@Crimsonspill No problem, feedback's something I like doing. It tends to help me mull over new ideas vaguely based on whatever I'm cards I'm considering and concepts I'm feeding back on. However, I suspect that this might end up being a lengthy back-and-forth discussion, and so I'm going to recommend that we move it into private messages to avoid clogging up the forum thread. I'll send you one answering all of the questions in your reply when I can.
Perhaps it's due to my lack of familiarity with cards from Innistrad/Shadows over Innistrad/Dark Ascension, etc., but I can't think of any interactions off-hand other than reanimation that is based on P/T like Alesha, but those cards care about their own graveyards generally rather than yours. So in that vein, I can imagine it as a potential counter/sideboard card if it affected all graveyards.
So I am incredibly interested to know what interactions/synergies you had in mind with this card because more than likely I am just blind to it =/
@fire12 I'm with Crimsonspill. I bet this is one of those awesome cards that no one knows is awesome until something comes along and makes it totally broken! It's an awesome {1} artifact for stuff like Ensoul Artifact or Cranial Plating or other affinity stuff. FAVORITED!
You guys know I'm hooked on Land mechanics and full cycles of lands. I'm also working on a Group-Hug commander set, and I got to thinking: why aren't there "group-hug lands" if we've already got shock and pain lands? Can you guys plz help me balance this?
@TerryTags This isn't an actual review of the card or anything, but since you might not know about it and might be interested for the purpose of a cycle like this, have you heard of Grove of the Burnwillows (and its role in getting Punishing Fire banned in modern)?
Also, a reminder that the "add {1}" should be an "add {C}".
As I said, this isn't an actual review, just a little contribution out of interest. If you're looking at the thread, please go through the normal favorite and / or comment procedure about Benevolent Outpost before putting up more cards.
@TerryTags Love it! Unlike Grove of the Burnwillows, your opponents gain 2 life, which makes it less easy to regulate your opponent's life total, but your card can be better in some (rare) circumstances! Which is why, I suspect, it is uncommon, and not rare. One problem. Why did you delete the card? Anyways, here's my card: (By the way, I need a Lot of help with the wording on this one.)
Also, Crystalline Coffin works with all creatures with Scavenge [Cost] ([Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: Put a number of +1/+1 counters equal to this card's power on target creature. Scavenge only as a sorcery.)
Not only that, but Carrion Grub to. I can't think of anything else it would work with at the moment.
@fire12 Cripes, that's a thing. A warning in advance: This is going to get kind of rant-y and pretty critical. Hope you don't mind. I'll start with an attempt at the wording, then move on to balance and stuff:
Whenever an opponent taps a land for mana, you may have that player lose any mana added this way. If you do, add the mana lost this way to your mana pool and put a mana counter on CARDNAME.
At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, if CARDNAME has twenty or more mana counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, each opponent may add twenty mana in any combination of colors. Until end of turn, mana doesn't empty from opponents' mana pools as steps and phases end.
First, a few notes about the wording:
- You've got different names in the card's text and as the actual name. Khalni Heart as the name, Heart of the Plane as the text.
- What I've done here is mostly ironing out a few faults, and lots of guesswork. There are no rules or examples for a lot of this, and as such I've just tried to make it sound vaguely professional.
- I'd recommend changing the counter name from "mana" to something else. I get the sense that it's making a word that's already confusing as all heck in the situation appear and confuse even more.
Now, actual card evaluation:
- This is a flawed design. While I hate to just look at things and go "Nope, it can't be saved", this is probably one of those cases. You could move it to silver border, I suppose. To clarify why, this is painfully complex, painfully against-mtg-design-philosophy, painfully not-fun to play against, and just generally something that shouldn't exist. I hope you can already understand the complexity point, but I'll break down the other points in a moment.
- Painfully against-mtg-design-philosophy. In MTG, the mana of lands tends to be vaguely sacrosanct. Land destruction tends to be expensive. Mana abilities can't be interacted with (which is a rule this kind of breaks, by the way, which is a flaw in its own right). The only card capable of sucking away an opponent's mana was printed literally at the very dawn of the game in Alpha, back when the design team had no idea what they were doing. What this does goes against all of that.
