MTG Salvation

This will be red-centric and use a custom rubric:

Suitability in red (out of :rate5:): Is it fitting in red? Does it belong in red more than the other four colors?
Innovation of red (out of :rate5:): Is it a clever new effect? Does it expand red's slice of the color pie in a natural way?
Reflection on red (out of :rate5:): Is it a design worthy of red in general? Does it seem well-developed?

Quote from arbitraryarmor

Hell's Lightning RRR
Creature — Elemental [M]
Kicker 1R
Trample, haste
When Hell's Lightning enters the battlefield, if it was kicked, it gains double strike until end of turn.
At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice Hell's Lightning.
5/1

IIW: A red mythic that could be worth big money (Think Thundermaw Hellkite)

This is very strong in the archetype it's built for; having a dependable choice between five damage on turn 3 and ten damage on turn 5 should let mono-red curve reliably, especially with two in hand. I'm looking at Ball Lightning -- a phenomenal card in its own right -- and wondering, "what does it really offer me over Hell's Lightning?" Hell's is exciting in the sense that it offers you a choice, but boring in the sense that the choice kills some of the deck's variance -- which is true for pretty much every card that offers a choice between one good thing and another, but egregious here because the choice is between one simple thing and a more powerful version of that simple thing at appropriately higher cost.

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Quote from CrustaceanCrusader

Jostle 1R
Sorcery (U)
Target player discards three cards at random, then draws three cards.

IIW: One word card names.

I really like this. It's the convergent evolution of Goblin Lore and Burning Inquiry, and at the same time a more versatile version of Dangerous Wager. It's powerful at two mana but sorcery speed raises the question, "is this really something red wants to be doing on turn 2?" so the balance seems just right. The use of "random" here is less offensive than on at least 90% of that dreaded word's appearances. Great design! (Is the flavor that getting knocked around in a crowd jumbles up your thoughts...?)

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Quote from AsianInvasion

Curse of Chaos 4RR
Enchantment - Aura Curse {R}
Enchant player
Whenever enchanted player puts a spell or ability onto the stack, if it has a single target, reselect its target at random.

IIW: Chaos.

I don't like Grip of Chaos on principle; it falls too far down on the "difficulty to resolve" spectrum (it also mentions the stack by name, which I think should be avoided for rules simplicity reasons). That being said, I like this marginally more than Grip of Chaos because Grip is one of the U/R chaos cards that is difficult to make benefit you, even when built around (unlike Thieves' Auction, Eye of the Storm, etc.)

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Quote from Ink-Treader

Drolug Cloudsplitter 1RRR
Legendary Creature - Minotaur Shaman (M)
Trample, haste
Sacrifice an enchantment: Drolug Cloudsplitter gets +2/+0 until end of turn.
R, Exile an enchantment, instant or sorcery card from your graveyard: Drolug Cloudsplitter deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
"Tremble before the envoy of storm and fire!
3/3

Why is this the way it is? I've been (or was [or should start doing so again]) designing an enchantment based set. It seemed to me the best way for red to work with that would be to use them as a resource.

Sure, it seems appropriate for red to eat enchantments in an enchantment block. Red and black will have to do something when the enchantment block inevitably rolls around. My complaint here is that it does too much with enchantments -- there are three lines of rules text and there should only be two. IMO, rares should build from the commons and uncommons of the set rather than be designed in a vacuum. For example, instead of letting Cloudsplitter both sacrifice and exile, in your block you could have a discarding subtheme that gives red a reliable way to get enchantments into the graveyard, which Cloudsplitter exiles in turn for some effect (for example).

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Quote from MDenham

Sparkhoof 2RRR
Creature - Elemental Horse (U)
Haste, trample
At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice each creature that didn't attack this turn.
7/1

IIW: Cards from a Princess Bride-themed set.

That second line screams "demon" to me. But this is a black-tinged design that red has every right to get -- I like how it eats away at the edges of black's slice of the pie without gobbling the whole thing (I also like red drawing from its allies instead of its enemy blue, which R&D does too much). And the drawback has more tension than Ball Lightning's, if only because it forces more options on you. Great design!

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Quote from The_Cooler

Charflinger 3RR
[U]Creature - Elemental[/U] [U]
When Charflinger enters or leaves the battlefield, it deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Evoke 2RR
2/2

IIW: abilities from the grave

Seems fine, if not a bit boring. The "enters or leaves" clause spices it up but I'd rather have Spitebellows.

