Need help with card ideas

So I'm working on a proxy set at home for me and my friends to play with. This set features a few key mechanics that I'm having some trouble working around and would like to have some advice, tips, criticisms, etc. on.

So the mechanics in question are:
Empower (On your end step and only once each turn you may discard a card, if you do [insert effect here]).

Tide (As long as the amount of cards in your hand is equal to or more than your maximum hand size you may [insert effect here]).

Anchor X (Each players hand size is reduced by X).

And Contagious X (Whenever this creature deals damage to a non-diseased creature, that creature gains "At the beginning of your upkeep you lose X life.").

For an example of Empower: https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/genesis-beetle

Contagious is meant to be a way for players to want to avoid being chump blocked; where as Anchor doesnt affect the other mechanics as Empower decks would focus on dumping their hand and Tide decks can use their abilities quicker with smaller hand sizes.

As I said, I'm looking for positive tips, advice, and constructive criticism on designing cards for this set and would love to hear or see other people's thoughts on these.

Comments

  • So what I can say about empower is that its technically not going to have reminder text. It's going to be worded
    Empower--At the beginning of your end step, you may discard a card. If you do, [effect].

    I'll look over the other ones a bit later for you.
  • edited January 2018
    Okay as for the others:
    Tide: Seems fine. Once again, like empower this needs to be changed from a keyword to an ability word.
    Tide--As long as the number of cards in your hand is greater than or equal to your maximum hand size, [effect].

    Anchor: Just make sure you don't reduce player's hand size, but their maximum hand size.
    Anchor X (Each player's maximum hand size is reduced by X.)

    Contagious: Quick question: Are contagious creatures diseased by default?
    If they aren't, the ability should read
    Contagious X (Whenever this creature deals damage to a non-diseased creature, that creature becomes diseased and gains "At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose X life.")
    That way you can't put multiple life loss instances on the same creature.

    Hope this helped some. This all seems like a solid start!
  • edited January 2018
    Thanks for the input!

    The majority of Diseased creatures have Contagious. Some don't and are there just to act as blockers for those with Contagious.

    I kind of want Disease to make players think hard about whether or not blocking and killing an attacker is worth getting their creature sick.

    I'm glad to hear the abilities don't sound too powerful or anything. I was really worried that one of them might overshadow another.
  • @J-Ammin
    The only abilities I'm really concerned about with interaction are Anchor and Tide, but only because they work very well together. I think it's a cool interaction, just be weary about what your tide cards can do.
  • @Arceus8523

    Yeah, that was more of a design choice...since Tide abilities require the player to be at maximum hand size or more it means that you have to play slowly or lots of card draw. Where as Empower doesnt care because they can just turn 3 Genesis Beetle and discard a card every turn till they are swinging with 20 21/21's. So anchor was created as a little boost for tide cards.

    Most of them are 2 or more mana and only Anchor 1.
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