@LvB you and your snails... So I'm guessing saligarphobia is the fear of snails and if so, is fitting for the cards abilities. Also I am not checking if saligarphobia actually means that because I frankly don't want to waste my energy. For being a tribal Enchantment, it's pretty balanced. Though when you say "dual strike" I think you're referring to double strike. Though I think it would mesh better as a blue/black, no real green in there. So I'd change the cost to {u/b}{u/b}. Overall a good card to go with all the snails you keep making. Keep at it man.
@cadstar369 You Search the Room is a well-balanced card. I can see how you have one of the two colours taking the lead in each of the modes. Making the spell a sorcery and adding red to the cost definitely justifies a Catalog + Treasure in Take Your Time. That same cost also fits well with a toned down Big Score/Pirate's Pillage in Ransack the Place. Either mode on its own could've been common, but uncommon is the right place to be for the versatility of both choices. You could even have done without the "If you do" clause for Ransack. Aside from impulse drawing, symmetrical discarding then drawing is a signature of red that encourages using the effect with an otherwise empty hand to get card advantage under a very narrow set of circumstances.
@TheKeefMan I'm not sure if "exchange" lets you take something and give nothing. If that's the case, there's no worry about not excluding lands in the ability's wording and no need to specifiy that the exchanged permanent's mana value can't be 0. It would probably be good to make both effects sorcery speed and require tapping Aslamnna so you can't cash in a permanent your opponent is targeting with removal and give them something that'll immediately get destroyed, activate the sale in response to a death trigger like from Evoke, activate the sale in response to a bounce trigger like a self-targeting Man-o'-War, activate the purchase to Fog an opponent's creature in the middle of combat, or sell your own chump-blocker mid-combat to save it and then buy it back with those same Treasures to achive limitless blocking. Even with the suggested changes, you can still do fun stuff like sell Dashed creatures that will bounce themselves or Unearthed creatures/Encore tokens that will go away on their own.
Also, I wonder if the first ability should specify that the Treasures are controlled by you. Otherwise, you can force a sale in multplayer between two other players.
Here's my suggestion: When Aslamnna, Market's Head enters the battlefield, creature three Treasures.
UR, T: Exchange control of X Treasures you control and target permanent, where X is that permanent's mana value. Activate only as a sorcery.
T: Target opponent gains control of target permanent you control. Create X Treasures, where X is that permanent's mana value. Activate only as a sorcery.
Hmm, im not sure if blue/black would be so fitting. So i made a black/green version. Black is for phobia and green for the really scary big monsters. And i also fixed some wording.
@LvB using double hybrid mana doesn't make sense here, considering neither green nor blue get effects that give creatures -1/-1. They both get effects that remove abilities however, which black doesn't, so this would make sense as {g/u}{b} if you wanted to keep it at 2 mana with hybrid included.
@cadstar369 I thinks these cards are brilliantly designed. The interactions between these cards are interesting and unique to say the least; and I really like the flavor. The only problem that I see (and this may be personal preference), is that with Empty Trascendence I don't think it's worth it. With the amount of effort you'll put into it, I would want that effort to get me closer to winning the game, as opposed to simply leveling the play field. The Unspeakable is a good example. You put all that mana into it, and you get a big creature for free. Don't get me wrong, I think these are really neat cards, but again, I just don't think it's worth it.
@ShadowReign a 4 drop mythic rare legendary creature, always fun to see a strong midgame legendary, though, it does leave a lot to be desired. It has alright color cohesion. But let's talk about this white, I personally don't see any white in this creature. Personally I see a mono blue, or most likely an izzit (blue/red). Focussing on token creation and library searching, plus having the ability to play instants/sorceries for free, screams izzit to me. Overall a pretty good card. Id rate it like a 8.5/10, only thing holding it back is the odd, but not uninvited inclusion on the last ability. I would've made it and mono blue, and have made the last ability be like "At the beginning of your end step, is you sacrificed three or more Clues this turn, search your library for an instant or sorcery card, reveal it and put it into your hand. Shuffle." This way not only does it go with the first ability, it could also accelerates the creation of Clue tokens, making a balanced snowball of sorts. But I still think is decent on its own, good card!
@LvB Love how this card came out! The inclusion of making it a 3 color of 2 mana was really smart, and I love how you added the tribal subtype to it. Though, it should be a plain gold border instead of blue/green, but no one really cares.
