Tuesday, July 28, 2020

CCDD 072820 - Dovin's Prerogative

Most high-profile "hate cards" target specific broken strategies: Relic of Progenitus for graveyards, Stony Silence for artifacts, Damping Sphere for storm, and so forth. A while back I thought about turning this around. If I could define what was "unreasonable" in a game of Magic, and target that, then maybe I could create the One Hate Card To Rule Them All. Here's what I came up with.





If anything I suspect the discounted mode here is too tame-- since the spell still costs two colored mana, it does nothing against an opponent on the play until their third turn. I'm also not sure whether the "end the turn" effect is sufficient-- maybe it should exile things instead? Finally, the design presents an interesting color pie question. Ending an opponent's turn is mono-blue, but powering it up based on "play fair" restrictions seems very white. Is that enough to make this an Azorius card?

2 comments:

  1. That is an interesting way to define what is broken in an open way - players are supposed to play 1cc worth of permanents on turn 1, 2cc worth of permanents on turn 2, and if the total is above that, they are breaking the speed limit! Some thoughts:
    ・The condition could be more flexible to allow casting the spell earlier, such as "having total converted mana cost of permanents > turn number x 2, in the first 4 turns of the game"
    ・If the card is to have an impact on the metagame, it would be better to make it a mono-color card somehow so that more decks have access to it. If it's two colors, its effect on the metagame would be limited by how many contender decks exist in those two colors.
    ・"End the turn" is like gaining an extra turn, it may be overly harsh against a player who merely played according to the requirements of some mechanic such as Dash, or used a Mana Elf to accelerate their board.
    So maybe the effect could be "exile target permanent" or "bounce target nonland permanent or spell and draw a card" that can be cast for 1 mana if the opponent breaks the speed limit. There could be a cycle of such spells.

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