Hi @12SidedGuy. You're probably right about trying to put too much stuff into the card. I drew my inspiration from the image and you got exactly what I was going for. The whole deathtouch, first strike thing was the result of the hand decaying in the image. As for why it taps for mana, that was the result of the mana rock lockets that are already in the game.
I should probably have slimmed the idea down to the essence like you said. I'll keep it in mind for the future. Thanks for the tips. Do you know how the monthly card purge works? Where can I find more info?
Oh I haven't even heard of that and I've been on and off this site for a few years. Maybe old cards get deleted every so often to help the site run smoother or something like that.
Frogspawn Jumper - I think it's token generation is too cheap, it's actually negative mana to create a token when all other cards that can repeatedly create 1/1 cost mana, a card or both. The other abilities are probably fine but you should aim to make things fit within the text box, that too is part of card design, knowing what to trim away.
Crystalline Gargoyle - Looks like Crystalline Giant with but with the ability to pass out abilities, it's cool but very slow. I would probably remove the hexproof counter as that will almost always be chosen first or be the only one chosen to be passed around really.
Battlements of Bodies - Strange card as it's a very defensive for being black/red, the second ability should probably read, "tap target attacking or blocking creature an opponent controls and remove it from combat." The bird tokens can be shut down if they have a decent flyer untapped and I don't see most games where you will make a crazy amount. I don't think it's overpowered or anything it's six mana for a creature that stalls the game is what I'm seeing honestly.
Necromancer's Locket - I think there should be a clause to prevent you from being able to pay {b}{b}{b} each turn to rez a creature. Other than that I think this card balances the powerful deathtouch/firststrike combo well by slowly weakening the creature. Wording should be "At the beginning of your uppkeep up a -1/-1 counter in equipped creature."
Fiery Temper - Besides that fact that there is already card named that this is pretty interesting. First choice, 3 mana to destroy an artifact or enchantment, kinda expensive and mono red shouldn't be able to destroy enchantments flavourwise, perhaps replace that with destroy non basic land. Second choice, again a bit over cost to deal 3 to a creature or planeswalker, but this is a modal card so it's fine. Third ability 5 damage to everything for 3 mana and 3 turns that's fine as everyone sees it coming. I would incorporate suspend rather than make it into an enchantment since no card does that yet. Something like "if Fiery Temper was cast from exile do 5 damage to all, otherwise choose 1... " and have normal cost appropriate for the first 2 choices"
Overall these are good cards, nothing over the top or too complex and no crazy new mechanic. You will need to work on using magic's wording and trying not to have the text spill over the text box. Keep at it, the cards you make pass off as real cards, you just need a bit of proof reading.
Also on this thread you need to review the card posted previously before posting your own.
Here is mine, created for the wild west theme going on this month
I like The Way of the Dark Crystal as a concept, but I'm not sure I would ever get to use of the abilities other than the first one buffing all your creatures with +2/+2. You already need 6 turns to get it onto the board, then you need 6 additional turns to get the deity counters going. I do like how you balanced things by making the player sacrifice the enchantment when it reaches 6 deity counters, otherwise those God creatures also get +2/+2 and that would be too busted.
Could you elaborate on which parts of the films you pulled from for the flavor?
@EisenKreutzer: I like the concept of Atrigan, Terror of the West and making all damage combat damage is very flavorful for the Wild West in general and for Orcs in particular, but I'm not sure what sort of deck this should go into. I don't know how to use the ability to my advantage. What was your initial inspiration for this design?
Hi @Sweda. Thanks for the feedback. Here are my responses with a review of your card at the bottom.
Frogspawn Jumper - You're probably right about the cost. I should probably cut one of the last abilities and make it more expensive to cast.
Crystalline Gargoyle - Crystalline Giant was indeed the inspiration for this one. I just found it annoying that it's so hard to move counters around (especially in Standard). I made both the obtaining of the counters and their passing around a tap ability to ensure there is time for interaction. I didn't want someone to do both on the same turn. With hindsight I should probably have kept it more similar to Crystalline Giant's ability by making the counters that appear random instead of chosen or at least make each be able to be chosen just once.
Battlements of Bodies - I specifically wanted this to work on attacking creatures and not blocking creatures. Tapping them was supposed to deal with Vigilant creatures. I totally agree that it is strange to see a defensive card in these colors (the birds are supposed to be defensive too), but I think it could stall a game long enough to get those last bits of damage in. I think you could make a decent amount of birds if you have a mill or reanimator strategy.
