MTG Salvation

Hey friends! I'm running a "contest" of my best designs for one year anniversary of my blog bullzzai.com.

Would you be kind enough to give me some feedback and votes? I'm organizing this and couple more fun stuffs to celebrate, I already have a bunch of votes from reddit so I'm pretty excited

Mys vote would be: 2, 3, 6 and 8 for quarterfinals
I'll be putting up the next rounds and probably offer an indie title or two from my leftover Steam to the people who voted right the most until the final winner!
You can use the poll, but if you are in for the prize, you probably don't want to, as I'm guessing it's anonymous.

Thank you so much for your participation!

Seems like it's pretty painful to access the picture here. Please visit imgur . com/mTa9c8Y if necessary

Voted for Forges, Damion, Poltergeist and Lord of Lambholdt.

My thoughts, though, on the lot.

1.) Fateseal is a pretty weak drawback. Unless it's done repeatedly, you're not really "losing" a lot, except that your opponent may or may not know your next draw, and it may or may not have been what you needed if he didn't. Especially early game, it's not that terrible of a thing, IMO.

2.) Paragon of Restoration is kinda...weird. Was he intended not to have flying? I mean when we get down to it, it's a discount Restoration Angel with a bit more tribal backing, really. I apologize, but it just doesn't feel very inspired to me.

3.) Damion is interesting, an oddball twist on the "Aggro flavored planeswalker." Prevent blockers, take a bear or utility creature out and ding the opponent, and finally, you either wrath or wrath while holding a creature for yourself. Then if your opponent lays a creature down before youfinish him, you go back to preventing. I'm not gonna say I'm COMPLETELY on board with it, but it is interesting at least.

4.) Noble Hellkite just feels really bland, IMO. Granted, the sac mountain is an interesting twist on the Monstrous ability, it's otherwise unimpressive to me.

5.) Soulthief Poultergeist is really quite interesting to me. I like the "Keyword Thief" ability, I hope to see it on a real card soon. You missed Intimidate, not sure if it was intentional or not, but otherwise, well done.

6.) Binding Ritual...oh dear. If this was before M14, I'd be all over it, because I love the flavor and the execution. I still like it, but with how they are doing the O-Ring wording now (Exile this as long as this is in play) it's harder to do this as cleanly. A pity, really.

7.) This is cool, but it's not striking me as fully Monogreen. Up the cost of token production and lose the life payment aspect. That is more black's turf.

8.) This is cool. I like it. Honestly, the only thing I'd change on it is have it transform humans when he transforms (maybe even a one shot, say "Put a blood counter on each human you control. They are vampires in addition to their other creature types") to get a hair more value out of him. I'd be sad if he transformed and then suddenly half my field loses their lord.

Some good ideas here, though, man. Really good ideas!

Thanks for the kind word and comments!
1) Is it? I thought this might be fairly equivalent to the temples, and supposedly fateseal is worse than scry? Maybe not. If that's the case I guess I could try fateseal 2.
2) Paragon was very much my attempt to access the cloudshift effect for cheaper, so I understand it looks less creative, though I'm afraid that's just what it needed to be based on the restrictions imposed to it... I needed to make it an angel so that it doesn't combo horribly with its big sister. Maybe it could be a 2/1 (first strike?) for 2W.
3) I didn't think for long enough for Damion, I just figured two less blockers or two mini lightning helix were kinda ok. I agree it's not the most compelling.
4) I got that a lot. To be honest I just thought "let's make a Rathi Dragon with monstruous". I realized since then dragons have come a long way though, I think to be popular this one would at least need to get haste or some kinda of protection or direct damage.
5) Thanks! I like this idea and I did miss Intimidate. I really like the idea of hosing other awesome creatures by taking trample, deathtouch, first strike or even hexproof from them. Might be a tad be overpowered even.
6) I completely missed that, you're right. Guess that kinda breaks it. Maybe I'll pretend it's a card from Gatecrash or Dragon's Maze
7) Yep agreed. I mentioned that on reddit, I guess I was trying to contain the super strong ability. Maybe make it use black mana would get it back in flavor a bit, though it would still be weird.
8) That's a fair point, though it was in sync of Mayor of Avabruck that I copied. Someone mentioned that anthem for humans in black is wrong, they are pretty much right as well. I like transforming people into vampires, though not transforming because you could transform a whole bunch of human werewolves lol.

Thanks again for the feedback, those are all pretty good points

1.) Ah, but the Temples, the Scry is a boon, with it coming into play regardless. Compare it more to the Shocklands. 2 life is a more clear, definitive detriment. Is getting a card you didn't know what it was (most likely, anyways) getting stuffed to the bottom really gonna make you think twice about it coming into play tapped?
2.) Cloudshift, I getcha now. Still, at least it should have flying.
3.) Not sure I really have a lot to add here.
4.) Perhaps add a monstrous triggered effect, too?
5.) Eh, he's still a reasonably fragile target. It'd need playtesting to fine tune, really, but it's pretty decent, I think.
6.) You could still do it, you'd just need three lines of text as the system isn't set up to "borrow" life.
7.) I don't think it's really terrible as is. I mean the token, and activated ability on the token are all very green...maybe up the creature and activated costs a smidge?
8.) That's a fair point, however, an anthem for humans that are about to become vampires is a bit more workable, I think. And it's still kinda black, really. A king so obsessed over the dominion of his subjects, he will make them undead to keep them. Your call.

Regarding the Angel, it isn't really a dealbreaker for it to combo with Resto. At worst, its a three card combo with it, Resto, and a trigger card like Soul Warden. I'm of the opinion that three+ card combos are healthy for the game.

Piar, I think I agree with you. What's left though, is that I would have to make the paragon blink anything but soldier, witch is also a little funny, when you look at it next to the angel, since they specifically restrict different things. Oh well.

Now here are the results!

Forges of Insanity wins with 53%
Damion Colebane wins with 53%
Binding Ritual wins with 53%
Lord of Lambholt with with 61%

NOBODY could predict the exact result, but so far the best predictions (3) are:
Me
GigaGuess from Magic Salvation
Umbrall from Reddit
Aweq from Reddit
StealthNL from Reddit

Thanks a lot again, and see you for the next round

You need text versions if you want a proper response.

Ok let me add this to the next one, thank you!