HMC 4th Printrun Reviews Part III

 

Juvenile Offender

Design 5

Balance 6

This is a bit more interesting than a lot of one drops designed for beating face. This is narrower than most needing some degree of support to be interesting. The scaling is indeed interesting, this can grow pretty fast and can even become a relevant top deck even in the late game. This can also be a 1/1 embarrassment. I don't love that polarity. It is also a bit of a snowball card, make this turn one and then  answer everything they have with crime and this will do critical damage pretty quickly and start dodging some removal and winning most combats. I like that this makes you consider your design a bit, and I like that it is a little bit more interesting and involved than many other pure combat focused one drops, however I am not sure that offsets the polarity and snowball potential of the card. 

Knowledge Power Conduit

Design 8

Balance 6

This is a really aspirational card. It is huge amounts of fun getting it going but it is hard to not die getting there, and then to put it to good use. This is very middle management sort of affair needing both support and payoff. Normally really no nos in limited settings. The thing is, this is just such an alluring card. Like moths to a flame, this pulls the nerd in. This card is fun, it is one of the most fun cards I have designed and so I'll be damned if it being a bit narrow is getting in the way of my good time! I did probably also cock up the design a bit. Copies are a bit hard to answer, and messy, and so it should probably be a counters on the card mechanism to give a bit more counter play. I am torn though, I like the costing on this and part of me thinks this card needs all the help it can get. I am certainly going to test other versions of this card. Just because something isn't a problem doesn't mean we can't make it better! That is obviously not a luxury wizards can so easily afford, nor is it without mental and financial cost for me to do so, but I think in the case of a card with this much promise it is worth trying to get it closer to right. Especially if I can already point out some potential design issue...

Knuck Fuckle

Design 7

Balance 8

I just had some random effects I wanted to see on cards and so threw a couple of unrelated ones on this dork. This was just a bit of fishing, I wanted to see what would come of a card like this. All told it has worked out pretty well. Played loads but never oppressive or anything. There are plenty of places happy with a card like this and you are typically happy playing it for just one of the abilities. Broadly a design win as it is fun, it makes you want to build with it and play it and it does this without offending opponents or being out of whack on power level. I don't mind if a card is aimless or ambiguous in what it is trying to do if the card is fun and compelling. I thought this was a silly tester card and so named it accordingly, now it seems like it is a real card and so I have renamed it Nick Bottom for a cleaner, more youth friendly cube.

Krushok

Design 6

Balance 6

This is my attempt to fix Overrun. My +2/+0 and trample dork at six mana was one of the best win conditions in the format. It seemed weak compared to both Overrun and Craterhoof and yet it was one of the big name cards. I didn't think it was reasonable to nerf it any further and so I thought I would dabble in scaling it down. This little dork might be cheaper but it gives a window to react in thus keeping this rather calmer. As yet this has not partaken in an alpha-strike. That is probably a good thing but it might also mean this card is either bad or under tuned. Bad seems unlikely, but boring is certainly a possibility. Jury still out on this one. 

Legendspeaker

Design 8

Balance 6

Big fan of this one. Convoke is one of my favourite mechanics and being able to give it to stuff without it is always a tantalizing possibility. My interest is always piqued when you can stick a cost reduction effect on other spells. I spent time trying to break Mycosynth Golem! This isn't too much of a limited card as it fails to stand alone that well nor offer than much raw power. I have no idea what sort of shell you want this in nor how many historic cards you are looking to have before this is exciting. Cards like this take a while to come out of their shell. Once players have worked out how and where it goes I'll be better able to appraise this one. It is probably too narrow for limited play but might one day suddently become really powerful should sufficient support exist in the meta. Indeed, this is the sort of card that could just be a bit broken in the right sort of combo deck. Due to how my I like it I shall very much give this every chance to succeed. Hopefully it will do so without resorting to combo. I might also toss a bit more stats this guys way to make him a bit more generally playable in a limited setting if the support is not forthcoming. I want this guy to succeed.

Lifeforce Weaver

Design 8

Balance 6

A take on Llanowar Elf. Much more relevant in combat and even able to burst output more mana like a Wall of Roots. Worse however in that without ways to evolve this guy he does nothing. He is like the Arbor Elf of the set. Mostly comparable to a more standard elf, sometimes a bit of a wiff, and sometimes a bit better. This guy plays OK, if slightly more polar than other cheap mana dorks. What he does well compared to other ramp is being interesting and different. That goes pretty far in an otherwise fairly samey group of cards. There are also some cool counter synergies on the go with this one which is always fun. 

Litter

Design 4

Balance 4

I had been liking the way in which vehicle which came with their own crew played so I tried to distil that into the purest and cheapest useful form. Mostly I think I failed in that endeavour. This just isn't tempting enough, it is low power, low scaling  and super low excitement. You would only play this in an aggressive deck and even then, only really to make up the numbers, to bolster artifact synergy, or to lower exposure to mass removal. All of these things can be done with more powerful or exciting cards and so they typically are. I expect to be cutting this soon and not looking back. Just not offering enough of an experience to merit the slot. 

Little Fat Goblin

Design 5

Balance 4

I'm not entirely sure what this was about. It just sort of happened and it seemed reasonable, if somewhat aimless, and so I printed it. It hasn't done anything of note yet, but I have just dropped a whole food synergy thing in the fifth print run so it might well start to do something. A relatively low power, and somewhat niche support card.

