MTG Salvation

Well, I've died to it in draft.

Still, seems a way bit behind typical white 5-drops available in peasant. If you want a curve-topping creature that boosts your team then Elite Scaleguard can do a lot of the same. A bit worse in the Hordeling Outburst-Raise The Alarm-Rally the Peasants deck perhaps, but better overall.

It's great in damage races where the vigilance actually matters. That's an okay percentage of Peasant games, but certainly less than you see in normal booster drafts.

Otherwise it's about as good as Inspiring Captain, which is to say... not that good.

One might say it's...uninspiring.

Should Heart Warden be viewed as:
-an easy to kill, summoning sick, more expensive to cycle Mind Stone
-a mana elf without late game irrelevance

?

It is technically not more expensive to cycle than Mind Stone as it can tap to pay for that extra part of the cost. Indeed, its cycling is slightly better because it can be done even if it was already tapped for something else.

However, there is no way the card is anywhere near playable, given the amount of better quality green 2-drops we currently have.

I prefer Goldnight Commander in that dawnfeather slot it gets really crazy with token makers.

Commander is also useless at doing something when it enters and having a relevant body (3/3 flyer for 5 isn't great, but it's a billion times better 2/2 for 4).

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Heart Warden is like the Fire Ambush of mana dorks. It's still strong, but why on earth would you choose it over the 200 better options?

Quote from VariSami »

It is technically not more expensive to cycle than Mind Stone as it can tap to pay for that extra part of the cost. Indeed, its cycling is slightly better because it can be done even if it was already tapped for something else.

I guess that's true, at least when you play them early, use them for a while and then cycle them. When you draw them late though, Mind stone cycles for 3, but Warden cycles for 3G.

Quote from _i0 »

Heart Warden is like the Fire Ambush of mana dorks. It's still strong, but why on earth would you choose it over the 200 better options?

I guess if you wanted to diversify your mana dorks.

What's the pecking order of commonly played dorks by the way?

Order somewhat after power, somewhat after redundancy and somewhat after CMC:

Arbor Elf
Joraga Treespeaker
Llanowar Elves/Fyndhorn Elves/Elvish Mystic
Boreal Druid/Elves of Deep Shadow/Avacyn's Pilgrim

Wall of Roots
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Devoted Druid
Werebear

Of these, is it fair to say that only Werebear has late game relevance, and Wall of roots is not completely irrelevant (at least more than the others). So if you needed a third two-drop mana dork behind these guys...

Shame, mana dork plus cycling is a good combination of abilities.

Treespeaker very easily #1

Any 1-mana dude that makes G (Arbor Elf probably the best) at #2

Roots/Elder best of the 2-drops since they actually can block (in different ways, but enough to save some crucial life points when it matters against aggro)

I don't play any of the off-color (or colorless) 1-drops, but they're still super strong cards

I think in some big mana decks, devoted druid is very close if not equal to STE/Roots. Being able to slam an acidic slime on turn 3 is pretty good.

Devoted druid is the best ramp 2drop come at me.

I know Leelue used to have a custom cube. Designing cards of my own has never appealed to me, I prefer trying to sculpt the best environment I can out of the pool of cards Wizards has printed.

I've considered it, but never actually pulled the plug. I play around with card designs occasionally in the 'print this' thread, and for the most part I'm looking for cards that help bridge multiple archetypes. i.e. How can I support as many archetypes as possible with as little real estate as possible?

That said, I haven't played my cube since buying the landbase, but I am going to use 'draft your choice of painland / bounceland / triland' conspiracy type cards. The Magic cards themselves aren't custom, but it's close to the same thing.

Interesting ruling for people cubing un-cards.

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/157330574988/in-un-rules-if-you-have-a-creature-with-deathtouch

Just so we don't end up with revisionist history about my things, I never had a custom cube

I once had about a dozen custom cards in my cube (like a 1GG 4/4 vanilla creature) but they were all cards from a custom set that I had. It was imperfect (the set) but very close to being great if I do say so myself.

I then made a cube with multiple copies of things, heavily themed. So there were auriok salvager combos and thrummingbird was a bomb. But no custom cards.

Recently I started making a custom cube. Fashioned to be at the power level "of a Modern cube, in 5 years" (so a rare cube with stuff as busted as affinity or dredge, but with nothing like sol ring). That I am not done with but I do have 180 cards in it. I am excited for it but it's hard to make things like a fourth burn spell or white one drop. But I do get to make cards that could never happen, like 3GB, 4/4, basic landcycling 1G, Cycling 1B, and dredge 2. Cycling in a dredger is dumb.

ok, sure

How would I send you a list?

