Foreshadow - type/subtype (You may reveal a [type/subtype] card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
I considered having this have an additional cost; so I could put it on more powerful spells. However, I templated it this way because I wanted to see how good "free spells" could be. This also gives me an excuse to print otherwise overcosted limited spells that are occasionally free, likely mostly at common and uncommon.
A future expansion might have a variant:
Foreshadow - type 1, type 2 (You may reveal a type 1 card and a type 2 card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
or
Foreshadow - Two types (You may reveal two cards of type in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Sample cards:
Scattering Prey1G
Creature - Insect (C)
Haste
Foreshadow - Beast (You may reveal a beast card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
1/1
Comic Relief2R
Creature - Goblin Pirate (C)
Prowess
Foreshadow - Legendary (You may reveal a Legendary card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
1/2
Dance of Fire1R
Instant (C)
Foreshadow - Dragon (You may reveal a Dragon card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Choose 1 -
- Add R to your mana pool.
- ~ deals 1 damage to each creature and each player.
Elemental Learning2U
Instant (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental (You may reveal an Elemental card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Choose 1 -
- Draw a card.
- Return target creature to its owner's hand.
Imp's Prank2B
Instant (C)
Foreshadow - Imp (You may reveal an Imp card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Each opponent discards a card. Gain 2 life for each card discarded in this way.
Demon's Tutorial1BB
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Demon (You may reveal a Demon card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Search your library for any card. Shuffle your library, then put that card on top. Lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand.
Coming Bloom2G
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Forest (You may reveal a Forest card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Search your library for a forest card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library. Gain 2 life.
Herald of the Faith2W
Creature - Human Cleric (U)
Foreshadow - Angel (You may reveal an Angel card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Lifelink
1/3
Intriguing Plans2U
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Artifact (You may reveal an Artifact card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Name four different artifact cards. Target opponent picks a card you named. You may search your library for an artifact with a chosen name, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If you do, draw a card.
Some of these are potentially really powerful, especially the free mana from Dance of Fire. The free mana is probably too risky to print, multiples of any of these spells can use the same reveal card after all, and turn-0 mana with no downside is a huge red flag.
Dance of Fire was something I was a bit risky on... but it's a harder to use Simian Spirit Guide. If that leads to someone having 6 mana on turn 1 and a 6 drop elemental in one game... sure? That's a risk I'd be okay with.
It's useful for storm... if you're running Storm Entity... but come on; Storm Entity.dec needs all the help it can get.
I tried to make these effects cost about 1.5 mana normally, then doubled it and added the keyword. The exception, of course, is the creatures, which I usually costed as though they were 1 drops.
_______________
One challenge here is to design a block in which a land-less deck could play 100% foreshadow cards and foreshadow enablers. For this to work, I think it'd have to be "5 colors", with each color getting a vertical cycle of foreshadow cards - likely Foreshadow - Elemental, because all colors have access to elementals.
Elemental Shift2U
Sorcery (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental
Draw 2 cards. You may reveal two elemental cards in your hand and discard one. Otherwise, discard two cards.
Elemental Stirrings2B
Sorcery (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental
Return target creature card with power 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains Haste until end of turn. At the end of turn, sacrifice it.
[AKA, Mulldrifter-reanimator.]
Elemental Longevity2W
Sorcery (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental
Gain 8 life.
Elemental Fade2R
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Elemental
You may discard any number of cards. This deals X damage to each creature, where X equals the number of cards discarded.
Demon's tutorial is the busted one here in Griselbrand reanimator decks. Most of the other cards are just bad. Dance of fire isn't an unreasonable option for a DragonStorm deck, but it's not close to busted though. It's just a generally weaker desperate ritual. Elemental learning is the other card with potential but elementals aren't particularly well supported in any formats. If it was a merfolk themed card, it might be playable. The rest of the cards are just too weak to be worth a card.
I'm skeptical of free spell mechanics in general. Free spell cards tend to be either broken or useless with very little space in between. This isn't very surprising when you consider how few developmental knobs are on free spell cards.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
You've definitely picked up on the fact that all of these have to be incredibly minor effects, which is good, because otherwise free spells are apocalyptic. Others have commented on balance and other things but oh man, is Comic Relief ever a genius design.
Intriguing Plans is way overpowered; it's a 2-for-1 for free requiring only a very common card type, and it's almost strictly better than Thoughtcast which is already a strong card. There is no reason it should cantrip.
The overall mechanic is pretty neat, but it obviously has limited design space as far as how powerful the cards can be. The only real problem I could see is how one would fit enough of each creature type into whatever block featured the mechanic to allow players to consistently Foreshadow in drafts (even though you don't need to foreshadow to cast them, it should still be something players can do in limited with reasonable consistency. See: Trials and Carouches). Comic Relief especially should be uncommon if only because of how few legendaries one would presumably encounter in limited.
