Give me an artifact with a line of rules text no one's ever seen before, like Jester's Cap or Mindslaver. (Mark Rosewater calls these "marquee cards".) For bonus points, don't make it an activated ability.
Good luck and have fun!
Saturday, February 6, 2021
Weekend Design Challenge 020521 - Marquee Card
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Another week when I had designs I was interested in but wasn't confident I could produce something printable.
ReplyDeleteThe best I had was:
Mantis Automaton 4
Artifact Creature - Insect Assassin
4/3
Flying
CARDNAME can attack creatures that opponents control. (Creatures being attacked can't block, but if they're untapped they assign combat damage to unblocked attackers.)
The comprehensive rules would be tweaked for the specifics of how attacking creatures works, but most of it is already inherent in how attacking planeswalkers works. I didn't clarify the blocking damage for multiple creatures since most usually it will only be this creature attacking.
Obviously people keep coming back to this idea and it's usually impossible because it causes too much confusion. But on a SINGLE high-rarity creature, I think it's reasonable to track what's going on in combat when it comes up (whereas if there were a lot of creatures attacking other creatures, it would be hard to track which creatures are being attacked and which are blocking, etc).
I think attacking creatures is a neat direction to push in when looking for novel mechanical space, but I'm not sure what cool gameplay it enables that provoke doesn't. Provoke functions in a similar way (you could even provoke a tapped creature, which made it untap and block), other creatures can also block a creature with provoke.
DeleteI think your intuition is right that this wouldn't be healthy for Magic overall, but could be pulled off on a single card. Not sure whether it would be better for the rules text or the comprehensive rules to do the heavy lifting-- if it's a one-off there's an argument to be made for the former, even though it reads as less special.
DeleteUnsnaring bridge {3}
ReplyDeleteArtifact (R)
Creatures with power less than the number of cards in your hand must attack each turn if able.
That's a fun one. It's a lot worse than Ensnaring Bridge, especially when you draw it late, but that's not a bad place to be. Being (in 2-player) strictly-worse-ish than Curse of the Nightly Hunt is a little more concerning though. I'd have liked to see something more innovative as a marquee card.
DeleteCorpse Pit 2
ReplyDeleteArtifact (R)
Your card effects treat cards in all players' graveyards as though they were in your own graveyard. (Only cards you own can be put into your hand or library.)
The formatting is no doubt incorrect but hopefully the intention is clear enough.
Indeed that is the only issue. I really like it but it would be busted with any card that uses the graveyard as a threshold or a resource. Imagine delve for example...
DeleteI'd really love this effect (and others like it) if the templating could be made to work. Not sure it can, though. We could say:
DeleteSpells and abilities you control that would count cards in your graveyard count cards in all players' graveyards instead.
This already has some subtle rules interactions-- what about Igneous Elemental? Embodiment of Agonies? Zombie Mob? Delirium cards?-- but we could probably make it work. It would read kind of underwhelmingly though. If we want to extend it to actually *doing* things to cards in graveyards, then stuff like Deadbridge Chant and Izzet Chemister will open even more cans of worms. Which I guess is fine if we have an explicit "cards you don't own can't go to your hand, graveyard, or library" rule? But that makes, say, Volcanic Vision play quite non-intuitively.
Anyway, it's an exciting concept and not all that much more rule-breaking than Mindslaver.
400.3. If an object would go to any library, graveyard, or hand other than its owner’s, it goes to its
Deleteowner’s corresponding zone.
So Deadbridge Chant would actually bounce a noncreature card from an opponent's graveyard back to their hand. Tricksy!
Flowstone pen | 5
ReplyDeleteArtifact
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player puts an ink counter on a permanent of their choice
Permanents with ink counters on them are 2/2 black creatures in addition to their other types
Flowstone has been associated with the {1}: cardname gets +1/-1 ability in Stronghold, but I guess it is so long ago they might reuse the name. Why ink counters though?
DeleteI took "flowstone" as a flavor rather than mechanical reference and in that light it looks pretty good. The fact that anyone can choose any other permanent opens the door for lots of hijinks and log-rolling.
DeleteIt's a little less "different" than I had in mind for a marquee card, but examples like Mirari show that's not necessarily a bad thing.