You need to read this text to know what the card does. And what does it do for all of that valuable game text, complexity? Scry 1. Whooptie doo!
Scry 1 is often (~40% of the time) as good as drawing a card in limited. Its not some minor effect to be ignored. IMO
Maybe you want to evergreen "When this enters the battlefield."
Its definitely on the shortlist of game actions to keyword and many other card games have done so. The reason not to is that mtg uses many abilities that are similar to "When this enteres the battlefield." Off the top of my head: "As this enters the battlefield", "When you cast this", "if this would enter the battlefield",
I agree that these things do too much. They just feel ugly to me. These are filling the same design role as anthems (cheap enchantment that buffs a specific sub class of creatures) but rather than be anthems for something specific, they feel like they randomly care about two separate classes of creatures. Which brings me too.
Flying is probably the only evergreen keyword common enough to justify getting its own "tribal" effects, so I decided to pair common evergreen abilities with less common evergreen abilities.
If the problem is that evergreen abilities aren't common enough to make the designs work, then make the abilities more common. You can either do this environmentally, or you can do something like...
Knight's Training 1W
Enchantment {U}
Tap an untapped creature you control : Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.
Whenever a creature with first strike you control dies, create a 1/1 white soldier creature token.
...And if you are willing to move away from anthem style designs, lord style designs will usually play better and help to solve your "keyword isn't common enough" problem...
Master at Arms WW
Creature - Human Knight {R}
First Strike
Whenever Master at Arms or another creature with first strike you control dies, create a 1/1 white soldier creature token.
2/2
Was Converge well received? I know landfall was...
Converge was generally unpopular, but that is likely due in large part to being in an environment which didn't well support it and under development of the mechanic in general. MaRo puts it at a 6 on the storm scale.
My experience in Amonkhet was mostly in FNM Paper events. In my opinion, Amonkhet was quite simply a lousy format. Color balance was poor, archetype diversity was low, the format in general was linear and non-interactive. HOU seems to have fixed most of these problems and the format is dramatically better for it.
1) The Cartouche and Trial cycle was substantially more than the sum of its parts.
They were fine. A tend to prefer synergies to be more discovered and less explicit though.
2) I felt empowered in this draft format.
I felt bored. Because I mostly played at FNM level where most players at any given draft are still just new to and exploring the format, the supposedly self balancing nature of draft was never seen. White was always open and whoever played white won. My choices in any given draft were "play the best deck and steamroll opponents for the umpteenth time with broken exert creatures" or "play something fun, and pretty much just lose to the player who happened to be playing the white deck."
3) One gripe I did have about the format is that the UB Cycling archetype was unique in that it relied on specific cards to be competitive.
UR spells had the same problem. As did GB counters in so far as GB counters was a deck. Personally, I'm of the opinion that there were really only three decks in amonkhet: Wx aggro, Gxxx jank, and Bx cartouche. UR spells could be a good deck if you get lucky enough to grab a handful of uncommon spells matters cards and/or some magma sprays, but in the typical draft, not enough cards will be opened for the deck across the entire table, making it impossible to get a good version of the deck. GB counters just didn't work as a deck. You could play GB midrange decks but the counters synergies were irrelevant to the deck. UB cycling similarly wasn't a deck. If you got lucky and got multiple of the three pay off cards you mentioned, and you got lucky and draw the pay off cards early and reliably, you could win, but the deck was basically just a trap, especially among the new to the format players I saw at FNM level.
4) Aggressive mechanics should not discourage blocking too strongly. I felt this problem less than others, since the spell interactivity was very high in this format, but I think most players' gripe with this format was the pushed nature of the exert creatures and what that did for combat. Combat attacking and blocking is its own form of interactivity, and a form of interactivity that players crave.
In a normal limited format, blocking is interaction. Interactive spells are so much less frequent than a block that they might as well not matter by comparison. A limited format in which blocking doesn't work, is a very non-interactive format. This is personally my biggest gripe with the format. I find non-interactive races boring and that's basically all Amonkhet had to offer.
