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Anyone wants feedback on their GDS3 challenges?
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Design 1
Teferi the Timeless (mythic rare)
3WU
Legendary Planeswalker - Teferi
4
+2: At the beginning of the next upkeep, scry 1 and draw a card.
-3: Put each creature with power less than or equal to the number of cards in your hand on the bottom of its owner’s library in any order.
-9: Take two extra turns after this one.
Design 2
Moritz Lang, Grand Magus (mythic rare)
5UR
Legendary Creature - Human Wizard
1/4
Flash
This spell costs {1} less to cast for each spell cast before it this turn.
Spells you cast cost {1} less to cast for each spell cast before it this turn.
Design 3
Charging Oxen (uncommon)
4GW
Creature - Ox
4/4
Trample
Whenever Charging Oxen attacks, defending player may tap any number of creatures they control. Charging Oxen gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of untapped creatures that player controls.
Design 4
Karmanya the Reclaimer (mythic rare)
2BG
Legendary Planeswalker - Karmanya
3
+1: Target player discards a card. If that card was a land card, repeat this process.
-2: Put target noncreature permanent card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control.
-7: You get an emblem with “Whenever you would draw a card, you may put the top card of your library into your graveyard and return a nonland card from your graveyard to your hand instead.”
Design 5
Feast for the Mind (rare)
3UG
Instant
Choose one or more. For each mode chosen beyond the first, remove two +1/+1counters from a creature you control --
- Put a number of +1/+1 counters on target creature equal to the number of cards in your hand.
- Draw cards equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on target creature.
- Return target creature to its owner’s hand. Draw cards equal to its power
Design 6
Howl of Unity (common)
1RG
Sorcery
Create a 2/2 green Wolf creature token. Howl of Unity deals X damage to target creature you don't control, where X is the number of creatures you control.
Design 7
Stitching Time (rare)
3UB
Enchantment
Whenever a nontoken creature you control dies, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token.
Sacrifice five Zombies, exile five Zombie creature cards from your graveyard: Take an extra turn after this one. Activate this ability only any time you may cast a sorcery.
Design 8
Fervent Zeal (common)
2{R/W}
Enchantment - Aura
When Fervent Zeal enters the battlefield, if enchanted creature is a Cleric, draw a card.
Enchanted creature gets +1/+0 and has double strike.
Design 9
Bloodlord's Tax (uncommon)
1WB
Sorcery
Target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You gain life equal to its converted mana cost.
Design 10
Undue Attention (common)
BR
Instant
Destroy target creature that entered the battlefield this turn.
Edit: forgot to submit them in ranking order. I have, now.
Nope, you can still post your submission to any challenge of the GDS3 and I'll try to give you the most constructive feedback I can
It just takes a little time to write the full review of 10 cards, I'm only halfway through KalamMekhar's submission but I'm getting there x)
I'd like to try the tribal challenge and the mechanic challenge myself once I have more time ^^
*Caught
My bad xD I have an excuse though: I'm not a native speaker, I'm french so I tend to improvise words sometimes ;p
Design 1 — Teferi the Timeless
You start with a very flavourful planeswalker. All those abilities tie strongly into both the time theme and the control archetype which makes the overall card feel very coherent. I believe the whole card could have been done in monoblue though, maybe the first ability could have gained you life, or the middle ability could have hated on creatures with power 4 or greater to feel a little white. It's also very close to Teferi, Hero of Dominaria as it has the same "Drawing ability with a delay theme> Removal to library > Ultimate" structure. Overall, it's still a very solid design and, barring small details, I'd believe you if you told me that was a real card.
Quick comment on each ability:
+2: The delay theme is flavourful and I like that it incentivizes playing instants, just like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. I think the fact that this ability does nothing when you activate would feel bad though.
-3: That's too strong, you can guess that by comparing with the printed Teferi's -3, but planeswalkers in generals don't do mass removal outside of ultimate abilities. Remember it's repeatable, that would be too opressive ^^ The answer is simple: remove only one or two permanents.