@ShadowReign good to see you again! It's been a hot minute.
I wanted to make Empty Transcendence reasonably playable when hard cast and awesome when it's free, rather than how The Unspeakable is bad when hard cast for 9 and alright when you get it for free at instant speed. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, but I figured Balance crossed with Tragic Arrogance would be a decent place to start, especially since you don't have to combo into it all at once.
@cadstar369 Making use of empty zones is a great idea. I agree with ShadowReign that the payoff for all that effort should be bigger than a modified Balance. You should be setting yourself up to win with such a sequence of plays, rather than just making it more difficult for everyone else to win.
At least there's more inevitability to seeking emptiness than stringing together Peer Through Depths, Reach Through Mists, and Sift Through Sands on the same turn. It's harder to disrupt something that's already in exile (hope you don't play against Processors), and this can all be done with no more than two mana and across multiple turns, so that's something worth recognizing. A single copy of Empty Body, Empty Mind, Empty Soul in exile can discount multiple copies of Empty Transcendence. Once you're setup, you'll probably stay setup to cast all remaining copies for free for the rest of the game, which can be pretty annoying. And those cards don't even need to get into exile through being cast, so Empty Transcendence can theoretically be cast from scratch for no mana given the right setup.
As a general comment, Empty Mind and Empty Soul seem fairly weak and not worth playing on their own if you're not specifically building towards the big payoff. Whereas Peer Through Depths, Reach Through Mists, and Sift Through Sands at the very least cantrip at instant speed (and in other cases give you selection to help you draw into the remaining cards), only one card in the Empty cycle cantrips and they're all two mana sorceries. Another thing about Peer/Reach/Sift is that they all have the potential to do more than what's written in their textboxes. Since they exist in an environment with Splice and they're all Arcane, they all have a much higher ceiling for impact than the Empty cycle.
Empty Body - This is probably the only card in the cycle worth playing for its own sake. But even then, that's only true under very narrow circumstances. In a near-creatureless deck, Empty Body can often be a better Journey to Nowhere. However, as soon as you control a creature, you can't even use Empty Body to save it from removal, since it's a sorcery. A sorcery-speed phase out effect only has very narrow uses, like getting rid of a blocker for a turn, protecting your own planeswalker from attacks for a turn, or saving your creature or planeswalker from a sweeper you play. There's also a typo in the card: "exile that creature or planeswalker instead."
Empty Mind - The cost for a Healing Salve + cantrip is about right, but being a sorcery greatly reduces this card's versatility. On the surface, satisfying Enlightened for this card sounds really good, but to do that means you'll probably be playing it in a deck that wants to cast out its hand as quickly as possible. It would be tough to justify a card that might cost you your entire turn's worth of mana just to gain a few life and cycle itself when the deck that plays it most likely wants to build a board fast and rush in hard. Also, holding two copies of this would just be miserable.
Empty Soul - This is the least useful card of the cycle by a great distance. It's nether guaranteed life gain nor usable as graveyard hate against your opponent unless you satisfy Enlightened. Again, being a sorcery means you can't even cast it in response to your opponent trying to put something into your graveyard.
Seeker of Emptiness - Seeker of Emptiness is a surprisingly useful and well-balanced enabler. I suspect you may want to qualify the first ability with from anywhere. The self-phasing ability is probably the best ability on it, though you're not going to get its best use from the cards it can fetch. I like that it can avoid the nombo with Empty Body. It's just too bad you can't both EOT fetch a card and cast what you fetch.
Empty Transcendence - I like Empty Transcendence's twist with you choosing your opponent's worst cards to save rather than them choosing their best ones. I think you'll want to specify on the last line that each player sacrifices each nonland permanent they control not chosen this way. Lands may have been exempt from selection, but they also need to be explicitly exempted from the sacrifice. I suppose it's good that the Empty cycle doesn't fetch this directly from your library to cast like Sift Through Sands, but I gotta believe there's something better to do that will advance your game than reset the board. The flavour is there, making your opponent embrace nothingness like you have, but it's just not fun to play against, especially with the prospect of all future copies being free if you've exiled the Empty cycle once. As for casting Empty Transcendence for full mana value, for that cost I think I'd rather get the guaranteed reset of a Planar Cleansing, Hour of Revelation, or even Devastating Mastery.
