10 Custom Magic Cards from my Cursed Cube

I don't play Magic much anymore, strictly speaking, but I spend a lot of time designing for it. Specifically, I make custom cards for a project with some friends we call the cursed cube. The concept is simple-- do things that are technically possible in black-border (i.e. unambiguous, don't require dexterity, etc.) but that should never be printed in a black-border Magic set.

I've adapted cards from the cursed cube into games. In fact, Catalyst started as a Magic variant, and became a card game when I got sick of trying to fix it with cursed cards.

The cursed cube is my love letter to what I love about Magic: making your own stuff to draft with friends, the labyrinth of under-the-hood rules, and a rich history of design failure with footprints you, too, can follow. I hope you enjoy, too.

Also, in case it's not clear: WotC folks, beat it. Not just because there are custom cards here, but because your eyes will burn.

1. A Simic Monstrosity

Simic Shenanigans 2UG

Instant

Merge two nonland permanents that share a controller until end of turn. Until end of turn, that permanent has all abilities of each card or token that represents it. (You choose which permanent is on top.)

This was the first card in the cursed cube. For those who don't know, "merging" is the thing that happens when you play a mutate spell-- it's the process that actually lets you put one card on top of the other.

(Note for nerds: The second line of text may seem unnecessary-- isn't that what merging does? It turns out that it's the mutate ability, not merge, that gives the mutated permanent the abilities of the cards below it. Yeah, I'm surprised too, but it's right there in Rule 721.2a.)

(Edit: Another note for bigger nerds: "Until end of turn, the resulting permanent becomes mutated" is an better second sentence, with upsides like working how you expect mutated permanents to work with copying. Thanks to Jay Dragon for commentary which led to this!)

I like this card as a thought exercise-- how many uses for it can you find? If you still actually play Magic, instead of just making cards and thinking about it, how often would having Simic Shenanigans in your hand win the game?

I also like this card as establishing what this cube is about: stuff you could do in black-border, or that you could do in black-border with trivial rules adjustments, but wouldn't even think about doing because it's obnoxious and clever for no reason.

2. A Rhapsody In Blue

Blue Doom Blade (Blume Blade) 1U

Instant

Put an islandhome counter on target creature.

This was another early card. It spawned a cycle of colorshifted iconic removal spells (including a white Prey Upon that started a subgame and a red Nekertaal that made an extra combat phase)-- but none were as elegant as using a deprecated mechanic to suggest the "non-blue" that would be in a proper blue Doom Blade. It's a pretty egregious break, but if vintage cube is anything to go by, a few cards being extremely disrespectful of the color pie is okay.

This is my proudest design in the cube.

 3. Word Choice Matters, Kids!

Called Shot 1UR 

Sorcery

Scry 1, draw a card, then discard a card. If you do, ~ deals damage equal to the discarded card's converted mana cost to target creature.

Ohnoverload 3UR (If you cast this spell for its Ohnoverload cost, replace each instance of "if" in its text with "when".)

What? How can the difference between "if" vs "when" matter?

Here's the deal: If you cast it without the ohnoverload, you will choose the target as you cast the spell, because that's what you do when you cast a spell. That means that you have to choose which creature you're targeting before you see the new card from Called Shot. In other words, you don't have full information about what you'll be able to discard when you choose what to target.

If you cast it with ohnoverload, the "When you do" signals that the second sentence is what's called a reflexive triggered ability, as seen on cards like Hypothesizzle. This means that the "When you do" part triggers after you're done with scry-draw-discard process. In other words, if the top cards of your deck are lands, you won't try to target a big dude hoping that you draw into something big.

(For the rules-savvy-- you do, in fact, choose targets after choosing whether to pay alternate costs like ohnoverload; that's how the original overload mechanic is able to function.)

This is a great cursed-cube card because, while this could technically be printed in a black-border set, the Magic judges are already tired from understanding the novellas WotC writes these days, and I wouldn't want to put explaining this on their plate.

