TOP 4 players from rounds 1-3 can participate in this round.
Theme
The fire whittles down. The edge of the sky grows brighter, heralding the coming of dawn.
The woman shudders from cold. She's close to falling asleep, yet can't resist asking.
- So, the worlds you saw. Many worlds. What are they like?
The old viashino hesitates, as if he doesn't know where to start.
- They're different. Unlike each other. A world of metal, where life is replaced by its unnatural imitation. A world that's as old as time itself, bled dry aeons ago, yet still clinging to life. A world of demons. A world deep in slumber. A bizarre world, the inhabitants of which, lacking any magic within themselves, have to imagine it. A city-world: endless streets and spires that rise above the clouds. Speaking of which...
The shaman looks at the viashino with interest.
- The city-world turned out to be a trap. It is there that I have first met the ones like me.
- The world-walkers?
- Not just them. A viashino. The same as me. I met him only to lose again. You know, there were actually quite a lot of those like me. All a plan of an evil genius. A dragon. He aspired to devour our sparks.
- Your souls?
- Well, you could put it that way. Our tiny sparks, after which he would have proceeded to snuff out the sparks of worlds, the Worldsmith's creations. And if he would've succeeded... I wouldn't be here.
- But you're here.
- Exactly. Although many have died that day. I, however...
- Chose to come back home?
- Yes. I came back home.
Challenge
Design TWO cards feraturing the same world - one World enchantment and one of any permanent type.
One of your card is World enchantment and another one is a permanent of any type. Both should be flavorfully related to one world - the world can be existing one or original.
Make sure to include a rarity.
PLEASE NOTE: This month will NO LONGER use the "mandatory top 3" rule. Critiques and top 3s will each be worth one bonus point per round but it will be possible to score points and advance even without submitting a top 3. This will also be done on a trial basis; future months may once again require top 3s from contestants.
Contestants:
Artorias
Fajen Thygia
RaikouRider
Algernone
Your submissions are due Monday, April 29th, 23:59 EST.
Schedule
Round 1 Open to Everyone (April 1st-6th)
Round 2 — Open to Everyone (April 7th–12th)
Rounds 1 and 2 Critiques (Due April 15th)
Top 8 — Open to top 8 finishers (April 16th–19th)
Top 8 Critiques (Due April 26nd)
Top 4 — Open to top 4 finishers from last round (April 26th–29th)
Top 4 Critiques (Due May 3rd)
Final (End of month, winner determined by public poll)
Adinian Chronographer2U
Creature - Human Scout (R)
Suspend 4 - U
When Adinian Chronographer enters the battlefield, draw a card. UU: Flip three coins. Exile Adinian Chronographer with a number of time counters on it for each flip you won. A few souls embraced Adina's shattered timeline, risking everything to explore everywhen.
2/1
The Untethering1UUUU
World Enchantment (M)
At the beginning of each player's end step, if that player controls exactly one tapped creature and/or exactly one untapped creature, put those creatures on the bottom of their owner's libraries in any order.
If The Untethering would be put into a graveyard from play, instead exile it with four time counters on it and it gains suspend. After the Untethering, to be unobserved on Adina was to find oneself in another time.
Nyx Influence3WW
World Enchantment {R}
Each other non-Aura enchantment is a creature in addition to its other types and has base power and base toughness each equal to its converted mana cost. 4: Each player returns target enchantment card from their graveyard to their hand. Any player may activate this ability.
___
Elspeth, God of the Dawn6W
Legendary Enchantment Creature - God {M}
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Elspeth isn't a creature. (Each W in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to white.)
Other creatures you control have flying. 4WW: Create three 1/1 white Soldier enchantment creature tokens.
4/4 After escaping the Underworld and taking her revenge the plane of Theros needed a new God of the Sun.
Lunar Lifeblood2
World Enchantment (R)
Whenever a transformed or melded creature dies, its controller may pay 4. If they do, return that creature to the battlefield. (The creature returns untransformed. A melded creature returns as the two cards used to meld it.) Emrakul's new game requires new players.
