I think Undercity Looter should be a 1/2 or cost 3U. Even with the condition, it's just a shade too efficient for a common.
You get to plain draw a card for 3U. That card is fine.
Personally I just utterly fail to see how having a tapped creature is supposed to be Dimir-ish in any way or form. It sounds like a Boros or general mechanic at best.
Besides, there's some significant lore/anatomical differences between the sakura-tribe Snakes of Kamigawa (four-armed, two-legged) and Nagas (two-armed so far, serpentine lower half). They made it very clear when introducing Nagas that they wanted any future cards with that body type to have that creature type, simply by virtue of not printing them as snakes.
I get that no one ever believe a 4+ drops is useful unless they break the game open right then and there, but I for one know I'm going to have fun frustrating people with these.
What? Kaladesh has tons of playable 4 drops,virtually all of them better than this stinker.
The green one in this cycle, for example, I like a lot more than the white one. Because +1/+0 is an actual significant upgrade, and vigilance on a 2/3 creature is almost always irrelevant.
I'd say something like:
White: D
Blue: C+
Black: B-
Red: B-
Green: C
Blue one might be better than I give it credit for, since it can trigger repeatedly, but then storm crow is a really bad body on its own whereas 1/1 DT or 2/1 fs are pretty reasonable for 2. So we'll see.
I'm not saying it's not the facially least appealing of the cycle (all the other ones are clearly on-curve or above, yes, even the blue one. It's just a really bad curve point in general, as you point out yourself), but I am very much sticking to my gun that it's nowhere as terribad as you emphasize, and the evaluation is probably tainted by the fact white nonevasive 2/3 for 2C (or 4C for that matters) are hardly ever much good. Reminder that there's never even been a 2/3 french vanilla white vigilance card to compare this with.
Given that the only other nonrare four drop in the set is Felidar Guardian, hardly a card I'd want to attack with in the first place, I'll wager this will either be found much more useful than you make it out to be or result in a massive premium on Kaladesh's white 4-drops.
I suspect this is not so much an assertion of the card's power as a reflection of how bad most 2/3 for 2W have been overall (with the effect of skewing the evaluation of a 2/3 for 4 without clear precedent at either mana cost: the closest os probably Dragon Bell Monk). Objectively, vigilance+potentially repeated token making is well worth the extra over Mardu Hordechief, and hordechief was a very good common.
uh...it's barely repeatable (how often can you attack with a 2/3 for 4 without it dying? I'd be surprised if it was even once without a combat trick...and then you also need extra energy. On many boards it won't be able to attack at all, so you could end up with energy you may not even be able to use) and vigilance on a small creature is pretty worthless. 1 mana, on the other hand, is a HUGE difference.
Mardu hordechief was pretty strong. This card is pretty awful. The rest of the cycle looks fine, though.
I get that no one ever believe a 4+ drops is useful unless they break the game open right then and there, but I for one know I'm going to have fun frustrating people with these.
The white one seems really bad compared to the rest; funny what +1/+0 can do for you. The blue and red one seems borderline standard applicable as surprisingly efficient bodies that can vent excess energy into more dork tokens. The black one will be very very good in limited.
I suspect this is not so much an assertion of the card's power as a reflection of how bad most 2/3 for 2W have been overall (with the effect of skewing the evaluation of a 2/3 for 4 without clear precedent at either mana cost: the closest os probably Dragon Bell Monk). Objectively, vigilance+potentially repeated token making is well worth the extra over Mardu Hordechief, and hordechief was a very good common.
All - Have you playtested your mechanics? If so, what were the results?
I really wish I could say I have the social skill to assemble people for playtesting this, but being Asperger, I don't have enough close friends either on- or offline for that (plus I utterly lack the patience required to get card images which seem to be an important prerequisite to get people on board these things).
Interdict – Have you considered having this check any creature (including yours) and not just opponents? I think it would give drafters and deckbuilders some direction rather than “I hope my opponents play lots of big creatures.” This is also a VERY good candidate for an ability word (landfall style) rather than a keyword ability (evolve style). That would be fun and open up design space.
