Friday, December 11, 2020

Weekend Design Challenge 121120 - Vitu-Ghazi

Happy Friday, Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your mission is to design a custom magic card that follows the guidelines. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. I'll try to offer some feedback of my own starting on Monday.

Clicking on the Random Card button this time sent me to Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree. It's not all that exciting a card design, unfortunately. Fortunately, more exciting things have happened to Vitu-Ghazi since then! Awakening of Vitu-Ghazi shows it being animated during the War of the Spark, after which it was defeated and collapsed to lie dormant. Lots of possibilities there...

So here's your challenge: Design a card with "Vitu-Ghazi" in the name that could appear in the next Ravnica set after War of the Spark. For bonus points, make it a memorable rare while using four or fewer lines of rules text (roughly 150 characters assuming no symbols or line breaks).

Good luck and have fun!

22 comments:

  1. so, i don't know what mechanic selesnya will have the next time we visit Ravnica, but it will probably be related to "have a lot of creatures" right? earlier mechanical iterations also had Vitu-ghazi itself be a land. having something that is permanently active felt contrary to how vitu is considered "dormant", so here is what popped into my head:


    The slumber of Vitu-Ghazi | 3WWG
    Enchantment
    At the beginning of each upkeep, Target land you control becomes a Legendary 5/5 Elemental Land Creature Named Vitu-Ghazi until end of turn.

    I wanted this to have text such as "with power and toughness equal to the number of creatures you control". but that ended up easily going over the 150 character limit
    I was also pondering making it "target land". but that would allow for, land destruction chenanigans...

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    1. I love the idea of a creature that "pops up" from a different land (potentially) every time. For a 6-mana rare it's a little on the weak side, but that's easy to fix by reducing the cost and/or adding abilities.

      To A's point, vigilance in particular would make this more powerful but might also make the gameplay a bit less interesting-- there wouldn't be as much reason to switch between different lands.

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    2. Finally figured out how the account system worked!

      anyhow, i agree with vigilance making it a bit so-so. but what abut untapping the land? it would allow for you to ramp with it. even more so if you do it with a land that produces more mana, at the risk of someone playing removal on it.
      new:
      The slumber of Vitu-Ghazi | 3WWG
      Legendary Enchantment
      At the beginning of each pre-combat main phase, Target land becomes a Legendary 5/5 Elemental Land Creature Named Vitu-Ghazi until end of turn. Untap it.

      changes: in order to have the untap make sense, i changed it from upkeep to precombat main phase, so you have time to spend the mana. this warranted the cutting of "land you control". to fit within the 150 char limit. that change allows for legend-rule-ing of opponent lands, To counteract this i made the enchantment itself legendary.

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  2. Vitu-Ghazi panspermia 2bbg
    Enchantment (r)
    When a non token creature comes into play it owner sacrifices it and creates X 1/1 green saproling tokens equal to its power.
    If there are 30 or more creatures on the battlefield you win the game.

    This imagines a world where the Golgari have corrupted the remains of Vithu Ghazi to create a spreading fungal plague.

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    Replies
    1. I was wondering if anyone would go BG with this! Dovescape-for-creatures is an exciting idea, very resonant and very Golgari.

      Unconditionally winning when there are 30+ creatures total seems oppressive. This basically makes it pointless for opponents to play creatures, right? Could it be "when a player controls 30+ creatures that player wins the game"? Or even skip that line entirely?

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    2. I like your take better, yes! It can backfire as many times as it can frontfire. I could also see skipping it altogether, making it a more versatile card.

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    3. I like this concept. How about having a different symmetry-breaking effect instead, like sacrifice this and saprolings you control get +1/+1 UEOT or similar?

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  3. Vitu-Ghazi, the Unbroken
    Land (R)
    {T}: Add {C}.
    {GW}, {T}: Untap all creatures you control. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery and only once each turn.

    So i herd u like convoke, so I made a card to convoke while you attack, or attack while you convoke, or like give pseudo-vigilance or something c'mon it's in white-green and also it scales really well with go-wide.

