For anyone who has been keeping track, this is Rogurr's Panda Force that the set my friends and I have been building is based off of. Rogurr is a black, white and green Planeswalker and the primary decision maker of the universe's direction. Born 14 billion years ago, he began the first battle of immortals against Lycaeon after having discovered, created and conquered two thirds of the universe. During the battle, half of the known universe was obliterated by Rogurr's muscles flexing alone. As his power grew his mere existence caused a geosurge that shook through the fabric of time and space and crushed most of the universe's matter into supermassive blackholes. Having discovered that not even the creatures he had fought for, for so long, could exist in his awesome presence, he and Lycaeon formed a truce in the only part of the universe left unharmed, its heart and final dimension. Here Rogurr has ruled over a new panda dominated countryside across the planet from Lycaeon's ice-world though he has been trapped by his own choosing in a spirit form that prevents him from interfering with the lives of mortals everywhere. If he were to even exist in his real form for a second all of time itself would dissipate and shake as all of the universe was cast into an unknown future. (IN scientific terms, the quantum fluctuations would recreate the universe's base particles into a new format starting from the base matter and anti-matter and working through the very protons and neutrons of our elements until each being was incomprehensibly different from anything understood as fundamental to our mind's now.)
Now to the cards: As a deck these cards have seemed to work perfectly from the get-go. Here we tried to make them as exclusive as possible. If you aren't playing all the pandas, your not playing pandas. The pandas also have the calmheart ability because they are not aggressive but can chop you in half with a seemingly half-hearted paw swap. They are mediators and peaceful beings with supreme defensive power handpicked Rogurr to wage war upon those who would attempt to break the harmony of the universe.
The Walker: (our only point of concern; finding a planeswalker that plays well with his friends has been annoyingly hard. This version has been acceptable.)
sometimes there is a lack of pandas on the field. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
So yeah if you think these cards are overpowered, you really need to play some more magic the gathering. This was a great deck that played extremely well against everyone. It was really fun to play and to play against and these were more fun to create than any card I have ever thought up. These cards also just seemed right and though it was originally a five color deck it was still impressive. To make it more realistically competitive we cut it to three colors but kept the main theme. Don't mess with the pandas or they will mess with you!
Menghai Forest: auto-run in every deck that can splash Green and doesn't run Pandas. It might as well read "T: Add G to your mana pool. When ~ enters the battlefield put an Emerald Mox from outside the game onto the battlefield under your control," only it boosts KotR too. How is there anything even vaguely, mildly balanced about that land?
Menghai Shaman, DeMarcus von Bearon, and the PW are all way overpowered. Panda Party is basically flat-out better than the already awesome Bestial Menace.
And I still can't understand why on earth you would ever make a card like Menghai Forest.
The Panda planeswalker seems a bit strong compared to, say, Elspeth 1, who made 1/1 tokens at that cost and only got +1 loyalty out of it. The second ability is also very ambiguous because of the way planeswalker abilties work. As worded, it doesn't really function. What I think you want to do is to have sacrificing a creature as its cost, something which doesn't really work with planeswalker abilties.
Knight of the Lotus Temple is bad design, because there isn't an indicated way to remember what mana was used to cast it and you shouldn't have to remember the abilities a 2 cost creature has. Memory issues are major issues. It may as well cost WB instead of the hybrid cost, which doesn't seem to add much to the card.
I'm not sure why Panda Party has odd hybrid symbols, or if those symbols mean something specific. I can definitely say that the mana cost is TERRIBLE - you mean I need to pay two colored mana, of a color I couldn't have possibly used to cast the spell, to kick it? That's not good design. Hybrid is an interesting mechanic because it lets you play a spell when you're in one of two colors, without needing to commit to another. This spell, however, forces you to commit to at least two colors for it to be useful, one of which isn't even in the mana cost. That's not cool.
The Figure of Destiny rip-off is very awkward. First, I don't get why there's hybrid everywhere on the card except in the first two activated abilities. If the card's hybrid, it should be usable without necessarily being in either of the two specific colors. It's also very confusing that the card's power and toughness are always different numbers - on a card where you already have a bit to keep track of, including whether it's tapped or untapped, adding such lopsided P/T is obnoxious. Also, I don't think black gets 3/1s for BB that block as 5/3s.
