The Cube According to Gatherer, Part 25 – Balancing Those Scales

‘Welcome back!’ is what you should be saying to me. I know, I know. I don’t work on this project as much as I would like.  I can’t even guarantee you even remember what we’re doing, so here’s your reminder: We’re making a cube. Every odd numbered card is determined at random by Gatherer, and every even numbered card is designed by me in a futile attempt to turn chaos into controlled chaos.  And I guess it takes three months in between logs for every 12 cards I add.  That’s one card designed every fifteen days!

Look, it’s best not to dwell on this.  Otherwise I become one of those creators that spends as much time apologizing about all the content I’m not creating as I am creating content.  But you guys know I have an audio drama, a movie discussion show, and show regular movies in my hometown.  Popcorn Roulette is now an official 501(c)-3 nonprofit, so I got administrative duties too.  And I’m in the beginning stages of organizing a film festival in 2020.  These independent movie submissions won’t watch themselves.  There are also the projects you don’t see, like the script I wrote and performed for an early American industry enthusiasts group, and I’m editing my uncle’s memoir/art book.  I’m bad at saying no to good ideas (your mileage of what a ‘good idea’ is will vary.)

You get it. I’m busy. But there is no way I’m dumping this cube.  There’s only 71 cards to be added (of which I will only design 35 more.) That means I need to be careful.  With so few slots left, some mechanics need to be shored up, and the colors need to maintain balance.

A quick tally of colors tells me I shouldn’t design anything Blue this week…

…and avoid Green where possible.  White, Black, and Red are tied for third, so they’re fair game.

As for mechanics, I put them under spoiler tags below.  I’m sure some people like to follow my status in these categories.  But if you just want to see some cards, we can skip all this.

Enough with the boxes that hold other boxes.  Gimme goods, Gatherer!

Yowza!  I didn’t even know Bloodtracker existed!  This is what happens when you don’t buy every Commander expansion, eh?

That’s a phenomenally powerful ability for this low-power cube.  It doesn’t help that even if Bloodtracker doesn’t tackle the opponent in two or three turns, he will most likely explode into card advantage.  Outside of power level, though, I have no complaints. He plays into both the suicide them, and the +1/+1 counter theme.

I wanted to create a card that triggered when you lost life. But after twisting and tampering with the card, I just ended up with more suicide:

I just wanted too many things for this card.  And I wanted an answer for Bloodtracker.  One maxim I came away with when playtesting this cube at the halfway point is that there needs to be a powerful answer for every overpowered creature.  So one tends to lead to the other now.  And if we’re answering Bloodtracker, why not use a Pacifism so the opponent doesn’t get to draw those cards (without their own answer card.)

I still wanted suicide, though, so this became a Pacifism that drained its caster life.  But that sounded too much like a White/Black card, so I added the ability to switch control of the aura and the creature to make it feel more ‘cruel’.  It doesn’t hurt that I already included a ‘convince your opponent to play a little black’ card already to the cube.  You know… so in this situation, they can switch the the aura and the creature back.

And in case you weren’t able to figure it out, if you cast this enchantment, you will be the one losing life every round.  At least until you swap control of the creature and the aura.  At one point this card featured very painful to read reminder text.  And at another point, this card leaped through hoops to say that the opponent of the owner of the creature that this enchantment enchants loses one life per turn.  Ick, ick, ick, ick, ick.  Eventually I came to grips with the idea that, since the aura and the creature swap control, then maybe players will be able to logically backtrack who should be taking the damage, and when.

Also, the last line used to be ‘You may then sacrifice that creature.’ as icing on the meatloaf (gravy on the cake?) It was intended to be an escape clause that doubled as another sacrifice trigger. But this is already a confusing card.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll put it back on, depending on how players react.

Next card! Move down! Make room!

Harvestguard Alseids work well with auras, so they fit. To be honest, the aura theme needs little support.  Not that that’s ever stopped me from making yet another aura-matters enchantment.  Sometimes you roll with the muses you got. Otherwise, your muse might ignore you.  And I don’t want look for a new muse.  That gives me a one in eight chance of ending up with Melpomene, Greek Muse of Tragedy.  That’s how you get cards like Numai Outcast and Sorrow’s Path.

Originally this didn’t come with a cost of to return each aura.  Instead the base cost was .  But that restricted the kind of decks this enchantment could go into.  I like the idea of a creature rush deck with cheap auras taking advantage of this enchantment in early trades, even when the creature rush stalls out at two mana.

And once again, here’s another aura-matters card that spurns the advances of the Devout Harpist.  In fact, Devout Harpist might go in the same deck as Enshrined Essence.  Planning on casting a creature, and want to trigger another ‘enter the battlefield ability’ on one of your auras? Destroy the aura with the Harpist, cast the creature, pay , and profit.

