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 common or uncommon card for this illustration.
Precipice of Knowledge 1U
ReplyDeleteEnchantment - U
Sacrifice ~ : target instant or sorcery in your graveyard gains flashback.
Interesting! Scribe of the Mindful in Seal form.
DeleteI think we'd want Precipice of Knowledge over Call to Mind in a set that has flashback and counts enchantments. Which seems like an unlikely set, since you can't put flashback on enchantments, and both those mechanics add on-board effects to track.
DeleteI'm guessing this only grants flashback until EOT, so you don't have to track that and to make the timing of the sacrifice meaningful. Being able to cast this on one turn and flashback the target on another turn means your mana isn't being stressed the way Snapcaster Mage does, which makes this play just like a cheaper Call to Mind.
Emanate Knowledge U
ReplyDeleteSorcery
draw a card
whenever you cast a spell this turn you may draw a card if you do discard a card.
Jeeeeeze that’s broken
DeleteBut sweet. I’d devinitely play it. Wonder if strength was an issue, if adding a “when you cast your second spell this turn draw” would help
DeleteI'd guess this needs to cost more or not cantrip, but the appeal to storm players is clear. We're not going to see storm printed in a new expansion again, but this also works with surge (both enabling surge by being a cheap first spell, and then rewarding it with looting) and I do expect that to return. Being pretty good in Limited/Standard but great in Modern/Legacy is tricky to do, and I think this does.
DeleteKnowledge Theft
ReplyDeleteUB
Sorcery - Common
Target player discards a card.
Draw a card.
Ah shoot, Unhinge exists. Thought I’d found an untapped niche!
DeleteNew submission:
Incomplete Tome
2
Artifact - Uncommon
T: Flip a coin. If you win the flip, draw a card, then discard a card.
Unhinge does exist, but {U}{B} is unique from {2}{B}, and totally valid.
DeleteIncomplete Tome looks annoying to play. Not just because sometimes it does nothing, but because it's repeated physical effort for a relatively small effect. I'd rather pay more and either loot reliably or draw randomly.
Runes of Mlö 1
ReplyDeleteArtifact - Equipment (u)
Equipped creature gets +1/+1.
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top X cards of your library into your graveyard, where X is equipped creature's power.
Equip 1
Interesting variant! Self Mill is a good fit for the art, although I'd be surprised to see it on an equipment. I like the tension between wanting it on a creature and the size of the mill. I'd imagine that any set that would want this as an uncommon build around would have enough self Mill benefits where that tension wouldn't be too much.
DeleteRunes of Mlö is competing with Honed Khopesh. That tells me that we're playing it because we really want to mill ourselves, presumably for reanimation/flashback/delve/etc.
DeleteOn its own, this looks bad. It's worse than Khopesh, which is only pretty good. Where I'd normally put Khopesh on a big creature to make it the biggest, this makes doing that expensive and risky in Limited If this is good enough for Standard, it's because of how efficiently it fills your graveyard, not the primary effect.
Does it even make sense for a book to grant a p/t boost? What if we ditched that part and just made this mill? What if we made the mill targeted, so it looks like it's for decking your opponent but turns out to be better for your gy deck?
I might be playing too much Fire Emblem, but I started from "What if a book was a cool equipment". I'd give it a funky rangestrike ability to suggest it teaching your creature a spell, but +1/+1 seemed like a fine way to encourage combat alongside being a cheap enabler for both graveyard and artifact decks. Making it an equipment in general helps give both you and your opponent opportunities to interact with shutting down the mill.
DeleteReprint: Hieroglyphic Illumination
ReplyDeleteOpen the Spellbook 1U
ReplyDeleteInstant (Uncommon)
Look at the top card of your library. If it's a nonland card with converted mana cost 3 or less, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. Otherwise, put it into your hand.
This looks fun. Worst case you get to play draw-go. But often you'll get a a little mana advantage and sometimes you'll even get to flash a creature into combat. My only concern is this effect feels much more red rather than blue, both because of the randomness and the ritual-like effect.
DeleteLawbinder's Tome (U)
ReplyDelete3
Artifact
2, tap: Scry 1
3WU: Detain target nonland permanent an opponent controls.
Seems good! Detaining permanents seems pretty brutal against planeswalkers, but for 5.
DeleteBoth these effects fit the cardname and art. It makes sense that want to limit scrying to once per round, and it's not unreasonable that a player with 6WWUU could detain two permanents ecah round, but it's very aesthetically off-putting that one effect taps and the other doesn't. That choice also brings extra attention to how arbitrary it was putting both those effects on the same card. They don't play together mechanically at all, and the combination of them doesn't tell a very cohesive story. I'd vote for nixing one or the other entirely, but making them both tap would make the pairing a little cleaner.
DeleteReassemble the Codex
ReplyDelete1U Instant
Look at the bottom four cards of your library and put any number of them on top of your library in any order.
It took me a while to think of a reasonable concept, but I loved all those flying bits of paper. Not sure how to cost this though (and YES, that means the combination of mana cost, instant/sorcery, number of cards moved, and whether it's a cantrip), I don't have enough developer sense to be sure what's interesting rather than oppressive or too weak.
I like it! Especially fun with scry. Index suggests this could be costed pretty aggressively
DeleteThank you! OK, that's a good comparison. Index seems playable but not impressively strong, so that's probably a reasonable level. And Index is a lot weaker than scry, it sticks you with the useless cards. And sorcery. This looks plausible, but could be pumped a little.
DeleteI think it would only be printed in a set that had a use for the bottom specifically so that needs to be taken into account (like index was a bit more useful with miracle).
I also considered 2u tome of lost secrets: put the bottom two cards of your library into your hand :)
DeleteThe only time Reassemble the Codex isn't functionally identical to scry 4, is when you've previously put specific cards on the bottom of your library. In the same way that we try to keep exile a no-return zone, we don't want to care about the bottom of your deck without very good reason. It's also just physically awkward to do.
DeleteBut scry 4 is a great effect and fits the art.
Accidentally deleted:
ReplyDeleteWobbles
Memory Hole 2BB
Sorcery (Uncommon)
Target player reveals his or her hand and discards all noncreature, nonland cards.
I'm worried how swingy this is: Sometimes it's a wasted 4 mana card and sometimes it gets an entire hand and wins the game.
DeleteOn the other hand, it can only really punish Combo or Control, not Aggro (or Mid-Range, etc). Blue Control can save countermagic for this. Non-Blue Control is rarer, but I feel like we should be helping that rather than hurting it, and this hurts it. As for Combo, we're giving them a four turn deadline to win the game, and I'd rather hurt fast Combo decks than slow ones. So while this reads like a card WotC might print, I suspect what it does for games and metagames is net-negative.
I don't know, persecute is legal in modern and doesn't see any play. Especially because the decks that want access to this effect are already playing cheaper discard spells like Duress.
DeleteNon-blue control decks tend to be more permanent based (lantern, Blood Moon modern) so discard isn't great against them either. I'm not sure that it'd be as game ending as feared.
If Persecute is no problem, Memory Hole probably isn't either.
DeleteAlthough, that does me ask: What purpose does this card serve?
DeleteIt's a sideboard card for standard, much like it's little brother duress. I mean, it's certainly very good against second sunrise style all-spells control/combo decks as long as you have an aggressive curve to apply early pressure. I like not forcing players between playing early disruption and their aggressive threats.
Delete