@FireOfGolden Apart from a few grammatical errors (which I assume might be from English being a second language? No offense intended, I'm just making an assumption based on your cards in the set) I like melting-subject. Your "Mirroring" card might be worded incorrectly, because I think you have to create the copied creature token BEFORE you return the target creature to its owner's hand?
Hello Cardsmiths!! I'm a former regular in these forums, but life sometimes gets in the way for ... (months? yikes!) ... quite some time.
I was researching some of Jodah's lore because of his new card, and I stumbled on a person from his lore who didn't have a card of her own. I thought she deserved one, so can you please let me know if you think her activated ability is broken? Thank you!
@TerryTags ; Game-wise, great card. It's amazingly balanced and would completely demolish me in a Zirda companion deck. According to her lore though, Gerda, who's full name I will not be spelling, is a very offensive ambush caster, so the fact that you can only attack with 1/1s and without haste doesn't seem fitting, though this is a very small issue.
@TerryTagsGerda - I think it's a well designed card, 4CMC for a 1/4 ward {2} is not an issue. The ability to create 2/2 flying tokens that fade away is versatile I can see situations where you can play mind games with just the threat of making them. They can easily be used to chump block, paying {1}{u} and 2 life to block anything bigger than 2 power you kinda come out a head, even trading with their 2/2 or gang blocking and removing a card form their board can be well worth it. Even better if they don't attack at all because they know you can make the token, it cost you nothing and you stopped the aggression.
I'm wondering was it your intent tie the P/T to the fading counters given you can only really attack with them as 1/1 since they don't have haste. I think I would have like it if they could have been able to attack as 2/2s, that was what I initially thought this could do, so you'd be trading 2 life for 2 damage if they have no blockers. As 1/1s it's a tougher trade, you summons them at the end of their turn, go to your upkeep, they fade and become 1/1 and you swing for 1.
Of course you are also making tokens so for any sacrifice pay offs you have you can get some extra value, it always nice to have enablers like this.
Also for fading, the illusions don't continue to live when they have no fade counters since they become 0/0, would vanishing been better as they die as soon as you remove the last counter, not sure if it saves any room but it think it might have been a more cleaner choice.
It's a defensive card, but can enable pay offs with the right synergies, which the Johnny in me always likes.
@jaceberlinJump to Conclusions - It does have an odd condition that you must play it in a 3 colour deck not sure the justification for it, it makes playing this card more difficult and restricts what decks would include it. Sagas are already a niche archetype having it colourless to allow it to support 1 and 2 colour decks with sagas would give it a better chance to be used since there is already competition with proliferate which has a whole host of other synergies. And of course with Dominaria United we have the Read ahead keyword which is a strictly better version of what this card can do since you can start anywhere. Might as well reword it and have it say "Sagas you control have Read ahead". Or perhaps it forces all sagas to enter at 3 so if the opponent plays sagas they might lose out on the value that the first 2 chapters give, maybe it is they that Jump to Conclusions.
Here is mine
Wanted to make this into an enchantment but it's hard to find art to represent what I was going for. The concept was stripping the power of a creature and then they must take the challenge of getting tapped usually by attacking to earn back their strength. Was going to call it Trial of Humility or something like that and be {w/u} since there isn't a body to deal with.
@FireOfGolden Queke's Response is a fun card (and quite useful in white decks), but I would have worded it differently to match with what I would expect from MTG cards. "Choose a color. Choose another color for each time this spell was kicked. Destroy all creatures with the chosen colors."
I'm not sure how often it would be kicked, though. White tends to play a beat down game plan with small creatures that want to have you dead long before this thing can get kicked... I think it could be slightly cheaper, especially with the strict color requirements built into the cost.
@Sweda I love how Avatar of Humility can get rid of annoying text boxes and gets more powerful for the overload cost. I'm not so sure its ward cost works as intended even though it fits the flavor of the card. If you want to target it, you need to skip your next untap step. Most players would pay that cost in a heartbeat since their creatures are most likely tapped already when this came onto the battlefield.
Avatar of humility is a kind off unbalanced in my opinion. It's not to say that it is broken, it just feels a tad too unhinged for it's cost. It essentially grants an overwhelming splendor effect for 4 cmc as long as you can get stun counters in the field. It has a ward ability that has the potential to mana lock opponents for a turn if they want it gone bad. It is essentially overwhelming splendor but more protected and guarded, and for less if you don't use the overload cost. In my "Humble" opinion, this card should atleast be 5cmc if you wanna maintain the toughness and stats, unless you make the etb trigger a casting trigger so it can't be recurred.
I think the second land falls more in flavor with the phyrexian oil theme since phyrexian oil is black like in glistening oil. Also @FireOfGolden there have been colored lands before that are still colorless like Urbog, Tomb Of Yawgmoth, so I think the second frame is fine.
In my honest opinnion the card is out of flavor. Red never taps a creature, rarely gives flying with sorceries or instants, and always deals damage equal to power rather than toughness with minor exeptions. I would say that the card needs to atleast have blue in it in the minimum to function with that wording. The art is cool though.
Damn! It seems I got a bit lost when I posted this message, since the original post I answered to was some days old. I didn't pay enough attention! This first half was an answer for @LuckyLeopard665 !
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Ups! Unfortunatly your link appears to be broken (at least for me). Anyway, I've found your card searching on the website, so I think it would be nice to post a full picture so people can see it and comment it by just passing by there as well.
First of all, I'll start by speaking a brievly about what I'd call the ''architecture'' of the card (its cost/stats/creature types/general ability design/choice of the artwork) before entering the heart of the subject which is the effect of the card itself.
It's needless to say that the stats you get out of this creature for the mana you invest, namely four mana and the multicolored black/green restriction, is really bad. Judging on the vanilla test, a 0/2 isn't even worth 1 mana and if we consider it comes defender it's even worse. But the statistics matter only little if the card itself has strong enough effects, so let's dive right in those!
Since Leaning Mossbark has a death-trigger effect, the bad end of its statistics we've mentionned before slightly becomes more of an upside, because it would make it easier that way to activate it. That being said, it still remains pretty slow and that doesn't alone is enough to justify such bad statistics, so we'll need to have a closer look at the effect itself. That's something to keep in mind.
About the creature types, there's nothing very special to be said, except that maybe it could have been a treefolk looking at the chosen artwork, which depicts an old and massive tree covered in moss and slowly falling down to the ground. But with the flavor text along, it makes more sense for it to be a simple Plant, since it's really about it just being a ''casual'' tree.
Now, concerning Leaning Mossbark's ability, it's all about it being a kill-spell on small body. It's pretty good on its own and this card is surely more suited for a control deck archetype, and what's particularly interesting there is that you've worded it so that it opens room for some weird plays in which this card could actually destroy more than one creature. It seems pretty hard to pull off though. I could see some shenanigans with graveyard recursion, but those do not feel like they would be worth it.
I will compare it to Noxious Dragon, which is another uncommon creature that kills creature with some conditions when it dies and which has been reprinted recently so I think it makes for a decent comparison point. The conditions you have in order to destroy a creature with Leaning Mossbark (it has to be dealt some damage (not only combat damage)) are in my opinion way more restrictive than those of Noxious Dragon that just has to die, but only can hit something that's of a mana value 3 or less. That being said, it's true on the other hand that Noxious Dragon can't vanquish a colossal monster, which is something Leaning Mossbark has the potential to do.
Yet the question is: if you are playing a control archetype, why would you want to include this specific card in your deck while you would have access to a ton of other cards that do the same but more efficiently? F.e., why would you play this card instead of a simple and efficient Doom Blade? For sure, creatures grant access to another kind of synergies and you may like those in certain archetypes so Doom Blade is not the best example I could have chosen, but that's the first one that came to my mind.
Also, I think it doesn't need to precise that it isn't able to destroy creatures with flying since it doesn't have reach (for sure it's possible to find some way to give it reach, but that seems a bit weird). I can understand that it was an aesthetical choice (a tree doesn't kill bird when it falls?) if I understand the card's flavor. But I'd like to address a further suggestion regarding that point.
Honestly, I love that kind of cards and in terms of flavor I think this card shines, but at the same time it just feels way too weak. It's only a few suggestions and I don't pretend to be a clever player or someone that knows well the MtG rules, but I think that this card should either have better statistics, or have reach and the possibility to destroy flying creatures. Other than that, it's a really nice and clean design!
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Here's a second half of feedback, for @Tonysparks (and for repairing my mistake) this time!
I will comment Brumagg, the Brutal because it is the first of those two magnificent dragons you've posted!
With flying and trample, the body looks quite correct if we consider that other abilties will come along, given the card's quite high mana cost. It reminds me a bit of Dragonlord Atarka on that perspective. From what I imagine so far, without yet looking at the abilities, it should be an endgame beater!
It's a legendary creature, which is worth mentioning since it could be playable as a commander and so tells us it's a character that plays an important role in some lore. The artwork is also looking very good. I've seen that you've written your own name on the credits alongside artist's name, is it because you made some modifications to the art? If so, I think that's awesome!
The first ability, which is a triggered ability upon land destruction looks like something that can get out of hands really fast. First, it triggers upon the destruction of any land, including upon Brumagg's controller land destruction. With a spell of mass land destruction such as Armageddon, Jokulhaups, etc. it not only triggers X time, where X would be the number of lands destroyed by those spells, but it scales! So, it would grenerate generates an OTK pretty easily. That may be what you intended to do with this design though. In my honest opinion, that's a bit too strong (not much). I really like the idea of that unusual way to make an ability scale though.
The last ability is a typical land destruction ability for 4RG. Just a little thing about the wording of this one: ''Activate only as a sorcery.'' should be in another sentence from the rest. Since it may not be clear with my bad english, it gives: ''COST: Destroy target land. Activate only as a sorcery.'' / This ability is quite heavily costed, for a good reason, but making it repeatable (without having to tap Brumagg to do so) as a mana sink feels very dangerous and potentially obnoxious for the gameplay. There's the argument that you've already won anyway if you have access to an infinite amount of mana, but I think it still would be better and safer to have Brumagg to tap in order to activate this ability, since it synergizes with its second ability and immediatly creates a 4/4 flying Dragon token (if not more than one) when you activate it.
Nice design, but a bit too powerful and unrestricted imo. My suggestion would be to maybe rework the second ability so it triggers only once upon any number of destroyed lands (which is way way less powerful, indeed). With some wording corrections: ''Whenever a spell or an ability you control destroys one or more lands, create a 4/4 red and green Dragon creature token with flying. Repeat this process for each time this ability triggered this turn.''
