Dementia Bat
Creature — Bat (C)
Flying (This creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with flying or reach.)
When Dementia Bat dies, each player put the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
1/1
Cremation Mori
Creature — Spirit Illusion (C)
When Cremation Mori enters the battlefield, you may exile target card in a graveyard.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. When it enters the battlefield, exile it.) A dream of ash and sorrow.
2/1
Servant of Ikelious
Creature — Human Cleric (C)
Awaken (Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap it. If you do, untap this creature.)
Whenever Servant of Ikelious awakens, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
1/3
What do you guys think about Awaken?
Dreadreader Envoy
Creature — Human Cleric (C)
When Dreadreader Envoy dies, augur 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.)
2/2
Hope Slicer
Creature — Nightmare (C)
Dreamwalk (This creature can’t be blocked by untapped creatures. Tapped creatures can block it.)
: Hope Slicer gains deathtouch until end of turn.
2/1
Dazed Flesheater2B
Creature - Zombie (C)
Lifelink
Awaken (Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap it. If you do, untap this creature.)
Whenever Dazed Flesheater awakens, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
1/4
Lunar Hunter
Creature — Nightmare (C)
Lifelink (Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life.)
Lunar Hunter enters the battlefield with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the number of creature cards in your opponent’s graveyard.
0/0
I'm increasingly thinking this should be uncommon
Ghoulish Nightwalker
Creature — Nightmare (C)
As an additional cost to cast Ghoulish Nightwalker, exile a creature card from an opponent’s graveyard.
5/4
Noctus Bloodwing
Creature — Vampire (C)
Flying
Whenever Noctus Bloodwing attacks or blocks, you lose 2 life. “Power such as mine is always hungry.”
4/1
Extra useful for the BW life drain deck.
Darkscape Lurker
Creature — Nightmare (C)
3/5
Pouncing Murkbeast
Creature — Beast (C)
: Untap Pouncing Murkbeast, it gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Activate this ability only once each turn.
4/4
Endless Insomnia
Enchantment — Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Whenever enchanted creature becomes untapped, its controller loses 2 life.
: Untap enchanted creature.
Is this too complex?
Grim Mantle
Enchantment — Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each creature card in each opponent’s graveyard.
Build around for UB mill aggro
Graveknit
Instant (C)
As an additional cost to cast Graveknit, exile target creature card from a graveyard.
Regenerate target creature. (The next time the creature would be destroyed this turn, it isn’t. Instead tap it, remove all damage from it, and remove it from combat.)
Extra useful for fighting against flashback creatures.
Drown in Misfortune
Instant (C)
Target creature gets -13/-13 until end of turn.
This may be changed as the needs of the set evolve.
Reweave the Lost
Instant (C)
Augur 2 (Look at the top two cards of your library. You may put one of them on top of your library, put the rest into your graveyard.)
Return up to two creature cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Riotous Behaviour
Sorcery (C)
Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains intimidate until end of turn.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. then exile it.)
Withering Nightmares
Sorcery (C)
Target player sacrifices a tapped creature.
Grasping Agony
Sorcery (C)
Target player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. then exile it.)
Horrific Futures
Sorcery (C)
Target player discards two cards.
Augur 1 (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.)
I'll probably come back to give you a fuller commentary later, but right now all I'm going to say is that I'm not a fan of your version of permanent flashback. You just turned it into a free evoke. The reason the "then exile it" text makes sense on instants and sorceries is because there's nowhere else for them to go but into the graveyard, and you don't want people to reuse them indefinitely. I'd really change the ability to:
Flashback(You may cast this card from your graveyard for its mana cost. The next time it would be put into a graveyard, exile instead.)
I'm pretty sure you could just incur a reminder text update and change the flashback ability altogether. This would work for instants and sorceries in exactly the same was as before, and it would take the extra confusion out of flashing back a permanent, because flashback is really just supposed to be casting the card from your graveyard for its mana cost--not some weird variation of evoke/unearth.
