Kykar, the Storm's Center - I think it's pretty balance, for 6CMC 4/4 flying a bit over costed but gives all your creatures flash which is nice for all the colours needed to cast. Not needing to sac evoke can give some really steep discounts on some huge bodies on top of the ETB effect but it's late game by then so it works. Adding a discount on top of a discount though I think is unnecessary.
Cruelty corpse collector - 4CMC for a 3/3 a bit over costed, but it gets bigger, when things die. It's ability to make tokens is alright. Remove 3/3 worth of power to make a 2/2, net -1/-1, or if you have three other inklings remove 3/3 worth of power to break even. I don't see anything broken, on it's own, it's rare to come out on top with it's ability with a bit of support it can be a nice +1/+1, token build around.
Serka, Benevolent Steward - You can go infinite with him, might want to say nontoken creature. With a sac engine you sac token, exile it get a token, sac it, exile... If you still want it to work with tokens maybe say non spirit or non wolf to stop it looping on itself. Work well on decks that go wide, as each creature gets a second chance, though exiling nontokens can be a tougher choice, but I encourage decision making.
Burn the Path - Interesting take on deal 3 damage to target attacking creature, much more limited but doesn't target and can trigger creature synergies, pretty neat.
@Sweda I like this enchantment a lot. Much like other spells with taxing effects, this enchantment forces opponents to dedicate their whole turn to attack you or cast spells, but not both in most many cases. Assuming you'd play this in Ward tribal, I can see you surviving a bunch of turns untouched.
The only issue I can see with this spell is it's cost for 2 mana; that's much to cheap for this kind of spell. Let's say I only attack you with 1 creature, if you had Archangel of Tithes, Archon of Absolution, or Baird, Steward of Argive on the battlefield (all of which are 4cmc creatures) I would only need to pay 1 mana. If you had Ghostly Prison or Propaganda on the battlefield (which are 3cmc enchantments), I would only have to pay 2. But if you had Replusive Wardings (a 2 cmc enchantment), I would easily be forced to pay anywhere from 4-6 mana or more. Sphere of Safety is still easily the best tithe spell for defending yourself, and it costs 5.
Thus I'd say Replusive Wardings needs to cost at least 4 or 5 to be on par with everything else.
@Talidin1337 Maybe 3CMC, on it's own it does not add to the board, you need creatures to make the tax work, that is a liability.
Ghostly prison is 3CMC taxes each creature for {2}. This card is 2CMC but you'll need a ward creature, cheapest one is 1CMC at ward {1} so it's already 3CMC 2 cards, and less taxing since you only pay once. Sure it can scale but it's not 'solid'.
I think there is also more nuance when trying to fill the deck with ward creatures too, as they need to also need to be a means of winning and of course they can still be killed with removal.
I don't think it will get up to {3} all that easy without it being dealt with against a competent deck, either a board sweep, targeted removal of the enchantment or ward creature will keep it in line.
@Sweda Repivise Wardings is now something interesting I would love to try use for my deck.
However, once controller paid for ward cost for each creature. Does that mean they don't have to pay it again? If so, I would leave that be.
Otherwise, I will go with "Creatures cannot attack you this turn unless their controller paid ward cost for each creature you control." That way will force your opponent to pay for each turn when they attacks. Otherwise, everything looks balanced.
@Talidin1337 Your card looks cool! But there are some grammar issues I beileve we will have to point out;
Keywords are not capitalized. (I might spelled wrong there...) Treat it as if it were any normal word.
I.e.: "Flying, frist strike"
The creature type is kinda off. If you were to put "God Warrior" or "God Soldier", it would be an awesome reference to Marvel!
I must admit for only six mana, having a commander that's flying, has first strike... With 10/10 and indestructible. Also, trample. That sounds a little op, isn't it?
I would recommend this ability for fun; "Whenever Thor attacks, if your life is half or less than your starting life, he gains +3/+3, trample, and indestructible until end of turn." Now that's more fair. Otherwise, looks good!
@FireOfGolden That really helped, thank you much! I feel more confident about this card now. As for Onman's Call, look up a card called Cosmotronic Wave, it will help with the wording format. You basically can copy and paste Cosmotronic Wave verbatim, just replace the part that says "each creature your opponents control" with "each creature target opponent controls". Also, bump the cost up from 2 mana to 3 mana. I loved using Cosmotronic Wave in standard way back when it came out, I won some games with it. I think I should start using it again. By extension, I love Onman's Call, the ability to knock out some 1/1 dorks and slide past your opponents defenses is an awesome maneuver.
@FireOfGolden I agree completely with Talidin1337 regarding Onman's Call, so I will give feedback on previous cards instead.
@Talidin1337 I'm not quite sure how strong Thor is, but I feel it falls strongly into pet card territory. While the body is relatively good, it doesn't do anything outside of being a beatstick, which feels pretty weak for a mythic 6-drop. While it does get dramatically better when you're under half, the three gods from Baldur's Gate have a similar ability, yet none of them see play since it's not sufficiently impactful. While getting +5/+5 and trample as well can be huge, the lack of haste really hurts it, so I can't see what sort of deck it has a home in.
@Sweda I really like Repulsive Wardings, but my concern is that Wizards keeps printing stronger and stronger Ward abilities (e.g. Sauron the Dark Lord and Saruman of Many Colors) that make Repulsive Wardings way stronger than Propaganda and similar effects, especially since you're likely going to have protection spells or countermagic for when your opponent tries to remove your permanents directly. Even one or two life payment Ward abilities (e.g. Nine-Fingers Keene, Sedgemoor Witch, Phyrexian Fleshgorger) should be enough to rapidly remove your opponent's ability to attack you. Considering that, perhaps it should be 2WU, especially if Wizards starts printing more noncreature permanents with Ward abilities as well.
I'd appreciate feedback on these cards: ~~~ ~~~
For context, the monocolored five are meant to support Ars Opalescent. Currently, I've received feedback on Ars Insidious here and Ars Opalescent here, so I'm mainly looking for feedback on the other four and the group as a whole.
Wow! Those dragons are perfect for a penta dragons. As Ars Opalescent, I think is a little overcosted. I mean, just exiling cards and paying life to draw a little bit of cards. Also, there is an error. While having prismatic makes the card one or more colors, the card does not need the penta color indicator.
For Ars luminius, The only balance effect I would add is "other creatures" instead of "creatures".
