Wow.
All I can say is I must have seen your Spite late one night, forgotten about it, then later recalled it only to think it was my own creation.
My bad.
Credit to you.
Continuing the vindictive theme I'm been working on for Serenta, we have the Spite mechanic. I originally started it as pure revenge mechanic that only cared about your life lose, but after seeing CryoZenith take the same design space with a DCC entry, his symmetrical version offered a lot more and fit my design goals.
Taken from my thread there. Also mine was used as a morbid-esque replacement effect/trigger as apposed to an alternate cost condition. No worries, was more interested in pointing out how easy it is to trigger currently.
Gourtarch4
Artifact (M) 4, T, Sacrifice four permanents: Search your library for an artifact, creature, enchantment, or planeswalker card and put it onto the battlefield. Shuffle your library. Walking through its span is a price only tyrants pay.
When I was testing my version of the life loss mechanic (also coincidentally calls Spite) I was using a version that set the minimum amount of life loss it cared about at 3. I did test at any amount, 3, and 5 (though only briefly at each. I settled on 3 for the feel of my set.
The thing is, when you're looking at ANY player to lose life ANY amount of life, it's a fairly easy condition to satisfy and limits the power level of what you do (as pointed out, even lands offer a lot of easy outs between fetches, shocklands, and things like City of Brass variants.) Your example card, Scorch, is an overly pushed example as RDW would LOVE that card and it might even fly in eternal formats. An easy fix would be to make it only target creatures.
Point being, for constructed purposes, assume that Spite as currently written will have it's condition met ~95% of the time thanks to lands and cost things appropriately. Though that begs the question, if it's so easy to trigger, what does it bring to the table? Is it worth it?
Steal Rest1WU
Instant (U)
Tap each untapped creature target player controls. You may untap up to X target creatures you control, where X is the number of creatures tapped this way. "You're invigorating"
- Artex Galla
Ethereal Theft2UB
Sorcery (R)
Search target player's library for a card and manifest it. That player shuffles his or her library.
I just wanted to point out while Ethereal Theft seems to be the winning card for the day, that this is the type of manifest card Wizards specifically said they decided against printing as it would be too powerful. This plus a flicker effect = easy Eldrazi/Progentius/etc, getting around their reanimation clauses. Not to mention non creature permanents too. You don't even need to draw them. Every card printed after and before would have to be considered on how much impact it would have being cheated into play through this method. I'm not sure how everyone felt on that.
So Piar, I've like a lot of what you submit, but that's why I didn't follow suit in voting for you today.
Wow, not really a big fan of today's choices. I'll go unglued then.
Votes: Flatline, Legend
Royal WayWW
Enchantment (U)
Whenever a nontoken creature you control becomes blocked, put a 1/1 white Soldier creature token onto the battlefield. Those who impede royal roads are sure to meet royal arms.
Artex Galla2WU
Planeswalker - Artex (M)
+1: Tap or untap target permanent.
-2: Choose a color. Creatures of the chosen color can;t attack you until your next turn.
-7: Choose a type. You gain control of all permanents of the chosen type.
4
Artex, an old walker, has travel the multiverse for quite sometime in his pocket dimension. He is a relative isolationist who prides himself in being a collector, latching his home onto planes among the blind eternities and slowly taking away forgotten artifacts, monsters, and knowledge he feels valuable. He has watched Serenta for sometime, picking up tidbids forgotten among the war. He would of left decades ago if it were not for Coronis, who has been working on a very interesting project of his own. Well, his own for now.
...this is the kind of card that confuses new players.
But they're so simple. I think they're the kind of cards that teach new players how to see the forest one tree at a time.
It has nothing to do with how complicated they are and everything to do with the fact that they don't act like enchantments. That's very confusing when you're learning a game.
It's like teaching new players the trees of the forest only to point to a boulder and call it a tree too.
New Player: "I thought trees where supposed to be alive and grow."
New Player: "I thought enchantments and permanents are supposed to have effects/abilities on the battlefield."
I get that you're supporting spectrum, but these don't feel like enchantments. Enchantments should have a reason to remain on the battlefield based on their own merit. It kinda the same issue that making enchantments tap has, you're taking one of the defining concepts of the card type and mudding it, and here I don't feel it's justified or flavorful.
Will players get why they are in your set? Sure, most of them will catch on. But this is the kind of card that confuses new players. "What? Aren't enchantments supposed to be like..."
