Saturday, July 28

C:L July Cube Update

Hello cube enthusiasts! I have a good amount of stuff to update you on about the happenings of my cube. First, I’ve updated the ability sheet and achievement/rewards pages at the bottom of the blog. Second, I’ve shifted a few cards around after giving some more thought to the M13 changes. Those changes are as follows:

    Simian Grunts > Farhaven Elf

After playing with Simian Grunts (despite the fact that its been in the cube for a long time) I realized it’s actually shit. Echo makes cards really bad and every card with the ability has slowly been cut from the cube. I think we’re down to just Goblin Patrol, Ghitu Slinger, Albino Troll, and Hetrick Champion.

    Crippling Chill > Jilt

Crippling Chill was never supposed to stick around. I just needed to find a suitable replacement and Jilt is perfect. I overlooked it a while back and then just didn’t realize how good it is.

    Feeling of Dread > War Falcon

I thought Feeling of Dread would be a decent card but it’s very narrow. White decks are usually not great and Feeling of Dread is probably one of the worst cards you’ll find in a bad white deck. War Falcon (errataed to say Rebel of course) is another one-drop, 2-power flying creature which is perfect for white.

    Dauthi Slayer > Surakar Murauder

There’s nothing wrong with Dauthi Slayer except that black has an abundance of creatures that can’t block and also cards that are black intensive. As such, I’ve decided to cut it for the more versatile Surakar Murauder.

    AEther Spellbomb > Traumatic Visions

In short, there’s too many bounce spells and Traumatic Visions is a nice card for blue mages to have access to.

    Latch Seeker > Fettergiest

As a narrow double-U card, Latch Seeker wasn’t particularly impressive. Fettergeist is a cool card for blue to have that I overlooked from AVR.

    Wonder > Stern Mentor

Blue decks usually don’t really care about giving flying to the few creatures they have that don’t already have flying. Stern Mentor allows for potential mill wins single-handedly which is something I like having as an option.

    Recoil > Cut

    Jungle Barrier > Cut

    Giant Ambush Beetle > Cut

    Monstrous Carabid > Cut

I mentioned in my last update that I’m working on cutting the worst of the gold cards because they are usually the latest picks and because RTR is around the corner. Recoil is also out because of the large amount of bounce spells. Jungle Barrier is out because there are now too many UG cards. The other two are just lackluster and don’t see a lot of play.


In updating the Achievements/Rewards section, I decided that the both the achievements need to be more difficult and the rewards need to be splashier. Therefore a lot of them have been removed from the list or updated to reflect that.

One of the new rewards is something that’s been requested for a bit: the ability to add a rare to the cube (treated as an uncommon). I ended up switching out the reward for the “mulligan to 4 and win” achievement with the new one because it has been on the sheet so long without being achieved. It was shortly achieved and Snapcaster Mage was added to the cube.

Shriekmaw (Graft 1, Persist), AEther Adept (Graft 1, Persist), and Mulldrifter (Persist) have been reset. I gave Beast Attack Cascade and someone else gave it Rebound. No one has reset that one yet...

A new ability that I added to the third tier reads, “switch a keyword ability with one worth the same amount of points or less.” This is a tricky ability to enact because you (cube owner) have to know/decide what all keyword abilities are worth. It’s a really sweet one though. It lets players make cards that they deem “too good” into less powerful ones (read: poop) as they see fit. Defender (6 pts) is an interesting ability to make use of. I’m allowing this ability to overrule the “only 2 stickers” rule because it doesn’t technically add an ability.


Recently, some local players liked the idea of Cube:Legacy and created their own with a real (and powered) cube. They went way over the top though. Their ability sheet was 4 pages long and included just about everything you could think of (change colored mana symbols to phyrexian mana, etb destroy artifact or enchantment, etb search library for basic land/any land).

One of the abilities I liked most is one they adapted from my sheet. “Counterparts” turned into a keyword ability called friendship which acts similar to soulbond. For instance, If you give friendship to Attended Knight then whatever abilities that card has its “friend” also has. I’m not sure about the logistics surrounding it (infi tokens? works after Attended Knight has died?) but I love the idea.

Their experiment ended up being a success, but not for very long. Without any efforts to keep it balanced It got pretty far out of hand. I’m sure that I’ll adopt a bunch of their ideas in the near future.


Another fun idea I discovered recently was the BoozeCube. If you’re not familiar, it’s a format/cube designed with drinking dynamics and is intended to get you drunk (what else?). The design space for such a game is pretty wide open. I’m not about to create an entirely new cube but I do think I could incorporate some of the simpler things from BoozeCube into my ongoing cube project, most likely just adding boozetouch or something similar to the ability sheet. You can find out more about that here.

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