Arcana Seeker2W
Creature - Human Scout (U) 3, T: If you both own and control Arcana Seeker and a Wisp creature, exile them, then meld them into Cecily, Leyline Guardian. To ask for power is useless. It will either be earned, or found.
1/2
/////
Cecily, Leyline Guardian {}
Design Notes
-Arcana Seeker is the top half of a meld card, which on the front has the instructions of how to meld, but only contains the name and art of the melded card on the back.
-The typeline, rules text, and power/toughness are all on the back of the melded card's bottom half - and since the bottom half is a horizontal cycle of creatures with the Wisp creature type, the rest of what Cecily does can't be shown in the one card I can present.
Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
The Worldsoul1GGWW
World Enchantment {M}
Nonartifact spells have convoke. (Each creature a player taps while casting a spell pays for 1 or one mana of that creature's color.)
All creatures have "T: Prevent the next 1 damage that would be dealt to any other target." Many voices, one message.
Voda Wurmcaller2GW
Creature - Dryad Shaman {U}
When Voda Wurmcaller enters the battlefield, create an X/X green and white Wurm creature token, where X is the number of creatures you control.
Wurm creatures you control have trample.
1/2
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A mere ten days after the Mending, a young knight of Valeron and a young ranger of Eos made a discovery that would change Alara forever.
Fajen Thygia World
Love the time theme as a blue thing but 1UUUU seems too blue to my taste. Maybe 3UU makes it easier to build around a deck and also fits with the other World Enchantments where color mana never reaches three symbols on monocolor cards.
Creature
Love it, really original. I was thinking on 1 counter + the coin toss but then I read the flavor text and I like the risk of a 0 time counter option and getting "lost in time".
Algernone25 World
Like the meld flavor on Innistrad. My problem is that Transform and Meld are quite unique and being the World Enchantments symmetrical I found quite hard for the opponent to use this one.
Creature
Your idea of meld with a cycle gaining different abilities depending on the color of the bottom card is REALLY good and I would like to see it developed by WotC. My problem here is that I can't evaluate the card by it's power because I need more information on the Wisp side.
RaikouRider World
Selesnya was my first main Guild back on the original Ravnica and your flavor here with the Worldsoul is top notch. I would quit the prevent damage section and maybe make it GGWW, a deck built around this card can be quite strong. Curiously Soul of Ravnica is blue... maybe for being an urbanized plane?
Creature
I find interesting a Selesnya card that gains power with the more creatures you have on the battlefield and also didn't use Convoke. Personally I'm not into the selesnyan wurms gaining Trample because is one of their main abilities (they have head armor and they are used as living battering rams Siege Wurm, Armada Wurm or Autochthon Wurm, only Impervious Greatwurm didn't have it and it triggers me) and a Trample lord here is redundant. Maybe a X/X token with Trample makes more sense, like Advent of the Wurm.
Top 3
1- RaikouRider
2- Fajen Thygia
3- Algernone25
Fajen Thygia Creature: This is a very interesting card, it can dodge removal similar to Aetherling but its stats otherwise seem...kind of weak for a rare, even with the semi-repeatable draw - uncommon is more reasonable. One other thing I'd do, if it were me, is have it exile itself with counters equal to the number of heads - ideally you want to win exactly 1 flip so it comes back ASAP, but rooting against yourself feels awkward. The danger of just exiling itself with 0 counters (and being stuck there) is a nice touch. Flavor is also beautifully on point.
World: I'm really not sure this should be mono-blue. Yes the tuck part is blue but caring about only one creature tapped/untapped feels more white. It also plays merry hell against decks that WANT only one creature in play at a time. While time magic is very explicitly blue's thing, quad-U doesn't make the most sense to me from a set-building perspective. 5 mana for a mythic that just completely screws with your opponent's combat math sounds right though.
