I like it. With any one-mana removal, it takes some time to tell where it lies. I only play type 2 and EDH, so my thoughts are limited to those formats.
T2:
Jund will likely search bitty blast or pulse, then laugh at you. Still hurts thrinax. 6/10
Eldrazi green might search vines if they have a fattie, or the monument if they're missing it. They have no biggies worth hitting, but it can hit their tempo. 7/10
Vamps will search up a fetchland to keep nocturnus on, or a tendrils. That's fine if it takes out a threat like theirs. 8/10
RDW will pick up selected removal, but their creatures are pretty important. 8/10
White weenie will pick up honor or brave elements, or ajani or elspeth. That will hurt. 3/10
Grixis control runs sphinx, so this is dead. 0/10
Looking at it, it's good for the meta since it's halfway decent against jund and pwns the vamps. Probably a sideboard card, but a nice one.
I'm tempted to say that not enchanting a land breaks the flavor of the block, but if after reading my post and cards, you still see no point to it, I'll definitely take that into consideration. I'm not willing to part with the idea just yet, but I'm not going to ignore you either. Thanks for the feedback.
"Unplayable" is relative to other cards. Dark Depths is going to be the poster child for this example. If R-E posted Depths before its printing, I imagine you'd have mocked it. If he posted it after ZEN, would you have screamed broken? That's why your call for "objective standards" is kind of silly.
I do think that a graveyard-hitting hurt-all trigger is flavorful enough to warrant a keyword given sufficient support and flavor within a block. landfall wouldn't be deserving in a few small contexts, but with Zendikar, it was supported enough to be important.
So I was thinking about a set involving spells leaving a residual effect. It's borrowed a little inspiration from Zendikar block, so you'll see some connection with lands and some quest-effects. I'm focusing on a rare cycle central to the small storyline in the back of my head. According to the storyline, there are mages who can make mana bonds more powerful, but which demand loyalty to their color. I had a few goals with the design:
1st: take a note from wizards about rewarding instead of punishing. Players like to be rewarded for good things rather than punished for bad. Therefore, my cards have to push players toward mono-color while not necessarily punishing a multi-colored approach.
2nd: make it harder to create the cards in multiples and prevent brokenness. One major reason why the power level of some cards gets held back is that they might coexist with one-another. A typical fix for some overpoweredness has been to make cards legendary a la isamaru, hound of konda. However, while I want to make it harder to break such cards, I don't mind if it gets a little broken from time to time.
3rd: The cards should play a dual-role. A lot of times, certain designs don't make it to play because they are too specific as offensive or defensive positions. While this definition is good to have sometimes (such as ball lightning on one extreme and wall of denial on another), players love flexibility. They're also more likely to enjoy a card if it does something for them more often. Thus, each card has a "hurt my enemy" and a "help me" clause.
Thus, I present the following cycle:
Imprint of Reason - 1UU
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant island
Whenever you cast a blue spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Reason.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Reason: Return target creature to its owner’s hand, then draw a card.
Imprint of Bounty - 1GG
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant forest
Whenever you cast a green spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Bounty.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Bounty: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool, then tap target creature.
Imprint of Fury - 1RR
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant mountain
Whenever you cast a red spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Fury.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Fury: Imprint of Fury deals one damage to target creature or player, then Imprint of Fury deals one damage to target creature or player.
Imprint of Wisdom - 1WW
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant plains
Whenever you cast a white spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Wisdom.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Wisdom: put a 1/1 white soldier creature token onto the battlefield, then gain two life.
Imprint of Malice - 1BB
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant swamp
Whenever you cast a black spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Malice.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Malice: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature, then search your library for a black card, reveal it, then shuffle your library and put that card on top.
Pre-empting a few questions: Why does it enchant lands?
1) Because I want it to.
2) Because by enchanting basic types, it becomes harder to exploit in the current standard.
3) Emblem of the warmind gives precedent to this type of effect
4) It fits flavor
5) it makes these a little easier to kill. kill them or the land, which keeps them from getting out of control.
