Mad Lad (cut)
Power 4
Design 7
Everyone loves cascade. This is the simplest one can make such a thing, and, conveniently, the lower the cascade value the more consistent of an effect you have, thus pleasing the lead designer! This is the vey red Elvish Visionary that they would love to have already printed if it were not for the issues in real magic between cascade cards and no-mana spells like Living End. I have no such issue and so I am free to pack this little cutie. He is essentially a cantrip one drop that you can't play on turn one. On turn two, have a 1/1 and some 2/1 or perhaps a burn spell. He is very low cost but he absolutely comes with risk, or at least deck building constraints. You need your 0 and 1 drops to be things you are generally going to want to play. Too many situational cards and Mad Lad isn't playable. Often this is simply worse than Elvish Visionary. Sometimes you wanted to get a land and sometimes you can't make use of the card you find. A two mana 1/1 was never a tempo play so even when you get that "free" one drop it hasn't gained you tempo, rather not lost you quite as much. You want this in decks that are making use of bodies somehow, then it shines. Just in a red aggro deck it underperforms. It is never really good tempo and the value is questionable. Basically it is a filler/support card and with those you cannot be inconvenient or unreliable, which this is on both accounts, and as such it just isn't getting the action required. It is somewhat comic in the face of Amped Raptor... To get play this needs reworking into a 2/1 as well but that feels over powered, although it probably isn't. The solution is forcing it to attack or removing the ability to block. I think that would be enough to at least have it see play in my format.
Madeira Chimera (cut)
Power 3
Design 3
Part of a cycle aimed at pushing mono coloured builds. This was the outlier of this cycle offering no real value as you scaled it up with more islands. It is just a medium sized flier pretending to offer value perks a dash of scry. This should probably be a three mana 3/3 flier. Or it should be a five+ mana 2/2 flier and actually draw cards per island and really light up some eyes! As it stands it just offers no appeal whatso ever. Cube cards need to do more. Some ward could also help but I don't want to muddy it up with too many keywords, especially as we already have rather too much ward floating about.
Mage Class (cut)
Power 8
Design 4
I like the flavour of this one but the card is somewhat aimless. A useless dork, a reactive buff to your dorks, and then Braingeyser. It is kind of irritating value eventually. The card does evoke the concept of "mage" but I am not sure what we are supposed to do with the card. All the classes are a bit that way. Too powerful with rather too much all in one card and no real downside, but sufficiently all over the place it was hard to pinpoint what sort of archetype they are best in. This is sitting in an unusual place, a sweet spot of sorts, but between non ideal spots. It is too much card without being too powerful. And it is very playable along with all that without being that overly played. It is the right level of card but for all the wrong reasons. Ward is also an ability that you need to be carful with. Like salt in cooking. Great in most places but too much and you ruin things. Ward on all your dorks is too much salt in all the ways.
Magpie (reworking)
Power 6 (once adventure costs 2)
Design 6
Thieve is simply way too good and needs bringing back in line. Certainly two mana, perhaps instant speed though, is where Thieve will end up. Beyond that I am happy with the card. This is a nice little utility support card. Low power but a good spread of effects. A bit of fixing or ramp if needed. An extra spell for those prowess folk, and then a cheap little flash flier to apply some pressure, sneak some tempo without letting the counter shields down, or just ambushing an attacker. This is the kind of support card I want to be packing as and when I can. It lets you play magic and that is great.
Mahamoti Efreet
Power 8
Design 7
Just a Hill Giant with flash. Gets a bit of free kills ambushing in combat but it is never impressive. Killing a 2/2 is barely making up for the fact you are now the proud owner of a Hill Giant. Mock this as I might it is still great as basically all the cheap land cyclers are. This has a somewhat low impact middling body but the flash allows you to deploy it with minimal risk allowing it to be a small but significant tool in helping stabilize or leverage a position. Losing a stat would likely be a bit more reasonable overall but I am quite happy with how this is playing in this more pushed mode.
Mana Blessing (cut)
Power 6
Design 4
Much as free spells are not popular I wanted to dip my toe in and experience them from a design perspective. I made a cycle following this form of double Phyrexian cost and an effect that requires you to have a colour appropriate basic to do anything. This kept them colour pie fixed but to have a life cost rather than a pitch cost or other means of tying to a colour. Ultimately very Snuff Out in function. The white offering is my least favourite. It is a protection come combat trick and is just situational and boring. I don't often feel I have the spare space to fit in this kind of luxury card. I would have to have an incredibly potent and low to the ground hyper aggro list to want this really. It is one of the less elegant designs too.
