Irregular Cube

Another cube for lovers of limited!

A cube with roughly the same design goals as my Regular Cube but built around a different set of overlapping mechanics, including cycling, madness, suspend, morph, flashback, and general graveyard interaction. The intention is still to build around synergistic mechanics without dedicated archetypes for each color pair.

Distinct from Regular Cube, the mechanics focus less on the board and more on the hand and graveyard. The power level is overall a bit lower to support these mechanics. The individual mechanics are heavily influenced by Time Spiral, and to a smaller degree Modern Horizons and Ultimate Masters.

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This cube is still a work in progress and hasn't been thoroughly tested

It was the subject of Lucky Paper Radio: Episode 47, and comes up occasionally in other episodes.

Rarity - Playing the Cube

The cube includes a core set of cards and a separate set of 'rare' cards. Before playing the cube, shuffle 36 rare cards into the core set and deal out packs. (the exact number is probably not critical and needs to being tinkered with)

The 'rares' are generally higher power than the main list and many are build-arounds. The hope is to introduce variation and exciting draft and gameplay moments without the repetition that just increasing power level range would create. I want to create a context for these cards to shine and be exciting. I think this will also work especially well for sealed.

Introducing rarity also opens up the opportunity to play a lot of cards in reasonable doses. Conspiracies like Sovereign's Realm can be a ton of fun to draft occasionally, but can truly wreck a format when present consistently. Potential traps like Aetherflux Reservoir can be a distracting negative in a format, but as a rare opportunity, sacrificing some win percentage to see if you can do make it work is much more appealing. Even underpowered cards are well served by only showing up occasionally. We don't have to watch Bag of Holding table every draft.

Most importantly, it lets good cards be good cards. Context is key, and putting your favorite A+ in a cube with a flat power level makes it a C. Providing a background context lets us make cards powerful.

Tertiary Goals

Minimize shuffling. Without all out banning it, I'm raising the bar for any effects that shuffle to keep gameplay quick.