I really like the flavor text you've got there also! It really makes you feel that Brumagg is leading a Dragon herd to destroy the grounds, which makes a lot of sense according to its design.
(I had to cut that comment in two parts since it was getting too long.)
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As for myself, I'll propose a card this time! It's a ridiculous card design and it's intended to be more of a joke card than an actual serious design, but I'd like to hear what you'd think of it! (Yes, it has such a lot of text it looks more like a Yu-Gi-Oh! card than an actual card from MtG haha (I love wordy cards))
This doesn't seem too crazy on the surface (though I do agree this is Yu-Gi-Oh! levels of 'all the text' thanks to the reminder text and the options in the white & blue parts of the triggered ability). It's a massive bomb that's relatively difficult to cast, can't be cheated out, doesn't benefit from being cast for free, and only sometimes helps you close out the game directly.
The only problem I can see is that having the cost written in generic mana makes it too easy to reduce with cards like Gargos, Vicious Watcher or Animar, Soul of Elements. Modular 10 plus the extras at half price or less is a little nuts (particularly the 10 damage on red).
However, since the ETB is a 'when', Mecha Progenitus is vulnerable to being blasted with a kill spell in response, having the trigger countered, getting hosed by a Hushwing Gryff, etc.
Overall, this seems like a weird and very powerful yet not totally unreasonable mashup between Progenitus and something like Scion of Draco with some modular shenanigans thrown in.
Unfortunately I can not give you any more reviews for this card that I haven't already given prior so I will mark your card in my post for the next person to review before mine.
I appreciated the thoughtfull feedback on Bruvak, the greatest moment for me is when someone understands the flavor texts behind my cards and you hit it right in the coffin. I admit that I considered making the land destruction a sorcery, but ultimately I opted to raise the cost instead while still understanding its repeatability might be abit dangerous. I believe that by making the ability a tap ability, It would undermine Bruvak's usefulness a bit. The ability for it to be able to target your own lands was also intentional. In regards to the art credit, I did some moderate editing to create Bruvak but I wanted to ultimately also respect the main artist from the source material I took from, thus the me being in the credit with them.
In regards to your Hydra, it does not fail to disappoint when it comes to the buracratic level of texts in Yugiho (meant respectfully ofcourse). I never got in to yugi because I didn't want to delve into the outlandish texts that translate to simple sentences in mtg. Taking the card at face value, it is not a bad card for its mana cost since usually 7cmc and above are cards that are conventionally considered finishers when it comes to creatures, eg craterhoof, ulamog and emrakul. This card would be vastly broken if you prepare right for it, mainly running gruul to double counters, have ramp and gain haste at the same time. Throw in ozolith and some enchantments like doubling season and you would be giving your opponents a really bad time. The only qualms I have with this card are the same as @cadstar369 's. Generic mana is so easy to produce it is not very difficult to imagine someone dropping this within the 5 turn range and moping the floor with a whole player. I would make some of the mana colorless to create some casting dificulty to the card.
@cadstar369 I think this card is fairly well balanced, although it seems like the card is made mainly for its abilitys, rather than for attacking, so perhaps it would fit better as an enchantment for {1}{u}{r}. If you make it an enchantment, I also think that ward is unnecessary, and even if you don't, ward doesn't serve that much purpose.
@Tonysparks Regarding the blood drake, I think the design is really cool, but a 4/3 with flying and menace for only 4 mana Is really good on its own, even without the additional abilities. I think making it a 3/3 or a 3/4 even would balance it out. an alternative could be to make it cost {1}{b}{b}, and have it be a 2/3. That would probably make it more playable in aggro decks as well.
As for snarlagg, I would judge him, but I don't know enough about commander to fairly judge.
Thanks a lot for your very nice feedbacks! @cadstar369 and @Tonysparks! It's a very good point that its cost can be reduced. On one side, I thiiink it may not be that bad though, since I would personally still consider it to be quite a lot of set-up to work with in order to get it out early, and that it would require a pretty good starting hand, but yeh... I think I got a bit carried away with the straight-forward 10 damage to the face in red and that may be a thing to rework!
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I went to follow a bit the discussion and I remarked that nobody gave a feedback for Eyran, so I'll allow myself to give a feedback to @cadstar369 and after my message anyone is free to comment on the card proposed by @The_333_ !
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Concerning Eyran, Reticent Archivist, first of all, I have to admit that I may not be very objective during this analysis since this card reminds me a lot of Mairsil, the Pretender who has to be one of my very favorite cards in the whole game. I find that Mairsil's design is especially well thought for Commander/EDH format, and that it's a fruitful way to explore for new concepts so I'm loving your ideas there! Here, the cage coiunters have been replaced by grimoire ones, but we remain in that continuity in my opinion, and it's a very cool manner to exploit some unique kinds of counters.
Regarding that point, I will start with a little note about the archetype I would see for Eyran as a commander. I find it actually would be really innovative and would ask players for a very particular deckbuilding strategy. Compared to the usual ways in which current Izzet commanders are approaching some "combo" archetypes, I feel like a Eyran decklist would surely be unique in its own way and that would make it cool and refreshing!
What about the card itself now? Its cost is relatively expensive at four mana for a card that requires potentially to be activated over several turns before turning into a real value engine or into a combo, especially when you consider that there is still a certain amount of mana you've got left to spend in order to be able to activate one or the other of its abilities. Just for giving a brief comparison point with what other commander Izzet can do for a 4 mana value currently, the three most played ones are respectively in order: the new Jhoira, Galazeth Prismari and Mizzix. I feel like it's worth mentionning that all three of those are commanders with passive abilities and not activated abilities, which makes them perhaps more attractive than Eyran at first glance since they thus seem more versatile (Jhoira has a very particular archetype, so I still put her a little apart even by saying that). With Galazeth, you're at least creating a Treasure, so you're ramping on the same turn and keeping one mana up, and if you got a decent artifact set-up (which is likely by the turn it hits the table) you can potentially go on with some crazy turn actions at the moment you play it. With Mizzix... well, you've still got to play cards but it also ramps you a lot and really quickly can get out of control if it isn't straight up interacted with by your opponents. With Eyran, unless you've got the outs on your side by self milling/discarding enough cards to combo instantly on the turn, you still need at least seven mana to do so (and that's if you've got something such as Training Grounds on the battlefield / unless there's a one-card combo I can't think of atm). On that perspective, Eyran seems really slow.
That being said, there are also a lot of upsides to play Eyran as a commander instead of one of those previously mentionned. First thing firsts, Eyran comes with ward 2 along, which isn't insignificant at all since it makes it way more expensive to be interacted with, asking for your opponents to take some decisions when facing you. Also, since the combo could somehow difficult to pull out, that plays also on the side that your opponents are potentially less likely to remove it from play quickly. I like that you've chosen to put ward instead of hexproof and I think that ward 2 is a fair cost. I also at the same time want to say I like the stats you've chosen, since it may feel easy to remove, but it will pretty much always cost your opponents quite a lot!
Then, there's the other upside that is interaction. Actually, Eyran is really pretty good against decks with a similar strategy or against flashback decks, since it directly interacts with your opponents graveyards, which is a really nice thing.
However, where I find that Eyran really becomes very nice is more precisely fond on the fact that to combo with its activated abilities, it looks like it wouldn't require much set-up tbh. Dramatic Reversal and Seething song in the graveyard and you're good to go! All you need (except the quite high amount of mana) is a way to untap it once, some way to filter/alter your red mana into blue mana and a nice random finisher storm card/a third spell to draw your deck or do whatever you want (there's surely plenty of choices)! That's a very good idea to make it so that you need both colors to activate its last abilities, as it makes it just a little bit more difficult to combo with but enough in order to prevent it to be potentially too oppressive to be confronted to!
All in all, I think it's a fairly strong card that is appealing to a lot of possibilities and that I find very inspirational! I think it's well balanced. Well done!
This card is absolutely absurd, especially in a control deck where you're already not playing many creatures. (It's perfect for control at 2 mana because you might not have strong interaction available, and if doesn't draw out your opponent's removal or a board wipe it's practically a strictly better Scute Swarm.)
Having its mana cost be generic mana is perhaps the biggest reason Ezill is broken, since you can throw it into any deck without investment. If it cost CC it might be slightly more reasonable, since then you'd have to risk gumming up your mana base with colorless sources, but with mana value 2 there's plenty of ways to both cheat it out and recur it cheaply and/or easily in a variety of colors.
Reanimation effects and cards like Monster Manual and Howlpack Piper allow you to easily sidestep Ezill's downside. Besides, you probably won't want to cast your creatures anyway since Ezill's one-card army should either win you the game or prompt a board wipe, so your other creatures can be sandbagged until Ezill's removal to easily maintain pressure.
Light Windward
While the passive ability could be interesting to build around, with the ability to -4 immediately Light will most likely be played as an infect cantrip rather than a planeswalker. Since their passive and +1 already promote an interactive and creature-heavy playstyle, perhaps you could reduce the starting loyalty to account for this.
There doesn't seem to be anything blue happening here, so you could perhaps get away with making this card 1WB. (Scry 1 and card draw are both generic enough when attached to other effects to not require blue here.)
Mana Cost Note -- Mana symbols appear in WUBRG order with the most even spacing possible. In this case, it should be WUB instead of UBW. (e.g. Aminatou)
I'd appreciate feedback on this card:
While it took way too much text to describe the "cost" of its ability, I wanted to try making a non-colorless non-finisher bomb that could reasonably see play in decks of all color combinations. (Borrowing and slightly modifying Ral1000's Prismatic, seen in Shelko's Mecha Progenitus above.) <Edit: Giving credit to Ral1000 as the initial creator of Prismatic, as Shelko informed me below.>
If it helps, here's some primary examples of how it works:
You cast it for RRRRRCC : You can exile a colorless and/or red card, or you can exile any number of red cards. (up to 2 cards or any number)
You cast it for WWWUBCC : You can exile up to one each of C, W, U, B, WU, WB, UB, and WUB, or you can exile any number of white cards. (up to 8 cards or any number)
You cast it for WUBRGCC : You can exile up to one each of C, W, U, B, R, G, WU, WB, RW, GW, UB, UR, GU, BR, BG, RG, WUB, UBR, BRG, RGW, GWU, WBG, URW, BGU, RWB, GUR, WUBR, UBRG, BRGW, RGWU, GWUB, and WUBRG (up to 32 cards)
I respectfully request that you give @cadstar369 adequate feedback. I am noticing a personally upsetting trend of you giving short feedbacks on cards that people have put quite a bit of time. I was willing to ignore it on a few of my cards, but I am sure others don't quite appreciate that as much. Otherwise the forum will devolve into two word feedback. Ofcourse even if @cadstar369 is content, you should keep that in mind for other cardsmiths. Cheers mate.
