This weekend, design a Black Rare Enchantment named "Black Friday." It can't have you pay life to draw cards.
Good luck, have fun, and I'll see you all Monday.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Weekend Design Challenge 112318 -- Black Friday
This weekend, design a Black Rare Enchantment named "Black Friday." It can't have you pay life to draw cards.
Good luck, have fun, and I'll see you all Monday.
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Black Friday (2)(B)
ReplyDeleteEnchantment (uncommon)
Attacking creatures you control get +1/+0 and have menace as long as they're black.
The Gruul War Chant to Bad Moon's Glorious Anthem? Sure.
DeleteAny particular flavor reason for connecting this mechanical idea with "Black Friday"?
You lose some points for making it uncommon, but we'll spin it as an overstock sale instead of a black Friday one.
DeleteA templating nitpick - I believe that's it's "black creatures you control have menace as long as they're attacking" and not the other way around. Cards' colors don't often change, but whether they are currently attacking definitely does.
This is a perfectly serviceable uncommon. Nothing about it is terribly exciting, nor is anything exactly resonating with Black Friday as a cultural touchstone. Arguably it captures some of the aggressiveness associated with the day. There's nothing wrong with the design at all, but nothing exactly gripping either. Your homework: up it to rare, keep the existing text, and add one more line to justify the rarity and better sell me on the "holiday" connection.
Black Friday (???)
ReplyDeleteEnchantment (rare)
Creatures you control have menace.
If you attacked with 2 or more creatures this turn, you may sacrifice a creature to add (B)(B)(B).
or
~~~~, you may sacrifice a creature to create a number of colorless Treasure artifact tokens with “{T}, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.” equal to its mana cost.
The first one needs to have some timing questions answered, so I'll address the second.
DeleteI love that card. It definitely needs some playtesting, but the idea of converting creatures into hoardable Mana and then back into spells makes me laugh.
I want the tokens to etbt as a safety valve, but the create action doesn't lend itself well to that templating. Still, very cool.
Just saw your post below. I like the flavor your trying to capture in the updated version, but it's very wordy, and you're actually losing resonance by keeping both concepts in one card. Let one clear mechanic carry the cards flavor, and trust your audience to get it.
DeleteBlack Friday - 3BB
ReplyDeleteEnchantment (rare)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Black Friday deals X damage to each player, where X is the number of artifacts you control.
BB, Discard two cards: Create a treasure artifact token with "Tap, sacrifice: Add one mana of any color."
In my first pass at this card, I accidentally made Revel in Riches.
I like the direction this card too, although it might be a bit underpowered. Between the mutual life loss and the very steep cost for a single treasure, there might be one drawback too many here.
DeleteEngine cards like this need safety valves, but try breaking it with one Mana and a single discard for a treasure instead. If it's too powerful, we can adjust for it, but currently it just isn't enough of a bargain to wait in line at midnight for.
Black Friday
ReplyDelete2BB
Enchantment (rare)
Spells you control cost 1 less to cast.
Whenever you cast a spell, you lose 1 life for each spell you cast this turn.
I love this design. Very in-pie for black, but with an angle we've never really seen before. Nice how the drawback is targeted to keep this from being used in "broken" ways.
DeleteIn fact, I bet this design is safe to cost at 1BB. Now to figure out which is a better follow-up: Aetherflux Reservoir, or Tendrils of Agony...
That is so fun, and a great flavor win. It's also much easier to go bankrupt on this sale that you would think, which is both good and bad. This may make some exciting games, but it's easy for this to backfire in a big way. I'd love to play with numbers here. 2 Mana and 2 life per spell, 2 much? I'd love to know.
DeleteBlack Friday
ReplyDelete2BB
Enchantment (Rare)
At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player loses X life and draws X cards where X is equal to the number of artifacts that player controls.
Caring about artifacts either way is a little out of black's color pie. But I dig the flavor, and I like how you got around the no-Necropotence restriction by making the effect super-hard to control.
DeleteThis is the kind of design I wanted you to avoid based on the restriction, but we'll let that slide for the moment.
DeleteHaving this as mutual effect is a little odd. It creates a bit of an identity problem in the card. In a meta with lots of artifacts, how often is this going to help your opponent? How often will it hurt them? I get the feeling that you only run this if the meta is artifact-light, so whether it hurts or helps your opposition is less relevant. At that point, why keep the symmetry?
