Cool Card Design of the Day8/22/2013 - Not sure how the idea of being able to cast multicolored red spells as if they were monocolored got into my head. Not sure how I settled on red as the color to do it, either; I'm certainly not married to that choice.
I do know how the second ability came about. The base effect is pretty narrow, which is no sin, but it's something that if you want at all, you probably want four of, and at the same time, multiple are completely useless and you're not even worried about replacing destroyed copies because, well, it's an enchantment.
Originally, it was just going to cantrip. Then I had a clever idea to make it an escalating cantrip:
When Truefire ETB, draw a card for each permanent you control named Truefire.That's kind of neat and even resonates with the flavor of a magical fire that escalates faster and faster as you fuel it. The trouble is, it's more exciting than the first ability, the primary identity of the card, and so it detracts from the design's identity while doing injustice to two ideas at once.
So I looked at Grandeur as another way to mitigate duplicates and found a variation that seems to fit pretty well.
EDIT: Added a cleaner version thanks to Evan and TehWERR's feedback.
Manamorphose as an enchantment; interesting. Prismatic Omen is {1}{G} and mostly better than this, which leads me to believe that {R} is the right cost for this.
ReplyDeleteThe ability would read better as "{R}: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only on costs that include {R}".
I'm not sure the "wants to be a four-of" problem is a real problem. Some deckbuilders enjoy the challenge of deciding how many copies of a card to run. Why solve it for them?
Prismatic Omen is better, but green is better at making different colors of mana anyhow.
DeleteI don't think your templating is as clear.
Last point is fair.
I think this card is overdesigned. it does some narrow effect, and then does something that is entirely different. it's a johnny card to be sure, but why give one card two effects for johnny that would fit into entirely different puzzles?
ReplyDeleteIt may well be overdesigned. I disagree that the two abilities are entirely different, since they're both about casting spells with red mana, but one fixes while the other accelerates and you're probably right that we don't need both on a single card.
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