Artorias Creature: From a power level perspective this is pretty solid. 7 mana that will basically end the game when it lands (board stalls just don't happen when this resolves) and a way to close out the game in short order if worse comes to worse. From a flavor standpoint, though...it sucks. A huge part of the ending of Theros block was the people turning on their Gods, and Elspeth's character makes really little sense for her to take on a deific role even if it was given to her. The flavor text is also missing a comma after "revenge".
World: How to we keep Opalescence weirdness from becoming a thing? Make it so you can't possibly have 2 in play - works, I guess. The interaction with Humility is cleaned up at least, so plus for that. It's markedly weaker than Starfield of Nyx for the same CMC, so rare is probably right. The activated ability is...odd but world enchantments should be global so I'm not going to deduct for that.
RaikouRider Creature: This card kind of feels win-more. If you're ahead you get a giant trampler alongside your army but it's a horrible topdeck looking at an empty board. Uncommon I think is right for the variability, and it'll be great in limited by obliterating a boardstall. I guess I just expect a bit more play outside of 40-card formats. I'd like it to be a 2/2 for 4 honestly.
World: I'm assuming from the convoke your worldsoul is invoking Selesnya, as apparently there's several that have been mentioned. In that vein this absolutely gets the point across, and the flavor text is a homerun for it. Convoke has always been a strong ability and being able to give it to everything (except artifacts, also makes sense for green/white) is going to lead to blowouts one way or another - likely to whoever plays more creatures. The damage prevention just takes it a bit over the top. The one message your many voices are saying is "whoever draws more creatures wins." and I'm not entirely sure I like it.
1st: Fajen - you've been killing it all month and this round has been no exception. A bit of fine tuning is about the best I can offer. 2nd: Raikourider 3rd: Artorias
You two were a paper's width apart. Raikou's flavor hits a home run in describing the part of the world he wants to showcase, while Art's takes what we know about Theros and ignores a critical part of it's development. Art's cards are a little bland in terms of effects but are properly costed and tempered. Raikou's cards have some wobbly balance issues and while ambitious they raise some hard design philosophy questions.
Ultimately I had to determine that, given the stories we've been weaving all month, the flavor fail has to be more harshly penalized. If I could give you both 2nd I probably would.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Thanks for the feedback. I'm just starting designing MTG custom cards (those were like my 10-11th cards) and I have to polish my skills and feedback is gold for me.
PS: also I didn't know about Starfield of Nyx, I think a need to search for more sets on the Gatherer, not the block sets.
Fajen Thygia:
Creature: I'm not sure how I'd feel about the chance to have this permanently exiled. I like this use of suspend, but the ability should probably have a minimum of 1 time counter placed on it for this reason. Only nitpick is maybe the suspend cost takes too much time?
World: This is unique. Very unique and very difficult to evaluate. I *think* this is balanced but could get a little crazy with other cards like Arcane Laboratory. Minor nitpick: "Play" isn't a zone anymore. That zone is called the battlefield.
Artorias:
World: Judges everywhere love you because this is an Opalescence you can't have two of. The second ability doesn't work - no matter what functionality you intended, this isn't going to work as written because of how targeting an object works. I like the idea but it needs polish.
Creature: So Elspeth gave up her Spark to rule over Theros? Makes sense from a character perspective, considering she didn't want to planeswalk in the first place. I think this needs to cost less mana. Sure it's an "I win" if you untap with it in any kind of board position, but you're sinking 13 mana into this card to get any appreciable benefit out of it. This should probably cost four mana.
Algernone:
World: This is...weird. Like...really weird. I don't know how to evaluate this, either for draft or for constructed. Definitely rewards people for playing meld cards, but getting the meld cards together seems prohibitively difficult for draft. The cards need to be strong enough on their own for this to be worth playing.
Creature: So this is a meld card whose abilities vary depending on its materials? Definitely off the wall, but I'd probably need to see at least one of the cards in the Wisp cycle to evaluate this fully understand the power level of this.
1) Fajen Thygia
2) Artorias
3) Algernone
This was razor-thin between the bottom two of you. If I could, I'd give you both 2nd place. You both have very creative ideas and also some execution issues that even out in the end.
