Ixidor the Reality Torn2UUU Legendary Creature — Shapeshifter Wizard
Shroud
As long as you control a permanent that's a copy of another permanent, Shapeshifter spells you cast cost three mana of any kind less to cast. 1U : Choose a permanent that's a copy. You may change its copy to another permanent or permanent card in any revealed zone of the same type. "People aren't who you want them to be. They're who they want to be. I've learned this in the darkest lesson. And now I've become the darkest master of this: Fight for your life to destroy those people; break their will and take everything with you!"
3/7
"Life isn't necessarily what we want it to be—it's what it's willed to be by the environment. I've learned this in the darkest lesson. And now I've become the darkest master of this: Fight for your life to destroy that environment; break its will and take everything with you."
This is a very interesting card. It has major powerlevel concerns with that cost reduction. Making anything free is a problem. Just give it the generic 3 discount or you can get freaky with a WUBRG discount.
Secondly, the wording on that activated ability is a mess. "Target permanent you control that is a copy becomes a copy of another permanent that shares a type."
This is a very interesting card. It has major powerlevel concerns with that cost reduction. Making anything free is a problem. Just give it the generic 3 discount or you can get freaky with a WUBRG discount.
Secondly, the wording on that activated ability is a mess. "Target permanent you control that is a copy becomes a copy of another permanent that shares a type."
Once again, the argument that 'anything free isn't good' is biased and under-thinking.
Loading your deck with 'conditionally free' Shapeshifters in this case involves to major factors. The first is meager Shapeshifters in the range of 3 CMC and below. Very few interesting things are actually free. Realmwalker (which is new) + Taurean Mauler; yet this involves multi-card combos that face the challenge of probability. Shifty Doppelganger + Mirror Image + Glasspool Mimic; but too much the same. Realmwalker is easy to get stuck on a non-creature; but to some fun is elevated by Sensei's Diving Top. That's just fun combo-play.
The second of course is loading a deck with content such as this detracts from powerful control spells. Take your pick. Very few players will feel comfortable doing that. And many who try—will likely die trying. Can it be done? Possibly. But once again now we're just talking about fun combo play.
It's not broken by itself. It requires an enabler. And the enabler has to be sustained.
Update: New ability. Awaits feedback. I like it better this way.
The aforementioned Realmwalker actually makes this pretty broken if it reduces the cost of any shapeshifter by three of any color. If your deck is nothing but 3 CMC or less changelings, you get to play every creature in your deck until you hit a land, then scry somehow (since you havent been paying mana for any of your creatures) and keep going some more.
If it reduced the cost by 3 (and therefore didn't affect colored costs) it would be strong but fine. However, anytime you make spells effectively cast for free the game becomes broken, as evidenced by recentbannings and current problem cards.
The aforementioned Realmwalker actually makes this pretty broken if it reduces the cost of any shapeshifter by three of any color. If your deck is nothing but 3 CMC or less changelings, you get to play every creature in your deck until you hit a land, then scry somehow (since you havent been paying mana for any of your creatures) and keep going some more.
If it reduced the cost by 3 (and therefore didn't affect colored costs) it would be strong but fine. However, anytime you make spells effectively cast for free the game becomes broken, as evidenced by recentbannings and current problem cards.
I'm not really buying that the cost reduction would be any different if it was three colorless.
These are common cases in competitive play. You'd want to be more deft than that—so that what you're suggesting isn't relevant.
Since you don't actually play the game, you are unfamiliar with what is actually common case in competitive play. You shouldn't try to speak authoritatively on something you have openly expressed a desire not to participate in.
The reason the type of cost reduction matters is because a "Shapeshifters cost 3 less to cast" reduces a 1GG shapeshifter to G, while your version makes it free. With Realmwalker, it becomes effectively drawing a card free as well. If the spell still costs its colored mana, the player will run out of mana eventually and have to stop casting shapeshifters off the top of their deck, where your version has no such safety valve.
Then, as I'm cycling through my deck for free, I can hit a copy of something like Hellraiser Goblin (which I have mana up to cast with since everything else was free so far) and all the creatures I've cast now have haste and kill you before you get a turn to board wipe.
If you reduce the cost by 3 generic, you card is a strong rare. As currently written it would, at best, get printed and quickly banned if it even got pined at all.