I realize you'd have to change a lot of cards--costs especially--to accommodate this change, but right now having two different reminder texts for two different types of cards with the same ability just really isn't working for me. There'll be all sorts of confusion over this.
Servant of Ikelious: I'd make this a 3 drop, as its fairly repeatable life steal. Either that or drop it to 1/2. Other than that, I like Awaken. Trance felt good because it allowed you to defend against Dreamwalk without having to attack, and this carries that on.
Lunar Hunter: I agree that this doesn't feel very common, as its potentially a very high threat lifelink creature.
Endless Insomnia: I want to say this could be common. And all things considering, it can be common. Just be very wary of potential abuse cases.
Grim Mantle: Keep an eye on this card. It probably won't be a concern, but I can imagine this winning people some extended draft matches on its own. Maybe keep trample away from the black uncommons as much as you can.
Reweave the lost: Should probably be a sorcery.
Riotous Behaviour: 1R may be necessary for the flashback.... then again, probably not. Keep an eye on it.
A lot of the others like Graveknit or Withering Nightmares I like quite a lot. And I have to disagree with Withengar: flashback on creatures isn't hard to understand, because every single one of them has an ETB trigger. You get the trigger, you exile the card. Simple.
It does work. Etched Oracle. Clearwater Goblet. Mechanics are allowed to have different reminder text, with minor mechanical differences, if it is across different permanent types. And really, Artifact to Artifact Creature is a lot less of a change than Instant to Creature is, so I'd say the changed text is justified. Flashback is a well known, classic mechanic. People already know how flashback works, and thus, won't be set back by a minor adjustment such as this.
That's a pretty valid comparison. I just really can't get behind the "exile it when it enters the battlefield" thing, because that almost totally defeats the purpose of putting flashback on a permanent. At that point you're just using the card the way you'd use an instant or sorcery spell with flashback. The only difference is that the first time around there's a body attached. Seems pretty shoehorned.
Having a dual purpose mechanic that changes functionality isn't unprecedented, both Sunburst and Prowl are previous example of this.
As for reminder text, the changes between permanent types is very minor. (four word to be exact)
Also think of how it also synergizes with Awaken, Augur etc. My current thinking is that the gameplay is worth any minor issues.
that almost totally defeats the purpose of putting flashback on a permanent.
Well considering flashback on a permanent hasn't been done before, the purpose should be to create the best gameplay. Not just merge Unearth and Flashback into one mechanic.
How can you in good conscience compare what I proposed to a combination of unearth and flashback when this is almost the exact same thing as Evoke, but with the stipulation you can only use it from your graveyard?
Look, I'm just saying there's probably a way to bring it closer to actually recurring the spell from your graveyard (like you do with instants and sorceries with flashback) instead of just attaching ETBs to every permanent with flashback so that it does something when you flash it back. Like I said before, the "then exile it" thing works on instants and sorceries because you usually only cast them for the effect you get on resolution. Permanents are different--you generally want them to stick around. This incarnation of flashback doesn't account for that difference in any way.
How can you in good conscience compare what I proposed to a combination of unearth and flashback when this is almost the exact same thing as Evoke with the stipulation you can only use it from your graveyard.
Good conscience......? Should I have a bad conscience for making a design comparison as a game designer?
Let me tell you what I think of the the mechanic you proposed.
What you proposed just simply has massive memory issues for one thing. Really stalls the board. It isn't elegant and in my opinion is far less like the original implementation of flashback than my version.
I could see it being tweaked to be workable but it doesn't fit my set.
Anyway to replace Lunar Hunter (now uncommon) I've added this: Dazed Flesheater2B
Creature - Zombie (C)
Lifelink
Awaken (Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap it. If you do, untap this creature.)
Whenever Dazed Flesheater awakens, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
1/4
Good conscience......? Should I have a bad conscience for making a design comparison as a game designer?
Pffff haha. Definitely not. I was just tired and irritable. Make your set however you'd like--I just wanted to see if I could persuade you to consider a different approach. Clearly, flailing my arms and biting you is not very convincing.
