Black/Blue is a real problem area for hybrid designs. There really isn't a whole lot of mechanical overlap for the two colors. It's pretty much milling, evasion... and more milling. It does frustrate me that multicolor UB cards are so mill oriented, but I understand why historically that's been the go to mechanic for hybrid designs.
As I mentioned in yesterday's comments, one of the (many) design goals I had for this series was to avoid hybrid cliches, so I threw out mill for this card. Blue gets to mess around with counters, black gets to remove counters, so there was the cards ability. I think one of my follow up explorations for this series will be to dig deeper into some of the problematic hybrid colors to see if there are newish mechanical spaces that can be carved out.
you say it's a blue thing to mess with counters, but I personly don't know a lot of cards that do so
ReplyDeleteSimic Fluxmage, Leech Bonder, and Fate Transfer are probably three of the more clear ones, but Proliferate was also a blue mechanic the last time we saw it.
DeleteIt's a small tweak, but I would take out the "you control"s from the first ability. This would allow it to trigger more often (especially in multiplayer? I assume we're aiming these to be functional in traditional formats but generally for Commander play) and for playing around with Bloodied-Ghost style cards. I think people who enjoy playing around with counters enjoy that sort of "move a -1/-1 counter from my guy to yours" style play.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting series, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of this week!
I approve of this idea.
DeleteNot a terrible thing, but it stands out that Jaru's second ability is the killer one, where Thief's killer ability was first.
ReplyDeleteI like this, but I'm worried it can't work.
ReplyDeleteI like counter-manipulation as U/B overlap, and I've always liked the "choose how creatures attack" mechanic.
But the first ability is so narrow, even if it was "all counters", it would normally never do anything. And IIRC the second ability can't really be templated, because if different players make blocking decisions, there's no way in the rules to resolve precedence in cases that there's a blocking restriction and the decisions conflict. (And if it's "attacks if able" or "blocks if able", that's R or G not RW) :(
I've been trying to think of a similar hybrid creature, but haven't got one I like yet :)
I like that you're doing these. I've always felt that when the four-colour commanders show up, there will probably be a four-colour commander (like the nephilim) and then two back-up commanders that will be hybrid like these.
ReplyDeleteThis first ability is really, really marginal. I like the pseudo-evasion of "block this creature, and bad things happen" but the condition is so rare and the payoff so minimal that I have a hard time envisioning scenarios where it would be worth 3 mana to me to force it to happen.
ReplyDeleteThe second ability is a bit better, but compares unfavorably to Odric, Master Tactician, who can actually prevent creatures from blocking.
Weak body (fails vanilla test pretty badly), limited utility, and synergies require your opponents to be playing a particular kind of deck. Doesn't feel designed to be a commander.
This is only somewhat related, but the more I think about it, the more I suspect the 4-color commander itch might be a design red herring. Commander has access to so much mana fixing that a 4-color deck probably wouldn't have meaningful play differences from a 5-color deck. 5-color decks run a ton of slow mana so they can hit all of their colors, and I strongly doubt that a 4-color manabase would look much different. From a deck construction perspective, missing 2 colors is a meaningful weakness; missing one is not. So what do we gain, gameplay-wise, from having four-color commanders?
What do we gain? Absolutely nothing, other than satisfying the aforementioned itch. But the itch is clearly there given how often the question pops up on blogatog, so I wanted to take a shot at making 4 color commanders with some sort of sensical color identity to them.
DeleteHavelockV rightfully pointed out on twitter a few weeks ago (when I first started mulling this idea) that 4 color commanders are virtually an inevitability what with the cycle of annual commander decks published.
DeleteBetween monocolor, ally guilds, enemy guilds, shards, and wedges, we've got enough variety for a 5-year cycle (and that's not even counting oddball themes like tribal, artifacts, etc. they could theme around.)
DeleteI don't think that 4-color decks are an inevitability by any stretch, particularly since if you play a deck against any other deck there's a guarantee that they'll share at least three colors in common.
I think you're overlooking a pretty simple overlap between blue and black: they both draw cards! Especially when designing for Commander, card draw is king, and even red/white got powerful card drawing artifacts like Loreseeker's Stone.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this effect: "Whenever a creature you control becomes blocked, draw a card and defending player loses one life".
I think this has been a great exercise in hybrid design too! Thanks for the designs, and I really appreciate the synergy between the abilities and the effort these must have taken.
DeleteDamned If You Do
DeleteWhenever a creature you control becomes blocked, draw a card. Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, draw a card.
Suvnica guy! Yay!
ReplyDeleteSuvnica guy! Yay!
ReplyDelete