Mana Bloom (cut)
Power 6
Design 5
One of the most reasonable of the cycle but much more a constructed card than a cube one. This has Force of Vigor vibes, it is little Force of Vigor. This is just not how you want your Naturalize effects in limited or in cube. This might get a pass in vintage cube but elsewhere there just isn't the target density or at least, not with sufficient relevance to be worthy of dedicating removal slots to them.
Mana Burn
Power 8
Design 6
Wizards removed manaburn from the game, I have sought to bring it back! Red always does the best out of these sorts of things with burn being so universally good. This is a better card than Gutshot but ultimately pretty similar. Most of the value you are getting here is that surprise free spell but when you are not getting value out of that you are not unhappy with your lot. You still have a cheap card, a Shock, that you can use for normal Shock type things. I'll play this in most red decks and it is fine, it keeps people a bit honest but never feels oppressive.
Mana Dazzle (cut)
Power 9
Design 5
If you want oppressive you have to look for blue. No shocker than blue gets the most dangerous looking card of the cycle. This is the Daze of the set. Arguably better, four life is rather less of a cost in most situations than returning an Island, or at least the early and mid game situations where your Force Spike interaction is still holding weight. I have provisionally cut this as I don't want to alienate the playerbase and we all well know how free counters play. It is not a feel good card. Force Spike is a feel bad. Free counter magic is loathsome. Or at least so people tell me. This could probably be turned into more of a Spell Peirce and as such it might be more reasonable. This is at least a playable card that would get picked and used in a cube setting and has a slim chance of returning because of that.
Mana Well
Power 6
Design 9
Good times. Clean and simple. Graveyard interaction is a tricky thing to get right. You need to weave it into cards that are otherwise playable. You can't be paying too much for it as graveyard stuff is often free incidental stuff and is very easy therefor to over invest in countering. The graveyard is an interesting zone in magic that wants to be lightly contested. I found getting that fine line right on cards awkward and slow but this one got it done. A mana rock, nothing flashy but absolutely something most decks are in for. A great starting point for slopping on some utility. There are three important reasons to want to be able to interact with the yard, and one is somewhat unique to cube. There is the ability to snipe cards out of it or prevent them going there at all as a disruptive element, a check to keep it all cool. Then there is the ability to make use of your own yard positively else it is a pointless zone. This is all the things from flashback to delve to threshold to escape and other kinds of recursion. The tension between these two things and the natural progression of the game is what makes the yard one of the best but also delicate ecosystems in the game of magic. The final aspect which is somewhat unique to cube is the notion of being able to recycle cards from the bin back into the library. A kind of long game recursion. It is not a value thing so much as a inevitability or gas thing. Cube has powerful decks and small libraries. Games don't have to go too long before the objectives change and they become about not drawing cards! I also made a boatload of draw in my homemade cube and I really didn't want close games to all just come down to who had drawn less. I tried pretty hard to splash things that put cards from the bin back into the library where I could, and that would get played. This is likely my best effort on that front. It sits very neatly in the design of the card, not sticking out like some ugly tacked on afterthought. It also works pretty well with the card and gives it a pretty broad scope in utility for pleasantly little text. This is a card I am super happy to have in any slower deck. Also really pleased to have found a nice classic Tedin art to upcycle onto it. Makes it like a poster boy card for what this set is about on all axis.
Manappropriate
Power 8
Design 7
Oddly reasonable despite seeming like it is totally unreasonable. This is a suitable kind of reward repaying a player for being that heavy in blue, which is more of a cost than being heavy any other colour. This card is super blue and somewhat says, being just blue is a total liability so I'll do all the blue things really hard and see if that is enough to power out of the situation. Rarely is it. This is a card that feels like a Remand or Repulse or a Cryptic Command when they land at the upper end of their range. Really solid, a two for one with a bit of tempo. Good, but not good enough to make up for being just blue! Certainly this is a card you can play with in a Ux deck and that can be reasonable. Indeed, you can just play it as a bad Mana Leak in your deck splashing blue and that is a big part of what makes this good. Just a card with an impressive ceiling and a low but viable floor, that gives full control of that range to the architect of the deck rather than random chance, and that is to be lauded.
Mardu Standard
Power 7
Design 9
I wanted a clean way to do Glorious Anthem and this is what I came up with. Super happy with the design, seems really obvious and like it should already exist, like in a core set from 15 years ago or something! Broadly this says "on your turn - Anthem" but it has a bit of shenanigans allowing for instant speed interaction and use for blocking. It is pretty spot on in terms of power and gets a bunch of play with white aggro, as ever, being a solid strategy.