Artorias
World - Yeah, opalescence effects should be legendary, if just to have mercy on the poor rules team. I also like the flavor of it - when it dies, it really feels like a world is ending (in-game). The wording of the activated ability seems off; the way I'm reading it, there is exactly one target and whoever owns that card returns it, meaning that the only difference between it and a standard any-player clause like Endbringer's Revel is that you can force opponents to return dead enchantments to their hand? There are some fun things you can do with that, like Lobotomy and Isperia the Inscrutable, but I'm not sure that's worth the wording. If each player was supposed to choose and return one, that's more interesting.
Card - Interesting upgrade to Heliod, and it could possibly work flavor-wise (an old-gods-new-gods story). That story team would definitely have some work to do, though. I feel like it should be beefier than Heliod, if a) she's supposed to supplant him and b) she's so much more expensive.
RaikouRider
World - It's an interesting take on something like Cryptolith Rites, making it symmetrical and not usable on abilities, but with all the shenanigans of convoke writ large. Spells like Raise the Alarm and Hordeling Outburst become essentially free, while spells like Goblin Gathering or Promise of Bunrei become rituals. The effect is symmetrical but not the impact. Lots of interesting ways to play with this. You could even lure people in to over-committing before a wipe.
Card - Yeah, it's pretty in keeping with what we've seen. Reminds me of Voice of Resurgence with added blinking tricks. A nice spin on a familiar formula.
Algernone
World - Interesting card. I like the use of split-to-colorless mana there, although I wish the difference in costs was more pronounced. The flavor text is nice; it made me reread that part of the Innistrad story. I think the wording might be a little off for the meld half; when a melded card is no longer in play, it doesn't exist, thus this should refer to the constituent cards.
Card - What's here, I like. A new set of melds, perhaps without the eldrazi influence... but it's really, really hard to evaluate this. Strictly speaking, it falls in the criteria, but does so in the vaguest way possible. I kind of wish you had done the other side of the meld, so that we'd have a more complete picture. Judging just what's here...I'm guessing that there are multiple different wisps, which result in different resultant meld creatures? That is an awesome, awesome idea, and I'd love to see more of it. But I can only judge what's been submitted. There are other explanations that could fit the parameters set by this card, some of which are terrible.
Top 3:
1) RaikouRider. Solid set of cards.
2) Artorias. I'm surprised you haven't been doing this long; I've enjoyed your entries.
3) Algernone25. I like the flavor, but I needed more from the creature you submitted.
“Home, Sweet Home”
Sudden Disappearance by Cliff Childs
Theme
The fire whittles down. The edge of the sky grows brighter, heralding the coming of dawn.
The woman shudders from cold. She's close to falling asleep, yet can't resist asking.
- So, the worlds you saw. Many worlds. What are they like?
The old viashino hesitates, as if he doesn't know where to start.
- They're different. Unlike each other. A world of metal, where life is replaced by its unnatural imitation. A world that's as old as time itself, bled dry aeons ago, yet still clinging to life. A world of demons. A world deep in slumber. A bizarre world, the inhabitants of which, lacking any magic within themselves, have to imagine it. A city-world: endless streets and spires that rise above the clouds. Speaking of which...
The shaman looks at the viashino with interest.
- The city-world turned out to be a trap. It is there that I have first met the ones like me.
- The world-walkers?
- Not just them. A viashino. The same as me. I met him only to lose again. You know, there were actually quite a lot of those like me. All a plan of an evil genius. A dragon. He aspired to devour our sparks.
- Your souls?
- Well, you could put it that way. Our tiny sparks, after which he would have proceeded to snuff out the sparks of worlds, the Worldsmith's creations. And if he would've succeeded... I wouldn't be here.
- But you're here.
- Exactly. Although many have died that day. I, however...
- Chose to come back home?
- Yes. I came back home.
Challenge
PLEASE NOTE: This month will NO LONGER use the "mandatory top 3" rule. Critiques and top 3s will each be worth one bonus point per round but it will be possible to score points and advance even without submitting a top 3. This will also be done on a trial basis; future months may once again require top 3s from contestants.
