@hileandr thanks for the feedback! I fully agree with your first and third points (I feel silly for not thinking to restrict to basics even though that was the intended scenario in my head). With regards to skulk, I feel like the more recent “~ can’t be blocked by creatures with power N or greater,” while stronger, really doesn’t feel like a ’sneaky’ creature once buffs are involved (e.g. stacking auras on Beloved Princess). In my mind, it should be harder to sneak around if you’re fully geared up and packing crazy firepower as opposed to applying a potent poison shortly before the deed. That’s the biggest reason for using skulk on this card (the other being that I can’t think of another particularly ‘sneaky’ ability that also doesn’t take up much space, since I don’t want to give it ward or anything closer to flat-out unblockable.)
@mongu you're meant to provide feedback on the previous card before posting your own. It's fine since hileandr already gave feedback, but I'd certainly appreciate getting some feedback from you as well now that I've fixed the image for Rhododendron Operative.
With regards to Delve Into Rot:
This card breaks the color pie pretty hard, as tutoring for creatures is mainly a green effect, especially when putting them directly onto the battlefield. Delve Into Rot not only costs significantly less than almost all similar existing tutors, but it's also at instant speed (there's only ~3 instant speed creature tutors, and two of them require a creature on board). It would make more sense if Delve Into Rot brought a creature back from a graveyard and gave it decayed, which would still be very potent.
There's so many powerful creatures that don't need to attack/block and/or don't mind dying where being able to cheat them out at any moment for 1BB would cause plenty of horrific situations, especially early game since Dark Ritual exists. You could potentially win turn 0 in a similar fashion to Flash Hulk (Gemstone Caverns pregame action -> Dark Ritual -> Delve Into Rot for Protean Hulk -> exile 1+ Elvish/Simian Spirit Guide for mana -> any instant that kills Protean Hulk -> combo of choice), but if instant wins aren't your style, why not slam down your favorite Phyrexian praetor before your opponent has a chance to do anything?
@cadstar369 I think that's one my favorite designs I've seen in a while, so I'll drop by and comment it a bit, hoping that would be useful if you inted to play it as I can already see that card played in some funny casual decks.
Sunset Summons is a really great design. It shares a lot of similitudes with other green tutors that can hit multiple target creatures, such as Uncage the Menagerie (first exemple that has hitten my mind when I saw your design). However, where this has the potential to figure out as the best tutor for creatures ever printed, putting those cards not in hand but directly into play, it's nicely balanced by the fact it can only hits target creatures you most of the time don't really want to run in a constructed deck, so vanilla creatures. And while this remains very potent at what it does, I think it does it just perfectly well not to feel neither too oppressive or too weak at the same time, given the archetype it requires to run, and on that line I feel like the overall scaling of this card was well thought and executed. It's also important to note that this works not only with vanilla creatures, but also with some particular modal cards on which the main side is a vanilla creature, such as some adventure cards, which in the end could dimish the negative aspect of having to run a lot of vanilla creatures that can't interact with anything during the game. I could see a constructed adventure deck with this as a wide board maker, some cards to enable haste to everything, and cards like Lucky Clover to make value out of adventures.
I'll do quick maths there below, and share the research for the best options of cards to search for I've found so far, so it's probably not completly accurate but this gives an idea of the potential of scaling this card has:
X = 1 > Honorable mention to Merfolk Secretkeeper. Nobody would probably ever want to cast it for this cost. It's 3 mana to tutor a creature with bad stats and pretty much nothing else.
X = 2 > Honorable mentions to Embereth Shieldbreaker and Curious Pair as nice adventure cards to run in the archetype I'd see with this card. At 4 mana, hitting two creatures is starting to be valuable if you can hit big enough targets. Kalonian Tusker is probably the best card at that spot as it's 2x a 3/3 for 4 mana, which is pretty good.
X = 3 > The best one I've found is Leatherback Baloth and it's damn strong to put on the battlefield 3x 4/5 for only 5 mana. You have also access to Woolly Thoctar to do the same but with 5/4 bodies, so running both would make the outs really consistant.
X = 4 > Honorable mention to Garenbrig Carver. That's probably once we invest that much mana that we get access to the most powerful options of them all, since in a constructed deck that means you can tutor a full playset of cards. Playing this card alongside big vanilla creatures such as Indomitable Ancients at that cost feels great. For 6, tutoring in that exemple 4x a 2/10 and put it onto the battlefield is incredibly strong. And that still feels balanced since that means you need to run those cards in your deck, and Indomitable Ancients is surely a card you'd probably want to avoid playing most of the time.
X = 5 > It's starting to be costly and the funny thing is that cards aren't getting much better from what I've searched. The best one is Fusion Elemental and while it's amazing to tutor 4x 8/8 creatures, it's five colors so it makes the deckbuilding way harder if you want to run some of the cards mentionned previously. It would still be a very nice option and you could probably build that archetype five-colors with some Woolly Thoctars in the mix.
X= 6+ > Honorable mention to Tuinvale Treefolk as a nice card to run with this, given it won't always be just a vanilla creature if you draw it. I didn't really searched that far, for reasons I think are understandable on their own.
