Blek reminds me of Kookus, but better. I would drop the Shade type for something else, preferably something alive so the "Haunted" bit makes more sense, ghosts haunt the living, not other undead or spirits.
Changeling Titan is already taken.
As for your card, I think it's too costly at 10, Quilled Slagwurm says a vanilla 8/8 at 7 is Ok, so I think an 8/8 trample for 8 is fine. The changeling ability is weird, and I dislike it in general, but that's my opinion and preference. If you want changelings to play with your offbeat tribal things, that would work to make them more appealing to play.
Ebony Hunter is an interesting concept. Basically, you're offering a 3/3 for 2 with the downside that it takes up an additional slot in your deck with a bad card. What if all you had to do was reveal it from your library? Then it would be a bit more of a sacrifice to the deck construction. You could also take this concept, or the reveal concept into other things, using the lost deck slots as a downside for your over-curve cards.
Wind Navigator1UU
Creature - Human Pirate (C)
When Wind Navigator enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a card named Air Elemental and reveal it. If you reveal at least one card this way, shuffle your library then draw a card.
2/3
King of the Hill2RR
Legendary Creature - Giant Warrior (R)
Trample
When King of the Hill enters the battlefield, you may search your library for any number of cards named Hill Giant and reveal them. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on King of the Hill for each card revealed this way, then shuffle your library.
3/3
Ok, it functions, it provides a free, more powerful Vindicate every turn and is difficult to stop.
I don't mind answering questions ahead of time, in fact I like that, it helps to understand the thought processes that led to the presented design, and cut through some of the obvious questions. My point is, "I don't want to make it balanced." and "Because I will it so." doesn't leave much room to talk about the card. I don't think its a very good to start a thread about custom card design by damping down any criticism of the design.
But here goes, I shall talk about the card without referring to balance or flavor considerations.
The first ability is very interesting, and could be a fun way to build a planeswalker, but having two abilities that just use the whole loyalty every turn, causing her to come back every turn and do it again makes the card's operation rather repetitive and predictable; and since one of those abilities is much more desirable in most situations than the other, she will usually operate in exactly the same way every turn and every game. If the abilities were different costs, and didn't drop her to 0 in one activation her controller would be forced to plan how to use her in order to get her down to 0 so she could resurrect and reset, especially if it were possible to accidentally leave her at just 1 loyalty and have no way to zero her out, like a combination of Sarkhan the Mad and Kaya, Ghost Assassin.
So your purpose is to present your card concept to the community and not receive feedback about the design, flavor, or interactions with the rest of the game?
Ok, I have viewed your card design, I will keep my feedback to myself, as you request.
It would be neat if Throne of Shiv could complement Zirilan of the Claw by grabbing dragons from Exile, but that might be going too far. If I were doing it, I'd probably stick to a regular tutor from library, as I'm rather leery of wishes. Too much access to the sideboard undermines the point of careful deck construction, you have to dedicate slots to cards that you might not want to draw randomly, like Shivan Dragon.
If you really want Glintleaf Call at 6, I would definitely suggest sticking it at 3GGG, since it is a sorcery rather than an instant like Firemind's Foresight. Tutors that grab multiple cards are VERY powerful, some decks would try for the three vanilla creatures, but many would use this one simply as a tutor for combos or for a lot of gas to close out a game. It's a nice design, but tutoring three cards is strong and you definitely want to cost it cautiously. Otherwise, if you limited the searches to just green creatures, you could be a little more aggressive with it.
In that case would search for Trained Jackal, Kalonian Tusker, and Leatherback Baloth.
Otherwise, Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Watchwolf, and Woolly Thoctar.
I think if you just up the cost of Glintleaf Expedition to 5G and made the three basics enter tapped you could call it an uncommon. If you make it search for any three lands, and drop them into play tapped if they're all basic, then 4GG sounds reasonable. Green ramping at 6 mana is a known quantity. There is the precedent of Gilded Lotus however, showing that ramping 3 at 5 is doable too. If all it did was grab three basics into play, I'd be comfortable sticking it at 3GG, it's the options that make me want it to be 6, you always pay more for options.
I would say that forcing the three basics to be different names is more tedious than restrictive, I'd just toss in a Wastes or two in order to get the value out of it if I was gong for big ramp.
Here are some cards for comparison: Elvish Aberration, Verdant Confluence, Seek the Horizon, Gilded Lotus, Dreamstone Hedron, Seedguide Ash.