5) Another lesson I learned is that you can design aggressive mechanics in such a way that don't directly benefit the card's combat prowess, and in such a way that don't make interaction in combat absent or miserable in a fatalistic way.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to design such cards which would be appropriate for common.
6) Amonkhet showed that you can design a format in which you can build hyper aggressive decks that start their curve on 1 and hyper-controlling decks in the same format.
It is possible for aggressive and controlling decks to coexist in the same format, but I don't think amonkhet showed this. Maybe HOU does.
This also taught me my final takeaway from the format - common cards do really need to be perfect for a format to be successful. Mistakes at the common level really do shape a format in its entirty. Mistakes at uncommon (Faith of the Devoted being too weak) can really hurt the viability of limited archetypes, but those mistakes don't dominate the format in the same way that design choices at common do.
Agreed. Unfortunately, Amonkhet made numerous mistakes at common which made the format mediocre. Shadows and Eldritch moon are much better, in my opinion.
In general, I think players/designers overestimate the self balancing nature of draft and under value color balance in a format. Amonkhet had one color that was head and shoulders above the rest and this was really bad for the format. Hou seems to have fixed this for the most part.
Trample is definitely not as problematic as the more problematic keywords like Prowess, but I still think that pulling back on it a little on permanents can make the game a little more accessible to players learning.
It won't make the game more accessible though. New players will still need to be taught trample. The only way to actually make the game more accessible on this front is to remove trample from evergreen all together.
As for Survive, mine is different from yours in that mine is strictly reactionary, the same way that counterspells are reactionary. This restricts the timing in which a player is allowed to use the ability and keeps it from becoming a "shield ability," like I mentioned. I believe that the slight difference this will make will allow for more compelling gameplay.
Can you please outline a typical series of game events for which my version of Survive is meaningfully different from your version? The only difference I can think of is for effects with resolution time decisions like harnessed lightning. Thing is, these cards almost don't exist and most of the time, the difference between my simple version and your version is tiny.
I don't agree with some of your thoughts on trample. Trample isn't too complex or too powerful for common. Trample just isn't actually interesting on cards unless they have high power, which usually means high cost, and do to the needs of limited, there aren't going to be a ton of high cost common creatures. One way around this is to combine effects that increase power with Trample which is what we have seen WotC do in recent years with many commons.
Expendable (When this creature dies, draw a card.)
This is an interesting keyword. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised I haven't seen it before. It has some issues though. First, common expendable creatures (with >1 power) will usually need to be red flagged for their ability to routinely generate card advantage. Second, I'm not convinced there is much interesting design space with the keyword. You can kind of throw it on anything but it's only particularly interesting on small fodder creatures. You can try to combine it with creatures who have sac abilities, but that feels a lot more clever than I actually think it is. Is there anything else that can be done with it?
So lets say Trample is pulled back at common, used only on one-time effects like Larger Than Life. What takes its place? Well, we have a couple of options:
If Trample is going to be pulled back at common, it should be removed from evergreen completely. If we are going to go through the trouble of teaching every new player how Trample works, let's just use trample. If we aren't going to use trample frequently, why go through the trouble of teaching every new player how Trample works?
If we were looking for a replacement, I actually think a re-flavored Afflict fits best. Afflict is interesting on a wider range of designs than trample and has similar gameplay. It lets your attacking creatures deal damage through chump blocks or while trading with opponents creatures. You even point out this design space as being useful.
Ravage K (Whenever this becomes blocked, this deals K damage to defending player.)
Survive (cost) (If this creature would be destroyed, you may pay (cost). If you do, it gains indestructible until end of turn.)
How is this functionally different from the far more simple...
Survive {COST} ({COST} : This creature gains indestructible until end of turn.)
...Survive isn't how regenerate was ever used either. Regenerate was used in much the same way indestructible is now.
