Long time Cuber and Card designer here. I've decided to try and tackle a custom cube yet again, but this time I'm going to give it a shot in more manageable 3 card bursts. I'll be keeping the set skeleton and all designs I post (or their fixed versions that you critique) in the Set Creation subforum: Altaurus321's Custom Cube. This will allow me to stay organized and focused.
Design Standards/Goals:
1. This is a 360 card cube. 50 cards in each color, 60 Guild, and 50 Colorless.
2: The majority of card's need to be easily grokkable. Player's are playing with hundreds of cards they've never seen before. Making each design easy to understand will make the whole process alot smoother.
3. Creature card power levels should be around the current design standards, and noncreature card power levels should be around Urza's block design standards. Planeswalker's will be measured on a case by case basis.
4. There will be reprints in this cube (roughly 10%). I will be choosing the most simplistic cube effects used (Think Lightning Bolt and Original Dual lands) and using them to take a bit of work load off of this project, and give the players of a bit of familiarity.
Wanted to thank MOON-E, good advice. I will be putting together a general outline of the archetypes as well as fleshing out the skeleton a bit more by assigning each slot more detailed descriptions as time permits.
As for right now, I just have another three designs:
[Guild, UB_Control]
Demonic Mentor 4UB
Creature - Demon {MR}
3/3
Flash
When Demonic Mentor enters the battlefield, search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. Until end of turn you may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost.
[Green, C_CMC1]
Reckless Pride
Creature - Cat {U}
1/1
:1mana::symg:: Reckless Pride gets +2/+2 until end of turn. If this ability has been activated more than once this turn, sacrifice Reckless Pride at the beginning of the next end step.
[Black, C_CMC1]
Scrapyard Thug B
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, each player puts the top card of his or her library into their graveyard. 1: Exile target card from a graveyard. If it was an artifact card, put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
As always, feedback is appreciated!
Scrapyard Thug B
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of a library into its owner's graveyard. 1: Exile target card from a graveyard. If it was an artifact card, put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
Scrapyard Thug
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of your library into your graveyard. B: Exile two cards from target player's graveyard, then put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
Scrapyard Thug
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of your library into your graveyard. 1, Exile two cards from your graveyard: Put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
Demonic Mentor :3mana::symu::symb:
Creature - Human Wizard {MR}
2/2
Flash
When Demonic Mentor enters the battlefield, search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. Until end of turn you may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost.
Demonic Mentor - A little weird for a name to be like that but not be a demon. Maybe Demonic Consult, to make it more clear that he's consulting with demons? Another possibility is making him cost 6 and be a 3/3 Demon; 2/2 feels too piddly to be a demon.
Reckless Pride - creature type should be Cat. This guy is quite the Rootwalla, but it makes him a decent draw late game. When I cube I like to draft aggro, and I would be happy to take this card 4th or later if I knew I was aggro.
Scrapyard Thug - I'm surprised you didn't use this guy as an opportunity to give graveyard hate to aggro players, cuz its a cool implementation. If it was me, I'd make the ability cost and be able to hit any "a single" graveyard. Either way, its a decent way to make him stay relevant as the game progresses.
Demonic Mentor - A higher mana cost is definitely better here. It has scary potential, although it is dependant on what is available in the cube. Keep an eye on it when you test it.
To soften it a little, you could remove flash so it can't tutor in response to something, but then allow you to cast it as long the Demon remains alive, like Intet, the Dreamer. I would suggest exiling it face down too, but that adds a lot of text.
4UB
Creature - Demon (M)
Flying
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. You may play that card without paying its mana cost for as long as CARDNAME remains on the battlefield. If you do, you lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost.
4/4
Variations:
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. You may play that card for as long as CARDNAME remains on the battlefield.
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a card, exile it face down, then shuffle your library. You may look at that card for as long as it remains exiled. You may play that card for as long as CARDNAME on the battlefield.
Reckless Pride - Lions have the creature type Cat. The ability is a little awkward, but I guess that is how it would be worded (Dragon Whelp + Rootwalla).
Scrapyard Thug - Using the exile as a cost like Grim Lavamancer is much simpler. There are a few problems introduced by changing it to a hate card.
- First and simplest, the change you made no longer requires cards in the graveyard. It should target the cards like Famished Ghoul, not the player. (or possibly target both the player and the cards like Krosan Reclamation.)
