The Cube Without God

When I started playing Magic in 2014, the game--and my relationship to it--were normal. Then they started printing crazy shit, and I fell off the deep end of Cube design.

They're taking Magic off the rails, so I'm taking this cube off the rails. It is designed around one central restriction:

This is an intentionally loose restriction. The idea is that every card must have been created with a vague intention for real play, but it fundamentally breaks some central feeling of being an acceptable Magic card.

Examples include:

• Textless cards (Urza's Saga , Cryptic Command )

• Not played in paper constructed formats (e.g. Alchemy or Uncards)

• Not readable by humans (e.g. Phyrexian, unreadable secret lairs, The One Ring, etc)

• Cards from sets in early Magic's history. These include Spectral Chaos, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma playtest cards, and other oddities from Magic's history. Some of these cards have been adjusted for power level purposes.

• Cards that are blatantly too strong and should never have been released (Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Nadu, Winged Wisdom)

• Misprints (Orcish Artillery )

• Memes (Swords to Plowshares )

• Universe Beyond cards (Looking at you Fortnite.)

• Cards that were playtested by R&D but did not make it into a final set.

Every card must have a story, which is detailed in the "Notes" section of the card on cobra.

Rules Changes:

In general, if it doesn't work, it does instead.

Some specific changes:

• Nonland backside cards retain the mana cost of their front side.

• Cards that tell you to Learn have access to all Lessons.

• Augment cards can be attached to any creature. If that creature has triggered abilities of any kind, all will trigger when the Augment condition is meant (yes, these cards are now broken).

• Seek is played as "reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal enough cards that meet the seek conditions. Put those cards into your hand and shuffle the rest into your library"

• Alpha, Beta, and Gamma playtest cards work weirdly with mana costs. 2U for Time Walk means "two mana, one of which must be blue" (so 1U in modern speak). For artifacts, the left number indicates its cost, and the right number indicates the cost of its activated ability (so Black Lotus is 0/0).

• Conjure and cards that instruct you to draft from spellbooks work just the way you think they do.

• Conspiracies work the way they do in Conspiracy draft. You may have as many conspiracies at you'd like. Hero cards operate just like Conspiracies too--the cards just exist in play.

• Vanguards operate like conspiracies, but you may only play one Vanguard.

• Companions use the original companion rules, before the errata

Planes

Planes can be drafted by players! Every player has a blank plane and separately a shuffled deck of planes they drafted. The game begins on the starting player's blank plane (it does nothing).

At any time time they could cast a sorcery, a player may roll a d6. If they roll a 1 and a plane is in play, its chaos. If they roll a 6, the game planeswalks to one of their planes (blank or the top card of their plane deck). While the first roll of the turn is free, each additional roll of the planar die costs more.

Effectively, this ruleset allows players to try to leave opponents' planes, even if they did not draft a plane themselves.

Contraptions and Attractions

At the end of the draft, there is a Contraption and Attraction draft. All players with at least one card that cares about Contraption or Attractions must draft. Your eventual contraption and attraction decks must have at least 4 of each card type (otherwise, you cannot play the cards).

The contraptions and attractions are incredibly strong, so these cards are quite good.

Archetypes

Who knows, the gameplay is pretty trash.

Random things

https://scryfall.com/random?q=(type%3Ainstant+OR+type%3Asorcery)

Contraptions and Attractions:

Centrifuge
Centrifuge
Dart Throw
Dart Throw
Gallery of Legends
Gallery of Legends
Hall of Mirrors
Haunted House
Haunted House
Push Your Luck
Push Your Luck
Storybook Ride
Storybook Ride
Swinging Ship
Swinging Ship
Bee-Bee Gun
Deadly Poison Sampler
Dispatch Dispensary
Duplication Device
Dual Doomsuits
Faerie Aerie
Gift Horse
Gnomeball Machine
Goblin Slingshot
Hard Hat Area
Oaken Power Suit
Pet Project
Rapid Prototyper
Record Store
Widget Contraption