Dragonlover's Design Hoard

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

I've been on a bit of a CC design kick lately, but mostly in various game/contest threads, so I figured I'd start a thread to collect the stuff I chuck out for actual like, critique/sparking off ideas in myself and others, rather than everything just being consigned to the depths of random game threads. So, in no particular order, the first batch of stuff:

Froskaz, the Yawning Gullet 2gur
Legendary Creature - Frog Horror (M)
At the beginning of your upkeep, return a land you control to it's owners hand or sacrifice Froskaz, the Yawning Gullet.
Whenever an opponent taps a land for mana, you may add one mana of any colour to your mana pool.
You can't play lands.
6/6

Summoner of the Deeps 1ug
Creature - Merfolk Druid
t: Add or to your mana pool for each creature you control with power 6 or greater.
2/2

Rootgrasp g
Sorcery (R)
Target player reveals their hand. You choose a noncreature, nonland card from it. That player discards that card and creates a 0/2 Plant creature token with defender.

Graven Guardian 5
Artifact Creature - Gargoyle (C)
2/4

Daring Heist 4r
Sorcery (C)
Destroy target land and create a Treasure token.

The Gatewatch, Together 1wubrg
Enchantment (M)
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control at least five non-Bolas planeswalkers of different types, you win the game.
United, they can face any challenge the Multiverse throws at them.

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Post by Krishnath » 4 years ago

Rootgrasp does something green isn't allowed to do, as in forcing your opponent to discard.

Other than that, I like the cards. The legend in particular is incredibly interesting, and requires some very specific build arounds to reach its full potential, which I like. It feels like it wasn't an ability word or two. Trample perhaps.
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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Rootgrasp came from the Colourshift game and the challenge was Inquisition of Kozilek but mono-green, so I kind of went with the concept of discard being essentially pre-emptive destruction and went for a kind of Beast Within but in the hand approach. When it comes to game thread cards I'm happy to take a more 'Planar Chaos' approach to the designs where needed, as sometimes actually squaring the circle can be really quite hard.

Thinking about it a bit more, would a potential way to take it that's more in green's real world colour pie be to send the card to the top of the library? Is that still a thing green does?

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Post by SecretInfiltrator » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
Rootgrasp came from the Colourshift game and the challenge was Inquisition of Kozilek but mono-green, so I kind of went with the concept of discard being essentially pre-emptive destruction and went for a kind of Beast Within but in the hand approach. When it comes to game thread cards I'm happy to take a more 'Planar Chaos' approach to the designs where needed, as sometimes actually squaring the circle can be really quite hard.
Except Beast Within itself breaks the color pie. And Planar Chaos was about bending the colors, not breaking them, so clearly this is not where you want to go.

So some ways to get this more green is seriously restricting the cards affected to something green can affect and/or rethinking what discard is and how it can be turned into something green. Discard-equivalent action in another color doesn't necessarily mean removing the card from the hand - it can be about preemptively addressing a threat in another way. White-blue e. g. has Meddling Mage. I'd have gone for...

Transformation of Emrakul G
Enchantment
When ~ enters the battlefield, look at a player's hand, then name a nonland permanent card.
If a permanent with the chosen name would enter the battlefield, its controller exiles it instead and creates a 3/2 colorless Eldrazi Horror creature token.


Green turning any spell into a creature seems fine-ish.

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Yeah that works, I always forget Beast Within is a break.

Got a fresh design that my brains been bouncing around the last few days, as yet unnamed:

Morph-Manifest-Flicker-Thing 3ug?
Enchantment
If a face-down creature you control would be turned face up, you may instead exile it. For as long as they remain exiled, you may play cards exiled with ~ without paying their mana cost.

Basically, it lets you cast your face down non-creatures and also lets you get the ETB off any manifested creatures that have them. I *think* that's the least complex way of wording it, it certainly is compared to my first run at the concept that had some very odd flicker clauses from what I remember.

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Post by Krishnath » 4 years ago

I think I get where you are going with that card. I.e. you still get the effect from it being turned face up, but then the card is exiled. As it is worded, it sets up a replacement effect instead, where the creature is exiled instead of getting turned face up, thus you won't get the ability when it is turned face up if you chose to exile it instead. Which in certain situations can be pretty good if the effect is negative for you. But in most instances it is not.

If you want the "turned face up" effect to trigger, you need to word it differently. Something along the lines of.

"Whenever a face-down creature you control is turned face up, you may chose to exile it. As long as that card remains exiled, you may play it without paying its mana cost."

This also moves the recast effect to the exiled card, and is less wordy, which is a bonus.
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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

I'll elaborate on what I want to happen in the four potential scenarios I can think of that will interact with the card:

1) Unmorphing a creature: Creature gets turned face up, is not exiled, any face up triggers on the creature happen e.g Nantuko Vigilante will blow up a thing then stick around face up.