@cadstar369 This is more stream-of-thought commentary than review, but:
I'm a little confused on the wording of Prismatic. If an ability on the field causes the cost of casting this creature to increase, would that extra cost still be restricted by Prismatic to only colored mana? It currently reads that you can only spend colored mana on {5}, but what about the sixth mana? If it's not restricted, one could definitely arrange a situation where you could spend three colorless mana on this creature. If this wasn't the intent, then I can't honestly think of a better way to word the ability that wouldn't be confusing to someone.
I think this card would see most use in mono- and dual- colored decks, where you have more control over the number of cards you can exile. Sure, with five colors you can exile up to 32 cards, but how many of those color combinations are going to be in your graveyard when you cast this? And exiling cards from your hand to activate doesn't help if your goal is to get card advantage it's just a more painful take on cycling. It could have some synergy with a cycling deck, but only if that deck doesn't care too much about what's in your graveyard.
I think it would mostly be used in white, black, and blue decks. Especially since those colors synergize well with artifacts, which would be the easiest way to ramp to 7 while still having a source of colorless mana. Plus white and black have plenty of ways to gain life, to offset that cost.
This guy didn't get as much response as I'd hoped (which sometimes just means no one saw it, but still), I'd appreciate feedback on it:
I wanted to make a land-focused creature in Abzan colors, but make it white-centered instead of the more obvious green-centered route.
As Ars Opalescent is casted, two colorless mana are required while Prismatic forces caster to spend any five of same or different color mana. Sixth mana or colorless mana are not included and cannot be used for this purpose. Then Ars Opalescent becomes the color to match the spent mana.
The second ability is somewhat confusing. This is what I can make of. When Ars Opalescent enters the battlefield, if at least two different color mana were spent to it, a same color card will be exiled from hand or graveyard for each color mana were spent to it. If at least three same color mana were spent to it, then exile any number same cards from hand and/or graveyard.
Once exiling is over, caster loses 1 life for each exiled card then he or she puts that many cards from top library into his or her hands.
If it was included in my collections, I would agree with @Korora12 for my commander deck. It would be likely red and blue, because I usually have no use for my graveyard, so I can exile them without a regret to get more cards with some benefit from red and blue.
Since Ars Opalescent is legendary creature, I would recommend adding adjective word(s) to the name.
@The_333_ As for Ezill, the name should go this way; "Ezill, the God of Infinity". The ability that says "Legend rule doesn't apply to [Name of legendary creature]" will make it silver bordered. To avoid this, do this way instead.
"On your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill then create a copy token of it expect for it's not legendary.
You cannot cast creatures from your hand, if Ezill is on the battlefield."
Now you have a room for flavor texts, everyone loves flavor texts, right?! Am I right?!
You should increase mana cost from {2} to {3} because it can be a commander.
As for Light Windward, since the name of planewalker is Light, it should go; "Light, the Windward".
First ability: Whenever you put a -1/-1 counter on a creature, you may put +1/+1 counter on another target creature.
Second ability: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature, scry 1.
Third ability (This way should cost 8 or more loyal counters, because infect itself is very powerful that can use only 10 counters to defeat a player): Target creature gain infect until end of turn. Draw a card.
You must understand, infect isn't something key word each player loves them. (I have the worst experience with it)
@Korora12 Babaiki Pilgrim is interesting card with potential becoming very powerful creature in late game.
However, in early game, it can be used for increasing lands onto the battlefield, if it is put into the battlefield for free or from the battlefield... And if there are no lands to put onto the battlefield, opponent will start losing some lands until Babaiki Pilgrim is destroyed or exiled.
@FireOfGolden the color indicator is necessary is to fix Ars Opalescent's color identity as WUBRG for commander purposes. Given how you've written the reminder text for the Increase Quality ability in the Mechanic Encyclopedia, the spell doesn't actually change colors when paying the cost. In your Onman example, the card's color identity (defined by the symbols on the card not in reminder text) is RGW, but it's color (defined by the mana cost, color defining abilities, and color indicators) is colorless. Thus it's three static abilities don't actually work at the moment. If you want the Increase Quality ability to affect a card's color, you'd need to say something along these lines:
Increase Quality N {cost} (You may pay an additional {cost} as you cast this spell. If you do, it becomes [colors in the cost] and it enters the battlefield with an additional +1/+1 counter on it. You may pay this cost up to N times.)
This way Onman's color changes based on which costs are paid. (Using the variable number N instead of words also makes things more concise.)
With regards to Fight Until the End // Death Do Us Part, what kind of split card is this meant to be? There are a few different kinds:
Fuse cards frorm Ravnica can be cast as one or both halves.
Aftermath cards have one side that can be cast normally while the other can be cast from your graveyard.
Normal split cards can be cast as one side or the other. (Your card appears to be in this category.)
Additionally:
Split cards are normally named in such a way that the "//" that appears in their name is read as a connecting word (e.g. Assault // Battery = Assault and Battery, Heaven // Earth = Heaven to Earth, Connive // Concoct = Connive or Concoct)
Fight Until the End's effect is ambiguous. Is it meant to be similar to Alpha Brawl, or more along the lines of [Target creature you control fights target creature you don't control. Repeat this process for each other creature you control.]? (Effectively, is this trying to be a kill spell or a board wipe?)
By the way, "Opalescent" is an adjective in Ars Opalescent's name, similar to how I read the "Windward" in Light Windward (though this could easily just be the usual fantasy-style last name). Additionally, a number of cards reference the legend rule directly, but your suggested wording is certainly simpler as it's not necessary to do so for Ezill. Also, I direct you to my response to Korora12 for more detail, but to answer your questions directly, the actual value Prismatic affects can be changed by cost modifiers, so it won't necessarily be 5, and you cannot use colorless mana for the part affected by Prismatic. When it enters the battlefield, if you spent lots of different colors on it, you have the option of exiling lots of different cards for its ability, and if you spent lots of the same color you can exile as many cards of that color as you want (if Ars Opalescent ends up costing extra, you could have the option to exile as many cards as you'd like of multiple colors this way).
@Tonysparks while I appreciate the sentiment, and it would perhaps be wonderful if everyone did their proverbial homework while giving feedback, I don't think it's fair to expect that of them. This would likely become a rather unwelcoming place if we took relatively rigorous detail as the norm, particularly for newer cardsmiths.
@Korora12 thanks for the feedback. The reminder text uses "{5}" as shorthand for "the generic portion of this spell's mana cost," mostly because Shelko's original design used only generic mana in its cost; I'll rewrite it to clarify this, since exmaples of real cards with a similar mechanic appear to exclusively use it for {X} or the entire mana cost. The option to exile cards from your hand is mainly to increase flexibility, since card selection can be just as important as card advantage. I also imagine 4+ colors decks that use lots of multicolor cards (particularly legendary tribal and charm tribal) could get a large amount of value out of Ars Opalescent, although you're probably right about it being better with fewer colors, particularly when combined with self mill.
With regards to Babaiki Pilgrim, while it's triggered ability is an interesting white/black take on messing with lands, the need for the basic land types hurts its use outside dedicated decks. It's also significantly more difficult to use when you don't have a significant number of Forests, so this feels fairly green-centric to me anyway (especially since I think a player would be more likely to just tutor typed lands directly onto the battlefield rather than use the balancing triggered ability). With the way you have the static ability giving +1/+0, +1/+1, and and +0/+1, perhaps you could play on the ordering of the colors and redistribute the bonuses to White, Black, and Green in that order? (That's not to say I think the current design is problematic, as I rather like it as it is, just that it might be interesting to consider this as an alternative.)
I'd appreciate some additional feedback on this card:
To reiterate, I'm trying my hand at a non-colorless non-finisher bomb that could reasonably see play in decks of all color combinations (despite the extreme wordiness of the "cost" of its ability).
Here's some primary examples of how it works:
You cast it for RRRRRCC : You can exile a colorless and/or red card, or you can exile any number of red cards. (up to 2 cards or any number)
You cast it for WWWUBCC : You can exile up to one each of C, W, U, B, WU, WB, UB, and WUB, or you can exile any number of white cards. (up to 8 cards or any number)
You cast it for WUBRGCC : You can exile up to one each of C, W, U, B, R, G, WU, WB, RW, GW, UB, UR, GU, BR, BG, RG, WUB, UBR, BRG, RGW, GWU, WBG, URW, BGU, RWB, GUR, WUBR, UBRG, BRGW, RGWU, GWUB, and WUBRG (up to 32 cards)
@cadstar369 Thank you but Increase Quality doesn't put +1/+1 counters on Onman when it is casted.
Here's best example. Increase Quality simply gives color(s) to colorless creature. Therefore, Increase Quality {X} (You may pay Increase Quality cost as additional to cast this creature. If you do, this creature is [color same as mana spent to it])
Fight Until the End // Death do us Part is split card and I prefer that way because it's more like this
Fight Until the End is designed for each creature fights another creature. It can have two or more creatures fighting same creature as if three creatures are blocking same creature. It is designed for attempting to wipe off the board.
And forgive me for grammar issue. It should go here:
"Each creature you control fights another target creature you don't control."
@FireOfGolden in that case I suggest you update your post over in the Mechanic Encyclopedia, since people are more likely to look over there and make the same mistake I have as opposed to looking through your collection to find you've completely changed how the mechanic works.
Also, your rewording for Fight Until the End is still rather ambiguous, but considering it only specifies a single target opposing creature, it's more in line with Alpha Brawl or Nissa's Judgement than what it seems like you want it to do. To specify multiple targets, you'd need to use wording along the lines of what I suggested previously. Wording along these lines might also work: "For each creature you control, choose target creature you don't control. Each creature you control fights the creature chosen for it you don't control." (This is kinda clunky though.)
@cadstar369 Thanks so much for you feedback, all of you sugestions were amazing.
