Howdy folks, I’m starting (well restarting) to build a set and I’d like a bit of input on a few new keyword mechanics I’d like to introduce. Each mechanic corresponds do a specific tribe/color group, and I’m aware some on the surface look a bit broke or a bit underpowered compared to the others, but again this is just a keyword rather than a full card design.
Impede
Colors: Black/Colorless
Impede X (Whenever this creature becomes blocked, put X 0/-1 counters on the blocking creature at the end of combat.)
Thoughtweft
Colors: White/Blue
Thoughtweft (At the beginning of your upkeep, each creature with Thoughtweft share activated abilities until the end of your turn.)
Purify
Colors: White primarily, but it has backup shades in Black
Purify (Whenever this creature deals combat damage, if this creature isn't purified, create a 1/1 black shade creature token then this creature becomes purified.)
Gigantify
Colors: White/Green/Red
Gigantify X (You may pay an additional X as you cast this creature. If you do, double this creature's power and toughness and it becomes a Giant in addition to its other types.)
X is a mana cost similar to kicker, but I wanted to give the creatures a bit more room for other abilities. Most of the Gigantifying creatures will be humans turning into giants to make sense of the ability.
Explode
Colors: Red/Blue
Explode X (Whenever this creature dies, it deals one damage to X target creatures, planeswalkers, or players chosen at random.)
Void
Colors: Blue/Green/Black?
I had trouble designing this, so I ended up with two versions that I can’t choose between. And the wording is horrific, need a rules guru for these.
Ver. 1
Void (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or an ability requiring mana for activation, add half of the mana spent, rounded down, as colorless mana to your mana pool.)
Ver. 2
Void (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or an ability requiring mana to activate, instead counter that spell or ability. Then, that spell or ability's controller adds colorless mana to their mana pool equal to the amount of mana spent to target this creature.)
I’m open to criticism, but I don’t intend on completely redacting any of these abilities.
Some card ideas or more info on the tribes would be helpful to see how these are supposed to interact. Given the use of Thoughtweft and Giants I'm guessing you're going for something Lorwyn related here, but knowing more is needed for evaluating how the keywords are going to be used.
Impede
The biggest knock against this is the -0/-1 counters, both because they are very narrow in their usage and having them limits the other kinds of counters you can effectively have in your set. Depending how you want this to show up, it should either use -1/-1 counters or deal damage. Also, you might want it to be an end of combat trigger instead a delayed trigger on becoming blocked, so that the opponent can kill the attacker in combat or before the end of combat to prevent the trigger from happening.
Impede X (At the end of combat, put X -1/-1 counters on each creature that blocked this creature this combat.)
Thoughtweft
This is a little unclear if you want each creature to gain each other creature's activated abilities, or if you want each activated ability to affect each creature with Thoughtweft. The latter makes more sense, but it can be done more easily by making Thoughtweft a subtype and then just writing the effect onto the activated ability.
T: Each Thoughtweft creature you control gets +1/+1 until the end of turn.
Purify
I think the trigger should be on "combat damage to a player or planeswalker" instead of combat damage in general. I assume this is similar to reknown and creatures will get some kind of static bonuses when they are purified.
Gigantify
This ability really needs to use counters to help with memory.
Gigantify COST (As an additional cost to cast this creature, you may pay COST. If you do, it enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it, where X is this card's power.)
Explode
First off, this is definitely not a blue ability as written. Very red, probably black, not blue at all.
This has a lot of strikes against it. Random targets is both time consuming to sort out in paper play and has too much variance to be effectively used, as it could easily blow out either player, regardless which one plays it. Competitive players won't like the randomness downside, but if you're keywording it that means you intend it to show up a lot in your set.
This needs to either be a one or two card ability at most, have the targeting changed and/or have a way that opponents can remove the creature "safely" some of the time (a way to disarm the bomb, if you will) like you have to pay a cost when it dies to get the boom.
Void
The challenge here is that you'll typically be getting mana when you don't need it, and your opponents will only target the void creatures when gaining mana will do you the least good (like during your own end step).
Version 1 is better because it is psuedo protection, but version 2 will never be relevant because your opponents won't bother to target it and its just bad card costing colorless mana filtering for you.
This is really tough to word to include activated abilities, but I'll take a shot.