-9: Time Stretch is a fitting ability for Teferi that I bet we'll see someday as a real planeswalker Ultimate ^^
Design 2 — Moritz Lang, Grand Magus
This fits wonderfully in the Blue/Red spellslinger deck like the Commander deck with Mizzix of the Izmagnus. The math it involves once it hits the battlefield might cause some head-scratching but nothing Mythic Rare would refuse to do. Overall, it's splashy, offers very tactival options, as well as crazy combos to figure out. I believe such a card would appeal to many different types of players and is a great design
Design 3 — Charging Oxen
This Oxen offers a really interesting play pattern. As I have to calculate its stats for each configuration of blocking and tapping, I would have considered keeping this effect for Rare or higher. I'm not convinced it's White, it's supposed to come from the tapping but, since the opponent has the choice between tapping or giving this +1/+1, it actually feels more like a black bargain card to me
Design 4 — Karmanya the Reclaimer
It has a clear structure that's pleasing to read with a Fill the graveyard > Recuperate from your graveyard > Do both. Overall, it feels like a solid design but I wish it had a defensive ability for 4-mana, and that your second planeswalker slot would have been a bit riskier design wise.
Quick comment on each ability:
+1: I like that it forces the opponent to discard a nonland card but punishing the opponent another way for discarding a land could have been less snowball-y.
-2: Why the noncreature restriction? Black/green can reanimate creatures, but most importantly I'm not sure it can reanimate any nonland permanent like that, it's more a White thing. Also, it would have had a defensive ability without that restriction.
-7: I really like the Dredge ultimate, it's clean and elegant
Design 5 — Feast for the Mind (rare)
Escalate is neither evergreen nor deciduous, but you realized that yourself ;p
I like that you pushed the synergy to the maximum. You're really incentivized to escalate as much as possible. But you created a number of nonbos inside the cards that are not very elegant. Mostly, asking players to remove 1/+1 counters from their creatures to escalate before caring about the number of those counters or putting back more counters on those same creatures is awkward. Moreover, green can draw based on its creatures, so this could have been monogreen. Still, even with blue in the mix you shouldn't have put two modes that could draw you that many cards, it's a bit crazy if you do both I think x)
Design 6 — Howl of Unity
Outnumber with a built-in token sounds like a clean concept for a common at first glance, but If you dig a little deeper there are a couple issues >.< First, unless you have a very specific set theme around tokens like Selesnya in Ravnica which the rules of the challenge specify you haven't, this card should be a creature with an enters-the-battlefield effect to avoid multiplying pennies and dices on the battlefield in Limited. Second, it's actually too strong for common. You don't want your commons to be two-for-ones usually, and when they are they're usually very expensive and/or narrow.
Design 7 — Stitching Time
I really like the idea of Open the Graves with a bonus to use the Zombies. I'm less convinced by the bonus you chose. Taking extra turns doesn't really feel like Zombies in my opinion, though I can see you chose a good title that sells it better. Besides, the "Exile zombies from your graveyard" restriction prevents infinite turns combos but not chaining several turns, while making this card awkward outside Zombie Tribal. I would remove the graveyard exiling cost and either have the enchantment sacrifice itself as part of the cost or change the bonus for something less problematic to repeat.
Design 8 — Fervent Zeal
The first ability helps fighting the inherent card disadvantage of enchantment auras, I couldn't believe they never printed such a card before when I checked. Also, it immediatly incentivizes you to play the tribal deck and fits perfectly at common.
Design 9 — Bloodlord's Tax
Another elegant design that I was surprised didn't already exist. I like that you put it at uncommon since common doesn't like the concept of "converted mana cost" very much. It could have been a monoblack card though.
Design 10 — Undue Attention
That's very close to a card from the GDS 3 challenge by Ryan Siegel-Stelcher (Challenge 2 Design 2): Flaming Hoop. (Instant for R — Flaming Hoop deals 3 damage to target creature that entered the battlefield this turn.)
As Erik Lauer mentioned:
"Blue poses a major challenge in Limited design. The preponderance of its strength should come from spells, but not from spells that eliminate a creature already on the battlefield. So, to make blue feel different from the other colors, it's important to carve out some design space that we save for blue commons. Part of that design space is counterspells for creatures a la Essence Scatter. My problem with this card is that it's red stepping on the toes of something that we need to save for blue. This is a complex issue, so it's not something I would expect someone outside of the Pit to be aware of."
Overall Feedback —
I felt you were really good at making realistic cards, I had to check multiple times because I couldn't believe this had not been done before! You had a good balance of simple and more complex cards which was pleasant to read through, and had some really good concepts I'm sure we'll see in the real game one day
The thing I missed the most was a really splashy design, you mostly re-interpretated things that had been done before which creates this very solid level of design but, doing that, you didn't show me a new concept that would excite me by challenging what the game usually does.
