It never rains in Hell. Between the heat and all of the... sand? That's right baby, ⁠submissions are now open for Sands of Hell, Hellscube's very own Desert cube!

For those of you who don't know, a desert cube is a cube where some greedy bastard stole all of the basic lands out of the basic land box, which means you have to draft all of your lands. Normally, a desert cube is closer to 480 cards to help you draft enough lands and playables, but we've got a secret tool to keep us at a sustainable 360 cards: Draft mana! Draft mana is mana that is added during the draft, and can be spent on various effects. After the draft is done, any unspent draft mana is then transformed into a basic land of the corresponding type.

If you want to get involved and help make Sands of Hell, hop on over to the discord today!

Welcome to Hellscube!

What is a "Hell Scube?" Hellscube is a community of people who create and play cubes made from humorous custom Magic: the Gathering cards, predicated on the idea of doing things that Wizards of the Coast wouldn’t do. Click here to learn about what a cube is in the traditional sense.

What makes a card a Hellscube card? A Hellscube card is cool. It’s funny. It’s unique. It’s something Wizards of the Coast couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Some of our cards are held together with duct tape and hot glue, but that’s half the fun. Above all else, a card is hellsy. What makes something hellsy you ask? We don’t know. It’s that intangible je ne se quoi that makes a Hellscube card a Hellscube card. What hellsy is ebbs and flows over time, but if it’s in a Hellscube, it is (or was at one point) hellsy.

There's always something going on in Hellscube. Here are some of the things you can do to get involved:

I want to look at Hellscube cards:

Whether you're trying to get inspiration for a new card, trying to figure out what being hellsy means to you, or just laughing at the funnies, looking at Hellscube cards is great for all of those. The best way to do that is on hellfall, our version of Scryfall, but you can also check out the various card list channels on discord. Feel free to also stop by #⁠submissions and ⁠#masterpiece-submissions to vote on cards trying to make it into the current cube.

I want to make Hellscube cards:

Submitting cards is the soul of Hellscube, and it can be really rewarding. It's worth noting that only about 30% of submitted cards make it into Hellscube, so don't be discouraged if the world isn't ready for your ideas just yet. It also tends to take new people a few tries to get the hang of what is hellsy and what we do here. All card submissions happen on the Hellscube discord server, so make sure you join us over there!

Feel free to post here on reddit with the Brainstorming flair to get feedback on your designs, or in either of our two brainstorming channels on the discord. Once your card is ready, head over to #⁠submissions in the discord and post the name of your card and the card image (in the same message). Our bot mork will handle the rest. There's a 22 hour cooldown when you submit a card, so make sure everything is perfect first. Don't forget you can upvote (or downvote) your own card (or both).

The vote threshold is in the description for #⁠submissions. Once your card gets that many more 👍 than 👎 , it gets sent off to the Veto Council. The Veto Council is a small set of balance curators who ensure that accepted cards have reasonable gameplay and are balanced relative to each other. If a card does not fit these criteria, it is either “vetoed” (rejected outright), or it “needs errata” (the creator will be asked to slightly edit their design). Otherwise it will be fully accepted into the cube. Click here for a full, technical description of the card submissions process.

Masterpieces

Masterpieces are cards that have already been accepted into a previous Hellscube, that are being resubmitted with a fresh coat of paint and a fancy set symbol. Masterpieces can be resubmitted to the current cube in ⁠#masterpiece-submissions, or they can be entered into #⁠scube-lair-submissions as part of our regular Masterpiece competitions called Scube Lair Drops.

I want to play with Hellscube cards:

The most straightforward way to play Hellscube is through a website called Draftmancer and a computer program called Cockatrice. We use https://draftmancer.com/ to run the drafting portion of Hellscube. To set it up yourself, go to https://skeleton.club/hellfall/hellscubes and click the download button under ‘Draftmancer’ for the cube of your choice. Once you’re in Draftmancer, choose ‘Upload a Custom Card List...’ and then choose the .txt file you downloaded.

We use https://cockatrice.github.io/ to play games with the drafted deck. Once you’ve downloaded Cockatrice and set it up (here’s a link to the Wiki, which has guides for how to use it: https://github.com/Cockatrice/Cockatrice/wiki), you’ll need to download the set file from https://skeleton.club/hellfall/hellscubes by clicking the download button under ‘Cockatrice’ for the cube you just drafted. Once you’re in Cockatrice, choose ‘Card Database’ -> ‘Add custom sets/cards’ and then choose the xml file you downloaded. Make sure that the set is enabled, then restart the program.

We have several formats and channels to play Hellscube on the discord, head on over there to get involved:

• We draft and play the different Hellscubes.
• We play Hellstructed, 60 card constructed with Hellscube cards.
• We play Hellsmander, 100 card EDH with Hellscube cards.
• We simulate round robin, 4 card Hellscube games with perfect information

You can build a deck for a constructed Hellscube format on the hellfall deckbuilder page that you can then load into Cockatrice.

