These aren't designed to fit any existing characters, just to explore different interpretations of Gods in Magic.
I wanted to break out of the "can't attack or block unless blah" trope and aim for raw power and scale. I'm also forgoing the indestructible in the interest of balance.
White God?WWW
Legendary Creature - God M
?/20
All damage that would be dealt to you and other permanents you control is dealt to ~ instead.
Blue God?UUU
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
When you have fewer than seven cards in hand, draw cards equal to the difference.
Black God?BBB
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
You may cast other creature cards from graveyards.
Red God?RRR
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
You may cast instant and sorcery spells from your graveyard.
Green God?GGG
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
Other creatures you control get +3/+3.
Now obviously, some of these effects are pretty absurd. Being able to repeatedly cast a Lightning Bolt from your graveyard without any drawback is insane, and our first thought as rational designers is gonna be something along the lines of "we need to fix this."
I want to avoid that line of thinking though. These are meant to be crazy absurd effects, and adding riders or downsides or other trinket text is gonna water them down. Sticking with single-sentence mythic effects is my priority here. Given that, I wanna focus on the mana costs. So what do you guys think?
Black God doesn't need to say "other," the ability isn't in effect if Black God itself is in the graveyard as written.
5WWW 4/20 (hue hue hue) - What you've got here is a super Palisade Giant. Beyond a certain toughness point the ability's value diminishes. The opponent will give up on trying to break through it and will instead hit it with removal or deathtouch. Occasionally a high-damage strategy will put together enough to just overwhelm it, but if the opponent reaches that stage, it's doing no more than a Fog.
7UUU 3/4 - This infinite card advantage is kinda crazy. Considering Damia, Sage of Stone and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, I would say this has to cost at least 10, should have a fragile body, and probably needs another downside to dissuade cheating it into play.
4BBB 5/4 - It's powerful, but you still have to pay for the creatures, so it's not completely insane. Comparison is Karador, Ghost Chieftain I think. You still need another card to get the creatures back into your graveyard if you want to abuse the effect. Any combo has enough moving parts that it shouldn't be insurmountable to interrupt it.
RRR -X/-X - Now this one is actually insane. Spells go right back to the graveyard ready for another cast. Pyretic Ritual is infinite mana. Manamorphose is infinite draw. Rewind is infinite counterspells etc. I don't think it's possible to cost this fairly, you would need to glue one hell of a downside to this to even get it close to printable. The only thing I can think of if you want to maintain this effect and maintain the 1-line ability is to give it negative power/toughness, thus creating a roadblock to using it. If it hits the battlefield and sticks, it's game over.
6GGG 7/7 - Obvious comparison here is Collective Blessing. Give yourself a baseline of 3GGG 3/3 and increase that based on the P/T you choose to go with. As a green God, I would think that a fairly high P/T is appropriate.
White God is very underwhelming. To keep it one line it would be better to just prevent all of the damage to not leave open disappointing loopholes. 6WWW, like Blazing Archon 7/7
Blue God needs a specific point where it refills you. Or go the same route of something like Null Profusion. It makes more sense to not feed from discard effects 6UUU 4/8
Black God, a tame yet still insane ability.3BBB 5/5
Red God keeping to a single simple ability this is unprintable. No mana cost and negative stats, make it too much work to bother.
Green God, I've never thought Megantic Sliver was particularly strong. 3GGG 6/6
Blue God goes uncontrollably infinite and kills you on your end step with anything that reduces your maximum hand size, like Thought Nibbler or Midnight Oil, since you'll discard during your cleanup step and then Blue God will trigger, resulting in another cleanup step. The same thing happens if you run out of cards in your library but can't lose due to Platinum Angel or something.
Even without that, this is too strong. There's only so high you can cost a card before you're just asking for it to be cheated out instead.
I agree with Saneatali on the White, Black, and Red gods. In fact I would simply say for Red God: either exile the cards afterwards flashback-style or go back to the drawing board and figure something else out.
Black God does get a bit weird with creatures that have flash, since then any new players using it will need to understand how priority works. It's probably fine though.