Loose Moss Walker

Design 3

Balance 4

Another card to come into being just because I want to toy with mechanics and find out how they work. In red this would see play, perhaps in white too. Cheap efficient beaters are the name of their game. In green this is just small and shit. It didn't tell me anything about last strike. If a stompy archetype ever presents itself cards like this will go in it but that is pretty unlikely. Stompy rarely performs in a constructed setting for one. Secondly green doesn't need a different thing to do, especially when it will do it less well and less interestingly than other colours already doing it. Colour shifting this to one of those colours is probably a little overly dangerous and so I'll sac this off and learn about last strike in other ways. 

Lord Baron Sengir IV

Design 3

Balance 2

I shit the bed here. This is basically indestructible, and you aint racing it either. You need to be a supremely long way ahead, able to win around this, or have specific answers to it else you were just done for. I have revised this down to 3/3 base stats and a need to sac 3 Blood to get the perks. I want a big flashy Blood payoff vampire legend and was happy with the concept of this, just not the execution. Hopefully I won't uncover other design flaws once the balance issues are addressed. 

Merchant Ship

Design 4

Balance 6

Top down design mostly aimed at upcycling this art and trying to create a flavour that was also playable. It did get play and was interesting and well balanced. Despite that the card feels off. It is blue ramp and life gain. It is a human boat? A skulky boat? It doesn't quite feel like a magic card. Off in just a few too many ways and thus ultimately a dead end design and an early retirement. 

Merfolk Trade

Design 6

Balance 5

I had a lot of wiggle room to toy with tutor effects as they are far weaker in limited than any other setting, especially ones without combo decks. Demonic Tutor gets almost no love in my unpowered cube nor has it done for quite a long time despite it being a pretty premium card in the powered cube. I like tutors in principle for the consistency they can offer. I had designed a cycle of Vampiric Tutor style cards that found a basic land or any card of that colour. I only printed the black to test as I figured they would not be too popular. The card disadvantage never felt worth the utility. Next test, to see if that same template works when served up in Demonic Tutor form. This is a much more significant tempo hit but saves you the card. Overall this is better suited to most limited environments, and mine being relatively slow is not going to punish you too hard for using this. Even so, it is not a popular card despite pretty substantial power level. While this isn't getting too much love yet I think as the format matures and either more synergies are added, or simply uncovered, this will appeal ever more. Also, if I ever add in actual combo cards and decks then there is a good chance this moves right to a top tier spell. 

Mill Wheel

Design 3

Balance 2

Preemptive design. I felt like I needed a cheap generic mill effect. No specific reason. This is a bit limp to be a threat or a support card. It also kindof has to be too bad as a threat such as this is not the kind of game play we are encouraging. I haven't even put this in the cube, there is no point, it would just be taking up space. I just wanted to have it ready to go when for whatever reason a cheap little mill rock was needed. This card just feels like it should exist. A Plutonic magic card of sorts like Giant Growth, Counterspell, Wrath of God, Stone Rain, Rampant Growth, etc.

Monastery Instructor

Design 8

Balance 7

I feel like this has been a hit. It is quite flashy and exciting with some real nice upside. It is also a nice scaling synergy card with a pretty reasonable floor. Throw on top of that some interesting game interactions and mechanical tensions and you have a pretty involved one drop for not much mana, text, or noise. This has yet to own a game all by itself but it has seen plenty of play, and even tossed out the odd counter here and there!

Mounted Ballista

Design 3

Balance 4

The hardest design challenge might be to make Gather the Towns folk fun... This certainly didn't hit the mark. This is a little bit too top down. It is also way too loaded in the EtB effect resulting in a card with a lot of text hanging around further clogging up the game without doing much of much. This fails more on feel than anything else. You make this you wanna shoot shit in the face, not do nothing with some lame 1/1s. For this flavour to work as a card it needs a whole mechanical reworking to feel like a big shooty weapon. 

Mr Tickle

Design 3

Balance 7

Occasionally your creative endeavours are just a good release valve for things like naughtiness or silliness. That is happening here. Not entirely sure I realized it at the time either. This is flavourful but it isn't the right flavour for my tribute to magic. This is all a bit adult and seedy. I want to be able to play with anyone and this isn't a card for that. I'll be cutting this and moving on. I do like the ability to negate ward effects but I am sure I can find better vessels for that. This card works in a vacuum but put it with the rest of the cube and it stands out in a way that makes me want to cut it.

Mushroom Soldier

Design 5

Balance 6

 

A silly tribute to Infected Mushroom and a vessel to explore the mechanic. The problem with infect is that it was very linear, parasitic, and polar. Especially in draft formats. The intent here was to solve those issues. While I think I have done that here in a cute way I did it on a boring and unrequired card. No green mage wants an efficient little beater. Scale this up a bit in size or add a stompy archetype to green and this is interesting. Equally you could probably play this in an infect deck if there were such a thing within my homemade meta. I like the way you could potentially set this up to one shot a player with the right buffs or use it as a wither dork in combat to help tackle a problem dork. I really like that the opponent can use it to fog normal damage they might take to the face. In comic fail fashion I feel as if I did one of the best implementations of a bad mechanic, and then managed to dump that on a near unplayable card! I may try and reuse this solution later down the line, and if I do I'll make sure to put it on a playable creature!

