Saturday, April 17, 2021

Weekend Design Challenge 041721 - If X Is

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.

Magic has a tradition of printing X spells that don't scale evenly-- they gain a new effect at some value of X. Some notable examples are Martial Coup, Subterranean Tremors, Finale of Devastation and friends, and the delightful Multiple Choice from Strixhaven. Design another card whose text box contains the phrase "if X is", and for bonus points, make it feel mythic rare.

Good luck and have fun!

24 comments:

  1. Fifthist absolution || X
    Create a X/X colorless horror creature token
    If X is 5, each player exiles their hand


    I had another idea that I wanted to post, but it would just be a rehash of an earlier idea. So it didn’t feel like I created a card for the challenge

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    1. I dislike giving hand exile to all colors. This feels like a good eldrazi {x}{c} spell

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    2. I'm having trouble understanding the link between the card's two lines of rules text. Martial Coup has a flavor connection with it's "if X is"; most of the Finales have some kind of mechanical connection. Here I don't see any of either. So the card leaves me asking "why this, in particular?"

      I also agree that as written this would be a color pie break. It doesn't satisfy the challenge, but a clause like "if you spent at least WUBRG on X" or "if you spent at least CCCCC on X" would both fix that and help with the connectedness.

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  2. Whelp, there hasn’t been much activity here. So I guess I’ll make some activity.


    Void Maw || XRBBG
    Sorcery
    Target creature fights X other target creatures
    If X is 5 or more, that creature gains lifelink until end of turn. If X is 8 or more, that creature gets indestructible until end of turn


    Finale of ingenuity || XUR
    Sorcery
    When you cast this spell, copy it X times, you may choose new targets for the copies
    Target creature gets +1/+0 and flying until end of turn.
    Draw a card, then, if X is 9 or less and this spell is a copy, discard a card.

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    1. I like that void maw might m1ke you fight your own creatures. I think I would reverse indestructable and lifelink, and put the fight after these trigger.

      For the finale, I do not know if it really needs extra oomf after x is 9. How about a reward tied to X being bigger than the number of creatures you control to promote either few creature finisher or go wide in UR?

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    2. I like Finale of Ingenuity a lot. I'd suggest removing "and this spell is a copy" to simplify it, though.

      Void Maw doesn't quite work under current rules-- fighting multiple creatures isn't well defined (see Polukranos, World Eater for a typical workaround). After fixing that, I'd want to back off the RBBG color requirement to just BG or something. Otherwise hitting 5 let alone 8 is quite hard. (Is it intended that the spell can only be cast with X valid targets?)

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  3. Divisiveness XBB

    Sorcery

    If X is prime, each opponent sacrifices X creatures. (Prime numbers aren't divisible by any number except 1 and themselves.)

    If X is composite, each opponent discards X cards. (Composite numbers are divisible by at least one number besides 1 and themselves.)

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. I love the idea of using prime/composite :) Even if I doubt wizards would, it could be a Strixhaven thing, or an Eldrazi thing. Although I wish I could think of a reason for composite to matter, to have to do something with to numbers that multiply together for it, or for each factor it has.

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    3. I also find prime/composite to be a unique idea. But it does end up being a bit, “fucky” when large amounts of mana are used.
      What I mean is, if you put more than (2^82,589,933)-1 mana into X, you would have problems with knowing wether X is prime or not, simply because (2^82,589,933)-1 is the largest prime number we have confirmed, and any larger haven’t been confirmed yet.

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    4. I would hqve templated it as "else". This would wofk with the math school but not in other sets, I think.

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    5. It's a good point that this could in theory lead to game situations where what happens can't be easily adjudicated. On the one hand, what's the chance of the opponent having more than 2^82,589,933 creatures, and you having that much mana, but not knowing what prime number to choose? On the other hand, they would probably choose something that wasn't open to that sort of ambiguity (even if they were willing to print something this mathsy which they probably wouldn't).

      In retrospect, I should have thought how this would play in practice. It would probably play almost the same way if it said "odd or even", since if you have enough mana, you can usually choose whichever you prefer. And for numbers smaller than 9, they're the same except that 2 is even.

      And I only just realised this but 0 and 1 are weird they're traditionally considered neither prime nor composite, so any reminder text would have to take that into account. Only saying "if prime" and then "or else" would simplify it.

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    6. As a math nerd I really like the concept. In practice this would probably be odd vs even rather than prime vs composite. Also, the sacrifice effect is very strong-- I'd expect to see this getting cast a lot for X=2 (one-sided Barter in Blood) and X=3 (one-sided Taste of Death). "Each player" for that one maybe?

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  4. Get in the zone {x}{u}{u}
    Sorcery
    If x is equal to the number of cards in your hand as it resolves, you may cast X instants and / or sorceries from your hand without paying their mana cost. Otherwise, draw X cards

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    1. ooo, me likey.
      i'm also thinking this card could get broken very easily. i could see people busting out any high cmc instant/sorcery by setting up their hand with a good discard outlet.

      then again, how would one change this card to keep the fun intact while still removing the brokenness?

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    2. I really think this makes for interesting deck choices. If test reveals it to be broken I would up the cost.

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    3. Are there any obviously broken combos? Another way to limmit it is to restict it to spells of mana value less or equal to X

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    4. Like I said, discard outlets. Turn two play something which lets you discard cards for free, turn three discard down to [Get in the zone] and a spell of your choice (for example: reshape the earth to valakut your opponent to death) and then cast Get in the zone for X equal to 1

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    5. I agree that this looks prohibitively hard to balance. Presumably it's okay at, say, X2UU, but then it's not very appealing. It might be worth trying at XUUU, but... what exactly is the motivation for balancing such different effects together? I don't see much of a connection between the card draw half and the "cast stuff for free" half (which is mostly in red's color pie BTW).

      I do really like the "if it's exactly equal" idea though. Riffing:
      XU Sorcery
      Discard X cards, then draw X cards. If X is equal to your hand size, instead draw X cards.

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    6. Yes, that was the interesting part of the design, I admit your implementation is much better.

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  6. Hi, I'm Razor and I create Hearthstone custom cards and sometimes MTG ones - I want to start pushing more into MTG but is quite daunting because of the complexity of the game. Anyway this is my idea for an 'if X' card. I wanted to create Fractals but that card already existed as one of the Lessons so I changed it to a land related effect.

    Quandrix Dichotomy XGU
    Sorcery

    If X is an odd number, search your library for up to X land cards, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle.

    If X is an even number, draw X cards. (Zero is even.)

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    1. Welcome! As I mentioned in my comment to Markus, I like the odd/even idea a lot. And getting lands vs any cards is a neat choice of implementation. So this is a very solid design. I was going to say that the odd option is worse a lot of the time, but then I noticed that it's exactly Nylea's Intervention, and tutoring any land card (not just basics) is a big deal, so I think it's actually fine.

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    2. Thanks for the feedback! I'll try to start doing more MTG and when I'm confident enough with my skills give some feedback to other users.

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