@cadstar369 Thoughtscape mystic is a great card. I have one thought about Mentality, but the concept is well done.
The concept of "noting" is pretty obnoxious for a keyword mechanic. Noting I think works alright for legendary cards or one-offs, but can get out of hand when you're dealing with multiple cards with that mechanic.
For example, imagine I had some way to repeatedly scry and I had 3-4 mentality cards on board. If I wanted to, I could look at a different card for each of Mentality's triggers, and now I have to note 3-4 different color combinations for each card.
The TLDR is that you may want to come up with some clever way to remove the burden from the player to keep track of the colors. Some kind of special counter or token that goes away at the end of turn would accomplish that nicely, and potentially adds extra synergy to playing multiple cards with mentality, where you could stack colors until you had all 5.
Anyway, after all that, I think the card is an interesting design, I quite like it, and there's potential for the mechanic.
Here are my cards. Funny that @ShadowReign has also made a card using Phyrexian mana, because it's been on my mind as well to try to take the concept of Phyrexian mana and make it less terrible of a mechanic. Here is a cycle that demonstrates my attempt:
@hileandr These are nice. They look really unbalanced at first glance, but I don't think that they are that powerful. I really like Prelate of Norn, especially.
@hileandr there appears to be some misunderstandings here. Allow me to clarify:
Mentality as a keyword does not involve noting values (see the prior post). Thoughscape Mystic does so because it was the most natural way for me to interpret a mana-dork that relies on the top card of your library, and this is part of why I requested commentary on it.
The colors Thoughtscape Mystic sees do not stack, though a player might keep track of the additional color(s) available from turn to turn via some sort of temporary counter like you suggest.
Mentality is structured to avoid both being bricked and exploited via players stacking the top card(s) of your library (similarly to Mind's Desire), so it is both very likely and intended that a player sees a new card for each Mentality trigger.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/wizards-flask @hileandr This is another top-down design, this one of the water bottle. I first made a card literally called "water bottle" with a picture of a real life water bottle, but then I made it actually fit in Magic more. I made that picture by splicing together a picture of Saruman and a fantasy water bottle picture.
@cadstar369 Thoughtscape Mystic looks to be a well-designed card. Given the downside of revealing information from your library, though not necessarily your draw, it could afford to go down to uncommon as creatures that ramp you by two mana are readily found at the lower rarities.
If you're committed to making the card a Mentality card and have thought through all the nuances of the current iteration of it, I completely understand and wouldn't propose the need to change anything. A possible alternative way to do a similar effect (instead of locking in colours during your upkeep) would be to allow you to look at the top card of your library at any time (a very blue effect) and make revealing the top card of your library part of the cost to activate, followed by shuffling your library. That way, you're not just sitting there giving away deck information whether or not you use the card for mana and have the utility of seeing what your next draw will be.
@SPyBondPlays I like the flavour design of it and I can see a cycle of them. But be careful when making cards and that store mana like this on a 1 to 1 basis. You can cast this on turn 2, on turn 3 play your island and leave 3 islands open on your opponent's turn to maybe counter stuff, if nothing to counter dump all the mana to the water bottle at the end of turn and on turn 4 you have 7 mana available (if your land drops are consistent).
Made this a while back, any good? One bad mechanic with a good mechanic
Why do people say cipher is so bad? I honestly think its a fine mechanic. For the water bottle Sweda, I put a maximum of four mana because I felt like that was a good number because it does cost mana and only blue mana to put counters on it. It would be really good in a mono-blue deck. I think that I should maybe put a max of 3 on it instead but I don't know. Its got a lot of limits. It is a 2 cost artifact, can only have 4 counters, and only works for blue mana.
For the pickpocket card @Sweda, I think its good, though maybe too cheap, as cipher is usually way upcosted and storm on cipher just seems busted. Especially since you're literally getting mana from casting spells now. https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/lightning-charge-2
@SPyBondPlays I think people say cipher is bad because it is easy to shut it down. All the opponent needs to do is pretty much have a bigger creature in play, and on top of that if you don't have a good creature or no creature to cipher to do you still play it knowing cipher would probably never trigger, or do you wait and not maximize mana usage? It can be needless over thinking sometimes. Personally I think its a fun build around mechanic.
