Political Prisoner | 1W
Instant (R)
Target opponent becomes the monarch.
Exile target creature until the monarch changes.
I'm looking for low mana ways to introduce the monarch mechanic into games and I keep getting hung up on various effects that make an opponent the monarch for you to later steal.
Meredith, With a Cause | 2W
Legendary Creature — Human Knight (M)
Defender U or B or R or G: Creatures you control lose defender and gain vigilance and double strike until end of turn. Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard. 4/2
I love the concept of taking a multicolor commander and building it without using one of the colors. This is more of a brute force go at it, but just thinking about the different ways you could end up building it tweaks my brain in a good way.
Bird Lady, Caller of the Singing Storm | 1WU
Legendary Creature — Human Advisor (R)
Whenever one or more creatures you control with flying deal combat damage to an opponent, draw a card.
Tap an untapped bird you control: Target creature gains flying and double strike until end of turn. 1/4
Pls.
Rix Maadi Riteknife | RB
Artifact — Equipment(R)
Equipped creature gets +1/+0 for each creature that died this turn.
Equipped creature has, "T, Sacrifice this creature: Each opponent sacrifices a creature."
Equip 1
Rakdos Riteknife really needs a rework. This is probably unbalanced, but it's so much cleaner to read.
There is probably a better way to phrase the cost on Meredith. Putting 3 "or"s into a cost is super clunky, and it's easy to miss that the ability on costs 1 mana (which is much too low with mass double strike added in). What if the ability were this, accounting for some power level balancing:
1: Creatures you control with defender lose defender and gain vigilance and first strike until end of turn. Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard. You may only pay blue, black, red, or green mana to activate this ability.
Blazing is right about how bad Meredith's ability looks. The cost looks bad and the effect is overpowered. You are vastly underestimating how powerful doublestrike is. Firststrike is safer
Since you are just trying to get all the colors for color identity you can use hybrid mana reducing it to a single or.
(U/B) or (R/G): Creatures you control lose defender and gain vigilance and First Strike until end of turn. Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard.
I think the crux of what Meredith is going for should probably be a multicolor Odric, Lunarch Marshal, but the wording would be way too long.
COST: Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard. Creatures you control gain flying until end of turn if a creature you control or a creature card in your graveyard has flying. The same is true for first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, menace, reach, trample, and vigilance.
But at that point, it'd just be more natural to do something without the 2-color restriction.
Maybe instead,
WUBRG: Create an emblem with, "As long as there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard, creatures you control have double strike."
Spirit of Cooperation | 2WW
Legendary Creature — Avatar (M)
As Spirit of Cooperation begins the game in the command zone, choose a color. That color is part of its color identity.
Creatures you control have the ability corresponding to the chosen color:
White — Double strike
Blue — Prowess
Black — Exalted
Red — Provoke
Green — Changeling 2/5
In the 99, this is a do-nothing card. As a commander, it has a unique effect for each 2-color pair with white and will likely be built in different ways as a result.
The interesting bit is when you build a monowhite deck, you can choose any of the options at the start of the game and your deck remains legal. This would likely be a super interesting deck to build.
Spirit of Cooperation, these abilities aren't even close to equal. While I see the logic in making White stronger because then you don't get a second color, the other 4 abilities aren't remotely balanced. Also, Double Strike is a very powerful ability. We've only gotten tribal double strike at this cost and on much smaller bodies, I believe all 2/2. Conditional double strike is gotten at 5 and while flat out everyone gets double strike seems to cost 6 or 7 depending on the body that comes attached.
Red granting provoke is the strongest of these abilities. Getting the ability to snipe down utility creatures is great and even just using it to sacrifice a 1/1 to take out a large blocker is reasonable.
Black and Blue granting Exalted and Prowess are tied. Both are very powerful and encourage different playstyles, but only help you close out the game. They don't provide any kind of advantage outside of my threats are lagers which is why they fall behind Red. Ideally, all of the abilities would hit this level.
Green granting changeling is abysmal. The reason for using this over a more relevant commander would be to tie together two or more separate tribes. The problem is that because this only works on the battlefield you end up with lords that don't' help your other creatures unless you control your commander.
Spirit of Cooperation, these abilities aren't even close to equal. While I see the logic in making White stronger because then you don't get a second color, the other 4 abilities aren't remotely balanced. Also, Double Strike is a very powerful ability. We've only gotten tribal double strike at this cost and on much smaller bodies, I believe all 2/2. Conditional double strike is gotten at 5 and while flat out everyone gets double strike seems to cost 6 or 7 depending on the body that comes attached.
Red granting provoke is the strongest of these abilities. Getting the ability to snipe down utility creatures is great and even just using it to sacrifice a 1/1 to take out a large blocker is reasonable.
Black and Blue granting Exalted and Prowess are tied. Both are very powerful and encourage different playstyles, but only help you close out the game. They don't provide any kind of advantage outside of my threats are lagers which is why they fall behind Red. Ideally, all of the abilities would hit this level.