These are common cases in competitive play. You'd want to be more deft than that—so that what you're suggesting isn't relevant.
Since you don't actually play the game, you are unfamiliar with what is actually common case in competitive play. You shouldn't try to speak authoritatively on something you have openly expressed a desire not to participate in.
I'm not unfamiliar with the game.
You're trying to claim that a 3 or 4 card combo is broken. A schematic which has a probability of 40% or less—and looks to the near the fifth turn to resolve itself.
What we have here is a fun card.
For its capabilities—it has potential. For its challenges—it's not broken.
You miss the point, its not a 3-4 card combo. Realmwalker and your card are the combo.
Step 1: Play Realmwalker
Step 2: Play your shapeshifter lord.
Step 3: Cast a free shapeshifter off the top of your deck.
Step 4: Repeat ad infinitum.
Taurean Mauler gets huge for free. Mirror Entity comes out free and you can immediately buff your team with all the mana you haven't been spending. Find a Mirror Image or something similar to copy your lord and you can cast 6 CMC shapeshifters without paying mana.
The rest of the cards are just gravy. Free spells lead to degenerate game states. If you actually played the game or had any interaction with competitive Magic, you'd understand these principles.
The "change its copy" could function with a cluster**** of conner cases. Just have it become a new copy. "Choose a face up permanent in any zone. A permanent you control of the same type that is a copy becomes a copy of it."
You miss the point, its not a 3-4 card combo. Realmwalker and your card are the combo.
Step 1: Play Realmwalker
Step 2: Play your shapeshifter lord.
Step 3: Cast a free shapeshifter off the top of your deck.
Step 4: Repeat ad infinitum.
Taurean Mauler gets huge for free. Mirror Entity comes out free and you can immediately buff your team with all the mana you haven't been spending. Find a Mirror Image or something similar to copy your lord and you can cast 6 CMC shapeshifters without paying mana.
The rest of the cards are just gravy. Free spells lead to degenerate game states. If you actually played the game or had any interaction with competitive Magic, you'd understand these principles.
But you don't.
You would want to Living Wish for Realmwalker actually. But anyways...
First step is play your 'copy card' to enable Ixidor's ability. Then play Ixidor (for 5 mana).
But how are you keeping that 'copy card' alive? If you expend your resources to do that, how are you keeping Realmwalker alive?
If you pack your deck with control spells to do this, how are you loading it with 3CMC Shapeshifters to enable your endless play off the library?
You miss the point, its not a 3-4 card combo. Realmwalker and your card are the combo.
Step 1: Play Realmwalker
Step 2: Play your shapeshifter lord.
Step 3: Cast a free shapeshifter off the top of your deck.
Step 4: Repeat ad infinitum.
Taurean Mauler gets huge for free. Mirror Entity comes out free and you can immediately buff your team with all the mana you haven't been spending. Find a Mirror Image or something similar to copy your lord and you can cast 6 CMC shapeshifters without paying mana.
The rest of the cards are just gravy. Free spells lead to degenerate game states. If you actually played the game or had any interaction with competitive Magic, you'd understand these principles.
But you don't.
You would want to Living Wish for Realmwalker actually. But anways...
First step is play your 'copy card' to enable Ixidor's ability. Then play Ixidor (for 5 mana).
But how are you keeping that 'copy card' alive? If you expend your resources to do that, how are you keeping Realmwalker alive?
If you pack your deck with control spells to do this, how are you loading it with 3CMC Shapeshifters to enable your endless play off the library?
What if players can't search their libraries and spells can't be cast from the library?
There are way more creative ways to counterbalance this—even if it was broken.
The concept in notion would make a cool casual deck—but it's not the alpha build by any means.
The only reasonable answer you put here is thoughtseize which goes a long way to proving rowan's point. You don't know how this game is played. You've admitted you don't play why try and make the claim that you do. Your notions of how the game is played is a strange blend of outdated and misinformed which makes sense given your own admittance to not playing in a decade and never really being into the game. If you can't even accept such obvious critiques about not knowing things you've admitted you shouldn't know then you have no hope of growing as a designer or an individual.