You're trying to sort of thread through the middle of those.
"Whenever damage is prevented by an effect you control, CARDNAME deals that much damage to target creature or player."
That's how I would word it. It would be fine to do this for a commander, there are load of old prevention effects that would finally be able to shine. Printing it in standard would probably not fly, prevention spells and abilities are scarce these days, aside from the occasional Fog.
Would be cool if the effect of Withered Onions made two permanents, in the end - Seven Herbs Porridge from, like, Switching Clothes and itself, and something else from Bugs Come Out and First Autumn Storm.
I presume the intention would be to make one humongous card out of the four parts. Giving it a tap ability is just trolling players, how do you tap that monstrosity?
I can't imagine this in a set, too many parts to assemble for too little payoff. Peer Through Depths, Reach Through Mists, and Sift Through Sands helped you to dig for each other and delivered The Unspeakable for your trouble, but nobody but me ever bothered to try to put that one together. It's a fun creativity exercise though.
Komcha would be worded "XGU, T, remove a +1/+1 counter from Komcha: Create a token that's a copy of target creature."
What's the X in the activation for? I assume its from a previous iteration of the design, as it stands the Xis not referenced by the rest of the card, so the ability costs just 2 mana. It should probably cost at least 3, and should definitely not be able to target himself, otherwise he can endlessly copy himself to refresh his counters.
He's very similar to a design I made for a resurrected Momir Vig, but I used X as a limiter, only copying creatures with CMC X.
Gloria is... strange and interesting.
It might be too powerful for 3 mana. Chump block with a creature, tap to switch it for a token. Get attacked, tap to switch it for a token. I feel like the timing should be limited to outside of combat, like Djinn of Infinite Deceits. I'm having a hard time gaugeing this one though, it feels comborrific.
Sid reminds me of Hydra Omnivore, which suggests that that ability belongs in green. It's a one-of ability that has only been in multiplayer special sets, so I suppose it might fit anywhere. As a commander, you've crafted a mighty aggressive one there, lends itself to turning dudes sideways all day long, punishes players for sitting next to other players that aren't laying down early defenses. The way you have it worded sounds like you want the distributed damage to count as commander damage. I'm not sure if it actually works that way, but if so, that's one heck of an aggressive ability.
Putting them on lands could work, but basics are an overreach, they'd be too easy and common to use, so the sealed spells would have to be watered down to compensate, undermining the whole point of jumping through all these hoops.
I continue to disapprove of trying to keep the Runes out of the text box, that's what it's there for after all, to tell you what the cards do.
I don't see why these need to be enchantments either.
One question though, if a Cleave creature attacks and is not blocked, how is it's combat damage distributed? Point out why this is the case based on your understanding of the rules that would define it, not just based on how you want it to work. The way I read it, an unblocked Cleave can just throw its damage wherever it chooses among nonblocking creatures.
Creatures deal all of there damage to a player if left unblocked. It cant have excess damage to spread around a f wll of it hits the player. I.e.- no excess
The reminder text in the OP is not comprehensive, what would be the defining rules to cause this to be the case? user_938036's suggested rules do not require the Cleave creature to be blocked, just that sufficient damage is assigned to blocking creatures to kill them, and allows any additional damage (which in the case of being unblocked would be all of it) to be Cleaved off to other creatures. This is a side effect of duplicating the rules of Trample, but it's something that should be addressed, and why I requested that the rules being used to define the ability be cited in the answer to my question. Like Trample, the operation of Cleave will demand much more rules text than can be encompassed in reminder text, we need to hammer out those details before trying to apply it to cards.
It's complex and would absolutely consume the theming of the set, and would be more parasitic than "Splice onto Arcane" but it's a darn inventive idea and it sounds like a big old heap of fun.
I would make some tweaks:
First, I definitely want to put the runes into the text box, I'd just make it "Rune - {Symbol}" and tack it onto whatever permanents, not just enchantments. I know you want the runes to be special, but making them features of other normally playable cards would make them much less parasitic and more desirable to play; less feel bad if you can't assemble the runes to make your sealed spell go off. I don't think there would be any problem in just printing the rune symbols larger than normal text. Including them in the art is good too, but I really don't think it would be a viable replacement for actual card text.