I'm a begginer cardsmith, so my own feedback might be bad, but here gos
Ars Opalescent: I think this card is a little underwhelming. for 7 mana, requiring you to run colorless sources, exile your own hand (or graveyard, wich is probably a little more usefull), and taking damage, just to a draw a few cards, is something that won't see play in many decks. The only one of those payments I could see beniffiting is the loss of life, but even so, for 7 mana there are better alternatives. I think its main pro is actually just being a 7/7 flyer. also whats the purpose of "putting the top card of your library into your hand" isn't that just drawing a card? I think a main improvment for this card would be to make it {5}{c}{c} or even {5}{c}, and reducing its power and toughness.
Just before giving the feedbacks, I wanted to let you know that at first I was about to write a comment to say something I surely should have mentionned while posting Mecha Progenitus. It made me somehow feel a bit weird about that since the Prismatic mechanic actually isn't from me but it's a mechanic that was designed by @Ral1000. I just changed it a bit my own way as I find it to be an amazing custom mechanic but also wanted it to be a little different to match what I had in mind as card designs.
Therefore, I should also continue by saying what I think about this mechanic is its main limitation that I kind of crossed with the card I've posted previously. I personally think it works better on nonpermanent stuff. The problem with Prismatic on permanents in my honest opinion is that it could become a pain to track over turns. For sure, it's easy if there's only a few permanents with prismatic to remember their colors, and it works quite nicely with etb effects, but keeping track of that permanent's colors during the whole game could be something that I feel like it could become a bit overwhelming. Yet of course the player could just note the colors of their specific card aside on a piece of paper or on their smartphone, but that was just to add some brieve self criticism about that way I reworded it that may not always be very intuitive. If for some reasons there is a lot of permanents with prismatic on the battlefield, it could cause some headhaches I guess.
So, with the feedback now! I'll start with Ars Opalescent from @cadstar369
I think that you've made a really good use and that you've take a very intersting turn on Prismatic! (Btw, I'm feeling honored my yugi-like card gave you some ideas haha!)
I greatly appreciate the vast diversity of the panel of cards the last and main ability of Ars can hit. It surely should make it a quite versatile card to play (and if we are speaking about commander once again, it would definitly be quite potent as a 5-color commander that draws a lot of cards when played), yet it needs quite a lot of set-up in order to work well.
In some aspects, it reminds me of the pretty recent Niv-Mizzet Reborn that was also caring about multicolored cards different combinations in order to draw a lot of cards. However, the biggest difference between those two is that it's not possible to use a flicker strategy with Ars Opalescent, because it has to be cast for its ability to trigger, which is a nice way to balance it and that goes pretty much without saying it's a logical choice of design regarding prismatic ability. Compared to Niv-Mizzet, Ars also has the immense advantage to propose a very flexible deckbuilding. With Niv-Mizzet, the player is kind of forced to play a lot of multicolored cards that aren't always what they would really be interested in. With Ars however, you have the choice to put a limited amount of multicolored or to dedicate your multicolored deck to one specific color in order to maximize its pure value. I think it's a very cool idea as it would ask the players for having to put a lot of creativity in their efforts when they will be building up a commander decklist using Ars as their commander.
After this small talk about its ressemblances with Niv-Mizzet and its playability as a commander, I'll add that it would probably also a potent and useful card for outside of only commander format, even though on one hand it will surely suffer in those formats from the comparison with other late game bombs that would most of the time be considered as better alternative - on the other hand, Ars still offers the versatility of being playable pretty much anywhere. I think what may be its biggest weakness is the two colorless mana in its mana cost, but that's fine and overall I think it balances it nicely.
In terms of pure flavor, that choice of artwork is lovely and the card's name and creature types seem to be very fitting. It makes me wonder what kind of ancestral creature or important character Ars would be in the lore. If you have thought about some background or about including it in a particular constructed environment I'd be delighted to hear about those (I'm sometimes a bit of a lore maniac, I just like so much discovering or discussing/supposing concepts based around the depth of Magic lore (despite my very own lack of imagination haha))!
Nonetheless, there's a minor critic I would have about this design and it's concerning what you've explained about it is that I unfortunatly think doesn't really work out as intended. (Idk how to use quotes, sorry...)
When you say:
''Here's some primary examples of how it works:
You cast it for RRRRRCC : You can exile a colorless and/or red card, or you can exile any number of red cards. (up to 2 cards or any number)''
Actually from my understanding of the game rules you can't exile colorless cards with Ars, since by definition those cards have no colors and therefore won't be affected by the ability of Ars that only cares about colored cards. Here's what says an article on mtg.fandom as reference about that point: ''Note that colorless is not a color, and is not represented in the color wheel.''
In that regard, if you added the colorless mana in its mana cost for the purpose of allowing it to exile colorless cards and to draw on those, I think you might maybe want to rework it with either adding a line to explain that you can also use colorless cards to do so.
My first impressions are that it has a lovely choice of artwork. I don't know if that was intended flavorfully, but I think it's really nice that you've got exactly three of those ''strange'' creatures hanging around on that piece of art while one being is bigger than the other, and that you've somehow tried to report it into your design (at least, that's the way I feel it) with it being a three-colored card caring about three lands types, but with the last two types making it less strong than the first one.
On another side, even if that's quite nice in terms of flavor, it's also a bit clunky that it doesn't follow the same rule for that ''pump'' effect. That makes the Forest just much more valuable and doesn't give the player many reasons to run a ''balanced'' decklist speaking about the variety of land types they run. That may be intended though. I'd say this first ability feels very green to me and I don't see the white and black aspects of it, so I think that may be why you wanted Plains and Swamps to give less value than Forests. Given that the second ability, about which I'll say some words later on, is mainly white/black I think that works just fine.
Where that ''pump'' effect becomes really strong is that it works with lands that have multiple land types, which are pretty much the most played lands in constructed. The best land to play with those cute Pilgrims would surely be Indatha Triome, which ''pumps/buffs'' Babaiki Pilgrim by +2/+2 on its own. I think in terms of pure stats the card is well balanced since it's still requiring quite some set-up in order to play it big on turn two/three, and a 3-colored card is quite an investment in a lot of formats. I'd maybe even say it could be a bit too weak to feel playable, as even a lot of stats without evasion doesn't mean much and the player that runs this card would need to put quite a lot of efforts to get there for, imho, little rewards. In continuity, that does not mean it's bad either, it's just a fair and fine balance.
Then, about the second ability, it uses the ''very white'' wording that checks if your opponent controls more of a kind of stuff than you do, here: lands (which is pretty adequate, hey, given that this cards works with lands)! It may be my only critic about this card, that's that this wording is to me something more specifically mono-white. I don't think there's any mutlicolored card in the game using this wording. Even if the card is white itself, its color-identity should imho remain on the Abzan side of themes (Idk if that makes much sense btw, feel free to tell me if something I say is too poorly formulated).
The land destruction aspect isn't much Abzan neither, at least to me, but I can understand it and it doesn't strike me as ''not matching theme,'' so I can say it's fine if it's intended to be part of an Abzan archetype caring about, maybe (that's just a random assumption to give an exemple of archetype I'd think is fitting well with that design), the number lands in your opponents graveyard or something like that. All the three colors are doing a bit of land destruction, Golgari and Orzhov both have some land destruction spells, so for Abzan, why not? In terms of power level, I think it's fairly strong and I like the fact it's giving the choice between two very different options that seem to work well together at closing the gap for that ability to trigger again next turn. Concerning that choice, it's maybe more of a personal feeling, but I think the modal wording with ''choose one'' may look a bit better (but I guess you may be lacking some space for the text to fit well).
Overall, I think it's a neatly exectued cards design with a lot of good ideas!
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EDIT: I won't post any card, but anyone is free to post a card and ask for feedback after this comment!
@The_333_ thanks for the feedback. Ars Opalescent doesn't say "draw a card" to prevent it from being affected by draw replacement abilities (i.e. it won't get doubled by Teferi's Ageless Insight, but also won't be hosed by Narset, Parter of Veils). Also, perhaps it's just because of the decks I tend to play and see played, but I don't actually imagine this getting played at 7 mana, but more as a semi-desperation play when you're top-decking really late in the game and need more than just a card or two to help you close the game out (of course, this could totally be a situation unique to commander, which I play most often). In a similar fashion I feel like CC is necessary to have the card actually impact deckbuilding, since just a single C shouldn't be too hard to come up with between a variety of mana-fixing lands and a large number of cheap mana rocks with additional utility. CC might be sufficiently restrictive though, since those lands also tend to not have types on them (so you can't tutor them onto the battlefield as easily), and artifacts that produce mutiple colorless mana generally aren't too helpful in a deck with lots of colors. It also doesn't make too much sense to me to mess with Ars Opalescent's cost because it'd likely deviate significantly from my initial intent. If it didn't have flying, I would probably argue that it's too small for how much effort it takes to cast (I might be able to get away with making it an 8/8 even now, but having it be a 7-mana 7/7 looks nicer).
Light feels a touch overbalanced now. You could have left the scry 1 on the +1 (it's perfectly fine to have that in WB), though it's probably for the better that you cut the draw on the minus ability. Granting infect at sorcery speed to a single creature isn't particularly scary, so you could probably get away with the minus ability being a -3 to match Light's starting loyalty. My original concern was more that Light also drew you a card, so you could just play the card as a cantrip; without that it's become an interesting build-around.
With regards to Arkados, am I correct that the restriction on X means you must control a nonland mana source and/or reduce Arkados's cost in order to cast it? Since there's both the X in the cost and the X for the activated ability, it's ambiguous as to whether the restriction applies to casting the card, activating the ability, or both. (In this case I'd assume it only applies to casting the card, since there's no restriction written into the activated ability, unlike these cards.)
@Shelko thanks for the feedback and reference; I've updated my original post to credit Ral1000. Glad you like the card!
I agree that Prismatic works way better logistically for nonpermanent cards (I think I've been partially numbed from dealing with all these Alchemy cards and not being able to play as much in person).
The overall design came to me as an anime-style "boss card of someone's deck" for a story I'm writing (somewhat influenced by recent card game anime like Build Divide and Shadowverse), with the typing influenced by Malfegor and some other loose notions of what Ars Opalescent would be like as a character. I'll probably end up exploring their lore at some point in the near future, but I'm don't know if I'll ever put that onto more cards or into a set (I still have two custom commander deck projects to finish first ).
