MTG Salvation

It's definatly a neat card, the drawback is what makes it intresting. The choice between using your creatures or their's. I think it's fine as is. Very flavorful.

Flavor 10/10
Power 7/10
Uniquness - 5/10
Overall 7.5


Herald of Hope - XXGW
Legendary Creature - Hydra Avatar
Comes into play with X +1/+1 counters on it.
~ can block an additional creature for each +1/+1 counter on it.
X, Remove X +1/+1 counter from ~: Prevent the next X damage that would be dealt from a source of your choice, then add that many +1/+1 counter to it.
0/0

Herald of Hope -- Definitely needs some flavor to explain how a hydra (a fearsome and feared creature) is viewed as a herald. The third ability is a little confusing; what does "it" at the end of the ability refer to -- the hydra, or the source (...or possibly the creature it's shielding?)

It might be simpler to reduce the last ability to its lowest common denominator -- "1, remove a +1/+1 counter ... prevent the next 1 damage" You can still prevent greater sums of damage by activating the ability multiple times.

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Lord Ichibarra's Timepiece -- 3
Artifact
At the end of each turn, untap the last permanent you control that became tapped that turn.

The wording should be "at the beginning of each end step" , and although it's not impossible to keep track of what you did and didn't tap. Works well with tap effects, but attacking creatures all tap simultaneously so you may have to reword for that too?

Law of the Jungle 3GG
Sorcery (Rare)
For each creature, that creature's controller chooses another target creature he or she doesn't control. Those creatures fight each other. (They each deal damage to each other equal to their power.)
"It is the fate of the weak to further the strong."
-Darma, Alpha Beastmaster

Hmm..... A bit difficult to evaluate, but may be doable. It needs creatures, you need to pump up your creatures first, and it's prone to all sort of -X effects. Essentially a Wrath, most of the time, unless you have Rhonas.


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Watarach, Wandering Charmer 3UU
Legendary creature - Human Advisor (R)
3UU, T: Gain control of target creature, then its controller gains control of target land you control. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
"I have no need for realm, only companions."
3/3

Comments?

Law of the Jungle - I see a couple of issues with it, mostly from it being symmetrical. First, what is the order targets are chosen, the second is honestly it has the potential to be a bookkeeping night mare, I would simply drop the Symmetry from it. Otherwise I like the card, it still has the potential to be a semi wrath, and I think that would be the closest to a wrath Green should get.

Watarach, Wandering Charmer
I like it as it is, I like the idea of an unfair trade. (Granted I'm not a big fan of theft effects. But here and there...)

Darkening Frost - UUU
Sorcery
Tap target creature an opponent controls. It doesn't untap during it's controllers next untap step. Gain control of that creature (This effect doesn't end).

I think between the triple U, and the drawback, it's cost is fair. 4 feels to high for it, and 1UU feels to low.

Darkening Frost -- It's a nice combination of effects. I'm surprised it hasn't been done before!

It needs to be 2UU. That's the same cost as Control Magic (and that's an o-l-d card), which gains control of the creature immediately, but has the drawback of being disenchantable. Even if you don't get use of the creature immediately, you're still robbing your opponent of its use. Plus, blue has all sorts of untap shenanigans, or it could be sacrificed to pay for some bigger ability.

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Pride of Leadership -- 2WW
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Whenever enchanted creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller creates that many 1/1 white Follower creatures.
When enchanted creature dies, exile all Followers.

Pollenbright wings v.2.0 - and I think honestly a little bit better. I'm having problems judging this card, in the current standard, it would be to expensive, in standards of the past it would be undercosted.

Mirror Reality - 4UUU
Enchantment
Whenever a creature attacks (Nontoken ETB?), put a copy of that creature onto the battlefield, except it is an illusion the "Whenever this is the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it."

As in, put that Illusion on the field under your control? Well, for 7 mana, that would've been.... well, potentially too busted, but if the copy goes to the same controller as the attacking creature.... A tad too expensive at 7, but indeed needs to be expensive.


