I'm not sure exactly whats so appealing about Demonic Bargain. What is X? I am assuming it has something to do with the cost because the card doesn't specify where the counters are based on so I can only assume that this card will have X in its casting cost somewhere right?
If that's the case, let's look at the options for casting cost.
XB is probably the cheapest this card can be.
At 1B: It is worse than sign in blood
At 2B: It is worse than sign in blood
At 3B and up: It is worse than phyrexian arena
Any other cost it is worse than Phyrexian Arena. Am I not seeing something? What's so appealing about it?
The X could simply be a fixed number, it doesn't have to relate to the mana cost. Lets say:
Demonic Bargain1BB
Enchantment
CARDNAME enters the battlefield with 5 doom counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a doom counter from CARDNAME and draw a card. Then, if CARDNAME has no doom counters on it, sacrifice it and put a 5/5 black indestructible Demon token with flying onto the battlefield under an opponent's control.
That would imo be of similar power level to Arena.
The X could simply be a fixed number, it doesn't have to relate to the mana cost. Lets say:
Demonic Bargain1BB
Enchantment
CARDNAME enters the battlefield with 5 doom counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a doom counter from CARDNAME and draw a card. Then, if CARDNAME has no doom counters on it, sacrifice it and put a 5/5 black indestructible Demon token with flying onto the battlefield under an opponent's control.
That would imo be of similar power level to Arena.
That's not how it's worded, though. The way it is worded, it will be costed XB most likely, which makes it worse than the previously mentioned cards, Braingeyser, ambition's cost, basically any card with "draw cards" printed on it.
That's not how it's worded, though. The way it is worded, it will be costed XB most likely, which makes it worse than the previously mentioned cards, Braingeyser, ambition's cost, basically any card with "draw cards" printed on it.
X could just be being used as a placeholder variable in this case.
Bane's Reading Suggestions David Eddings: The Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli Series. The Redemption of Althalus Jim Butcher: The Codex Alera Series
Numbers and costs can still all be adjusted. It might cost XB but enter with twice X or X+3, or X just might be a number to fill in later in delevopment.
Right now we're voting on general effect.
Geth's Grimoire can do some pretty hot things in edh. I use it in a mono red deck with many wheel effects like Dragon Mage/Wheel of Fortune/Shocker and it draws mad cards. It's not a great card, of course I agree. It can be built around though, while this card does random stuff that you can't plan for.
This black enchantment card is just worse than that colorless artifact though...
Yeah, Grimoire has some uses for sure. But the fact that we currently have a narrow combo piece that's worse than a colorless uncommon as the front runner for this YMTC does not speak well for the community's card evaluation skills. I picked Eldrich Rites; I think it is one of the most powerful AND has cool combo potential. Blood in the Watering Can seems pretty powerful as well, and Soulfeaster's Rising seems like a super fun casual card. Revenge of Necromancy and Demonic Bargain look like the dregs to me.
The only cards I like are Consuming Contract and Demonic Bargain.
Both are flavourfull enough to cater towards the casual crowd, and all the 'magic player types' aside from Timmy.
They also both have enough potential powerlevel to see constructed play, and make the spikes happy.
Eldritch Rites would potentially have gotten my vote if it hadnt been so restrictive.
Nontoken AND black nonpermanents makes it an incredibly narrow card.
It will have to be a deck that needs to be monoblack, run this card 4x (enchantment), have enough creatures with the right utility to make it effective AND enough spells to make the enchantment relevant...
It is like juggling multiple burning chainsaws, with 1 hand tied behind your back, and balancing on a thin rope with a pit trap staring down at you from the abyss.
In other words, pretty damn impossible.
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Give credit, where credit is due. Give irony and sarcasm, when ignorance and stupidity is found. The whip is kept for special occasions
The Internet was a revelation to me, I never imagined there are so many idiots on this planet.
I can't believe there isn't more love for Double Down. Do people not see the potential of breaking something like this in a dredge shell or even with Sphinx of the Chimes. It has the potential to be a true combo engine as long as they don't add "non-land" to the activation cost.
This is pretty sad, none of these designs are likely to see competitive play unless the card is drastically undercosted. That said, none of them are even that good except for maybe the first one. The rest just feel too forced and clunky.
Why doesn't it have P/T equal to the number of counters on it?
