was "nearing completion" and I concluded that in many ways it was as it was not lacking for anything. In another sense however there is near infinite potential. In a month or so of designing without the aid of a team or a multi-million dollar corporation backing me I have managed to find a whole cubes worth of relatively fresh, simple, and playable designs. And it has been a blast doing so!