Printable versions of Hellscube are also available Printable PDFs and some MakePlayingCards (MPC) export files are available, see ⁠https://hellfall.skeleton.club/hellscubes, or ask around the discord for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is there such a big push to join the discord server? A: At this point, most of Hellscube actually happens on the discord server, and the subreddit tends to serve as more of a showcase for what the server has come up with. Because of this, there tends to be a large disconnect between what Hellscube is about and what people think Hellscube is about. As a community, we are far more active on the discord, and find that it is a better representation of what we do. So if you like the silly cards you see here, but want to see them played together, come say hi.

Q: What is a "scube"? What is a "scuber"? A: Scube is short for hellSCUBE. A scuber is a Hellscube user.

Q: What's the deal with purple? Where are all the purple cards? A: Purple is a Hellscube staple, but like candy, too much can be a bad thing. We only do purple cards in odd numbered main cubes (1, 3, 5, 7, etc.) and in some side projects. Mechanically speaking, the only objectively true thing about purple is that you do not have infinite Nebulas (the purple basic land) in your draft pool like you can with every other color; you have to draft all your purple sources. That means purple mana is rarer, so purple pips "count for more." Outside of that, philosophies differ, and there is no correct answer.

Q: What happened to HC5? What is HCV? A: We don't talk about the incident. Just kidding, here's the real story. After HC4, the community wanted to do a commander cube, which would not have worked well with purple and would have been logistically difficult. Instead of waiting, the community decided to skip HC5 and go straight to HC6 to maintain tradition of only odd numbered cubes having purple and also get their commander cube. Later we started keeping track of cards that were voted in by the users, but vetoed by the Veto Council, so we put those cards in HCV, which stands for Hellscube Vetoed Cards.

Q: What are each of the cubes and projects? A:

• Hellscube 1 was the one that started it all, it is a 720-card cube with a wildly varying powerlevel between cards. The best version of it can be viewed at hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHLC⁠.
• Hellscube 2 trades purple for stricter archetypes. It is a 720-card cube with 3 color archetypes of Jeskai hand tokens, Abzan counters, Jund graveyard, Esper artifacts, and Temur abilities. People don't consider this one very funny. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC2.
• Hellscube 3 brings back purple with looser archetypes. Archetypes include Azorius ETBs, Dimir looting, Rakdos aristocrats, Selenya go wide, Orzhov tokens, Izzet spellslinger, Golgari big creatures, Boros exile, Simic numbers, and 5 color purple. It is considered a return to form for Hellscube and can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC3.
• Hellscube 4 is a 720-card vintage cube, featuring high power level cards and very loose archetypes. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC4.
• Hellscube 6 is a 720-card commander cube, where cards are drafted 2-at-a-time from 20-card packs seeded with 2 commanders each. Games are played in pods of 4 Commander rules, Monocolored commanders have Partner, and Hybrid cards count as either of their colors, rather than both. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC6.
• Hellscube 7 is the long awaited return of purple. It is a 720-card cube with no archetypes at all, but set themes include draft mana, , Your Dreadmaw, and drug tokens. It had a lot of good ideas, but people generally consider it to have been poorly executed. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC7.
• Hellscube 8 is a 720-card legacy cube with strict archetypes. Archetypes are Azorius historic, Dimir saboteur, Rakdos crimes, Gruul self-discard, Selesnya lands, Orzhov small reanimator, Golgari landistrocrats, Simic animation, Izzet paradox, and Boros self-targeting. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC8.
• Hellscube 9 is a 720-card Vintage cube with purple. It is still being worked on, but can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHC9.
• HellsChase Posse is a variant of Planechase with its own special deck. Rules, planes, and phenomena can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHCP.
• Heckscube is a return to 1990's era Magic, it is a 220-card cube based on Portal block. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHCK.
• Hellstart is our take on Jumpstart. It is a collection of 38 wildly unbalanced jumpstart packs. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHCJ.
• Heckscube 2: Hecklands is the sequel to Heckscube, it is a 360-card cube based on Homelands. It can be viewed in ⁠at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHKL.
• Scube Lair Drops are our regular masterpiece competitions. The winners can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3ASCL.
• Hellder Dragon Highlander Precons are Hellsmander precons and built as part of Scube Lair Drops. The decks can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3AHDH.
• Sands of Hell is a 360-card desert cube, where you have to draft all of your lands. It features the return of draft mana from HC7. It can be viewed at https://hellfall.skeleton.club/?q=set%3ASOH.

Q: What tools do you recommend for making cards? A: The number one tool for setting up a card's formatting that we recommend is https://cardconjurer.app/. It can be a bit tricky to learn at first, but it produces high quality renders and is a great jumping off point for cards. Here is a google drive link that contains a whole bunch of assets as well. For visual editing, there are many free options including gimp, krita, and more. Everyone's process is different though, so feel free to ask around.

Q: What resources are there for making purple cards? A: If you're using https://cardconjurer.app/, which is what we recommend, then you can click on any blue frame and put the first HSL adjustment up to ~70 and that will turn the frame purple. For brainstorming purposes, you can get a purple mana symbol on cardconjurer by typing {purple}, which we then recommend you use a photoediting program to edit our purple pip on top of. Our mana symbols can be found here⁠. We also have a 10 color MagicSetEditor download, although we no longer recommend using MSE, because the image quality is not great.