@Jadefire ; The issue is, lesson spells could be placed directly into one's deck if you so chose too, plus conjure seems like it is similar to lesson spells except it can also include creature cards. I don't want these token spells and enchantments to be able to be placed into a deck directly (that would mean having them take up slots within the set card list as well as being able to be placed directly into one's deck). Take Mira, Street Ruffian for example (https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/mira-street-ruffian?list=set&set=64215). She creates the token instant, Slash of the Scythe (https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/slash-of-the-scythe?list=set&set=64215) which specifically is meant to pair with Mira as upon casting the spell it adds +1/+1 counters onto her. Conjure is similar to what I am doing, but since the cards conjured also include cards that already exist, I feel like I would be stuck to just existing cards or include conjured cards within the set as well. (Plus I'd still be treating them like tokens if they weren't included in the set by removing them from the game upon resolving or leaving the battlefield)
Before I started my underwater set, I had looked into maybe using token spells for a space themed set I attempted to make. Personally, I think the only types of tokens that should be able to be put into your hand are token instants and sorceries, as they don't currently exist, and can't be put onto the battlefield like other tokens as they aren't permanents. Sure, token permanents could be spells and put into your hand, but I think that overcomplicates tokens, and makes them a bit too confusing.
I thought about it and I'm going to do only token enchantments as they can be placed directly onto the battlefield and create a new type of instant and sorcery known as conjure instant and conjure sorcery which act like tokens if removed from hand via discard or shuffling into a deck, but are removed from the game when they resolve. They also cannot be placed in a deck legally (which i wanted to prevent by making them tokens)
I am really proud of this design. It is a sort of "darned if you do, darned if you don't" situation, where it sort of has deathtouch. I was thinking it could be a 0/1, but I am not sure.
The destroy target untapped creature ability seems quite powerful, but at 0/2 it will likely require the player to use up a spell to raise its power.
But it would probably be best utilized if it didn’t attack at all, since it can remove small tapped creatures every turn, provided that you attacked (I think. There aren’t many cards I can think of the involve the individual combat steps).
I think what this card needs is some simplification. Perhaps it could be reworked to be built around either the combat damage trigger or the end of combat ability.
@jpastor you can make spaces by copying a tab from a text document. I only found out about this recently, and I thought I’d give it a try. I think it turned out quite nice.
Nice job using non-green/white artwork for a green/white card.
Always try to look for more subtle ways to entwine everything on your card. At the moment, it's a good card, but each thing just exponentially feeds off itself... It's strong by itself and gets stronger if you control plenty of creatures and it buffs those creatures, implying that if you've made it gallant, your army is big enough to be led to victory by Sterjnak's second ability. This is easy to understand your intent, but I would try to blend these abilities together a little more gently to increase the strategy behind playing this card.
I would have liked to have seen a different way for it to become gallant and a different play on what he does when he attacks based on if he's gallant or not. For example, for the sake of space, remove its static combat abilities... then have it give target creature +2/+2. If it's gallant, each creature gets +2/+2 instead. For the method to give it gallant, have it be a triggered effect like: When Sterjnak attacks with three or more other non-token creatures and isn't blocked, it becomes gallant.
Voila- a very old card that hasn't received favorites yet...
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/grumobile?list=user The abilities are based on two things. The first ability is from the lyric in the Despicable Me intro song: "Gru's got the speakers in the trunk [of his car, presumably] to make you bounce, bounce, bounce". I thought, "Well, if his car has speakers which can play music to make people bounce up and down, why not have his car's card have the ability to "bounce" (return to hand) creatures?". The second one is from the first trailer of Despicable Me 3 (according to the wiki, I thought it was from the intro of the first movie tbh) where Gru's car can make its suspension go really high and slam another car into a building. It has menace and trample because I thought that would be flavorful, and then 5/3 not because it is fragile in the movie or anything, but just for balance.
5 mana 5/3 is reasonable as most with that statline are 4 but coloured. Having it being crewed balances the trample and menace I guess. Second ability is powerful, not many cards have repeat bounce no questions asked for good reason. Most board states makes attacking with it too risky, either by surprise blockers or removal spell.