Necromancer's Locket - You are right. I should have had a clause to avoid repeated reanimation or at the very least keep the -1/-1 counters coming on previously resurrected creatures. I do think you may have had a couple of typos in your alternative wording suggestion though. You're right though, it should have read "beginnning" instead of "start".
Fiery Temper - How would you see suspend working? If you suspend the entire card, the other two options become unplayable. If you suspend only the last option, you have the same problem as I ran into now, right?
Here are my thoughts on your card. Of course, it is inevitable that the card "Quick to Draw" has to make you draw a card. I wonder how much damage you can bait an opponent into with the right deck... You need a couple of instants that you can play on an opponent's turn to really take advantage of this. I guess that's why it's red/blue. Did you start this design with the name? Because the artwork, the name and the effect all work together very well.
@Sweda The more I look at Quick to the Draw the more I like it. The design is very clean and I think you nailed the wording. I feel that the card looks a little awkward without flavor text and I think adding some would make the textbox more aesthetically pleasing, but that's just me. Overall, the card is great.
@stijnhommes I think you can reword Fiery Temper to
{2}{r} Instant
Suspend 3 - {2}{r}
If Fiery Temper was cast from exile, it deals 5 damage to each creature, planeswalker and player, otherwise chose one -
- Destroy target artifact or enchantment
- Fiery Temper deals 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker
I think that should work, suspended cards are in exile and are cast there so you can use that mechanism to make alternate casting costs like this. If you can some how find a way to cast it from exile besides suspend then you deserve it.
As for how I design cards I usually think of a fun flavour, idea or concept then then try and use magic's framework to try and represent it, then I need to search for a appropriate image. As for the card I made, most of the time you're dealing 2 damage but if in multiplayer if opponents are slinging spells around you can get in as the final response in a big stack and ping everyone, kinda like fanning the hammer in a shoot out.
The "Otherwise, choose one" really solves things. I've made a new version of the card with Suspend and a different name and it cleans things up. The text actually fits in the box!
@stijnhommes I wouldn’t worry about the monthly card purge. From what I can tell, it only removes cards that have been around for over three years. Even then, you’ll still have access to them on your profile, you just won’t be able to find them on the site.
@Globert-the-Martian: And presumably no one else will be able to find them on the site either. Kind of bad for feedback. At least it's good to know I won't have to worry for a couple of years.
@Sweda I personally have a strong dislike of counterspells, so I would hate to play against Quick to the Draw. It seems to work though. You can only get 2 damage to each person each turn, so it seems balanced.
I I like the first ability of Love and Hope. There isn't any backgrounds that give commanders lifelink. The second ability might be a bit powerful for 2 mana but if your commander phases out its another turn with no commander. I think that the abilities balance each other out.
Here are some cards that I made for commander. I couldn't find images so I just didn't add one:
Urignak sounds interesting at first, but I think the acceleration this gives you can spiral out of control too easily, especially if you're playing effects like Paradox Haze or Orvar + Legend Rule Avoidance.
I like the idea of the 'hot potato' minigame Cursed Bag creates, but I feel like everyone at the table would just become miserable after a turn cycle or two of this (including the player that cast it). 5 life is steep, but it's also not worth skipping most or all of your turn to avoid losing the life, especially when you might also be ramping your opponent at the same time. Additionally, it's definitely undercosted for the amount of life loss and/or treasure generation. Consider Painful Quandary for example, which costs 3BB and presents your opponents with a significantly less brutal choice. (There's also an obnoxious interaction with effects that prevent activating Cursed Bag's ability, effectively forcing players to lose 5 life every turn unless they can somehow sacrifice/exile the bag.)
It's very easy to turn Tafad into an instant-kill or instant-draw by preventing players from searching their libraries (some examples). In general, the "lose the game" clause feels arbitrary and is much easier to execute compared to existing cards. If the objective is 'fairness', then perhaps you could punish players that search for nonbasics. You could inflict a flat 2 damage, or maybe inflict damage based on the number of types of mana the land could produce if you wanted to be particularly brutal. Additionally, there's really nothing blue happening anywhere on Tafad, so perhaps you could shift the cost to something like 1RRGG. (This kind of effect probably shouldn't be easily splashed into, hence the 4 colored mana in the suggestion.)
As an aside, there's a nice tutorial for finding artwork over here.