The issue with the water bottle is how fast you can store the counters, not the counter limitation or the colour restriction. There are lands that pretty much do what you have like Calciform Pools but it can only put 1 counter at a time and to use the mana it also cost one so you are losing one mana too. If you can some how make slower it can be balanced, maybe make it so it doesn't untap but you can pay something to untap it.
@cadstar369 My apologies, you did state that mentality was not just about noting colors. Not sure how I missed that. I also missed the shuffle clause. Let me review the card again:
As for the card itself, I have no issue with it, really. I think it's a neat card. It's odd to see a Bant-colored dragon, and one without flying to boot, but that's not really a problem.
As far as the mechanic is concerned, it's a pretty simple one that works just fine. My only concern would be the shuffle aspect. I get why it's there - you want each reveal to be a new card, and you want to prevent people from stacking their library. However, shuffling, especially often, can become quite burdensome in paper, and extends the game time significantly. I'm also not sure if it's such a bad thing that people could stack the top of their decks. It rewards good play and makes players feel clever. As it stands right now it's more of a roll of the dice, which is fine; but in combination with the shuffling aspect, I wonder if it isn't cleaner to simply put the card on the bottom of your library instead of shuffling.
That being said, I will reiterate that I quite like Thoughtscape Mystic.
I would also appreciate your thoughts on my Phyrexian mana cards that I posted earlier.
@hileandr my main concern with your phyrexian cycle is that using their alternate cost punishes the player. They not only lose life, but also get a weaker effect, heavily discouraging taking advantage of the cycle's potential flexibility. This is also the main difference between your cycle and existing cards that use phyrexian mana; might I ask why you think phyrexian mana is a terrible alternative cost?
As individual cards, here are some additional thoughts (tried to consider these from a standard/draft perspective, since I think that's what commons & uncommons are mainly balanced for):
Prelate of Norn mitigates its own downside in an interesting way; lifegain decks would probably love to have this since the life loss should be generally irrelevant.
Gitaxian Spymaster is almost as painful as Vorinclex's Tunneler, scaling from Sleight of Hand to Impulse. Without the life loss, this would be a very nice card.
Geth's Executioner is pretty strong, as most creatures with an equivalent fixed variation of this effect cost 1~3 more mana than this would (though this is counterbalanced by the life loss and weak stats).
Warlord of Urubrask is somewhat worrying, as 2~4 mana for 3~5 power spread across an equal number of bodies (with haste!) is pretty strong for aggro decks. This gets a huge amount of mileage out of combat tricks like Trumpet Blast.
Vorinclex's Tunneler is exceptionally punishing, as {g}{g}{g} and 6 life for a 4/4 trample is horrible in green, but as part of an uncommon cycle scaling toward a 6 mana 7/7 trample is pretty good.
@cadstar369 Thanks for the review. Here are my issues with the Phyrexian mana cards that are currently printed in MTG:
1: Some of them are too free. Look at Gitaxian Probe, banned in all formats and restricted in vintage. Same with Mental Misstep, which caused legacy and vintage to be degenerate formats while it was legal. Even Gut Shot was highly popular for a while. Two life is simply not much of a cost, especially in older formats. Fetch and shock lands are an example of this (although admittedly shock lands have a better option to not pay life).
2: They break color barriers by removing color requirements. Should a blue or green deck have access to Dismember? Should a red deck have access to a clone effect in Phyrexian Metamorph? This is less of an issue with Artifact creatures, since they are artifacts after all. But still, Pith Driller grants a very black effect to any deck.
My goal with my current Phyrexian Mana experiments (Check them out here if you're interested) is to alleviate both of those issues by making the Phyrexian mana colorless and still requiring colored mana to cast these spells, as well as increasing the life cost of casting them cheaply. Perhaps I have gone overboard with the life costs, but I tried to make them scale in an interesting way. The "default" mode of current Phyrexian mana cards is to pay the life. I'm trying to introduce an interesting choice. Do I want a 3 mana 4/4 trample here? It's a steep cost, so it's risky. Maybe I'd rather play a 4 mana 5/5 trample and pay less life here.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Feel free to add any input, I'd love to hear other thoughts and opinions on this topic.
