After having played this deck extensively and tried many lists, I've found a few things, but here are the biggest points:
-Mox opal is strictly necessary
-Voltaic Key is very strong
-Thoughtcast is very strong
-I preferred Planar Portal as my way to go off, as the other options (atlas, temple bell) leave you too vulnerable to opponents drawing hate cards and/or flooding out and fizzling
-I have one Ballista and one Cut//Ribbons as my ways to win, and they are just better than the other options
Design
Appeal: Spike likes rebuying cards. Johnny wants to abuse this somehow.
Elegance: The wording is pretty clunky, but the effect is simple enough and easy to understand.
Development
Viability: Blue is a bad color for this effect. Blue can rebuy spells. Rebuying artifacts would be a big stretch but not out of reason. But rebuying creatures isn't something blue does.
Balance: This card is very powerful but very expensive mana-wise too. The fact that it's limited to three uses makes me think this card is perfectly fine if a little too commander-ish.
Creativity
Uniqueness: Cute homage to Ring of Three Wishes.
Flavor: Why is this ring an enchantment? They have typically been artifacts in the past.
Polish
Quality: You need to capitalize the R in Remove, and the correct order for the card types is "artifact, creature, instant or sorcery" (it's almost always alphabetical).
Challenges:
Design
Appeal: This is too much of an investment for spike. Johnny might try to win the game with it.
Elegance: This card has too many moving parts and numbers to calculate. You could read it three times, understand what the text means, and still not get what the card does.
Development
Viability: Sultai is a good fit.
Balance: This card is a ridiculous investment. Paying six mana and sacrificing several creatures to get a few cards' value out of this is nowhere near a good deal. I wouldn't expect this card to see play in any format.
Creativity
Uniqueness: It's unique.
Flavor: The name is a bad fit for the mechanics. You have so many moving parts on this card, and the name isn't even closely related.
Polish
Quality: You need to combine the reminder texts for gravestorm and flashback. Also, for a mythic rare card such as this one (especially one as wordy as this one), you should skip the reminder text.
Challenges:
Design
Appeal: Spike loves this. Johnny likes it too.
Elegance: This card isn't very elegant. Also, the rules nuances to this card are unintuitive and lead to awkward judge calls.
Development
Viability: Sultai is a good fit for this ability, as is mythic rare.
Balance: This card is a very dangerous commander. Being able to rebuy five cards is a big deal, as it being able to use cards from any graveyard.
Creativity
Uniqueness: It's a lot like Yawgmoth's Will.
Flavor: You don't need much flavor to tie the mechanics together, though some flavor text would be appreciated.
Polish
Quality: The correct wording is "exile X target cards from graveyards" (Angel of Serenity)
Challenges:
Design
Appeal: Spike likes this. Timmy is somewhat interested, as is Johnny.
Elegance: It's clean. Side note: I'm not sure if your wording is the correct wording or not as there is no precedent that I can see, but it looks like it is? It's unfortunately you have to repeat the self-exile clause.
Development
Viability: Green works.
Balance: This is fine. Classic variant on "increase the mana cost of an existing card by 1 but give it an upside". It's probably worse than Seasons' Past under most circumstances, and thus is probably forgettable outside of commander.
Creativity
Uniqueness: The similarity to Restock is unmistakeable.
Flavor: The flavor text is good if a bit flat in my opinion. I'm under the impression that it's referencing something in the artwork which I obviously can't evalutate, but this doesn't feel like the strongest way to evoke a feeling.
Design
(3/3) Appeal: Johnny might want to use this as an enabler. Spike loves the raw efficiency. Timmy isn't really interested.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The fade counters stick around and do nothing if you unmorph the cards early, which is pretty inelegant.
Development
(3/3) Viability: Temur is a good fit.
(0/3) Balance: This is simply too strong. Four mana for 6/8 worth of stats is absolutely monstrous, and that's not even taking into account the possibility of unmorphing the creatures to upgrade them. Yes, Fading 3 is a drawback, but you still have four turns' worth of the creatures before they go away, by which point they will likely have already been removed or traded.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness: This was a very unique approach to the challenge.