All in all, it makes a really huge impact when cast for between 5-7 mana, and I think that's fine. The archetype this card supports is quite weak but it's very interesting to bring new card ideas for it and I think that's a great support tool in that perspective. There are a lot of counterplays, so the crazy tutors options still remains pretty clunky, as the whole archetype remains for exemple very weak to board whipe.
EDIT: A funny thing is also that, in limited, this has the potential to tutor more than a playset if you manage to draft 5+ times the same vanilla creature. It's quite unlikely, but I think it's worth noting also this pretty cool and funny potential in limited.
There are some pretty extreme life gain effects out there, and this guy has enough power that it can leech quite a bit of life by itself. It's pretty powerful. One big problem is "40 or more life". Some formats have different starting life totals. How would this creature play in e.g. Commander? I do like the base concept, though.
Here are two cards:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/eaurven-zookeeper How's this as a two-mana planeswalker? I'm not fully satisfied with the -6 ability, I'd like to know if you can think of alternatives that still use the "for each emblem you control/have" mechanic.
Sunset Summons: This card's cool, but has the issue of existing solely for shenanigans with Leatherback Baloth and Wooly Thoctar. It also restricts possible future vanilla creature design space - if they want to print, for example, a vanilla 5/5 for 3 in standard, you're now dealing with 5 mana spells that summon three 5/5's in Pioneer. It permanently makes it harder to print good vanilla creatures. Maybe make it search out creatures with different names?
Barbarian Saint: Rather underpowered, compared to something like Felidar Sovereign, who has better base stats at rare and is somewhat old. I'd personally make the win the game condition not require the city's blessing, and instead attach a different upside to the city's blessing. Something like "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 40 or more life, you win the game. Otherwise, if you have the city's blessing, EFFECT.", for example.
Eaurven: Feels confused. The first +0 awards you with loyalty for casting creatures, but the fact that it costs GG in the first place means it's easy to get mana screwed, and the fact it's a 2-loyalty planeswalker that can't protect itself well also makes it likely to die on turn 2. The -6 is underpowered aswell, but you've already identified the emblem as unsatisfying. The good part about this card is the second +0, which unfortunately doesn't work well with the inconsistent and slow loyalty gain. I'd personally change the cost to 1G and give it an additional starting loyalty, or make the +0 a +1.
Sniegoski, Blood Marshall: A card that grants both lifelink and haste repeatedly is unenjoyable, and gaining indestructible on an opponent's turn makes for boring scenarios when attacking or blocking. I would personally try and buff it while removing the unenjoyable elements; remove lifelink from the haste ability and change the indestructible ability to say "That creature gain indestructible until your next turn. Tap it.". In exchange, make it a 4/3 or a 3/4 or a 3/5 and you can remove black from its color identity. Alternatively, you can replace lifelink in the first ability with deathtouch.
@Potato13 would Sunset Summons really be that impactful on future vanilla creatures? If you've built a deck around cheating them out with Sunset Summons, you likely aren't playing too many copies of it (at least if you've decided on going the minimax Leatherback Baloth/Wooly Thoctar route), since extra Sunset Summons become dead draws, and the vanilla creatures are likely also dead draws due to their lack of abilities. I'd think Sunset Summons is more suited for something like an Ayula deck to fetch lots of bears at once (lots of them don't have abilities, so might as well avoid needing to draw a chunk of them). That said, the 'different names' clause you suggested does sound like an interesting addition.
While I'm not particularly knowledgeable about any format outside of commander, isn't turn 5/6 already approaching the endgame for a wide variety of modern/pioneer decks? Even if it isn't, I don't see how Sunset Summons would pose much of an issue in those formats, mostly due to the increased inconsistency, increased number of dead draws, and the potential to not even get the chance to use the creatures you cheat out.
@Potato13 I take the liberty of responding to your comment and feedback on Sunset Summons, which I found very interesting in its approach and analysis, but with which I fundamentally disagree and about which I would like to discuss with you. From my perspective as a player of many formats, I honestly think without much of a doubt, and even if I find this a tad bit sad at the same time, that the archetype this card supports is extremly weak and should therefore serve as the basis for judging the potential of this card. In those regards, I personally think you're kind of overestimating the power level of both Leatherback Baloth and/or Woolly Thoctar, which imo, outside of limited, are very bad cards, and overall overestimating how bad it would be to play a deck with playsets of both. Outside of casual/kitchen table games, those two cards aren't played anywhere. It's not Sunset Summons that would change much that point. It's not a magical card that transforms your bad, hard to cast (because one is GGG and the other one is naya, playing both in the same deck will often result in making it so that you won't always be able to play it on curve, unless you start also running in that same decklist playsets of bird of paradise or else), vanilla creatures into value engines. That's just to say that this card won't make much of a difference in the fact it won't make this archetype good enough for competitive play. It makes it much better, indeed, but the archetype still suffers from its deckbuilding weaknesses that are really horrendous. I highly doubt that if such a card was printed it and a 5/5 for three existed it would be played in Pioneer. Just play Collected Company instead, it's always much better. (And a vanilla 5/5 for three would be such a big powercreep on both Thoctar and Baloth I doubt we would ever see such a card in the game. So, I think it's not a good point to speak about restricting the design space of vanilla creatures on that perspective imo, as this card isn't really restricting it.)
