MTG Salvation

I predict a 2-mana arrest for the cheapened aura, honestly.

You know what, it’s about time that I just create a boiler plate message that I can more or less copy to all of your threads.

1. If you want to make changes to the rules, please do so for mechanical reasons. If a similar ability isn’t being used because it doesn’t “flow” or “lacks adherence to sound principles”, or you feel a card deserves “allowance for flavor” or the like, you are a not a great designer. If a card does not look right or is too wordy when fully written out, simply abandon the card.

2. Assume that your card will be used by idiots without the comprehensive rules with them. If someone with a basic grasp of the rules who reads the card is still confused and would need to read additional rulings to navigate core functions of your cards, you are a bad designer.

3. the color pie is a good thing and should be upheld, not seen as a norm that you should be making every sort of exception to. As an extension of this, hybrid mana means that either color could get an effect, not that one color could get it but you want the other color to get it.

4. interaction between cards and giving a card weaknesses where other cards can respond to it is a GOOD thing. Abusing special actions, hybrid abilities, deus ex abilities, and protective abilities on all of your cards so their function can’t be interfered with is a sign of a bad designer, even if one or two cards with protection may be okay in a vacuum.

5. What sees play is dependent on the actual metagame. Making a card for a specific combo with two obscure old cards that wouldn’t be too fast or reliable compared with what people actually play is not powerful.

Does that cover everything, guys?

Edit: surprisingly, all of those points fit in here. Hybrid ability that reduces interaction and doesn’t work within the rules on a clone that can be cast in mono green whose text was edited specifically for imagined interactions with a single card.

Wow… I don’t think you’ve ever made such a non-functional card… which is really saying something from you.

1. This creates uncomfortable situations where characteristic-defining abilities (such as lhyrgoyf and MaRo) directly conflict with each other, which the rules can sorta handle through timestamps but not in a neat and intuitive way.
2. This is a free and colorless way to go infinite with crackdown construct and this effect definitely shouldn’t be free.
3. The second ability affects the first ability (ie: “0: equipped creature becomes a copy of target creature…)”, which means that you can turn the bauble into something, equip it to each of your creatures, and turn each of your creatures into a copy of it as well (as the copy activated ability will remain even after it is re-equipped).
3.5: just realized that if you equip before activating, the bauble will even survive at end of turn as “exile the bauble” will be replaced with “exile the creature”, which likely isn’t the intent (especially as you could just throw this onto a disposable creature token for all of 1 mana or 2 life per turn).
4. making the card retain its abilities is a much bigger headache than you likely expect as it also means that you keep the copied abilities from all previous activations this turn. Now, this creature and each of your creatures can ALL become copies of ALL of your creatures.
5. It gets even worse. You know how a card with haste given riot by rhythm of the wild can technically gain haste twice, the original Lazarus can get hexproof twice if it copies a card with hexproof, and Mairsil the Pretender can use a caged quicksilver elemental to get infinite activations per turn as each use of the quicksilver elemental effectively gives Mairsil a new identical copy of all of its own activated abilities (letting it bypass the once per turn limit)? If you copy a celestial crusader with this ability and then activate it again targeting the same crusader, it doesn’t lose the first set of copied abilities for the reasons listed above. Instead, it will have flying, flash, and split second twice (all useless) and two separate instances of pumping white creatures +1/+1, which stack with itself. If you copy a creature with good static abilities or triggered abilities infinite times, you instantly win the game.
6. Putting it all together, though, we can get a bit more efficient in breaking the game. Combining points 3 and 5, we can have a creature copy itself infinitely, doubling all of its abilities each time because your “retains its abilities” line literally stops the effect from replacing one set of copied values with another.

Seriously, though, learn the rules of the game before you make yourself look dumb. If the rules of the game, your creative intent, and the mechanics you write do not align, you have failed in your design.

Honestly, I don’t think that locuses are good design… like at all.

While it’s interesting to consider a world where a colorless deck could be compensated by the mana base resembling a sliver deck, I believe that there is very much a maximum limit on the number of these cards that can ever be printed for power reasons.