Honestly I don't really see it being too much of an issue. I've played a little bit with phyrexian mana in cube and its very fun. Being able to draw a card, counter a one drop, or kill a one drop, for life is an interesting interaction. I do think that outside of singleton its problematic, because it would be like thoughtseize for zero black which would be crazy, but in singleton they work fine and I think the designs are very interesting and the flavor is excellent. I would say that having them pay for colored mana is a bit of a problem, but I would just alleviate that with "you may only cast CARDNAME if you control a land or creature with a mana ability that can produce COLOR mana".
Enchanted creature has "Whenever this creature would deal combat damage to a player, you may instead have it deal damage equal to half of its power, rounded up, to any target."
For Stane, similar to Shahrazad, there's a variety of issues with forcing players to play an additional game within a game. On top of that, what if the player and/or their opponent don't know how to play chess? At least with Shahrazad you're still playing the same game.
@SPyBondPlays Comparing Lightning Charge to Farrel's Mantle, losing half the damage for the potential to hit another player in multiplayer or a planeswalker controlled by another player (cuz why not directly attack the planeswalker controlled by the player you attacked, since you clearly got through to hit them in the first place) seems like too high a cost to pay.
@cadstar369 Not sure if it matters to you but Discombobulate is already an existing card in Magic. Personally, I don't think Cryptic Command is so broken that it needs nerfing. Granted, the modes of your Discombobulate aren't strictly worse than the modes of Cryptic Command (except for the second one), and the differences can potentially be significant improvements in very niche cases, but the card is so close in functionality to Cryptic Command that it hardly carves out any new territory to call its own and feels like it's just trying to cash in on nostalgia by riding the coattails of another card.
Recursion Snare has good cohesion and a consistent theme that stands on its own. I see a common thread of regression (returning something to a former state) in all of the modes, which I like a lot. The card is well costed and in the right rarity, IMO. Despite costing more and losing out on the card draw of a Remand, the added versatility of being able to affect permanents already on the battlefield makes up for it. Even the overlap in uses between the second and third abilities doesn't bother me (i.e., Aside from creatures with ETB effects, how often would you rather fog a creature for a turn rather than remove it from the battlefield, cost your opponent their next draw, and make them spend their mana all over again?)
@Jadefire Darn! I think that's my first naming slip-up. ? It was probably an accident how close Discombobulate is to being Cryptic Command II; might have replaced the second effect with a slow flicker if I'd noticed. I'm thinking about turning this into a cycle of {1}{m}{m}{m} instants with 'choose 2 of 4' effects.
Both cards are from the Mystery Box Campaign between you, me & Corwinnn (representing 2 of the 4~5 cards I'd prepared for the defense slot to guard against metagaming); thanks for the feedback!
@cadstar369 Welcome to the club. I had my first a while back and one of my pet peeves is when a card's name doesn't match the URL Good job if you came up with the concept of a "choose 2 of 4" cycle on your own. Perhaps it would be helpful to reference these during your design process so you don't inadvertently overlap with existing design.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the campaign. I wonder if we'll ever return to it.
@ShadowReign Neat card, it does roll alot of abilities into one packages though. The most powerful ability is the flashback, Dralnu, Lich Lord does it for {t}, you make it cost {2}{u} and {t} so it should be fine. It's no snapcaster in terms of cost or body or speed. Getting passive pay off when things get countered, and getting more when your spell is counter is a cool build around for commander. I think it should be instant and sorcery cost {1} less to be more consistent with similar blue cards. I can see the synergies in playing in a counter heavy deck, you counter get 1/1s, reuse counters get more 1/1s adding to the board while denying opponent must be frustrating to play against. It doesn't do much on it's own so I think the cost is about right.
Tried making a new soft removal in the form of having the creature have no controller. It's stronger than auras like pacifism, maybe on par or better than oblivion ring since it can still end up in the graveyard or bounced somehow but killing Anaphiel won't get it back. Designed for it's flavour of liberating creatures from the planeswalker that summoned it, it opens up for card design to interact with creatures with no controller. Each colour could have it's own way of interacting with them, "hire" it with mana or treasure, if you control a creature of the same type "peer pressure" it, control a bigger creature to "bully" it. For the colours here I chose white because it's the "good" colour, red because it wants freedom, blue might do this but I feel it's not freeing the creature for the creature's sake, it does it because it can.