Putting -1/-1 counters on a creature doesn't cause it to die, state based actions resulting from having 0 or less toughness do. The Interrogator needs to be reworded.

Synod Mechanist should have "this creature" replaced with "Synod Mechanist".

The templating for Treacherous Slaver should be: "When Treacherous Slaver enters the battlefield, look at target player's hand and choose a creature card from it. You may put that card onto the battlefield under your control. That creature gains haste. Sacrifice the creature at the beginning of the next end step."

Templating aside, those are some neat designs. The Elemental and the Ooze in particular shows the cool results you can get from mixing and matching mechanics. I wish WotC would do more of this.

The Ostracize-Threaten-guy must be a design that is just waiting to happen. I wonder if it could have a negative impact on constructed though. Like, would something like this be too much of a disincentive to play large creatures? (Like purportedly was the case with Bribery. If WotC feels this way they could decide to push up the P/T and CMC (so that it won't always be early enough to nab the big threats) or they could put a max CMC limitation on the Threaten-target, like Enthralling Victor(But who cares about constructed in this context, right?).

Thanks noob
[Insert emphatic thumbs up gif]

I did have the interrogator guy worded even worse before. Not sure how to fix it.

I think you proofread my custom set once.


And yeah, jovian, I figured such a card could get printed in a commander product or something.

I could only attach 5 images per post, but I had lots of stuff I wanted to use. Like a modular+evolve creature, devour+persist creature (interesting gameplay choices, I imagine) etc.

It is interesting, but you have to resist the urge to make "cool" things. Sometimes you just need an rampant growth ripoff.

Maybe you should make it an EOT trigger that checks for creatures which have had -1/-1 counters placed on them this turn? It has a different timing, sure, but it would be the most elegant solution I can come up with. Plus, it kind of works fluff-wise since interrogations take time to yield results and that can be prevented by committing suicide.

'At the beginning of each end step, each player discards a card for each creature they control that had a -1/-1 counter placed on it that turn.'

If that templating works then I have no problems with that.

Really, I just liked the art and had to make a topdown card for it.

Doing the custom cube is fun, though. I get to make discard outlets for reanimator that dont only belong in reanimator, for example. I support storm with good surge cards and good prowess cards so it isn't all in and lacking in interactivity. I get monocolored Momentary Blink. Etc

Oh, I can ask you guys:
Sword of X/Y
Same costs as the originals.
+2/+2 and Etb, choose a color for protection.
What should its damage trigger be?
Right now, I have it blinking itself onto a new target, but that's whack. But I don't know what to do.

If we are sharing custom designs, I've got a few (although I've never cubed with them).











There are more but they are less relevant to peasant cube.

Arrogance of Mortals looks like it has a lot of cool corner cases. It's pretty close to how Undying Evil would play out, but it can kill opposing creatures with +1/+1 on it for a single mana, and even if you give your opponent a +1/+1 counter, sometimes removing a blocker for the turn, removing a creature after a double block, or just keeping you alive against a lethal attacker for another turn all seem like plausible plays.

Reckless Pyromancer... it just seems a lot less elegant than making it an activated ability from your hand. I guess as an actual instant it can trigger spells matters cards and be retrieved from the graveyard by either creature or instant retrieval cards, but that doesn't seem enough upside for a card that can be done with current technology (just a creature with an activated ability, and a second activated ability that requires discard and only works from your hand).

Choice of Destinies seems cool. 2/2 for 3 with card draw as a baseline is ok, but choosing what to manifest can make a difference.

Touch of Fae... I don't understand the defender text. The creature is summoning sick when you gain control of it. This prevents you from giving it haste somehow and attacking with it, but it seems intuitively incongruent.

Seek the Frontier looks super swingy. Dead card after the first few turns, but untapping on turn 2 with 4 lands sounds like it could be dumb. Seems very draw dependant.

Yeah, Reckless Pyromancer is more of a test of design space limits than a card I would want to play with, and Seek the Frontier is not really made for limited - swingy but probably not worth the inconsistency as a one-of. Arrogance of Mortals is my favorite of the designs, with lots of neat interactions. I do think the defender text on Touch of Fae is relevant to make it clear that you can use the card for blocking, many players are used to threaten effects and don't realize that a creature becomes summoning sick when it changes control.

Here's some nice renders of old cards, while we are at it.

Nice, those look great!