(2.5/3) Flavor: The name isn't perfect, but it fits what the card's going for. I think you had some room for flavor text, but the card still functions as a whole without it.
Polish
(2.5/3) Quality: Fading shouldn't be capitalized.
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 19.5/25
Design
(3/3) Appeal: There's something for everyone here.
(3/3) Elegance: It's not too hard to understand.
Development
(3/3) Viability: I don't see any problems here.
(3/3) Balance: I'd be very careful with this card. Five mana is expensive enough that you can afford to push it, but even revealing two creatures is extremely strong. Any cheaper than five mana and this card would have a lot of potential to be broken, but as-is it's expensive enough that it shouldn't cause too many problems.
Creativity
(1.5/3) Uniqueness: All of the effects are simple ones that we've seen before.
(2/3) Flavor: The flavor is a bit bland for my tastes; "champion of the many" could describe a lot of designs with Changeling.
Polish
(2.5/3) Quality: Technically, the reminder text is incorrect. Almost every single creature in Magic has a creature type. In fact, every single creature in the game except for one does. Nameless Race would not be able to give your card a +1/+1 counter, unfortunately. You'd have to account for that somehow; perhaps "...on it for each creature card with a creature type you reveal in your hand." Unfortunately, there's no elegant solution to an extremely annoying problem.
(3/4) Challenges:
Total: 21/25
Design
(1/3) Appeal: Spike likes this for limited. The card is largely forgettable otherwise.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The text is very clean, but the way the card plays out is probably a nightmare. Calculating the optimal times to attack and block and in which manner, especially with larger board states, is quite the headache.
Development
(3/3) Viability: Flanking was more of a white ability than a black one, but I'll let it slide.
(3/3) Balance: This is a textbook example of an unbeatable bomb in limited.
Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness: This card doesn't do much to make itself memorable.
(3/3) Flavor: I like the name a lot. It makes up for the lack of flavor text.
Polish
(2/3) Quality: You're supposed to put the reminder text after "Activate this ability only once each turn".
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 19.5/25
Design
(3/3) Appeal: This seems interesting enough that everyone likes something, even if Spike is skeptical about the card in constructed.
(3/3) Elegance: Assuming the card works the way I believe you intended it to, it would be elegant — I'll elaborate more on this later.
Development
(3/3) Viability:
(2.5/3) Balance: I wouldn't want to be casting this card unless X was at least 3. Once you get to X=4 or 5, you have a powerful card. So your card is 8 mana minimum, with 10 or 12 being the real goal. That's a lot to ask for a card, which means it probably wouldn't see constructed play. In casual and EDH it could be fun, but honestly there are better things to spend your mana on in EDH, especially given how you're locked out of casting spells.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness: It's different enough from Endless Swarm that it gets a pass from me.
(1.5/3) Flavor: The choice of the word "backwater" really doesn't make sense here.
Polish
(0/3) Quality: Unfortunately, there are several quality issues with your card. First, the most cosmetic ones:
Create an X/X green and whiteElemental creature token.
Threshold — You gain 5 life, as long as if seven or more cards are in your graveyard.
The other big issue with your card is that it doesn't work as it's currently worded. Epic doesn't copy the X cost, which means that each future copy will only be able to make 0/0 tokens. I haven't been able to think of an elegant solution to this problem; the best I could come up with is "When you cast Elemental Backwater from your hand, you get X resurgence counters." and "Create an X/X green and white Elemental creature token, where X is the number of resurgence counters you have."
(3/4) Challenges:
Total: 19/25
Design
(3/3) Appeal: Tribal cards for popular tribes get an automatic pass in this area.
(2/3) Elegance: The card's pretty wordy, but it's not too hard to understand. However, the fact that your card uses the old tribal wording (each creature instead of only your creatures) is rather inelegant.
Development
(3/3) Viability: This card honestly borders on mythic rare, both in terms of complexity and power level.
