MTG Salvation

I won't have internet starting today until the weekend is over. So if anything is required by me for the final round of last month it'll have to wait until monday. But I guess it's only voting now. I'd suggest not quoting our entries in the listing, as that'll turn everything italic. Best of luck Hemlock and Subject16

Making a new mechanic for the first round? That's one of the hardest tasks you can set out to solve. I'm in. If I find something. Found something!

Izzet

Catalyst Weird 2R
Creature - Weird (C)
When Catalyst Weird enters the battlefield, spelltest. (The next time you cast an instant or sorcery spell this turn, put it into your hand as it resolves.)
Sacrifice Catalyst Weird: Add UR.
1/3

Didn't have internet for the past 3 days. I'll do critiques in about 15 hours from now. :/


1. void_nothing
2. Hemlock
3. Subject16

Random card: Propeller Pioneer

Neera, Propelled Penguin 2GW
Legendary Creature - Bird Artificer Hero (R)
[Silver border and Crossbreed Labs watermark]
Reveal Neera, Propelled Penguin as you draft it and note a token you took from a booster pack you opened this draft.
Flying
When Neera, Propelled Penguin enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it or create a token that you noted for cards named Neera, Propelled Penguin.
2/2

I was hoping that it'd be mostly me seeing the issues with my cards, as I was the one spending the most time with them, but now IcariiFa just went and found them.
Yes, I agree, there's too much counters going on. Funnily, Lore counters wouldn't be axed, as those are used by Sagas. In hindsight I'd just remove the counters from the Mother, as they might cause confusion with +1/+1 counters and as per Gerrard's Mom's suggestion one time caring about historic is enough. I was too deep in the counters matter theme.
The reason why Brennet has no similiarity between his own ability and the Bequest is that this started as a fixed Grandeur. So it's supposed to play well with itself. Having a super big creature that needs blocking makes for an edict. Originally I was going to add trample, but that pushed it over the edge. And yes, Bequest is 'just' the Dauntless Cathar mechanic, but rather Dauntless Cathar is just a discarded design space. I was really disappointed back then when they printed that. I feel like it's a mechanic that deserves a slot in a set. I toyed around with that mechanic before the printing, but never named it.
I think you can't go above Reinforce 1 on common. It's too swingy. Oh well, playtesting.
Actually I liked the synergy between Stronghold and Mending as you get a high cost permanent for free that deals with whatever they put on the board plus more, while the drawback it has, that it can get rid off, doesn't matter so much, because it's going to be gone soon anyway.
Also I didn't catch what The Mending of Dominaria was about even though it's right there in the name. I just don't see it. It wasn't so much about dead stuff, but rather about time issues.

Comments on Gerrard's Mom's cards:
Jeska's Corruption is truly worthy of being a Legendary Sorcery. It fits the flavor well too. What I dislike is dealing 1 damage, when it just flat out destroys anyways. That might confuse players and has this clever-with-itself thing going on that just never feels right.
Tetlok is pretty cool. Makes for cool gameplay even on it's own. Only issue I have is that WotC shied away from using historic in a context, where part of the group doesn't make sense. Non-creature artifacts and sagas are seldom going to deal damage to your opponent. The rare cases they do might justify this though for people to feel clever.
Sparktouched reads exciting. I wonder what it plays like.
Resonate makes good use of the observation that with historic come artifacts. I didn't want to make an artifact centered mechanic, as I felt it turned Dominaria into an artifact set, which it isn't supposed to be and historic already pushed it into that direction too much for my tastes.
I like what Portal Gnome does in terms of it making sense while you have Shadow and while you don't. Great execution. Not sure if I'd want Shadow in a set when the previous set didn't have it. It becomes super-flying and fights for that space. The two sets are likely not going to play well together as both flying creatures and shadow creatures become too good and uninteractive. It IS a fan favorite tho. It's worth trying.

Ogre Sneak 5R
Creature - Ogre Rogue (C)
Haste
Skulk
When Ogre Sneak enters the battlefield, you may put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature.
It takes the smarts of an ogre to get the idea to sneak past a dragon. It takes the size of a dragon to miss a sneaking ogre.
4/4

Allergy is blocked my brain yesterday. Battlecry means ETB triggered ability, yes. But look what MaRo posted just today: http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/174359050043/why-is-mangara-a-bend-i-thought-exile-was-in
That's what I meant. You can just flat out use it as a removal that exiles any non-land permanent. And that's a bend. Apparently.

Ah, I was hoping for a thread like this.

The trouble I see with Patrol is that it's not different enough from Forecast. Also issues about hidden zone information. How can my opponent tell that I didn't reveal the same card twice while claiming those are different cards?
As for Familiar I am sceptical about the design space. An even bigger issue is that you can't have too many different tokens in your set. Especially if they appear on lower rarities. The memory issues become too big with this mechanic, when players have to memorize 3 different tokens on the board.

