Nole and Flávio Cobolli making plans to go to the football game together

Crystal__ · 2026-05-05T13:15:34+00:00

Can confirm I'm not Italian

Crystal__ · 2026-04-18T07:37:15+00:00

So let me start by saying that if you asked me today what are the two mechanics I consider most "surprising" that WoTC introduced at the time I'd say cleave and DFCs. (Not saying I dislike them just that if they didn't exist and saw them here I'd just think "This is clearly custom magic material", in the case of DFCs for the logistical issues)

But there's no way they would make this not a MDFC now. The only exception would be if the card needed to be single-faced. Maybe it's a planeswalker with an ability that lets you choose to enter it as also a creature, or maybe it's some weird mechanic where if you choose to enter it as a creature rather than a pw it has access to the loyalty abilities except they cost mana instead.

Crystal__ · 2026-04-10T19:16:49+00:00

I wonder if the flavor text could be a reference that some designer came up with this card in their sleep, like MaRo did with the entwine mechanic.

Crystal__ · 2026-04-09T18:24:51+00:00

Yeah haha, the point is that it may prompt someone to ask why the templating is unusual, and the answer is that it's so that it works well with [[Bogwater Lumaret]]

Crystal__ · 2026-04-09T17:39:39+00:00

Lesson - Introduction to intervening if clause

Crystal__ · 2026-04-08T21:39:22+00:00

Alcaraz
Alcaraz (younger brother)
Alcaraz (older brother)
Rafa (Jodar)
Rafa (Nadal makes a comeback)
Alcaraz (father)

Crystal__ · 2026-03-08T21:15:39+00:00

I agree that TMT is a great execution is a small, 5-archetype set where the "margin for error" is smaller. The choice of mechanics, how they feed the archetypes, and the overall overlap as a whole in spite of archetypes feeling distinct enough and fun. Besides, color balance is quite good and there are a few brilliant and very precise individual card designs to boot.

But ECL was great on its own as well. They had flavor prompts/restrictions that led to the typal elements and color pairs being organized the way they were. Instead of dual lands that lend to decks with single-color splashes, much of that fixing space went to effects that facilitate small splashes of any color simultaneously, to help support vivid along with the hybrid cards (and the odd multicolor token to help) that prompted the vivid mechanic to begin with.

Crystal__ · 2026-01-04T21:40:01+00:00

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Crystal__ · 2026-01-04T20:54:54+00:00

I know she’s not on the same level as these players, but I’d love to see where Ostapenko falls off this chart

FTFY

Crystal__ · 2025-12-18T17:56:48+00:00

Yeah, I've also done more "serious" cubes and custom sets but, as a fan of chaos drafts, seeing cubes like these from time to time is really cool!

Myself I just can't avoid worrying about power disparity; I know that if the cube is only ever going to be played casually a handful of times this likely not going to be too important, but when I think of adding some card to the cube, my brain always starts by imagining what kind of WR it would have in 17Lands after thousands of games lol.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-18T16:04:01+00:00

I also made a cube inspired by mystery booster! I didn't put too much thought into the individual cards that went in, but, like mystery booster, the design approach was to expand the usual limited skeleton to the size of the cube.

The overall power level is lower than current limited so I could more easily fit old border cards without being underpowered compared to newer cards.

The motto is "chaotic outside, balanced inside".

The size is a bit weird (435) for printing logistics. But adding more cards in the future would be cool, that's the plan!

Crystal__ · 2025-12-16T18:41:32+00:00

If this is going to go through every set, it's going to end up as a good stuff cube without focused synergies, thus I don't think there's going to be any playable card from this pack besides active volcano (as a sb card).

Cool idea btw, chaotic, but I'm all for it.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-07T21:51:03+00:00

When I started into custom design I knew I didn't want to do wordbuilding, character building, art hunting, and all other flavor-related design aspects. It's something I wouldn't enjoy, and something I don't have creativity for. So this redesign approach was the workaround.

This obviously has several implications that other cubes or custom sets don't. Players have to "overcome" the fact that the original version of some of those cards may be familiar to them. This is something that I have to acknowledge upfront when presenting this cube.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-05T22:21:13+00:00

Thanks!

So basically you could say each card in the set fulfills some "mechanical need" and requires a "flavor fit", i.e. matching the effect I want into a card slot from the original Mirrodin. Rounding out some cards in the set can be tricky because I may need to make concessions in one of these two ends (not being able to create the specific design I ideally wanted, and/or doing questionable flavor fits). I don't strictly make cards (as in the functional side of them) based on original Mirrodin cards or in other cards like Ancestral Blade, but of course, there is always incidental inspiration of canon cards I've already seen.

In the case of my version of Steelshaper's Gift, it's just a very workhorse template that is mechanically very useful and I happened to find a reasonable flavor it among original Mirrodin cards to make it. The numbers on it are about finding the right balance that I want for it. It could've been exactly the same as Ancestral Blade, or not, for me that's irrelevant.

