Monday, August 15, 2011

CCDD 081511—Entwine with the Arcane

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/15/2011 - Today's card is a sort of Lich meets Necropotence. Or perhaps more of a Phyrexian Arena as life choice. The name is terrible because it uses two existing mechanic words and has nothing to do with either of them, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with the card. Okay, one aspect of the wording is pretty clunky, but other than that... oh just look at the card already!


So life loss is card draw and vice-versa. This is very powerful. With this enchantment in play, Sign in Blood is doubled, Demon of Death's Gate gets a bit more attractive and Bond of Agony becomes insane. Oh, and I guess it makes life pretty hard on your opponent too, since killing you also makes you stronger than he could possibly imagine. Or something like that.

In other words, development may need to up the mana cost on this thing.

Originally, this was just the second ability. All upside. That didn't feel quite as black as it could and tying the two events together really helps sell the whole massive-change-to-your-essence thing I was going for.

It probably needs to be legendary as well, just so that having two in play doesn't become a "win at instant speed or lose immediately" scenario. Which leads us into the clunky wording. Without "except through ~," the card's first ability will trigger its second and vice-versa. There's probably a better way to template it. At least I hope there is.

Completely unrelated: Zaiem Beg

4 comments:

  1. Worst card name ever.

    Also I can't think of an elegant way to word the card. "Whenever a source other than ~ causes you to lose life, draw that many cards." is not a problem. The first part is. You can't use an analogous wording because drawing cards during the draw step has no source.

    Design-wise, the first ability seems silly since in almost all games it will trigger only once a turn (hint: don't put card draw and this in the same deck).

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  2. For the second effect, maybe it could be changed from drawing cards to just putting them in your hand? Then the "whenever you draw cards" caveat could strike the "except by this" clause.

    It doesn't read as nicely though.

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  3. Honestly, I think you just ignore trying to get too cute with the concept and just use the second clause and cost it at 3BBB or whatever.

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  4. Pact of the Archlich 3BBB
    Legendary Enchantment
    If you would draw one or more cards or lose life, instead draw that many cards and lose that much life.

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