Amphibious Scout GU
Creature - Merfolk Rogue
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, scry 1. T: Draw a card, then discard a card.
1/1
Landfall tutor capsule:
Repulsive Experiment 1B
Enchantment
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a charge counter on Repulsive Experiment.
Sacrifice Repulsive Experiment: Search your library for a card with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of charge counters on ~ when it was sacrificed, put it into your hand, and then shuffle your library.
Amphibious Scout GU
Creature - Merfolk Rogue
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, scry 1. T: Draw a card, then discard a card.
1/1
Landfall tutor capsule:
Repulsive Experiment 1B
Enchantment
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a charge counter on Repulsive Experiment.
Sacrifice Repulsive Experiment: Search your library for a card with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of charge counters on ~ when it was sacrificed, put it into your hand, and then shuffle your library.
Repulsive Experiment seems like it should be a quest, and the wording can be cleaned up.
Delve for Dark Secrets 1B
Enchantment - Quest
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a quest counter on Delve for Dark Secrets
Remove X quest counters from Delve for Dark Secrets and sacrifice it: Search your library for a card with converted mana cost X or less, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Edit: only problem is, this is a strictly better Sylvan Scrying already, so it'd probably need "nonland", which weakens it.
Kenzo, Nirvana Master 1WW
Planeswalker - Kenzo
When damage is dealt to ~ add that many loyalty counters instead of removing them.
0: Gain 2 life.
-1: Put a 1/1 Monk token into play.
-7: As long as ~ is in play prevent all damage dealt to you.
Starting loyalty 3
I feel like that first ability ruins the card. Nobody is going to attack that Planeswalker, and you've given them no reason to. (Also, I'm pretty sure that 3rd ability would need to be an ability-granting effect by saying "~ gains 'as long as...'")
Shol, The Skull Merchant 3B
Planeswalker -- Shol
+1: Add B to your mana pool.
+0: Each player sacrifices a permanent.
-7: Put six 2/2 black zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield under your control.
[3]
I get the idea behind your PW, but it is easier to cast and harder to kill than Braids, so that might be an issue. It is definitely a house and I'd certainly put it in my cube. I'm just not sure it would see print.
I feel like that first ability ruins the card. Nobody is going to attack that Planeswalker, and you've given them no reason to. (Also, I'm pretty sure that 3rd ability would need to be an ability-granting effect by saying "~ gains 'as long as...'")
The idea is to find a way to activate it yourself.
You have to work a little to achieve Nirvana.
I like cheap Threaten effects, and maybe make it a walker signature spell.
Tibalt's IncitementRB
Sorcery
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste and deathtouch until end of turn.
I like cheap Threaten effects, and maybe make it a walker signature spell.
Tibalt's IncitementRB
Sorcery
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste and deathtouch until end of turn.
I have wanted a pushed version of this for a while, but being gold might make it still not enough to get in cube. Maybe RR? Also deathtouch is not really synergistic since the opponent wouldn't want to kill the creature you take. I prefer trample or doublestrike. Give it both and it would be hard for any cuber to resist.
What would get me really excited is a Zealous Conscript with Evoke maybe
Zarek's Phantasm2UR
Creature Spirit
Flying Haste
Evoke UR (You may cast this spell for its evoke cost. If you do, it's sacrificed when it enters the battlefield.)
When ~ enters the battlefield, gain control of target permanent until end of turn. Untap that permanent. It gains haste until end of turn.
2/2
Probably not enough room on the card for all the rules text but I can dream.
I'm not cubing that ^^^^. I don't see when I would ever want to spend a spot in my 23 for a random spell or worse yet a blank spell. I'd rather have a 24th land.
Zarek's Phantasm is cool, OP with haste and/or grabbing any permanent for the cost/evoke cost. If you want it to have haste, I'd have it swipe a creature only. If you want it to take any permanent, I'd drop haste. I might even say this card's evoke cost needs to be more like 2R either way.
