MTG Salvation

Your probability assumes people aren't going to mulligan for their combo, which increases the odd highly. And assuming the meta is expecting some graveyard heavy decks, yes, your opponent can side in Leyline and mulligan aggressively to get it out, but you'll have sided in answers to Leyline/Rest in Peace/etc as well. That's how tournament play works.

Going into exile is a step in the right direction, but you'll still need to address the power level of this on cheap, early creatures. Discard outlets are plentiful for decks that want to use them proactively and there are few removal options that can deal with a high toughness creature on turn 1/2. Since you love probability, I'm sure you can figure out the odds of the opponent just happening to have an answer on Game 1, Turn 1 when they don't know they need to mulligan to have one ready - A white or black deck might have 3-4 copies of Path to Exile or Fatal Push in the main, red won't be able to deal with anything more that 3 toughness with only one card, blue might have Spell Pierce, and green's got nothing to even block with for a few turns if your creature has flying. All the decks will get better after sideboard, but you'll be siding in things to protect your combo as well.

If you limit the ability to cards with toughness 2 or less, you'll be mostly on balance for a Modern glass cannon deck, but any higher than that and you'll need some balancing factor (like paying a cost) to keep them from being oppressive. Its still too strong for Standard unless the format is warped around this particular ability.

While I was referring to your wrongness specifically about the analysis you made of Deaths Shadow strategy, you are also wrong about the play impact of your,as written, costless recurring high power creature buffing ability. Since you said you haven't played the game in ten years and have no clue about the competitive magic metagame, your "feelings" have no bearing on reality of gameplay. The difficulty if getting 1-3 of your "reincarnation" cards into the graveyard is negligible with discard and dredge abilities and the fact that it triggers for free without exiling itself means removal is irrelevant - kill the first creature you reincarnated onto and the cards go right back to the graveyard to be used on the next 1-drop nobody you play, assuming your opponent even draws one of the few spells that can kill a high toughness creature for 1-2 Mana.

Your mechanic is broken because you lack the experience and knowledge base to address why, and your self superior attitude and unwillingess to play the game you feel compelled to design for for some reason means your cards will remain poorly made messes in the eyes of anyone evaluating them instead of the artistic masterpieces that your ego wants them to be.

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

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Let's consider this point invalidated.

Lets not. Because you're wrong. The reality is multiple versions of Deaths Shadow Decks - Rakdos, Jund, Grixis, Temur - were dominant forces in Modern for quite some time, Tarmogoyf was not a common denominator between them, and Lurrus didn't even exist in the deck's height. Your opinions lack any sense that there might be understanding beyond what you see right in front of your face and you refuse to engage with any idea that contradicts your view of reality.

If you don't have a desire to get constructive feedback and learn from others experience with a game that you say you haven't played in ten years and thought was "steaming pile of ****", you are wasting your time here.

Quote from rowanalpha »

While probability isn't everything, what you are missing is that, between 4-8 fetchlands, Mishra's Bauble and Street Wraith the deck had effectively 44-48 cards instead of 60 since all of those cards were "free draws" and the life payments fed the deck's plan instead of being a detriment. The low curve also meant the deck could mulligan more aggressively as well. The deck lost some umph when Gitaxian Probe got banned (free card plus life loss plus check for opponent's removal) but Bauble was an okay replacement.

It also created interesting interactions like a player giving Death's Shadow doublestrike and trample with Temur Battle Rage and then Lightning Bolting themself to pump the combat damage by 6.

Here's a current cardlist for your edification.

While probability isn't everything, what you are missing is that, between 4-8 fetchlands, Mishra's Bauble and Street Wraith the deck had effectively 44-48 cards instead of 60 since all of those cards were "free draws" and the life payments fed the deck's plan instead of being a detriment. The low curve also meant the deck could mulligan more aggressively as well. The deck lost some umph when Gitaxian Probe got banned (free card plus life loss plus check for opponent's removal) but Bauble was an okay replacement.

Here's a current cardlist for your edification.

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

I haven't played since Mirrodin personally. I'm an OG Mid Schooler from Odyssey block/7th Edition. I picked the game back up and Lorwyn/Time Spiral, then left again at Scars of Mirrodin. I haven't played though since High School. I just know some tricks from back then, and I've picked up deck-building via mathematical proportion, which I didn't fully understand back then, but do now.

