MTG Salvation

The Dredge 2 and Dredge lording are powerful but pretty balanced on their own I think, because in the end you can only dredge once per draw so its inherently limiting. But combined with the +1/+1 clause that's so open-ended on an already efficient 2/2 body, this would really break zombies in a way that even relentless dead doesn't do. With just gravecrawlers and dredgers and any other recursion it wouldn't be hard for this to be a 4/4 on turn 3 and 7/7 on turn 4. Just the ability to go off on looting effects makes it dangerous in the same way as flameblade adept, except this is permanent.

Riptide Myrmidon UB
Creature - Merfolk Soldier (U)
Hexproof
Breach (This creature gets +1/+0 until end of combat whenever a creature blocks)
2/2

Heh I wouldn't want to have that in my hand when I see someone playing lingering souls, that would really rub it in. As far as a hoser to other creature based strategies, its a rather interesting riff. Its not the most powerful effect given that most token strategies like souls are already dinky, so in many ways its just winding up being a round-about form of life loss. Not the worst thing ever and maybe even slightly efficient for 1 mana in a race condition. But as far as narrow hosers go, its always difficult to justify the existence of cards that do little if they're not hosing someone and have incredibly specific conditions where they work, like this beating dark depths. What might be interesting is its combo potential in breaking the symmetry of some kind of token creator effects. For example, turn 1 Token Persecution, turn 2 hunted horror.

You're right about breach being clumsy and bad gameplay wise for the same reasons as something like Afflict. Another stab at a UB keyword;

Ochre Jelly 1BB
Creature - Ooze (U)
Lifelink
Enveloping (This creature deals its combat damage to all blocked creatures when blocking and all blocking creatures when blocked.)
2/2

So a thouhgtseize discard effect for additional U if nothing good just a peek.

Omnipotent Vanish WB
Instant (U)
Choose one
Put target instant or sorcery spell with converted mana cost 2 or less on top of its owner's library.
Put target permanent with converted mana cost 4 or more on top of its owner's library.

Scrying Stick:
It’s a neat, fairly costed Uncommon. I’m not sure how much space Scry Strike has, but the card itself is neat.

Omnipotent Vanish
Despite the name being really strange given the card’s effect, the first mode is a massive break. It’s essentially counter target spell, which only blue gets on its own (white VERY rarely can get taxing counterspells like Mana Tithe in theory, but I don’t think it’s happened since Time Spiral Block). Additionally, the second effect can be done in mono white, so I’m not seeing where the black is in the card. Essentially, this is a WU not a WB spell, and should probably cost 1WU.

Also, I’m not sure what your comments are referring to, but remember to give feedback on the previous card before postin your own.

Burn Out
RR
Sorcery
Each spell you cast this turn gains storm and ‘This spell deals 1 damage to you’.

First off, Burn Out needs to specify Sorceries and Instants, as creatures and enchantments are spells. To reword the current text: "Each Instant and Sorcery you cast this turn gains Storm and "As an additional cost to cast this spell, pay 1 life". This particular version of rewording would also let it be put in black/red quite nicely, which helps keep it away from Lightning Helix, which'd more than negate the cost and deal assloads of damage. It's way too easy to turn into a win condition in burn decks.

Roving Soothsayer... Lacks anything to do with the scrying, like it could if it were a variant of Delver of Secrets, so I'll instead critique the idea of Scry Strike. Up front, it's a rather niche keyword, as it's a variant of another with extra constraints, rather than differing mechanics. Having it be present on mono-Blue cards is a bit of a problem, as it slots into multicolor equipment and aura boosts far too easily, allowing for numerous instances of Scrying by way of equipment-pings. Unless you have very granular draw power, it ends up being nothing but a single overlapping scrap of deck info, because you have to scry in a highly-granular manner.

It really only works if the number is two or more, as you can then keep a card without shutting down further Scrying. This lets you actually get through your deck with it, which... Can be a problem, if you're running Rite of Replication. The key thing is that you're essentially giving a ticket to stack the top N cards of your deck, where N is the Scry Strike number, because Blue also has most of the cloning.

