Weekend Design Challenge Review 042415—cycle patching

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

4/4

Tommy's Ainok Tracker is the same as the original, swapping out first strike for the Goblin War Drums ability. I'm happy to see that ability more frequently in red and Tracker seems like a fine card, if a bit over-costed. Tommy explains that the original was the least surprising morph to turn face up in its cycle. As much as like the new version, it's even worse in this regard, because its ability does nothing if you turn it face up after attackers or blockers are declared. Mystic of the Hidden Way also wants to be morphed earlier, but it's also very close to strictly better and I'm not sure we need two cards so similar in the same cycle.

{1}{W}

Birthing Sliver doesn't turn your slivers into Banisher Priests, as Constricting Sliver does; instead, it gives all your slivers convoke. Convoke is clearly an exciting ability for a sliver deck, and convoke was in M15, so this is an amazing fit. The original was exciting because it was strong: Condition-less removal for a potentially all-creature deck, but it was also fiddly and thematically felt green despite being mechanically white.

Czynski's Bow of Nylea is simpler and more direct than the original. Instead of giving you a choice between four abilities, you get a Pit Fight that requires an untapped creature and that taps a creature. This version brings two creatures together, like Cupid's, but instead of making out they pummel each other to exhaustion. It's cool that despite only being one ability, it still has two uses: You can kill creatures, and you can sacrifice weenies to tap big creatures down. And if you've got a vigilant creature, the bow will let it kill anything via deathtouch.

A hunting ability makes sense for a bow, right? It's a bit odd that the hunter is fighting their prey rather than shooting it, ala Shock or Fall of the Hammer, but you can sort of justify that in keeping the bow mono-green. What I can't justify thematically at all, is that the hunter's running up and grappling its target... with a bow?

BUT—that's the thing—your creature isn't using the bow, you are. Despite being weapons, none of the divine weapons act as removal. Except the original bow, which either helps prove it needed a better design or that removal here is fine.

Counterpunch completely replace Cunning Strike because the burn cantrip was the weakest of its cycle. This card is also fairly weak as a Negate that usually cantrips. Shave a mana off and it becomes more attractive, but that's true of the original too. It's harder to trigger prowess with this one and it's also more likely to be stuck in your hand while you're trying to finish the job with your aggro/tempo deck.

It was a bit odd to see Kin-Tree Invocation talking about toughness when the set had a named mechanic caring about power. Evil Miming Slime was quite strong in Abzan thanks to all the high-toughness creatures, but Fighting Spirit can be a 2-for-1 and sometimes more. Wrap in Vigor would be stronger, saving your token creatures, and preserving your auras and +1/+1 counters; This can re-trigger ETB effects, but KTK didn't have a huge number of those.

Frail Conjuring is like a manifest Spark Elemental, but to seem more black than red, we trade haste for waiting until your next turn to sack your 2/2. This sorcery brings Sultai Emissary in line with the card type of its cycle, but I'm not buying this color-shift. It doesn't help that Emissary serves an important role slowing down aggro assaults and feeding exploit, while Conjuring is much harder to optimize.

How have we not seen this ability before? Hardened Berserker is the closest I can think of, which is relevant since this ability seems more appropriate for red than blue. That said, making instants cheaper to cost makes prowess easier to trigger, and helps cast those big delve cards when your graveyard's thin. I think they made Mindscour Dragon mill just so fans of milling would have a dragon-y toy in the block, but I agree Gale-Bringer Dragon is much more relevant for Limited.

Icetwin Hunter trade the Cold-Eyed Selkie saboteur ability for Icefeather Aven's flying, and loses a point of p/t in the process. The goal was to make the card more green-blue, since the original could be mono-blue. Green gets saboteur-draw more often than flying, so it is an improvement to that end. But since Inanimate kept the mono-blue Unsummon ability, it would have been nice to have a mono-green ability up top. Or, we could keep the new saboteur ability which is equally green and blue, and make the morph trigger both green and blue. Aven was one of the few flying creatures I relied on in my GUx decks, but I can't say I'd pass up Hunter either.

The original Karametra, God of Harvests was a disappointment. Fetching land only when we cast creatures, after we've cast a five-mana god wasn't something anyone was terribly grateful for. Bass's version helps you grow your creatures, which is very green and fitting for a god of harvests. That it does so every round and as soon as you cast her means she can impact the game immediately. You've got to supply a creature with some counters for it to matter, but doubling a hydra is enticing enough to make some players care.

The original Kheru Lich Lord sported a wall of text whose value scaled with your graveyard, but in practice is often ignored because you've got better things to do with your mana than recur a 2/2 for a turn. Daniel's Lich gives you card selection with a small boost to delve. If this cost and ability look familiar, you're thinking of Sultai Ascendancy. Clearly, if this were Sultai's leader, their enchantment would have to change. But to what?

Nissa's +1 now lets you attack when you cast her on turn five. Her -7 no longer fetches you any lands, but will include any you play afterward. It's her second ability that Pasteur changed the most: It doesn't refund as much of your mana the turn you cast her, but it accelerates you very quickly. You'll have nine land to use the very next turn (and at least four of exactly the land types you need)! I'm not sure why a player would ever choose to play lands from their hand when they can grab them from outside the game. It's hard to evaluate planeswalkers, but I think this is clearly a more powerful card than Nissa, Worldwaker.

I have to point out that land, forests, and basic lands do have a large overlap… in basic forests, and that this new card still mentions both land and basic lands, so it's not a huge improvement there.

