General The Great Custom Cards in Cube Debate Thread of Doom

[Suicufnoc]

OK, so the intent isn't that people will argue and tell other people that they're wrong for running custom cards, but to the discuss the advantages and disadvantages. I took the jump a month or two ago, and its gone well.

Disadvantages:
Learning Curve - People don't know the cards. Granted, people don't know half the cards in my cube anyways.
Ugly - Print some decent proxies, its not that hard.
Some people think custom cards are stupid - If you use good looking proxies of well designed cards that aren't excessively powerful, this seems to be less of a problem.

Advantages:
If you know what your environment needs, you're free to design cards to fill those roles.
Opportunity to support/create undersupported/new archetypes.
More variety. Where's a power-max cube would run less 1 drops/worse 1 drops because there aren't enough, and a riptide cube would run multiples of its preferred 1 drops, you can make your own to keep some variety. As far as 1 drops go, this mostly applies to blue, though the colors vary in variety of options.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I'm not going to actually "debate" custom cards, as I really don't care I'm going to run them either way and I don't care if you do or don't, but I will give my experiences with running them which may be of some value to someone in this thread.

At first, people look at me funny. They might say, "Someone wrote on this card."

Then I say something like "That was me."

Then they go, "Umm, ok" and look kinda confused.

Then I go, "Yeah, in my cube that card does what is written on it, so if that bloodhunter bat has a casting cost of and has echo, then it costs and has echo ."

Then they say, "Alright."

And it never comes up again.

No one has ever told me my custom cards were stupid. They have had no problem telling me that plenty of actual cards that I have run in the past were stupid (Attrition, Armageddon, Jace the Mindsculptor, etc).

I use custom cards to fill holes, but mostly to be able to play cards that are good in design, but underpushed. People are generally ambivalent to them

 

[anotak]

the advantages: you get total control of archetypes and much more fine-tuned targeting of a specific powerlevel
the disadvantages: you can make much bigger mistakes

getting people to play with custom cards:
1) admit that everyone is basically going to be a crash dummy for potentially unfun cards
2) sound very sure that its a good idea to mess with anyway. discuss with them in detail how the cards make them feel and play and etc as they are drafting/playing.
3) apologize when that card I added at the last minute to nerf/push something or just even fill a slot inevitably breaks everything. talk with them on how they think it could be fair or if its just unsalvageable.

i've never had anyone say my custom cards were stupid, but i also worked on my finished cube all in team efforts and showed it to other people

here's 2 awful mistakes i've made
Suntouched Abomination
Creature - Zombie Cleric
Sunburst (This enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each color of mana spent to cast it.)
When Suntouched Abomination enters the battlefield, target player loses X life and you gain X life.
0/0

Javos, Mindeater
Legendary Creature - Elf Mutant
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, draw a card and lose 1 life.
Your maximum hand size is two.
2/1

 

[Chris Taylor]

Javos, Mindeater
Legendary Creature - Elf Mutant
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, draw a card and lose 1 life.
Your maximum hand size is two.
2/1

Oh sweet jesus ><

Yeah it gets interesting sometimes. When I started people were a little wary of my cube for having custom cards, but one of my buddies vouched that they were all very well balanced, and about five minutes into playing with them people realized they were all pretty simple, but strong cards.
Thesedays I even have my drafters coming to me with ideas for new cards, or how to change existing ones to be more sweet. Not even designer type magic players, just regular drafters who've never tried game design in their life

I love spreading some love like that

And just because it's been too long since I pulled this guy out:

It could always be worse fellas

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'm very close to testing the waters with custom land cards. Like, who-has-a-good-laser-printer-close.

 

[Changling Bob]

I trust R&D more than I trust my own judgement. I realise there are neat things to be done with custom cards, but I'd rather make my own game than bolt things onto magic, to be perfectly honest. I also run singleton and lower power level than normal, so my tastes skew a bit from normal.

E: plus there's a certain amount of interesting challenge (to me) of only using real cards.

 

[Lucre]

It was rough when I first put weirdo cards in cube. I was too eager to make things of high power level to balance deficient guilds (this was around the time of dissension) and folks were not as hip to cube and sort of super unwilling to play with cards they could not predict.

 

[Suicufnoc]

How many custom cards is too many? I'm thinking I don't want there to be more than 2 per pack in general, which my horrible quick math puts at ~50/360. Unknown cards make it harder for new drafters. I do try make my cards fairly easily to grok and to evaluate their power level, though

 

[anotak]

as many as you want, you just have to be aware of keeping your total complexity within your drafters' comfort zone