You may or may not actually care how these work in limited though; they obviously work very well in tribal decks and you don't really need to worry about how many of a creature type you can have of any given type in constructed.
You've definitely picked up on the fact that all of these have to be incredibly minor effects, which is good, because otherwise free spells are apocalyptic. Others have commented on balance and other things but oh man, is Comic Relief ever a genius design.
Thanks. I like how Comic Relief turned out.
I've long thought limited should have cards that get a lot better in constructed, or when a draft "goes right" and this feels like that. It's a straight up D in limited most of the time. But in constructed... it might encourage a certain kind of deck design (IE, legend prowess deck?).
I like the flavor here. Prowess works wonders as it gives you a way to "save" your comic relief character. It suggests the creature is just playing a fool, and better than it appears; but you could also just see it as being lucky. And let's not kid ourselves, free squire is quite good.
I considered having this have an additional cost; so I could put it on more powerful spells. However, I templated it this way because I wanted to see how good "free spells" could be. This also gives me an excuse to print otherwise overcosted limited spells that are occasionally free, likely mostly at common and uncommon.
A future expansion might have a variant:
Foreshadow - type 1, type 2 (You may reveal a type 1 card and a type 2 card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
or
Foreshadow - Two types (You may reveal two cards of type in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Sample cards:
Scattering Prey 1G
Creature - Insect (C)
Haste
Foreshadow - Beast (You may reveal a beast card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
1/1
Comic Relief 2R
Creature - Goblin Pirate (C)
Prowess
Foreshadow - Legendary (You may reveal a Legendary card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
1/2
Dance of Fire 1R
Instant (C)
Foreshadow - Dragon (You may reveal a Dragon card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Choose 1 -
- Add R to your mana pool.
- ~ deals 1 damage to each creature and each player.
Elemental Learning 2U
Instant (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental (You may reveal an Elemental card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Choose 1 -
- Draw a card.
- Return target creature to its owner's hand.
Imp's Prank 2B
Instant (C)
Foreshadow - Imp (You may reveal an Imp card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Each opponent discards a card. Gain 2 life for each card discarded in this way.
Demon's Tutorial 1BB
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Demon (You may reveal a Demon card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Search your library for any card. Shuffle your library, then put that card on top. Lose life equal to the number of cards in your hand.
Coming Bloom 2G
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Forest (You may reveal a Forest card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Search your library for a forest card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library. Gain 2 life.
Herald of the Faith 2W
Creature - Human Cleric (U)
Foreshadow - Angel (You may reveal an Angel card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Lifelink
1/3
Intriguing Plans 2U
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Artifact (You may reveal an Artifact card in your hand instead of playing this spell's mana cost.)
Name four different artifact cards. Target opponent picks a card you named. You may search your library for an artifact with a chosen name, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If you do, draw a card.
Custom Card / Set Reviewer
When reviewing custom cards / sets, I look for (a) flavour, (b) function, and (c) cohesiveness, generally through a risk focus.
That's a typo that got copy-pasted.
Some of these are potentially really powerful, especially the free mana from Dance of Fire. The free mana is probably too risky to print, multiples of any of these spells can use the same reveal card after all, and turn-0 mana with no downside is a huge red flag.
Dance of Fire was something I was a bit risky on... but it's a harder to use Simian Spirit Guide. If that leads to someone having 6 mana on turn 1 and a 6 drop elemental in one game... sure? That's a risk I'd be okay with.
It's useful for storm... if you're running Storm Entity... but come on; Storm Entity.dec needs all the help it can get.
I tried to make these effects cost about 1.5 mana normally, then doubled it and added the keyword. The exception, of course, is the creatures, which I usually costed as though they were 1 drops.
_______________
One challenge here is to design a block in which a land-less deck could play 100% foreshadow cards and foreshadow enablers. For this to work, I think it'd have to be "5 colors", with each color getting a vertical cycle of foreshadow cards - likely Foreshadow - Elemental, because all colors have access to elementals.
Elemental Shift 2U
Sorcery (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental
Draw 2 cards. You may reveal two elemental cards in your hand and discard one. Otherwise, discard two cards.
Elemental Stirrings 2B
Sorcery (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental
Return target creature card with power 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains Haste until end of turn. At the end of turn, sacrifice it.
[AKA, Mulldrifter-reanimator.]
Elemental Longevity 2W
Sorcery (C)
Foreshadow - Elemental
Gain 8 life.
Elemental Fade 2R
Sorcery (U)
Foreshadow - Elemental
You may discard any number of cards. This deals X damage to each creature, where X equals the number of cards discarded.
I'm skeptical of free spell mechanics in general. Free spell cards tend to be either broken or useless with very little space in between. This isn't very surprising when you consider how few developmental knobs are on free spell cards.