This is trash.

This is not “black fact or fiction”. This is “instant speed Ancient Cravings that feels like a red punisher spell”.

This type of spell effect simply does not work if you cannot ensure that you are getting at least one good card in any pile and this card only “pays off” if you draw two different “good piles” (one “good enough” pile with a threat and/or removal to reveal and an “actually good pile” to hide away).

I would hesitate using this even if it only cost 3 mana.

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

This is great that this instantly becomes an example of something I was stating regarding another recent topic (keywording ETB).

The application of an action (as it's worded) changes the player's perception, and thus decides how much fantasy emulates from that action.

Bland monotone names/terms/actions, will always lack this, and thus take players out of the game and the fantasy emulation.

1. Rowanalpha was insinuating a replacement effect, not a triggered ability.
2. Mtg provides no flexibility in wording for the sake of impact. If two possible wordings of the same effect are mechanically identical, one is correct and one is incorrect. This is how mtg works.

Quote from Simto »

Quote from lookingupanddown »

Quote from Simto »

They could have put tron lands in the set but immediately and say they're just legal in standard. They banned that spellslinger otter when Ikoria came out in some format. Could have done it with tron lands too?

Lutri isn't banned in any format that Wizards officially runs the banlist for.

It's not? I thought it was banned day one?

In commander, which wizards doesn’t run the banlist for.

I’d much rather have wizards consider non-rotating formats when deciding what to include rather than going back to the “We’ll print whatever and ban what doesn’t work” approach of Eldraine… and that’s coming from someone who likes Eldraine.

Quote from Lectrys »

Quote from Rosy Dumplings »

Wait a minute… if the big stone in the middle is the main powerstone that broke in half, the stone to the right is the weak stone, and the stone to the left is the mightstone… what is that stone floating up in the middle?

"One thing we never previously told you about the Brothers' War...Gix got ahold of a third powerstone piece."

If Teferi gets embroiled in things and ends up grabbing a third powerstone piece, I’m going to lose my cool and start laughing like a madman… more than normal, I mean.

Also, I am dubbing the third piece “The Midstone”

You know what? This card is substantially better in several ways. It doesn’t punish mana producers to the point where it is never worth using them and instead makes players make an informed choice. You also can’t pay 4 life to force your opponents to waste their first turn dealing with this card, which is also appreciated.

It very much looks like you took the criticisms received in your previous thread and actually used them to create something good, which is what a lot of us have been wanting for you for a long time.

Excellent work.

Here is a scary thought.

There are 9 sticker sheets including a name sticker with 4+ vowels, meaning that you are guaranteed to get at least two stickers that make ______ goblin mana positive.

There is a possible future in which stickers are used semi-competitively in a storm deck.

You missed out on Rosethorn Acolyte. In combination with it, you can run this card out on turn 2 and scry yourself closer to a Neoform. With that Neoform, you could be looking at Dream Trawler, Gyruda, Doom of Depths, Kogla, the Titan Ape, or any other 6-drop creature on turn 3.

Psychic Impetus
Predatory Impetus
Shiny Impetus
Martial Impetus
Chimney Impetus

"Opponents can't cast their commanders"

Fling is Standard-legal.

Now THIS I cannot wait for.
Stealing an early creature for 1 Red? Fantastic. Red Deck Wins just needed a good 1 Drop to both remove a blocker and gain another attacker. I definitely see a lot of fun with this one.

Quote from Pokken »

Please improve the mobile UI. The most glaring gap is an option to go to the latest unread page of a large thread.

I'll second this. I'm kind of used, but it can really smooth the experience.

Multiquoting is really annoying to do in mobile, Losing a multiquoting post edit to.random browser refreshes is very frustrating.

Risen Reef, Thunderkin Awakener, yeah I think that deck might be a thing.

Chained to the Ice

Tantalizing!

Your patience has been rewarded, blue players. Have fun stopping everyone else's fun.