Paladin

Design 4

Balance 7

Painfully boring. I have been trying to make an interesting and relevant iteration of a Samite Healer but have thus far failed. This was an attempt to see if scaling the card up a bit, and thus giving it a bit of threat, was of any help. As yet this has not tempted anyone into playing it. I think it is more a case of dodging the draft rather than being ineligible so to speak. I think if this were presented at a time white weenie was being played it would often make the cut, that just doesn't seem to have happened yet. Largely because white is real dull and consequently not played as often as it otherwise might. This bear with bells is doing nothing to help entice you to play white sadly. It might ultimately be a playable Samite Healer but I am pretty sure the quest to find a fun or interesting one is still very much underway. 

Penumbra Unicorn

Design 7

Balance 7

I wouldn't have done this but I stumbled upon the art and it compelled me. This is a very suitable card. The power and flavour are on point for a gold card and I like the way it marries up with the art. While this is broadly a win as a magic card it is rather less so when it comes to cube play. This isn't super fun to play with or against being rather polar, a kind of brutal Kitchen Finks against aggro decks and mostly just a low impact bear against the bigger lists. It jusut does its thing and that is either great or rather minor. Further to that the card just isn't what I want from my gold. This is curve filler and hedging, or perhaps lifegain support. It is not a flashy signal card or thing to splash. This is not the sort of gold card worth using up valuable cube space on. So while it is a fine placeholder card I will endeavour to make something better. 

Piaranya

Design 3

Balance 2

This is a top down card design gifted to us via another Andrea Mengucci mispronunciation. I wanted to try and replicate the effect of a shoal and I am pretty happy with the flavour of the card. Sadly it fails on the mechanical side repeatedly. Firstly this is too good, you can easily gum up the board with it cheaply and take control of the game with little risk or cost. I have doubled the offspring cost, such was the extent of the overpowering! It is certainly a much more reasonable card with the changes as far as power level goes. Sadly it won't fix the other issues. The play pattern is never going to be great as first strike isn't a great mechanic. The nature of the card ensures you are using it to play defence and first strike blockers are tedious. There is a real Ophiomancer vibe to this card. And that right there is the final problem. Blue shouldn't have effective low risk board control dorks like this. We are at a bit of an impasse as the flavour of the card is on point for the colour and the mechanics are on point for the flavour but the mechanics and the colour do not mesh. The only real fix for such things is to down power it sufficiently that it isn't problematic. That might mean going to something as wild as offspring 3! At that point the card probably just doesn't see play, and that might be for the best. I guess it won't be too long to wait now for Universes Beyond - Waterworld edition after which I can just colourshift this out of blue to make it more reasonable!

Power Lich 

Design 7

Balance 2

Love the design concept on this one but I did rather overshoot with the power level. This isn't reasonable at three mana and it remains pretty unreasonable at four 4 mana as well! It is just a bit too sticky for a card that offers both ongoing value and some reasonable board control. I probably need to up the life cost to two per counter removed. Really put some pressure on those card draws and deaths.

HMC 4th Printrun Reviews Part II

 

Explosive Dissent

Design 8

Balance 8

Plot is a great mechanic and so I was keen to dump it on a bunch of things and explore it a bit more fully. Here we have a kind of quirky back to front Seal of Fire type card. Hold it in hand and retain instant speed and hidden information trickery. Or pay the plot cost and deploy this now for potential mana efficiency and big blow out turns. This is a very simple card that has a huge amount of play to it. I felt all clever finding ways to make plot interesting without even altering the cost. It feels on point flavour wise too. There is little that pleases me more than a simple core spell with a single line of text that is made dynamic an interesting by the addition of a single keyword mechanic. This looks clean and simple, and to any who have played with plot it is, yet it masks quite a deep and involved card. A card like this is a real skill tester but it does so without being inaccessible to newer and weaker players.

Bat Wrangler

Design 3

Balance 4

There needs to be enough stuff for synergies to work and so I cobbled together a couple of extra security Blood cards. A kind of extra padding to help it pan out. Most of the Blood cards were self contained in that if they used Blood in some way they tended to also provide some. Not the case here, this is pure payoff without any support. It is not the worst should you not have Blood at the time but you are never playing this if you don't have decent Blood generation effects. This card has very much lived upto being a boring filler card in that it has done very little of note and seen little play. A pure payoff card wants to be more powerful or at least flashier. A card this dull should be pure support, or self supporting. Nothing too awfully wrong here but we can and should do better! I think I will try an embellish this card a little to make it more interesting and self contained while also hopefully taking a little off the top end. There are also now a few too many ways you can drop this down and make an army of bats out of nowhere to steal the game. I need to put a safety value on the potential flow of Bats given the ease with which one can now accrue Blood. A not insignificant list of necessary changes to be made on this one!

Fishwhispers 

Design 4

Balance 3

The best thing about this card is the name. As far as play goes this is a bit of a flop. Shame as this is two great things combined - drawing cards and convoke (I like most cost reduction mechanics but most are also a bit broken, convoke is the fairest of them and thus probably the best). I forgot a core tenant of card draw - you want it reliable and unconditional. As soon as it gets awkward it just doesn't feel worth it. Yes, this is fairly well costed but convoke is also after something blue isn't great at. As a white card this would be pretty delightful. It could probably even be a white sorcery and it would get action. In blue where dorks are harder to have, card draw is abundant, and tempo loss can be fatal, Fishwhispers just isn't getting it done. A shame but this one probably has to go. It might still be good in a blue weenie constructed deck but as yet that is a bit too corner for limited play. I have heard directors of films talking about how they often have to cut their favourite scenes from films and I didn't really appreciate it fully. This card, my love of it and my knowing that it isn't right for the format, helps me understand the plight of the director and their pain in cutting treasured scenes.