Overall I think everything is reasonably costed, but choosing between bouncing or attacking leans heavily to bouncing making it clash with it being a vehicle, it's third ability and trample and menace.
this is a revision of an earlier card that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with. (https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/goblin-genuity-1) I think the new version has a more interesting design, but it doesn’t feel QUITE balanced yet. Any thoughts? Thank you
@Globert-the-Martian this is a very interesting card. The randomness makes it difficult to evaluate, but here are my thoughts:
The first effect is more blue than red due to the order of the events, but I can understand why given the 'downside' third effect. (It also prevents this from being 'draw two cards if you have no cards in hand' at X=0.)
At X=0 this is usually either a Lightning Strike effect or a nice card draw spell that can also enable madness plays.
At X=1, this is similar to the above, but with the additional chance to either hurt you a bit while potentially enabling a madness play, or be much better than any other card I can think of at a similar mana value.
As X gets larger, I think it's fairest to evaluate under the assumption that each mode is chosen an approximately equal number of times (since that's statistically most likely). In this case, this is lots of card selection while tossing out lots of burn and some self-harm. While there are cards that can do either of those better, I think this might end up a bit silly in a UR deck if you double your draws and/or the burn.
In a Goblin deck (where this is clearly intended to be given the tribal tag), this feels like fun card that has both a high ceiling and low floor value-wise. I like that the third effect also burns you in addition to discarding a card, since mono-red decks tend to run out of cards in hand since they usually have impulsive-draw style tools.
If this card existed, I'm not sure how much play this would see in formats outside of commander, because repeatedly hitting the third effect is pretty awful if you start at 20 life, but playing it for X<=2 could be very strong, especially in madness decks.
@Globert-the-Martian I agree with cadstar369. Here's some additional food for thought as you look at your design: -Drawing and then choosing a discard (aside from the notable counterexample of Faithless Looting) is not something that red typically does. Usually, it's a chosen discard first as a cost and then draw or draw first and then discard at random. Both of these worsen your discard options and generally lead to a less ideal final hand than an equivalent effect in blue since crafting your hand methodically is blue's specialty and red typically throws in some uncertainty/chaos into the mix. -I recommend swapping the order of the draw and discard in the first ability if you're worried about power level. I wouldn't be too concerned about someone getting pure card advantage if they cast this at X=0 with an empty hand as that's what would happen with Dangerous Wager anyway and if the first mode gets chosen more than once, you're right back to netting only one additional card thereafter with the previously mentioned downside of potentially drawing worse cards than what you discarded. -Looking at one scenario in the extreme case, at X=2 and choosing the second mode, you have a 1 in 9 chance of getting three Lightning Bolts for four mana but you could also get double Shocked and your opponent 3-for-1s you (assuming you targeted a creature and your hand isn't empty). Are these best and worst case scenarios at these probabilities acceptable to you? You can explore the extreme case of choosing the first mode as well. Of course, the downsides can be greatly mitigated by casting this as the last card in your hand to either filter/refill your hand or get in some extra damage. -The way I see this card getting played is either X=0 as a really versatile 2-mode card or X=max as an "I'm going to be dead anyway" last ditch YOLO effort to either win or draw out the game where loss was inevitable. Do you care for this card being used to potentially deliver a "bad beat" to someone? From the perspective of the person playing the card, I'd love to have the opportunity to randomly win games I have no business winning but does that make for a fun card to play against? -As cadstar369 mentioned, the randomness is what makes this card hard to evaluate. If you're really up for it, you could work out a table with the different scenarios (permutations of abilities) and the relative probabilities of each for different values of X. I think that's the best way, to have something concrete to look at to see what's most likely to happen and how frequently you can expect to see the more niche cases.
As an aside, I really like the ratio you set of two desirable effects to one undesirable effect and the fact that the undesirable effect is a backfiring of both of the desirable effects.