The red enchantment seems less creative
1) i'll admit, I got a little lazy on it. But let's face it, red loves destruction
2) Red loves forking and pinging. It's furious. Good in burn, good in red control decks. Good in aggro decks to help clear the field.
X is broken.
I'm eager to hear why. Please offer a replacement in-theme. For instance, if you think that the black tutor effect is broken, recognize that falls under the "help you" section. Give an atlernative that helps you within black.
Scourge could reflect a broad pool of something general, as long as it felt scourge-like. For instance, scourge could have any sort of infest effect.
Scourge - all creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn.
Scourge - all creatures get -2/-2 until end of turn.
Scourge - all creatures get -4/-4 until end of turn.
Alternately, scourge could be some sort of graveyard-retribution effect.
Scourge - when CARDNAME is put into a graveyard from play, each player discards three cards.
Scourge - when CARDNAME is put into a graveyard from play, each player loses three life.
Scourge - when CARDNAME is put into a graveyard from play, each creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
The point is to create a mechanical unity which allows players to feel more connected to a mechanic. It also makes effects easier to search for on gatherer.
I prefer orcish miner 2 even if it isn't as good - it has more flavor, isn't broken for exploitation, but is still a good pick in a limited environment (assuming your limited would be anything like other limited environments other than Alara block)
As for bonk, I look forward to seeing this in my all-0 CMC artifact deck. It will lose about 999,999 times out of a million, but that one-in-a-million game, I will laugh so hard when I say "Turn 1, ornithopter ornithopter ornithopter ornithopter, bonk, bonk, bonk, go. Turn 2 Bonk, swing 25. I win."
I like the first and the last. A search top seven is a nice trend that keeps things balanced while allowing for nuts plays. Is probably broken in EDH, but then again, what isn't?
As for quest for loads of mana, this would be an auto-include in TEPS and storm decks, but it's a pretty crappy total topdeck like most quests, which I think helps to keep it fair. You may consider SOME drawback to it, but I can't for the life of me think one.
I read on another site at some point (I think it was the magic lampoon) a fake article talking about Dorothy dropping an 8/8 house on a witch. This got me thinking about "dropping a house" on enemy creatures. I have the card templated to work within flavor, but the text is too long and clunky. I was wondering if somebody could help clean it up.
Crush Wall - 1UU
Creature - Wall (0/5)
CARDNAME enters the battlefield with a levitation counter on it.
CARDNAME has flying as long as it has a levitation counter on it.
1R, T, Remove a levitation counter from CARDNAME: CARDNAME deals X damage to target attacking creature without flying, where X is CARDNAME's toughness.
1U: If CARDNAME has no levitation counters on it, put a levitation counter on CARDNAME.
The flavor, of course, should be of some sort of wall that can splat attackers.
Bazaar Trader 1R
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a 1/1 red Goblin token into play.
First Strike, Vigilance, Lifelink, Haste, Shroud T: Draw two cards, discard three cards. R, T: Target opponent gains control of target creature you control. You gain control of target creature.
3/4
Looks like a decent card, not?
Limited fodder. Lern 2 maek cards, kthx?
Personally, I think they might underpower him in another way. Goblins are supposed to be humorous, right? Has anybody given any thought to the fact that he's likely dealing in any number EXCEPT 3?
I think that we can rule out a token generation effect when he CIP simply on the grounds of established power level. Goblin assault's priced at 3, and with a goblin-heavy drawback. Siege-gang's 5 mana and a 2/2. This means the trader is looking at a couple of possibilities:
Haste - he's red, if he has an ability haste would make it better and warrant a rare rating, since he'll live to use the ability.
A meta-game - what I mean by this is any kind of small game within magic, whether it's draw and discard three, or exchanging control, or a warp world effect. Odds are, since he's a trader, he'll either trade with you (draw and discard) or trade with an opponent (guilded drake effect, MAYBE).