Legend's solution is a fair one as it gives some meaning to them sticking around that's self contained on the card. You could also work in some psuedo buyback mechanic, add a clause like. "3W: Return ~ to it's owners hand." making it repeatable. That would make the NWO friendly though. Maybe this cycle isn't the best solution for what you want at common?
Yeah, I botched the formatting on my second card. Cost me the month. Can't believe I missed it, but what's done is done. Next month y'all. Watch out ;).
Decisive Battle3RB
Sorcery (R)
You and target opponent choose a creature you each control. Your chosen creature fights their chosen creature. If your opponents chosen creature dies from damage dealt this way, destroy all creatures that player controls. If your chosen creature dies from damage dealt this way, destroy all creatures you control.
Keeping this mechanic out of common is a good idea. I'm still worried having two or more nemesis creatures (on either side of the table, pairing with different nemeses) could get confusing, but hopefully it'll still be manageable.
Coronis is a pretty cool card. He's got an awesome, flavorful ability that's balanced by the fact it's based on your opponent's strength (which is great design). IMO he could serve to cost a little less: we live in a world where a 5/5 flying first strike for 7 (that's both legendary and mythic) isn't all that strong. He has no natural protection and can only shut down creatures when your opponent already has a decent board state.
Vealtz has some wording issues (you put counters on things nowadays). This one seems rather strong, since unlike Coronis it kills the creatures instead of just locking them down. I like his design, but held up next to his counterpart he's not as exciting. Both of these feel like rare abilities, so maybe they need a little bit of extra spicy to push them into the mythic-sphere.
Small wording nitpick: the reminder text for nemesis should say "this creature" rather than the creature's name. These are functionally identical, but reminder text for keywords is almost universally generic.
I know the wordings arn't perfect. I appreciate the edits though.
I've done some small amount of testing with Nemesis, and the number of Nemesis creatures on the board does need to be limited, but for a different reason. It's hasn't seemed too difficult to keep track of nemesis creatures with different targets, as you can line them up face to face across the board in one on one games. What HAS been an issue is when 3 or more Nemesis creatures are on the board forming triangular relationships between players. That was confusing!
That's why I'm trying to limit the potential for 4 or more to appear in a drafted deck, so it'd be unlikely for 2 to appear on either players side. Besides, one nemesis at a time please! Haha. 12 across the higher rarities is pushing it, so what I may end up doing is breaking the cycles between the main set and the smaller second set.
I'll adjust the numbers on these for sure, but I'm more curious about mythic level nemesis effects, so I'll have to ponder that more baring suggestions.
Nemesis is pretty cool but I think you cards are overly complex, specially the white one. Why such a huge creature wants to choose Kraken Hatchling as his nemesis ? Why are those legends nuking and paralyzing everyone but their nemesis ?
In my mind something like "~~ Nemesis can't block" or "When ~~ nemesis die, draw a card" would be a better usage of the ability... and much cleaner.
You misread the cards... and the post in general. Since both of them care about how strong there nemesis is, neither one would want to pick a Kracken Hatchling as it would null their effects. I specificly pointed that out in the design notes afterwords as a something to avoid, which I clearly did with my current drafts.
As for cleaner abilities, I would certainly be happy to improve on the elegance here, thats why I posted this thread. However, we are talking about MYTHICS, and what you suggested is not mythic. You can see uncommon and rare versions of the ability in my Serenta thread which I linked in my post and is part of my signature. Those are more in line with what you suggested.
As some of you are aware, I've been working on a set called Serenta, a set of vindictive and hate-filled magic. The sets standout mechanic atm is a creature focused one called Nemesis. I've introduced it before, but for reference:
Nemesis(You may pair ~ with a creature an opponent controls when this enters the battlefield or when the paired creature dies. The paired creature is this creature’s nemesis.)
My current plan is to have 12 Nemesis cards, a cycle of rares and uncommons, and a pair of mythics. One white and one black. Creating effects for the rares and uncommons have been fairly easy and read quite well overall, but the mythics have been harder. Getting the grandiose feel and matching it with the right numbers has been challenging, so I present you my current drafts:
Coronis, Zenith Emperor4WWW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Nemesis (You may pair Coronis, Zenith Emperor with a creature an opponent controls when this enters the battlefield or when the paired creature dies. The paired creature is this creature’s nemesis)
Flying, First Strike
Creatures you don’t control with power less than Coronis’ nemesis can’t attack or block, and their activated abilities can’t be activated.
