This is a loosey goosey update where I pulled a bunch of cards out of my collection and swapped them into the cube. Most of them have been in the cube before at some point, and are of a generally lower power level than the rest of the cube. The goal is to replace a bunch of powerful cards that don’t play into the cube’s prescribed themes (Treasure Cruise, Monastery Mentor) with less powerful cards that do (Loan Shark, Blessed Hippogriff). I want to force players to put some less flashy “glue” cards in their decks to make them function. I don’t think this update fully accomplishes this, and more likely I’ve just added a bunch of 12th-15th pick cards that will end up in sideboards, but it’s the first step in a direction. And yes, this is a bit of a pendulum swing back towards what the cube looked like when I first built it, but hopefully with more intentionality this time around.

Also, I’m testing a few cards from Aetherdrift. I didn’t care much for this set, but I had a chance to play with Cryptcaller Chariot and that was fun enough that I feel vindicated in cutting Drake Haven.

This is the final form of the cube as we approach Vertex Philly. Whoop whoop! With this update I’m turning the knobs on removal spells, replacing Never // Return with Eliminate, Virtue of Courage with Cathartic Pyre, et cetera. I’ve decided removal should not be where complexity lies in the cube, and instead it should be clean and effective at dealing with aggressively-statted creatures. I’m also adding some Gruul monsters in the form of Urabrask, Heretic Praetor and Balustrade Wurm to help support a stompy deck. Other than that, it’s just time to try some Foundations toys. I’m especially excited about Sphinx of Forgotten Lore.

Not too many changes this time around. The headline here is Insidious Roots leaving the cube. The card has a high cool factor, but the gameplay was undesirable as it would grind the boardstate to a halt with plants. Paradox cube games often run long, and I’m looking at ways to produce shorter games. There’s a lot of weight on the scale towards long games due to the nature of the mechanics in the cube producing extra value for the caster. Replacing Insidious Roots with Drag to the Roots, a card that reduces the amount of stuff on the board rather than increasing it, is a nudge towards less grindy gameplay that has everyone leaving the game shop exactly when they meant to.

TLDR: Paradox Cube takes a step towards more streamlined gameplay in an effort to reduce complexity. The Foretell mechanic is cut, and the graveyard gets easier to track. Reanimation and cheating out big spells lose support as strategies in favor of more small-ball strategies like sacrifice and spellslinger.

Mark Rosewater breaks complexity in Magic into the subcategories of comprehension complexity, board complexity, and strategic complexity. These refer essentially to the complexity of cards, turns, and multiple turns or entire games respectively. The episodes of Mark’s Drive to Work Podcast #455 and #1011 go over these concepts in greater detail and I highly recommend them!

Paradox cube plays at the frontiers of Magic design, and because of that its comprehension complexity is a given. There’s a lot of wordy cards with a variety of mechanics, but the expectation is that players will be able to grok these cards with time, and revel in their interactions. Where things start to break down is in board complexity. Boardstates can build up with so much going on that players have a hard time tracking everything, becoming more prone to mistakes. While this isn’t ideal, the real bad news is that this compounds with strategic complexity to make planning out multiple turns difficult for most, and impossible for some.

In an effort to lighten the mental load of boardstates and ease access to strategic gameplay, some structural changes are coming to Paradox Cube. The first of these changes is the removal of all the cards with the Foretell mechanic. There are a lot of different ways to cast spells from exile in the cube, and keeping all those cards in separate piles on the table is a big contributor to board complexity. I wanted to reduce the number of different “subzones” in exile, and Foretell with its hidden information was an easy candidate.

The other major change is the streamlining of cards that track the graveyard. In this latest iteration of the cube, there are cards that track the number of card types among cards in the graveyard, but gone are any cards that track the number of cards, the number of a given card type, or the number of different mana values among cards in the graveyard. My hope is that this will greatly reduce board complexity by making it easier to remember what’s in your graveyard and the ways in which those cards matter. It also allows the cube to lean into the Delirium mechanic, which got some fun new toys in Duskmourn.