Slingsquire's ability is White/Red, not blue/black. It also seems to have the Calmheart ability just tacked on to it.
Menghi Shaman bothers me on several levels. I'll just address the most obvious: if you lose one Panda, you can play one Menghi Shaman free, find another, play it free, and get all four this way and still end up with another search. That's just not cool.
Panda of the Divine Branch doesn't work very well. If a creature would leave the battlefield due to a state-based effect, it still does, since the source of the state-based effect (usually lethal damage or 0 toughness) doesn't revert after preventing the card from leaving play.
Pandacious Explosion has an atrocious and unparsable mana cost that completely subverts the elegance that hybrid usually creates. With hybrid, you usually can say, "Okay, so I can cast my spell with this color, or that color." With this card, you're left saying, "Okay, I can cast my spell... lots of ways." Since you need red most of the time, you might as well make it 2R or something.
The card could also have a lot less text. And what's Rebound doing there? It's just hanging out! What makes Rebound a neat mechanic is that all the spells with it do something subtly different the first and second times, mostly because by the time you get the spell for the second time, your opponent has had a chance to respond.
Yunnan's Secret is bad design because if you have a deck with many colors, you don't want your color-fixing to cost two green mana.
EternalLurker is absolutely correct about Menghai Forest.
Oh, one more thing: The Calmheart mechanic is bad because it actively discourages attacking - both your attacking and your opponents' attacking. This likely makes games unnecessarily long.
Divine Branch: I don't think replacement abilities can trigger from your hand.
Menghai Forest: Overpowered. Land tokens pop up every now and then, and they're almost always deemed a bad idea.
Menghai Shaman: Likely broken somehow. One of these lets you rip three other 3/3s from your deck, plus tutors another panda. Two of these and a Wheel of Sun and Moon equals infinity sacrifices. Awkward colours are awkward. Why is this black?
Crafty Slingsquire: This is in no way monoblue (or monoblack, really. Or blue-black.)
DeMarcus: The idea of <0 toughness with calmheart is really cute. The rest of the card makes me cringe. Black does not get 5/3 Vampires for BB without a really steep drawback.
Lotus Temple: Memory issues.
'Walker: Broken. Gains loyalty too fast while protecting itself. Has a super underwhelming ultimate. Also, what happens if a panda dies and gets Loam Shaman'd? "Return each panda card in each graveyard and in exile to the battlefield under your control." I guess? Still boring.
Rogurr: From a power standpoint, this guy seems too good. Like everyone else said, he gains too much loyalty for protecting himself too well. Even on his own, +2 for a 2/2, and then +1 for 3 2/2's is pretty insane. His ultimate is pretty boring, but I would honestly just use him as an infinite creature generator by +1'ing a token.
Knight of the Lotus Temple: This guy seems pretty good. The memory issues make it awkward, but its a pretty good design. I would rather it put some kind of counter on itself just as a reminder.
Panda Party: This card is very awkward. It's a hybrid card that's kicked for double of another color. I think this is a little undercosted for being an instant. It scales up pretty nicely, but the fact its instant speed may warrant 3cmc.
DeMarcus Von Baron: 0 toughness with calmheart is cool. The rest is not. I don't see any reason for this not to have full hybrid costs like figure of destiny, and even then each stage is awkward, especially with calmheart.
Crafty Slingsquire: I don't get this. You've already established Pandas as a heavily (B/W) tribe with a bit of G, why would you switch to (U/B)? Beyond that, direct damage dealing hardly even makes sense in Black, let alone UB or mono blue.
Menghai Shaman: The fact that it can search for itself breaks this card. Also, it just says "Panda" not creature. I don't know if this is a mistake, but if its not, then you can play Panda party (technically a Panda) and flash in a 2/2 and four 3/3 blockers at instant speed.
Panda of the Divine Branch: Pretty sweet combo with Shaman, especially if you search for another Divine Branch.
Pandacious Explosion: whaaaa...?
Why the mana cost? Why do you lose life for each target? Why is the color the mana spent to cast it? Why does it rebound?
Yunnan's Secret: This one is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd rather it cost 2G and be a sorcery.
