MTG Salvation

A variation could be to make it like Brittle Effigy.

{mana}, T, Exile CARDNAME: Exile target nonbasic land.

Avoids Crucible of Worlds on both sides.

If it was a silver-bordered card, you could replace the cost with a physical action like

Point at CARDNAME: [effect.]

- At the beginning of your end step, if ~ didn't deal damage this turn, return it to its owner's hand.

There is a lot of complexity in the other abilities, and this is the easiest place where something could be simplified. Outside of use of cards like Prey Upon, the most likely decision for triggering or not triggering is just attacking with it.

- At the beginning of your end step, if ~ didn't attack this turn, return it to its owner's hand.

But maybe you don't need any complicated decisions.

- At the beginning of your end step, you may return ~ to its owner's hand.
- At the beginning of your end step, return ~ to its owner's hand.

... or just remove that self-bounce completely. Flash and the kill trigger is probably an interesting enough design.

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"no cards in your graveyard, hand, library or on the battlefield"

Is that "or" supposed to be "and"?

I think Meteor Crater and Corrupted Grafstone are worded that way because you have to choose both the permanent/card and the color. If the first choice is already limited, then it doesn't need to be as wordy. Based on Chrome Mox, it should be okay to say "Add one mana of any of that creature's colors to your mana pool."

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The way I see it, you get to EITHER:

• Put this mechanic in blue
• Make this mechanic evergreen

As SecretInfiltrator said, and Legend expounded upon, mechanics occasionally bleed into colors where they probably shouldn't, in the greater interest of the set. I don't think I need to provide any more examples.

But evergreen defines what is a bleed and what is not a bleed for a color. If you're saying this is both blue and evergreen, then you're saying that blue gets damage / death / growth mechanics like this, whenever it wants them. This mechanic is so far from the traditional conception of blue's pie that even I call foul, and I'm much more loosey-goosey with my color pie standards than some of the other forum-goers here.

Approaching this from a flavor angle, I don't necessarily agree with the "psychic vampirism is blue" thing. I think it's blue/black, specifically, and if you had to put it in a single color I think you'd put it in black. BUT... if your set/block has great flavor, and great need for this mechanic in blue, I do not have a problem with it, and am excited to see your interpretation of it.

But it can't be blue AND evergreen. One or the other.

Quote from Legend »

Why doesn't Canopy Cover grant Hexproof but Alpha Authority does? Need to know for a design.

Canopy Cover works differently when you enchant a creature controlled by an opponent - since they aren't able to cast spells on their own creature anymore i. e. Canopy Cover counteracts spells from opponents of the Aura's controller, while Alpha Authority counteracts spells from opponents of the creature's controller.

Both act the same if the Aura is attached to a creature with the same cotroller.

Canopy Cover's is outdated wording similar to Spirit Link's.

Evil Necromancer 3B
Creature - Human Wizard (R)
When Evil Necromancer enters the battlefield, return target Zombie, Vampire, or Skeleton* creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
1/1

*Or any combination of 3-4 creature types of your choice.

What's keeping you from just doing it like that? Why is it important that the mechanic works with the total of eight Nightstalkers in the game?

Quote from Doombringer »

I believe you meant "subtly brilliant"

I don't see how the post you linked has anything to do with the topic.

Quote from Thought Criminal

What makes lands like checklands (is that the right term? the ones that check to see if you control a land with basic land type A or basic land type B and enter untapped if you do) so different, especially than shocklands? Much more likely than not, a person who pulls a Dragonskull Summit who uses black and red as their main two colors in their limited deck will pretty much auto-include it in their deck for the extra consistency. And even in limited, you're able to pick as many basic land cards as you want to supplement the cards you choose, so you can increase or decrease the chances of getting the extra benefit at will depending on the number of basic Swamps or Mountains you include. The card would still evoke a "Why would I ever choose a basic land card over this land card?" response, yet Dragonskull Summit and friends are printable and a Tundra with its basic land types stripped of it isn't.

Checklands taper off in usefulness the more colors/nonbasics you add. Imagine playing in the Scars/Innistrad standard and making a Jund deck. You have the full cycle of checklands as well as the Scars fastlands. This means Copperline Gorge, Blackcleave Cliffs, Rootbound Crag, Dragonskull Summit, and Woodland Cemetery to pick from. So you obviously don't just want to play 4 of each, because if you did you'd never get the benefit of playing a non fastland untapped. You have to start pulling some and adding basics into your deck.