Marionette Strings
Power 8
Design 7
An attempt to reduce how swingy Control Magic can feel. Somehow that failed. The bargains you can get for UU and 1UU absolutely make up for the times you pay five or more mana to steal something hefty. Given they are losing X while you gain X the card is effectively double scaling anyway, the top end performance of Control Magic was never in doubt. As such, this attempted fix, while being less polar, does actually perform better. If I had more combo means to cheat fatties into play then this would drop off in performance somewhat but as it stands you are pretty capable of finding the required mana to steal whatever in the meta in a timely manner. At least most colours have some better means to tackle stuff getting stolen by sorcery speed enchantments in the homemade cube.
Mask of Curiosity (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
The quirky equip cost didn't add as much to the card as I hoped in terms of play while costing a not insignificant amount on the aesthetic value and feel of the card. All told this failed because it was too low impact. It does nothing by itself and is hardly mind boggling when it does kick off. An initial tempo and card cost with a requirement for several turns and successful attacks to repay, and only the card aspect is to be repaid. Sure, this is a lot better than Curiosity, but it is not enough better to get it into a cube setting in 2024. I'm not even fully sure the living weapon treatment helps this much as you really want to be equipping this sort of thing to evasive dorks.
Masochistic Edict
Power 8
Design 6
I really like how clean and black this is. A really unusual removal spell in that it is very cheap and broad with a unique inconsistency. This is pretty outstanding when it comes to enchantment and plansewalker removal and a little dodgy when it comes to creature and artifact removal. Basically when you have one of something this is as good as it gets. More than one and it is getting dodgy fast. And, while it is rare for someone to have multiples of every type it is not so often the case that they just have one of the thing you want to kill. Further to that, this is symmetrical, so sometimes you need to bin your own things to kill stuff. Artifacts and creatures are pretty abundant in token form as well which further harms the effectiveness of this. Even so, you can see from the power ranking this is no slouch. It is amazing on curve answering almost anything, even selectively sometimes. It is fairly easy to engineer a situation where this kills something you care about for a good rate. This is Council's Judgement at a reduced price most of the time. The rest of the time it is still killing useful things efficiently, just lacking some of the precision.
Mass Exodus
Power 7.5
Design 7
This now only rewards players for killing their nontoken stuff and I am not even sure that makes the card better, certainly more powerful but an improvement? We shall have to see. Either way, this is a very white Toxic Deluge style card. Efficient removal that gives some kind of compensation for each kill in some form or another. This is rarely a devastating Wrath, it is a really stalling one. It not scaling up that well in terms of taking stuff out, while also being on the cheaper side of things means this is played in a way that just calms the waters. Throw it out on turn three to kill a pair of dorks etc. It is rather more playable in midrange lists than many other mass removal cards and that contributes quite a bit to the card.
Massive Wurm
Power 5
Design 7
I started out with the premise of "green needs a Craw Wurm type of card." Basically I wanted a simple six mana six power trampler in Wurm form and tried to keep it as clean and simple beyond that, while also having something that would be considered playable in a cube setting. I quite like how a ward of sacing a land plays out on big dorks. That was the big design triumph of this bad boy. It is a lot more interesting to play against than with. It is just a fatty that takes a lot of killing. It isn't super quick or super threatening but it is a lot of stats to take out in combat and a lot of cards needed to remove outside of combat. Very green feeling. A lot of force but applied quite slowly.
Matsu Tribe Scout
Power 8
Design 6
It is a Coiling Oracle that always ramps and that does make it better. Not 100% of the time, but on average, significantly. This is what you want to play on turn two. I knew this was quite an upgrade on an already good card so to keep it a little calmer we made the land tapped. I could have gone a bit further and made it dig all the way to a basic. While this is pushed I am happy enough with that as Simic needs a bit of love. This is gold and a support card which isn't my favourite place to be designing for so it may well end up making way for more interesting cards and letting mono coloured cards take the support card mantle..
Mechanical Lion (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
Quite cute in conception and reality. Sadly, lacking power and playability. The idea was that this was just your generic beater any aggro deck could pick up to pad out the ranks with. This would have been a great addition to most real cubes 10 or so years ago and back. Nowadays there is no bottleneck in cheap beaters nor is this card really packing enough punch to be wanted anywhere.