For the art challenge I actually want to try H (the Ooze) for the black creature. It looks very green, but Oozes can work in black. I tried my hand on that Plummet variant, but it's not easy to innovate on a common like that. So far I have:
Snatch off the Skies 1G
Instant
Target creature you control gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Then you may have it deal damage equal to it’s power to target creature with flying an opponent controls. [This is supposed to be playable, even with no flying creature on the board.]

Venomous Serpopard 1GG
Creature - Cat Snake (U)
Deathrouch
Feral - Other creatures you control with base power and toughness 2/2 have deathtouch.
2/2

Mistarmor Knight 3U
Creature - Human Knight (U)
When Mistarmor Knight enters the battlefield or is turned face up, manifest the top card of your library. (Put it onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 creature. Turn it face up any time for its mana cost if it's a creature card.)
2/2

Rakdos

Omen of the Revel 2BB
Creature - Horror (U)
Unbound (When the last card in your hand is played or discarded, and this creature isn't unbound, put a +1/+1 counter on it and it becomes unbound.)
When Omen of the Revel enters the battlefield, discard a card.
When Omen of the Revel becomes unbound, return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
4/3

I will claim Dimir!

Plot is a keyword mechanic. To plot, exile the top card of your library face-down. Most plot cards will have abilities that will happen based of those hidden cards!

Duskmantle Bloodseer B
Creature - Human Wizard (Uncommon)
Whenever Duskmantle Bloodseer enters the battlefield, plot (To plot, exile the top card of your library face-down. You may look at it any time.)
Turn a face-down card you own in exile face-up: Put that card in your hand. You lose life equel to its mana cost.
1/1

Quote from doomfish »

Well, it won't let me edit, so here: Bat- gives +1/+1

Fixed.

IMPORTANT NOTE: due to an unforeseen n unfortunate personal life event, I have to extend the deadline for judging a day.

the round is closed.

thanks again to kjsharp for offering to judge a some entries this round, but i have instead decided to take on twice as many entries as the other judges this round.

Judge Antiantiserum will be judging:
Algernone25
Koopa
The_Hittite
Flatline
Netn10
Rkohn1357

Judge Void_nothing will be judging:
Vertain
IcariiFA
Kjsharp
Cardz5000
Mirrodin71
Doomfish

Judge Rudyard will be judging:
Hemlock
Raptorchan
Forestsguy
RaikouRider
Subject16
KoolKoal
Jimmy Groove
|Katamari|
Freyleyes
Seeonee
BlackWaltz3
P E
8buffalo

Quote from doomfish »

So, there's this concept I've come up with, where a card makes all your X spells and abilities have a set value for X.

Like so:


hat means for example that Blaze, no matter how much mana you pump into the spell, always does 3 damage. Aether Burst always returns 3 creatures. Corpseweft makes 3/3 tokens. You get the idea.

But every time I posted the card in a contest (twice so far) people have said they think there's rules issues and they don't understand it.

What would be a better way to word this? What cards would actually cause rules issues?

It isn't intuitive.

You say you no matter how you pump blaze, it still deals 3 damage. Ok, fine. Does that mean X in the CASTING COST of blaze is still X, but not 3, since it is still a pumpable spell (even if pumping it dose nothing)? Should blaze be 3R rather than remain a pumpable spell?

You said Aether blaze returns 3, but aether blaze says X is X plus PLUS 1. That goes against what most people would consider correct in math. X=X+1 should result in 4, not 3.

How many counters should an engineered explosives have to blow up a chalice of the void with 5 counters on it?

I had an idea for an artifact like this once. I think it has to be worded:

"Whenever a player casts a spell or activates an ability, change its text by replacing all instances of "X" with 3."

DO WHATCHA WANT CUZ' A PIRATE IS FREE, YOU ARE A PIRATE!

Shipwreck Salvager 2U
Creature - Human Pirate Artificer [U]
Prowess
Treasures you control have "T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add CC to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast artifact spells."
“Every part of High and Dry used to be a ship. For the right price, it can be again.”
1/2

Anytime, Moss.

Regarding my July top 4 entry... Now that it's been soundly defeated, let me explain. It's a ridiculous card, and I know it. It was very much a draft of an idea that just never got updated due to time constraints. Everyone was unnecessarily kind in their critiques, which I appreciate.

@doomfish: The combined version of the two triggered abilities of your card would look like this: "Whenever you cast an artifact spell, if ~ is tapped, untap all artifacts you control."

Except for fringe cases, it would function the same.

Quote from void_nothing »

And the poll is closed! Congratulations to IcariiFA, our June CCL winner, as well as to Raptorchan for having a great run last month and being a worthy finalist!

Thanks everyone for the slammin' victory! I'm glad people saw the strength of my designs. Now as promised:

Quote from doomfish »

IcariiFA

Negative points:
- How does the set work?: Is this supposed to be a draft format? If so, it's problematic, as I imagine 40 card decks run out of a library very fast in this format. If not, there's no point to the commons. So I suppose it IS a draft format. And as I said, I don't see that working out. But I never played this format, so I can't be sure.

