General Print this Wizards! (So I can put it in my cube)

[Chris Taylor]

Yes, title stolen from that wretched hive of scum and villainy, the MTG Salvation Forums (Source).
As we all know, card design is part of design. And cube design is also part of design. Exercising one can help the other (In my case more directly, since some of these cards may make it into my cube )

The idea here is to strive for printable, playable cards you want wizards to make so you can add them to your cube. Balanced, strong, but reasonable.

I'll get this started: Back before I read Jason's article about duplicating cards in cube, I used custom cards to add in more copies of an effect I found desirable, and to fill holes in my cube design with cards that just didn't exist yet. I'd latched onto the idea of black being a more recursive aggro color, but as strong recursive cards went it was basically just Gravecrawler and Bloodghast.
So I decided to make a few of my own:

Deathless Knight 2B
Creature - Spirit Knight
Exile two cards from your graveyard: Return ~ to the battlefield tapped. Play this ability only if you control a swamp
3/1

Reassembling Zombie
Creature - Zombie Skeleton
1B: Return ~ from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped.
2/1

Kami of the Unreleased Grudge B1
~ Can't Block
B, Reveal a Black card from your hand: Return ~ to the battlefield. Play this ability only as a sorcery
3/1

To get you started, here's a great program for mock-ups of cards:
http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/download.html

I get most of my card art here:
http://www.deviantart.com/
http://cghub.com/
Put artist credit in whenever you can. These people work hard, and deserve all the credit and more.

and Lastly: have fun. All these ideas should belong to all of us, and as such be used by all of us. Try not to get too caught up in the exact decimal mana cost of stone rain


It's totally 3.4, no question

 

[Jungle Bus]

Coming up with cards is a lot of fun, so here are some:

Stifle Bear 1UU
Creature - Human Wizard
Flash
When Stifle Bear enters the battlefield, counter target activated or triggered ability.
2/2

Reasoning: I love Stifle, but it's too narrow for most cubes. Adding a reasonable body/cost might make it playable where Voidmage Husher isn't.

Sudden Stones RR
Sorcery
Split second
Destroy target land with no basic land types.

Reasoning: It's important to have ways to deal with problem nonbasics but not punish people too hard for just trying to play their spells. Missing shocks/duals as well as basics makes this targeted enough to be aggressively costed. Split Second is there to give people a reason to crack fetches on their own turn, and to punish control decks that want to win with manlands (ideally there would exist a set of enemy color manlands to go with the ones from Worldwake).

Richard Garfield, Undergrad 3UU
Legendary Creature - Human Designer
Cards in your hand have Transmute 1UU.
3/3

Reasoning: Richard Garfield, Ph.D is awesome, but maybe a bit too much to run. This toned-down version gives you plenty of options without immediately making your hand insane. He's a little beefier because he had more time to work out before grad school.

Show and Yell 3R
Sorcery
Each player may cast a sorcery card from his or her hand without paying its mana cost.

Reasoning: There are a million ways to cheat out giant dudes, but few ways to cheat out giant spells. Goes great with storm.

Where's the Body? 1B
Instant
Destroy target nonblack, nonartifact creature, then you may exile a card from a graveyard.

Reasoning: Gravehate is too narrow to be playable on its own, but attach it to Terror and you've got something you're not embarrassed to maindeck. Sometimes it lets you get rid of something for good, sometimes you get some incidental value, and sometimes it's just a kill spell.

Little Loam 1G
Sorcery
Return target land card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Reasoning: Life From the Loam and Crucible of Worlds are fun to build around, but there are only the two of them. Adding this to the mix increases the chances that you get multiple land recursion cards to work with.

 

[tomchaps]

May I offer a challenge to custom card designers? Jar of Eyeballs should have been the coolest card ever, flavorwise. I want to make it cubable.

Here's my first pass:
Jar of Eyeballs, 3.

3, Tap: Put a Blindness counter on target creature and put two eyeball counters on Jar of Eyeballs. A blind creature is 0/1 but retains all other abilities and attributes.
When Jar of Eyeballs has eight counters, sacrifice it and put an 8/8 colorless Beholder creature into play with the activated abilities of all creatures in play.
When Jar of Eyeballs leaves play, remove all Blindness counters from the game.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Love the responses!