Thanks for pointing out the rules for colorless. I was thinking combinatorially, where choosing nothing still counts as a combination (and thus colorless is the combination of colors where you don't take any of them). Colorless being unavailable is likely more intuitive and doesn't affect the card overall, so I'll leave it as is.
(By the way, to use quotes, click the "Quote" button under the paragraph icon's dropdown menu. If you copy/paste the desired text, highlight it, and then click the "Quote" button it should enclose all of it automatically, but you can also copy/paste into the gray bar that appears when you click the button by itself first.)
@The_333_ As for Ezill, you should treat the name as if they are title. Instead of "Ezill, god of infinity", do this Ezill, God of Infinity
There are some grammar issues, however, they are good.
You spelt "Beginning" wrong. You don't have to say, "At beginning of your upkeep", you can get away with "On your upkeep..." I believe both are same thing.
Therefore, "On your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill" Notice that you don't have to include the adjective when you are preferring to Ezill. This way can save some room and make it easier for people to read flavor text.
Second ability is good but there are some grammar issues. The activate cost should have ":" after itself word to show the activated ability. I must warn you; this ability can be activated more than once. If that's your intent, that's fine.
For classic ability with proper grammar; "{c}{c}: Create a copy token of Ezill, expect for it's not legendary."
For weaken ability; "{c}{c},{t}: Create a copy token of Ezill, expect for it's not legendary"
On third ability, it seems reasonable as long as the second ability allows it to be activated more than once. If you decide to go with weaken second ability, I recommend; "You may not cast creatures from your hand or put creature from graveyard onto the battlefield, if Ezill is on the battlefield."
As for Light, wayward balancer, you also should treat the name as if it's title name. Such as "Light, Wayward Balancer"
You don't have to capitalize "put" on first ability.
I don't see any problem otherwise, good job.
As for Arkados, as usually, treat the adjective as if they are part of title.
First ability is somewhat doesn't work exactly you would like it to. Try this: "Arkados can be only casted, if {x} is equal or greater than number lands you control." This way will prevent caster from casting it when he or she spent mana less than the lands they control.
Second ability is reasonable however, I would prefer increase from {1} to {3} because it can be a commander. Don't forgot you don't have to include the adjective when you are preferring to Arkados.
Now for third ability, if you are looking for try to increase the power and toughness of the Arkados, I afraid that won't work. Proliferation applies to any counters only rather than the power and toughness.
If that's not your intent, then do this to fix the grammar; "{x}: Proliferation X times, you may put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Activate this ability only once your turn"
I would prefer land being put onto the battlefield tapped AND make it ability can be only activated once because this classic ability allows player to put all lands onto the battlefield, if mana allows.
@FireOfGolden there's a couple issues with your commentary on @The_333_'s grammar and syntax:
"At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill, God of Infinity" is the correct way to phrase the trigger (see these cards). Since Ezill is a legendary creature with a comma in its name, this can be shortened to "At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill." (In general, it should be shortened, but you can opt not to since it's at the end of a sentence.) Otherwise there are no alternatives to this wording.
Neither of your suggestions 'fix' Arkados's wording (addressed in the spoiler below).
I agree with the majority of the other feedback, particularly the point about considering increasing the non-X portion of Arkados's cost. (While it'll certainly be exceedingly annoying to recast in commander, it's perhaps a bit too easy to use when not your commander.)
If the aim is to make the current text more realistic (compressed to reduce clutter):
Ezill, God of Infinity {c}{c} Legendary Creature – God
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill.
{c}{c}: Create a token that's a copy of Ezill, except it's not legendary.
You can't cast permanent spells from your hand.
1/1
See these cards for reference on the nonlegendary clone ability. Note that 'playing' a card only matters when lands are involved (e.g. Escape to the Wilds), whereas 'casting' applies to all other card types (and is thus sufficient here). It's also notable that the last ability is significantly less restrictive than Codie (which has a similar restriction), since you can cast permanent spells from everywhere else (e.g. you could cast a permanent spell exiled with Light Up the Stage). It may be worth considering changing this to Codie's "you can't cast permanent spells."
Whenever you put one or more -1/-1 counters on a creature, put that many +1/+1 counters on target creature. [+1]: Put a +1/+1 counter on up to one target creature. [-5]: Target creature gains infect until end of turn.
See these cards as reference for the rewording of the triggered ability. Otherwise just some capitalization correction and missing periods.
Arkados, God of the Planes {X}{1} Legendary Creature – God
X can't be less than the number of lands you control.
Arkados's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control.
{x}: Proliferate X times, then put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield [tapped]. [X can't be 0.]
*/*
See these cards as reference for the P/T setting ability. The bracketed additions prevent the player from freely dumping their lands as FireofGolden mentioned. If the intention is for the restriction on X to affect both the cost and the ability, you'd have to put "X can't be less than the number of lands you control" where I have "X can't be 0." (Mentioned in my prior feedback.)
(I'm not currently looking for feedback on any particular design, so I'll refrain from commenting on Kuk-Kuk for the moment to reduce confusion.)
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Gotcha!
I have completed the set called Figures: The Forgotten. Let me know what do you think of these.
Figures: The Forgotten | Custom MTG Set | MTG Cardsmith
Choose few cards that's most broken, let me know why and how can I fix it.
And other some cards that's best, let me know why it is so good.
I need these informative before I plan to remaster two figure sets.
Apart from a few grammatical errors (which I assume might be from English being a second language? No offense intended, I'm just making an assumption based on your cards in the set) I like melting-subject. Your "Mirroring" card might be worded incorrectly, because I think you have to create the copied creature token BEFORE you return the target creature to its owner's hand?
Hello Cardsmiths!! I'm a former regular in these forums, but life sometimes gets in the way for ... (months? yikes!) ... quite some time.
I was researching some of Jodah's lore because of his new card, and I stumbled on a person from his lore who didn't have a card of her own. I thought she deserved one, so can you please let me know if you think her activated ability is broken? Thank you!
In case you're into lore, here's more info on Gerda Äagesdotter
Game-wise, great card. It's amazingly balanced and would completely demolish me in a Zirda companion deck.
According to her lore though, Gerda, who's full name I will not be spelling, is a very offensive ambush caster, so the fact that you can only attack with 1/1s and without haste doesn't seem fitting, though this is a very small issue.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/jump-to-conclusions-1?list=user
Queke's Response is a fun card (and quite useful in white decks), but I would have worded it differently to match with what I would expect from MTG cards. "Choose a color. Choose another color for each time this spell was kicked.
Destroy all creatures with the chosen colors."
I'm not sure how often it would be kicked, though. White tends to play a beat down game plan with small creatures that want to have you dead long before this thing can get kicked... I think it could be slightly cheaper, especially with the strict color requirements built into the cost.
I'm not sure which of these is better. Any opinions?
Usually, lands have no color and is always colorless permanent, but
Second one looks better than first one.
Any thoughts?
Pulled to the Air by FireOfGolden | MTG Cardsmith
Avatar of humility is a kind off unbalanced in my opinion. It's not to say that it is broken, it just feels a tad too unhinged for it's cost. It essentially grants an overwhelming splendor effect for 4 cmc as long as you can get stun counters in the field. It has a ward ability that has the potential to mana lock opponents for a turn if they want it gone bad. It is essentially overwhelming splendor but more protected and guarded, and for less if you don't use the overload cost. In my "Humble" opinion, this card should atleast be 5cmc if you wanna maintain the toughness and stats, unless you make the etb trigger a casting trigger so it can't be recurred.
@stijnhommes
I think the second land falls more in flavor with the phyrexian oil theme since phyrexian oil is black like in glistening oil. Also @FireOfGolden there have been colored lands before that are still colorless like Urbog, Tomb Of Yawgmoth, so I think the second frame is fine.
@FireOfGolden
In my honest opinnion the card is out of flavor. Red never taps a creature, rarely gives flying with sorceries or instants, and always deals damage equal to power rather than toughness with minor exeptions. I would say that the card needs to atleast have blue in it in the minimum to function with that wording. The art is cool though.
The cards I would like reviewed this week are
- Brumagg, The Brutal
(Gruul, Land Destruction)
- Soulwalker Primal
(Orzhov Midrange Reanimation)
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Ups! Unfortunatly your link appears to be broken (at least for me). Anyway, I've found your card searching on the website, so I think it would be nice to post a full picture so people can see it and comment it by just passing by there as well.
First of all, I'll start by speaking a brievly about what I'd call the ''architecture'' of the card (its cost/stats/creature types/general ability design/choice of the artwork) before entering the heart of the subject which is the effect of the card itself.
It's needless to say that the stats you get out of this creature for the mana you invest, namely four mana and the multicolored black/green restriction, is really bad. Judging on the vanilla test, a 0/2 isn't even worth 1 mana and if we consider it comes defender it's even worse. But the statistics matter only little if the card itself has strong enough effects, so let's dive right in those!
Since Leaning Mossbark has a death-trigger effect, the bad end of its statistics we've mentionned before slightly becomes more of an upside, because it would make it easier that way to activate it. That being said, it still remains pretty slow and that doesn't alone is enough to justify such bad statistics, so we'll need to have a closer look at the effect itself. That's something to keep in mind.
About the creature types, there's nothing very special to be said, except that maybe it could have been a treefolk looking at the chosen artwork, which depicts an old and massive tree covered in moss and slowly falling down to the ground. But with the flavor text along, it makes more sense for it to be a simple Plant, since it's really about it just being a ''casual'' tree.
Now, concerning Leaning Mossbark's ability, it's all about it being a kill-spell on small body. It's pretty good on its own and this card is surely more suited for a control deck archetype, and what's particularly interesting there is that you've worded it so that it opens room for some weird plays in which this card could actually destroy more than one creature. It seems pretty hard to pull off though. I could see some shenanigans with graveyard recursion, but those do not feel like they would be worth it.
I will compare it to Noxious Dragon, which is another uncommon creature that kills creature with some conditions when it dies and which has been reprinted recently so I think it makes for a decent comparison point. The conditions you have in order to destroy a creature with Leaning Mossbark (it has to be dealt some damage (not only combat damage)) are in my opinion way more restrictive than those of Noxious Dragon that just has to die, but only can hit something that's of a mana value 3 or less. That being said, it's true on the other hand that Noxious Dragon can't vanquish a colossal monster, which is something Leaning Mossbark has the potential to do.
