Golden. I ended up switching off of Blue Control to Blue/Black Mill because most of the counters suck lately. Is it too much to ask for Mana Leak? Meanwhile, green has their [BEEP] disenchant for ONE MANA and GAIN FOUR LIFE edit: No, no, I was wrong, and one of my friends is a dirty [BEEP]ing cheater. I'm taking my crotch-kicking boots with me to the draft next week, while R&D just seems to wipe their [BEEP] with blue... Sigh. Can't I at least get something DECENT in blue, like maybe substitute Mind Control for [BEEP] [BEEP] [BEEP] TREACHERY?! IT CAN BE A [BEEP]ING MYTHIC IF NECESSARY!
The video is funny, though, fortunately, so I don't wind up going into a rage of bleeps and derailing the thread with my Lewis Black impersonations. The funniest bit, to me, is the line where Hitler remarks that his DCI rating is lower than Stalin's. When I saw the title, I had no idea what to expect out of this. I should have expected this, though, as this seems to be the thing people are complaining of most. (Even me. I play blue pretty extensively, and honestly, I feel like Wizards has left me behind.)
Same with Bad Cards. Bad cards used mean a lot of things, from Ridiculously narrow hosers to cards that usually did nothing to Jokecards. These days, the only bad cards you really see are overcosted ones, which are a lot more boring mechanically. The first time I read Mudhole, I laughed out loud, so at least I got some pleasure out of it. Who's going to laugh for Mindless Null or Viashino Skeleton? Answer: Nobody. There is no joy to be derived from either of those cards.
You cite Steamflogger as a joke card, but I wouldn't call it that, being a futureshift. Maybe it'll STILL be a joke card (and admittedly, some of it is pretty silly), but... (edit: But I have to agree with you, Thraximundar is pretty badass in terms of recent blocks.)
I think the artwork is very middle-of-the-road. I never really cared for it but it wasn't complete suck. The thing that bugs me is all the green. It's not even a decent green to me!
Let me fix that typo for you... Did you have something like this in mind?
ShockwaveRRR
Sorcery (U)
Shockwave deals 3 damage to target player and 1 damage to each creature that player controls.
Ripple 2 (When you cast this spell, you may reveal the top two cards of your library. You may cast any revealed cards with the same name as this spell without paying their mana costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library.)
No, clearly creatures control other creatures in this set.
I have no idea how I missed that, but that's almost exactly what I meant. I probably shouldn't be making and/or posting these in the middle of the night. Yet, that's swtill when I do 99% of my work. When will I ever learn...
Actually, I like that one better than my original one, which did 3 damage to one creature, then 1 damage to each creature controlled by the same player (including the first creature).
It works fine. The creature is created during the resolution of the spell, when X is still kept track of. Then the token is just a 2/1 or 4/1 or whatever, it doesn't need to "remember" anything once it's actually created.
Even if not, it could be reworded to "two 0/1 red Elemental creature tokens [...]; put X +1/+0 counters on each of these creatures." Not that I'm suggesting this should be done, with the other being fully functional and understandable.
Triumphant Awakening would still, as I understand it, leave the enchantments attached to the other permanents, as auras are attached at casting. Thus, they would probably not act correctly. A better idea would be, to me, to have it say that it destroys your enchantments or forces them to sacrifice them, then generates a number of the prescribed Angels equal to the number of destroyed/sac'd enchantments. edit: Oh, disregard this bit.
I had a few cards specifically for running with planeswalkers and an altered black Planar Cleansing (Endgame, which forced players to sac all their non-land stuff), but I won't get into those.
So instead, here's a few cards I was working on that don't really fit much into the more modern massively themed blocks. Some of them do have a little bit of theme action going on, but not as much as most blocks. (These are designs from set/s that I probably won't ever get to posting here or even get near completing. For now they have no flavor text.)
Thus, in no real order...
ShockwaveRRR
Sorcery (U)
~ deals 3 damage to target creature, then deals 1 damage to each creature the chosen creature controls.
Ripple 2
Static Elemental2RR
Creature -- Elemental (U)
You can't cast ~ unless you've dealt damage to an opponent this turn.
Trample; haste
At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice ~.
8/1
Hatred Elemental3BR
Creature -- Elemental (R)
You can't cast ~ unless you've dealt damage to an opponent this turn.
6/6
Bloodied Didact2BB
Creature - Demon Advisor (R) 2B, T, skip your next draw step: Search your library for one black card or one land card of your choice and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library afterward. Use this ability only during your upkeep.
1/3
Two for One4UU
Sorcery (U)
Draw two cards. Draw two cards at the beginning of target player’s next turn.
Violation of LogicUB
Instant (U)
Counter target spell.
Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
I like where this is going, no matter what. Just from what I've seen below, this set does feel a lot like some of the older stuff. (What I've posted probably feels a little too new-school, some of it...)
Admittedly, I do like the idea set behind Primal Link, but its design of "play it face down as a land" is confusing in formats where face-downs are typically 2/2s. I thought of it as being similar to Hideaway, where you exile a spell face-down under a land token (this replaces your lans play for the turn, of course), and whatever happens to the token would happen to the spell. If you bounce the token, the spell is bounced. If you kill the land, the spell goes to the graveyard. There is, of course, a lot of trouble with this not being easy to implement, either (I'm not sure how to properly word the replacement, as nothing seems quite right. In a block/standard setting incorporating this, Primal Link would work just fine.