Melt
Power 8
Design 6
I just shamelessly ripped on Abrade. The card plays really well in cube and I wanted to bring that good play pattern to mine. I felt it could even be toned down a bit and I was right. This gets played in every red deck and does pretty reasonable work. Cheap and versatile. Fine when controlling dorks, usually great when removing an artifact. Just the kind of tool you want in a limited setting.
Mercadian Astrolabe
Power 7
Design 6
Here is my attempt at a fixed Arcum's Astrolabe I'm not sure fixed is the word, it is probably still totally broken in real magic but without the things to fire off it the card is more than fair in the format it is housed in. I love a Chromatic Sphere and I fiddled with a lot of different designs to bring some of that greatness to the homemade cube. This was probably my favourite of the builds but it turned out that I didn't need to put in so much effort, the mana and consistentcy in the homemade cube is sufficient that a Chromatic Star effect is seldom needed. As such this is typically just played when decks want artifacts to sac, or powerstones to upgrade.
Merchant of Souls (reworking)
Power 4
Design 6
I was surprised at how bad this is. If you are paying three mana to kill something you don't want it at sorcery speed nor do you want to pay life. Getting a 2/1 body for your troubles does not excite at all. It isn't enough to make this feel like a 2 for 1. As such you just always play a removal spell, or I guess a three drop dork that is good, or a two for one that is good. It wouldn't take too much to make this desirable. Deathtouch would probably be enough, flying or even wither might get there. An extra toughness feels like it would go down very nicely too. Basically a 2/1 body doesn't feel like enough of a card to properly call this a two for one and so we need to bolster it just enough to make the body relevant.
Mighty Sprite
Power 6.5
Design 8
This is the Swiftspear of the set. It is also the Delver of Secrets. This is just a solid foundational little card that lets you build upon the good work it starts. It is certainly the cornerstone of the Izzet prowess deck, and it does this without even being that powerful. It is just what you want. I am kindof stunned this isn't a real card already. Of the various blue beaters to be found at the lower costs this has performed the best. It has seen some of the most play and in the more functional looking decks. This is a card I now really want some redundancy for, ideally a red and a blue one. Finding sweet spots on cards like this that remain elegant in design and on point for power level seems like it will take some searching!
Mind Control Mage
Power 7
Design 8
Another one of those accidental good designs. The ward here is just perfect in several ways. Firstly, it does what you want ward to do, which is stop expensive dorks opening you up to devastating tempo swing plays. You can flop this guy down and not just get rolled by a Shock. Broadly speaking, if you are eating a cheap removal spell and losing tempo, you did at least get a two for one. The other reason the ward is so juicy is that it allows a response to the EtB trigger. If I can't answer the mage but I can target it at instant speed I can toss the target under the bus so that at least you don't get anything relevant. Doesn't come up loads but it has come up enough to make this one of my all time favourite Control Magic effects. They are normally dodgy or egregious and tend not to play too well. This artfully manages to dodge all the usual pitfalls.
Mind Sculpting (retuning)
Power 8
Design 6
Can we spot the inspiration? I like this card a lot but it is frankly just a bit too good. I should just make it a 2U cost and be done with it. Much more playable and rather more reasonable. One of the subtle things I like about this is that it is a lot of card doing loads of stuff, but in a way that it real easy for most magic players to pick up and run with. Turns out that if you want to put a lot of words on a card there are ways in which that can be done that don't use up lots of peoples processing power. This is one of those ways.
Mind Tap (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
Cute design, all neat and nice, but not a card anybody ever asked for in a cube setting. Just not doing enough to merit playing nor keying into anything else to boost the power in synergy terms. This is filler and because it is also discard it is somewhat feel bad filler.
Mine (cut)
Power 2
Design 4
Feels like there is no sweet spot here. Any cheaper to make treasure and it feels like it would be insane but at the cost it is no one is biting. I guess I could try it at one and tap to make a treasure but it seems real dangerous! The bar for utility lands is extremely high in cube, to the point that generally only broken stuff gets a look in. This is somewhat of an indicator to perhaps just skip on these sorts of cards. I seem to be porting a bunch of utility land effects onto fortifications which themselves find a land. Not entirely sure if this is just making the same mistake in a more circuitous way or a clever solution. Watch this space...