Currently you need to keep putting counters on it even after it's animated and the counters don't matter anymore. Not doing so would give you a warning in competitive play, not the kind of needless paperwork you want to dump on players. For the same reason, Time of Heroes doesn't give +X/+X equal to the number of level counters.
Apart from that, it is my favorite card from the 8 =)
Thanks! While you make a great point, I do get to pass off the blame hehe. My final version didn't include counters at all and triggered when five creatures were exiled. That must not work in the rules, since the good folks at Wizards added the risen counters to the card. And it was my intention that the Void effect keep working even after it becomes a creature (I hope it works that way as worded!) I did consider having power/toughness equal to the number of creatures exiled, but I wanted something bigger than 5/5 to start. I'm planning to type up my full thought process like some of the other designers have done, and my thoughts on the other cards.
I don't know why they chose some of these cards for this contest... Like it feels like if they decided to do YmtC for a red enchantment and someone made Guild Feud, it would be up here... I really do like Eldritch Rites though, depending on the cost it could see competitive play and could make a new deck. I did not want to see enchantments that give each player a certain amount of time to live, or enchantments that "became active" by stacking counters on them like the quests from zendikar. Mass Mummification is such bad design... Even if it was cheap, I wouldn't want it in an aggro deck because it SETS the opponent's life total to a value over 10 for three turns, like if some sort of mass life gain deck like soul sisters becomes meta it might see play in sb. (jk plz dont let this card get printed) Consuming contract seems really badly worded and nobody likes losing the game, so instead of the current wording, it should just enter the battlefield with three or so counters on it and at the beginning of your upkeep you lose 2 life regardless of the number of counters on it, remove a counter from it to draw 2 cards/Murder/Something else. For about 2 to 3 mana.
But they will add either Non-land or at least Non-basic, or else the mana cost will be way too high to be playable.
I must admit I actually missed the whole it can take basic lands until this point, and if they do leave it like that, then it might actually see play, depending on the mana cost, but just because it can hit basics makes me think that they'll make it not be able to in the final version, because they don't really like combo anymore, if they ever did (seems to me like that anyway).
But if it can hit basic lands then it might actually be a decent card, don't know why I missed that
Even if they add non-land, the way it is currently worded, you can also exile from any combination of graveyards. In something like a Jund mirror match, you can just start removing from their yard or 1 from each and gain critical card advantage. Even just the ability to play a deck with this enchantment, 4 Pack Rat and 34 or so of the new Apostle sounds like fun. I feel like Double Down isn't getting the respect it deserves in its current state. Now, whether or not it would as useful as this is in its final form...I doubt it. But, I'd be intrigued to see what could be done.
Even if they add non-land, the way it is currently worded, you can also exile from any combination of graveyards. In something like a Jund mirror match, you can just start removing from their yard or 1 from each and gain critical card advantage. Even just the ability to play a deck with this enchantment, 4 Pack Rat and 34 or so of the new Apostle sounds like fun. I feel like Double Down isn't getting the respect it deserves in its current state. Now, whether or not it would as useful as this is in its final form...I doubt it. But, I'd be intrigued to see what could be done.
I think a lot of people's complaint about Double Down is that it's nearly 100% useless in both EDH and limited, and a LARGE percentage of all the games of magic ever played are one of those two formats. It would just be sad if a card came out of YMTC and was just worthless in huge swaths of the magic landscape.
I think it's a very interesting design, aside from that (although horribly templated).
The Void effect keeps working, but that's also the problem. Exiling the 8th creature for another ability is cool. Having to remember to put a worthless 8th counter on there isn't. Shame on Wizards.
I prefer your card btw as a 1 or 2 mana spell. If that means the threshold for animation needs to go up (6? 7?) so be it, and that would also solve the starting stats if you link it to the counters.
Original wording was:
Whenever a creature dies, exile it.
When five creatures have been exiled by CARDNAME, CARDNAME becomes a 7/7 Demon creature and gains "CARDNAME has all activated abilities of all creature cards exiled by CARDNAME".
I was thinking 2 or 3 mana spell, but I like your idea of 1 mana spell that gets linked to counters, as long as the wording fits. It's probably balanced, but may be harder to trigger.
Did you submit a card for YMTC, Toby? I remember your card designs from GDS2, when you were helping out the competitors. They were really good!
I mean, I love it dearly... but does WoTC really want Smallpox to be a dominant archetype?
Consuming contract would be an amazing control card, but... do you really thing WoTC is going to make it costed fairly enough to be a valid lock?
