Weekend Art Challenge Review 092713—IACG

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

I imagine Johnny building a deck with Abandoned Gallows and Abhorrent Overlord or, worse, Bile Urchin so that it's a free Zombify for him every turn but a Woebringer Demon to everyone else, mostly. Hmm, like Sheoldred. I would expect Development to keep a close eye on this because it's not unlikely to cause repetitive game states and a few soft-locks.

The contrast between killing and returning creatures every turn is nice, and fits the art well enough.

I love how Jules tied this dexterous chance card to black's tendency to prey upon the weary and the tapped. It's unfortunate that none of the reminder text considered will prevent players from arguing endlessly what the threshold for being tapped is.

Attempted Murder doesn't really fit the art, but the name and rules text are perfect for un-world and make a very silly play out of a very dark crime.

You don't see a lot of end step counter handling, but Ant really wanted Bloodthirsty Gallows to do something the first turn you cast it. Apart from that, this is a very neat card and should be quite appealing to mono-black control players (especially since it combos with devotion).

Repeated removal is always dangerous, but this will only trigger every other turn if it's picking off X/1s, and it can be disenchanted. I love the name and the idea that these gallows demand blood.

Built as a mirror to Bridge from Below, Bridge to Above offers you a much bigger upside than Xathrid Necromancer, but with a huge condition that could be a real challenge for the mono- or mostly-black player to circumvent.

I'd rather see this card in white, but then it wouldn't work for this challenge. I do enjoy the poetic metaphor that the gallows is a bridge to the afterlife.

Circle of Life is a bigger Shadowfeed (that doesn't target). I'd tried something similar named Pick Bare, but it was needlessly more complex. While this art doesn't show a circle, vultures do circle and that would upgrade the name to full pun status.

Chained to the Rocks works because it refers directly to an existing story all myth buffs know. The 'enchant plains' here only exists because of the art (and the directive to include some contrast) and it seems like we should be able to plant this gallows anywhere.

I like the name, Crowfood Gallows, and how that describes the middle ability.

Crow's Feast lets you trade in late creature draws for 2 points of flying power / two bodies. If you've got other things to do with your mana (or if you just drafted a terrible deck), that could be a huge boon. This is a neat black build-around uncommon.

I won't think too hard about the fact that you're feeding the crows with creatures you haven't made yet.

Delayed Execution could work in a set that features vanishing, allowing a player to delay the execution by somehow adding more time counters to it. In the abstract, vanishing is a needless addition that triples the complexity of of "At the beginning of your upkeep step, enchanted creature's controller sacrifices it." Non-artifact is a fun restriction since you probably can't asphyxiate a robot.

Eager Noose sets up a mini-game that challenges players to keep two or more creatures on the field to avoid it's wrath. Of course, you really want three or four since you know the black mage who loosed the noose probably has more juice. Poison juice, of course. Strawberry-Nightshade to be exact.

Very cool.

Execution Ground is almost a reverse Lord of the Pit. First, you kill some of your own monsters, then when you can't, you get a bunch of hard-to-block, flying power. I love how it fits the art, and how it works with other combos like self-milling. Fun stuff.

Lynchings lets you kill a creature on each of your turns. It might be huge, regenerating or indestructible, but it's not safe. In addition, you get any death triggers it might have. (What's the flavor justification there?) I'm guessing a card like that would need to cost at least 6 if not 7 or more mana. On the plus side, you have a brief window to block with it, enact a Dramatic Rescue, or sacrifice it to a Blood Bairn …assuming you don't have two or more of them.

Gallows for the Chosen is a one-sided version of Eager Noose. I mean, the sacrifice is equal, but the minigame is mostly only being played by the enchanter. That's a little less fun, but Gallows still presents an interesting challenge and I can imagine Johnny happily pairing this with non-creature permanents that make tokens at will.

Gallows Humor seems like a printable and sometimes-Constructed-playable one mana discard spell, which is a pretty nice accomplishment. I'm not convinced it fits the art at all, but the silly name and flavor text do, so there's that. Hey, contrast.

Jules proposed a simpler template for Gallows Volt and that would likely win-out nowadays, but there's some charm to this old-school way. What do you think?

I like what Goblin Gallows is doing for a tribal set like Lorwyn. It's cheap, removal that deals with most creatures (potentially even regenerating creatures), but requires goblins and is unreliable.

This is also a perfect example of why we don't need tribal.

Purge the Heretics goes the opposite direction from Gallows for the Chosen and Eager Noose requiring you to have more creatures, but letting you super-wrath for just two mana.

I'm not sure who the audience for this is, though. Spike loves the power of wraths, but the condition ensures he'll lose card advantage on the deal. Johnny loves figuring out how to turn a bad deal like this around, but can't really win the game with a wrath. I suppose the Johnny who finds our this is the cheapest way to win with Blood Artist will be pretty happy.

These vultures only swoop in to eat once all your humanoids and beasts are dead, which is neat flavor even if it's a little awkward to read. I wonder if you could get a bird for each creature in your graveyard, both for flavor and power reasons. 'Reclaimed Gallows' is a great name for this design.

I suspect Raise Dead is underrated; Vacant Gallows is incrementally better, but I don't think it's too good (especially given how people value such cards). I wonder if people try this out and see how good it is and that leads them to value Raise Dead more afterward.

I don't have a problem with this black mana production because it's not mana acceleration.

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There was a lot of very good flavor this weekend: creepy, campy and some dark humor. Good stuff.

There were more than a few repeated removal spells, which makes perfect sense given the subject matter of a gallows. Some of them are probably okay, and some are probably broken. It's a dangerous line to walk. Any repeated effect is dangerous simply because it will lead to repetitive play and likely change the focus of the game to itself. That's not a deal breaker, but it is a warning flag. Attaching to that to disruption, permission and removal doubles the risk because these are the things that turn off your opponent's game and most often contribute to unfun games. Again, that's not to say this area of design is off-limits, but it's definitely a dark and gnarled wood where the travelling designer needs to keep his wits and take every caution.