As strong as tutoring to the battlefield three large creatures for five mana might feel, it still costs five mana (no way, captain obvious) and those creatures are nothing but creatures with some decent stats. And those creatures the player will find themself forced to play in their deck, as explained previously, are in most of the cases modiocre cards in viability terms. A 5/4 for 3 isn't mediocre on pure outcome of stats they get when played for the cost they pay, for sure, but it's mediocre card on pure value imo. In limited, such a card can often do an advantage of 2 for 1, if not more, given that the ''format'' is very creature oriented and players won't have access to all the interactions they could want. In constructed, it will pretty much always do 1 for 1, and won't generate any real value. If those cards were good, they would be played somewhere. Even if they were Pioneer legal, imo they wouldn't be played.
Even if you manage to find a set to play Sunset Summon and give haste to your creatures (maybe with something such as Concordant crossroad or a discarded Anger), that's a lot of set up to do for a very late way to win the game. And if your opponents has creatures, you can't even win because your creatures have no evasion.
Those points, all converging, make me think that such an archetype will never be more than a fun/casual archetype. Once again, why would anyone want to play Woolly Thoctar in constructed when they could have played, for exemple, Steel Leaf Champion instead that has evasion, less colored restrictions and better creature types? And Steel Leaf Champion isn't even a very good card. But that was just to say that I doubt Sunset Summon would be able to change anything on that perspective, it just adds one more tool to the toolbox of a fun/casual archetype. For sure, it does make Woolly Thoctar and Leatherback Baloth look a bit better than they usually do and gives players a reason to play them in their decklists over cards such as Steel Leaf Champion, but I'm quite sure that would never prove anywhere as good as just playing a midrange/zoo monogreen deck with Steel Leaf Champion and creatures with abilities and evasion. Mainly because for every creature card without ability a player includes in their deck, there is a card with abilities and effects in their opponent's deck, and more especially one that was included for its synergies and potential, which are two things a Woolly Thoctar won't have. Players can run cards to make Woolly Thoctat feel better than it is, but in the end it always remain what it is, a vanilla creature with very little impact on the game. To conclude on this point, the difference in potential just at the deckbuilding point already makes for a very huge gap. If the player wants to include enough creature without abilities in their deck, they'll need at least a playset of Thoctar and Baloth, which is 8x underwhelming cards when drawn, and with that they'll play a playset of Sunset Summons. But 8x vanilla creatures is probably not enough if you draw them, so imo they'll need at least 12x. And that's already half the decklist that is full of cards with almost no impact and no interaction.
I personally think that the wording you're proposing, closer to Uncage the Menagerie, would make the card unplayable. Nobody would want to include a great variety of vanilla creatures in their deck just for the value of this card, even in casual imo. Maybe ''with the same name'' would be a better way to balance it if a balancing nerf feels like it's needed, so you can't search for two Thoctar and a Baloth if that's all that's left in your deck. Filling a deck with vanilla creatures is already a struggle that's much bigger than most of deckbuilding restrictions imposed by Ikoria companions imo, and imposing another restrictions above that stipulating that the player running this already pretty weak archetype needs to play something like 6/7 different kinds of vanilla creatures makes the card choices so complicated on a deckbuilding perspective I would no longer see the point of playing this card.
@Suleman Eaurven is unique planewalker that takes some time, just like every green cards. So, -6 ability is powerful but reasonable. Does second ability forces the creature attacks enemy creature and Eaurven? All others of that, its good card and if it's real thing, myself, will try to build around it.
I want to know if Reinforcement still requires caster to discard a card when Burn Up cost is paid. And will abiltiy would be still triggered as Burn Up cost is paid or it just deals 4 damage? https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/reinforcement-8
@FireOfGolden the main issue I see with your wording is that the words “would” and “instead”, which indicate a replacement effect, are in different sentences. This makes it unclear what’s being replaced with what. If I were to move the “instead” to make “If this card would be discarded, you may cast it for its Burn Up cost instead. If you do, it deals 4 damage to any target,” forming a normal replacement effect, you get a strange not-quite-Madness effect that both does not trigger effects that care about discards and also tacks on extra text alongside the benefits of Madness. That is, you would get the spell ability (discard a card as additional cost & create four 2/1s with haste), and also deal 4 damage to any target, both at instant speed and for a cheaper cost than hard casting it. (Also note that spell abilities are not triggered abilities, Forgotten should be capitalized since it’s the creature type of the created tokens, and haste should be neither capitalized nor in quotation marks.)
If instead you’re aiming for an alternative effect when discarded as opposed to hard cast, then you’ll perhaps want to use this wording similar to Edgar’s Awakening: “When you discard ~, you may pay 2RR. When you do, ~ deals 4 damage to any target.” (Where ~ represents the card name. I’ve made a generic form under the assumption that Burn Up will go on more than one card.)