@cadstar369 Mnemis is priced well at four mana and looks to be in the right rarity. Given that it's legendary, it could even cost 1GW, which would give it some earlier game value as a blocker in the decks that would run it. Having a reusable Riftsweeper as well as graveyard recycling effect would make it very hard to mill you out or suspend anything against you, but I suspect this card is meant to occupy the same play space as Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Laboratory Maniac as the "my library's empty, I win the game now" inevitability. Instead of modifying the game rules, as blue does, to win immediately, Mnemis does it in a much more drawn out way where you recycle the cards to make it impossible for your opponent to win before recycling the cards that enable you to win. It's a narrow effect that can only be fully utilized with an empty library but Mnemis does what it does very well and can single-handedly keep you alive and win you the game if you can setup the situation for it to shine.
I like this card, and I think that the green in the cost is a good costing mechanic, as having the card purely in Rakdos would be really good. However, I think that the card is too packed full of abilities with no real draw-backs. +1/+1 for each blood token is already very good, as blood tokens are pretty easy to create, and I've gotten many out in the games that I've played with blood focused decks. On top of the blood token buff you have this ability that creates bloods essentially whenever it attacks, meaning that it just makes itself stronger and stronger until your opponent can't block it any more, but then it still gets stronger because any damage can make blood tokens and therefore buff itself. I think that the card gets out of hand really quickly, and if you built around this card it would be a complete powerhouse. Plus, you can attack/block, kill a creature that your opponent has, get +1/+1, and then fight another creature that they have, getting +1/+1 again. I would give something like this either cumulative upkeep or vanishing to make it so it is only out temporarily. Also make it so it only makes a blood when it deals damage to a player, but that would debuff its fight ability as well. I've seen that WotC doesn't do triggers on damage other than to a player or planeswalker, and I think there is good reason for this. There is a lot of other tweaking that I believe this requires to make it playable. This card is very similar to a card that says: "Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME." "Whenever CARDNAME deals damage, draw a card". When you have cards that buff themselves based on a condition, giving them the ability to enable that condition is dangerous.
For my card, I have three of the functionally same card with different text styles:
I know I posted last, but I really liked these two lands I just made so I am going to post them. They represent the Jedi and Sith. I tried to make them similar and different at the same time, and made the flavor text similar and the land concept the same.
as for the Paragon, I think it’s also balanced. It’s interesting how it also can buff creatures your opponents control (but probably won’t). I like the first one’s flavor text.
@Globert-the-Martian Gargalix feels like it was overbalanced in favor of flavor (don't get me wrong, the story here is great). While it does grow twice as fast as similar cards, the downsides feel like it's just waiting for a token deck or proliferate engine to render it unable to do anything for the whole game, and it's not that strong even when managed properly. Additionally, since you have to make sure Gargalix doesn't have too many counters, you can't run many of the +1/+1 counter support cards, since they will only accelerate Gargalix's food coma (mass sacrifice effects are likely best avoided for a similar reason). I might be funny to see this in a Jund deck that aims to Fling huge creatures though.
I'd appreciate some thoughts on this pair of cards:
Additional context (should you desire it) can be found in this set.
@ShadowReign I’m a huge fan of Morteros. I like the way the huge stats and keywords help protect you during the main ability’s dance on the edge of life and death (since you’ll probably have less than 10 life if you’re trying to use it), and how the last ability helps get your life total down while providing excellent card advantage. It’s also nice that the front end of the revival ability doesn’t care what your life total is, so you can set things up long before your life total reaches the appropriate level (though keeping track of the chosen permanents might be a nightmare since this card doesn’t mark them in any way, which is to its benefit since it doesn’t get shut down by Solemnity and such). And of course it’s still a powerful beatstick even if you never utilize the middle ability.
I like this card, it can be used and abused in so many angles. You can get some amazing value playing it with 0 cost creatures, go wide and upgrade all your guys, have +1/+1 counters so you will have an advantage in combat, a weird wrath if you pick a legendary, flicker it for shenanigans... lots of build arounds. It is symmetrical too so you have to be tactical on when to play it and that just makes it more interesting.
Only thing I think is that it's stat line is a bit under powered for 5 mana I would want to bump the toughness a bit more given it's w/u.