(1.5/3) Balance: This card is very much a "must kill". I really like how the undying vampires are confined to their own realm once they come back, but this card is still really powerful.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness:
(2/3) Flavor: The flavor text and name feel too basic to me. They aren't bad, but there's a lot of wasted potential here.
Polish
(1.5/3) Quality: You don't capitalize keywords. Also, Vampire needs to be capitalized in the reminder text. Lastly, it should be "Vampire creatures with a +1/+1 counter on them have shadow."
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 20/25
Design
(3/3) Appeal: Spike loves this. Johnny likes it too.
(2/3) Elegance: There are a lot of moving parts going on here.
Development
(3/3) Viability: Nothing's out of place here.
(1/3) Balance: This card is far too powerful. One mana to draw two cards is already extremely strong, and the other mode of the card ("UR, Discard a card: Draw two cards") is also extremely powerful for a repeatable effect. Yes, the card is somewhat weak to countermagic, but the card really needs to cost 1U to cast. Compare to Whispers of the Muse.
Creativity
(1.5/3) Uniqueness: There's already a card that's called Circular Logic. Other than that your card is very interesting.
(3/3) Flavor: The name supports the mechanics of the card even if some flavor text would have been appreciated.
Polish
(2.5/3) Quality: The Buyback reminder text should be "You may pay the Buyback cost as you cast this spell. If you do,..."
(3/4) Challenges:
Immortal's Chestplate4
Artifact — Equipment [M]
Equipped creature gets +3/+0, has deathtouch if it's black, has trample if it's green, and has indestructible if it's black and green.
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice a creature. If you can't, sacrifice Immortal's Chestplate.
Equip 2
Until end of turn, whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may have it fight target creature you don't control.
Create a 1/1 green Snake creature token with deathtouch.
Entwine—2G, Put two -1/-1 counters on a creature you control. (Do both if you paid the entwine cost.) The Trial of Strength houses all sorts of deadly creatures.
You need more ways to answer planeswalkers, such as Gideon. I would add 4 Quarantine Field to remedy that.
Also, you're missing some more powerful top-end cards. I would try to pick up some Torrential Gearhulks if you're able to.
Lastly, you should work on improving your mana base; adding four Prairie Stream and four Port Town should improve your mana consistency greatly.
Design
(2/3) Appeal: This is sufficiently build-around for Johnny, and Spike likes how this is both a decision-intensive and powerful card.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The functionality of the second ability is rather confusing at first glance. Also, I'm not a fan of modal cards that have one mode that is generally much stronger by default; however, the fact that the ability triggers on blocking adds a good deal of complexity to the card that does help it overall.
Development
(3/3) Viability: If this idea was executed differently, I would question Green's involvement. As-is, it feels like a flavorful bend to give a Rakdos mechanic to a Gruul card. This card feels like a rare in terms of complexity and a mythic in terms of power level.
(3/3) Balance: This one reminds me of Polukranos, World Eater; an interesting ability on top of an already powerful card. Gold mythic rare cards do have a high power level budget, though.
Creativity
(2.5/3) Uniqueness: Somewhat remniscient of Hex Parasite, but the execution is certainly unique.
(3/3) Flavor: Unleash is a tough sell on a Monk, but the flavor text is strong enough to compensate for it.
Polish
(3/3) Quality:
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 22/25
Design
(2/3) Appeal: Johnny loves this effect already. Timmy likes big splashy things like this.
(3/3) Elegance: The design cultivates a strong "aha!" moment when the reader realizes that the fight ability will let you draw cards if you target your own creature with it. Such design has strong elegance.
Development
(3/3) Viability:
(3/3) Balance: I don't see any problems with this card. It feels like a more commander version of Swans, but even in the modern deck you can run this for redundancy purposes.
Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness: Though this is a callback, that it overlaps so greatly with Swans does hurt you in this area.
(2/3) Flavor: You're missing some flavor text to really tie the card together.
