Cool Card Design of the Day4/3/2011 - Continuing my discussion from yesterday, Gil and I came upon the idea of baking some of the Commander/EDH rules directly into a card. I heard you like tournament Magic and EDH so I put some EDH in your tournament Magic so you can EDH while you Magic.
I couldn't quite fit the death-by-general-damage clause in, but that doesn't make sense in a 20 life game anyhow. Adding the singleton or 100-card clauses would just force you to play this in an actual Commander game, which kind of defeats the purpose. Sadly, I also couldn't fit any commander-specific abilities here, so I just gave it some unique and desirable stats.
While nothing exactly like this should ever see print, I am surprised how comfortable "begin the game with ~ exiled from your library" feels and I'm forced to wonder if there isn't a nugget of useful design to be gleaned from it. Sort of an uber-Leyline. Hmm...
This seems difficult to work with. To work as written, it'd need to start with "At the beginning of the game, reveal your library. If there are no mana symbols in your deck..." It probably also needs a line for "You may cast CARDNAME from [zone]." (Remember, commanders aren't exiled anymore; they go to the command zone.)
ReplyDeleteI think if you really wanted to play with this card, it'd make more sense to phrase it like the leylines.
It's problematic that the commander rules take up so much space on the card that you run out of room for any abilities that would make the Legend an interesting General in the first place. After all the commander shenanigans, when this creature is in play he's just a 4/3 for 3, which really isn't that interesting.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'd imagine there are potential rules complications with a card that can do things while in your library, and that cares about the color of other cards in your library. I confess I'm far from a rules expert though.
The concept is a cool one however; EDH is a pretty wonderful format.