Did a grid draft with my dad and got creamed (2-1 but it didn’t feel close). I drafted Power Play, Backup Plan, Mishra’s Workshop, & the Urza’s Expansion voucher and still lost to Tolarian Academy casting Cityscape Leveler. Leveler continues to be the most successful card in the cube. Removal is insane!

Regardless, I’m making a few small changes since I picked up some new stuff and got some experience with others:

• I played with Rift and it made my opening hands much worse than I thought. It’s also not fun to forget about the pre-game effect. Good riddance.
• Neither of us drafted Pithing Spyglass, but I literally don’t know how it works and it’s not an imperative inclusion.
• Nevinyrral’s Disk is probably useful somewhere, but it’s incredibly awkward elsewhere. Calamity of the Titans will hopefully be similar in intended utility but much more reasonable to mainboard.

I can’t believe I forgot about Conspiracies until now! In theory, they should help universally increase the cube’s power level, give more players access to powerful options that compete with other broken cards in the cube during the draft, and be great fun. I’ve also been looking for a cube to play some of the playtest cards in and I’m excited to see that a good number of them fit in Karnfrontation! nicely. I can’t wait to resolve a Who’s That Praetor?!

• Marvin, Murderous Mimic & Zhulodok, Void Gorger both sucked and were completely unplayable. Womp womp.
• Rise of the Eldrazi was insanely hard to cast and not very interesting. The new Kozilek, the Broken Reality that’s replacing it should be much better and more fun.
• Extruder is a pretty sweet combo and aggro enabler, but I think Echo cost made players wary of including it in their deck (even if that Echo cost could be completely irrelevant). This could easily come back someday though.
• Aggro in this cube is pretty niche, so some of these cuts get rid of less viable/boring aggro options. Even if Flayer Husk or Bonded Construct seem playable on paper, they haven’t yet and I’m tired of wasting slots waiting for that to happen.
• The rest of these cuts are just cards that never made it into the mainboard. I could see some of these coming back in the future.

These changes mostly follow some of Andy Mangold’s recent Bun changes for Foundations, but I’m also trying some other stuff. Hope to see success with it!

Turns out that I may have gotten a bit carried away with both the power level and size of the old Urza's Expansion, so I'm doing a quick remake before my draft tonight!

This version removes Urza's Cave and Urza's Fun House from the Voucher and puts them in the mainboard of the cube instead. This should help balance the Voucher while boosting more strategies throughout the cube. Particularly, Urza's Cave can work with any land strategy! (Reminds me of something I added in the last update...) The 2-card combo of Urza's Fun House + Planar Nexus/Nearby Planet was way too silly to be all in a single draft pick too.

I'm keeping a close eye on this entire Voucher. Ideally, the voucher is as good of a pick as Mishra's Workshop. As soon as it's better than Workshop by a noticeable margin or isn't fun, it's getting nerfed.

This version of Karn showed his age a lot more than I thought he would. He's not terrible, but with the cube continuing to grow in power level, there's a lot of better stuff to do for .

Manakin is better now that we're adding more and more Eldrazi. If I'm ever desperate for more -cost ramp spells, I'll add it back.

So after publishing the last massive update, I realized I forgot to include Thought-Knot Seer. But during that time, I started considering two cards I originally dismissed for this environment: Dark Depths and Urza's Workshop. I realized I really wanted to try these cards, so I worked on a way to get them to function.

Depths was pretty easy; I already run Mirage Mirror, so adding Depths alongside Thespian's Stage and Expedition Map seemed like it was enough. There's also the possibility of using infinite/tons of mana to just pay the ten times, so that's a neat little backup plan.

Workshop was harder. I knew that I wanted to get it in somehow since having it and Mishra's Workshop would be super cool, but the card clearly needs the entire Tron land package, which is not really feasible to include in the cube. So I came up with this:

This is my first attempt at making a custom voucher. A voucher can be drafted just like any normal card in the cube, but the drafter can redeem it after the draft to get the cards listed on the voucher.

There's a chance this voucher is the new strongest card in the cube, but I'm more than happy to try it now and nerf it later. Plus, the variance inherent to the Tron land package should be enough to keep it in check.

In the future, I may include other vouchers, but Urza's Expansion will probably be the most useful and evocative one that could exist for this cube. (A Kaldra voucher could be cool, even if pretty weak!)

• Sire of Seven Deaths is the perfect Eldrazi for this cube. It costs , which is a number I want to represent more here after adding It That Heralds the End and Zhulodok, Void Gorger, and it actually ends the game if it's unable to be dealt with (especially considering its Ward cost).
• There aren't enough of the same creature types to support Metallic Mimic (except Constructs, but it's not consistent) and keeping up with future creature type erratas is not worth it.
• Precursor Golem was barely played and just got worse with the added instants/sorceries. for 9/9 in stats is pretty great, though, so I could see it returning someday.
• I'm a little scared to do this, but Field of Ruin and Demolition Field were the worst land destruction pieces in the cube. I want players to value land destruction highly for balancing reasons (especially after adding Urza's Expansion and Dark Depths), but these cards rarely ever seem to affect the game. However, decreasing the total amount of land interaction may be worse than this. We'll see how it goes.
• Somehow, I missed that I didn't actually own a paper copy of Karn, Scion of Urza, so that's fixed now too!