Contestants:
Artorias
Fajen Thygia
RaikouRider
Algernone
Your submissions are due Monday, April 29th, 23:59 EST.
Schedule
Creature - Human Scout (R)
Suspend 4 - U
When Adinian Chronographer enters the battlefield, draw a card.
UU: Flip three coins. Exile Adinian Chronographer with a number of time counters on it for each flip you won.
A few souls embraced Adina's shattered timeline, risking everything to explore everywhen.
2/1
The Untethering 1UUUU
World Enchantment (M)
At the beginning of each player's end step, if that player controls exactly one tapped creature and/or exactly one untapped creature, put those creatures on the bottom of their owner's libraries in any order.
If The Untethering would be put into a graveyard from play, instead exile it with four time counters on it and it gains suspend.
After the Untethering, to be unobserved on Adina was to find oneself in another time.
World Enchantment {R}
Each other non-Aura enchantment is a creature in addition to its other types and has base power and base toughness each equal to its converted mana cost.
4: Each player returns target enchantment card from their graveyard to their hand. Any player may activate this ability.
___
Elspeth, God of the Dawn 6W
Legendary Enchantment Creature - God {M}
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Elspeth isn't a creature. (Each W in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to white.)
Other creatures you control have flying.
4WW: Create three 1/1 white Soldier enchantment creature tokens.
4/4
After escaping the Underworld and taking her revenge the plane of Theros needed a new God of the Sun.
World Enchantment (R)
Whenever a transformed or melded creature dies, its controller may pay 4. If they do, return that creature to the battlefield. (The creature returns untransformed. A melded creature returns as the two cards used to meld it.)
Emrakul's new game requires new players.
Arcana Seeker 2W
Creature - Human Scout (U)
3, T: If you both own and control Arcana Seeker and a Wisp creature, exile them, then meld them into Cecily, Leyline Guardian.
To ask for power is useless. It will either be earned, or found.
1/2
/////
Cecily, Leyline Guardian {}
Design Notes
-Arcana Seeker is the top half of a meld card, which on the front has the instructions of how to meld, but only contains the name and art of the melded card on the back.
-The typeline, rules text, and power/toughness are all on the back of the melded card's bottom half - and since the bottom half is a horizontal cycle of creatures with the Wisp creature type, the rest of what Cecily does can't be shown in the one card I can present.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
World Enchantment {M}
Nonartifact spells have convoke. (Each creature a player taps while casting a spell pays for 1 or one mana of that creature's color.)
All creatures have "T: Prevent the next 1 damage that would be dealt to any other target."
Many voices, one message.
Voda Wurmcaller 2GW
Creature - Dryad Shaman {U}
When Voda Wurmcaller enters the battlefield, create an X/X green and white Wurm creature token, where X is the number of creatures you control.
Wurm creatures you control have trample.
1/2
Emille, Seven-Sting Dancer Shalin Nariya
World
Love the time theme as a blue thing but 1UUUU seems too blue to my taste. Maybe 3UU makes it easier to build around a deck and also fits with the other World Enchantments where color mana never reaches three symbols on monocolor cards.
Creature
Love it, really original. I was thinking on 1 counter + the coin toss but then I read the flavor text and I like the risk of a 0 time counter option and getting "lost in time".
Algernone25
World
Like the meld flavor on Innistrad. My problem is that Transform and Meld are quite unique and being the World Enchantments symmetrical I found quite hard for the opponent to use this one.
Creature
Your idea of meld with a cycle gaining different abilities depending on the color of the bottom card is REALLY good and I would like to see it developed by WotC. My problem here is that I can't evaluate the card by it's power because I need more information on the Wisp side.
RaikouRider
World
Selesnya was my first main Guild back on the original Ravnica and your flavor here with the Worldsoul is top notch. I would quit the prevent damage section and maybe make it GGWW, a deck built around this card can be quite strong. Curiously Soul of Ravnica is blue... maybe for being an urbanized plane?
