Weekend Art Challenge Review 020615—TheHereticDivine

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

We've got a bunch of new designers today. Welcome!

I want to say something before we dive in. Critical feedback is crucial to improvement. Congratulations on taking the first step toward growing as a designer. Every designer twists up their own ego with the quality of their work, and it takes effort to escape that. The reason it's a problem is that we all make terrible cards (especially when we're just starting—but great designers still make bad cards) and that doesn't make us bad designers.

A good designer is just a bad designer who keeps designing.

Why do I mention this? I'm going to tell you your card isn't that great. This isn't a personal attack. Don't take it personally. Use it. Grow.

Magic has never put evoke on a non-creature permanent. It's not mind-blowing, but it's a really solid evolution of a nice mechanic. I dig it.

Altar of Sorrows is a good representation of the revisited mechanic, and it illuminates the one big downside. Evoking Altar of Sorrows is not the same as casting Shrivel. When our enchantment resolves, its static ability goes into effect and its sacrifice trigger goes on the stack. Any creatures with 0 toughness die, and then we finally get priority back. The trigger resolves and Altar goes away. Every creature that survived is entirely unaffected by the ordeal. Not as intuitive as I'd like.

Magic has never given you two libraries in the same game (nice try, Shahrazad). Antipode Dreams does just that. I know I've tried to make this work before and I expect others have as well. It's a neat idea. To make it relevant, you need some way differentiate the two decks' contents, or at least gain information about their difference. This one lets you choose exactly which cards will be in your second deck, which is seriously powerful. Exciting.

Even without considering combo decks proper, the ability to guarantee you'll only draw gas for 15 turns seems worth more than {2}{U}, but cost is easy to adjust. The real question is, does this work at all within the rules, and if so, is there any fair cost? I expect the answer to both is 'yes,' but the set FAQ will be completely dominated by interactions throughout Magic with just this one card.

In tournament Magic, this is totally a legendary sorcery. Heh.

'Exactly' is redundant.

Magic has never had a land that caused other lands to ETB tapped or untapped. Pretty sure Amulet of Vigor is the only thing that's done that. With that upside in place, Cathedral of the Contract balances it with a downside that slows down lands that produce anything else. That feels kind of appropriate. And of course, it's a drawback we can build our decks around (Commander or otherwise). That might seem a little easy, but it's a pretty narrow effect on a card you're unlikely to play many of. Neat.

Unearth {B}

I was confused about this entry until I went back and saw Count's Embrace was meant to have unearth. Not unlike evoke above, this is a clever and useful evolution of an existing mechanic. Putting unearth on auras isn't just a random destination for a former creature mechanic, it actively addresses the two-for-one problem the subtype has. I'd happily pay {1}{B} for the initial price or the unearth price here.

The closest I can think Magic has come to making a card more effective in your hand is the Chancellor of the Forge cycle and the two Leyline of Anticipation cycles, but it's really not the same. Those trigger from your opening hand, and you either keep them or play them immediately. Endbringer triggers when you'd lose, and it exiles itself (and, y'know, one or two other things). Obviously, you have to prove you've got an Endbringer to use one, but exiling it does the trick.

Exiling all your nonlands is going to set you back pretty far, and will usually leave you to die the very next turn, but you could build a deck that can kill or recover based purely on the contents of your graveyard.

Each individual ability on Guardian of the End has been done in some form, but I will grant that the sum is relatively unique. Even so, those last three abilities are fairly redundant with the fact that this is a 7-mana finisher. If you're allowed to keep it for three turns, chances are it's killing your opponent anyway. If you lose it, you're down a whopping 7 mana anyway. Not the same, to be sure, but probably not worth six lines of text either.

'Sources' aren't referenced often, outside of damage prevention, and they're granted abilities even less frequently. While there have been effects that could potentially grant a non-creature source of damage lifelink or deathtouch, that's never been done explicitly. While Herald of Uroborus isn't going to blow any minds, giving every damage source you control deathtouch and lifelink feels quite special. I expect this would be templated as "Everything you control has deathtouch and lifelink" since that's functionally identical, sounds awesome, and requires less vocabulary to understand.

Inquisitor's Wish lets you Living Wish for free if it's in your opening hand. That's unique. Also strong. Distant Land is powerful just letting you cycle it for free. Being able to snag a particular creature or land from your sideboard (and of course, you planned for that in deck-building) will help you get that perfect draw far more often. I will grant that a {B}{B}{B} Duress will not be great when you draw it later in the game and that helps balance this card's power considerably, but this still gets flagged for close attention from development. I'd be happy with "replace with a card at random from your sideboard."

Okay. Magic has indeed never done this before. Inverted Globe should appeal to players of both the Melviniest and Johnniest order, as long as they're not also Vorthosy.

Dungeon is a new card type. Magic's never had dungeons before. Like a planeswalker, players can attack them, but instead of collecting damage, dungeons offer a wild chance at some effect. And that chance is affected by that creature's CMC. Why CMC and not the amount of damage dealt? Because… unique? There actually is a flavor reason for it—CMC is a better gauge of a creature's competence than its power. But if we were going to stick with that, we'd trigger off of the attack rather than find a way to let a creature to deal damage to something that has no life, loyalty or toughness. And we lose the ability to root for our creature with Giant Growths.

So what's the effect that the game is doing all this work to allow, the deck's player is paying a card and mana for, and her opponents are doing in lieu of attacking her? The first person to survive the dungeon gets a bad-ass piece of equipment named Shroud of Innistrad.