Polish
(3/3) Quality:
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 22/25
Design
(2/3) Appeal: Planeswalkers automatically make Timmy happy, and Spike likes the power level and flexibility of this one.
(2/3) Elegance: Planeswalkers with four abilities definitely take a hit in this area, even though they have been done before.
Development
(3/3) Viability:
(1.5/3) Balance: This card is extremely powerful. I don't think the -3 was necessary; the +1 is very strong at locking up a threat whilst adding loyalty, and it even has the ability to ramp you. The -X is also extremely powerful, and the emblem is certainly a new variant of "you win the game". I think I would have gone with only three abilities on this one. Also, the fact that the -X gains you life is even more powerful.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness: Hard to call this one anything but unique.
(3/3) Flavor: The mechanics are all very flavorful. Well done!
Polish
(3/3) Quality:
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 21.5/25
Design
(3/3) Appeal: Everyone likes something here.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The wording of this ability is very inelegant.
Development
(3/3) Viability: This fits Bant.
(0/3) Balance: This card is extremely overpowered. Let's look at the level 0 application:
Phthino, Essence of Plenty1GWU
Legendary Creature - Elemental (M)
At the beginning of your upkeep, put three +1/+1 counters on Phthino, Essence of Plenty. "Let us all share in the bounty of the seas, the woods, and the fields."
5/8
That's clearly too powerful even on its own. Factor in the utility of growing your other creatures, and even the fact that this can draw you several cards at a cost, and you have a severely overbudgeted card.
Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness: This has too much in common with Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer for my liking.
(3/3) Flavor: The flavor fits.
Polish
(1/3) Quality: The correct wording would be "When Phthino, Essence of Plenty enters the battlefield and at the beginning of your upkeep, distribute three +1/+1 counters among one, two, or three target creatures. Then, for each creature you don't control that had a counter placed on it this way, draw a card." Also, you need end quotes on your flavor text.
(4/4) Challenges: It feels like a bit of a stretch to say this evokes the feeling of autumn moreso than summer, but I'll allow it.
-Mox opal is strictly necessary
-Voltaic Key is very strong
-Thoughtcast is very strong
-I preferred Planar Portal as my way to go off, as the other options (atlas, temple bell) leave you too vulnerable to opponents drawing hate cards and/or flooding out and fizzling
-I have one Ballista and one Cut//Ribbons as my ways to win, and they are just better than the other options
I can go more in depth if anyone is interested.
Appeal: Spike likes rebuying cards. Johnny wants to abuse this somehow.
Elegance: The wording is pretty clunky, but the effect is simple enough and easy to understand.
Development
Viability: Blue is a bad color for this effect. Blue can rebuy spells. Rebuying artifacts would be a big stretch but not out of reason. But rebuying creatures isn't something blue does.
Balance: This card is very powerful but very expensive mana-wise too. The fact that it's limited to three uses makes me think this card is perfectly fine if a little too commander-ish.
Creativity
Uniqueness: Cute homage to Ring of Three Wishes.
Flavor: Why is this ring an enchantment? They have typically been artifacts in the past.
Polish
Quality: You need to capitalize the R in Remove, and the correct order for the card types is "artifact, creature, instant or sorcery" (it's almost always alphabetical).
Challenges:
Appeal: This is too much of an investment for spike. Johnny might try to win the game with it.
Elegance: This card has too many moving parts and numbers to calculate. You could read it three times, understand what the text means, and still not get what the card does.
Development
Viability: Sultai is a good fit.
Balance: This card is a ridiculous investment. Paying six mana and sacrificing several creatures to get a few cards' value out of this is nowhere near a good deal. I wouldn't expect this card to see play in any format.
Creativity
Uniqueness: It's unique.
Flavor: The name is a bad fit for the mechanics. You have so many moving parts on this card, and the name isn't even closely related.
Polish
Quality: You need to combine the reminder texts for gravestorm and flashback. Also, for a mythic rare card such as this one (especially one as wordy as this one), you should skip the reminder text.