I'm too lazy to comment on the individual cards, but I have some words for the mechanics:
Permanent Flashback
I believe you know my feelings on this matter. :b
Awaken
Pretty simple. Trading blockers for triggers works. I'm not quite sure I get the flavor, though. Are your creatures waking up your other creatures that are sleeping? And it's still somewhat unclear whether you can awaken a creature that's already untapped, because it doesn't say anywhere on the card that that's a prerequisite. That could be interpreted very easily as an additional effect.
Augur
Self-mill and draw fixing. I can buy that. It seems like you're not being too generous with the numbers here, which is the right way to go, since this is probably more powerful than Scry (giving you ammunition in the graveyard and fixing your next draw, as opposed to just fixing your next draw or two).
Dreamwalk
This is a really cool ability. The only problem I can honestly see is that the tapped creatures are presumably dreaming, right? So in the spirit of __walk, they should be able to trespass more easily because this is their territory. Instead, it seems to be harder for them to move through dreams.
I currently have it at common to combat flashback, I'll keep it in mind though if it is too powerful during playtests. Remember that unlike a lot of graveyard exile it is sorcery speed so isn't as powerful.
Servant of Ikelious - Awaken looks like interesting mechanic (and definitely offers much more design space than Trance). I just want to ask you one thing - when exactly Servant of Ikelious awakens? When he's untapped? Or when the creature becomes tapped? Also I think that this card is probably little undercosted.
Your right that the wording is a lit ambiguous. I'll change it.
Dazed Flesheater - Looks fair... But I don't like the fact, that his awaken trigger is a lot of time technically almost identical to Servant of Ikelious.
Good point, I'll look at changing one of them.
Ghoulish Nightwalker - This definitely should exile creature card from your graveyard, not opponent's. And even then it probably needs to be smaller (5/3?).
Makeshift Mauler was my base here. Relying on an opponents graveyard makes this harder to cast for a lot of decks (which I want) but makes it really good in the UB mill deck. I'm happy to reduce toughness if this is too strong but I'll wait till my next playtest.
Pouncing Murkbeast - I don't like this card very much... It's virtually 6/6 with vigilance, which doesn't feel like common.
Hmm when you put it that way... I'll see what I can do.
Grim Mantle - I don't like build around me Auras, because... They're Auras, so they aren't very reliable... I think that creature with similiar ability will be much better (for example common variation of Wight of Precinct Six or something like Undergrowth Scavenger)
I never said it was supposed to be a good build around....
Graveknit - Exiling card from opponent's graveyard as additional cost looks weird... I think this should be only from your graveyard.
I'll change that.
Drown in Misfortune - Nice uncommon, -13/-13 for 5 mana definitely isn't common card...
Dreamwalk
This is a really cool ability. The only problem I can honestly see is that the tapped creatures are presumably dreaming, right? So in the spirit of __walk, they should be able to trespass more easily because this is their territory. Instead, it seems to be harder for them to move through dreams.
The flavor of this is that the dream creatures that have /dreamwalk can attack you through your dreams, which means yu can only defend against them if your asleep (tapped).
But how are they attacking you through your dreams if you're awake? The flavor here is that the only place they can be stopped is in your dreams, making it seem as though they attack you better in the waking world than in your sleep.
Comments in BLUE
Dementia Bat
Creature — Bat (C)
Flying (This creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with flying or reach.)
When Dementia Bat dies, each player put the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
1/1
Cremation Mori
Creature — Spirit Illusion (C)
When Cremation Mori enters the battlefield, you may exile target card in a graveyard.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. When it enters the battlefield, exile it.)
A dream of ash and sorrow.
2/1
Servant of Ikelious
Creature — Human Cleric (C)
Awaken (Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap it. If you do, untap this creature.)
Whenever Servant of Ikelious awakens, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
1/3
What do you guys think about Awaken?