Second, I know you want the sealed spells to be special, but again, there would be big feel bads to literally have do-nothing cards in your hand if you fail to assemble the runes. I'd make them minor but playable effects, with an instead clause making them go super-big if you have the runes to set them off.
So for your Time Walk example:
Sealed Time1U
Instant
Tap or untap target permanent.
Sealed ABC - If you have ABC, instead target player takes an extra turn after this one.
If the runes are decently playable without the sealed spells, and the sealed spells are both not dead cards and the sealed effects are big enough, it will encourage players to overcome the hurdles and parasitism of the mechanic, and make it more exciting and appealing for the players.
Well, it reminds me of super-trample, which would put it into green, and it reminds me of Butcher Orgg and the laccoliths, which puts it in red, and it reminds be of fighting and creature-baseddamage spells, which puts it in red and green, and obviously it works like trample, which puts it in green.
I really feel like its green.
It's similarities to trample mean that it could in theory go anywhere that trample does, White, Blue, Black, and Colorless all get trample sometimes, though white's tramplers are mostly quite old, and blue's are entirely huge leviathan-like critters. It's not super on-message for white or blue in my mind, but black would have a lot of fun with it.
Combining it with deathtouch would be the absolute bomb.
It would be interesting to have a creature with both Trample and Cleave, kill the blocker, spread the damage to kill bystanders, and drop any extra on the player.
One question though, if a Cleave creature attacks and is not blocked, how is it's combat damage distributed? Point out why this is the case based on your understanding of the rules that would define it, not just based on how you want it to work. The way I read it, an unblocked Cleave can just throw its damage wherever it chooses among nonblocking creatures.
The new version of Paranoid is certainly harder to trigger, which allows you to set the costs more aggressively. It still seems odd though. What are you trying to accomplish with the mechanic? That would help to focus in on how it could work.
The new version of Mind's Passage is looking much less broken, and the base enchantment is now definitely worth playing in addition to being splashy and a callback to olden times, a good mythic. There are still some very strong combos with it, Mulch springs to mind, but it definitely requires much more thought than before. I'd still raise the cost from 1U to at least UU to be safe, free stuff for 4-5 mana (when combined with an enabler) hasbeendone before without breaking anything too badly.
I was expecting five spellshapers with rare spells as effects
Talking of expectations - I was expecting five Spellshapers with "Spellshaper creatures you control have ' , , Discard a card: *spell effect*.'" or " , Tap an untapped Spellshaper creature you control, Discard a card: *spell effect*."
Ooh, interesting concept.
May I propse:
Master Spellshaper2UU
Creature - Djinn Spellshaper {R} U, T, discard a card: Activated abilities of other spellshapers you control cost "Discard a card" less to activate.
3/3
He's too tame for his sheer cost, 8 mana over three colors is a serious investment, you'll want him to put a crater in the board state.
The +2 seems to be structured correctly, and is a decently powerful effect, especially when you already have board control. I approve.
The -3 seems underwhelming, I'd drop that cost down to -2 and make it exile at the beginning of your next upkeep. That let's Mr. Bolas grab a blocker if he needs one.
He costs 8 mana over three colors, don't be afraid to go nuts with that ultimate: "You may play face-up cards exiled by effects you control without paying their mana costs."
Finally, I'd put his starting loyalty at 8, so if you have board control and drop him, you can +2, then Ult without killing him. Yes, that's powerful, but again: 8 mana over three colors, and he's an aspiring DEITY, and the ult isn't an auto-win on its own, so it's not a cast of cheat him out somehow and pop his ult to win,you have to set it up first.
Changeling Titan is already taken.
As for your card, I think it's too costly at 10, Quilled Slagwurm says a vanilla 8/8 at 7 is Ok, so I think an 8/8 trample for 8 is fine. The changeling ability is weird, and I dislike it in general, but that's my opinion and preference. If you want changelings to play with your offbeat tribal things, that would work to make them more appealing to play.
Ebony Hunter is an interesting concept. Basically, you're offering a 3/3 for 2 with the downside that it takes up an additional slot in your deck with a bad card. What if all you had to do was reveal it from your library? Then it would be a bit more of a sacrifice to the deck construction. You could also take this concept, or the reveal concept into other things, using the lost deck slots as a downside for your over-curve cards.
Wind Navigator 1UU
Creature - Human Pirate (C)
When Wind Navigator enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a card named Air Elemental and reveal it. If you reveal at least one card this way, shuffle your library then draw a card.
