Cunning Goliath2UU
Creature — Vedalken Warrior [R]
Cunning Goliath's power and toughness are each equal to 2 plus the number of cards in your hand.
You have no maximum hand size.
[2+*/2+*]
Depraved Gaunt*1B
Creature — Ape Wizard [C] 1, Sacrifice a creature: You gain 1 life.
[2/1]
Moon-Eyed Shrieker*R
Creature — Ape Warrior [U]
If Moon-Eyed Shrieker attacks, all creatures you control attack if able. 1R: Creatures you control gain trample until end of turn.
[2/1]
Timeflayer*(2/R)(2/R)(2/R)(2/R)
Legendary Artifact — Equipment [M]
Equipped creature gets +4/+4 and has first strike.
You may assign equipped creature’s combat damage as you choose among any number of creatures, planeswalkers, or players.
Equip (2/R)(2/R)(2/R)(2/R)
Starfallen King*3G
Creature — Elephant Druid [R]
If a source you control would produce colorless mana, it also produces that much additional mana in any combination of colors.
[3/4]
EDIT: Changed the sac ability of Depraved Gaunt from "Each opponent loses 1 life" to "You gain 1 life". Because reasons.
EDIT: Decided Magic didn't need a separate creature type for winged space elephants, made Starfallen King an Elephant Druid instead of a Yag.
EDIT: Also decided Magic didn't need a separate creature type for creepy, intelligent apes, changed Depraved Gaunt and Moon-Eyed Shrieker. (Flavor-wise and name-wise, they will still be Morlocks.)
Cunning Goliath 2UU
Creature — Vedalken Warrior [R]
Cunning Goliath gets +1/+1 for each card in your hand.
You have no maximum hand size.
[2/2]
...There is also no reason to mention Planeswalkers in time flayer's ability.
Everything else looks fine, though the abilities in Timeflayer and Moon-Eyed shrieker are unprecedented, and I'm not sure they work within the rules. The rules text I'd use for Time flayer is "If equipped creature would deal combat damage, equipped creature deals that much damage divided as you choose among any number of creatures or players instead." I'm 100% certain that wording works.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
I stand corrected. They all seem fine then. I do recommend using the simpler version of cunning goliath though.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
- Manite
Now, how does Starfallen King interact with Seethe, is the question. Does it get the temporary Upwelling bonus? Or does the colored mana just get made in the combat damage step and then go away? One of those obviously feels a lot better than the other for this guy's inclusion in the set, but as written (or last I checked, anyway) I'm pretty sure we're in the latter scenario right now.
Now, how does Starfallen King interact with Seethe, is the question. Does it get the temporary [card]Upwelling[/b] bonus? Or does the colored mana just get made in the combat damage step and then go away? One of those obviously feels a lot better than the other for this guy's inclusion in the set, but as written (or last I checked, anyway) I'm pretty sure we're in the latter scenario right now.
That's a good question.
I think it could only be answered by the specific wording of the comp. rules entry for seethe. Since this only changes the kind and amount of mana that is produced by an effect, rather than creating a separate mana-producing effect itself, I think the mana would get the Sakura-Tribe Springcaller bonus. That was my intention in wording it this way, at least. I do want it to combo with seethe, as well as the other big colorless mana producing mechanic of this set.
Because Starfallen King is a replacement ability, it will combo properly with Seethe, making it so that the additional colored mana has the "Springcaller" bonus. If the King were a triggered ability, then it would be a nonbo.
Cunning Goliath seems too strong, IMO. With only three cards in your hand, he's a 5/5, and he can easily be an 8/8 or 9/9. At 4 mana in blue, that seems to be pushing it.
Why not just make it a Maro with a Reliquary Tower clause? Otherwise, the mana cost needs to go up several points.
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Cunning Goliath seems too strong, IMO. With only three cards in your hand, he's a 5/5, and he can easily be an 8/8 or 9/9. At 4 mana in blue, that seems to be pushing it.
Why not just make it a Maro with a Reliquary Tower clause? Otherwise, the mana cost needs to go up several points.