Stifle Bear 1UU
Creature - Human Wizard
Flash
When Stifle Bear enters the battlefield, counter target activated or triggered ability.
2/2

Seems like a decent man. Stifle is pretty sweet in the right environment, so all might not be lost! (Jason runs it, and I run trickbind, the split second version)
The problem here is that 3 mana is a lot. Part of the reason stifle sees so much play in eternal formats is how cheap it is: keeping 3 mana up is a lot to ask most of the time.
He would also work as a U1 2/1, or a G1 2/1 if you wanna be spicy

Sudden Stones RR
Sorcery
Split second
Destroy target land with no basic land types.

First thing here: we older players have a skewed version of what the baselines of certain effects are. That being said, it's never cool to imitate sinkhole. That card is not kosher. The incremental advantage RR1 land destruction (Of which only molten rain comes to mind. Wait no! Pillage.) work much better for a healthy environment.
I appreciate what you're trying to do with the split second, but the downsides (being uncounterable, the feelbad when you forget to crack your fetch against someone who has this, let alone against someone you don't know does) outweigh the upside of the interaction with fetchlands. I've seen a lot of people want to colorshift sinkhole, but I can't say it's realistically going to happen, no matter what restrictions are on it.

(ideally there would exist a set of enemy color manlands to go with the ones from Worldwake).

See, this is a design element I can get behind. The Worldwake manlands are some of my favorites (except lavaclaw reaches), and I think given the experience I've had with it in cube, a Blue/Red one would be strongly appreciated, since they fit best into control shells.

Richard Garfield, Undergrad 3UU
Legendary Creature - Human Designer
Cards in your hand have Transmute 1UU.
3/3

An interesting card, one that really rewards planned deckbuilding. The only thing I don't like about it is Transmute makes you need to know the contents of your deck inside and out. Spending half a game glancing at a piece of paper beside the game to figure out of you should even cast the card you just drew doesn't sound too fun to me, and god forbid if you draft it

Show and Yell 3R
Sorcery
Each player may cast a sorcery card from his or her hand without paying its mana cost.

I think this exclusion might be intentional to be honest
As magic has shifted from a more spell focused game (Drain Life Mirrors) to a more creature focused one (Naya Blitz), cards like show and tell generally fell by the wayside because of their lack of interaction with most colors (Essentially everything but blue, sometimes black)
This is the kind of card that's always hard to balance because < 1% of people will use it fairly. Think for a second about how many people use show and tell without the intention to win that turn in some degenerate way
I will say: Good catch on it being 4 mana. That extra mana is a big deal in slowing down decks like this. Mox --> Ancient Tomb --> Show and Tell is not a nice line of play from my perspective. "Okay, do you have force of will? Are you dropping something that stops Omniscience right now? Alright, I win then. Another?"

Where's the Body? 1B
Instant
Destroy target nonblack, nonartifact creature, then you may exile a card from a graveyard.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I think there are better ways to approach this idea.
Here specifically the problem is that if you really REALLY need the graveyard hate, you might not be able to cast it to remove a key card due to lack of targets for the terror half.
I really love the tension present in Scavenging Ooze: solid in regular matchups, amazing in graveyard based matchups. Maybe something like this?

1B Instant
Target creature gets -2/-2. You may exile a card in a graveyard. If you do, that creature gets -X/-X until end of turn instead, where X is the CMC of the exiled card.

It doesn't solve the lack of target problem, but it does seem a little more interesting.

Little Loam 1G
Sorcery
Return target land card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Interesting Idea. If this is a theme you wanna pursue in your cube, maybe take a look at these cards? (Tilling Treefolk, Grim Discovery, Cartographer, Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary, Sylvan Safekeeper)
Balance wise, I'd probably make this return the land to the battlefield tapped, just to be safe. It seems halfway between a Rampant Growth/Wasteland split card, and a crazy combo engine with gaea's cradle or something
It might be able to cost G, or have another small upside, I'm not sure. There isn't much like this in magic at the moment

May I offer a challenge to custom card designers?

You better!

Jar of Eyeballs should have been the coolest card ever, flavorwise. I want to make it cubable.

Here's my first pass:
Jar of Eyeballs, 3.