@FireOfGolden I’m not sure why you’re fixated on having Burn Up cast the spell, but keywords aren’t particularly suited to drastically altering effects like you're doing here. From what I understand of your intentions, there's perhaps a couple ways you could go about this (aside from my prior suggestion):
You can turn it into an activated ability: Burn Up 2RR (2RR, Exile ~ from your graveyard: ~ deals 4 damage to any target. Activate only if you've discarded a card this turn.) Once again, ~ represents the card's name. This form for Burn Up does not cast the spell, so you won't have to discard a card to the additional cost.
You can rewrite the entire spell to make Burn Up a temporary form of Aftermath. This is much clunkier, but will still be casting the spell, and thus you'll have to discard a card to the additional cost as well.
As an additional cost to cast Reinforcement, discard a card.
Create four 2/1 red Forgotten creature tokens with haste. If you cast this spell from your graveyard, it deals 4 damage to any target instead.
Burn Up 2RR (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its Burn Up cost if you discarded it this turn. Then exile it.)
There’s also still a variety of wording issues on your current version (see cards like Big Score and Flurry of Horns for reference).
I like the Sunset Summons, because it has an interesting idea, and would probably build around it(put cards like Gigantosaurus or Leatherback Baloth). But I agree that this card would prevent future vanillas to be much stronger than X mana X/X. About the card's style, I think that there's a bit too much of empty space, and I would have made the distance from the art to the text a bit smaller, and instead write a flavour text. But anyway, a nice card, maybe a bit stronger than it should be.
my card: https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/korb-beastmaster-of-ailatat?list=user I feel that the first ability should be worded a bit differently(maybe "Whenever a creature with deathtouch you control...") and I don't know if I positioned the tap and mana signs correctly.
@RegalGorgon13 the mana symbols go before the tap so it should be {b}{g}{g},{t}:. Other than that I believe everything is worded well enough for the card to make sense.
For the same price as Blazing Archon, Allie is not only significantly more obnoxious, but also doesn't help you close the game like you would probably want from such an expensive card. If you're playing a 9-mana card that symmetrically stalls the game out (unlike how Blazing Archon only stops your opponents from killing you), why not just play a wincon instead? I can't find a reason to play Allie, since you could be casting cards like The Immortal Sun and Approach of the Second Sun for less mana and fewer colors, or even something like Expropriate to advance your game state.
Iphaeto's +2 is very dangerous if not outright broken. Currently, exile is the only "unreachable" place in Magic; it's the only zone we can't easily retrieve things from, which makes it the only zone Wizards can send cards that are meant to only be used once, and this makes exiling cards the greatest risk and heaviest cost. But with the +2, your exile zone becomes a third hand from which you can send cards to your second hand (graveyard), and the cards in it are protected from everything except Riftsweeper. Additionally, the +2 interacts with face-down exiled cards, so it can double as disruption for opposing effects like Thief of Sanity, turn Pyxis of Pandemonium into an asymmetric effect so you never need to crack it, etc.
Ivil feels like everything is scaled way too high to be useful. For 7 mana, Ivil has to get attacked 5+ times just so you can set your opponent's life total to 1? At that point it really doesn't matter if her 10 base loyalty helps keep her alive, the game should be way past over one way or the other by the time she gets anywhere close to the -15. Master of Cruelties does the same thing for 5 mana and one attack, and Vraska, Relic Seeker comes down one turn earlier than Ivil, only needs to survive for 2 turns to set your opponent to 1, generates creatures for you in the meantime, and can remove a wider variety of permanents than Ivil. Ivil feels very similar to Allie to me, in that there's no reason to play her when there are plenty of cheaper and more impactful cards to choose from that provide similar effects.
I'd appreciate feedback on this prototype:
I'm currently considering three ways this could progress:
Keep it UR, perhaps add a keyword ability to increase combat effectiveness. I'm not particularly satisfied with the first ability though if anyone has suggestions for a more interesting effect.
Shift to mono-red and modify the top ability accordingly. I'd prefer the new ability to be something rather thought-provoking in this case (as opposed to something like an impulse draw engine).
Shift to Grixis (either 2UBR or 3UBR) and either add a keyword ability, add Ward (either life payment or a discard), or increase the complexity of the first ability.
@cadstar369 Flagis certainly has an interesting ability in that it punishes tutors and strategies that can "index" (looking at the top few cards) and then using an effect to shuffle the library for better card selection, it denies them a draw every time they do it, that's a pretty cool way to do it and I like it.
It does feel weird that it's also a beater driving the mana cost up, I think it would be better if it cost less as the hosing ability is probably more effective early game.
As for the first ability, it is kinda weak, I was thinking maybe some kind of mill effect like everyone mills a card so if you tutored you can mill away the card you put on top or if the opponent tutored you can threaten to mill the card they put on top of course you don't know what they put but it causes interesting mind games.
It can use some tweaking but it's an interesting card
Here is mine
It's up to you to figure out how to tap or get more value of the Tesla coils after they've untapped.