Incidentally, I don't know if it could even be printed these days regardless of its complexity because of translation issues. Magic cards in all languages are presumably able to unambiguously form a reflexive triggered ability, but I'm not sure whether they do so in a way that a text-modifying ability can change. There goes my GDS4 submission.

4. This Is How I Use My Math Degree

Deathessence Noble 1BB

2/1 Creature-- Vampire Noble

Tithe (Spells targeting this creature cost 2 more life to cast.)

For each natural number n, ~ has "Sacrifice n creatures: Add {B}. Activate only once each turn."

For the math-haters in the audience, this card has "Sacrifice a creature: Add {B}", and "Sacrifice 2 creatures: Add {B}", and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

Anyway. There are multiple cursedcube variants of the mechanic that WotC released as ward, most of which are pretty non-cursed. Tithe is one of those.

I think this is a funny card. It changes the kind of infinite combos you can do, it provides interesting choices regarding whether to squeeze more out of your guys this turn or save them as fodder for the next. It's a great example of what Magic could do if it stuck to its roots of a bunch of math PhDs messing around.

The downside, if you can call it that, is the hypothetical Arena interface. That's also true of Teshar combo, though, so who cares?

5. Old Meme

They Were Cake All Along! 2WW

Sorcery

Destroy all creatures. Each opponent may create any number of Food tokens.

We like arbitrarily large numbers here in cursed cube. The mathematician in me loves the sort of mini epsilon-delta proof that cards like this can sometimes make. I'm not totally confident this is a well-designed constructed card. In a cube, though, I think it's at least worth the playtest, especially since in a limited environment giving your opponent an emblem with "{2}: You gain 3 life" will greatly affect your deckbuilding, since you can't count on a random Flickerwisp beating down, You don't have a constructed-level array of tools to work with, which is what makes the restriction fun rather than "The same, but your opponent loses 150% slower"

It can't be implemented on any computer program that runs Magic that I know of, but you know. You win some, you lose some.

6. gun

Leyline of the Gun 2CC

Artifact-- Equipment

If this card is in your opening hand, you may begin the game with it on the battlefield.

Equipped creature gets +1/+1.

Equip {2}

I don't have enough experience with affinity-style decks to know if a "free" artifact with these drawbacks is too good-- it seems worse than Memnite, since it doesn't... really help you win the game? In an Equipment-matters style deck it has some potential to create noncharacteristic games, but not getting the cast triggers means it doesn't really slot into, say, Sram Os.

However, it is unique in that it is 4 CMC of artifact cardboard that can be played for free. As you might imagine from a custom cube, there are a fair few pod variants, so getting high-CMC blank cardboard into play can be good if it's the right types. The lesson? Even in a meme cube, always design for context! Even though this looks like just a funny read, it's actually worth the playtest.

7. She wears short skirts, I wear totem armor

Taylor, Swiftest Spear R

1/2 Legendary Creature-- Human Monk

Haste

Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, put a "Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, put a prowess counter on this creature" counter on this creature.

The point of this card is not to be played. It is to be assessed.

See, it has a very obvious point of comparison-- Monastery Swiftspear, an iconic and powerful red aggressive card. At first glance, Taylor is significantly worse. If you cast two spells with Monastery Swiftspear, it's done 2 damage; if you cast two spells with Taylor it... just got prowess? Not great.

It scales better, though. Specifically, it scales triangularly if you can cast the spells in the same turn as each other. And it'll persist as a threat, too (one friend thought a Taylor EDH deck would be fun for this reason-- he had big dreams of using other spells from the cube to cast six spells in a turn, giving the monk double-digit amounts of prowess in one fell swoop!). Now you can start imagining how Taylor could be better sometimes. Maybe not in modern, but in cube...

It's a fun puzzle! And if you get bored, you can even just play it!

Also, it must be said-- Ikoria was heaven for this cube. It brought mutate and changes to the lethal damage SBAs, but above all it gave us keyword counters-- which, in the cursed cube, have evolved into ability counters.

8. "Stax Is Good For The Game," I shout to the empty casual edh table

Rule of Law But Worse 2W

Enchantment

Players can only cast spells whose converted mana cost is of the same parity as the number of lands on the battlefield.

