Suspend, as it currently exists, is a bit too wordy and involved mechanically to easily get ones head around for a lot of people, especially inexperienced players. It's unlikely to return outside of reprint sets or otherwise higher-level products like Modern Masters. But the basic concept, of using time as a cost to cast a spell, is still sound, and in a more simplified form I think it could live on.
Steel the Soul4W
Sorcery (U)
Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
Meditate 2W(Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay 2W and exile it. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast it from exile without paying its mana cost.)
Words of Blasphemy2BB
Sorcery (U)
All creatures get -2/-2 until end of turn.
Meditate BB(Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay BB and exile it. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast it from exile without paying its mana cost.)
I could see something like this getting printed at some point. Not having to track things across several turns makes for a more elegant mechanic. There are a few drawbacks though.
- Limiting it to effects that happen one turn later could make it harder to balance a range of cards with this effect. The suspend mechanic allowed development to play with two variables (how much of a discount you get and how long you have to wait), where this just has the one variable. I feel like a lot of the cards would just be StockCardEffect at -1 mana cost to meditate and +1 base CMC to not make it strictly better. (I do like the design on Words of Blasphemy though. Cheap sweeper that trades low cost for your opponent being able to see it coming.)
- You still have to deal with the "would creatures have haste" question (from what I hear, the story goes that suspend gives haste because so many playtesters expected it to.) It would rarely be the right play to hardcast a creature with meditate if it got haste out of the deal (unless you desperately need a blocker right now.) If you wanted to avoid this, you could put it on only instant or sorcery cards. And then it would likely be mostly to only sorceries because, again, no downside to meditate at opponent's end step.
One thing going for it is... one. The integer one. Not like any other integer. But not thus NAMED and accounted? Even though, next turn. And a unique word. Maybe not that one... but you ask the 8 ball? That is pretty good. It's pointing to yes. When you mess around, mess around with other things, is the best reason. The problem with it is... doesn't put a counter. Counter says deal with this. Are you LIKELY to forget it, no, but it's something that could kill the mechanic from real world, unlike the straightjacketed non-caringly complex suspend. Next turn only is a good idea, but it's... a bit problematic. The cards would end up being awfully good. It's awfully good with Storm, even though Storm is crazily upper tier. Suspend has the same issue, but very few cards that QUITE go bonkers like that. You'd have to put them at the range you have thus put them and not any cheaper and not great in number. Oh, that's just... BLEH. That one makes us angry. Wrong, A+.
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"Warning: Um, warning. This is going to be a game state violation. And a taking extra turns and drawing extra cards violation, pretty much, a whole bunch of violations. Look at me, I'm the DCI."
Maybe have the trigger happen during your next turn's beginning of combat phase? This lets you cast spells (creatures) before they go off. Maybe harder to remember.
Though I suppose if you give haste like suspend does, the haste creature entering at the beginning of combat feels better?
On the other hand, the creatures you play this way wouldn't be in play during your main phase, so you couldn't target them yourself with sorceries or equipment. I guess the complexity isn't worth the tradeoff.
I designed a mechanic nearly identical to this in the form of Bide, though I think I like your take on the flavor better. My recommendation is to template it much like I did, where you exile the card as part of Meditate's cost and add the card draw as a bonus. The reason I add the card draw is because you give the opponent a heads up of what spell to expect, giving them ample time to prepare an answer. But if you get a replacement card for meditating, the potential disadvantage is mitigated. Plus it makes flavor sense that you gain knowledge for meditating.
I would recommend adding a "Meditate only as a sorcery" restriction to keep players from simply waiting until the last moment to meditate the card.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
couldn't you just use suspend 1 all the time, and then have higher suspend numbers when you go up to rare/mythic rare instead? theyve done it with scry (anything higher than scry 1 is a long and arduous process normally) already. the more extra keyworded words you add to the game, the harder it is for magic to use them in-text/cardname, i'd imagine (meditating monk can't exist then without the keyword meditate then, etc).
i think off the top of my mind, poisonous N/infect and vanishing/fading are the only 'replaced' mechanics, and the two mechanics actually work quite differently, whereas this doesn't work any differently to suspend 1.
couldn't you just use suspend 1 all the time, and then have higher suspend numbers when you go up to rare/mythic rare instead? theyve done it with scry (anything higher than scry 1 is a long and arduous process normally) already. the more extra keyworded words you add to the game, the harder it is for magic to use them in-text/cardname, i'd imagine (meditating monk can't exist then without the keyword meditate then, etc).
i think off the top of my mind, poisonous N/infect and vanishing/fading are the only 'replaced' mechanics, and the two mechanics actually work quite differently, whereas this doesn't work any differently to suspend 1.
I think there are a few more replaced mechanics than that. A recent example of a replaced mechanic is Chroma being obsoleted by Devotion.
Steel the Soul 4W
Sorcery (U)
Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
Meditate 2W (Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay 2W and exile it. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast it from exile without paying its mana cost.)
Words of Blasphemy 2BB
Sorcery (U)
All creatures get -2/-2 until end of turn.
Meditate BB (Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay BB and exile it. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast it from exile without paying its mana cost.)
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
- Limiting it to effects that happen one turn later could make it harder to balance a range of cards with this effect. The suspend mechanic allowed development to play with two variables (how much of a discount you get and how long you have to wait), where this just has the one variable. I feel like a lot of the cards would just be Stock Card Effect at -1 mana cost to meditate and +1 base CMC to not make it strictly better. (I do like the design on Words of Blasphemy though. Cheap sweeper that trades low cost for your opponent being able to see it coming.)
- You still have to deal with the "would creatures have haste" question (from what I hear, the story goes that suspend gives haste because so many playtesters expected it to.) It would rarely be the right play to hardcast a creature with meditate if it got haste out of the deal (unless you desperately need a blocker right now.) If you wanted to avoid this, you could put it on only instant or sorcery cards. And then it would likely be mostly to only sorceries because, again, no downside to meditate at opponent's end step.
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Though I suppose if you give haste like suspend does, the haste creature entering at the beginning of combat feels better?
On the other hand, the creatures you play this way wouldn't be in play during your main phase, so you couldn't target them yourself with sorceries or equipment. I guess the complexity isn't worth the tradeoff.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
I would recommend adding a "Meditate only as a sorcery" restriction to keep players from simply waiting until the last moment to meditate the card.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
i think off the top of my mind, poisonous N/infect and vanishing/fading are the only 'replaced' mechanics, and the two mechanics actually work quite differently, whereas this doesn't work any differently to suspend 1.
Legacy - Solidarity - mono U aggro - burn - Imperial Painter - Strawberry Shortcake - Bluuzards - bom
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
Yes, except Suspend is unfortunately all but completely unprintable. Meditate is a realistically printable alternative to Suspend.
What about token making spells? Somehow I suspect people wouldn't mistakenly play those as though they had haste.
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(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).