Design a Card

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Asthanius
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Asthanius » 22 Sep 2015, 05:34

And Void Winnower.

Also, self-damage based on power has been done in mono-black, as well as red. See Kiku, Night's Flower and Kiku's Shadow.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Mara Kalat » 22 Sep 2015, 06:54

Self damage has been printed before, in Black, White and Red:
ImageImageImageImageImage

Planeswalker ultimates can be pretty much all over the place. Just looking through the Ajanis you have full land destruction, pretty much becoming invulnerable, gaining 100 life or getting one huge token or a ton of 2/2 cat tokens.
It's all a matter of how you cost them to make sense. Your Planeswalker comes out late with a CMC of 6 (I must've misread earlier) and then needs to +1 up to it over the course of 4 turns, that should be slow / late enough to do... well, pretty much whatever you want really.

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Phi
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Phi » 22 Sep 2015, 08:24

Based on the notes, I made a few small changes:

Atratus, Winnower of Souls
3 W U B
5 loyalty
+1: Put a 1/3 Illusion creature with vigilance onto the battlefield. It has "When this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it."
-2: Exile target creature. You lose 2 life.
-9: Exile all creatures your opponents control whose power is less than their toughness. Scry X, where X is the number of creatures exiled this way.

I made them 1/3 instead of 2/2/ since it seems to work better with the flavour of the ultimate. Ultimate was simplified and was added to it to make it a bit more blue.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby WP&P » 23 Sep 2015, 17:17

Due to their fragility, I'd be inclined to make the Illusion tokens be 2/3 instead of 1/3. I do like the power less than toughness thing going on.

A slight change in wording might be in order: "-9: Exile each creature your opponents control whose..." so that it is clear that you are applying the test of power < toughness on a creature-by-creature basis. The "all creatures" phrasing could lead to a misunderstanding... "Jim controls one creature with power less than toughness, therefore I am exiling all of his creatures".
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Asthanius » 25 Sep 2015, 09:09

Just looking for some input on mechanics:
Landlink - Click to Expand
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Dilute - Click to Expand
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Urge - Click to Expand
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Essence - Click to Expand
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Re: Design a Card

Postby chetoos » 25 Sep 2015, 13:12

Landlink is unclear on what it does exactly, and it doesn't give the land type.
Dilute seems just unnecessary, it increases cost without adding any value to the card.
Urge is an interesting card idea, allowing you to get more umph for trading away a card draw
Essence doesn't feel like it needs to be a keyword. It can just be a subtheme in the fake set.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby AdmiralMemo » 25 Sep 2015, 13:51

Well, dilute seems to make it colorless, so you can play it in a non-black deck.
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chetoos
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Re: Design a Card

Postby chetoos » 25 Sep 2015, 14:46

Oh, I misread it, I thought it was just an additional cost to cast if you wanted to spend it, ok. Then yeah, it seems like a good effect, but make sure that you balance the cards appropriately.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby WP&P » 25 Sep 2015, 15:17

It's not clear what it means to play a Landlink card as a land... does that mean you play it for free? Is it then still a creature? It says that it retains its abilities, but that doesn't mean it retains its power and toughness or its creature types.

I tend to wonder whether the mechanic might be better as one that goes on lands, and lets you cast them as creatures (or other card types) if you pay the mana cost when you play it. Invert it, in other words; this card would be a type of Plains, that can be played as a creature for 3W.

Urge might need the phrase "you may cast this card as an instant" so that you don't have timing problems. But I really like it! I'm already starting to imagine an Urge version of Sign In Blood, or other cantrips...
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 25 Sep 2015, 16:26

A few quick thoughts:
Landlink - I assume the point is that you can make it either a creature with an activated ability, or a land with an activated ability, but never a land creature? This seems like it will be pretty difficult to flavor appropriately, as a dwarf turning into a plains is rather odd.