For Ars enigmatic I think is balanced. I think that having a "first spell" is a great form to say "once per turn".
For Ars inflamed, I think it has lesser power as the rest of the cads. Being a 4/3 is good, but just the "random discarding" effect is what it makes it bad. To give it some power, I would change the text to this:
Flying. Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, each player draws X cards, where X is the number of cards on that spell's color identity, then discard X cards at random. When you do, Ars Infamed deals damage to any target equal to the greatest color identity among cards discarded this way plus X.
So when you discard cards, you deal some damage.
Lastly, for Ars Verdant, I think is balanced. Discarding a card to get mana. is a good option. I would add something like "if the amount of mana added this way was 1 or less, draw a card" so you can cycle that card.
@cadstar369 I think it is an interesting discussion of what the mana cost of Repulsive warding should be. I've been thinking, would increasing the cost actually do anything given it's strength comes of the creatures in play, creatures you need to pay a cost for. Additionally creatures with strong wards are also late game cast, would increasing the cost of Repulsive Warding doing much effect here? I also think creatures with strong wards will also become the priority to take out, take them out and you take out the cost to attack, however if your plan to 'take them out' is to kill your opponent by attacking then, well that would be a problem.
Increasing the cost I think only weakens it's viability when you aren't playing bomb creatures with ward, your {1}, discard a card, pay 3 life ward creatures, those are always killable if you really want them dead.
I can see a reason for increasing the cost so it's a harder decision to make mid/late game weather to cast another one over effecting the board in a more meaningful way. At the same time doubling it also means if the creature providing the ward is killed you reduce the effectiveness 2 times as well.
2CMC or 3CMC is still what I think given it can be a dead card in many game states.
Of course this can be reworked so the opponent pays the cost of untapped creatures, it would make your big scary ward creatures needing to stay back and not activity be dealing damage/killing creatures but... thinking about it would the opponent have attacked anyway if you have a huge dude hanging back there? Interesting thoughts when trying to design stuff as always.
@Sweda the best comparison to Repulsive Wardings I can think of is Sphere of Safety. On the one hand, multiples of Repulsive Wardings do nothing, and the current dearth of exceedingly powerful ward abilities in WU or WUx may hurt its strength in some formats. On the other hand, Repulsive Wardings can fuel itself, the creatures it fuels itself with can come with a degree of built-in protection, said creatures can also be used to kill your opponent directly when you don’t need the protection, and there are a number of cheap cards in similar colors that give all of your creatures ward, making it easy to stall attacks with even a couple of spare tokens. Thus I can’t see this card being dead as often as you suggest, especially since there’s significantly less opportunity cost to including it relative to effects like Sphere of Safety.
Overall, while I could see it at 3MV, it feels like it’d be one of those cards that steadily becomes more busted because of how early it was created and how free it is to play. (In general, I think cards that have to ability to scale up like this should be costed higher than those with fixed values, even if they occasionally scale down to doing nothing.)
P. S. — Regarding the potential shift to having them pay only for untapped creatures, doing so would make the card nonbo with itself, as its activated ability would effectively do nothing under most circumstances. It would also completely destroy the usefulness of the card in general, since you’d have to actively avoid trying to win (in the general sense that the majority of decks win via attacking) in order to defend yourself, at which point you might as well play any of Baird and company instead since they don’t have such a huge downside.
@cadstar369 Your dragons are really neat, I like how they all share abilities that scale off the same mechanic but produce a tasteful effect that's on brand with their colors, and the abilities don't seem too powerful. I would change nothing expect the wording on the black dragon. It was confusing to read Ars Insidious, I had to go over it a couple of times. I can't think of any good alternative right now because I'm very tired but I'm sure you can come up with something. I'm curious, how would you handle color indentity ties? Also, you nailed Thor on the head, he's just a glorified beat stick. The idea was to create a lore accurate representation of Thor for mtg and I wanted abilities that reflected that. I modeled him after Anya, Merciless Angel to gauge how much mana he should cost. I actually nerfed him quite a bit, the current card is much weaker and more balanced.
I'm really bad at making blue cards and I have no idea if this is balanced or not. I could really use some feedback on this card, I highly appreciate it.
@Talidin1337 The closest card to compare is Sigrid, God-Favored, 2/2 first strike flash and oblivion rings an attacking or blocking creature. Black Widow somewhat does the same in that she can negate their biggest threat but the downside is it locks her down and cost {1} each time. In that sense 3CMC is about right but better be 1{w}{u} and make her rare as you're also baking in scry3.
Though I will have to mention choosing to lock their greatest threat by tapping her down does not synergzies with having first strike so it's a bit of a wasted potential.
If I may, to make it more offensive you can have her scry 3 upon dealing combat damage to an opponent or any combat damage and also upon attacking she detains a creature. This way things syngerizes a bit better, it's riskier but she's a spy, it's always risky.
@cadstar369 Knowing ward as being one of the most flexible abilities to design to I would not be surprised that there could be a small creature that is "ward - you lose the game' or something ridiculous. Ultimately the problem is potential interactions that results in unfun lock states for the opponent and asks for nonmana payments and I don't think changing the mana cost solves it. It would need a design to mitigate future ward costs from being abused. It is an interesting way to open new design spaces for ward as I think it has a lot of potential for creative costs which I think wizards is slow exploring.
Edit: Maybe adding something like "pay the ward cost a creature, put a <name> counter on it, players need to pay the ward cost of creatures with <name> counter on it to attack you".
Here is mine, not sure about this one.
Since LotR set seem to like food I built it around the name, though I'm afraid of the free artifact generation abuse as you can get quite a bit for free.
@Sweda This idea is hilarious. I'm any game mode I think it would be rather easy to get 10 foods onto the battlefield, especially in commander. What I'm getting here is that unless people want to lose their food tokens and give them to you, they have to trigger almost all of them immediately in response to the next part of the spell, so at the beginning of your turn, everyone else taps out all thier mana but gains a bunch of life. If someone doesn't tap out their mana, that's fine, you just get a bunch more food tokens next turn. But as you mentioned, the main problem I can see here is the artifact abuse, you might be accidentally giving someone the game just by handing over so many food tokens, and there are also plenty of food sacrificing outlets that would love nothing more than to sac 7 or more foods all at once. A potential fix for this is to give everyone a set number of foods, like 3, rather than as many as the cards in their hand.