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Swarmform 3GG
Enchantment (R)
2G: Exile target creature you control. If you do, create a number of 1/1 green Insect creature tokens equal to that creature's power to a minimum of one.
1G, exile one or more Insect creatures you control: Return target creature card exiled by Swarmform with power equal to or less than the number of Insects you exile this way onto the battlefield under its owner's control.

The limitation of at least exiling an Insect is mostly due to things like Clockwork Hydra... And yes, I deliberately word it so that in the event your creature has been debuffed to oblivion, you can still get something. Okay with you?

That's... An interesting implementation of a transformation effect. It's a great way to clear out -1/-1 counters from really big hitters and resetting high-end Clockworks, like Clockwork Hydra. For creatures that come into play with numerous counters, it lets you generate massive numbers of Insect tokens fairly rapidly. But the cards able to make this problematically efficient are very rare. Clockwork Dragon gives you a net gain of five tokens for five mana, which is fairly reasonable. Resetting it takes other creatures to generate tokens, but is still not causing a huge amount of trouble.

The most problematic feature of this, I suppose, is that it renders those high-efficiency "cyclers" utterly unremovable, and keeping two mana free to recover them at the last moment is not a huge penalty. But this isn't actually problematic outside of a rare few absurdly high counter density creatures. I mean, it's also unlimited use flickering, but at five mana a pop and being shut down by field damage instants, it isn't effective enough to be problematic in its capacity to remove targets in the middle of targeting.

I mean, Doubling Season, as usual, utterly destroys the balance of the card, but if we judged by combo potential with inherently massively broken cards, we'd never see anything remotely interesting as balanced. A partial solution to that is using Phasing instead of Exile, which at least cuts off doubling ETB counters, but using archaic mechanics that were always overcomplicated to work around overpowered cards that render so many other cards broken combo pieces is, again, not exactly productive.

Have a Sliver inspired by an idea I had for modeling Spitting Sliver in D&D:

Volley Sliver 2WG
Creature - Sliver
Slivers you control have Double Strike and "If this creature is unblocked after First Strike damage, it gains Trample."
2/2

---

The idea is making ranged attacks while Charging as the first strike M:tG wise, with the second being the normal Charge attack routines. Hypothetically, I could keyword this particular setup of conditional Trample, but it'd be so absurdly niche that it would be redundant.

I'm not quite certain that that's how the rules reference "first strike damage" -- it's just a step of the combat phase, I believe, with no special moniker. It probably deserves one.

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Ratapalan Armsmaster -- 1WW
Creature - Human Duelist
First strike
Ratapalana Armsmaster has doublestrike as long as it's not blocked by a creature with first strike or doublestrike.
"I have matched your blade with my steely wit!"
2/3

Hmmm... I think this guy may need to have weaker stat, like lower toughness, but I may be wrong. If the ability is worded as is, that means when it is unblocked, it also gains double strike, which can be scary. Although maybe I am overreacting, since 2/2 double striker for 2 does exist, even if it needs some conditions fulfilled (Metalcraft, for example; forgot the name of the dude)


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Unforeseen Violence 1BB
Sorcery (U)
You may cast Unforeseen Violence without paying its mana cost if you have not drawn any card this turn.
Destroy target creature.
Sometimes it's better to strike without thinking.

Essentially sorcery Murder, but if you have, say, Maralen of the Mornsong or Archmage Ascension, it's possible to have this free. Comments?

Cute; there's also the Words cycle (Words of Waste and its kin). But as you point out, it's just another card but with two restrictions on when and how it can be cast. Unfortunately, you can't really make it any cheaper -- there's already Terror and Walk the Plank and so many others -- that it's cost-reduction ability seems a little bit wasted. It's a good idea, though; it just needs a different home.

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Velvet Gloves -- W
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
If enchanted creature would deal damage, its controller gains that much life instead.


(I feel like adding "When enchanted creature is dealt damage, sacrifice ~" for a near-perfect "now the gloves come off!" reference; would that make the card too complicated?)