@BT9154 I'm mixed on this one. I quite like the land ability mixed with a payoff for using off-color mana. However, I have a few issues with this card:
1. The art doesn't match MTG style at all (it's also not a bird). 2. I'm not very excited by the payoff of getting +1/+1 counters, but that is more of a personal preference, so I wouldn't deduct points for that. 3. You definitely have to read the last line multiple times before you understand what it does. I don't know if there is a better way to word it, but I think that kind of complexity would at least bump it up to mythic. 4. Lastly, there isn't really a reason this card needs to cost red mana. There is nothing on the card that is a red ability. This card could probably just be UG.
I think it's a neat idea with a few flaws, in my humble opinion.
I quite like Black Market Salesman, though it looks more like a woman (like an old hag). I think that the ability for any player to activate it is very interesting and I think that this could be quite interesting to play with. However, it should say: "Pay {X} and X life where X is the number of demand counters on Black Market Salesman:" Maybe it should be legendary, as having two of those out would be really complicated.
My card is: https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/marc-predka?list=user The "art" is credited to Marc Predka because it is a picture of Marc Predka himself; Mr. Predka didn't take the picture, I don't know who did. I made this card because of the song "My Time is Now" by John Cena and Tha Trademarc (Marc Predka). Marc Predka is John Cena's cousin. Anyways, his abilities come from the lyrics in the song and the fact that he is a rapper: The fact that he is a rapper (Bard type and attacking buff, which also buffs him and 3/2 stats) "I spent twenty plus years seeking knowledge of self, so for now Marc Predka is living life for wealth" (creation of treasure tokens and blue and black colors) "A man is measured by the way that he thinks, not clothing lines, leather, or minks" "Aiming guns in all your photos, that's a "no-no"." (the discarding of red or black cards, which are materialism and rash, impulsive things)
MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Comments
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/mira-street-ruffian-1?list=set&set=64215
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/slash-of-the-scythe-1?list=set&set=64215
I am really proud of this design. It is a sort of "darned if you do, darned if you don't" situation, where it sort of has deathtouch. I was thinking it could be a 0/1, but I am not sure.
this is a strange one.
I think what this card needs is some simplification.
Perhaps it could be reworked to be built around either the combat damage trigger or the end of combat ability.
I hope that helps.
here’s mine:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/nest-guardian-1
how did you center align and center space everything?
—
I think my card got skipped, so I'm just gonna repost it.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/sterjnak-dauntless-king-1?list=user
Nice job using non-green/white artwork for a green/white card.
Always try to look for more subtle ways to entwine everything on your card. At the moment, it's a good card, but each thing just exponentially feeds off itself... It's strong by itself and gets stronger if you control plenty of creatures and it buffs those creatures, implying that if you've made it gallant, your army is big enough to be led to victory by Sterjnak's second ability. This is easy to understand your intent, but I would try to blend these abilities together a little more gently to increase the strategy behind playing this card.
I would have liked to have seen a different way for it to become gallant and a different play on what he does when he attacks based on if he's gallant or not. For example, for the sake of space, remove its static combat abilities... then have it give target creature +2/+2. If it's gallant, each creature gets +2/+2 instead. For the method to give it gallant, have it be a triggered effect like: When Sterjnak attacks with three or more other non-token creatures and isn't blocked, it becomes gallant.
Voila- a very old card that hasn't received favorites yet...
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muckblaster
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/emergency-extraction?list=user
This one mostly for the flavor text I wrote myself (this is a functional reprint of [[Rescue]]). Also I made a typo; "your" should be "you".
or
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/grumobile?list=user
The abilities are based on two things. The first ability is from the lyric in the Despicable Me intro song: "Gru's got the speakers in the trunk [of his car, presumably] to make you bounce, bounce, bounce". I thought, "Well, if his car has speakers which can play music to make people bounce up and down, why not have his car's card have the ability to "bounce" (return to hand) creatures?". The second one is from the first trailer of Despicable Me 3 (according to the wiki, I thought it was from the intro of the first movie tbh) where Gru's car can make its suspension go really high and slam another car into a building. It has menace and trample because I thought that would be flavorful, and then 5/3 not because it is fragile in the movie or anything, but just for balance.
Second ability is powerful, not many cards have repeat bounce no questions asked for good reason.