Also, if possible, you need to format the abilities in such a way that conforms to how sagas are worded, like using bullet points or lines to indicate phases and take out phrases such as "at the beginning of your upkeep" since sagas trigger at the beginning of your upkeep anyway; and remove the word "Then" in the second ability since it's happening in the next turn, not the same turn. If you didn't mean to make this a saga, but rather just a normal enchantment, then the current wording is fine, but I would limit the food generation to just 1 per turn, that way several turns have to go by before there will be 10 foods and there won't be as much power spiking going on.
@Talidin1337 ah, my mistake, this was initially a saga, I-II was everyone gets a food for each card in hand, III was you get all of the food and eating them at reduced cost. I think I changed it to a non saga due to text box space limitations since I wanted read ahead in there too.
As for rebalance, can't really say to be honest haven't played much food or any of the new life gain synergies. I made it cost 4CMC since I think by then, cards in hand aren't too much in 1v1 so opponent's have some leeway.
Though spawning 1 food per turn for everyone could work, less pressure for the opponent to eat their food at an increased cost but also you can suddenly make a bunch of food on one turn and put them in a tight spot. Or make the increased cost also affect you to discourage eating the food and using it as a easy way to constantly gain life throughout the game and to have the final ability fire off at a timely manner.
@cadstar369 I've already given feedback for Ars Insidious, so I'll give some thoughts on the remaining cards. I've only given the other comments a cursory look, so excuse any feedback that overlaps with any existing feedback.
Ars Luminous - I agree with smax765 that modern templating words abilities as affecting "other" creatures you control while separately re-listing the abilities of the creature itself. It's not a big deal to give Ars Luminous its own bonus since it's monowhite, it'd just be a 3/6 creature with flying and vigilance that gives other creatures you control +1/+1 for each colour in their colour identity and vigilance. A Blessing of the Nephilim-type effect for all your creatures plus vigilance is a pretty big game, even if it ends up being an Intangible Virtue. Keeping the card at 3WW doesn't seem enough, even as a mythic rare legend. Just a Dictate of Heliod is 3WW, so perhaps changing the cost to 4WW or 2WWW would be the way to go.
Ars Enigmatic - Ars Enigmatic probably doesn't need to be a mythic rare. I wouldn't make it that just to have consistency across the cycle. 1UU for a 1/4 flier is decent but the tap ability is more restrictive in what it can target and less versatile than Stinging Lionfish and it can't trigger as often as Gadwick, the Wizened, both of which are lower in rarity. The addition of a stun counter is really what saves the effect, but a card like Ojutai, Soul of Winter allows for more than one trigger per turn. Maybe tap a number of permanents equal to the number of colours in the spell's colour identity, regardless of their mana value, and forego the stun counter. Rather than making the focus tapping a single permanent for multiple turns, it can instead tap down multiple key permanents for a single turn.
Ars Inflamed - I'm not really sure where to begin with this. The nature of random discards introduces so much variance in how a card will play out. Unless the payoff is significant, like with Gamble, this variance is really unappealing. The fact that the effect is symmetric means it's just as likely to help your opponent and hurt you as vice versa, and you never know which it's going to be. I wouldn't be inclined to play Burning Inquiry, even if it didn't cost me a card to get the effect. A mythic-level effect might be to discard a number of cards equal to the number of colours in the spell's colour identity and then draw that many cards. That way, you can actually net a gain on the number of cards in your hand.
Ars Verdent - If Ars Enigmatic doen't deserve to be a mythic rare, Ars Verdent deserves it even less in terms of both its complexity and its power level. I'm not sure why the clause to keep the mana until the end of turn is necessary. Other cards that have this clause have triggered mana-producing abilities, so the clause is needed to enable you to spend that mana on spells you wouldn't be able to cast when the ability triggers. With Ars Verdent, you can choose to activate it at any time and the mana doesn't last past the turn, so there doesn't seem to be a need to retain that mana for later use. Requiring a discard to activate the ability is a bit pricey since Ars Enigmatic, Insidious, and Inflamed let you also get the effect of the spell. You don't even get to choose the colours of mana Ars Verdent creates. Instead, Ars Verdent's ability could be an attack trigger that gives you mana based on the combined number of colours in the colour identities of all creatures that attacked that turn, then the clause to keep the mana until end of turn would make sense.
Ars Opalescent - The first thing I notice about Ars Opalescent is that its colour indicator makes it a five-colour card in every zone, but as soon as you cast it with anything less than five colours of mana, it loses some of its colours. That doesn't quite make sense to me. The ETB ability is also quite convoluted. Ars Opalescent seems to have a split personality where it wants you to spend as many colours of mana as possible to cast it in order to yield the greatest possible number of colour combinations. At the same time, it wants you to spend at least three mana of the same colour to unlock unlimited exiles of that colour. That aside, exiling cards from your hand to redraw is just an overpriced loot that doesn't net you any card gain. On the other hand, as good as a large Skeletal Scrying might be, it's heavily dependent on not only having cards in your graveyard, but having cards of the right colour. I think I would only play Ars Opalescent in a monocoloured deck so that I can get consistent card drawing each time I cast it. Also, I'm not sure why the draw ability isn't worded as actually drawing the cards instead of putting them into your hand. There's no interaction with the other cards by doing this.
@Talidin1337 I like how the card has been designed! I think that the "defender counter" effect is a little bit OP, just giving your opponent cards and disrupting all his strategy. For balancing, I would change the text to this one:
Warm Forgiveness 3GW Instant Prevent all combat damage dealt this turn. You and target opponent that attacked you draw X cards, where X is the amount of creatures that attacked you this turn, then put a [name] counter on them. They gain defender and "{3}, remove a [name] counter from this creature: You gain 2 life."
So that the controller pays mana to remove the counter. When the counter is removed, the creature loses defender and the ability of removing the counter, that means that that creature can attack you another time but the opponent has used all his mana to remove that to gain 2 life, that is not a lot.
I would like feedback on this card. For context is to create a WUB spirit-tokens deck.