Double Down just has too many chances to be an engine and Extraction defense regime.
We've already got black GY hate that was so beneficial that people started running GY hate to fight it and they're giving us a second one in M14. Let's not go there.
Why is no one voting for Double Down? It's the best one of the eight.
I am surprised at this as well. It has a lot of good things going for it. The first being there is no timing restrictions on when you can draw the card.
The second (if I am reading the card correctly) is that the two same cards don't have to be in the same graveyard. I have come up to this conclusion because for it to remove two same cards for the one graveyard the wording would have been " Exile two cards with the same name from a graveyard: Draw a card. ". With the current wording as given, Double Down is great in mirror games and in multiplayer as you have more graveyards to attack with it.
Also the card is great in mill decks, when you run out of gas, you can simply activate it to draw more mill cards.
I am surprised at this as well. It has a lot of good things going for it. The first being there is no timing restrictions on when you can draw the card.
The second (if I am reading the card correctly) is that the two same cards don't have to be in the same graveyard. I have come up to this conclusion because for it to remove two same cards for the one graveyard the wording would have been " Exile two cards with the same name from a graveyard: Draw a card. ". With the current wording as given, Double Down is great in mirror games and in multiplayer as you have more graveyards to attack with it.
Also the card is great in mill decks, when you run out of gas, you can simply activate it to draw more mill cards.
If it's aggressively costed, it's good in everything. Here's hoping for 1B or BB... if it even wins.
If it's aggressively costed, it's good in everything. Here's hoping for 1B or BB... if it even wins.
Useless in EDH/Commander/Singleton/Cube/Etc. A lot of people (myself included) think that playing one of every card is the funnest way to not see the same 3 decks over and over, and this card is useless in all of those formats. A definite uphill slope for a Johnny Spike card.
omg, I don't need to read anything, of course I know all of these cards...you just behave like a know-it-all It just seems to me, that this card would cost more in current MTG
I'm sorry. I would just be disappointed to see that card win when the other options are so much more creative. Necromancy would almost be strictly worse than the old similar cards and the design is just a combination of Megrim and Grimoire.
I voted for Consuming Contract in this poll. Great design IMO. Lots of fun. On the mothership, these were my votes:
Consuming Contract vs Double Down - Contract just seems way cooler. It's resonant, it's fun and it can be built around. Double Down is kind of neat, but not that inspiring. The name is also kind of silly.
Blood in the Watering Can vs Mass Mummification - Despite the awful name, I chose Watering Can. Mummification is pretty neat as well. Now that I think of it, I should have voted for Mummification instead.
Soulfeaster's Rising vs Revenge of Necromancy - It looks like Revenge is a big favourite, but I voted for Rising. Again, it's just way more resonant as a design. Revenge is pretty neat, but feels like a soulless mechanical design, AKA for Spike, which doesn't interest me.
Eldritch Rites vs Demonic Bargain - I honestly can't remember which one I voted for. They are both fairly fun and resonant. I guess if I had to pick one, I'd go with Rites but they are both solid.
This is pretty sad, none of these designs are likely to see competitive play unless the card is drastically undercosted. That said, none of them are even that good except for maybe the first one. The rest just feel too forced and clunky.
Blood in the Watering Can is a source of card advantage that would definitely see competitive play if its cost is low enough. The condition is trivial to fulfill so you can basically get a creature back every turn if you want.
Consuming Contract as well will see competitive play if its cost is low enough. Winning the game in three turns should be easy with all the card advantage you're getting from the Contract. And if you can't, just use some kind of sac effect before the final trigger.
I can't get over how many people like Consuming Contract. That card is just downright bad. And the flavor is so-so at best. So, say you play this, get 2 triggers off of it, and then find a way to destroy or bounce it. You've spent what will probably be at least 4 mana to draw 2 card, lose 2 life, and kill 1 creature. I can't see any situation where I would rather play 2 copies of this over a single sign in blood and doom blade. Also, don't overlook the fact that if there are no creatures on the battlefield, it effectively reduces the number of uses by at least 1 turn since there are no legal targets for that mode. It's just BAD. If this card sees print in any form close to what it is right now, it might be the most disappointing card to open since One with Nothing. Frankly, I can't believe its even up for a vote.
