Custom cards - Playability assessment

[Volafortis]

Made the life drain symmetrical.

Form of the Demon - BBB
Enchantment - Rare

Indestructible

1, Pay 1 life: Draw a card. Place an ascension counter on Demonic Ascension's controller. Only an opponent may activate this ability, and they may only use it once per turn.

At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card. Then, each player loses X life, where X is the number of ascension counters you have.

[CSt]

That doesn't help, because the activation is simply to weak to actually warrant any use. You would have to be in a situation where you accepted putting yourself on a 19-turn clock to draw one card. Meanwhile your opponent draws two cards every turn regardless of what you do.

Nitpicking:
You named the card "Form of the demon" and in the text you call it "Demonic Ascension". Or is that another card?

[Volafortis]

Ah, no, I was torn between two names.

And realize: This is basically an indestructible, and harder to cast Phyrexian Arena for you if your opponent activates it once. But, I suppose to make it a real Phyrexian Arena, regardless of whether or not your opponent uses it:

--------------------------
Form of the Demon - BBB
Enchantment - Rare

Indestructible

1, Pay 1 life: Draw a card. Place an ascension counter on Form of the Demon's controller. Only an opponent may activate this ability, and they may only use it once per turn.

At the beginning of your upkeep, draw a card and lose 1 life. Then, each player loses X life, where X is the number of ascension counters you have.
--------------------------

And the ability is *not* too weak to warrant use: You (as the opponent) allow yourself to keep up with the owner of this in terms of card advantage (Actually, you can get ahead of them if you use it on their turn and your own.) which is quite a big deal, and if your the aggro deck, I feel like you'd rather be playing against this than with it.

The card is made for multiplayer, where it allows you to try to "go off", but at the same time allowing your opponents the ability to dig for cards to stop you, and you'll probably get targeted, due to the clock you'll be putting on everyone. Which is why I had a Drain Life effect originally, but I realized that would be too punishing in 1v1.

[JackSlack]

That's not bad. It's now an acceleration rather than a powerhouse for its controller.

[AdmiralMemo]

So, I was looking at the 6 special "Celebration" cards that were never legal in any format (like "Proposal" and "1996 World Champion") and I was thinking...



These two seem... not broken? Like they, or something similar, could actually see play and not be ridiculously powerful. What do you think?

[Re'ozul]

The Dragon actually seems fairly weak. He enters as a 7/7 for 9 (and a really red 9 at that). So giving him at least flying on top of the current would likely be better. Or give him a Landwalk ability.

Talrand from M13 blows the Robot Chicken out of the water in regards to the token's stats. BUT since these tokens are hard removal as long as Robot chicken is on the board, its probably okay (since you want the destroyed).
This card is a massive removal magnet.

EDIT: After looking at it again, the Chicken is probably too strong. It comes down on turn 4. The opponent has exactly 1 turn (unless you somehow have 0-drops in your hand) to deal with it. After that you get hard removal that you can crack on their turn. effectively, anything that you block with the eggs dies, or bigger stuff than what you block dies. This is among the bombiest of bombs. Limiting the destruction to artifacts might be in order (as you can still get artifact creatures with that)

And now I'm thinking of removing the destroy effect and simply having a cracked egg make a copy of robot chicken. Expinential growth of 2/2s.

[Tinfish]

So a little while ago an idea arrived in my head from somewhere. It doesn't have a name but for the purposes of this post I'll call it Happy Rainbow Town:

Happy Rainbow Town
Legendary Land
Happy Rainbow Town comes into play tapped.
Tap: add WUBRG to your mana pool.
During your upkeep, you must sacrifice a land.

Now initially Happy Rainbow Town seemed okay to me, in that you get five mana up front but it gradually reduces your mana pool, until I realized that play today is a lot faster than it was during school lunchtimes in my youth; and that it enables a turn two Sliver Queen; and that if you keep playing land each turn, the upkeep is negligible. So it's obviously overpowered.

I've got multiple ideas for fixing it. Possibly it's an artifact that costs five colourless; or you sacrifice five lands when it comes into play; or you can't play lands while it's in play; or all of the above.