3, Tap: Put a Blindness counter on target creature and put two eyeball counters on Jar of Eyeballs. A blind creature is 0/1 but retains all other abilities and attributes.
When Jar of Eyeballs has eight counters, sacrifice it and put an 8/8 colorless Beholder creature into play with the activated abilities of all creatures in play.
When Jar of Eyeballs leaves play, remove all Blindness counters from the game.

Interesting. At first glance, it's Altar of Shadows, only Humble instead of Terminate, but the beholder clause makes it interesting.
I feel like the "Make a beholder" ability should be activated, not triggered. I'm okay with it not costing mana, but there are times when you won't want to make the creature right now, especially since it gives them all their creatures back! If it's part of balancing the card, we need to make sure it's balanced without it since it's going to be in play for a while without that clause being relevant.
it kinda reminds me of Helvault, but with a different ultimate.
Small wording change: remove the counters from all permanents instead of removing the counters from the game.

I almost want to make it have a bunch of clauses: 8 eyes for a spider, 1 eye for a cyclops, 0 eyes for a spirit etc, but we'll never make it feel perfectly right

 

[Jungle Bus]

Thanks for the feedback. Regarding the recursive dudes: they seem solid, although you have to be really careful what sac outlets you include with guys that are so easy to bring back. I'd like it if they were all zombies so you could have tribal shenanigans, but that might make the theme a bit too linear.

Now more cards!

Unnatural Order 2GG
Sorcery
Sacrifice a creature. If you do, search your library for up to two creatures with mana cost less than the sacrificed creature's mana cost and put them on to the battlefield, then shuffle your library.

Reasoning: A new toy for the Birthing Pod/Reveillark/infinite value dudes decks. Where Natural Order gave you incentive to sac small dudes, this gives you incentive to sac big ones.

The Rock and His Millions 4BG
Creature - Horror
When The Rock and His Millions enters the battlefield, put four 1/1 green Squirrel creature tokens onto the battlefield.
Sacrifice a creature: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
3/3

Reasoning: Creatures, especially expensive ones, have come a long way since the days of Phyrexian Plaguelord and Deranged Hermit, to the point where neither is all that amazing on its own. Why not glue them together and see what happens?

Lingering Procession WB
Sorcery
Put two 1/1 black and white Spirit creature tokens with flying onto the battlefield.

Reasoning: I like when B/W tokens iss a playable archetype, and another solid low drop might help.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Thanks for the feedback. Regarding the recursive dudes: they seem solid, although you have to be really careful what sac outlets you include with guys that are so easy to bring back. I'd like it if they were all zombies so you could have tribal shenanigans, but that might make the theme a bit too linear.

Now more cards!

Unnatural Order 2GG
Sorcery
Sacrifice a creature. If you do, search your library for up to two creatures with mana cost less than the sacrificed creature's mana cost and put them on to the battlefield, then shuffle your library.

Reasoning: A new toy for the Birthing Pod/Reveillark/infinite value dudes decks. Where Natural Order gave you incentive to sac small dudes, this gives you incentive to sac big ones.

The Rock and His Millions 4BG
Creature - Horror
When The Rock and His Millions enters the battlefield, put four 1/1 green Squirrel creature tokens onto the battlefield.
Sacrifice a creature: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
3/3

Reasoning: Creatures, especially expensive ones, have come a long way since the days of Phyrexian Plaguelord and Deranged Hermit, to the point where neither is all that amazing on its own. Why not glue them together and see what happens?

Lingering Procession WB
Sorcery
Put two 1/1 black and white Spirit creature tokens with flying onto the battlefield.

Reasoning: I like when B/W tokens is a playable archetype, and another solid low drop might help.

Lingering Procession is a sweet one! Basically perfectly costed, no less. It'd be strong, but that's deserving of it's pedigree I think.

The Rock and his millions is a bit too large for his cost I think. He is 7 power and a machine gun for Titan cost, which is pretty insane. I think he's fine as either a 1/1, or the same size and 1 less token.

Is there a reason Unnatural Order gets 2 dudes? That seems pretty insane. Sac Kitchen Finks, get Goyph + Flinthoof Boar? Thats just a 4 drop. o.O
I think it'd be a little more reasonable if it worked like protean hulk, except capped at 2 creatures as to limit the combo shenanigans.

