@cadstar369 Hell yeah, a Flagbearer! I have a soft spot for most of those obscure old creature types that don't get new cards but are still canon types. The top ability would probably be more help than hinderance unless you have a way of making Flagbearer tokens, since people would eventually just remove Camille and leave whatever non-Flagbearer threat you're redirecting away from exposed. However, with the second ability, it becomes a lot harder to do that. I think this card is a bit powerful, I would put her up at least one mana, but the effect is well-designed and makes sense. Next up: https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/quirrel-amnesiac-hero
@KorandAngels while Quirrel is balanced, but I don't feel it really right. Landfall normally appears on green cards, and white is not the best color for lands. Normally you will only seek basic plains... But well, sometimes cards are exceptions! The buff of gaining first strike and +1/+1 counters are very useful, because you get a bonus while investigating.
My card will show you that stories are never completed...
@smax765 The Rise and Fall of Agnor seems all over the place.
I: This sort of effect scales too powerfully in multiplayer games, especially on cheap cards. (That's why Wizards tends to use "each opponent loses N life and you gain N life" after Return to Ravnica block.)
II: This is lackluster given chapter I; why do chapters I and II need to be different?
III: This chapter seems lackluster as well. Over three turns, you've gotten a little bit of life and a small creature; not exactly worthy of mythic rarity. Why play this rather than something like a Soul Sister? (I know it's because of Secret Lore.)
Secret Lore: I don't know if it's for space reasons or something else, but I don't see why you used Hideaway here, considering you're fudging the rules for Hideaway by both using it on a nonpermanent spell and also not giving the player an actual choice while they're resolving it. That said, 2 mana for a free card is nuts (especially since WUB has strong deck manipulation), and having it be a recursive free effect on a one-drop is even more absurd. It's also notable that there can only ever be one card that Secret Lore will see as 'exiled with Secret Lore' when you cast it, so the wording of the last line is odd.
Overall: This seems to be a running theme with your Sagas, but why is this a Saga if you want it to do something Sagas aren't meant for? As with It Came from the Sky, using a regular enchantment with counters would be significantly simpler here. That said, this seems less like a Saga and more like Secret Lore plus a bunch of extra stuff, with both starting points significantly undercosted. (The quickest reference that comes to mind is Djinn of Wishes, which costs 2UU to use and can only be used three times.) Without Secret Lore though, this could easily be a common Saga after some minor tweaks. (For example, chapter I doesn't make sense if you cast it for W, so this probably shouldn't have a hybrid mana cost.)
I'd appreciate feedback on these two cards:
These are both designed to be support for criminally underdeveloped archetypes. (Let me know if Xera's intended archetype is too obtuse.)
The Mana cost for Camille and Xera is way too low considering what they do.
Camille basically makes all you creatures immune to spells that deal 4 or less damage.
If the opponent has no "destroy" or "exile" spells he's in real trouble.
But worse, it also counters all spells that buff creatures. A green deck with some of these buffs can either not play this spells or face a buffed up Flagbearer.
Example: Enemy has 2 creatures and i have Camille and another creature. Enemy plays Giant Growth. It ahs to target Camille, is copied and i may chose new a new target for the copy, targeting my other creature. Enemies gets nothing i get two giant growths.
Same with lightning bolt. Lets say i have Camille and a bird of paradise. Enemy wants to bolt the bird, but Lightning bolt goes onto Camille, not killing her and then i shoot the lightning bolt back into the enemies face or use it to kill an enemy creature.
Even with destroy effects, the enemy will lose a creature too if he uses a "destroy" spell on Camille.
Now Xera's first effect is ok, cause its for everyone. But the second effect is overpowered. First, it doesnt cost mana. You can use it every turn. You can reshuffle your graveyard into your library over time and you get a tutor for free each turn that fetches any card from your graveyard. Imagine playing Xera in a Dredge Deck or a deck that mills yourself.
@LvB RW has plenty of effects that reduce or turn off noncreature damage at MV4 or less, so I don't see the problem here. (Your argument can also be reduced to "red has problems against Camille" without much loss of generality, which is fairly weak.)
Regarding your examples, creatures like Selfless Spirit accomplish the same protection in a broader fashion, and white also has effects like Karmic Justice and Martyr's Bond in the vein or retributive abilities, so I don't see the issue here either. As for the interaction with buff spells, is that not what makes Flagbearers interesting? There are few ways to interact with an opponent buffing their creature(s) without simply removing the creature directly; why not have such a silver bullet? It's unlikely your opponent will be all-in on such effects, so this also seems like a narrow objection.
