Cacodemon
Power 8
Design 5
This is a little generically good for my liking and it is barely offset by being gold. This could just be a 4/3, or at least have a slightly more interesting clause on the EtB trigger and it would get a lot more play or at least be interesting! I went too far core set in this card. It is a suitable card that works and fills a role but it isn't exciting. It is the kind of card you splash in because it is high power and high suitability, not because you are excited about the card itself. Hopefully I can design something a bit more fun and interesting to replace this stopgap of a card.
Cancel Out (cut)
Power 7
Design 4
A powerful but somewhat self balancing counterspell. Early this is probably a little too good but later on in the game the high cost of using it against expensive cards makes it rather less useful. The main concern with this from a design perspective is that it is, as with all cards following this mana value equal to X style, a whole lot better on the play than on the draw. For that reason it is getting cut despite so far quite liking the play pattern of it. I doubt however that it is the wonky power level based on being on the play or draw that is the reason we haven't seen a card like this before now. I put that down to this being a little oppressive in a format like modern or legacy. This simply counters too much for too little, like a sort of Mental Misstep. For cube, certainly my homemade cube, this is a long way from problematic as it is only countering a third or so of someone's deck at a good rate. It is always one for one in cards and mana so you struggle to complain about fair with this sort of thing. Impressive to get a below average design rating for a card so inherently fair looking too! There are plenty of decks in those older formats where this would hit the whole list at one or two mana. That is too powerful. Another aspect of why I cut this one is that this total mana rather than exact reference to X is misleading and inelegant design. I almost prefer X+1 as the way to template this. Curse you Prismatic Ending!
Canopy Sentinel (cut)
Power 3
Design 3
I wanted to have more things that applied early pressure to planeswalkers. I also wanted to bake more of this kind of narrow utility onto somewhat playable creatures. While this card is fine it somewhat misses the mark. The removal utility is nice but it is absolutely no reason to play the card, neither being reliably useful nor all that efficient when it is. That means you need the rest of the card to be worth playing and an evasive Bear is not worth playing. Especially in green that wants generic beaters to be higher up the curve. Power wise this card is OK but suitability wise it rather missed the mark. This is an example of an overly forced design aimed at doing a thing not working out.
Care Package
Power 7
Design 6
I really like this card. Great all round support tool. The power level here is high but not totally unreasonable. I certainly don't always play this. Sometimes I don't need the burst or early plays, sometimes I want higher creature count etc. The most common mode is Treasure and Clue which means you are ultimately just down two mana and never actually up anything. Being able to carry one mana from turn one or two for a big play in the next couple of turns is pretty significant, well worth that two mana cost later down the line. I also really like the random Food you can get if you like as it has some utility across the set beyond being life or an artifact. I wanted to make this escalate or kick in someway to get all three but I fear that would undo some of the nice clean design while also being an unnecessary power boost. This acts a bit like a card quality spell and a bit like a ramp spell, but I think I would describe it as a resource quality spell. And now having defined that group of cards I wish to find and design more such things! This is the kind of card that excites me in magic and likely why I am so poor at making big flashy top end cards.
Career Goblin
Power 8
Design 6
A little generically good again. Probably this should stay a 2/1 longer, and perhaps not even get to having haste before a three total mana investment. Beyond that it is quite a contained iteration of a Rabblemaster type of card. An aggressive source of token fodder. Playable in a fairly wide array of places for varying reasons. The floor of being a Savannah Lion is always a perk for aggro builds, and while a lot for constructed it is likely where you want to be for cube cards on the whole. This is not a parasitic card and that is a big perk given how much support it does for the cube ecosystem. Baring in mind that most generic 2/1 dorks in cubes are parasitic cards. Not massively so, and you need them, but still, always great when you can find ways to have wider playability while being a 2/1 for one. Balance is a really fine line with more generally playable and rounded cards such as this one. You need it to be as low as possible to prevent them just getting continual action but skirting that low risks making them unplayable. I have made a fair few of these level up dorks. I remember loving them when they first arrived on the scene. A really good mana sink, of which there were very few at the time. They were incredibly welcome in cube and lots lasted for a long old time. Turns out that by modern standards it is a messy and restrictive mechanic that lacks aesthetic elegance. This is the only level up card that I really like at all fromt he many I designed and the few I printed. Time has not been kind to level up dudes at all. Career Goblin is a nod to the past, a tribute to pay resects, but not something to build upon.