I really like Lurid Tocsin! I do think this could either be costed cheaper or the effect could be tweaked. Seeing as we are getting wraths that just destroy all creatures for four or five mana, I don't think this needs to cost 5 considering it is arguably much weaker than a 4 or 5 mana sorcery that just kills all creatures. While it is good against token strategies, there are so many better cards for killing hoards of 1 or 2 toughness creatures like pyroclasm that aren't conditional on anything and cost 2 mana. I think this would be fair if it only affected creatures that you don't control. I also think that would be good flavorfully because then card punishes your opponents for their mistakes, instead of punishing yourself as well. If not that, I would probably lower the mana cost to 4 or maybe even 3.
I think Introspect looks quite fair. The going rate for 5 mana card draw in blue is 4 cards or 3 cards with upside. I would consider this 3 cards with upside, so I think it's very fair.
@12SidedGuy I don't really like the way this creates a token that does this, because if Doc over there dies, you have a bunch of useless tokens. And then after a while you have no more creatures to put counters on, since all your creatures will have been changed into Horrors. Another thing: where would this see play? No one wants this in there counters deck because proliferating -1-1 counters isn't very good. In horror decks, this doesn't work because this isn't synergetic at all, it makes thinks that are already horrors into horrors. Maybe in an artifact deck, but then I'd change it to an artifact instead of horror.
It's a nice card, and a nice idea, but with a few tweaks it would be pretty nice design space. I guess the making tokens rebalances it a bit, but it isn't a very powerful card. Anyone have anything to say about this? Could see play in maybe simic aggro?
@TheDukeOfPork ; I'm sure decks that have green and often play big beefy creatures would love to have a card giving out haste counters upon mutating. I'm just not sure the flavor is there. I mean, how can you have a Swamp Prowler and not use any swamps to cast it? This really feels more like a red/black or green/black card to me.
What thoughts do you guys and gals have on this one?
@stijnhommes This is quite expensive for what it does, you're looking at 8 mana for this card to be doing anything. On top of that you need at least 2 other card and specifically insects to swarm. Swarming has it's risks of getting 2 for 1 at minimum if the swarm dies to removal, I'll assume and also getting chump blocked if your swarm doesn't have good evasion.
I think if you want to have this concept work it should probably be exile any number of insects you control and create a token that is equal to all the insect and has all the keywords of a the exiled cards, when the token leaves the battlefield return the exiled cards. That should mitigate the risk of combining many cards into one. The idea can be done but in the current form it's too expensive and uses new mechanics, the wording does not tell you what to do with the cards that are in the swarm, can they be targeted? When the swarm dies do the creatures in the swarm also die? Swarming swarms? The ruling in the reminder text is not air tight.
I think Felix Chevron if pretty balanced except for the fact that if he's your commander, it's kinda like you start the game with a Ghosty Prison on the board. Players will have a hard time attacking you if they have a reason to target you. If you play Felix Chevron, some players may not want to remove it. Other than that, he's pretty balanced.
@WaterMonster29 You can't reveal Felix from your hand if he's in the command zone... I think that opens him up to discard removal that puts it back in your command zone. However, if you get two wanted counters on a player, you can remove one counter to give it +4 and attack with a 7/9 and and since it has hexproof, it can hit pretty hard.
As for Trake, Warrior Mage: I'm pretty sure people will want to equip for free, but it comes with a pretty big risk. Kill the equipment and the creature is gone as well... I do think it needs some balancing, because it makes Colossus Hammer (and other enchantments) way too easy to abuse in a color and tribe that are usually not acting like warrior decks. What was your reason to choose these creature types? It is quite an interesting card that I would definitely try out if it existed for real.
@Sweda Yes, you do need at least two other cards, which is why it didn't make sense to me to make it too cheap. I wanted players to first play a lot of insect tribal and use this as a finisher.
Since I reviewed two cards since I last posted a card of my own, I think I can afford to drop another new creation in.
Guess what inspired me... Is this something you would play in a dragon tribal deck?
I originally wanted to make the third ability create a treasure token as well, but I cut the ability to not make it too strong and make the text fit into the box nicely.
This seems like a cute card in limited, much like I'd assume similar existing cards are. (Are those cards what you meant by inspiration? If you meant the art, I've no idea; looks like a baby rathalos perhaps.) Having to activate the last ability three times is pretty painful though.