- Second and a bit more complicated, if you target two cards in a graveyard, but someone else Cremate one of those cards in response, there is still one legal target so the ability will still resolve. But if both are exiled in response, then the ability has no legal target and is countered on resolution. Should this be dependant on actually exiling two cards? There is not currently an easy way to word that, but this might work:
B: Exile exactly two target cards from graveyards. Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
-Maybe it should just exile one card, but have the counter be dependant on the type of card removed like Scavenging Ooze.
Demonic Mentor: Ill keep those in mind if it becomes to strong, thanks.
Reckless Pride: Fixed! Actually thought I had already fixed that when Piar mentioned it above lol.
Scrapyard Thug: Changed to mirror Scavenging Ooze a bit. Seems a bit more flavorful now I guess, though why Black cares about artifacts is a bit weird I guess.
Hello everyone!
Design Standards/Goals:
1/10/2013 - Immortal Elder (White, C_CMC4), Fearless Knight (White, C_CMC2), Unparalleled Foresight (Blue, NC_CMC3)
As for right now, I just have another three designs:
[Guild, UB_Control]
Creature - Demon {MR}
3/3
Flash
When Demonic Mentor enters the battlefield, search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. Until end of turn you may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost.
Creature - Cat {U}
1/1
:1mana::symg:: Reckless Pride gets +2/+2 until end of turn. If this ability has been activated more than once this turn, sacrifice Reckless Pride at the beginning of the next end step.
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, each player puts the top card of his or her library into their graveyard.
1: Exile target card from a graveyard. If it was an artifact card, put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
As always, feedback is appreciated!
Scrapyard Thug B
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of a library into its owner's graveyard.
1: Exile target card from a graveyard. If it was an artifact card, put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
Scrapyard Thug
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of your library into your graveyard.
B: Exile two cards from target player's graveyard, then put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
Scrapyard Thug
Creature - Human Warrior {U}
1/1
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of your library into your graveyard.
1, Exile two cards from your graveyard: Put a +1/+1 counter on Scrapyard Thug.
Demonic Mentor :3mana::symu::symb:
Creature - Human Wizard {MR}
2/2
Flash
When Demonic Mentor enters the battlefield, search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. Until end of turn you may cast that card without paying its mana cost. If you do, you lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost.
(CubeTutor & MTGS)
360 Peasant Cube!
Custom Cube
RWU Miracles RWU
Reckless Pride - creature type should be Cat. This guy is quite the Rootwalla, but it makes him a decent draw late game. When I cube I like to draft aggro, and I would be happy to take this card 4th or later if I knew I was aggro.
Scrapyard Thug - I'm surprised you didn't use this guy as an opportunity to give graveyard hate to aggro players, cuz its a cool implementation. If it was me, I'd make the ability cost and be able to hit any "a single" graveyard. Either way, its a decent way to make him stay relevant as the game progresses.
To soften it a little, you could remove flash so it can't tutor in response to something, but then allow you to cast it as long the Demon remains alive, like Intet, the Dreamer. I would suggest exiling it face down too, but that adds a lot of text.
Creature - Demon (M)
Flying
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may search your library for an instant or sorcery card, exile it, then shuffle your library. You may play that card without paying its mana cost for as long as CARDNAME remains on the battlefield. If you do, you lose life equal to that card's converted mana cost.
4/4
Variations:
Reckless Pride - Lions have the creature type Cat. The ability is a little awkward, but I guess that is how it would be worded (Dragon Whelp + Rootwalla).
Scrapyard Thug - Using the exile as a cost like Grim Lavamancer is much simpler. There are a few problems introduced by changing it to a hate card.
- First and simplest, the change you made no longer requires cards in the graveyard. It should target the cards like Famished Ghoul, not the player. (or possibly target both the player and the cards like Krosan Reclamation.)
- Second and a bit more complicated, if you target two cards in a graveyard, but someone else Cremate one of those cards in response, there is still one legal target so the ability will still resolve. But if both are exiled in response, then the ability has no legal target and is countered on resolution. Should this be dependant on actually exiling two cards? There is not currently an easy way to word that, but this might work:
Reckless Pride: Fixed! Actually thought I had already fixed that when Piar mentioned it above lol.
Scrapyard Thug: Changed to mirror Scavenging Ooze a bit. Seems a bit more flavorful now I guess, though why Black cares about artifacts is a bit weird I guess.
(CubeTutor & MTGS)
360 Peasant Cube!
Custom Cube
RWU Miracles RWU