Custom cards means cards you have designed yourself, or somehow altered the rules of. Most cubes don't play custom cards, but some do. A common reason for customizing cards are to play cards as they were before an errata, to simplify a rule or similar. A common example is cubes that play Chaos orb like an artifact that says: (1)(Tap): Destroy target permanent. Another common example are people who play Orcish Oriflamme or Oubliette misprints, these were both printed with the wrong mana cost, so you can get copies that lower CMC and thus more powerful.
If I play Snow basics instead of Basics, then that is just the way it is like in any other format. In addition, I really like that cards like Coatl, Dead of Winter, etc. exactly lead players to play more (Snow) Basics.
This is where I disagree, and this was my main point. Playing snow basics in a cube is not like any other format. In no official limited format ever have you been allowed to add snow basics to your draft pool. Not in draft, and not in sealed. Instead you have needed to draft snow basics. The design of snow-matters card for limited strongly reflects this, where the pay-off necessitates that you also draft snow-covered lands during the draft. Only in constructed format can one freely add as many snow basics as you want, but Cube is inherently a limited format, where to me, the draft experience is the main reason to play it.
I know a lot of people play snow-covered basics in their cube, and I totally understand why, it means you get to play some unique and powerful cards. But my point was that this is changing the fundamentals of how a limited format usually works. It's your cube and your format, of course you decide how you play. But to me this goes against what I want cube to be. Some people also let people add as many tapped dual lands as they want to their draft pool. One cube I saw mentioned on Reddit let all players add one of each fetch and one of each dual to their pool. These are more drastic examples of changing the "fundamental rules" of how draft works, but I think adding snow-covered basics is basically the same as these examples at the most fundamental level.
My point about snow-cards feeling like "custom cards" is this: Because adding snow-covered basics to your pool is traditionally not allowed, adding this house rule is functionally equivalent to taking a sharpie to snow-cards and changing "snow permanents" or "snow lands" to "basic lands". I won't criticize anyone for playing snow in their cube, nor would I criticize anyone for playing custom cards. I was just presenting my thoughts on why I, personally, don't.
Another example: Some people also play only snow-covered basics in their cubes, saying you can't play non-snow basics - and then they add Cold Snap as an incredibly powerful aggro card. I mean, at that point, you might as well just design your own white sulfuric vortex and play that.
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I've never liked doing snow in cubes and honestly think it just looks quite messy design wise. Snow cards are designed to be in limited environments where you are supposed to need to draft the snow lands, and it really shows. It's a "critical mass" kind of design. I think it worked really well in Modern Horizons for example, which I personally found to be a great limited format. When people play things like Ice-Fang Coatl in cube it's basically like you replace every instance of "Snow" on the card with "Basic". Feels like using custom cards to me.
If I wanted to build a snow theme it would probably be in a Desert-style cube where all lands needs to be drafted, where some lands could be normal basics, some non-basics and some snow-basics perhaps.
With that said, I don't think any of these cards are terribly exciting to begin with. Also, calling Boreal Outrider a "mono-green Good-Fortune Unicorn" is a big exaggeration. You briefly mention it not working in persist combo, which is the main reason the unicorn is played, but it also doesn't work with tokens, which is another major downside.
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Custom cards means cards you have designed yourself, or somehow altered the rules of. Most cubes don't play custom cards, but some do. A common reason for customizing cards are to play cards as they were before an errata, to simplify a rule or similar. A common example is cubes that play Chaos orb like an artifact that says: (1)(Tap): Destroy target permanent. Another common example are people who play Orcish Oriflamme or Oubliette misprints, these were both printed with the wrong mana cost, so you can get copies that lower CMC and thus more powerful.
This is where I disagree, and this was my main point. Playing snow basics in a cube is not like any other format. In no official limited format ever have you been allowed to add snow basics to your draft pool. Not in draft, and not in sealed. Instead you have needed to draft snow basics. The design of snow-matters card for limited strongly reflects this, where the pay-off necessitates that you also draft snow-covered lands during the draft. Only in constructed format can one freely add as many snow basics as you want, but Cube is inherently a limited format, where to me, the draft experience is the main reason to play it.
I know a lot of people play snow-covered basics in their cube, and I totally understand why, it means you get to play some unique and powerful cards. But my point was that this is changing the fundamentals of how a limited format usually works. It's your cube and your format, of course you decide how you play. But to me this goes against what I want cube to be. Some people also let people add as many tapped dual lands as they want to their draft pool. One cube I saw mentioned on Reddit let all players add one of each fetch and one of each dual to their pool. These are more drastic examples of changing the "fundamental rules" of how draft works, but I think adding snow-covered basics is basically the same as these examples at the most fundamental level.
My point about snow-cards feeling like "custom cards" is this: Because adding snow-covered basics to your pool is traditionally not allowed, adding this house rule is functionally equivalent to taking a sharpie to snow-cards and changing "snow permanents" or "snow lands" to "basic lands". I won't criticize anyone for playing snow in their cube, nor would I criticize anyone for playing custom cards. I was just presenting my thoughts on why I, personally, don't.
Another example: Some people also play only snow-covered basics in their cubes, saying you can't play non-snow basics - and then they add Cold Snap as an incredibly powerful aggro card. I mean, at that point, you might as well just design your own white sulfuric vortex and play that.
If I wanted to build a snow theme it would probably be in a Desert-style cube where all lands needs to be drafted, where some lands could be normal basics, some non-basics and some snow-basics perhaps.
With that said, I don't think any of these cards are terribly exciting to begin with. Also, calling Boreal Outrider a "mono-green Good-Fortune Unicorn" is a big exaggeration. You briefly mention it not working in persist combo, which is the main reason the unicorn is played, but it also doesn't work with tokens, which is another major downside.