@TheKeefMan having what is practically better Force of Will for at most 5 phyrexian blue is pretty strong, even if your opponent can see it there. I'd imagine most players would be willing to pay 10 life to secure the win (1 life is greater than 0 and all that), and this card only gets better the longer your opponent plays around it, especially with cards like Clockspinning to keep it around on one or two counters. I'm not sure if anything needs to be changed, but I'm fairly certain it'd become an instant staple with how splashable it is.
Incidentally, this card will fizzle and stay exiled when you remove the last counter because of how suspend works; is this intentional? Also, there is precedent for this style of effect in Greater Gargadon; the ability should probably be worded "{p/u}: Remove a time counter from Countdown Till Closure. Activate only if Countdown Till Closure is suspended."
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@Jadefire I don't really get what you mean by "setting yourself up to win." Shouldn't virtually every card in your deck do that? Perhaps I tend to lean too hard on noncombat synergy, but I see winning as something that happens on accident rather than something actively advanced. In that sense I was hoping to make Empty Transcendence something that's fine in normal decks and very strong when built around. (I'm not set on it being a sweeper, despite leaning even further into that with the revision below, but I don't want to make a creature for this slot and couldn't come up with anything else. Would something like an enchantment that benefits from empty zones be more interesting here?)
@cadstar369 The "fizzle" mechanic of the card is intentional. the card is mainly for intimidation, if you have this card it basically tells your opponents, "Don't play a good card for four turns." Also I didn't really know the correct wording of the last ability, so thank you.
@cadstar369 These cards are kinda odd. 3 cards needing to be exiled, to activate this one enchantment, to just exile some card players control? Seems a little tedious and underpowered. Either that or im too dumb to understand how easy and simple and overpowered this is, but to me it's a great idea with confusing execution.
@cadstar369 I was going to suggest a more proactive card with an Empty Transcendence-like effect along the lines of World Queller, but I guess that's off the table if building up to a creature isn't something you want to do (I might end up making that card myself).
What I mean by "setting yourself up to win" is creating a win condition. Although every card in your deck may theoretically contribute to your win in some way, a deck of 60 basic lands isn't going to get you there. Think of all the ways you can win the game (or ways you can make your opponent lose the game) like reduce their life total below 1, make them draw from an empty library, give them more than 9 poison counters, or resolve a "you win the game" or "target player loses the game" effect. Empty Transcendence does none of those things for the effort of building your deck around it. You devote all those deck slots to it and its enablers, yet resolving all four of them doesn't progress you towards any of those goals, At least The Unspeakable is a big evasive trampling body that recurs cards that can advance your board position.
Treating winning as something accidental rather than a goal to be worked towards is an interesting perspective, I don't think I've heard that one before. Did you notice that with Empty Body and Empty Soul, you start the game getting the maximum effect from Enlightened (and things only stand to get worse), while with Empty Mind, you need to "build" towards getting its maximum effect? I don't know how desirable it is when a card can only go downhill. At least Empty Body starts out really high and is much harder to take down than Empty Soul.
Empty Body - I like the boost in power and versatility this card got. It's not only a very effective control card but a great catch-up card if you get off to a slow start. In its current form, it's much closer to an uncommon than a common.
Empty Mind - Nice pivot on this card with a Soul Partition Counterspell and only taxing your opponent on the recast. The versatility of being able to save your own spells from fizzling with this is a nice touch.
Empty Soul - Making this an instant and allowing it to take cards from any graveyard makes it much more playable. I suppose you can get away with not requiring the cards to be targeted on casting, since it's unique and makes it harder to interact with. It's still the weakest of the three though.
Seeker of Emptiness - The updated wording looks good.
Empty Transcendence - Believe it or not, the shuffling of your own Empty cards into your library actually gives this seqence of plays a direction. Now I can see a much clearer path to victory: you reset the board and stall out the game while reshuffling previously cast cards back into your library for a "mill" win. I still wouldn't want to play against these cards with that strategy, but it's a legit strategy. I suppose another way you could go with the wincon is to setup an enduring effect, like how Epic does something every every turn going forward, or give yourself an emblem that lets you get further value from your exile zone or your opponent's, since everything seems to be geared towards getting stuff there.
Also could I get an opinion of this card? It's a land creature which makes you play the long game, with a modified version of cumulative upkeep, where the cost doesn't increase and utilizes the age counters in another way.