Miner of the Deeps (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
I thought this would be a little dangerous to print however in practice it failed to perform. The power than can be gained from a one off ramp turns out to not be worth the loss in power of having otherwise used a card to get a 2/1 body. There are a fair few cards in this set that have this problem. A 2/1 is the new 1/1 and simply fails to put sufficient work in. If this isn't good enough to cast, it certainly isn't good enough to evoke, and that played out in testing. Further to these power issues the card fits nowhere. Aggro most wants a "free" 2/1 but least wants to ramp to four with the reverse being true for other archetypes. A potential fix would shift the treasure to an on-death trigger and then improve the body somehow. I'm not sure making it a 2/3 or 3/2 is the kind of change it wants, as this card was fluff and boring I've put very little effort in to thinking about fixing it. If a good idea for what to do with the body part pops up I'll get on it but I am not actively searching. At least the shift to on death trigger leans in to the evoke a bit better.
Mining Rig
Power 5
Design 8
I love this card so much. It is a bit awkward as it is relatively low power and diminishes in power as the format power creeps. This is part Mana Battery and part Cabal Coffers. You flop it out and then start making a stockpile of Powerstones and/or Treasure and that is a great time. The former can help refortify this so as to make it scale up in production if you want. All this is a lot of time and mana investment and is rather an exercise in wheel spinning. I love a lot of mana and options and so I play this card more than I should. It has some really nice interactions with other cards, mostly ones with activation costs in colourless and artifact synergies. Powerstones are a great and underused mechanic and this is a really cool way to involve them, both mechanically and in a flavour sense too.
Mirestrider
Power 7
Design 7
Surprised by how good Graveyard Tresspasser had been in my unpowered cube I wished to fiddle around with the card a bit and see what made it tick. This is a toned down and streamlined version with no graveyard interaction at all and it still plays reasonably. The EtB effect is just about enough to make you OK with this just dying. The ward makes you pretty happy about things if they do that with spot removal. The ward usually doesn't meaning this will typically get at least two triggers. This dork chump attacks more than most but that it fine. Not a million miles off a 4/3 lifelinker with ward but relevantly so. The low power ensures this can't just bully a race. A lot of small dorks take this out forcing it to sit back and bide its time before attacking. This is a great example of the kind of card I am bad at, just a generic mid level dork that has no specific role beyond focusing attention on combat. That latter part is good, it makes the game more combat focused which is typically more interesting, swingy, and interactive.
Mirimble
Power 7
Design 8
Massive fan of forcast on a card that gives away relevant information, especially when the cost is so low. A lot of the time on this card the choice to forecast is not about the life or mana but revealing your removal spell. Heroes Downfall isn't a great card but it is very playable, add in a little spice and you are right back to a solid include. This does extra well in my format that is a little slower and a little more planeswalker centric.
Mirimble Tower
Power 9
Design 6
Mirran Hydra (cut)
Power 2
Design 6
I thought this was a really neat and balanced way to do a Trinket Mage style card that was more of a coverall. Turns out this was narrow as well as low powered. Six mana to get a 4/4 and some four mana artifact isn't impressive. Add to that the likelihood you will have multiple good top end artifacts. If you just have the one then this guy is fixed at X and becomes near useless if you draw your big target. Making this at three or four mana and grabbing a mana rock or cheap cycling artifact is laughably bad. This could probably cost XR, perhaps even have some keyword slapped on. Likely a bit too splashable then.
Mischievous Imp (cut)
Power 1
Design 4
A dork based take on Entomb. Certainly quite the nerf on Entomb being twice the mana and sorcery speed, for what is mostly going to be a useless body. It would be cute with the likes of Cabal Therapy and Dread Return and that sort of malarkey. Would being a key word there as they are cards not in my format. In my format this has a little more value in the body and quite a lot less value in the effect resulting in a card with no uses and thus no home. This might be interesting if I do some more constructed games with the homemade cube but for limited stuff it is a long way from there. Reluctant to try and buff this to playable level as it is not really a card that would see print lightly in real magic. Perhaps one day it will make a return to the cube but I suspect I will probably have printed too many Hogaak style cards if this thing is starting to look good!
Mist Dragon
Power 5
Design 6
I am so used to the land cyclers that this feels like a bomb at first glance. The random nature of normal cycling really detracts from the utility. This isn't gas or a land, this is a Mist Dragon or not a Mist Dragon. Sure, it is a bit better at smoothing out a screw than most five drops, it is still a long long way off a land cycler. The cost to play this in your deck is real. It is either zero nomical power and a bit of tempo cost when cycled, or OK nominal power but low relative power. It is a bit of a clunker you play as filler or because you are deficient in the threat department. This card is fine, it does its thing and does it OK. It is certainly a great way to get those more vanilla feeling monsters into the game. As far as boring simple cards go these are winners. They offer a lot of choices and do so without being oppressive or sluggish. This is one of those cards that doesn't stand out at all by itself but that improves the meta with its presence.
