MTG Salvation

I think you made a lot of really good updates. Just some quick responses to further explain my feedback

Quote from InfinityDie »

Ok, yeah, I agree with the white being a color break. I think black still fits due to the fact that is has a bunch of self-harming card draw, like phyrexian arena.

In general, you don't need to remove colors to solve a color pie breaking design. The design couldn't really be WB, but it could be WUB if you wanted it to. It can also just be UB or even just mono blue, though more colors tends to work better in commander. Note that Kalem doesn't have self-harming card draw. Kalem just says draw an extra card a turn. There is no life loss payment of any kind. Kalem has other abilities that allow you to discard cards, but these abilities are fully under the owners control meaning they aren't self-harming and aren't connected to the card draw ability at all. Kalem's first ability is solidly blue. No other color gets that effect

Judge of the Xios - I like the simplification, the card is only marginally weaker though. This More or Less style effect just goes infinite very easily Basalt Monolith is just the simplest combo off the top of my head. There are tons more though.

Guess I did something right.

You got many things right. Card design is hard

Well, the entire point was to line it up to kill any creature it fought.

The issue with merci was that it didn't do what you wanted. first strike only works in combat. It doesn't work with fight effects. Merci was able to trade with any creature not kill any creature. Your current design is totally reasonable but the cost seems way too low. Compare it to Avatar of Woe. Sure both cards can technically cost 2 mana, but the hoops you have to jump through for avatar are dramatically higher. Just playing merci on turn 2 and being able to murder every turn will be really oppressive at an EDH table.

Dust is legendary, it wouldn't be too hard to keep track since there is only one. And yesh, I guess the infinite 0/0 is a bit broken.

I totally missed that. Update looks good.

Mettaton NEO - I don't like this design. It has too much going on IMO. I don't think you can even fit this much text on an MTG card in any kind of reasonable way. It also is letting you make infinitely many artifact tokens for free which is super degenerate. less so because the commander is colorless so it's harder to combo with, but still super busted and degenerate. Just off the top of my head, this card makes arcbound ravager infinitely big for free. Krark-Clan ironworks makes infinite mana that you can then use to make infinite 5/1 tokens. I'm sure there are other more degenerate combos using cards I'm less familiar with too.

Chara, the Heartless - I don't know the lore, but this card seems really keyword soupy to me. Its also just kind of comically large and expensive. The design itself is good but it seems way over the top to me. I'd dial it back a bit.

Papyrus, the Aspiring - Baring mino templating issues, this design looks solid to me. My intuition is that it will be miserable to play against and is probably a bit too efficient, but it seems like that's what your going for.

Sans - The front side works fine. It is incredibly easy to flip it using pain lands though. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not. As written, the card seems way too good. The back side is way too efficient and way too easy to get. It seems really easy to just make disgusting amounts of tokens way too quickly. Basically, turn 2 rock, turn 3 play it transform and phase it out making a 4/1 and a 1/1. Turn 4, phase out phase in in response to trigger making another 4/1 and four 1/1s. phase out + phase in again to make another 4/1 and nine 1/1s. Phase out again and make another 4/1 and eighteen 1/1s for a total of 48 power on turn 4. And even more to come next turn because the effect grows exponentially. This just seems super busted.

I feel like you haven't learned the right lesson from innistrad tribal. The very reason innistrad tribal was so well liked is that it was only a minor theme in the set. You could play the formats and weren't forced down a tribal path. The tribal paths were available, but alongside a half a dozen other paths you could take that were equally viable. As a result, the draft format was very diverse with a ton of different viable archetypes. Expanding the tribes to three color and making tribal a larger part of the set is going against the very thing that made innistrad tribal work so well. It's just not a good idea to do. Just consider what your draft format looks like when you expand all your tribes to three color. I'm going to list all the tribal archetypes you plan to support given the shard expansion you describe first.