Carving of the Seasons (cut)
Power 3
Design 2
Super cute but ill thought out. This card is fairly low powered in addition to being neither an answer or a threat. That makes it unplayable. A top down design I got a bit carried away with because of the lovely art. Aimless design, harmless and sometimes lovely but probably not doing too much to improve things. This is also a card that takes about half an hour to resolve with all the counters, tokens, and stages.
Celestial Incantation (cut)
Power 4
Design 5
Although part of a cycle that is functionally identical beyond the colours this is performing a lot less well than the others. That is much like saying we gave Shock to all the colours and it is doing really well everywhere except in red. This is no worse in blue, it is just blue already has better alternatives rendering this a much lower pick and choice. I am still a bit undecided how to proceed with this. I could buff this by giving it something like flashback or making it instant, or I could just cut it. If I wanted to be really extreme I could cut better blue card quality and force this into a higher choice. Cutting is the cleanest and easiest that is for sure. Instant is subtle but it probably isn't enough to get this competitive with the alternatives and more is getting heavy handed.
Centaur Archer
Power 7
Design 5
I wanted to test protection from tokens. Tokens are pretty rampant in the cube and I wanted to explore ways to handle them a bit better. I tried out a cycle of reasonable well rounded dorks that essentially had that protection bolted on for free. It is a bit of a lazy design but it will at least ensure I get to see the effects of the protection. As far as protection goes it plays pretty well but is not any sort of solution to anything. You want a mere dash of it and as such it is doing a whole lot to affect the meta. This dude is incredibly playable, reasonable stats, plugs some holes, and doesn't ultimately cost resources. It probably landed best out of the cycle. I am reminded of Briarbridge Tracker, a real mid filler card! Has a bit of play too it and a nice high floor without any possibility of being considered broken. Although a touch more playable than I would like the extreme "mid"ness of this dude does stop him just being an auto include. Very much the last of the cycle I would consider cutting. Green feels like the natural home of protection from tokens as they need it most!
Cephalopod Umbra (side lined)
Power 7
Design 4
This is one of those cases of being able to jam an absurd amount of card into a card because it is cube and to even get a look in aura creature buffsneed to be utterly broken. So yes, this is a nice convenient Curiosity that has not just flash but flash and totem armour. This is safe to deploy, reliable to draw at least one card, and can be used as a protection spell rather than as a value one. This isn't just significantly better than the best iterations of this card that actually exist, it is significantly better twice over! And after all that it came out about right. It is a little egregious in a couple of places but the general nerf of being blue in those places keeps this fair. That and card draw not being quite so valuable in my homemade cube. This Umbra is still an aura, you still need a suitable dork to put it on making it a conditional non-threat, non-removal spell. The bar for such things is ever so high and this mad seeming card only just clears it. If blue managed to have a good tempo deck either rich in targets or at least rich in card selection, then this might be too good. Until then it is shockingly fine. In a non-cube setting this should be investigate rather than draw, that would be a lot nearer the reasonable mark. Probably lose the flash too... This and Augment are two similar creature buffs I pushed through the roof and could still only get to a place where it was the archetypal support letting them down.
Charge of the Goat Knight Brigade
Power 7
Design 5
Entirely top down once I saw the art and thought of the name. This is the second iteration as the first was just broken! The whole cleave aspect was added. You used to get the whole card for 4 and it was an auto include all over. This is a bit of a dodgy fix as it is still the same card when you use it to finish people off and that is the best use scenario. The card is fine, a big tokeny slap. A kind of Ball Lightning come Hordeling Outburst and moving rapidly towards a Herioc Reinforcements. It isn't super interesting but it does do roughly what you want in a bunch of archetypes. Just a little too efficient and direct to leave out of a lot of lists. My main complaint with this card is that the tokens have lopsided stats and keywords making them tedious to represent with dice. Perhaps just making 1/1 Goblins then giving them a buff that turn is the way to go. It would also chip a bit off the power level. Would be nice if the title were a little less cramped!