For a 1/1 at red to gain control of something in a goblin-supported tribe, he'll likely interact with small guys. Perhaps he sacrifices two creatures to threaten for a turn? I can see somebody building around it while still requiring a heavy trade-off. Certainly fits in red's share of the color pie as well.
My 100 percent random guess then, is:
Bazaar Trader - 1R
Sacrifice two creatures: Gain control of target creature until end of turn. It gains haste until end of turn.
1/1
And, if wizards is following in power creep, he might be a goblin-making mana sink, such as,
1R, discard a card: put two 1/1 red goblin warrior creature tokens onto the battlefield.
Relic of progenitus and pithing needle both stop it dead in its tracks. The unearth deck's quickest route to victory is through a combination of fatestitcher and extractor demon. Pithing the unearth ability makes them slow down long enough for you to draw relic/other goodies.
Sorry to post and run - I really need to get to bed, but since the topic hadn't been started, I felt that I should get the ball rolling.
In an article on wizards today (12/4/09), I read that the fact that Lorthos, the Tidemaker was an octopus and not a leviathan forced a change on a card in Worldwake. I personally have no idea of any conceivable change. Still, "forcing a change" sounds like something rules-based beyond something being "broken" unless some merfolk has U: Search your library for an octopus and put it onto the battlefield, etc.
Anyways, again, I'm posting and running, but I thought I'd lay the groundwork for discussion here. Thoughts?
Your harrow would cause valakut to trigger twice - however, you would be playing a combo-oriented version of the deck, against my personal recommendation.
Magma spray depends on your meta. My FNM crowd loves bloodghast and hellspark, so i maindeck four. I'd probably have to make a much more conscious decision for states. Honestly, if not for a wierd meta like mine, I probably wouldn't. It's such a terrible late game draw, even against emeria.
As a preface to this post, I'd like to point out that the purpose of these forums is to test new ideas - often times, I'm happy to pitch a bad idea and have it shot down, but it's still important for us to remain open. By no means should this post be interpreted as "Hai guise check out this BEAST card it wins all matchups lolololol"
I've been trying to pilot wank in casual games just in case a gem sticks out. One card that I'm going to look into a little bit more is sanctum gargoyle. Now, I'm waiting on a set of Day of judgments, so I've got some slots that are stuck open right now, and I"m often wanting another card to suck away some hate or to serve as a blocker - I'm also rather happy that it can bring back an armillary sphere or an expedition map, as well as a cousin if you run them in multiples.
In my testing so far, I've been fortunate to topdeck it in the late game, where it's actually somewhat beastly. (since I have so much extra mana anyway, why not get a creature out of the deal?) - on the other hand, I recognize that it's NOT a burn or straight removal spell. Part of the question then becomes whether it's even worth consideration.
On boros: Definitely no sanctum gargoyle there - I do think, however, that even though the deck is made to recover from a day of judgment, I'd still like to force them to recover. Sunspring expedition's basically a fog against boros that comes with a trigger switch, and I really like it in the matchup, but I still like to have that access to removal. For me, that's in the form of earthquake/magma phoenix due to a lack of day of judgment. Obviously, day is the superior removal choice in most cases. However, not having a set of my own, I understand if this analysis may seem naieve, and subject myself to the judgment of those who HAVE played with a set.
T2:
Jund will likely search bitty blast or pulse, then laugh at you. Still hurts thrinax. 6/10
Eldrazi green might search vines if they have a fattie, or the monument if they're missing it. They have no biggies worth hitting, but it can hit their tempo. 7/10
Vamps will search up a fetchland to keep nocturnus on, or a tendrils. That's fine if it takes out a threat like theirs. 8/10
RDW will pick up selected removal, but their creatures are pretty important. 8/10
White weenie will pick up honor or brave elements, or ajani or elspeth. That will hurt. 3/10
Grixis control runs sphinx, so this is dead. 0/10
Looking at it, it's good for the meta since it's halfway decent against jund and pwns the vamps. Probably a sideboard card, but a nice one.
