Weekend Art Challenge Review 091815—NightsongWS

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a card for this illustration. Bonus points for telling a story.

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Cursed Mirror is the ultimate mirror match trump. Any deck with more than a handful of creatures can sideboard this to dominate whenever it's paired up against its clone. Clone, btw, being the proactive way to enjoy this card. At {2} I'm concerned this becomes a sideboard staple in far too many Modern and Standard decks, but that dev concern aside, this is a very neat design and I love that it tells you what it's mechanical purpose… in a thematic way.

Fae Queen's Realm re-introduces the world enchantments of early Magic. In the same way legends don't have reminder text how their supertype works (and that fact has enabled it to change with the times), I wouldn't try to apply reminder text to worlds; I'd explain how they work in Tips & Tricks cards, and on the explainers that come with any preconstructed decks including worlds.

Tangential but: I might also simplify their function to "When a world ETB, all other worlds are destroyed." Not the same result for Warp World, but that's not a real cost.

Fae Queen's Realm gives you a faerie whenever your opponents summon a creature, and doesn't cost you anything to summon your faeries. You can also play it in a deck with any faerie spells because even though you and your opponent(s) are giving each other free creatures, none of them can attack you. I love how this works in multiplayer and how a non-faerie player might want to play it, but I worry that it's too strong in the dedicated faerie deck. That's a wide spectrum for one card to try to contain.

Mirror Image is a Duplicant that matches—no, mirrors—its victim's p/t. It also returns the original if you kill it, which is what makes it white, despite being a shapeshifter. I'd personally make this blue-white since in addition to p/t matching, it's also doing p/t switching. It's also hard to justify a mono-white card with such a duplicitous and cruel flavor. Very cool. And creepy.

Zeno and I are guessing this is a rare sorcery, but neither type nor rarity were specified.

Mirror of Betrayal gives your opponent a choice for each of her creatures: Either you get a copy or they lose theirs. For any given creature, that choice might be easy or interesting, though I worry the matrix of possible choices on a large board might be very complex indeed. Even so, I love this effect. It's a pick-your-poison that's very thematic of an evil mirror. Could probably be {4}{U}{B}.

Turns out the Mirror of Delusion is deluding you, the player, into thinking the first line matters. Once you figure out that it doesn't, what you've got is a Mind Control generator. Well, Hypnotic Trance, actually. That's pretty terrifying. Especially if you target your own non-legendary creature with a cumulative static/triggered effect… like Doomwake Giant. No rarity given; I'd assume mythic. And I'd still want it to cost more in some way.

Quick aside about order of presentation. By putting the downside first, you're warning the player that there are limitations to the upside, but that's a lot like selling a card by starting with the high price or bad gas mileage. More importantly, the first line is making a forward reference to something the player doesn't know what is—shard counters—or how the mirror might get them. If we put the last line first, however, we see the card's purpose first, suffer no forward references, and we also describe the things the card does in the order that the card does them.

I'm not sure if "at any time" is meant to be 'whenever' (in which case you could theoretically get 4+ uses out of the mirror if your opponent is foolish enough to respond to the third) or an unnecessarily state-based effect. The better template is to add that check to the end of the primary trigger: "Whenever opp casts, copy, and add a counter. If 3+, exile."

As for the actual design, Mirror of Finite Reflections makes you copy your opponents' next three instants/sorceries. It's possible to de-fruit that with spells like Day of Judgment and so the lack of a 'may' is a relevant drawback, but generally getting to cast three spells for no mana or cards (past Mirror's {5} and 1) is going to be pretty good. Three is a lot, though, and some opponents will simply elect not to cast any more sorceries/instants at all, which is a lot less fun for everybody. If the Mirror instead copied spells some unpredictably amount of the time, it could do so indefinitely.

Mirror of Luck is a misnomer. There's no luck involved. Unless your opponent can deal n-1 damage and then follow it up with n+1 all in one turn, the Mirror will trigger and you'll get to steal all their attackers or copy their life. That's a solid proposition (though not one I'd pay {7} for at mythic). What I'm not clear on is why you choose what the mirror does. It would tell a more cohesive story if it just did one or the other (or even both). Stealing their creatures is more interesting than adjusting life totals, but it could be a big life swing, and both force your opponent to carefully consider their attacks.

Cards with 9 lines of rules text don't get flavor text… and shouldn't need it.

Mirrored Essence is simple and evocative. It's also an effect I've wanted to see, and saved you all an upcoming CCDD. Reuben's template is clearer but mine is more succinct. Preferences?

Mirrorfiend is a Duplicant combined with Infinite Reflection. At first I thought it odd that this shapeshifter allowed your other creatures to copy the imprisoned creature but didn't copy that itself. Of course, it can, but I was thrown off (in part) by it having a power and toughness of its own. It's enough that Mirrorfiend turns all your creatures into Clones, you don't need to innovate on shapeshifters by giving players a reason not to clone with it. Nice mythic variant.

Portal of the Solitary delays some creatures from entering play, potentially for the entire game, though likely not. I have no idea how abusable that is, or even how to abuse it. It's unique, though, and suggests some kind of mirror-based reverse-purgatory (reverse in that it's where creatures go before they're born rather than after they die). I imagine your opponent would only play an affected creature when they had no better use for their mana, but I suspect Portal will be used on your own creatures for some more nefarious reason. I'm curious if folks can identify solid or broken uses for this.

The colors joke is well done. I'm aware that there's cleverness behind the convoke too, but I'm not getting it right now (but I am getting a cold). Functionally, this would be pretty sweet removal in a gold set.

Touch of the Nemesis seems like it could kill an opponent in two or three turns in an awful lot of Limited games (and quite a few Constructed games). "Nice Craw Wurm. No sacrifice effects? Too bad, I've got a couple chump-blockers right here." I think you could make this a one-time sorcery and still be sideboard-able. As a repeated effect, it's too strong for this price+rarity. Strength aside, I like the flavor. I'd like it even more if the name suggested self-doubt or narcissism.

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Good stuff, artisans. It was interesting to see how many mythic designs came through. I wonder if that was inspired by seeing other designer's rare designs, or if the art naturally gravitated that way; Mirrors don't come up often in Magic, so it makes sense that when they do, they'll be special.

Thanks to Zeno Rage for rendering the cards.