@Jadefire World Queller is an interesting card to bring up here; I'd love to see what you come up with. I wanted to avoid building up to a creature with these particular cards partially because it felt counterintuitive to have the cards that want you to have no creatures, no hand, and no graveyard end with a creature. (I'm honestly not sure how to give this deck more creatures without overusing phasing, but perhaps normal phasing could use some more exploration.)
The way that zones tend to fill/empty over the course of a game is one of my main concerns for Enlightened. From Hellbent it's clearly fine to give cards that want an empty hand strong effects, and I want to at least be careful with empty graveyard effects since white has cards like Rest in Peace, but I'm not sure how to treat effects that want an empty board.
At risk of creating a deck that looks like something out of Yu-Gi-Oh, I wonder if it would be interesting to give an Enlightened deck more cards that shuffle exiled cards into libraries. I'm also considering experimenting with effects that trigger when something doesn't resolve but wasn't countered.
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@TheKeefMan shuffling in those three cards lets you cast Empty Transcendence for free; you can still play it for 7 normally.
Regarding Emn, it'd probably be less confusing if the first ability wasn't keyworded, or at least not so closely to culumative upkeep (it's easy to misread since constant also starts with 'c'). Given the reminder text for cumulative upkeep, I'd suggest this wording:
At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on Emn, the Ancient Lifeoak, then sacrifice it unless you pay {g}.
That said, I don't like that Emn pays for itself. There's no real downside to playing it in any deck that wants the game to go long, even if it isn't green. Heck, you could even sideboard it in against such decks and try to land it first, so I'd suggest increasing the upkeep cost.
@LvB I fail to see the distinction being made in your second question. Regardless, the answer to both your second and third questions is no. The color(s) of spells you cast are irrelevant. Additionally, note the specific wording “cast a spell or activate an ability.” Chemister’s Gambit only triggers when you spend at least {u}{r} on a single spell or ability, and triggers for each multiple of {u}{r} you spent on that spell or ability.
For example, Chemister’s Gambit will trigger thrice when you cast Niv-Mizzet, Parun because you spent {u}{u}{u}{r}{r}{r} (or 3x{u}{r}) to cast it. Similarly, it will trigger twice if you spend {u}{u}{r}{r} (2x{u}{r}) on Bag of Holding’s second ability. It will not, however, trigger if you cast Opt followed by Lightning Bolt, because you didn’t spend {u}{r} to cast either of those spells, even though you’ve spent a total of {u}{r}.
@cadstar369 I figured building up to a creature was a bit of a stretch and also counterintuitive to what the Empty series does, which is why I found it interesting that you previously asked about ending on an enchantment. The only idea I have for utilizing creatures without using phasing is to allow players to cast creatures from exile as though they had flash, those creatures enter the battlefield tapped and attacking if it's during your declare attackers step (otherwise they enter untapped for blocking purposes), and then they exile themselves at the end of combat. It's a bit complicated.
Many colours have access to some form of graveyard emptying effects, whether they're for the express purpose of hating on graveyards or use cards in graveyards as a consumable resource. There are even artifacts that get you there like Relic of Progenitus. For me, the concern isn't the ease with which you can achieve and maintain Enlightened, it's moreso the discrepancy in whether you start off strong or weak, depending on the zone you're looking at. You're right that Enlightened hand is functionally identical to Hellbent, which has proven to be a reasonable mechanic. Enlightened graveyard and Enlightened battlefield are less proven. Imagine what reverse Threshold would be like, you definitely wouldn't be able to give as large a bonus from the get go because that would make things unbalanced. There's also very little ability to interact with Enlightened battlefield (unless your opponent is playing Forbidden Orchard, Alliance of Arms, or Eiganjo Uprising) and powered up is the state you start in, unlike with Enlightened hand.
I'm interested in seeing your take on reshuffling exiled cards into your library and caring about effects that don't resolve. I can't imagine a scenario for this aside from a targeted spell fizzling.
Chemister's Gambit is an interesting and original card that makes me think of Bladecoil Serpent. I appreciate that you included checking for mana spent on activated abilities as well. This could make for a very powerful Madness turn or turn your Clues into pseudo-Curiosities. Given the amount of mana needed to really abuse this effect (i.e., 3, 5, 7, etc.), having to go down a card to even get the ball rolling (compared to enablers like Quicken or Scout's Warning), the exactness of the colour ratio needed to trigger, the fact that it's a loot rather than a straight draw, and the fact that the damage is tied specifically to the loot discard, I wonder if the card could be taken down to an uncommon. The uniqueness of what it does and its complexity (I'm lowkey averse to that term now) alone would be enough to justify it staying at Rare though.
