Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Challenge #6: Critique

Carlos R submitted this card for critique:

Zwyvren the Damned
3BBB
Legendary Creature - Dragon
Flying, undying, deathtouch
When Zwyvren the Damned enters the battlefield, choose a creature type, then put X -1/-1 counters on each creature of the chosen type, where X is the number of Dragons on the battlefield.
5/3

I thought this would be an excellent candidate for discussion, because it falls into a very common trap: this card is trying to do too much!

As submitted, Zwyvren has three different keyword abilities, a very complicated ETB ability, and non-matching power and toughness. (Yes, a 5/3 creature is slightly more complicated than a 5/5, because it takes up more player memory.)  I don't think these are all necessary to evoke the ideas behind the card, so let's pare them down.

What is this card supposed to be?  From the name and abilities, I infer that it's an undead dragon with some sort of deadly or venomous breath weapon.  The conditions on the ability suggest a tribal theme, so this would have been right at home in Dark Ascension.  The concept is certainly strong and flavorful enough to support an exciting legend.  But which of the above abilities is actually needed to portray this creature?

Flying clearly needs to stay, since it's a dragon.

Undying also seems vital, given the card name and ETB ability.  For the sake of flavor, this should probably be a Zombie Dragon.

I don't think Deathtouch is relevant.  It'll come up so rarely that it's not an important part of the card.  It's not doing a great deal of harm, but it's always preferable to trim away non-essential abilities.

The only reason for 3 toughness is to make Undying trigger more often, which I don't think is terribly important: your opponent will kill this regardless, or lose.  Let's make it 5/5.

And what about that ETB ability?  For starters, it should count only your dragons, not all dragons on the battlefield.  (Tribal cards, in general, shouldn't be affected by your opponent's creatures.)  But I don't think that counting dragons is a good idea to begin with; how often are you going to have multiple dragons on the battlefield?  I would instead use a fixed number of -1/-1 counters, so that Zwyvren always works, and isn't disappointing if you throw him onto a battlefield devoid of dragon pals.  Furthermore, I don't think the ability should hit your own creatures, or you might be put in the awkward position of having to name "Camarid" to avoid nuking your team.

Here's the revised version with these changes:

Zwyvren the Damned
3BBB
Legendary Creature - Zombie Dragon
Flying, undying
When Zwyvren the Damned enters the battlefield, choose a creature type, then put three -1/-1 counters on each creature you don't control of the chosen type.
5/5

To me, this card is substantially easier to read, process, and remember, but still keeps the flavor of the original proposal.  What do you think?

8 comments:

  1. There is the minor issue of a card having Undying and creating -1/-1 counters. In some auxiliary product, that *might* fly, but I don't see it happening in an expert set.

    Eternally Damned Dragon 3BBB
    Creature - Zombie Dragon 5/5
    Flying, Undying
    When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, put a -1/-1 counter on target creature, two -1/-1 counters on another target creature, and three -1/-1 counters on a third target creature.

    This produces an interesting effect where, when he undies, you can use his first ability to reset his own counters and still tick down two opposing creatures; or conversely, go infinite with a Blood Artist. Probably too cute.

    The way I'd probably go with it for an expert set would be:
    Dragon of Death's Hold 3BBB
    Legendary Creature - Zombie Dragon
    Flying, Undying
    When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, choose a player.
    Creatures the chosen player controls get -1/-1.
    4/4

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a cool design, Carlos. Nice.

    I agree with Havelock that Deathtouch is unnecessary and locking in the number of counters is cleaner with no real loss of flavor/awesome.

    I agree with Pasteur that being able to put one or more -1/-1 counters on your own undying creature makes him infinitely recurable. If that's what we're going for, he needs a greater cost. I think it's not what we want though.

    I would propose something almost identical to Pasteur's Dragon of Death's Hold, but using the -1/-1 counters as originally proposed so that the dragon coming back to life doesn't just make you choose your opponent again, but actually does more damage.

    Zwyrven, the Damned 3BBB
    Legendary Creature - Zombie Dragon
    Flying, Undying
    When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, put a -1/-1 counter on each creature opponents control.
    4/4

    It's also worth asking whether legendary is right for this creature. Do we want the Yosei effect where you intentionally play a second copy just to put four -1/-1 counters on your opponent's team? With undying, you could wait until your first copy comes back once, then play the second copy, kill them each once, but end up with a +1/+1'd dragon and a handful of evil counters.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think that part of the intent of the original design was infinite recursion (or at least the possibility of infinite recursion). That's at least how it looked to me. I like Jay's version of the Dragon but maybe, if we were going for the recurring version, it would look something like this:

    Zwyrven, the Hate-Riddled 4BBB
    Legendary Creature - Zombie Dragon
    Flying, Undying
    When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Put two -1/-1 counters on each creature of that creature type.
    5/5

    The flavor here is that his hatred for some type of creature brings him back from the dead to continue wreaking havoc on them. He can either hurt your opponents creatures or come back slightly weaker to ensure that he can continue fighting.

    It's important to keep in mind that in many cases this doesn't nuke the opponents team unless they're a tribal deck.

    Also, it's unlikely that choosing 'dragon' will really hurt you too badly because just like Havelock said, how often do you have multiple dragons on the field?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would either give it Persist or make the counters just -X/-X until end of turn.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Whoa, I totally missed that! Yes, Undying definitely needs to be Persist; mixing +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters in the same card is absolutely not okay.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Furthermore, I don't think the ability should hit your own creatures, or you might be put in the awkward position of having to name "Camarid" to avoid nuking your team."

    I laughed. Great piece, very quick and entertaining to digest!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was going to put "Spuzzem", but apparently it didn't survive the purges.

      Delete
    2. Also, I'm glad you liked it!

      Delete