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Quote from Link

Avashira, Soul of Fire RRRRRRR
Legendary Creature — Avatar (M)
Trample
Generic mana cost can be paid only with red mana.
Under her gaze, only the purest fires burn.
7/7

IIW: Fancy lands.

Well, it's essentially an inverted Iona (middle finger to players running one particular color vs. middle finger to players not running one particular color). Probably needs an maintenance cost in the same way that Reality Twist and Stasis do, since while Iona only interferes with casting spells, those interfere with something as basic as mana production. Because as is, having to splash red or sideboard non-colorless-costing answers for a single card is just unfun. Even red can ramp this thing out by turn 3-4, so I shudder to think about what it could do in EDH. All of that being said, this is a sort of control that I can potentially see in red.

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Quote from Ninja Caterpie

Bloodquake Giant 3RR
Creature - Giant (R)
Trample
When Bloodquake Giant enters the battlefield, it deals X damage to each other creature without flying, where X is the amount of noncombat damage dealt to opponents this turn.
4/4

Cool, scalable bloodthrist as an ability word. I like that it's automatically balanced since it usually requires an outside mana investment to do damage, but can still be combo'd to break the balance.

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Quote from KageHamusuta

Firestoke Slogger - 3RR
Creature - Beast(R)
When ~ enters the battlefield, you may discard X cards. If you do, then ~ deals X damage to target player and you draw X cards.
Heifgal's eyes burned at it's sight, and his mind burned in it's presence
5/4

IIW: MONO FOR MODERN!!

Very, very powerful. Probably too powerful. Probably too powerful even if it only had one of the X effects, and that's not counting the madness, flashback, etc. possibilities this design opens up -- Arc-Slogger is a strong card as is. I like the idea of turning cards directly into damage, but replenishing those cards immediately is too much fuel for red.

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Quote from Sir Karn

Spark Flinger RR
Creature - Goblin Shaman (U)
Whenever you cast a red spell, you may pay R. If you do, Spark Flinger deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
2/2

IIW: Modal or Morph

This has core set uncommon cycle written all over it; you could plug it right into the M12 Mage cycle. Solid design. I can't say it's especially inspiring -- I prefer Embersmith if only because it isn't as generic -- but it's definitely solid.

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Quote from Ehzak, Master of Magics

Champion of the Village R
Rare
Creature - Human
Whenever a Human Creature enters the battlefield under your control put a +1/+1 counter on Champion of the Village.
When Champion of the Village has 3 or more +1/+1 counters on him, remove all those counters and transform him.
1/1
///
Village Warleader (R)
Creature - Human Warrior
Other Humans you control have +1/+1 and first strike.
3/3

IIW: epic spells are epic

I like the execution of the flavor. He assembles the army by day, then stops assembling the army to lead it to battle at night. Although, this design has a catch-22: it wants to be from Innistrad in both flavor and mechanics, but clashes with Champion of the Parish, and indeed it still feels like it belongs more in white than in red. It has a bunch of effects that can individually fit in red, but the overall picture doesn't say "this is red." And as I said to MDenham above, I feel that red draws from its enemy colors too much to begin with.

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Quote from MirrorEntity

Ember Immolator 1RR
Creature - Goblin Beserker (R)
First strike
,Sacrifice Ember Immolator: Ember Immolator deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
3/2

IIW: nonartifact golems

I love that this design hearkens back to the pre-2010 days of damage off the stack with the simple addition of first strike (actually, now that I think about it, I'm surprised R&D hasn't done that since the rules change, IIRC). It's a simple design, but a clever sort of simple, and it fits like a glove in red and seems fun to play. It has a lot of utility in one text box, but feels inherently well-balanced with the two-mana activation cost. Good design!

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Quote from Oculus

Dock Pillagers 2R
Creature - Human Pirate {C}
Whenever Dock Pillagers deals combat damage to a player, untap target land that player controls and gain control of it until end of turn.
2/2

IIW: Horses, Goats and Weasels.

I adore designs that make the distinction between first main phase and second main phase matter. I also adore red being "green" by borrowing things that it would otherwise be destroying (I'd love to see red get permanent artifact/land stealing, but that's another topic and an opinionated one). And the flavor is charming. Love this.

