MTG Salvation

Volthros is... really underwhelming. It’s a 4 mana card that innocent bloods once I’ve had a creature die and doesn’t even stick around, and then after I’ve had 9 creatures die, if I protect him long enough, I eventually get to trade whatever permanents I have left for a Tormnet of Hailfire effect? Sure I can’t throw all my permanents into it, but there is a realistic chance of it actually doig what I want it to? At which point why not just play Torment of Hailfire? Theres also a strange anti-synergy where it’s static ability wants you to have creatures that die, but the -2 works best when you control no creatures. It’s a neat concept, but as is the card just strikes me as being too much work.

Jace’s Phantasm
UU
Planeswalker - Jace (Rare)
+1: draw a card, then discard a card.
-1: put an 0/1 Blue Illusion creature token on the battlefield with flying and “when this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, exile it”.
-6: Reveal the top card of your library until you reveal a Jace planeswalker card. Put it onto the battlefield, then put all other cards revealed this way onto the bottom of your library in a random order
2

Well the clear parallel is pillory of the sleepless- same mana cost, same 1-for-1 removal aura, but for adding a harder mana cost of 1 -> R, you've turned it from a 1 point of damage per turn to 4 point swing. Its way too powerful with that I think, the amount of advantage from 2 drain per turn is too much, I mean its the swing you get from a vampire nighthawk swinging in uncontested each turn yet also negating one enemy creature, and enchantments are very hard to remove. It could be drain 1 life per turn, thus being a slight upgrade to pillory, but that would be too similar to pillory

Prismatic Geyser RG
Enchantment - Aura (U)
Enchant land
When Prismatic Geyser enters the battlefield, untap enchanted land.
Whenever enchanted land is tapped for mana, its controller adds one mana of any color to his or her mana pool.

Prismatic Geyser
Why red though? It feels very unred to me, red does not often untap its things to abuse this. That said utopia sprawl is real powerful and this is in line with wizards new no 1cmc dor rule, yet is not a strict down grade of the 1cmc powerhouses. Still hard to justify the red here i think.

Shambleback Mage 1B
Creature - Zombie Wizard (R)
Deathtouch
When Shambleback Mage enters the battlefield, exile target creature card from a graveyard, then gain life equal to it's mana cost. You may add the exiled card to your hand by paying its mana cost.
2/1

Hrmm well the templating is a bit wonky- maybe the last bit would be something like "You may pay that card's mana cost. If you do, put it into your hand. (Mana cost includes colors)". It would also have to be from your graveyard only, you can't put other player's cards into your hand. But its a pretty weird effect to let you draw a card from your graveyard for its mana cost, effectively letting you pseudo-recur or pseudo-cantrip with this but being rather expensive. Just getting a shambleback for a shambleback chain going would cost 4 per cast which is pretty fair and a bit pushed with the 2 life and trading deathtouchers, but its not exactly the black version of snapcaster or dire fleet daredevil if its just drawing the card it recurs, but then again it also loops instead of being self-limiting which is dangerous.

Intrepid Pilot 2R
Creature - Human Artificer Pilot (R)
When Intrepid Pilot enters the battlefield, create a 0/2 colorless Thopter artifact creature token named Ornithopter. It has flying.
T: Target Thopter creature you control gets +3/+1 until end of turn. Activate this ability only at the start of combat.
3/1

(I think this would have to be rare to not destroy limited)

I wish this just created a 1/1 Thopter instead of an Ornithopter (a more common token which is a bit less complex) with the numbers on the pump ability changed to match, and that the timing restriction on when you can activate the ability was removed. It would then be a strong but fair card in limited and likely standard as well.

Treasures Taken
4UUBB
Sorcery
Search target opponent’s library for up to 4 cards with different names and reveal them. That opponent then chooses 2 of those cards and shuffles them into their library. You may cast the remaining cards without paying their mana cost.

