MTG Salvation

Last month, KHANanaphone and Talore were the two remaining finalists from January's Card Creation League. Now it's time to vote for the winner. For the finals, I presented three distinct challenges.

1) In a hypothetical game situation, the opponent controls an Eldrazi Monument and attacks with their Great Sable Stag. You are on 2 life and control a Misty Rainforest and a playset of Gargoyle Castles. Design a card that will help you survive this turn.

2) Each finalist chooses a specific creature type, colour and converted mana cost, and the other person designs a card with these specifications. (NOTE: Multicoloured cards were allowed)

• KHANanaphone was asked to design a Green Pirate creature with a converted mana cost of 3.
• Talore was asked to design a Blue Phoenix creature with a converted mana cost of 4.

3) The finalists selected a design task from a list of difficult challenges. KHANanaphone and Talore both elected to design a multicoloured Aura with a converted mana cost of 7.

Here are their cards:
Don't forget to vote for your winner! A comment or two would also be much appreciated. I'll keep this poll open for a week, and I'll make the deciding vote if it's a tie.

@Jau, so that Khan's first card doesn't get knocked for that :symg::symg: cost, I'm pretty sure Mark said that they also could have a few forests/islands

Edit: Checked the scenario again: You do not in fact have islands/forests in play. Apparently you have them in your library and I read than wrong. Sorry. However, this sadly makes KHAN's first submission unplayable in this situation. I would love to see this printed, though.

First challenge: Khan card costs two green, but as far as I see the player only has access to one, so I'm not sure how they're going to cast it. Talore's nicely tweaks the prevent damage or gain life into a prevent damage and gain life, of which I heartily approve.

Second challenge: Khan's card is simple, flavourful, unique and printable. Talore's feels like it's trying to do too much with its 5 abilities, and feels overpowered.

Third challenge: I've always liked the concept of Aura's that affect more than the card they're attached to, but A) they should still have some effect on it, and B) I completely missed the angel-demon-on-shoulder thing at first, I think because the tokens are so big. Would be better with 1/1 tokens (but then of course wouldn't cost 7). Talore's card again tries to do too much at once (imo, of course), and again seems overpowered (quite impressive as it costs 7). Just seems to easy to cast this on some creature with a sac ability while holding some monster in hand, leaving you with a +3/0 trampling monster on a clear board.

In my view, the first two challenges were split and the third awfully close but Talore's card just squeaks out ahead, and he gets my vote.

I really didn't want to make a planeswalker; I'm no good at them...
Isn't 4 mana in two colours is costly enough to keep the bird in play? I felt that the first four abilities made sense; and all phoenix's need a recursion ability; so I decided to keep with the bouncing theme.
I wish I did better; but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
Maybe for a future CCL we could do viking themes. \m/

Although it doesn't fit the challenge, KHANaphone's first card is much more interesting than Talore's. It's a creative use of Vanishing which works very well with the ability it has. Talore's card is solid and printable, it's just not really breaking any ground.
I like both of the creatures, blue/red is interesting for a Glitterfang Phoenix, and the graveyard ability fits well. KHANaphone took the harder route here as well, keeping his pirate entirely green, and came up with a believable green common, no easy feat.
7 cost Auras need to be pretty cool to warrant their cost, and both of them field powerful effects. I like how clean KHANaphone's card is, although it does seem like it could do something else, maybe showing how the enchanted creature is torn between the two. The +3/+0 on Talore's card is nagging to me, when green and white are much more likely to pump toughness as well, and black is amenable to doing so as well. As jwanders said, it is basically a Wrath effect that, with three more mana and two more colors, ensures that only you end up with a nasty creature.

Quote from Monkey_Playing_MTG

@Jau, so that Khan's first card doesn't get knocked for that :symg::symg: cost, I'm pretty sure Mark said that they also could have a few forests/islands

Edit: Checked the scenario again: You do not in fact have islands/forests in play. Apparently you have them in your library and I read than wrong. Sorry. However, this sadly makes KHAN's first submission unplayable in this situation. I would love to see this printed, though.

Ah, I missed that. I really should have notified KHANanaphone before making this thread.

So is this going to be concluded tomorrow?

Talore, it looks like you are the winner of the January CCL. Congratulations!

Better luck next time, KHANanaphone. As the runner-up of this game, you did very well last month. My thanks to everyone who played in the January CCL, and I hope I'll see you all in future editions of the Card Creation League.

Quote from Jau

Talore, it looks like you are the winner of the January CCL. Congratulations!

Better luck next time, KHANanaphone. As the runner-up of this game, you did very well last month. My thanks to everyone who played in the January CCL, and I hope I'll see you all in future editions of the Card Creation League.

Do I get one of those shiny trophies?
Smeagol...

You certainly do. You'll have to PM one of the moderators about it (either Moss Elemental or Kraj) and link them to this topic.

It often takes a while to get the trophies, if I'm not mistaken it may require an administrator. I try to press the mods to cover the CCL trophies every now and then, last time I asked they came pretty quickly.
Congratulations Talore and good job KHANaphone!