The only reasonable answer you put here is thoughtseize which goes a long way to proving rowan's point. You don't know how this game is played. You've admitted you don't play why try and make the claim that you do. Your notions of how the game is played is a strange blend of outdated and misinformed which makes sense given your own admittance to not playing in a decade and never really being into the game. If you can't even accept such obvious critiques about not knowing things you've admitted you shouldn't know then you have no hope of growing as a designer or an individual.
Was Meddling Mage not a staple in its time? How it that not relevant?
Did you even explain how the other examples aren't reasonable?
Did you even explain anything at all of 'how the game is played' that makes this broken?
You didn't even acknowledge in your first argument the condition and impact of needing a 'clone card'.
Why wasn't Vesuva legendary? That definitely should be fixed. It's a proper noun. Seems more legendary than generic to me. Should also enter untapped to that respect. No one at the time obviously realizes the significant of providing a 'tech extension' to increase the 'probability factor' and secure a successful 'mathematical proportion' for a content. This is the same in Pokemon TCG. And yet, I'm the one who doesn't understand how to play the game?
The only reasonable answer you put here is thoughtseize which goes a long way to proving rowan's point. You don't know how this game is played. You've admitted you don't play why try and make the claim that you do. Your notions of how the game is played is a strange blend of outdated and misinformed which makes sense given your own admittance to not playing in a decade and never really being into the game. If you can't even accept such obvious critiques about not knowing things you've admitted you shouldn't know then you have no hope of growing as a designer or an individual.
Was Meddling Mage not a staple in its time? How it that not relevant?
Did you even explain how the other examples aren't reasonable?
Did you even explain anything at all of 'how the game is played' that makes this broken?
1. The key words you are looking for are "In it's time", as in "not anymore".
2. Meddling mage (and a bit of Ixalan's Binding/Gideon's Intervention in Standard and nowhere else) were the only card of its sort that ever saw considerable play. Declaration of Naught, nevermore, voidstone gargoyle, and even the recent Ashiok's Erasure have seen little to no play.
3. When it comes to "how the game is played", everything ultimately comes down to what is played competitively. Look at the decks that actually make up the meta before throwing down a random card as a counter or else you're just spitting out cards that nobody actually uses. declaration of naught appears in virtually no decks so suggesting it as a counter makes no sense. Thoughtseize does appear in played decks so it would be fair to point out.
4. Yes, we expect you to do the research (or at least to absorb what is actually played via exposure to the game). You are putting out cards and all of us are going to critique it in the context of the current meta-game, not in an isolated bubble. If you want to make a card that others call good, that means being aware of these things.
Why wasn't Vesuva legendary? That definitely should be fixed. It's a proper noun. Seems more legendary than generic to me. Should also enter untapped to that respect. No one at the time obviously realizes the significant of providing a 'tech extension' to increase the 'probability factor' and secure a successful 'mathematical proportion' for a content. This is the same in Pokemon TCG. And yet, I'm the one who doesn't understand how to play the game?
Again, this shows that you are out of touch.
It has been addressed on multiple occasions why Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Vesuva, and The World Tree are not legendary cards.
1. On a mechanical level, making them non-legendary makes lands virtually unplayable. When you draw a second copy of a legendary creature, it is reasonable to expect to cast it after the first copy has been removed (and you can play the second copy to remove the first via legend rule even if it is locked down by arrest or something similar). As land destruction is so much less common, however, it is far more likely that a second copy of a land will simply be trapped in your hand for the entire game. While legendary land can still technically be created, keep in mind that the two most recent legendary lands (Inventors' Fair and The Mirror Pool could both sacrifice themselves, meaning that excess copies could eventually be played.
2. Things have also changed on a creative level (much as players are no longer thought of as planeswalkers waging war with each other since the mending occurred). Rather than a land representing exclusive access to a specific space as our domain, it represents an open mana link to that location. A single space can have more than one mana link at a time, allowing us to have multiple copies of a single land even if it feels that it should be legendary.
3. If you don't like this... so what? We are talking about the actual rules of the actual game. If you keep adding caveats and rules changes that would need to be in place to talk about your card, you are no longer talking about the game in the state where it stands... and your card remains utterly pointless (or broken, in this case) in the actual game that people play.
4. Even if Vesuva WAS legendary, the rules for copying effects mean that it would lose the legendary supertype if it copies a nonlegendary permanent (as a copy copies all of the types and supertypes of a card), which makes your argument utterly pointless to begin with.