Menghai Forest: I don't think the fact you can run this in non-panda decks was taken into account when it was designed. Even in a panda deck, a land (and a forest at that) that taps for any color with no drawback, especially with a tribe that spans all 5 colors randomly, is insanely good.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
It was at that moment that I realized: I'm kinda just making these things up. We can just write the rules the way we want them to work. People will have fun, and people will get it.
What's with the mana cost on Panda Party? Are those symbols meant to represent an alternate mana cost of some kind, or are they there for no reason? Players are going to be confused as all hell with that card without any elaboration on it.
Slingsquire - slingsquire is blue/black duh. Royal assassin +pingers. Pingers were originally blue. Has calmheart because all Pandas have calmheart. They don't need to be told to relax.
Panda Party - Those mana symbols on the party are just clan hybrid symbols from magic set editor. Also the card doesn't work as just white and black. Otherwise maybe we would have played it more. Changing it to have green is to mesh it with menghai. And Pandas are better than beasts.
Menghai Forest - Menghai forest is a pretty sweet card. It would certainly be restricted, but cards like engineered explosives and ratchet bomb would make you pay for it. Also the deck used to span all five colors, but we reigned it in and kept some of the old spell's original colors but for the most part focused on WBG.
Menghai Shaman - I should definitely reword Menghai shaman but some part of me was pretty sure that triggered abilities only trigger once. I apologize for that mistake. That shall be fixed! Has to be just panda creature and only search on one non-menghai shaman creature got it.
Pandacious Explosion - Just a fun card and its a burn spell, but my friend changed it to all three colors of the panda army because he could. SO deal with it. Rebounds- so you actually do damage. That pretty much sums it up. So that you have actually done damage.
Divine Branch - meant to combo with the shaman. This card is one of those ones that glued some of the weaker aspects of the deck together. And of course his replacement ability is unique. If every card in magic had Divine Branch's ability, we would have come up with something else. Also it was originally more complicated and for sure reset the damage but I cleaned it up because I thought people would be all like "Oh no I can't read." So I apologize for not expecting you'd find some other way to tell me to fix it.
Rogurr- thats why I added the backstory on how hes 14000 million times older than Nicol Bolas. (I think I did that math in my head right) And like I also said this deck sometimes goes creatureless for long periods of time. Also the creator of this card didn't want it to make a real impact on the game despite me saying it should. So far it hasn't.
Yunnan's Secret - Yunnan's Secret is GG because that is harder to cast for multi color decks which could make better use of the grab two land ability. Otherwise it has the same CC as rampant growth which GG is harder to get so you get your one land untapped. Not quite Harrow but along the same lines.
Knight of the Lotus Temple- I've seen cards with similar ideas to this and I don't have memory issues. Use a counter if you need one, but me and my eidetic memory are content.
Its DeMarcus Von Bearon - One of the only cards that really makes a name for itself on the battlefield and attacks as a 3/1 until you pay 5 with at least WWWB to get a 6/4 which is actually pretty standard. Also the 5/3 after one stage is the only place where he is ultra-powerful, and that is because we couldn't keep him at 0 toughness and wanted to create the differential between power and toughness. Lightning Bolt! Also he ends at a 9/7 for 10 which is only one CC better than the figure of destiny who is an 8/8 for 11, who would win in combat. And thanks for calling it cute. It was originally called curious cub and was a 1 drop 0/0 with calmheart. Also Vigilance is an only-white ability and isn't really meant to be included on hybrids so you've got to spend the WWW for this creature to really become dangerous.
Calmheart - actively discourages attacking - that's why I love calmheart. Have you honestly ever seen Pandas organize into an army and charge over a hill like a bunch of chimpanzees? Nope, but I have seen Pandas covered in the blood of mutilated trespassing hikers. But in all honesty, Path to exile and terminate work just fine. You just have to worry about the occasional Divine Branch and Menghai Shaman.