Eldrazi are invading Karnfrontation! I'm taking out some boring/less powerful cards for some heavy-hitting tentacle monsters, including a couple instants, sorceries, and enchantments!

This accomplishes a few things:

1. Mishra's Workshop and Needlebug are a little worse now (and so are some other cards, but these 2 scared me the most.)
2. There's a few more ways to interact with stuff using the new instants/sorceries.
3. It increases the number of strategies available throughout the cube and strengthens existing but weaker ones.

• Titan's Presence, Kozilek's Command, and Eldrazi Confluence all add some much needed interaction to the cube. I guess Rise of the Eldrazi technically counts as interaction too, but it's also just generally broken (if you can figure out how to cast it).
• Glaring Fleshraker is going to be insane.
• I love that It That Heralds the End can help multiple archetypes!
• Echoes of Eternity, Workshop Assistant,and Abstruse Archaic will all help boost various combo decks, with Assistant specifically helping add pieces for the combo deck with a desperate need for more of them (KCI).
• I'm so excited to play with Zhulodok, Void Gorger! I pulled one in a random Commander Masters Collector Booster and wanted to try it (I never would've picked it up otherwise).

• Damping Sphere and Endless Atlas were my attempt to incentivize using more Wastes, but a) playing Wastes isn't fun and b) they weren't good enough at making Wastes worth it.
• Mycosynth Golem looks broken, but it's played much worse than that. Even with the mana reduction, it's too much, and there's not enough creatures in hand by that time to make use of the second ability.
• The dream of Lupine Prototype never happened. :(
• Lost Jitte was supposed to synergize with lands that tap for 2+ mana and help with combat, but it's too slow and not really worth a slot in the deck/opening hand. Fast aggressive decks don't usually have trouble swinging in and they don't need more mana. It's a good card that I adore and could come back in one day, but I'm going to try out these new toys first.
• The rest of the cuts never saw success in mainboards or were just cards that never came out of the sideboard. Good riddance!

So far, I'm surprised at how useless Marvin, Murderous Mimic has been. Was very high on the card, but so far it hasn't made any decks' mainboards since they're usually low on creatures. I'll give it some more time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it came out eventually.

Also, I'm not adding any Eldrazi Titans this time around. None of them really speak to me in the context of this cube, and Rise of the Eldrazi is a fine way to represent the Titans without including them. In the future, I could easily see some of them coming in, but I'd rather focus on trying out these new inclusions for now. (It also doesn't help that I don't own very many...)

Want to slowly add more support for the Psychic Frog deck, and not only do I need Cradle more for my colorless-only cube Karnfrontation!, but I never really felt like its inclusion here did anything besides be mediocre (if not just bad) to annoying beyond belief. There’s not much to ramp towards here, and decks are not going wide.

I’ve finally tested this cube (even though everyone only got to play 1 game), so I’ll be using the blog feature to record all changes from now on.

This first change is pretty simple. Marvin, Murderous Mimic is perfect for this cube and Rust Tick is quite slow and boring. An easy swap that will probably be pretty impactful since Marvin can fit into a number of decks and be powerful within them.

I’ve decided that all D&D cards count as Universes Beyond, so they’re no longer to be included in this cube moving forward.

Simultaneously, I’m allowing Universes Beyond “skins” if they’re from IPs I enjoy. So far, this includes Monty Python and Fortnite (I don’t really care about Fortnite, but the Battle Bus is admittedly funny as hell).

Notes:

• I REALLY hope Pyrogoyf does work. Design is super cool and it’s nice to have a viable Flametongue Kavu
• Staff of the Storyteller is actually quite good, but it’s way less impactful that I hoped. I could see it coming back in someday
• Having Keen-Eyed Curator AND Scavenging Ooze may be overkill, but the effect is fun and they work differently enough that I think it’ll be ok
• Pest Infestation is back. I just like the design: an artifact/enchantment removal spell that I almost never mind casting just to get some bugs in a pinch. I hope it sees play in and out of the sideboard

Forgot to add a few last MH3 cards. Might be even more coming.

Additions:

• Phelia is simply a pushed but interesting White bear (dog?) that will hopefully make combat more involved. Worried about play patterns though.
• Six is more anti-aggro for Green decks that also helps out the late game. I love X/4s so much.
• Golgari doesn't really need help in the 2-drop slot, but Wight of the Reliquary does a good job of requiring a bit more consideration for that slot. I also like the reference to Knight of the Reliquary and appreciate the power creep, as Knight often felt like a bad card with good abilities.
• Sinkhole is to give Red another thing that kills Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, but this is probably the last thing I'll try before I just remove Sheoldred completely.
• Brainsurge is a card I hope will play well and make up for the lacking power level found in the Universes Beyond cards in Blue that I don't run anymore (Lorien Revealed & Stern Scolding).

Removals:

• Risk Factor is a personal favorite card of mine, but it has appeared in exactly 0 decks since its addition. I think the cost is too high, or it's too niche.
• Virtue of Loyalty excited me a lot on release, but a 2 mana 2/2 with flash attached to the Virtue was a lot less draftable than I thought, ESPECIALLY in White.
• Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis hasn't made it into a deck in forever, so it's gone. Seems like a cool design held back by White prioritizing low curves and fast threats, both of which Elspeth doesn't really excel at.
• Judge's Familiar is fantastic design for another cube.