Dreadreader Envoy
Creature — Human Cleric (C)
When Dreadreader Envoy dies, augur 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.)
2/2
Hope Slicer
Creature — Nightmare (C)
Dreamwalk (This creature can’t be blocked by untapped creatures. Tapped creatures can block it.)
: Hope Slicer gains deathtouch until end of turn.
2/1
Dazed Flesheater 2B
Creature - Zombie (C)
Lifelink
Awaken (Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap it. If you do, untap this creature.)
Whenever Dazed Flesheater awakens, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
1/4
Creature — Nightmare (C)
Lifelink (Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life.)
Lunar Hunter enters the battlefield with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the number of creature cards in your opponent’s graveyard.
0/0
I'm increasingly thinking this should be uncommon
Ghoulish Nightwalker
Creature — Nightmare (C)
As an additional cost to cast Ghoulish Nightwalker, exile a creature card from an opponent’s graveyard.
5/4
Noctus Bloodwing
Creature — Vampire (C)
Flying
Whenever Noctus Bloodwing attacks or blocks, you lose 2 life.
“Power such as mine is always hungry.”
4/1
Extra useful for the BW life drain deck.
Darkscape Lurker
Creature — Nightmare (C)
3/5
Pouncing Murkbeast
Creature — Beast (C)
: Untap Pouncing Murkbeast, it gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Activate this ability only once each turn.
4/4
Endless Insomnia
Enchantment — Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Whenever enchanted creature becomes untapped, its controller loses 2 life.
: Untap enchanted creature.
Is this too complex?
Grim Mantle
Enchantment — Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each creature card in each opponent’s graveyard.
Build around for UB mill aggro
Graveknit
Instant (C)
As an additional cost to cast Graveknit, exile target creature card from a graveyard.
Regenerate target creature. (The next time the creature would be destroyed this turn, it isn’t. Instead tap it, remove all damage from it, and remove it from combat.)
Extra useful for fighting against flashback creatures.
Drown in Misfortune
Instant (C)
Target creature gets -13/-13 until end of turn.
This may be changed as the needs of the set evolve.
Reweave the Lost
Instant (C)
Augur 2 (Look at the top two cards of your library. You may put one of them on top of your library, put the rest into your graveyard.)
Return up to two creature cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Riotous Behaviour
Sorcery (C)
Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains intimidate until end of turn.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. then exile it.)
Withering Nightmares
Sorcery (C)
Target player sacrifices a tapped creature.
Grasping Agony
Sorcery (C)
Target player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its flashback cost. then exile it.)
Horrific Futures
Sorcery (C)
Target player discards two cards.
Augur 1 (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard.)
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
Flashback (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its mana cost. The next time it would be put into a graveyard, exile instead.)
I'm pretty sure you could just incur a reminder text update and change the flashback ability altogether. This would work for instants and sorceries in exactly the same was as before, and it would take the extra confusion out of flashing back a permanent, because flashback is really just supposed to be casting the card from your graveyard for its mana cost--not some weird variation of evoke/unearth.
I realize you'd have to change a lot of cards--costs especially--to accommodate this change, but right now having two different reminder texts for two different types of cards with the same ability just really isn't working for me. There'll be all sorts of confusion over this.
Lunar Hunter: I agree that this doesn't feel very common, as its potentially a very high threat lifelink creature.
Endless Insomnia: I want to say this could be common. And all things considering, it can be common. Just be very wary of potential abuse cases.
Grim Mantle: Keep an eye on this card. It probably won't be a concern, but I can imagine this winning people some extended draft matches on its own. Maybe keep trample away from the black uncommons as much as you can.
Reweave the lost: Should probably be a sorcery.
Riotous Behaviour: 1R may be necessary for the flashback.... then again, probably not. Keep an eye on it.
A lot of the others like Graveknit or Withering Nightmares I like quite a lot. And I have to disagree with Withengar: flashback on creatures isn't hard to understand, because every single one of them has an ETB trigger. You get the trigger, you exile the card. Simple.