2) Un-manifesting a creature: creature gets exiled, can then be cast from exile.

3)Un-manifesting a non-creature permanent: permanent gets exiled, can then be cast/played from exile

4) Un-manifesting an instant or sorcery: card gets exiled, can then be cast from exile

I had the 'instead' wording due to scenario 4 as I didn't want a manifested instant or sorcery to end up in the graveyard before the enchantment exiled it.

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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

Manifested non-creature cards can't be turned face up. If you try then the game acts like it never happened:
701.33f If a manifested permanent that's represented by an instant or sorcery card would turn face up, its controller reveals it and leaves it face down. Abilities that trigger whenever a permanent is turned face up won't trigger.
You'd want something more like Release to the Wind. Maybe this?
Whenever a face-down creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may exile it. You may cast that card for as long as it remains exiled.
If we also give it an ability that manifests cards then it's a powerful card in its own right and better justifies the include.

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

See this is why it's good to talk to people about custom designs, I'd somehow totally forgotten you can't turn manifested non-creatures face up while coming up with the card despite it coming up regularly in games with my Storrev deck. Ok, how about this then:

Ugin's Subterfuge 3UG
Enchantment
When Ugin's Subterfuge enters the battlefield, manifest the top card of your library.
Whenever a face-down creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may exile it. You may cast that card for as long as it remains exiled.

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Post by SecretInfiltrator » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
Morph-Manifest-Flicker-Thing 3ug?
Enchantment
If a face-down creature you control would be turned face up, you may instead exile it. For as long as they remain exiled, you may play cards exiled with ~ without paying their mana cost.

Basically, it lets you cast your face down non-creatures and also lets you get the ETB off any manifested creatures that have them. I *think* that's the least complex way of wording it, it certainly is compared to my first run at the concept that had some very odd flicker clauses from what I remember.
You totally have not seen Primordial Mist yet, huh? : ) The idea is definitely worthwhile. I like it in monocolored blue, because it supports the noncreature manifest interaction. But coming up with the idea itself is great - it is a very useful trick.

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Well, now I feel like a fool. I had seen that card, and indeed plan to run it, but I'd forgotten about the second ability. Ah well, was an interesting thought exercise, and I like the combat damage condition on the custom version as it encourages interaction a bit more.

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

One last one before I head to bed, again courtesy of the colourshift game:

Akroma, Angel of Ferocity 5GGG
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, haste, protection from from blue and black.
You may have Akroma, Angel of Ferocity assign combat damage as though it were not blocked.
6/6

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

"Akroma in one of the other colors" has been done since Planar Chaos but why, I'm not sure - it's certainly not the case for Braids or Crovax or any of the others in that loose cycle. Maybe it's the keyword-soup aspect? The fact that she has protection from two colors in each version?

That brings me to my issues with this design - it practically has too few abilities to feel like an Akroma, and so much of what its abilities are doing is pure evasion. I think you could do a green Akroma (although there's little story justification for that and requires us to imagine a really wacky alternate version of Ixidor) but, being green, there are a lot more things you could do.
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Post by Krishnath » 4 years ago

It feels like it wants to have vigilance, and trample instead of "You may have Akroma, Angel of Ferocity assign combat damage as though it were not blocked."
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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Yeah my original idea was to anagram the name and do a Hydra, then I was like 'sod it what can we do if we keep it as Akroma?'. Turns out, lots of evasion. She originally had menace and/or intimidate along with trample then I remembered super-trample exists which did all of that kind of stuff a lot more succinctly and feels right on a mythic. I could probably have gotten away with giving her an activated pump ability as well to be fair.

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Post by Krishnath » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
Yeah my original idea was to anagram the name and do a Hydra, then I was like 'sod it what can we do if we keep it as Akroma?'. Turns out, lots of evasion. She originally had menace and/or intimidate along with trample then I remembered super-trample exists which did all of that kind of stuff a lot more succinctly and feels right on a mythic. I could probably have gotten away with giving her an activated pump ability as well to be fair.

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The three color Akroma from Alara block is actually a Sphinx, so changing the name and creature type is not a problem.