For Xera, why would a self-mill deck want Xera when they already have cards like Muldrotha that are significantly stronger and in better colors? Also, with the graveyard being an important resource for most strategies, consistently retrieving even 3~4 mana cards with Xera is fairly unsustainable, so I fail to see why you call the second ability overpowered. Regardless, it appears the point of the card has been missed, so revisions to make the theme more apparent may be in order.
@cadstar369 Great job with making a Flagbearer lord. The second ability really does double duty in deterring your opponent from casting any targeted spells and being a pseudo-Heroic trigger for copying your own beneficial spells and abilities, especially cantrips. Given that targeted removal in both spell and ability form is essentially useless against Camille as long as you control another expendable Flagbearer, it doesn't need to be as cost-efficient as 3/5 for four mana. I probably wouldn't give it a higher toughness than three because it's not an outright lightning rod like a Coalition Honor Guard or Spellskite and it can really stifle your opponent's gameplan. It shouldn't be absorbing many harmful spells anyway, and when it does, it'll go eye-for-an-eye for free and likely net you a 2-for-1 trade. The wording of the first ability is obviously right on, let me take a crack at the second one to see if it can be streamlined a bit: Whenever a Flagbearer you control becomes the target of a spell or ability, you may copy it. If you do, you may choose new targets for both. At least one of the targets must be a Flagbearer you control.
Xera enables a lot of looting (even moreso in multiplayer games), but it's at least symmetrical. Given that there's no built-in way to get rid of the Omphalos tokens, they'll have a tendancy to accumulate over the course of a Commander game. The second ability being manaless and limitlessly useable so long as you have cards in your graveyard (even if it's limited to once per player's turn) is a bit problemmatic as it makes Xera both a mill strategy wincon, the way you save yourself from it, and an extremely powerful recursion engine. A mass mill effect will put you in a position to tutor directly into your hand (at instant speed, unaffected by summoning sickness) any card you put into your graveyard. Outside of Commander, two copies of Xera can recur each other and make getting rid of it permanently extremely difficult. As with Camille, the toughness for Xera seems out of proportion for what it costs. Given the power of its abilities for a control strategy, it's best to not make it too self-sufficient and difficult to remove. Otherwise, it could get fairly oppressive. I suggest adding tapping Xera (and possibly a mana cost of {x} as well) to the cost of the second ability. That way, a resolved Xera won't automatically allow its controller to get a card back as soon as they receive priority and it will limit the ability to one use per untap.
EDIT: It seems I didn't see the earlier reply as I was writing my own comments.
@Jadefire fair point about both creatures' toughness; I'll adjust them accordingly.
The circles I play in tend to play relatively high power magic, so I forgot that there are Commander games that don't see tons of removal, sweepers, and/or a win by turn 5~7 (and thus didn't even consider more than 4 or so Omphalos tokens floating around). It's also probably why my creatures tend to have more toughness than necessary, since I want them to have the potential to meaningfully block rather than just be an extra vulnerable enchantment. It appears that Xera's current second ability is vastly overshadowing my intent, so I'll swap it out for something else.
Edit: I may have pulled back too hard, but what do you think of this version? (I've currently come to the conclusion that attaching card advantage to the triggered ability will likely overshadow what I want this card to enable, and I fear making tokens will cause a similar problem. Perhaps I should just drop the trigger entirely for a funky Ward ability.)
Edit 2: Omphalos tokens are now legendary, since having them not be enabled boring pseudo-mill shenanigans.
You play xera, and when its your turn again, the emphalos tokens triggered the 2nd ability 4 times, allowing you to reshuffle 20 cards and to gain 12 life.
BUT, lets say you have some more fancy white stuff in your deck. Like Teleportation Cicle.
Play Xera, exile her, and at end of turn she comes back. Now all players already have 2 Omphalos tokens each. Enemy thinks this is too powerful and wants to swords to plowshares her, but you respond with Cloudshift to exile her only to come back into play.
Triggering the ETB effect can get out of hand really fast the more players you have.
In this example with 5 players, after 3 ETB effects, each player has to mill 15 cards until its his turn again, while you would get 36 life meanlife.
If you can protect xera after triggering the ETB a few times, you win the game by milling everyone. And if you play a madness deck, then things get crazy really fast.
Now heres my card, since i found out that you can animate almost everything, but not exiled cards!
@cadstar369 It's understandable that if powerful decks is the context you're familiar with, that you'd design your cards to be competitive in that environment. That's probably how power creep happens, since no one wants to make underpowered designs that won't get played. Would it be correct then to assume that Xera is meant to support a strategy that involves triggering effects that care about you or your opponents drawing cards? The retention of looting on the Omphalos tokens and surrender of recursion on the second ability suggest that card advantage isn't the point of Xera.
The lowering of Xera's toughness to five seems very reasonable. I can see why you were concerned about pulling back too far for the second ability. The difference in power level between this and the original version is quite large, but bottoming cards for life (roughly one activation for each of your turns in a four-player game) is very on-flavour for Bant. If part of the hope for Xera is to slow things down, use it as a blocker, and stay alive while other cards that interact with it do the heavy lifting as wincons (maybe even digging for them through the Omphalos tokens), then Xera does that reasonably well. In its current form, it could even cost 1GWU. If you intend Xera to be defensive, another way to do it could be that when its second ability triggers, until your next turn, creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays X for each of them, where X is the highest mana value among cards put on the bottom of your library this way. That might be too wordy, though.
@LvB The animated exile should have the "Enchantment creature" type and then the subtype (maybe Avatar). On balance, I really like the card. Is a cheap one that increases its power as cards you control get exiled by your own and opponent spells, similar to boneyard wurm.
I wanted to see if my most recent cards are balanced.
@Jadefire I intended for Xera to support with cards like these that care about your opponents making you discard. I didn't want to do something in black since it'd probably result in something that'd get consistently hated out, so I went with mass looting.
Perhaps I should just design another card entirely for that, since players will probably gravitate to strategies that care about the extra cards being drawn instead since that's much easier to do.
@cadstar369 Giving your opponent control of a token that causes mass looting is a clever way to accomplish that goal. The fact that it's also a group hug of sorts might help the card to not get hated out, though once the Omphalos tokens have been creataed, Xera has done its job. "Cares about discards" was actually my second guess, but I discounted it precisely because black was missing. I guess count that a missed opportunity to play Waste Not, Megrim, and Deathrite Shaman.
I don't think creating an entirely new card to support discards is necessary. Repeatable looting is an ideal way to ensure consistent discards. The problem with cards like Bottomless Pit, Creeping Dread, and Honden of Night's Reach that do nothing but cause discards is that players eventually run out of cards, at which point the card does nothing except keep players' hands empty by encouraging them to immediately play everything they draw. Looting actually has benefits for drawing you to your cards that care about discards in addition to being the discard outlet. The other effect that could work for a discard strategy would be a repeatable Recoil (perhaps edict-style rather than targeted), but that might have a higher potential to be detrimental to you.
@cadstar369 The basic problem is the combination of looting and returning cards. Even though if Omphalos is legendary, the effect that makes everyone to discard is very powerful. While you gain life, each opponent mills cards and you can shuflle all those milled cards.
In my opinion the best ways to make the card balanced is:
A. To give Omphalos an ability of sacrificing it/vanishing. For example: Vanishing 3 should be fair enough. You have white and blue, so it will be easy to blink Xera and return those tokens to the battlefield.
B. Instead of shuffling cards, you may exile them. That way, you will be in the same situation than other players, with the exception that you can exile cards to gain life.
A last question: Why is the card green? I feel it more like WUB or RWU.
Please look at my last comment and give feedback to my cards.
Call from Beyond ~ While the first ability of Call from Beyond fits in White and Black, it certainly doesn't fit in one of those colors alone, so it doesn't make sense to use hybrid mana here. That said, getting an Ajani's Welcome that also grinds your opponents down for 1 mana seems like a bit much. Given the prior point, this should cost at least {w}{b}, probably more after considering similar effects at 2 mana like Corpse Knight tend to only have half of Call from Beyond's first ability.
On a separate note, X is not defined for the activated ability. That said, assuming X is meant to be the number of counters on Call from Beyond, how many creatures do you expect your opponents to have? Putting a counter on Call from Beyond is mandatory, and you have to target exactly X creatures, so you're likely to be stunning a huge portion of your own board if there are even enough targets in the first place.
Agnor, Lord of the Dead ~ This is broken, now even more so than previous iterations.
The Eminence ability has become more absurd, allowing you to go infinite with ease in tons of ways. (Similar arguments to last time can be adopted here, so I won't repeat myself.) The wording also makes it unclear what happens if you have effects like Anointed Procession or Queen Allenal of Ruadach in play, making it potentially trivial to sidestep the restriction and start a loop.
While Spirits have plenty of powerful ETB effects, Spirit/Token Panharmonicon is not by itself especially notable since we have ~15 Panharmonicon-style effects floating around already. But Agnor's Eminence ability means this will get out of hand nigh-instantly.