2/3
King of the Hill 2RR
Legendary Creature - Giant Warrior (R)
Trample
When King of the Hill enters the battlefield, you may search your library for any number of cards named Hill Giant and reveal them. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on King of the Hill for each card revealed this way, then shuffle your library.
3/3
I don't mind answering questions ahead of time, in fact I like that, it helps to understand the thought processes that led to the presented design, and cut through some of the obvious questions. My point is, "I don't want to make it balanced." and "Because I will it so." doesn't leave much room to talk about the card. I don't think its a very good to start a thread about custom card design by damping down any criticism of the design.
But here goes, I shall talk about the card without referring to balance or flavor considerations.
The first ability is very interesting, and could be a fun way to build a planeswalker, but having two abilities that just use the whole loyalty every turn, causing her to come back every turn and do it again makes the card's operation rather repetitive and predictable; and since one of those abilities is much more desirable in most situations than the other, she will usually operate in exactly the same way every turn and every game. If the abilities were different costs, and didn't drop her to 0 in one activation her controller would be forced to plan how to use her in order to get her down to 0 so she could resurrect and reset, especially if it were possible to accidentally leave her at just 1 loyalty and have no way to zero her out, like a combination of Sarkhan the Mad and Kaya, Ghost Assassin.
Ok, I have viewed your card design, I will keep my feedback to myself, as you request.
If you really want Glintleaf Call at 6, I would definitely suggest sticking it at 3GGG, since it is a sorcery rather than an instant like Firemind's Foresight. Tutors that grab multiple cards are VERY powerful, some decks would try for the three vanilla creatures, but many would use this one simply as a tutor for combos or for a lot of gas to close out a game. It's a nice design, but tutoring three cards is strong and you definitely want to cost it cautiously. Otherwise, if you limited the searches to just green creatures, you could be a little more aggressive with it.
In that case would search for Trained Jackal, Kalonian Tusker, and Leatherback Baloth.
Otherwise, Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Watchwolf, and Woolly Thoctar.
I think if you just up the cost of Glintleaf Expedition to 5G and made the three basics enter tapped you could call it an uncommon. If you make it search for any three lands, and drop them into play tapped if they're all basic, then 4GG sounds reasonable. Green ramping at 6 mana is a known quantity. There is the precedent of Gilded Lotus however, showing that ramping 3 at 5 is doable too. If all it did was grab three basics into play, I'd be comfortable sticking it at 3GG, it's the options that make me want it to be 6, you always pay more for options.
I would say that forcing the three basics to be different names is more tedious than restrictive, I'd just toss in a Wastes or two in order to get the value out of it if I was gong for big ramp.
Here are some cards for comparison: Elvish Aberration, Verdant Confluence, Seek the Horizon, Gilded Lotus, Dreamstone Hedron, Seedguide Ash.
You're trying to sort of thread through the middle of those.
That's how I would word it. It would be fine to do this for a commander, there are load of old prevention effects that would finally be able to shine. Printing it in standard would probably not fly, prevention spells and abilities are scarce these days, aside from the occasional Fog.
I presume the intention would be to make one humongous card out of the four parts. Giving it a tap ability is just trolling players, how do you tap that monstrosity?
I can't imagine this in a set, too many parts to assemble for too little payoff. Peer Through Depths, Reach Through Mists, and Sift Through Sands helped you to dig for each other and delivered The Unspeakable for your trouble, but nobody but me ever bothered to try to put that one together. It's a fun creativity exercise though.
What's the X in the activation for? I assume its from a previous iteration of the design, as it stands the Xis not referenced by the rest of the card, so the ability costs just 2 mana. It should probably cost at least 3, and should definitely not be able to target himself, otherwise he can endlessly copy himself to refresh his counters.
He's very similar to a design I made for a resurrected Momir Vig, but I used X as a limiter, only copying creatures with CMC X.
Gloria is... strange and interesting.
It might be too powerful for 3 mana. Chump block with a creature, tap to switch it for a token. Get attacked, tap to switch it for a token. I feel like the timing should be limited to outside of combat, like Djinn of Infinite Deceits. I'm having a hard time gaugeing this one though, it feels comborrific.