*Edit: Had to add an ability for her to lose flying so that the provoked creature can block it. Makes the text box very cluttered, but I feel I need the reminder text for provoke since it's an older mechanic
@Sweda I feel like that card is very good, but instead of flying, reach would be better, bc then you wouldn't have to remove the ability. also its quite expensive, so i'd say making it cost {3}{w}{w}{r}. It also seems more like a blue white card.
@The_333_ what exactly is Phasganon meant to do? Assuming all X are set upon cast, X neither does anything for Phasganon itself, nor has anything to do with the reminder text for ‘Cursed Summon X’ (which is an optional triggered ability so there’s no reason to pay the Kicker cost when a player can simply decline to take the action).
By the way, I’m fairly certain that the exile trigger for Cursed Summon X never happens because you’ll be past the beginning of your turn by the time you trigger Cursed Summon X. Is it meant to exile at the beginning of your next turn? (Also, is Cursed Summon X supposed to exile the manifested cards or the triggering card?)
@The_333_ Let me try and figure out what this guy does. So I think it says all creatures that are cast now have cursed summon X where X was the amount paid for Phasganon's {x} cost. Creatures with cursed summon causes it's controller to have to manifest 3 cards and they exile at the start of their next turn. You can pay {x} to ignore cursed summon. This can be worded better, like this.
Phasganon enters the battlefield with X curse counters.
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, it's controller manifests the top three cards of their library unless they pay {x}, where X is the amount of curse counters on Phasganon. Cards that are manifested this way are exiled at the beginning of it's controller's next upkeep.
Not sure if they are still exiled after you flip them but It's actually pretty interesting, if you can some how create a mass amount of tokens you can rip though your deck for a creature you want or if you give the manifest haste you got a lot of 2/2, maybe sac them for something. Not really cursed, more of a blessing if you ask me.
@The_333_ I like this card's unique brand of exile mill + encouraged aggression. However, I feel like it should have blue somewhere, since blue and green tend to get the interesting manifest effects (I can understand this as WB for the strong political implications of its effect, but I think it makes a bit more sense as WUB). Combos well with white's many anti-haste effects.
Wording note: the second ability could possibly be reworked to say "Each creature card in each player's hand has [Cursed Summon X] and cleave. The cleave cost is equal to that card's cost plus {X}." (Using Homing Sliver; Lier, Disciple of the Drowned; and Underworld Breach for reference)
I'd appreciate thoughts on this prototype: (Final version will also have Simic watermark; couldn't get it on this MTG Design prototype.)
@cadstar369 That's an interesting design. At first glance, it seems like evolve and the death trigger may step on each other's toes but they actually combine to fill in each other's gaps. In the beginning, Project DRG can rely on evolve to make it strong enough to survive other creatures in combat and once it gets to a certain size, evolve stops triggering and it can start growing on its own.
Having to remember all of the chosen keywords without any kind of marker seems like it could become cumbersome over a longer game. Since the keyword abilities it gains can be a subset of the abilities possessed by the creatures it kills, it doesn't quite make sense to exile those creatures to have a visual reminder from the cards because not every ability on those cards may have been chosen and it wouldn't be helpful in the case of tokens. Fortunately, you limited the effect to keyword abilities so perhaps it could be marked by putting an ability counter on Project DRG for each chosen ability. That way, it'll also remind you of the number of times that non-redundant abilities have been chosen. Granted, we haven't seen non-evergreen abilities be represented with counters yet but the concept of doing that is live.
As unique as an ability-draining effect is, Project DRG doesn't quite feel mythic overall. It needs a certain degree of setup, which you'll only have situationally, before it gets to mythic levels of power, so it can probably go down to a rare. You should probably include a description of what keyword abilities are in reminder text (or give some examples of them from across the spectrum), since it's not part of the Oracle card vernacular and it's not obvious without referencing rules 702.1 to 702.147a (and counting).
@cadstar369 Very cool. This card seems well balanced, and has some really nice flavor. There's just a few minor issues. First strike should be before haste; strike should never be capitalized; chained keyword abilities should not be capitalized beyond the first. In this case: First strike, haste. There is enough room to put a text line in between ability and flavor. Again, it's minor. This a well rounded card, and I really like it.
