#1, Bringing Merfolk to Ravnica: Ravnica had oceans that parts of the planespanning city had covered over, and there where large parts of the plane that we had not yet visited (and still haven't), as such it was not unreasonable to find that Merfolk lived in the depths. All and all, it was handled fairly well, and Simic needed another race now that the last of their elves was dead.
It may be personal preference, but I don't think it was handled well. A densely populated plane like Ravnica has an entire race, an entire civilization hidden just like that? And they pop up en masse all at once? I'm sorry, but my suspension of disbelief is not that stretchable.
I think they could have gotten away if they said these Merfolk are actually a result of a secret breeding program back from before the events of dissension and they decided to step out of the shadows and seize control of the guild (basically, they would be part of the guild, just that nobody knew). It would also explain the several plotholes, namely, why do the merfolk adopt a completely foreign organisation even down to its signet. The "suddenly merfolk" solution makes less sense the more you think about it.
#3: Eldrazi having left Zendikar: Where do you get this information from? As far as we know the Eldrazi are still stuck on Zendikar in corporeal form.
In a couple sources (The checking up on the planeswalker articles and the Nissa UR) it was implied that some of the titans haven't been seen in a long time, indicating that they may have left Zendikar, although I don't think it has ever been confirmed.
I felt the story was a bit forced. It's like they wanted to create some background story around the DotP15 teaser, and that didn't work out incredibly well. The beginning (with the werewolf children) was pretty good, but then it became kinda rushed and forced.
When were people asking for the return of Merfolk? It seems like they have been in Magic pretty consistently (not counting the break with Mirrodin, Kamigawa, and Ravnica of course).
uh, that long break, including the tribal block Onslaught, was the reason people asked for their return. they were also left out of core sets after 7th edition. they tried to replace them with other blue races, but failed.
They did realize that Merfolk make no flavorful sense on Mirrodin, Kamigawa, or Ravnica right? (though you have a point about the core sets)
You do realize that Merfolk were actually retconned into Ravnica right?
Also, Merfolk were also phased out during Odyssey* and Onslaught block, even though the setting was part of Dominaria, which was inhabited by merfolk.
All in all, Merfolk was largely absent during Odyssey, Onslaught, Mirrodin, Kamigawa and Ravnica. A point could be made that the merfolk were only included in Time spiral because for nostalgic reasons, so that makes 5 (and a half with TSP) years, plus total absence in coresets during that time. If that is 'consistently' then we probably have different definitions of that word.
*There was exactly one merfolk in Odyssey, which was Ambassador Laquatus. And that one was only included, because the author of the accompanying book for odyssey screwed up and described the lead aquatic character as merfolk instead of cephalid. So that was not a decision of creative.
The only thing I dislike (apart from the designer credits, but that has nothing to do with the frame itself) is that the bottom left and right is not symmetrical.
Also, what I don't understand about the holo sticker, why didn't they do it in place of the set symbol? Or have the set symbol inside the holo sticker or something? I just think it's a bit weird to have some cards with the stamp and commons/uncommons don't have them, but quite frankly I didn't notice the stamp the entire pre-release, until I got home and actually examined the frame more closely.
Personally, I think it severely needs a drawback. Only white and green can deal with the card itself and blue has a lot of fliers (also bounce and counters). Black and red can do nothing against enchantments, and even though theoretically red has access to burn and black some fliers and lifedrain, I don't think it's fair at 6 mana.
Maybe you can add an attax(tm) mechanic to the ability, like the following: "Creatures without flying or islandwalk have "This creature can't attack unless you pay [mana]." Taxing is more white's part of the pie, but I think the flavour justifies it.
I was just playing devil's advocate. I don't believe it is either Alara or any plane we will ever visit. And personally I prefer the idea that the different tribes were pulled from different planes, instead of all of them from one plane.