"Parity" means "oddness or evenness". 2 and 6 have the same parity, 1 and 8 have different parity. One good property of parity is that whenever you add or subtract 1 from a number, you change its parity.

I like this card because it makes the "Are you sandbagging a land" minigame really, really weird, since your opponent can always change the parity of lands in play! It also allows a way of interacting that every deck, regardless of wincon, has access to. (Unless you're not playing lands in service of some shenanigan, in which case you've consensually forfeited your ability to interact with your opponent's stuff, and also you're a big doofus.)

It also exemplifies the big flaw in landfall-- fiddly, often cumbersome trigger-counting that's often "your opponent loses, but sloooowly and just barely non-deterministically"-- but if I made nothing but bangers, WotC might fear me and strike me for copyright. Besides, cubes are meant to be iterated on, and if this card gets iterated out of the cube I'll still have the laughs I got from making it.

9. Repetition Legitimizes

Again // Again // Again 2R // 2R // 2R

Sorcery // Sorcery // Sorcery

Cascade // Cascade // Cascade

Fuse

If it's not clear, this is a triple split card, where all the spells are "Again", a 2R sorcery with cascade and no other text. The spell also has Fuse (which, in this world, means you can cast any number of "halves" of the card). It does work how you think (i.e. you can cast a 6RRR sorcery with cascade, cascade, cascade).

I'm putting this here because so far, all my love letters to MtG's rules have been complicated piles of text that, quite frankly, nobody should understand. This one, though? This is a love letter that anyone can read, and have fun playing. Again and again.

10. sigh

Pink Power Ranger Suit 3

2/2 Artifact-- Powersuit

First strike

~ enters the battlefield tapped.

T: Add {R} or {W}.

3: Until the end of your next turn, Powersuits you control become artifact creatures with voltronbanding. (Before blockers are declared, you may have any number of attacking creatures with voltronbanding become Equipment artifacts with "Equipped creature gains the other abilities of this artifact and gets +X/+Y, where X/Y is this artifact's power and toughness" until end of combat. Attach those creatures to an attacking creatures you control.)

There's a cycle of power ranger suits. Why wouldn't there be.

I've been advertising the cursed cube as a wonderful love letter to Magic's arcane rules, a place of creativity and celebration. However, in reality, it is mostly longwinded banding jokes . I thought, as a parting curse, I'd give you a glimpse of that.

Weapons and Variety (a Weekend Workshop solve)

 Yesterday I posted the following prompt to Twitter:

In your friend's game, to do the basic "attack" move, the attacker rolls Xd6 (X depends on weapon size, skill, etc). For each 4+, they choose an effect from a list in their playbook. They complain that weapons feel the same, and small ones are useless. Can you help?

The responses were real good. The most common one by far was a tuning of "well, separate the playbooks by weapon", but they were far from uninteresting, and it was far from the only response. You can see all the responses here.

I've had a day to think about it, so I wanted to write what I would do, and my answer doesn't fit in a thread of any reasonable size. If my thing resembles your answer and I don't explicitly talk about it, I swear I'm not plagiarizing you, we just both thought an idea was good.

First, establish what it means to have your weapon outside of combat. Kazumi's very good answer touches on this. Their argument, which I take here, is that, rather than try the weapons such that they're equally good at hitting things, we should attempt to construct situations where the worse weapons shine. I'll reword that slightly: People pick weapons because they have an idea of what it looks like to use them. Let's let them do so.

If you have a dagger, you want to stab people in the back, right? So let's do that: if you've set up the perfect situation, you can backstab people, no rolls no shenanigans. Similarly, if you pick a shield, you probably find a theme of protection resonant-- so let's say it makes people feel safe around you. I'm picking up PbtA/FitD vibes, so let's say you can roll the Act Under Fire equivalent for them.

If you have a big ol' axe, you're communicating to the table that you want to have a lot of combat scenes, right? So let's say you can't conceal the axe, ever, in any situation-- you leave it at home or you send a signal to everybody at the dinner party or whatever that you like to cause problems on purpose. And so on, and so forth.