    Most of the words are in the last two clauses to prevent the most obnoxious abuse cases. In exchange, a very simple and cheap ability with a very high ceiling nonetheless.

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    Replies
    1. Crud, that was supposed to be {G}{W}, not hybrid.

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    2. This is a great design mechanically, for the reasons you describe. I wish it felt like something more than "the old Vitu-Ghazi is back" story-wise but that might just be the way the set wants to go.

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    3. Yeah, despite Ravnica being one of my favorite planes, I don't actually know a lot about the narrative that happened on it. Card leans 100% Mel, I'll own that.

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  4. Sprout of Vitu-Ghazi 1GW
    Creature - Plant
    Flash, Vigilance
    {T}: Add {G}
    When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, target creature gains indestructible until end of turn.
    3/3

    I wanted something like "new growth" of lands with a flavour of renewed protection. I went through a lot of variants about searching out or animating (maybe multiple) lands and different white effects, before trying representing the new sprout directly.

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    Replies
    1. Now it's a bit under exciting, but the version that animated two or three lands was too hard to get right (and wordier)

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    2. Cool! There's a bit of tension where you won't always have something to do with the indestructible when you want the ramp, but being able to target itself helps with that. Eating an attacker (or at least discouraging an attack) while ramping seems quite powerful. Great choice making a creature, "baby Groot" version of Vitu-Ghazi. The soup of different effects (flash-indestructible + vigilant attacker + mana) dilutes the flavor a bit but I still like it a lot.

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  5. Resurgence of Vitu-Ghazi 2GG
    Sorcery
    Convoke
    Until end of turn, all lands you control become 3/3 Elemental creatures with haste and vigilance. They're still lands.
    "When Vitu-Ghazi fell it did not die. It merely slumbered."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is fun effect that we've seen several times before, e.g. Rude Awakening and Sylvan Awakening. It's also perfect for Vitu-Ghazi flavor-wise!

      The convoke part is... interesting. Presumably players run these effects because they want creatures and not mana. Letting you tap creatures instead of lands to pay for it is fun because you get that many more 3/3s, but you also have that many fewer creatures to attack with. If the creatures are Saprolings then you're pretty happy with that trade, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be much point. Vigilance adds an additional wrinkle, though; now your new "creatures" can also still tap for mana post-combat. That's subtly powerful and makes the convoke more appealing, but I'm still a little confused about which resources I'm supposed to be exchanging for which, here.

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    2. Yeah, my thought on adding Convoke was that it would let you trade in weaker creatures for lands. An awkward piece of Sylvan Awakening is that 3 of the lands you animate are tapped. Another approach could be to replace convoke with "Untap up to four target lands" and remove the vigilance granting.

      My other idea for this was to permanently animate three lands as 3/3s, as a callback to the WAR card. Something like:
      Vitu-Ghazi Resurgence 3GG
      Instant
      Put three +1/+1 counters on each of up to three target lands you control. They become 0/0 Elemental creatures with haste and are still lands.

      There's some awkward elements here though too. You need 8 mana before this actually gives you 3 land creatures all together, but if you have 5 mana you can hold this up and cast it on your opponent's end step.

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    3. Yeah, I quite like convoke because it lets you trade up your creatures to 3/3 if that's useful (which it might well be if you're playing 1/1 elves or similar). But untapping lands would also work well.

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  6. Hi!

    Reminisce of Vitu-Ghazi
    Land (R)
    {T}: Add {C}
    {2}{G}{W}, {T}: Until end of turn, target land you control becomes 3/3 Elemental creature with trample and "Whenever this creature attacks, create a 1/1 green Saproling creature token."

    Watch the card image here: https://mtg.design/i/syms82.jpg

    Hope you guys like it :)

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    Replies
    1. gotta be totally honest... do not know what happened to vitu-ghazi. Think Nicol Bolas killed it or something?

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    2. A land that animates other lands is an interesting idea. I guess the benefit of that over something like Stirring Wildwood is that you can do it over and over if they kill your land-creature. The on-attack trigger is a clever incentive to make that scenario more relevant, as well as a fun callback to the original Vitu-Ghazi. Nice work!

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