Void (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or an ability with an activation cost, add an amount of C equal to half the mana cost of the spell or activation cost of the ability. You don't lose this mana as steps and phases end.)
Thanks for fixing void, I wanted that to work as a new take on pseudo-hexproof instead of the generic 3 more to cast.
I like the new format for impede, but I want to keep the narrowness of the 0/-1 counters so that indestructible creatures can get through. The creature type that will have impede are Slith, as a type of invert on the usual combat damage abilities that they have, but because of the Mirrodin block capitalizing on indestructible and more importantly darksteel, I didn’t want to make it -1/-1.
I’ll change gigantify and I think I’ll make it toughness rather than power.
Explode was goofy because I wanted to balance out the colors more and forgot I already included blue in another color so I think I’ll keep it mono-red. The reason I threw blue at it was the creatures would be goblin ‘chemists.’ I’ll consider reworking the ability, but I want to keep a bit of randomness.
With purify, the idea behind it is by releasing rage (dealing damage), you get rid of evil (the shade), so keeping it at generic combat damage allows it to be a bit stronger, but I think I might reduce the shades power and toughness to 0/1.
I wanted to design Thoughtweft on the description that’s printed on the Kithkin. My interpretation is that Lorwyn kith has a sort of hive mind where if one member of the clan was a good farmer, every kith was a good farmer. So I wanted some type of ability sharing design, which was hard to think of. Yours is close to another interpretation, but I don’t feel that it’s exactly what I’m looking for.
Okay, but I'm still not clear on how you want Thoughtweft to actually work, and it needs to be worded differently depending on what your intent is.
If my creature with Thoughtweft has
T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
Do you want, at the beginning of your upkeep, for all your other creatures to also gain that ability, or do you want the one creature to activate and all the thoughtweft creatures to gain a counter?
My intent is that each creature with Thoughtweft will gain the activated abilities of each other creature with Thoughtweft at the beginning of your upkeep, lasting until the end of your turn.
So by your example, each creature would gain T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
Okay, so this is still easier to do with a type (or marker like devoid, but that doesn't seem to have gone over well).
Easy template:
Thoughtweft creatures you control have "T: Put a +1/+1 counter on this creature."
I also like this because it makes "sharing" other abilities easier too, like
Thoughtweft creatures you control have vigilance
The more complicated template would be doing it as a keyword
Thoughtweft - T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME (Each creature you control with Thoughtweft has this activated ability)
or
Thoughtweft - T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME (Each creature you control with Thoughtweft has "T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME")
Its more wordy due to the reminder text and will be more limited in what you can share, but its a more direct translation of your original description.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Impede
Colors: Black/Colorless
Impede X (Whenever this creature becomes blocked, put X 0/-1 counters on the blocking creature at the end of combat.)
Thoughtweft
Colors: White/Blue
Thoughtweft (At the beginning of your upkeep, each creature with Thoughtweft share activated abilities until the end of your turn.)
Purify
Colors: White primarily, but it has backup shades in Black
Purify (Whenever this creature deals combat damage, if this creature isn't purified, create a 1/1 black shade creature token then this creature becomes purified.)
Gigantify
Colors: White/Green/Red
Gigantify X (You may pay an additional X as you cast this creature. If you do, double this creature's power and toughness and it becomes a Giant in addition to its other types.)
X is a mana cost similar to kicker, but I wanted to give the creatures a bit more room for other abilities. Most of the Gigantifying creatures will be humans turning into giants to make sense of the ability.
Explode
Colors: Red/Blue
Explode X (Whenever this creature dies, it deals one damage to X target creatures, planeswalkers, or players chosen at random.)
Void
Colors: Blue/Green/Black?
I had trouble designing this, so I ended up with two versions that I can’t choose between. And the wording is horrific, need a rules guru for these.
Ver. 1
Void (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or an ability requiring mana for activation, add half of the mana spent, rounded down, as colorless mana to your mana pool.)
Ver. 2
Void (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or an ability requiring mana to activate, instead counter that spell or ability. Then, that spell or ability's controller adds colorless mana to their mana pool equal to the amount of mana spent to target this creature.)
I’m open to criticism, but I don’t intend on completely redacting any of these abilities.