Most board states makes attacking with it too risky, either by surprise blockers or removal spell.
here’s mine:
this is a revision of an earlier card that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with. (https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/goblin-genuity-1) I think the new version has a more interesting design, but it doesn’t feel QUITE balanced yet. Any thoughts? Thank you
- The first effect is more blue than red due to the order of the events, but I can understand why given the 'downside' third effect. (It also prevents this from being 'draw two cards if you have no cards in hand' at X=0.)
- At X=0 this is usually either a Lightning Strike effect or a nice card draw spell that can also enable madness plays.
- At X=1, this is similar to the above, but with the additional chance to either hurt you a bit while potentially enabling a madness play, or be much better than any other card I can think of at a similar mana value.
- As X gets larger, I think it's fairest to evaluate under the assumption that each mode is chosen an approximately equal number of times (since that's statistically most likely). In this case, this is lots of card selection while tossing out lots of burn and some self-harm. While there are cards that can do either of those better, I think this might end up a bit silly in a UR deck if you double your draws and/or the burn.
- In a Goblin deck (where this is clearly intended to be given the tribal tag), this feels like fun card that has both a high ceiling and low floor value-wise. I like that the third effect also burns you in addition to discarding a card, since mono-red decks tend to run out of cards in hand since they usually have impulsive-draw style tools.
- If this card existed, I'm not sure how much play this would see in formats outside of commander, because repeatedly hitting the third effect is pretty awful if you start at 20 life, but playing it for X<=2 could be very strong, especially in madness decks.
I'd appreciate thoughts on this card:-Drawing and then choosing a discard (aside from the notable counterexample of Faithless Looting) is not something that red typically does. Usually, it's a chosen discard first as a cost and then draw or draw first and then discard at random. Both of these worsen your discard options and generally lead to a less ideal final hand than an equivalent effect in blue since crafting your hand methodically is blue's specialty and red typically throws in some uncertainty/chaos into the mix.
-I recommend swapping the order of the draw and discard in the first ability if you're worried about power level. I wouldn't be too concerned about someone getting pure card advantage if they cast this at X=0 with an empty hand as that's what would happen with Dangerous Wager anyway and if the first mode gets chosen more than once, you're right back to netting only one additional card thereafter with the previously mentioned downside of potentially drawing worse cards than what you discarded.
-Looking at one scenario in the extreme case, at X=2 and choosing the second mode, you have a 1 in 9 chance of getting three Lightning Bolts for four mana but you could also get double Shocked and your opponent 3-for-1s you (assuming you targeted a creature and your hand isn't empty). Are these best and worst case scenarios at these probabilities acceptable to you? You can explore the extreme case of choosing the first mode as well. Of course, the downsides can be greatly mitigated by casting this as the last card in your hand to either filter/refill your hand or get in some extra damage.
-The way I see this card getting played is either X=0 as a really versatile 2-mode card or X=max as an "I'm going to be dead anyway" last ditch YOLO effort to either win or draw out the game where loss was inevitable. Do you care for this card being used to potentially deliver a "bad beat" to someone? From the perspective of the person playing the card, I'd love to have the opportunity to randomly win games I have no business winning but does that make for a fun card to play against?
-As cadstar369 mentioned, the randomness is what makes this card hard to evaluate. If you're really up for it, you could work out a table with the different scenarios (permutations of abilities) and the relative probabilities of each for different values of X. I think that's the best way, to have something concrete to look at to see what's most likely to happen and how frequently you can expect to see the more niche cases.
As an aside, I really like the ratio you set of two desirable effects to one undesirable effect and the fact that the undesirable effect is a backfiring of both of the desirable effects.
Having a reusable Riftsweeper as well as graveyard recycling effect would make it very hard to mill you out or suspend anything against you, but I suspect this card is meant to occupy the same play space as Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Laboratory Maniac as the "my library's empty, I win the game now" inevitability. Instead of modifying the game rules, as blue does, to win immediately, Mnemis does it in a much more drawn out way where you recycle the cards to make it impossible for your opponent to win before recycling the cards that enable you to win. It's a narrow effect that can only be fully utilized with an empty library but Mnemis does what it does very well and can single-handedly keep you alive and win you the game if you can setup the situation for it to shine.
