MTG Salvation

Ugh jesus consuming contract is so red.

I think revenge of necromancy is the only real appealing card here. Everything else is either kind of unplayable or uninteresting or incredibly busted like eldritch rites or the doom card.

Consuming contract really took the diet coke approach.
Is sign in blood, or terminate, or *some 2 mana thing* over three turns really worth losing the game on the fourth upkeep for?

To eliminate the memory/cheating issues, and give it more reason to risk losing the game, it really should be something like:
BBBBB
Consuming Contract enters the battlefield with three Impending Doom counters.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove an Impending Doom counter from Consuming Contract. If you do, choose one: return target creature card in a graveyard to the battlefield under your control, or target player sacrifices two creatures, or target player draws three cards and loses three life. If you do not remove a counter, you lose the game.

There. Now that's both worth the risk of losing the game because there's a good payoff before you die, and the memory/cheating issues are solved. Plus, it's not always going to be obvious what the best of those options are, whereas it's pretty easy to work out if Sign in Blood or Terminate is required.

Most people complaining should describe how there ideas were better than these. They selected cards that not every player would like, because they have to please the majority, so varying the options gives more wiggle room.

Quote from Yamikiri

Most people complaining should describe how there ideas were better than these. They selected cards that not every player would like, because they have to please the majority, so varying the options gives more wiggle room.

My idea was withering boon on a stick. It was worth a shot.

Will be voting for Eldritch rites and Double down all the way. Exchanging of resources is neat.
Everything with counters is too clunky.

I made a blog post going into a lot of detail about the design of Mass Mummification and how I thought it might be used. (It really was designed to be tournament playable.)

Thanks so much for all the comments so far. I've had a lot of fun reading them (positive AND negative).

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/blog.php?b=8759

I will not say I want only strong cards, but wotc please at lease make a playable card. Some of these cards are truly unplayable(or playable in a limited card pool), and some are unplayable after considering the mana cost wotc will give them.


A) Consuming Contract: Yes you can disenchant/stifle it, but it NEED ANOTHER card. Playability depends on how broken the "_______" part will be: How much benifit you can get vs the things you need to setup(removing the enchantment to avoid lose game)?

B) Double Down: Unplayable unless it cost B or at most 1B, and only as a mirror match SB card. Least change to make it playable: "Remove 2 cards of same type from any single graveyard". But for current text, no.

C) Blood in the Watering Can: Johnny-Spike. Possible part of newtype recuring engine. Playable if cmc not more that 3. Consider it a new Oversold Cemetery.

D) Mass Mummification: Johnny, good to play with pay-life decks. I dont expect this cost less then 4BB, but I will play Eternity Vessel instead at that cmc. 2BBB I hope.

E) Soulfeaster's Rising: This can vary from super good to bad, depends on the mana cost. Should not cost more than Lurking Evil.

F) Revenge of Necromancy: This is a nice headache card if cost BB, but I suppose wotc isnt giving it such and aggressive cost. Btw it should not be compared with Deathrite Shaman, which is a card with active abilities.

G) Eldritch Rites: I see possibilities but need more broken cards to break this.

H) Demonic Bargain: Unplayable no matter how much it cost(XB?) in any format you can play Phyrexian Arena.


A vs B: A wins(obviously)
C vs D: C wins(hmm)
E vs F: E wins(personal wish, but F is also ok)
G vs H: G wins(obviously)

A vs C: unknown text, I think C?
E vs G: E is easier to use.
or
F vs G: G is more interesting.

C vs E vs G: ???

These cards are all awful. I saw some truly unique submissions and feel that I submitted something rather unique as well. It seems they chose some incredibly safe designs which is the opposite of what the players want in a YMTC style contest.

You have to ask yourself if you'd be fine in knowing that one of these cards is the culmination of the minds of the entire voting community. I'd like to think that we as a community can do much, much better. This is worse than Vanish into Memory. This is simply an insult

All those people who wanted Necropotence reprinted or Black Enchant Destruction are disappointed, just as they should be.

While I'm not a fan of a chunk of these designs, the others are at least unique. Revenge of Necromancy (albeit I don't like the name) would be a really fun one for EDH.

Revenge of Necromancy or Eldritch Rites. Not even close with the others for me. Would prefer Revenge, but the Rites is awesome.

Quote from lith

B) Double Down: Unplayable unless it cost B or at most 1B, and only as a mirror match SB card. Least change to make it playable: "Remove 2 cards of same type from any single graveyard". But for current text, no.

That effect for one or two mana? Riiight, let's make a card drawing engine better than Ancestral Recall

I like most of the cards, except boring spikey ones Double Down and Eldritch Rites, which will be most likely overcosted (or broken, if not). Also, not a fan of Demonic Bargain.
Other cards have interesting designs and I'd like to see one of them printed.

I like the resource exchange cards.

I think "blood in the watering can" is underrated... its quite good. its easy enough to lose life when you want to and getting back a creature can be huge.

Edrich rites has to be the most compedative.. as long as the cost is low.

I went for demonic bargain. Great flavor.

I'm still upset that i couldn't enter my Card..

Necromancer's Cache. BBB

1B: exile target artifact or creature from an opponents graveyard.

You may cast cards exiled with necromancers cache.