@ShadowReign Welcome back! Elenise looks like a good way to generate throttled card advantage from your search effects. It seems the obvious play would be to pair it with fetchlands to turn your land drops into cantrips in waiting. It's good that you limited the investigating to the first search each turn, even if that's a very easy restriction to work around. I wonder why you chose to wait until the beginning of the end step to grant the free cast as opposed to wording it more like: "Whenever you sacrifice your third Clue each turn..." Were you trying to ensure that players had the option to cast the card they got off of the third Clue or to prevent someone from casting a sorcery at instant speed? Also, consider that sacrificing a Clue doesn't just happen from activating its ability. If someone has a repeatable effect that allows them to eat artifacts for free, they can just sacrifice three Clues to circumvent the mana cost for any instant or sorcery. If this wasn't your intention, the way to word this ability would be to check for activating an ability of three Clues, so that you put the floor for that free spell at {6}.
Dash might be interesting way to do creatures for Enlightened decks, since you'd have to balance when to have an empty board or an empty hand. On the opponent's end, something like Akroan Horse or the Hunted cycle could help mess with your empty board.
@cadstar369 Dash would be an interesting approach to playing with Enlightened. There are definitely more cards than I named that can give an opponent a creature like Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, Xantcha, Sleeper Agent, Beast Within/Generous Gift, Cavalier of Dawn, Reduce to Memory, Resculpt, Stroke of Midnight, and Swan Song. But aside from fairly narrow circumstances like Hunted Dragon in Dragonstorm or Swan Song in a combo deck's sideboard, these generally aren't played, so they're of minimal consequence against Empty Body unless someone uses them as a silver bullet.
I had a much narrower interpretation of a spell not resolving. I was thinking more along the lines of a spell trying and failing to resolve as opposed to it leaving the stack for a reason aside from resolving or getting countered. In that case, you've got a lot more options available to you.
@TheKeefMan I agree, white is not very prominent in Elenise, however searching your library, and creating Clues is something white does fairly well. An Azorius instant and sorcery themed card isn't something new, although the previous ones we've seen also are the creature token/go wide archetype, I still feel Elenise isn't too far off the beaten path. The last ability is a payoff for the first ability, allowing you to cast an instant or sorcery for free that you've either searched your library for (that which the first ability wants), or drew (that which the first ability provides). I appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad you like it.
@Jadefire Thanks, I'm excited to return. Fetchlands will indeed work excellently with Elenise, and is probably my favorite combo with her. The end step restriction is there simply because the card is inspired by Briarbridge Patrol, and that's when it's ability triggers. As well as the reasoning for why it triggers from three Clues being sacrificed for any reason, which works out; making something like Kuldotha Forgemaster an MVP. I appreciate the feedback.
@TheKeefMan Considering what blue decks can pull off in Commander, I would make Aradoris at least one mana more expensive. The mechanic itself is reasonable and makes sense. I think it would be better if you rephrased it to "...scry 1. You may put that card into your graveyard..." Etc. Also he's a skeleton and that's cool. Next: https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/quirrel-amnesiac-hero
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@TheKeefMan I'm not sure if "exchange" lets you take something and give nothing. If that's the case, there's no worry about not excluding lands in the ability's wording and no need to specifiy that the exchanged permanent's mana value can't be 0. It would probably be good to make both effects sorcery speed and require tapping Aslamnna so you can't cash in a permanent your opponent is targeting with removal and give them something that'll immediately get destroyed, activate the sale in response to a death trigger like from Evoke, activate the sale in response to a bounce trigger like a self-targeting Man-o'-War, activate the purchase to Fog an opponent's creature in the middle of combat, or sell your own chump-blocker mid-combat to save it and then buy it back with those same Treasures to achive limitless blocking. Even with the suggested changes, you can still do fun stuff like sell Dashed creatures that will bounce themselves or Unearthed creatures/Encore tokens that will go away on their own.
Also, I wonder if the first ability should specify that the Treasures are controlled by you. Otherwise, you can force a sale in multplayer between two other players.