Why does the activated ability cost blue mana? Sacrificing creatures for various effects is black's thing, so why not have Agnor be WU and the ability cost black mana? That said, slapping this on Agnor makes it even more combotastic; nothing in particular comes to mind here that I didn't say last time.
Overall, this card has way too much happening on it, with loads of ways to break each of its abilities. Balancing Agnor might be doable if it had one of these abilities, difficult with two, and I can't see any way to balance all three of these abilities on one card.
Soul of the Damned ~ I have similar issues with this as I have with Orcish Bowmasters. Draining 1 life from an opponent would be plenty strong already; why does this need to deal damage to any target, and with lifelink at that? That said, it's also fairly trivial to trigger the kill condition, since many spirit generating effects generate two or three spirits, to say nothing of token doublers. And that's without considering that Soul of the Damned triggers on ETB and LTB (not even dies!). Normally for 2 mana you get life drain on death (e.g. Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant). Soul of the Damned is better in three aspects: it deals damage to anything (and has a flat out kill condition), triggers on entering, and triggers on leaving for any reason. Restricting to Spirits is not much of a drawback, which makes this effect seem more appropriate for a five or six mana body than a two-drop, and it's certainly not a common (more like a strong rare, borderline mythic depending on the mana cost).
Edit: P. S. – To answer your question about Xera's colors, see the cards it's meant to support. The majority are in GW, and looting is primarily blue, hence Xera became bant. (Also see my prior comment for why it's purposefully not black.)
Thanks for the feedback, @cadstar369. I will try to balance them.
CALL FROM BEYOND: The ability to drain life could start at 10 ritual counters. That should balance it like sagas and suspend(they give a better value after turns).
AGNOR: I thought about an ability that should balance the eminence. It is “vengeance”. It is when this creature deals combat damage to a player, sacrifice it . The last ability could be paid with a hybrid blue/black. That should give a blue effect while sacrificing, like Toxrill. I will also increase the cost to {4}{w}{b}.
SOUL OF THE DAMNED: Not like orcish bowmasters, soul of the damned can only deal damage to creatures. Now that I think, it should be ETB or dying and to increase the rarity to uncommon. The kill effect will be increased to “dealt damage 3 or more times this turn” instead of twice.
@smax765 there seems to be a massive misunderstanding regarding Agnor, so let me try this again: Eminence (the ability to start the game with a free effect that your opponent can't interact with) is fundamentally broken. In Agnor's case, you could lose 2 life for 0/0 tokens and it would still be broken, because the important part is that they're bodies that enter and die. So long as Agnor has eminence, he will be broken, and there's virtually nothing you can do to change this. (Comparing Agnor to Edgar Markov, a problematic card in and of itself, should make it clear how absurd this card is.)
Additionally (I missed this the first time around because this card does too much), half of the second ability doesn't work. Activated abilities don't 'trigger,' and thus require a separate effect: "Whenever you activate an activated ability of a Spirit or token, copy it. You may choose new targets for the copy." (References) Notice that these abilities also generally have costs attached or hoops to jump through.
I should also note that Agnor immediately creates an infinite loop when cloned, since the clone triggers the original, then the tokens one creates will trigger the other (twice). While this does kill the player in isolation, it forces a draw with a soul sister effect on board and wins in any number of ways with ease.
Edit: Let me address your Toxrill argument as well. Notice that Toxrill costs blue and black mana to activate, not blue or black mana. While sacrificing creatures fits in black, it most certainly does not fit in blue, so hybrid mana is inappropriate for that ability. Since sacrificing creatures to draw cards is perfectly fine in mono-black, Toxrill doesn't actually need blue in its activated ability (it's presumably there to change its color identity for Commander). <end Edit>
On a separate note, the issue with Call from Beyond isn't the number of ritual counters required to trigger the life loss, it's that the card costs one mana. The first ability alone is worth more than that (see similar effects), and it also doesn't fit what hybrid mana implies. (By the way, your Saga argument fails to account for two important things: Sagas sacrifice themselves after a few turns, and Sagas provide varying effects during their duration. Suspend also fails to support your argument because a suspended card does nothing while suspended.)
For call from Beyond, I want to say that it is similar to sagas. It is true that they are sacrificed when they do their effect, but they give you effects of a greater mana cost than the one they cost. for example, this saga gives you two turns of damage invulnerability and then reanimates a card and gives it flying. Only the last effect needs 5-6 mana on an uncommon card. The other abilities also make you able to attack a lot while losing one creature.