My own card is, yet again, a crosspost, this time from The Mechanic Game:

Prizewinning Experiment GU
Creature - Drake Mutant
Evolve, Scale 4 (whenever this creature would deal more than 4 damage, reduce the damage dealt to 4)
As long as Prizewinning Experiment has a +1/+1 counter on it, it has Flight and Shroud
3/2
While it handily won the long-standing prize for a griffin-superior krasis, many members of the Simic Combine feel it to be a crude intermediary step due to complex maturation needs and stark limitations with its design

-

To be more concise (or at least straightforwards) with the idea than I was in the mechanic thread, this is the "answer" to Assault Griffin's flavor text, being utterly superior in raw combat once it Evolves once... Then Shroud guts your ability to buff it further, while Scale (the mechanic from the "game") makes it so it will never deal more than 4 damage at a time. Thus, it is better than a Griffin with fairly easy steps, but can't become massively better thanks to Shroud targeting prevention and a flat cap on per-hit damage (may or may not allow Trample overflow, definitely allows Double Strike workaround. Must bypass Shroud to get them on it)

Hmm..... While the drawback can be a bit pesky, the fact is that this guy can easily reach 4 damage per turn for someone that costs a measly 2 mana, even if Evolving him may be a bit tricky. I may be worrying too much though, but anyway I believe the stat may need to go down.


Randomly making an epic card, if it could work.

Nirezatel, Perfector Extraordinaire 4WWUU
Legendary Creature - Dragon Illusion
Flying
When you cast Nirezatel, Perfector Extraordinaire, shuffle all nonland permanents and cards in all players' hands into their owners' libraries, then each player reveals his or her deck. For each player, you choose five nonland permanent cards in that player's deck that can be put onto the battlefield, then that player puts the chosen cards onto the battlefield under his or her control, shuffles his or her deck, and draws five cards.
"Everything is exactly as how I see it: Perfect."
6/6

looks great. like Angel of the Dire Hour, Dread Cacodemon, etc you definitely want the "When ~ enters the battlefield, if you cast it from your hand..." template since it both makes it more vulnerable to counterspell interaction and cuts down on some of the ways to cheat in the effect like release to the wind. Also, as a cast trigger, it would be oddly likely to hand your opponent a counterspell if they were already out, letting them counter the dragon after the trigger resolves.

Against most decks resolving this would probably the end of the game on the spot. And thats kind of problematic gameplaywise, because even when the ability is very interesting like this one is, if it just winds up being "8 mana: I win", nobody will get much fun out of the effects. Like spawnsire of ulamog. One problem I'm not sure you could easily template away is the problem with legendary permanents- you could simply fetch 2-4 of each legendary in their deck and hand them only 2-3 nonland permanents. Especially dangerous against smaller legends like Baral. That said, at 5 cards into their hand and 5 onto the battlefield, it might be enough to keep the game going for a few turns against enough decks to justify the paragraph of ability text.

Watchtower
Land (R)
When Watchtower enters the battlefield, create a tapped 1/1 white Human Scout creature token.
T, tap an untapped creature you control: Add one mana of any color.

Quote from KarmaHoudini »

Burn Out
RR
Sorcery
Each spell you cast this turn gains storm and ‘This spell deals 1 damage to you’.

I feel like this could be made far less broken if it instead said "Each sorcery and instant you cast this turn has Storm, and each sorcery and instant you control this turn has "This spell deals 1 damage to you." This would put the 1 damage on all storm copies, too. I mean, it's probably still problematic, but if you're trying to go through mana ramping and card drawing effects, those are all going to hurt you considerably before you get to the kill spell.

Quote from clan_iraq »

Watchtower
Land (R)
When Watchtower enters the battlefield, create a tapped 1/1 white Human Scout creature token.
T, tap an untapped creature you control: Add one mana of any color.

This basically a damage-free City of Brass that gives you an extra attacker as an alternative to adding mana. Maybe add a clause saying "Does not untap as normal during your untap phase" and give it a second ability where you can tap an untapped creature to untap the land (only once per turn of course).

This is an idea i had earlier...

A Will for Peace GW
Legendary Enchantment
Skip your attack phase.
0: If you control at least three creatures and all creatures you control are tapped, add X mana of any combination of colors to your mana pool, where X is the number of creatures you control. Activate this ability only once during each of your turns.