I'll start with Ars Opalescent, since that's the original card, and the others are aspects of the same creature meant to serve as support for it. The color indicator is mainly to ensure the card functions in commander and similar formats, and the ability is intended to be like reverse devoid, where you can make Ars whatever colors you need it to be. The ETB is meant to give it a use in decks with few colors in addition to rainbow decks, and it doesn't draw mostly so nobody can mess with how many cards you get once the ability resolves (whether it be your own draw doubler or an opponent's Narset or Notion Thief). Do you think I should just drop the low-color application and add something on top of the hand refill? Perhaps I should also add some form of Ward ability. I want Ars Opalescent to be a suitably scary boss monster, but I also want it to be a serious build-around, rather than just getting slammed down willy-nilly for free cards like Atraxa, Grand Unifier and (to a lesser extent) Niv-Mizzet Reborn.
Ars Luminous ~ I let this one affect itself in case something changes the colors of your creatures, but I suppose that's such a corner case that I wouldn't mind dropping it. After reading your comment on Ars Enigmatic, I actually like the idea of dropping the cycle to rare to emphasize that these five are only fragments of Ars Opalescent. In that case, does a 3/6 for 3WWW sound fair for this at rare?
Ars Enigmatic ~ I appreciate your feedback on this one and Ars Inflamed the most, though I'm not sure the comparison to Ojutai, Soul of Winter here is fair since that's a 7-drop. If I were to drop the stun counter and shift to hitting multiple permanents, what do you think of letting it tap or untap any nonland permanents?
Ars Insidious ~ Since I'm strongly considering dropping these five to rare, what do you think of simplifying this one's ability to something like this: "Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, reveal the top card of your library and put it into your hand. Each player loses life equal to the number of colors in the revealed card's color identity." (I figure I should drop the life gain since the only two cards I can find that have life drain on this style of effect are Twilight Prophet and Sorin, Grim Nemesis, both of which are mythics that give you a card once per turn cycle.)
Ars Inflamed ~ I was struggling with what to put on this one. Giving it a damage ability felt boring, and random draw/discard was the only other interesting thing I could think of that was unique to red (my experiences with red are generally in UR+ decks). Putting a Dangerous Wager style effect on it once a turn seems pretty nice if you can consistently turn it into card advantage. This would probably be excessive at rare, but what do you think about having only your opponents' discards be random, as well as restricting their draws to the number of cards they discarded this way? (That way you don't accidentally give them card advantage.) I'd be fine with just having mini-wheels every turn if that's too much though.
Ars Verdant ~ I had absolutely no idea what to put on this one, since I can't think of any really interesting abilities in mono-green (it feels like it's all mana, +1/+1 counters and big creatures). Letting the player hold the mana for the entire turn is mostly for utility, since I imagine a deck that plays most or all of these six cards will likely run lots of instants. If I were to keep it as a mana ability, what do you think of something like this: "Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, add X mana in any combination of colors, where X is the number of colors in that spell's color identity. Until end of turn, you don't lose this mana as steps and phases end." (While I don't dislike your suggestion, it's significantly weaker than something like Savage Ventmaw, and making it the only attack trigger means it doesn't work well with the rest of the cycle.)
@cadstar369 you definitely need Ars Opalescent to be all five colours for it to function as a commander with each of its fragments. I just didn't understand why Prismatic was needed as a new ability that resets its colours when you cast it. I get the need to restrict players to using coloured mana to cast it, but that can be done with wording like on Myr Superion: "Spend only colored mana to pay for this spell's generic mana cost." The first half of the draw ability doesn't need to reference Ars Opalescent's colours, but can be worded to look at the colours of mana spent to cast it, similar to the second half of the ability. Putting the cards into your hand from your library is a good way to not be affected by your opponent's Notion Thief or Orcish Bowmasters. If you want to make Ars Opalescent more focused on multicoloured decks, you can keep the first half of the draw ability and give it another ability like trample to make it more of a significant presence after it hits the board. What would be interesting would be giving it Ward WUBRG, but with all Phyrexian mana, so any player can pay the cost, but it'll maximally punish the decks with the least colours. Too bad MTGCS doesn't have the coloured/2 generic split mana symbols like on Reaper King.
Ars Luminous - A rare 3/6 with Ars Luminous' abilities for 3WWW is fair.
Ars Enigmatic - Admittedly, the comparison of Ars Enigmatic to Ojutai, Soul of Winter is weaker than the other ones that were mentioned. Enabling both the tapping and untapping of multiple permanents seems fine, especially since the ability can't target lands and it's capped at only once per turn.
Ars Insidious - Your simplified version of the ability works, although since colour identities are capped at no more than five, you could also make it like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow.
Ars Inflamed - Having your discards be chosen and always drawing the maximum number of cards while making your opponent's discards random and only allowing them to draw as many cards as they discarded does a good job to make the effect no longer symmetrical, but it's a bit convoluted. If Ars Inflamed is going to affect all players, better to just keep it simple.
Ars Verdant - Another typically monogreen effect is destroying noncreature permanents (E.g., Bramblecrush, Chain of Acid, Mold Shambler, Rootgrapple, Terastodon, Woodfall Primus). I hadn't thought of Savage Ventmaw, I'm surprised that a card that singlehandedly and repeatedly gives you so much mana is only an uncommon. The reason why I didn't suggest making Ars Verdant's ability a cast trigger is to have it always net you the maximum amount of mana, which could mean the difference between being able to cast a spell or not. It would also not make Ars Luminous the odd one out for not having any kind of cast trigger.
@Jadefire thanks for all the advice. I'll put edited versions of the six up on MTGCS later today (assuming their text fits ). The Prismatic ability on Ars Opalescent was just because I wanted to play with it after someone posted a card with it for review back then. I made this version on MTG.Design since Scarecrow King mana looks and feels much better than rainbow phyrexian mana to me. (The II is just to distinguish it from the prior design over there.)
@smax765 as absurd as the existing eminence cards are, this is far and away more busted. The closest immediate comparison is Edgar Markov, which makes a 1/1 whenever you cast another Vampire spell. Agnor however, gives you a 1/1 with flying for free every turn. (The life loss is irrelevant since you're in both white and black, and the added evasion is incredibly powerful, especially in the early game and in these colors.) Additionally, Edgar Markov has to attack to provide additional value once he's on the board, while Agnor gets to sit there and drain your opponents with minimal risk. Finally, the last ability is very strange, considering blue generally doesn't get mana abilities that aren't restricted to artifacts/instants/sorceries, especially not in this color combination.
