Adding abilities to lands that feel sorta like having the ability to cycle their land is pretty sweet. I design a lot of cards with that angle. Cards like goyfe and deathrite get waaaay cooler, as do weird tricks like gravecrawler. Imagine if you will, playing a lightning bolt that turns into a nether spirit from the yard. Or something like Death Spark!
Make a decision about if you want cards to have similar costs or occupy different areas of the high low spectrum.
It's always nice to see more land destruction! I usually get so much flack for posting 3cc LD (because for some reason people love telling me wizards doesn't do that anymore as if that would be important to me or mattered to what I was doing) that your obv overpowered stuff puts a big stupid grin on my face! Last week I was AEther Mutationing my Acidic Slimes in PEZ cube and everyone had a wonderful time being incredibly frustrated. Just add eternal witness and repeat!
Anyway here are some sweet cards that I made and I think you will love!
Dark PrayerB
Instant
Target player loses 1 life.
Draw a card.
Flashback - Sacrifice a creature
LichfireBR
Instant
Deal 2 damage to target creature or player.
You may return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
I can imagine a lot of environments where this card is fine. It just seems sorta uncomfortable to cast and probably doesn't work very nicely with what people have going on already in their environments.
I love scry in colours that normally don't get draw manipulation.
Nice to make your acquaintance BFFChilli! I had no idea everyone was cockatricing it up in my absence!
Yeah the problem is often that everyone wants the sweet blue cards innit? Plus it only takes one degenerate thing you have trouble undoing to ruin your day. It's funny I tend to play a lot of Gx rockish disruptive aggro decks in powered cubes because I like how it puts pressure on consistently and it tends to have a really easy time removing important pieces of strategies and the concentration of important artifacts goes way up.
I really like how the boon satyrs and vensers and goyfes of the world allow us to be proactive while still playing a draw go element. I'm sad it isn't more relevant in more cubes but I guess bouncing is a lot less good now that everyone has comes into play abilities.
Great post Wildfire!
I had this huge response typed up on my mobile but then I navigated to another page to find out the name of Gnarled Mass and the page decided to refresh! Woe is me!
Anyway the point was that I really enjoy it when I take a position in a discussion and someone capitulates and humors me and their proposition makes me nervous and reconsider. Truly this is a negotiation and subject to environmental factors. Like a 3/3 that replaces itself seems pretty meager, but one that immediately shows up and generates you a card and influences your draws as well as having the normal battlefield impact of a 3/3 changing profitable attacks and blocks, that sounds like something more interesting. In the context of cube it's a lot less scary, many decks in cube do things much less fair than making 3/3s for 3, and the card is often of dubious worth if you cannot grind out a win vs an unfair opponent or you are similarly degenerate and can just play everything you see pretty easily. Asking if a cantrip 3/3 is fair in standard or modern is a different story eh bloodbraid?
Anyway this totally reminded me of a recent Magic Box episode where Kyle and TSG discuss blue archetypes and the subject of UG is debated between ramp and tempo where Kyle criticizes UG tempo as being too fair. I think it hits home. People who play with relatively power level flattened cubes and PEZ/Pauper cubes might have a different perspective, but I thought I might mention it.
What does everyone think of this guy:
Pouncing Zandrak2G
Creature - Beast Mutant
Flash
When Pouncing Zandrak enters the battlefield draw a carte.
2/1
Man did I ever play the hell out of Crack the Earth in multiplayer before EDH became the only way anyone would play multiplayer games. Between the terravore decks and my tradewind rider decks it always felt like an exercise in prolonging the game. Good times!
Your card scares me because I know those decks can be evil in 1 on 1 too. Thank goodness it's no wasteland, but there are environments when being down land or being at no land doesn't have to feel too disadvantageous.
Kavu Climber says this costs 3GG, but I could see it costing less by modern design philosophy.
I like that you caught yourself at the end there. I'd love it if there was more discussion on this subject because frankly I think it's pretty easy to get sick of being reminded that cards like Kavu Climber exist and it tends to be a sorta unhelpful comparison when that does come up. I feel like the poster was involving questioning cards like climber and maybe even Admirers or Whistful Selkie when he posted his bold 3 drop. It's like a discussion piece (not unlike a kitchen island or a new coffee table book) lets at least humor the lad, mentioning similar cards can feel so relegating and dismissive.
What are everyone's fave 3 drops anyway? What does a 3 drop have to do to make it in your average powered cube? Pseudo-degenerate Grim Monolith touting cube? Power level flattened cube? or played in the Modern format?
I don't quite understand the 3 for 1. I guess you can catch the odd 2/1 attacker but those get invalidated pretty early by things like obstinent Baloth anyway right? Like how many cards is a 4/4 and 4 life worth against the attacking 2/1s deck?