Mental Omnipotence7UUU
Instant (Mythic Rare)
Target player exchanges his or her hand with their library, then shuffles their library. They have no maximum hand size until the end of their next turn. "The mind holds unfathomable possibilities and can be the ultimate weapon, provided you know how to correctly wield it." - Jace Beleren
This card reads "Target player with no cards in his or her hand loses the game." Punishing a player like that for having no cards in their hands is a bit too harsh.
Otherwise, I really love the card. It definately captures the flavour of overloading someone's mind better than Forced Fruition in my opinion so good job on that.
I'd just make a few changes:
1st) It should be a sorcery. There's not much to gain from this being an instant.
2nd) Maybe instead of swapping hand cards with library, have the player shuffle their hand into the libary and then make them draw all cards from their library except for a fixed number (3?).
Maybe even make it target opponents only, because why would you ever target your opponent, if you have the choice of drawing 90% of your deck to end the game.
As for your off-color hosers, be careful they are not too punishing. Of the five presented I like the green one the best, because its situationality allows your opponent to still play around it if he is clever. The other cards simply say "Don't play any spells, unless it's a removal of some kind." Especially the black and red one essentially put your opponent on a clock. The white one is capapable of creating steady card advantage, especially if you have an anthem out.
Some ideas for effects I can think of that might work, just from the top of my head:
- Gain life (simple but probably not too exciting)
- Untap non-land permanents (kinda like the blue one, except that I think tapping permanents may be too strong and untapping lands could also be problematic, but that could be determined through testing.)
- Add mana to mana pool
- Create a token with haste that disappears at the beginning of its owner's end step
But then everyone would be up in arms about why they wasted all this design space on not-slivers when they could have just made slivers.
Which is entirely the point. Why didn't they just make slivers?
They did, they wanted slivers and they wanted them to look like that. Let Magic do what Magic wants to do. They have compromised with giving the original design a role even amongst Shandalaran slivers, so there really is no need for bashing.
No and no.
No, they did not make slivers. They just created a new tribe and called them slivers.
And no, WotC is a company. WotC wants to make money. WotC would want to get feedback on their product to see what people like and don't like. WotC is not making the game for themselves, they are making the game for the players.
As for your compromise: It reads more along the lines of:
"Hey, can I crap on your sandwich?"
"No of course not, what the hell?"
"Ok, here's a compromise. I'll crap on half of your sandwich and eat the other half. How does that sound?"
Volcanic Outrage1R
Enchantment (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Volcanic Outrage deals 1 damage to each opponent. Only those who understand the mountains know how powerful they are.
An argument could be made that this card wants to be black, because, as you said, the longterm gameplan isn't really on red's radar, but depending on the environment, it could make even more sense in red. (For instance if G/R bloodthirst is around.) Even if not, I suppose it's a fine card on its own.
Necrophage1B
Creature - Insect Zombie (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return Necrophage from your graveyard to your hand.
A deck can have any number of cards named Necrophage. "And you thought cockroaches were hard to kill."
1/1
As others have pointed out this card is probably way too powerful and/or too easily abusable. And even if not, this is not a card for common I'd say. Getting cards back from your graveyard for free and with no restriction at all? That is not common at all. I am not sure which direction you want to go. On the one hand you want it to enable combos, on the other hand you want people to make aggressive decks with it. I'm not sure how to 'fix' this, but I'd probably focus for one role.
If you want to go the combo role, you might give it the ability:
"If ~ is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may pay B. If you do, return it to your hand."
This even enables combos that require you to discard cards from your hand and selfmilling. Not sure how useful that is.
If you, however want it to be a more aggressive card that's supposed to swarm your opponents with waves after waves of little critters, I'd probably think about a card like this:
Swarm Engine 3BB
Enchantment (R)
~ enters the battlefield with a swarm counter on it.
When ~ enters the battlefield or at the beginning of your upkeep, put X 1/1 black Insect creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the number of swarm counters on ~.
Whenever an Insect creature you control dies, put a swarm counter on ~.
Please note that this card is not a common and as such not what you are looking for, but then again your card, as it is, shouldn't be a common.