Flaming Rain

Design 4

Balance 3

Oddly this arose out of me wanting more mass artifact removal options in the format. Obviously those kinds of thing want to be somewhat modal in cube but I went a bit far here. This card is simply too versatile and too powerful. It is less of a Meltdown and more of a Fireball / Starstorm combo card. Finishing blow or Wrath is a lot. And then I didn't even cost it properly. Absolutely it should be some mana to escalate, and it probably should really be XRR to play in the first place. Mostly I think we need to find another X mode and either combine or remove one of the creature/player damage modes. I am being a little speculative here as this is more towards the midrange and control end of the spectrum and as such has seen a little less play than some of the other new cards. Although the card seems over-tuned, the jury is still out for now. I don't hate the card in principle, indeed I quite like the way I snuck a Meltdown into the format, it just needs to be more sensible and appropriate in power level. Such versatility and such scaling result in a card with real game ending potential on too many fronts for too little cost...

Flooded Forrest

Design 6

Balance 6

Some more toying around with lands that can tap for extra. I made a Golgari one to start with that always tapped for two but entered tapped and exerted, a bit more like the mono red one. It was a touch too good but only a touch and only in some ways. To my great surprise it wasn't simply broken, it was just a little clunky and in need of some tidying up. I had also committed the sin of calling it a forest but not giving it that type. So I remade it but wanted to make it less of an anomaly so added this flavourful Simic clone of the land. Being tutorable is dangerous, and probably a design mistake but otherwise these are playing very reasonably. They allow for some burst mana but offer no actual mana advantage over a normal land. They also offer some quirky scaling with land untap effects which I am a fan of. All a bit close to the mark when it comes to dangerous but so far all is well. As is so often the case with lands, there isn't much room between broken and marginal where they can earn cube slots. At least these can argue themselves a case by virtue of being fixing. Ultimately I suspect they will get cut, if not for space reasons, then for those of asymmetry. I am not looking to do a cycle of these. I like them but I don't rate them enough to consider them good cube cards. Cool magic cards but not something that enhances a cube meta enough (while also potentially adding risk). So, homemade constructed the place this might find its forever home! Would that such things ever become an actual thing.

Foxfire

Design 6

Balance 6

A product of me liking and wanting to explore the gift mechanic. This is a generic card quality come mill tool in green made slightly interesting with the gift. There wasn't loads of demand on cards like this, mill support or card quality, however the addition of a bunch of graveyard matters cards in the 5th printrun has given this a boost. Comically that in turn has weakened the gift mode yet further. There is some interesting tensions at play here. Your 2nd card is a selected one so it should be of higher quality than the random one you give away, however it will be rather worse than the first card you get from this as standard and thus overall you are pulling less far ahead. If you want to fill up the bin however giving up that gift results in one fewer cards in the bin as well! I could probably make this instant and it would be fine. It is not something green can leverage really. I have a fair number of two drop self mill card quality effects kicking around in the cube, so far it has not seemed like too much but it is something I'll be keeping an eye on.

Giant Saltdune Slug

Design 3

Balance 5

Mechanically this feels like a real card but I don't much like it. It plays OK and is somewhat on point but that doesn't do anything for my affections towards it. It was designed at a time I wanted more Disenchant options and it fulfils that brief. There is just something a bit off about the card. High toughness deathtouch creatures are a little tedious in general so I will be happy to cull this as soon as required. It is sufficiently unappealing that I have no desire to try and fix whatever is wrong with this one.

Grave Robbing

Design 8

Balance 6

Malevolent Rumble is the inspiration for this one. I am a huge fan of how this card came out, it feels like Rumble is based on this card the flavour is so on point! This is a lovely little tool and sees a bunch of play. It feels good to cast and doesn't feel oppressive when an opponent casts it. I expect it to be getting a lot better with more graveyard matters cards coming to the format. Hopefully not too much so as I don't want to have to cull or nerf it! A high concentration of one mana cycling dorks makes this quite reliable and versatile even in the more creature light decks. Cycle some dork turn one and fire this off safely turn two knowing at worst you are getting the cycler back is a great line that sets you up for the next couple of turns as well as one reasonably can. This is good enough to see play in most decks as a bit of generic support, while also being one of your most desirable support options when doing the graveyard archetype.

Gravecaster Mage

Design 8

Balance 8

I wonder what inspired this one? As is often the case when I riff on those flagship magic cards, you wind up with a decent card. This is good in all the same sorts of ways Snapcaster Mage is good, but is pleasantly different in a bunch of ways that gets the brain to sink its teeth in. Mostly this is worse than Snappy as cheap spells are impactful and cheap dorks, especially when we are looking at one attack and one EtB trigger only, are not. Gravecaster Mage is a house late game when you can recur something like a Titan and get a really relevant swing and a bunch of bonus high value triggers. It is however hard to do anything too scary for less than five total mana with this guy. Regardless, this is an interesting, flexible, and scalable card with some cool synergies on the go. The power level is on point too. One of the coolest things about this one is that unearth is not a cast and so you can use mana from Powerstone tokens on it, of which I have a fair few knocking about in the format!