@cadstar369 I had an idea for making a balanced eminence ability: Eminence - [effect] as long as this card is in your command zone, you may pay [cost] to get an emblem with this ability until end of turn.
@smax765 while this revision is a large step in the right direction, there's still a variety of issues with it, including:
The mana cost definitely should not be going down considering how much this card does.
It doesn't resolve the instant infinite loop from cloning it.
Removing the sacrifice cost to the mana ability makes it very strange; if it's going to be mana neutral, why not use a triggered ability in the vein of "whenever you cast a Spirit spell, if {u}{b} was spent to cast it, scry 1"? (Also note that it no longer fits in this color identity without the sacrifice cost.)
(I have no idea how to interpret your parenthetical statement; I assume it's meant to refer to the change to the mana ability in some capacity.)
On a separate note, your attempt to balance eminence has done nothing to that effect. Consider Inalla, who requires you to pay for her ability every time. Alternatively, how nonsensical would it be to have a player pay to receive a cost reduction effect like the Ur-Dragon's? In general, requiring a single payment each turn only poses a minor delay to the player, which generally does not function as a balancing factor. (Note that the only time this sort of mechanic appears on existing cards is to allow your opponents to temporarily remove one or more abilities an otherwise severely undercosted card.)
Overall, it's clear to me that there is some gulf in perspective that I am insufficiently articulate to bridge. I will refrain from further commentary so as to avoid sounding like a broken record (or at least from further doing so).
@cadstar369 it's a good izzit sorcery, matching both color identities greatly in a way of not mixing two color identities into one ability, but instead splitting it into two abilities reflecting their respective colors. The use of keywords for the effects in this sense seems redundant and more confusing, but I believe it could be excused. Though, I am curious why you chose the D&D set for the set of your choosing, and seeing it was made in MTG.Design it was obviously done for a reason and i would love to hear your reasoning on it. Overall it's a good card, no real flaws, well balanced and is quite deserving of it's uncommon rarity. I would expect nothing less from a Cardsmiths of your stature. Keep up the great work!
@TheKeefMan You Search the Room was made in the same vein as the D&D choice cards (examples) for this challenge. The italicized words aren't keywords, they're flavor text describing the two decisions.
Regarding Aslamnna, it's pretty nuts that the 'trades' can target any permanent. In particular, lands and most tokens cost 0 treasures to steal. With just a couple cards (e.g. a token doubler and a permanent with mana value 3+ controlled by any player), you can bounce back and forth between the two trades to steal all permanents on the battlefield. You can even steal the treasures your opponents would be left with if you have a couple more pieces.
I really like the design with this concept of forcibly trading things back and forth (reminds me of this old card I made), but no effective way to balance the interaction between the two activated abilities comes to mind at the moment.
@cadstar369 I deleted the other comment. Literally I thought about deleting it, but I have a bad mind and I forgot. I made a balanced Agnor that uses your feedback.
Aslamnna looks almost fine to me. Maybe reduce his toughness by one. And what you could do is that if he leaves play all players gain back control of their permanents.
Also his last ability has a really high abusive potential.
"Heres my Illusions of Grandeur/Demonic Pact/Forbidden Crypt".
EDIT: Didnt think of stealing 0-Mana permanents. To fix that you could make it an ability that requires tapping.
Maybe this works:
When Aslamnna, Market's Head enters the battlefield, create 3
treasure tokens. XX,: Exchange control of X treasure tokens and
target permanent an opponent controls, where X
is target permanent's converted mana cost. X cant be 0. Tap: Target opponent gains control of target perman-
ent you control: Create X treasure tokens, where
X is the permanent's converted mana cost. X cant be 0.
@LvB A very odd artifact creature, a 3 color, that effects libraries and permanents. I think activated ability is a bit overpowered. I would recommend putting a cost to the ability that taxes you somehow, maybe like, "{t}, discard a card: Each player shuffles their library." Though I am curious how the red plays into this card. Blue from the obvious card/library play, and white from its balancing, but there is no destruction, or any other red identifiers. Would love to hear your reasoning on that. Overall a good card and uniquely designed.
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https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/quirrel-amnesiac-hero
My card will show you that stories are never completed...
I: This sort of effect scales too powerfully in multiplayer games, especially on cheap cards. (That's why Wizards tends to use "each opponent loses N life and you gain N life" after Return to Ravnica block.)
II: This is lackluster given chapter I; why do chapters I and II need to be different?
III: This chapter seems lackluster as well. Over three turns, you've gotten a little bit of life and a small creature; not exactly worthy of mythic rarity. Why play this rather than something like a Soul Sister? (I know it's because of Secret Lore.)