EDH:
Don't play this in EDH. You will lose. 0/10
I do think that a graveyard-hitting hurt-all trigger is flavorful enough to warrant a keyword given sufficient support and flavor within a block. landfall wouldn't be deserving in a few small contexts, but with Zendikar, it was supported enough to be important.
1st: take a note from wizards about rewarding instead of punishing. Players like to be rewarded for good things rather than punished for bad. Therefore, my cards have to push players toward mono-color while not necessarily punishing a multi-colored approach.
2nd: make it harder to create the cards in multiples and prevent brokenness. One major reason why the power level of some cards gets held back is that they might coexist with one-another. A typical fix for some overpoweredness has been to make cards legendary a la isamaru, hound of konda. However, while I want to make it harder to break such cards, I don't mind if it gets a little broken from time to time.
3rd: The cards should play a dual-role. A lot of times, certain designs don't make it to play because they are too specific as offensive or defensive positions. While this definition is good to have sometimes (such as ball lightning on one extreme and wall of denial on another), players love flexibility. They're also more likely to enjoy a card if it does something for them more often. Thus, each card has a "hurt my enemy" and a "help me" clause.
Thus, I present the following cycle:
Imprint of Reason - 1UU
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant island
Whenever you cast a blue spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Reason.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Reason: Return target creature to its owner’s hand, then draw a card.
Imprint of Bounty - 1GG
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant forest
Whenever you cast a green spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Bounty.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Bounty: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool, then tap target creature.
Imprint of Fury - 1RR
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant mountain
Whenever you cast a red spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Fury.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Fury: Imprint of Fury deals one damage to target creature or player, then Imprint of Fury deals one damage to target creature or player.
Imprint of Wisdom - 1WW
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant plains
Whenever you cast a white spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Wisdom.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Wisdom: put a 1/1 white soldier creature token onto the battlefield, then gain two life.
Imprint of Malice - 1BB
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant swamp
Whenever you cast a black spell, you may put an imprint counter on Imprint of Malice.
Remove three imprint counters from Imprint of Malice: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature, then search your library for a black card, reveal it, then shuffle your library and put that card on top.
Pre-empting a few questions:
Why does it enchant lands?
1) Because I want it to.
2) Because by enchanting basic types, it becomes harder to exploit in the current standard.
3) Emblem of the warmind gives precedent to this type of effect
4) It fits flavor
5) it makes these a little easier to kill. kill them or the land, which keeps them from getting out of control.
The red enchantment seems less creative
1) i'll admit, I got a little lazy on it. But let's face it, red loves destruction
2) Red loves forking and pinging. It's furious. Good in burn, good in red control decks. Good in aggro decks to help clear the field.
X is broken.
I'm eager to hear why. Please offer a replacement in-theme. For instance, if you think that the black tutor effect is broken, recognize that falls under the "help you" section. Give an atlernative that helps you within black.
Scourge - all creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn.
Scourge - all creatures get -2/-2 until end of turn.
Scourge - all creatures get -4/-4 until end of turn.
Alternately, scourge could be some sort of graveyard-retribution effect.
Scourge - when CARDNAME is put into a graveyard from play, each player discards three cards.
Scourge - when CARDNAME is put into a graveyard from play, each player loses three life.
Scourge - when CARDNAME is put into a graveyard from play, each creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
The point is to create a mechanical unity which allows players to feel more connected to a mechanic. It also makes effects easier to search for on gatherer.
As for bonk, I look forward to seeing this in my all-0 CMC artifact deck. It will lose about 999,999 times out of a million, but that one-in-a-million game, I will laugh so hard when I say "Turn 1, ornithopter ornithopter ornithopter ornithopter, bonk, bonk, bonk, go. Turn 2 Bonk, swing 25. I win."
As for quest for loads of mana, this would be an auto-include in TEPS and storm decks, but it's a pretty crappy total topdeck like most quests, which I think helps to keep it fair. You may consider SOME drawback to it, but I can't for the life of me think one.