I can't think of any dragon tribal deck this might fit in. It's not worth tutoring for, cheating out, reanimating, or copying, lacks an etb, and has an underwhelming return on investment, so it does nothing for the majority of popular dragon commannders. Maybe it fits into a budget Lathliss deck, or perhaps some kind of MorophonDragonstorm?
@cadstar369 Actually my inspiration cards were Ascendant Spirit and Evolved Sleeper. The first one did pretty well in spirit decks and I have no reason to believe the sleeper won't be good either. And you don't technically have to trigger that last ability on my card multiple times, you can always give it +1/+1 counters in some other, cheaper way to reach that point things get haste...
As for Chilling Star Light: I like Pestilent Spirit from Ravnica Allegiance giving instant and sorceries deathtouch, but I'm not sure how often enchantments actually deal damage to creatures to make the first ability worth it. Of course, it's a great way to boost enchantment creatures. Especially when the second ability wants you to play enchantment tribal for the extra damage. It's definitely a card I would play.
@MrVeydin you're meant to give feedback on the most recent card(s) in the thread before putting up your own card.
With regards to Lazara, aside from being a pretty big color break (the 2-19 ritual effect fits in any color(s) other than white and blue, depending on the context; on a creature it'd make the most sense in mono-green), this card would likely cause the same kind of problems as Narset, Enlightened Master. With any repeatable flicker effect (the cheapest that comes to mind is Deadeye Navigator, which only requires you to roll 4+ to try again, 6+ to net mana), you most likely end up with infinite mana, and maybe some extra turns as well. The problem is that this potentially doesn't go infinite, so your opponents have to sit there and pray you crit fail (roll a 1) before you amass sufficient amounts of value, instead of being able to resign to a demonstrable loop. Additionally, if you flicker Lazara during an opponent's turn, a crit fail doesn't stop you from trying again. (And of course, don't forget the extra dice roll cards to help avoid crit fails in the first place.)
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I should probably have slimmed the idea down to the essence like you said. I'll keep it in mind for the future. Thanks for the tips. Do you know how the monthly card purge works? Where can I find more info?
I like The Way of the Dark Crystal as a concept, but I'm not sure I would ever get to use of the abilities other than the first one buffing all your creatures with +2/+2.
You already need 6 turns to get it onto the board, then you need 6 additional turns to get the deity counters going. I do like how you balanced things by making the player sacrifice the enchantment when it reaches 6 deity counters, otherwise those God creatures also get +2/+2 and that would be too busted.
Could you elaborate on which parts of the films you pulled from for the flavor?
Here are my thoughts on your card. Of course, it is inevitable that the card "Quick to Draw" has to make you draw a card. I wonder how much damage you can bait an opponent into with the right deck... You need a couple of instants that you can play on an opponent's turn to really take advantage of this. I guess that's why it's red/blue. Did you start this design with the name? Because the artwork, the name and the effect all work together very well.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/love-and-hope
Here are some cards that I made for commander. I couldn't find images so I just didn't add one:
- Urignak sounds interesting at first, but I think the acceleration this gives you can spiral out of control too easily, especially if you're playing effects like Paradox Haze or Orvar + Legend Rule Avoidance.
- I like the idea of the 'hot potato' minigame Cursed Bag creates, but I feel like everyone at the table would just become miserable after a turn cycle or two of this (including the player that cast it). 5 life is steep, but it's also not worth skipping most or all of your turn to avoid losing the life, especially when you might also be ramping your opponent at the same time. Additionally, it's definitely undercosted for the amount of life loss and/or treasure generation. Consider Painful Quandary for example, which costs 3BB and presents your opponents with a significantly less brutal choice. (There's also an obnoxious interaction with effects that prevent activating Cursed Bag's ability, effectively forcing players to lose 5 life every turn unless they can somehow sacrifice/exile the bag.)
- It's very easy to turn Tafad into an instant-kill or instant-draw by preventing players from searching their libraries (some examples). In general, the "lose the game" clause feels arbitrary and is much easier to execute compared to existing cards. If the objective is 'fairness', then perhaps you could punish players that search for nonbasics. You could inflict a flat 2 damage, or maybe inflict damage based on the number of types of mana the land could produce if you wanted to be particularly brutal. Additionally, there's really nothing blue happening anywhere on Tafad, so perhaps you could shift the cost to something like 1RRGG. (This kind of effect probably shouldn't be easily splashed into, hence the 4 colored mana in the suggestion.)
- As an aside, there's a nice tutorial for finding artwork over here.
