A philosophical question: does the Detain mechanic work in non-Azorius colors?
In Red, there's already some amount of target creature can't block this turn. Preventing attacking or activating abilities definitely isn't red, but it isn't really undermining anything either. I would say it's a bend, but should be limited to sorcery speed one-offs.
Temporary removal really isn't black's thing at all - why detain something when you can just kill it instead? But detain really fits the flavor of the world, and helps what I'm leaning towards in two of my Black archetypes. Another bend, but very helpful in set.
Oh boy. I sure do disagree with these card designs.
ReplyDeleteRed does have a lot of “can’t block” effects, aka the “panic” mechanic, and it follows a very specific flavor of something spontaneous. (For example, panic) it can be seen as giving you the freedom of attacking without anyone getting in to it way.
Stopping things however, is *not* something red does. Stopping things from attacking and activating their abilities is a complete antithesis of what red does, and I do think detaining non-land permanents is a break in red. red would totally let you do something it doesn’t like, but if you do they’ll sure punch you in the face for it (see: harsh mentor)
But the emphasis here is on “detaining non-land”. Detain is in essence, a bit like tapping a permanent IMO. And something that red does have access to is destroying (and also, but less commonly used: tapping) lands.
Tl:dr; red detain is a no-no expect for detaining lands.
Your black card is kinda just weird to me. It’s as you said, black would just kill/sacrifice/drain/shrink instead of using anything like tapping/detaining. The only real times I see black doing stuff like that is when it’s used as a cost for the person playing the black card.
This card however just looks like a weird blue card to me.
You haven’t mentioned green yet. But I believe green would be quite simple: green usually doesn’t stop attacking or blocking (sometimes it even forces blocking). But green can stop activated abilities. Well. Of artifacts at least. And with green being the anti tech color, having green detain illegal tech (eg. Enchantments and artifact) seems like a good fit for me.