Dilute - I assume that it is just an alternate casting cost with no extra benefit for doing so? If that's the case, I would definitely make the colorless cost higher. I would look at the 2/C hybrid mana for baseline inspriation. Note that it will still be a black spell and creature, even if you're not spending black mana to cast it. It may end up taking up more design space than necessary, as it's essentially two cards in one with minimal gain.

Urge - This is an interesting mechanic. The one thing I would do at the moment, is make the urge cost on sorcery spells higher, as they can end up being cast at instant speed as a result of instant speed card draw.

Essence - I would want this to be a subtheme similar to the Spawn/Scion tokens of ROE/BFZ; the importance of its inclusion should be flavorful as well as mechanical. I would be concerned about limited design space here though, so make sure you have enough room before you lock this in as a mechanic.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby susu.exp » 25 Sep 2015, 18:39

Landlink - Highly problematic in how it interacts with the rules. Since the card itself is not a land it wouldn't count as your land drop for the turn and therefore you could just dump a couple of them on turn 1. I.e. these would function like Moxen that entered tapped. A better version might be:
You may discard ~ any time you could play a land. If you do search your library for a basic Plains and put it on the battlefield tapped.

Dilute - Could just use the 2/C hybrids, making it superfluous as a keyword unless you want dilute to matter in some way.

Urge - Seems interesting and has a lot of possible design space. I do think that Urge cost can be quite low, because you are giving up a draw for it.

Essence - Seems like it has a very narrow range between unplayable and busted cards, i.e. even though there are a couple of knobs to the mechanic most possible values aren't really options.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 25 Sep 2015, 20:01

Regarding making Urge cards cheap, remember how R&D was confident in their ability to cost cards with Phyrexian mana? Never underestimate the value of getting 'free' mana...
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Re: Design a Card

Postby susu.exp » 25 Sep 2015, 21:47

SixFootTurkey wrote:Regarding making Urge cards cheap, remember how R&D was confident in their ability to cost cards with Phyrexian mana? Never underestimate the value of getting 'free' mana...


The problem wasn't the cost really, it was that the Phyrexian mana got around color pie restrictions. If a mono-green deck gets to straight up kill a creature that's a problem, because you are supposed to pay for this ability by making your mana base less consistent. Furthermore life is a resource that is quite easy to spend, because you have plenty to start with. But you only get one card per turn and getting an additional card is costly. Now, you don't want cantrips aplenty with this, but we are generally happy to pay 3 mana for an additional card, or 2 mana and 2 life. And 5 mana for two cards was played in constructed recently (3 copies of Jace's ingenuity in the 2nd place finishing UB control deck at PT Fate Reforged). "Draw a card" are the sweetest words in Magic, while "gain a couple of life" aren't...
Outburst, the card used to showcase the mechanic is not anywhere near busted. At its casting cost it's a pretty bad burn spell. And the only reason to Urge it would be that you are mana screwed, in which case forgoing your draw means that you will continue to be mana screwed. You are always 2-for-1ing yourself when you Urge.

Now, of course there are cards that 2-for-1 you that are busted - Force of will comes to mind. But FoW is discard, which is better than not drawing, because you get to pick what you discard and the discarded card goes to the graveyard. Also FoW costs no mana, allowing it to be played before you had a turn. Unless there's an Urge cost of 0, or an alternative cost that's not the case here.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Asthanius » 26 Sep 2015, 05:18

Here, this should make landlink easier to understand:
Landlink - Click to Expand
Image

As for the flavor of it, the plane itself is breaking down and so is "taking back" some creatures in the form of the mana associated with them. This is an event known as the Unraveling.

Also, I was thinking of adding a rider to Outburst, and I want to make sure it doesn't make the card too powerful.
Outburst - Click to Expand
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Finally, I'd rather not use two-brid, because it means that I can't control the costs as much, and I also wouldn't be able to do things like this:
Flash of Brilliance - Click to Expand
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Re: Design a Card

Postby WP&P » 26 Sep 2015, 09:46

Plainslink still doesn't actually say that the card is a land and not a creature, assuming that is the intention. It needs to be worded a little bit differently, as "Plains" is a type of land; maybe just saying "Plains land card" instead of "Plains card" is enough in that regard. "It enters the battlefield tapped as a Plains land card and isn't a creature."