Avant Block: Avant -- Stormfront
Avant Block: Avant -- Stormfront
As for reminder text, the changes between permanent types is very minor. (four word to be exact)
Also think of how it also synergizes with Awaken, Augur etc. My current thinking is that the gameplay is worth any minor issues.
See this thread for the rules changes required for Permanent Flashback
EDIT:
Well considering flashback on a permanent hasn't been done before, the purpose should be to create the best gameplay. Not just merge Unearth and Flashback into one mechanic.
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
Look, I'm just saying there's probably a way to bring it closer to actually recurring the spell from your graveyard (like you do with instants and sorceries with flashback) instead of just attaching ETBs to every permanent with flashback so that it does something when you flash it back. Like I said before, the "then exile it" thing works on instants and sorceries because you usually only cast them for the effect you get on resolution. Permanents are different--you generally want them to stick around. This incarnation of flashback doesn't account for that difference in any way.
Good conscience......? Should I have a bad conscience for making a design comparison as a game designer?
Let me tell you what I think of the the mechanic you proposed.
What you proposed just simply has massive memory issues for one thing. Really stalls the board. It isn't elegant and in my opinion is far less like the original implementation of flashback than my version.
I could see it being tweaked to be workable but it doesn't fit my set.
Anyway to replace Lunar Hunter (now uncommon) I've added this:
Dazed Flesheater 2B
Creature - Zombie (C)
Lifelink
Awaken (Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap it. If you do, untap this creature.)
Whenever Dazed Flesheater awakens, it gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
1/4
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD
I do like the awaken mechanic, though I feel that the Servant is undercoated.
Ghoulish Nightwalker seems really pushed for a common, even with flashback being a factor on creatures. Maybe knock off a point of toughness.
Keep in mind that Drown in Misfortune gives black an easy way to null regeneration, which it normally doesn't do so much these days.
A good batch overall though.
Permanent Flashback
I believe you know my feelings on this matter. :b
Awaken
Pretty simple. Trading blockers for triggers works. I'm not quite sure I get the flavor, though. Are your creatures waking up your other creatures that are sleeping? And it's still somewhat unclear whether you can awaken a creature that's already untapped, because it doesn't say anywhere on the card that that's a prerequisite. That could be interpreted very easily as an additional effect.
Augur
Self-mill and draw fixing. I can buy that. It seems like you're not being too generous with the numbers here, which is the right way to go, since this is probably more powerful than Scry (giving you ammunition in the graveyard and fixing your next draw, as opposed to just fixing your next draw or two).
Dreamwalk
This is a really cool ability. The only problem I can honestly see is that the tapped creatures are presumably dreaming, right? So in the spirit of __walk, they should be able to trespass more easily because this is their territory. Instead, it seems to be harder for them to move through dreams.
Still, cool ability.
I currently have it at common to combat flashback, I'll keep it in mind though if it is too powerful during playtests. Remember that unlike a lot of graveyard exile it is sorcery speed so isn't as powerful.
Your right that the wording is a lit ambiguous. I'll change it.
Good point, I'll look at changing one of them.
Makeshift Mauler was my base here. Relying on an opponents graveyard makes this harder to cast for a lot of decks (which I want) but makes it really good in the UB mill deck. I'm happy to reduce toughness if this is too strong but I'll wait till my next playtest.
Hmm when you put it that way... I'll see what I can do.
I never said it was supposed to be a good build around....
I'll change that.
Tragic slip says hi. I may move this to 6 mana.
The flavor of this is that the dream creatures that have /dreamwalk can attack you through your dreams, which means yu can only defend against them if your asleep (tapped).
Are you designing commons? Check out my primer on NWO.
Interested in making a custom set? Check out my Set skeleton and archetype primer.
I also write articles about getting started with custom card creation.
Go and PLAYTEST your designs, you will learn more in a single playtests than a dozen discussions.
My custom sets:
Dreamscape
Coins of Mercalis [COMPLETE]
Exodus of Zendikar - ON HOLD