Yet the question is: if you are playing a control archetype, why would you want to include this specific card in your deck while you would have access to a ton of other cards that do the same but more efficiently? F.e., why would you play this card instead of a simple and efficient Doom Blade? For sure, creatures grant access to another kind of synergies and you may like those in certain archetypes so Doom Blade is not the best example I could have chosen, but that's the first one that came to my mind.
Also, I think it doesn't need to precise that it isn't able to destroy creatures with flying since it doesn't have reach (for sure it's possible to find some way to give it reach, but that seems a bit weird). I can understand that it was an aesthetical choice (a tree doesn't kill bird when it falls?) if I understand the card's flavor. But I'd like to address a further suggestion regarding that point.
Honestly, I love that kind of cards and in terms of flavor I think this card shines, but at the same time it just feels way too weak. It's only a few suggestions and I don't pretend to be a clever player or someone that knows well the MtG rules, but I think that this card should either have better statistics, or have reach and the possibility to destroy flying creatures. Other than that, it's a really nice and clean design!
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Here's a second half of feedback, for @Tonysparks (and for repairing my mistake) this time!
I will comment Brumagg, the Brutal because it is the first of those two magnificent dragons you've posted!
With flying and trample, the body looks quite correct if we consider that other abilties will come along, given the card's quite high mana cost. It reminds me a bit of Dragonlord Atarka on that perspective. From what I imagine so far, without yet looking at the abilities, it should be an endgame beater!
It's a legendary creature, which is worth mentioning since it could be playable as a commander and so tells us it's a character that plays an important role in some lore. The artwork is also looking very good. I've seen that you've written your own name on the credits alongside artist's name, is it because you made some modifications to the art? If so, I think that's awesome!
The first ability, which is a triggered ability upon land destruction looks like something that can get out of hands really fast. First, it triggers upon the destruction of any land, including upon Brumagg's controller land destruction. With a spell of mass land destruction such as Armageddon, Jokulhaups, etc. it not only triggers X time, where X would be the number of lands destroyed by those spells, but it scales! So, it would grenerate generates an OTK pretty easily. That may be what you intended to do with this design though. In my honest opinion, that's a bit too strong (not much). I really like the idea of that unusual way to make an ability scale though.
The last ability is a typical land destruction ability for 4RG. Just a little thing about the wording of this one: ''Activate only as a sorcery.'' should be in another sentence from the rest. Since it may not be clear with my bad english, it gives: ''COST: Destroy target land. Activate only as a sorcery.'' / This ability is quite heavily costed, for a good reason, but making it repeatable (without having to tap Brumagg to do so) as a mana sink feels very dangerous and potentially obnoxious for the gameplay. There's the argument that you've already won anyway if you have access to an infinite amount of mana, but I think it still would be better and safer to have Brumagg to tap in order to activate this ability, since it synergizes with its second ability and immediatly creates a 4/4 flying Dragon token (if not more than one) when you activate it.
Nice design, but a bit too powerful and unrestricted imo. My suggestion would be to maybe rework the second ability so it triggers only once upon any number of destroyed lands (which is way way less powerful, indeed). With some wording corrections: ''Whenever a spell or an ability you control destroys one or more lands, create a 4/4 red and green Dragon creature token with flying. Repeat this process for each time this ability triggered this turn.''
I really like the flavor text you've got there also! It really makes you feel that Brumagg is leading a Dragon herd to destroy the grounds, which makes a lot of sense according to its design.
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As for myself, I'll propose a card this time! It's a ridiculous card design and it's intended to be more of a joke card than an actual serious design, but I'd like to hear what you'd think of it! (Yes, it has such a lot of text it looks more like a Yu-Gi-Oh! card than an actual card from MtG haha (I love wordy cards))
- This doesn't seem too crazy on the surface (though I do agree this is Yu-Gi-Oh! levels of 'all the text' thanks to the reminder text and the options in the white & blue parts of the triggered ability). It's a massive bomb that's relatively difficult to cast, can't be cheated out, doesn't benefit from being cast for free, and only sometimes helps you close out the game directly.
- The only problem I can see is that having the cost written in generic mana makes it too easy to reduce with cards like Gargos, Vicious Watcher or Animar, Soul of Elements. Modular 10 plus the extras at half price or less is a little nuts (particularly the 10 damage on red).
- However, since the ETB is a 'when', Mecha Progenitus is vulnerable to being blasted with a kill spell in response, having the trigger countered, getting hosed by a Hushwing Gryff, etc.
- Overall, this seems like a weird and very powerful yet not totally unreasonable mashup between Progenitus and something like Scion of Draco with some modular shenanigans thrown in.
I'd appreciate feedback on this card:Partially inspired by Izzet Chemister and Chun-Li.
Unfortunately I can not give you any more reviews for this card that I haven't already given prior so I will mark your card in my post for the next person to review before mine.
Card by @cadstar369 review this first
@Shelko
I appreciated the thoughtfull feedback on Bruvak, the greatest moment for me is when someone understands the flavor texts behind my cards and you hit it right in the coffin. I admit that I considered making the land destruction a sorcery, but ultimately I opted to raise the cost instead while still understanding its repeatability might be abit dangerous. I believe that by making the ability a tap ability, It would undermine Bruvak's usefulness a bit. The ability for it to be able to target your own lands was also intentional. In regards to the art credit, I did some moderate editing to create Bruvak but I wanted to ultimately also respect the main artist from the source material I took from, thus the me being in the credit with them.
In regards to your Hydra, it does not fail to disappoint when it comes to the buracratic level of texts in Yugiho (meant respectfully ofcourse). I never got in to yugi because I didn't want to delve into the outlandish texts that translate to simple sentences in mtg. Taking the card at face value, it is not a bad card for its mana cost since usually 7cmc and above are cards that are conventionally considered finishers when it comes to creatures, eg craterhoof, ulamog and emrakul. This card would be vastly broken if you prepare right for it, mainly running gruul to double counters, have ramp and gain haste at the same time. Throw in ozolith and some enchantments like doubling season and you would be giving your opponents a really bad time. The only qualms I have with this card are the same as @cadstar369 's. Generic mana is so easy to produce it is not very difficult to imagine someone dropping this within the 5 turn range and moping the floor with a whole player. I would make some of the mana colorless to create some casting dificulty to the card.
The cards I will post for this week are:
Snarlag, The Dragonfoot
(Mono Red Burn commander)
Markov Blood Drakes
(Mono black lifeloss/aggro)
@Tonysparks Regarding the blood drake, I think the design is really cool, but a 4/3 with flying and menace for only 4 mana Is really good on its own, even without the additional abilities. I think making it a 3/3 or a 3/4 even would balance it out. an alternative could be to make it cost {1}{b}{b}, and have it be a 2/3. That would probably make it more playable in aggro decks as well.
As for snarlagg, I would judge him, but I don't know enough about commander to fairly judge.
My cards
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I went to follow a bit the discussion and I remarked that nobody gave a feedback for Eyran, so I'll allow myself to give a feedback to @cadstar369 and after my message anyone is free to comment on the card proposed by @The_333_ !
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Concerning Eyran, Reticent Archivist, first of all, I have to admit that I may not be very objective during this analysis since this card reminds me a lot of Mairsil, the Pretender who has to be one of my very favorite cards in the whole game. I find that Mairsil's design is especially well thought for Commander/EDH format, and that it's a fruitful way to explore for new concepts so I'm loving your ideas there! Here, the cage coiunters have been replaced by grimoire ones, but we remain in that continuity in my opinion, and it's a very cool manner to exploit some unique kinds of counters.
That being said, there are also a lot of upsides to play Eyran as a commander instead of one of those previously mentionned. First thing firsts, Eyran comes with ward 2 along, which isn't insignificant at all since it makes it way more expensive to be interacted with, asking for your opponents to take some decisions when facing you. Also, since the combo could somehow difficult to pull out, that plays also on the side that your opponents are potentially less likely to remove it from play quickly. I like that you've chosen to put ward instead of hexproof and I think that ward 2 is a fair cost. I also at the same time want to say I like the stats you've chosen, since it may feel easy to remove, but it will pretty much always cost your opponents quite a lot!
Then, there's the other upside that is interaction. Actually, Eyran is really pretty good against decks with a similar strategy or against flashback decks, since it directly interacts with your opponents graveyards, which is a really nice thing.
However, where I find that Eyran really becomes very nice is more precisely fond on the fact that to combo with its activated abilities, it looks like it wouldn't require much set-up tbh. Dramatic Reversal and Seething song in the graveyard and you're good to go! All you need (except the quite high amount of mana) is a way to untap it once, some way to filter/alter your red mana into blue mana and a nice random finisher storm card/a third spell to draw your deck or do whatever you want (there's surely plenty of choices)! That's a very good idea to make it so that you need both colors to activate its last abilities, as it makes it just a little bit more difficult to combo with but enough in order to prevent it to be potentially too oppressive to be confronted to!
All in all, I think it's a fairly strong card that is appealing to a lot of possibilities and that I find very inspirational! I think it's well balanced. Well done!
@The_333_
Ezill
- This card is absolutely absurd, especially in a control deck where you're already not playing many creatures. (It's perfect for control at 2 mana because you might not have strong interaction available, and if doesn't draw out your opponent's removal or a board wipe it's practically a strictly better Scute Swarm.)
- Having its mana cost be generic mana is perhaps the biggest reason Ezill is broken, since you can throw it into any deck without investment. If it cost CC it might be slightly more reasonable, since then you'd have to risk gumming up your mana base with colorless sources, but with mana value 2 there's plenty of ways to both cheat it out and recur it cheaply and/or easily in a variety of colors.
- Reanimation effects and cards like Monster Manual and Howlpack Piper allow you to easily sidestep Ezill's downside. Besides, you probably won't want to cast your creatures anyway since Ezill's one-card army should either win you the game or prompt a board wipe, so your other creatures can be sandbagged until Ezill's removal to easily maintain pressure.
Light WindwardI'd appreciate feedback on this card:
While it took way too much text to describe the "cost" of its ability, I wanted to try making a non-colorless non-finisher bomb that could reasonably see play in decks of all color combinations.
(Borrowing and slightly modifying Ral1000's Prismatic, seen in Shelko's Mecha Progenitus above.)
<Edit: Giving credit to Ral1000 as the initial creator of Prismatic, as Shelko informed me below.>
If it helps, here's some primary examples of how it works:
Cool card! However, I would prefer it to be colorless legendary by default before it changes to another color like this
Other than that, I don't see any problem, I am sorry.
Now, I am trying to develop a fusion card. Did I do it right?