It's Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and not actually a legendary creature.
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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Now it's been judged, I can add my second round August MCC entry:

Goblin Boomwagon 2
Artifact - Vehicle (U)
Goblin Boomwagon gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each Goblin crewing it.
Crew 1 (Tap any number of creatures you control with total power 1 or more: This Vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.)
2/1

I also want to chat a bit about a mechanic I came up with years ago thanks to that ridiculous card generator that used to chuck out word salad stuff like 'Sacrifice a Squid to destroy target tapped Elk'. I once had it generate the line of text 'Tap target library' which got me wondering how the hell you make that actually a relevant line of text, and came up with the following rough concept:

Grimoire X - Put the top X cards of your library onto the battlefield in a face down pile. They become a Grimoire creature with power and toughness equal to the number of cards in the pile. If you would draw a card, you may draw it from either your library or a Grimoire you both own and control. The same applies to both search effects and effects that put a card on the top or bottom of your library. If a Grimoire runs out of cards, you do not lose the game.

I've never come up with a satisfactory way to get around the fact that once a Grimoire is reduced to a single card it's technically a 2/2, I suspect some weird kludge along the same lines as not being able to turn a DFC face down would need to happen. I also appreciate it's got a whole host of logistical issues, but I'd dearly love to get it into some kind of usable form.

Hmm, maybe you instead exile X cards and make a Grimoire token with P/T equal to X? We can link specific exiled cards to specific tokens (cf Ugin, the Ineffable's Spirit tokens) and if nothing else, it'd get around the face down card issue.

Just in case it needs spelling out, I've written it as Grimoire X because it's a variable like Amplify or Fabricate. In the hypothetical set it lives in, it'd probably be in Esper colours.

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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

I think there's a piece missing with Grimoire: I don't actually have a good reason to draw from one!

Given they're both unknown piles I might as well draw from my library. The only serious difference would be that a creature I control shrinks a bit or doesn't, and I'd rather it doesn't. If I did know the top of my library and chose to use a Grimoire effect, chances are I wanted those cards filtered out so that I could have a chance of finding better ones.

That means it's not functionally very different from this: Exile the top X cards of your library. Create a Grimoire creature token with X +1/+1 counters on it. (It occurs to me it's a bit like Corpseweft except a Bookweft and it's drawing from a fully stocked pile. I'd happily dump the top 20 cards of my library for a 20/20 given the option.) Maybe there could be a reason to draw from the grimoire?

Another way to do it might be to have creatures which give you their cards as a reward, like Hoarding Dragon. Consider:

Stressed-out Scribe 1UU
Creature — Human Monk
2/2
Grimoire 2 (As this creature enters the battlefield, exile the top two cards of your library face down. They become its grimoire.)
Whenever Stressed-out Scribe becomes untapped, you may put a card from its grimoire into your hand.
Last edited by spacemonaut 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

Given that, Grimoire would likely see use alongside variable/large-number/high-frequency Scry effects and using the Grimoire abilities to chunk cards out of your main library, heavy card draw with some sort of mill downside, and stuff that acts upon libraries in more novel ways, promoting the removal of many cards from your main library to instead have them put in others.

One of the biggest things is that Grimoires are shuffled separately, so you can be tutoring heavily out of your main library, but keep structured Grimoires for your draws, especially if there's ways to add to them or move cards between. Ultimately, it would require a lot of deck manipulation mechanics around it, possibly having the Grimoire mechanical element be referenced by a dissimilar mechanic name so there's multiple "kinds" of them from additional properties like having the top revealed or being made from the hand/graveyard, and several mechanics interacting with them so they're more organziable than a normal library, at the cost of being vulnerable to removal effects.

Also, I'd have them be Artifacts, not Creatures. Less common removal vulnerability, so large ones are more commonly usable, and it better fits the habits of permanent types. The confusion of single-card Grimoires is still notable, though, especially given the normally-visible nature of face-down creatures.

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

First off, thankyou so much for putting thought into my "would never make it into a set ever because can you imagine the confusion?!" mechanic. I think it's easy to get stuck on 'Would this be printable?' when designing.

[mention]spacemonaut[/mention] : Do you know, it hadn't occurred to me that there's no incentive to draw from them? Given that my initial flavour concept was that wizard tower trope of flying spellbooks, that's a bit of a downside from my perspective. Riffing on that, I imagine there might be cards that interact with the cards in your Grimoires/trigger when you put one into your hand?

Bookworm Homonculous 2U
Creature - Homonculous (R)
Whenever you put a card exiled by a Grimoire into your hand, draw a card.
0/1
It may only have one eye, but it reads everything

(Post-design note: Would consider changing this to 'Whenever you put a card into your hand from exile' to remove parasitism)

Also, you could have cards based on the opponents Grimoires:

Magebane Rampager 2rg
Creature - Elf Berserker
Magebane Rampager gets +1/+1 for each card exiled by Grimoires your opponents control
2/2

(Post-design note: Probably wouldn't change this one, she chills out once the books are used up, the flavour works better and she's probably a draft uncommon, maybe hits Standard.)

