Hey! I love cube, and I'm a huge fan of your Pink Sleeves!
I've been working on my own cube for quite a while now, but what that means is I put some good and beloved cards together, play it once, have a meh experience, and take it apart... then I get the cube itch and repeat the cycle.
Do you have any advice/resources on coming up with a vision for your cube? My "vision" if you could call it that has been basically not Vintage cube (I play enough of that) and wanting something fun to play with my friends, most of whom like Limited the most. That's fine, but it leaves me adrift when it comes to card choices, power band, etc.
Thanks for reading and happy cubing~
Oh this is such a a good question, and I don't have a clean answer because vision is so personal and elusive! I have a few thoughts and recommendations.
First, I think it's way easier to work on improving a set of cards in front of you than it is to come up with a digital list you're happy with. I think it gets your brain firing differently, just seeing and touching the cards. Sounds like you're already up and running with "just at least make something."
For what it's worth, my initial vision for Pink Sleeves was to build something we could draft for free. Once I did that, it became pruning confusing stuff and feel bads. Once I was happy with that, I moved to making it more elegant and atomic. Now that I'm mostly happy with that and I'm pushing more explicitly for pursuing my own taste. So it's iterative and I went years without more vision than just making something that worked for me and my friends.
My other cube, Forbidden Trash came about because I was inspired by Inscryption's Bones mechanic (imagine Delve, except you have no way to ever recur your graveyard), and the discard deck in Slay the Spire. I had a lot harder time executing that, and I wrote about it here. I don't think that essay really answers your question, but might give you a sense of the process I went through.
How I built my newest cube in parallel with the cube community
I've also had several ideas that I was just never satisfactorily able to follow through on. I think there's a degree of serendipity with finding an idea that you're passionate enough about to stick with, and where the pool of existing cards feels like it's providing further inspiration, rather than limiting you
On an elementary level, playtest and notice what feels good and interesting and what feels bad and tedious. Then add and cut cards to get more of what you like and less of what you don't. That core loop is way more important for developing something you're excited about than balance or whatever. That also doesn't have to mean actually getting a draft together, it can be looking at packs or doing mock drafts or gold fishing or anything else that has you looking at the cards you've picked and how they interact with each other.
In the absence of a bigger, motivating vision, a good approach is to pick a handful of cards that you want to be important in the cube and build out from there. For Pink Sleeves, Goblin Bombardment, Parallax Wave, and Living Death are a few of the cards I've retroactively identified as core pillars that I want to stick out. Lucky Paper Radio has done a few episodes where they talk through this process, and I'd highly recommend those. Episode 182 was the first, and 197 was another.
Andy and Anthony talk through how they would use a single card as a seed crystal for generating ideas for a brand new Cube.
No magic bullet, but hopefully some piece of that resonates with you and provides some help or direction .
