Weekend Art Challenge Review 120415—Damie M

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Design a rare card for this art. What's the setting? How does that impact your design?

Ankh-Teb Death Mask is a Seal of Vigor Mortis. It's interesting and thematic that you have to choose your target when you first cast it, as opposed to when you finally reanimate it, but I'm not sure the game play justifies the graveyard-aura technology. Arguably more thematic, and definitely simpler: Unhallowed Pact.

You might wonder if creating an artifact is worth {2}{B}, but keep in mind that statuefying dead creatures will still trigger their ETB effects and turn on their static effects. That effect's cool enough to Jenny to be a card all its own.

The ability to animate those statues isn't cheap but free creatures are always great, so it's well worth it.

Czynski mentions that the red-black tribe in this world of ancient terracotta armies will include golem zombie artifact creatures, perhaps with unearth. Assuming this card is rare, it doesn't have to interact directly with its color's mechanics, but it would be better if they didn't conflict directly.

Afterlife is undying plus "psionic," converting life damage to library milling*. That's a neat way to mitigate the high power level of undying (though it's still very effective in controlling the board).

Afterlife is a very long keyword and Coptic Necromancer demonstrates how that's a problem, greatly limiting the amount of space available for other abilities even on rares. That last ability definitely gets cut for space (and relevance), particularly since granting the set's new creature keyword to all your creatures is already a pretty big deal.

*Food for thought. Suppose "psionic" was already a keyword. When we're ready to make afterlife, do we use that giant reminder text, or just "Undying. As long as ~ has a +1/+1 counter, it has psionic"?

Timeless is a neat kicker effect, upgrading a temporary effect to a permanent one. It would be nice if the sorcery could become an enchantment so that players can see the effect on the board rather than having to remember how many of what timeless effects are in play. Subtly, it's possible exiling the card solves that problem: Players could place the exiled card in the same spot where they'd put a global enchantment.

More-powerful-than-Infest is fine, but I'm less sure double Night of Souls' Betrayal that can never be disenchanted is fair for six mana, even without an alternate mode. But Dev can easily tweak Eternal Decay into a very printable card (assuming timeless nets out).

Heirophant of Kutek is efficient on its own and will reward you for building a reanimation deck with even more efficiency and/or card advantage. A case where the flavor is there, a bit wishy-washy, but the card's raw potential pushes it over the line. This could easily by mythic.

Aura imagines an Egyptian set with unearth, and it's neat to see how unearth combos directly with Heirophant.

Lich's Helm follows in the proud tradition of extracting unique abilities from old cards and allowing a player to graft them to anything. In particular, you'd want to affix this to something with hexproof and/or indestructible.

The weird part is that being an equipment won't help much since re-equipping it after its wielder dies will be to slow to save you when you're already undead. Though, you can transfer it from one creature to another, but I wouldn't expect most players to know where that line is, nor for that to be a big factor in Helm's playability.

So the question is, do we simplify Lich's Helm to an aura, or keep it as equipment for flavor?

Mandias only 'returns' when a creature is killed in combat, and once it does, everything gains deathtouch. Not sure why 'deathtouch' isn't on the card, but that's what Mandias does to the board.

I expected it to leave the graveyard at some point because of the 'Returned' moniker, but the story might explain that Mandias is returning from something other than death.

Flash looks promising on a 1/5 flash deathtouch creature, but since you can only play it after combat damage, it's really just there to make blocking a viable way to play it. That's a little disappointing, but enterprising players could block with a first strike creature to... nope, sorry, that doesn't work either because blockers are already declared. You can use Murder to sneak Mandias into play, provided you cast it after the first main phase ends and no earlier. Hmm.

Mandias definitely plays well with tokens and feels like a member of the death-cult, Anastase described, though apparently a combat-death-cult that's not interested in other death.

Afterlife lets you keep the enchantment portion of your enchantment creature even after the creature dies. Does it prevent further disenchantment? I don't know. But otherwise that's a neat and very enchantment-y twist on undying effects. Definitely makes Erase more relevant.

Mortis Priest is a Shatterskull Recruit that could potentially inflict multiple edicts on your opponents. The conditional effect looks kind of white ala Balance, but… heh: It's a loner mechanic that isn't brute forced! And now it hits me that when you kill my Mortis Priest and I have no other creatures, I now get free edicts every turn as long as play no creatures, which seems like my probable game plan. That may be a bit much, especially in multiples.

Statue of Death will often be a strong defensive card, occasionally back-breaking, and rarely irrelevant. Not as annoying as a 1/1 indestructible deathtouch defender.

{3}{B}{B}

Veiled Confessor is good at defending, great at attacking, and a pain to be hit by. Sort of an Hypnotic Specter meets Phage the Untouchable. This has a lot of melvin appeal.

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Good stuff, artisans.

Thanks to P for Pizza for rendering the cards.