MTG Salvation

My stab at the design:

Misery Loves Company

All lands are swamps in addition to their other types.

Whenever a player taps a swamp for mana, if that mana isn't black, they lose 1 life.


Sort of a Contaminated Ground / Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth hybrid

Beerblebrox's Decklists are the ones from the Duels of the planeswalkers 2013 expansion content. These are not the intro pack names.

Quote from Ravarshi

The mentioned KArn, being the heart of mirrodin and then they mentioned the word Dewstroyer, is it possibly/likely that this would be a card name?

Likely not colorless, but it's possible.

Discuss?

I would love for a Karn, the DewStroyer.

Imagine, Karn standing over a glimmervoid filled with crumpled empty mountain dew bottles. Simply beautiful.

But in all seriousness, I do expect Karn to appear beside Milara in an attempt to save the remaining uninfected mirrians.

When I think of totems, I think of things stacked up on top of other things, so I'd like to imagine totem armor as a keep-building-on-me type of mechanic. Perhaps:

1) Making the enchanted permanent better for each/ each other aura attached to it.
2) Making other auras cheaper to cast on the enchanted creature.
3) perhaps these are auras that pull copies of themselves from your deck when you cast them, ala Avarax.

Quote from cheethorne

Alabaster Bloom :1mana::sym2w::sym2w::sym2w:
Sorcery
Gain 2 life for each spent to cast Alabaster Bloom.
If only white mana was spent to cast Alabaster Bloom, put a 3/3 white Angel creature token with flying onto the battlefield.

That is a very strange spell. You could pay 7 green, red, blue, or black mana to cast a spell that doesn't actually do anything because no white mana was spent on it, I don't think they've ever had a spell that could actually do nothing.

I guess it could be "Gain 4 life, then gain 1 life for each spent to cast Alabaster Bloom", but the main idea was that it was a card that encouraged specific colored mana in order to get powerful. I was thinking about the command cycle, especially cryptic, in that the cost is very restrictive. The second card is (arguably) better when cast for rather than :2mana::symb: or :symb::symb:, encouraging the use of colorless sources or perhaps some kind of color -> colorless filtering, while still allowing the card to retain usefulness in a limited setting where those mana sources would be more scarce.

I'd bet pretty much anything that the surrakar creature type will be linked to the Eldrazi. There's really not much of any other reason for them to create a new non-tribal creature type that isn't of epic magnitude, like llamasu, Avatar, Bringer, or other weird types.

I'd probably say it's a safe bet that Surrakar is also likely the brood Lineage. They seem like nasty, fanged minions of some malevolent, tentacled superbeings if you ask me.

I think there's a ton of design space for monocolored hybrids, especially in cards that either want to be more colored or more colorless:

Alabaster Bloom :1mana::sym2w::sym2w::sym2w:
Sorcery
Gain 2 life for each spent to cast Alabaster Bloom.
If only white mana was spent to cast Alabaster Bloom, put a 3/3 white Angel creature token with flying onto the battlefield.

Much like Waoldwake's multikicker, this spell allows the caster to scale the effect to whatever mana they have available.
Note that this could be :3mana::symw::symw:, :symw::symw::symw::symw:, or :symw::symw::symw::symw::symw::symw::symw: to cast, etc. Whichever you choose, each yielding different results.

or in contrast...

Twisted Broodling :sym2b::sym2b:
Creature - Surakar
Twisted Broodling enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each colorless mana spent to cast it.
When ~ is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, target opponent sacrifices a creature.
0/0

In a dedicated black deck, it's basically a sorcery speed edict effect, but has the option to scale up to a 2/2 or 4/4 if you are utilizing colorless mana sources.

I think that a colorless theme is deeper design space than it first appears. Like others have said, it could be used as a niche for certain homeless mechanics (read: they aren't rooted in a main color) or as a sort of 6th color.

This also enables more use of the hybrid symbols.