Mogg Thief (retuning)
Power 8
Design 4
I felt that Fable of the Mirror Breaker was so iconic already that we needed a real version of the starting token. I am not quite sure I got this right. It is played a lot and it is quite cool but I think we can do rather better. The issue is the blitz as this is almost never cast. If you do cast it your treasure isn't assured, and you get no card back. Mostly this is a two mana make a treasure and draw a card card. That is pretty good, especially as it sometimes also does two damage somewhere relevant. There is just too much risk in flopping this out when you want it to make treasure, and then having it die or unable to attack well. I am not too set on the idea of making a real Fable token that I am unwilling to move away from the stats and text exactly as they are but I need to have a better idea how to make this before hand and as yet I've not found it. The blitz probably needs to cost 3 but then I am unsure what buff to give it there are to bring it back in line power wise. Could be 3 power or menace? This isn't a bomb but it is a bit too free and winds up getting a whole lot of play without ever underperforming.
Moulding
Power 6
Design 10
I am going to go out on a limb here and give this a 10. I need to give something a 10 else the scale is calibrated wrong! And that is because this is finally a fixed and playable Disenchant. Not since the "old school" era of magic has Disenchant been a maindeck card. There have been times you can pull it off in (unpowperd) cube but mostly it is not a thing you want to do. Disenchant effects, like graveyard disruption, are things you really want to have access to in a meta, and this has been hard to do. Slap them on an incidental card and it feels messy and is often over powered. Like when you hit a relevant artifact with Kolaghan's Command and the card is devastating. On cards dedicated to Disenchant however they are almost always just too situational. Over the years we have gotten a variety of somewhat Disenchant looking cards with forms of cycling. None quite as rounded as this however. This offers good rate interactive removal making it an effective Disenchant while removing all that narrowness with a pretty perfectly cost cycling. In heavy green a cycling of one is minimal and lets you play this in any list with little risk or cost. Further to that the colourless mode, lets you splash this comfortably in decks with little to no real green in them. That auto include in mono green towards an option if needed elsewhere gives this enough action to solidly keep a cube slot. It is a pretty fair card that really helps keep games interesting and brings a lot of choices to the games. This rewards those good choices and helps to stop raw power reaping all the rewards!
Molten Giant
Power 5
Design 6
I was scared this was going to be a bit oppressive but it is been fairly quiet thus far, despite red having some impressive slow decks. This is a controllable mass removal spell that leaves behind a body. Both of those things can lead to blowouts so slapping both on one card was a concern. The reality is that this is a little situational, quite expensive, and pretty heavy red. This is pretty good at clearing out chaffy small dorks but you need to get to big mana before you can really hope to clear most boards. At that point the 4/2 isn't all that impressive, odds on it is trading for a 2/2. Perhaps I could try giving it a ping as basic as well? That would make it dodgy to play in decks with lots of one toughness dorks but make it a much better top end sweeper. This is increasing the power and making it more suited to the role it finds itself in most. This sounds like it might be reasonable but it might not be more fun. For now I am happy with this as is but I can see a tipping point where this either needs a little buff or a cut.
Moon Drake
Power 5
Design 5
Sea Gate Oracle got a bit less selective and took to the skies! This is a filler card and no mistake. It is fine, it gets a lot of play but doesn't do loads and loads. Just a nice bridging play. It is reasonable defensive board control and costs relatively little in cards and mana. I like the clean simplicity of the card but beyond that there is not too much here to get excited about. I'm confident this will actually exist in some form some day.
Moray Umbra (cut)
Power 3
Design 2
I was trying to push the blue aggro archetype and yet, despite being very aware of quite how much you need to push a buff aura to make it cube viable, I made this one pretty tame. Dodgy evasion and some annoying protection that isn't scaling in a very impressive way. This failed to be a card in its own right, let along support an archetype as intended. Even if this had hit the mark for power it wouldn't have been a fun card to play. Just a kind of all round miss here. Really could have done with a +1/+0 buff of sorts, perhaps firebreathing for U, that is interesting with skulk, but sounds more like it wants to be an equipment.
Mother of the Inquisition
Power 6
Design 4
This is a card is still think has legs in concept but feel like I missed the mark in design. This just feels wrong. I was trying for a Brimaz like card that was value rather than dorks. The cost reduction ability is where this goes wrong in feel. It should trigger in some way rather than tap. She doesn't feel super vampiry either. The card is fine in terms of power, just a mid dork that at least replaces itself. Like a Kavu Climber, but playable. She plays OK too, on the board making for dynamic game play, with options on the clues giving her sufficient choices to prevent being too dull.