Sid reminds me of Hydra Omnivore, which suggests that that ability belongs in green. It's a one-of ability that has only been in multiplayer special sets, so I suppose it might fit anywhere. As a commander, you've crafted a mighty aggressive one there, lends itself to turning dudes sideways all day long, punishes players for sitting next to other players that aren't laying down early defenses. The way you have it worded sounds like you want the distributed damage to count as commander damage. I'm not sure if it actually works that way, but if so, that's one heck of an aggressive ability.
I continue to disapprove of trying to keep the Runes out of the text box, that's what it's there for after all, to tell you what the cards do.
I don't see why these need to be enchantments either.
The reminder text in the OP is not comprehensive, what would be the defining rules to cause this to be the case? user_938036's suggested rules do not require the Cleave creature to be blocked, just that sufficient damage is assigned to blocking creatures to kill them, and allows any additional damage (which in the case of being unblocked would be all of it) to be Cleaved off to other creatures. This is a side effect of duplicating the rules of Trample, but it's something that should be addressed, and why I requested that the rules being used to define the ability be cited in the answer to my question. Like Trample, the operation of Cleave will demand much more rules text than can be encompassed in reminder text, we need to hammer out those details before trying to apply it to cards.
I would make some tweaks:
First, I definitely want to put the runes into the text box, I'd just make it "Rune - {Symbol}" and tack it onto whatever permanents, not just enchantments. I know you want the runes to be special, but making them features of other normally playable cards would make them much less parasitic and more desirable to play; less feel bad if you can't assemble the runes to make your sealed spell go off. I don't think there would be any problem in just printing the rune symbols larger than normal text. Including them in the art is good too, but I really don't think it would be a viable replacement for actual card text.
Second, I know you want the sealed spells to be special, but again, there would be big feel bads to literally have do-nothing cards in your hand if you fail to assemble the runes. I'd make them minor but playable effects, with an instead clause making them go super-big if you have the runes to set them off.
So for your Time Walk example:
Sealed Time 1U
Instant
Tap or untap target permanent.
Sealed ABC - If you have ABC, instead target player takes an extra turn after this one.
If the runes are decently playable without the sealed spells, and the sealed spells are both not dead cards and the sealed effects are big enough, it will encourage players to overcome the hurdles and parasitism of the mechanic, and make it more exciting and appealing for the players.
I really feel like its green.
It's similarities to trample mean that it could in theory go anywhere that trample does, White, Blue, Black, and Colorless all get trample sometimes, though white's tramplers are mostly quite old, and blue's are entirely huge leviathan-like critters. It's not super on-message for white or blue in my mind, but black would have a lot of fun with it.
Combining it with deathtouch would be the absolute bomb.
It would be interesting to have a creature with both Trample and Cleave, kill the blocker, spread the damage to kill bystanders, and drop any extra on the player.
One question though, if a Cleave creature attacks and is not blocked, how is it's combat damage distributed? Point out why this is the case based on your understanding of the rules that would define it, not just based on how you want it to work. The way I read it, an unblocked Cleave can just throw its damage wherever it chooses among nonblocking creatures.
The new version of Mind's Passage is looking much less broken, and the base enchantment is now definitely worth playing in addition to being splashy and a callback to olden times, a good mythic. There are still some very strong combos with it, Mulch springs to mind, but it definitely requires much more thought than before. I'd still raise the cost from 1U to at least UU to be safe, free stuff for 4-5 mana (when combined with an enabler) has been done before without breaking anything too badly.
It looks like this effect costs <1 in most cases.
Ooh, interesting concept.
May I propse:
Master Spellshaper 2UU
Creature - Djinn Spellshaper {R}
U, T, discard a card: Activated abilities of other spellshapers you control cost "Discard a card" less to activate.
3/3
The +2 seems to be structured correctly, and is a decently powerful effect, especially when you already have board control. I approve.
The -3 seems underwhelming, I'd drop that cost down to -2 and make it exile at the beginning of your next upkeep. That let's Mr. Bolas grab a blocker if he needs one.
He costs 8 mana over three colors, don't be afraid to go nuts with that ultimate: "You may play face-up cards exiled by effects you control without paying their mana costs."
Finally, I'd put his starting loyalty at 8, so if you have board control and drop him, you can +2, then Ult without killing him. Yes, that's powerful, but again: 8 mana over three colors, and he's an aspiring DEITY, and the ult isn't an auto-win on its own, so it's not a cast of cheat him out somehow and pop his ult to win,you have to set it up first.