Gates of Reason
Artifact (R)
At the beginning of your end step, if you control exactly one creature and have exactly one card in hand, sacrifice Gates of Reason, draw three cards, and put 3 token copies of that creature onto the battlefield.
Greedpact :symb::symb:
Enchantment (R)
Whenever a card you own is exiled from anywhere, you gain 1 life and each opponent loses 1 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 10 or more life than an opponent, sacfice Greedpact and put all exiled cards you own into your hand. You lose half your life, rounded up. You have no maximum hand size. (This effect doesn't end at end of turn.).
Ageless Vessel :1mana::symw:
Creature - Human Seer (R)
1/1
Whenever a creature dies, put a Soul counter on Ageless Vessel.
At the beginning of each end step, if three or more creatures died this turn, sacrifice Ageless Vessel and put X 1/1 white Spirit creature tokens with flying onto the battlefield, where X is equal to the number of Soul counters on Ageless Vessel.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if Ageless Vessel is in your graveyard and you control no spirits, you may pay :1mana::symw:. If you do, return Ageless Vessel from your graveyard to your hand.
The last one's a bit of a stretch as a Johnny card, but there you go.
im going to comment on these cards under the assumption that the goal is "make a cool weird johnny rare" rather than "make a cool magic card".
while these are cool cards, my critique is that i don't think johnny is excited by these cards. johnny cards make normal players go "what the hell does this do?" and johnny players go "i can't wait to try to make this weird card work".
your cards state very specific hoops to jump through and give very specific rewards. its not really a puzzle to be solved. for example, i don't consider primeval bounty a johnny card. its very obvious what you're supposed to do with it.
likewise, Gates of Reason screams "put me in a deck with lots of sac and discard outlets". maybe thats far from the most exciting thing that can be done with it, but the path is already fairly laid out. johnny wants to build his own path.
look at Bazaar Trader. i don't think its obvious at all what you're supposed to do with that. so a johnny is excited at finding the interaction between it and threaten effects. here's a similar card which would be "too obvious" to be a johnny card: "whenever you sacrifice a permanent an opponent owns, gain 5 life and that opponent loses 5 life".
no ones wondering how to make that card work, everyone understands: oh ok threaten and sac effects, done.
That's a good point about Relic of Progenitus. Might need to cost more just because of that card. Not sure how Infernal Tutor interacts with it other than finding it, though.
Gates of Reason is absolutely a classic Johnny card, though. No clue how that's even up for debate. The card does actual nothing unless you fulfill a set of specific and difficult conditions, at which point you're rewarded in an obvious and appropriately powerful way. Plus it scales according to how ambitious you want to be in building around it. It also isn't costed competitively. I think Xyx hit the nail on the head RE: Johnnys and bad cards.
Artifact (R)
At the beginning of your end step, if you control exactly one creature and have exactly one card in hand, sacrifice Gates of Reason, draw three cards, and put 3 token copies of that creature onto the battlefield.
Greedpact :symb::symb:
Enchantment (R)
Whenever a card you own is exiled from anywhere, you gain 1 life and each opponent loses 1 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 10 or more life than an opponent, sacfice Greedpact and put all exiled cards you own into your hand. You lose half your life, rounded up. You have no maximum hand size. (This effect doesn't end at end of turn.).
Ageless Vessel :1mana::symw:
Creature - Human Seer (R)
1/1
Whenever a creature dies, put a Soul counter on Ageless Vessel.
At the beginning of each end step, if three or more creatures died this turn, sacrifice Ageless Vessel and put X 1/1 white Spirit creature tokens with flying onto the battlefield, where X is equal to the number of Soul counters on Ageless Vessel.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if Ageless Vessel is in your graveyard and you control no spirits, you may pay :1mana::symw:. If you do, return Ageless Vessel from your graveyard to your hand.
The last one's a bit of a stretch as a Johnny card, but there you go.
Comments appreciated.
while these are cool cards, my critique is that i don't think johnny is excited by these cards. johnny cards make normal players go "what the hell does this do?" and johnny players go "i can't wait to try to make this weird card work".
your cards state very specific hoops to jump through and give very specific rewards. its not really a puzzle to be solved. for example, i don't consider primeval bounty a johnny card. its very obvious what you're supposed to do with it.
likewise, Gates of Reason screams "put me in a deck with lots of sac and discard outlets". maybe thats far from the most exciting thing that can be done with it, but the path is already fairly laid out. johnny wants to build his own path.
look at Bazaar Trader. i don't think its obvious at all what you're supposed to do with that. so a johnny is excited at finding the interaction between it and threaten effects. here's a similar card which would be "too obvious" to be a johnny card: "whenever you sacrifice a permanent an opponent owns, gain 5 life and that opponent loses 5 life".
no ones wondering how to make that card work, everyone understands: oh ok threaten and sac effects, done.
Gates of Reason is absolutely a classic Johnny card, though. No clue how that's even up for debate. The card does actual nothing unless you fulfill a set of specific and difficult conditions, at which point you're rewarded in an obvious and appropriately powerful way. Plus it scales according to how ambitious you want to be in building around it. It also isn't costed competitively. I think Xyx hit the nail on the head RE: Johnnys and bad cards.
Actually, even hitting yourself with a tormod's crypt if there's enough cards in the yard will end the game.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn