Click
through to see the illustration and design requirements for your
single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants
feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of
times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each
designer.
Design a non-creature uncommon.
Breathe Life 2R
ReplyDeleteEnchantment (u)
Whenever a creature you control defers, create a 3/1 red Efreet token.
I'm intrigued. Give me the rest of the set and what deferring means!
DeleteYou have to tell us...
DeleteI think it's roughly equivalent to "tap to attack, except you skip the attack part". A motivated nonviolence with a specific rules meaning.
DeleteIt's almost weird that red is the color who gets an enchantment to build around the set's keyword every block. But, assuming a set with defer—a defer that red is happy to do, which "not attacking" doesn't sound like—Breathe Life is cool.
DeleteI really like that it makes a thing that can deal damage, rather than doing damage itself. Can it power further deferral itself? If a little, awesome. If a whole lot, probably a problem.
A twist I'm not sure is clean or fun, but is interesting:
DeleteBreathe Life 1R
Enchantment
At EOT, if you control a tapped creature that ETB this turn, create a 3/1 red Efreet token.
Laboratory Ravings 1R
ReplyDeleteInstant - uncommon
Until end of turn, whenever you cast a spell you may tap or untap up to one target permanent.
Yikes - with all cantrips this is a ridiculous Storm enabler, and I don't see much of a use case for this otherwise...
DeleteThis seems hard to use when it's not winning you the game. On its own, it does nothing. If you cast one spell, it can either help you cast a second, or lend a creature vigilance or remove a blocker. If you cast two spells, it's probably just doing the latter two. But if you're replicating your way to storm or something, this could untap all your lands, multiple times.
DeleteAssuming our set wants such a card, and we don't mind introducing that to older formats with storm, cool.
Another option would be to make an enchantment that triggers at most once or so each turn. That would be easier to use normally and harder to abuse.
Mull Over
ReplyDeleteU
Sorcery - U
Name a card type, then reveal the top card of your library. If it's a card of the named type, put it into your hand. Otherwise, you may put it on the bottom of your library.
When isn't this strictly worse than just "U - Sorcery - Draw a card"?
DeleteYeah I iterated too much and lost the plot.
DeleteWas originally scry 1, then do the above. Since it needs something more to be even close to playable, I'll add it back in.
Even with scry 1, this is bad. You either like what's on top and keep it (aka "draw a card") or scry it away and then cross your fingers the next card is both useful and of the type you guessed.
Deletewell, with scry 2 we're entering Serum Visions/Preordain territory so I suspect there's actually no design space here that is safe. Oh well!
DeletePower-wise, scry 2 might do, because it's still strictly worse than those cards, and you're more likely to do something useful with it. But the more scry we add, the less relevant guess is.
DeleteWhat if we leave the draw off entirely and just make a {U} instant with scry 2 (or 3)?
Mystic Speculation saw no play at Scry 3...scry 4? I can't imagine a strict card disadvatange spell is going to be too powerful, but that seems like maybe a little much at U to me...
DeleteAlchemical Haze U
ReplyDeleteSorcery - U
Reveal the top 4 cards of your library. Put a creature or artifact revealed this way into your hand and exile the rest.
Artifact seems blue but creature seems squarely green - maybe instant or sorcery instead?
DeleteI don't think its correct to push this toward nonpermanents. Also, it clashes with the art if it can't get creatures.
DeleteMaybe GU and top 5?
DeleteIt does feel odd for a mono-blue card to sifting toward creatures, since that's been green's thing for a good while now. I'm not sold that this flavor demands it. The cardname very much does not, and we can claim that the tiny humanoid in the art is a vision (which are often sorceries/instants) or one-time actor (same) rather than a tiny creature that does battle for you.
DeleteReckless Inspiration 2RR
ReplyDeleteSorcery (uncommon)
As an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, discard a card.
Draw two cards. Then you may discard two cards. If you do, draw three cards.