- Painfully not fun to play against. When this resolves in a 1v1 game, your opponent effectively loses anything from two to five or perhaps even more turns of ability to do anything that involves mana. And for the whole time as they do it, they're forced to feed you mana that you can then spend on doing other stuff and ruining their day. In fact, it's probably longer than two to five turns, because you can choose whether or not to give them the mana and so can simply cripple them out of doing anything to stop you rather than taking away everything.
There's a theoretical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the form of that twenty mana payout, but it's just a dream. The person playing this will never, ever give you the chance to get there. They might remove the mana counters from this, or Solemnity to stop them from turning up at all. They might keep flickering it, or find any one of a hundred other ways to break it.
I really could just keep on ranting at problems here, but it won't change the fact that it's a flawed card. As I said, I hate to pronounce this kind of sentence, but it's just a bad idea and I don't think it can be redeemed.
I've committed myself to making a sort of mini-set of Return to Ravnica cards, so here's some a pair focused on expanding on the detain mechanic of the Azorius. Give one or both a favorite and / or a useful comment, then post up to two cards of your own.
@MemoryHead I disagree completely. Against a control deck, your opponent could easily counter it. Against a ramp deck, there are plenty of cards that aren't lands that tap for mana. Against an aggro deck, the opponent will have plenty of time to get cards out on the board before you play this card. Going off on that note, here's another reason: This card is all 5 colors, therefore it will be probably at least 5 rounds before you have this on a battlefield. But, to get it on the battlefield, you need to have a deck based on the 5 color cards with a lot of ramp. Then, if you want to bounce or remove counters from this card, you'd have to have cards based on that. In the end, you would have to base a deck around this one card, and even then, what good does it do you? You wouldn't be able to have a win condition. All you are doing is barley stopping your opponent from playing cards, while the opponent already has stuff on the battlefield to attack and do other things with! In addition to that, you are eventually going to run out of cards, which allows the opponent to immediately play basically their entire hand, which gives them an almost automatic win! And I haven't even mentioned multiplayer! In multiplayer, this card can become a card that just hurts you. You cannot continually regulate your opponents mana, so within one or two rounds, your opponents get a free 20 mana! In addition to that, there are cards like Skyship Plunderer, which can double the amount of counters on Khalni Heart. To restate words you said, "I really could just keep on ranting at how mistaken you are, but it won't change the fact that you are wrong." Sorry if this seems a bit rude, but I am just responding in the same tone you commented on my card.
By the way, this is just a comment in response to a comment on one of my cards. The cards for you to comment/favorite are just above, Court Magewarden and Lavinia's Lawkeeper.
@fire12 Fair, and I very much deserved that. I descended into complaining over constructive, and I apologise for doing so. For the sake of atoning for that mistake, a few points that are hopefully less utterly dreadful and more useful:
- The card would probably benefit from being non-optional in its mana-snatching. This would stop you from being able to regulate, and stop you from just deciding not to add any more counters on 19 so that the opponent(s) could never get their 20 mana payout (unless, as you suggested with the Plunderer, they have a proliferate effect, which it must be noted that many matchups don't have). The lack of decision would also help it feel less as though it's using the stack, maybe? I don't know.
The wording for that replacement effect would pretty much just be a modded version of my word assumptions above. Something like:
Whenever an opponent taps a land for mana, that player loses any mana added this way. When they do, add the mana lost this way to your mana pool and put a COUNTERNAME counter on CARDNAME.
- The card is hard to cast due to the five color. However, I'd retain the opinion that it's still very good, and can be played on a relatively early turn relatively consistently if you've got the deck for it, or just run cards that let you cheat color requirements like Fires of Invention or Dryad of the Elysian Grove. I'd also like to point to the combo of Karn the Great Creator and Mycosynth Lattice as a somewhat similar land-lock that was so good it got the Lattice banned. I'm aware that the two aren't the same, but they bear a resemblance. One dies if you quickly kill the Karn, the other if you wait a long time. As such, I might recommend lowering the number of mana counters before the card "breaks open" slightly.