There might be multiple options for each weapon, or these might actually be class traits, or it could just be the one thing. I don't know enough about my hypothetical friend's game to have a preference.

Anyway, this is good, but it only half-solves the problem. So far we've let people use weapons in the situations they want to. However, within actual combat, the weapons feel samey. Worse, they feel like strictly better and worse versions of each other entirely.

This may seem fine to you-- after all, the player gets to make a trade-off between combat abilities and other abilities! I have a story in response: Back when I played more Magic, I did a bunch drafts with my then-girlfriend. The variant we did was pretty feast-or-famine, and it led to a lot of matchups that were fun, but lopsided. Despite this, the only time anybody ever conceded mid-match was when we went for the same strategy (storm) but one of us, by sheer luck, did it better. Players like being weaker than their friends or adversaries; very few like being strictly or basically objectively weaker.

Anyway-- we have a dice pool, which is a canvas that allows for a lot of expression. The most obvious way I can think of to proceed is this:

• Different weapons use d4, d6, or d8 dice. Daggers and such are d4s, big dumb swords are d8s, for "that's what they are in D&D" reasons more than anything else.
• We already have a "Choose one for each 4+" picklist, so let's keep that as is. This is generic stuff like "Impress, dismay, or frighten" or "Do 1-harm" or "Defend a position" or whatever.
• Weapons also have another stat called EDGE. Edge is the maximum number of picklist options you can choose by roling 4+. Flavorfully it represents like, potential backstabbery ability. Large-die weapons have Edge around 2 or 3, small-die ones have more.
  
• Finally, each weapon has "combos" that trigger on patterns in the numbers. For example, a d4-based dagger might have an additional effect when you roll triples or when you roll a 1, 2, 3, and 4. An enchanted d8-based mace might have a boring damage-boosting effect if you rolled an 8, and it might start whispering to you if you roll double 1s. Stuff like that.
  
• To actually attack, roll some number of your weapon's dice (derived from your skill and the fictional position and whatnot). For each 4+, choose one option from the picklist, up to a maximum of MAX. Then, check to see if you rolled any combos, and apply those.

The benefits of this system off the top of my head:

• The daggers and whatever feel weaker, but they do feel cool and distinct, and if a player says "I want a dagger that can actually pull its weight in combat", the table has the tools to make that happen.
• The players who have signaled that they want to be better at combat (i.e. the big-die weapons) have more consistent success. It's real easy to roll 4+ on d8s, actually.
  
• But those high-die players are still doing cool things-- it's not like 5e and whatnot where you have a fighter with "Deal d6 damage. Special ability (1/day): Deal 2d6 damage".
  
• Similarly, it's real easy to make a weapon enchanted, or really old, or poorly-made, or if you wanna break out the d10s really big. Furthermore, all those enchantments will feel different, because caring about rolling 1s vs saving dice vs anything else you do with the dice pool feel different in a really tactile way.
  
• Edge lets you kind of give people whatever buffs you want. That's its main function-- your marginal skill increases from "high" to "really high", your weapon becomes more consistent as opposed to end-the-world powerful.
• This system generalizes nicely to non-weapon combat actions. Remember, we kept the picklist of generic combat goodstuff intact, free for the "throw sand at your enemy" move or an improvised "drop down from the chandelier" move to use.
  
• I used a lot of words, but the stat block for a weapon isn't that big? Die size, edge, like two combos, an out-of-combat effect. Boom. If you wanna go really rules-light you could probably ditch the edge and just promise to be very judicious about giving people skill buffs.

There are downsides, too, but I'm kinda sleepy, and also I'd really need to see this played in a broader context of game to verify them. That's the kind of impartial reporting you've come to expect from Natalie Libre Bigstuffedcat.

Anyway, if I have a broader design point to wrap this up, it's that dice pools are real expressive. They let you differentiate things in a way that feels more tactile and fundamental to me than, say, swapping out picklists in a BoB game. They're like a really intimidating synthesizer with a thousand knobs and settings that theoretically can imitate any instrument in existence, and several not in existence. My benediction to you is to turn those knobs more.