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Quote from avatarz

Burning Possession 2RRRR
Sorcery (R)
Burning Possession deals 4 damage to each creature, then untap all creatures and gain control of them until end of turn. They gain haste until end of turn.

IIW: Oxymoron

Yes! The only card I can think of that does anything remotely like this is Olivia Voldaren, and that's not nearly on the same scale. I dislike Insurrection for being a low-effort "you win" button with no tension; this design is actually challenging -- not in the sense that it's especially difficult to use, but in the sense that it requires interaction and timing to even play in the first place. (The rules text also gave me a hilarious mental image of a giant flaming hand picking up each creature by the coattails and dropping each one that didn't shrivel up on your side of the battlefield.) Wonderful!

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Quote from Antny223

Lightning Volt R
Instant (R)
You can't cast ~ if there is an island or plains on the battlefield.
~ deals four damage to target creature or two damage to target player.

IIW: Tru Blood

I do like that the first part is useless if you're on the play, but that the restriction is more likely to kick in if you're on the draw (i.e. I like that there's no "perfect" time to play this, which would make it inherently broken). That being said...I dislike that, paradoxically, Lightning Volt establishes an enemy-enemy relationship with white and blue that forces it to only deal damage to its allies, black and green. Normally, I wouldn't care, but this card explicitly defines that enemy-enemy relationship so it's self-defeating in that regard. Also, despite not being "inherently" broken, R is too cheap for a Chandra's Outrage with a restriction that won't even pop up in every game. The jump from common to rare doesn't really help since this design is awkward at rare (especially since it seems to be part of a color-hating cycle like the uncommon one in 10E-M12).

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Quote from spaceyjdjames

Mono R
Enchantment M
Reduce any numeral in cards to 1. (Mana symbols don't count as numerals.)
"A bird in the hand is worth 1 in the bush. Wait, that's not right. Ach, Hans help! My adage is broken!"


IIW: It's Monday Morning

Silver-border? Actually, yeah, I like that. It hates on random cards like Pygmy Giant and B-I-N-G-O so, Unhinged, why not. Seems more white than red though (what with the conformity and small numbers).

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Quote from Atogaholic

Goblin Fireheart 1RRR
Creature - Goblin Shaman (M)
1RR: Put a blaze counter on target creature without a blaze counter on it. For as long as that creature has a blaze counter on it, gets +3/+0 and gains trample, haste, and "At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice this creature." (The creature continues to burn if Goblin Fireheart leaves the battlefield.)
3/3

IIW: Throwback design

Okay, Obsidian Fireheart for creatures. Oh! Not quite Obsidian Fireheart for creatures. Well, it's good for a continuity laugh, but there are simpler ways to template this than the Fireheart wording, notably without the blaze counters at all. That aside this looks very fun to play, except for the fact that it reliably kills creatures (indestructible and not) when activated during your opponents' second main phases; it should probably just target creatures you control or activate at sorcery speed (or both for a fair experience).

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Quote from Cythare

Ishi-Ishi's Crackshot 3RR
Instant (U)
If an opponent controls an Island or Plains, you may tap two untapped Goblins you control rather than pay Ishi-Ishi's Crackshot's mana cost.
Ishi-Ishi's Crackshot deals 4 damage to target creature and 4 damage to that creature's controller.

IIW: Skeleton tribal

Sure, Chandra's Outrage with benefits. Seems fairly costed and I can't levy any complaints against it. I appreciate pseudo-landwalk being used for things other than making creatures unblockable (which has gotten rater boring), and I also appreciate conspire as a keyword and have to say it makes more sense waving a mana cost than copying the spell. Solid design.

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Quote from Lapson2

Stubbornness
Enchantment - Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature has indestructible and can't block.
Whenever enchanted creature becomes blocked, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
Whenever enchanted creature deals combat damage to an opponent, sacrifice Stubbornness.

IIW: Horrors

Cythare outlined the issues with this design; for a card (a common at that!) with so many words it's effective effect winds up being very simple and not terribly exciting -- and not terribly red, either.

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Quote from Eventide Sojourner

Raging Flame :xmana::symr::symr:
Sorcery {R}
Raging Flame deals X damage to target opponent and target creature you don’t control.
Overload :xmana::xmana::symr: (You may cast this spell for its overload cost. If you do, change its text by replacing all instances of “target” with “each.”)