Huh. At first, I thought you forgot Lifelink was a thing, but the damage prevention causes Lifelink to fail to function. It's a rare case of an Aura that can be useful when applied to an enemy creature, even though the effect is intended to be friendly-only. This is because you can stick in on an enemy as a discounted Pacifism with the "cost" of your opponent gaining health whenever it would normally deal damage. Hundred-Handed One is a good target, as it can block a usually-practically-infinite(Really only Elves and Slivers reliably get over 100 creatures) number of enemies and doesn't need to deal damage to be useful as a blocker.

Have a crosspost from the Commander's Tools Game, for Atraxa, Praetors' Voice:

Quicksplice Neurogel 2GU
Creature - Ooze
Graft 2, Flash, First Strike
Creatures with +1/+1 counters you control have First Strike
0/0

---

The synergy is in Proliferate applying to +1/+1 counters. And First Strike not being on Atraxa.

First strike in those colors feel weird, but otherwise the card itself is generally fine, cost-wise.


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Lesson Of Betrayal 4RR
Sorcery (R)
Target creature deals damage equal to its power to its controller, then that player draws that many cards.
"A betrayal hurts, but as with anything else, we can always learn something from it."

You can cast it on yourself for a one-shot, semi-unreliable Yawgmoth's Bargain, or cast it on an opponent's Eldrazi for a killing blow. Comments?

Being in red is a vital limiter, as there's very few decks with large Red inclusion that also have the life gain to make this a problem. Elf decks are the big thing to worry about, particularly with an Eldrazi titan present to reshuffle the graveyard. But this is getting to self-mill combos and multi-Mythic strategies, so it's mostly just a way to get out of the dreadful topdeck situation at the cost of some life. And, as mentioned, it can kill the enemy by making them hit themselves with a big creature. It can also mill them if they survive.

Have a crosspost from Work that Name:

Building a Legacy 1WWR
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Whenever enchanted creature destroys a creature controlled by an opponent, put a charge counter on Building a Legacy.
Enchanted creature has Renown X, where X is the number of charge counters on Building a Legacy
If enchanted creature dies and is Renowned, you may move Building a Legacy to another creature you control.

---

It's an Enchantment that rewards consistently landing hits to the opponent's face, with stuff like Hundred-Handed One being good targets due to a chance to kill a lot of enemies in one go. Popping off Tempting Licid gets a similar synergy of being able to wrack up kills once you land the Renown status to get a larger bonus next time. Above all else, it's something to carry you through matches against absurd life gain.

I'm a little unsure about the wording "whenever enchanted creature destroys a creature". Creatures blocking in combat cause combat damage, which is added to any other damage the creature takes, and it's a state-based effect that causes a creature that has taken damage equal or greater than its toughness to be destroyed. Very cool card, though.

So I noticed that the digital-only cards from the old Microprose "Shandalar" game are not in the Gatherer, which I assume means that cards could be created that share the same name as those cards. WotC effectively is pretending those Shandalar cards never existed. I thought about the one card that really sums up those cards as far as what they do differently from normal cards, and how it could be best recreated in a functional playable card.

For reference, the original card was this:
Whimsy XUU
Sorcery
Play X random fast effects

To actually resolve this card, the game would look through a list of all of the instant spells and all of the activated abilities on permanents, and pick a random one, and do so X times. Targets were also chosen at random. It was common for it to generate a sequence of useless effects (Lifelace, regenerate a creature that isn't about to die, etc.) and then use the Nevinyrral's Disk ability.

My suggestion on how to remake this card as close to the original:
---------------------------------------------------------
Whimsy XUU
Sorcery
Do the following X times:
Reveal cards from your library until you reveal an instant or a permanent with an activated ability, which can legally be activated now. Put a copy of that instant or ability on the stack. If this is the first iteration of X, you control the copy. Otherwise, control of the copy switches to the player to the left of the one who controlled the previous copy. Put all cards revealed on the bottom of your library in a random order.

If you reveal the last card in your library without finding an instant or playable activated ability, nothing goes on the stack and further iterations through X are ignored.
---------------------------------------------------------

Sooo..... we acticate an ability or cast an instant, then everyone gets to join in the fun? Um... Okay, wait, first thing first, I prefer the second version; not many people understands fast effects, much less if it's random. Anyway, back to the point... I think this card might feel a tad too pricey for something that can backfire on you, but then again, it's half-X for your benefit, so maybe it really does need that double blue.