Fo shame:)

Nothing on here is as good as revenge of necromancy. Some things look very fun, that rites card is interesting -- actually i still want them to consider just giving black cards like this again, but revenge of necromancy is a great way to make discard useful again.

However, it has got to be cheap. I'm not paying more than 3 for an effect the opponent can somewhat control, and 2 cmc is probably asking too much. It will probably win and get stuck at 1BB, but it might....just might get put in at BB for mana cost.... again, I'm putting too much faith in the powers of r&d up there, and the cost will just end up being unplayable at 4 cmc...

Quote from YamiJoey

How this pile made it is beyond me. My card was so much more eligant than any of these, and was playable, but not broken. It was hard in Black, and had 2-lines of text.

These are using counters unecessarily, have a bajillion abilities per card, and aren't even that powerful.

I totally agree. Interesting abilities are cool, but sometimes less is more. I really want to know what some of the "losing" submissions looked like.

This thread loves sour grapes.

These all feel 'safe' as in bland and uninteresting. Not surprised given designs current trend of not really exploring anything and throwing as much stuff as they can into every set.

Quote from Vividice

Cream of the Crop. The best of the best. The essence of thousands of submissions. Erm what?


1. Consuming Contract

Sign in Blood and Murder are not enough to risk losing in three turns and help only little to win the game. Without the each mdoe once & you lose it coud have been a "best of black" effect (Sign in Blood OR Murder OR Dark Ritual for 5BB maybe?
Good Idea but bland execution.

2. Double Down
Some synergy with milling, but even with low casting cost it would be quite much work for little gain.
Nothing special.

3. Blood in the Watering Can
Repeatable Creature Recursion! Oversold Cemetery that needs a little work for your value. Phyrexian Arena, City of Brass and your enemy will enable this quite easily.

Power scaling with the creatures you use. Playable in EDH, Modern and T2.
One of the two cards I would really like to see.


4. Mass Mummification
That it's symetric just kills this card. Could have been a nice Lich-Variant. Like this it's just a gimmick card that needs a lot of deck-space so only you take advantage of it. Absolutely don't like it in the current form.

5. Soulfeaster's Rising
Necrotic Ooze meets Rest in Peace? Sadly it's doing both parts far worse.
Most of the time I probably would prefer Dark Impostor for a similar effect.
At least it feels interesting while beeing wonky.

6. Revenge of Necromancy
Geth's Grimoire only uses the best mode of this card and really isn't that great. You hardly use discard all that often and when Geth's Grimoire would be the better choice to draw more discard. Unless it costs B or 1B it would be outclassed by an uncommon artifact.

5. Eldritch Rites
Buffed Toshiro Umezawa? Balanced Yawgmoth's Agenda?

Flashback for black instant or sorcery spells is awesome even if you have to jump through some hoops. Reassembling Skeleton et al. fit into many black decks anyway.
Who wouldn't like some spell recursion?

6. Demonic Bargain
One of the worst YMTC card designs I have seen so far.
XB Draw a card each upkeep for X turns. Wouldn't be all too exiting. Giving your opponent a crazy token for playing a bad card is a lose-lose situation. Who could read this card and think "oh that sounds nice and balanced" ?

If it gave you the Token it could be great. Something like Promise of Power in enchantment form. But who would play this over Phyrexian Arena, Underworld Connections or Bloodgift Demon?
Bad design!

For me only two cards are really interesting:
Blood in the Watering Can vs. Eldritch Rites
Would you like creature recursion or flashback for black instants & sorceries?

Revenge of Necomancy (Ugh I do not like that name) may be unplayable in Standard, but that doesn't mean its not an interesting card. Discard is always a tool people use, having a bonus tacked onto each discard based on your opponent's choice is nice. Not to mention how well it plays with Windfall effects.

Well I'm pretty excited about this. I wasn't all that excited about the black enchantment, but these cards have put me in the mood.

I chose the Consuming Contract. I like that we can zoom in on that last ability to adjust it's power level. If it's strong enough I think it would make for a fun card to build around. I like the idea of this costing BBB or BBBB, all in baby.

Second would probably be Eldritch Rites. Seems good, I like it at 3BB , but maybe I'm underestimating it.

BW Consuming Contract control deck with enchantment removal. THAT is something I would like to play!

Kinda sad at how popular Revenge of Necromancy seems to be. It will probably end up being a 4-mana enchantment that does nothing on its own, and will only be OK against control decks.

how is Revenge of Necromancy winning, it's even worse than the others

Remember, power level is still adjustable on these, and we're voting for the overall effect first.

Quote from Vividice

For me only two cards are really interesting:
Blood in the Watering Can vs. Eldritch Rites
Would you like creature recursion or flashback for black instants & sorceries?

pretty much the two I like as well, though I thinking revenge of necromancy has it's place if it's aggressively costed.

I was hoping for a better set of top 8.:rolleyes: I personally know of a few that were submitted that were better than many of these from a flavor and functionallity standpoint. A little disappointed.

Of these Eldrich's Rites seems like the most black I want card to me. That card is a card I would love to brew with.

I voted Mass Mummification simply because its a clock, and has interaction with Hex Parasite and Hidetsugu's Second Rite.

Revenge of Necromancy is cool and all, but it won't be reasonably costed.