Charged Crab (retuning)
Power 8
Design 6
What is perhaps more shocking that Cephalopod Umbra being fine is that this Crab is over powered! There are a couple of fixes, all of which I hate and all of which detract a little from what I like about the card. The least unpleasant of the options, and one which keeps the card most true to this is simply halving the EtB energy gain, and really just something I need to come to terms with and implement. I have so far loved this guy and played him in a lot of decks. He is really versatile and gives you loads of control and options. It is a bit oppressive against aggressive strategies in control decks and that is why it needs reigning in a bit sadly. In energy decks it is outstanding. Just the kind of card you want. It is good aggressively and defensively. It supports well while also being a good payoff card. I have called it the blue Thraben Inspector, mostly just because I really like those cards! The real problem with the Crab is not so much the power level, which is high but could be stomached if it were not for how off theme Crab is in blue. It just completely covers blue for its traditional expected weakness. Blue shouldn't have efficient well statted cheap dorks. And that is exactly what this crab is, even if it might hide it well. There is also just a lot of incidental energy kicking around making this that extra bit good.
Chariot
Power 7
Design 6
While this is over tuned it is supporting aggressive strategies in a nice broad way. As those strategies haven't been over performing I am thus far reluctant to change this. It isn't even an auto include in all aggressive decks as they cannot all reliably support it with crew. Red decks have a lot of haste and a amount of burn all reducing potential crew count. Chariot feels a lot like a fairer Delver of Secrets. This would be better with trample as first strike and three power make it near impossible to block right into the mid game and even then it can be scary in the face of tricks. Trample is likely better flavour than first strike too. If for some reason one really wanted to keep the first strike then it could be made a 3/1 so as to give more potential outs to it. Regardless, I like the card conceptually, a cheap pure beater of a vehicle and there are a selection of reasonable ways you could present such a card.
Charlie Little Potato
Power 5
Design 6
Oddly this is one of the only planeswalkers that has yet to impress all that much despite the type being rather overpowered at the outset. This struggles to apply pressure. It struggles to protect itself on curve as well. Unless you play a removal spell in your first couple of turns and happen to have it be suitable for more than one of their early plays Charlie can't do all that much beyond taking it in the face. Giving away scrys is also unpleasant, it gives your opponent better chances of curving well and answering your walker conveniently. What really did for this guy was the lowered value of card draw. This is a good source of value but there are plenty of those and you don't need to be gold or take risks for most of those sources of value. Sure, this guy is relatively efficient when it works but it turns out that as far as things important to have mana efficiency on, card draw is low on the list. The -2 needs setup, is typically just more value or light removal. You cannot spam the -2 even if you do have loyalty or targets as you are super unlikely to have both. The -6 is super cool but a pipe dream. I'll possibly buff this by removing the symmetry on the scry, or perhaps just going to 4 starting loyalty. It was a card a friend wanted to crowbar in as they disliked the card I had made in their name so much! Given how reasonable this design was I couldn't well say no, especially with the highly appropriate artwork I got to use. It does however mean I have less attachment to the card and thus less urge to get it where it wants to be.
Chaos Amplifier (cut)
Power 3
Design 5
This was top down design entirely, I saw the picture and just rolled with it. The card was sufficiently odd that I didn't really know what to do with it so just left it as it was and printed it. Obviously it is rather narrow and a bit of a do nothing. I have played it and it was quite fun but the power is pretty low and you need good reason to pack it. Perhaps with enough supporting it this will creep back into the cube but really it just isn't that sort of card. I have been trying to trim on the modal stuff a bit too which is only going to lower the potential on this. Clearly a build around, and something I want to do but should save such things for the world of constructed.
Cheetah (cut)
Power 4
Design 5
A kind of green take on a Shock. The card is fine on power level but it fails a bit on suitability. Green doesn't want dorks in this price range. Why would you start out with threats when you can start out with mana production? A card like this is going to work better in red or white as it is a bad removal spell split card with a cheap threat. To work in green we want to scale this up rather, perhaps a 4/2 at three. It can't be too meaty as such things can get oppressive if suitably big and unanswered but equally, it can't stay small if it wants to be a green tool. I thought green would want it most as green lacks for removal but cards need to be good at a thing and that is where we stumble.