Look I write in the text every time that we have played with these cards and obviously I still made a couple mistakes but really do you guys not care enough to read that we tested these out. The Panda cards are great and you can say all you want about them being too good, but honestly would it kill you to say "hey cool ideas, you need to fix this part and this part here and there?" Playing against this deck, dropping things like day of judgement and other removal were pretty effective and as he thins out his hand in response, your removal begins to take out aggregate pandas. Also, each time you guys bring up some excellent points, but you also always talk at the computer and not at me. Saying things like that is stupid. First of all I can take the insults, but I'm not going to consider anything you say to be of any real value if it doesn't read like the coherence of a genius level intellect. Also, we paid a lot of attention to the colors and at times you may doubt the elegance of the Panda nation. But the Pandas are a serene and beautiful race of peaceful and respected creatures, so sleeve these up and shuffle them in. This deck is fun.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
if you like blue and white spells or Venser or magic the gathering, check out these sweet spells I came up with: Venser's Legion
Click it and like it.
Aggressive and out of control, the Wolf King and his soldiers Winter's Wolves
I forgot like the most important one. This guy has ended up being a key igniter of the Panda offense and we added in the cycling to get going some of the other cards early. This was to prevent your opponent from having board position and card advantage. Also, Vindicate is basically Champion without the creature coming back and you can choose himself as well. It has effectively worked as an alternate use of Divine Branch.
ATTACHMENTS
Fu Pan-Shu Master
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
if you like blue and white spells or Venser or magic the gathering, check out these sweet spells I came up with: Venser's Legion
Click it and like it.
Aggressive and out of control, the Wolf King and his soldiers Winter's Wolves
Slingsquire - slingsquire is blue/black duh. Royal assassin +pingers. Pingers were originally blue.
Pingers are not blue anymore. lrn2moderncolourpie. See: Prodigal Pyromancer, almost every pinger since 7th edition.
Pandacious Explosion - Just a fun card and its a burn spell, but my friend changed it to all three colors of the panda army because he could. SO deal with it. Rebounds- so you actually do damage. That pretty much sums it up. So that you have actually done damage.
You asked for feedback. We gave it to you. This card is an absolute mess of bad design decisions. You can keep it how it is if you'd like - that's your prerogative - but I'd question your reasons for posting it here.
Knight of the Lotus Temple- I've seen cards with similar ideas to this and I don't have memory issues. Use a counter if you need one, but me and my eidetic memory are content.
Consider this:
Player 1: Your creature dies. My panda has deathtouch!
Player 2: It does not!
Player 1: Yes it does!
Player 2: No!
Player 1: Judge!
It simply creates awkward gamestates. Use a counter (or just make it multicoloured).
Its DeMarcus Von Bearon - One of the only cards that really makes a name for itself on the battlefield and attacks as a 3/1 ... for this creature to really become dangerous.
Black doesn't get 3/1s for BB, which is the issue. Otherwise it's fine, if a little messy.
The Panda cards are great and you can say all you want about them being too good, but honestly would it kill you to say "hey cool ideas, you need to fix this part and this part here and there?"
Yes.
First of all I can take the insults, but I'm not going to consider anything you say to be of any real value if it doesn't read like the coherence of a genius level intellect.
Darling, this is the internet. What did you expect?
Slingsquire - slingsquire is blue/black duh. Royal assassin +pingers. Pingers were originally blue. Has calmheart because all Pandas have calmheart. They don't need to be told to relax.
Royal Assassin doesn't deal damage, and neither do blue cards in modern magic. Calmheart makes no sense on this card because not only is it not a good blocker, it also has a tap ability that turns it off. It doesn't need or even want Calmheart, so it shouldn't have it. Giving it a keyword just because its a Panda isn't great design IMO.
Menghai Forest - Menghai forest is a pretty sweet card. It would certainly be restricted, but cards like engineered explosives and ratchet bomb would make you pay for it. Also the deck used to span all five colors, but we reigned it in and kept some of the old spell's original colors but for the most part focused on WBG.
Neither of those cards remove lands. It doesn't matter if its a token, it's still a land, and both of those cards specify non-land permanents.
Pandacious Explosion - Just a fun card and its a burn spell, but my friend changed it to all three colors of the panda army because he could. SO deal with it. Rebounds- so you actually do damage. That pretty much sums it up. So that you have actually done damage.
Well, its a conglomerate of bad design choices. SO deal with it.