Well for 8 mana cost its certainly an bomb effect, and very punishing against certain decks like that unexpected results list, but against normal decks there won't be a curve high enough that you could pick out 4+ different card names that all have a high enough value to justify an 8 power effect. Yet at lower costs, it might get broken, so its kinda hairy on the value. If you were getting 2x 4+ mana cost cards, and they winded up giving you the least 2 of them, then you're basically getting 2x 4-drops which is +1 CA and mana back, and with the opponents choice its never going to be exactly what you needed at any time. In general, opponent chooses effects are worth the least of the options (options here dependent on opponents deck), made better by your ability to manipulate the choice (nothing more than bluffing here), and made worse by the amount of variation between the choices (4x different named cards is a lot of variation). Now what exactly that's worth is still questionable, I guess, the "3rd and 4th best cards in an opponents deck"
one tweak I could offer for sure is change the wording to "That opponent then chooses 2 of those cards and puts them on top of their library, then shuffles their library". You want to guarantee a shuffle even if 0 cards were chosen by the caster. I'm not sure that's implied in "shuffle 0 cards into their library".

Horned Prodder RR
Creature - Devil (U)
First Strike
At least one creature must attack each combat if able.
At least one creature must block each combat if able.
2/1

Horned Prodder - Must attack is definitely red. But the must block (or be blocked) so far I have only seen in green. Correct me if I am wrong.
Anyway, I guess its not much of color bleed, red definitely likes all the action. Very elegeance.

Ardence of Pain 1B
Enchantment - Aura Curse
Enchant player
If enchanted player lost life this turn, creatures he or she they control gets +1/+1.

Ardence of Pain is a bit of a flavour fail, since this is a curse that you’d basically only ever want to put on yourself (which isn’t what curses do). I’m also not sold on the trigger, I like the idea that it’s a static effect to reduce the number of triggers, but given that the most common way to deal damage is with combat damage, it doesn’t seem like it would often be relevant. If you want this to remain a curse, make the text read ‘as long as the enchanted player lost life this turn, creature’s that player’s opponent’s control get +1/+1’. If you want to make it so that you put the enchantment on yourself, just make it a straight enchantment rather than an aura-curse.

Undercity Rats
2BB
Creature - Rat
You may have any number of creature cards named Undercity Rats in Your deck.
When Undercity Rats enter the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it for each creature in your graveyard that shares a name with it.
”Make sure you burn the corpses, they eat their own dead”
1/1

Edit: Karma basicly said the same thing I did.

Undercity Rats ; basicly plauge/relentless rats, only in reverse. I'm a big fan of the 1 rat rats deck.

<Name> WR
Enchantment
If a player would gain one or more counters,that player looses 2 life instead.
Edit: Fixed an a gamebreaking loop via. Phyrexian Unlife

Quote from Lord_Kaos »

Edit: Karma basicly said the same thing I did.

Undercity Rats ; basicly plauge/relentless rats, only in reverse. I'm a big fan of the 1 rat rats deck.

<Name> WR
Enchantment
If a player would gain one or more counters,that player looses 2 life instead.
Edit: Fixed an a gamebreaking loop via. Phyrexian Unlife

This still reads 'you can't lose the game as long as you control this and 'Phyrexian Unlife', but given that Solemnity is still a card I think thats fine. My only complaint is that even though I see the argument for it, I'm not convinced that the card should be White/Red. I see the argument that white is the only colour (that I know of) that so far has had effects which prevent the placement of counters (Solemnity and Vizier of Remedies), it typically does this in a beneficial way. Also, since its such a low-occurrence effect, I don't think that the fact that it has only been in white means that it couldn't creep into other colours in some way. Red is also allowed to have punisher effects for various things, so I see no reason why this card couldn't be mono-red.

Anyways, moving on:

Jhoria, Master Artificer
1UR
Legendary Creature - Human Artificer
1UR, T: Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discard an artifact card this way, untap Jhoria and create a 1/1 Thopter artifact creature token with flying.
2UR, Sacrifice X Artifacts, T: Return target artifact with a CMC of x from your graveyard to the battlefield.
2/2

Edit: clarified that she sacs artifacts to bring an artifact with a cmc of x.

Why ever would she want to sac X artifacts? X is lost in that card, like an ability or feature was cut off. I like the thipter loot though.
Feels like a real salvager girl.


