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.
Apologies for the missed week-- I was distracted by Strixhaven spoilers. Among other things we learned about a juicy new evergreen mechanic: Ward. For this weekend's challenge, design a rare card with a ward ability. For bonus points, make it an ally-color hybrid design.
Good luck and have fun!
Dimir Extortionist {2}{U/B}{U/B}
ReplyDeleteCreature Human Rogue
Ward -Mill 10
Dimir Extortionist cannot be blocked.
3/1
"You can spill my guts, yes, but think of all I know on you. I die, everyone learns them."
This doesn't quite feel rare to me. As scary as the card's Invisible Stalker impression is, most decks won't mind milling 10 a few times in a game to deal with this, and once the "hexproof" is ignored the body is a very poor rate. Still, I like the concept and the flavor a lot!
DeleteI thought of it as limited bomb actually. I mostly play limited and commander, so I usually design with that in mind.
DeleteSince it is so empty right now, here is another:
ReplyDeleteVoice of Perseverence {3}{UW}{UW}{UW}
Creature -Avatar
~ and other creatures you control have ward: return 3 nonland permanents you control to their owner's hand.
When ~ would die shuffle it in your library instead.
6/6
I get the sense this is influenced by "control finishers" like Nezahal and Pearl Lake Ancient. The approach here is slightly different (protecting the whole team struck me as an unusual choice) and makes for a strong, distinctive design. The ward cost is very innovative and fun-- though I was confused for a minute by "you control" getting used to refer to two different players in the same ability. Good stuff.
DeleteUnbearing jester {B/R}{B/R}
ReplyDeleteCreature - Human Shaman
Ward - Pay 5 life
All spells that target [CARDNAME] costs {3} less to cast
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deletewhoops, forgot pow/thg.
Deletemake it a 4/4
I love this. It is waaaaaaaaay too cheap, and I would have probably gone for your opponent's spells costing {3} less, but otherwise it is a very flavorful take on Rakdos jesters
Deleteactually, yeah. this is way to good at two hybrid mana. really should be R B for it to not be an insta include in "red deck wins".
Delete4/4 is also a concern...
Deletesorry in advance for my wall of text:
Deleteyeah, that's also true. but what other good statlines are there? at three mana this would have to compete with a plethora of different creatures at around 3 mana (bonecrusher giant, love struck beast, rotting regisaur, tarmogoyf, and so on)
reducing it to a 4/3 , a 3/4, or a 3/3 just makes it trade poorly against a lot of fairly average stat creatures in the 3-4 mana range.
i think i mainly overshot it on the ward. that should be 3 life for balance sake. and i think it would follow a weird contextual viability then:
In limited it would be a removal magnet, as any removal spell an opponent would have would be sufficent to deal with it. in (hypothetical) standard, it would be more consistent in any given deck, but so are your opponent's decks. and in eternal formats the removal is so efficient as to make the downside nearly inapplicable.
As you wrote it above it seems to be a 4/4 for 2. Which is very scary. I wonder what encironment would warrent a 4/4 for 2 without negative constraints. Ward 5 life means that it trades for a card of your opponent, tempo and shocks and lightningbolts. If you take it to 3 mana value, I could see it as a hard to kill pest, something like a 3/4 would be the upper bounds I would push it to try and get people tempted into testing it during playtesting. I love the flavor, but I would let the stats in a lower range, myself. Would love to see Ipaulsen's and others take on this.
DeleteI agree that a 4/4 for 2 with an additional protective ability is way above rate. (Being cheaper to remove doesn't seem like much of a drawback to me; in the best case for the opponent this is still a two-mana Lava Axe that also forced the opponent to discard a removal spell.) Otherwise, though, the concept is cool-- definitely an exciting use of ward. I could see this as a 3/2 for 2 mana or maybe a 4/4 for 3.
Delete