My estimation of the P/T and mana cost was based on the following:
The Reliquary Tower clause is not likely to matter in Standard / Modern play.
I'm trying to push this card.
Now, I'm not exactly wanting to solicit comparisons to Tarmogoyf — I sure don't want them to be of equivalent power level — but I was hoping to capture some of Tarmogoyf's "surprisingly large, scalable ground-pounder" mojo with this guy. I figured that at twice the CMC, with no evasion abilities and no ability to protect itself, it could never amount to even a fraction of the metagame concern that Tarmogoyf is.
But then, it is a blue card, so I might be underestimating it.
In any case, yeah, I want it to be a scary amount of P/T for the mana cost, if you play your cards right (or don't, as the case may be).
I think Deadbridge Goliath/Polukranos would basically suggest that 5/5 is fine, while Alms Beast suggests that consistently 6/6 would be too much. Without testing I'm not sure where this falls on average.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
It's really going to have to depend on the format. If Draw-Go is a thing and creature decks suck, this guy will consistently be a 7/7 with counterspell backup. If aggro and midrange has more of a presence, this guy is unplayable due to being a dumb beater with no self-protection abilities, at the same cmc you'd be wanting to cast a sweeper instead.
Incidentally, the random references to sci-fi novels that were written before I was born are really not endearing me to the flavor of the set.
Incidentally, the random references to sci-fi novels that were written before I was born are really not endearing me to the flavor of the set.
I assure you, the references have been culled in a very non-random fashion.
While we're on the subject of references, it's not my intention to have this be the "early pulp fantasy & sci-fi references" setting. It is, of course, drawing inspiration from H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and other similar authors. But my goal is to create a unified setting that's not just a bunch of random ideas thrown together. I picked Morlocks, Rykors, and weird green space Elephants out of the unlimited options open to me because they meshed with the ideas that I have for this setting, and because I think that they mesh well with a fantasy-genre game like Magic. I am not doing Space: The Convergence. I am trying to do my own thing, in the end.
Incidentally, the random references to sci-fi novels that were written before I was born are really not endearing me to the flavor of the set.
I assure you, the references have been culled in a very non-random fashion.
While we're on the subject of references, it's not my intention to have this be the "early pulp fantasy & sci-fi references" setting. It is, of course, drawing inspiration from H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and other similar authors. But my goal is to create a unified setting that's not just a bunch of random ideas thrown together. I picked Morlocks, Rykors, and weird green space Elephants out of the unlimited options open to me because they meshed with the ideas that I have for this setting, and because I think that they mesh well with a fantasy-genre game like Magic. I am not doing Space: The Convergence. I am trying to do my own thing, in the end.
I personally love the old space-fantasy setting. It's unique and has throwback qualities and exciting new (but old) things.
I picked Morlocks, Rykors, and weird green space Elephants out of the unlimited options open to me because they meshed with the ideas that I have for this setting, and because I think that they mesh well with a fantasy-genre game like Magic. I am not doing Space: The Convergence. I am trying to do my own thing, in the end.
If this isn't a reference-based setting, why not tell us what "your own thing" is rather than have us wade through a bunch of Wikipedia articles about someone else's thing and try to figure out which of those elements do and don't matter? The little one-sentence taglines are intriguing, but they're not meaty enough. I rather appreciated the short stories and Planeswalker's Guide-esque blurbs of your previous big sets.
Right now I'm vaguely picturing this plane as a radioactive world with disunited, horribly mutated inhabitants (the permanents-matter/critical/seethe faction, plus Deserts matter), and a hive mind of cyborg people and their slave robots (the hand-size-matters/psionic/rebound faction, plus "clockwork"). I have no bloody idea how the flying green elephants fit in.
I rather appreciated the short stories and Planeswalker's Guide-esque blurbs of your previous big sets.
Glad to hear it. And I owe people that.
I am still trying to figure out how to pitch this set. Do I start with the fact that it's the Vedalken home plane? (It is, but that's just exposition, so no.) Do I start with describing the catastrophic "event" that happened to the plane to make it what it is now? (I like the mystery of not knowing all the details, so no again.) Do I introduce the Psions, the plane's universal yet unknowable antagonists? (The Psions aren't the story, here, so that's a third no.) It's a big world with a lot of new stuff in it. And what I really need is a pair of eyes through which people can see it all for the first time.
