Recent content by Dom Harvey

UR I've struggled with blue, red, and UR for a long time (to the extent that I once made an Abzan Cube more out of frustration than anything else). There's a lot to like in each colour but it felt like every possible theme was a bit too shallow and you had to settle for generic blue and/or red...

Some general thoughts before starting on archetypes: - A reminder to myself that I know I have a very bad perfectionist streak at all levels when it comes to Cube: this is an iterative and imperfect process, that's the whole point! - Especially as the main form of 'feedback' is drafting vs bots...

To take an extreme example, I think Black Lotus is a much better card to add to a Cube than Moxes even though it's stronger - you're much more excited to see it, it's more unique, it makes you prioritise cards that find/loop it, it leads to better stories (I cast this thing on T1 and/or I beat...

Warden is fantastic, my favourite white one-drop in a long time - it lets you feel like you're actually doing something important with your trinkets and it represents a real threat more quickly than you expect Planisphere feels almost overengineered to be a glue card for Riptide-y Cubes - not...

Time to grow up and actually get my main Cube list in a tangible form. What better way than to reinvent it from scratch in public? I'll be working on the template here and talking through it in this thread. For similar Cubes I've been drawing a lot of ideas from: - Returning the love to...

That was 9(!!) years ago. What does the game look like now? - The themed/engine aggro or aggro-combo decks I was pining for back then are flourishing; every set brings a new bounty for the Tokens, Counters, Sac etc decks of the world. Meanwhile, the Savannah Lions tribe is racking up more and...

Wow they printed a lot of magic cards in the past two years A whistlestop tour: Lord of the Rings Quite uneven in its power distribution; I am tempted by The One Ring but understand why others swear it off. The LOTR Commander cards were a goldmine though especially if you're a Food-motivated...

A lot depends on what 'control' means in that vision - I wouldn't call that Naya deck control (but also idk what label I would even apply to it if I had to choose), the (mostly) tap-out control deck is the usual model these days but the old-school control purists will tell you that having to tap...

A key role of the land system is to give players something to blame for losses. I've played games that have 'every card is basically a land/spell DFC' or similar resource systems and a lot of losses there involve decision paralysis with every card, fewer distinct types of low/high-resource...

I don't think he really presents himself this way - he's a central figure in a lot of the stories he tells about design because he's been there forever and he's the lead designer plus a lead on a lot of individual sets, plus the main public face of R&D. My comment is that the mix of being our...

Probe: I'm a bit leery of the free info and the fact it doesn't 'do anything' other than be a very strong free spell; good enough on power level but without specific tie-ins to spell payoffs/drawing extra cards etc it doesn't win me over Cruise: In a weird spot where the decks that could make...

Have been bot drafting/iterating a lot with a fork of your 1v1 Cube, maybe some food for thought!

Maestros' Totally Safe Hideout + Bloodghast is the infinite land(fall) combo I didn't know I wanted (EDIT: because it doesn't actually work, which is very on brand for a Mystery Booster combo)

The Cube seems to be in a fantastic place! I'm curious what you'd try if power cap wasn't a concern (or people didn't mind a higher power differential between the outliers and the 'average' card) and if you had to expand the Cube to 450/540

In a format where you can build around it with a high density of specific triple-pip cards, the exact opposite of most Cubes