Cards like:

Draw Spell
Sorcery
Draw a card.

or

Eldrazi Berserker :sym2r::sym2r::sym2r:
Creature - Eldrazi Something
~ is colorless, Double Strike
When you cast ~, if you paid 6 mana to cast it, ~ enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it.
2/1

or

Nasty Eldrazi :sym2b::sym2b:
Creature - Eldrazi Something
~ is colorless, Intimidate
Whenever you cast a spell, if no colored mana was used to cast it, ~ gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
2/1

I second the colorless hybrid Idea. It'd be great to see somefunkier mana costs using these. (:sym2w::sym2w::symw:, abilities with as an activation cost, spells that care about how much mana you paid, etc)

I'm hoping for this new multi-kicker mechanic to be more than just X spells in disguise. Things that count how many times they've been kicked. Like:

Zendikrater Hellion 1R
Creature - Hellion
Multikicker - R
~ enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each time it was kicked. If it was kicked three or more times, ~ does 3 damage to each creature and player.
1/1

or

Dishevel B
Sorcery
Multikicker - B
Target player discards a card for each time ~ was kicked. If ~ was kicked three or more times, target player discard their hand instead.

or

Farther Farseek G
Sorcery
Multikicker 1G
Search your library for a forest and put it onto the battlefield tapped. For each time ~ was kicked, search your library for a basic land and put it onto the battlefield tapped.

AMAZING DRAW SPELL U
Sorcery
Multikicker - U
Draw a Card. For each time ~ was kicked, draw a card and then discard a card. If ~ was kicked three or more times, draw a card for each time it was kicked instead.

Zendikar Prison 1W
Enchantment
Multikicker - W
~ enters the battlefield with a charge counter on it for each time it was kicked.
Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 1 for each charge counter on ~ for each creature ho or she controls that's attacking you.

What about something more open-ended:

Lockdown Walker 2:symu::symu:
+1: Return target card with the word counter in its name in your graveyard to your hand.
+1: Put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.
-5: For the rest of the game, opponents can't cast more than one spell per turn.
{2}

or maybe something that looks for specific mechanics ranther than cards:

Birdman 1:symw::symw:
+1: Creature cards with flying you cast cost 2 less to cast until end of turn.
-1: Target creature with flying has double strike until end of turn.
-2: Search your library for an Aura card with enchant creature and the word flying, and put it onto the battlefield attached to target creature you control.
{2}

Is there currently a way to search for cards in your library that contain a specific word, like an aura that grants flying? If so, the Lockdown Walker could return cards with the word counter in their text instead of cards named "counter", making it substantially more powerful (and justifying a higher CMC or loyalty cost.)

Quote from Sacramento Tzar

adme3tris: I like most of what you speculated except for the white and the black allies. It seems to me that the granting +1/+1 would make combat math more complicated than needed and would be duplicating what the +1/+1 counter theme is already doing for allies. As far as the black ally is concerned, I really don't see bouncing your own creatures as a black ability. Blue yes, white maybe and even red perhaps but not black.

The black ally actually brings it back from the graveyard, not from play. It's a raise dead for allies. Also, I could see the white one's +1/+1 effect being confusing with all those counters. I thought of it more like Kazuul Warlord, in that it beefs up all of your allies, but it's only temporary and rewards you for playing more than one in a turn.

Conventional allies I'd like to see:

Productive Ally 2G
Whenever ~ or another Ally enters the battlefield under your control, add 1 to your mana pool.
1/1

Twiddle Ally U
Whenever ~ or another ally enters the battlefield under your control, you may tap or untap target creature.
1/1

Blessed Ally 3W
Whenever ~ or another Ally enters the battlefield under your control, ally creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
2/3

Reckless Ally 3R
Whenever ~ or another Ally enters the battlefield under your control, draw a card and then discard a card at random.
2/2

Grim Ally 1B
Whenever ~ or another Ally enters the battlefield under your control, you may return an Ally card with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of Allies you control from your graveyard to your hand.
1/1

----------

As for less conventional ally cards:

Friendship Badge 1
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 and has, "T: return this creature to it's owners hand."
Whenever an Ally Creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may attach ~ to it.
Equip - 2

Allies Guildhouse
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
,T: Exile target Ally you control that entered the battlefield this turn, then return it to the battlefield under its owner's control.

Quote from welly321

What i was saying is that if you flip two of them, they both die due to legend rule...leaving your opponent to capitilize on your warp.

Sure, they die due to the legend rule, but the opponent also dies at the same time due to the damage triggers. Usually.

Quote from KitsuneWarlock

I updated the "Death of Magic Forever" memorial. If you see my in a shop with it, feel free to tag it. Obviously no one will be playing magic anymore, so I want as many memories from other players as I can get so I can look back and remember this now dead forever game.

Beautiful. I'd love to see a higher-res version so I could read the comments by each year.