Child of Vorinclex (cut)
Power 6
Design 4
Perfectly balanced card that was just boring. The proactive stuff using Phyrexian mana just isn't interesting in the same way the reactive things are. As such I can use the space this leaves to test an interesting card out instead. Also, still not a card green really wants. You are hard pressed to find something at one or two mana in green that isn't some kind of fixing, card advantage/quality, or ramp. This is not those things and so you are hard pressed to find good homes for it. Stompy is viable in the homemade cube but it has none of the advantages red or white has. It is more fragile and critically, less fun to play due to less overall control. It is a real auto pilot sort of a deck. I do have a special place in my heart for stompy so will tinker with things that might help it become fun. This certainly isn't it though.
Christina, Full of Beans
Power 8
Design 6
Very potent card packed with full steam ahead feeling. First and foremost you curve with this which is great. Often better in concert with the Treasure. They ramp, they fix, they provide artifact synergy. A nice little +1. The -1 is just rounding that out with some more reliable and consistent value and mana. The 0 is where the card gets naughty as it threatens to just be draw two each turn once the hand is empty, which of course is quickly when you get loads of treasure and don't miss land drops. The 0 is also perfeclty useful before hellbent, both for synergy and just for some card quality. For a walker that doesn't directly affect the board or provide threat, she does both very well! Should quite possibly start at 2 loyalty. While she is a bit generically good I do like her, she is support and in a variety of ways while being somewhat interesting as well. Because of that I am likely happier leaving her on the more powerful end of the spectrum
Chromatic Spinning Top
Power 4
Design 5
A Chromatic Star that comes in tapped and compensates you with a scry. Quite a dodgy top deck all told as it takes a turn to cycle. Mana is good enough in my cube that you typically only play this in a deck with synergies for it beyond just fixing. Low power and relatively low play filler. It could probably enter untapped in the meta I have made and would remain a long way from being over powered. This design however feels most appropriate. The main issue I think with this is that it isn't very good at fixing or not costing you anything because it is so slow to use. Much as these are some of my favourite cards in real cubes they are not needed or particularly useful in mine.
Cilice (reworking)
Power 4
Design 4
My attempt to expand upon the aristocrats archetype. This just never got played, it is a do nothing by itself and it fails to affect the board when it does do something and these are not even the really critical things in its failures. Mostly it is that it only does one dork trigger at a time and needs a sorcery speed mana investment to do others thus failing to proctect or combo as you would like. Instat speed equip, perhaps even some free equip, would help make this playable. As would living weapon. With those quality of life additions it might well then be wise to scale this down to a single drain rather than the double it is set at here. This isn't an exciting card or that good of a concept and so I am not in any wild rush to "fix" this. It may well just stay cut from the cube and a reminder of bad design.
City Square
Power 7
Design 6
The one size fits all Triome. This lacks the land typse making it harder to find and thus is rather weaker than on colour Triomes. We can at least forgive it that being so space efficient being ten cards in one. This is just a nice solid bit of fixing that comes at relatively low cost to the build. Triomes are a design win and this is just piggybacking on that. It is dubiously open design space but when the card plays so nicely I am not too bothered.
Cleanse
Power 7
Design 6
This is basically just Cast Out but in spell form. The cycling is kinder allowing it to be a more splashable removal spell and it doesn't come with the risks of them getting their thing back if they answer it. This is one of those cards that is eminently fair and incredibly playable. It is really really hard to get advantage with Cleanse. You pay a card and 4 mana, whatever you kill is costing less mana or has already achieved other things. Cleanse is just a nice little insurance policy. You can slot it into your deck at very low cost and feel a bit safer come what may. In some ways I am pleased with this in that it is a low powered card that is very simple that gets lots of play. It is however the kind of card that is guilty of making the homemade cube chess like. It is also pretty boring despite being so option rich. I cycle it around as much as I cast it, just a touch less, which feels like it means the card is in a good spot.
Clinnon the Destroyer (retuning)
Power 9
Design 6
Presently well over tuned to the point that my plan to calm this down is to simply cost it at six. I might then make the +1 a +2 instead. That or make two rebels. The power here is good, but the suitability and rounded nature of the card, lead it to stabilizing and taking over the game rather a lot of the time. It is an answer and a threat and it needs to either lose some of that power or be given an actual weakness. Unlike many other walkers this one is pretty fast acting which is a general inherent weakness of walkers. This tends to come down, solve the problem and then go on to win it before opponents have time to properly react. They are scrambling to rebuild after getting blown out with a removal mode and you are coming at them with haste dorks backed up by a growing planeswalker. I do oddly like this card and want to get it working, I can't put my finger exactly on why I like this highly rounded card so much. I like haste. I like direct damage. I like red. I reckon that all just adds up.