[Re'ozul]

You could add: Upkeep - sacrifice a Land.
unless thats already what you planned. (so if you have no other lands left, it dies from lack of ressources to suatin itself)

[Tinfish]

You could add: Upkeep - sacrifice a Land.
unless thats already what you planned. (so if you have no other lands left, it dies from lack of ressources to suatin itself)

It's possible that my templating is bad, but that's already in there. I actually considered giving it cumulative upkeep, but that's a rather archaic ability. Actually, now I'm not sure - the "sacrifice a land" upkeep does mean that whenever it becomes inconvenient, you can get rid of it by sacrificing it to itself.

[Re'ozul]

True but thats not bad.
Keep in mind that the ability adds 5 mana to your pool. and you have to use that all in the pahse you tap it or it empties out.
Cumulative upkeep would have made this unplayable.
Even as it is its okay.
Turn 2: Town (1 mana this turn available)
Turn 3: sac land, play land (6 mana available)
etc
You will never get higher than 6 mana (unless you play a lot of 'may play additional lands' cards). But becuase of this you'll likely never have much in the way of combat tricks. Further, any land destruction the opponent has means you lose, because they just torpedo your sac-fodder lands until you have nothing less.

[JackSlack]

So, this card, I know exactly the wording I want exactly, but what cost should it be?

Planeswalker Panic
Enchantment

Replace all instances of the word "target" with "random".

Edit: Actually, that's too vague. Let's try again.

Planeswalker Panic
Enchantment

If any permanent would be targeted by a spell, instead select a permanent of that type controlled by the same player randomly. If a player would be targeted by a spell, instead target a player randomly.

[Volafortis]

Already a card:

Grip of Chaos

[JackSlack]

O.O

Well THAT's going into my Commander deck now.

[Volafortis]

It's worth noting, however, that it's no exactly the same as the one you made; this will randomly select any legal target, not just ones with the same controller.

Also, have a random number generator ready, dice probably won't cut it

[Antitonic]

Rereading the El Goonish Shive archives brought me back around to the current storyline in which an ENTIRELY ORIGINAL *cough cough* card game is being played. During the deck building stage, this card is drawn. Translating into a slightly more Magic-based interpretation:

Click to Expand

Ideally, this is going into an Innistrad-like set. Lots of werewolves and vampires to go around.

[AdmiralMemo]

You mean the card that we declared slightly over-powered or under-costed and out-of-flavor for black (Shroud) on Page 1 and 2 of this thread?

[Antitonic]

Yes, that one exactly!

I should really read less when I'm tired. Or more. Or something...

[Tinfish]

So I realized the other day that MTG players are supposedly treated as planeswalkers for lore purposes. Which led to me wondering what my planeswalker card would look like ...

Tinfish, Planar Cartographer
3UG
Loyalty 4
+1: Scry 2. You may put a land revealed this way into play tapped.
-2: Search your library for a creature card with converted mana cost equal to or less than the number of loyalty counters on Tinfish, Planar Cartographer, and put it into play.
-8: You gain an emblem reading "Creatures you control gain landwalk of a basic land type of your choice".

I like geography, anthropology, and am generally inoffensive, so I tried to come up with abilities which worked with those traits. I think if I were a planeswalker I'd just spend my time wandering about looking at things, maybe have tea with Tamiyo.

Then there's a more "in-flavour" version:

Tinfish, Fish in a Tin
2BB
Loyalty 3
+1: Put three colorless Tinfish artifact tokens with "Tap, sacrifice: add U to your mana pool" into play.
-1: Sacrifice any number of Tinfish tokens to put an equal number of blue 2/2 Untinned Fish creature tokens with Islandwalk into play.
-5: You get an emblem reading "All Untinned Fish tokens under your control gain +4+4 and trample".

This one is out of flavour for blue, which doesn't have much in the way of mana generation, token creature generation, or pump ... but it's fish in a tin, I can't think of any more flavourful abilities for it.

What do you think of my card(s)? What would your planeswalker card be?

[Re'ozul]

Planar Cartographer:
Chassis: Good
+1: Very Nice
-2: This is okay but a relatively low threat. Further in oder to get anything big (4+ CMC) you have to +1 a whole bunch. So you may get to the situation that you have to decide to either draw your scried bomb or keep it in the library for the -2 ability. It works a bit against the +1.
-8: Very useful and works due to being part green, but feels a bit lackluster.