Massive burn?

Solarblaze Runner 1R
Creature - Elemental (U)
Haste
T: Solarblaze Runner deals 5 damage to target player who has more life than his or her starting life total.
The sun burns brighter for those who live better.
1/1

So at best, this guy deals 4 damage (5 damage to someone with 21 life/41 life depending on format), after which it's just a 1/1 with haste. Comments?


EDIT:

Solarblaze Runner 1R
Creature - Elemental (U)
Haste
T: Solarblaze Runner deals 6 damage to target player who has more life than his or her starting life total.
The sun burns brighter for those who live better.
2/1

Its an interesting design space for sure, punishing players above their starting life, but its also a very narrow space, I mean, the vast majority of decks in all formats either ignore their life total or treat it as a disposable resource, so barring shenanigans like grove of the burnwillows you can't really reliably set it off, and even in that case, its just going to activate once to fairly mediocre effect.
I think what might be more interesting use of that design space is if you had other effects than damage or life loss, something repeatable or punishing other resources and board position. Because as long as the ability just deals damage, all it does is deactivate its own activation condition, which at starting life means it won't ever move you anywhere close to winning. As a specific hoser to life gain strategies, it could be far more pushed, setting them to their starting life total and forbidding lifegain at the same time, be a hate-bear and still not be broken. But if it was an activation for an ability that attacked them in some other vector like board state, that opens the deck building to giving opponents life gain to kill their board or whatever.

Stallpox BBB
Sorcery (R)
Target opponent takes an extra turn after this one. At the beginning of that turn, that player loses a third of his or her life, then discards a third of the cards in his or her hand, then sacrifices a third of the creatures he or she controls, then sacrifices a third of the lands he or she controls. Round up each time.

Stallpox -- "At the beginning of that turn" is a phrase I agree with, but doesn't technically exist in [i]Magic[/i]. "At the beginning of that player's next upkeep" would probably be most correct, and probably better overall; I mean, a player [i[could[/i] Chronatog his or her way out of taking that extra turn and avoid the toll. Assuming you play it turn three, though, it mostly ends up filtering things; discard a card (if you have three or less in hand) only to draw one to replace it during the bonus turn; sac a land, but probably likely to have one to put into play; sac a creature, but ditto. On the other hand, that bonus turn can be very valuable to a player if he or she knows that after it ... they get to take another turn. This sounds like an interesting card in theory, but not one I'd put into a deck.

It reminds me of a card I once made...


Bend the Will -- 4UB
Sorcery
Gain control of target player's next turn. During that turn, that player can't attack you or your teammates, and can't gain life, draw cards, or sacrifice permanents.

Might work. The cost is relateable to Mindslaver, and the double-color requirement does help. The drawback should work given that there's that Theros card that flat-out mind-control a player and it was at... 9 mana, I think? I think should be ok.


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Allocator of Space 1U
Creature - Human Advisor (U)
T: Put target creature on top of its owner's library if its controller controls four or more other creatures.
"I'm sorry, but this place is already fully occupied."
1/2

So, yeah, in a way your opponent can sac some creatures in response to avoid having his big guy bounced back to library. Comments?

This is a pretty strong card, to the point where I think it should cost 2 mana to activate the ability. The thing is that it eats a drawn card in a similar way to forced discard, although the requirement of having more than four creatures might balance that out. In terms of what it actually accomplishes, it's like conditional but costless Unsummon, with the condition being severe enough that it makes up for effectively having mill power and shutting down Flash(which opens up some viable targets/situations that make it work against some otherwise-problematic archetypes, like Slivers, who have tribe-wide Flash access and the mana generation to resummon with ease)

Have a really weird card made in an attempt to accomplish creature retrieval with Morbid, crossposted from the same post as Building a Legacy:

Parting Shot 1GGUU
Instant
Target creature you control fights another target creature. Choose one of those creatures to return to it's owners hand.
Morbid - If a creature died this turn, Parting Shot may target a creature that died this turn.