Love it!
DeleteSpicy. My Daretti EDH wants to make room for this.
DeleteFirst you Tormenting Voice then you optionally Cathartic Reunion. And you pay the combined mana cost of both those cards up front. The combination does still save you a card, but that's something Magic cards do all the time.
DeleteThis uncommon could turn itself and a dead card into three live cards even while drawing you past two more dead cards. It can also turn itself and three dead cards into five new cards. It'll only ever net you one card, but could give you quite a lot of gas. It's worth noting that it'll be hard to cast another spell the same turn you cast this, which isn't true of the component spells, and that you can't use it on turn 2 to help draw you lands. Even so, this has a ton of potential.
I like it. I do wonder if we need to keep the middle part optional. You may well discard your last card to cast this and draw the best 2 cards in your deck, and prefer not to discard them in order to get card advantage, but that should very much be the exception. Hmm.
The other option is just to make this is a single step: Discard three cards to draw five cards, but that's much more limiting. That's not nearly as good.
Thanks for the review, Jay. I do agree with you that the middle part could be mandatory, in that more often than not the correct play is to continue discarding. I left the may exactly for the reason you thought. It may be a very rare case you draw your best cards in the middle, but I wanted to avoid that feel bad moment.
DeleteImpulsive Again {2}{R}
Deletesorcery (unc)
Discard a card, then draw two cards.
Rebound
Hazy Impulse R
ReplyDeleteSorcery (U)
Exile the top four cards of your library. Until end of turn, you may play one of those cards as though it were in your hand.
This is super red. I like it though I worry about its power level in Storm.
DeleteYup.
DeleteConsidered making this an instant, but then we'd want to change 'play' to 'cast' for clarity. Depends on your intention.
Mind-expanding Alchemicals XR
ReplyDeleteSorcery
Exile the top X cards of your library. For each card type among them, you may play one card of that type this turn.
I debated giving this a fixed cost and number, but it seemed more interesting where you could hope, in theory, to hit all card types. Even though usually you'll only have the mana to play one or two cards anyway.
I also considered a more complicated version where you got an elemental for each card you played, or were dealt damage for each card you didn't play, but nothing seemed quite right, and it made the card clearly rare.
I wasn't quite sure what this should cost. Mind spring showed "draw x cards" could be surprisingly cheap occasionally, but it's not very efficient unless you're wanting to draw three or four cards. Or maybe it should be U and just put the cards in your hand, but the idea of losing the cards you can't cast seemed to fit the flavour better.
Commune with Lava did this a bit more cleanly and at instant speed for XRR
DeleteThis suffers from the problem that unlike all other X-spells, you want to keep X small so you have enough mana left to cast some of the cards you exile. And you don't know how much to keep, because you don't know what you'll get. Commune with Lava solves this by letting you cast your spells next turn.
DeleteThe card-types bit is neat, though, and would fit well in a set that cares about them, as with delirium.
Breath of Vitality {4}{R}{G}
ReplyDeleteInstant
Add seven mana in any combination of colours to your mana pool.
Whenever you cast a creature spell this turn, draw a card.
crap. this is definitely rare. oh well!
also: tempted to make it 3RG / add five mana
Deleteor: tempted to make it a Sorcery to match Glimpse, it kinda doesn't make sense as an Instant (except in a few rare cases)
actually, i'm definitely gonna make it a 5-cmc Sorcery.
Breath of Vitality {3}{R}{G}
Sorcery
Add five mana in any combination of colours to your mana pool.
Whenever you cast a creature spell this turn, draw a card.
Neat. Not my favorite fit for this art, but I like a lot about the gameplay here. I would totally try (and likely fail to) play this.
Delete(Because it's best when you can cast multiple off-color creatures, but if you're playing small creatures you probably cast most of them by turn 5. And because you really want multiples of these if you're building around it but you won't in Limited, and it's likely not good enough for Constructed.)