- Random thing, but I wonder if it might be neat for the thing to get counters equal to the mana stolen or something (a Gaea's Cradle tapping for five mana would add five counters rather than one, for instance)? I don't know, it'd feel more fitting. Might not fit in terms of text, though.
Again, sorry.
This is a response to a response, because apparently that's something we're doing now. The most recent cards should be above, Court Magewarden and Lavinia's Lawkeeper.
In the case of multiplayer, i.e. Commander, while it is more likely that people will attempt to interact with it, it is important to remember that having the ability to shut players out of their lands, even if only temporarily, is an incredibly powerful effect, especially since it can shut players off of the lands they need to counter the card in the first place.
More importantly, this card is very much a build around win-con rather than an incidental one. If someone ran this in their deck, no matter the format (it'd be far more popular in EDH), many of the same methodologies that MemoryHead mentioned would be integral to getting the deck functioning. An optimized Ramos or Golos deck could hypothetically get the card out into play as early as Turn 2, respectably consistently on Turn 3.
And this is not even mentioning the degenerate lines of play that stem from cards like Solemnity or even something as value-centric as Aminatou, the Fateshifter, Brago, King Eternal or Venser, the Sojourner can create some incredibly low interaction games, especially when in tandem with the deck's own suite of counterspells and removal due to being five colors. While I mainly play cEDH, I could easily see a couple of five color decks running this with the sole purpose of setting up a potential lockout for the table. WUBRG is not as difficult of a casting cost as one would normally think, especially in decks designed to generate all of said colors.
Lastly, you mention that "you cannot continually regulate your opponents' mana, so within one or two rounds, your opponents get a free 20 mana!" Stax as an archetype does exactly this and with scarily efficient cards like Winter Orb, Static Orb, Stasis, and many others. If you are making sure that your opponents can already only generate one, two, or maybe three mana a turn sans cards like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, this card can establish a soft lock on the table where even if the other three players cooperate against you, the experience it creates still can devolve into which of the three players is the one to cause the upkeep trigger, as 20 mana for each opponent is great; however, being able to use that mana at both sorcery and instant speed is far more valuable than solely instant speed.
That said, I do think that the conceptual nature of the card is interesting - Perhaps you could aim for more of a Blood Moon-esque effect where lands opponents control only add colorless mana and place a counter on the card instead. This wouldn't get around the potentially degenerate stax/lockout nature of the card, but it would prevent the card from functioning as nigh perpetual ramp for the player that manages to resolve it.
Another potential option would be to make the "payoff" be more consistent, i.e. something like Forbidden Orchard. This would also give the opponents more avenues/tools from which they could interact.
I would not go as far as to say that it is impossible to salvage, but it -would- need some heavy revisions if you are designing the card for the explicit purpose of balanced/printable play.
I will admit that detain is a mechanic that I wished I got to experience more when I first started playing Magic in Battle for Zendikar. I cannot wait to see what other cards you create for the miniset! Onward to the brief comments for each card.
In the case of Court Magewarden, a slight minus to its power would justify having the 5 toughness, especially since Lavinia of the Tenth or New Prahv Guildmage can create some pretty scary situations. If neither card would be "reprinted" within the miniset, I see it far less likely to be problematic, though probably still merited, especially due to its likelihood of sticking over multiple turns within a control deck and its strength as a blocker.
As for Lavinia's Lawkeeper, I see a potential adjustment in a similar vein; perhaps change the stats to be a 1/3 so that it possesses more value as a blocker and synergizes more with the control archetype it would see play in. That said, I could honestly imagine it as either version (2/2 or 1/3), so it would be an incredibly difficult design decision.
Having Kushin exile a card from the graveyard for the activated ability I think works nicely, especially since in flavor it could be one of the souls it captured/reaped moving on to the afterlife. Definitely going to modify that on the MSE version of Kushin.
It's a small thing, but tyrannical is missing the extra "n," though from what I can tell, the space in the name box is already tight. Could always change "Lizelle" to "Lizele" so that you could fit the extra "n?" Another option would be that Lizelle is from a place called Tyran, Tyrania, or another plane/place perhaps.