Interdict – Whenever a creature with greater power than ~ power enters the battlefield (under your control?), something special happens.
Originally the Zhavi had a law mechanic (pretty much as in the Tesla project). I accept that Interdict is not a mechanic that you specifically build your deck around. Besides, it interacts well with the Sorba mechanic and a white theme surrounding creatures with base power 2 or less.
Besides, this block already has 4 ability words, three of which are in this set, and I'm not thrilled by the idea of making 4 out of 5 faction mechanics ability words.
Voidmind –Does it become just an upside down, nameless, typeless, colorless permanent (not a 2/2 colorless creature)?
I have reminder text on several of the cards. They are 2/2 colorless creatures because the rules define them as such (707.2a)
Encore – Is this only on instants and sorceries for Izzet-like guild flavor reasons?
Indeed. If you're going to have 10 mechanics, at least one is going to end up being an instant/sorcery one, just like one will end up being a graveyard one (It's the on in my case)
Leadership – I really, really like this and long considered a version of it for Boros. A couple of things. It seems like a needlessly complicated version of Exalted, and it’s using the word “champion”, which can’t be used because it’s already a keyword. The tracking for this is very simple, so the counter isn’t necessary. Imo, when it comes to reminder text, grockability is paramount (even if an extremely simple one time explanation is required). “Leadership” flavor is ultra-generic that could mean nearly anything and be in any color, and yet manages to not feel GW or “priestly”, not even “battle-priestly”. It doesn’t evoke any emotion whatsoever. Anyways, I have a suggestion.
Valiance (At the beginning of combat [of each?] on your turn, choose a creature you control to be your vanguard until your next turn.)
Your vanguard gets +1/+1 and/or has stuff.
It's not supposed to be priestly. Champions are not (at least not inherently. Creature types still need a lot of working out) priests. They're, well, champions of the Aynsele. Representatives backed by the strength of their entire caste.
I'll admit that Leadership is on its face possibly the fiddliest part of the design. I can't honestly justify fate counters if they're not used in at least two mechanics, and Leadership was the one it fell upon. I do honestly believe the mechanic leads to some interesting designs, and I am especially fond of Champion's Attendant in this regard.
Invigorate – I really, really like this so so much. The flavor is perfect. My only “criticism” is that it looks parasitic in the Heroic sense, but more narrow. Of course, narrow is fine for guild mechanics and parasitic can be managed through clever set design.
Originally more of the cards at uncommon and rare were intended to have the capability to self-trigger. They ended up dwindling to the sole Rumgarr for (fairly obvious, I hope) complexity reasons.
Taking away Wrap in Magma for the Hostile Realm reprint may prove after testing to be a mistake in this regard, but I'm not sure if plotwise Realm fits in Threads of Fate.
The last one is ridiculously overpowered (hell, it's vintage playable). And not white.
The mechanic would also be very, very annoying if there's a lot of them in a set, because then you'd just be passing around contaminate -1/-1 counters. That and non contaminate creatures become unplayable unless they're huge battleships.
I think this mechanic is interesting, and would require cards that you want to put -1/-1 counters on within the set to make it really interesting. Very few such cards would probably have contaminate levels higher than 1, though. Agree that the third one is probably OP (though it can be white. It a Phyrexian set can have white Infect, it can have white contaminate).
Overcast is interesting to think about but likely oppressive in Limited and maybe even more so in Constructed. Thorn of Amethyst and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben are both great cards, after all. I only hope there would never be an overcast one-drop.
However, Legend has playtested a one-shot version of this for Lords of Ravnica.
Flavor is amazing, but I'm not sure this amount of copying can be worked at common.
And some of those reads are way overboard: A card like Mutadon can be read as essentially a 3/3 haste vigilance card with "prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to this creature", and all it demands is that you have another creature to copy onto when it ETBs. As a common 3-drop, that is completely insane.
