CCDD 082317—Twinned

Cool Card Design of the Day
8/27/2017 - I was working on a keyword called 'emulate' which would let you play cards from your hand as copies of the spell with emulate. Some iterations were exactly that, others cost more or had a reduced effect. One had a variable effect based on the card's real CMC, so that you could pay more and get more out of your copies (or pay less and get less)

Ultimately all of those executions suffered the same problem. Emulate is too recursive and noninteractive. Games are less interesting when we cast the same spell over and over, and less fun when there's nothing we can do to end such shenanigans.

How can we salvage the core idea—to let you discard useless cards to cast more of the spells you need right now—without promoting boring and frustrating games?

Twin lets you emulate your spell, but only once and only when you cast that card. It's less like repeating the same action over and over and more like doubling it once. You still get to pitch excess lands or conditionally useless spells to some useful effect, but if you want to do that a lot, you've got to play a lot of twin spells.

Note: You must pay the mana cost (and any additional costs) to cast a copy of a spell.

Growth and Lightning are just everyday spells you'll often be happy to have two copies of, whether you're targeting the same creature or two different ones. And that's fine. But can we find designs that are more interesting when you cast two of them at the same time?

Being able to prevent two blockers in a single turn will often negate your opponent's entire defense.

A Mind Rot that costs {B}{B} and an extra card isn't amazing, but having the choice and being able to punish them for discarding lands should push Twinned Rot well into playable territory.

The twinned draw spell was always going to tricky. You could do a one-mana cantrip with twin that lets you cycle one or two cards for {U} each, but that might just be too good. Experiment is a Divination with a minor downside when you cast one, and a significant downside when you cast two. Being able to draw four cards when you've got this and 2- other cards in hand is still dangerously good for a common, but that does cost {4}{U}{U} and doesn't play into any kind of big-hand strategy. IDK. It's tricky.

They'll choose both at once, obv, but the second choice is always harder than the first.

It might be too cute that the first token you get makes the second bigger, but rawr.

Design a card with twin in the comments below.