Clockwork Slith
Power 6
Design 6
I was musing that aggro lacked tools to overcome control strategies and felt like it was often those potential snowball cards that did it in other formats. The design brief for this third print run card is to try and make a card that has that snowball type of effect but with the polarity of it reduced as much as possible. Sounds like a paradox... This is an attempted reworking of Stromkirk Noble. It can never snowball so obscenely in terms of mana advantage but it does attack a bit bigger and better. I have been impressed with how this plays. It performs the desired task and works in a number of shells.
Cloister
Power 7
Design 6
So far this has just about been the best of the manlands I designed in terms of raw power. Comically the power of this is mostly coming from the extort and not the combat potential. Basically the boards are too gummy, there is plenty to be doing with spare mana, people are not running out of gas so quick, and overall the manlands are too small. All of this means they are underperforming. Cloister however is a form of direct damage and life gain and has won several games doing that. Very mediocre fixing but you play it in a two colour deck happily enough. This, and all the rest of the cycle are more colourless lands than they are dual lands. They will fix you in a pinch and are fine for splashes but if you have a colour intense three colour deck they are worse than a basic most of the time. The real tragedy of this card I realize now is that for all my effort, I think this would be a better card if it just tapped for colourless and had extort...
Comfortably Numb
Power 8
Design 8
Pretty happy with this one. It was just a ripoff of Thoughsieze but with a means to ensure it wasn't too dead late. Although 2 life lost on the Shock lands translated into 3 life on the salve lands the shift upto 4 life here felt more reasonable. Especially given that decks using targetted discard are not that often super aggressive. Jumping from 3 to 4 also makes the alternate mode of gaining life and having a look at their hand to be more acceptable. Four is a nice chunk of life and can be all the difference in a close game. This card is powerful, dynamic, option rich, and interactive. It avoids being too much of a feels bad card from most perspectives as well, at least compared with other hand hitting stuff. As far as cube goes I like this more than any other other discard spell Wizards has ever printed. Bit of a happy accident, there just isn't much design space open for hand disruption so this one somewhat made itself.
Command of the Legion
Power 9
Design 5
Given that Blaze is essentially one of the best cards in the set it is no shock that this super charged Blaze is performing well. Forth Eorlinggas is so nuts that this didn't seem that bad in design, it wasn't until playtesting that the raw power of this card became evident. It just does it all, and in a very powerful scaling way. Griselbrand? Death Grasp? Sphynx's Revelation? A Blaze and a Secure the Wastes in one? Yup, all of those are options here. Decent power, good flexibility, and phenomenal scaling ensure this is an auto include in any deck that can play it. I need to speed the format up a little otherwise this is simply going to remain a little too powerful. In my main cube this would be unimpressive.
Composting (cut)
Power 2
Design 4
An attempt to provide a counterpart to the black Mental Note equivalent in the set. I wanted self mill to not be so risky and figured a card like this could help with that. Unfortunately you just can't play do nothing cards like this that are only relevant in the super late game. Sure, mill this over or just cycle it and you can turn your excess lands in hand into cards. Yet more late game utility that isn't worth a useless early card. I am sure this would have some powerful constructed and combo applications but in a midrange drafting cube this is getting no love.
Condense
Power 6
Design 7
The fairest of all the counterspells. Much better than the scry, cycle, stifle, and other utility three mana counters we have seen over the years. And yet still much much worse than Actual Counterspell. This gets play but it usually does so as a cover all, a bit like Cleanse. People are playing it, not because it is offering raw power, but because they have a hole in need of plugging and this generic and clean card does the job. This would be unplayable in modern and yet likely a little oppressive in standard. I think that missing of the sweet spots is probably the only reason we have yet to see this exact card already a real magic card! While it might miss the sweet spot in constructed this is doing so pretty perfectly in cube. This is ideally where you want your countermagic to be as far as utilitarian enjoyment.