Enshrined Essense isn’t as strong against Aura Shard though. Best case scenario is that it buys one of your auras an extra turn or two, since your opponent will most certainly target the Essence first.  I did think of making this enchantment a creature.  But the set is crawling with creatures, and I miss global enchantments.  They used to be a mainstay of the early game. Now they’re relegated to enigma status. Ice Age, for example, included fifty-five global enchantments.  War of the Spark has three.  Ice Age includes as many Enchant Lands as War of the Spark has Auras and global enchantments (all six of them.)

I also miss common rule-bending global enchantments.  Most modern sets usually don’t include any.  I often work to slip one into the custom sets I design, but it can be a challenge.  In theory, it should be reasonable to run six of any common passed to you in a draft.  But casting a second Zephyr Charge feels silly.

Time to stop before I rename the site to be Magic: the Grumbling.  What does Gatherer got for me now?

Mirrorpool.  That is… an interesting card one could put in any cube presuming there’s enough colorless mana floating around.  And therein lies the problem.  There’s only three cards in this set that produce C.  And one of them is Myr Moonvessel.

I need to add more.  One option is to alter existing designs.  Though, that can make for odd choices.  Let’s look at the Bloodmage Amplifier cycle for example:

We could add CC.  And CB, and CR.  It would admittedly look silly.  The only reason we want to add the colorless is to activate Mirrorpool.  And it doesn’t help that this cycle is based off a random design not from Gatherer, on a day that I decided to get silly and head to Multiverse.  Daxiefrax didn’t include colorless mana in their design, so forcing it onto this cycle solely so I can use Mirrorpool doesn’t feel right.

For now, let’s focus on increasing colorless mana generators before we run out of cards to do it with.

Granted, using mana during your upkeep can be a challenge.  It would only be used on instants, and abilities that can be activated at instant speed (like Mirrorpool.)  But in a deck where you control when the sacrifices happen, this can be a major boon, if not an engine piece unto itself.  Just add Saprolings.  Or Illusions.  Those blue wizards that summon Illusions every turn that you have less creatures than your opponent keep looking better and better in this cube.

But for most other players, this card is a variation on Carnage Altar.  The cost in mana is less overall.  But you can’t control the timing.  You must sacrifice every turn.  If there’s nothing else to sacrifice, then you sacrifice the altar.  In a worst case scenario, I suppose the altar costs to cycle. One turn later. If your opponent doesn’t destroy it first.

Call me Hunter, cause I’m the perfect match for you, Gatherer:

Rakdos Charm.  If this was log one or two, this entire cube’s theme would be charms.  In logs three to nine this would’ve instead spawned a ten card cycle.  If it popped up in log ten through twenty, a five card cycle would’ve been fine.  But we’re in log twenty-five, and I can’t blow an additional four cards.  I guess Rakdos Charm will be the oddball out.

As for multicolor… I think I need to make a couple cards to make up for the abundance of .  But that’s for log 26 or 27.  I’m more concerned with finishing the pre-existing cycle of charms already in the set before my hand is forced.

And that’s our last “choose one or more” charm. The trick to this cycle has been to find abilities that players might or might not want turned on, depending on the circumstance.  With all modes on, Ceremonial Charm turns combat into a disaster.  But maybe you already have creatures with Masquerade, or your opponent has a lot of little creatures, or your team is ready to fly in for victory?  Then toggle some switches and not others.

The abilities on Ceremonial Charm complement each other well, even if some choices only come about due to odd circumstances.  It works the way this charm cycle is supposed to work.  And now that it’s more clear what this charm cycle is supposed to look like, I need to revisit the white and blue charms.  Here’s a corrected Plumage Charm:

Now Plumage Charm protects small things, and destroys big things.  But what if you only want to protect the small things and don’t want to destroy your own big thing?  And what if the permanent you want to destroy with the highest converted mana costs two?  Then hold the pickle, hold the lettuce.  Special orders don’t upset us.

I got to admit, it’s difficult costing these cards.  When the stars align, Plumage Charm is spectacular.  Even when it’s just okay, destroying the biggest threat is still pretty good.  But is this card better than Angelic Edict?  Maybe?  I don’t know.  Let’s work on the blue charm.

Vortex Charm now wants a very specific board state.  Ideally, you’re behind by one creature and in control, making this card all good times three.  If that doesn’t apply to you, then pick and choose.

These are admittedly weird modes.  Designing these ‘sometimes charms’ often lead to a wordiness that miffs me.  Also, I’m no fan of rogue kill spells ruining my fun.  Choose your timing poorly, and an opponent can alter ‘who has the most creatures’ after you lock in what modes the charm is using.  All that said, the original Vortex Charm was uninspired compared to what it became.

Hey Gatherer! Show me the mana!

