What Should things Cost?

DecaldorDecaldor
edited April 2017 in Custom Card Discussion
I hope I'm not alone in thinking that sometimes, you don't know what some abilities should cost in mana. I mean, it could be as simple as figuring the CMC of a 2/3 creature, or as tricky as combining two abilities that work well with each other and seeing how much to boost the mana cost. So, I think that if people want answers to these questions, they should post them here and have others try and figure it out, based on real MTG cards, or just common sense. For example, let's say you are trying to create a 4/2 with first strike and wither. What does a regular 4/2 cost? How about with first strike? And how much should I add because of wither? Plus, first strike and wither is an interesting combo. So post your questions here and hope that someone can give the answers.

Comments

  • LujikulLujikul
    edited April 2017
    A regular 4/2 would likely have a converted mana cost of three, while one with first strike could hit four or five mana, depending on the rarity and whether or not it's vanilla. With wither, it's easily a cmc of five, at the very least.
  • Biblio4Biblio4
    Look at the costing for different printed creatures with stats you want. Remember after the first colored mana symbol, each colored mana pushes it farther into a color and is "worth" about 2 generic mana. So RR is the same as 2R but more exclusively red. It makes it harder to cast in a deck that isnt' mono-colored. The cost for vanilla creatures is the baseline, each keyword ability generally costs an extra mana. Being legendary makes a creature cost slightly less, because that's a drawback - a 2nd in hand can't just become a 2nd creature on the board. With some creatures there are "free" abilities not included in the costs - flying is generally a given for Dragons, Demons, Vampires, and Angels and not included in the cost. The same with Reach for Spiders. Green gets slightly better stats for the same cost as the other colors. So vanilla 4/2 in Green is 2G (Alpine Grizzly). In Black it's 3B (Giant Cockroach). In Red it's 3R (Viashino Warrior). In White, it's 3W (Loxodon Covert). Blue doesn't have one with those specific stats, but 4U would be reasonable - Its creatures usually cost slightly more than the other colors - just as Green is the "creature color," Blue is penalized because it has the best of so many other spell types. Start with those and add about a mana for each keyword you want, like wither, or first strike. A white 2/2 goes for 1W, with first strike it would be either 2W or WW.
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