Just wanted to craft a card that I would really want to see some day.
Soulwalk Guide
Creature- Human Cleric (U)
When Soulwalk Guide enters the battlefield, exile another target untapped nonland permanent and return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control.
2/1
On top of all of those synergies, this card is somewhat difficult to go infinite with and does a decent job of acting like an innocuous tapper for limited environment purposes. This is a card I am genuinely hoping that we might see some day and I wanted to check if there are any obvious problems with this design that I may have overlooked.
Given that Charming Prince is a thing, this is probably reasonable.
I think its balanced as a flicker effect without requiring the permanent to be untapped when targeted, and I think that qualifier muddies the text a bit.
I completely missed on a few read throughs that it returns the permanent tapped, until i saw your comment about it being a tapper. The returns tapped is the sort of thing that will probably be missed regularly, like how there's always that limited card people forgethasreachuntil they attack into it. In this case, its controller would likely either forget or "forget" to tap their own returning creature. That's not to say that returning the permanent tapped is a bad interaction, just that it would probably be misplayed for a while until people get used to the card.
I actually took the returning tapped thing as a cue from eldrazi displacer, which does the same thing (though I got the wording for it slightly wrong. Will change that).
Requiring an untapped target was put there to make infinite loops more difficult (if this card blinks restoration angel, for example, and the angel blinks this card, the guide won't be able to blink the angel a second time and keep the loop going). Without this requirement, the risk of Copycat-style shenanigans (attached to a cheaper creature with higher power, no less) would make me a bit uncomfortable. As it can only target untapped permanents and returns permanents tapped, things are relatively safe.
Tapping the target as it comes back in was something that I implemented to give this card a general purpose outside of triggering ETBs in limited environments. As the blink doesn't wait until end of turn, it can't effectively remove blockers like flickerwisp. As the blink isn't being triggered at instant speed, it can't blank removal like ephemerate and restoration angel. Having this card function as an incidental tapper gives this card some sort of use "in a vacuum".
If you can think of a better way to preempt loops that doesn't look as messy, I am open to suggestions.
Unfortunately, the only way to 100% avoid loops is to have the permanent come back at the end of turn, other than that there will always be the possibility of shenanigans.
That said, I wouldn't worry overly about the Resto Angel interaction because it already exists with Felidar Guardian, and that combo doesn't show up anywhere that I can think of. Further, its not like Resto and Kiki-jiki which can win immediately, because you need a third card to actually benefit from the loop.
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Soulwalk Guide
Creature- Human Cleric (U)
When Soulwalk Guide enters the battlefield, exile another target untapped nonland permanent and return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control.
2/1
While this card isn't too impressive on the surface, it checks most of the boxes for white synergy in Commander. As an immediate (non EoT) flicker that works on most permanents on ETB... which happens to have CMC < 3 and P/T each < 2... there are tons of synergies. You can search for it with recruiter of the guard, can revive it with Idol of Endurance, Sun Titan, and Reveilark, can use it to reset Idol of Endurance, remove luminous broodmoth counters, or to get more triggers from karmic guide, Reveilark, Sun Titan, recruiter of the guard...
On top of all of those synergies, this card is somewhat difficult to go infinite with and does a decent job of acting like an innocuous tapper for limited environment purposes. This is a card I am genuinely hoping that we might see some day and I wanted to check if there are any obvious problems with this design that I may have overlooked.
I think its balanced as a flicker effect without requiring the permanent to be untapped when targeted, and I think that qualifier muddies the text a bit.
I completely missed on a few read throughs that it returns the permanent tapped, until i saw your comment about it being a tapper. The returns tapped is the sort of thing that will probably be missed regularly, like how there's always that limited card people forget has reach until they attack into it. In this case, its controller would likely either forget or "forget" to tap their own returning creature. That's not to say that returning the permanent tapped is a bad interaction, just that it would probably be misplayed for a while until people get used to the card.
Requiring an untapped target was put there to make infinite loops more difficult (if this card blinks restoration angel, for example, and the angel blinks this card, the guide won't be able to blink the angel a second time and keep the loop going). Without this requirement, the risk of Copycat-style shenanigans (attached to a cheaper creature with higher power, no less) would make me a bit uncomfortable. As it can only target untapped permanents and returns permanents tapped, things are relatively safe.
Tapping the target as it comes back in was something that I implemented to give this card a general purpose outside of triggering ETBs in limited environments. As the blink doesn't wait until end of turn, it can't effectively remove blockers like flickerwisp. As the blink isn't being triggered at instant speed, it can't blank removal like ephemerate and restoration angel. Having this card function as an incidental tapper gives this card some sort of use "in a vacuum".
If you can think of a better way to preempt loops that doesn't look as messy, I am open to suggestions.
That said, I wouldn't worry overly about the Resto Angel interaction because it already exists with Felidar Guardian, and that combo doesn't show up anywhere that I can think of. Further, its not like Resto and Kiki-jiki which can win immediately, because you need a third card to actually benefit from the loop.