If you want people's thoughts on your cards, people's assistance in general, it would help to post text versions of your cards alongside or instead of picture versions. It's a forum rule. For example...
Construct of Silence 2
Artifact Creature - Construct {R}
Activated abilities can't be activated unless they are mana abilities.
3/1
...Regarding the design itself, there are multiple things you could do to make it less swingy.
Follower of Silence (V2.0a) 1W
Creature - Human Cleric {R}
Activated abilities of permanents controlled by an opponent cost 2 more to activate unless they are mana abilities.
2/1
Construct of Silence (V2.0b) 2
Artifact Creature - Construct {R}
Activated abilities of permanents controlled by an opponent cost 2 more to activate unless they are mana abilities.
2/1
...This design wouldn't historically be colorless. It makes the most sense in white.
EDIT: forgot the 'mana ability' clause in original templates
Jean-Michel - Seems fine to me. A bit boring, but functional.
Frena, Corrupted Cleric - Once again, seems fine. Ability that rewards attacking alongside an ability that mitigates the cost of attacking. Makes sense.
Numbai, Fiend Manipulator - Design is interesting, no idea on the costs. Personally, I'd scale down the search penality. Choosing land vs single draw seems much more interesting than double draw vs a land. I also agree that this card doesn't really feel like a zombie at all. Zombies are graveyard lovers and dumb bodies for the most part. They don't strategically limit your opponent's decisions or blow up lands historically. I guess zombies are kind of menacing? That isn't much of a connect though. It's not outrageous to make Numbai a zombie, I just don't understand why it should be.
You're quite right; just wording it to avoid targeted graveyard hate is a bad thing. But that's why that's concern #2. Yes, it's functionally better, but only slightly. All we're saying is that Extirpate is no longer a counterspell for the card; it just removes your best option. THAT is interesting design space that is scarcely evaluated.
Concern 1 is also in contention. I don't think you gain interesting design space here. If you go out of your way to design other strange combo cards, you can make your first concern matter, but doing so is going to make that package very insular in standard
Re: Skittering Zombie Combo: Tell that to Prized Amalgam.
Once again "this seems like a lot of design work for mostly uninteresting gameplay." If you want prized amalgam style gameplay, there are simpler ways to do it than printing non-interactive raise dead effects clunky stapled to hand disruption except it's actually meant to merely be a discard outlet. Why not have a more focussed design that actually communicates to players how it is meant to be used. You have numerous options.
[quote from="Honor Basquiat »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/community-forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/780367-help-me-name-these-cards?comment=1"]Bottom up designs I came up with that I am having trouble trying to flavor/lore. Any ideas?
CARD 1 - So if I have enough mana and even a minor source of lifegain, I can deny my opponent from ever drawing a card? Does this seem like it would be good gameplay? In terms of name, I'd go for entrapment flavor. Something like '[appropriate name], master of entrapment' if it has to be legendary.
CARD 2 - Name proposal: Ruthless Scholarship
CARD 3 - [NAME], thought of the wild. This card is super pushed though, makes edric look weak by comparison.
CARD 4 - In order for this effect to work, you need to combine both of the abilities. As is, any time the first replacement effect would apply, it would cause the second replacement effect to apply resulting in neither ever actually working. At least, that's my understanding of the rules. I don't have any good naming advice here
CARD 5 - Name: Legislated Growth. Give it a pseudo-azorius flavor
CARD 6 - Any reason not to just say "if you did not play a land during your turn." I know there is a mechanical difference, but it's a very small one which feels more in line with the desired function of the card. No good name suggestion here.
Regarding your first version, double madness, why not just bring back madness and add a trigger or conditional effects to relevant cards that you want to make escalating?
Spreading Dementia V0.9 B
Sorcery (U)
Target player discards a card.
When you cast Spreading Dementia, copy it if it's madness cost was paid.
Madness B (If you discard this card, discard it into exile. When you do, cast it for its madness cost or put it into your graveyard.)