Shocklands, on the other hand, just get worse the more of them you have in your deck (Granted, they're still incredibly good despite this fact). The more you have, the more decisions you'll have to make about shocking yourself. The biggest difference between shocklands and checklands is that shocklands allow you a choice, but checklands set up a condition you have to meet. Shocklands can be good independent of other cards in your deck, checklands need those land types.

When you make your Tundra without the land types, you have strictly better checklands because they're the same except they never do the whole check thing. When you compare them to shocks, sure you don't get the land types so it's not strictly better, but it removes any decision making you'd need to make. You can add as many as you want to a deck of any number of colors and they never get worse. A 5 color deck full of check lands will never come into play untapped. 5 color deck full of shocks will have to deal with the decision to come into play tapped or shock you every land. There is literally no drawback from a deckbuilding perspective to having a 5 color deck full of your ETB untapped duals.

Quote from Zaratustra

What exactly happens if the player concedes when unable to?

If this were in black-bordered land and at a tournament: Game Rules Violation. Penalty: Game loss. Basically, the same thing that would happen if you conceded.

As I predicted in the previous thread, Carpe Noctum is the most popular choice, but I'm still pulling for Waste Not. I want to save Carpe Noctum for a better card.

I can break this.

4 Multani's presence.
4 Null gem, with 44 other 0cc cards (including moxen, chalice of the void, and what not).
1 Tolarian academy
1 Brainfreeze
1 Hurkyll's recall
1 Tropical Island
4 Land grant


Mull for a turn 1 multani's presence + this + 1 other mana to cast multani's presence with (that may be a land grant to tropical island, which means you have to wait until turn 2 to win).
cast at least 2 other 0cc artifacts first (preferably moxen and the like). Cast null gem.
Zip through your deck until you reach tolarian academy and hurkyll's recall.
Play academy.
Tap academy for mana. Tap null gem for mana. Cast hurkyll's recall with mana from null gem. Cast the 0cc artifact mana that returned to your hand. Cast brainfreeze.

Legacy version won't have tolarian academy or p9, but stuff like multiple LEDS and petals.


If you have to add a ridiculous drawback to an effect, the effect is too powerful, and it still may not be balanced. All it takes is a 1 weird application.

In a thread for Pokémon-based custom Magic cards I suggested using a simple template that allowed for cards to have an additional name. If I were to remake Magic from the grounds I would include it for all cards. Basically legendary permanents get an additional optional type line (that is really small) except that the content of the type line isn't a supertype, card type or subtype, but an additional name.

The rules can handle objects with multiple characteristics - all questions can be answered analogous to similar questions for split cards. And it's easy t discern e. g. that only the main name applies for deck building restriction.

The benefit: While I'd like to apply this change retroactively to all legendary permanents for consistencies sake, such a thing is not necessary to make the fix work with existing cards, e. g. you could right now make a card Verdeloth, Forest Guardian and add the name "Verdeloth the Ancient" and the Legend Rule (old or new) does the rest whenever it sees two legendary permanents with the shared name "Verdeloth the Ancient".
You could make it a keyword, but that wastes text box space and the additional name line could easily take away very little space from the illustration. Examples have shown that the solution looks well (both readability and no unreasonable encroachment on the illustration) for cards where a single common name can be used - I make no guarantees for three-character fusion legendaries like Karona.

Quote from DarkSapphire

The answer you're looking for is actually in the article you're quoting:

"Their consistency is powerful—if anything, slivers are so visually consistent that it's hard to find new directions for how they could look."

The problem is laid out right there. Imagine that you're tasked with creating 20 (or more!) new Slivers. They're going to be in the Core Set, which means you can't explore any fun design space in Scavenge Sliver or Bloodrush Sliver or Slivers with level up counters. Instead, they'll be limited to evergreen keywords, P/T boosts, and maybe the one new keyword that gets cycled through the Core Set - traits that have already had cards made around them, and done a couple of times for most of them. On top of all of that, one of the species key tenets has fundamentally changed thanks to New World Order.

If I were in such a situation with all of these constraints on art, mechanics, and complexity, I would think the solution is simply not to print Slivers because it is apparent that they cannot be done in a way that really draws on the previous iterations. Why force a square peg into a round hole? Even if you make it work, you really had to screw up your peg to do so.

You also can construct capture to avoid that interaction completely:

When ~~~ ETB, capture target creature. It is captured as long as ~~~ is on the battlefield. (To capture, exile the target captured by this card. When it is no longer captured, return it to its previous position.)

:symtap:: Capture target creature until ~ untaps.

etc.