---

This kinda needs some clarification about the effect, and the point of it being Fights, instead of dealing damage, is that the creatures are dealing damage. So stuff like Lifelink and Deathtouch kick in. The Morbid effect makes it so that you can have a creature that's already dead be targeted for recovery or to Unsummon an enemy while getting Lifelink damage in. Fights is found mostly on Red cards, but also on a couple Green cards and Green is where more archers are at(as well as having the revival access), and most uses of it are 2 or 3 mana cost, while the "return to hand" effect is one mana on a Common.

...It should probably cost one or two more mana than the initial version, honestly, given that there's some ETB abilities which get nasty when you can repeat them. What's the typical cost of flicker effects? ...That card says two mana, you have to pay the mana cost again so I'll go with an increase of one more(blue) mana for the sake of mercy upon mana curve. For the sake of clarity, the only change is that the original cost 1GGU

That Morbid ability requires some re-wording, or at least clarification; on my first reading, I took it to mean you could target a dead creature to fight another creature. On reflection, that sounds awesome, but utterly black, not green or blue.

Minus morbid, the card breaks down into two functions: Return a creature you control to your hand, it deals damage equal to its power to an opponent's creature .. that seems fair; or return an opponent's creature to his or her hand, and maybe lose one of yours. That doesn't sound fair; sure, you could bounce a 1/1 utility creature and not lose one of your own, but that's less likely to swing the game in your favor than the other option. So for all the options presented, it's really just one choice. And that choice doesn't feel blue, or green, or blue-green.

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Desecratorium -- 5
Artifact
Whenever mana empties from a player's mana pool, you may look at that player's hand, and have that player discard a non-land card with converted mana cost equal to that amount or less.

I'm not entirely certain this trigger 'works'; is there a better way to phrase it?

That's an amazing card, and I don't know how else you would word it. The only thing that I see that would keep it from working... would this ability go on the stack? If so, it would suggest mana can then be added in response... and then would that mana also be emptied? The problem is that you aren't supposed to be able to do things in between the mana emptying from the pool at the end of a phase and the next phase beginning. But if this triggered ability uses the stack, then that would become possible, and there are probably game-breaking interactions I haven't even thought of that would result from that.

My other main criticism of this card is that it would enable some pretty heinous slow-play. If a player adds mana during every phase, you're looking at his hand every phase. Perhaps limit it to main phases?

This next one probably breaks combo decks in Legacy and Vintage, I dunno.
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Veil of the Sun GW
Enchantment (R)
When Veil of the Sun enters the battlefield, name a spell. Spells you cast with that name can't be countered.
Whenever a spell you control is countered, put a charge counter on Veil of the Sun. Then, if it has three or more charge counters, sacrifice Veil of the Sun.

I like Veil of the Sun, I am surprised a similar card has not seen print. I would almost have it do something on the sacrifice but over all nice design.

Desecratorium - I think it works fine as it is. So to clarify, what would happen is mana would empty between steps, this would cause the ability to trigger, look at his or her hand force discard, return to the previous step (The step you were leaving), then if mana empties again, repeat. (Gitrog Monster can cause a simular interaction during the end step, if you discard lands.

Forever Seeking - BBB
Enchantment
Pay 1 life, Name a card: Exile the top card of your library face up, if it is the named card, until the end of turn, you may play that card as if it was in your hand.

Quote from Lord_Kaos »

Forever Seeking - BBB
Enchantment
Pay 1 life, Name a card: Exile the top card of your library face up, if it is the named card, until the end of turn, you may play that card as if it was in your hand.

Best Necropotence redesign I've seen yet. I particularly like this card because when Sensei's Divining Top was banned in Legacy, it no longer had a home (very little Vintage play). This would pretty much create a formidable "Forever Top" deck in Vintage. It's almost "1, Pay 3 Life: Draw 3 cards". Also makes Brainstorm even more nuts than before.

I have no card idea right now, just wanted to comment on that one because I really like it, so I guess the next person gets a freebie.