Spreading Dementia V0.91 B
Sorcery (U)
Target player discards a card. If Spreading Dementia's madness cost was paid, that player discards two cards instead.
Madness B (If you discard this card, discard it into exile. When you do, cast it for its madness cost or put it into your graveyard.)
Replicated madness is more interesting by comparison, but seems just as hard to balance as replicate. It's going to be really hard to get them to a point where they are playable in standard without being busted in standard. You gain a single development knob over replicate in that you can control the power level of discard effects in the format. Thing is, this isn't a precise knob and turning it requires changing the design of many cards (potentially every discard outlet) and affects the power level of many cards (basically every escalating madness card). It seems to me like replicated madness has all the same developmental difficulties as replicate originally did.
(I'm not trying to comment on your individual designs but it's worth noting that Tarnation doesn't really work. If you copy a modal spell, you have to choose the same modes and there is basically never going to reason to want to copy a damnation effect.)
EDIT: Actually, replicating madness seems to have even worse developmental problems than replicate as you lose the ability to cost a single instance of the effect at a different rate from multiple instances of the effect. Consider the following replicate design which doesn't really have a clean escalating madness variant...
Replicated Madness B
sorcery
Target player discards a card
Replicate 1B
...Of course, the develpmental problem gets much easier if you just overcost the escalating madness ability and leave the cards pushed at normal casting cost, but doing so feels really boring and lame. And the same is true of replicate...
Replicated Insight 2UU
Sorcery
Draw three cards.
Replicate 7UU
...Replicated Insight is developmentally pushed and likely balanced, but it isn't interesting as a replicate design at all
2. It evades targeted graveyard hate. With raise dead effects, targeted instant speed graveyard hate stops them.
In general, it isn't a good thing in a design to avoid counterplay. Better_Murder isn't a good design. Graveyard hate effectively stopping graveyard matters abilities/cards is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Better_Murder 1BB
Instant
Choose a creature and then destroy the chosen creature.
Yours isn't even "Swapping" anything, as you canget the discarded guy back! So you're not really even paying any cost it's like it was raise dead with Kicker - Discard a creature card. If you kickered, copy this spell! Yeah, as is it's a drawback, but a silly one as you'll often get back what you discarded. And that just feels bizarre.
Your right, the body swap variant I just posted should target in order to enforce the swapping.
The wording on mine leaves open the bizarre option (you choose you, discard your skittering zombie, then return it from your grave to your hand, but it skitters into play instead.)
Thing is, that's awful. You are spending two mana and two cards in order to get a 2/1. If that's the right play, something has gone horribly wrong with your deck or the meta. You are going out of your way to design a clunkier version of a spell in order to design other cards to specifically combo with the needlessly clunky spell, but in a combo that isn't even good in 99.9% of formats ever. This seems like a lot of design work for mostly uninteresting gameplay.
(Doesn't target so you can get back what you discard).
If that is the intended use, you should just use a raise dead+tormenting voice variant. As is, there isn't any real reason to use the original version of body swap targeting oneself.
Body Swap B
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast Body Swap, discard a creature
Return up to two creature cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Then again, at common you can draft 8 of them. That's going to be a serious problem (or not, depending on how you view mill wins; let's face it, some people hate them).
The odds of 8 or more being opened in a modern large set is approximately 0.16%. It's a miniscule number. We are talking once or twice every thousand drafts. And even in the case when 8 are opened, that won't mean one player gets 8 of them.
Truth is Brain drain (absent other sources of mill in the format) doesn't actually become good until you get 4 of them. Odds of 4 or more being opened in a single draft are approximately 21.5%. So maybe one in every 5 drafts, a single player manages to draft the mill deck.
None of this seems like a problem to me. Brain Drain seems fine at common and probably should be at common.
I'm a bit worried about this because if you don't hit on the discard, you don't raise dead.
That's easy to fix...
Body Swap 1B
Sorcery (U)
Choose one or both:
- Target player reveals his or her hand. You may choose a creature card from it. If you do, that player discards that card.
- Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
...Might need to choose a different name now as the bodies aren't always swapping, but whatever. If it's the gameplay you want....
Scry 1 is often (~40% of the time) as good as drawing a card in limited. Its not some minor effect to be ignored. IMO
Its definitely on the shortlist of game actions to keyword and many other card games have done so. The reason not to is that mtg uses many abilities that are similar to "When this enteres the battlefield." Off the top of my head: "As this enters the battlefield", "When you cast this", "if this would enter the battlefield",
If the problem is that evergreen abilities aren't common enough to make the designs work, then make the abilities more common. You can either do this environmentally, or you can do something like...
Knight's Training 1W
Enchantment {U}
Tap an untapped creature you control : Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.
Whenever a creature with first strike you control dies, create a 1/1 white soldier creature token.
...And if you are willing to move away from anthem style designs, lord style designs will usually play better and help to solve your "keyword isn't common enough" problem...
Master at Arms WW
Creature - Human Knight {R}
First Strike
Whenever Master at Arms or another creature with first strike you control dies, create a 1/1 white soldier creature token.
2/2
Converge was generally unpopular, but that is likely due in large part to being in an environment which didn't well support it and under development of the mechanic in general. MaRo puts it at a 6 on the storm scale.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/storm-scale-zendikar-and-battle-zendikar-2016-11-21
They were fine. A tend to prefer synergies to be more discovered and less explicit though.
I felt bored. Because I mostly played at FNM level where most players at any given draft are still just new to and exploring the format, the supposedly self balancing nature of draft was never seen. White was always open and whoever played white won. My choices in any given draft were "play the best deck and steamroll opponents for the umpteenth time with broken exert creatures" or "play something fun, and pretty much just lose to the player who happened to be playing the white deck."
UR spells had the same problem. As did GB counters in so far as GB counters was a deck. Personally, I'm of the opinion that there were really only three decks in amonkhet: Wx aggro, Gxxx jank, and Bx cartouche. UR spells could be a good deck if you get lucky enough to grab a handful of uncommon spells matters cards and/or some magma sprays, but in the typical draft, not enough cards will be opened for the deck across the entire table, making it impossible to get a good version of the deck. GB counters just didn't work as a deck. You could play GB midrange decks but the counters synergies were irrelevant to the deck. UB cycling similarly wasn't a deck. If you got lucky and got multiple of the three pay off cards you mentioned, and you got lucky and draw the pay off cards early and reliably, you could win, but the deck was basically just a trap, especially among the new to the format players I saw at FNM level.
In a normal limited format, blocking is interaction. Interactive spells are so much less frequent than a block that they might as well not matter by comparison. A limited format in which blocking doesn't work, is a very non-interactive format. This is personally my biggest gripe with the format. I find non-interactive races boring and that's basically all Amonkhet had to offer.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to design such cards which would be appropriate for common.
It is possible for aggressive and controlling decks to coexist in the same format, but I don't think amonkhet showed this. Maybe HOU does.
Agreed. Unfortunately, Amonkhet made numerous mistakes at common which made the format mediocre. Shadows and Eldritch moon are much better, in my opinion.
In general, I think players/designers overestimate the self balancing nature of draft and under value color balance in a format. Amonkhet had one color that was head and shoulders above the rest and this was really bad for the format. Hou seems to have fixed this for the most part.
It won't make the game more accessible though. New players will still need to be taught trample. The only way to actually make the game more accessible on this front is to remove trample from evergreen all together.
Can you please outline a typical series of game events for which my version of Survive is meaningfully different from your version? The only difference I can think of is for effects with resolution time decisions like harnessed lightning. Thing is, these cards almost don't exist and most of the time, the difference between my simple version and your version is tiny.