WU : Supports both Zombies and Spirits
UB : Supports both Vampires and Zombies
BR : Supports both vampires and werewolves
RG : Supports both humans and werewolves
GW : Supports both humans and spirits
WB : Supports zombies
UR : Supports Vampires
BG : Supports Werewolves
RW : Supports Humans
GU : Supports Spirits

In the original innistrad and in SOI, only half the color pairs were concerned with tribal. It was a minor but important theme of the formats and people liked it because there were other things to do alongside tribal. By expanding the tribes to three colors, you make tribal into a major theme of the format, to the point where literally every color pair is trying to support at least one tribe and sometimes multiple tribes.

I don't think the direction you are heading in is a good one. If you want to make the tribes of innistrad feel free fresh again, I'd recommend just coming up with new mechanical space for the existing tribes to play in. Make them play differently. If you really want to shake things up, you could push the tribes into different color pairs, but I suspect you will run into a different problem if you do. The tribes just won't feel like innistrad tribes. For example, zombies on innistrad are UB. If you push them to some other color pair, you will also change the underlying flavor and they will end up feeling like they belong on some other plane. WB zombies are an Amonkhet thing for example.

Overall feedback, please take more care when formatting your cards. If something is a mana symbol, make it a mana symbol: W not W. As is, these cards are hard to read. I'm just going to go through and give card by card feedback.

Ben, the ceaseless Hunger - This card can't be templated cleanly. It has two different eminence abilities and they need to be seperated. This card also needs a name change. The Ceaseless Hunger is an already existing title that shouldn't be reused. How about "Branch Blossom, the Consuming." I'm imagining a fungus in a similar vein to Slimefoot except it is trying to grow and reproduce to literally eradicate the rest of the local ecosystem. It's also not clear to me if you intend for Ben to have devour. As is, I think it does, but I'm not sure. I also don't like that the card has multiple different token making abilities. It feels redundant and messy. If it were me, I'd choose one and balance the card appropriately.

Talkao, the Entitled - Seems reasonable to me. The only thing I find clunky is that the card has multiple abilities that accomplish the same thing, becoming the monarch. If it were me, I'd remove the etb ability or remove the activated ability. Choose one and the design becomes cleaner and simpler.

Kalmon, the Kid - This card is a massive color pie break. This is a solidly blue card. White and black just don't get card draw like this and don't get giant leviathan what is seen on the backside of the card. The wither ability seems out of place and pointless to me as well. It's just keyword soup. Final thought, 13/10 seems super random. 13/13 seems thematically appropriate to me just because of the lore behind the number 13. 13/13 is also plenty large enough and will easily two shot people in commander. In general, unless you have a gameplay reason why a creature should have uneven stats, just give it square stats.

Judge of the Xios - This is a super degenerate combo commander and is just generally busted IMO. As with some of your other designs, I don't like that this card has multiple abilities that do the same thing. Choose one and the card becomes cleaner.


Karz Zil, Corrupt Banker - Seems fine. Nice call back to Gwafa

Merci, Gunner - This card is going to be very counter intuitive for a large bulk of players. I wouldn't generally reccomend mixing first strike and fight. They don't work together and people expect them to. I'm also not sure a "gunner" should be fighting. I feel like it should be punching.

Mac, Brawler - This card is exceptionally pushed. I guess its fine for commander only products but would never be acceptable in standard. It is kind of a theme of my comments here, but I'm really not sure why this is granting wither. Wither is a weird keyword to just be throwing around. This feels keyword soupy to me.


Ann, Time Bender - I really like the idea of this card but it doesn't pass the mental playtest. Figuring out who is going to go next is going to be very difficult when you are skipping five turns chosen at random. It just seems really annoying to me to have to track how many turns each player is going to have to skip. I like the idea, but the scaling on this seems problematic.


Ash the Maker - Just like Marath this needs to have an "x can't be zero" clause. Or else it needs to have some additional cost on the activated ability preventing people from making 0/0 tokens for free infinitely many times. A Rootwalla clause would also work. As is, this card is degenerate and goes infinite trivially. In general I think this kind of design will be a pain to track. You can produce up to 32 different possible combinations of keywords and tracking which tokens have which keyword will be a pain.