Once I figure out the identity of my Barbarian protagonist(s), I think I'll have a story blurb to start everyone off.
I rather appreciated the short stories and Planeswalker's Guide-esque blurbs of your previous big sets.
Glad to hear it. And I owe people that.
I am still trying to figure out how to pitch this set. Do I start with the fact that it's the Vedalken home plane? (It is, but that's just exposition, so no.) Do I start with describing the catastrophic "event" that happened to the plane to make it what it is now? (I like the mystery of not knowing all the details, so no again.) Do I introduce the Psions, the plane's universal yet unknowable antagonists? (The Psions aren't the story, here, so that's a third no.) It's a big world with a lot of new stuff in it. And what I really need is a pair of eyes through which people can see it all for the first time.
Once I figure out the identity of my Barbarian protagonist(s), I think I'll have a story blurb to start everyone off.
I write, and as a writer I would say a little bit of each, but not enough to give them a full picture. Just give us enough information to draw us in. We only need to know that there was a catastrophic event, but not who or what caused it. We could know the races and their roles on the plane, and mentioning of Psions, but then let the rest of your cards and stories come later to fill in the pieces of the puzzle.
I rather appreciated the short stories and Planeswalker's Guide-esque blurbs of your previous big sets.
Glad to hear it. And I owe people that.
I am still trying to figure out how to pitch this set. Do I start with the fact that it's the Vedalken home plane? (It is, but that's just exposition, so no.) Do I start with describing the catastrophic "event" that happened to the plane to make it what it is now? (I like the mystery of not knowing all the details, so no again.) Do I introduce the Psions, the plane's universal yet unknowable antagonists? (The Psions aren't the story, here, so that's a third no.) It's a big world with a lot of new stuff in it. And what I really need is a pair of eyes through which people can see it all for the first time.
Once I figure out the identity of my Barbarian protagonist(s), I think I'll have a story blurb to start everyone off.
Maybe an aerial flyby of post-catastrophe world?
Incidentally, my favorite of your sets is still Qhunb'eg. Despite the double whammy of references to stuff written before I was born and the Time Spiral-esque nostalgia reprints, you crafted a world with a really unique geography that, pardon the pun, sucked me in, in a way that neither "sequel to Dominaria" nor "sequel to Kamigawa" has really managed to do.
Incidentally, my favorite of your sets is still Qhunb'eg. Despite the double whammy of references to stuff written before I was born and the Time Spiral-esque nostalgia reprints, you crafted a world with a really unique geography that, pardon the pun, sucked me in, in a way that neither "sequel to Dominaria" nor "sequel to Kamigawa" has really managed to do.
I'll get back to Qhunb'eg, someday. It still exists in my mental map of the multiverse.
I just realized that the story I wanted to tell there was too far ahead of the game. Dominaria, Call to Glory, Raksu, and a couple other blocks all need to happen before I can pull off what I was trying to pull off, there. And so does... this.
Butcher Orgg and Cunning Giant seem to come up in custom card design once or twice a year. I still think they are unprintable post M10. With combat damage no longer using the stack, those abilities no longer give the defending player an appropriate window of opportunity to respond with pump and damage prevention. (There was a similar problem with deathtouch in M10 that was fixed by M11.) There is unfortunately no easy way to fix Butcher Orgg to fairly allow the defending player time to respond. Cunning Giant can be adjusted by at least making the choice when it isn't blocked, although I personally like the version that has you make the choice when the creature attacks so that choosing a creature to attack can flavorfully be grouped in with the current existing choices for attacking players and planeswalkers.
Butcher Orgg and Cunning Giant seem to come up in custom card design once or twice a year. I still think they are unprintable post M10. With combat damage no longer using the stack, those abilities no longer give the defending player an appropriate window of opportunity to respond with pump and damage prevention. (There was a similar problem with deathtouch in M10 that was fixed by M11.) There is unfortunately no easy way to fix Butcher Orgg to fairly allow the defending player time to respond. Cunning Giant can be adjusted by at least making the choice when it isn't blocked, although I personally like the version that has you make the choice when the creature attacks so that choosing a creature to attack can flavorfully be grouped in with the current existing choices for attacking players and planeswalkers.