Secret Lore: I don't know if it's for space reasons or something else, but I don't see why you used Hideaway here, considering you're fudging the rules for Hideaway by both using it on a nonpermanent spell and also not giving the player an actual choice while they're resolving it. That said, 2 mana for a free card is nuts (especially since WUB has strong deck manipulation), and having it be a recursive free effect on a one-drop is even more absurd. It's also notable that there can only ever be one card that Secret Lore will see as 'exiled with Secret Lore' when you cast it, so the wording of the last line is odd.
Overall: This seems to be a running theme with your Sagas, but why is this a Saga if you want it to do something Sagas aren't meant for? As with It Came from the Sky, using a regular enchantment with counters would be significantly simpler here. That said, this seems less like a Saga and more like Secret Lore plus a bunch of extra stuff, with both starting points significantly undercosted. (The quickest reference that comes to mind is Djinn of Wishes, which costs 2UU to use and can only be used three times.) Without Secret Lore though, this could easily be a common Saga after some minor tweaks. (For example, chapter I doesn't make sense if you cast it for W, so this probably shouldn't have a hybrid mana cost.)
I'd appreciate feedback on these two cards:
These are both designed to be support for criminally underdeveloped archetypes. (Let me know if Xera's intended archetype is too obtuse.)
Regarding your examples, creatures like Selfless Spirit accomplish the same protection in a broader fashion, and white also has effects like Karmic Justice and Martyr's Bond in the vein or retributive abilities, so I don't see the issue here either. As for the interaction with buff spells, is that not what makes Flagbearers interesting? There are few ways to interact with an opponent buffing their creature(s) without simply removing the creature directly; why not have such a silver bullet? It's unlikely your opponent will be all-in on such effects, so this also seems like a narrow objection.
For Xera, why would a self-mill deck want Xera when they already have cards like Muldrotha that are significantly stronger and in better colors? Also, with the graveyard being an important resource for most strategies, consistently retrieving even 3~4 mana cards with Xera is fairly unsustainable, so I fail to see why you call the second ability overpowered. Regardless, it appears the point of the card has been missed, so revisions to make the theme more apparent may be in order.
Xera enables a lot of looting (even moreso in multiplayer games), but it's at least symmetrical. Given that there's no built-in way to get rid of the Omphalos tokens, they'll have a tendancy to accumulate over the course of a Commander game. The second ability being manaless and limitlessly useable so long as you have cards in your graveyard (even if it's limited to once per player's turn) is a bit problemmatic as it makes Xera both a mill strategy wincon, the way you save yourself from it, and an extremely powerful recursion engine. A mass mill effect will put you in a position to tutor directly into your hand (at instant speed, unaffected by summoning sickness) any card you put into your graveyard. Outside of Commander, two copies of Xera can recur each other and make getting rid of it permanently extremely difficult. As with Camille, the toughness for Xera seems out of proportion for what it costs. Given the power of its abilities for a control strategy, it's best to not make it too self-sufficient and difficult to remove. Otherwise, it could get fairly oppressive. I suggest adding tapping Xera (and possibly a mana cost of {x} as well) to the cost of the second ability. That way, a resolved Xera won't automatically allow its controller to get a card back as soon as they receive priority and it will limit the ability to one use per untap.
EDIT: It seems I didn't see the earlier reply as I was writing my own comments.
The circles I play in tend to play relatively high power magic, so I forgot that there are Commander games that don't see tons of removal, sweepers, and/or a win by turn 5~7 (and thus didn't even consider more than 4 or so Omphalos tokens floating around). It's also probably why my creatures tend to have more toughness than necessary, since I want them to have the potential to meaningfully block rather than just be an extra vulnerable enchantment. It appears that Xera's current second ability is vastly overshadowing my intent, so I'll swap it out for something else.
Edit: I may have pulled back too hard, but what do you think of this version? (I've currently come to the conclusion that attaching card advantage to the triggered ability will likely overshadow what I want this card to enable, and I fear making tokens will cause a similar problem. Perhaps I should just drop the trigger entirely for a funky Ward ability.)
Edit 2: Omphalos tokens are now legendary, since having them not be enabled boring pseudo-mill shenanigans.