5. I find it kind of funny how you ask for specific and detailed reasons why the cards you recommend don't work while spitting out terms like "tech extension" or "probability factor" as if those are standardized terms that we could find in the glossary of any game design handbook and not personally created buzzwords that you think everyone should automatically intuit the meaning of.
Again, you are the one who doesn't know how to play the game.
The explanations aren't correct. They wanted to botch the challenge factor of the design obviously. That's irresponsible.
It's still playable. Just once again, requires a creative way to now bridge the gap (a fetch land for only legendary lands–a cascade for legendary lands).
Magic is much too broad a spectrum of a game to summarize what's 'played' by decklists. A large majority of players are commonwealth, local card shop hobbits, who quite enjoy putting their copies of Declaration of Naught, Extract, Extirpate, Counterbore.
--
As for the card name, no. It is a proper noun‒describing a specific place. Not a place that could just be anywhere. A specific place, in a specific location.
It is the responsibility of development to make it functional, and accept the aspect of challenge that comes with the design.
Not try to hotfix it with some ungodly, unreasonable stretch of the imagination forced projection.
For example, Vesuva would need to retain the legendary land status, and have the legends rule not apply to it or cards it copies.
--
And did you even answer how a player would be doing any of the above mentioned stuff (keeping the 'copy card' alive; also keeping Realmwalker alive; packing the deck with control spells to do so; also packing the deck with 3CMC Shapeshifters to enable the powerplay off the top of the library)?
The explanations aren't correct. They wanted to botch the challenge factor of the design obviously. That's irresponsible.
Reap, you - as a person who doesn't play Magic or follow its play - telling people who actually play the game, understand the game, and follow its design and play is akin to the people with less-than-high-school education saying they don't need to wear masks because they know better than Fauci. Your conclusions are wrong and the further you try to defend them with dated or irrelevant examples, the more and more foolish you make yourself look.
If you want feedback to improve your cards, then listen to it and adapt. Otherwise, you are wasting your time here.
The explanations aren't correct. They wanted to botch the challenge factor of the design obviously. That's irresponsible.
Reap, you - as a person who doesn't play Magic or follow its play - telling people who actually play the game, understand the game, and follow its design and play is akin to the people with less-than-high-school education saying they don't need to wear masks because they know better than Fauci. Your conclusions are wrong and the further you try to defend them with dated or irrelevant examples, the more and more foolish you make yourself look.
If you want feedback to improve your cards, then listen to it and adapt. Otherwise, you are wasting your time here.
I am like the one saying to wear a mask here.
You are all the one saying something is broken without being able to prove or explain how.
Show me a decklist, and explain how viable the 4 card combo (requiring 5 mana top-end) is so easy achieve and sustain.
Legendary Creature — Shapeshifter Wizard
Shroud
As long as you control a permanent that's a copy of another permanent, Shapeshifter spells you cast cost three mana of any kind less to cast.
1U : Choose a permanent that's a copy. You may change its copy to another permanent or permanent card in any revealed zone of the same type.
"People aren't who you want them to be. They're who they want to be. I've learned this in the darkest lesson. And now I've become the darkest master of this: Fight for your life to destroy those people; break their will and take everything with you!"
3/7
"Life isn't necessarily what we want it to be—it's what it's willed to be by the environment. I've learned this in the darkest lesson. And now I've become the darkest master of this: Fight for your life to destroy that environment; break its will and take everything with you."
Secondly, the wording on that activated ability is a mess. "Target permanent you control that is a copy becomes a copy of another permanent that shares a type."
Once again, the argument that 'anything free isn't good' is biased and under-thinking.
Loading your deck with 'conditionally free' Shapeshifters in this case involves to major factors. The first is meager Shapeshifters in the range of 3 CMC and below. Very few interesting things are actually free. Realmwalker (which is new) + Taurean Mauler; yet this involves multi-card combos that face the challenge of probability. Shifty Doppelganger + Mirror Image + Glasspool Mimic; but too much the same. Realmwalker is easy to get stuck on a non-creature; but to some fun is elevated by Sensei's Diving Top. That's just fun combo-play.