Greenhouses

Design 6

Balance 8

This is not a very exciting card but it fulfils the brief I had in mind for it. I have been culling some of the less appropriate acceleration and needed to have replacements. This is uncomplicated, reasonably appropriate and flavourful, and all while staying firmly between the limits of playable and broken. It is basically a Utopia Sprawl that is less narrow but pays for that a little with lower tempo. I don't love the logistics of having things on my land but I can handle it. It does at least make the untap land effects a lot more interesting! This will certainly be something I look to ultimately replace with a more exciting iteration with comparable mechanical suitability but it is a very real possibility no such thing comes to pass.

Hatchery

Design 7

Balance 9

More green ramp. Essentially this is Rampant Growth or a kind of Natural Connection / Harrow affair. Either pay 3 at instant speed, or 2 at sorcery. As the land comes in untapped the plot delay doesn't stop this from ramping you to 4 in the same way a Rampant Growth would. The trick here is simply getting a lot more card out of the card with the very simple addition of the plot. It isn't overly cluttered and it certainly isn't over powered. It just performs the support role of two different sorts of cards. It lets you have a narrower effect represented without it consuming valuable cube slots. Basically only blue decks wanting to hold up interaction really care about instant speed ramp but they are willing to pay a little more for that privilege. This card services those players very nicely. Much as I am a fan of what this card does and the elegant way it does it I lay most of the credit at the feet of plot which is just a fantastic mechanism. You do not want all the cards in a cube to be sexy flashy ones. What you do want is for the ones that are not flashy to be clean and elegant and efficient like this hard working little card. 

Hunter's Mark

Design 3

Balance 2

In a vague sort of irony this is quite the miss. I wish I could talk about why but I can't even do that as I have fully failed to temp anyone into playing this card. I thought I was designing an interesting and flavour appropriate green removal tool. Seemingly this is too weak, or too conditional, or both. I might have gotten away with it had I made a more sensible recover cost. Perhaps it is a life payment or some collect evidence style thing so you can recover even when tapped out. Perhaps it shouldn't even be recover and should be retrace or escape instead. I'm not sure if I am going to bother trying to rework this given how far it missed the mark and consequently how little I have to go on directing me as to improvements. 

Hurloon Anthem

Design 5

Balance 7

This card has a couple of issues with it despite being clean and simple and even pretty on point for power. The first is pretty simple and that is that the card is not very easily interacted with. That can make it very oppressive to play against. When you know you have little to no answers for it and you have to play the rest of the game fighting at a huge disadvantage. It is not a terminal issue but for me to overlook it the card would have to be an absolute banger and it isn't that. I am going to try and reduce the cost of the card to three and give it fading. Probably that doesn't help too much with the design issues and just reduces the playability but it is certainly worth experimenting. The other subtle issue faced by this card is that it is a super clean card. Any card that is just one thing and the cheapest you can reasonably make that thing will win up going "out of tune" with the format far quicker than other cards. While I presently think this is on point for power level it wouldn't take too much in the way of things like flip Chandra and Goblin Sharpshooter in the format to make this a problem. It is the kind of card that limits design space without offering enough fun in return for doing so. Not for those playing against it at least! 

Hurloon Bloodkeeper

Design 7

Balance 7

I love this art and wanted to give it the mechanical backing to make it playable. When upcycling cards as directly as this I find it best to keep as much intact as possible, especially when it was a pretty vanilla dork. I vaguely modelled it on Seasoned Pyromancer. They do a lot of the same sorts of things and fulfil the same sorts of role, and that is a versatile and safe mid mana play. It would likely benefit from being less red mana intense but I backed myself into a bit of a corner there. At least it means the card can get away with being a little more on the powerful side of things. As a stand alone this is good. With a means to sac artifacts it is a bit better, and with the fairly heavy blood synergy  have added to Rakdos in the recent 5th print run I suspect it will be down right spicy! A power level more worthy of the art.

Inn

Design 7

Balance 8

Although it doesn't look like it this card is virtually identical to any of the many, typically four mana enchantments in red that provide value in the same guise. This has some subtle perks over most in that you can break up the cost and you can often get value out of it the turn you play it when you use it off curve. Artifacts are a bit easier to answer than enchantments but this is none the less a very strong card advantage engine for any proactive deck. Really the only time this isn't decent is when you are playing counter magic and/or other highly situational reactive stuff - which typically isn't great! Decent flavourful and on point value engine for red. The only real gripe I have with this is that it feels a bit messy when it is on a land. I think that is just me though. Stuff on lands is just a bit messy and confusing.

Into the Light

Design 1

Balance 2

This is problematic. It is basically a Seal of Wrath, and an unremovable one at that. There are several reasons this card is problematic. Firstly it isn't fun. The opponent sees it and it makes the game quite stale and depressing. Secondly it can lead to some wild swings that are just a bit unreasonable. You can clear the board, deploy something of your own and have some counter magic still up with ease using cards like this which isn't fun and is over powered. There are two ways a card like this could be made acceptable. One is just rifling up the costs on the card, likely by around three total mana... a bit of a testament to how wrong I got this one. Certainly a 3 mana hike having both modes at 6 mana would make the card a little under powered, or at least I hope it would, but that is the right way to do things on cards with poor play patterns. The other option for a fix would be to make it quite a situational removal effect, such as all tapped creatures. That would give a bit more interesting counter play. You might even be able to lop a bit of mana of a cost with that power lowering change. I am not even sure if I want to try either such is the extent of this cards failing! Plot is a great mechanic but that doesn't stop you from being able to totally cock it up and use it to ruin cards. Most of my plot cards have been good. This has not.  