I can't get over how many people like Consuming Contract. That card is just downright bad. And the flavor is so-so at best. So, say you play this, get 2 triggers off of it, and then find a way to destroy or bounce it. You've spent what will probably be at least 4 mana to draw 2 card, lose 2 life, and kill 1 creature. I can't see any situation where I would rather play 2 copies of this over a single sign in blood and doom blade. Also, don't overlook the fact that if there are no creatures on the battlefield, it effectively reduces the number of uses by at least 1 turn since there are no legal targets for that mode. It's just BAD. If this card sees print in any form close to what it is right now, it might be the most disappointing card to open since One with Nothing. Frankly, I can't believe its even up for a vote.
8/10 times you will win the game before the "lose the game" trigger.
You get +2 card advantage with the first two abilities alone, and that's not even counting the third ability.
If you can manage to get +3 card advantage and three turns, you will more than likely win the game within that time frame.
8/10 times you will win the game before the "lose the game" trigger.
You get +2 card advantage with the first two abilities alone, and that's not even counting the third ability.
If you can manage to get +3 card advantage and three turns, you will more than likely win the game within that time frame.
The first ability only nets you one card (since you had to play the enchantment) AND you have to wait a turn before you even net that card. The removal ability can be turned against you if an opponent has no creatures or if the board is simply clear of them altogether, you can't even choose that mode. So, at best, this enchantment nets you 2 cards in its current form, and one of those cards is conditional.
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The X could simply be a fixed number, it doesn't have to relate to the mana cost. Lets say:
Demonic Bargain 1BB
Enchantment
CARDNAME enters the battlefield with 5 doom counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a doom counter from CARDNAME and draw a card. Then, if CARDNAME has no doom counters on it, sacrifice it and put a 5/5 black indestructible Demon token with flying onto the battlefield under an opponent's control.
That would imo be of similar power level to Arena.
That's not how it's worded, though. The way it is worded, it will be costed XB most likely, which makes it worse than the previously mentioned cards, Braingeyser, ambition's cost, basically any card with "draw cards" printed on it.
X could just be being used as a placeholder variable in this case.
Under Original Management!
Bane's Reading Suggestions
David Eddings: The Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli Series. The Redemption of Althalus
Jim Butcher: The Codex Alera Series
Right now we're voting on general effect.
Yeah, Grimoire has some uses for sure. But the fact that we currently have a narrow combo piece that's worse than a colorless uncommon as the front runner for this YMTC does not speak well for the community's card evaluation skills. I picked Eldrich Rites; I think it is one of the most powerful AND has cool combo potential. Blood in the Watering Can seems pretty powerful as well, and Soulfeaster's Rising seems like a super fun casual card. Revenge of Necromancy and Demonic Bargain look like the dregs to me.
Both are flavourfull enough to cater towards the casual crowd, and all the 'magic player types' aside from Timmy.
They also both have enough potential powerlevel to see constructed play, and make the spikes happy.
Eldritch Rites would potentially have gotten my vote if it hadnt been so restrictive.
Nontoken AND black nonpermanents makes it an incredibly narrow card.
It will have to be a deck that needs to be monoblack, run this card 4x (enchantment), have enough creatures with the right utility to make it effective AND enough spells to make the enchantment relevant...
It is like juggling multiple burning chainsaws, with 1 hand tied behind your back, and balancing on a thin rope with a pit trap staring down at you from the abyss.
In other words, pretty damn impossible.
Give irony and sarcasm, when ignorance and stupidity is found.
The whip is kept for special occasions
Thanks! While you make a great point, I do get to pass off the blame hehe. My final version didn't include counters at all and triggered when five creatures were exiled. That must not work in the rules, since the good folks at Wizards added the risen counters to the card. And it was my intention that the Void effect keep working even after it becomes a creature (I hope it works that way as worded!) I did consider having power/toughness equal to the number of creatures exiled, but I wanted something bigger than 5/5 to start. I'm planning to type up my full thought process like some of the other designers have done, and my thoughts on the other cards.
Even if they add non-land, the way it is currently worded, you can also exile from any combination of graveyards. In something like a Jund mirror match, you can just start removing from their yard or 1 from each and gain critical card advantage. Even just the ability to play a deck with this enchantment, 4 Pack Rat and 34 or so of the new Apostle sounds like fun. I feel like Double Down isn't getting the respect it deserves in its current state. Now, whether or not it would as useful as this is in its final form...I doubt it. But, I'd be intrigued to see what could be done.
