MTG Salvation

A card that can tutor for an artifact feels like it would match the flavor of classic treasure map trope associated with pirates.

Although an artifact that can tutor for more artifacts seems overpowered to be in the same standard as Kaladesh. So either it's mana cost will only be slightly cheaper than Planar Bridge or perhaps instead of being an actual tutor it will be a chaotic effect where the player reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal an artifact card. I actually would like that better than a straight tutor here, I'm a vorthos and love the flavor of a Treasure Map that may just lead the person who follows it to another treasure map.

I wonder if this set will be all nostalgia, or will they simply throw in some references to classic cards and then use the rest of the set to try to reinvent the plane?

Also, this somewhat relates to my first question, but I'm wondering if we'll see WOTC only reuse past mechanics from sets that took place in Dominaria (or slight iterations on past mechanics), or will see entirely new mechanics?

If Amonkhet hadn't already used cycling, I would have thought cycling would be a shoe in for the return to Dominaria. With cycling off the table I could see Phasing making a return, since Teferi's Protection makes it seem like WOTC is no longer adverse to printing new cards that use it. Flashback is also a very popular mechanic that first appeared in a Dominaria set that could possibly come back, since the last standard set that used it was the first Innistrad Block was released in fall of 2011.

I like the versatility of it. If you are in a bind and need some removal you can put this on one of your opponent's creatures to destroy that creature at the beginning of your next upkeep and then start digging for threats out of your library.

Edit

Actually, after reading the card again I may be wrong. Could someone enlighten me if an enchantment you control grants an opponent's creature rules text that says "at the beginning of your upkeep..." do all instances of "you" and "your" refer to the creature's controller or the aura's controller?

Quote from Subject16 »

That land is very limited in its Hideaway ability. Having only 5 permanents (or less, three of which have to be lands) and 2 cards in hand basically means by the time you use the hidden spell you're probably so far behind it won't help you. Try removing some of its restrictions. I'm not sure about exiling cards from your graveyard either.

Since you wanted to see more Relic support, here are two cards (I know I'm being naughty)

Compulsive Collector 2UB
Creature - Human Rogue (Uncommon)
Excavate (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless Relic artifact token with "1, Sacrifice this Relic: Draw a card, then discard a card.")
Compulsive Collector gets +1/+0 for each Relic you control.
Sacrifice a Relic: Compulsive Collector gains menace until end of turn.
"Each of these trinkets is part of a greater whole. I must have them all! I must!"
1/4

Gazzard, Explorer Chieftain 2RW
Legendary Creature - Viashino Warrior (Rare)
Trample, haste,
Excavate (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, create a colorless Relic artifact token with "1, Sacrifice this Relic: Draw a card, then discard a card.")
Other creatures you control have excavate.
2, Sacrifice X Relics: Search your library for a card with converted mana cost X or less, reveal that card, then put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
A true leader does not sit back and care for his people. He leads them into the unknown, paving the way for a better future.
3/3

I feel that Excavate could save some reminder text space and give you more design space if you did not tie it to combat damage and instead used it like SOI used the investigate mechanic, then creature cards can say "whenever (condition is met), Excavate" and the spells can simply have Excavate added to the end of their rules text. By doing this you can spread the mechanic across all card types and it won't force you to heavily push it onto creatures that don't need it.

That being said, if Excavate is strictly tied to creatures dealing combat damage, then it makes the power level of your uncommon hard for me to access because it entirely depends on how much Excavate players will see is in the set. If a BU player can reliably have at least one relic token in play by their fourth turn, then I think the card is a fair uncommon that is reasonably costed. On the other hand if BU players cannot expect to have any relics on the battlefield by their fourth turn, then this card is nearly unplayable since it needs to connect at least once to start building its power and it can only grant itself evasion after its first attack makes it through. If there isn't enough sources that create relic tokens then perhaps giving this creature menace outright is the best way to push it a little more.

Gazzard is an easier card to access an fairly balanced as far as I can tell, since it supports itself by having built in evasion and also grants Excavate to all your creatures. However I do think its colors are a little out of whack, aside from its creature type and flavor, there really isn't a lot of white in the card. In general white can search for planswalkers and enchantments, red usually gambles when searching, blue can search for instants, sorceries and artifacts, green looks for creatures and black can search for anything. This makes me feel like Gazzard should be 2RB, but if you are set on the colors then perhaps add a bit of randomness to the search, maybe make the player search for three different cards with a converted mana cost of X or less and then put one at random into thier hand (similar to how signal the clans Works).

Mirrored Shield 3
Artifact - Equipment (R)
Equipped creature gets +0/+3, has Vigilance and has "t: Change the target of target spell or ability that targets you or a permanent you control."
Equip 2

While this card would be fine in a format such as limited or perhaps even standard, ?? Ritual is still way to powerful for most non-rotating formats because Dark Ritual effects feed Storm decks too well. Sacrificing an already tapped land lost land isn't enough of a downside when the player using this card is comboing out. Perhaps a better downside would be, "sacrifice an untapped land", but again that isn't very helpful since most of the time it functionally would just increase the card's cost by 1. Perhaps a better path is to somehow limit the way the mana can be used or restrict the player from casting more than one additional spell after ?? Ritual resolves.