I think the main "consistent" issue I can see coming up with Lizelle is what I'd call the "memory funnel" issue, where Lizelle's trigger to "exile target creature card from your graveyard until that creature leaves the battlefield" can create situations where having to keep track of each card and then simultaneously figuring out which card is better to remove, especially with how many value creatures there are in Abzan's colors could prove difficult.
I also think that this would be compounded by a "matroshyka doll" effect if you recurred things like Banisher Priest, Faceless Butcher, and a few other cards that possess exiling abilities of their own.
That said, I find its design space incredibly interesting, especially in Abzan, where you can utilize some of those delicious token synergies. Even something as simple as a Siege Rhino starts slamming people like a truck when you can generate value like this.
Also would it be possible to DM you a question about the card?
@Crimsonspill Extremely powerful in a tribal. 4/4 with mentor, searches your library for more tribal cards, and puts even more counters on your Knights and Soldiers when they damage a player. Also, why black? This card has no black abilities whatsoever. I do understand, though, how hard it is to fit a card in the perfect colors. Here's my card:
- X isn't something that permanent cards "remember" once they're on the battlefield. As such, the ability that defines power and toughness won't be able to "remember" what X was and so doesn't work.
- You probably want the "gain control" ability to happen as the creature enters the battlefield or something, not "when". If that doesn't happen, it's capable of dying as a state based effect because of the defined power and toughness before you gain control of the creatures (if you don't have any creatures of the right costs or whatever).
- I can't think of any particular reasoning for X not to be allowed to be 0. It'll end up being zero if you cheat it in by any non-casting method. I guess it lets you do some scary stuff if you can animate all of the opponent's lands or something, and it mucks with tokens?
- This seems like it'd be a bit too good in some formats. Many decks in formats like legacy place significant emphasis on low-cost creatures, and this breaks them down too easily. Similarly, it's a serious threat against creature-based red aggro lists (one mana to snatch away all their 1 drops and make a big creature). I know that killing the Corrupter gives them back, but "Dies to removal" is rarely a good reason for something.
- The name could do with changing, perhaps. I guess corruption could be just about argued into control, but I don't get the sense of the card linking into mana in any particular way.
More Return to Ravnica mechanics stuff, this time for the Orzhov. I'm aware that the Orzhov are actually from Gatecrash, but I'm using the RtR set symbol because I can't find a good Gatecrash one and it isn't overwhelmingly important since they're for a unified mini-expansion. Give one or both a favorite and / or a useful comment, then post up to two cards of your own.
I honestly believe that Teysa's Demands could be buffed, instead having a cost of 2WB. This is especially true for me as it is currently a rare in the miniset that does nothing on entering the battlefield and relies on other resources to generate its value.
Not much I can say about Vizkopa Profiteer - since it's looking to be designed more for that mid-range/control Orzhov deck, its CMC and stats are solid.
If you wanted to make the card more aggressively costed, you could do the following:
1) Lower the cost to 1WB 2) Remove the lifelink 3) Redo the "Whenever you extort..." to "Whenever you extort for the first time each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on Vizkopa Profiteer. It gains lifelink until end of turn." <-- Admittedly not 100% sure on the syntax, but the idea would be that it only gains the lifelink when you extort, which shouldn't be too difficult in an Orzhov deck based in Ravnica.
@Crimsonspill, for Savior the wording for the fateful hour should be
Fateful hour - As long as you have 5 or less life, whenever you gain life, create that many 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens.
and "... under your control ..." isn't needed.
Also, the design is weak. If you play this, most of the time, all you get is a 1/1 and a 2/2 for 3W which is pretty bad. Rarely, you might get three 1/1s and a 2/2 for 3W which is good but not overpowered. I suggest a 1WW cost as that would make it stronger and make it more mono-white which it is.
The next card is really cool! I like it and faved it. _________________________________________________________________________________
@Crimsonspill Thanks for the feedback. I might have been being overly cautious with Teysa's Demands because I was worried about the sheer number of tokens it could net you (either that or it makes your extortion free). I think I'll keep the Profiteer where it is (it's meant to be a draft signpost uncommon kind of thing, and I think it's happy where it is for that purpose), but the point about the Demands doing nothing until the future's a good one, and so I'll do as you suggested and drop the cost.
This is a reply. Current cards should be just above.
@shadow123 I love the art! And the card, to. Favorited! To make it a little less wordy, you could probably word that last ability "Whenever you sacrifice a creature for the first time each turn, each opponent loses life and you gain life equal to its power." Anyways, here's my card:
Archery 3 (This creature enters the battlefield with three arrow counters on it.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, CARDNAME deals X damage to you, where X is the number of arrow counters on it. Then, remove an arrow counter from it.
And a little feedback:
- The counters have different names throughout the text (arrow in the keyword, archery elsewhere).
- I get the sense that unless this is in a set where you have reasons to lose life or things to manipulate / use arrow counters (and Eldraine has neither) then this is really quite weak. Since it's a common then that isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. I can see it being a draft / sealed common that red might want one or two of, though I doubt it'd have any place outside of limited. It's probably totally fine at common rarity.
Honestly, there isn't too much else to say about it. Possibly the fact that the art doesn't fit the flavor text and keyword idea, I guess, but that's about it.
More Return to Ravnica, this time for the Dimir. Since neither of them actually have it, I'll also note down the Dimir's Return to Ravnica mechanic (which both cards interact with), Cipher:
Cipher(Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of the encoded card without paying its mana cost.)
@MemoryHead Cipher is one of my favorite mechanics! I really like both of these cards and the way they interact with cipher. My only constructive critique would be to make Whisperwyrm a Wurm with deathtouch and not flying, but it's actually fine as a dragon, lol. Favorited!
Here's mine for your amusement: (Brütal Legend was that Jack Black game from around 10 years ago, ICYWW.)
@TerryTags I love it! I do, though, feel like Downbeat should do something, because otherwise it is pretty weak. I would have downbeat give the equipped creature +0/+4. Other then that, well, I don't really know how to rate unglued cards. Kinda going away from my alley. Here's my card:
Well....okay let's do this. Ability #1: maybe make it crank out trap tokens that are artifacts with a function, rather than 0/1 creatures called "beast trap"? Ability #2...okay, Ability #3. make sense, but Jerry never killed Tom. Maybe tapping it, or exiling it while Jerry's in play?
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Perhaps it's due to my lack of familiarity with cards from Innistrad/Shadows over Innistrad/Dark Ascension, etc., but I can't think of any interactions off-hand other than reanimation that is based on P/T like Alesha, but those cards care about their own graveyards generally rather than yours. So in that vein, I can imagine it as a potential counter/sideboard card if it affected all graveyards.
So I am incredibly interested to know what interactions/synergies you had in mind with this card because more than likely I am just blind to it =/
It's an awesome {1} artifact for stuff like Ensoul Artifact or Cranial Plating or other affinity stuff. FAVORITED!
You guys know I'm hooked on Land mechanics and full cycles of lands. I'm also working on a Group-Hug commander set, and I got to thinking: why aren't there "group-hug lands" if we've already got shock and pain lands? Can you guys plz help me balance this?
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=438804
Also, a reminder that the "add {1}" should be an "add {C}".
As I said, this isn't an actual review, just a little contribution out of interest. If you're looking at the thread, please go through the normal favorite and / or comment procedure about Benevolent Outpost before putting up more cards.
(By the way, I need a Lot of help with the wording on this one.)
Not only that, but Carrion Grub to. I can't think of anything else it would work with at the moment.
At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, if CARDNAME has twenty or more mana counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, each opponent may add twenty mana in any combination of colors. Until end of turn, mana doesn't empty from opponents' mana pools as steps and phases end.
First, a few notes about the wording:
- You've got different names in the card's text and as the actual name. Khalni Heart as the name, Heart of the Plane as the text.
- What I've done here is mostly ironing out a few faults, and lots of guesswork. There are no rules or examples for a lot of this, and as such I've just tried to make it sound vaguely professional.
- I'd recommend changing the counter name from "mana" to something else. I get the sense that it's making a word that's already confusing as all heck in the situation appear and confuse even more.
Now, actual card evaluation:
- This is a flawed design. While I hate to just look at things and go "Nope, it can't be saved", this is probably one of those cases. You could move it to silver border, I suppose. To clarify why, this is painfully complex, painfully against-mtg-design-philosophy, painfully not-fun to play against, and just generally something that shouldn't exist. I hope you can already understand the complexity point, but I'll break down the other points in a moment.
- Painfully against-mtg-design-philosophy. In MTG, the mana of lands tends to be vaguely sacrosanct. Land destruction tends to be expensive. Mana abilities can't be interacted with (which is a rule this kind of breaks, by the way, which is a flaw in its own right). The only card capable of sucking away an opponent's mana was printed literally at the very dawn of the game in Alpha, back when the design team had no idea what they were doing. What this does goes against all of that.
- Painfully not fun to play against. When this resolves in a 1v1 game, your opponent effectively loses anything from two to five or perhaps even more turns of ability to do anything that involves mana. And for the whole time as they do it, they're forced to feed you mana that you can then spend on doing other stuff and ruining their day. In fact, it's probably longer than two to five turns, because you can choose whether or not to give them the mana and so can simply cripple them out of doing anything to stop you rather than taking away everything.
There's a theoretical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the form of that twenty mana payout, but it's just a dream. The person playing this will never, ever give you the chance to get there. They might remove the mana counters from this, or Solemnity to stop them from turning up at all. They might keep flickering it, or find any one of a hundred other ways to break it.
I really could just keep on ranting at problems here, but it won't change the fact that it's a flawed card. As I said, I hate to pronounce this kind of sentence, but it's just a bad idea and I don't think it can be redeemed.
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I've committed myself to making a sort of mini-set of Return to Ravnica cards, so here's some a pair focused on expanding on the detain mechanic of the Azorius. Give one or both a favorite and / or a useful comment, then post up to two cards of your own.
By the way, this is just a comment in response to a comment on one of my cards. The cards for you to comment/favorite are just above, Court Magewarden and Lavinia's Lawkeeper.
- The card would probably benefit from being non-optional in its mana-snatching. This would stop you from being able to regulate, and stop you from just deciding not to add any more counters on 19 so that the opponent(s) could never get their 20 mana payout (unless, as you suggested with the Plunderer, they have a proliferate effect, which it must be noted that many matchups don't have). The lack of decision would also help it feel less as though it's using the stack, maybe? I don't know.
The wording for that replacement effect would pretty much just be a modded version of my word assumptions above. Something like:
- The card is hard to cast due to the five color. However, I'd retain the opinion that it's still very good, and can be played on a relatively early turn relatively consistently if you've got the deck for it, or just run cards that let you cheat color requirements like Fires of Invention or Dryad of the Elysian Grove. I'd also like to point to the combo of Karn the Great Creator and Mycosynth Lattice as a somewhat similar land-lock that was so good it got the Lattice banned. I'm aware that the two aren't the same, but they bear a resemblance. One dies if you quickly kill the Karn, the other if you wait a long time. As such, I might recommend lowering the number of mana counters before the card "breaks open" slightly.
- Random thing, but I wonder if it might be neat for the thing to get counters equal to the mana stolen or something (a Gaea's Cradle tapping for five mana would add five counters rather than one, for instance)? I don't know, it'd feel more fitting. Might not fit in terms of text, though.
Again, sorry.
This is a response to a response, because apparently that's something we're doing now. The most recent cards should be above, Court Magewarden and Lavinia's Lawkeeper.
In the case of multiplayer, i.e. Commander, while it is more likely that people will attempt to interact with it, it is important to remember that having the ability to shut players out of their lands, even if only temporarily, is an incredibly powerful effect, especially since it can shut players off of the lands they need to counter the card in the first place.
More importantly, this card is very much a build around win-con rather than an incidental one. If someone ran this in their deck, no matter the format (it'd be far more popular in EDH), many of the same methodologies that MemoryHead mentioned would be integral to getting the deck functioning. An optimized Ramos or Golos deck could hypothetically get the card out into play as early as Turn 2, respectably consistently on Turn 3.
And this is not even mentioning the degenerate lines of play that stem from cards like Solemnity or even something as value-centric as Aminatou, the Fateshifter, Brago, King Eternal or Venser, the Sojourner can create some incredibly low interaction games, especially when in tandem with the deck's own suite of counterspells and removal due to being five colors. While I mainly play cEDH, I could easily see a couple of five color decks running this with the sole purpose of setting up a potential lockout for the table. WUBRG is not as difficult of a casting cost as one would normally think, especially in decks designed to generate all of said colors.
Lastly, you mention that "you cannot continually regulate your opponents' mana, so within one or two rounds, your opponents get a free 20 mana!" Stax as an archetype does exactly this and with scarily efficient cards like Winter Orb, Static Orb, Stasis, and many others. If you are making sure that your opponents can already only generate one, two, or maybe three mana a turn sans cards like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, this card can establish a soft lock on the table where even if the other three players cooperate against you, the experience it creates still can devolve into which of the three players is the one to cause the upkeep trigger, as 20 mana for each opponent is great; however, being able to use that mana at both sorcery and instant speed is far more valuable than solely instant speed.
That said, I do think that the conceptual nature of the card is interesting - Perhaps you could aim for more of a Blood Moon-esque effect where lands opponents control only add colorless mana and place a counter on the card instead. This wouldn't get around the potentially degenerate stax/lockout nature of the card, but it would prevent the card from functioning as nigh perpetual ramp for the player that manages to resolve it.
Another potential option would be to make the "payoff" be more consistent, i.e. something like Forbidden Orchard. This would also give the opponents more avenues/tools from which they could interact.
I would not go as far as to say that it is impossible to salvage, but it -would- need some heavy revisions if you are designing the card for the explicit purpose of balanced/printable play.
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@MemoryHead
I will admit that detain is a mechanic that I wished I got to experience more when I first started playing Magic in Battle for Zendikar. I cannot wait to see what other cards you create for the miniset! Onward to the brief comments for each card.
In the case of Court Magewarden, a slight minus to its power would justify having the 5 toughness, especially since Lavinia of the Tenth or New Prahv Guildmage can create some pretty scary situations. If neither card would be "reprinted" within the miniset, I see it far less likely to be problematic, though probably still merited, especially due to its likelihood of sticking over multiple turns within a control deck and its strength as a blocker.
As for Lavinia's Lawkeeper, I see a potential adjustment in a similar vein; perhaps change the stats to be a 1/3 so that it possesses more value as a blocker and synergizes more with the control archetype it would see play in. That said, I could honestly imagine it as either version (2/2 or 1/3), so it would be an incredibly difficult design decision.
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My sincerest apologies for the incredibly dense block of text here. I merely wanted to provide my perspective as someone that plays cEDH.
My card:
A way to do this would be to limit the creatures it can destroy with its ability. Such as "nonblack creature", or "nonartifact creature".
Maybe even "nonlegendary creature"?
Another way is to make it exile a creature card from your graveyard for each activation that occurs.
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Opinions on my card for my brother?
Having Kushin exile a card from the graveyard for the activated ability I think works nicely, especially since in flavor it could be one of the souls it captured/reaped moving on to the afterlife. Definitely going to modify that on the MSE version of Kushin.
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As for Lizelle, Tyrannical Bloodlord -
It's a small thing, but tyrannical is missing the extra "n," though from what I can tell, the space in the name box is already tight. Could always change "Lizelle" to "Lizele" so that you could fit the extra "n?" Another option would be that Lizelle is from a place called Tyran, Tyrania, or another plane/place perhaps.
I think the main "consistent" issue I can see coming up with Lizelle is what I'd call the "memory funnel" issue, where Lizelle's trigger to "exile target creature card from your graveyard until that creature leaves the battlefield" can create situations where having to keep track of each card and then simultaneously figuring out which card is better to remove, especially with how many value creatures there are in Abzan's colors could prove difficult.
I also think that this would be compounded by a "matroshyka doll" effect if you recurred things like Banisher Priest, Faceless Butcher, and a few other cards that possess exiling abilities of their own.
That said, I find its design space incredibly interesting, especially in Abzan, where you can utilize some of those delicious token synergies. Even something as simple as a Siege Rhino starts slamming people like a truck when you can generate value like this.
Also would it be possible to DM you a question about the card?
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My card:
- X isn't something that permanent cards "remember" once they're on the battlefield. As such, the ability that defines power and toughness won't be able to "remember" what X was and so doesn't work.