I think a lot of people's complaint about Double Down is that it's nearly 100% useless in both EDH and limited, and a LARGE percentage of all the games of magic ever played are one of those two formats. It would just be sad if a card came out of YMTC and was just worthless in huge swaths of the magic landscape.
I think it's a very interesting design, aside from that (although horribly templated).
Original wording was:
Whenever a creature dies, exile it.
When five creatures have been exiled by CARDNAME, CARDNAME becomes a 7/7 Demon creature and gains "CARDNAME has all activated abilities of all creature cards exiled by CARDNAME".
I was thinking 2 or 3 mana spell, but I like your idea of 1 mana spell that gets linked to counters, as long as the wording fits. It's probably balanced, but may be harder to trigger.
Did you submit a card for YMTC, Toby? I remember your card designs from GDS2, when you were helping out the competitors. They were really good!
I mean, I love it dearly... but does WoTC really want Smallpox to be a dominant archetype?
Consuming contract would be an amazing control card, but... do you really thing WoTC is going to make it costed fairly enough to be a valid lock?
Double Down just has too many chances to be an engine and Extraction defense regime.
We've already got black GY hate that was so beneficial that people started running GY hate to fight it and they're giving us a second one in M14. Let's not go there.
But... meh, Rites would be a delicious engine.
I am surprised at this as well. It has a lot of good things going for it. The first being there is no timing restrictions on when you can draw the card.
The second (if I am reading the card correctly) is that the two same cards don't have to be in the same graveyard. I have come up to this conclusion because for it to remove two same cards for the one graveyard the wording would have been " Exile two cards with the same name from a graveyard: Draw a card. ". With the current wording as given, Double Down is great in mirror games and in multiplayer as you have more graveyards to attack with it.
Also the card is great in mill decks, when you run out of gas, you can simply activate it to draw more mill cards.
If it's aggressively costed, it's good in everything. Here's hoping for 1B or BB... if it even wins.
Useless in EDH/Commander/Singleton/Cube/Etc. A lot of people (myself included) think that playing one of every card is the funnest way to not see the same 3 decks over and over, and this card is useless in all of those formats. A definite uphill slope for a Johnny Spike card.
I'm sorry. I would just be disappointed to see that card win when the other options are so much more creative. Necromancy would almost be strictly worse than the old similar cards and the design is just a combination of Megrim and Grimoire.
Consuming Contract vs Double Down - Contract just seems way cooler. It's resonant, it's fun and it can be built around. Double Down is kind of neat, but not that inspiring. The name is also kind of silly.
Blood in the Watering Can vs Mass Mummification - Despite the awful name, I chose Watering Can. Mummification is pretty neat as well. Now that I think of it, I should have voted for Mummification instead.
Soulfeaster's Rising vs Revenge of Necromancy - It looks like Revenge is a big favourite, but I voted for Rising. Again, it's just way more resonant as a design. Revenge is pretty neat, but feels like a soulless mechanical design, AKA for Spike, which doesn't interest me.
Eldritch Rites vs Demonic Bargain - I honestly can't remember which one I voted for. They are both fairly fun and resonant. I guess if I had to pick one, I'd go with Rites but they are both solid.
I don't always post about Rafiq of the Many, but when I do, I cardlink to the original artwork, and not the supplementary product version.
"I trust myself to do my duty, even unto death. It's what comes after that I'm afraid of."
"Just fight without fear. Your soul is protected by the hand of Avacyn and will never submit to evil."
If I have to pick from these I like the revenge of necromancy card. Doubt it would be competitive but flavorful and just cool.
Blood in the Watering Can is a source of card advantage that would definitely see competitive play if its cost is low enough. The condition is trivial to fulfill so you can basically get a creature back every turn if you want.
Consuming Contract as well will see competitive play if its cost is low enough. Winning the game in three turns should be easy with all the card advantage you're getting from the Contract. And if you can't, just use some kind of sac effect before the final trigger.
8/10 times you will win the game before the "lose the game" trigger.
You get +2 card advantage with the first two abilities alone, and that's not even counting the third ability.
If you can manage to get +3 card advantage and three turns, you will more than likely win the game within that time frame.
The first ability only nets you one card (since you had to play the enchantment) AND you have to wait a turn before you even net that card. The removal ability can be turned against you if an opponent has no creatures or if the board is simply clear of them altogether, you can't even choose that mode. So, at best, this enchantment nets you 2 cards in its current form, and one of those cards is conditional.