Creation XXGG
Creature - Incarnate
Flash
When you cast Creation, reveal the top X cards of your library. Put all lands and green permanents revealed this way on the battlefield.
Green permanent spells cost 1 less to cast while creation is in the graveyard.
3/2

Jhoira 3.0 - The looting ability is interesting but could cost UR, T instead; it's hard to use repeatedly (and thus hard to get the most out of) if it costs three mana to activate. The artifact reanimation ability is so expensive it'd almost never be useful. If you're playing a deck artifact-heavy enough to want this card in it as well you'll have other ways to cheat out/get back your artifacts.

Creation - Interesting idea but crazily overpowered. For X = 0 it's an overly efficient flash blocker that gives you effective mana for the rest of the game after dying - the ultimate combat trick. The flexibility of the Xs in the cost will definitely lead to some blowouts. Not to mention - putting cards onto the battlefield with this card's on-cast ability (which is almost uncounterable, btw) is antisynergistic with the "Incarnation-style" graveyard ability reducing mana costs.

And now for some metamagic -

Flectomancer's Mastery U
Instant (R)
Until end of turn, whenever a spell or ability becomes the target of a spell or ability you control, you may counter the first spell or ability.
Draw a card.

Well its certainly a tricky template to grok, in that 'the first spell or ability' in this line means 'the former spell or ability', but there is no concept of former/latter in magic. And its also a bit tricky in that unlike most counterspells that reactively counter an effect targeting a spell or ability, especially in the case of fizzling it with hexproof like vines of vastwood, this instead sets up a shield for future spells/abilities. And I think a lot of people wouldn't understand that reading the card, and would think it could reactively counter something, which it can't since it occurs only when someone casts/activates an ability after this resolves. Now, between the costing and cantripping I think you got the metagame viability and aggressive costing right- that's a pretty fair effect. But how relevant would it be that an opponent could counter a spell/ability with two counterspells? In almost every situation people wouldn't counter a spell even if they could with 2 counters. And in that regard, it becomes something like overmaster or silence, or vexing shusher or Abeyance- but with an extra shield against ability based countering. That's actually still pretty relevant in metagaming, like against chalice of the void (well, not on 1). But I feel like it could be templated easier to understand.

Unholy Fervor BB
Enchantment - Aura (R)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+1 and can't block.
When enchanted creature dies, return Unholy Fervor to the battlefield transformed and attach it to that creature card in your graveyard.
//////////////
Devil's Brand
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature card in your graveyard.
BBB: Return enchanted creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Transform Devil's Brand and attach it to that creature.

Keep in mind it can't cheat in creatures like normal reanimation. I was trying to solve an animate dead-style recursion aura that moves between zones, without the incredibly inelegant terms needed to track across zones. A DFC I think is the trick. it could be flipped around so Devil's Brand is the front side and castable, with different mana costs...

Quote from clan_iraq »

Unholy Fervor BB
Enchantment - Aura (R)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +2/+1 and can't block.
When enchanted creature dies, return Unholy Fervor to the battlefield transformed and attach it to that creature card in your graveyard.
//////////////
Devil's Brand
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature card in your graveyard.
BBB: Return enchanted creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Transform Devil's Brand and attach it to that creature.

Keep in mind it can't cheat in creatures like normal reanimation. I was trying to solve an animate dead-style recursion aura that moves between zones, without the incredibly inelegant terms needed to track across zones. A DFC I think is the trick. it could be flipped around so Devil's Brand is the front side and castable, with different mana costs...

Admittedly, the nature of double-faced cards fits perfectly with the concept of your aura. I would not swap the two sides; however, depending on how and how much you want Devil’s Brand to be abusable (for example with cards like He Who Hungers or Phyrexian Plaguelord), you might want to make it so that its ability can be activated only at sorcery speed and/or only once per turn, maybe even giving the returning creature haste to balance the tuning. On a very personal note, I find the increase in toughness of Unholy Fervor a little counterintuitive, as the enchantment already gives enough resilience to the creature you attach it to.


Spellslinger’s Pendulum 1UWR
Enchantment
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell from your hand, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile an instant or sorcery card. You may cast without paying its mana cost if it has the same converted mana cost as the card you cast from your hand. Otherwise, put it into your hand.
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, Spellslinger’s Pendulum deal 1 damage to each opponent.


I designed this card so that it would be both the engine and the winning condition of a grindy deck that does not rely on creatures to close out the game. Just to clarify, I want it to work in such a way that if the spell had the same converted mana cost and you did not want to cast it, it would remain exiled. As for the name and the type of the card, I did not imagine the spell as a swinging weight, but rather, as a pulsing rune.