Yeah, I should of been more clear. I think there might of some confusion since you could choose any format/supplement to base your set off of, but that set ultimate had to be a booster anyway. This makes it weird to design a set for say commander where most commons wouldn't jive very well with what would actually be usuable in commander.

I intended it to be a draft set. So yes, you might run through your library faster than normal. But consider first of all that you'll be playing much bigger, high powered threats so in theory you hsould be killing faster. Second, is it such a bad thing that perhaps this format would encourage you to go over 40 cards in your deck? I don't think so. It makes a meaningful choice in optimizing what's in your deck versus how quick you burn through it. I think it encourages some new angles in deckbuilding.

- Amass track issue: While Amass sounds like a really cool mechanic on paper, it's probably really tedious to keep track of the spells cast each turn. Guess you'll have to have a die next to the game, ticking it up every turn. Forget about it and the backtracking begins.

Most amass effects would be one time things. Only a few rares and maybe a mythic would have it be a repeatable thing to track every turn. So tracking for a single turn wouldn't be a huge amount of back tracking. That said, I agree it would need be very limited in an effect that would require counting turn to turn as opposed to a one time yes here and there.

- Roofside Settlement power level: For a land that gains an occasional 2 life and you have to find the help of other cards for that, only producing colorless mana is already enough of a drawback. Making it enter tapped is a deal breaker in a format this fast.

Yeah, I could of dropped the ETB tapped clause and it'd be fine.

- One big dorm: The way Home is worded right now, all creatures can just be at home in a single land. So you put one land aside and from then on Home is just all upside. I don't think that's how you wanted this to work, right?

It's totally the way I wanted it to work :). Some of my initial designs for home included cards that cared about other creatures that also lived there, but I quickly determined that those kind of effects wouldn't be what would show on a common and I had other design space to show. That's part of why it was important for me to have some kind of land destruction at common to counter home strats that stack all their creatures on one land.

Some other effects I was experimenting with wanted to track the home land in different ways that conflicted with each other too, but that was looking complicated. I was going to explore having more lands in the set than normal, and have them care about creatures living there as I showed with my common to further encourage spreading out your critters among them.

Neutral points:
· Home: "That land is this creature's home and it lives there." made me laugh. What a silly sounding wording. It's cute. I like it.

Yeah I'm not 100% on the naming, but given the time frame and not having something better, I went with it because I felt it was a solid mechanic that fit the format well.

· The powerlevel of the cards: Very hard to judge without ever having played this format.

Yes it is! Mostly mental playtesting here, so I would have to test A LOT.

· Naive Conclusion: Should probably be an uncommon?

Maybe. I planned on card draw being on a small subset of cards, but this design just stuck and felt better at common given how the set was shaping towards accelerating.

· Functional?: You did reprints instead of functional reprints as was asked. I don't think that should matter, as finding reprints that are a good match is actually worth a lot.

Yeah I miss read that. I'm glad it was deemed acceptable, because as you say it is more challenging.

Positive points:
+ Lands matter: I think having lands matter with two mechanics is a great call for the format and your own Home mechanic is very creative and actually goes for different space than Landfall.

Yes, that was a point I wanted to make with the land mechanics; that they cover quite different design space. You may also consider Multikicker playing into this as almsot a third "land" mechanic. So between the three you have a mechanic that cares about lands in play, cares about them coming into play, and cares about how much mana you can produce.

+ Sholtien's Rebuff: Really solid designed card. A fair thematical counterspell for not too much mana.

I'm glad you like the card. Before I came up with amass for the set, I was experimenting with converge since I made Kylshin a multicolor set. But I started experimenting with the idea that playing multiple spells a turn would be a common occurance and wanting to reward/encourage that. Further, coverge had already used a lot of design space I wanted.

I was happy that I created a 2 mana counter that had some flexibility but fair limits. In theory it will always be able to counter something costing 2 or less. I kinda wish we could have this power level of counter in standard.

+ Exciting format: I think people would really enjoy this "change of pace" for a more wacky draft format. It also opens up interesting new developmental space.

Thanks, I think it could have some great appeal too, especially to newer players, timmies, johnnies, and those who enjoy casual games that mix up the gameplay.

+ Battlecruiser Magic: Yay! This might be the place for that.

Very much so. That's why I made my vanilla common HUGE and the average CMC of the pack is way above average.


Thank you again for the thoughtful comments. I would love to hear further feedback as this is a set/project I'd consider expanding in full.

Quote from "doomfish" »

Ah yes, I see. The moon is made of stone and stones are often used for counters, tide counters for example, and when you return creatures do player's hands, they have to play them again, so that you can counter them. Very clever. Clever indeed.

Wow, that's some Illuminati-level theorizing right there! You're giving me far too much credit. The moon controls the tides, and the dam itself is made of stone. Tide counters are to simulate the dam weakening somewhat under load. I appreciate the thoughtful critique, and agree that non-sentient walls make perfect flavor sense.