Midwinter is a snow desert cube that expands upon many gameplay and aesthetic themes present in the Kaldheim, and to a lesser extent, the Arthurian themes of Eldraine. The overall Viking/Arthurian aesthetic is central to the cube, and is rarely broken.
The power level is designed to be around a masters limited set and the play experience should evoke kitchen table magic decks which are based around cards from these sets. The desert component to the cube furthers the scrappy kitchen table magic vibe.
Design Goals & GuidelinesThere are heavy singleton breaks throughout the cube to support the themes present.
There are foretell cards in all colors within the cube, all with different quantities. Having only a single copy of cards like Saw it Coming would remove a lot of the fun tension from the mechanic. My hope is that it would be very hard to remember the number of each effect to maintain that tension.
The cards that bend the aesthetic of the cube must be doing something truly amazing from a mechanical perspective.
This should not be a cube where players reliably have plays on turn one. It is supposed to feel slower, and more like Kitchen Table magic in that regard. There are plenty of one drops, but no deck should feel they are too behind for missing their turn 1 play.
All basics are snow basics, and there are many in each color. This is not a cube where basics are a rare resource, and this makes the cards that care about snow permanents and exciting highlight of the cube.
The power band is not supposed to be flat across the cube, but the most powerful cards from KHM limited, such as those below, are intentionally avoided here.
This cube contains a four player, 240 card version and an eight player 432 card version. To see the four playter version filter by tag "twobert". The larger number of cards/player in the four player version is designed to offset the disadvantages inherent to four player drafting.
My updates for this cube aren't going to be as extensive as Bodleian Cube in terms of writeup. While I enjoy that for Bodleian, I don't want to attempt it here until the cube is in a relatively stable place.
The UpdateThis update is taking into account feedback from a few drafts that happened at Cubecon for this cube.
Blue decks are getting access to some cheap answers to have a better matchup against aggro.
Naya sagas are keeping the same payoffs, but the sagas themselves are getting toned down a bit. This combination was a bit too much.
Spot removal is getting a bit more effective across the board. Joust Through and Cut Down are good answers against cheap threats, and Feed the Swarm will give black a good option against the sagas.
The rest of the updates are cards that I want to test out, and the cards coming out have felt either off flavor or didn't do what I hoped. The DMU aesthetic of the cube is also being trimmed back.