Green granting changeling is abysmal. The reason for using this over a more relevant commander would be to tie together two or more separate tribes. The problem is that because this only works on the battlefield you end up with lords that don't help your other creatures unless you control your commander.
I kind of thought Changeling would have the highest ceiling of these options since it lets you run a ton of cards that turn all of your tokens into mana rocks, whereas all of the other modes are just various flavors of combat utility. Manaweft Sliver, Gemhide Sliver, Priest of Titania, Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro on top of Bonescythe Sliver / Knight Exemplar type cards. It might not be strictly stronger, but by providing value that's unconnected to combat, it seems at minimum worth considering.
I'm not at all concerned that the abilities being of equal utility as long as they're interesting deck-building decisions and not clear color pie violations. (original version used deathtouch on black) And yes, double strike being a more easily tapped into source of threat was intended as compensation for limiting oneself to monowhite since white doesn't have card draw, ramp, or as many non-combat paths to victory as other colors. Boros getting provoke is similarly in this vein, at minimum providing that deck with the means for combos or card advantage despite not being card draw though it still needs to stick bodies that are big enough to get through combat before this can happen. Mana dorks can just tap for mana and are therefore safe.
There simply aren't enough candidate abilities to even try to have them be equivalently strong and had they been, the context of the second color would have unbalanced them.
Instant (R)
Target opponent becomes the monarch.
Exile target creature until the monarch changes.
I'm looking for low mana ways to introduce the monarch mechanic into games and I keep getting hung up on various effects that make an opponent the monarch for you to later steal.
Legendary Creature — Human Knight (M)
Defender
U or B or R or G: Creatures you control lose defender and gain vigilance and double strike until end of turn. Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard.
4/2
I love the concept of taking a multicolor commander and building it without using one of the colors. This is more of a brute force go at it, but just thinking about the different ways you could end up building it tweaks my brain in a good way.
Legendary Creature — Human Advisor (R)
Whenever one or more creatures you control with flying deal combat damage to an opponent, draw a card.
Tap an untapped bird you control: Target creature gains flying and double strike until end of turn.
1/4
Pls.
Artifact — Equipment(R)
Equipped creature gets +1/+0 for each creature that died this turn.
Equipped creature has, "T, Sacrifice this creature: Each opponent sacrifices a creature."
Equip 1
Rakdos Riteknife really needs a rework. This is probably unbalanced, but it's so much cleaner to read.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
1: Creatures you control with defender lose defender and gain vigilance and first strike until end of turn. Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard. You may only pay blue, black, red, or green mana to activate this ability.
Since you are just trying to get all the colors for color identity you can use hybrid mana reducing it to a single or.
COST: Activate this ability only if there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard. Creatures you control gain flying until end of turn if a creature you control or a creature card in your graveyard has flying. The same is true for first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, menace, reach, trample, and vigilance.
But at that point, it'd just be more natural to do something without the 2-color restriction.
Maybe instead,
WUBRG: Create an emblem with, "As long as there are exactly two colors among permanents you control and cards in your graveyard, creatures you control have double strike."
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
Legendary Creature — Avatar (M)
As Spirit of Cooperation begins the game in the command zone, choose a color. That color is part of its color identity.
Creatures you control have the ability corresponding to the chosen color:
White — Double strike
Blue — Prowess
Black — Exalted
Red — Provoke
Green — Changeling
2/5
In the 99, this is a do-nothing card. As a commander, it has a unique effect for each 2-color pair with white and will likely be built in different ways as a result.
The interesting bit is when you build a monowhite deck, you can choose any of the options at the start of the game and your deck remains legal. This would likely be a super interesting deck to build.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
Red granting provoke is the strongest of these abilities. Getting the ability to snipe down utility creatures is great and even just using it to sacrifice a 1/1 to take out a large blocker is reasonable.
Black and Blue granting Exalted and Prowess are tied. Both are very powerful and encourage different playstyles, but only help you close out the game. They don't provide any kind of advantage outside of my threats are lagers which is why they fall behind Red. Ideally, all of the abilities would hit this level.
Green granting changeling is abysmal. The reason for using this over a more relevant commander would be to tie together two or more separate tribes. The problem is that because this only works on the battlefield you end up with lords that don't' help your other creatures unless you control your commander.
I'm not at all concerned that the abilities being of equal utility as long as they're interesting deck-building decisions and not clear color pie violations. (original version used deathtouch on black) And yes, double strike being a more easily tapped into source of threat was intended as compensation for limiting oneself to monowhite since white doesn't have card draw, ramp, or as many non-combat paths to victory as other colors. Boros getting provoke is similarly in this vein, at minimum providing that deck with the means for combos or card advantage despite not being card draw though it still needs to stick bodies that are big enough to get through combat before this can happen. Mana dorks can just tap for mana and are therefore safe.
There simply aren't enough candidate abilities to even try to have them be equivalently strong and had they been, the context of the second color would have unbalanced them.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill