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Help! Making a custom card as a Christmas gift!
Hi! My 26-yr-old son loves Commander and plays most Saturdays locally in London (UK). I'm visiting in the US for Thanksgiving and made him a custom card--just for fun--for Christmas. I'm in the Raleigh NC area. I found this site and gave it a try. Please check it out and let me know if I got it reasonably right or blew it completely (suggestions please!!!). The art is a RL filtered picture of his 20-year old cat that he adores. The point was to combine the two. If the card is OK, please give me printing hints. Thank you all in advance!
Comments
1a) When Lou the Obstacular enters the battlefield, sacrifice a Food. If you don't, return it to its owner's hand...or feet. (Ideal wording)
1b) When Lou enters the battlefield, sacrifice a Food or return it to its owner's hand...or feet. (Modified wording)
2) When Lou enters the battlefield, tap target creature an opponent controls. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
As far as cost and power level go, it may be better costed at {g}{w} instead of {3}{g}{c} since it's a legendary rare and colourless mana doesn't quite fit the abilities of the card or typically combine with other colours.
I also wanted to suggest the following, though these are just thoughts I had and have no real rules to back them up.
-Handsome could be a supertype (like legendary) rather than a subtype, since it's a description.
-The colorless mana symbol could come before the green instead of after (I don't know if there's ever been a card that requires specifically colorless and green mana, so I don't know if that's the right ordering, but it feels more right to me). Or, perhaps just get rid of the colorless mana cost, since, as I mentioned, I don't think mixing colorless and colored mana is a thing.
-You could consider making it say "As an additional cost to cast Lou, the Obstacular, sacrifice a food token." rather than allowing it to be cast, ETB, and then bounce. If not, you may want to have it create a food token when it returns to your hand, so there's a good chance you can have it stick around the second time you cast it.
-You may want to change doesn't untap during it's controller's next untap step to "does not untap for as long as Lou, the Obstacular is on the battlefield." That would be a nice power boost, but only works if you make sacing a food an additional cost, it's actually a draw back if you rely on the play it from your hand just to have it bounce back strategy.
-This seems like a really expensive card to cast. If you don't have a food, you're paying 5 to tap down a creature. Not worth it. Otherwise, you're paying 5 and a food to get a 2/2 cat with vigilance and also tap down a creature? Still seems not worth it. I'd reduce the cost to 3, maybe 4, total mana, or improve its stats so it's really worth the 5 mana.
One last bit of feedback, if you want to make it really special for your son, you may want it to have an ability that can be used every turn, rather than just these one time effects. That makes it a much more interesting commander to play and use. I know that means more designing and tweaking, but if I got a custom card like this, I'd try to build around it, and it might be frustrating if I couldn't really figure out how to make my commander mean much more than a one turn answer to a very limited type of threat.
This is an awesome gift idea, though, and I really hope your son loves it as much as my brother loved the custom card I made for him. It was a really cool experience sharing my card with him, and I'm sure you'll get a similar memory. Merry Christmas!