Goodbye Playtests & Conspiracies

I took a very long break from Magic (and still am for the forseeable future) due to various circumstances, but I wanted to make these changes for three reasons:

First, I learned that I really don't like the art of the playtest cards. Opening a card like Unicycle was not as satisfying as initially planned, so all playtest cards are out. (The sole exception is Mirrored Lotus since I adore its design for this environment and having a single playtest card is more special when it's this one.)

Second, Conspiracies are only either broken to the point of unfun or just unfun! They're out too. Marchesa's Surprise Party is the only one I could see coming back, but see reason 1 above for why it probably won't. Backup Plan is one of the stupidest designs for limited I've ever seen.

Lastly, I just needed to clean my desk!

I've also made a few other changes. Highlights include:

• Classic affinity staples Frogmite and Myr Enforcer have never seen play and are outta here.
• I looked into the potential synergies with Agatha's Soul Cauldron and saw that there were basically none. I also just don't like the card very much.
• With the addition of Emrakul, the Promised End, the cube now has versions of all three Eldrazi Titans! Yippee!!!
• Genesis Chamber has the potential to go crazy with a variety of decks, or just help fill up a board in aggro decks. Very excited for this card and I'm happy to replace Cauldron with it.
• Get ready to Icy Manipulator people like the good ol' days!
• Lotus Petal is an awesome card that can be a safe pick for a variety of decks without needing a ton of setup like other mana cheaters while also synergizing with various graveyard strats. Pumped to see it played.

Last but DEFINITELY not least, the cube has a brand-new Voucher! I'm super excited to present:

Cloudposting should be another fun way to improve your mana base and shouldn't break the game too much since the lands enter tapped. It's also why Planar Nexus is coming out of the Urza voucher and into the mainboard. (Also, in case you missed it, the Urza voucher no longer includes Nearby Planet to make the voucher a bit smaller and since Planet was actually quite a bad card.)

Thanks for reading and see y'all in another 6 months or something idk lol (or maybe once I finally snag a copy of The Aetherspark...)

Did a grid draft with my dad and got creamed (2-1 but it didn’t feel close). I drafted Power Play, Backup Plan, Mishra’s Workshop, & the Urza’s Expansion voucher and still lost to Tolarian Academy casting Cityscape Leveler. Leveler continues to be the most successful card in the cube. Removal is insane!

Regardless, I’m making a few small changes since I picked up some new stuff and got some experience with others:

• I played with Rift and it made my opening hands much worse than I thought. It’s also not fun to forget about the pre-game effect. Good riddance.
• Neither of us drafted Pithing Spyglass, but I literally don’t know how it works and it’s not an imperative inclusion.
• Nevinyrral’s Disk is probably useful somewhere, but it’s incredibly awkward elsewhere. Calamity of the Titans will hopefully be similar in intended utility but much more reasonable to mainboard.

Let’s Break This Thing Even More!

I can’t believe I forgot about Conspiracies until now! In theory, they should help universally increase the cube’s power level, give more players access to powerful options that compete with other broken cards in the cube during the draft, and be great fun. I’ve also been looking for a cube to play some of the playtest cards in and I’m excited to see that a good number of them fit in Karnfrontation! nicely. I can’t wait to resolve a Who’s That Praetor?!

Cuts

• Marvin, Murderous Mimic & Zhulodok, Void Gorger both sucked and were completely unplayable. Womp womp.
• Rise of the Eldrazi was insanely hard to cast and not very interesting. The new Kozilek, the Broken Reality that’s replacing it should be much better and more fun.
• Extruder is a pretty sweet combo and aggro enabler, but I think Echo cost made players wary of including it in their deck (even if that Echo cost could be completely irrelevant). This could easily come back someday though.
• Aggro in this cube is pretty niche, so some of these cuts get rid of less viable/boring aggro options. Even if Flayer Husk or Bonded Construct seem playable on paper, they haven’t yet and I’m tired of wasting slots waiting for that to happen.
• The rest of these cuts are just cards that never made it into the mainboard. I could see some of these coming back in the future.

Oops

Turns out that I may have gotten a bit carried away with both the power level and size of the old Urza's Expansion, so I'm doing a quick remake before my draft tonight!

This version removes Urza's Cave and Urza's Fun House from the Voucher and puts them in the mainboard of the cube instead. This should help balance the Voucher while boosting more strategies throughout the cube. Particularly, Urza's Cave can work with any land strategy! (Reminds me of something I added in the last update...) The 2-card combo of Urza's Fun House + Planar Nexus/Nearby Planet was way too silly to be all in a single draft pick too.

I'm keeping a close eye on this entire Voucher. Ideally, the voucher is as good of a pick as Mishra's Workshop. As soon as it's better than Workshop by a noticeable margin or isn't fun, it's getting nerfed.

---

Cuts

This version of Karn showed his age a lot more than I thought he would. He's not terrible, but with the cube continuing to grow in power level, there's a lot of better stuff to do for .

Manakin is better now that we're adding more and more Eldrazi. If I'm ever desperate for more -cost ramp spells, I'll add it back.