@Sweda giving Flagis a mill ability seems to defeat the point of having the second ability, since there'd be little reason not to mill your opponent after they tutor, and at that point one might as well replace both abilities with a discard on tutor (respective synergies aside). It also doesn't seem to serve UR well to have a self-mill ability (perhaps I'm missing some niche interactions here that could use a home).
With regards to Tesla Dragon, it's a great piece for Affinity and other strategies that run cards like Reckless Fireweaver & Hellkite Tyrant. Inspiring Statuary & Galazeth Prismari make the activated ability pretty ridiculous, and it's definitely broken if you land Urza. (The more synergies I find, the more concerned I am about the number of artifacts Tesla Dragon can churn out.) Perhaps you could increase the cost to XXUR to restrain how quickly this escalates, but have the damage be based on how many Tesla Coils you control instead of just how many become untapped. (It might be fine to just leave the last ability alone though, since the removal appears to be icing on top of the mass artifact generation cake.)
I'd appreciate feedback on this revised prototype:
I'm currently wondering about two things:
Is there a more interesting way I can play with hand disruption and/or additional information? (Without changing the last ability outside of adding to it. I'd also like things to remain symmetrical.) Perhaps something related to exiling the tutored card(s)? (That feels like it might be too strong and/or obnoxious though.)
Would this be more interesting as is, shifted back to UR, or perhaps even shifted to mono-red? (Assuming appropriate modifications are made.)
@cadstar369 ah yeah the ability to make the Tesla Coils is too cheap now that you listed some cards I did not consider. I was only thinking affinity, improvise, Urza and the handful of cards that tap artifacts as a cost, I didn't consider ETB stuff, that really broke it. {x}{x}{u}{r} is probably a good change, in a vacuum it makes it a pretty heavy cost for a bit of damage but it keeps the right synergies in check, it'll be a slow build up of the coils but they do stick around. I'll keep the untap part in place as it was a flavour I was going for of on hitting the player the Telsa Coils "discharge" all at once, maybe I can say the coils have {1}: Tap Tesla Coil" lol not sure if the little extra text would make the textbox ugly though.
For Flagis, the thing about after they search and them putting a card from thier hand on top of the library is that they will almost always choose the card least important to them, they won't choose their tutored card unless forced to. The ability to see what they put on top is hard to exploit and I think that room can be put to better use or to interact with it better. Maybe reduce everyone's hand size and the card put on top is random for a chance to hit the tutored card and in general a chance for hand disruption if they do other shuffling. Perhaps ward would be everyone mills one, so other players can "gamble" at milling away someone's potential tutored card, or if they realized thier card is on top they won't target it until they get it back? I guess with that you would certainly cause some panic on slow control decks.
I feel there really isn't much room for more wordy interactions if the top of the library is revealed other than, milling, scrying and the new ones like surveil, explore, connive or looting and rummaging.
@Sweda thanks for the new suggestions! Really liking the shenanigans the random topdecks could cause, but I don’t think that ward works since it would give everyone the option to pay, and anyone that topdecked a card they tutored for would refuse to pay the ward cost, thus countering another person’s effect for free (would definitely be interesting as a regular ‘on target’ trigger though). Playing with maximum hand size also sounds fun; I honestly forgot there were cards that messed with that aside from ‘no max hand size’ effects.
@Globert-the-Martian I really like the concept! I would perhaps bump up the toughness of the legendary wall token to 3, but I can see why you kept it at 2 since the brick counters increases toughness. still, getting a 0/3 wall (that can admittedly block two creatures but has low toughness) and a 1/1 for 4 mana doesn't seem super powerful so there is room for some buffing.
@EisenKreutzer Now this is probably the purpose you had in mind, but the combat damage rule makes this card *Ridiculous* in Commander because of Commander Damage. I know Wombo is pretty difficult, I've made one or two cards with it myself, but nothing about that image looks "orc elemental" to me. If anything, the lower black armoured object looks a lot like a Garthim from The Dark Crystal. Speaking of which, https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/the-way-of-the-dark-crystal
(Contains secret flavour text) Yes, this is a crossover between The Dark Crystal (my favourite film) and Hollow Knight (which I haven't played but like the world building of.)
@KorandAngels Yeah, the idea was a splashy commander with a unique ability. About the art, if I squint it kinda looks like an orc-ish figure leaning an arm on his knee. I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder, really. I almost exclusively use wombo for card art, because I like the ambiguous nature of the images it produces.
I started creating some cards yesterday. Any one you like in particular? Is there one that you feel needs editing to fix a glaring mistake? (I'm still figuring out why the text doesn't always stay inside the box.)
Hey @stijnhommes! I remember struggling with the text too when I first started. When I have a word that goes over the border of the card, I add spaces before it so force it to the next line. That should help you make your cards look more clean and presentable. Here is how that looks on one of my cards when I'm typing it up:
"When Boreal Basher attacks, tap target creature, then you may remove a fade counter from Boreal Basher. If you do, that creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step."