I'm not sure about the mana counter thing, I know that's there for memory purposes, but does it start to beg the question of what happens if the counter is removed? Is there another way to mark this?

Finally, a minor flavor suggestion I would have is that maybe the name of the mechanic isn't quite right. You're describing a devolving of useful manifestations (i.e. summoned creatures) back into constituent parts (mana). Maybe the name needs to reflect this better; the term "link" suggests a useful cooperation, which is a different connotation. Maybe something like "Plainsform" (Landform) or "Plainsrot" (Landrot) or "Plainsbreak" (Landbreak).

One possible solution to the mana counter thing might be to have the mechanic go and exile a plains from your library, to then be "encoded" onto this. That might even open up design space, as dual lands that count as plains could be fetched this way. This may have been suggested by others earlier in this thread, or at least hinted at - credit where due!
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 26 Sep 2015, 10:35

I highly recommend not having it become a plains _card_; cards exist outside of the battlefield, so that's going to create quite a bit of confusion regarding how long the effect lasts. (If it dies, will you be able to return it as a land card from your graveyard?)
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Re: Design a Card

Postby AdmiralMemo » 26 Sep 2015, 14:45

WP&P wrote:I'm not sure about the mana counter thing, I know that's there for memory purposes, but does it start to beg the question of what happens if the counter is removed? Is there another way to mark this?
WotC didn't have a problem with the "manifestation counters" from Arbiter of the Ideal. If they were removed, the things were still enchantments. However, WotC tends to be more flexible with rares than commons.
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SixFootTurkey
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 26 Sep 2015, 17:25

A one off card also has more leeway than a keyword that will be a big part of a set.
Asthanius
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Asthanius » 26 Sep 2015, 21:45

I don't see any reason to worry about what happens if the counter is removed, because there won't be any ways in limited to do that, and there aren't many ways to do that in Magic as it stands.

Also, saying that it enters the battlefield as a Plains, and not as a Plains "in addition to its other types," means it's just a Plains and nothing else.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 26 Sep 2015, 22:13

I'm double checking there's not a more relevant ruling, but from the CR:

205.3d An object can’t gain a subtype that doesn’t correspond to one of that object’s types.

Basically though, a Plains is a Land subtype, but making something a Plains does not inherently make it a Land as well. (This is why you typically only ever see effects that can make something into a Plains/Mountain/etc will only effect permanents/cards that are already lands.)
Last edited by SixFootTurkey on 27 Sep 2015, 01:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Design a Card

Postby AdmiralMemo » 26 Sep 2015, 23:41

SixFootTurkey wrote:This is why you will only ever see effects that can make something into a Plains/Mountain/etc will only effect permanents/cards that are already lands.
Oh really?
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SixFootTurkey
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 27 Sep 2015, 01:50

*cough cough* Yes Memo, you were saying? >.> (I changed the wording partway through, and forgot to go back and reread the first half... That comes back to bite me more than I would care to admit. But hey, at least it was a coherent sentence, even if it was incorrect...)

Anyway, the wording on that does back up the main point I was trying to get across.

An aside, this does bring up the fun topic of posting incorrect data to get someone else to do the legwork... (I personally find the discomfort of being called out more annoying than doing the work oneself, but it's still neat to think about.)
Asthanius
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Asthanius » 27 Sep 2015, 08:41

So like this, then? I took a page from Awaken's playbook for the wording. Also, this conveniently allows Mountainlink to fit on five lines by itself, which is the unofficial maximum number of lines for an ability's reminder text.
Landlink - Click to Expand
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SixFootTurkey
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Re: Design a Card

Postby SixFootTurkey » 27 Sep 2015, 13:42

I'd have to check, but I believe having it enter 'as' a colorless Plains land may not actually change its types... can anyone else chip in?
Asthanius
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Re: Design a Card

Postby Asthanius » 27 Sep 2015, 15:08

Okay, I think I finally have it this time.
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