5/5
-----
Vealtz, Void Manifest4BBB
Legendary Creature - Avatar (M)
Nemesis (You may pair Vealtz, Void Manifest with a creature an opponent controls when this enters the battlefield or when the paired creature dies. The paired creature is this creature’s nemesis)
Deathtouch
When Vealtz, Void Manifest attacks, creatures defending player controls other than Vealtz’s nemesis get X -1/-1 counters, where X is it’s nemesis’ power.
4/7
Some Design notes/thoughts:
* Currently there are no absolute plans to make the pair symmetrical, even though they vaguely feel that way right now with their cost.
* The names and types of these cards are set.
* It's important that players both want to choose a Nemesis and that the creature they choose is the most relevant/threatening on the board. For example, effects that would simply destroy all creatures but their nemesis would encourage players to choose their weakest creature that they wouldn't care if it survived. This goes against my goals and the flavor of a Nemesis.
* -1/-1 counters are part of this sets theme between Wither and a mechanic called Corruption.
First impressions? Suggestions? Where would you go to make a Mythic Nemesis?
Soul Survival2WWU
Instant (R)
Exile target creature. Destroy all other creatures, then return the exiled card to the battlefield under its owner's control. "As the horde rallied toward me, I shut my eyes one last time. After a sudden silence, I opened them to an empty battlefield." - Houn, Jeskai Elder
I like this card, but it seems like a bit too much of an improvement on Duneblast in too many ways.
Ditto. As a WU tempo control player. I'd love this card if it existed, but I feel its waaaaaay too good. Bumping day of judgment effects to instant speed by itself is worth more than U, yet alone the upside of just you getting a creature unlike divine reckoning.
To be fair:
Taken from my thread there. Also mine was used as a morbid-esque replacement effect/trigger as apposed to an alternate cost condition. No worries, was more interested in pointing out how easy it is to trigger currently.
Gourtarch 4
Artifact (M)
4, T, Sacrifice four permanents: Search your library for an artifact, creature, enchantment, or planeswalker card and put it onto the battlefield. Shuffle your library.
Walking through its span is a price only tyrants pay.
The thing is, when you're looking at ANY player to lose life ANY amount of life, it's a fairly easy condition to satisfy and limits the power level of what you do (as pointed out, even lands offer a lot of easy outs between fetches, shocklands, and things like City of Brass variants.) Your example card, Scorch, is an overly pushed example as RDW would LOVE that card and it might even fly in eternal formats. An easy fix would be to make it only target creatures.
Point being, for constructed purposes, assume that Spite as currently written will have it's condition met ~95% of the time thanks to lands and cost things appropriately. Though that begs the question, if it's so easy to trigger, what does it bring to the table? Is it worth it?
Steal Rest 1WU
Instant (U)
Tap each untapped creature target player controls. You may untap up to X target creatures you control, where X is the number of creatures tapped this way.
"You're invigorating"
- Artex Galla
I just wanted to point out while Ethereal Theft seems to be the winning card for the day, that this is the type of manifest card Wizards specifically said they decided against printing as it would be too powerful. This plus a flicker effect = easy Eldrazi/Progentius/etc, getting around their reanimation clauses. Not to mention non creature permanents too. You don't even need to draw them. Every card printed after and before would have to be considered on how much impact it would have being cheated into play through this method. I'm not sure how everyone felt on that.
So Piar, I've like a lot of what you submit, but that's why I didn't follow suit in voting for you today.
Votes: Flatline, Legend
Royal Way WW
Enchantment (U)
Whenever a nontoken creature you control becomes blocked, put a 1/1 white Soldier creature token onto the battlefield.
Those who impede royal roads are sure to meet royal arms.
Artex Galla 2WU
Planeswalker - Artex (M)
+1: Tap or untap target permanent.
-2: Choose a color. Creatures of the chosen color can;t attack you until your next turn.
-7: Choose a type. You gain control of all permanents of the chosen type.
4
Artex, an old walker, has travel the multiverse for quite sometime in his pocket dimension. He is a relative isolationist who prides himself in being a collector, latching his home onto planes among the blind eternities and slowly taking away forgotten artifacts, monsters, and knowledge he feels valuable. He has watched Serenta for sometime, picking up tidbids forgotten among the war. He would of left decades ago if it were not for Coronis, who has been working on a very interesting project of his own. Well, his own for now.
It has nothing to do with how complicated they are and everything to do with the fact that they don't act like enchantments. That's very confusing when you're learning a game.
