Today's random card is Sphinx's Revelation, an iconic X spell that riffs on cards like Stroke of Genius but added life gain to become even more appealing to control decks. Let's design another multicolor X spell that is... somehow... similar to or inspired by it. How exactly is up to you but here are some ideas:
- Designed to be exciting to Spikes
- Builds on a well-known X spell
- Is an instant
- Named "[creature type]'s [action noun]"
- Costs two mana of one of its colors, but not the other
- Uses as little rules text as possible
- Is mythic rare
No explicit bonus-point challenge this time-- let's see what the looser agenda turns up. Good luck and have fun!
Warrior's Consociation XGWW (Mythic)
ReplyDeleteInstant
Create X plus three 1/1 green and white Warrior creature tokens with reach and protection from creatures with flying.
Inspired by Secure the Wastes (and Dragon Hunter).
A consociation is "a political system formed by the cooperation of different, especially antagonistic, social groups on the basis of shared power."
Reach is fun here and suggests why it's an instant (surprise blockers) but pro-flying reads as random and could create really annoying board states. First strike instead maybe, for maximum archer flavor? Would that be too strong? Or "prevent all damage that would be dealt to them this turn" a la Arachnogenesis?
DeleteX+3 is aggressive but not crazily so compared with Secure the Wastes / March of the Multitudes, and I can see why you'd want it there rather than X+2 or X+1. Good use of the "plus" tech to make the card exciting. I think it's powerful enough to call for dropping pro-flying entirely, though, and maybe even reach as well.
Plotter's Masterstroke XUUB
ReplyDeleteInstant (M)
Counter X target spells. For each spell countered this way, that spell's controller loses X life.
Compare this to Undermine. I think you could do "loses X plus 2 (or 3) life". I discovered "X plus" is an easy way to make these Mythics Spike friendly.
Delete"X target spells" is a hard sell for an X spell for me. How often will there be two things to counter with this and 5 mana to cast it with? The quadratic part is nifty but I feel like it'll never come up.
DeleteI could imagine wanting the upside if the second effect was more powerful, e.g. "create X treasure tokens for each spell countered this way" or "for each spell countered this way, its controller discards X cards". Nich's suggestion is also a smart way to go about this. Along similar lines, you could say "up to X target spells" and have the other half scale normally.
Good flavor here!
Crypt Repulsion{X}{U}{B}{B}
ReplyDeleteInstant (M)
Return up to X target creatures to their owners' hands. Return up to X target creature cards from your graveyard to your hand.
A pin-point Soulquake is pretty neat. And being instant speed is very powerful. Spike would like this card.
DeleteThis looks fun! I like that even X=1 is reasonable as a UB version of Into the Roil. Having access to that plus the option to dump more mana into the X sounds great for tempo decks, so good work making this appealing to Spike. Also, nice call on the "up to X" templating.
DeleteDevil’s glee || {X}{B}{R}{R}
ReplyDeleteSorcery
CARDNAME deals X damage to any target
Each player sacrifices one or more creatures with total power X or more
I have to say, it’s hard to match up with sphinx’s revelation. It just hits a lot of sweet spots (a simple design, yet impactful. fits being an instant without being oppressive.)
Is this supposed to have flashback, like Devil's Play? Having it hit all players is very fair. Jenny may build around the downside, but Spike might just put a different X-spell in their deck. I dunno.
DeleteTbh, I just went with devils to represent the {RB} colour pair. And was trying to fit the base challenge (took the abundant Red damage X spell and added black.) But I’m not that proud of the design. More so that it was mediocre than it being bad. Wasn’t really aiming for the spike optional challenge either.
DeleteThat second effect is innovative and attention-grabbing. Nice work finding an effect to staple to the damage spell! I'm not 100% sure it works as written (is it supposed to make them sacrifice all their creatures if they don't have X power worth?) but I'm sure there are ways around that. I also wonder if it could be made into a one-sided effect; having your epic X spell also wreck your own board seems like a recipe for feeling bad.
DeleteYes, it is meant to force a player to sac all their creatures if they have less than X total power (thought it would be handled the same as how a mind rot works against a player with 1 card in hand, etc)
DeleteThe damage was also meant to play into this, but I now remember and realize that state based actions don’t happen within the resolution of a spell. To alleviate this, and to allow for a bit more playing around the spell I would like to make it a delayed trigger:
“*At the beginning of the next end step,* each player sacrifices one or more creatures with total power X or more”
Demonic Summoning {X}{B}{R}{R}
ReplyDeleteInstant
CARDNAME deals X damage to any target.
You draw X cards and you lose X life.
I had to do some searching to convince myself this didn't already exist. Very solid choice of effect to fit the challenge! It seems well calibrated for power level too; I imagine if Sphinx's Revelation said "you can lose the life instead to deal X damage to something" players would take the offer often but not always.
DeleteShards of Time {X}{W}{W}{U}
ReplyDeleteInstant (M)
Distribute 8 phasing counters amongst X target creatures and/or planeswalkers. (They phase out, and if they would ever phase in, they instead lose a phasing counter if possible.)
I like the phasing counters a lot! I'd want to see some simpler implementations of them-- probably as a set mechanic-- before trying to evaluate this, though. At first glance it's slightly weird that the number of counters is fixed. At X=1 it's a Banishing Light with some potential upside and at X=2 it removes two things for quite a while but for X>2 it seems lame. Maybe consider upping the number of counters and letting this target any nonland permanent?
Delete