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Contest - Insanity mechanic
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Comments
Heedless Spellcaster: http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/heedless-spellcaster
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/spitespeaker-of-jund
Edit: Made a 3rd and final version of it. Thank you for the input the people who commented on the 2nd one and my lvl1 mtg judge friend who is not on here and won't see this:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/cup-o-insanity-2?list=user
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/glimpse-the-depths-1
Nightmare Escape: http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/nightmare-escape-1
[EDIT 07/03]: Slightly fixed templating - just two words changed, original version here: http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/nightmare-escape )
Perhaps one of the following instead?
Disturb, Unhinge, Dement or Unbalance? I like the mechanics, just the name I can't take seriously.
Risky: http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/insanity-ward-patient (The idea was that you had to win before the patient got too many insanity counters)
Non-Risky: http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/nightmarish-beast (Still a bit risky I suppose, but if played at the right time could yield a huge reward)
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/creeping-horror
Edit: whoops - didn't see the deadline had passed. My mistake!
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/painborn-demon
Introduction: While looking at these cards I felt a bit uneasy about most of them... in order to not seem arbitrarily negative, I came up with specific criteria that the cards had to live up to, so that people could better understand why I judged the cards the way I did.
1) Does this card present insanity as a self-directed drawback, and not an offensive mechanism.
2) Is the card accordingly stronger than non-drawback comparable cards?
3a) If non-risky, is upside effectively nullified in a low/non insanity deck?
3b) If risky, is the risk mechanism not trivial to ignore? Examples:
- Unknown number of counters at once
- Spread across multiple permanent types
- Placed on permanents not of your choice
4) Is the card balanced at the low end of insanity?
5) Is the card balanced at the high end of insanity?
Risky
@ningyounk - Heedless Spellcaster - Winner of the Risky category
1. Yes.
2. Yes. Although hard to find a direct comparison, the potential upside of the effect is enticing enough to warrant a drawback.
3. Yes. The (potentially large) random number of counters at a time makes it non-trivial to skirt the drawback.
4. Yes, as suggested by number #2.
5. Yes. Although at high insanity, this may be underpowered as effectively a dead draw, that is mitigated if you're playing with a lot of scry... So this really depends on the format
Comment: This card wins because it is not just a well-designed card in a vacuum, but rather it is a card that tells you what the mechanic does. It's raison d'etre, if you will pardon my French :P It doesn't just use the rules text of the mechanic that I wrote above, but instead explains to you why this seemingly simple rules text can make interesting deck building decisions, and interesting play decisions. Cards like this are the foundation for other cards that use and interact with this mechanic.
@Lujikul - Loxlorn, King of the Abyss
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. No. Placing all the counters on just him makes it quite easy to avoid the supposed risk.
4. Yes, slightly underpowered.
5. No way! Even with +1/+1 instead of +2/+1, a situational 10-power flyer with haste for 5 mana is not balanced.
Comments: A fairly straight-forward idea, but definitely in the spirit of the mechanic. Balance is a big issue though. Nice nod to the madness interaction.
@Faiths_Guide - Rise of Mayhem
1. Yes/no. It is presented as both. While limited offensive use is acceptable *situationally*, in particular for opponents that already use insanity, the huge potential number of counters this card can generate makes it a possible offensive win condition regardless of what deck the opponent is playing.
2. Not really. For both pumping power or killing weenies, you've got lower costed alternatives with more precision.
3. Yes. Random permanents.
4. No - At low insanity, the card is underpowered.
5. Yes - It may still be a bit underpowered due to the uncontrollable nature of the counter placement.
Comments: Ironically, this card started out as very overpowered. Changing the +1/+1 to +1/-1 was definitely the right call, but I think changing it from a global buff to a permanent-by-permanent effect sadly killed the allure of the card. I think if you kept the global effect and put it on a creature body with high toughness (to prevent locking the board of creatures with a global +9/-9), this would be a really versatile and interesting aggro control card.
@CourtOfMiracles - Herald of the Yellow King
Note: If I were giving a prize for flavor, I think this card would have taken it - great name, art, and flavor text!
1. No. Lots of counters, hitting your opponent before you, and you being able to play around this with sacrificial effects all suggest that you will use this to force your opponent to succumb to insanity & life loss while you prepare to work around it.