- Manite
I̟̥͍̠ͅn̩͉̣͍̬͚ͅ ̬̬͖t̯̹̞̺͖͓̯̤h̘͍̬e͙̯͈̖̼̮ ̭̬f̺̲̲̪i͙͉̟̩̰r̪̝͚͈̝̥͍̝̲s̼̻͇̘̳͔ͅt̲̺̳̗̜̪̙ ̳̺̥̻͚̗ͅm̜̜̟̰͈͓͎͇o̝̖̮̝͇m̯̻̞̼̫̗͓̤e̩̯̬̮̩n͎̱̪̲̹͖t͇̖s̰̮ͅ,̤̲͙̻̭̻̯̹̰ ̖t̫̙̺̯͖͚̯ͅh͙̯̦̳̗̰̟e͖̪͉̼̯ ̪͕g̞̣͔a̗̦t̬̬͓͙̫̖̭̻e̩̻̯ ̜̖̦̖̤̭͙̬t̞̹̥̪͎͉ͅo͕͚͍͇̲͇͓̺ ̭̬͙͈̣̻t͈͍͙͓̫̖͙̩h̪̬̖̙e̗͈ ̗̬̟̞̺̤͉̯ͅa̦̯͚̙̜̮f͉͙̲̣̞̼t̪̤̞̣͚e̲͉̳̥r͇̪̙͚͓l̥̞̞͎̹̯̹ͅi͓̬f̮̥̬̞͈ͅe͎ ̟̩̤̳̠̯̩̯o̮̘̲p̟͚̣̞͉͓e͍̩̣n͔̼͕͚̜e̬̱d̼̘͎̖̹͍̮̠,͖̺̭̱̮ ̣̲͖̬̪̭̥a̪͚n̟̲̝̤̤̞̗d̘̱̗͇̮͕̳͕͔ ͖̞͉͎t̹̙͎h̰̱͉̗e̪̞̱̝̹̩ͅ ̠̱̩̭̦p̯̙e͓o̳͚̰̯̺̱̰͔̘p̬͎̱̣̼̩͇l̗̟̖͚̠e̱͉͔̱̦̬̟̙ ̖͚̪͔̼̦w̺̖̤̱e͖̗̻̦͓̖̘̜r̭̥e͔̹̫̱͕̦̰͕ ̗͔̠p̠̗͍͍̱̳̠r̰͔͎̰o͉̥͓̰͚̥s̟͚̹̱͔̣t͉̙̳̖͖̪̮r̥̘̥͙̹a͉̟̫̟̳̠̟̭t͈̜̰͈͎e̞̣̭̲̬ ͚̗̯̟͙i͍͖̰̘̦͖͉ṇ̮̻̯̦̲̩͍ ̦̮͚̫̤t͉͖̫͕ͅͅh͙̮̻̘̣̮̼e͕̺ ͙l͕̠͎̰̥i̲͓͉̲g̫̳̟͈͇̖h̠̦̖t͓̯͎̗ ̳̪̘̟̙̩̦o̫̲f̙͔̰̙̠ ̹̪̗͇̯t͖̼̼͉͖̬h̹͇̩e͚̖̺̤͉̹͕̪ ͚͓̭̝̺G͎̗̯̩o̫̯̮̟̮̳̘d̜̲͙̠-̩̳̯̲̗̜P̹̘̥͉̝h͍͈̗̖̝ͅa͍̗̮̼̗r̜̖͇̙̺a̭̺͔̞̳͈o̪̣͓̯̬͙̯̰̗h̖̦͈̥̯͔.͇̣̙̝
The overall mechanic is pretty neat, but it obviously has limited design space as far as how powerful the cards can be. The only real problem I could see is how one would fit enough of each creature type into whatever block featured the mechanic to allow players to consistently Foreshadow in drafts (even though you don't need to foreshadow to cast them, it should still be something players can do in limited with reasonable consistency. See: Trials and Carouches). Comic Relief especially should be uncommon if only because of how few legendaries one would presumably encounter in limited.
You may or may not actually care how these work in limited though; they obviously work very well in tribal decks and you don't really need to worry about how many of a creature type you can have of any given type in constructed.
- Rabid Wombat
Thanks. I like how Comic Relief turned out.
I've long thought limited should have cards that get a lot better in constructed, or when a draft "goes right" and this feels like that. It's a straight up D in limited most of the time. But in constructed... it might encourage a certain kind of deck design (IE, legend prowess deck?).
I like the flavor here. Prowess works wonders as it gives you a way to "save" your comic relief character. It suggests the creature is just playing a fool, and better than it appears; but you could also just see it as being lucky. And let's not kid ourselves, free squire is quite good.
I'd laugh at the 4 Comic Relief, 1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda opening hand.