Background: Primal Scream is my custom-set inspired by muraganda petroglyphs. I'm thinking it should be a green-focused set, with the the following themes: GW - Populate W - Adviser tribal/Rule setting GU - Synergy with returning lands/playing lands U - "Making an exception of yourself" (Blue features a floating city motif and the blue civilization is a refugee from another plane.) GR - Entwine matters. R - Elemental Worship GB - Sacrifice B - ?
I'm thinking white should get rule-setting cards (with the occasional enemy color mirror just to be fun). I'm worried about two things - (1) will this be fun, and (2) will it lead to too complex board states?
Because Beast Rider gives utility to beasts, I plan on printing a variety of vanilla or french vanilla beast and beast-token generators. White's advisers will be in direct opposition to this kind of design; each of the tribe will be a rule-setter in one form or another.
Veles, Master Adviser2W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a creature type.
Advisers and creatures of the chosen type get +1/+2.
Partner
2/3
(I plan on including cards that let you tutor for partners)
Heroic Calling1W
Sorcery (R)
Choose 1
- Search your library for a legendary creature card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Shuffle.
- Search your library for two legendary creature cards with partner, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Shuffle.
Entwine G
Soso, the Vigilant1W
Legendary Creature - Human Knight Adviser (R)
Vigilance
Creatures with haste cannot attack. T: Target creature gains haste until end of turn.
Partner
2/2
Gar the Reckless1R
Legendary Creature - Goblin Warrior Adviser (R)
Haste
Creatures with vigilance cannot block. T: Target creature gains vigilance until end of turn.
Partner
2/2
Mulet, Curserune Priest1W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
Lifelink
Non-mana activated abilities of creatures can't be activated.
Partner
1/3
High Priest of the One Path1W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
Players cannot entwine spells.
Players cannot return land cards to their owner's hand.
Players cannot play more than one land per turn.
2/3
(Note: This shuts down the moonfolk/elf combo of returning lands to your hand to replay, and it shuts off the green/red entwine theme.)
Milos, Mentoring Shaman2G
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman Advisor (R)
Whenever you would populate, instead create a 1/1 green insect creature token, then populate.
Partner
2/3
Garpeth, Fester Shaman2B
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman Advisor (R)
Whenever a player would populate, instead that player creates a 1/1 green insect creature token.
Whenever an insect enters the battlefield, you gain 1 life and each opponent loses 1 life.
Partner
3/2
Sigel, Shaman Elite1G
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman Advisor (R)
Flash
~ cannot be countered by spells or effects.
Creature spells you control cannot be countered by spells or effects.
Partner
2/3
Magus of the Prison2W
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 2 for each creature he or she controls that's attacking you.
2/3
Stoset Prison Guard1W
Creature - Human Solider Adviser (U)
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 1 or 1 life for each creature he or she controls that's attacking you.
2/2
Border PatrolW
Creature - Human Rebel (U)
When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Creatures of the chosen type enter the battlefield tapped.
1/1
Aura EnlightenedW
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (C)
Whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield, gain 1 life.
1/2
Patent ClerkW
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (C)
Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield, gain 1 life.
1/2
Census Taker1W
Creature - Human Adviser (U)
Whenever a player creates one or more tokens, you may draw a card.
2/2
Veles, Master Adviser-This guy is way too pushed. It's a 3/5 for 3 that is also a lord to any type. And it has partner? Geez. Anyhow, I strongly, strongly advise (no pun intended) not to use partner outside an explicitly commander-centric set. The fact that you want to include cards that interact with partner doesn't help. In fact it hurts even more because you're trying force players to use a mechanic in a format in which it does absolutely nothing! This is an excellent example of why explicitly commander-centric cards are not included in standard sets.
Heroic Calling-Again, don't include this card outside of a commander product.
Soso the Vigilant-What? This card is weird. Usually white hoses haste in the form of ETB tapped.
Gar the Reckless-What? This card is weird. This makes your forced inclusion of partner even more painful, since these two cards only make sense in the context of Commander.
Mulet, Curserune Priest-Eh, fine hatebear, other than partner.
High Priest of the One Path-Too narrow. Gives me bad flashbacks to Kamigawa's Arcane hosers.
Milos, Mentoring Shaman-An otherwise fine card, except for the meaningless mechanic.
Garpeth, Fester Shaman-See my High Priest comment
Sigel, Shaman Elite-Magic has abilities, not "effects." That's Yugioh terminology. Flash makes this a little too pushed.
Magus of the Prison-Neat Ghostly Prison with legs. I like it.
Stoset Prison Guard-White life loss made sense with the Orzhov and New Phyrexia, but it needs more justification here. What is Stoset?
Border Patrol-Should be rare. This card would be extremely obnoxious in a tribal-heavy limited format.
Aura Enlightened & Patent Clerk-Seem like fine commons to me.
Census Taker-Looks like a fine build-around-me limited card.
Sacrifice Police-These kinds of effects generally don't belong on commons. Being strictly better than Tajuru Preserver is alarming, and Preserver doesn't deserve to be dropped to common.
The "populate replacement" partners are too specific to not have populate printed on the card; it's not a common enough mechanic otherwise. They should probably also have white in their colors.
Generally partners have synergistic effects, but aren't incomplete alone (see: Ishai, who is a threatening attacker by himself, and Reyhan, who comes into play with his own counters.)
A better pairing there would be one who populates as an activated ability and also has a replacement effect for populating, while the other populates as a triggered ability and has another triggered ability for creatures entering the battlefield.
Soso and Gar should both say "creatures opponents control with X can't Y", otherwise the 'cleverness' of the activated ability is lost since it's functionally identical to just saying "target creature can't Y this turn." Making it only apply to opponent's creatures gives it a duality that emphasizes the cards' synergy with themselves. Maybe increase their CMC to 3 for the added functionality and bump soso's toughness and gar's power by one to keep them relevant and make them feel a bit more "color-appropriate".