I read on another site at some point (I think it was the magic lampoon) a fake article talking about Dorothy dropping an 8/8 house on a witch. This got me thinking about "dropping a house" on enemy creatures. I have the card templated to work within flavor, but the text is too long and clunky. I was wondering if somebody could help clean it up.
Crush Wall - 1UU
Creature - Wall (0/5)
CARDNAME enters the battlefield with a levitation counter on it.
CARDNAME has flying as long as it has a levitation counter on it.
1R, T, Remove a levitation counter from CARDNAME: CARDNAME deals X damage to target attacking creature without flying, where X is CARDNAME's toughness.
1U: If CARDNAME has no levitation counters on it, put a levitation counter on CARDNAME.
The flavor, of course, should be of some sort of wall that can splat attackers.
Limited fodder. Lern 2 maek cards, kthx?
Personally, I think they might underpower him in another way. Goblins are supposed to be humorous, right? Has anybody given any thought to the fact that he's likely dealing in any number EXCEPT 3?
I think that we can rule out a token generation effect when he CIP simply on the grounds of established power level. Goblin assault's priced at 3, and with a goblin-heavy drawback. Siege-gang's 5 mana and a 2/2. This means the trader is looking at a couple of possibilities:
Haste - he's red, if he has an ability haste would make it better and warrant a rare rating, since he'll live to use the ability.
A meta-game - what I mean by this is any kind of small game within magic, whether it's draw and discard three, or exchanging control, or a warp world effect. Odds are, since he's a trader, he'll either trade with you (draw and discard) or trade with an opponent (guilded drake effect, MAYBE).
For a 1/1 at red to gain control of something in a goblin-supported tribe, he'll likely interact with small guys. Perhaps he sacrifices two creatures to threaten for a turn? I can see somebody building around it while still requiring a heavy trade-off. Certainly fits in red's share of the color pie as well.
My 100 percent random guess then, is:
Bazaar Trader - 1R
Sacrifice two creatures: Gain control of target creature until end of turn. It gains haste until end of turn.
1/1
And, if wizards is following in power creep, he might be a goblin-making mana sink, such as,
1R, discard a card: put two 1/1 red goblin warrior creature tokens onto the battlefield.
In an article on wizards today (12/4/09), I read that the fact that Lorthos, the Tidemaker was an octopus and not a leviathan forced a change on a card in Worldwake. I personally have no idea of any conceivable change. Still, "forcing a change" sounds like something rules-based beyond something being "broken" unless some merfolk has U: Search your library for an octopus and put it onto the battlefield, etc.
Anyways, again, I'm posting and running, but I thought I'd lay the groundwork for discussion here. Thoughts?
Magma spray depends on your meta. My FNM crowd loves bloodghast and hellspark, so i maindeck four. I'd probably have to make a much more conscious decision for states. Honestly, if not for a wierd meta like mine, I probably wouldn't. It's such a terrible late game draw, even against emeria.
I've been trying to pilot wank in casual games just in case a gem sticks out. One card that I'm going to look into a little bit more is sanctum gargoyle. Now, I'm waiting on a set of Day of judgments, so I've got some slots that are stuck open right now, and I"m often wanting another card to suck away some hate or to serve as a blocker - I'm also rather happy that it can bring back an armillary sphere or an expedition map, as well as a cousin if you run them in multiples.
In my testing so far, I've been fortunate to topdeck it in the late game, where it's actually somewhat beastly. (since I have so much extra mana anyway, why not get a creature out of the deal?) - on the other hand, I recognize that it's NOT a burn or straight removal spell. Part of the question then becomes whether it's even worth consideration.
On boros: Definitely no sanctum gargoyle there - I do think, however, that even though the deck is made to recover from a day of judgment, I'd still like to force them to recover. Sunspring expedition's basically a fog against boros that comes with a trigger switch, and I really like it in the matchup, but I still like to have that access to removal. For me, that's in the form of earthquake/magma phoenix due to a lack of day of judgment. Obviously, day is the superior removal choice in most cases. However, not having a set of my own, I understand if this analysis may seem naieve, and subject myself to the judgment of those who HAVE played with a set.