Edit: Improved punctuation.

Spellslingger’s Pendulum is neat, but my only comment is that I’d pull of the line about pinging your opponents. The card is wordy enough as is. I could also see this card at just WUR if you pull off the pinging ability.

Aetherialize
1W
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
When Aetherialize enters the battle, exile target permanent you control until Aetherialize leaves the battlefield.
Enchanted creature gets +X/+X, where X is the exiled permanent’s converted mana cost.

Taking Bishop of Binding into account, I think this should also cost at least 4, if not more since you have full control of which of your creatures being exiled. Neat idea, regardless.


Forced card?

Grasp The Sun 3WU
Sorcery (R)
If you have the City's Blessing, you gain 10 life and draw three cards. Otherwise, you gain the City's Blessing.
There are those who would take the power of the sun even before it rises.

Basically it's an Ascend cheat: Instead of having 10 permanents, you can have only 5 (or maybe less) and get the City's Blessing this way. Deliberately this card doesn't have Asced; not sure if I should. Comments?

Not many ascend cards are curve toppers, most are intentionally in the 1-4 mana cost range and gain value above the curve when turned online, but this is naturally balanced by ascending turning on late enough into a game that they're competing with bigger threats. In that sense its a lot like Threshold, your weenies get bigger as the game goes on, your instants/sorceries too. But this puts a card like Grasp The Sun in a tricky spot like tendershoot dryad- decks with a bunch of permanents are going to go big for 10 permanents by turn 5-6-7 or so pretty easily, so it would be pretty rare you cast this just to get the blessing, and even if you did, it might be redundant when just 1-2 more permanents might have done the trick. And then the payoffs pretty good, 10 life is big enough that even though its 2 more mana than secrets of the golden city it would be worth it to stabilize. If it was a sorcery it should probably have ascend, so that if you have 10 non-ascend permanents you don't get the feel-bad of having this whiff just to give you the blessing you'd get from casting a dork first. But then there's the grok problem of the card giving you the blessing in two different ways so people might not understand which order the abilities work. Another idea is maybe it could be an enchantment like Font of Fortunes with ascend on it, requiring the blessing to sacrifice itself.

Seedling Pilgrim G
Creature - Treefolk
T: Seedling Pilgrim becomes a forest land. (Its no longer a creature. It has "T: Add G")
T: Seedling Pilgrim is no longer a land. (It becomes a creature again.)
0/2

is the blocking too good for a slow dork?

The big issue I have with seedling pilgrim is that it will create a ton of memory issues as to whether or not it’s a creature. I think a better implementation would be to make it a DFC that transforms between the creature side and the land side.

Pristine Plain
Land
T: Add 1
1, T: Add WW

Intention is a variation of the filterlands. Only adds one colour, but doesn’t required specific mana to produce coloured mana.

Hrmm well I'm not sure about how much point there is to producing monocolored filtering. The only advantage over just running a plains is that if you have only 1-2 colorless producers and such a mono-filter you can pay for WW costs which lets you curve out cards like crusade or mirran crusader more easily on a mana base splashing utility lands. It kind of favors 2-3 drop curves over 1-drops: Its useless when put in with mono plains, worse than useless since its bad on turn 1 and vulnerable to non-basic hate, but favors running alongside those utility lands. So that really doubles down the deck building constraint on ever running 1-drops since now not only are your utility lands bad on T1 but also the filter lands, but smooths out better.
I guess it could work, but it lacks the color fixing reliability that enables decks to run more colors. A regular filter land can let you play 2W, 1WU and 2U spells all of a single land regardless of your others, this only helps for WW spells

Treacherous Councillor B
Creature - Human Advisor (R)
T: Target opponent reveals their hand and you choose a nonland card from it. That player exiles that card and draws a card. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
When Treacherous Councillor leaves the battlefield, each player may exchange any number of cards in their hand for cards they own exiled by Treacherous Councillor.
1/1

Treacherous Councillor is very interesting. It feels like risk high high reward card to me, but it also makes the opponent ask themselves if it's worth using removal on a 1 Drop. I can't tell how good it is.