Hans, the Trickster - As written this card doesn't work. It needs to say something like "Exile target nonland permanent with CMC X, then return it to the battlefield as an Enchantment-Aura with "Enchant Creature" attached to Hans under your control. (it has no other types or abilities)" I also don't know why this is bothering to exile the target. It doesn't accomplish anything mechanically. I also don't understand why this is bothering to turn things into auras at all. It seems really pointless. I just don't understand this card I guess. I feel like you could get essentially the same game play by just doing..

Hans, the Trickster 0
Legendary Creature - Spirit Wizard
(Hans is Blue/Black)
XX :Exile target nonland permanent with CMC X, and put X charge counters on Hans
1, Remove all Charge Counters from Hans : Hans deals damage equal to the number of counters removed to target player.
0/1

.. In terms of balance, this card seems super busted to me. Its a zero cost card that lets you repeatedly exile any nonland permanent at an efficient rate and then randomly dome people for huge amounts of damage. It seems way too efficient.

I was thinking 1-3 per tribe, one per color (i.e. Green Fitted), one for Artifact Fitted, and one with just Fitted, which would let you equip on etb to any creature. It's not a huge mechanic, but I think it would add a lot to the gameplay of the typical set. It's also pretty generically flavored meaning it could be made deciduous and be used infrequently in subsequent sets. Kind of like vehicles. I also don't think a mechanic needs to show up on twenty cards for it to be worth keywording. Living weapon was only on 10, and only one was at common. This can be used at least as much as living weapon IMO.

I designed this mechanic for a friend working on a set with a lot of equipment in the lore. It's just a keywording of an existing mechanic but I expect it to play well and thought I'd share it anyway. I'm looking for advice on templating, positive/negative opinions/feedback on the mechanic, and fun custom designs using the mechanic or playing around with the mechanic that anyone wants to offer.

{Characteristic} Fitted (When ~ enters play, attach it to target {Characteristic} creature you control.)


Let me know what you all think.

In addition to the design problems posed by others, I'd challenge this design for color pie reasons as well. Mechanically, this card is just a wish and a free cast spell. This is more of a Black card than a Blue card. Blue isn't permitted to wish for any spell. Only black is allowed to wish for any spell. In addition, because this card lets you cast spells for free, it also permits color pie violations by allowing mono blue decks access to any color of effects.

I'm generally wary of wish effects and would recommend avoiding the design space.

I couldn't agree with watchwolf any more here. Energy really is a developmental problem, exacerbated by the fact that energy is parasitic. Serioously, just consider all of these energy cards being played in standard. Lets just ignore all interactions between cards and just evaluate the cards in a vacuum.

Whirler Virtuoso - It is 3 mana for a 2/3 and a 1/1 flier. 3/4 worth of stats spread across two bodies with evasion. This card would probably be playable in the typical standard format on value alone and ignoring other interactions.

Rogue Refiner - Its a 3 mana 3/2 that draws a card. The closest comparison I can find is Wistful Selkie which is harder to cast and has a worse body. Rogue Refiner would be a playable card in most standard environments even without its energy clause.

Bristling Hydra - Its a 4 mana virtual 5/4 with the added upside of blanking your opponent's first targeted removal spell. I'm fairly comfortable stating this card would be playable totally absent any energy support.

These are just straight up strong cards by themselves which end up being significantly better as a result of interacting with other energy support cards. It doesn't help that energy decks will always have the best mana bases as a result of attune with aether, aether hub, and servant of the conduit.

Quote from Apoquallyp »

Again, I don't get where your notion comes from that control mirrors in Innistrad were uninteractive.

I'm pretty sure what he meant to say was that mirrors aren't likely to happen on Innistrad. kjsharp enjoys skill intensive matches, which mirrors provide. Innistrad is a very deep format with a lot of decks so you are very unlikely to be in a mirror in any given match. Innistrad was less interactive because it was more diverse and interesting.

Quote from kjsharp »

1) My statement you cite cannot be summarized or reduced to "signalling is more important". My claim is that Ixalan offers a fundamentally different experience which presents its own game and its own sets of challenges that I don't think people are appreciating.