I have two suggestions regarding balance. The first is to turn the eminence ability into a regular upkeep trigger (since eminence is a fundamentally broken mechanic); perhaps also consider letting Agnor create a spirit on ETB to help cover for its lackluster statline. The second is to shift the activated ability to something more common in blue. For example, you could do something along the lines of "{2}{u}, Sacrifice two Spirits: Scry 1, then draw a card." (Modified from Sai, Master Thopterist.)
I'd appreciate feedback on these cards:
In particular, I'm worried that the possessed ability is too easily blown out, so I'm considering having the creature only be exiled until the associated equipment leaves the battlefield, similar to Idol of Endurance.
@cadstar369 the activated ability is a little bit copied from the apprentice wizard. The two colorless mana are because of usefulness. The deck wants to generate tokens and the ability helps to use the utility tokens (eg food, clues).
The eminence ability is copied from bitterblossom, but because is free I make heavier the life loss.
For your cards, they are not bad. The blades are good if the exiled creature returns to the graveyard. The creature is OP, considering the low mana value you spend to cycle a card per turn and pay life for mana. I recommend to change the CMC to 3 and to change the last ability to pay 2 life instead of 1, so you are basically paying phyrexian mana.
@smax765 note that Apprentice Wizard is an incredibly old card with no recent equivalents in blue. It’s gotten reprinted in masters sets, but there are no modern monoblue creatures that add unrestricted mana (Urza, Lord High Artificer is the only one that comes to mind, which is also an incredibly busted card). Additionally, note that all of the aforementioned abilities are tap abilities, whereas Agnor’s is not for no apparent reason. If you’re intent on having a mana ability, consider the effects of cards like Omen Hawker, Renowned Weaponsmith, and/or Vedalken Engineer as a baseline (i.e. add a tap symbol and a restriction on what the mana can be used for).
Bitterblossom is an insanely powerful card (it’s mythic rare for a reason), and making the player lose a mere one additional life in exchange for both starting the game with it and your opponents being unable to interact with it is absurd. Without thinking too hard about it, one has access to anthems and soul sister effects in white (to buff your free creatures and turn the life loss into life gain), Curiosity effects and additional flier support in blue (to refill your hand when your free evasive creatures connect), and Zulaport Cutthroat effects in black (to punish your opponents for interacting with your free creatures). This ability is completely broken for only 2 life per turn; heck, it’d probably still be broken at 4 life per turn because you have plenty of life to spare while you get set up. So long as it has an eminence ability, Agnor will likely not be built as the spirit/token deck you intend for it, especially since it provides minimal value for creating and utilizing either spirits or tokens. (Spending five mana on a 3/4 that slowly drains your opponents isn’t worth it unless you’re trying to go infinite, but even then you can do better relatively easily.)
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Regarding The Invocation of Spirits, once again, the first ability doesn’t make any sense in mono-blue. (Note that the only two recent blue cards that tutor into the graveyard, Phantom Carriage and Vizier of the Anointed, restrict to cards with disturb/flashback and embalm/eternalize, respectively. Your effect is like a triple Entomb or Gravebreaker Lamia, or an unrestricted version of effects like Buried Alive and Disciples of Gix, which are all mono-black.) Considering most permanents that tutor a single card into the graveyard cost 5+ mana, while The Invocation of Spirits not only tutors for three, but also protects your graveyard, this is easily worth being a seven or eight mana mythic from the first chapter alone.
The second chapter doesn’t seem particularly useful, especially for a token strategy, but discounts are discounts, and I assume most disturb decks would like this, though I can’t recall many powerful disturb cards that can also take full advantage of the discount, nor many disturb cards that see play in spirit decks at all. (This is too expensive for flashback decks, as they generally play Goblin Electromancer effects for cost reduction.) Also, flashback is an alternative casting cost, not an activated ability.
The third chapter also makes no sense in mono-blue, as it’s one of the two colors that never gets this style of effect (the other being red). This is more white’s sort of thing (e.g. Unbreakable Formation), but even then it’s very rare. Between this chapter and the first chapter, why is The Invocation of Spirits mono-blue instead of something like 4WUB or 5WUB?
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Regarding Koku’En, I fail to comprehend what you’re basing your opinion on. Red has plenty of creatures that rummage at 2, including Conspiracy Theorist, Plargg // Augusta, and Territorial Kavu. At three mana we start hitting commons like Rummaging Goblin. Additionally, paying 2 life per mana to equip is way too steep; most equipment don’t provide sufficient benefit to be worth that cost. For example, would you pay 6 life for Embercleave? Maybe. How about 8 life for Blazing Sunsteel, 12 life for Argentum Armor, or 16 life for Colossus Hammer? Most certainly not. The goal of this sort of ability is to be cheaper than spending the mana while not going full-on free like Puresteel Paladin effects, so it doesn’t make sense to use phyrexian mana as a baseline.
@cadstar369 I read bad Koku’En, I thought the text said “Rather than pay the cost of abilities targeting Koku’En, pay life equal to its mana cost”. Making it a 2/2 for 3 CMC and using the ability above but instead of one life paying 2 life sounds for me fair.
@smax765 here's two quick mock-ups based on my prior suggestions. Personally, I find the first one to be significantly more balanced, but the second is there if you absolutely must keep the eminence ability.
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I like this enchantment a lot. Much like other spells with taxing effects, this enchantment forces opponents to dedicate their whole turn to attack you or cast spells, but not both in most many cases. Assuming you'd play this in Ward tribal, I can see you surviving a bunch of turns untouched.
The only issue I can see with this spell is it's cost for 2 mana; that's much to cheap for this kind of spell. Let's say I only attack you with 1 creature, if you had Archangel of Tithes, Archon of Absolution, or Baird, Steward of Argive on the battlefield (all of which are 4cmc creatures) I would only need to pay 1 mana. If you had Ghostly Prison or Propaganda on the battlefield (which are 3cmc enchantments), I would only have to pay 2. But if you had Replusive Wardings (a 2 cmc enchantment), I would easily be forced to pay anywhere from 4-6 mana or more. Sphere of Safety is still easily the best tithe spell for defending yourself, and it costs 5.
Thus I'd say Replusive Wardings needs to cost at least 4 or 5 to be on par with everything else.
Also, I fixed Serka if you wanna take a look.
Repivise Wardings is now something interesting I would love to try use for my deck.
However, once controller paid for ward cost for each creature. Does that mean they don't have to pay it again? If so, I would leave that be.
Otherwise, I will go with "Creatures cannot attack you this turn unless their controller paid ward cost for each creature you control."