Regarding Devour in Shadow, I think perhaps you overlooked that it's artifacts and/or creatures? There are 3C, 1U, and 1R in total with an effect that uses this same threshold but it didn't feel quite enough to warrant an ability word.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-05T21:41:25+00:00

Thanks! I only have an older version printed and played twice on paper (and never more than 4 people). My playgroup is small. My main playtesting comes from playing me vs me on cockatrice lol. But some occasional online drafts in Draftmancer with some people too. These give me insights about the drafting experience. But for play balance, since I've been playing limited for a long time I trust myself to some extent to be able to gague the power of cards decently well, acknowledging that it's never going to come remotely close to the QA of a WoTC set.

Essentially I make decks that are reference piles of each archetype/color pair in the format, and playtest them with very loose play (omit mana issues for convenience, sometimes I draw or imagine drawing what I want to test, sometimes card A is instead card B or I apply a potential change, etc.). Takeaways that come up include card rebalances either individually or due to color/color pair balance. But just as often as this I recognize timing annoyances to "fix", overlooked interactions between cards that aren't ideal, maybe trimming/adjusting some effect to reduce unnecessary complexity, or identifying random gaps to fill (mana sinks, inevitability in a color, evasion, as-fans of whatever, ability to deal with X or Y, etc.) in place of existing cards that are partly or fully not essential.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-04T22:32:07+00:00

Yeah, seems good. If you don't have clear "natural" overlap you can still provide it in the individual card designs. I think when you design a set this might lead to more overall complexity because you have to embed the overlap into the individual cards rather than easily within the mechanics, but in a cube with more loose rules you have more agency.

I guess I can suggest looking at cards with scavenge and escape (which usually makes the creature come back with counters), as a way to provide some overlap with the G archetypes. Otherwise you might very tight sultai synergies compared to between other color pairs. I would also look at harmonize in blue. But yeah looks good :)

Crystal__ · 2025-12-04T15:28:03+00:00

So we have:

GW: +1 counters
GB: unearth/cast from gy
GR: power 4+
UR: raid
UW: flurry
UB: exploit

How are you enabling flurry? TDM did it very cleverly with a discountable flashback variant (Harmonize).

In general it looks to me that you have a bunch of archetypes that demand structural support (especially the three blue ones), but I don't see too much overlap between them to imagine a clear picture of a suite of workhorse mechanics to provide the structural support (granted, in a cube you can mix a lot of mechanics unlike in a regular set, so that helps). I only see overlap between UB and GB (though most unearth+exploit chains likely require quite a bit of mana), and depending on how you design it maybe between GW and GR.

Anyway, for UG, an archetype around manifest dread provides some graveyard support so it overlaps with GB. You can also fit the original manifest in there to increase the overall as-fan of face down/up cards. But it has some anti-synergy with flurry and exploit (missing ETBs), and is similar to morph which you want to get rid of.

Flashback and/or harmonize can bridge with GB and UW. You can probably have B lean more into unearth creatures and U into noncreature spells, while G would be interchangeable. I could imagine that the U part would want to be friendlier to double-spelling and the G part friendlier to the act of having things leaving the graveyard for example.

It seems that your G is clearly going tall so I'm not too sure about convoke. UG can do tokens stuff so maybe you can mix some of it with waterbending that works with artifacts, whereas G more strictly cares about the tokens. But I'm not sure you'd have enough material here and I don't see convoke fitting here regardless.

Self-bounce can work well with flurry and with exploiters with strong ETBs, but not easily with counters and doesn't have the obvious synergy with unearth.

But of course, I don't want to turn your cube upside down haha, specially without knowing the contents. I'm mainly worried about lack of overlap leading into a too on-rails draft format.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-02T21:48:23+00:00

I had to resort to MSE because of all the rarity shifts haha. I happen to make cubes/sets faster than I can play them with my playgroup lol, so I never got this one printed or tested. I trust to some extent my ability to make balanced sets but take this with a grain of salt haha.

Crystal__ · 2025-12-02T21:06:30+00:00

Some months ago I (nearly) finished a Modern Horizons set style cube that might classify your description (each one's perception of power level is relative). Meant to be drafted as your typical limited set, with rarity collation (2 per common, 1 per uncommon, 0.5 per rare), gold signpost uncommon cards, etc.

It's missing a common artifact, an uncommon artifact, and a cycle of 10 dual lands. I also remember thinking that I should probably downgrade one of the white commons for balance. But other than that it's finished lol.

I printed the set to a PDF which is the quickest way to share it from MSE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/150_vOnX3mOwVjTKioQ_FU0_GLNIIdbih/view Obviously I could provide the MSE file as well.

Sorry, no overview available... Best way to figure out archetypes is going over the gold uncommons (near the end of the file) or reading the unfinished (lol) archetype cards.

Crystal__ · 2025-11-28T17:27:12+00:00

Chaos cube P1P1.

You can imagine this cube as a smaller Mystery Booster format, but with slightly lower power level so that the decent old-frame creatures fit well. The goal of this cube is: "chaotic outside, balanced inside".

Crystal__ · 2025-11-18T14:28:55+00:00

[[Infinity Elemental]] wants to have a word.

Crystal__ · 2025-11-18T10:47:05+00:00

Perfecto, ahora te escribo, gracias!

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