Mountain Giant
Power 7
Design 5
Very solid card. It has land cycling for 1 and so it hard not to be a solid card. This has not performed as well as you might expect relative to its peers but that is in large part due to the strength of red fives. This only ever does anything as a dork when there is nothing else to do. I could easily shave a stat or two off or make it reach instead of trample and somewhat bring the card closer to the minimum playable power level as opposed to the maximum that it is presently near. Given how reasonably it is presently playing I have no desire to rock the boat.
Mountain Goat
Power 6
Design 7
You might think this is absurdly good given how unreasonably close the front side is to on rate. The reality is that this is just fine, generally worse than the previous Mountain Giant. Late game this is really low value. It is not a big powerful thing yo sink some a load of mana into nor is it a useful land. Early in the game this is what you want to see in your hand, it means you are either not going to flood or have some things to do with your mana, or at least have mana to use. Control and midrange decks really are not after a 2/1 dork for one. They might play one against an aggressive deck to fight for early tempo but mostly it is a long way from the kind of spell they are looking for. As such this is only something you really really want in an aggro deck and in those it is just a bit of consistency. A cheap threat barely above the threshold for playable, or a CipT land. Both subpar concessions. When you just think of how good this dork is and how good land cycling is you might jump to the conclusion this is wild, once you factor in the context of how and where this is playing out and suddenly it seems significantly more fair than Mountain Giant and the other larger land cyclers. I really like how this offers consistency to aggro decks as playing things like Preordain in those is a much higher cost than it would be elsewhere. The most playable ones typically come higher up the curve like Seasoned Pyromancer and they cannot get the ball rolling like your one mana card quality effects. The sucess of this makes me somewhat want to try this for other colours to try and promote aggro there. Getting suitable variation in one drops in other colours is not something that sounds super viable.
Mountain Gorilla (cut)
Power 6
Design 3
Aww, power crept Kird Ape. How lovely. How nostalgic. Too boring. Too gold. Same old story. Moving on.
Mucky Morris
Power 7
Design 8
Love this guy and don't know why. He just has derp energy. He has a dumb keyword ability while all the others in the cycle have reasonable and generally relevant ones. He also has the worst statline of the cycle as far as suitabiltiy for take. Objectively should be the weakest but seems to be one of the best thanks to better things to spend lots of mana on in black, with heavy and mono black decks being viable. Very much still my favourite of the incentievs towards going mono cycles of cards.
Mudungus, Black Market Bay
Power 9
Design 6
Murderous Fae
Power 8
Design 6
Another card from the school of "how can I make this crap situational mechanic a bit more consistent and useful?" Today, on the adventure repair bench we have prowl. This card feels about right, it is there for flavour and name and effect, these elements all marry up. I do quite like holding up On The Prowl, it feels powerful to dump in a dork at EoT then get in and deploy. Really here we are paying five mana for a pair of 1/1 fliers and a murder or four mana and one less dork. Neither sound great but the flash and cost split on the former makes it pretty impressive in practice. It is a crushing tempo curve one two not entirely unlike Bonecrusher Giant. This puts less pressure on the opponent but is a lot more capable of a removal spell. It is also in a much less powerful format making it rather more impressive. Should this ever become tedious I will consider upping the cost of On the Prowl to 1UB and prevent it being such a clean curve situation. At that point people will likely just start casting it at 4 mana and forgoing the adventure. Luckily this is a card with a passable floor, not a million miles off Ravenous Chupacabra. As floors go that is a fine one to have!
Murkwood
Power 6
Design 7
This card is weird to play with, you kind of want it to die so you can have this 3/2 dork, but then it is a land so it is really sketchy of a thing to risk losing with that kind of line. I do love an internal tension on a card after all! Oddly, the thing I most dislike about this is the lack of reach, it just feels like it should have it but I didn't want to go overboard on card text and abilities. I guess I can move away from the flavour aspect and then have the card become a non-spider. This is the sort of minor detail I'll get to last of all the things.
Murkwood Spider (cut)
Power 8.5
Design 3
This is just too pushed. It needs something less to stop it being one of those boring auto include cards but I can't quite fathom what or where. The thing is, at the point of mildly nerfing it the card just becomes a basic support card and that is not really where you want to be with your gold spells too much if possible. If you simply took away almost any one of the abilities on this card and it would be fair and playable, arguably about right. The thing is then that the slot could just be better utilized by a "better" card. Either a similar one but not gold and thus not as parasitic. Or simply, a more exciting and fun card.