It's good that it's Legendary (though it lacks sufficient specificity of nature to quite fit the label, the same holds true of Aetherworks Marvel), otherwise it'd be spammed in any token deck with a reliable Enchantment killer to get attacks going. Convoke or Conspire to get everything tapped, this for mana, then Fireball deals as much damage as you have creatures.

I think this works much better by requiring all your creatures be untapped, then tapping all of them to get mana equal to the number tapped. This disables access to actual tap effects the same turn... But conversely gives you access to untap effects. As-is, it's too good for some decks that'd get stupidly out of hand, like Slivers.

My own card is, somewhat rarely for me, a non-crosspost:

Mind Echo 1(U/B)(U/B)
Instant
Exile target card in a graveyard. Until end of turn, you may play it for its normal cost.
Flashback UB

---

The thought is to be something akin to Scavenging Ooze, where it's effective at countering Graveyard play, while still having use outside of it and not outright hosing graveyard play entirely (as it can be countered pretty reliably by some staples). While not as recurring as Scavenging Ooze is, the ability to recast your own spells makes me think it's worth it in non-graveyard decks. Of course, then mana screw counters can result in you Exiling an important spell, so it has answers to a particularly degenerate use. Also, this can actually be used to steal/recover lands from graveyards. A good consistency boost, as it means you can steal an enemy fetch land to mana-fix for yourself.

Very versatile, both helping and hindering the same archetype, while having a role outside of it in decks with no interest in graveyard plays beyond just extra uses of what they already have. As it can be played once in decks that aren't blue/black, it can work in red/blue control decks or nonblue reanimator decks as, primarily, an extra few copies of whatever you need (similarly to a certain pro's use of Tidehollow Sculler, where it was used mostly as extra Thoughtseizes, in the form of a sub-par substitution. This does that for Reanimator. Or it can let you just reuse one of the better reanimate cards if you have them in the graveyard... Like Reanimate. And you can use it to recover buybacks that got in the graveyard, too... Lots of recursion bits to open up). Or you can be a jerk and use it on a Wasteland for decent, fast, land hate, because it doesn't have a nonland clause.

This is probably overpowered, on its own, and overly synergistic with too many deck types. But answers do exist, and the worst abuses are still subject to the obtrusive graveyard hosing it's intended to be a substitute for.

Hrmm well the proper template would be "Exile target card in a graveyard. Until end of turn, you may play that card" The normal cost is implied, as is 'from exile', like on ire shaman or abbot of keral keep. That said, your card as written is indeed pretty overpowered, especially on the flashback mode for decks that can feed their graveyard, and especially at instant speed. Contrast recoup, which only allows instants/sorceries, only from your own graveyard, at sorcery speed, with a heavy flashback cost. Its always going to be dangerous to have a card advantage flashback card at a low price, and this would be more than most. Also the combination of playing another player's lands is an odd choice.
Even if all this did was get you back two fetch lands, that's pretty sick for a draw/go deck; the same guard that accelerates your mana at 3 at the end of an opponent's turn when they didn't play anything, then can also get you another land, or recur another cryptic- twice. Just looking at the price next to snapcaster mage is scary, since this is far more flexible at hitting either players bin, ramping lands, and is a free card advantage if done from your graveyard.

Crystalize 1U
Instant (U)
Exile target spell with three crystal counters on it. It gains "1: Remove a crystal counter from this card" and "You may cast this card from exile as long as it has no crystal counters on it"

Color/current flavor quibbles aside, this is a balanced and fun-looking card that fits within GW. No criticisms here, very nice!

??? 3G
Legendary Creature - ??? Druid
When you cast ???, choose one plus the number of times it’s been cast from the command zone this game. You may choose the same mode more than once.
• Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
• Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
• Search your library for a creature card and exile that card. Shuffle your library. When ??? enters the battlefield, put all cards exiled this way on top of your library in any order.
3/3

I realize it’s too wordy to fit on a card but pff. If you have suggestions for different modes, though, I’m interested!