The lowering of Xera's toughness to five seems very reasonable. I can see why you were concerned about pulling back too far for the second ability. The difference in power level between this and the original version is quite large, but bottoming cards for life (roughly one activation for each of your turns in a four-player game) is very on-flavour for Bant. If part of the hope for Xera is to slow things down, use it as a blocker, and stay alive while other cards that interact with it do the heavy lifting as wincons (maybe even digging for them through the Omphalos tokens), then Xera does that reasonably well. In its current form, it could even cost 1GWU. If you intend Xera to be defensive, another way to do it could be that when its second ability triggers, until your next turn, creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays X for each of them, where X is the highest mana value among cards put on the bottom of your library this way. That might be too wordy, though.
I wanted to see if my most recent cards are balanced.
Perhaps I should just design another card entirely for that, since players will probably gravitate to strategies that care about the extra cards being drawn instead since that's much easier to do.
I don't think creating an entirely new card to support discards is necessary. Repeatable looting is an ideal way to ensure consistent discards. The problem with cards like Bottomless Pit, Creeping Dread, and Honden of Night's Reach that do nothing but cause discards is that players eventually run out of cards, at which point the card does nothing except keep players' hands empty by encouraging them to immediately play everything they draw. Looting actually has benefits for drawing you to your cards that care about discards in addition to being the discard outlet. The other effect that could work for a discard strategy would be a repeatable Recoil (perhaps edict-style rather than targeted), but that might have a higher potential to be detrimental to you.
A. To give Omphalos an ability of sacrificing it/vanishing. For example: Vanishing 3 should be fair enough. You have white and blue, so it will be easy to blink Xera and return those tokens to the battlefield.
B. Instead of shuffling cards, you may exile them. That way, you will be in the same situation than other players, with the exception that you can exile cards to gain life.
A last question: Why is the card green? I feel it more like WUB or RWU.
Please look at my last comment and give feedback to my cards.
@smax765
Call from Beyond ~ While the first ability of Call from Beyond fits in White and Black, it certainly doesn't fit in one of those colors alone, so it doesn't make sense to use hybrid mana here. That said, getting an Ajani's Welcome that also grinds your opponents down for 1 mana seems like a bit much. Given the prior point, this should cost at least {w}{b}, probably more after considering similar effects at 2 mana like Corpse Knight tend to only have half of Call from Beyond's first ability.
On a separate note, X is not defined for the activated ability. That said, assuming X is meant to be the number of counters on Call from Beyond, how many creatures do you expect your opponents to have? Putting a counter on Call from Beyond is mandatory, and you have to target exactly X creatures, so you're likely to be stunning a huge portion of your own board if there are even enough targets in the first place.
Agnor, Lord of the Dead ~ This is broken, now even more so than previous iterations.
The Eminence ability has become more absurd, allowing you to go infinite with ease in tons of ways. (Similar arguments to last time can be adopted here, so I won't repeat myself.) The wording also makes it unclear what happens if you have effects like Anointed Procession or Queen Allenal of Ruadach in play, making it potentially trivial to sidestep the restriction and start a loop.
While Spirits have plenty of powerful ETB effects, Spirit/Token Panharmonicon is not by itself especially notable since we have ~15 Panharmonicon-style effects floating around already. But Agnor's Eminence ability means this will get out of hand nigh-instantly.
Why does the activated ability cost blue mana? Sacrificing creatures for various effects is black's thing, so why not have Agnor be WU and the ability cost black mana? That said, slapping this on Agnor makes it even more combotastic; nothing in particular comes to mind here that I didn't say last time.
Overall, this card has way too much happening on it, with loads of ways to break each of its abilities. Balancing Agnor might be doable if it had one of these abilities, difficult with two, and I can't see any way to balance all three of these abilities on one card.
Soul of the Damned ~ I have similar issues with this as I have with Orcish Bowmasters. Draining 1 life from an opponent would be plenty strong already; why does this need to deal damage to any target, and with lifelink at that? That said, it's also fairly trivial to trigger the kill condition, since many spirit generating effects generate two or three spirits, to say nothing of token doublers. And that's without considering that Soul of the Damned triggers on ETB and LTB (not even dies!). Normally for 2 mana you get life drain on death (e.g. Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant). Soul of the Damned is better in three aspects: it deals damage to anything (and has a flat out kill condition), triggers on entering, and triggers on leaving for any reason. Restricting to Spirits is not much of a drawback, which makes this effect seem more appropriate for a five or six mana body than a two-drop, and it's certainly not a common (more like a strong rare, borderline mythic depending on the mana cost).
Edit: P. S. – To answer your question about Xera's colors, see the cards it's meant to support. The majority are in GW, and looting is primarily blue, hence Xera became bant. (Also see my prior comment for why it's purposefully not black.)
CALL FROM BEYOND: The ability to drain life could start at 10 ritual counters. That should balance it like sagas and suspend(they give a better value after turns).