Wouldn't this say 'if you control the creature with the lowest power among creatures on the battlefield'?
While a few recent cards have used "on the battlefield", I can't say I see the need for it, and they haven't applied it retroactively either, so I'll stick with the simpler template. It's not like it's easy to misunderstand.
For a faction flavored as vigilante justiciars, I created the following mechanic:
Dauntless — If you control the creature with the least power, [effect].
That is, they defend the small guys. I'm realizing, though, that as much as I like the deckbuilding challenges this creates (one of the card I expect to be key for the mechanic is a -2/+2 aura), the level of potential manipulations on the stack are somewhat troublesome. This even though the issue can be alleviated somewhat by making most of the effects triggered abilities instead of continuous ones.
I am now considering a reworking of the mechanic so that instead it is worded as
Dauntless — If an opponent controls the creature with the greatest power, [effect].
This mechanics puts a different spin since manipulations must now be applied to another player's creature to negate the effect, and they reinforce the "level the field" aspect of it. However, they also make designs with power higher than 2 a lot harder to make work, leaving these two commons a lot less appealing:
Prison Smasher
Creature – [TBD]
Trample Dauntless — Whenever Prison Smasher attacks, if you control the creature with the least power, target creature can't block Prison Smasher this turn.
3/3
Gentle Giant
Creature – Giant
Defender Dauntless — Gentle Giant can attack as though it didn't have defender as long as you control the creature with the least power.
4/4
Currently I'm not clear when, if ever I'll have a chance to playtest either versions, so I would like some thoughts on this issue from the designing community.
Also, are large numbers of +1/+1 counters (say 3+) put on a creature at once more of a green thing than a red thing? Would small numbers of +1/+1 counters (like 1 or 2) put on a creature at once be more acceptable in red?
A red permanent can put +1/+1 counters on itself no problem (e.g. Ember Swallower, Thorn-Thrash Viashino, Ignition Team). However, it is very unusual for red cards to put +1/+1 counters on other creatures as part of an effect.
Alright. About 90+% of the cards are designed. What's missing is mostly rares and mythics, both areas where I tend to be a poor designer. I still need to rework over the creature type and flavors (I lost the document with my notes on creature types), but the basic designs are mostly done. I've started working on set #2 in the block, Threads of Fate, and already a few card movements have occurred between the sets.
I thought Daxos was a champion (or was it oracle?) of all gods? Or did I misremember that?
There's a lot of link issues, especially, for some reason, in the Zendikar section. I'm not sure why several links seem to be intended for story articles only in that section, so for those I listed both the story and fixed card link.
You got Elspeth's family name misspelled in the Scars sction.
You get to plain draw a card for 3U. That card is fine.
Personally I just utterly fail to see how having a tapped creature is supposed to be Dimir-ish in any way or form. It sounds like a Boros or general mechanic at best.
I'm not saying it's not the facially least appealing of the cycle (all the other ones are clearly on-curve or above, yes, even the blue one. It's just a really bad curve point in general, as you point out yourself), but I am very much sticking to my gun that it's nowhere as terribad as you emphasize, and the evaluation is probably tainted by the fact white nonevasive 2/3 for 2C (or 4C for that matters) are hardly ever much good. Reminder that there's never even been a 2/3 french vanilla white vigilance card to compare this with.
Given that the only other nonrare four drop in the set is Felidar Guardian, hardly a card I'd want to attack with in the first place, I'll wager this will either be found much more useful than you make it out to be or result in a massive premium on Kaladesh's white 4-drops.
I get that no one ever believe a 4+ drops is useful unless they break the game open right then and there, but I for one know I'm going to have fun frustrating people with these.
I suspect this is not so much an assertion of the card's power as a reflection of how bad most 2/3 for 2W have been overall (with the effect of skewing the evaluation of a 2/3 for 4 without clear precedent at either mana cost: the closest os probably Dragon Bell Monk). Objectively, vigilance+potentially repeated token making is well worth the extra
I really wish I could say I have the social skill to assemble people for playtesting this, but being Asperger, I don't have enough close friends either on- or offline for that (plus I utterly lack the patience required to get card images which seem to be an important prerequisite to get people on board these things).