2. No. Ignoring the offensive use of insanity, 4/5 fear for 5 mana is pretty standard.
Comments: While a very alluring card to build/play with, it gets its allure from using insanity-or-life-loss as an offensive mechanism.
@Jase9112 - Brain Cogs - Honorable Mention
1. Yes, clearly so.
2. Yes, it's clearly a slightly more powerful Wheel of Fortune (which is itself already quite powerful)
3. No. Decks with no other insanity get the full benefit of this card (relative to Wheel of Fortune) with no meaningful drawback. Even in an insanity deck, the ability to choose which permanent they go on makes it trivial to lose the 4 counters that you might get.
4. Maybe, the additional card is fine, but an instant speed Wheel of Fortune may be asking for trouble :P
5. Yes, the risk of playing this at 6+ counters more than offsets the increased power of the card.
Comment: I like that you took an existing effect and tried to rebalance it for the given drawback, rather than coming up with some crazy combination of unexplored mechanics. I would just see if point #3 could be improved somehow.
@Mobin Epiphanizing Hallucinator
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Umm, no. As pointed out in the comments, this card unintentionally short-circuits the risk.
Alternate reality 3, wherein our author worded his card in a better way: "At the beginning of your upkeep, you may remove exactly 9 insanity counters from this. If you do, take an extra turn after this one": With a minor tweak, the card becomes very intersting because you can no longer weasel your way out of the risk, and you're even tempted to be super risky with this card and get it up to 9 counters. Even better if you couldn't sacrifice him.
4. Underpowered at low insanity, but ok given the upside at high insanity.
5. Again, depends on whether the rules/wording issue is fixed. Stupid OP as printed, could be well balanced if done correctly.
Comment: As worded, I can't really give this a prize, but I really like the idea that it's suggesting, and would deserve an honorable mention if worded correctly.
@Gelectrode - Spitespeaker of Jund - 2nd place
1. Yes, mostly. Although this card does place insanity on the opponent, the randomness, slow rate, and buff to that creature really make this of very limited offensive use, while still maintaining the drawback aspect.
2. Yes. Pretty much any time the word doublestrike is involved, people will bend over backwards around drawbacks to get it.
3. Yes. The random selection, coupled with the need to keep the counters out there to get the benefit makes it hard to skirt the drawback.
4. Yes.
5. Yes. With targeted removal being very in-color, the upside is very there despite the randomness.
Comment: This card works perfectly in the spirit of the mechanic, and could easily be printed in a set focused around the mechanic. Plus, the card definitely has overall appeal to it, and players would love to use it. The only thing stopping this from being first place is that it plays in the shallow-end of the risk pool. And while cards like this are necessary, given the choice between that and one card that clearly shows the risk in an imminent way, the latter is better at showcasing the mechanic.
@Jase9113 - Glimpse the Depths - Winner of the non-risky category
1. Yes, clearly.
2. Yes, clearly by comparison to Braingeyser, Stroke of Genius, et al.
3. Yes, technically, but still feels like no. Basically, non-insanity decks can play this with no real drawback, except imagining that it had "X can't be greater than 9". While this is an important restriction meta-game wise since these cards are often used as decking win conditions, it isn't one that is very interactive with the spirit of the mechanic.
4. Yes.
5. Yes.
Comment: This design is fairly straightforward. It wins the non-risky prize because it's really the only balanced card that plays within the lines of the mechanic.
@NicoStoner - Incomprehensible Tome
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes, in a low-insanity deck the card is prohibitively expensive
4. No. Underpowered, but intentionally so.
5. Maybe. I think it is slightly overpowered at the 7-9
Comments: This card is pretty hard to understand power-level wise because of the variety of mechanics interacting on it. It feels a bit all-over the place and missing focus. It's not bad, but I'm sure it could be made more elegant.
@NoahtheBoah36 - Eldrazi Rorschach
1. Yes.
2. Yes, between the power and the potential indestructability, the card is powerful at any level of insanity.
3. No. Although the card's power is proportional to insanity, it has a self-contained non-risky insanity increasing mechanism - the cards plays powerfully even in decks that have no insanity risk.