Contagion (cut)
Power 5
Design 4
An odd kindof auto Pestilence come Glistening Oil. I like the design on this one although the jury is still out on the play pattern. It is quite interesting from both sides of the table but it can be too slow as a Wrath to want to play it or too continuous of a Wrath to be able to play against it. Basically the performance of it is quite polar being either rather useless or rather oppressive. If I have a big wall and you have a weenie deck this is pretty much game over. It is mass removal for enough turns that the game is on lockdown. Equally, you have a couple of fatties I am just going to take critical damage from them before this answers them. I like that there is a risk with this that it kills you, very black and flavourful. Sadly a bit too slow and unlikely. If you have 10 turns of board control from this and didn't win or find a way to get this out of play then frankly it is good that you lost! Perhaps the sweet spot for design on this one is a four mana card that does two damage a tick. Faster acting, higher costing, harder to self support and riskier to keep in play for longer etc. Regardless, the only way I am getting this sufficient play in any cube is by making it too good.
Cooked Goose
Power 7
Design 5
A shameless take on Gilded Goose but in energy form. I just really like how Goose plays and want more dynamic options for the energy decks. I had been conservative with the design on energy cards and as such a high percentage have been cut due to insufficient power. This third printrun card simply aims to plug a hole with a known and loved quantity. Not quite as cool an flavourful as the original but I am not bothered or ashamed, when the goal is maximizing fun then I can't be too put out by the answers. This is a silly card but it is doing good work, playing well in lots of places and filling the role I ad hoped it would.
Council of the Wise
Power 7
Design 8
Insane as this seems this card is just good in the format in which it exists rather than being outright nuts. What makes it good is not that it is efficient card draw so much as it is a playable card that provides early consistency. What makes it not insane is that card draw and consistency are pretty abundant in the format and both reasonably efficient. The cardboard problem also helps to weaken this card somewhat. It is also something you mostly only look to play in mono decks, heavy white decks, or two colour decks with really strong mana bases. This card performs fine, above average but a long long way from oppressive. What it does do better than most cards is feel great. My favourite opening hands involve two mana draw two effects I can cast. Turns out that is where I want to be in Magic and lots of others seem to feel the same. People like drawing cards. I want to let them, I just need to figure out better ways to get them more library to draw from!
Courser of the Immortal Sun (banned)
Power 7
esign 2
Toying around with making my own keywords. This was a full kneejerk reaction to planewalkers being over powered. Really this is just bad design. The antiplaneswalker bit is mostly just blank text so the card has to be otherwise playable. The result is just an over tuned card that is either generically fine or randomly really good. Ultimately I have found a selection of good ways to temper the planeswalkers and have more than enough interesting and playable cards that this cautionary tale of a design needs not see play. There is nothing wrong with it beyond it existing in a slot that could be given to an interesting and well designed card. This is filler and it is pushed filler at that, which is the worst kind!
Crafty Swashbuckler
Power 6
Design 7
Quite the fan of this one. It does a reasonable job of being playable due to immediate effect while also being a card you are happy enough to deploy without anything to provide backup to. This is sufficiently cheap of an Ophidian style card that it is playable and it achieves this cheap yet playable balance more through utility than raw power. Where this does fall down a bit is simply lack of supporting archetypes. This gets play but would get rather more if blue tempo of any guise was more common.
Crimson Scorpicore
Power 6
Design 5
Reworked a little over time, with lower mana but higher card exile costs on back end and a cheaper less threatening body calming down the front end. Fundamentally this is just a tame, middle of the road version of Bedlam Reveler come Ox of Agonas. Red late game fuel. Playable but a little underpowered with rather more options on late game gas in the homemade cube. Forcing discard is uncomfortable and reduces the number of good homes for this somewhat. Even so, certainly a card style I like. Hopefully I will come up with an improved iteration of this style of card that is a bit more all round playable. Below isn't even the first version, I managed to make that without flying which was quickly pointed out as a massive flavour fail!
Current version;
Crouching Tiger
Power 6
Design 7
Surprisingly one of the more played fight cards I put in green. I thought this was going to be a bit tame and a bit situational but people seem to like it which I am happy about. It is pegged about right and feels pretty green. It is quite Flame Imp. Scales with some stuff, relatively cheap two for one but limited by being relatively low impact body and typically only able to answer smaller dorks. It does do away with most of those small utility dorks than can so frequently plague green decks and I think that is where this is getting it done.