Creature
I find interesting a Selesnya card that gains power with the more creatures you have on the battlefield and also didn't use Convoke. Personally I'm not into the selesnyan wurms gaining Trample because is one of their main abilities (they have head armor and they are used as living battering rams Siege Wurm, Armada Wurm or Autochthon Wurm, only Impervious Greatwurm didn't have it and it triggers me) and a Trample lord here is redundant. Maybe a X/X token with Trample makes more sense, like Advent of the Wurm.
Top 3
1- RaikouRider
2- Fajen Thygia
3- Algernone25
PS: sorry for the delay.
Creature: This is a very interesting card, it can dodge removal similar to Aetherling but its stats otherwise seem...kind of weak for a rare, even with the semi-repeatable draw - uncommon is more reasonable. One other thing I'd do, if it were me, is have it exile itself with counters equal to the number of heads - ideally you want to win exactly 1 flip so it comes back ASAP, but rooting against yourself feels awkward. The danger of just exiling itself with 0 counters (and being stuck there) is a nice touch. Flavor is also beautifully on point.
World: I'm really not sure this should be mono-blue. Yes the tuck part is blue but caring about only one creature tapped/untapped feels more white. It also plays merry hell against decks that WANT only one creature in play at a time. While time magic is very explicitly blue's thing, quad-U doesn't make the most sense to me from a set-building perspective. 5 mana for a mythic that just completely screws with your opponent's combat math sounds right though.
Artorias
Creature: From a power level perspective this is pretty solid. 7 mana that will basically end the game when it lands (board stalls just don't happen when this resolves) and a way to close out the game in short order if worse comes to worse. From a flavor standpoint, though...it sucks. A huge part of the ending of Theros block was the people turning on their Gods, and Elspeth's character makes really little sense for her to take on a deific role even if it was given to her. The flavor text is also missing a comma after "revenge".
World: How to we keep Opalescence weirdness from becoming a thing? Make it so you can't possibly have 2 in play - works, I guess. The interaction with Humility is cleaned up at least, so plus for that. It's markedly weaker than Starfield of Nyx for the same CMC, so rare is probably right. The activated ability is...odd but world enchantments should be global so I'm not going to deduct for that.
RaikouRider
Creature: This card kind of feels win-more. If you're ahead you get a giant trampler alongside your army but it's a horrible topdeck looking at an empty board. Uncommon I think is right for the variability, and it'll be great in limited by obliterating a boardstall. I guess I just expect a bit more play outside of 40-card formats. I'd like it to be a 2/2 for 4 honestly.
World: I'm assuming from the convoke your worldsoul is invoking Selesnya, as apparently there's several that have been mentioned. In that vein this absolutely gets the point across, and the flavor text is a homerun for it. Convoke has always been a strong ability and being able to give it to everything (except artifacts, also makes sense for green/white) is going to lead to blowouts one way or another - likely to whoever plays more creatures. The damage prevention just takes it a bit over the top. The one message your many voices are saying is "whoever draws more creatures wins." and I'm not entirely sure I like it.
1st: Fajen - you've been killing it all month and this round has been no exception. A bit of fine tuning is about the best I can offer.
2nd: Raikourider
3rd: Artorias
You two were a paper's width apart. Raikou's flavor hits a home run in describing the part of the world he wants to showcase, while Art's takes what we know about Theros and ignores a critical part of it's development. Art's cards are a little bland in terms of effects but are properly costed and tempered. Raikou's cards have some wobbly balance issues and while ambitious they raise some hard design philosophy questions.
Ultimately I had to determine that, given the stories we've been weaving all month, the flavor fail has to be more harshly penalized. If I could give you both 2nd I probably would.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
PS: also I didn't know about Starfield of Nyx, I think a need to search for more sets on the Gatherer, not the block sets.
Creature: I'm not sure how I'd feel about the chance to have this permanently exiled. I like this use of suspend, but the ability should probably have a minimum of 1 time counter placed on it for this reason. Only nitpick is maybe the suspend cost takes too much time?