However, as long as we're affixing new mechanics to the game, I'm sure you can get away with inserting "unless another card's effect states otherwise" onto the end of the rules in 702.2a... reasonably unscathed. Reasonably. (Hey, this being MTG, you can't expect to please everyone...) If it's such a problem, overall, it can't be that difficult to produce a token with the following data:
(no name)
Land T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
to be placed on top of face-down cards made by Primal Link. Obviously, with the six types of tokens already in your set, this might not be a good idea. That said, I do like the idea of the ability (come on, we all know how much getting mana screwed sucks. Why not have a bunch of things that can give you a little boost while you need it? All we need to worry about is color from there...), especially since we're talking RGW here.
For naming the cards, if you still need things to fill in for anything in brackets... I can't help much, but I'd say that, for Jarad, since he's the leader of the new version of Golgari... I was thinking his title could be "The Progenitor." Well, I think it sounds good, at least, and it's reasonably fitting, right?
Overall, I like the firection this is going in and would love to have a chance to give this a test drive in the future, but I'm also horrifically biased toward Ravnica in terms of blocks. So, well...
Meanwhile, green has their [BEEP] disenchant for ONE MANA and GAIN FOUR LIFEedit: No, no, I was wrong, and one of my friends is a dirty [BEEP]ing cheater. I'm taking my crotch-kicking boots with me to the draft next week, while R&D just seems to wipe their [BEEP] with blue... Sigh. Can't I at least get something DECENT in blue, like maybe substitute Mind Control for [BEEP] [BEEP] [BEEP] TREACHERY?! IT CAN BE A [BEEP]ING MYTHIC IF NECESSARY!The video is funny, though, fortunately, so I don't wind up going into a rage of bleeps and derailing the thread with my Lewis Black impersonations. The funniest bit, to me, is the line where Hitler remarks that his DCI rating is lower than Stalin's. When I saw the title, I had no idea what to expect out of this. I should have expected this, though, as this seems to be the thing people are complaining of most. (Even me. I play blue pretty extensively, and honestly, I feel like Wizards has left me behind.)
You cite Steamflogger as a joke card, but I wouldn't call it that, being a futureshift. Maybe it'll STILL be a joke card (and admittedly, some of it is pretty silly), but... (edit: But I have to agree with you, Thraximundar is pretty badass in terms of recent blocks.)
I think the artwork is very middle-of-the-road. I never really cared for it but it wasn't complete suck. The thing that bugs me is all the green. It's not even a decent green to me!
No, clearly creatures control other creatures in this set.
I have no idea how I missed that, but that's almost exactly what I meant. I probably shouldn't be making and/or posting these in the middle of the night. Yet, that's swtill when I do 99% of my work. When will I ever learn...
Actually, I like that one better than my original one, which did 3 damage to one creature, then 1 damage to each creature controlled by the same player (including the first creature).
Even if not, it could be reworded to "two 0/1 red Elemental creature tokens [...]; put X +1/+0 counters on each of these creatures." Not that I'm suggesting this should be done, with the other being fully functional and understandable.
Triumphant Awakening would still, as I understand it, leave the enchantments attached to the other permanents, as auras are attached at casting. Thus, they would probably not act correctly. A better idea would be, to me, to have it say that it destroys your enchantments or forces them to sacrifice them, then generates a number of the prescribed Angels equal to the number of destroyed/sac'd enchantments.edit: Oh, disregard this bit.So instead, here's a few cards I was working on that don't really fit much into the more modern massively themed blocks. Some of them do have a little bit of theme action going on, but not as much as most blocks. (These are designs from set/s that I probably won't ever get to posting here or even get near completing. For now they have no flavor text.)
Thus, in no real order...
Shockwave RRR
Sorcery (U)
~ deals 3 damage to target creature, then deals 1 damage to each creature the chosen creature controls.
Ripple 2
Static Elemental 2RR
Creature -- Elemental (U)
You can't cast ~ unless you've dealt damage to an opponent this turn.
Trample; haste
At the beginning of the end step, sacrifice ~.
8/1
Hatred Elemental 3BR
Creature -- Elemental (R)
You can't cast ~ unless you've dealt damage to an opponent this turn.
6/6
Cactus Golem 7G
Artifact Creature -- Plant Golem (U)
Trample, vigilance
6/10
Bloodied Didact 2BB
Creature - Demon Advisor (R)
2B, T, skip your next draw step: Search your library for one black card or one land card of your choice and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library afterward. Use this ability only during your upkeep.
1/3
Two for One 4UU
Sorcery (U)
Draw two cards. Draw two cards at the beginning of target player’s next turn.
Violation of Logic UB
Instant (U)
Counter target spell.
Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
I like where this is going, no matter what. Just from what I've seen below, this set does feel a lot like some of the older stuff. (What I've posted probably feels a little too new-school, some of it...)
However, as long as we're affixing new mechanics to the game, I'm sure you can get away with inserting "unless another card's effect states otherwise" onto the end of the rules in 702.2a... reasonably unscathed. Reasonably. (Hey, this being MTG, you can't expect to please everyone...) If it's such a problem, overall, it can't be that difficult to produce a token with the following data:
to be placed on top of face-down cards made by Primal Link. Obviously, with the six types of tokens already in your set, this might not be a good idea. That said, I do like the idea of the ability (come on, we all know how much getting mana screwed sucks. Why not have a bunch of things that can give you a little boost while you need it? All we need to worry about is color from there...), especially since we're talking RGW here.
For naming the cards, if you still need things to fill in for anything in brackets... I can't help much, but I'd say that, for Jarad, since he's the leader of the new version of Golgari... I was thinking his title could be "The Progenitor." Well, I think it sounds good, at least, and it's reasonably fitting, right?
Overall, I like the firection this is going in and would love to have a chance to give this a test drive in the future, but I'm also horrifically biased toward Ravnica in terms of blocks. So, well...