Anyways, I like a lot of your design ideas, especially Necromancer's Locket. The idea of reanimating a creature but the locket punishing it is super cool and flavorful. Overall, I feel like you're doing too much with your designs which makes them confusing and takes away from the theme. For example, on the locket, I think the central idea is that this ancient dark Locket can bring you back to life, but you pay a heavy price and the Locket wears you down. For this reason, I don't think it needs to tap for mana or even give the creature deathtouch and first strike. I feel like it would be easier to understand and appreciate the card if it was simpler. That would also make your text less clumped up so your cards would look nicer.
I love these designs a lot and I'm definitely giving you a follow. Overall, I would say don't worry about adding so much to your cards. That's only my opinion, though. I hope this helped.
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With regards to Delve Into Rot:
- This card breaks the color pie pretty hard, as tutoring for creatures is mainly a green effect, especially when putting them directly onto the battlefield. Delve Into Rot not only costs significantly less than almost all similar existing tutors, but it's also at instant speed (there's only ~3 instant speed creature tutors, and two of them require a creature on board). It would make more sense if Delve Into Rot brought a creature back from a graveyard and gave it decayed, which would still be very potent.
- There's so many powerful creatures that don't need to attack/block and/or don't mind dying where being able to cheat them out at any moment for 1BB would cause plenty of horrific situations, especially early game since Dark Ritual exists. You could potentially win turn 0 in a similar fashion to Flash Hulk (Gemstone Caverns pregame action -> Dark Ritual -> Delve Into Rot for Protean Hulk -> exile 1+ Elvish/Simian Spirit Guide for mana -> any instant that kills Protean Hulk -> combo of choice), but if instant wins aren't your style, why not slam down your favorite Phyrexian praetor before your opponent has a chance to do anything?
I'd appreciate feedback on this card:Sunset Summons is a really great design. It shares a lot of similitudes with other green tutors that can hit multiple target creatures, such as Uncage the Menagerie (first exemple that has hitten my mind when I saw your design). However, where this has the potential to figure out as the best tutor for creatures ever printed, putting those cards not in hand but directly into play, it's nicely balanced by the fact it can only hits target creatures you most of the time don't really want to run in a constructed deck, so vanilla creatures. And while this remains very potent at what it does, I think it does it just perfectly well not to feel neither too oppressive or too weak at the same time, given the archetype it requires to run, and on that line I feel like the overall scaling of this card was well thought and executed. It's also important to note that this works not only with vanilla creatures, but also with some particular modal cards on which the main side is a vanilla creature, such as some adventure cards, which in the end could dimish the negative aspect of having to run a lot of vanilla creatures that can't interact with anything during the game. I could see a constructed adventure deck with this as a wide board maker, some cards to enable haste to everything, and cards like Lucky Clover to make value out of adventures.
I'll do quick maths there below, and share the research for the best options of cards to search for I've found so far, so it's probably not completly accurate but this gives an idea of the potential of scaling this card has:
- X = 1 > Honorable mention to Merfolk Secretkeeper. Nobody would probably ever want to cast it for this cost. It's 3 mana to tutor a creature with bad stats and pretty much nothing else.
- X = 2 > Honorable mentions to Embereth Shieldbreaker and Curious Pair as nice adventure cards to run in the archetype I'd see with this card. At 4 mana, hitting two creatures is starting to be valuable if you can hit big enough targets. Kalonian Tusker is probably the best card at that spot as it's 2x a 3/3 for 4 mana, which is pretty good.
- X = 3 > The best one I've found is Leatherback Baloth and it's damn strong to put on the battlefield 3x 4/5 for only 5 mana. You have also access to Woolly Thoctar to do the same but with 5/4 bodies, so running both would make the outs really consistant.
- X = 4 > Honorable mention to Garenbrig Carver. That's probably once we invest that much mana that we get access to the most powerful options of them all, since in a constructed deck that means you can tutor a full playset of cards. Playing this card alongside big vanilla creatures such as Indomitable Ancients at that cost feels great. For 6, tutoring in that exemple 4x a 2/10 and put it onto the battlefield is incredibly strong. And that still feels balanced since that means you need to run those cards in your deck, and Indomitable Ancients is surely a card you'd probably want to avoid playing most of the time.
- X = 5 > It's starting to be costly and the funny thing is that cards aren't getting much better from what I've searched. The best one is Fusion Elemental and while it's amazing to tutor 4x 8/8 creatures, it's five colors so it makes the deckbuilding way harder if you want to run some of the cards mentionned previously. It would still be a very nice option and you could probably build that archetype five-colors with some Woolly Thoctars in the mix.
- X= 6+ > Honorable mention to Tuinvale Treefolk as a nice card to run with this, given it won't always be just a vanilla creature if you draw it. I didn't really searched that far, for reasons I think are understandable on their own.
All in all, it makes a really huge impact when cast for between 5-7 mana, and I think that's fine. The archetype this card supports is quite weak but it's very interesting to bring new card ideas for it and I think that's a great support tool in that perspective. There are a lot of counterplays, so the crazy tutors options still remains pretty clunky, as the whole archetype remains for exemple very weak to board whipe.EDIT: A funny thing is also that, in limited, this has the potential to tutor more than a playset if you manage to draft 5+ times the same vanilla creature. It's quite unlikely, but I think it's worth noting also this pretty cool and funny potential in limited.