Crypt Dweller (cut)
Power 2
Design 4
Feels like you need to represent with a Shade dork. I should probably have made a bigger one with more impressive base stats. These kinds of dorks scale with their base stats very well. This guy is a bit mana intense to be relevant and really all too mono. If I wanted this playable I should have pushed it up the curve and added base stats, at least to a point. Beyond that it is needing protection or good EtB effects which stops it being clean. I think 3 or 4 mana with 6-8 total stats is going to be the sweet spot for a cube shade. I think even making this a 1/1 isn't enough to excite.
Cultivator // Planting
Power 8
Design 7
Super Rampant Growth. That is the floor for this guy and even then it is mostly still better than Rampant Growth as it is a creature. Probably this should only get basic Forest cards to bring it more in line with other two mana land ramp effects. While the first glance ceiling of making a turn one plant with the adventure and then having a Rampant Growth and a 1/2 body on turn two is above curve it isn't as impressive as all that. A 1/2 isn't doing much. The real power of this card comes in with the various synergies it offers. Extra spells, extra bodies, sac options, ways to efficiently spend mana etc etc. This is just a whole load of card that gets a whole load of play. He stands out as good support in a format rife with good support.
Cumbersome Powerstone (cut)
Power 2
Design 6
With double mana ramp being so dangerous I kept this about as weak as possible and it showed. My top end is not juicy enough to merit ramping into so unreliably and underwhelmingly with this. Mostly it needed a non-exert for single mana mode but it could also have entered untapped and been fine. Mana rocks are highly desired in my homemade cube and this failed to get much attention even then. As such I am planning on reworking, and empowered this into six Signet like mana rocks for the non green pairs. That "fixes" the design on this and should cover the cubes needs as far as mana rocks go. This manages to get a win for spawning many other cards in the design category despite being close to unplayable itself
Cumulonimbus (cut)
Power 4
Design 3
Low powered, boring, and rather redundant. This card is perfectly playable and does it's job well enough. Mostly it was getting play early days due to lack of more interesting or powerful alternatives. Really this should either be cut or scaled back in size (not power, a mana version of this might be a good thing for the format). It is one of those cards that got lots of action prior to the second print and has seen a long way from enough to retain a spot since. I would have considered reworking this if it were not quite so fundamentally dull.
Curve of the Veil (cut)
Power 4
Design 3
I did a selection of well known planeswalker tributes in saga form. Some worked out very nicely and cleanly, others needed a bit more artistic licence to create something half sensible looking. Despite this being one of the least clean representations it also failed to be that appealing. It is an unreliable and situational removal spell. Why would you play such a thing when you could play one of many much more reliable cards? So yes, this might be cute, it might be reasonably balanced and flavourful, but it just isn't the kind of card you want in a cube environment. The only way to get a card like this action is to push it in power and that is generally not a good design philosoophy. Especially when there is no real reason or need for this card.
Curious Beebles (cut)
Power 3
Design 4
Cute but without any evasion this is unreliable to say the least. It isn't even all that powerful if you deploy it and it connects a bit early. Some clues are not going to help all that much unless the game goes long. If the blue tempo archetype was a bit more prominent and blue had tools to buff dorks then this would be OK filler. Some kind of skulk or activated ability to help it get through might make it get some cube action but I am not going to bother too hard with it unless blue tempo picks up a bit. Having Tamiyo now on the scene with flying and a whole lot of extras I feel I could go quite far in buffing this if I was so inclined.
Cursed Brooch (cut)
Power 4
Design 3
Attempted homage to Cursed Scroll. Turns out it isn't a great design space. Either this is too slow and it does nothing or it dominates the game and is a tedious play experience. Originally it cost just 1 to deploy and in the lower powered format of the early days it was usually in the dominant camp. With power crept up on threats and it moved to two mana the reverse is the case. It is a less good tribute at two mana but a generally safer design as far as fun goes. Probably it is just best off cut altogether to make room for something more interesting. There needs to be a clause on an ongoing damage source as Cursed Scroll appears to have known. That lets you have an enticing cost without going on to be consistently oppressive.
No comments:
Post a Comment