Cool Card Design of the Day2/5/2013 - While reading MaRo's Boros article, I was thinking about how great haste is at enabling battalion, and how terrible battalion is at granting haste. What if your creature could attack the turn you cast it, but only if you attack with two or more other creatures?
I simplified it from the battalion-esque idea to parallel Ember Beast and Mogg Flunkies. Mountain Giant is actually a sort of all-upside Ember Beast. In fact, if I weren't such a fun of drawback cards in general and Ember Beast et al specifically, I would question how drawback cards like these are still being made. Maybe the answer isn't that drawback cards need to go, only that they need to be infrequent and the mechanics are necessarily too commonplace to be drawbacks.
(I'm not 100% sure this exact template works, but I believe there exists one that does.)
I don't think there exists a satisfactorily concise template for this ability. It SEEMS as simple as Mogg Flunkies and Ember Beast, except Mountain Giant's clause is ever-so-slightly "Chicken or the Egg?", as it demands parsing the declare attackers phase into sub-steps according to however many creatures you can legally declare as an attacker.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's ok as is because the intent is clear, but it seems like you'd just want to do something like "~ has haste as long as you control two other creatures."
Worst case, this should work:
Delete"~ can attack the turn it ETB if you attack with at least one other creature."
I think it should be "can attack as though it has haste" or it'd be confusing if you gained control of it without it entering the battlefield. But otherwise, I think that works as a template.
DeleteI think maybe "if you control 1 or 2 other creatures" might be simpler and just as good, though.
If I play two of these on turn 8, can I attack with both of them immediately? I can't tell.
ReplyDeleteCan you attack with two Ember Beasts and nothing else? (Yes)
DeleteThe way the rules actually work here is that you declare attackers and then check that they're legal. The template should probably be something like "~ has haste as long as another creature you control is attacking."
ReplyDeleteMaybe just give it haste when it ETB if you control two or more other creatures. Makes it a bit less narrow and reads much more cleanly, but functionally acts the same most of the time if you're dedicated to a Battalion strategy.
ReplyDelete"Haste
ReplyDeleteWhen ~ enters the battlefield, it can't attack alone this turn."
Not functionally the same, but along these lines:
DeleteHaste
~ can't attack or block alone.
I like the idea, it's a simple idea but much more difficult to execute which means this is, at best, uncommon, but most likely rare.
ReplyDelete