Rogurr- thats why I added the backstory on how hes 14000 million times older than Nicol Bolas. (I think I did that math in my head right) And like I also said this deck sometimes goes creatureless for long periods of time. Also the creator of this card didn't want it to make a real impact on the game despite me saying it should. So far it hasn't.
I don't think backstory can be used to balance a card. I think the main problem with these designs is that you're designing a specific, exclusive deck, while we're looking at these cards outside of a vacuum. Sure, if you've got one of him in a very specific deck he may be balance, but outside of that, he's insanely powerful.
Knight of the Lotus Temple- I've seen cards with similar ideas to this and I don't have memory issues. Use a counter if you need one, but me and my eidetic memory are content.
It doesn't matter how good your memory is, it matters how every other player's is. It's too easy to forget/lie/cheat with this card unless it uses some kind of counter. You're right that there are other cards that use this method, but I don't think those are very good either.
Calmheart - actively discourages attacking - that's why I love calmheart. Have you honestly ever seen Pandas organize into an army and charge over a hill like a bunch of chimpanzees? Nope, but I have seen Pandas covered in the blood of mutilated trespassing hikers. But in all honesty, Path to exile and terminate work just fine. You just have to worry about the occasional Divine Branch and Menghai Shaman.
You may love Calmheart, but other players may not. The reason the mechanic is degenerate is that it kills the tempo of the game. If you're stoping both yourself and your opponent from attacking, nothing is happening. Sure, you can remove the Pandas, but I'd rather lose a 10 minute game than win a 30 minute game. (This is all hypothetical of course, but in this case it really is the principle of the thing.)
Also, you can't use flavor to rationalize a design choice.
You're entitled to your opinion, but so am I. In my opinion, some of these cards have design problems that should be fixed. Even if you don't agree with me, you should at least take my opinion into consideration. The reason we're all so harsh is that we want to improve the designs we see. Some times we go a little too far, but that doesn't mean our opinions are any less relevant. If you don't want to listen to us, that's fine, but if you post your designs here, be prepared to get some criticism. Hopefully you can learn from it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"In the beginning, MTG Salvation switched to a new forum format.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
It was at that moment that I realized: I'm kinda just making these things up. We can just write the rules the way we want them to work. People will have fun, and people will get it.
To be fair, Calmheart can be a fine mechanic if well-implemented. And putting it on a tap-pinger is actually a decently interesting way to implement it. Now, Slingsquire in particular is stupid because it does much more damage than most pingers while costing less than most pingers, and it's an undercosted blocker while it's not pinging, but aside from the major balance issues Crafty Slingsquire is probably the best designed card in the...."set".
.......You know, I still can't understand why anyone would make Menghai Forest.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Now to the cards: As a deck these cards have seemed to work perfectly from the get-go. Here we tried to make them as exclusive as possible. If you aren't playing all the pandas, your not playing pandas. The pandas also have the calmheart ability because they are not aggressive but can chop you in half with a seemingly half-hearted paw swap. They are mediators and peaceful beings with supreme defensive power handpicked Rogurr to wage war upon those who would attempt to break the harmony of the universe.
The Walker: (our only point of concern; finding a planeswalker that plays well with his friends has been annoyingly hard. This version has been acceptable.)
sometimes there is a lack of pandas on the field. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
So yeah if you think these cards are overpowered, you really need to play some more magic the gathering. This was a great deck that played extremely well against everyone. It was really fun to play and to play against and these were more fun to create than any card I have ever thought up. These cards also just seemed right and though it was originally a five color deck it was still impressive. To make it more realistically competitive we cut it to three colors but kept the main theme. Don't mess with the pandas or they will mess with you!
Venser's Legion
Click it and like it.
Aggressive and out of control, the Wolf King and his soldiers
Winter's Wolves
Everyone loves them, its the Pandas!
Alpha Panda King
I play UW control
Standard - Venser competitive
Please comment on how awesome these are. Just kidding. But I know you love them. Apparently you didn't love them.
Venser's Legion
Click it and like it.
Aggressive and out of control, the Wolf King and his soldiers
Winter's Wolves
Everyone loves them, its the Pandas!