I like this card, and I think that the green in the cost is a good costing mechanic, as having the card purely in Rakdos would be really good. However, I think that the card is too packed full of abilities with no real draw-backs. +1/+1 for each blood token is already very good, as blood tokens are pretty easy to create, and I've gotten many out in the games that I've played with blood focused decks. On top of the blood token buff you have this ability that creates bloods essentially whenever it attacks, meaning that it just makes itself stronger and stronger until your opponent can't block it any more, but then it still gets stronger because any damage can make blood tokens and therefore buff itself. I think that the card gets out of hand really quickly, and if you built around this card it would be a complete powerhouse. Plus, you can attack/block, kill a creature that your opponent has, get +1/+1, and then fight another creature that they have, getting +1/+1 again. I would give something like this either cumulative upkeep or vanishing to make it so it is only out temporarily. Also make it so it only makes a blood when it deals damage to a player, but that would debuff its fight ability as well. I've seen that WotC doesn't do triggers on damage other than to a player or planeswalker, and I think there is good reason for this. There is a lot of other tweaking that I believe this requires to make it playable. This card is very similar to a card that says: "Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME." "Whenever CARDNAME deals damage, draw a card". When you have cards that buff themselves based on a condition, giving them the ability to enable that condition is dangerous.
For my card, I have three of the functionally same card with different text styles:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/metamorphic-paragon-1
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/metamorphic-paragon-2
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/metamorphic-paragon-3
Flavor text version:
Reminder text version:
Basic text version:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/ilum-4
I know I posted last, but I really liked these two lands I just made so I am going to post them. They represent the Jedi and Sith. I tried to make them similar and different at the same time, and made the flavor text similar and the land concept the same.
the lands seem balanced enough
as for the Paragon, I think it’s also balanced. It’s interesting how it also can buff creatures your opponents control (but probably won’t). I like the first one’s flavor text.
here’s mine:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/gargalix-the-glutton
I'd appreciate some thoughts on this pair of cards:
Additional context (should you desire it) can be found in this set.
—
Here is the card I would like some opinions and critique on:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/morteros-the-corruptor?list=user
This is actually a revised card of mine that I made awhile back, which has gone through some major changes.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/ea-conformitys-evangelist
I actually meant to put "creatures you control" on there but I forgot.
I'm mixed on this one. I quite like the land ability mixed with a payoff for using off-color mana. However, I have a few issues with this card:
1. The art doesn't match MTG style at all (it's also not a bird).
2. I'm not very excited by the payoff of getting +1/+1 counters, but that is more of a personal preference, so I wouldn't deduct points for that.
3. You definitely have to read the last line multiple times before you understand what it does. I don't know if there is a better way to word it, but I think that kind of complexity would at least bump it up to mythic.
4. Lastly, there isn't really a reason this card needs to cost red mana. There is nothing on the card that is a red ability. This card could probably just be UG.
I think it's a neat idea with a few flaws, in my humble opinion.
Here's a couple of mine:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/poacher-of-paradise
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/black-market-salesman-1
"Pay {X} and X life where X is the number of demand counters on Black Market Salesman:"
Maybe it should be legendary, as having two of those out would be really complicated.
My card is:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/marc-predka?list=user
The "art" is credited to Marc Predka because it is a picture of Marc Predka himself; Mr. Predka didn't take the picture, I don't know who did. I made this card because of the song "My Time is Now" by John Cena and Tha Trademarc (Marc Predka). Marc Predka is John Cena's cousin. Anyways, his abilities come from the lyrics in the song and the fact that he is a rapper:
The fact that he is a rapper (Bard type and attacking buff, which also buffs him and 3/2 stats)
"I spent twenty plus years seeking knowledge of self, so for now Marc Predka is living life for wealth" (creation of treasure tokens and blue and black colors)
"A man is measured by the way that he thinks, not clothing lines, leather, or minks"
"Aiming guns in all your photos, that's a "no-no"."
(the discarding of red or black cards, which are materialism and rash, impulsive things)