The second of course is loading a deck with content such as this detracts from powerful control spells. Take your pick. Very few players will feel comfortable doing that. And many who try—will likely die trying. Can it be done? Possibly. But once again now we're just talking about fun combo play.
It's not broken by itself. It requires an enabler. And the enabler has to be sustained.
Update: New ability. Awaits feedback. I like it better this way.
If it reduced the cost by 3 (and therefore didn't affect colored costs) it would be strong but fine. However, anytime you make spells effectively cast for free the game becomes broken, as evidenced by recent bannings and current problem cards.
I'm not really buying that the cost reduction would be any different if it was three colorless.
Board-state is easily wiped. Balance, Damnation
Then what?
These are common cases in competitive play. You'd want to be more deft than that—so that what you're suggesting isn't relevant.
Since you don't actually play the game, you are unfamiliar with what is actually common case in competitive play. You shouldn't try to speak authoritatively on something you have openly expressed a desire not to participate in.
The reason the type of cost reduction matters is because a "Shapeshifters cost 3 less to cast" reduces a 1GG shapeshifter to G, while your version makes it free. With Realmwalker, it becomes effectively drawing a card free as well. If the spell still costs its colored mana, the player will run out of mana eventually and have to stop casting shapeshifters off the top of their deck, where your version has no such safety valve.
Then, as I'm cycling through my deck for free, I can hit a copy of something like Hellraiser Goblin (which I have mana up to cast with since everything else was free so far) and all the creatures I've cast now have haste and kill you before you get a turn to board wipe.
If you reduce the cost by 3 generic, you card is a strong rare. As currently written it would, at best, get printed and quickly banned if it even got pined at all.
I'm not unfamiliar with the game.
You're trying to claim that a 3 or 4 card combo is broken. A schematic which has a probability of 40% or less—and looks to the near the fifth turn to resolve itself.
What we have here is a fun card.
For its capabilities—it has potential. For its challenges—it's not broken.
Step 1: Play Realmwalker
Step 2: Play your shapeshifter lord.
Step 3: Cast a free shapeshifter off the top of your deck.
Step 4: Repeat ad infinitum.
Taurean Mauler gets huge for free. Mirror Entity comes out free and you can immediately buff your team with all the mana you haven't been spending. Find a Mirror Image or something similar to copy your lord and you can cast 6 CMC shapeshifters without paying mana.
The rest of the cards are just gravy. Free spells lead to degenerate game states. If you actually played the game or had any interaction with competitive Magic, you'd understand these principles.
But you don't.
You would want to Living Wish for Realmwalker actually. But anyways...
First step is play your 'copy card' to enable Ixidor's ability. Then play Ixidor (for 5 mana).
But how are you keeping that 'copy card' alive? If you expend your resources to do that, how are you keeping Realmwalker alive?
If you pack your deck with control spells to do this, how are you loading it with 3CMC Shapeshifters to enable your endless play off the library?
What if Realmwalker gets banned via Meddling Mage/Declaration of Naught? What if it gets discarded Thoughtseize?
What if players can't search their libraries and spells can't be cast from the library?
There are way more creative ways to counterbalance this—even if it was broken.
The concept in notion would make a cool casual deck—but it's not the alpha build by any means.
Was Meddling Mage not a staple in its time? How it that not relevant?
Did you even explain how the other examples aren't reasonable?
Did you even explain anything at all of 'how the game is played' that makes this broken?
You didn't even acknowledge in your first argument the condition and impact of needing a 'clone card'.
Why wasn't Vesuva legendary? That definitely should be fixed. It's a proper noun. Seems more legendary than generic to me. Should also enter untapped to that respect. No one at the time obviously realizes the significant of providing a 'tech extension' to increase the 'probability factor' and secure a successful 'mathematical proportion' for a content. This is the same in Pokemon TCG. And yet, I'm the one who doesn't understand how to play the game?
The card isn't broken. It has potential.
1. The key words you are looking for are "In it's time", as in "not anymore".
2. Meddling mage (and a bit of Ixalan's Binding/Gideon's Intervention in Standard and nowhere else) were the only card of its sort that ever saw considerable play. Declaration of Naught, nevermore, voidstone gargoyle, and even the recent Ashiok's Erasure have seen little to no play.