In this case, it fits the time-breaking flavor of what I'm trying to do. If I could have given this "split second, but for damage", I would have done that. This is a nice alternative.
There are some adequate responses. The environment simply needs to provide them. You've made a pretty great case for putting Terrifying Presence in the set, silvercut.
Ancient Power Lurks Beyond the Stars!
Creature — Vedalken Warrior [R]
Cunning Goliath's power and toughness are each equal to 2 plus the number of cards in your hand.
You have no maximum hand size.
[2+*/2+*]
Depraved Gaunt* 1B
Creature — Ape Wizard [C]
1, Sacrifice a creature: You gain 1 life.
[2/1]
Moon-Eyed Shrieker* R
Creature — Ape Warrior [U]
If Moon-Eyed Shrieker attacks, all creatures you control attack if able.
1R: Creatures you control gain trample until end of turn.
[2/1]
Timeflayer* (2/R)(2/R)(2/R)(2/R)
Legendary Artifact — Equipment [M]
Equipped creature gets +4/+4 and has first strike.
You may assign equipped creature’s combat damage as you choose among any number of creatures, planeswalkers, or players.
Equip (2/R)(2/R)(2/R)(2/R)
Starfallen King* 3G
Creature — Elephant Druid [R]
If a source you control would produce colorless mana, it also produces that much additional mana in any combination of colors.
[3/4]
EDIT: Changed the sac ability of Depraved Gaunt from "Each opponent loses 1 life" to "You gain 1 life". Because reasons.
EDIT: Decided Magic didn't need a separate creature type for winged space elephants, made Starfallen King an Elephant Druid instead of a Yag.
EDIT: Also decided Magic didn't need a separate creature type for creepy, intelligent apes, changed Depraved Gaunt and Moon-Eyed Shrieker. (Flavor-wise and name-wise, they will still be Morlocks.)
Cunning Goliath 2UU
Creature — Vedalken Warrior [R]
Cunning Goliath gets +1/+1 for each card in your hand.
You have no maximum hand size.
[2/2]
...There is also no reason to mention Planeswalkers in time flayer's ability.
Everything else looks fine, though the abilities in Timeflayer and Moon-Eyed shrieker are unprecedented, and I'm not sure they work within the rules. The rules text I'd use for Time flayer is "If equipped creature would deal combat damage, equipped creature deals that much damage divided as you choose among any number of creatures or players instead." I'm 100% certain that wording works.
- Manite
Moon-Eyed Shrieker's ability comes by way of Viashino Bey. Timeflayer is an evolution of the Butcher Orgg mechanic.
- Manite
Ophelia Le Doux (R/B)
Creature - Vampire Assassin
Haste First Strike
1/1
Gold: 0
Inventory: Clothes
Abilities:
Traits: Speed
Experience: 6/20
Mana: R
Odula Besa (U/B)
Creature - Vampire Artificer
T: Target artifact creature gets your choice of -1/-0 or +1/+0 until end of turn.
1/1
Gold: 41
Inventory: Adventurer's Clothes, Basic Artificer Toolkit, 3 pounds of Basic metal.
Abilities: N/A
Current Goals:
Experience: 1/20
Mana: 2(U/B)(U/B)
I did just snipe the "Yag" creature type, in case that is confusing later.
Ophelia Le Doux (R/B)
Creature - Vampire Assassin
Haste First Strike
1/1
Gold: 0
Inventory: Clothes
Abilities:
Traits: Speed
Experience: 6/20
Mana: R
Odula Besa (U/B)
Creature - Vampire Artificer
T: Target artifact creature gets your choice of -1/-0 or +1/+0 until end of turn.
1/1
Gold: 41
Inventory: Adventurer's Clothes, Basic Artificer Toolkit, 3 pounds of Basic metal.