AGNOR: I thought about an ability that should balance the eminence. It is “vengeance”. It is when this creature deals combat damage to a player, sacrifice it . The last ability could be paid with a hybrid blue/black. That should give a blue effect while sacrificing, like Toxrill. I will also increase the cost to {4}{w}{b}.
SOUL OF THE DAMNED: Not like orcish bowmasters, soul of the damned can only deal damage to creatures. Now that I think, it should be ETB or dying and to increase the rarity to uncommon. The kill effect will be increased to “dealt damage 3 or more times this turn” instead of twice.
Additionally (I missed this the first time around because this card does too much), half of the second ability doesn't work. Activated abilities don't 'trigger,' and thus require a separate effect: "Whenever you activate an activated ability of a Spirit or token, copy it. You may choose new targets for the copy." (References) Notice that these abilities also generally have costs attached or hoops to jump through.
I should also note that Agnor immediately creates an infinite loop when cloned, since the clone triggers the original, then the tokens one creates will trigger the other (twice). While this does kill the player in isolation, it forces a draw with a soul sister effect on board and wins in any number of ways with ease.
Edit: Let me address your Toxrill argument as well. Notice that Toxrill costs blue and black mana to activate, not blue or black mana. While sacrificing creatures fits in black, it most certainly does not fit in blue, so hybrid mana is inappropriate for that ability. Since sacrificing creatures to draw cards is perfectly fine in mono-black, Toxrill doesn't actually need blue in its activated ability (it's presumably there to change its color identity for Commander). <end Edit>
On a separate note, the issue with Call from Beyond isn't the number of ritual counters required to trigger the life loss, it's that the card costs one mana. The first ability alone is worth more than that (see similar effects), and it also doesn't fit what hybrid mana implies. (By the way, your Saga argument fails to account for two important things: Sagas sacrifice themselves after a few turns, and Sagas provide varying effects during their duration. Suspend also fails to support your argument because a suspended card does nothing while suspended.)
For call from Beyond, I want to say that it is similar to sagas. It is true that they are sacrificed when they do their effect, but they give you effects of a greater mana cost than the one they cost. for example, this saga gives you two turns of damage invulnerability and then reanimates a card and gives it flying. Only the last effect needs 5-6 mana on an uncommon card. The other abilities also make you able to attack a lot while losing one creature.
Eminence - [effect] as long as this card is in your command zone, you may pay [cost] to get an emblem with this ability until end of turn.
- The mana cost definitely should not be going down considering how much this card does.
- It doesn't resolve the instant infinite loop from cloning it.
- Removing the sacrifice cost to the mana ability makes it very strange; if it's going to be mana neutral, why not use a triggered ability in the vein of "whenever you cast a Spirit spell, if {u}{b} was spent to cast it, scry 1"? (Also note that it no longer fits in this color identity without the sacrifice cost.)
(I have no idea how to interpret your parenthetical statement; I assume it's meant to refer to the change to the mana ability in some capacity.)On a separate note, your attempt to balance eminence has done nothing to that effect. Consider Inalla, who requires you to pay for her ability every time. Alternatively, how nonsensical would it be to have a player pay to receive a cost reduction effect like the Ur-Dragon's? In general, requiring a single payment each turn only poses a minor delay to the player, which generally does not function as a balancing factor. (Note that the only time this sort of mechanic appears on existing cards is to allow your opponents to temporarily remove one or more abilities an otherwise severely undercosted card.)
Overall, it's clear to me that there is some gulf in perspective that I am insufficiently articulate to bridge. I will refrain from further commentary so as to avoid sounding like a broken record (or at least from further doing so).
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I'd appreciate feedback on this card:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/aslamnna-markets-head
Regarding Aslamnna, it's pretty nuts that the 'trades' can target any permanent. In particular, lands and most tokens cost 0 treasures to steal. With just a couple cards (e.g. a token doubler and a permanent with mana value 3+ controlled by any player), you can bounce back and forth between the two trades to steal all permanents on the battlefield. You can even steal the treasures your opponents would be left with if you have a couple more pieces.
I really like the design with this concept of forcibly trading things back and forth (reminds me of this old card I made), but no effective way to balance the interaction between the two activated abilities comes to mind at the moment.
XX,: Exchange control of X treasure tokens and
target permanent an opponent controls, where X
is target permanent's converted mana cost. X cant be 0.
Tap: Target opponent gains control of target perman-
ent you control: Create X treasure tokens, where
X is the permanent's converted mana cost. X cant be 0.