Municipal Buildings (cut)
Power 2
Design 4
One of my less successful attempts to remake Chromatic Star. Basically, this is pretty bad at helping you fix. It is two mana upfront making it a bad Prophetic Prism. It is also investigate rather than draw making it a bad everything. The only uses this really has are to produce two artifacts for one mana or to turn a land that doesn't tap well for mana into one that does. Neither of these are things my cube has any real need of and so this is jus a very bad fixing tool in a format full of good fixing. This wants to either just draw a card when it enters, or cost 0 mana to play. That would all be a bit much in real magic but in my meta that would be no problem at all, and still likely not needed much.
Muse
Power 5
Design 6
This was my attempt to "fix" Brainstorm. We scaled it back by a card and made it sorcery just to get it in the reasonable ball park. That would still be dangerously good for constructed magic but in cube Brainstorm is actually not all that, often outclassed by Consider and Preordain. Further to that, there is less need and demand on card quality in my cube thanks to general high consistency and the importancte of total nominal card power. With all that in mind my toned down Brainstorm wasn't going to get too much action and so I let you put the card top or bottom so as to give that sac land feel as and when required. Sadly, being sorcery, much of the hand protection aspect of Brainstorm was lost, and not having jazz like miracles and cascade tricks and Erratic Explosions, the top of deck synergy in my cube is pretty minor. I could very easily make this instant and have it be a more interesting card and still not too powerful for the format. I might well need to if this is to see any play...
Mwonvuli Confluence
Power 7
Design 6
Blam, have a load of green shit. This is the kind of modality I think green should have on cards. And indeed, what sort of effect on their bigger instants and sorceries. What sort of creature? This basically says do you want pressure, defence, or swing? There is some merit to a mix and match selection in closer midrange games but in those more extreme or polar games this is commonly a mono culture. At one point it was instant, that was utterly foolish broken. It was so good it was getting splashed for, but just going down to sorcery really sorted that out and left it pretty fair. There was also a time the 4/2 was a provoke dork and not a lifelinker. In some ways I prefer it but sadly provoke is a bit of a messy mechanic and not quite as well suited to task as you might like. I feel like some day they will bring us some kind of replacement fight in combat mechanic that tidies up provoke and gives green a cool removal like tool. Until that time I am quite happy with the lifelinkers filling in. I would have marked this higher on design but any card that makes multiple different tokens is something you have to really ask if it is worth it. Firther to that, creatures with X/Y rather than X/X stats, and abilities, are much more awkward to play with. You ideally want to then make those tokens. Regardless, this plays fine. Not too broken, not too boring, very green feeling and just a little bit different.
Myr Flample (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
You can see how these bad pun cards get out of hand. They are like an itch you need to scratch. I never knew "flample" was shorthand for a flying trampler, I found it out and all I could think of was this card. The reason you are all asking? There is a pro climber called Mia Krample. Thats it. Thats the link and my brain wouldn't rest till this card was made flesh. Turns out this could have probably been a 3/3, certainly at least a 3/2. There just isn't a need for this card and it doesn't come close to having the power level to generate its own need. That is fine, a happy cut. I like trimming gold cards and this was never budgeted for or made to order, it just kindof showed up.
Mystic Command (retuning)
Power 4
Design 4
I was over cautious here and made it too expensive. This just isn't pulling its weight as a five drop. As a four drop the card gets there although still not as good as you might hope. It is a long way off a Cryptic Command. The power likely only jumps to around 6 at best at 2UU. The best modes are a little locked behind conditions. The drake token is the only one always applicable and it is the lowest value by some way. The two for ones that this offers that don't involve tokens are pretty good but they are not that easy to engineer.
Mystic Discovery (cut)
Power 3
Design 6
Love this card but it is just not what you want. It is too slow and costs too much in resources you don't usually think too much about in magic. This is deck thinning and does not by itself add any actual power to your 40 and that is a problem with all card draw and quality effects in my homemade cube. This then amplifies that by really needing some degree of delve to be paid to make the costing reasonable. Assume we are going 2 and 4 or 3 and 3 or something, that is six cards gone from the bin that now cannot be used again at all. They cannot be put back into the library to by extra time or used on escape costs etc. Longer slower decks want to have access to many of their cards more than once ideally. Delve is in quite strong tension with that. All in all, Tutors are just really effective card quality spells, and those are not needed in the formats that are high consistency and very demanding on total power. I like this card sufficiently that I might try and bring the costs down a little to make it more tempting but I fear the card will hit broken before it hits reasonable.
