Homemade Cube: Full Spoilers!

 

After many months of teasing, here it finally is to see in all it's glory - the Homemade Cube full spoiler list! While this is the exact list of cards I have been testing and playing with, this spoiler list is more like the Beta version, while I have been using the Alpha set. This discrepancy is because I have (digitally) altered some hundred cards or so over the course of 12ish events. While I am still playing with the originals you will be seeing the proposed changes for the reprint. I am sure I will do some articles on the original versions at some point but not until this part of the design and development is complete. It seemed sensible to give the best iterations of the cards rather than the originals.

Of these hundred or so cards that were changed about 20% to 25% have been for aesthetic reasons. Either I misaligned the picture in the frame, spelled something wrong, or got some templating grammar off. There are still a bunch of these lurking about to iron out so if anyone spots any please stick it in the comments so I can keep the number of reprints I end up doing to a minimum! There were a couple of cards tweaked for flavour reasons. I called a card a forest and it wasn't which was irksome. I also had a card with wings but no flying so that needed a bit of a rework. Everything else was a change made for balance reasons. Mostly these have been slight nerfs, a stat off here, a mana cost on an activation added there, etc. About 5% of the changes have been buffs, and all pretty minor ones. It is not at all surprising that the over powered cards stick out first while the underpowered stuff takes a while to make itself known. I suspect there will be relatively more balancing with buffs going forwards. There were of course some more serious nerfs, usually in the form of having a mana added, there have been about 5% of those too. Further to that I managed to get all the artists credited on this "Beta" version of the Cube. 

There will be more balance changes to come as testing continues but the most egregious stuff has been calmed. I have a bunch of new designs to print alongside those (so far) hundred odd corrections from the Alpha printing. Some of these new cards are aimed at solving issues presenting so far in testing such as being a bit thin on top end or planeswalkers being a bit sticky. Then there are just a bunch of cards that are more like an expansion, a bit more complex or exotic! Those I plan to be added drip feed over time to spice things up as required, unlike the changes to existing cards which I want actioned asap really. I have a bunch of adventure cards and fortifications and this sort of jazz in the expansion half of the new designs. I doubt I will ever finish this product in my eyes and similarly I doubt I will ever think it is perfect. I would advise holding off a little if you wanted a copy, as I am confident I will improve it significantly within a couple of print iterations and a year or so of playtesting them. Beyond that it should have flatlined rather in terms of improving but I am happy to help anyone who might want to get a copy printed for themselves, then or sooner! It is certainly a lot of fun now, despite having those clear areas in which I feel I can improve it.

Right, enough pre-amble. Enjoy my love of the old school aesthetic and my generally basic and poor ability to name cards! Here is the spoiler broken down into colours, gold, artifacts and land.

Here are some green cards:

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Here are some red cards:

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Here are some black cards:

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Here are some blue cards:

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Here are some white cards:

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Here are some gold cards:

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Here are some artifact cards:

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Here are some land cards:

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While there are many cards I am tweaking so as to make more suitable for the cube meta there are also plenty I am not bothering with. So far I have cut 74 cards from the cube, which is a little over 10%. I am expecting to cut nearly the same again over the next few months. There are a range of reasons for why these cards are getting cut from the cube and not tweaked or reworked. Usually they are fine on power and trying to increase or reduce the power level is going to make the card worse overall for the cube. 

Some cards were cut because they were logistically not that fun to play with, too much fiddling around and maintenance. Some were cut because they were mechanically not that fun. Some were cut because they were overly narrow in what they were offering. Mostly the cards got cut because they were too fluffy. I love a cheap do nothing cantrip sort of card and made a few too many of them! A lot of these were cards I rather forced because I wanted to represent that kind of ability in set somehow. Like, a set without a Fog didn't feel it could go round calling itself a tribute to Magic. This is where my project having several goals didn't line up neatly. A tribute to Magic has slightly different attributes to a set of cards to play as a cube and the cut cards are shining a light on what those differences are. 

There is a last set of 10 cards I cut because they take up more room than they are worth. I thought I would be clever and try and make a cycle of ten extra playable pseudo-gold cards that were playable in mono colour but offered something more to a player in the right two colours. These stealth gold cards were supposed to be more playable than a normal gold card but in practice they were just messy and a bit feel bad if you didn't support them. To quote one of the main helpers on this project "Why can't your gold cards just be gold cards?" And for this project he seems to have hit the nail on the head. Gold slots are precious, use them for juice, don't fill them with diluted down standard mono colour stuff. I liked the design on the cycle, the power level and interest were good, and I would like to see that sort of card for constructed play, but for taking up slots in a cube, it is not an optimal direction to go. These cut cards will be like my "constructed reserves" are now. I will keep them and allow them for events like rotisserie and anything else on the more constructed and larger pool side of the cube spectrum. For limited and draft however they are just clogging up the works. 

Here are the cards I have cut so far:

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