4. Yes.
5. Yes.
Comment: This card managed to fit well within the criteria, except that it is powerful even in decks with no other insanity mechanisms and is not itself risky. The card works, but doesn't quite convey the potentially interesting deck building and playing decisions associated with the mechanic.
@KOTH_Krunch - Realm of Insanity
1. No. It is too plausible to play 6 mana sources, non-permanent spells, and this as a kill spell.
Comment: Beyond the comment above, the card is just way too swingy to be balanced. Even at 6 mana, the amount of card draw from entering the battlefield is ridiculous. Also, the last ability is only playable if you are circumventing the insanity somehow, so it's not really a selling point for this card to win the contest that's supposed to be about that mechanic.
@Faiths_Guide - Phobia Fiend - Honorable Mention
1. Yes, and clearly so.
2. Yes, and clearly so.
3. No. This card would happily be an undercosted 1-of in a non-insanity deck with no real drawback.
4&5. Maybe, perhaps slightly on the powerful side. (Same for 4&5 because its power is independent of insanity level)
Comment: This card gets bonus points for how clear it is about points #1 and #2. This card screams undercosted fatty with a drawback, and that drawback is insanity. It falls short of an A+ in that the design basically allows it to not be a drawback at all.
@Lujikul Throes of Madness
1. No. Although the card has some interesting effects, and does tie them to insanity, there is no hint of the fact that insanity is a drawback mechanism.
2. Not really. In all but the last case, you get pretty mediocre results for your mana investment
3. Yes. There is no real upside to this card in a non-insanity deck.
4. Underpowered at low insanity, but acceptably so.
5. (If opponents have insanity,) very unique effect that is not overpowered, and is playable even if underpowered due to how interesting it is.
Comment: Beyond the issue mentioned in item #1, this card suffers from a huge lack of focus. It's all over the place, which is unfortunate because that last idea is so cool that I really want a card that explores it properly.
@Grimshac - Blight-mad Wyrmrider - Honorable Mention
I like the simplicity and straigt-forwardness of the design. This card is good except that it's too overpowered at the high end of insanity.
@Jorenthar - Cup O Insanity
Insaney overpowered at all but the lowest insanity levels.
Not Qualified
@HIM - The Watcher Without Eyes
1. No
Other: Unfortunately, this card is so oriented towards using insanity as an offensive mechanism that it just misses the point of the mechanic, and the other considerations are not relevant.
@PiJoeG - Insanity Beckoning
Comments: This card doesn't actually use the insanity mechanic in a meaningful way... it immediately puts a lethal amount of counters out, then nullifies the mechanic itself until it leaves the battlefield. It might as well have just killed the player and skipped the "insanity" counters altogether.
@CourtofMiracles - The Half-Wit's Descent
Comments: This card doesn't just modify the insanity mechanic, it wholly replaces it - while at some point this design space would make sense to explore, the point of the challenge was to explore the insanity mechanic, not to explore some other mechanic that you could replace the insanity mechanic with.
@Gelectrode - Deranged Seeker
Comment: No comment, lol :P
@strongbelieves - Wranx Tomb Fiend
1. No
Other: Unfortunately, this card is so oriented towards using insanity as an offensive mechanism that it just misses the point of the mechanic, and the other considerations are not relevant.
I will be away from the site for about 5 days, so please allow me a week to get the prizes to you!
"It's raison d'etre, if you will pardon my French :P" Hahaha i don't know if you made it on purpose but i find it especially funny considering i'm french
The point is that you put Insanity counters on your own creatures and permanent with some kind of benefit that is balanced through the risk of adding more insanity counters towards you total
Ya, sorry about Rise of Mayhem. It really couldn't stay a global buff (I realized while remaking it) because everything would just die after a few discards. Then I was like "well maybe if it sacs itself as a result of no dudes on the board", then I realized it would be totally useless. The thing would slap counters on lands too (the way it is written) so there would be a board altering buff at all stages of the game until someone died from Insanity or removed the enchantment. That would be one boring game!
To be honest I think the original was better, albeit only in a vacuum. If there were no other way to get Insanity counters then it would've been awesome.
On a side note maybe Insanity counters should have an additional rule associated with them: Insanity counters can't be doubled by spells or abilities. Otherwise don't even think about playing it in EDH where you might be up against Vorel!