Evan's take on Nylea, God of the Hunt is a mana cheaper, requires your creatures to block rather than granting them trample in case they are blocked, and regenerates your attackers rather than boost them. She's still pushing you to attack and crush your enemy, but this version is more brutal; looking to crush your opponent's forces underfoot before finishing them off. Notably, both modes require thought. The former helps you play defense if needed, letting you decide when it's right to strike. The latter can reward your for keeping some creatures back to limit your opponent's blocking choices. I don't know if she needed to be cheaper, but I will say this gameplay seems like a thematic win.

Crystalline Nautilus was part of the cycle of offensive bestow auras. It featured the illusion vulnerability, allowing you to play an undercosted but vulnerable creature, or make an opposing creature weak to any targeting effect (and then get your creature). Phantom Nautilus tones it down a notch, merely bouncing the enchanted creature and only when it gets into combat, ala Leyline Phantom. Of course, it bounces itself, so you can enchant that creature, bounce it, get your nautilus, bounce it, and restart the cycle. Which might get annoying, except that it depends entirely on your opponent choosing to attack or block with the enchanted creature. Which they should totally do because it's huge and you'll have to re-bestow your nautilus. Hmm.

The original Phenax, God of Deception was great for players who want to mill their opponent out… with creatures. A lot of mill players are also fans of creatureless decks, but it's nice to give fans of an archetype a new twist on that archetype every once in a while, and clearly Vedalken Entrancer fits right in. But apart from the fact that creatures in a mill deck inherently want to be defensive, the connection to toughness felt odd. P for Pizza's take is meant to better invoke Phenax's title. Turns out, deception can be tricky to illustrate. I can see that flavor here, but it takes as much imagination as it took to see it in the mill version. Still, it is terrifying. It's bad enough to have one of your spells countered, but to have every counter become a 3-for-1 automatically? I can be sure you loaded up on counters to max your advantage, and that means I'm going to be losing all kinds of mana and cards to you. Phenax could be god of torment.

Hunt the Hunter was indeed the worst of its cycle. How bizarre that in addition to requiring green mana to cast and requiring a green target, the creature you used to satisfy green's requirement for removal also had to be green. And after all that, all you got was +2/+2 over Prey Upon? Primal Clash undoes that last prerequisite, but it trades the fight for a forced block, which means you'll never get double duty out of your spell, killing a blocker and then swinging in large and unopposed. If it prevented any other creatures from blocking it as well, and gave trample, then you might have a reason to prefer that over fight. Or you could just fight.

By swapping Sandsteppe Outcast's power and toughness, Aura has made the choice much more relevant. 3/2s are poor in a format full of 2/2s you're eager to trade with, especially when you can still trade as a 2/1 and get an evasive creature on top. This version can be 2/3, though, letting you trump those 2/2s for a while. I love that the result is less powerful but only now strictly better than Seller of Songbirds. 'Strictly better' is weird like that.

Ben found the original Setessan Griffin too weak to play in Limited. It was never a high pick for me, but a 3 power flyer for 5 is reasonable at common, and the option to risk your mana to make it a dragon each turn made the card entirely relevant. This version is more efficient, like an Assault Griffin, and trades the ability to grow for the ability to protect itself from removal. It was never fun to pay {4}{W} and then {2}{G}{G} only to have your griffin hit by a Lightning Strike, and this can avoid that as long as your very careful with your mana. And your opponent never plays a Coastline Chimera and completely invalidates your griffin.

Wobbles' tweak to Silumgar's Scorn is that you can't use it counter another dragon. While it's debatable whether Silumgar would scorn dragons this way or not, I can't deny it's a flavorful exception. The result is wordier than I'd like, but that fault clearly lies more in the dragon-reveal.

Deathtouch is indeed a disappointing keyword for a 6/6 like Soul of Innistrad. Daniel proposes a new evergreen keyword for black creatures. Cruel does look like a good keyword for a block, though not one I'd jump to repeat year to year.

I'm not sure what purpose turning triple Raise Dead into single Vigor Mortis serves. It's not unreasonable, though it is rather stronger. If the raised creature was given cruel instead of a counter, that might be neat.

I can't help but chuckle that one designer commandeered this card's ability elsewhere and another replaced it. This version of Sultai Ascendancy has two abilities, bringing it in line with the rest of the cycle. It enables delve at least twice as fast, but doesn't smooth your draws. It also gains you 4+ life each round, which is a lot more powerful than we've been trained to appreciate. This is definitely stronger for delve decks, though I'm not sure if it's more fun, since it doesn't give you any choices or a feeling of control.

A 4/6 for six isn't a terrible common, but I've never seen anyone play Defiant Ogre in Tarkir Limited, usually because we'd rather be unmorphing things or dropping dragons at six mana. Trove Thief looks to make a more appealing card reducing the cost and size a bit, and improving the seldom-needed Shatter with a Steal Artifact / Aladdin. There are very few artifacts worth worrying about in this block, so I might feel worse about not getting to steal one, except that a 4/4 for {4}{R} is pretty decent.

---

Only a handful of these seem like definite improvements to me within their original context, but few seem worse. It's absolutely fascinating to see what cards people picked and why, as well as the end results. Cycles are hard to design because they're constrained not just by the set's themes and environment, but by the cycle itself. It stands out to me that rarer cycles with more text have more leeway and more possible executions.

Thanks to Ipaulsen for rendering the cards.