Cool Card Design of the Day9/25/2014 - Fight is primary in green and secondary in red. It's not in black's color pie at all, but I couldn't help imagine a skeleton hopping out of a closet or a zombie dragging someone into its grave.
This is the pure vision but it's unlikely to work within the rules, and even if it technically does, it's likely to confuse players. I love the poetry of it, but we can do better.
This definitely works. While in practice it will usually be moot, I really like that the creature you're reanimating has to win a fight for the right to breathe again. Fight isn't a black thing, but if it were, this would be pretty sweet. Corpse Lunge is how they did Resist the Grave, and Dead Reckoning is a cheaper Fight Another Day.
Fight Another Day could probably be 2BG, maybe cheaper - though 1BG almost certainly wrecks Modern.
ReplyDeleteThe problem there is that to me it doesn't /feel/ like a black-green card. It could be in-flavor for a particular faction for a particular Magic set, but in the abstract, it's not quite there for me. Maybe WBG or RBG as a powerful draw to either shard.
Right? I thought about just adding G to the cost, and it didn't fit nearly as well. If there's an argument for making a black fight card despite the color pie, that's it.
DeleteWhat about 2RB?
DeleteLess opposed to red-black.
DeleteYeah, there might be a flavour that makes BG work (or RB is easier but still not perfect), but it's nowhere near as obvious.
DeleteIn fact, it's possible this is one of those cases where the flavour demands an exception to the usual rule (like dragons and phoenixes flying in red). Almost always, that's a mistake, because it should be a multicolour card, or a different flavour, but sometimes it happens.
After all, fight is a fairly new mechanic, most mechanics have small exceptions carved out over time where a different colour does something similar but more specific. It's possible that even though fight is R or G, "return from the graveyard and fight" is black.
I think adding a color would all depend on the context of the set/card. I see Fight Another Day being RB just because the context seems to say this creature wants to fight so badly, it has cheated death. This burst of passion for carnage screams red. And lets not forget fighting is in red's color pie.
DeleteI really love the idea of a creature fighting from the graveyard. The closest I could find was Judgment's Selfless Exorcist.
ReplyDeleteSelfless Exorcist (RAR)
Creature — Human Cleric 3/4, 3WW
T: Exile target creature card from a graveyard. That card deals damage equal to its power to Selfless Exorcist.
Notice how that card deals damage, not the Exorcist to itself, or some other nonsense. So there's hope. You seem to be saying, if only fight were in black, when it's fine to make these spells both black and green.
Btw, why aren't either (or both) of these spells BG?
Corpse Lunge is closer, and still does the damage instead of the creature dealing it. Even so, there's no rule preventing a(ny) card from dealing damage from the graveyard, and a creature card *does* have power even when it's not a creature, so it should be legal. But confusing.
DeleteI don't buy either of these as black-green cards. I could imagine a setting where that would make sense—maybe Golgari—but in the abstract I'm not convinced.
I mean, this can be mono-black. The end result is nothing black can't do, it's just using the keyword as a shortcut that isn't usually black.
I like the idea of the first one, but I agree it's just asking for trouble. I think it nearly works under the current rules -- I think (?) fight is only defined between creatures, but since creature cards in a graveyard have a power, it's clear what it would mean, and the rules could trivially be expanded to fit. But they SHOULDN'T be, because it's almost entirely meaningless. 90% of the time it's just corpse lunge and should be written like that, and 9% of the time, it's corpse lunge, but players will play it wrong because the creature has deathtouch but that only applies when it's in play. In fact, is there any case where it matters that it's that card dealing the damage? Maybe if it's a non-black creature card and the target has protection from that colour?
ReplyDeleteThe second one works really well -- sometimes it's a kill spell, but sometimes it's a two-for-one.
Agree with all that, except I'm not sure deathtouch would be ignored. Might work from all zones. Not sure there's any precedence either way. (All the more reason /not/ to do it.)
DeleteYou're right about deathtouch. "if a spell or ability causes a card with deathtouch that's not on the battlefield to deal damage to a creature (like Selfless Exorcist's ability does, for example), that creature will be destroyed."
DeleteOuch, that's ridiculously confusing because *most* creature abilities only activate on the battlefield unless they say otherwise. OK, maybe it is unambiguous, but yes, certainly not clear, shouldn't be done unless it's a major mechanic.
Seems more monoblack to me to have the creature that comes back just deal damage to another creature. That's already in black's color pie, and black *really* doesn't need another way of getting rid of creatures (it already has destruction, direct damage, and -N/-N.)
ReplyDeleteThat does seem more mono-black.
DeleteAnd yeah, black doesn't need more ways to kill, though that was't the motivation for this, and it's not a reason to not do it.
I love both. I think you could rescue the first with, "Choose a creature card in your graveyard. CARDNAME deals damage equal to that creature's power to target creature." It feels monoblack to me, but a case could be made for Rakdos.
ReplyDelete