Weekend Art Challenge Review 060713—Lagutin

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Given that Archaic Remnant costs {U}{B}{R}, those six lines of text will rarely play differently than if the card just always had hexproof, deathtouch and first strike. Perhaps if it cost {2U}{2B}{2R} or {2}{B} or something.

The flavor text tells us nothing.

Flamewraith Warrior reminded me at first of Nim Lasher, but it counts artifacts in your graveyard rather than on the battlefield, which is perfect for this setting. The closest card to it is Salvage Slasher, which could totally get reprinted here. Since it's got one toughness, you usually only attack with it once (unless you're able to kill their only blocker with the trigger).

I started out 'eh' on this design but have talked myself into liking it pretty well.

Wraith is a super black race, but I must admit that hood is quite wraith-like.

I wanted to find a mechanic about searching the wastes for items of use. 'Scavenge' was taken, so I went with 'excavate,' though having just written the above review, 'salvage' could be perfect too.

Anyhow, excavate gives you a chance to return a card from your graveyard (proportional to that card type's prevalence there). White might excavate for artifacts, while blue/red might excavate for instants/sorceries. I suppose green could excavate for enchantments, but not every color needs the mechanic, and it'll lead to more feel bad moments the rarer the card-type it looks for is.

That said, I'm not sure excavate is awesome. It'll feel great when it works (and especially when you make it work), but it'll be a let-down when it doesn't and choosing a random card from your graveyard isn't the fastest thing to execute.

The Ghoul/Mutant thing is a Fallout reference for anyone not familiar with that series.

Hey look, 'salvage' again. Clearly an important theme for a post-apocalyptic world to explore. While the flavor of this triggered version matches up less perfectly, the gameplay seems much stronger (at least in a vacuum). Ground Zero Scavenger is blue because the effect tied to the trigger is blue (and because zefferal likes the art better on a blue, black or red card), but it bugs me that blue can't destroy artifacts or enchantments and so this ability does nothing in a mono-blue deck. I'd rather see this salvage in white, green and maybe red.

Devin describes warp as the ability to hijack "the summoning magic that Planeswalkers utilize to manifest objects and creatures." It only now occurs to me that it might be interesting if you could hijack your opponent's spells: "Whenever a player casts an Artifact spell, you may cast ~ for up X less."

Back to Junctionblast Mage: I'm not entirely sure warp is something we want to put on commons, but if it is, the only way to make a simpler warp card is to put it on a big french vanilla as a cost-reduction mechanic.

I'm guessing the flavor text is either sound of a Junctionblast Mage hijacking your artifact spell, or the sound of his damage being dealt.

Ipaulsen wanted to find a mechanic that basically said "this creature can only be killed by damage" but that proves difficult to do, particularly in the face of state-based effects like having 0 toughness. Survivor is what he settled on, and it's not bad, except for also making Mage-Scarred Avenger immune to tap effects, enemy auras and the like.

I'm not entirely clear what the name means. Was this shaman scarred by a mage whom he since swore vengeance against? Has he sworn vengeance against all mages, hence the triggered ability? About that ability, it's almost functionally identical to "Whenever ~ attacks, it deals 1 damage to the defending player" since you can then redirect that damage to a planeswalker she controls.

In my initial brainstorm, I had messed with a couple cards that 'spent' artifacts from your graveyard to buff the creature. Havelock's design is better. It's simple and enticing. Sold.

Daniel riffed off of that design to make something more interesting and flavorful at the cost of more complexity. I like this Mageborn Scavenger too, though it may be better cheaper and rarer. Not sure why it's red-blue.

Delve is an excellent mechanic to try out for this setting. We quickly learned how hard it is, though, to appealingly cost cards with big cost reduction mechanics like delve and affinity. Tombstalker looks okay at {6}{B}{B} because it's a big flyer anyhow. Death Rattle looks okay at {5}{B} because six mana isn't unreasonable for nearly conditionless instant-speed removal (in Limited). And Logic Knot is solid because it only costs one more than it's kin and that won't be hard to offset via Delve (plus it's Counterspell in the best case).

Master Scavenger would definitely be disappointing to cast with no cards in your 'yard, but exiling three cards to make a 5/5 for {B}{B} is pretty exciting (and you can even delve more cards just to make him bigger). He might be too good with Intimidate, but rare is definitely the right rarity. "Equipping" Master Scavenger with the cards he delved is some nice flavor.

"Yeah, kicker. Kinda lazy. Still, fits in with whatever big mana theme is supporting giant mechs. Flavor is exactly what it says on the tin -- in a post-apocalyptic world where resources are scarce, he uses necromantic magic to 'recycle' expired constructs, mixing in red metalworking magic to get them fighting fit much sooner."

It feels a little strange that red mana is what lets Necroforger return the artifact creature to the battlefield instead of our hand, but no moreso than a black card returning only nonliving creatures. Not my favorite of Jenesis' work.