Challenges:
Appeal: Spike loves this. Johnny likes it too.
Elegance: This card isn't very elegant. Also, the rules nuances to this card are unintuitive and lead to awkward judge calls.
Development
Viability: Sultai is a good fit for this ability, as is mythic rare.
Balance: This card is a very dangerous commander. Being able to rebuy five cards is a big deal, as it being able to use cards from any graveyard.
Creativity
Uniqueness: It's a lot like Yawgmoth's Will.
Flavor: You don't need much flavor to tie the mechanics together, though some flavor text would be appreciated.
Polish
Quality: The correct wording is "exile X target cards from graveyards" (Angel of Serenity)
Challenges:
Appeal: Spike likes this. Timmy is somewhat interested, as is Johnny.
Elegance: It's clean. Side note: I'm not sure if your wording is the correct wording or not as there is no precedent that I can see, but it looks like it is? It's unfortunately you have to repeat the self-exile clause.
Development
Viability: Green works.
Balance: This is fine. Classic variant on "increase the mana cost of an existing card by 1 but give it an upside". It's probably worse than Seasons' Past under most circumstances, and thus is probably forgettable outside of commander.
Creativity
Uniqueness: The similarity to Restock is unmistakeable.
Flavor: The flavor text is good if a bit flat in my opinion. I'm under the impression that it's referencing something in the artwork which I obviously can't evalutate, but this doesn't feel like the strongest way to evoke a feeling.
Polish
Quality:
Challenges:
(3/3) Appeal: Johnny might want to use this as an enabler. Spike loves the raw efficiency. Timmy isn't really interested.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The fade counters stick around and do nothing if you unmorph the cards early, which is pretty inelegant.
Development
(3/3) Viability: Temur is a good fit.
(0/3) Balance: This is simply too strong. Four mana for 6/8 worth of stats is absolutely monstrous, and that's not even taking into account the possibility of unmorphing the creatures to upgrade them. Yes, Fading 3 is a drawback, but you still have four turns' worth of the creatures before they go away, by which point they will likely have already been removed or traded.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness: This was a very unique approach to the challenge.
(2.5/3) Flavor: The name isn't perfect, but it fits what the card's going for. I think you had some room for flavor text, but the card still functions as a whole without it.
Polish
(2.5/3) Quality: Fading shouldn't be capitalized.
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 19.5/25
(3/3) Appeal: There's something for everyone here.
(3/3) Elegance: It's not too hard to understand.
Development
(3/3) Viability: I don't see any problems here.
(3/3) Balance: I'd be very careful with this card. Five mana is expensive enough that you can afford to push it, but even revealing two creatures is extremely strong. Any cheaper than five mana and this card would have a lot of potential to be broken, but as-is it's expensive enough that it shouldn't cause too many problems.
Creativity
(1.5/3) Uniqueness: All of the effects are simple ones that we've seen before.
(2/3) Flavor: The flavor is a bit bland for my tastes; "champion of the many" could describe a lot of designs with Changeling.
Polish
(2.5/3) Quality: Technically, the reminder text is incorrect. Almost every single creature in Magic has a creature type. In fact, every single creature in the game except for one does. Nameless Race would not be able to give your card a +1/+1 counter, unfortunately. You'd have to account for that somehow; perhaps "...on it for each creature card with a creature type you reveal in your hand." Unfortunately, there's no elegant solution to an extremely annoying problem.
(3/4) Challenges:
Total: 21/25
(1/3) Appeal: Spike likes this for limited. The card is largely forgettable otherwise.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The text is very clean, but the way the card plays out is probably a nightmare. Calculating the optimal times to attack and block and in which manner, especially with larger board states, is quite the headache.
Development
(3/3) Viability: Flanking was more of a white ability than a black one, but I'll let it slide.
(3/3) Balance: This is a textbook example of an unbeatable bomb in limited.
Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness: This card doesn't do much to make itself memorable.
(3/3) Flavor: I like the name a lot. It makes up for the lack of flavor text.