Alpha Panda King
I play UW control
Standard - Venser competitive
Menghai Forest: auto-run in every deck that can splash Green and doesn't run Pandas. It might as well read "T: Add G to your mana pool. When ~ enters the battlefield put an Emerald Mox from outside the game onto the battlefield under your control," only it boosts KotR too. How is there anything even vaguely, mildly balanced about that land?
Menghai Shaman, DeMarcus von Bearon, and the PW are all way overpowered. Panda Party is basically flat-out better than the already awesome Bestial Menace.
And I still can't understand why on earth you would ever make a card like Menghai Forest.
Knight of the Lotus Temple is bad design, because there isn't an indicated way to remember what mana was used to cast it and you shouldn't have to remember the abilities a 2 cost creature has. Memory issues are major issues. It may as well cost WB instead of the hybrid cost, which doesn't seem to add much to the card.
I'm not sure why Panda Party has odd hybrid symbols, or if those symbols mean something specific. I can definitely say that the mana cost is TERRIBLE - you mean I need to pay two colored mana, of a color I couldn't have possibly used to cast the spell, to kick it? That's not good design. Hybrid is an interesting mechanic because it lets you play a spell when you're in one of two colors, without needing to commit to another. This spell, however, forces you to commit to at least two colors for it to be useful, one of which isn't even in the mana cost. That's not cool.
The Figure of Destiny rip-off is very awkward. First, I don't get why there's hybrid everywhere on the card except in the first two activated abilities. If the card's hybrid, it should be usable without necessarily being in either of the two specific colors. It's also very confusing that the card's power and toughness are always different numbers - on a card where you already have a bit to keep track of, including whether it's tapped or untapped, adding such lopsided P/T is obnoxious. Also, I don't think black gets 3/1s for BB that block as 5/3s.
Slingsquire's ability is White/Red, not blue/black. It also seems to have the Calmheart ability just tacked on to it.
Menghi Shaman bothers me on several levels. I'll just address the most obvious: if you lose one Panda, you can play one Menghi Shaman free, find another, play it free, and get all four this way and still end up with another search. That's just not cool.
Panda of the Divine Branch doesn't work very well. If a creature would leave the battlefield due to a state-based effect, it still does, since the source of the state-based effect (usually lethal damage or 0 toughness) doesn't revert after preventing the card from leaving play.
Pandacious Explosion has an atrocious and unparsable mana cost that completely subverts the elegance that hybrid usually creates. With hybrid, you usually can say, "Okay, so I can cast my spell with this color, or that color." With this card, you're left saying, "Okay, I can cast my spell... lots of ways." Since you need red most of the time, you might as well make it 2R or something.
The card could also have a lot less text. And what's Rebound doing there? It's just hanging out! What makes Rebound a neat mechanic is that all the spells with it do something subtly different the first and second times, mostly because by the time you get the spell for the second time, your opponent has had a chance to respond.
Yunnan's Secret is bad design because if you have a deck with many colors, you don't want your color-fixing to cost two green mana.
EternalLurker is absolutely correct about Menghai Forest.
Oh, one more thing: The Calmheart mechanic is bad because it actively discourages attacking - both your attacking and your opponents' attacking. This likely makes games unnecessarily long.
Menghai Forest: Overpowered. Land tokens pop up every now and then, and they're almost always deemed a bad idea.
Menghai Shaman: Likely broken somehow. One of these lets you rip three other 3/3s from your deck, plus tutors another panda. Two of these and a Wheel of Sun and Moon equals infinity sacrifices. Awkward colours are awkward. Why is this black?
Crafty Slingsquire: This is in no way monoblue (or monoblack, really. Or blue-black.)
DeMarcus: The idea of <0 toughness with calmheart is really cute. The rest of the card makes me cringe. Black does not get 5/3 Vampires for BB without a really steep drawback.
Lotus Temple: Memory issues.
'Walker: Broken. Gains loyalty too fast while protecting itself. Has a super underwhelming ultimate. Also, what happens if a panda dies and gets Loam Shaman'd? "Return each panda card in each graveyard and in exile to the battlefield under your control." I guess? Still boring.
Knight of the Lotus Temple: This guy seems pretty good. The memory issues make it awkward, but its a pretty good design. I would rather it put some kind of counter on itself just as a reminder.