Fish in a Tin
Chassis: Fine
+1: yay free mana
-1: Gross. Fishy comes down on turn 4 and you get 3 tins. Depending on your board state, three more on turn 5. And then on turn 6 you get 6 2/2s with islandwalk.
-5: Hurk.

The second version is one that is absolutely a target of "Throw everything at this guy even if its not optimal".

[Tinfish]

In my defense, I was trying to figure out mechanics for tinned fish. A can of tuna is unlikely to be an optimal planeswalker, and, being inanimate, doesn't actually do much.

Would the Planar Cartographer's -2 ability be more appealing if it were 0 instead? The way I've understood planeswalkers' (usually) two abilities is that you have to make a choice between them; one will get you closer to their ultimate, one will take you further away but provide more immediate benefit; and of course the third will, if not immediately win you the game, make it substantially harder for your opponent.

I was worried that "tutor for any creature and put it into play" was obviously too powerful; I mean, it'd give you a fifth-turn Emrakul! I was thinking of Yisan, the Wandering Bard for this ability ... but you're right in that Yisan doesn't require you to remove charges from him to search up creatures. I could easily see this being a 0 ability - that way your choice is between searching up a four-drop now or scrying, maybe getting an extra land for your next turn, and getting a five-drop next turn. You're choosing between ramping creatures or ramping land, I guess.

As for the ultimate, landwalk seems something quintessentially blue and green to me - most of the time these days you only see it in Islandwalk on squid - but also fits nicely with the flavour of the character. The Cartographer provides maps for the creatures to follow to avoid the enemy troops. As to lackluster, it's always possible that this is another case of my expectations being outdated, but it's essentially "your creatures cannot be blocked" - which, considering you can use the first ability to get more land, allowing you to play more creatures, and the second ability to play more creatures, making all those creatures you've played unblockable seems like a short road to Winsville.

I will grant you that it relies upon your creatures surviving - against a removal-heavy deck, or a situation in which you can't afford to attack because you need to keep blockers back, it's not very useful. Maybe if it granted Vigilance as well? Or Haste, or possibly even Hexproof?

[tamaness]

templating:
Scrying doesn't reveal the cards, and you can't put one into play during a scry. If you want to manipulate the cards in this way it should probably read:

+1: Look at the top two cards of your library. You may put a land from among these cards into play. Put each card either onto the top or bottom of your library in any order.

This allows the mechanical action of scrying, but allows for the land to be played from among those cards.

Balancing:
Fish in a tin's first minus should probably be a -2 or a -3, and probably should make 1/1 or 1/2 untinned tokens.

The ability is definitely in Blue's color pie, and I really enjoy it. I do like that for the limit break to do anything of use, you'll have to use the second ability at least once, so it's more of a two-stage limit break, than one that you go all-in on one-shotting. I'm also a fan of not being able to blow off the ultimate immediately when you've got a Doubling Season.

Did you mean for Fish in a Tin to be Black, or did you mean to cost him at 2UU?

[edit to add:]
Cartographer's first minus might be better costed at -1 instead of -2. It takes you two turns to get a four-drop off of it, but you can grab a three-drop immediately (Reclamation Sage, Goblin Rabblemaster, and Courser of Kruphix are all three-drops). As is, you have to either grab a 2-drop immediately, or scry.

[Re'ozul]

I agree with tamaness.
Tinny's second ability at -2 for 1/1s.
If Tinny was supposed to be Blue not Black, then it may also work to have the +1 create a number of tins equal to your devotion to blue.

[Tinfish]

Whoops, yes - Tinfish, Fish in a Tin is definitely meant to be blue, not black. Because fish live in water.

[Antitonic]

You mean the card that we declared slightly over-powered or under-costed and out-of-flavor for black (Shroud) on Page 1 and 2 of this thread?

Seeing as we have a new contender then...

Click to Expand

I have a feeling the same arguments might be made.

EDIT: Misread the initial rules text.

[AdmiralMemo]

Yeah, seems like it should be white/blue if it has shroud. Since it gives itself +0/+2, it's a 3/5 shroud flier.

The Vampire angle on both other abilities is highly situational, though, so you can discount it somewhat. Therefore, I think 3WB seems decent for a 3/5 shroud flier that buffs other Angels and is good against an opponent who happens to use Vampires.

Like, if your opponent is using a Zombie rush, he eats one, and the rest get through. Not so good.