• In a few sentences, what is the premise of Port Noon?

"Port Noon is a God-matters and disposable creatures set adapting the world of Weather Factory's Cultist Simulator."

• What inspired you to begin creating Port Noon?

"I'd say the inspiration behind Port Noon is the vast amount of lore and world-building within Cultist Simulator, and although I have made some alterations to the world to make it fit more inline with what a Magic plane would be like. Still, most of it remains intact."

• Where would you say Port Noon is in the development process?

"Port Noon is now in rare design; having finished both commons and uncommons, I now have a long list of Gods and Relics, and Events that I need to print."

• You set went through some fairly significant mechanical and design changes recently, can you talk us through some of the thought processes you went through for those? 

"Port Noon was a victim of forced themes, archetypes, and mechanics for most of its lifetime. These included abet, a forced combat mechanic, Reflection Tribal, and dealing exactly 1 damage. I know a lot of cube designers learn the lesson of make goodstuff with hooks instead of all or nothing synergy cards and that is a lesson I too had to learn when suffering through remakes. I was making a thing too niche for no good reason, to the detriment of the set. I need to let archetypes form semi-naturally. Additionally, red was always the hardest color to design for and Port Noon never really had a large number of mechanics. Because I had Foretell which was a slower mechanic, I thought that I needed a creature-based aggressive mechanic when that wasn't the case. I've learned that a set doesn't need to have high number of mechanics or mechanical complexity. The cards are more important than the mechanics and themes."

• It's not often we see an alteration to the official rules for a set, what led you to doing so for Foretell, and how has that worked out for your design process?

"The rule in question: 702.143d Altered If an effect states that a card in exile becomes foretold, that card becomes a foretold card. That effect may give the card a Foretell cost, if it doesn't it's mana cost becomes its Foretell cost. That card’s owner may look at that card as long as it remains in exile and it may be cast for any Foretell cost it has after the turn it became a foretold card has ended, even if the resulting spell doesn’t have Foretell. If that card is a land, it may be played as if it were in its owner's hand.

There was a lot of design space for Foretell, Foretell-kicker in Starnheim Unleashed and Poison the Cup and becomes foretold in Ethereal Valkyrie. I wanted these designs to be featured more at lower rarities and pushing "becomes foretold" into reminder text instead of rules text allowed me to do just that. Additionally, lands becoming foretold felt really bad for a really long time so the alteration to be able to play lands felt necessary. This rules change has worked out pretty well, "Foretell drawing" feels good to do and allows for cards without Foretell to add to the mystery of what's face-down."

• What is your favorite card in Port Noon?

"My favorite card in Port Noon is River Drowner. This card was originally made early on, back when exploit was still keyworded, but it shows what I wanted to do with the set. Cultist Simulator doesn't have many Merfolk but Magic: the Gathering does. I've flavored it in a way that makes sense for both universes and have a lore justification written elsewhere. It shows that I'm not simply copy pasting but that I've taken the time to transpose and reinterpret."

• Would you like to give any special thanks to anyone for their help?

"I'd like to thank TVP, The Ensorceler, Silas, and everyone else that kept an eye on the project especially since I wasn't the most active and getting it out there."