Panda Party: This card is very awkward. It's a hybrid card that's kicked for double of another color. I think this is a little undercosted for being an instant. It scales up pretty nicely, but the fact its instant speed may warrant 3cmc.
DeMarcus Von Baron: 0 toughness with calmheart is cool. The rest is not. I don't see any reason for this not to have full hybrid costs like figure of destiny, and even then each stage is awkward, especially with calmheart.
Crafty Slingsquire: I don't get this. You've already established Pandas as a heavily (B/W) tribe with a bit of G, why would you switch to (U/B)? Beyond that, direct damage dealing hardly even makes sense in Black, let alone UB or mono blue.
Menghai Shaman: The fact that it can search for itself breaks this card. Also, it just says "Panda" not creature. I don't know if this is a mistake, but if its not, then you can play Panda party (technically a Panda) and flash in a 2/2 and four 3/3 blockers at instant speed.
Panda of the Divine Branch: Pretty sweet combo with Shaman, especially if you search for another Divine Branch.
Pandacious Explosion: whaaaa...?
Why the mana cost? Why do you lose life for each target? Why is the color the mana spent to cast it? Why does it rebound?
Yunnan's Secret: This one is interesting. I like the idea, but I'd rather it cost 2G and be a sorcery.
Menghai Forest: I don't think the fact you can run this in non-panda decks was taken into account when it was designed. Even in a panda deck, a land (and a forest at that) that taps for any color with no drawback, especially with a tribe that spans all 5 colors randomly, is insanely good.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Comic Book Set
Archester: Frontier of Steam (A steampunk set!)
A Good Place to Start Designing
Panda Party - Those mana symbols on the party are just clan hybrid symbols from magic set editor. Also the card doesn't work as just white and black. Otherwise maybe we would have played it more. Changing it to have green is to mesh it with menghai. And Pandas are better than beasts.
Menghai Forest - Menghai forest is a pretty sweet card. It would certainly be restricted, but cards like engineered explosives and ratchet bomb would make you pay for it. Also the deck used to span all five colors, but we reigned it in and kept some of the old spell's original colors but for the most part focused on WBG.
Menghai Shaman - I should definitely reword Menghai shaman but some part of me was pretty sure that triggered abilities only trigger once. I apologize for that mistake. That shall be fixed! Has to be just panda creature and only search on one non-menghai shaman creature got it.
Pandacious Explosion - Just a fun card and its a burn spell, but my friend changed it to all three colors of the panda army because he could. SO deal with it. Rebounds- so you actually do damage. That pretty much sums it up. So that you have actually done damage.
Divine Branch - meant to combo with the shaman. This card is one of those ones that glued some of the weaker aspects of the deck together. And of course his replacement ability is unique. If every card in magic had Divine Branch's ability, we would have come up with something else. Also it was originally more complicated and for sure reset the damage but I cleaned it up because I thought people would be all like "Oh no I can't read." So I apologize for not expecting you'd find some other way to tell me to fix it.
Rogurr- thats why I added the backstory on how hes 14000 million times older than Nicol Bolas. (I think I did that math in my head right) And like I also said this deck sometimes goes creatureless for long periods of time. Also the creator of this card didn't want it to make a real impact on the game despite me saying it should. So far it hasn't.
Yunnan's Secret - Yunnan's Secret is GG because that is harder to cast for multi color decks which could make better use of the grab two land ability. Otherwise it has the same CC as rampant growth which GG is harder to get so you get your one land untapped. Not quite Harrow but along the same lines.
Knight of the Lotus Temple- I've seen cards with similar ideas to this and I don't have memory issues. Use a counter if you need one, but me and my eidetic memory are content.
Its DeMarcus Von Bearon - One of the only cards that really makes a name for itself on the battlefield and attacks as a 3/1 until you pay 5 with at least WWWB to get a 6/4 which is actually pretty standard. Also the 5/3 after one stage is the only place where he is ultra-powerful, and that is because we couldn't keep him at 0 toughness and wanted to create the differential between power and toughness. Lightning Bolt! Also he ends at a 9/7 for 10 which is only one CC better than the figure of destiny who is an 8/8 for 11, who would win in combat. And thanks for calling it cute. It was originally called curious cub and was a 1 drop 0/0 with calmheart. Also Vigilance is an only-white ability and isn't really meant to be included on hybrids so you've got to spend the WWW for this creature to really become dangerous.