GW - Populate
W - Adviser tribal/Rule setting
GU - Synergy with returning lands/playing lands
U - "Making an exception of yourself" (Blue features a floating city motif and the blue civilization is a refugee from another plane.)
GR - Entwine matters.
R - Elemental Worship
GB - Sacrifice
B - ?
I'm thinking white should get rule-setting cards (with the occasional enemy color mirror just to be fun). I'm worried about two things - (1) will this be fun, and (2) will it lead to too complex board states?
Because Beast Rider gives utility to beasts, I plan on printing a variety of vanilla or french vanilla beast and beast-token generators. White's advisers will be in direct opposition to this kind of design; each of the tribe will be a rule-setter in one form or another.
Veles, Master Adviser2W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a creature type.
Advisers and creatures of the chosen type get +1/+2.
Partner
2/3
(I plan on including cards that let you tutor for partners)
Heroic Calling1W
Sorcery (R)
Choose 1
- Search your library for a legendary creature card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Shuffle.
- Search your library for two legendary creature cards with partner, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Shuffle.
Entwine G
Soso, the Vigilant1W
Legendary Creature - Human Knight Adviser (R)
Vigilance
Creatures with haste cannot attack.
T: Target creature gains haste until end of turn.
Partner
2/2
Gar the Reckless1R
Legendary Creature - Goblin Warrior Adviser (R)
Haste
Creatures with vigilance cannot block.
T: Target creature gains vigilance until end of turn.
Partner
2/2
Mulet, Curserune Priest1W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
Lifelink
Non-mana activated abilities of creatures can't be activated.
Partner
1/3
(Note: This shuts off the block's signature mechanic, beast rider. See: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/771192-lets-ride )
High Priest of the One Path1W
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
Players cannot entwine spells.
Players cannot return land cards to their owner's hand.
Players cannot play more than one land per turn.
2/3
(Note: This shuts down the moonfolk/elf combo of returning lands to your hand to replay, and it shuts off the green/red entwine theme.)
Milos, Mentoring Shaman2G
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman Advisor (R)
Whenever you would populate, instead create a 1/1 green insect creature token, then populate.
Partner
2/3
Garpeth, Fester Shaman2B
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman Advisor (R)
Whenever a player would populate, instead that player creates a 1/1 green insect creature token.
Whenever an insect enters the battlefield, you gain 1 life and each opponent loses 1 life.
Partner
3/2
Sigel, Shaman Elite1G
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman Advisor (R)
Flash
~ cannot be countered by spells or effects.
Creature spells you control cannot be countered by spells or effects.
Partner
2/3
Magus of the Prison2W
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (R)
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 2 for each creature he or she controls that's attacking you.
2/3
Stoset Prison Guard 1W
Creature - Human Solider Adviser (U)
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 1 or 1 life for each creature he or she controls that's attacking you.
2/2
Border PatrolW
Creature - Human Rebel (U)
When ~ enters the battlefield, choose a creature type. Creatures of the chosen type enter the battlefield tapped.
1/1
Aura EnlightenedW
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (C)
Whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield, gain 1 life.
1/2
Patent ClerkW
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (C)
Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield, gain 1 life.
1/2
Census Taker1W
Creature - Human Adviser (U)
Whenever a player creates one or more tokens, you may draw a card.
2/2
Sacrifice Police1W
Creature - Human Cleric Adviser (C)
Players cannot sacrifice creatures.
2/2
Heroic Calling-Again, don't include this card outside of a commander product.
Soso the Vigilant-What? This card is weird. Usually white hoses haste in the form of ETB tapped.
Gar the Reckless-What? This card is weird. This makes your forced inclusion of partner even more painful, since these two cards only make sense in the context of Commander.
Mulet, Curserune Priest-Eh, fine hatebear, other than partner.
High Priest of the One Path-Too narrow. Gives me bad flashbacks to Kamigawa's Arcane hosers.
Milos, Mentoring Shaman-An otherwise fine card, except for the meaningless mechanic.
Garpeth, Fester Shaman-See my High Priest comment
Sigel, Shaman Elite-Magic has abilities, not "effects." That's Yugioh terminology. Flash makes this a little too pushed.
Magus of the Prison-Neat Ghostly Prison with legs. I like it.
Stoset Prison Guard-White life loss made sense with the Orzhov and New Phyrexia, but it needs more justification here. What is Stoset?
Border Patrol-Should be rare. This card would be extremely obnoxious in a tribal-heavy limited format.
Aura Enlightened & Patent Clerk-Seem like fine commons to me.
Census Taker-Looks like a fine build-around-me limited card.
Sacrifice Police-These kinds of effects generally don't belong on commons. Being strictly better than Tajuru Preserver is alarming, and Preserver doesn't deserve to be dropped to common.
Generally partners have synergistic effects, but aren't incomplete alone (see: Ishai, who is a threatening attacker by himself, and Reyhan, who comes into play with his own counters.)
A better pairing there would be one who populates as an activated ability and also has a replacement effect for populating, while the other populates as a triggered ability and has another triggered ability for creatures entering the battlefield.
Soso and Gar should both say "creatures opponents control with X can't Y", otherwise the 'cleverness' of the activated ability is lost since it's functionally identical to just saying "target creature can't Y this turn." Making it only apply to opponent's creatures gives it a duality that emphasizes the cards' synergy with themselves. Maybe increase their CMC to 3 for the added functionality and bump soso's toughness and gar's power by one to keep them relevant and make them feel a bit more "color-appropriate".
- Rabid Wombat