Wasn’t there talk with the Rotation about “Returning to minion based combat” or something?
IMO:
[Carnivorous Cube] and [Faceless Manipulators] = Most interactive and BOARD BASED Metas ever.
What do you think?
Do you love or hate [Carnivorous Cube]?
Was [Carnivorous Cube] good or bad design?
Ahh yes, cubelock. I’d LOVE to see some “nerf cubelock” threads for old times’ sake! I’ll sign this 
Good or bad design isn’t about people liking or not.
i always found cube degenerate, and that’s coming from someone that loved dr rogue and abusing necrium+cube.
Both?
Cube was a super interesting card, that was seemingly designed to get folks to think about cards in a different way. It was a good DR trigger, it spawned copies in a less straight forward way than Faceless Manipulator & burst combos with Charge.
At the same time it was pushed by some less than healthy cards that were only really broken when they hit the cube. (Dark Pact pops to mind). imho this is where we lean into really bad design territory. These types of interactions aren’t clever - they are practically printed in boldface on the cards themselves.
The simplest way to put this is - the existence of Humongous Razorleaf did not suddenly make Purify a good or interesting card.
By contrast Shadow Step, certainly a powerful card but also an interesting one, an average rogue deck has multiple good Step targets (to replay a battlecry, keep a minion around for another turn, satisfy a combo requirement…)
I edited to make the questions more separate.
Cube should have “exiled” the card not destroyed it. That would have most certainly solved issues with getting a board full of doomguards with Guldan and other broken nonsense it created. In a vacuum the card is relative innocuous. However, in the meta where it was released it was ridiculously broken.
Sorry but when you talk about something being good or bad you really have to choice one.
Why?
Everything has it’s pros and cons.
If people didn’t got to choice a side how any decision would ever be made?
And in my personal opinion there was more pros than cons.
Why?
If cards were only created in environments were they can’t reach their potential the game would be really tasteless.
That to not say that people gonna whine no matter what.
Cube and Lunacy are very similar in that they are only as powerful as the card pool allows them to be.
No I’d compare lunacy more to control warrior with dr boom where both were falsely inflated by players who were misled by the forums and word of mouth.
If you bring cubes back, you need to bring devilsaurus back as well!!!
I hated playing vs cube but I don’t think that makes it a badly designed card. Cube was an interesting card, but many Doomguards getting played with no drawback was bs imo.
So I will go for interesting design of cube, but bad design to have it existing at the same time as Doomguard.
I would say it was good design. Why? Because it made people buy packs and get lots and lots of nerdgasms. Sure, they could have balanced it by making the cube silence the minion, then destroy it, but you know what they say: you want to make an omelet, then you gotta break a few eggs.
The real world is a bit more nuanced than that.
A card can be good design for one meta and bad for another.
everyone talks about cubelocks but the most disgusting use for cube was by hunter. Cube with playdead, creating boards totaly unsolvable.
i think it was an intresting card.
It really isn’t.
Good design is one that causes reactions in people be they good or bad.
If you would really care for how people feel about it you would end with a 100% tasteless game.
If people keep talking about how bad what you done is then they’re still talking about you.
In the end of the day the 858858 please nerf tickatus because it’s disgusting threads are just as good as a ton of people saying how much they love it.
With that definition, every memorable card is good design.
Or it could be used to throw a ton of damage at face both in a single turn or over a few turns, and deny your opponent the means of interacting with a powerful card in your deck. Shadowstep is an extremely degenerate card.
It’s a game and people play for fun.
So how exactly is getting different experiences not good design?
People focus too much on metagame perspective but let’s talk for example about watch posts…
For the first time the metagame actually opened a little more for slower play.
Isn’t the point of new cards to change the world around they?
Maybe they were a bit overpowered but switching between different worlds is far more fun to anyone than atleast 90% of the “good design” nonsense this forum talks.
And even if we arguably reach that utopic balance someday there gonna still have a “next expansion” to “ruin” it anyway.
And since we’re talking about good design.
Let’s put last balance in the spotlight for a little.
They nerfed watchposts out of the game.
They not changed paladin enough to even get out of the “king of the metagame” throne.
They also killed rogue in the process.
If I would have to say what is bad design. I say that last balance changes were a really bad idea.
And
Is essentially arguing that release day Demon Hunter was amazing design. That 2-mana Deck of Lunacy is good design. Or Patches having Charge is good design.
It’s extremely easy to make something that is memorable or “cause different experiences”. A 1 mana 100/100 with Charge would be memorable and it would certainly be a different experience, but it wouldn’t be good design.
Good card game design creates memorable experiences that leave room for a wide variety of decks to prosper. The pre-nerf Standard meta was something like 70-80% No Minion Lunacy Mage and 20-30% Libram Paladin. That is NOT a healthy or well designed meta.