I like the variant you propose, and may well take it further if I can't nail down the 'animated spellbooks' version that's lodged in my head, as it does contain a lot of the same elements of flavour.

[mention]Morpic_Tide[/mention] : You're not wrong about the fact they'd probably be in a set alongside a lot of library manipulation. Thinking about creating a Grimoire from different zones and assuming the mechanic was in Esper, I figure W would create them from hand, U from the library and b from the graveyard, which handily gives a nice easy direction in the event of making a multicoloured Grimoire creator. On the other hand, I wonder if creating Grimoires from different zones would run into the same problem Chroma had where the lack of consistency makes it confusing to use? Maybe I'll stick a variant on a mythic or two, see how I feel about it.

I desperately want to keep them as creatures, just because then the phrase 'tap target library' is a relevant thing(ish). If it becomes untenable I'll see what workarounds I can come up with that aren't horrifically unwieldy, and if it's still not working I'll either go with the version spacemonaut suggested or will just make them artifacts and have a card or two that turns them into creatures based on how many cards they've exiled.

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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

Grimoire's a really exciting idea as written. if you had an instant which was like 1U "Put the top card of your library and of each grimoire into your hand." that'd really accelerate into a set's main mechanic. also having increased number of cards in the set like Reclaim or Glowspore Shaman would justify them as a useful presence, I think, being able to set up exactly when you draw a key card. Plus you could make a saboteur specter which mills them for two and performs Grimoire 2 everytime it hits and that'd be insanely cool :3

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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
I desperately want to keep them as creatures, just because then the phrase 'tap target library' is a relevant thing(ish). If it becomes untenable I'll see what workarounds I can come up with that aren't horrifically unwieldy, and if it's still not working I'll either go with the version spacemonaut suggested or will just make them artifacts and have a card or two that turns them into creatures based on how many cards they've exiled.
What if you dig into the silver-border realm that Unstable waded into, and make a silver-bordered card that taps libraries and makes tapping them meaningful?

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Because Unstable is the first time I've actually enjoyed the concept of Un-cards, and this is the first time I've been designing cards since it came out so playing around in silver-bordered space doesn't really come naturally to me.

Ok, so, Un-set brain engaged! This may get a bit stream of consciousness...

First off, if we're tapping a library then that has to have a consequence, other wise it's just irrelevant text. The first thing that comes to mind is not being allowed to draw from a tapped library, similar to how tapped creatures can't attack/block. Wait, didn't Unstable have that Aura that animated your library? *Heads to Scryfall* Yes, yes it did. Animate Library, for reference. That puts no restrictions on the library, but is a one-off card as opposed to a full mechanic. There's also Split Screen, which gives you four libraries. Ok, so there's at least Un-precedent for it.

We'll keep Grimoire as the name, mostly cause that's how I think of it. Luckily, Un-wording can be more colloquial and less Magic-ese, so lets see what it ends up looking like:

----------
Grimoire X: Put the top X cards of your library onto the battlefield as a new library, then attach a Grimoire artifact token to them. A library with a Grimoire artifact token attached to it is a creature with power and toughness equal to the number of cards in it.
----------

I mean, that's fairly sane other than the fact it's giving you multiple libraries. I've opted not to take the shuffle from Split Screen as across multiple cards that's gonna get tedious, but that's always an option for tweaking

In terms of rules baggage, they're libraries, so can be searched/shuffled/scried from etc. and if you try to draw from an empty one you'll lose. Additionally, you can't draw from a tapped library, and anything that targets a library can target a player's starting library in addition to any libraries they have created via Grimoire or other means.

How does that sound to folks as a starting point? After all, there's a few things that started life in an Un-set and made the leap to black border, it's possible this is still workable.

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Post by Dragonlover » 4 years ago

Legendary Spore Frog? Legendary Spore Frog!

Eghva, Croaking Broodmother 4GG
Legendary Creature - Frog Fungus (R)
At the beginning of your upkeep, create a green 1/1 Frog token.
Sacrifice a Frog: Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.
4/4

Came up with this while trying to work something out for the September CCL.

No more noodlings on Grimoire yet, but I'll probably swing back round to it at some point.

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Post by Krishnath » 4 years ago

Dragonlover wrote:
4 years ago
Legendary Spore Frog? Legendary Spore Frog!

Eghva, Croaking Broodmother 4GG
Legendary Creature - Frog Fungus (R)
At the beginning of your upkeep, create a green 1/1 Frog token.
Sacrifice a Frog: Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.
4/4

Came up with this while trying to work something out for the September CCL.

No more noodlings on Grimoire yet, but I'll probably swing back round to it at some point.

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Unless your opponent has some way of directly dealing with that legendary frog, it's basically a free fog every turn. That seems pretty damn unbalanced.
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