The Druid seems good, balance wise. You could save some text space if you just said “when you cast — chose one plus the number of times it’s been cast this game”. It doesn’t really break the way it would work in commander if you remove the “from the command zone” clause. All it would do is allow players to get the on-cast benefit if they cast it from a any zone and removing the command zone clause opens the card up to being used in other formats.

I also feel the third ability could be worded better, because as is it requires the player to shuffle between each search if they choose that mode more than once, but I can’t figure out a better wording.

Sacrosanctity 1WW
Enchantment
Players cannot sacrifice permanents.
Non-Basic lands are Plains in addition to their other types.

I imagine "players cannot sacrifice permanents" could get broken pretty easily in ways that "Spells and abilities your opponents control can't cause you to sacrifice permanents." on tajuru preserver and Sigarda, Host of Herons, does not. The sticky point being that while stopping yourself from sacrificing to opponents effects hoses offensive abilities like annihilator or some sweepers or removal, and stopping opponents sacrificing their own creatures shuts down certain combos and value strategies, stopping yourself from sacrificing permanents to your own abilities could create broken combos. Any effect that counts on self-limiting via sacrifices that isn't paid as a cost could go pretty nutty. Now I can't say for certain what combo that could enable, there are a LOT of cards to run through with gathererfu.
Overall I'm not sure if its a safe alternative to the angel of jubilation form of the ability.

From Hell 3BB
Sorcery (R)
Create a 5/5 black demon creature token with flying. You lose 3 life.
Rebound (If you cast this spell from your hand, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast this card from exile without paying its mana cost.)

to compare to broodmate dragon/etc

From Hell - Honestly, there really isn't much to comment about on it, but for sake of symmetry, make I would make it 5 life.

Grove of Wonders
Legendary Enchantment Land - Plains Forest
As ~ enters the battlefield, exile target enchantment you own or sacrifice it.
T: Add any combination of W or G mana equal to the converted mana cost of the exiled enchantment, then return that enchantment to the battlefield.

You mean, sacrifice ~ unless you exile an enchantment (target is so unnecessary here...)? Anyway, I think this needs to at least enter tapped, because if you manage to get something big cheaply enough, this can become a scary mana burst.


Next

Library Of Phantoms
Land (R)
Whenever Library Of Phantoms becomes untapped, create a 0/1 colorless Illusion creature token. It has "This creature can't attack or block".
T: Add C
X, T, sacrifice X Illusions: Scry X.

Too weak?

So, a couple of notes: Yes your right, I worded it backwards, but target is necessary, as it refers to cards you own, not control. As far as it not ETB, I think that is fair. I wanted it to be a strong 1 shot mana burst card, but I think having to wait a turn to use it shouldn't to a deal breaker.

Library of Phantoms - It's pretty strong, I would almost remove "This creature can't attack or block" and replace it with "If this is the target of a spell or ability sacrifice it." (The illusion ability, if your going to make them illusions.)

Second, I would put a trigger cost on it, "Whenever this untaps <Pay/Do X, put a colorless illusion creature token. BLah blah blah, otherwise your producing free creatures for free every turn. (If mana burn was still a thing, a little less of an issue.)

Overall, I think it's a pretty solid card.

Monarch of the Skies 4RRR
Creature - Dragon
Flying, Trample
Whenever this deals combat damage to an opponant, it deals that much damage to each non-dragon creature that player controls.
7/7

Monarch of the Seas 4UUU
Creature - Serpent
Hexproof, Trample
Whenever this deals damage to a player, draw that many cards.
5/9

Monarch of the Vast 4WWW
Creature - Avatar
Double Strike, Trample
Whenever ~ deals damage to a player, return a creature with casting cost less then or equal to the damage dealt from your graveyard to the battlefield.
4/7

Monarch of the Earth 4GGG
Creature - Beast
Trample, Indistructable
Whenever this deals damage to a player, put that many +1/+1 counter on (This/Each creature you control?).
7/7

Monarch of the Void 4BBB
Creature - Horror
Trample, Menace
Whenever This deals damage to a player, search your library for a non-land card with converted mana cost equal to or less then the damage dealt, reveal it and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library.
8/5

Sorry, for throwing the entire cycle up at once.