 

[tomchaps]

Yeah, originally I had the Beholder as an X/X creature that you could create at any time, but I realized that being able to perma-Humble a creature every single turn was probably too powerful. It would rarely be worth it to make the Beholder. This way, you cap the number of activations, and still get a big, hopefully interesting creature. (I had lots of crazy eyeball-specific numbers for a while, too, but it was simply too much).

Is this too strong? I was thinking of making the abilities only work at sorcery speed...

 

[CML]

the other day we were bitchin about how every color but red has an absurd 1x 2-drop (sfm, goyf, bob, snap), so one of our "uw in every format" guys came up with a red one:

Fryer Tuck
1R
Creature - Human Shaman
Flash
When ~ CIP, copy target instant or sorcery spell an opponent controls. New targets etc
2/1

 

[Chris Taylor]

Well that's the cruel irony, isn't it? Snapcaster was supposed to be red, but Taigo insisted it be blue
I like forkcaster mage. I had him in my cube briefly, but people said he was too strong, but they might be talking out of their asses.

The fact that it's only your opponent's stuff, but that makes it feel not very red.

 

[Jason Waddell]

People in general have a much lower tolerance for strong cards that aren't real.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Challenge: bleeds that feel right. In discussion of weather a 2 color planeswalker should have a 1 Color ability ( Simic and prey upon) I wondered about ways to do color bleeds within the rules:

Alpha Challenge 3GG
Sorcery
Target creature you control fights target creature you done control. If either of those creatures would die this turn, return them to play under your control at the beginning of the next end step.

there's a bit of a templating problem that I can't sat "if your creature wins" without it being a million lines long, but yeah: green mind control. Discuss!

 

[Jason Waddell]

Ah, delayed triggers again! Also this still feels a bit color bleedy (black). I like the sorceries that make creatures fight, but this version feels a little clunky and not like an actual card.

I could maybe see a fight sorcery with a (creature) regrowth stapled to it, though.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I suppose it could return the triggers immediately, since they're new objects and won't just gain super persist.
keep in mind that it is supposed to feel wonky..this is not quite planar chaos territory I'm venturing into here

 

[Peter Angell]

Bottomless Cave
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if Bottomless Cave is in your graveyard, return it to the battlefield tapped.

Tether to Reality
G
Enchantment
Permanents you control can't be put into exile or returned to their owner's hand.

Angell's Protection
WW
Instant
Choose a permanent type. Permanents you control of that type gain indestructible until end of turn.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Hey, you made a typ--- oh.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Oooo, squee cave sounds sweet! (Jason, that might fit better than dakmor salvage hint hint )

Jeez, I suppose it is "gains indestructible" now isn't it. This is going to take some time adjusting, like how I used to keep saying "comes into play".

Tether seems either narrow or broken. It either pre-emptively counters your opponents swords to plowshares/unsummons, or you cast upheval with it and shit in your opponent's recently detonated eyeballs. It should probably say "by effects your opponents control" is what I'm getting at.

So sad about this guy:
B1
Unleash, Undying
<Downside>
2/1

Sadly unleash happens whenever he enters the battlefield, so he can just come back as a 4/3, which seems a bit insane. It's way less elegant, but:

B1
Kicker 0
When ~ enters the battlefield, if you paid the kicker cost, put a +1/+1 counter on ~, and it gains "~ can't block"
Undying
<Downside>
2/1

 

[Peter Angell]

Oooo, squee cave sounds sweet! (Jason, that might fit better than dakmor salvage hint hint )

Jeez, I suppose it is "gains indestructible" now isn't it. This is going to take some time adjusting, like how I used to keep saying "comes into play".

Tether seems either narrow or broken. It either pre-emptively counters your opponents swords to plowshares/unsummons, or you cast upheval with it and shit in your opponent's recently detonated eyeballs. It should probably say "by effects your opponents control" is what I'm getting at.

Oddly enough, I hadn't thought about the Squee comparison. Bloodghast was actually what inspired me: the land just keeps coming back and can't die.

The indestructible is something that I've been wanting to actually make into a custom card for my mono-white cube as it would fill a key role there as a two-mana counter to sweepers. Rootborn Defenses and Boros charm have already started exploring this design space, I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar to my suggestion show up in a real set, sans the vanity name.