Fight Until the End by FireOfGolden | MTG Cardsmith
Death do us Part by FireOfGolden | MTG Cardsmith
I respectfully request that you give @cadstar369 adequate feedback. I am noticing a personally upsetting trend of you giving short feedbacks on cards that people have put quite a bit of time. I was willing to ignore it on a few of my cards, but I am sure others don't quite appreciate that as much. Otherwise the forum will devolve into two word feedback. Ofcourse even if @cadstar369 is content, you should keep that in mind for other cardsmiths. Cheers mate.
@cadstar369
From what I read your card.
As Ars Opalescent is casted, two colorless mana are required while Prismatic forces caster to spend any five of same or different color mana. Sixth mana or colorless mana are not included and cannot be used for this purpose. Then Ars Opalescent becomes the color to match the spent mana.
The second ability is somewhat confusing. This is what I can make of.
When Ars Opalescent enters the battlefield, if at least two different color mana were spent to it, a same color card will be exiled from hand or graveyard for each color mana were spent to it. If at least three same color mana were spent to it, then exile any number same cards from hand and/or graveyard.
Once exiling is over, caster loses 1 life for each exiled card then he or she puts that many cards from top library into his or her hands.
If it was included in my collections, I would agree with @Korora12 for my commander deck. It would be likely red and blue, because I usually have no use for my graveyard, so I can exile them without a regret to get more cards with some benefit from red and blue.
Since Ars Opalescent is legendary creature, I would recommend adding adjective word(s) to the name.
@The_333_
As for Ezill, the name should go this way; "Ezill, the God of Infinity". The ability that says "Legend rule doesn't apply to [Name of legendary creature]" will make it silver bordered. To avoid this, do this way instead.
"On your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill then create a copy token of it expect for it's not legendary.
You cannot cast creatures from your hand, if Ezill is on the battlefield."
Now you have a room for flavor texts, everyone loves flavor texts, right?! Am I right?!
You should increase mana cost from {2} to {3} because it can be a commander.
As for Light Windward, since the name of planewalker is Light, it should go; "Light, the Windward".
First ability: Whenever you put a -1/-1 counter on a creature, you may put +1/+1 counter on another target creature.
Second ability: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature, scry 1.
Third ability (This way should cost 8 or more loyal counters, because infect itself is very powerful that can use only 10 counters to defeat a player): Target creature gain infect until end of turn. Draw a card.
You must understand, infect isn't something key word each player loves them. (I have the worst experience with it)
@Korora12
Babaiki Pilgrim is interesting card with potential becoming very powerful creature in late game.
However, in early game, it can be used for increasing lands onto the battlefield, if it is put into the battlefield for free or from the battlefield... And if there are no lands to put onto the battlefield, opponent will start losing some lands until Babaiki Pilgrim is destroyed or exiled.
With regards to Fight Until the End // Death Do Us Part, what kind of split card is this meant to be? There are a few different kinds:
- Fuse cards frorm Ravnica can be cast as one or both halves.
- Aftermath cards have one side that can be cast normally while the other can be cast from your graveyard.
- Normal split cards can be cast as one side or the other. (Your card appears to be in this category.)
Additionally:- Split cards are normally named in such a way that the "//" that appears in their name is read as a connecting word (e.g. Assault // Battery = Assault and Battery, Heaven // Earth = Heaven to Earth, Connive // Concoct = Connive or Concoct)
- Fight Until the End's effect is ambiguous. Is it meant to be similar to Alpha Brawl, or more along the lines of [Target creature you control fights target creature you don't control. Repeat this process for each other creature you control.]? (Effectively, is this trying to be a kill spell or a board wipe?)
By the way, "Opalescent" is an adjective in Ars Opalescent's name, similar to how I read the "Windward" in Light Windward (though this could easily just be the usual fantasy-style last name). Additionally, a number of cards reference the legend rule directly, but your suggested wording is certainly simpler as it's not necessary to do so for Ezill. Also, I direct you to my response to Korora12 for more detail, but to answer your questions directly, the actual value Prismatic affects can be changed by cost modifiers, so it won't necessarily be 5, and you cannot use colorless mana for the part affected by Prismatic. When it enters the battlefield, if you spent lots of different colors on it, you have the option of exiling lots of different cards for its ability, and if you spent lots of the same color you can exile as many cards of that color as you want (if Ars Opalescent ends up costing extra, you could have the option to exile as many cards as you'd like of multiple colors this way).@Tonysparks while I appreciate the sentiment, and it would perhaps be wonderful if everyone did their proverbial homework while giving feedback, I don't think it's fair to expect that of them. This would likely become a rather unwelcoming place if we took relatively rigorous detail as the norm, particularly for newer cardsmiths.
@Korora12 thanks for the feedback. The reminder text uses "{5}" as shorthand for "the generic portion of this spell's mana cost," mostly because Shelko's original design used only generic mana in its cost; I'll rewrite it to clarify this, since exmaples of real cards with a similar mechanic appear to exclusively use it for {X} or the entire mana cost. The option to exile cards from your hand is mainly to increase flexibility, since card selection can be just as important as card advantage. I also imagine 4+ colors decks that use lots of multicolor cards (particularly legendary tribal and charm tribal) could get a large amount of value out of Ars Opalescent, although you're probably right about it being better with fewer colors, particularly when combined with self mill.
With regards to Babaiki Pilgrim, while it's triggered ability is an interesting white/black take on messing with lands, the need for the basic land types hurts its use outside dedicated decks. It's also significantly more difficult to use when you don't have a significant number of Forests, so this feels fairly green-centric to me anyway (especially since I think a player would be more likely to just tutor typed lands directly onto the battlefield rather than use the balancing triggered ability). With the way you have the static ability giving +1/+0, +1/+1, and and +0/+1, perhaps you could play on the ordering of the colors and redistribute the bonuses to White, Black, and Green in that order? (That's not to say I think the current design is problematic, as I rather like it as it is, just that it might be interesting to consider this as an alternative.)
I'd appreciate some additional feedback on this card:
To reiterate, I'm trying my hand at a non-colorless non-finisher bomb that could reasonably see play in decks of all color combinations (despite the extreme wordiness of the "cost" of its ability).
Here's some primary examples of how it works:
Here's best example.
Increase Quality simply gives color(s) to colorless creature. Therefore, Increase Quality {X} (You may pay Increase Quality cost as additional to cast this creature. If you do, this creature is [color same as mana spent to it])
Fight Until the End // Death do us Part is split card and I prefer that way because it's more like this
Fight Until the End is designed for each creature fights another creature. It can have two or more creatures fighting same creature as if three creatures are blocking same creature. It is designed for attempting to wipe off the board.
And forgive me for grammar issue. It should go here:
"Each creature you control fights another target creature you don't control."
Also, your rewording for Fight Until the End is still rather ambiguous, but considering it only specifies a single target opposing creature, it's more in line with Alpha Brawl or Nissa's Judgement than what it seems like you want it to do. To specify multiple targets, you'd need to use wording along the lines of what I suggested previously. Wording along these lines might also work: "For each creature you control, choose target creature you don't control. Each creature you control fights the creature chosen for it you don't control." (This is kinda clunky though.)
I'm a begginer cardsmith, so my own feedback might be bad, but here gos
Ars Opalescent:
I think this card is a little underwhelming. for 7 mana, requiring you to run colorless sources, exile your own hand (or graveyard, wich is probably a little more usefull), and taking damage, just to a draw a few cards, is something that won't see play in many decks. The only one of those payments I could see beniffiting is the loss of life, but even so, for 7 mana there are better alternatives. I think its main pro is actually just being a 7/7 flyer. also whats the purpose of "putting the top card of your library into your hand" isn't that just drawing a card? I think a main improvment for this card would be to make it {5}{c}{c} or even {5}{c}, and reducing its power and toughness.
Old cards I revised thanks to your critiques:
New card:
I'll try to give a feedback to both @cadstar369 and @Korora12 in that order.
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Just before giving the feedbacks, I wanted to let you know that at first I was about to write a comment to say something I surely should have mentionned while posting Mecha Progenitus. It made me somehow feel a bit weird about that since the Prismatic mechanic actually isn't from me but it's a mechanic that was designed by @Ral1000. I just changed it a bit my own way as I find it to be an amazing custom mechanic but also wanted it to be a little different to match what I had in mind as card designs.
Therefore, I should also continue by saying what I think about this mechanic is its main limitation that I kind of crossed with the card I've posted previously. I personally think it works better on nonpermanent stuff. The problem with Prismatic on permanents in my honest opinion is that it could become a pain to track over turns. For sure, it's easy if there's only a few permanents with prismatic to remember their colors, and it works quite nicely with etb effects, but keeping track of that permanent's colors during the whole game could be something that I feel like it could become a bit overwhelming. Yet of course the player could just note the colors of their specific card aside on a piece of paper or on their smartphone, but that was just to add some brieve self criticism about that way I reworded it that may not always be very intuitive. If for some reasons there is a lot of permanents with prismatic on the battlefield, it could cause some headhaches I guess.
Here's a link to @Ral1000 card using Prismatic: https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/seek-another-day
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So, with the feedback now! I'll start with Ars Opalescent from @cadstar369
I think that you've made a really good use and that you've take a very intersting turn on Prismatic! (Btw, I'm feeling honored my yugi-like card gave you some ideas haha!)
I greatly appreciate the vast diversity of the panel of cards the last and main ability of Ars can hit. It surely should make it a quite versatile card to play (and if we are speaking about commander once again, it would definitly be quite potent as a 5-color commander that draws a lot of cards when played), yet it needs quite a lot of set-up in order to work well.
In some aspects, it reminds me of the pretty recent Niv-Mizzet Reborn that was also caring about multicolored cards different combinations in order to draw a lot of cards. However, the biggest difference between those two is that it's not possible to use a flicker strategy with Ars Opalescent, because it has to be cast for its ability to trigger, which is a nice way to balance it and that goes pretty much without saying it's a logical choice of design regarding prismatic ability. Compared to Niv-Mizzet, Ars also has the immense advantage to propose a very flexible deckbuilding. With Niv-Mizzet, the player is kind of forced to play a lot of multicolored cards that aren't always what they would really be interested in. With Ars however, you have the choice to put a limited amount of multicolored or to dedicate your multicolored deck to one specific color in order to maximize its pure value. I think it's a very cool idea as it would ask the players for having to put a lot of creativity in their efforts when they will be building up a commander decklist using Ars as their commander.
