Cool Card Design of the Day10/14/2014 - Found this design in my old folder. Seemed worth updating. I'll show you the original first so we can discuss its flaws.
The best part of this card is the novel take on the punisher mechanic. Your opponent gets to choose exactly what you get out of the card, but you're pretty happy either way, depending on the situation. In this case, you either get a more flexible Into the Void or a Capsize with buyback. But this card is also doing a Venser, Shaper Savant take on Remand; a Lost in the Mist with a million words. It's too much to read, too much to process, and not necessary to make an interesting card. Here's my update:
This doesn't have to hit permanents instead of creatures; On the one hand, it's nice that you can cast it when your opponent has only one creature, but on the other hand, bouncing two lands before your opponent's fourth turn might be a real problem. Granted, they can choose to bounce only one, requiring you to recast Test Your Meddle every turn just to keep them off that one land, but if you've already got board superiority that might still be too much. Not sure.
It also doesn't have to give the choice of which target to keep to your opponent when she chooses the buyback option; It could be "Return target creature to its owner's hand. Then return CARDNAME to your hand unless that player returns another target creature to his or her hand." That's stronger and could be afforded by raising the card's cost, but I stuck with the original idea since it should lead to less repetitive game play.
"Return target creature to its owner's hand. Then return CARDNAME to your hand unless that player returns another target creature to his or her hand."
ReplyDeleteThat version isn't actually that much 'stronger', since they get to pick ANY creature they want to return to their hand. I'd say it balances out.
You choose all targets (unless it says "a target of their choice")
DeleteSomething like "Return target creature to its owner's hand. Then return ~ to your hand unless that creature's controller returns another creature they control to its owners hand."
Delete"Either or both" might be crunching complexity points while preserving word count.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea, but I think this card could actually just be really unfun. Capsize is a real problem, and this can drastically reduce variance.
ReplyDeleteHow about, instead of it coming back, it draws a card?