Anyone is free to post a card after this comment.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/barbarian-saint
I guess let's start again with this guy
There are some pretty extreme life gain effects out there, and this guy has enough power that it can leech quite a bit of life by itself. It's pretty powerful.
One big problem is "40 or more life". Some formats have different starting life totals.
How would this creature play in e.g. Commander?
I do like the base concept, though.
Here are two cards:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/eaurven-zookeeper
How's this as a two-mana planeswalker? I'm not fully satisfied with the -6 ability, I'd like to know if you can think of alternatives that still use the "for each emblem you control/have" mechanic.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/sniegoski-blood-marshal
How about this creature? The "enters the battlefield" ability is one I'm not sure about. I'd like both options to be viable.
Sunset Summons: This card's cool, but has the issue of existing solely for shenanigans with Leatherback Baloth and Wooly Thoctar. It also restricts possible future vanilla creature design space - if they want to print, for example, a vanilla 5/5 for 3 in standard, you're now dealing with 5 mana spells that summon three 5/5's in Pioneer. It permanently makes it harder to print good vanilla creatures. Maybe make it search out creatures with different names?
Barbarian Saint: Rather underpowered, compared to something like Felidar Sovereign, who has better base stats at rare and is somewhat old. I'd personally make the win the game condition not require the city's blessing, and instead attach a different upside to the city's blessing. Something like "At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 40 or more life, you win the game. Otherwise, if you have the city's blessing, EFFECT.", for example.
Eaurven: Feels confused. The first +0 awards you with loyalty for casting creatures, but the fact that it costs GG in the first place means it's easy to get mana screwed, and the fact it's a 2-loyalty planeswalker that can't protect itself well also makes it likely to die on turn 2. The -6 is underpowered aswell, but you've already identified the emblem as unsatisfying. The good part about this card is the second +0, which unfortunately doesn't work well with the inconsistent and slow loyalty gain. I'd personally change the cost to 1G and give it an additional starting loyalty, or make the +0 a +1.
Sniegoski, Blood Marshall: A card that grants both lifelink and haste repeatedly is unenjoyable, and gaining indestructible on an opponent's turn makes for boring scenarios when attacking or blocking. I would personally try and buff it while removing the unenjoyable elements; remove lifelink from the haste ability and change the indestructible ability to say "That creature gain indestructible until your next turn. Tap it.". In exchange, make it a 4/3 or a 3/4 or a 3/5 and you can remove black from its color identity. Alternatively, you can replace lifelink in the first ability with deathtouch.
While I'm not particularly knowledgeable about any format outside of commander, isn't turn 5/6 already approaching the endgame for a wide variety of modern/pioneer decks? Even if it isn't, I don't see how Sunset Summons would pose much of an issue in those formats, mostly due to the increased inconsistency, increased number of dead draws, and the potential to not even get the chance to use the creatures you cheat out.
As strong as tutoring to the battlefield three large creatures for five mana might feel, it still costs five mana (no way, captain obvious) and those creatures are nothing but creatures with some decent stats. And those creatures the player will find themself forced to play in their deck, as explained previously, are in most of the cases modiocre cards in viability terms. A 5/4 for 3 isn't mediocre on pure outcome of stats they get when played for the cost they pay, for sure, but it's mediocre card on pure value imo. In limited, such a card can often do an advantage of 2 for 1, if not more, given that the ''format'' is very creature oriented and players won't have access to all the interactions they could want. In constructed, it will pretty much always do 1 for 1, and won't generate any real value. If those cards were good, they would be played somewhere. Even if they were Pioneer legal, imo they wouldn't be played.
Even if you manage to find a set to play Sunset Summon and give haste to your creatures (maybe with something such as Concordant crossroad or a discarded Anger), that's a lot of set up to do for a very late way to win the game. And if your opponents has creatures, you can't even win because your creatures have no evasion.
Those points, all converging, make me think that such an archetype will never be more than a fun/casual archetype. Once again, why would anyone want to play Woolly Thoctar in constructed when they could have played, for exemple, Steel Leaf Champion instead that has evasion, less colored restrictions and better creature types? And Steel Leaf Champion isn't even a very good card. But that was just to say that I doubt Sunset Summon would be able to change anything on that perspective, it just adds one more tool to the toolbox of a fun/casual archetype. For sure, it does make Woolly Thoctar and Leatherback Baloth look a bit better than they usually do and gives players a reason to play them in their decklists over cards such as Steel Leaf Champion, but I'm quite sure that would never prove anywhere as good as just playing a midrange/zoo monogreen deck with Steel Leaf Champion and creatures with abilities and evasion. Mainly because for every creature card without ability a player includes in their deck, there is a card with abilities and effects in their opponent's deck, and more especially one that was included for its synergies and potential, which are two things a Woolly Thoctar won't have. Players can run cards to make Woolly Thoctat feel better than it is, but in the end it always remain what it is, a vanilla creature with very little impact on the game. To conclude on this point, the difference in potential just at the deckbuilding point already makes for a very huge gap. If the player wants to include enough creature without abilities in their deck, they'll need at least a playset of Thoctar and Baloth, which is 8x underwhelming cards when drawn, and with that they'll play a playset of Sunset Summons. But 8x vanilla creatures is probably not enough if you draw them, so imo they'll need at least 12x. And that's already half the decklist that is full of cards with almost no impact and no interaction.