I don't agree with some of your thoughts on trample. Trample isn't too complex or too powerful for common. Trample just isn't actually interesting on cards unless they have high power, which usually means high cost, and do to the needs of limited, there aren't going to be a ton of high cost common creatures. One way around this is to combine effects that increase power with Trample which is what we have seen WotC do in recent years with many commons.
This is an interesting keyword. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised I haven't seen it before. It has some issues though. First, common expendable creatures (with >1 power) will usually need to be red flagged for their ability to routinely generate card advantage. Second, I'm not convinced there is much interesting design space with the keyword. You can kind of throw it on anything but it's only particularly interesting on small fodder creatures. You can try to combine it with creatures who have sac abilities, but that feels a lot more clever than I actually think it is. Is there anything else that can be done with it?
If Trample is going to be pulled back at common, it should be removed from evergreen completely. If we are going to go through the trouble of teaching every new player how Trample works, let's just use trample. If we aren't going to use trample frequently, why go through the trouble of teaching every new player how Trample works?
If we were looking for a replacement, I actually think a re-flavored Afflict fits best. Afflict is interesting on a wider range of designs than trample and has similar gameplay. It lets your attacking creatures deal damage through chump blocks or while trading with opponents creatures. You even point out this design space as being useful.
Ravage K (Whenever this becomes blocked, this deals K damage to defending player.)
How is this functionally different from the far more simple...
Survive {COST} ({COST} : This creature gains indestructible until end of turn.)
...Survive isn't how regenerate was ever used either. Regenerate was used in much the same way indestructible is now.
Construct of Silence 2
Artifact Creature - Construct {R}
Activated abilities can't be activated unless they are mana abilities.
3/1
...Regarding the design itself, there are multiple things you could do to make it less swingy.
Follower of Silence (V2.0a) 1W
Creature - Human Cleric {R}
Activated abilities of permanents controlled by an opponent cost 2 more to activate unless they are mana abilities.
2/1
Construct of Silence (V2.0b) 2
Artifact Creature - Construct {R}
Activated abilities of permanents controlled by an opponent cost 2 more to activate unless they are mana abilities.
2/1
...This design wouldn't historically be colorless. It makes the most sense in white.
EDIT: forgot the 'mana ability' clause in original templates
Frena, Corrupted Cleric - Once again, seems fine. Ability that rewards attacking alongside an ability that mitigates the cost of attacking. Makes sense.
Numbai, Fiend Manipulator - Design is interesting, no idea on the costs. Personally, I'd scale down the search penality. Choosing land vs single draw seems much more interesting than double draw vs a land. I also agree that this card doesn't really feel like a zombie at all. Zombies are graveyard lovers and dumb bodies for the most part. They don't strategically limit your opponent's decisions or blow up lands historically. I guess zombies are kind of menacing? That isn't much of a connect though. It's not outrageous to make Numbai a zombie, I just don't understand why it should be.
Concern 1 is also in contention. I don't think you gain interesting design space here. If you go out of your way to design other strange combo cards, you can make your first concern matter, but doing so is going to make that package very insular in standard
Once again "this seems like a lot of design work for mostly uninteresting gameplay." If you want prized amalgam style gameplay, there are simpler ways to do it than printing non-interactive raise dead effects clunky stapled to hand disruption except it's actually meant to merely be a discard outlet. Why not have a more focussed design that actually communicates to players how it is meant to be used. You have numerous options.
CARD 1 - So if I have enough mana and even a minor source of lifegain, I can deny my opponent from ever drawing a card? Does this seem like it would be good gameplay? In terms of name, I'd go for entrapment flavor. Something like '[appropriate name], master of entrapment' if it has to be legendary.
CARD 2 - Name proposal: Ruthless Scholarship
CARD 3 - [NAME], thought of the wild. This card is super pushed though, makes edric look weak by comparison.