3. When it comes to "how the game is played", everything ultimately comes down to what is played competitively. Look at the decks that actually make up the meta before throwing down a random card as a counter or else you're just spitting out cards that nobody actually uses. declaration of naught appears in virtually no decks so suggesting it as a counter makes no sense. Thoughtseize does appear in played decks so it would be fair to point out.
4. Yes, we expect you to do the research (or at least to absorb what is actually played via exposure to the game). You are putting out cards and all of us are going to critique it in the context of the current meta-game, not in an isolated bubble. If you want to make a card that others call good, that means being aware of these things.
Again, this shows that you are out of touch.
It has been addressed on multiple occasions why Emeria, the Sky Ruin, Vesuva, and The World Tree are not legendary cards.
1. On a mechanical level, making them non-legendary makes lands virtually unplayable. When you draw a second copy of a legendary creature, it is reasonable to expect to cast it after the first copy has been removed (and you can play the second copy to remove the first via legend rule even if it is locked down by arrest or something similar). As land destruction is so much less common, however, it is far more likely that a second copy of a land will simply be trapped in your hand for the entire game. While legendary land can still technically be created, keep in mind that the two most recent legendary lands (Inventors' Fair and The Mirror Pool could both sacrifice themselves, meaning that excess copies could eventually be played.
2. Things have also changed on a creative level (much as players are no longer thought of as planeswalkers waging war with each other since the mending occurred). Rather than a land representing exclusive access to a specific space as our domain, it represents an open mana link to that location. A single space can have more than one mana link at a time, allowing us to have multiple copies of a single land even if it feels that it should be legendary.
3. If you don't like this... so what? We are talking about the actual rules of the actual game. If you keep adding caveats and rules changes that would need to be in place to talk about your card, you are no longer talking about the game in the state where it stands... and your card remains utterly pointless (or broken, in this case) in the actual game that people play.
4. Even if Vesuva WAS legendary, the rules for copying effects mean that it would lose the legendary supertype if it copies a nonlegendary permanent (as a copy copies all of the types and supertypes of a card), which makes your argument utterly pointless to begin with.
5. I find it kind of funny how you ask for specific and detailed reasons why the cards you recommend don't work while spitting out terms like "tech extension" or "probability factor" as if those are standardized terms that we could find in the glossary of any game design handbook and not personally created buzzwords that you think everyone should automatically intuit the meaning of.
Again, you are the one who doesn't know how to play the game.
Only if you make the changes recommended.
Otherwise, it is broken.
It's still playable. Just once again, requires a creative way to now bridge the gap (a fetch land for only legendary lands–a cascade for legendary lands).
Magic is much too broad a spectrum of a game to summarize what's 'played' by decklists. A large majority of players are commonwealth, local card shop hobbits, who quite enjoy putting their copies of Declaration of Naught, Extract, Extirpate, Counterbore.
--
As for the card name, no. It is a proper noun‒describing a specific place. Not a place that could just be anywhere. A specific place, in a specific location.
It is the responsibility of development to make it functional, and accept the aspect of challenge that comes with the design.
Not try to hotfix it with some ungodly, unreasonable stretch of the imagination forced projection.
For example, Vesuva would need to retain the legendary land status, and have the legends rule not apply to it or cards it copies.
--
And did you even answer how a player would be doing any of the above mentioned stuff (keeping the 'copy card' alive; also keeping Realmwalker alive; packing the deck with control spells to do so; also packing the deck with 3CMC Shapeshifters to enable the powerplay off the top of the library)?
Reap, you - as a person who doesn't play Magic or follow its play - telling people who actually play the game, understand the game, and follow its design and play is akin to the people with less-than-high-school education saying they don't need to wear masks because they know better than Fauci. Your conclusions are wrong and the further you try to defend them with dated or irrelevant examples, the more and more foolish you make yourself look.
If you want feedback to improve your cards, then listen to it and adapt. Otherwise, you are wasting your time here.
I am like the one saying to wear a mask here.
You are all the one saying something is broken without being able to prove or explain how.
Show me a decklist, and explain how viable the 4 card combo (requiring 5 mana top-end) is so easy achieve and sustain.
"Turn five win. I just need my Mana Flare, Burning Sands, Death Pits of Rath, and my Underworld Fires."