Jackal

Design 4

Balance 7

This card is a very simple attempt to speed up games. Stuff was a all a bit slow. To speed up games you need better threats. There are lots of ways threats can be better but this is a pretty pure and obvious way. More power. Jackal Pup was the first successful red Savannah Lions card, it was wizards pushing out the boat to advance threats. It felt fitting to copy their "drawback" for the grown up Jackal. This being such a pure way to push things, both at one end of the curve and in being a power boost on a card that was just about high power/low cost in the first place. This is a 50% buff on good cheap direct card. This is Shock to Lightning Bolt difference. Just being a pretty vanilla dork with low toughness and low late game relevance does render this card incredibly safe. The only time it ever gets too problematic is when the opponents answers are all easily burned out the way dorks and you made this early. If you get three hits in with this, ideally deploying something else cheap and aggressive then you are probably winning that one! So yes, this card is playable and reasonably well balanced. The aggressive decks want it and the others don't so it is a bit boring and a bit narrow. It also doesn't do what you want in the best way possible, even if it is still doing what you want! This is speeding up the average game by providing a few very short games where this got out of hand. The addition of this card is a bit polar. It stretches out the arms of the bell curve rather than flattening down the middle. Regardless, this card is ripe for the cutting even if it is doing fine enough work. Where it might not be the perfect card mechanically it is an absolute peach aesthetically which will give it some extra staying power in the cube.

HMC 4th Printrun Reviews Part I

Acid Rain

Design 5

Balance 6

Eating a bit into my own design space rather here but I do like the Desert Twister card in green that is made viable with cycling. This is the Bramblecrush version of that treatment. The cycling is not quite so convenient nor is the cost reduced, but I did treat the card to some instant speed action! I am a little concerned with this being able to hit lands but it is yet to even hint at being a problem. This is much more an insurance policy, you are generally a little down when you use it but you are glad that you had it. Instant is nice but it is still so expensive that it is pretty hard to find yourself up having used it. Instant speed interaction that is both playable and on colour in green feels like a bit of a miracle and so I will gladly take that even if it is occupying somewhat similar design space, perhaps this is just an area in green where some redundancy is more than welcome! This just seems to improve the format overall in the same kind of way that Cast Out used to in real cube. This is one of those simple clean cards that lets you properly get down to playing some good old Magic! Bramblecrush doesn't become broken with cycling, nor at instant speed, nor apparently even both. I love when you find how to make a card playable without having to fundamentally alter what the card does, I guess that is why I like cycling so much...

Aerial Thief

Design 6

Balance 6

This card is on the boring side but it does serve a good purpose in supporting the Izzet tempo archetype. It would be a bit too powerful in red where such a robust and hard hitting cheap threat really shouldn't also have access to evasion! In blue it flies more easily but pumps a little less readily and significantly less dangerously due to blue lacking the finishing power of red! I enjoy Izzet tempo decks and want to support them in my cube. This is a simple and safe way of doing so. This is card that is bland but on point, allowing other cards to shine. It might not always be needed but it'll be nice to have access to cards like this for tuning the cube.

Ancestral Unity

Design 5

Balance 6

Always nice to be able to give a nod to Ancestral Recall, especially if it is a somewhat reasonable one. While miracle is a fairly poor mechanic, making Rosewaster's Top 10 bad mechanics list I believe, this doesn't mean you can't use it, you just need to do so with a lot more caution. Miracle is a weird one, it rather falls flat on limp cards. Other attempts I had made at balancing the miracle mechanic was simply to make low key cards that didn't break the game when you randomly hit them at the right time. While the cards were indeed safe, they were also boring. Putting big effects on miracles just makes them swingy and random and a bad experience for the opponent but not doing so leaves them lackluster. The "safest" thing you can do in magic that is big and flashy tends to be drawing cards. It isn't tempo, it isn't assured power or victory but none the less it feels great. And here we arrive at this thing. The card is surprisingly fine. It is great when you hit it but no so much of a swing as to be broken or egregious. I don't think this is a great card but it is surprisingly reasonable. I think it is about as good as you are getting while using the miracle mechanic and packs a good balance of polarizing to excitement. Sadly I have quite a lot of reasonable card draw effects I have designed and they are competing for ever more contested space. This is not one of the best and is likely getting edged out sooner rather than later. It is good for a card with miracle but it has to compete with cards that say "draw cards" without having the miracle text weighing them down. 

Battle Ram

Design 8

Balance 8

Part of the drive to make white more fun. I had made so many generic 2/1 dorks in white and not only was it a bit dull, it was also something you could easily meta against. Variety is key to any healthy ecosystem. A lot of my white 2/1s did a thing once and then that was that, just a generic small body and no ongoing choices. This card is aimed squarely with some targetted design at alleviating those issues in white. It is super simple yet quite interesting. It has the capacity to scale and be more relevant than many one drops in the late game which is another thing I appreciate in a one drop beater. This is really spot on for where you want a common cheap support card like this to be. It isn't too wordy or complicated but it retains some interest and gameplay. 