That way will force your opponent to pay for each turn when they attacks. Otherwise, everything looks balanced.
@Talidin1337
Your card looks cool! But there are some grammar issues I beileve we will have to point out;
Keywords are not capitalized. (I might spelled wrong there...) Treat it as if it were any normal word.
I.e.:
"Flying, frist strike"
The creature type is kinda off. If you were to put "God Warrior" or "God Soldier", it would be an awesome reference to Marvel!
I must admit for only six mana, having a commander that's flying, has first strike... With 10/10 and indestructible. Also, trample. That sounds a little op, isn't it?
I would recommend this ability for fun; "Whenever Thor attacks, if your life is half or less than your starting life, he gains +3/+3, trample, and indestructible until end of turn." Now that's more fair. Otherwise, looks good!
I would like a feedback on this card
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/onmans-call
That really helped, thank you much! I feel more confident about this card now.
As for Onman's Call, look up a card called Cosmotronic Wave, it will help with the wording format. You basically can copy and paste Cosmotronic Wave verbatim, just replace the part that says "each creature your opponents control" with "each creature target opponent controls". Also, bump the cost up from 2 mana to 3 mana. I loved using Cosmotronic Wave in standard way back when it came out, I won some games with it. I think I should start using it again. By extension, I love Onman's Call, the ability to knock out some 1/1 dorks and slide past your opponents defenses is an awesome maneuver.
Glad to be of a help and thank you for your valuable feedback!
@Talidin1337 I'm not quite sure how strong Thor is, but I feel it falls strongly into pet card territory. While the body is relatively good, it doesn't do anything outside of being a beatstick, which feels pretty weak for a mythic 6-drop. While it does get dramatically better when you're under half, the three gods from Baldur's Gate have a similar ability, yet none of them see play since it's not sufficiently impactful. While getting +5/+5 and trample as well can be huge, the lack of haste really hurts it, so I can't see what sort of deck it has a home in.
@Sweda I really like Repulsive Wardings, but my concern is that Wizards keeps printing stronger and stronger Ward abilities (e.g. Sauron the Dark Lord and Saruman of Many Colors) that make Repulsive Wardings way stronger than Propaganda and similar effects, especially since you're likely going to have protection spells or countermagic for when your opponent tries to remove your permanents directly. Even one or two life payment Ward abilities (e.g. Nine-Fingers Keene, Sedgemoor Witch, Phyrexian Fleshgorger) should be enough to rapidly remove your opponent's ability to attack you. Considering that, perhaps it should be 2WU, especially if Wizards starts printing more noncreature permanents with Ward abilities as well.
I'd appreciate feedback on these cards:
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For context, the monocolored five are meant to support Ars Opalescent. Currently, I've received feedback on Ars Insidious here and Ars Opalescent here, so I'm mainly looking for feedback on the other four and the group as a whole.
For Ars luminius, The only balance effect I would add is "other creatures" instead of "creatures".
For Ars enigmatic I think is balanced. I think that having a "first spell" is a great form to say "once per turn".
For Ars inflamed, I think it has lesser power as the rest of the cads. Being a 4/3 is good, but just the "random discarding" effect is what it makes it bad. To give it some power, I would change the text to this:
Flying.
Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, each player draws X cards, where X is the number of cards on that spell's color identity, then discard X cards at random. When you do, Ars Infamed deals damage to any target equal to the greatest color identity among cards discarded this way plus X.
So when you discard cards, you deal some damage.
Lastly, for Ars Verdant, I think is balanced. Discarding a card to get mana. is a good option. I would add something like "if the amount of mana added this way was 1 or less, draw a card" so you can cycle that card.
Your dragons are really neat, I like how they all share abilities that scale off the same mechanic but produce a tasteful effect that's on brand with their colors, and the abilities don't seem too powerful. I would change nothing expect the wording on the black dragon. It was confusing to read Ars Insidious, I had to go over it a couple of times. I can't think of any good alternative right now because I'm very tired but I'm sure you can come up with something. I'm curious, how would you handle color indentity ties?
Also, you nailed Thor on the head, he's just a glorified beat stick. The idea was to create a lore accurate representation of Thor for mtg and I wanted abilities that reflected that. I modeled him after Anya, Merciless Angel to gauge how much mana he should cost. I actually nerfed him quite a bit, the current card is much weaker and more balanced.
This idea is hilarious. I'm any game mode I think it would be rather easy to get 10 foods onto the battlefield, especially in commander. What I'm getting here is that unless people want to lose their food tokens and give them to you, they have to trigger almost all of them immediately in response to the next part of the spell, so at the beginning of your turn, everyone else taps out all thier mana but gains a bunch of life. If someone doesn't tap out their mana, that's fine, you just get a bunch more food tokens next turn. But as you mentioned, the main problem I can see here is the artifact abuse, you might be accidentally giving someone the game just by handing over so many food tokens, and there are also plenty of food sacrificing outlets that would love nothing more than to sac 7 or more foods all at once. A potential fix for this is to give everyone a set number of foods, like 3, rather than as many as the cards in their hand.
Also, if possible, you need to format the abilities in such a way that conforms to how sagas are worded, like using bullet points or lines to indicate phases and take out phrases such as "at the beginning of your upkeep" since sagas trigger at the beginning of your upkeep anyway; and remove the word "Then" in the second ability since it's happening in the next turn, not the same turn.
If you didn't mean to make this a saga, but rather just a normal enchantment, then the current wording is fine, but I would limit the food generation to just 1 per turn, that way several turns have to go by before there will be 10 foods and there won't be as much power spiking going on.
Over all it's a good card.
Ars Luminous - I agree with smax765 that modern templating words abilities as affecting "other" creatures you control while separately re-listing the abilities of the creature itself. It's not a big deal to give Ars Luminous its own bonus since it's monowhite, it'd just be a 3/6 creature with flying and vigilance that gives other creatures you control +1/+1 for each colour in their colour identity and vigilance. A Blessing of the Nephilim-type effect for all your creatures plus vigilance is a pretty big game, even if it ends up being an Intangible Virtue. Keeping the card at 3WW doesn't seem enough, even as a mythic rare legend. Just a Dictate of Heliod is 3WW, so perhaps changing the cost to 4WW or 2WWW would be the way to go.