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Thoughtscape mystic is a great card. I have one thought about Mentality, but the concept is well done.
The concept of "noting" is pretty obnoxious for a keyword mechanic. Noting I think works alright for legendary cards or one-offs, but can get out of hand when you're dealing with multiple cards with that mechanic.
For example, imagine I had some way to repeatedly scry and I had 3-4 mentality cards on board. If I wanted to, I could look at a different card for each of Mentality's triggers, and now I have to note 3-4 different color combinations for each card.
The TLDR is that you may want to come up with some clever way to remove the burden from the player to keep track of the colors. Some kind of special counter or token that goes away at the end of turn would accomplish that nicely, and potentially adds extra synergy to playing multiple cards with mentality, where you could stack colors until you had all 5.
Anyway, after all that, I think the card is an interesting design, I quite like it, and there's potential for the mechanic.
Here are my cards. Funny that @ShadowReign has also made a card using Phyrexian mana, because it's been on my mind as well to try to take the concept of Phyrexian mana and make it less terrible of a mechanic. Here is a cycle that demonstrates my attempt:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/prelate-of-norn-1
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/gitaxian-spymaster
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/geths-executioner-2
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/warlord-of-urabrask-1
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/vorinclexs-tunneler-1
These are nice. They look really unbalanced at first glance, but I don't think that they are that powerful. I really like Prelate of Norn, especially.
@hileandr
This is another top-down design, this one of the water bottle. I first made a card literally called "water bottle" with a picture of a real life water bottle, but then I made it actually fit in Magic more. I made that picture by splicing together a picture of Saruman and a fantasy water bottle picture.
If you're committed to making the card a Mentality card and have thought through all the nuances of the current iteration of it, I completely understand and wouldn't propose the need to change anything. A possible alternative way to do a similar effect (instead of locking in colours during your upkeep) would be to allow you to look at the top card of your library at any time (a very blue effect) and make revealing the top card of your library part of the cost to activate, followed by shuffling your library. That way, you're not just sitting there giving away deck information whether or not you use the card for mana and have the utility of seeing what your next draw will be.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/lightning-charge-2
My apologies, you did state that mentality was not just about noting colors. Not sure how I missed that. I also missed the shuffle clause. Let me review the card again:
As for the card itself, I have no issue with it, really. I think it's a neat card. It's odd to see a Bant-colored dragon, and one without flying to boot, but that's not really a problem.
As far as the mechanic is concerned, it's a pretty simple one that works just fine. My only concern would be the shuffle aspect. I get why it's there - you want each reveal to be a new card, and you want to prevent people from stacking their library. However, shuffling, especially often, can become quite burdensome in paper, and extends the game time significantly. I'm also not sure if it's such a bad thing that people could stack the top of their decks. It rewards good play and makes players feel clever. As it stands right now it's more of a roll of the dice, which is fine; but in combination with the shuffling aspect, I wonder if it isn't cleaner to simply put the card on the bottom of your library instead of shuffling.
That being said, I will reiterate that I quite like Thoughtscape Mystic.
I would also appreciate your thoughts on my Phyrexian mana cards that I posted earlier.
As individual cards, here are some additional thoughts (tried to consider these from a standard/draft perspective, since I think that's what commons & uncommons are mainly balanced for):
Thanks for the review. Here are my issues with the Phyrexian mana cards that are currently printed in MTG:
1: Some of them are too free. Look at Gitaxian Probe, banned in all formats and restricted in vintage. Same with Mental Misstep, which caused legacy and vintage to be degenerate formats while it was legal. Even Gut Shot was highly popular for a while. Two life is simply not much of a cost, especially in older formats. Fetch and shock lands are an example of this (although admittedly shock lands have a better option to not pay life).
2: They break color barriers by removing color requirements. Should a blue or green deck have access to Dismember? Should a red deck have access to a clone effect in Phyrexian Metamorph? This is less of an issue with Artifact creatures, since they are artifacts after all. But still, Pith Driller grants a very black effect to any deck.