Here's my suggestion:
When Aslamnna, Market's Head enters the battlefield, creature three Treasures.
UR, T: Exchange control of X Treasures you control and target permanent, where X is that permanent's mana value. Activate only as a sorcery.
T: Target opponent gains control of target permanent you control. Create X Treasures, where X is that permanent's mana value. Activate only as a sorcery.
I'd appreciate feedback on these cards:
This is mainly a first attempt at exploring effects that care about empty zones, mixed with some Renowned Weaponsmith and The Unspeakable.
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Here's my card:
I wanted to make Empty Transcendence reasonably playable when hard cast and awesome when it's free, rather than how The Unspeakable is bad when hard cast for 9 and alright when you get it for free at instant speed. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, but I figured Balance crossed with Tragic Arrogance would be a decent place to start, especially since you don't have to combo into it all at once.
At least there's more inevitability to seeking emptiness than stringing together Peer Through Depths, Reach Through Mists, and Sift Through Sands on the same turn. It's harder to disrupt something that's already in exile (hope you don't play against Processors), and this can all be done with no more than two mana and across multiple turns, so that's something worth recognizing. A single copy of Empty Body, Empty Mind, Empty Soul in exile can discount multiple copies of Empty Transcendence. Once you're setup, you'll probably stay setup to cast all remaining copies for free for the rest of the game, which can be pretty annoying. And those cards don't even need to get into exile through being cast, so Empty Transcendence can theoretically be cast from scratch for no mana given the right setup.
As a general comment, Empty Mind and Empty Soul seem fairly weak and not worth playing on their own if you're not specifically building towards the big payoff. Whereas Peer Through Depths, Reach Through Mists, and Sift Through Sands at the very least cantrip at instant speed (and in other cases give you selection to help you draw into the remaining cards), only one card in the Empty cycle cantrips and they're all two mana sorceries. Another thing about Peer/Reach/Sift is that they all have the potential to do more than what's written in their textboxes. Since they exist in an environment with Splice and they're all Arcane, they all have a much higher ceiling for impact than the Empty cycle.
Empty Body - This is probably the only card in the cycle worth playing for its own sake. But even then, that's only true under very narrow circumstances. In a near-creatureless deck, Empty Body can often be a better Journey to Nowhere. However, as soon as you control a creature, you can't even use Empty Body to save it from removal, since it's a sorcery. A sorcery-speed phase out effect only has very narrow uses, like getting rid of a blocker for a turn, protecting your own planeswalker from attacks for a turn, or saving your creature or planeswalker from a sweeper you play. There's also a typo in the card: "exile that creature or planeswalker instead."
Empty Mind - The cost for a Healing Salve + cantrip is about right, but being a sorcery greatly reduces this card's versatility. On the surface, satisfying Enlightened for this card sounds really good, but to do that means you'll probably be playing it in a deck that wants to cast out its hand as quickly as possible. It would be tough to justify a card that might cost you your entire turn's worth of mana just to gain a few life and cycle itself when the deck that plays it most likely wants to build a board fast and rush in hard. Also, holding two copies of this would just be miserable.
Empty Soul - This is the least useful card of the cycle by a great distance. It's nether guaranteed life gain nor usable as graveyard hate against your opponent unless you satisfy Enlightened. Again, being a sorcery means you can't even cast it in response to your opponent trying to put something into your graveyard.
Seeker of Emptiness - Seeker of Emptiness is a surprisingly useful and well-balanced enabler. I suspect you may want to qualify the first ability with from anywhere. The self-phasing ability is probably the best ability on it, though you're not going to get its best use from the cards it can fetch. I like that it can avoid the nombo with Empty Body. It's just too bad you can't both EOT fetch a card and cast what you fetch.
Empty Transcendence - I like Empty Transcendence's twist with you choosing your opponent's worst cards to save rather than them choosing their best ones. I think you'll want to specify on the last line that each player sacrifices each nonland permanent they control not chosen this way. Lands may have been exempt from selection, but they also need to be explicitly exempted from the sacrifice. I suppose it's good that the Empty cycle doesn't fetch this directly from your library to cast like Sift Through Sands, but I gotta believe there's something better to do that will advance your game than reset the board. The flavour is there, making your opponent embrace nothingness like you have, but it's just not fun to play against, especially with the prospect of all future copies being free if you've exiled the Empty cycle once. As for casting Empty Transcendence for full mana value, for that cost I think I'd rather get the guaranteed reset of a Planar Cleansing, Hour of Revelation, or even Devastating Mastery.