My card references a card that was revealed just under an hour ago, so I'm putting it in a spoiler tab just incase anyone doesn't want the spoilers.

Each bird creature, huh? Quite narrow, but maybe playable. Birds aren't the only fliers in town, after all; she's useless against angels and dragons.


Super complicated card based on a flavor I have in mind.

Unexpected Adversary 4RR
Sorcery (R)
Choose target creature or planeswalker you control, target creature or planeswalker you don't control, and another target player. The chosen player reveals the top cards of his or her library until a creature or planeswalker card is revealed this way, puts it onto the battlefield, then shuffles his or her library. If a permanent enters the battlefield this way, it fights with each of the chosen permanents. (A planeswalker who fights deals damage equal to its loyalty counters)

In case you're wondering about what flavor, the art I'm imaginng about this card is that Bolas and Ugin are clawing at each other again when suddenly Emrakul crashes the party. Comments?

Well, its definitely a card with a lot of targets and objects to keep track of in its text box. Its a pretty complicated thing to follow when its choosing two different objects of two possible types, and then a third object of another type (player), then producing a fourth object of two possible types. That's already really complex, but then it requires both the unprecedented ideas of one creature fighting two creatures at once, without specifying how that works (presumably, it deals damage equal to its power to both of them, and both of them to it, at the same time?) but also introduces planeswalker fighting which is new. That's a whole lot of new ideas for one card. Now, following the flavor of the idea and what you're talking about- two creatures interrupted by a third- thats neat. But maybe you'd want to narrow it down to just creatures and leave out the planeswalker side so its one less unique concept and a whole lot less text and 'or' branches.


Elvish Woodcrafter G
Creature - Elf (U)
G: If target creature has no +1/+1 counters on it, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
1/1

This seems like an incredible powerhouse in limited or slower formats in general, but overall fair. It's sort of comparable to Scavenging Ooze, in that it is a "fair" mana sink. Essentially you get to Glorious Hymn your entire team by spending enough G, but also enables counter shenanigans. It's actually a quite nice design. Might want to add an Artificer/Druid subtype to it though.

Glorious Blossoming (W/G)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant forest or plains
Whenever enchanted permanent becomes tapped, add G if it is a forest.
Whenever enchanted permanent becomes tapped, gain 1 life if it is a plains.

Edit: The cost is a hybrid GW mana, hovering over the symbol even says so, but apparently the symbol didn't load correctly or smth.

My concerns about Glorious Blossoming are these:

1. I think that the power level difference between the two ‘modes’ is too large. Gaining 1 life a turn is a lot less impactful than getting an extra mana.
2. This might be a little too good with lands with two land types, such as Temple Garden. While getting 1 life a turn isn’t great on its own, getting 1 life and 1 mana for a 1 CMC enchantment is quite strong.

Run and Hide
URG
Sorcery - Rare
Reveal your hand. Target opponent chooses a permanent card from your hand, then you choose a different permanent card from your hand. Each player puts the chosen card onto the battlefield under their control.
”Reinstating show and tell was a bad idea” - Naban, Dean of Iteration

Its an interesting variant on dubious challenge, in that you some different means of controlling and crafting the available permanent cards that your opponent chooses between. In terms of breaking the symmetry of the effect, the dubious challenge decklists should give some idea of the kinds of janky combos that it can do, like emrakul + flickerwisp. I think using the same template as dubious challenge makes it more clear which player is putting which card onto the battlefield, since as you wrote it "The chosen card" is slightly ambiguous as both players choose a card, even if the intent is clear. In practical terms of deckbuilding, its more controllable to get 2 cards you want in your hand before comboing off, since it could be build around draw/filter spells. And while its less mana at 3, dubious let you dig 10 cards deep and then choose only two you wanted- it could whiff, and couldn't be set up as easily in advance since scrying deep isn't that easy, but without setup its effect is much easier to break. So I'd say its an erm, dubious dubious challenge.

Fledgling UU
Creature - Bird (R)
U: Choose one. Activate this ability only once per turn:

• Untap Fledgling.
• Fledgling gains flying until end of turn.
• Fledgling gains hexproof until end of turn.
• Fledgling gets +1/-1 until end of turn.
• Fledgling gets -1/+1 until end of turn.

2/2