Each color has some small thing it can do on triggers that happen a lot. In red and black, direct damage to players will eventually win the game, but white has life gain. I'm looking for a way to have a card available to white decks that triggers off the things white does that still offers this game-ending pressure when the number of triggers manages to accumulate.
When I look for ways to help white, I'm always drawn to equipment that just have useful static abilities since white has a ton of budget, but still highly efficient equipment tutors. In the case of wincons, here's where I'm at:
Armory Hammer | 2
Artifact — Equipment
Equipment you control have, "Whenever this becomes attached to a creature you control for the first time each turn or whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to an opponent, this deals 2 damage to each opponent."
Equip 4
In this case, I switched from an attack trigger to a combat damage trigger to add more interaction to the passive damage and also allow scaling with white's access to double strike and extra combats in Boros generally, but I think the card is weaker in the vacuum as a result of that change.
It's unclear to me the strength of the damage when moving the equipment, but it helps to make up for the tempo risk inherent to equipment that can be more easily preyed on in Commander. I'm moving the equip cost to 4 since I don't want it being moved around willy nilly in the early game since you'll likely get 12 damage from it the turn you equip it and nobody has blockers. The unblockable damage from just moving the equipment around is probably better placed in the late game as a mana sink when there are no other plays and increasing the equip cost will push the play pattern in that direction. It also encourages playing it with other equipment that can trigger it more freely in the midgame like Skullclamp and Lightning Greaves, further doubling down on what white wants to be doing.
As a similar example of what I'd like to see in this space, consider this alternative:
Inspiring Banner | 3
Artifact — Equipment
At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
When equipped creature attacks, attacking creatures you control gain double strike until end of turn.
Equip 6
White can easily tutor this out with Steelshaper's Gift to cast on turn 3 and then benefit from the cardflow while developing its board. Once it has its board set up and there's an opening, or if there's nothing better to do with its mana, it can sink 6 into this to double its damage, but regardless of whether it ever does this, drawing and playing the equipment is a solid cardflow play. White is also the color which gets to more easily cheat on equip costs, so it scales into that thing white does well while still being a solid card without needing those to perform its role well.
Secondarily, with white's fatal flaw being a lack of card advantage, it wants more cards that are flexible, having a variety of uses so that no matter which stage of the game the card is drawn, the drawn card can contribute to the game plan in that moment rather than being fully dead until a later point (or dead now when it would have been useful earlier, in the case of certain ramp spells). I praise Cartographer's Hawk in this regard for being a solid ramp play early while being a solid body for equipment/monarch late.
Armory hammer is doing some things that don’t feel right. Looking at the restriction on the damage is not pleasant. While I don’t like the fact that it deals damage to opponent on equip the fact that it only does it the first time it’s equipped feels even worse. I think it would look and function better if you drop the restriction and equip cost; and have it also damage the equipped creature. This gives it more play patterns and makes it restrictive in a way white can handle, high toughness creatures.
Inspiring Banner, I am very disappointed wizards doesn’t use this design space. Artifacts that are artifacts that then can be picked up as weapons. This is a great card, though honestly the specific card name I would rather see as an anthem and cost 1WW with the same equip effect.
The main reason for only looking at the first attachment per turn is to prevent something like Lightning Greaves from being degenerate and generating an unbounded number of damage triggers in a single turn. The proposed change of damaging the creature makes a lot of equipment just unplayable, but also doesn't prevent a global indestructible spell from letting someone combo off in a single turn like before, which admittedly IS something that scales with what white is good at. I just don't think this is a good direction to push it since it makes equipment bad and encourages using the hammer for an goldfish-style win.
My primary goal with this design is to turn the equip cost into direct damage both mitigating the tempo loss and creating a mana sink for the late game that helps on a board stall. Before I realized that Greaves would go infinite, it seemed neat that you could just throw all your mana into equipping over and over again, but that's not very interactive, so I lowered the efficiency of that and pushed the rest into combat.
Rather than scaling onto each equipment you own, it could instead only look at the first equip each turn rather than the first equip per equipment and only track the hammer's creature for the extra damage, which is probably more in line with the flavor it's going for but is less interesting in the midgame when you could attack with boots for extra damage.
Armory Hammer | 1
Artifact — Equipment
Whenever an equipment becomes attached to a creature you control for the first time each turn Armory Hammer deals 2 damage to each opponent.
Equipped creature gets +2/+0.
Equip 3
This feels overall weaker but is a bit cleaner in the vacuum while still giving the bonus for using Skullclamp each turn.