It's like teaching new players the trees of the forest only to point to a boulder and call it a tree too.
New Player: "I thought trees where supposed to be alive and grow."
New Player: "I thought enchantments and permanents are supposed to have effects/abilities on the battlefield."
Will players get why they are in your set? Sure, most of them will catch on. But this is the kind of card that confuses new players. "What? Aren't enchantments supposed to be like..."
Legend's solution is a fair one as it gives some meaning to them sticking around that's self contained on the card. You could also work in some psuedo buyback mechanic, add a clause like. "3W: Return ~ to it's owners hand." making it repeatable. That would make the NWO friendly though. Maybe this cycle isn't the best solution for what you want at common?
Decisive Battle 3RB
Sorcery (R)
You and target opponent choose a creature you each control. Your chosen creature fights their chosen creature. If your opponents chosen creature dies from damage dealt this way, destroy all creatures that player controls. If your chosen creature dies from damage dealt this way, destroy all creatures you control.
Wording is probably off but I like the idea.
I know the wordings arn't perfect. I appreciate the edits though.
I've done some small amount of testing with Nemesis, and the number of Nemesis creatures on the board does need to be limited, but for a different reason. It's hasn't seemed too difficult to keep track of nemesis creatures with different targets, as you can line them up face to face across the board in one on one games. What HAS been an issue is when 3 or more Nemesis creatures are on the board forming triangular relationships between players. That was confusing!
That's why I'm trying to limit the potential for 4 or more to appear in a drafted deck, so it'd be unlikely for 2 to appear on either players side. Besides, one nemesis at a time please! Haha. 12 across the higher rarities is pushing it, so what I may end up doing is breaking the cycles between the main set and the smaller second set.
I'll adjust the numbers on these for sure, but I'm more curious about mythic level nemesis effects, so I'll have to ponder that more baring suggestions.
You misread the cards... and the post in general. Since both of them care about how strong there nemesis is, neither one would want to pick a Kracken Hatchling as it would null their effects. I specificly pointed that out in the design notes afterwords as a something to avoid, which I clearly did with my current drafts.
As for cleaner abilities, I would certainly be happy to improve on the elegance here, thats why I posted this thread. However, we are talking about MYTHICS, and what you suggested is not mythic. You can see uncommon and rare versions of the ability in my Serenta thread which I linked in my post and is part of my signature. Those are more in line with what you suggested.
Nemesis (You may pair ~ with a creature an opponent controls when this enters the battlefield or when the paired creature dies. The paired creature is this creature’s nemesis.)
My current plan is to have 12 Nemesis cards, a cycle of rares and uncommons, and a pair of mythics. One white and one black. Creating effects for the rares and uncommons have been fairly easy and read quite well overall, but the mythics have been harder. Getting the grandiose feel and matching it with the right numbers has been challenging, so I present you my current drafts:
Coronis, Zenith Emperor 4WWW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Nemesis (You may pair Coronis, Zenith Emperor with a creature an opponent controls when this enters the battlefield or when the paired creature dies. The paired creature is this creature’s nemesis)
Flying, First Strike
Creatures you don’t control with power less than Coronis’ nemesis can’t attack or block, and their activated abilities can’t be activated.
5/5
-----
Vealtz, Void Manifest 4BBB
Legendary Creature - Avatar (M)
Nemesis (You may pair Vealtz, Void Manifest with a creature an opponent controls when this enters the battlefield or when the paired creature dies. The paired creature is this creature’s nemesis)
Deathtouch
When Vealtz, Void Manifest attacks, creatures defending player controls other than Vealtz’s nemesis get X -1/-1 counters, where X is it’s nemesis’ power.
4/7
Some Design notes/thoughts:
* Currently there are no absolute plans to make the pair symmetrical, even though they vaguely feel that way right now with their cost.
* The names and types of these cards are set.
* It's important that players both want to choose a Nemesis and that the creature they choose is the most relevant/threatening on the board. For example, effects that would simply destroy all creatures but their nemesis would encourage players to choose their weakest creature that they wouldn't care if it survived. This goes against my goals and the flavor of a Nemesis.
* -1/-1 counters are part of this sets theme between Wither and a mechanic called Corruption.
First impressions? Suggestions? Where would you go to make a Mythic Nemesis?
Ditto. As a WU tempo control player. I'd love this card if it existed, but I feel its waaaaaay too good. Bumping day of judgment effects to instant speed by itself is worth more than U, yet alone the upside of just you getting a creature unlike divine reckoning.