- You probably want the "gain control" ability to happen as the creature enters the battlefield or something, not "when". If that doesn't happen, it's capable of dying as a state based effect because of the defined power and toughness before you gain control of the creatures (if you don't have any creatures of the right costs or whatever).
- I can't think of any particular reasoning for X not to be allowed to be 0. It'll end up being zero if you cheat it in by any non-casting method. I guess it lets you do some scary stuff if you can animate all of the opponent's lands or something, and it mucks with tokens?
- This seems like it'd be a bit too good in some formats. Many decks in formats like legacy place significant emphasis on low-cost creatures, and this breaks them down too easily. Similarly, it's a serious threat against creature-based red aggro lists (one mana to snatch away all their 1 drops and make a big creature). I know that killing the Corrupter gives them back, but "Dies to removal" is rarely a good reason for something.
- The name could do with changing, perhaps. I guess corruption could be just about argued into control, but I don't get the sense of the card linking into mana in any particular way.
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More Return to Ravnica mechanics stuff, this time for the Orzhov. I'm aware that the Orzhov are actually from Gatecrash, but I'm using the RtR set symbol because I can't find a good Gatecrash one and it isn't overwhelmingly important since they're for a unified mini-expansion. Give one or both a favorite and / or a useful comment, then post up to two cards of your own.
I honestly believe that Teysa's Demands could be buffed, instead having a cost of 2WB. This is especially true for me as it is currently a rare in the miniset that does nothing on entering the battlefield and relies on other resources to generate its value.
Not much I can say about Vizkopa Profiteer - since it's looking to be designed more for that mid-range/control Orzhov deck, its CMC and stats are solid.
If you wanted to make the card more aggressively costed, you could do the following:
1) Lower the cost to 1WB
2) Remove the lifelink
3) Redo the "Whenever you extort..." to "Whenever you extort for the first time each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on Vizkopa Profiteer. It gains lifelink until end of turn." <-- Admittedly not 100% sure on the syntax, but the idea would be that it only gains the lifelink when you extort, which shouldn't be too difficult in an Orzhov deck based in Ravnica.
Hopefully any of this proves useful.
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My cards:
Also, the design is weak. If you play this, most of the time, all you get is a 1/1 and a 2/2 for 3W which is pretty bad. Rarely, you might get three 1/1s and a 2/2 for 3W which is good but not overpowered. I suggest a 1WW cost as that would make it stronger and make it more mono-white which it is.
The next card is really cool! I like it and faved it.
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My cards:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/the-spirit-being
and,
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/wanted-inverter
This is a reply. Current cards should be just above.
My card (and my art!):
https://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/5380/help-me-with-my-dad-s-present#latest
At the beginning of your upkeep, CARDNAME deals X damage to you, where X is the number of arrow counters on it. Then, remove an arrow counter from it.
- The counters have different names throughout the text (arrow in the keyword, archery elsewhere).
- I get the sense that unless this is in a set where you have reasons to lose life or things to manipulate / use arrow counters (and Eldraine has neither) then this is really quite weak. Since it's a common then that isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. I can see it being a draft / sealed common that red might want one or two of, though I doubt it'd have any place outside of limited. It's probably totally fine at common rarity.
Honestly, there isn't too much else to say about it. Possibly the fact that the art doesn't fit the flavor text and keyword idea, I guess, but that's about it.
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More Return to Ravnica, this time for the Dimir. Since neither of them actually have it, I'll also note down the Dimir's Return to Ravnica mechanic (which both cards interact with), Cipher:
Here's mine for your amusement:
(Brütal Legend was that Jack Black game from around 10 years ago, ICYWW.)
Pretty cool card. The idea of turning it face-down is really fun. Favorite.
My card:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/monument-to-terror
https://mtg.design/i/sxqf67
Sorry bout this, the image won't show up.
Well....okay let's do this. Ability #1: maybe make it crank out trap tokens that are artifacts with a function, rather than 0/1 creatures called "beast trap"? Ability #2...okay, Ability #3. make sense, but Jerry never killed Tom. Maybe tapping it, or exiling it while Jerry's in play?
here's my offering today
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/idol-of-the-accursed