Anyway I'm not entirely sure why it's unprintable next to things like resto or say thragtusk. Like masked admirers isn't a strong card by today's standards and has been downgraded to uncommon presence in limited. This card has one toughness and one ability more than that thing and is a multicolored 4 cost spell. Like we are all in agreement that flash is free on playable green cards these days right?
The UR guy is a weird one and kinda a remant from my experiences with UR in the magnivore/wildfire decks and the lighting angel/venser/rift wing decks. Just a dorky guy with a body that stands on it's own and can create substantial tempo advantages or reset something when it comes down. Has anyone else had a lot of experience bouncing people's lands?
Seems like this discourages interactive play and would probz lead to a lot of haymaker tap out matches. Might be something to think about when balancing this drawback and assigning it to colours.
A forest mountain that tapped at the end of your turn might be cool.
Anyway here's some crap I posted elsewhere but thought you guys might like I'll just do the tip of that iceberg now.
Jungle Bug2UG
Creature - Insect (R)
Flash, flying
When jungle bug enters that there battlefield draw a card.
3/3
(Would you believe that the custom card forum were excited to give me all sorts of input about how to make it weaker but had no inclination to tell me why it needed to be weaker? Lol riptide lab said they wanted something stronger)
Wild Weird2UR
Creature - Elemental Weird (R)
Haste
When Wild Weird enters the battlefield return target artifact or land to it's owners hand.
3/3
Could be hybrid without the haste maybe. I just wanted to give RU a better lil backbone
Brilliant OutburstUR
Instant (U)
Draw 2 cards then discard a card from yonder hand.
One I thought of the other day. I really love the idea of having control of what's going to my graveyard within the first few turns. I really dig blue and red grave stuff. Being able to use half a turn's mana to dig EOT is pretty nice too.
The people I've brought back to the game or taught the game through cube are like in the rush class to magic. Especially when you get them playing peasant or cubes limited to sets with modern design constraints.
That being said I'd only try to learn people to play magic with limited (or degenerate perversions of limited) if they are people I think can handle it. Cube puts you in the deep end fast and if you are playing with degenerate old cards like mana vault or balance etc you will be making it super easy for bad lessons.
I was really thinking of making a set of custom cards that would be for learning magic or to replicate sorta standard concept and would be drafted as a custom cube. I also considered making a crapcube with this in mind that would only contain white bordered commons and uncommons. The same could probz be achieved with only core clause and rares if you like.
Great angle you've got here. Always nice to see people trying to find a new purpose for a time tested format.
If we assume most decks will want to be playing 2 colours (pretty fair if you ask me from first eyeballing) we've got blue in 4 of those combos out of a population of 10.
I don't really mind the card. I like things that put pressure on blue mages but that's just me. Blue also just tends to be the best colour in magic fairly consistently unless you've got something like gtc/gtc/gtc going on but enough about that. I think the rat would be fine with 1 toughness. Make it just love attacking.
Anyway some of your cards make me a little quizzical or uncomfortable at first glance but I need to remember I know nothing about your set and the design elements you've incorporated into its planning. So please enlighten us.
Also what's a flayer? It sounds super gross and scary to have a racial identity closely associated with the idea of removing the skin from dead animals.
Make a decision about if you want cards to have similar costs or occupy different areas of the high low spectrum.
Like maybe fatty cheating decks aren't that fun to play against or things like jitte get old.
It's always nice to see more land destruction! I usually get so much flack for posting 3cc LD (because for some reason people love telling me wizards doesn't do that anymore as if that would be important to me or mattered to what I was doing) that your obv overpowered stuff puts a big stupid grin on my face! Last week I was AEther Mutationing my Acidic Slimes in PEZ cube and everyone had a wonderful time being incredibly frustrated. Just add eternal witness and repeat!
Anyway here are some sweet cards that I made and I think you will love!
Dark Prayer B
Instant
Target player loses 1 life.
Draw a card.
Flashback - Sacrifice a creature
Lichfire BR
Instant
Deal 2 damage to target creature or player.
You may return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
Wooooooooooooo
Nice to make your acquaintance BFFChilli! I had no idea everyone was cockatricing it up in my absence!
Yeah the problem is often that everyone wants the sweet blue cards innit? Plus it only takes one degenerate thing you have trouble undoing to ruin your day. It's funny I tend to play a lot of Gx rockish disruptive aggro decks in powered cubes because I like how it puts pressure on consistently and it tends to have a really easy time removing important pieces of strategies and the concentration of important artifacts goes way up.
I really like how the boon satyrs and vensers and goyfes of the world allow us to be proactive while still playing a draw go element. I'm sad it isn't more relevant in more cubes but I guess bouncing is a lot less good now that everyone has comes into play abilities.
I had this huge response typed up on my mobile but then I navigated to another page to find out the name of Gnarled Mass and the page decided to refresh! Woe is me!