Another thing I'd remove is the "no card limit" clause, because it serves no real function on the card. A better way would be to make it relevant, as they did it with Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle.
Dance of the Deathmage is clever. I like that. One might question the green part of the card, because it plays a bit like a spot removal with a creature sacrifice as an additional cost most of the time, but it's nothing major.
Immortal Combat, while technically a green/white card plays more like a red card. Essentially it simply says "Target creature you control deals damage to another target creature equal to its power." That is a very red effect.
Misdirected Rage, see Blood Feud. Not sure why you made yours blue, but it makes some sense flavourwise, so why not?
As for Trial by Combat, I'm not sure if that card isn't too powerful, or to be more precise: fun at all. The card simply reads "If you control a creature that can survive any creature an opponent controls, they have to get rid of all creatures they control, be they indestructibe or regenerating." Barring combat tricks you always clear your enemy's board if they play some 1/1 creatures or similarly small creatures. Another thing is that the card doesn't have quite the drama gameplay wise as it appears at first glance. Barring combat tricks, there is no real suspense who's going to win, so you'll never cast it if you'd only wipe your own board. A more interesting approach would be if the stakes were lowered and if there was a way for both players to influence the outcome after it has been announced. Suspend comes to mind, for instance.
Question is, would you even want to get rid of the Eldrazi altogether? As long as you can park them off somewhere on a mana rich, sparsely populated world, they're invaluable tools in dealing with threats you can't deal with otherwise. I mean, the Eldrazi seem to be made to destroy Phyrexia. Just place a mana beacon on New Phyrexia, wait some time, problem solved. Erasing the phyrexian threat has never been easier.
It may be personal preference, but I don't think it was handled well. A densely populated plane like Ravnica has an entire race, an entire civilization hidden just like that? And they pop up en masse all at once? I'm sorry, but my suspension of disbelief is not that stretchable.
I think they could have gotten away if they said these Merfolk are actually a result of a secret breeding program back from before the events of dissension and they decided to step out of the shadows and seize control of the guild (basically, they would be part of the guild, just that nobody knew). It would also explain the several plotholes, namely, why do the merfolk adopt a completely foreign organisation even down to its signet. The "suddenly merfolk" solution makes less sense the more you think about it.
If the webcomic on wizard's own site is not an official source then I do not know what is.
In a couple sources (The checking up on the planeswalker articles and the Nissa UR) it was implied that some of the titans haven't been seen in a long time, indicating that they may have left Zendikar, although I don't think it has ever been confirmed.
You do realize that Merfolk were actually retconned into Ravnica right?
Also, Merfolk were also phased out during Odyssey* and Onslaught block, even though the setting was part of Dominaria, which was inhabited by merfolk.
All in all, Merfolk was largely absent during Odyssey, Onslaught, Mirrodin, Kamigawa and Ravnica. A point could be made that the merfolk were only included in Time spiral because for nostalgic reasons, so that makes 5 (and a half with TSP) years, plus total absence in coresets during that time. If that is 'consistently' then we probably have different definitions of that word.
*There was exactly one merfolk in Odyssey, which was Ambassador Laquatus. And that one was only included, because the author of the accompanying book for odyssey screwed up and described the lead aquatic character as merfolk instead of cephalid. So that was not a decision of creative.
Also, what I don't understand about the holo sticker, why didn't they do it in place of the set symbol? Or have the set symbol inside the holo sticker or something? I just think it's a bit weird to have some cards with the stamp and commons/uncommons don't have them, but quite frankly I didn't notice the stamp the entire pre-release, until I got home and actually examined the frame more closely.
Maybe you can add an attax(tm) mechanic to the ability, like the following: "Creatures without flying or islandwalk have "This creature can't attack unless you pay [mana]." Taxing is more white's part of the pie, but I think the flavour justifies it.
This card reads "Target player with no cards in his or her hand loses the game." Punishing a player like that for having no cards in their hands is a bit too harsh.
Otherwise, I really love the card. It definately captures the flavour of overloading someone's mind better than Forced Fruition in my opinion so good job on that.