Ars Enigmatic - Ars Enigmatic probably doesn't need to be a mythic rare. I wouldn't make it that just to have consistency across the cycle. 1UU for a 1/4 flier is decent but the tap ability is more restrictive in what it can target and less versatile than Stinging Lionfish and it can't trigger as often as Gadwick, the Wizened, both of which are lower in rarity. The addition of a stun counter is really what saves the effect, but a card like Ojutai, Soul of Winter allows for more than one trigger per turn. Maybe tap a number of permanents equal to the number of colours in the spell's colour identity, regardless of their mana value, and forego the stun counter. Rather than making the focus tapping a single permanent for multiple turns, it can instead tap down multiple key permanents for a single turn.
Ars Inflamed - I'm not really sure where to begin with this. The nature of random discards introduces so much variance in how a card will play out. Unless the payoff is significant, like with Gamble, this variance is really unappealing. The fact that the effect is symmetric means it's just as likely to help your opponent and hurt you as vice versa, and you never know which it's going to be. I wouldn't be inclined to play Burning Inquiry, even if it didn't cost me a card to get the effect. A mythic-level effect might be to discard a number of cards equal to the number of colours in the spell's colour identity and then draw that many cards. That way, you can actually net a gain on the number of cards in your hand.
Ars Verdent - If Ars Enigmatic doen't deserve to be a mythic rare, Ars Verdent deserves it even less in terms of both its complexity and its power level. I'm not sure why the clause to keep the mana until the end of turn is necessary. Other cards that have this clause have triggered mana-producing abilities, so the clause is needed to enable you to spend that mana on spells you wouldn't be able to cast when the ability triggers. With Ars Verdent, you can choose to activate it at any time and the mana doesn't last past the turn, so there doesn't seem to be a need to retain that mana for later use. Requiring a discard to activate the ability is a bit pricey since Ars Enigmatic, Insidious, and Inflamed let you also get the effect of the spell. You don't even get to choose the colours of mana Ars Verdent creates. Instead, Ars Verdent's ability could be an attack trigger that gives you mana based on the combined number of colours in the colour identities of all creatures that attacked that turn, then the clause to keep the mana until end of turn would make sense.
Ars Opalescent - The first thing I notice about Ars Opalescent is that its colour indicator makes it a five-colour card in every zone, but as soon as you cast it with anything less than five colours of mana, it loses some of its colours. That doesn't quite make sense to me. The ETB ability is also quite convoluted. Ars Opalescent seems to have a split personality where it wants you to spend as many colours of mana as possible to cast it in order to yield the greatest possible number of colour combinations. At the same time, it wants you to spend at least three mana of the same colour to unlock unlimited exiles of that colour. That aside, exiling cards from your hand to redraw is just an overpriced loot that doesn't net you any card gain. On the other hand, as good as a large Skeletal Scrying might be, it's heavily dependent on not only having cards in your graveyard, but having cards of the right colour. I think I would only play Ars Opalescent in a monocoloured deck so that I can get consistent card drawing each time I cast it. Also, I'm not sure why the draw ability isn't worded as actually drawing the cards instead of putting them into your hand. There's no interaction with the other cards by doing this.
Warm Forgiveness 3GW
Instant
Prevent all combat damage dealt this turn.
You and target opponent that attacked you draw X cards, where X is the amount of creatures that attacked you this turn, then put a [name] counter on them. They gain defender and "{3}, remove a [name] counter from this creature: You gain 2 life."
So that the controller pays mana to remove the counter. When the counter is removed, the creature loses defender and the ability of removing the counter, that means that that creature can attack you another time but the opponent has used all his mana to remove that to gain 2 life, that is not a lot.
I would like feedback on this card. For context is to create a WUB spirit-tokens deck.
I'll start with Ars Opalescent, since that's the original card, and the others are aspects of the same creature meant to serve as support for it. The color indicator is mainly to ensure the card functions in commander and similar formats, and the ability is intended to be like reverse devoid, where you can make Ars whatever colors you need it to be. The ETB is meant to give it a use in decks with few colors in addition to rainbow decks, and it doesn't draw mostly so nobody can mess with how many cards you get once the ability resolves (whether it be your own draw doubler or an opponent's Narset or Notion Thief). Do you think I should just drop the low-color application and add something on top of the hand refill? Perhaps I should also add some form of Ward ability. I want Ars Opalescent to be a suitably scary boss monster, but I also want it to be a serious build-around, rather than just getting slammed down willy-nilly for free cards like Atraxa, Grand Unifier and (to a lesser extent) Niv-Mizzet Reborn.
Ars Luminous ~ I let this one affect itself in case something changes the colors of your creatures, but I suppose that's such a corner case that I wouldn't mind dropping it. After reading your comment on Ars Enigmatic, I actually like the idea of dropping the cycle to rare to emphasize that these five are only fragments of Ars Opalescent. In that case, does a 3/6 for 3WWW sound fair for this at rare?
Ars Enigmatic ~ I appreciate your feedback on this one and Ars Inflamed the most, though I'm not sure the comparison to Ojutai, Soul of Winter here is fair since that's a 7-drop. If I were to drop the stun counter and shift to hitting multiple permanents, what do you think of letting it tap or untap any nonland permanents?
Ars Insidious ~ Since I'm strongly considering dropping these five to rare, what do you think of simplifying this one's ability to something like this: "Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, reveal the top card of your library and put it into your hand. Each player loses life equal to the number of colors in the revealed card's color identity." (I figure I should drop the life gain since the only two cards I can find that have life drain on this style of effect are Twilight Prophet and Sorin, Grim Nemesis, both of which are mythics that give you a card once per turn cycle.)
Ars Inflamed ~ I was struggling with what to put on this one. Giving it a damage ability felt boring, and random draw/discard was the only other interesting thing I could think of that was unique to red (my experiences with red are generally in UR+ decks). Putting a Dangerous Wager style effect on it once a turn seems pretty nice if you can consistently turn it into card advantage. This would probably be excessive at rare, but what do you think about having only your opponents' discards be random, as well as restricting their draws to the number of cards they discarded this way? (That way you don't accidentally give them card advantage.) I'd be fine with just having mini-wheels every turn if that's too much though.