So yeah, I totally knew that when I typed out tether; it would need to be costed and templated better (opponent's control is definitely necessary). It might even be better as an instant. But I thought the idea of blocking bounce/exile was cool and I had the flavorful name. I just forgot to give the card a real cost.

So sad about this guy:
B1
Unleash, Undying
<Downside>
2/1

Sadly unleash happens whenever he enters the battlefield, so he can just come back as a 4/3, which seems a bit insane. It's way less elegant, but:

B1
Kicker 0
When ~ enters the battlefield, if you paid the kicker cost, put a +1/+1 counter on ~, and it gains "~ can't block"
Undying
<Downside>
2/1

Unleash + Undying is cool and I like it better than having the wonky kicker text. Maybe just cost the card and assign P/T under the assumption that the card will just have unleash + undying. 1/2 for 1B? 2/2 for 2B?

 

[Chris Taylor]

I could probably get away with a reminder text of like "house rule: you may only unleash this creature from your hand" or something like that.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The B1 squire might work, but it would be way less good. The grey ogre is probably too strong, look at what tuk tuk does in a color with less sac effects

 

[VincePendrell]

I would like something like this for a pro-white-weenie card:

Reprisal Guy 1W
Creature - Human Soldier
When ~ ETB, exile all creatures with CMC 4 or more.
2/1

This would also be a neat card for token strategies:

Birds of Jund G
Creature - Bird (Beast/Dragon?)
Devour 3
Flying
T: Add B, R or G to your mana pool.
0/1
(or 1/1 elf without flying; maybe a human to mirror noble hierarch)

 

[Peter Angell]

The B1 squire might work, but it would be way less good. The grey ogre is probably too strong, look at what tuk tuk does in a color with less sac effects

On an otherwise vanilla creature, unleash + undying can add a lot of play. You've got two modes: get the base level creature, then a creature that's +2/+2 and can't block. Or, the creature just gets to live once, but it gets +1/+1 and can't block. To make the card interesting, you want both options to be viable. I think keeping the creature small is probably the best way to do this, but you could also add some sort of perk/drawback to the creature if it doesn't have any counters on it, or if it has exactly one counter, etc. Also remember, not being able to block a majority of the time is a significant drawback; and as such, I don't think the comparison to tuktuk is that close.

Just thinking about different options that sound okay:
For B, 1/1. For 1B: 2/1 When ~ ETB from a graveyard, an opponent may pay (life/mana/discard) to exile it. Also for 1B: 1/2 If ~ has exactly 1 +1/+1 counter, it has haste.

Another potential drawback: When this creature dies, if it had a +1/+1 counter on it, exile it. This will prevent too many shenanigans.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I had a great suggustion from one of the guys over at the MTGS forums:

When you cast ~, it gains unleash.

Not quite as elegant as just the two keywords, but I'm okay with that.

Vince: I like the idea, but the numbers need some tweaking. Reprisal guy is just so many leagues better than retribution of the meek it's not even funny. He should probably cost 4 and have a bigger body, since the last time a mass removal spell like that was 2 mana was balance. How about

Defender of the Meek 2WW
First Strike
2/2

Birds of Jund is an interesting concept, but noble hierach is to mana accellerators what Hymn to Tourach is to discard spells. I'm not sure devour is what you want on a mana accellerator, it's a bit too perfect: A mana accellerator early and an evasive threat later. If you want to keep devour, it should certainly be smaller than 3. 2 probably, maybe 1. Since it's essentially birds of paradise (which is a really REALLY good card) it's upside has to be really marginal, and I'd argue Exalted is a bit too much on noble hierarch. (Since it's probably the best mana elf ever.

 

[Chris Taylor]

While I hate to rag on a fellow designer...well...

Every time I see it I notice something else wrong

I think this is what people imagine when I tell them I have custom cards in my cube

 

[Eric Chan]

I dunno, I think it's a clean design. I mean, who hasn't heard of a blue & white 7/8 legendary dwarf that uses his double hammers and layers of plate armor to mess with mana costs on the stack?

 

[Jason Waddell]

How on earth can creatures on the stack be tapped? Aren't they spells when they're on the stack anyways?