The rest of the changes made to the cube have less to do with complexity and more to do with the kinds of games I want to see. I’m a sucker for casting the biggest, dumbest spell possible, but I’ve come to realize that’s not what I want this cube to be about. I’m cutting cards like Reenact the Crime, Life // Death, and their supporting cast of big spells because I don’t want games to come down to the resolution of a single spell; rather, I want these games to be won by degrees, and for lots of cards to change zones in the process. Blue decks are more about cantriping and casting lots of spells now, and black decks are more about grindy creature sacrifice.

It's very fun to continually re-examine this list as I come to understand the game better, and make changes in service of the best gameplay possible (I hope). Cube!

TLDR: MH3 offers slam dunks and head-scratchers alike, juicing up the cube and offering some interesting build-arounds.

Ten new cards from Modern Horizons 3 are coming to Paradox Cube. These are mostly the obvious contenders. Cards like Nethergoyf, Party Thrasher, Detective's Phoenix, and Phlage are exactly the kind of efficient enablers of the cube’s themes that I’m looking for in new cards. I’m also happy to get three powerful green creatures in Grist, Eladamri, and Six; helping to round green’s slice of the cube, which has struggled to find an identity in the past.

Since adding Collector's Cage to the cube, I’ve been looking at it and the other ways of cheating mana costs and wondering what a good cheat target for the cube might look like. I’m trying out Ulamog, the Defiler because of its rules interaction with being cast from exile (It gains annihilator 10 and defiles and heck out of your opponent’s permanents). I’m anticipating this combo to be tough to set up and not something that comes together every draft, but maybe that’s okay? It’s also possible the eminently castable Emrakul, the Promised End is just a better fit in this slot.

Speaking of delirium, Triton Wavebreaker has types! Does this card suck? People don’t seem to be hot on it. I think it’s worth a shot.

Powerbalance is another niche card that I’m a little unsure about, but just imagine curving out with it and a Dragon's Rage Channeler.

That about covers it. Next stop, Steel City!

TLDR: Paradox Cube becomes more like my favorite cube to browse the list of: Bun Magic Cube. It also cracks a fetchland, puts on a cowboy hat, and casts your favorite mana dork.

It’s time for another big update to Paradox Cube. This update pushes the cube further down the paths laid out by its established design goals. I want to shout out @andymangold and his Bun Magic Cube, because the more I’ve thought about my design goals, the more I’ve realized they have in common with his cube’s design goals, which are wonderfully laid out in his cube’s overview. Things like the density of interaction, mana curve, the size of creatures, and the presence of game-prolonging effects are all growing more in line with Andy’s cube with each update. This update introduces Path to Exile, Counterspell, Inquisition of Kozilek, Ragavan, Tarmogoyf, and more powerful, iconic cards that push the cube’s curve lower and raise the floor of power level.

The biggest structural change in this update is the introduction of the full cycles of fetchlands and surveil lands, along with the removal of the slowlands. This brings the cube up to 71 fixing lands, significantly higher than the number of fixing lands in the average 360 card cube on Cube Cobra. A common feeling I have when drafting cubes, including my own, is that I wish there were more lands. So I’m being the change I want to see! Both of these new cycles should also add a considerable amount of mechanical depth to manabases, helping to enable delve and delirium, and making it more viable to cast three color spells.

Maybe I’ve buried the lead, but this is also the update that introduces Outlaws of Thunder Junction cards to the cube. Yeehaw? There are 14 cards with the new plot mechanic coming in, concentrated in . I’m a big fan of plot. It leads to interesting gameplay decisions and plays great with the rest of the cube. I’m adding some cards in this update just because of how well they play with plot. Does casting Restore Balance off of Jace Reawakened spark joy? How about plotting your Beastbond Outcaster so you can draw a card when you bring Vengevine out of the graveyard next turn?