Polish
(2/3) Quality: You're supposed to put the reminder text after "Activate this ability only once each turn".
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 19.5/25
(3/3) Appeal: This seems interesting enough that everyone likes something, even if Spike is skeptical about the card in constructed.
(3/3) Elegance: Assuming the card works the way I believe you intended it to, it would be elegant — I'll elaborate more on this later.
Development
(3/3) Viability:
(2.5/3) Balance: I wouldn't want to be casting this card unless X was at least 3. Once you get to X=4 or 5, you have a powerful card. So your card is 8 mana minimum, with 10 or 12 being the real goal. That's a lot to ask for a card, which means it probably wouldn't see constructed play. In casual and EDH it could be fun, but honestly there are better things to spend your mana on in EDH, especially given how you're locked out of casting spells.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness: It's different enough from Endless Swarm that it gets a pass from me.
(1.5/3) Flavor: The choice of the word "backwater" really doesn't make sense here.
Polish
(0/3) Quality: Unfortunately, there are several quality issues with your card. First, the most cosmetic ones:
Threshold — You gain 5 life
, as long asif seven or more cards are in your graveyard.The other big issue with your card is that it doesn't work as it's currently worded. Epic doesn't copy the X cost, which means that each future copy will only be able to make 0/0 tokens. I haven't been able to think of an elegant solution to this problem; the best I could come up with is "When you cast Elemental Backwater from your hand, you get X resurgence counters." and "Create an X/X green and white Elemental creature token, where X is the number of resurgence counters you have."
(3/4) Challenges:
Total: 19/25
(3/3) Appeal: Tribal cards for popular tribes get an automatic pass in this area.
(2/3) Elegance: The card's pretty wordy, but it's not too hard to understand. However, the fact that your card uses the old tribal wording (each creature instead of only your creatures) is rather inelegant.
Development
(3/3) Viability: This card honestly borders on mythic rare, both in terms of complexity and power level.
(1.5/3) Balance: This card is very much a "must kill". I really like how the undying vampires are confined to their own realm once they come back, but this card is still really powerful.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness:
(2/3) Flavor: The flavor text and name feel too basic to me. They aren't bad, but there's a lot of wasted potential here.
Polish
(1.5/3) Quality: You don't capitalize keywords. Also, Vampire needs to be capitalized in the reminder text. Lastly, it should be "Vampire creatures with a +1/+1 counter on them have shadow."
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 20/25
(3/3) Appeal: Spike loves this. Johnny likes it too.
(2/3) Elegance: There are a lot of moving parts going on here.
Development
(3/3) Viability: Nothing's out of place here.
(1/3) Balance: This card is far too powerful. One mana to draw two cards is already extremely strong, and the other mode of the card ("UR, Discard a card: Draw two cards") is also extremely powerful for a repeatable effect. Yes, the card is somewhat weak to countermagic, but the card really needs to cost 1U to cast. Compare to Whispers of the Muse.
Creativity
(1.5/3) Uniqueness: There's already a card that's called Circular Logic. Other than that your card is very interesting.
(3/3) Flavor: The name supports the mechanics of the card even if some flavor text would have been appreciated.
Polish
(2.5/3) Quality: The Buyback reminder text should be "You may pay the Buyback cost as you cast this spell. If you do,..."
(3/4) Challenges:
Total: 19/25
Necarg, do you know around when you'll have your judgments done?
Artifact — Equipment [M]
Equipped creature gets +3/+0, has deathtouch if it's black, has trample if it's green, and has indestructible if it's black and green.
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice a creature. If you can't, sacrifice Immortal's Chestplate.
Equip 2
Mandate of the Pits G
Sorcery [U]
Choose one —
- Until end of turn, whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may have it fight target creature you don't control.
- Create a 1/1 green Snake creature token with deathtouch.
Entwine—2G, Put two -1/-1 counters on a creature you control. (Do both if you paid the entwine cost.)The Trial of Strength houses all sorts of deadly creatures.