Calmheart - actively discourages attacking - that's why I love calmheart. Have you honestly ever seen Pandas organize into an army and charge over a hill like a bunch of chimpanzees? Nope, but I have seen Pandas covered in the blood of mutilated trespassing hikers. But in all honesty, Path to exile and terminate work just fine. You just have to worry about the occasional Divine Branch and Menghai Shaman.
Look I write in the text every time that we have played with these cards and obviously I still made a couple mistakes but really do you guys not care enough to read that we tested these out. The Panda cards are great and you can say all you want about them being too good, but honestly would it kill you to say "hey cool ideas, you need to fix this part and this part here and there?" Playing against this deck, dropping things like day of judgement and other removal were pretty effective and as he thins out his hand in response, your removal begins to take out aggregate pandas. Also, each time you guys bring up some excellent points, but you also always talk at the computer and not at me. Saying things like that is stupid. First of all I can take the insults, but I'm not going to consider anything you say to be of any real value if it doesn't read like the coherence of a genius level intellect. Also, we paid a lot of attention to the colors and at times you may doubt the elegance of the Panda nation. But the Pandas are a serene and beautiful race of peaceful and respected creatures, so sleeve these up and shuffle them in. This deck is fun.
Venser's Legion
Click it and like it.
Aggressive and out of control, the Wolf King and his soldiers
Winter's Wolves
Everyone loves them, its the Pandas!
Alpha Panda King
I play UW control
Standard - Venser competitive
Venser's Legion
Click it and like it.
Aggressive and out of control, the Wolf King and his soldiers
Winter's Wolves
Everyone loves them, its the Pandas!
Alpha Panda King
I play UW control
Standard - Venser competitive
You asked for feedback. We gave it to you. This card is an absolute mess of bad design decisions. You can keep it how it is if you'd like - that's your prerogative - but I'd question your reasons for posting it here.
Consider this: It simply creates awkward gamestates. Use a counter (or just make it multicoloured).
Black doesn't get 3/1s for BB, which is the issue. Otherwise it's fine, if a little messy.
Yes.
Darling, this is the internet. What did you expect?
Royal Assassin doesn't deal damage, and neither do blue cards in modern magic. Calmheart makes no sense on this card because not only is it not a good blocker, it also has a tap ability that turns it off. It doesn't need or even want Calmheart, so it shouldn't have it. Giving it a keyword just because its a Panda isn't great design IMO.
Neither of those cards remove lands. It doesn't matter if its a token, it's still a land, and both of those cards specify non-land permanents.
Well, its a conglomerate of bad design choices. SO deal with it.
I don't think backstory can be used to balance a card. I think the main problem with these designs is that you're designing a specific, exclusive deck, while we're looking at these cards outside of a vacuum. Sure, if you've got one of him in a very specific deck he may be balance, but outside of that, he's insanely powerful.
It doesn't matter how good your memory is, it matters how every other player's is. It's too easy to forget/lie/cheat with this card unless it uses some kind of counter. You're right that there are other cards that use this method, but I don't think those are very good either.
You may love Calmheart, but other players may not. The reason the mechanic is degenerate is that it kills the tempo of the game. If you're stoping both yourself and your opponent from attacking, nothing is happening. Sure, you can remove the Pandas, but I'd rather lose a 10 minute game than win a 30 minute game. (This is all hypothetical of course, but in this case it really is the principle of the thing.)
Also, you can't use flavor to rationalize a design choice.
You're entitled to your opinion, but so am I. In my opinion, some of these cards have design problems that should be fixed. Even if you don't agree with me, you should at least take my opinion into consideration. The reason we're all so harsh is that we want to improve the designs we see. Some times we go a little too far, but that doesn't mean our opinions are any less relevant. If you don't want to listen to us, that's fine, but if you post your designs here, be prepared to get some criticism. Hopefully you can learn from it.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Comic Book Set
Archester: Frontier of Steam (A steampunk set!)
A Good Place to Start Designing
.......You know, I still can't understand why anyone would make Menghai Forest.