Monday, February 23, 2015

CCDD 022315—Burnout Elemental

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/23/2015 We often see cards like Cast Through Time and Pontiff of Blight which grant set mechanics to every applicable card. It's not so often that we get to see the same for nameless mechanics from Magic's past.

That train of thought turned me to Ball Lightning. How can a Ball Lightning share its abilities with your other creatures when it dies? If it works from the graveyard then it's both easy to forget and hard to interact with. But it can't very well stay on the battlefield. Can it?


6 comments:

  1. This plus vigilance creatures seems like a potential flavor disconnect.

    The drawback also reads as very blue.

    I thought you were going to go the enchantment path with something along the lines of:

    Burnout
    RRR
    Enchantment - Rare
    Creatures you control get +X/-X, where X is equal to their toughness minus one.
    Creatures you control have haste, trample, and "At the beginning of the endstep, sacrifice this creature."

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    1. Trying to account for every flavor disconnect is basically impossible (see: Craw Wurm in Swiftfoot Boots), and even if we could do so, patching every flavor hole also cuts off a lot of space for players to come up with creative decks and plays.

      Burnout is certainly a good way to go about this if you want to adhere more closely to the template.

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    2. That's a fair point. Perhaps I need to re-evaluate my own adherence to that "rule". Thanks Jules. :)

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  2. Does Fervor on legs need a drawback? Madrush Cyclops doesn't have one, although being 3-color obviously give it more room. Hammer of Purphoros does this and makes creatures...

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  3. While never untapping isn't the same as EOT-sacking, it works the same way much of the time, and so that seems like a fairly clever solution. Given the pedigree in artifact creatures, I'm fine with it in red.

    What does bug me about Burnout Elemental is that with 1 toughness (particularly w/o trample), it's still quite likely to die in combat. That defeats the purpose of the exercise. Can this be 5/5?

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    Replies
    1. It's worse for the build-around, but as Jade Phoenix mentioned, this isn't very good at that. I figured this way it actually gives the opponent an interesting decision about whether or not to block it, but I certainly see the argument for going the other way.

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