Abilities: N/A
Current Goals:
Experience: 1/20
Mana: 2(U/B)(U/B)
I think it could only be answered by the specific wording of the comp. rules entry for seethe. Since this only changes the kind and amount of mana that is produced by an effect, rather than creating a separate mana-producing effect itself, I think the mana would get the Sakura-Tribe Springcaller bonus. That was my intention in wording it this way, at least. I do want it to combo with seethe, as well as the other big colorless mana producing mechanic of this set.
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Why not just make it a Maro with a Reliquary Tower clause? Otherwise, the mana cost needs to go up several points.
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But then, it is a blue card, so I might be underestimating it.
In any case, yeah, I want it to be a scary amount of P/T for the mana cost, if you play your cards right (or don't, as the case may be).
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).
Incidentally, the random references to sci-fi novels that were written before I was born are really not endearing me to the flavor of the set.
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Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
While we're on the subject of references, it's not my intention to have this be the "early pulp fantasy & sci-fi references" setting. It is, of course, drawing inspiration from H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and other similar authors. But my goal is to create a unified setting that's not just a bunch of random ideas thrown together. I picked Morlocks, Rykors, and weird green space Elephants out of the unlimited options open to me because they meshed with the ideas that I have for this setting, and because I think that they mesh well with a fantasy-genre game like Magic. I am not doing Space: The Convergence. I am trying to do my own thing, in the end.
I personally love the old space-fantasy setting. It's unique and has throwback qualities and exciting new (but old) things.
Dunes of Zairo
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Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
If this isn't a reference-based setting, why not tell us what "your own thing" is rather than have us wade through a bunch of Wikipedia articles about someone else's thing and try to figure out which of those elements do and don't matter? The little one-sentence taglines are intriguing, but they're not meaty enough. I rather appreciated the short stories and Planeswalker's Guide-esque blurbs of your previous big sets.
Right now I'm vaguely picturing this plane as a radioactive world with disunited, horribly mutated inhabitants (the permanents-matter/critical/seethe faction, plus Deserts matter), and a hive mind of cyborg people and their slave robots (the hand-size-matters/psionic/rebound faction, plus "clockwork"). I have no bloody idea how the flying green elephants fit in.
Avatar by Numotflame96 of Maelstrom Graphics
Sig banner thanks to DarkNightCavalier of Heroes of the Plane Studios!
I am still trying to figure out how to pitch this set. Do I start with the fact that it's the Vedalken home plane? (It is, but that's just exposition, so no.) Do I start with describing the catastrophic "event" that happened to the plane to make it what it is now? (I like the mystery of not knowing all the details, so no again.) Do I introduce the Psions, the plane's universal yet unknowable antagonists? (The Psions aren't the story, here, so that's a third no.) It's a big world with a lot of new stuff in it. And what I really need is a pair of eyes through which people can see it all for the first time.
Once I figure out the identity of my Barbarian protagonist(s), I think I'll have a story blurb to start everyone off.
I write, and as a writer I would say a little bit of each, but not enough to give them a full picture. Just give us enough information to draw us in. We only need to know that there was a catastrophic event, but not who or what caused it. We could know the races and their roles on the plane, and mentioning of Psions, but then let the rest of your cards and stories come later to fill in the pieces of the puzzle.
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
Maybe an aerial flyby of post-catastrophe world?
Incidentally, my favorite of your sets is still Qhunb'eg. Despite the double whammy of references to stuff written before I was born and the Time Spiral-esque nostalgia reprints, you crafted a world with a really unique geography that, pardon the pun, sucked me in, in a way that neither "sequel to Dominaria" nor "sequel to Kamigawa" has really managed to do.
Avatar by Numotflame96 of Maelstrom Graphics
Sig banner thanks to DarkNightCavalier of Heroes of the Plane Studios!
I just realized that the story I wanted to tell there was too far ahead of the game. Dominaria, Call to Glory, Raksu, and a couple other blocks all need to happen before I can pull off what I was trying to pull off, there. And so does... this.
There are some adequate responses. The environment simply needs to provide them. You've made a pretty great case for putting Terrifying Presence in the set, silvercut.