I like the cycle. They are all fairly costed and giving them all trample makes for interesting combat math. I also like how you resisted the urge to make them all 7/7s and instead varied the power and toughness when nessisary to be more balanced with their abilities. I’d say that probably its best to make them all say “when ~ deals combat damage to a player” or “when ~ deals damage to a player” rather than having the red one be the only one that cares that the damage is combat damage. As for the green one I think “put that many +1/+1 counters on target creature works” since it has indestructible and therefore is hard to remove, alternatively you could replace indestructible with vigilance (an ability that is occasionally in the green color pie) and give it the more powerful team pump ability.

Enforcer of the Countertax WW
Creature - Human Cleric
If a non-land permanent would enter the battlefield with more than one counter of any type on it, it enters with one counter of that type instead.
If more than one counter of any type would be placed on a non-land permanent, place one counter of that type on it instead.
2/2

Narrow hatebear hosers are a very niche thing in that you never want to run them in main, and they have to be silver bullets to justify putting them in sideboards of specific decks. And then its competing with other cards for that same slot. And if other cards can hose an archetype more effectively, you wouldn't want a half measure. Countertax as written makes opponents using counter-based strategies play fairly, ie it can turn off hardened scales, but it doesn't shut them down entirely, and they can still do pretty versatile things like putting 1 counter at a time. And this is competing with the likes of solemnity, which straight up shuts them down and doesn't even let them play fairly.

That said, what your card as written does very effectively is hose planeswalkers, and that would be a general enough effect to be worth considering- it makes them enter with 1 loyalty. But is that what you really intended with a 'countertax'? Seems like most of the time it would just be preemptive planeswalker hate, and they'd still get to +1 or +2 after casting and maybe put it out of range or protect itself.

Wall of Mirrors 3
Artifact Creature - Wall (R)
Defender
T: Create a token that's a copy of target creature blocked by Wall of Mirrors.
0/4

Wall of Mirrors 3
Artifact Creature - Wall (R)
Defender
T: Create a token that's a copy of target creature blocked by Wall of Mirrors.
0/4

I love it! I've always enjoyed silly token-making cards.

I see a couple issues - First, the ability has a tap activation cost but it's an ability that you will (almost) never want to skip. While it does make for some fun interactions with untap effects, I feel like the card would be cleaner with a triggered ability instead of an activated ability:

Wall of Mirrors 3
Artifact Creature - Wall (R)
Defender
Whenever Wall of Mirrors blocks a creature, create a token that's a copy of that creature.
0/4

Second potential issue - Giving someone the ability to clone a number of different attackers over a number of turns is really going to be problematic for aggro decks, and will also potentially lead to memory issues in tracking different tokens. Proposed fix to both those issues? Reduce the mana cost, and make the tokens only temporary.

Wall of Mirrors 2
Artifact Creature - Wall (R)
Defender
Whenever Wall of Mirrors blocks a creature, create a token that's a copy of that creature. Exile that token at the beginning of your next end step.
0/4

I feel that this fix if fairly flavorful (if you attack me, I get a token "reflection" that comes to attack you back) and it's balanced in terms of not being overly oppressive to aggro decks.

First of all, thanks for the freebie

Remember the Mentors 2WU
Instant
Counter target spell.
Return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand.

This is my attempt to design a card that helps pressure strategies outside Jund colors by disrupting the opponents' plan while, under the right conditions, increasing the resilience of the deck against attrition. Pretty simple, I know, but I deemed this as an elegant card.

Well its certainly a fine mashup of card abilities and reasonably costed for its pseudo-cantrip on a counterspell. And it is indeed elegant. But it seems really off-color. Returning a creature card to your hand has always been a primarily black effect, seen all over the place with black cards and rarely white, so it would really make sense as a 2UB card instead of 2WB. It hits dimir color identity perfectly. Its very close to soul manipulation, and might benefit from the optional template so it doesn't require a creature in the bin to target.

Pyre Goblin RR
Creature - Goblin Shaman (U)
When Pyre Goblin enters the battlefield, add RRR
1/1

How dangerous could a pyretic ritual on a stick be? Particularly in a relevant tribe to mirror Elvish Visionary. Contrast priest of urabrask and burning-tree emissary