I'd just make a few changes:
1st) It should be a sorcery. There's not much to gain from this being an instant.
2nd) Maybe instead of swapping hand cards with library, have the player shuffle their hand into the libary and then make them draw all cards from their library except for a fixed number (3?).
Maybe even make it target opponents only, because why would you ever target your opponent, if you have the choice of drawing 90% of your deck to end the game.
As for your off-color hosers, be careful they are not too punishing. Of the five presented I like the green one the best, because its situationality allows your opponent to still play around it if he is clever. The other cards simply say "Don't play any spells, unless it's a removal of some kind." Especially the black and red one essentially put your opponent on a clock. The white one is capapable of creating steady card advantage, especially if you have an anthem out.
Some ideas for effects I can think of that might work, just from the top of my head:
- Gain life (simple but probably not too exciting)
- Untap non-land permanents (kinda like the blue one, except that I think tapping permanents may be too strong and untapping lands could also be problematic, but that could be determined through testing.)
- Add mana to mana pool
- Create a token with haste that disappears at the beginning of its owner's end step
No and no.
No, they did not make slivers. They just created a new tribe and called them slivers.
And no, WotC is a company. WotC wants to make money. WotC would want to get feedback on their product to see what people like and don't like. WotC is not making the game for themselves, they are making the game for the players.
As for your compromise: It reads more along the lines of:
"Hey, can I crap on your sandwich?"
"No of course not, what the hell?"
"Ok, here's a compromise. I'll crap on half of your sandwich and eat the other half. How does that sound?"
Which is entirely the point. Why didn't they just make slivers?
An argument could be made that this card wants to be black, because, as you said, the longterm gameplan isn't really on red's radar, but depending on the environment, it could make even more sense in red. (For instance if G/R bloodthirst is around.) Even if not, I suppose it's a fine card on its own.
As others have pointed out this card is probably way too powerful and/or too easily abusable. And even if not, this is not a card for common I'd say. Getting cards back from your graveyard for free and with no restriction at all? That is not common at all. I am not sure which direction you want to go. On the one hand you want it to enable combos, on the other hand you want people to make aggressive decks with it. I'm not sure how to 'fix' this, but I'd probably focus for one role.
If you want to go the combo role, you might give it the ability:
This even enables combos that require you to discard cards from your hand and selfmilling. Not sure how useful that is.
If you, however want it to be a more aggressive card that's supposed to swarm your opponents with waves after waves of little critters, I'd probably think about a card like this:
Enchantment (R)
~ enters the battlefield with a swarm counter on it.
When ~ enters the battlefield or at the beginning of your upkeep, put X 1/1 black Insect creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the number of swarm counters on ~.
Whenever an Insect creature you control dies, put a swarm counter on ~.
Please note that this card is not a common and as such not what you are looking for, but then again your card, as it is, shouldn't be a common.
Another thing I'd remove is the "no card limit" clause, because it serves no real function on the card. A better way would be to make it relevant, as they did it with Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle.
Just some food for thought.
Immortal Combat, while technically a green/white card plays more like a red card. Essentially it simply says "Target creature you control deals damage to another target creature equal to its power." That is a very red effect.
Misdirected Rage, see Blood Feud. Not sure why you made yours blue, but it makes some sense flavourwise, so why not?
As for Trial by Combat, I'm not sure if that card isn't too powerful, or to be more precise: fun at all. The card simply reads "If you control a creature that can survive any creature an opponent controls, they have to get rid of all creatures they control, be they indestructibe or regenerating." Barring combat tricks you always clear your enemy's board if they play some 1/1 creatures or similarly small creatures. Another thing is that the card doesn't have quite the drama gameplay wise as it appears at first glance. Barring combat tricks, there is no real suspense who's going to win, so you'll never cast it if you'd only wipe your own board. A more interesting approach would be if the stakes were lowered and if there was a way for both players to influence the outcome after it has been announced. Suspend comes to mind, for instance.