You are using poetic language to describe how important finding an open archetype/colors is in ixalan (reading signals) and claim that this is less importaant in Innistrad as players can just kind of scramble and do whatever they want. I think "signalling is more important" is a totally fair way of summing up your statements about ixalan draft vs innistrad draft.

2) I articulate ways in which gameplay in Ixalan draft is skill-intensive, fun, and rewarding. I don't place all of the goodness of the Ixalan draft experience into the draft portion of the draft.

All of those articulations amount to my claim. Ixalan is skill intensive because you are always playing psuedo-mirror matches. Mirror matches are skill intensive. The reason we are always playing psuedo-mirror matches in Ixalan is because of its lack of archetype diversity. The thing you enjoy about Ixalan is the very thing other people dislike about it and find boring about Ixalan. There isn't much to do in this format other than keep playing psuedo mirrors.

I'm not claiming you are wrong to enjoy Ixalan. There is nothing wrong with enjoying skill-intensive matches. I personally haven't hated Ixalan, but I have found it boring for the same reason I think you enjoy it.

Quote from kjsharp »

Quote from harlannowick »

You are operating under the impression that it's just because signal reading is more important. I'm very confident you are wrong.

I don't say that anywhere, in either post.

I was mostly responding to your original linked post, not so much to your discussion of complexity here. This is the quote which lead me to the impression that you like ixalan because signal reading is more important.

Ixalan's draft experience is one for the politician, the poker player, the army man, the competitive gamer. And I say that because when you sit down to draft Ixalan, what is going on is that each of you sits down together at a large Christmas feast, and your goal is to acquire the largest amount of food at that feast. To do that, you have to figure out what the other players are choosing - are they taking the stuffing or the yams? The turkey or the ham? The green bean casserole or the red velvet cake? And your goal is to choose your food preferences based upon what the preferences of the others at the table appear to be. And sometimes that involves anticipating Course Two or Course Three by recognizing that certain foods were brought out in the First Course that affected others' preferences. This takes a lot of skill and memory and puts you in direct competition with your fellow drafters to a degree rarely seen in draft formats. To me it makes it feel much more like a competitive skill-based board game or card game.

Your post was very poetic, but I think there is a simpler way of understanding the complaints in relation to Ixalan as well as your enjoyment of Ixalan. Quite simply, Ixalan is a very skill intensive format and heavily rewards good decisions. You like this because competition and skill testing is one of the things you love about magic. However, you have totally missed the actual reasons why Ixalan is skill intensive. You are operating under the impression that it's just because signal reading is more important. I'm very confident you are wrong.

Ixalan lacks depth for the same reason you think it is skill intensive. Ixalan lacks archetypal diversity. Whenever you sit down to play a game in 3x Ixalan, you are effectively sitting down to play an aggro-midrange mirror. It is a general property of mirrors in mtg that they are very skill intensive and difficult to play. There are exceptions to this rule, but the rule holds true in general. This lack of archetype diversity is also why people claim Ixalan lacks depth.


In general, there are 3 ways to ruin a limited format.

1. Insufficient number of playables
2. bad color balance
3. low archetype diversity

Is it worth pointing out that we have already seen at least one constructed playable fight spell: dromoka's command.

speaking of changes to the layout of costs, one of the problems with these redesigned frames is that mana costs for a card will need to be written differently from mana costs in activated or triggered abilities.

Maybe try putting the set symbol in top right corner and left aligning the name? Centered names will look really weird on fanned cards, Being able to see part of the name is really important for identifying the card in your fanned hand.

Edit: Does anyone know how tight the the allowances on the card cutting bots are? The border of these designs may need to be significantly thicker in order to hide production imperfection.

If we are only shooting for "isn't op in any constructed formats," and are honestly trying to maximize the number of keywords I think we can go at least one further.

Eldric the (in)Sane W
Legendary Creature - Human Soldier Archer (R)
Vigilance, Reach, Flash, First Strike, Lifelink, Defender
1/2