My goal with my current Phyrexian Mana experiments (Check them out here if you're interested) is to alleviate both of those issues by making the Phyrexian mana colorless and still requiring colored mana to cast these spells, as well as increasing the life cost of casting them cheaply. Perhaps I have gone overboard with the life costs, but I tried to make them scale in an interesting way. The "default" mode of current Phyrexian mana cards is to pay the life. I'm trying to introduce an interesting choice. Do I want a 3 mana 4/4 trample here? It's a steep cost, so it's risky. Maybe I'd rather play a 4 mana 5/5 trample and pay less life here.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Feel free to add any input, I'd love to hear other thoughts and opinions on this topic.
Like Sharhazad but for chess! Based on Obidah Stane from Marvel.
- Enchanted creature has "Whenever this creature would deal combat damage to a player, you may instead have it deal damage equal to half of its power, rounded up, to any target."
For Stane, similar to Shahrazad, there's a variety of issues with forcing players to play an additional game within a game. On top of that, what if the player and/or their opponent don't know how to play chess? At least with Shahrazad you're still playing the same game.I'd appreciate thoughts on these two:
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Here's an interaction I've tried a few times, and I really like this latest attempt:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/arteus-velkalin?list=user
Recursion Snare has good cohesion and a consistent theme that stands on its own. I see a common thread of regression (returning something to a former state) in all of the modes, which I like a lot. The card is well costed and in the right rarity, IMO. Despite costing more and losing out on the card draw of a Remand, the added versatility of being able to affect permanents already on the battlefield makes up for it. Even the overlap in uses between the second and third abilities doesn't bother me (i.e., Aside from creatures with ETB effects, how often would you rather fog a creature for a turn rather than remove it from the battlefield, cost your opponent their next draw, and make them spend their mana all over again?)
Both cards are from the Mystery Box Campaign between you, me & Corwinnn (representing 2 of the 4~5 cards I'd prepared for the defense slot to guard against metagaming); thanks for the feedback!
Oh yeah, I forgot about the campaign. I wonder if we'll ever return to it.
My card:
By the way, I’m fairly certain that the exile trigger for Cursed Summon X never happens because you’ll be past the beginning of your turn by the time you trigger Cursed Summon X. Is it meant to exile at the beginning of your next turn? (Also, is Cursed Summon X supposed to exile the manifested cards or the triggering card?)
sorry, made so many mistakes, this is what i meant to do
Wording note: the second ability could possibly be reworked to say "Each creature card in each player's hand has [Cursed Summon X] and cleave. The cleave cost is equal to that card's cost plus {X}." (Using Homing Sliver; Lier, Disciple of the Drowned; and Underworld Breach for reference)
I'd appreciate thoughts on this prototype:
(Final version will also have Simic watermark; couldn't get it on this MTG Design prototype.)
Having to remember all of the chosen keywords without any kind of marker seems like it could become cumbersome over a longer game. Since the keyword abilities it gains can be a subset of the abilities possessed by the creatures it kills, it doesn't quite make sense to exile those creatures to have a visual reminder from the cards because not every ability on those cards may have been chosen and it wouldn't be helpful in the case of tokens. Fortunately, you limited the effect to keyword abilities so perhaps it could be marked by putting an ability counter on Project DRG for each chosen ability. That way, it'll also remind you of the number of times that non-redundant abilities have been chosen. Granted, we haven't seen non-evergreen abilities be represented with counters yet but the concept of doing that is live.
As unique as an ability-draining effect is, Project DRG doesn't quite feel mythic overall. It needs a certain degree of setup, which you'll only have situationally, before it gets to mythic levels of power, so it can probably go down to a rare. You should probably include a description of what keyword abilities are in reminder text (or give some examples of them from across the spectrum), since it's not part of the Oracle card vernacular and it's not obvious without referencing rules 702.1 to 702.147a (and counting).
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/roshk-desert-hunter-1
First strike should be before haste; strike should never be capitalized; chained keyword abilities should not be capitalized beyond the first. In this case: First strike, haste. There is enough room to put a text line in between ability and flavor.
Again, it's minor. This a well rounded card, and I really like it.
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I made Kalisha as a sub-commander for a creature heavy custom commander deck.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/kalisha-light-mage-protector-1?list=user