Originally the Zhavi had a law mechanic (pretty much as in the Tesla project). I accept that Interdict is not a mechanic that you specifically build your deck around. Besides, it interacts well with the Sorba mechanic and a white theme surrounding creatures with base power 2 or less.
Besides, this block already has 4 ability words, three of which are in this set, and I'm not thrilled by the idea of making 4 out of 5 faction mechanics ability words.
I have reminder text on several of the cards. They are 2/2 colorless creatures because the rules define them as such (707.2a)
Indeed. If you're going to have 10 mechanics, at least one is going to end up being an instant/sorcery one, just like one will end up being a graveyard one (It's the
It's not supposed to be priestly. Champions are not (at least not inherently. Creature types still need a lot of working out) priests. They're, well, champions of the Aynsele. Representatives backed by the strength of their entire caste.
I'll admit that Leadership is on its face possibly the fiddliest part of the design. I can't honestly justify fate counters if they're not used in at least two mechanics, and Leadership was the one it fell upon. I do honestly believe the mechanic leads to some interesting designs, and I am especially fond of Champion's Attendant in this regard.
Originally more of the cards at uncommon and rare were intended to have the capability to self-trigger. They ended up dwindling to the sole Rumgarr for (fairly obvious, I hope) complexity reasons.
Taking away Wrap in Magma for the Hostile Realm reprint may prove after testing to be a mistake in this regard, but I'm not sure if plotwise Realm fits in Threads of Fate.
I think this mechanic is interesting, and would require cards that you want to put -1/-1 counters on within the set to make it really interesting. Very few such cards would probably have contaminate levels higher than 1, though. Agree that the third one is probably OP (though it can be white. It a Phyrexian set can have white Infect, it can have white contaminate).
However, Legend has playtested a one-shot version of this for Lords of Ravnica.
And some of those reads are way overboard: A card like Mutadon can be read as essentially a 3/3 haste vigilance card with "prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to this creature", and all it demands is that you have another creature to copy onto when it ETBs. As a common 3-drop, that is completely insane.
While a few recent cards have used "on the battlefield", I can't say I see the need for it, and they haven't applied it retroactively either, so I'll stick with the simpler template. It's not like it's easy to misunderstand.
Dauntless — If you control the creature with the least power, [effect].
That is, they defend the small guys. I'm realizing, though, that as much as I like the deckbuilding challenges this creates (one of the card I expect to be key for the mechanic is a -2/+2 aura), the level of potential manipulations on the stack are somewhat troublesome. This even though the issue can be alleviated somewhat by making most of the effects triggered abilities instead of continuous ones.
I am now considering a reworking of the mechanic so that instead it is worded as
Dauntless — If an opponent controls the creature with the greatest power, [effect].
This mechanics puts a different spin since manipulations must now be applied to another player's creature to negate the effect, and they reinforce the "level the field" aspect of it. However, they also make designs with power higher than 2 a lot harder to make work, leaving these two commons a lot less appealing:
Prison Smasher
Creature – [TBD]
Trample
Dauntless — Whenever Prison Smasher attacks, if you control the creature with the least power, target creature can't block Prison Smasher this turn.
3/3
Gentle Giant
Creature – Giant
Defender
Dauntless — Gentle Giant can attack as though it didn't have defender as long as you control the creature with the least power.
4/4
Currently I'm not clear when, if ever I'll have a chance to playtest either versions, so I would like some thoughts on this issue from the designing community.
A red permanent can put +1/+1 counters on itself no problem (e.g. Ember Swallower, Thorn-Thrash Viashino, Ignition Team). However, it is very unusual for red cards to put +1/+1 counters on other creatures as part of an effect.
Mechanic is sound, but besides its name, I can't say it feels very Boros. It has a bit of an improvement vibe that reminds me a little more of Simic.