Also, you're missing some more powerful top-end cards. I would try to pick up some Torrential Gearhulks if you're able to.
Lastly, you should work on improving your mana base; adding four Prairie Stream and four Port Town should improve your mana consistency greatly.
(2/3) Appeal: This is sufficiently build-around for Johnny, and Spike likes how this is both a decision-intensive and powerful card.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The functionality of the second ability is rather confusing at first glance. Also, I'm not a fan of modal cards that have one mode that is generally much stronger by default; however, the fact that the ability triggers on blocking adds a good deal of complexity to the card that does help it overall.
Development
(3/3) Viability: If this idea was executed differently, I would question Green's involvement. As-is, it feels like a flavorful bend to give a Rakdos mechanic to a Gruul card. This card feels like a rare in terms of complexity and a mythic in terms of power level.
(3/3) Balance: This one reminds me of Polukranos, World Eater; an interesting ability on top of an already powerful card. Gold mythic rare cards do have a high power level budget, though.
Creativity
(2.5/3) Uniqueness: Somewhat remniscient of Hex Parasite, but the execution is certainly unique.
(3/3) Flavor: Unleash is a tough sell on a Monk, but the flavor text is strong enough to compensate for it.
Polish
(3/3) Quality:
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 22/25
(2/3) Appeal: Johnny loves this effect already. Timmy likes big splashy things like this.
(3/3) Elegance: The design cultivates a strong "aha!" moment when the reader realizes that the fight ability will let you draw cards if you target your own creature with it. Such design has strong elegance.
Development
(3/3) Viability:
(3/3) Balance: I don't see any problems with this card. It feels like a more commander version of Swans, but even in the modern deck you can run this for redundancy purposes.
Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness: Though this is a callback, that it overlaps so greatly with Swans does hurt you in this area.
(2/3) Flavor: You're missing some flavor text to really tie the card together.
Polish
(3/3) Quality:
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 22/25
(2/3) Appeal: Planeswalkers automatically make Timmy happy, and Spike likes the power level and flexibility of this one.
(2/3) Elegance: Planeswalkers with four abilities definitely take a hit in this area, even though they have been done before.
Development
(3/3) Viability:
(1.5/3) Balance: This card is extremely powerful. I don't think the -3 was necessary; the +1 is very strong at locking up a threat whilst adding loyalty, and it even has the ability to ramp you. The -X is also extremely powerful, and the emblem is certainly a new variant of "you win the game". I think I would have gone with only three abilities on this one. Also, the fact that the -X gains you life is even more powerful.
Creativity
(3/3) Uniqueness: Hard to call this one anything but unique.
(3/3) Flavor: The mechanics are all very flavorful. Well done!
Polish
(3/3) Quality:
(4/4) Challenges:
Total: 21.5/25
(3/3) Appeal: Everyone likes something here.
(1.5/3) Elegance: The wording of this ability is very inelegant.
Development
(3/3) Viability: This fits Bant.
(0/3) Balance: This card is extremely overpowered. Let's look at the level 0 application:
Legendary Creature - Elemental (M)
At the beginning of your upkeep, put three +1/+1 counters on Phthino, Essence of Plenty.
"Let us all share in the bounty of the seas, the woods, and the fields."
5/8
That's clearly too powerful even on its own. Factor in the utility of growing your other creatures, and even the fact that this can draw you several cards at a cost, and you have a severely overbudgeted card.
Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness: This has too much in common with Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer for my liking.
(3/3) Flavor: The flavor fits.
Polish
(1/3) Quality: The correct wording would be "When Phthino, Essence of Plenty enters the battlefield and at the beginning of your upkeep, distribute three +1/+1 counters among one, two, or three target creatures. Then, for each creature you don't control that had a counter placed on it this way, draw a card." Also, you need end quotes on your flavor text.
(4/4) Challenges: It feels like a bit of a stretch to say this evokes the feeling of autumn moreso than summer, but I'll allow it.
Total: 17.5/25