I'm really happy with how this design conveys a clear flavor identity with three very white effects-- exile-until, attacking-or-blocking, and symmetrical removal. I'm less happy with having to add the "draw a card" rider to make it appealing. This started out as a 1-mana effect without the cantrip, which seemed very hard to get value out of. The utility was less narrow than General Jarkeld's, maybe, but not by much. (Anyone remember Fight to the Death? Neither did I until it came up in a card search.) My guess is that the incremental trade-ups this enables are only worth the cost of the card if it gives some other benefit.
I almost added "for each creature you controlled exiled this way" to the last sentence, but I decided that was too likely to be used in color-pie-breaking ways.
This could slot nicely into a multiplayer free for all focused draft set, especially one with Goad, and it likely has a home in some commander decks (Marisi, or even a heavy token producing deck for example).
ReplyDeleteIf you could target blocking creatures as well, I think this could be useful in an aggressive white deck in a standard format.
The concept makes a ton of sense though and is super evocative, so nice job on that!
Yeah, I had the multiplayer applications for this in the back of my head. On the other hand, Fight to the Death is probably more powerful and its EDHREC rank is in the 9500's, i.e. barely the top half of all black-bordered cards ever printed.
DeleteOh, nice idea. It may just not work: I think there never been a flash-exile-until-target-attacker-or-blocker so maybe make that one with a different flavour?
ReplyDeleteOr if you want to find something that works with this flavour, try to find a bonus that ties into the creatures, eg N life per exiled creature? Or something that happens every turn. Or have an expensive activation that returns one of the creatures to the battlefield?
Good call. Seal Away is close to what you describe, so I bet we'll see the attacking / blocking creatures version of it someday. The only catch is that exile-until and Divine Verdict are both ways to get around the color pie rule of "white doesn't get unconditional removal" and there's not so much need to get around it in both ways at once.
DeleteThought I would pop in to say that there are some slightly counterintuitive rules interactions here; for example, I can block with a creature, remove it from combat (e.g. by returning it to my hand or something), then exile my opponent's lone attacking creature.
ReplyDeleteGood point, I hadn't considered that. Creatures with no blockers don't cease to be blocked... who'd have thought?
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