So after publishing the last massive update, I realized I forgot to include Thought-Knot Seer. But during that time, I started considering two cards I originally dismissed for this environment: Dark Depths and Urza's Workshop. I realized I really wanted to try these cards, so I worked on a way to get them to function.

---

Dark Depths

Depths was pretty easy; I already run Mirage Mirror, so adding Depths alongside Thespian's Stage and Expedition Map seemed like it was enough. There's also the possibility of using infinite/tons of mana to just pay the ten times, so that's a neat little backup plan.

---

Urza's Workshop

Workshop was harder. I knew that I wanted to get it in somehow since having it and Mishra's Workshop would be super cool, but the card clearly needs the entire Tron land package, which is not really feasible to include in the cube. So I came up with this:

Urza's Expansion

This is my first attempt at making a custom voucher. A voucher can be drafted just like any normal card in the cube, but the drafter can redeem it after the draft to get the cards listed on the voucher.

There's a chance this voucher is the new strongest card in the cube, but I'm more than happy to try it now and nerf it later. Plus, the variance inherent to the Tron land package should be enough to keep it in check.

In the future, I may include other vouchers, but Urza's Expansion will probably be the most useful and evocative one that could exist for this cube. (A Kaldra voucher could be cool, even if pretty weak!)

---

Other Notable Changes

• Sire of Seven Deaths is the perfect Eldrazi for this cube. It costs , which is a number I want to represent more here after adding It That Heralds the End and Zhulodok, Void Gorger, and it actually ends the game if it's unable to be dealt with (especially considering its Ward cost).
• There aren't enough of the same creature types to support Metallic Mimic (except Constructs, but it's not consistent) and keeping up with future creature type erratas is not worth it.
• Precursor Golem was barely played and just got worse with the added instants/sorceries. for 9/9 in stats is pretty great, though, so I could see it returning someday.
• I'm a little scared to do this, but Field of Ruin and Demolition Field were the worst land destruction pieces in the cube. I want players to value land destruction highly for balancing reasons (especially after adding Urza's Expansion and Dark Depths), but these cards rarely ever seem to affect the game. However, decreasing the total amount of land interaction may be worse than this. We'll see how it goes.
• Somehow, I missed that I didn't actually own a paper copy of Karn, Scion of Urza, so that's fixed now too!

I, for one, welcome our Lovecraftian overlords from another dimension!

Eldrazi are invading Karnfrontation! I'm taking out some boring/less powerful cards for some heavy-hitting tentacle monsters, including a couple instants, sorceries, and enchantments!

This accomplishes a few things:

1. Mishra's Workshop and Needlebug are a little worse now (and so are some other cards, but these 2 scared me the most.)
2. There's a few more ways to interact with stuff using the new instants/sorceries.
3. It increases the number of strategies available throughout the cube and strengthens existing but weaker ones.

---

Notable Additions

• Titan's Presence, Kozilek's Command, and Eldrazi Confluence all add some much needed interaction to the cube. I guess Rise of the Eldrazi technically counts as interaction too, but it's also just generally broken (if you can figure out how to cast it).
• Glaring Fleshraker is going to be insane.
• I love that It That Heralds the End can help multiple archetypes!
• Echoes of Eternity, Workshop Assistant,and Abstruse Archaic will all help boost various combo decks, with Assistant specifically helping add pieces for the combo deck with a desperate need for more of them (KCI).
• I'm so excited to play with Zhulodok, Void Gorger! I pulled one in a random Commander Masters Collector Booster and wanted to try it (I never would've picked it up otherwise).

---

Notable Cuts

• Damping Sphere and Endless Atlas were my attempt to incentivize using more Wastes, but a) playing Wastes isn't fun and b) they weren't good enough at making Wastes worth it.
• Mycosynth Golem looks broken, but it's played much worse than that. Even with the mana reduction, it's too much, and there's not enough creatures in hand by that time to make use of the second ability.
• The dream of Lupine Prototype never happened. :(
• Lost Jitte was supposed to synergize with lands that tap for 2+ mana and help with combat, but it's too slow and not really worth a slot in the deck/opening hand. Fast aggressive decks don't usually have trouble swinging in and they don't need more mana. It's a good card that I adore and could come back in one day, but I'm going to try out these new toys first.
• The rest of the cuts never saw success in mainboards or were just cards that never came out of the sideboard. Good riddance!

---

Bonus Thoughts

So far, I'm surprised at how useless Marvin, Murderous Mimic has been. Was very high on the card, but so far it hasn't made any decks' mainboards since they're usually low on creatures. I'll give it some more time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it came out eventually.

Also, I'm not adding any Eldrazi Titans this time around. None of them really speak to me in the context of this cube, and Rise of the Eldrazi is a fine way to represent the Titans without including them. In the future, I could easily see some of them coming in, but I'd rather focus on trying out these new inclusions for now. (It also doesn't help that I don't own very many...)

I’ve finally tested this cube (even though everyone only got to play 1 game), so I’ll be using the blog feature to record all changes from now on.

This first change is pretty simple. Marvin, Murderous Mimic is perfect for this cube and Rust Tick is quite slow and boring. An easy swap that will probably be pretty impactful since Marvin can fit into a number of decks and be powerful within them.