I'd appreciate feedback on these two cards:I really like Lurid Tocsin! I do think this could either be costed cheaper or the effect could be tweaked. Seeing as we are getting wraths that just destroy all creatures for four or five mana, I don't think this needs to cost 5 considering it is arguably much weaker than a 4 or 5 mana sorcery that just kills all creatures. While it is good against token strategies, there are so many better cards for killing hoards of 1 or 2 toughness creatures like pyroclasm that aren't conditional on anything and cost 2 mana. I think this would be fair if it only affected creatures that you don't control. I also think that would be good flavorfully because then card punishes your opponents for their mistakes, instead of punishing yourself as well. If not that, I would probably lower the mana cost to 4 or maybe even 3.
I think Introspect looks quite fair. The going rate for 5 mana card draw in blue is 4 cards or 3 cards with upside. I would consider this 3 cards with upside, so I think it's very fair.
Hope this helped!
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/complete/full/2022/7/18/1658163270467252.png
Another thing: where would this see play? No one wants this in there counters deck because proliferating -1-1 counters isn't very good. In horror decks, this doesn't work because this isn't synergetic at all, it makes thinks that are already horrors into horrors. Maybe in an artifact deck, but then I'd change it to an artifact instead of horror.
It's a nice card, and a nice idea, but with a few tweaks it would be pretty nice design space. I guess the making tokens rebalances it a bit, but it isn't a very powerful card.
Anyone have anything to say about this? Could see play in maybe simic aggro?
I'm sure decks that have green and often play big beefy creatures would love to have a card giving out haste counters upon mutating. I'm just not sure the flavor is there. I mean, how can you have a Swamp Prowler and not use any swamps to cast it? This really feels more like a red/black or green/black card to me.
What thoughts do you guys and gals have on this one?
As for Trake, Warrior Mage:
I'm pretty sure people will want to equip for free, but it comes with a pretty big risk. Kill the equipment and the creature is gone as well... I do think it needs some balancing, because it makes Colossus Hammer (and other enchantments) way too easy to abuse in a color and tribe that are usually not acting like warrior decks. What was your reason to choose these creature types? It is quite an interesting card that I would definitely try out if it existed for real.
Guess what inspired me...
Is this something you would play in a dragon tribal deck?
I originally wanted to make the third ability create a treasure token as well, but I cut the ability to not make it too strong and make the text fit into the box nicely.
- This seems like a cute card in limited, much like I'd assume similar existing cards are. (Are those cards what you meant by inspiration? If you meant the art, I've no idea; looks like a baby rathalos perhaps.) Having to activate the last ability three times is pretty painful though.
- I can't think of any dragon tribal deck this might fit in. It's not worth tutoring for, cheating out, reanimating, or copying, lacks an etb, and has an underwhelming return on investment, so it does nothing for the majority of popular dragon commannders. Maybe it fits into a budget Lathliss deck, or perhaps some kind of Morophon Dragonstorm?
I'd appreciate feedback on this card:Actually my inspiration cards were Ascendant Spirit and Evolved Sleeper. The first one did pretty well in spirit decks and I have no reason to believe the sleeper won't be good either. And you don't technically have to trigger that last ability on my card multiple times, you can always give it +1/+1 counters in some other, cheaper way to reach that point things get haste...
As for Chilling Star Light:
I like Pestilent Spirit from Ravnica Allegiance giving instant and sorceries deathtouch, but I'm not sure how often enchantments actually deal damage to creatures to make the first ability worth it. Of course, it's a great way to boost enchantment creatures. Especially when the second ability wants you to play enchantment tribal for the extra damage. It's definitely a card I would play.
With regards to Lazara, aside from being a pretty big color break (the 2-19 ritual effect fits in any color(s) other than white and blue, depending on the context; on a creature it'd make the most sense in mono-green), this card would likely cause the same kind of problems as Narset, Enlightened Master. With any repeatable flicker effect (the cheapest that comes to mind is Deadeye Navigator, which only requires you to roll 4+ to try again, 6+ to net mana), you most likely end up with infinite mana, and maybe some extra turns as well. The problem is that this potentially doesn't go infinite, so your opponents have to sit there and pray you crit fail (roll a 1) before you amass sufficient amounts of value, instead of being able to resign to a demonstrable loop. Additionally, if you flicker Lazara during an opponent's turn, a crit fail doesn't stop you from trying again. (And of course, don't forget the extra dice roll cards to help avoid crit fails in the first place.)