Green God can be fairly cheap. I would say that even 4GGG for a 6/6 wouldn't be too much since it doesn't actually give anything trample. Requiring a board state of creatures to begin with, in addition to either a source of trample or an even larger number of creatures, in addition to this card before you can win is not unfair for 7 CMC.
If you wanted to keep casting spells with the red god, you can have it exile the spells as they resolve, and put them into the graveyard at the beginning of the next end step. This keeps the repeated value going, but keeps it from going infinite, kind of how Marchesa, the Black Rose works for creatures if you get her engine online.
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I wanted to break out of the "can't attack or block unless blah" trope and aim for raw power and scale. I'm also forgoing the indestructible in the interest of balance.
White God ?WWW
Legendary Creature - God M
?/20
All damage that would be dealt to you and other permanents you control is dealt to ~ instead.
Blue God ?UUU
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
When you have fewer than seven cards in hand, draw cards equal to the difference.
Black God ?BBB
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
You may cast other creature cards from graveyards.
Red God ?RRR
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
You may cast instant and sorcery spells from your graveyard.
Green God ?GGG
Legendary Creature - God M
?/?
Other creatures you control get +3/+3.
Now obviously, some of these effects are pretty absurd. Being able to repeatedly cast a Lightning Bolt from your graveyard without any drawback is insane, and our first thought as rational designers is gonna be something along the lines of "we need to fix this."
I want to avoid that line of thinking though. These are meant to be crazy absurd effects, and adding riders or downsides or other trinket text is gonna water them down. Sticking with single-sentence mythic effects is my priority here. Given that, I wanna focus on the mana costs. So what do you guys think?
5WWW 4/20 (hue hue hue) - What you've got here is a super Palisade Giant. Beyond a certain toughness point the ability's value diminishes. The opponent will give up on trying to break through it and will instead hit it with removal or deathtouch. Occasionally a high-damage strategy will put together enough to just overwhelm it, but if the opponent reaches that stage, it's doing no more than a Fog.
7UUU 3/4 - This infinite card advantage is kinda crazy. Considering Damia, Sage of Stone and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, I would say this has to cost at least 10, should have a fragile body, and probably needs another downside to dissuade cheating it into play.
4BBB 5/4 - It's powerful, but you still have to pay for the creatures, so it's not completely insane. Comparison is Karador, Ghost Chieftain I think. You still need another card to get the creatures back into your graveyard if you want to abuse the effect. Any combo has enough moving parts that it shouldn't be insurmountable to interrupt it.
RRR -X/-X - Now this one is actually insane. Spells go right back to the graveyard ready for another cast. Pyretic Ritual is infinite mana. Manamorphose is infinite draw. Rewind is infinite counterspells etc. I don't think it's possible to cost this fairly, you would need to glue one hell of a downside to this to even get it close to printable. The only thing I can think of if you want to maintain this effect and maintain the 1-line ability is to give it negative power/toughness, thus creating a roadblock to using it. If it hits the battlefield and sticks, it's game over.
6GGG 7/7 - Obvious comparison here is Collective Blessing. Give yourself a baseline of 3GGG 3/3 and increase that based on the P/T you choose to go with. As a green God, I would think that a fairly high P/T is appropriate.
Blue God needs a specific point where it refills you. Or go the same route of something like Null Profusion. It makes more sense to not feed from discard effects 6UUU 4/8
Black God, a tame yet still insane ability.3BBB 5/5
Red God keeping to a single simple ability this is unprintable. No mana cost and negative stats, make it too much work to bother.
Green God, I've never thought Megantic Sliver was particularly strong. 3GGG 6/6
Even without that, this is too strong. There's only so high you can cost a card before you're just asking for it to be cheated out instead.
I agree with Saneatali on the White, Black, and Red gods. In fact I would simply say for Red God: either exile the cards afterwards flashback-style or go back to the drawing board and figure something else out.
Black God does get a bit weird with creatures that have flash, since then any new players using it will need to understand how priority works. It's probably fine though.
Green God can be fairly cheap. I would say that even 4GGG for a 6/6 wouldn't be too much since it doesn't actually give anything trample. Requiring a board state of creatures to begin with, in addition to either a source of trample or an even larger number of creatures, in addition to this card before you can win is not unfair for 7 CMC.
- Rabid Wombat