My favourite card from your challenge was Moritz Lang, Grand Magus because, to me, it's the card that combined the best your ability to make solid new designs out of old abilities while being one of the splashiest designs of the 10.
1. Teferi the Timeless: I, too, had concerns over the -3. Terminus is indeed very powerful as a repeatable effect, even if it does come with a numerical restriction. I had sort of designed the +2 to synergize with miracles, so I wanted the -3 to be a callback to miracles which unfortunately ended up being a bit OP. Regarding the current Teferi's -3, he also has a much more powerful +1, so I wanted this Teferi's -3 to be a bit stronger than that. And yes, I could add a 'gain 2 life' to the +2 to both make it whiter as well as make it do a bit more than it does. I'm not entirely sure what to do about the -3, but I could perhaps restrict it to one creature (that might be weakish, though), or I could restrict it to 'creatures with total power 4 or less' (that would give it immense utility against aggro without being backbreaking against more midrangy decks that struggle against control). The -9 is something I'm startled hasn't appeared on a Teferi before (although the sample size is only 2), and was one that I had thought of a while back.
2. Moritz Lang, Grand Magus: I don't have too much to say about this, other than that I should have had it at number 1. This was a design whose skeleton I made quite some time ago, with the only changes being to the mana cost and the addition of flash. It does fit well into spellslinger decks without being an additional tool for the likes of Storm (I wouldn't want to add many cards to that archetype, especially not a splashy mythic that many kitchen table players would love and EDH players would want as a commander; it would drive the price too high for budget players such as myself).
3. Charging Oxen: this was a rare before I bumped it down to uncommon due to a lack of uncommons in my 10! It is sort of a twisted version of Appeal to Authority on a stick, which was what inspired it and what decided the colours. Presenting choices is, admittedly, not very GW.
4. Karmanya the Reclaimer: I thought there weren't many good BG planeswalkers and that I wanted to make one, and I also wanted to make a dredge card that could be printed in Standard, so both desires of mine came together here! The +1 was another idea I had when I was getting frustrated at how opponents somehow always had a land to toss to LotV's +1, although I do agree it has the potential to decimate entire hands on occasion and I could have made it a bit less snowball-y. If I could reword the -2, I would reword it as 'nonartifact, nonenchantment permanent', although at that point I might as well say 'creature, planeswalker, or land', all of which are within the realms of BG. I did want a planeswalker who could reanimate lands. It won't come up often, but every now and then you'll steal a crucial Ghost Quarter or Field of Ruin, resurrect one of your manlands, revolt a Fatal Push by reanimating a fetch, and at the very least you can ramp yourself a turn if you have something important to cast. I just wanted to step a bit away from the typical 'destroy creature' black walkers and 'impulse for a creature' green walkers to make something a bit different, something more 'earthy' and 'ecological'.
5. Feast for the Mind: this ended up being a much more awkward and confused design than I wanted it to be, mostly because of me trying to push escalate (due to the Innistrad-y theme of many of my other cards) only to realise what a massive error that was. I would simply remove the last option and just have the first two, with the counter removal as a sort of pseudo entwine cost.
6. Howl of Unity: this started off as 'create token, then each creature you control deals damage equal to its power to target creature you don't control'. I felt that was a bit much for common, although now that you mention this, it might have been the better design (perhaps at 2RG as a kind of pseudo Chupacabra).
7. Stitching Time: this was one where I tried to be overly cute, with the title preceding the actual card design (you're either stitching time in the Teferi sense, or it's time to stitch in the Geralf sense). Taking extra turns would, however, synergize with upkeep token generating effects (like Lili the Last Hope's ult). I tried to make the cost steep, but not the M19 Bone Dragon steep (Bone Dragon is definitely a missed opportunity from Wizards). I might've added a mana cost to that, to balance any chaining of turns by restricting the amount of mana you have to play with on those turns.
8. Fervent Zeal: I should have had this a bit higher up. The cantripping is what makes it good while the tribal restriction prevents it from being a Thraben Inspector style white card draw. Double strike is weird at common though. I might just change it to cost just {r/w}
and give first strike.
9. Bloodlord's Tax: the CMC restriction was to prevent monstrous, game changing life gains from hitting an Emrakul or Ghalta or the like. Mono black can gain life, yes, but not as efficiently as this card is doing, so I still think it has some whiteness to it, which also adds that Ixalan vampire flavour. I could have put this higher.
10. Undue Attention: I knew there was something off about this! I can definetely see the point that Erik is trying to make here. This was clearly my weakest design, which was why I had it down at 10.