And now we have clarification for so much. You're basing your designs on a combination decade old gameplay experience and math theory without updating your knowledge of the game, rules, strategies or power levels.

Like I've said, its clear you have creative ideas for how you WANT cards to work, but you don't have the current knowledge or experience of how to actually MAKE them work. You're a designer, not a developer. That's not a bad thing, but be willing to bend on the execution of your designs in order for them to be playable. All you have to do is listen to the feedback people give you and your design experience will improve massively.

Also, go play actual magic. Arena is free, so there's no excuse not to update your play experience.

I'm just unfamiliar with that card's strategies to be honest. Aware me? Not sure where/why/how a person is reducing their life safely below 13 so soon. Or are they removing the abilities? If you have exactly 1 life, via such as Worship, it's a 12/12. I could never see this surviving in a hostile game. How was it so good?

To that particular answer, the deck used cards like shock and fetch lands and cards where life payments were meant as balancing factors (like Thoughtsieze) to both drive down their life total and fill their graveyard, so that Death's Shadow would be a 1 mana 4/4 or 5/5, and Tarmogoyf would be a 6/7 or so on turn 3ish. Thoughtsieze would have removed their removal and their early creatures wouldn't have been large enough to trade on blocks.

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

Quote from rowanalpha »

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

You still wouldn't be able to build a winning strategy around something that dies to removal.

You've clearly never heard of Death's Shadow, which was a dominant force in Modern for quite sometime, was vulnerable to removal, and necessitated the user to drive their life total down to use. As an added bonus, your ability could easily be triggered onto a slippery bogle or other cheap hexproof creature and no longer be vulnerable to removal.

Right, but that card doesn't hit the board until late-game, where and when masses of removal resources are likely to have been expended.

What you're suggesting in the opening game scenario, even with the Bogle, is lost to Innocent Blood lolfeelsbadman.

@Rosey You know that is really the product of your getting-ahead-of yourself and interpretation. You could easily pause, stop to think a moment, and then ask any additional questions necessary to mediate your logical direction of the thread discussion/points of interest.

Might I also point out of this elaborates on the factor of time-frame when it comes to gaming power and acceptance. If you had to wait 10 years to get enough Reincarnation cards to build a deck around them, you wouldn't it one bit. lmao nice. But if you release them all at once, that's not okay. But even so in the end, only to probably lose.

Yeah. I'm now about 95% positive you've never actually played Magic.

Quote from ReapThaWhirlwind »

You still wouldn't be able to build a winning strategy around something that dies to removal.

You've clearly never heard of Death's Shadow, which was a dominant force in Modern for quite sometime, was vulnerable to removal, and necessitated the user to drive their life total down to use. As an added bonus, your ability could easily be triggered onto a slippery bogle or other cheap hexproof creature and no longer be vulnerable to removal.

Reap, since you have demonstrated an unwillingness to people's polite feedback, I'll just be direct: You come up with creative card ideas, but you are terrible at execution. Further, your desire for the game and everyone else's experience to conform solely to your will is an act of ego that stymies your ability to improve as a designer.

If you want to keep designing cards that work "how you feel like they should", or need to rewrite the comp rules, or ignore game balance, fine, but you're just designing silver-bordered cards that can live in the company of Sauté and AWOL. If you want to design actual cards like people might want to play with, listen to the feedback you are given, iterate and improve.

If everyone is consistently telling you that you are wrong about the same things, they aren't the problem. You are. Once you realize this, your designs will improve and start getting the actual positive feedback you currently seem to expect without merit.

This feels like a triggered ability version of Scavenge (see Deadbridge Goliath). There is a kernel of an interesting mechanic here, but its current form has both rules and balance problems.

From a rules standpoint, your ability actually would need to make the card become an Aura or something else, as your current wording puts the creature card into play (meaning it is a creature) and a creature cannot be attached to another creature. You could either reframe the ability to work like a Bestow variant, or a Haunt variant and solve the "creature attached to creature" problem.

From a gameplay and balance standpoint, the card should be exiled when the ability is used, or else it can keep recurring over and over again.

Your example card (aside of the rules issues) is incredibly overpowered. One could on turn 1, play a Mountain, discard this card to a Faithless Looting and then cast an Ornithopther and have an 8/9 flyer, or a 16/17 if they managed to discard two.