Antny223 proposes reincarnate as a mechanic that lets you retrieve a card from the graveyard when something else enters. There's no card advantage since it goes to your library, and there's not a 1:1 between cards entering and cards leaving your battlefield, since you could pay for multiple cards when they trigger. As a result, the flavor is entirely lost on me, but the gameplay seems interesting.

Obviously, Neurosi Salvager is the one rare that hands out reincarnate like candy, while every other card in the set that mentions reincarnate only has it for itself, and since that could let you get it back any number of times, isn't so good that you always want to reincarnate it.

It's like dredge but for mana instead of cards in your library. Which means it's not as a broken.

Ruthless Acquisitor is a build-around for Act of Treason effects, which is something we might see a lot of in this post-apocalyptic setting, what with people looting and forming gangs and maybe blackmailing or enslaving others.

The flavor text is pretty good, though I wish it ended 6 words earlier.

'Scrounge' is another good word for the action many of us have been designing to. James suggests that this set would include a bunch of artifact creatures with activated abilities like "{U}: ~ gains flying until end of turn" or "{2}: ~ gets +1/-1 until end of turn." Given the mechs we've seen, this will give you extra uses for your dead mechs.

We definitely need to add a restriction to Scrounge so that your creatures never get the equip ability of equipment cards in your graveyard.

Obviously Seeker has a huge upside, potentially much larger than Snapcaster Mage. It's a little harder to deploy and much harder to turn on, though. It may not be too hard to balance this in Limited or Standard, but Seeker breaks pretty quickly with dredge and the like. You could add a trigger (perhaps you can only use his ability once per turn, and/or only after dealing combat damage). I just love the flavor of him taking two discarded items and making one functional item out of them (You could also limit it to just permanents or artifacts).

Threshold is rather unlikely to ever return, but if it were to, a post-apocalyptic set would be perfect.

Dread Specter is the only existing specter without flying, and it also doesn't have the discard ability. Even so, the hood is very specter-y and wither feels pretty natural here.

Fateful Hour seems appropriate, and Tenacious Pyromancer is pretty exciting.

Psionic will let you transfer any kind of counter. Trap Dispeller uses a -1/-1 counter, so we don't expect any other kinds of creature counters in the same set, but there's nothing stopping you from putting +1/+1 counters on it outside of the block. And then attacking and moving the +1/+1 counters off...

Trap Dispeller does a bunch of things. It blows up an enchantment. It shrugs off (very small quantities) of wither/persist tokens as well as it's own. It kills a creature. You could print this at common (without the flavor text), though it pushes that bar. I have concerns that all psionic creatures will do the same, since the keyword does nothing by itself.

I like the flavor. Just the name suggests that the traps you're worried about are magical in origin.

This mechanic must walk a fine line between why-would-I-ever-save-this-guy and why-wouldn't-I-ever-save-this-guy. The former would leave the mechanic weak and undesirable, while the latter would lead to repetitive game states.

Twisted Survivor does a decent job of skirting that line: It's a bit on the weak side, but you might want to bring it back if you're land shy and you've got an expensive creature in hand you don't expect to cast any time soon. If you've got reanimation effects or other graveyard shenanigans, you may be actively looking for opportunities to discard your own creatures.

I do wish it had more straight-forward applications, or that it returned directly to the battlefield so that discarding a slightly better creature might be worth the mana savings.

Ben suggests naming the "loner" ability from Dark Ascencion and using it here. Makes sense to me. I think Unyielding Renegade could be a bit simpler with square numbers, but it's not a deal breaker. 5 power of intimidate is a lot, but Ben's expecting a lot of artifact creatures in this set to offset that.

Pretty good flavor text.

An update to Rag Man, Waywardly Ragman is easier to cast and activate, but not as dominating at stripping away your creature cards. You wouldn't tangle with any kind of repeated discard at common, but as a rare, this sets up a mini-game that could be as interesting as frustrating. Neat.

Whispertear recurs your equipment cards for the low-low cost of their equip cost. That's quite a splashy and strong ability on its own and I don't know if you even need another incentive to gear him up, though I wouldn't be entirely shocked to see a bad-ass legend like this printed. I propose this alternate template:

You may equip Whispertear with equipment in your graveyard. When you do, return that equipment to the battlefield.

"After this phase" is a unique choice. VanVelding's intention is that Witness of Loss should be able to block after dodging a Lyev Decree and Sleep without being distracted by a Shadow Slice or Last Thoughts. The unusual wording definitely knocks this out of running for common, and arguably justifies rare, but uncommon is certainly arguable.

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We saw every color but green, which I think we can agree just couldn't work for this art. We saw a bunch of effects that care about artifacts, a bunch that care about the graveyard, and several that care about both. Most of these designs illustrate a really tough, interesting survivor and make me think that—whether it fits for Tesla or not—a post-apocalyptic world could really be an interesting setting for a Magic block at some point.

What stood out to you? Did any of these designs inspire more ideas about this world for you?