Hey Artisans! Click through to see this weekend's design challenge. Your mission is to design a custom magic card that follows the guidelines. Over the course of the weekend, give feedback to your fellow designers on their designs and incorporate their feedback to iterate on your own. I'll try to offer some feedback of my own starting on Monday.
Inscription of Abundance, Inscription of Insight, and Inscription of Ruin are a loose partial cycle of rares from Zendikar Rising. Design a white or red Inscription to add to the cycle. For bonus points, give it a total (casting + kicker) mana cost that the cycle hasn't used yet, i.e. not 5, 7, or 8.
Good luck and have fun!
Inscription of Ignition 3RR
ReplyDeleteSorcery
Kicker 2R
Choose one. If this spell was kicked, choose any number instead.
*Discard your hand, then draw seven cards.
*Deal X damage, among any number of targets, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
*Deal damage to each creature and opponent equal to the number of cards you have discarded this turn.
Balancing modal spells is tough, especially with the Inscriptions where there's secretly a fourth mode. In this case my main worry would be that the third mode never gets picked except as part of the kicker (also, being a second damage-based mode makes it feel redundant). How about a third mode that interacts with graveyards? "Cast target instant/sorcery from a graveyard without paying its mana cost" is a plausibly red effect in the right price range.
DeleteYou hit the nail on the head! I was stumped as to the third effect. 3RR is indeed a good price for the effect! Great upgrade would take it.
DeleteThis challenge was tough indeed. I think it is reflected by the number of submissions.
I'm super late to this post, but I just thought of a couple to add here.
ReplyDeleteInscription of Inspiration
{W}
Sorcery (Rare)
Kicker {1}{W}{W}
Choose one. If this spell was kicked, choose any number instead.
• You gain 4 life.
• Target creature you control gains lifelink until end of turn.
• Creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
This can be useful at almost any time setting up for a meaningful attack using either its normal or its kicked cost. If it ends up being kicked, all of the abilities should feed into each other, helping boost the player's life total a considerable amount, while still being reasonably cheap.
I'm not confident that the kicker is accurately costed, though.
and
Inscription of Pain
{1}{R}
Instant (Rare)
Kicker {3}{R}{R}
Choose one. If this spell was kicked, choose any number instead.
• Inscription of Pain deals 2 damage to any target.
• You may discard any number of cards. If you do, Inscription of Pain deals that much damage to target creature.
• Inscription of Pain deals X damage to any target, where X is the amount of damage dealt to that target this turn.
Just like the other inscription, this should be a reasonable card to use for any one of its abilities but, when kicked, all the abilities should feed into each other to land a knockout blow on one big creature, or help you really rub salt into the wound if you've already dealt a lot of damage to an opponent this turn.