IIW: Color-shifted.

So multi-Bonfire of the Damned, in essence. Overloaded Raging Flame is strictly better than normal Bonfire in multiplayer, though the possibility of getting miracle Bonfire is better than normal Raging Flame. It's also strictly better than Lavalanche at X=1 or 2 and isn't tri-colored on top of that. This strikes me as a very powerful and potentially dangerous card -- Street Spasm wasn't an earth-shattering design, even at instant speed, but Raging Flame does so much more than that. At the very least, I'd make the overload cost XXRR for an extra speedbump.

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Quote from FreshMeat

Fire Gazing 1RR
Sorcery
Discard all the cards in your hand, then draw that many cards. For each red instant or sorcery card discarded this way, Fire Gazing deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
"Knowledge is power, if you whack someone with a spellbook they're not getting back up"

IIW: Cards based on Studio Ghibli

Ooh, auto-madness. Definitely not to be printed in a block/standard with actual madness. No rarity, but uncommon seems appropriate -- on which note I should say that this is a "better" version of Shattered Perception in the sense that you're not casting a midgame card disadvantage spell without restitution. Flavor text is ridiculous but the design is solid enough that I don't care.

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Quote from Lapson2

Chaotic Rewind :2mana::symr::symr:
Enchantment
When Chaotic Rewind enters the battlefield, each player exiles and shuffles all creatures he or she controls into an ordered pile.
At the beginning of your upkeep, return the top card of each pile exiled by Chaotic Rewind to the battlefield under its owner's control. They gain haste until end of turn.

Four mana is definitely too cheap for something as game-scrambling as Scrambleverse, but this is a fun multiplayer chaos card, insofar as those cards can be fun. Like Thieves' Auction, Chaotic Rewind will require some very interesting choices to be made in turn order. Although, I'm not convinced that this is definitively mono-red: the rough flavor image I get from it is a bunch of creatures thrown into a waiting line to register for the game, or a forced check-up at the doctor's to make sure they're fit to keep playing (those poor tokens...) -- that is, to me it feels very white. Not mono-white necessarily, but a strong undercurrent of white. Maybe some blue, too; in fact, the immediate effect Chaotic Rewind has on the game isn't all that different from Stoic Angel's effect on the game state. That said, I'm being nitpicky since I could see this printed at 5RR or so.

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Quote from Caiaphas

Burning Rage XRR
Sorcery [R]
~ deals X damage divided as you choose among any number of creatures.
Wither

N.b. that wither comes from a "source", not a creature.

IIW: Biblical cards

So, Rolling Thunder with wither instead of the option to hit players? Sure, okay. Would be really fun in Shadowmoor/Eventide limited if you could hoard Morselhoarders and Wickerborough Elders. Also, thank you for not making it an instant which would be even more fun at this cost but impossible to balance. That being said...why does this have wither? Puncture Blast could hit players, but Burning Rage is only dropping -1/-1 counters on creatures. It feels tacked on for no good reason. Which also begs the question of why this is really mono-red when it's doing a very black thing that only has a tenuous claim to the color red.

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Quote from Cardz5000

Riftsail Raider
• Creature - Human Barbarian (R)
Echo :1mana::symr::symr:
Haste
When you sacrifice Riftsail Raider it deals 4 damage to you.
3/1

IIW: It's what's on the inside that counts!

It's a mini-pact! Cool indeed. I've always loved Jackal Pup and accordingly I love this, and the Melvin-laced complexity would have fit superbly in Time Spiral (Volcano Hellion also happens to be one of my personal favorites, but this isn't quite as interesting or tension-filled).

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Quote from Winterspring

Rallying Shout R
[U]Sorcery[/U] [C]
Target creature you control gains battle cry until end of turn.
Draw a card.

Mechanics and flavor are on my two shoulders right now, pulling me in two different directions on this design. It really should say "creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn" because most times you cast this the extra 1 point of power on one creature won't make an ounce of difference -- it's not any more interesting than a sorcery-speed, cantripping Banners Raised. But the flavor! So good! Ultimately, however, this isn't interesting enough, though it certainly fits in mono-red.

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HMs: CC, MDenham, & avatarz
Winner: Oculus
Next: Horses, Goats and Weasels.