Ars Verdant ~ I had absolutely no idea what to put on this one, since I can't think of any really interesting abilities in mono-green (it feels like it's all mana, +1/+1 counters and big creatures). Letting the player hold the mana for the entire turn is mostly for utility, since I imagine a deck that plays most or all of these six cards will likely run lots of instants. If I were to keep it as a mana ability, what do you think of something like this: "Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, add X mana in any combination of colors, where X is the number of colors in that spell's color identity. Until end of turn, you don't lose this mana as steps and phases end." (While I don't dislike your suggestion, it's significantly weaker than something like Savage Ventmaw, and making it the only attack trigger means it doesn't work well with the rest of the cycle.)
Ars Luminous - A rare 3/6 with Ars Luminous' abilities for 3WWW is fair.
Ars Enigmatic - Admittedly, the comparison of Ars Enigmatic to Ojutai, Soul of Winter is weaker than the other ones that were mentioned. Enabling both the tapping and untapping of multiple permanents seems fine, especially since the ability can't target lands and it's capped at only once per turn.
Ars Insidious - Your simplified version of the ability works, although since colour identities are capped at no more than five, you could also make it like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow.
Ars Inflamed - Having your discards be chosen and always drawing the maximum number of cards while making your opponent's discards random and only allowing them to draw as many cards as they discarded does a good job to make the effect no longer symmetrical, but it's a bit convoluted. If Ars Inflamed is going to affect all players, better to just keep it simple.
Ars Verdant - Another typically monogreen effect is destroying noncreature permanents (E.g., Bramblecrush, Chain of Acid, Mold Shambler, Rootgrapple, Terastodon, Woodfall Primus). I hadn't thought of Savage Ventmaw, I'm surprised that a card that singlehandedly and repeatedly gives you so much mana is only an uncommon. The reason why I didn't suggest making Ars Verdant's ability a cast trigger is to have it always net you the maximum amount of mana, which could mean the difference between being able to cast a spell or not. It would also not make Ars Luminous the odd one out for not having any kind of cast trigger.
@smax765 as absurd as the existing eminence cards are, this is far and away more busted. The closest immediate comparison is Edgar Markov, which makes a 1/1 whenever you cast another Vampire spell. Agnor however, gives you a 1/1 with flying for free every turn. (The life loss is irrelevant since you're in both white and black, and the added evasion is incredibly powerful, especially in the early game and in these colors.) Additionally, Edgar Markov has to attack to provide additional value once he's on the board, while Agnor gets to sit there and drain your opponents with minimal risk. Finally, the last ability is very strange, considering blue generally doesn't get mana abilities that aren't restricted to artifacts/instants/sorceries, especially not in this color combination.
I have two suggestions regarding balance. The first is to turn the eminence ability into a regular upkeep trigger (since eminence is a fundamentally broken mechanic); perhaps also consider letting Agnor create a spirit on ETB to help cover for its lackluster statline. The second is to shift the activated ability to something more common in blue. For example, you could do something along the lines of "{2}{u}, Sacrifice two Spirits: Scry 1, then draw a card." (Modified from Sai, Master Thopterist.)
I'd appreciate feedback on these cards:
In particular, I'm worried that the possessed ability is too easily blown out, so I'm considering having the creature only be exiled until the associated equipment leaves the battlefield, similar to Idol of Endurance.
For your cards, they are not bad. The blades are good if the exiled creature returns to the graveyard. The creature is OP, considering the low mana value you spend to cycle a card per turn and pay life for mana. I recommend to change the CMC to 3 and to change the last ability to pay 2 life instead of 1, so you are basically paying phyrexian mana.
Bitterblossom is an insanely powerful card (it’s mythic rare for a reason), and making the player lose a mere one additional life in exchange for both starting the game with it and your opponents being unable to interact with it is absurd. Without thinking too hard about it, one has access to anthems and soul sister effects in white (to buff your free creatures and turn the life loss into life gain), Curiosity effects and additional flier support in blue (to refill your hand when your free evasive creatures connect), and Zulaport Cutthroat effects in black (to punish your opponents for interacting with your free creatures). This ability is completely broken for only 2 life per turn; heck, it’d probably still be broken at 4 life per turn because you have plenty of life to spare while you get set up. So long as it has an eminence ability, Agnor will likely not be built as the spirit/token deck you intend for it, especially since it provides minimal value for creating and utilizing either spirits or tokens. (Spending five mana on a 3/4 that slowly drains your opponents isn’t worth it unless you’re trying to go infinite, but even then you can do better relatively easily.)
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Regarding The Invocation of Spirits, once again, the first ability doesn’t make any sense in mono-blue. (Note that the only two recent blue cards that tutor into the graveyard, Phantom Carriage and Vizier of the Anointed, restrict to cards with disturb/flashback and embalm/eternalize, respectively. Your effect is like a triple Entomb or Gravebreaker Lamia, or an unrestricted version of effects like Buried Alive and Disciples of Gix, which are all mono-black.) Considering most permanents that tutor a single card into the graveyard cost 5+ mana, while The Invocation of Spirits not only tutors for three, but also protects your graveyard, this is easily worth being a seven or eight mana mythic from the first chapter alone.
The second chapter doesn’t seem particularly useful, especially for a token strategy, but discounts are discounts, and I assume most disturb decks would like this, though I can’t recall many powerful disturb cards that can also take full advantage of the discount, nor many disturb cards that see play in spirit decks at all. (This is too expensive for flashback decks, as they generally play Goblin Electromancer effects for cost reduction.) Also, flashback is an alternative casting cost, not an activated ability.
The third chapter also makes no sense in mono-blue, as it’s one of the two colors that never gets this style of effect (the other being red). This is more white’s sort of thing (e.g. Unbreakable Formation), but even then it’s very rare. Between this chapter and the first chapter, why is The Invocation of Spirits mono-blue instead of something like 4WUB or 5WUB?
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Regarding Koku’En, I fail to comprehend what you’re basing your opinion on. Red has plenty of creatures that rummage at 2, including Conspiracy Theorist, Plargg // Augusta, and Territorial Kavu. At three mana we start hitting commons like Rummaging Goblin. Additionally, paying 2 life per mana to equip is way too steep; most equipment don’t provide sufficient benefit to be worth that cost. For example, would you pay 6 life for Embercleave? Maybe. How about 8 life for Blazing Sunsteel, 12 life for Argentum Armor, or 16 life for Colossus Hammer? Most certainly not. The goal of this sort of ability is to be cheaper than spending the mana while not going full-on free like Puresteel Paladin effects, so it doesn’t make sense to use phyrexian mana as a baseline.