Black Market 

Design 6

Balance 4

Basically just an Underworld Connections made fortification. I have since reworked this to allow you to sac the fortified land and gain 2 life. This was simply, and somewhat surprisingly, underpowered in my format and needed a little buff. This is pretty cute and flavourful but sorely awaits that buff so as to get it some actual play time amongst stiff competition in the heavily saturated world of card draw. The Zuran Orb mode buff is decent but a long way from too much. Having to fortify the land really takes the sting out of it. Your lands essentially become very bad Foods. Not sure why this has been left common, pretty clearly a rare looking card.

Blood Vendor

Design 6

Balance 5

This is very much a Seasoned Pyromancer of a card. It is a bit less tempo and a bit more longevity and utility. Safe consistency in a can. I attempted to make Blood a more relevant token type and made a load of support and payoff cards for it in the 4th and 5th printruns. Unsurprisingly these took mainly vampire forms! This is one of the most generic ones and is presently a little under tuned to have done much of much. I like how it is a fairly reliable source of Blood and discard whatever the situation and I like how the Blood it makes can fuel its own escape. It may well jump from fine filler to very good blood support card as the 5th printrun cards are more thoroughly tested but I think that will speak more to the power of those newer cards than any problems with this.

Bloodthief

Design 4

Balance 3

Conversely this dickhead is way over tuned. Stuff that can just pop back for no mana at instant speed is a right royal pain. These effects generally want to be sorcery speed, or at the very leave ensure that the card is coming in tapped. I think this guy also lost a toughness in the nerf. He was just too robust and fired on too many axis. I like the card conceptually and like the manner in which this is a Blood payoff but the implementation was all off. There is a cool kind of arc where you can either have enough other blood producers at one end, or enough sources of crime at the other end of the spectrum, where the card is playable. That or you cobble together some of both and hope the card is good enough - it did very much seem to be good enough most of the time. That in turn is concerning for a card you can't reasonably call good without support. This is not a standalone good card and thus clearly a problem when it is performing so well in limited.

Brimstone

Design 4

Balance 7

Bargain is a mechanic that came out after I stopped with real magic. I wanted to toy about with it and needed more instant speed cheap burn. This seemed like a good way to do it, and clearly it was because Wizards had done basically the same thing already. This card is fine, it does its job. It is certainly on the powerful side as the sac has utility despite mostly being a cost. Shock is a fine card and Bolt is a great one, an option on either with a bit of potential trickery and spice and we have quite the card. It is however not super original. It is just a burn spell and it is one that many people have essentially played with already. I will likely cut this before it is the worst designed burn spell remaining because it is not something I am at all proud of making. Still, you need a critical mass or clean simple effects in the game and this ticks that box like a dream. Considering how clean this manages to be, it is a whole lot more card than Lighting Bolt. Both more interesting while also more reasonable in power level. 

Buzzard

Design 3

Balance 6

This is basically a vehicle but it is in mount form. The reason I have ranked it so low on the design side of things is cohesion. This is a confusing card as it fails to conform with other mounts and how they operate, while also not quite fitting the vehicle mould. This is just not an intuitive card. It isn't exciting or interesting either. Not being able to saddle can often render this a dead card, and when it is working fine it is just a boring efficient evasive beater. I could put effort into fixing it but it doesn't seem like the best investment of time, likely I'll just cull this and move on to greener pastures. 

Caerbannog Badger

Design 6

Balance 7

A fusion of Inti and Ledger Shredder - both cards I enjoy playing with. They do a good job of being cheap relevant creatures that offer card quality and continued late game relevance without feeling too oppressive early. The Badger does all those things and manages to do so without being quite so pushed in power, and while being somewhat cleaner. This is simply an example where I have seen something I like in real magic and tried my best to clean it up and distil it. I don't think the Badger is very original but it does play rather nicely thankyou very much. Powerful but in the right kinds of way. The name is a Monty Python reference combined with a personal joke between my wife and I where I made the claim that a badger was likely the most dangerous wild animal in the UK and my wife ruthlessly mocked me ever after....

Citadel of Traitors 

Design 5

Balance 7

This is just me experimenting with lands and trying to understand the way in which they scale. This is knowingly pushed and I had no expectation of it being reasonable nor that it would last in the cube. I had just been surprised at how burst mana and double mana sources had performed thus far in my homemade cube meta - and that is a lot less impressively than in basically all other forms of real magic. I presume the reasons being less broken things to do with burst mana and greater risk of exposure for trying to take big swingy turns. So far this land has seems totally fine. It has helped with some turn three 5 drops from a mono red deck but that didn't break the game. Mostly it just feels like a spicy mountain. It is more likely to get cut for not being impactful enough than it is for being too powerful! Despite not making any waves thus far I shall be keeping a watchful eye on this one. It is exactly the sort of dangerous card that is just suddenly oppressive. It is pretty fun to play with, and it feels really naughty when you do, even if it isn't. This does all work in it's favour.

Crowd Source

Design 7

Balance 8

Serum Visions but surveil instead of scry. Not exactly original but super clean and on point. I made too many blue card quality effects and they were generally on the more convoluted side of things. While this is certainly not he most powerful, the self mill aspect gives it a synergy boost others lack, and the cleanliness of the card makes it more approachable and appealing. Much as I have no real pride in this card it will be very hard to cut it as it performs so well. It is that sweet spot where Mental Note and Serum Visions meet. Have two cards for the price of one. Just what a cube curator wants.

Dam

Design 4

Balance 4?