Anyway the point was that I really enjoy it when I take a position in a discussion and someone capitulates and humors me and their proposition makes me nervous and reconsider. Truly this is a negotiation and subject to environmental factors. Like a 3/3 that replaces itself seems pretty meager, but one that immediately shows up and generates you a card and influences your draws as well as having the normal battlefield impact of a 3/3 changing profitable attacks and blocks, that sounds like something more interesting. In the context of cube it's a lot less scary, many decks in cube do things much less fair than making 3/3s for 3, and the card is often of dubious worth if you cannot grind out a win vs an unfair opponent or you are similarly degenerate and can just play everything you see pretty easily. Asking if a cantrip 3/3 is fair in standard or modern is a different story eh bloodbraid?
Anyway this totally reminded me of a recent Magic Box episode where Kyle and TSG discuss blue archetypes and the subject of UG is debated between ramp and tempo where Kyle criticizes UG tempo as being too fair. I think it hits home. People who play with relatively power level flattened cubes and PEZ/Pauper cubes might have a different perspective, but I thought I might mention it.
What does everyone think of this guy:
Pouncing Zandrak2G
Creature - Beast Mutant
Flash
When Pouncing Zandrak enters the battlefield draw a carte.
2/1
Your card scares me because I know those decks can be evil in 1 on 1 too. Thank goodness it's no wasteland, but there are environments when being down land or being at no land doesn't have to feel too disadvantageous.
I like that you caught yourself at the end there. I'd love it if there was more discussion on this subject because frankly I think it's pretty easy to get sick of being reminded that cards like Kavu Climber exist and it tends to be a sorta unhelpful comparison when that does come up. I feel like the poster was involving questioning cards like climber and maybe even Admirers or Whistful Selkie when he posted his bold 3 drop. It's like a discussion piece (not unlike a kitchen island or a new coffee table book) lets at least humor the lad, mentioning similar cards can feel so relegating and dismissive.
What are everyone's fave 3 drops anyway? What does a 3 drop have to do to make it in your average powered cube? Pseudo-degenerate Grim Monolith touting cube? Power level flattened cube? or played in the Modern format?
Anyway I'm not entirely sure why it's unprintable next to things like resto or say thragtusk. Like masked admirers isn't a strong card by today's standards and has been downgraded to uncommon presence in limited. This card has one toughness and one ability more than that thing and is a multicolored 4 cost spell. Like we are all in agreement that flash is free on playable green cards these days right?
The UR guy is a weird one and kinda a remant from my experiences with UR in the magnivore/wildfire decks and the lighting angel/venser/rift wing decks. Just a dorky guy with a body that stands on it's own and can create substantial tempo advantages or reset something when it comes down. Has anyone else had a lot of experience bouncing people's lands?
A forest mountain that tapped at the end of your turn might be cool.
Anyway here's some crap I posted elsewhere but thought you guys might like I'll just do the tip of that iceberg now.
Jungle Bug 2UG
Creature - Insect (R)
Flash, flying
When jungle bug enters that there battlefield draw a card.
3/3
(Would you believe that the custom card forum were excited to give me all sorts of input about how to make it weaker but had no inclination to tell me why it needed to be weaker? Lol riptide lab said they wanted something stronger)
Wild Weird 2UR
Creature - Elemental Weird (R)
Haste
When Wild Weird enters the battlefield return target artifact or land to it's owners hand.
3/3
Could be hybrid without the haste maybe. I just wanted to give RU a better lil backbone
Brilliant Outburst UR
Instant (U)
Draw 2 cards then discard a card from yonder hand.
One I thought of the other day. I really love the idea of having control of what's going to my graveyard within the first few turns. I really dig blue and red grave stuff. Being able to use half a turn's mana to dig EOT is pretty nice too.
That being said I'd only try to learn people to play magic with limited (or degenerate perversions of limited) if they are people I think can handle it. Cube puts you in the deep end fast and if you are playing with degenerate old cards like mana vault or balance etc you will be making it super easy for bad lessons.
I was really thinking of making a set of custom cards that would be for learning magic or to replicate sorta standard concept and would be drafted as a custom cube. I also considered making a crapcube with this in mind that would only contain white bordered commons and uncommons. The same could probz be achieved with only core clause and rares if you like.
Great angle you've got here. Always nice to see people trying to find a new purpose for a time tested format.
I don't really mind the card. I like things that put pressure on blue mages but that's just me. Blue also just tends to be the best colour in magic fairly consistently unless you've got something like gtc/gtc/gtc going on but enough about that. I think the rat would be fine with 1 toughness. Make it just love attacking.
Anyway some of your cards make me a little quizzical or uncomfortable at first glance but I need to remember I know nothing about your set and the design elements you've incorporated into its planning. So please enlighten us.
Also what's a flayer? It sounds super gross and scary to have a racial identity closely associated with the idea of removing the skin from dead animals.