Speaking of Vengevine, I did a lot of waffling on green’s identity for this update. I’d been struggling to find good one-drops in green that weren’t just the mana dorks I see in every other cube, but I realized that the best thing green can do on turn one is play an accelerant that gets it’s keyword: Big three-and-four-drops onto the battlefield a turn earlier. Noble Hierarch enables green’s game-plan the same way Preordain enables blue’s. Once this clicked for me I decided to lean into mana dorks in green. Even though green doesn’t have a ton of 5 and 6 mana beaters like it would in other cubes with a ramp package, I think these dorks will still be great both at fixing and putting the pressure on your opponent earlier.

For yet another hefty update, I’m cutting cards that underperform, prolong the game, make a unique token, have a high mana value, rot in sideboards, are double-faced, or just looked at me funny. Here’s to the next update being not quite so hefty because it’s been a while since I 3-0’d a draft and I’m running out of store credit at my LGS.

This was the wordiest cube update yet because I’m on vacation and I love thinking about cube. Thanks? Goodbye.

The first big cube update! Paradox Cube is still young and hasn’t been drafted enough to tell how color balance and the viability of various decks in the format will shake out. As such, these changes are mostly based on cool-factor, making room for new toys by cutting some underperforming or redundant cards.

Some notes on individual cards:

Scout's Warning is a card I was considering when I first built the cube, and I’m making room for it now. I enjoy the novelty of white and black being the cantrip colors in this cube, and it supports the color pair’s double-spell archetype. Excited to see what creatures get flashed in!

Snapcaster Mage. It’s Snapcaster Mage! I’ve never been a Modern gamer, so I don’t have much experience casting this spell. But I hear it’s good. This will be a funky environment for the card, with blue’s instants and sorceries being more big value spells and less efficient cantrips.

Delayed Blast Fireball is a card I was apprehensive about including, because a one-sided board wipe is pretty busted. I’ve decided that creatures in the format generate enough value that the cube can handle it.

Dinosaur Egg is exactly the card I was looking for to bridge green’s archetypes. It’s good sac-fodder for the reanimator deck, and triggers the paradox cards in paradox midrange. And its name is the same as its type line, which is just neat.

I wanted a five-color card for all the dreamers out there, and Maelstrom Nexus is just not anywhere good enough. So out it comes, and in comes Invasion of Alara. Boy, does this card have a lot of text. I’m resistant to both DFC’s and cards you need to read five times, but I think this is the reward the five-color pile deck wants. For anyone wondering why this card specifically, it’s because when you flip a battle, you cast it again from exile. Get those paradox triggers!

Finally, some notes on Suspend, which interestingly just got some rules errata to make it a bit better. While Suspend cards are pretty sweet to me and a big part of the reason I built the cube, they seem to be a bit slow for the format, and overshadowed by the other cool stuff in the cube. Wheel of Fate, Ancestral Visions, and Sol Talisman are coming out because I’m not crazy about the Suspend cards you can’t hard-cast. Jhoira of the Ghitu, her bug Jhoira’s Timebug, Epochrasite, and Search for Tomorrow are coming out for being either too narrow or too far below the power level of the cube. Despite these cuts I think you can still do a lot of cool stuff with Suspend in this cube. It’s awesome to see Wizards giving the mechanic so much attention lately, and supporting its longevity in the rules. Hopeful for even more Suspend designs to come!

Wow, that was a lot of rambling. I promise to stop now. Please draft my cube with me.

Alrund's Epiphany is an early contender for "too good" in the cube after one playtest. It's great by itself, and pulls the decks it lands in away from synergy-based gameplay. This, combined with the fact that there is aleady another extra turn spell in the form of Time Warp, makes it an easy cut to make room for a more novel and situational card: Spelljack. Stay tuned for the Lost Caverns of Ixalan update. :)