I personally think that the wording you're proposing, closer to Uncage the Menagerie, would make the card unplayable. Nobody would want to include a great variety of vanilla creatures in their deck just for the value of this card, even in casual imo. Maybe ''with the same name'' would be a better way to balance it if a balancing nerf feels like it's needed, so you can't search for two Thoctar and a Baloth if that's all that's left in your deck. Filling a deck with vanilla creatures is already a struggle that's much bigger than most of deckbuilding restrictions imposed by Ikoria companions imo, and imposing another restrictions above that stipulating that the player running this already pretty weak archetype needs to play something like 6/7 different kinds of vanilla creatures makes the card choices so complicated on a deckbuilding perspective I would no longer see the point of playing this card.
Eaurven is unique planewalker that takes some time, just like every green cards. So, -6 ability is powerful but reasonable. Does second ability forces the creature attacks enemy creature and Eaurven? All others of that, its good card and if it's real thing, myself, will try to build around it.
I want to know if Reinforcement still requires caster to discard a card when Burn Up cost is paid.
And will abiltiy would be still triggered as Burn Up cost is paid or it just deals 4 damage?
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/reinforcement-8
I learned my mistake and I will start fix that!
How's that?
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/reinforcement-9
Create four 2/1 red Forgotten creature tokens with haste. If you cast this spell from your graveyard, it deals 4 damage to any target instead.
Burn Up 2RR (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its Burn Up cost if you discarded it this turn. Then exile it.)
I like the Sunset Summons, because it has an interesting idea, and would probably build around it(put cards like Gigantosaurus or Leatherback Baloth). But I agree that this card would prevent future vanillas to be much stronger than X mana X/X. About the card's style, I think that there's a bit too much of empty space, and I would have made the distance from the art to the text a bit smaller, and instead write a flavour text. But anyway, a nice card, maybe a bit stronger than it should be.
my card:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/korb-beastmaster-of-ailatat?list=user
I feel that the first ability should be worded a bit differently(maybe "Whenever a creature with deathtouch you control...") and I don't know if I positioned the tap and mana signs correctly.
From my newest set I'm working on with some crazy card designs:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/allie-cheerful-heir
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/iphaeto-the-deranged (the gravestones are artifacts that can be used for Delve)
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/ivil-master-assassin
@TheGamingBolasChannel
I'd appreciate feedback on this prototype:
I'm currently considering three ways this could progress:
With regards to Tesla Dragon, it's a great piece for Affinity and other strategies that run cards like Reckless Fireweaver & Hellkite Tyrant. Inspiring Statuary & Galazeth Prismari make the activated ability pretty ridiculous, and it's definitely broken if you land Urza. (The more synergies I find, the more concerned I am about the number of artifacts Tesla Dragon can churn out.) Perhaps you could increase the cost to XXUR to restrain how quickly this escalates, but have the damage be based on how many Tesla Coils you control instead of just how many become untapped. (It might be fine to just leave the last ability alone though, since the removal appears to be icing on top of the mass artifact generation cake.)
I'd appreciate feedback on this revised prototype:
I'm currently wondering about two things:
- Is there a more interesting way I can play with hand disruption and/or additional information? (Without changing the last ability outside of adding to it. I'd also like things to remain symmetrical.) Perhaps something related to exiling the tutored card(s)? (That feels like it might be too strong and/or obnoxious though.)
- Would this be more interesting as is, shifted back to UR, or perhaps even shifted to mono-red? (Assuming appropriate modifications are made.)
Previous prototype:"strength" isn't a defined MTG term. I assume you meant "power." otherwise, it looks good.
here's mine:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/lo-grand-architect
This is an idea I've been cooking up for a while. Is the last ability worded correctly?
Here's my card:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/atrigan-terror-of-the-west
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/the-way-of-the-dark-crystal
Is there one that you feel needs editing to fix a glaring mistake?
(I'm still figuring out why the text doesn't always stay inside the box.)
"When Boreal Basher attacks, tap target creature, then you may remove a fade counter from Boreal Basher. If you do, that creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step."
Anyways, I like a lot of your design ideas, especially Necromancer's Locket. The idea of reanimating a creature but the locket punishing it is super cool and flavorful. Overall, I feel like you're doing too much with your designs which makes them confusing and takes away from the theme. For example, on the locket, I think the central idea is that this ancient dark Locket can bring you back to life, but you pay a heavy price and the Locket wears you down. For this reason, I don't think it needs to tap for mana or even give the creature deathtouch and first strike. I feel like it would be easier to understand and appreciate the card if it was simpler. That would also make your text less clumped up so your cards would look nicer.
I love these designs a lot and I'm definitely giving you a follow. Overall, I would say don't worry about adding so much to your cards. That's only my opinion, though. I hope this helped.