Impede
The biggest knock against this is the -0/-1 counters, both because they are very narrow in their usage and having them limits the other kinds of counters you can effectively have in your set. Depending how you want this to show up, it should either use -1/-1 counters or deal damage. Also, you might want it to be an end of combat trigger instead a delayed trigger on becoming blocked, so that the opponent can kill the attacker in combat or before the end of combat to prevent the trigger from happening.
Impede X (At the end of combat, put X -1/-1 counters on each creature that blocked this creature this combat.)
Thoughtweft
This is a little unclear if you want each creature to gain each other creature's activated abilities, or if you want each activated ability to affect each creature with Thoughtweft. The latter makes more sense, but it can be done more easily by making Thoughtweft a subtype and then just writing the effect onto the activated ability.
T: Each Thoughtweft creature you control gets +1/+1 until the end of turn.
Purify
I think the trigger should be on "combat damage to a player or planeswalker" instead of combat damage in general. I assume this is similar to reknown and creatures will get some kind of static bonuses when they are purified.
Gigantify
This ability really needs to use counters to help with memory.
Gigantify COST (As an additional cost to cast this creature, you may pay COST. If you do, it enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it, where X is this card's power.)
Explode
First off, this is definitely not a blue ability as written. Very red, probably black, not blue at all.
This has a lot of strikes against it. Random targets is both time consuming to sort out in paper play and has too much variance to be effectively used, as it could easily blow out either player, regardless which one plays it. Competitive players won't like the randomness downside, but if you're keywording it that means you intend it to show up a lot in your set.
This needs to either be a one or two card ability at most, have the targeting changed and/or have a way that opponents can remove the creature "safely" some of the time (a way to disarm the bomb, if you will) like you have to pay a cost when it dies to get the boom.
Void
The challenge here is that you'll typically be getting mana when you don't need it, and your opponents will only target the void creatures when gaining mana will do you the least good (like during your own end step).
Version 1 is better because it is psuedo protection, but version 2 will never be relevant because your opponents won't bother to target it and its just bad card costing colorless mana filtering for you.
This is really tough to word to include activated abilities, but I'll take a shot.
Void (Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or an ability with an activation cost, add an amount of C equal to half the mana cost of the spell or activation cost of the ability. You don't lose this mana as steps and phases end.)
I like the new format for impede, but I want to keep the narrowness of the 0/-1 counters so that indestructible creatures can get through. The creature type that will have impede are Slith, as a type of invert on the usual combat damage abilities that they have, but because of the Mirrodin block capitalizing on indestructible and more importantly darksteel, I didn’t want to make it -1/-1.
I’ll change gigantify and I think I’ll make it toughness rather than power.
Explode was goofy because I wanted to balance out the colors more and forgot I already included blue in another color so I think I’ll keep it mono-red. The reason I threw blue at it was the creatures would be goblin ‘chemists.’ I’ll consider reworking the ability, but I want to keep a bit of randomness.
With purify, the idea behind it is by releasing rage (dealing damage), you get rid of evil (the shade), so keeping it at generic combat damage allows it to be a bit stronger, but I think I might reduce the shades power and toughness to 0/1.
I wanted to design Thoughtweft on the description that’s printed on the Kithkin. My interpretation is that Lorwyn kith has a sort of hive mind where if one member of the clan was a good farmer, every kith was a good farmer. So I wanted some type of ability sharing design, which was hard to think of. Yours is close to another interpretation, but I don’t feel that it’s exactly what I’m looking for.
If my creature with Thoughtweft has
T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
Do you want, at the beginning of your upkeep, for all your other creatures to also gain that ability, or do you want the one creature to activate and all the thoughtweft creatures to gain a counter?
So by your example, each creature would gain T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
Easy template:
Thoughtweft creatures you control have "T: Put a +1/+1 counter on this creature."
I also like this because it makes "sharing" other abilities easier too, like
Thoughtweft creatures you control have vigilance
The more complicated template would be doing it as a keyword
Thoughtweft - T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME (Each creature you control with Thoughtweft has this activated ability)
or
Thoughtweft - T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME (Each creature you control with Thoughtweft has "T: Put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME")
Its more wordy due to the reminder text and will be more limited in what you can share, but its a more direct translation of your original description.