Super-pushed, scalable "Dynamo":
Mishra's Dynamo xx
Artifact
Mishra's Dynamo enters the battlefield with X charge counters on it. T: Add X to your mana pool, where X is the number of charge counters on Mishra's Dynamo. T, Sacrifice Mishra's Dynamo: You may pay 1 for each charge counter on Mishra's Dynamo. If you do, draw X cards, where X is the number of charge counters on Mishra's Dynamo.
Something Bolt
R
Sorcery
CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
I want better burn spells. Speaking of which, would you cube Glacial Ray if it was able to splice onto any sorcery / instant?
What?! The last thing Modern needs is another powerful Burn spell! How could you...
*looks up at thread title*
Ah. Cube. Whoops. Carry on.
While I'm here, let me throw out an idea.
Prismatic Totem 3
Artifact T: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool 3, T, sacrifice Prismatic Totem: Search your library for a multi colored card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
I don't draft packs or Cube very often, but when I do, I'm always conflicted about picking up that one sweet multicolor card that comes by because you might not be able to reliably splash for it. This would be a neat way to encourage drafting those cards. It's a mana rock, which is always nice, and it can be a tutor if need be. It can't be both at the same time though, so you have to choose wisely.
Do you think it could be pushed to 1UUB without being too busted? I like the fact that it's immune to disenchant effects and gives you the ETB trigger on the creature, but I'm not sure those advantages are better enough from Mind Control to justify the gold mana cost.
Do you think it could be pushed to 1UUB without being too busted? I like the fact that it's immune to disenchant effects and gives you the ETB trigger on the creature, but I'm not sure those advantages are better enough from Mind Control to justify the gold mana cost.
Considering the last gold 4-mana Mind Control had a drawback instead of an advantage (Soul Ransom), I'd say that they wouldn't print this under 5.
I'm not cubing that ^^^^. I don't see when I would ever want to spend a spot in my 23 for a random spell or worse yet a blank spell. I'd rather have a 24th land.
Zarek's Phantasm is cool, OP with haste and/or grabbing any permanent for the cost/evoke cost. If you want it to have haste, I'd have it swipe a creature only. If you want it to take any permanent, I'd drop haste. I might even say this card's evoke cost needs to be more like 2R either way.
Super-pushed, scalable "Dynamo":
Mishra's Dynamo xx
Artifact
Mishra's Dynamo enters the battlefield with X charge counters on it. T: Add X to your mana pool, where X is the number of charge counters on Mishra's Dynamo. T, Sacrifice Mishra's Dynamo: You may pay 1 for each charge counter on Mishra's Dynamo. If you do, draw X cards, where X is the number of charge counters on Mishra's Dynamo.
Yea some people aren't realistic with how Wizards do things nowadays. Think of your dream card, then water them down by a few levels. That's how magic cards are developed in the modern era.
This card might see play as a sorcery in say, commander products, but it's more likely to be 6-7 mana sorcery in normal sets.
Well, we can design cards in this thread that could be printed in Commander products, can't we? I mean, we're asking for cube cards, not cards for Standard.
Not strictly better than the best available options, interesting and powerful enough to see cube play, while still being printable in some form. That's what we're looking for.
I get that there are corner cases where it would matter, but how often is the destroy then return under your control going to be different than just a sorcery that says "gain control of target creature." It's a cute card, but pointlessly complex IMO. So the real question is, how much would a gain control of target creature sorcery cost, and under modern magic, I think the answer is either 3UB or UUBB. There's no way Wizards is printing a better than mind control card at 4 mana unless it's crazy color intensive.
I get that there are corner cases where it would matter, but how often is the destroy then return under your control going to be different than just a sorcery that says "gain control of target creature." It's a cute card, but pointlessly complex IMO. So the real question is, how much would a gain control of target creature sorcery cost, and under modern magic, I think the answer is either 3UB or UUBB. There's no way Wizards is printing a better than mind control card at 4 mana unless it's crazy color intensive.