Incidentally, this card will fizzle and stay exiled when you remove the last counter because of how suspend works; is this intentional? Also, there is precedent for this style of effect in Greater Gargadon; the ability should probably be worded "{p/u}: Remove a time counter from Countdown Till Closure. Activate only if Countdown Till Closure is suspended."
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@Jadefire I don't really get what you mean by "setting yourself up to win." Shouldn't virtually every card in your deck do that? Perhaps I tend to lean too hard on noncombat synergy, but I see winning as something that happens on accident rather than something actively advanced. In that sense I was hoping to make Empty Transcendence something that's fine in normal decks and very strong when built around. (I'm not set on it being a sweeper, despite leaning even further into that with the revision below, but I don't want to make a creature for this slot and couldn't come up with anything else. Would something like an enchantment that benefits from empty zones be more interesting here?)
Alright, let's try these again.
What I mean by "setting yourself up to win" is creating a win condition. Although every card in your deck may theoretically contribute to your win in some way, a deck of 60 basic lands isn't going to get you there. Think of all the ways you can win the game (or ways you can make your opponent lose the game) like reduce their life total below 1, make them draw from an empty library, give them more than 9 poison counters, or resolve a "you win the game" or "target player loses the game" effect. Empty Transcendence does none of those things for the effort of building your deck around it. You devote all those deck slots to it and its enablers, yet resolving all four of them doesn't progress you towards any of those goals, At least The Unspeakable is a big evasive trampling body that recurs cards that can advance your board position.
Treating winning as something accidental rather than a goal to be worked towards is an interesting perspective, I don't think I've heard that one before. Did you notice that with Empty Body and Empty Soul, you start the game getting the maximum effect from Enlightened (and things only stand to get worse), while with Empty Mind, you need to "build" towards getting its maximum effect? I don't know how desirable it is when a card can only go downhill. At least Empty Body starts out really high and is much harder to take down than Empty Soul.
Empty Body - I like the boost in power and versatility this card got. It's not only a very effective control card but a great catch-up card if you get off to a slow start. In its current form, it's much closer to an uncommon than a common.
Empty Mind - Nice pivot on this card with a Soul Partition Counterspell and only taxing your opponent on the recast. The versatility of being able to save your own spells from fizzling with this is a nice touch.
Empty Soul - Making this an instant and allowing it to take cards from any graveyard makes it much more playable. I suppose you can get away with not requiring the cards to be targeted on casting, since it's unique and makes it harder to interact with. It's still the weakest of the three though.
Seeker of Emptiness - The updated wording looks good.
Empty Transcendence - Believe it or not, the shuffling of your own Empty cards into your library actually gives this seqence of plays a direction. Now I can see a much clearer path to victory: you reset the board and stall out the game while reshuffling previously cast cards back into your library for a "mill" win. I still wouldn't want to play against these cards with that strategy, but it's a legit strategy. I suppose another way you could go with the wincon is to setup an enduring effect, like how Epic does something every every turn going forward, or give yourself an emblem that lets you get further value from your exile zone or your opponent's, since everything seems to be geared towards getting stuff there.
The way that zones tend to fill/empty over the course of a game is one of my main concerns for Enlightened. From Hellbent it's clearly fine to give cards that want an empty hand strong effects, and I want to at least be careful with empty graveyard effects since white has cards like Rest in Peace, but I'm not sure how to treat effects that want an empty board.
At risk of creating a deck that looks like something out of Yu-Gi-Oh, I wonder if it would be interesting to give an Enlightened deck more cards that shuffle exiled cards into libraries. I'm also considering experimenting with effects that trigger when something doesn't resolve but wasn't countered.
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@TheKeefMan shuffling in those three cards lets you cast Empty Transcendence for free; you can still play it for 7 normally.
Regarding Emn, it'd probably be less confusing if the first ability wasn't keyworded, or at least not so closely to culumative upkeep (it's easy to misread since constant also starts with 'c'). Given the reminder text for cumulative upkeep, I'd suggest this wording:
That said, I don't like that Emn pays for itself. There's no real downside to playing it in any deck that wants the game to go long, even if it isn't green. Heck, you could even sideboard it in against such decks and try to land it first, so I'd suggest increasing the upkeep cost.
