Homemade Cube Part I

I have recently embarked on a project which has fully rejuvenated my love of Magic. I have been designing my own cards for a fully custom cube. I didn't really plan to do it, a couple of other projects and ideas collided and that is somehow what I ultimately found myself doing. Not only that but I found I was really enjoying it to the point of near obsession. Once I had made a card I was happy with I started to gain a weird affection for said card. It became apparent this was quite the passion project. 

It started with the Blueprint Cube ( https://mtgcube.blogspot.com/2023/04/blueprint-cube.html ) and an article I wrote about magic feeling complete ( https://mtgcube.blogspot.com/2022/12/is-magic-complete.html ). Both mercifully short articles by my standards! The blend of those two sets of ideas floating around my head at the same time lead me to consider what remaining design space there was in the game. Obviously infinite but when you are trying for clean, clear design, as per the Blueprint cube, and when you are aiming at a very consistent and even power level and playability on the cards, it all becomes a whole lot less infinite. And that much more of a challenge. 

I started out wanting to just see how easy it was and what I could make. I was just aiming at cube power level cards that were really simple and elegant designs and seeing if I really thought Magic was complete and running out of things to do. This is where it turned from a curiosity into a project. I am forever complaining about polar cards, win more cards, un-fun cards, and general bad design. (Obviously most cards are done very well but given I review it all the bad stuff does get discussed and slated). It never sits well with me when people are out there throwing about shade without ever demonstrating how they would fix it or do it better. That became part of my aim - I was now trying to showcase all that I have learned in near three decades of play and over one of critical review. Now I was not only trying for well simple cards that were novel and consistently powered, I was also trying to showcase what good design looks like by avoiding as much as possible all those things I complain about in actual cards. 

As the set started to take shape and direction I picked up some aesthetic notions about what I was trying to achieve as well. I convinced myself I was doing some kind of welfare, or charity work as far as one can for inanimate cards! I was trying to upcycle old cards and ideas that had never had their chance to shine. Loads of lovely art in magic does not get the love it deserves because it is attached to a rubbish card. I was all about finding lovely art on bad cards and reusing them to give them a new lease of life.

 

Another aesthetic notion that had crept it was that I was paying homage or tribute to the game of Magic, and a bit more specifically to Alpha, which is just such a work of art. I was trying to represent the flavour and lore of magic as accurately and appropriately as I was able. I was trying to haul Alpha through 30 years of improved understanding of the game and all the changing power levels too. Certainly no easy feat tipping the hat to iconic cards like Serra Angel while also trying to hit a current power level of card. 

Speaking of power level I actually wanted to experiment a little. While for the most part I have pegged everything at the level of my (un-powered) cube, what I consider to be the reasonable upper limit of magic power, I have tweaked a few areas. I wanted card quality and card advantage to be a little more accessible for all the colours and costed at a very small amount less than you typically find in real Magic. Secondly I wanted to rein in the insanity of top end power creep on threats. I am not a huge fan of how so many good five drops in magic these days will just end the game all by themselves, if unanswered in most settings, and in short order. I tried to stop five and six drops gong completely off the charts and was aiming more at a pre MH1 / Throne of Eldraine era of power level on those. The idea is to make games a little longer and a little more interesting. A few too many of my cube games just seem to end upon the arrival some random unanswered top end Preator or gold card or whatever that has only existed for a couple of years! 

I also kind of wanted to tone down the pace of the game a bit in general but I didn't want to set about making all my threats low powered. If stuff isn't comparable then I cannot so relevantly test and demonstrate things. My solution to this was to make life gain a lot more abundant and cost very little so as to give the feel of starting on 24 or 25 life on average. This is roughly what I think it should be anyway with the power of things as they are but it is fun to solve game issues in design rather than resorting to changes actual rules of the game. 

The last objective I have is to make a cube that I can use to introduce people to the game. My cube is horrifically inaccessible. The odd card not in english isn't even really the problem. The cards are just complex and from a complete spread of templating and mechanics. Lots of things show up once with no reminder text, writing in unfamiliar terms, sometimes very unclearly. I teach a lot of people magic and it is dull for me doing so with dull formats, cards, and decks. My hope is that this cube will be a good tool for introducing people to many of the mechanics in magic in a more gentle way without being dull for me! The advantage of simple card design is that you can fit the reminder text in! Lots of nice little things like that add up to really help new players. 

As this is quite a long project and quite so consuming I thought I would drip feed some progress on it in article form rather than just neglecting the blog, which is what I have been doing with this exciting distraction on the go. I am very keen on feedback for cards, of all kinds, from mechanical to flavour. I am not great at naming things either so all kinds of suggestion welcome. I'll try and do some showcases of cards I really like and what it is about them that I really like, or why I think they are examples of good design. My plan is to get to about 600 cards then print them off and play with them and then use that testing to refine and perfect a 540 finished article cube. I am on about 460 cards at present, ranging from perfect-in-my-eyes to needing a lot of work or just an idea. Most sit in the middle of the bell curve as you would expect and middle is the curve is all I need for my initial printing of 600 so I am well on my way to the testing and refining stage. As you can see though, there is more than just designing cards and putting art and names to them. Getting the templating correct and consistent will take a while. Not to mention balancing properly. Defender was missing from the wall at the start, how many of you noticed that? I didn't until proof reading this article! This is why you have teams for this kind of thing...