With the number of ETBs in my current cube, it would matter quite a decent bit.
Unless you are playing against the blink deck, the average cube deck has, what, 2 ETB creatures? And those have to be the ones you want to steal? And forget cube, these cards have to be printable. Would killing the creature then returning it to play under your control matter enough in a normal set for wizards to add that complexity, which is going to confuse a lot of players (what happens with regen? Persist/undying? Indestructible? ect ect - a lot of people would not grok this card easily). Not enough, I imagine.
As I said, it's a cute idea, but the added complexity is probably not something we'd see for the narrowness of use. Finally, if the goal is a card that gets you CITP effects, and that's what you want, why not just exile then return to play under your control? Then there's no confusion with interactions with various anti-destroy clauses (yes, it makes the card slightly better - which is probably fine) and it accomplishes the same goal.
I agree with asmallcat. There're more straightforward templates that achieve the same result most of the time.
It's a bit like how the effect "~ deals 100 damage to target creature" is technically different, but by flavor, really just a poorly expressed "destroy" effect.
Destroy target creature, then put target creature card from an opponent's graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.
I actually thought about suggesting something like this, and I like that there is now a very strong reason for using destroy then reanimate, since you get to pick any creature rather than the one you killed. I would definitely test this now, although it might be too good to see print.
Also, there might be some weird templating issue where you have to choose the GY target while the spell is on the stack, meaning you can't target the creature that you are killing, but we all know what you're trying to do and I'm sure there's some way to do it with a delayed trigger or something ("when that creature dies this turn, you may put target creature card from an opponent's graveyard onto the battlefield under your control" for example).
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Merfolk Looter with landfall - scry:
Amphibious Scout GU
Creature - Merfolk Rogue
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, scry 1.
T: Draw a card, then discard a card.
1/1
Landfall tutor capsule:
Repulsive Experiment 1B
Enchantment
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a charge counter on Repulsive Experiment.
Sacrifice Repulsive Experiment: Search your library for a card with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of charge counters on ~ when it was sacrificed, put it into your hand, and then shuffle your library.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Repulsive Experiment seems like it should be a quest, and the wording can be cleaned up.
Delve for Dark Secrets 1B
Enchantment - Quest
Landfall - Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may put a quest counter on Delve for Dark Secrets
Remove X quest counters from Delve for Dark Secrets and sacrifice it: Search your library for a card with converted mana cost X or less, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Edit: only problem is, this is a strictly better Sylvan Scrying already, so it'd probably need "nonland", which weakens it.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Planeswalker - Kenzo
When damage is dealt to ~ add that many loyalty counters instead of removing them.
0: Gain 2 life.
-1: Put a 1/1 Monk token into play.
-7: As long as ~ is in play prevent all damage dealt to you.
Starting loyalty 3
My Tribal cube
My 93/94 old school cube
My Artifact cube
My Hearthstone Quiz App for iOS
Shol, The Skull Merchant 3B
Planeswalker -- Shol
+1: Add B to your mana pool.
+0: Each player sacrifices a permanent.
-7: Put six 2/2 black zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield under your control.
[3]
The idea is to find a way to activate it yourself.
You have to work a little to achieve Nirvana.
My Tribal cube
My 93/94 old school cube
My Artifact cube
My Hearthstone Quiz App for iOS
Tibalt's Incitement RB
Sorcery
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of turn. That creature gains haste and deathtouch until end of turn.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
I have wanted a pushed version of this for a while, but being gold might make it still not enough to get in cube. Maybe RR? Also deathtouch is not really synergistic since the opponent wouldn't want to kill the creature you take. I prefer trample or doublestrike. Give it both and it would be hard for any cuber to resist.
What would get me really excited is a Zealous Conscript with Evoke maybe
Zarek's Phantasm2UR
Creature Spirit
Flying Haste
Evoke UR (You may cast this spell for its evoke cost. If you do, it's sacrificed when it enters the battlefield.)