Stitcher's Reproduction 2UU
Creature - Zombie Shapeshifter (R)
You may have Sticher's Reproduction enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature on the battlefield except it is a Zombie in addition to it's other types and has "if this creature would transform you may exile it and return it to the battlefield instead."
"Given enough motivation it can reassemble itself into just about anything."
0/0

My initial idea was a double sided clone that Allows the player to choose a different creature to copy whenever it transforms, I then realized that I could get the same effect on a card with only one side.

If they decided to design some of these cards for commander and don't print those cards in black-border then I think perhaps the easiest solution would be for WOTC to include the text "this card is legal in Commander" somewhere on the face of each of the cards.

Quote from Havrekjex »

Quote from Nightshade1233 »

IF changing te FNM prom ointo a 2-sided foil token helps to get rid of netdecking-pro-wannabe-tryhards then it is all for the better.

Did people really put T1 decks together and go to FNMs to farm promos for profit though? I just don`t believe that.

I did see your emphasis on if, and I do agree that more brewy, less sharky standard FNMs would be nice.

While I think some players may have purposely done it for the promos, I know at least one LGS owner that pocketed as many of the more valuable FNM promos that he could get away with to later sell online. I think these tokens could disincentives owners like him doing this if the amount of money people are willing to pay for foil double sided tokens is a lot less than the current average FNM promo.

I like the idea of this creature, but I feel the same way about it that the previous commenter did about your previous card. In that a bear with trample isn't usually enough to make your opponent want to target it outside of a multiplayer game, especially if it can be blocked in combat with little trouble. And unlike your previous card, sometimes there simply isn't going to be a target for this card's ability. All in all I feel this feels better as an uncommon. If you want to push it to rare I'd suggest perhaps giving the bear deathtouch instead of or in addition to trample, that might be enough to incentivize your opponents to target it since most players don't want their big bombs to trade in combat with a bear.

Another option that would make the card feel more like a rare is to have it's ability not care who targets it, that way a Giant Growth in the hand of it's controller also becomes a naturalize.

Selkestra, the Capricious WB
Legendary Creature - God (M)
Indestructible, Lifelink
Selkestra, the Capricious cannot attack or block if your life total is an even number.
Whenever a creature dies, gain 1 life.
"What are the odds?"
5/3

Perhaps an erase variant that mimics Oblivion Ring. It gets rid of the Gods at common, but is not as permanent a solution.

Antimagic Field W
Emchantment (C)
Flash
When Antimagic Field enters the battlefield, exile target enchantment until Antimagic Field leaves the battlefield.

It's clunkier than erase, but allows players to hopefully get their God back and doesn't involve any extra shuffle effects. If there are more enchantment creatures in the set at lower rarities, then I'd probably remove flash and bump Antimagic Field's cost up to Journey to Nowhere level.

(Not too happy with the name Antimagic Field, since it seems to be at odds with the name Magic: The gathering. I'm simply using it because the card is functionally similar to how Antimagic fields in dungeons and dragons work, they don't dispel magic, they simply suppress it.)

I could see this ability working on a land, but the fact that it's repeatable is worrying. On the other hand the costs are so conditional that I think it may be okay especially since activating the land's second ability requires the player who activates it to guess the exact converted mana cost of a spell in a opponent's hand. This seems like a card built for a midrange deck that is trying to deal with a bad matchup against control.


Bleed RR
Sorcery
Bleed deals X damage to target creature or player, where X is the number of non-basic lands your opponents control.
//
Death BB
Instant
Aftermath
Until the beginning of your next turn, spells and abilities cannot prevent players from losing life or losing the game.

(I wasn't sure how to word the aftermath part of the card, I specifically was trying to find some kind of wording that would work against Platinum Angel's ability as well as Platinum Emperion's ability.)

That blue conspiracy effect spoiled from Ixalan might be fun with this.

Why not a human wizard? Just a suggestion that harkens back to the very first ping-you-for-1 card Prodigal Sorcerer. As for the card itself, I can see it working well and the discard probably wouldn't be that much of a disadvantage for burn because they usually need something to do with the excess land in their hand.

Emerging Atoll (Art of an erupting volcano forming a series of islands)
Land
Emerging atoll enters the battlefield tapped.
Whenever an island or mountain enters the battlefield under your control, untap Emerging Atoll
T: Add R or U to your mana pool and Emerging Atoll deals 1 damage to you.

I would like to see Master of Waves and Goblin Piledriver as face cards. There's something about the symmetry of having pro-red and Pro-blue competing face cards that I find appealing (even though master of waves doesn't care about merfolk). Both decks would have to be multicolor to give each deck an answer to the other's face card. However I don't think this will ever happen because of new world order trying to reduce the times new players encounter confusing "protection from" abilities.

Anyone else think the name "Appeal to Authority" should have been green/black. It sounds like it could have been a pretty cool reference to the old magic combo of yore which was putting Lure on a creature with deathtouch (or pseudo deathtouch like Thicket Basilisk). Appeal is nearly a synonym of lure, and authority sounds like it could have easily been a black spell that grants deathtouch to a creature.

You might want to consider Grapple with the past as it could help you dig for your colorless sources.