Okay. Blazing Specter is officially tilting the multicolor scales.  Otherwise, I have zero complaints. Blazing Specter murders hands in a slower paced limited format, but requires color commitment.  Great.  Let’s ignore it and work on problem mechanics.  I need more colorless mana.  And I need more zombies…

…which is how we get Long Lost Relations. Originally, these entered the battlefield and put a counter on each player’s land.  But I knew that would rarely be beneficial for the player who cast the Relations, and wouldn’t hurt the opponent.  Except when it did hurt, and hurt hard.  Since mana screw isn’t fun to play around on the regular, the Relations required a high cost and mediocre stats for an ability that was often defunct.  Shifting the ability to multiple costly activations over an elongated period helped make the ability more potent (more Wastes), and increase the ‘costs’ (total mana spent, time, and the cost of keeping the Relations from attacking, or possibly out of combat altogether.)  I also made the zombie fragile.  Cards like this tend to wear their welcome out quick.  Any chance I can send it on its way, I take.

All the tokens used to leave the battlefield when this creature left the battlefield.  But on my drive home, it occurred to me that this would cause a mess if there were two Long Lost Relations on the battlefield.  How would I know which Relations put which counter on which lands?  Was I expected to keep track of this information?  This isn’t a problem in most cubes since there’s only one copy of this card.  But I don’t like to design cards that only work in a vacuum. And Mirrorpool and Bedizen Vanities are in this cube.  So it’s theoretically possible to get two Relations anyways.

Now the counters only get removed if every creature named Long Lost Relations dies.  You’re a smart one.  You know better than to dump your long lost aunt Gilda’s terrible fruitcake in the trash until you kick your long lost cousin Ernie out of the attic too.  It doesn’t hurt that this might combo with masquerade.  The despair counters turn off when the Relations leave for greener pastures.  But if a person wearing a mask of your Relations sticks around the house, you can keep the despair alive until you exhume that pasture.

Only one more card for the night.  Let’s make it a good one, Gatherer.

Ooh… a Plains!  That means the next card will be color-shifted to White.  What whammy wins the white wash, Gatherer?

Huh.  Scryb Ranger.  That’s requires a little bending.  Not as much of a bend as the original Scryb Ranger, though, which made a mockery of the color pie.

Let’s break down these choices:

• It’s not the same card, so it doesn’t keep the same name. The thesaurus had difficulty finding an appropriate synonym for ‘Ranger’, since it was reaching for authority figures (soldier, warden), or wanderers (gadabout, drifter.).  Lookout hit a nice middle ground.
• Flash is fine.  I’m surprised to see it listed as tertiary in White… but I doubt many people would argue removing it from this creature.
• Flying is at home in White.  Not many green creatures get flying nowadays.  ‘Dragons in a set about dragons from 2015’ being the only exception.
• White can do protection from blue.  Though it’s an awkward choice when it’s not part of a cycle. There’s no particular reason for White to call Blue out.  So I moved protection from blue to the thing White most likely does when protecting from blue: block flying creatures.  Protection from flying creatures is probably more of a Blue ability, but it’s fine on a white creature.  An aside: this is one tough creature to block.  Creatures with reach do it, but not much else.
• White can’t untap creatures willy-nilly (Personally speaking, I always thought White should. But I don’t have the space in this aside to get into it, and we’re working with Wizard’s color pie, not mine.)  White creatures occasionally untap themselves, though, as a sort of pseudo-vigilance. So I kept that.  That’s a considerable downgrade from untapping any creature, so I removed the restriction that prevented you from using the ability more than once per turn. Can you abuse this?  Absolutely!  A Scryb Lookout with a Heavy Arbalest is a terror to behold! But if returning all your Plains to your hand doesn’t kill your opponent, then it will likely kill you.

All in all, Scryb Lookout makes for one mean machine.  Or it’s a 1/1 flyer for two with vigilance that sets you back a land drop. Assessing its value requires using the word ‘depends’ many times.

Looking through the set, I see there’s only one card Scryb Lookout can really abuse (an enchant creature which grants the Gift of Paradise.)  It’s a powerful combination, but the outlook’s outlook would look boring if we ran out of combos the Lookout could look out for.  So here’s another one:

Yet again, I’m keeping one eye on the Devout Harpist. Even if the Harpist is ready to shoot your Obligation down, you can still upgrade a small creature into a mid-sized wall.  Maybe you won’t wallify your opponent’s Sentinel Spider every turn. But maybe you can still block it.  See also: Bonus sacrifice trigger.

Originally the enchanted creature gained the ability to ride a zebracorn, ala Master Decoy.  But there’s plenty of creature tapping in this cube already.  Not enough to stop me from making another one, but enough to get me to think about alternatives.  Wallification isn’t as strong as tapping.  But maybe you can fire off a lucky Tunnel.

Time for this week’s token.  And look at that… I just designed another card with a unique token.  I wonder if I’ll ever catch up.

Okay, that’s it!  With 301 cards out of a 360 cube, and twelve cards added per log, that means there’s only five logs left.  Click here to continue on to log 26.  But until then, you can always check out the According to Gatherer page.  I’m out!