This is a moderately new cube!

This cube is at Cubecon! Feel free to message me on the discord thread and/or find me in the fray.

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The first four questions cube designers should ask
How will your cube be played?
At Cubecon! Formerly an online only cube, Liquimetal cube is finally in paper to be drafted at the con and for my local play group.

What are your restrictions?
My restrictions are

• Every card will, literally or in spirit, be or interact with artifacts
• 360 cards
• Singleton (broken for lands)

How powerful do you want your cube to be?
I'd like the cube to be somewhere inbetween retail limited and unpowered cube. Powerful cards are ok unless they sacrifice the integrity of meaningful player interaction.
The strix scale doesn't quite make sense here. I wouldn't judge a player for first picking Baleful Strix

How does your ideal environment play?
I would expect players to be constantly surprised at the intricate and surprising amount of interactions between cards. The exact play pattern is yet to be discovered as the cube has only been playtested once or twice.

I expect decks to be of 0 to 4 colors with a general game plan with many win conditions, some of which are emergent.

Design goals:

• Liquimetal coat the environment for aesthetic and unique interaction purposes
• Power level: between limited power level and unpowered
• Support finishers that both give you warning and provide powerful game winning effects that win by building a board state that drives that effect into a winning play. e.g. The Antiquities War
• Offer familiar archetypes/play patterns but have players think a bit outside the box
• Be an exposé of cool artifact related cards throughout magics history that you may not otherwise see in other cubes
• Provide relatively balanced and competitive gameplay with an emphasis on interaction, agency, and skill expression
• Afford players agency and efficient resource use through activated abilities (mostly done as a thought experiment)

Mono Color Archetypes:
: Aggro/midrange - Go wide with artifact creatures and equipment
: Control - Collecting artifacts
: Midrange - Graveyard/Death/Anti Affinity
: Aggro - Sacrifice artifacts to deal damage

Two Color Archetypes:

The four main themes are:
Equipment
Artifact Creatures
Sacrifice
Recursion+Flicker

Each of these themes blend with each other. Since there are only four main archetypes players will be competing for the same resources in drafting.

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Welcome to my design notes/prose:

• Tiering your cube
  Tier 4: Masterwork of Ingenuity
  Masterwork is the definition of a tier 4 card. It works only in a very specific equipment deck where when your Helm of the Host is inevitably answered with removal your masterwork still comes down as Dragonwing glider. When on the offensive it comes down as a second Ghostfire Blade to power your thopter Pia Nalaar made.