Cube Cobra Overview: Clone of Redacted Cube

The design philosophy was pretty simple... I took a sharpie and started blacking out text on my bulk commons and uncommons to create new and powerful cards for a cube... at least it started out simple... things quickly began to get a lot more complex as I got better at making my redactions. Through the process of creating so many redacted cards, the complexity of the cube got to the point that it now has its own mechanics as well as some accompanying rules. Without further ado... let's get into those new rules and mechanics:

1.) How to read the cards:

When reading a card you do what it says to do regardless of capitalization and italization. What matters while reading is punctuation and spaces.

A useful example: if you read the letters "ea" followed by redaction and then the letters "ch", that spells the word "each".

Flavor text: You will know when you're reading flavor text vs. rules text. Don't be coy...and please enjoy some of the flavor text, there are some haikus as well as other clever little bits.

2.) Card Names:

I broke the card name rules. There are multiple unique cards with redundant names, for example: "Ghoul", "Mage", "Guard", "Ben", "Sphere".... and the list goes on and on. This was multi-purpose: partly to make Lobotomy-style effects playable in a limited environment as well as cards like the Echo-cycle from Darksteel; I also did this to increase the amount of times cards would trigger static abilities.

3.) Name-types:

A card's name-type is a subtype contained in that card's name.

Name-type and creature type can be redundant [e.g. Rat(s) or Cat(s)] or a name-type can be a type not found in the creature type bar [e.g. Mage, Sage, Guard, Leader, Ghoul...]. Redundant subtypes only trigger an effect once.

Compound words containing one or more name-types found in a card's name infer that the card possesses all those types [e.g. Guardmage -> Name-types: Guard & Mage].

Cards with the same name-type(s) do not necessarily have the same name.

4.) Pluralization and misc. grammar:

When an effect triggers on a plural of an object like, "When rats enter the battlefield..." this trigger will only happen once for one-or-more rats entering the battlefield. So for example if an effect put three rats on the battlefield simultaneously it would trigger an ability worded that way only once, not three times.

To use another example: Kavu is a plural, so you may see a card worded, "When kavu enter the battlefield..." which is a subtly different trigger wording than, "When a kavu enters the battlefield..." One of those triggers looks for one-or-more Kavu, while the other trigger happens for each specific Kavu. This is a relevant distinction that could come up.

5.) Puns/Double-meanings:

A bat (the animal) and a bat (the physical object) have the same sub-type: bat.

If an effect involving a double-meaning regards counting or otherwise seeing a specific object or specific objects, that effect's controller chooses which effect will happen. To give an example of this:

There is the creature card named "Ghouls" which has the text "B: Return Ghouls from your graveyard to the battlefield." The controller of this effect would either get to use this ability to return the card "Ghouls" from the graveyard to the battlefield, or they would get to activate the card "Ghouls" from the battlefield to return all ghouls [cards with the Ghoul(s) subtype] from the graveyard to the battlefield.

6.) Counters:

An effect/ability that says to "move" some number of counters but does not specify what type of counters, or to what type of object, may be moved as the effect's controller sees fit. (Yes you can move a loyalty counter to a land...yes you can move a charge counter to a creature...yes you can move a time counter off a suspended spell onto a permanent. Have fun! Live a little.)

There is a card that creates Shadow counters. Those counters grant whatever permanents that hold the counters with the ability "Shadow".

7.) Targetable graveyards & playing with your opponents stuff:

There are effects that target entire graveyards. There are effects that mill an opponents library into your graveyard (cards will still return to OP's GY, but graveyard triggers would be controlled by the you). There are effects that return a card or even a whole graveyard to an opposing players hand. There are effects that shuffle a players graveyard into an opponent's library. There are many novel effects that play on this theme.

8.) Modular Cards:

This cube contains modular cards..."what the hell are those?" you might be asking: A modular card is a card that has the redaction on the inner sleeve, not the card itself. The inner sleeve can be flipped around to reveal a different variant of the card. This is not a mechanic I designed for game play, but rather something I just stumbled on while making redactions and I thought it was cool. Doing this allows for the cube to have several different iterations by simply flipping a few sleeves around, which just thrills me (also I'm not ruining cards with a permanent marker). I'm actually working on a new redacted cube which will be comprised entirely of these modal cards, alas one project at a time!

When you hover over a card in the cube list, if it has two images, then it is a modular card. The image pictured on the left is the version that is currently represented in the cube.

I think that's it. I hope that's not too complicated. I swear all of this stuff becomes pretty self-evident just by reading and playing with the cards.

Hope y'all enjoy!

-M3