Or, if we're keeping symmetry, have it always be tied to the number of artifacts you control, instead of whoever's turn it is.
There's some great flavor there, but the design needs to figure out how it wants to be played.
Sorry about the no necro restriction, I might have missed that until Ipaulsen pointed it out to me...
DeleteAs for the mutual effect, I was thinking edh were most people run around 10 even if just for ramp, but an artifact deck can take a far better risk-reward stance given the target they put on themselves and a suddenly decreased effective life total.
Overall the symmetry isn't super necessary, but I think having it based on the controller is actually a more interesting mini-game I hadn't considered.
When I hear Black Friday, I think of the stock market crash more than the shopping day. I'm not sure if I can capture that in a card.
ReplyDeleteBlack Friday 2BB
Enchantment
At the beginning of each player's upkeep, put a crash counter on CARDNAME. Then, for each crash counter on CARDNAME, that player discards a card. If they can't discard a card, they sacrifice a creature instead. If they can't sacrifice a creature, sacrifice CARDNAME.
This is basically Descent into Madness for 1 mana less, right?
DeleteNifty. Good call, lpaulsen on the Descent into Madness similarities. That card might insprire a better templating approach as well.
DeleteI almost want something saga-like to capture a catastrophic market crash, with build up for a turn or two followed by intense destruction. What you have here feels less like an unexpected failure and more like a progression of gradually escalating misfortunes. Very fun and scary design.
A saga (hopefully this is allowed)
ReplyDeleteBlack Friday 2BB
enchantment- saga R
I,II- tap an untapped creature you control. that creature doesn't untap during your untap step for as long as you control Black Friday.
III- Untap each creature you control. they get +1/+0, gain menace, and gain "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to an opponent draw a card" until end of turn.
Please forgive my inability to cost cards if it is evident.
No worries. I like the idea here a lot ("wait... wait... go for it!") and saga definitely qualifies. I agree that this should be black-blue rather than mono-B, but that still fits the challenge.
DeleteAs far as costing goes, my first instinct would be 1UB. The first two steps are strict downside. The third is powerful, but could probably be printed as a sorcery for 3UB if not less. (Compare to Driven // Despair!)
I like where this is going, but there's really nothing about this design that makes it black other than menace, which is such a minor part of the design. It a very blue card in lot of ways. Even the (patiently?) waiting for the event to start feels nonblack.
DeleteBeyond that, though, is that there's jsujnot enough payoff for a card that takes two turns to go off, neutralizes your creatures for a turn or two, and still doesn't have guaranteed awesome at the end of the day. There's the seeds of something interesting here, but it's not black, and probably not rare.
Can't seem to reply to my comment so I'll say it here.
ReplyDeleteThat third effect is blue-black, or even blue-red. Neat depiction of Black Friday but not a very mono-black card.
Trying to capture the "great deals but really rushed" aspect:
ReplyDeleteBlack Friday 1BB
Enchantment- R
Whenever you tap a Swamp for mana, add B to your mana pool
(in addition to the mana the land produces).
You can't tap Swamps for mana during your main phases.
On second thought, the no-main-phase-mana clause is probably too harsh. How about just:
Delete"Whenever you tap a Swamp for mana during your upkeep, add B to your mana pool."
Ha! Love it. Without the timing restriction, Crypt Ghast tells me this effect is ok on a creature for 4 mana, so you might even be able to push this down to a 2 Mana enchantment, or get some other type of bonus out of it. Great implementation and flavor.
DeleteAny ideas on why I can't reply?
ReplyDeleteIt's not just you. It's been happening for about a week, at least on desktop Chrome and Edge. FF is working for me atm.
DeleteCouldn't reply to my suggestion, but I keep trying to get more flavorful with my base idea:
ReplyDeleteBlack Friday (???)
Enchantment (rare)
Creatures you control have menace and "this creature attacks each turn if able"
Sacrifice a creature: Create a number of colorless Useless Junk artifact tokens with “Sacrifice this artifact: Add one colorless mana.” equal to the number of creatures that attacked this turn. Activate this ability only anytime you can cast a sorcery.