I'd appreciate feedback on this card:
For example, Chemister’s Gambit will trigger thrice when you cast Niv-Mizzet, Parun because you spent {u}{u}{u}{r}{r}{r} (or 3x{u}{r}) to cast it. Similarly, it will trigger twice if you spend {u}{u}{r}{r} (2x{u}{r}) on Bag of Holding’s second ability. It will not, however, trigger if you cast Opt followed by Lightning Bolt, because you didn’t spend {u}{r} to cast either of those spells, even though you’ve spent a total of {u}{r}.
Many colours have access to some form of graveyard emptying effects, whether they're for the express purpose of hating on graveyards or use cards in graveyards as a consumable resource. There are even artifacts that get you there like Relic of Progenitus. For me, the concern isn't the ease with which you can achieve and maintain Enlightened, it's moreso the discrepancy in whether you start off strong or weak, depending on the zone you're looking at. You're right that Enlightened hand is functionally identical to Hellbent, which has proven to be a reasonable mechanic. Enlightened graveyard and Enlightened battlefield are less proven. Imagine what reverse Threshold would be like, you definitely wouldn't be able to give as large a bonus from the get go because that would make things unbalanced. There's also very little ability to interact with Enlightened battlefield (unless your opponent is playing Forbidden Orchard, Alliance of Arms, or Eiganjo Uprising) and powered up is the state you start in, unlike with Enlightened hand.
I'm interested in seeing your take on reshuffling exiled cards into your library and caring about effects that don't resolve. I can't imagine a scenario for this aside from a targeted spell fizzling.
Chemister's Gambit is an interesting and original card that makes me think of Bladecoil Serpent. I appreciate that you included checking for mana spent on activated abilities as well. This could make for a very powerful Madness turn or turn your Clues into pseudo-Curiosities. Given the amount of mana needed to really abuse this effect (i.e., 3, 5, 7, etc.), having to go down a card to even get the ball rolling (compared to enablers like Quicken or Scout's Warning), the exactness of the colour ratio needed to trigger, the fact that it's a loot rather than a straight draw, and the fact that the damage is tied specifically to the loot discard, I wonder if the card could be taken down to an uncommon. The uniqueness of what it does and its complexity (I'm lowkey averse to that term now) alone would be enough to justify it staying at Rare though.
@ShadowReign Welcome back! Elenise looks like a good way to generate throttled card advantage from your search effects. It seems the obvious play would be to pair it with fetchlands to turn your land drops into cantrips in waiting. It's good that you limited the investigating to the first search each turn, even if that's a very easy restriction to work around. I wonder why you chose to wait until the beginning of the end step to grant the free cast as opposed to wording it more like: "Whenever you sacrifice your third Clue each turn..." Were you trying to ensure that players had the option to cast the card they got off of the third Clue or to prevent someone from casting a sorcery at instant speed? Also, consider that sacrificing a Clue doesn't just happen from activating its ability. If someone has a repeatable effect that allows them to eat artifacts for free, they can just sacrifice three Clues to circumvent the mana cost for any instant or sorcery. If this wasn't your intention, the way to word this ability would be to check for activating an ability of three Clues, so that you put the floor for that free spell at {6}.
Dash might be interesting way to do creatures for Enlightened decks, since you'd have to balance when to have an empty board or an empty hand. On the opponent's end, something like Akroan Horse or the Hunted cycle could help mess with your empty board.
For having things not resolve, we've got effects like Reprieve, Endless Detour, and Possibility Storm to play with as well.
I had a much narrower interpretation of a spell not resolving. I was thinking more along the lines of a spell trying and failing to resolve as opposed to it leaving the stack for a reason aside from resolving or getting countered. In that case, you've got a lot more options available to you.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/aradoris-the-storm-caller
@Jadefire Thanks, I'm excited to return. Fetchlands will indeed work excellently with Elenise, and is probably my favorite combo with her. The end step restriction is there simply because the card is inspired by Briarbridge Patrol, and that's when it's ability triggers. As well as the reasoning for why it triggers from three Clues being sacrificed for any reason, which works out; making something like Kuldotha Forgemaster an MVP. I appreciate the feedback.
Next:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/quirrel-amnesiac-hero