World: This is unique. Very unique and very difficult to evaluate. I *think* this is balanced but could get a little crazy with other cards like Arcane Laboratory. Minor nitpick: "Play" isn't a zone anymore. That zone is called the battlefield.
Artorias:
World: Judges everywhere love you because this is an Opalescence you can't have two of. The second ability doesn't work - no matter what functionality you intended, this isn't going to work as written because of how targeting an object works. I like the idea but it needs polish.
Creature: So Elspeth gave up her Spark to rule over Theros? Makes sense from a character perspective, considering she didn't want to planeswalk in the first place. I think this needs to cost less mana. Sure it's an "I win" if you untap with it in any kind of board position, but you're sinking 13 mana into this card to get any appreciable benefit out of it. This should probably cost four mana.
Algernone:
World: This is...weird. Like...really weird. I don't know how to evaluate this, either for draft or for constructed. Definitely rewards people for playing meld cards, but getting the meld cards together seems prohibitively difficult for draft. The cards need to be strong enough on their own for this to be worth playing.
Creature: So this is a meld card whose abilities vary depending on its materials? Definitely off the wall, but I'd probably need to see at least one of the cards in the Wisp cycle to evaluate this fully understand the power level of this.
1) Fajen Thygia
2) Artorias
3) Algernone
This was razor-thin between the bottom two of you. If I could, I'd give you both 2nd place. You both have very creative ideas and also some execution issues that even out in the end.
Emille, Seven-Sting Dancer Shalin Nariya
World - Yeah, opalescence effects should be legendary, if just to have mercy on the poor rules team. I also like the flavor of it - when it dies, it really feels like a world is ending (in-game). The wording of the activated ability seems off; the way I'm reading it, there is exactly one target and whoever owns that card returns it, meaning that the only difference between it and a standard any-player clause like Endbringer's Revel is that you can force opponents to return dead enchantments to their hand? There are some fun things you can do with that, like Lobotomy and Isperia the Inscrutable, but I'm not sure that's worth the wording. If each player was supposed to choose and return one, that's more interesting.
Card - Interesting upgrade to Heliod, and it could possibly work flavor-wise (an old-gods-new-gods story). That story team would definitely have some work to do, though. I feel like it should be beefier than Heliod, if a) she's supposed to supplant him and b) she's so much more expensive.
RaikouRider
World - It's an interesting take on something like Cryptolith Rites, making it symmetrical and not usable on abilities, but with all the shenanigans of convoke writ large. Spells like Raise the Alarm and Hordeling Outburst become essentially free, while spells like Goblin Gathering or Promise of Bunrei become rituals. The effect is symmetrical but not the impact. Lots of interesting ways to play with this. You could even lure people in to over-committing before a wipe.
Card - Yeah, it's pretty in keeping with what we've seen. Reminds me of Voice of Resurgence with added blinking tricks. A nice spin on a familiar formula.
Algernone
World - Interesting card. I like the use of split-to-colorless mana there, although I wish the difference in costs was more pronounced. The flavor text is nice; it made me reread that part of the Innistrad story. I think the wording might be a little off for the meld half; when a melded card is no longer in play, it doesn't exist, thus this should refer to the constituent cards.
Card - What's here, I like. A new set of melds, perhaps without the eldrazi influence... but it's really, really hard to evaluate this. Strictly speaking, it falls in the criteria, but does so in the vaguest way possible. I kind of wish you had done the other side of the meld, so that we'd have a more complete picture. Judging just what's here...I'm guessing that there are multiple different wisps, which result in different resultant meld creatures? That is an awesome, awesome idea, and I'd love to see more of it. But I can only judge what's been submitted. There are other explanations that could fit the parameters set by this card, some of which are terrible.
Top 3:
1) RaikouRider. Solid set of cards.
2) Artorias. I'm surprised you haven't been doing this long; I've enjoyed your entries.
3) Algernone25. I like the flavor, but I needed more from the creature you submitted.