After this small talk about its ressemblances with Niv-Mizzet and its playability as a commander, I'll add that it would probably also a potent and useful card for outside of only commander format, even though on one hand it will surely suffer in those formats from the comparison with other late game bombs that would most of the time be considered as better alternative - on the other hand, Ars still offers the versatility of being playable pretty much anywhere. I think what may be its biggest weakness is the two colorless mana in its mana cost, but that's fine and overall I think it balances it nicely.
In terms of pure flavor, that choice of artwork is lovely and the card's name and creature types seem to be very fitting. It makes me wonder what kind of ancestral creature or important character Ars would be in the lore. If you have thought about some background or about including it in a particular constructed environment I'd be delighted to hear about those (I'm sometimes a bit of a lore maniac, I just like so much discovering or discussing/supposing concepts based around the depth of Magic lore (despite my very own lack of imagination haha))!
Nonetheless, there's a minor critic I would have about this design and it's concerning what you've explained about it is that I unfortunatly think doesn't really work out as intended. (Idk how to use quotes, sorry...)
When you say:
''Here's some primary examples of how it works:
- You cast it for RRRRRCC : You can exile a colorless and/or red card, or you can exile any number of red cards. (up to 2 cards or any number)''
Actually from my understanding of the game rules you can't exile colorless cards with Ars, since by definition those cards have no colors and therefore won't be affected by the ability of Ars that only cares about colored cards. Here's what says an article on mtg.fandom as reference about that point: ''Note that colorless is not a color, and is not represented in the color wheel.''Link to that article: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Colorless#:~:text=In%20Magic%3A%20The%20Gathering%2C%20colorless,represented%20in%20the%20color%20wheel.
In that regard, if you added the colorless mana in its mana cost for the purpose of allowing it to exile colorless cards and to draw on those, I think you might maybe want to rework it with either adding a line to explain that you can also use colorless cards to do so.
Very fun idea and design!
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@Korora12
My first impressions are that it has a lovely choice of artwork. I don't know if that was intended flavorfully, but I think it's really nice that you've got exactly three of those ''strange'' creatures hanging around on that piece of art while one being is bigger than the other, and that you've somehow tried to report it into your design (at least, that's the way I feel it) with it being a three-colored card caring about three lands types, but with the last two types making it less strong than the first one.
On another side, even if that's quite nice in terms of flavor, it's also a bit clunky that it doesn't follow the same rule for that ''pump'' effect. That makes the Forest just much more valuable and doesn't give the player many reasons to run a ''balanced'' decklist speaking about the variety of land types they run. That may be intended though. I'd say this first ability feels very green to me and I don't see the white and black aspects of it, so I think that may be why you wanted Plains and Swamps to give less value than Forests. Given that the second ability, about which I'll say some words later on, is mainly white/black I think that works just fine.
Where that ''pump'' effect becomes really strong is that it works with lands that have multiple land types, which are pretty much the most played lands in constructed. The best land to play with those cute Pilgrims would surely be Indatha Triome, which ''pumps/buffs'' Babaiki Pilgrim by +2/+2 on its own. I think in terms of pure stats the card is well balanced since it's still requiring quite some set-up in order to play it big on turn two/three, and a 3-colored card is quite an investment in a lot of formats. I'd maybe even say it could be a bit too weak to feel playable, as even a lot of stats without evasion doesn't mean much and the player that runs this card would need to put quite a lot of efforts to get there for, imho, little rewards. In continuity, that does not mean it's bad either, it's just a fair and fine balance.
Then, about the second ability, it uses the ''very white'' wording that checks if your opponent controls more of a kind of stuff than you do, here: lands (which is pretty adequate, hey, given that this cards works with lands)! It may be my only critic about this card, that's that this wording is to me something more specifically mono-white. I don't think there's any mutlicolored card in the game using this wording. Even if the card is white itself, its color-identity should imho remain on the Abzan side of themes (Idk if that makes much sense btw, feel free to tell me if something I say is too poorly formulated).
The land destruction aspect isn't much Abzan neither, at least to me, but I can understand it and it doesn't strike me as ''not matching theme,'' so I can say it's fine if it's intended to be part of an Abzan archetype caring about, maybe (that's just a random assumption to give an exemple of archetype I'd think is fitting well with that design), the number lands in your opponents graveyard or something like that. All the three colors are doing a bit of land destruction, Golgari and Orzhov both have some land destruction spells, so for Abzan, why not? In terms of power level, I think it's fairly strong and I like the fact it's giving the choice between two very different options that seem to work well together at closing the gap for that ability to trigger again next turn. Concerning that choice, it's maybe more of a personal feeling, but I think the modal wording with ''choose one'' may look a bit better (but I guess you may be lacking some space for the text to fit well).
Overall, I think it's a neatly exectued cards design with a lot of good ideas!
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EDIT: I won't post any card, but anyone is free to post a card and ask for feedback after this comment!
Light feels a touch overbalanced now. You could have left the scry 1 on the +1 (it's perfectly fine to have that in WB), though it's probably for the better that you cut the draw on the minus ability. Granting infect at sorcery speed to a single creature isn't particularly scary, so you could probably get away with the minus ability being a -3 to match Light's starting loyalty. My original concern was more that Light also drew you a card, so you could just play the card as a cantrip; without that it's become an interesting build-around.
With regards to Arkados, am I correct that the restriction on X means you must control a nonland mana source and/or reduce Arkados's cost in order to cast it? Since there's both the X in the cost and the X for the activated ability, it's ambiguous as to whether the restriction applies to casting the card, activating the ability, or both. (In this case I'd assume it only applies to casting the card, since there's no restriction written into the activated ability, unlike these cards.)
@Shelko thanks for the feedback and reference; I've updated my original post to credit Ral1000. Glad you like the card!
I agree that Prismatic works way better logistically for nonpermanent cards (I think I've been partially numbed from dealing with all these Alchemy cards and not being able to play as much in person).
The overall design came to me as an anime-style "boss card of someone's deck" for a story I'm writing (somewhat influenced by recent card game anime like Build Divide and Shadowverse), with the typing influenced by Malfegor and some other loose notions of what Ars Opalescent would be like as a character. I'll probably end up exploring their lore at some point in the near future, but I'm don't know if I'll ever put that onto more cards or into a set (I still have two custom commander deck projects to finish first
Thanks for pointing out the rules for colorless. I was thinking combinatorially, where choosing nothing still counts as a combination (and thus colorless is the combination of colors where you don't take any of them). Colorless being unavailable is likely more intuitive and doesn't affect the card overall, so I'll leave it as is.
(By the way, to use quotes, click the "Quote" button under the paragraph icon's dropdown menu. If you copy/paste the desired text, highlight it, and then click the "Quote" button it should enclose all of it automatically, but you can also copy/paste into the gray bar that appears when you click the button by itself first.)
As for Ezill, you should treat the name as if they are title. Instead of "Ezill, god of infinity", do this Ezill, God of Infinity
There are some grammar issues, however, they are good.
You spelt "Beginning" wrong. You don't have to say, "At beginning of your upkeep", you can get away with "On your upkeep..." I believe both are same thing.
Therefore, "On your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill" Notice that you don't have to include the adjective when you are preferring to Ezill. This way can save some room and make it easier for people to read flavor text.
Second ability is good but there are some grammar issues. The activate cost should have ":" after itself word to show the activated ability. I must warn you; this ability can be activated more than once. If that's your intent, that's fine.
For classic ability with proper grammar; "{c}{c}: Create a copy token of Ezill, expect for it's not legendary."
For weaken ability; "{c}{c},{t}: Create a copy token of Ezill, expect for it's not legendary"
On third ability, it seems reasonable as long as the second ability allows it to be activated more than once. If you decide to go with weaken second ability, I recommend; "You may not cast creatures from your hand or put creature from graveyard onto the battlefield, if Ezill is on the battlefield."
As for Light, wayward balancer, you also should treat the name as if it's title name. Such as "Light, Wayward Balancer"
You don't have to capitalize "put" on first ability.
I don't see any problem otherwise, good job.
As for Arkados, as usually, treat the adjective as if they are part of title.
First ability is somewhat doesn't work exactly you would like it to. Try this: "Arkados can be only casted, if {x} is equal or greater than number lands you control." This way will prevent caster from casting it when he or she spent mana less than the lands they control.
Second ability is reasonable however, I would prefer increase from {1} to {3} because it can be a commander. Don't forgot you don't have to include the adjective when you are preferring to Arkados.
Now for third ability, if you are looking for try to increase the power and toughness of the Arkados, I afraid that won't work. Proliferation applies to any counters only rather than the power and toughness.
If that's not your intent, then do this to fix the grammar; "{x}: Proliferation X times, you may put a land from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. Activate this ability only once your turn"
I would prefer land being put onto the battlefield tapped AND make it ability can be only activated once because this classic ability allows player to put all lands onto the battlefield, if mana allows.
Now, I would like feedback on this card.
Kuk-Kuk, the Treasure Hunter by FireOfGolden | MTG Cardsmith
- "At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill, God of Infinity" is the correct way to phrase the trigger (see these cards). Since Ezill is a legendary creature with a comma in its name, this can be shortened to "At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill." (In general, it should be shortened, but you can opt not to since it's at the end of a sentence.) Otherwise there are no alternatives to this wording.
- Neither of your suggestions 'fix' Arkados's wording (addressed in the spoiler below).
I agree with the majority of the other feedback, particularly the point about considering increasing the non-X portion of Arkados's cost. (While it'll certainly be exceedingly annoying to recast in commander, it's perhaps a bit too easy to use when not your commander.)If the aim is to make the current text more realistic (compressed to reduce clutter):
Legendary Creature – God
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on Ezill.
{c}{c}: Create a token that's a copy of Ezill, except it's not legendary.
You can't cast permanent spells from your hand.
1/1
Legendary Planeswalker – Light
Whenever you put one or more -1/-1 counters on a creature, put that many +1/+1 counters on target creature.
[+1]: Put a +1/+1 counter on up to one target creature.
[-5]: Target creature gains infect until end of turn.
Legendary Creature – God
X can't be less than the number of lands you control.
Arkados's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control.
{x}: Proliferate X times, then put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield [tapped]. [X can't be 0.]
*/*
(I'm not currently looking for feedback on any particular design, so I'll refrain from commenting on Kuk-Kuk for the moment to reduce confusion.)