I'm guessing the intention is that you can attack your own dungeon, but that's far from clear. If not, I can't imagine dedicating a slot in my deck to Markov Manor, even in multiplayer Commander. Presumably, you build your deck to be better at defeating dungeons, and better at taking advantage of the reverse side.

There's a very cool story here, to be sure, but this idea needs a lot of work before I can get behind it. That said, this is the kind of far-out brainstorming that leads to big innovation.

Mysteries Unmasked features an ability we discussed as a combo with dig/mine/whatever back when Tesla was just one of many possible Goblin Artisans projects. It takes Panglacial Wurm and gives us something we can put on a bunch of cards and feature prominently in a set. It's not quite the same as the Wurm's ability since searching your library won't let you cast it, so it is unique. A notable limitation of the mechanic is we can't make any of the effects very big, because there are so many things through Magic that let you reveal cards as a cost and it would just be too easy. Mysteries Unlocked is probably fair, though Tranquility has never been exciting.

Orzhov Command adds a little twist to modal spells by leveraging the new action label technology. I can't imagine there's a whole lot of design space here, but probably enough for 2 two-color cycles. This particular member of the cycle seems quite well executed. I doubt they'd all be so easy. Note that both black choices are generally stronger than both white choices; The clever thing is, that doesn't imbalance the card mechanically. You're always getting one strong and one weak effect.

Planeseal banishes planeswalkers, shuts off any on-going influence they might have, and locks the door behind them. Suck it, alien wizards. (Removing emblems is new to Magic.)

Ritual of Binding doesn't do anything Magic hasn't done, but it is really sweet white removal that marries Banisher Priest and Banishing Light in a newish way. I like it.

Stronghold is a new card type and vastly more simple than dungeons. Any damage at all destroys it, and ends its effect. That's pretty cool, but I'm sure we don't need a card type to do this. Just make Sanctuary Basilica an enchantment with "If a source an opponent controls would deal damage to you, she may destroy ~ instead." Okay, so that particular execution doesn't work with Basilica's ability, but it should work with literally every other ability you might put on a stronghold.

Sanctuary of Chronos is half a Ghostly Prison: Instead of charging {2} to attack each turn, it charges {1} to attack at full-pace. Otherwise, Meandering Towershell. Like Ritual of Binding, there's nothing new going on here, though the combination is a new card, and a pretty neat one at that.

Magic has never Flicker'd a graveyard before. Not ground-breaking, but playable. Is it black?

Maybe that dude would be better at sealing tombs if his hood weren't covering his face.

Auras have never had two targets. I discussed the complications of that last week.

If that's a thing, Shared Fates is my favorite use of it.
(Though I could argue it in red as a Romeo & Juliet thing.)

Spiritualism Seance is an upside-down Brainstorm. Generally, drawing from the bottom of your library is a trap; it sounds novel and interesting but is actually either the same as drawing from the top or worse. That fact that we're putting two back does make card play differently from Brainstorm: You can't protect cards from discard this way, but you can get rid of useless cards more effectively.

The black-aligned bonus makes Seance feel more like Thirst for Knowledge. So, two card references and a twist the value of which isn't obvious. Perfect for Time Spiral 2.

Only Planeswalkers have ever generated emblems before, but Telekinesis Ritual says, "Hey, the player is a planeswalker too, y'know!" Yeah! Why do cardboard 'walkers get all the glory?

Except why not just make an enchantment? Maybe with shroud if we really don't want the opponent to ever answer this frustrating effect. I think emblems are emblems less because they never go away and more because enchantment tokens have issues. Question mark? Emblems tend to be brutal or frustrating effects, but that's justified by the fact that they're really hard to achieve, no matter how much mana you have.

I'm not sure what extract does. There are couple possibilities. Let's work it out.

If we're searching for a card with the same name as the one we're discarding, then extract allows us to cast any card (that we have more of in our deck) for {3}{B} instead of its mana cost. I suspect that's not the intention.

If we're searching for a card with the same name as Thoughtbind Ritual, then extract allows us to copy the card it's on in our hand over another card in our hand. That feels a lot like retrace (ala Cenn's Enlistment), except it's harder to read and involves shuffling your library. Retrace dangerously skirts the issue of repetitive gameplay itself and while I wouldn't count out a similar mechanic for that reason, I don't want one that slows the game down too.

Time Disjunction lets you change the order of the game turn and that is new to Magic. (A couple spells have omitted phases, but none have reordered them). It's also a pretty esoteric card: There are no obvious uses for it.

There are uses for it. Oh my, there are uses for it. They're just not uses new or casual players will pick up on immediately.

The silliest use, is that I can switch the first main phase with the second main phase, which should mostly never affect anything, except for card's that specify one of the main phases.

The most dangerous and confusing use is to cast Time Disjunction during your opponent's combat step and switch their next post-combat main phase with their next beginning phase. They get to untap, upkeep and draw, but they don't get another chance to cast sorceries or permanents. Then you take your turn. Then their turn begins and they take their main phase twice before combat, getting no beginning phase at all.

Gross.

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That was a huge batch of cards. Thanks for participating, artisans. There were a lot of neat cards. Not all of them really fulfilled the challenge (we make a new card every week, so clearly that alone can't count), but some explored crazy new territory, and there were really cool entries in both categories.

Again, welcome to new folks. Don't be disheartened when people are critical of your design. The regulars are used to it, and so am I; We've all become much better designers by hearing other people's feedback, discussing things, and learning from it all.

Thanks to Evan Jones for rendering the cards.