When ~ enters the battlefield, gain control of target permanent until end of turn. Untap that permanent. It gains haste until end of turn.
2/2
Probably not enough room on the card for all the rules text but I can dream.
Instant
Look at target opponents hand. You may cast a card with converted mana cost 3 or less from that players hand.
Zarek's Phantasm is cool, OP with haste and/or grabbing any permanent for the cost/evoke cost. If you want it to have haste, I'd have it swipe a creature only. If you want it to take any permanent, I'd drop haste. I might even say this card's evoke cost needs to be more like 2R either way.
Super-pushed, scalable "Dynamo":
Mishra's Dynamo xx
Artifact
Mishra's Dynamo enters the battlefield with X charge counters on it.
T: Add X to your mana pool, where X is the number of charge counters on Mishra's Dynamo.
T, Sacrifice Mishra's Dynamo: You may pay 1 for each charge counter on Mishra's Dynamo. If you do, draw X cards, where X is the number of charge counters on Mishra's Dynamo.
At X=1, this is Mind Stone. At X=2, Hedron Archive. At X=3, Dreamstone Hedron.
R
Sorcery
CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
I want better burn spells. Speaking of which, would you cube Glacial Ray if it was able to splice onto any sorcery / instant?
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
I just want them to print a 1R shock with the chandra's phoenix clause (maybe pay R to return to hand or something).
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
What?! The last thing Modern needs is another powerful Burn spell! How could you...
*looks up at thread title*
Ah. Cube. Whoops. Carry on.
While I'm here, let me throw out an idea.
Prismatic Totem 3
Artifact
T: Add 1 mana of any color to your mana pool
3, T, sacrifice Prismatic Totem: Search your library for a multi colored card and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
I don't draft packs or Cube very often, but when I do, I'm always conflicted about picking up that one sweet multicolor card that comes by because you might not be able to reliably splash for it. This would be a neat way to encourage drafting those cards. It's a mana rock, which is always nice, and it can be a tutor if need be. It can't be both at the same time though, so you have to choose wisely.
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My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Considering the last gold 4-mana Mind Control had a drawback instead of an advantage (Soul Ransom), I'd say that they wouldn't print this under 5.
Problem I see here is that this is strictly better than the already-playable Everflowing Chalice.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
This card might see play as a sorcery in say, commander products, but it's more likely to be 6-7 mana sorcery in normal sets.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Not strictly better than the best available options, interesting and powerful enough to see cube play, while still being printable in some form. That's what we're looking for.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Unless you are playing against the blink deck, the average cube deck has, what, 2 ETB creatures? And those have to be the ones you want to steal? And forget cube, these cards have to be printable. Would killing the creature then returning it to play under your control matter enough in a normal set for wizards to add that complexity, which is going to confuse a lot of players (what happens with regen? Persist/undying? Indestructible? ect ect - a lot of people would not grok this card easily). Not enough, I imagine.
As I said, it's a cute idea, but the added complexity is probably not something we'd see for the narrowness of use. Finally, if the goal is a card that gets you CITP effects, and that's what you want, why not just exile then return to play under your control? Then there's no confusion with interactions with various anti-destroy clauses (yes, it makes the card slightly better - which is probably fine) and it accomplishes the same goal.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
It's a bit like how the effect "~ deals 100 damage to target creature" is technically different, but by flavor, really just a poorly expressed "destroy" effect.
I actually thought about suggesting something like this, and I like that there is now a very strong reason for using destroy then reanimate, since you get to pick any creature rather than the one you killed. I would definitely test this now, although it might be too good to see print.
Also, there might be some weird templating issue where you have to choose the GY target while the spell is on the stack, meaning you can't target the creature that you are killing, but we all know what you're trying to do and I'm sure there's some way to do it with a delayed trigger or something ("when that creature dies this turn, you may put target creature card from an opponent's graveyard onto the battlefield under your control" for example).
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
A sort of two-sided, one-shot recurring nightmare. It does seem really strong, but it's printable in some formats.