As for the banner, I really really don't like anthems in commander. They don't give relevant stats for their cost and white would really benefit more from the scry 1 each turn, especially when it can tutor it up early. What's less clear to me is how strong the double strike is going to be since it is actually a huge tempo risk without hexproof or a Grand Abolisher type effect. I do like that it is a decent pay of for Brass Squire while still doing something useful when you can't equip it.
I did not read the first card as effecting all equipment. That significantly changes it and makes me like the effect significantly less. This has a very strange feeling because it doesn't do much in the typical voltron style decks. I like encouraging other types of equipment decks
I also think the scry is better, I just think the name itself fits better with an anthem. Giving it some thought I think it would be better if you allowed to pick between a few different keywords to allow you to save your self from some problems. Maybe lifelink, indestructible, or doublestrike. I would also love so war drums to go along with this that give menace on attack and some kind of static bonus.
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When I look for ways to help white, I'm always drawn to equipment that just have useful static abilities since white has a ton of budget, but still highly efficient equipment tutors. In the case of wincons, here's where I'm at:
Artifact — Equipment
Equipment you control have, "Whenever this becomes attached to a creature you control for the first time each turn or whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to an opponent, this deals 2 damage to each opponent."
Equip 4
In this case, I switched from an attack trigger to a combat damage trigger to add more interaction to the passive damage and also allow scaling with white's access to double strike and extra combats in Boros generally, but I think the card is weaker in the vacuum as a result of that change.
It's unclear to me the strength of the damage when moving the equipment, but it helps to make up for the tempo risk inherent to equipment that can be more easily preyed on in Commander. I'm moving the equip cost to 4 since I don't want it being moved around willy nilly in the early game since you'll likely get 12 damage from it the turn you equip it and nobody has blockers. The unblockable damage from just moving the equipment around is probably better placed in the late game as a mana sink when there are no other plays and increasing the equip cost will push the play pattern in that direction. It also encourages playing it with other equipment that can trigger it more freely in the midgame like Skullclamp and Lightning Greaves, further doubling down on what white wants to be doing.
As a similar example of what I'd like to see in this space, consider this alternative:
Artifact — Equipment
At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
When equipped creature attacks, attacking creatures you control gain double strike until end of turn.
Equip 6
White can easily tutor this out with Steelshaper's Gift to cast on turn 3 and then benefit from the cardflow while developing its board. Once it has its board set up and there's an opening, or if there's nothing better to do with its mana, it can sink 6 into this to double its damage, but regardless of whether it ever does this, drawing and playing the equipment is a solid cardflow play. White is also the color which gets to more easily cheat on equip costs, so it scales into that thing white does well while still being a solid card without needing those to perform its role well.
Secondarily, with white's fatal flaw being a lack of card advantage, it wants more cards that are flexible, having a variety of uses so that no matter which stage of the game the card is drawn, the drawn card can contribute to the game plan in that moment rather than being fully dead until a later point (or dead now when it would have been useful earlier, in the case of certain ramp spells). I praise Cartographer's Hawk in this regard for being a solid ramp play early while being a solid body for equipment/monarch late.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
Inspiring Banner, I am very disappointed wizards doesn’t use this design space. Artifacts that are artifacts that then can be picked up as weapons. This is a great card, though honestly the specific card name I would rather see as an anthem and cost 1WW with the same equip effect.
My primary goal with this design is to turn the equip cost into direct damage both mitigating the tempo loss and creating a mana sink for the late game that helps on a board stall. Before I realized that Greaves would go infinite, it seemed neat that you could just throw all your mana into equipping over and over again, but that's not very interactive, so I lowered the efficiency of that and pushed the rest into combat.
Rather than scaling onto each equipment you own, it could instead only look at the first equip each turn rather than the first equip per equipment and only track the hammer's creature for the extra damage, which is probably more in line with the flavor it's going for but is less interesting in the midgame when you could attack with boots for extra damage.
Artifact — Equipment
Whenever an equipment becomes attached to a creature you control for the first time each turn Armory Hammer deals 2 damage to each opponent.
Equipped creature gets +2/+0.
Equip 3
This feels overall weaker but is a bit cleaner in the vacuum while still giving the bonus for using Skullclamp each turn.
As for the banner, I really really don't like anthems in commander. They don't give relevant stats for their cost and white would really benefit more from the scry 1 each turn, especially when it can tutor it up early. What's less clear to me is how strong the double strike is going to be since it is actually a huge tempo risk without hexproof or a Grand Abolisher type effect. I do like that it is a decent pay of for Brass Squire while still doing something useful when you can't equip it.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
I also think the scry is better, I just think the name itself fits better with an anthem. Giving it some thought I think it would be better if you allowed to pick between a few different keywords to allow you to save your self from some problems. Maybe lifelink, indestructible, or doublestrike. I would also love so war drums to go along with this that give menace on attack and some kind of static bonus.