CARD 4 - In order for this effect to work, you need to combine both of the abilities. As is, any time the first replacement effect would apply, it would cause the second replacement effect to apply resulting in neither ever actually working. At least, that's my understanding of the rules. I don't have any good naming advice here
CARD 5 - Name: Legislated Growth. Give it a pseudo-azorius flavor
CARD 6 - Any reason not to just say "if you did not play a land during your turn." I know there is a mechanical difference, but it's a very small one which feels more in line with the desired function of the card. No good name suggestion here.
Spreading Dementia V0.9 B
Sorcery (U)
Target player discards a card.
When you cast Spreading Dementia, copy it if it's madness cost was paid.
Madness B (If you discard this card, discard it into exile. When you do, cast it for its madness cost or put it into your graveyard.)
Spreading Dementia V0.91 B
Sorcery (U)
Target player discards a card. If Spreading Dementia's madness cost was paid, that player discards two cards instead.
Madness B (If you discard this card, discard it into exile. When you do, cast it for its madness cost or put it into your graveyard.)
Replicated madness is more interesting by comparison, but seems just as hard to balance as replicate. It's going to be really hard to get them to a point where they are playable in standard without being busted in standard. You gain a single development knob over replicate in that you can control the power level of discard effects in the format. Thing is, this isn't a precise knob and turning it requires changing the design of many cards (potentially every discard outlet) and affects the power level of many cards (basically every escalating madness card). It seems to me like replicated madness has all the same developmental difficulties as replicate originally did.
(I'm not trying to comment on your individual designs but it's worth noting that Tarnation doesn't really work. If you copy a modal spell, you have to choose the same modes and there is basically never going to reason to want to copy a damnation effect.)
EDIT: Actually, replicating madness seems to have even worse developmental problems than replicate as you lose the ability to cost a single instance of the effect at a different rate from multiple instances of the effect. Consider the following replicate design which doesn't really have a clean escalating madness variant...
Replicated Madness B
sorcery
Target player discards a card
Replicate 1B
...Of course, the develpmental problem gets much easier if you just overcost the escalating madness ability and leave the cards pushed at normal casting cost, but doing so feels really boring and lame. And the same is true of replicate...
Replicated Insight 2UU
Sorcery
Draw three cards.
Replicate 7UU
...Replicated Insight is developmentally pushed and likely balanced, but it isn't interesting as a replicate design at all
In general, it isn't a good thing in a design to avoid counterplay. Better_Murder isn't a good design. Graveyard hate effectively stopping graveyard matters abilities/cards is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Better_Murder 1BB
Instant
Choose a creature and then destroy the chosen creature.
Your right, the body swap variant I just posted should target in order to enforce the swapping.
Thing is, that's awful. You are spending two mana and two cards in order to get a 2/1. If that's the right play, something has gone horribly wrong with your deck or the meta. You are going out of your way to design a clunkier version of a spell in order to design other cards to specifically combo with the needlessly clunky spell, but in a combo that isn't even good in 99.9% of formats ever. This seems like a lot of design work for mostly uninteresting gameplay.
If that is the intended use, you should just use a raise dead+tormenting voice variant. As is, there isn't any real reason to use the original version of body swap targeting oneself.
Body Swap B
Sorcery
As an additional cost to cast Body Swap, discard a creature
Return up to two creature cards from your graveyard to your hand.
The odds of 8 or more being opened in a modern large set is approximately 0.16%. It's a miniscule number. We are talking once or twice every thousand drafts. And even in the case when 8 are opened, that won't mean one player gets 8 of them.
Truth is Brain drain (absent other sources of mill in the format) doesn't actually become good until you get 4 of them. Odds of 4 or more being opened in a single draft are approximately 21.5%. So maybe one in every 5 drafts, a single player manages to draft the mill deck.
None of this seems like a problem to me. Brain Drain seems fine at common and probably should be at common.
That's easy to fix...
Body Swap 1B
Sorcery (U)
Choose one or both:
- Target player reveals his or her hand. You may choose a creature card from it. If you do, that player discards that card.
- Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
...Might need to choose a different name now as the bodies aren't always swapping, but whatever. If it's the gameplay you want....