The Mana Battery or storage land have ever been a part of magic. There is nostalgia merely in the concept. Sadly they have not done too much to impact the game beyond some fringe things. I suspect it is one of those things that is fundamentally flawed and is either unplayable or broken without ever passing a sweet spot of good designs. Here was my first attempt at a storage land card. I like the flavour, I do not like the performance. This does nothing to entice people in. When I break it down it looks like it is better than most two mana mana rocks and yet I cannot ever seem to find the place for it. Perhaps it is just too fiddly and that puts people off. We all like our mana sources to be clean and easy. Tap, bam, done. Messing about with counters isn't fun when your bursting to blurt that spell out. I have to call this a design fail but sadly I can't proffer any fixes or solutions. 

Dark Halls

Design 3

Balance 2

Turns out manlands are one of the harder things to get right within a format. They do not scale quite as you might expect and subtle changes, even to weighting and not power level, can totally alter the card. I had been struggling to get manlands I was happy with in the meta and had a crack at some meatier ones. I failed pretty hard with my first go. I somewhat knew I would and so only even put out 2/5th of the cycle to test! This is one of those cards from the partial cycle. Simply put this is way too much card at too little cost. This is a huge and resilient threat basically bolted on to a swamp for effectively one mana and no cards. I wanted manlands to offer a good counterplay to planeswalkers more than anything else, but some wrath protection and late game mana sinking is all bonus good stuff. This land moved way beyond those roles and just landed itself squarely in the overpowered threat camp, I have finished the cycle of these now and reworked their activation costs, hopefully bringing them back down to where I want them. 

Delirious Girl

Design 6

Balance 4

Although Dragon's Rage Channeler is pretty broken I do enjoy the way it plays. This was a bit of a tribute to the card. In some ways I toned things down but in others I managed to boost it... This obviously has a better floor with the starting 2/1 statline able to beat relevantly regardless of the bin situation. There is also the hellbent mode where this is just drawing you a card on attack. All the things combined result in this being one of the most powerful one drops in the format. It does a lot on a wide range of fronts. Luckily for this card it looks and plays real good and so despite my lowish ratings I cannot see this getting cut.

Doctor Moin

Design 9

Balance 8

There is little more fun and powerful feeling in magic than going off with an Urza or a Tolarian Academy. Neither are very fair magic cards but at least Uzra has a wiff of fair to him thanks to cost and ability to interact with him. This is basically Urza but more so in regards safe design. This is an Urza you can attack with dorks. It is one that comes with a rather smaller dork bolted on and that lacks the built in mana sink card draw tool!  This card is great, it is loads of fun without overstepping the mark. It is a card that makes you want to build around it, rewards you with scaling and cool interactions for doing so, and does all this without being too offensive from the other side of the table. This is a product of me asking what the most fun cards and things in real magic are and trying to replicate that in a healthy way. Much as this is firing perfectly in the present meta it is a card with scaling and synergy and thus will rise and fall in power with the tides of the meta. In other words, this is exactly the sort of card that could become unplayable if the support dries up, or a bomb if I print a couple of whoopsie cards.  Until then it is going to sit happily as one of my best designs and best additions to the format.

Doom

Design 8

Balance 7

Yet another example of my wanting to explore and understand a new mechanic. Comically this landed pretty well and managed to do so despite a typo resulting in ambiguity over the card. It seems to have both impending 3 and 4 thanks to a reminder text error. What really threw me is that the card played fine at both values. People said it was bad at 4 and yet it got plenty of play. I assumed with it being fine at 4 that running it at 3 would make it oppressive but no, it was still somewhat the same. Much as it was initially hard to believe I think ultimately it just speaks a lot to the mechanic and the progression of games. This is a two toughness dork that is very rarely attacking before turn six and that broadcasts itself a long way in advance. Doom provides every opportunity for counter play and that is ultimately what makes it interesting. Edict needs to be boosted to be playable and this is a bad Edict on the front end. If left unchecked however it slowly turns to a bit of value and then ultimately into a game ending problem. Broadly this one seems to have been a good success but I don't know if that is because it is a good mechanic or just good fortune. I also still don't know when to set the impending counter at!  Four is probably sensible but then it is wise to push the more fun and interesting cards. Lots of conflicting things going on here!

Dragon Peaks

Design 3

Balance 1

This is the other mono coloured manland I printed and boy was it a booboo. It is perfect for red in design and then also under cost. Probably at six to activate this would still be a bit problematic in my format. Against a red deck it kindof just feels like a Lava Axe sat there in play. That is the floor as well. It can just kill you pretty much all by itself if you fail to have the appropriate answers. I have attempted to rework this but still fear it is the problem child of the cycle and anticipate more reworks down the line. Activations now require the sacrificing of lands and I am still not convinced it will do enough much like with Fireblast! The mere existence of this card makes it seem like opponents start on 15 life. One does not need lands in play to win the game!

Edvard

Design 7

Balance 8

Another card to be born out of the question "what real cards are fun". This is simply Torbran but toned down and made a little broader in appeal. Toned down in that the damage boost and stats are less. Broadened in that the cost is less red intense and the effect is not limited to red things. All told this is a pretty powerful card but it is doing so in the right kinds of way. It is interactable. It is scalable. And most importantly it is still fun and alluring. I see this and I want to play red. I scan through my ping effects etc. While not the most original card it is clean and very much fulfilling the brief. I also love that ultimately we are looking at a Hill Giant here when there is nothing else going on.