• In a few sentences, what is the premise of Bee Cube?

"Bee Cube (BEE) is a fully custom powerful legacy-like* synergy cube characterized by low curve, efficient interaction, and emergent archetypes. Its designs are either brand new or assembled from my previous works, including designs from Survivor and collaborative projects like Moxtober Cube. It’s like a culmination of all my custom magic work up to this point."

• What inspired you to begin creating Bee Cube?

"I recently moved to Toronto (if you’re nearby we should meet up!) and found an in-person cube group for the first time in my life. Meeting weekly and playing and joking face to face is a really special experience and I knew pretty much immediately that I wanted to make something to print out and play with them."

• Where would you say Bee Cube is in the development process?

"This number moves around a lot (in both directions), but at present I have 43 designs left before there’s a finished first draft of the cube. From that point onwards, it's just going to be a huge amount of testing and polish- to be honest, it’s the kind of project where I’m not sure I’ll ever call it finished, because it's pretty easy to sub cards out and try new things and gradually approach the perfect holy draft environment."

• In your design doc you mention that you want Bee Cube to have “card-by-card synergy” instead of traditional archetypes. Can you speak some on how you go about designing for that and how it has impacted the kinds of cards you put into the cube?

"Early in designing for this cube (when I wrote that into the design document), I had a vision for building my synergy sort of outwards instead of inwards; rather than list out all the archetypes I wanted, I’d design some cards, see where those cards pointed, then design more, etc. and let the decks and synergies emerge from that process. The hope is that this same process would be felt on the player’s end; rather than feeling shoehorned into an archetype, the player’s early picks would create a sort of decision tree of synergy that they could follow down in any number of directions.

Now that I’m looking at a dwindling number of slots at the back end of this process though, I have to solve the increasingly difficult puzzle of tying all these different synergy routes back together so that there aren’t any loose strategic ends. The Ascension of Caldius (the most recently designed Bee Cube card as of my writing this) is helping with the following things: create enchantments, modify creatures, create tokens, go to the graveyard, be a flicker target. That’s five different strategies covered with one card. Designing like this is certainly a challenge (especially stopping myself from designing things that are overly wordy or modal, which I know from experience can make a limited environment miserable), but it’s the kind of challenge I very much enjoy."

• Low curve and efficiency are major points in your design. How do you balance sticking to that while making games feel like they are ramping up over time?

"There’s a great article by the creator of Bun Magic Cube written about this somewhere, but scaling threats and effects that work at multiple different phases of the game are great for solving this problem. I do this with your usual X spells and kickers, but I’ve also been looking at hiding late-game effects where you’d least expect them, the mana base. My enchanto-transformo-painlands (patent-pending) slot in comfortably as monocolor painlands but can also transform themselves into famous game-ending enchantments from Magic’s history. Effects like this mean that players always have things to do even deep in the late game, and ensure that Bee Cube games come to exciting conclusions."

• What is your favorite card in Bee Cube?

"Some designs are the kind I’m very proud of, ones whose mechanics and flavor are clever and unique and perform a role for the cube that I’m happy with. There are also designs though, that just make me smile when I look at them, and Feathergoyf falls into this second camp. A classically simple design (literally just Nethergoyf + Vampire Nighthawk), the card says a lot about the cube very efficiently by flaunting its power level, signaling an archetype, and acting as one of many references to canon magic and canon cubes (the conceptual A to this cube’s Bee). And I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but I think the flavor text is as close to a perfect joke as I’ll ever write. Oh, and the name rhymes, one of a few rhyming allusions in the cube. (When the full preview drops, see if you can find them all!)"

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

"Thanks to all the regulars in the set channel for their feedback, Splitmoon, DrChipmunk, Pipsqueak, kumrac, enragedmukamuka1 to name a few. Also, if any of them are reading this, thanks to everyone in Toronto MTG Cubers, y’all have made the process of moving and establishing myself here so much easier and happier- this cube only exists because of you. Finally, thanks in advance for everyone who shows up to the inaugural draft at the end of the month, calling it now I’m going to be done by then and it’ll be perfect and we’ll have a great time i pinky promise ive never missed a deadline before ever ever ever"