MTGNexus Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

Although it is not updated every day, this is in fact a card of the day thread - if you want to continue talking about a previous day's card, and it isn't a last comment about the most recent previous day soon after the next card has been posted, please make a new thread.
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/18/19 is Mind Bend.

It was always so strange to me that "hack color" effects have been around since the beginning. Then I realized just how many color hosers were in early Magic.
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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

Color manipulation, as a mechanic, works better with pro-color sets than anti-color sets. Painter's Servant could never have existed in a heavy anti-color set, as it would allow one to shut down everything. And, indeed, this is precisely what it's used for in Eternal formats with the old color hate.

Another example of the mechanic being bad with color-hate was the ancient stall-mill "5-lace" deck, using the cycle of -lace Inturrupts to allow Circles of Protection to apply to any damage source, with the only win condition being Millstone.

But in-block, it's a major aid to Scarecrow viability and the wider "colors matter" theme, because it allows you to have colored permanents when you're running into nothing but color-payoff Scarecrows like Antler Skulkin or Blazethorn Scarecrow, or have a heavily off-color board for payoffs like Roughshod Mentor and Murkfiend Liege.

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Post by SecretInfiltrator » 4 years ago

"This effect doesn't end at end of turn." is all I need to read to boot this out of any set I'm making. Auras are a thing.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/20/19 is Springjack Shepherd.

An impressive three untranslated lore words in that flavor text!
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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

While Devotion has replaced Chroma for the forseeable future, Chroma, as an ability word, has the vital option of versatility in how it's applied. While Springjack Shepherd could just as easily have been Devotion, Light from Within exemplifies where the ability word has an advantage, as it has a per-target effect based on that particular target's variable. Phosphorescent Feast has you reveal cards and checks among those, which can be non-permanents. For an example of an extreme:

Deatheater Cinder 1bb
Creature - Elemental
Flash, Wither
Chroma - When Deatheater Cinder enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it for each Black mana symbol on Sorceries and Instants you control.
1/3

If I understand the stack properly (basically, if the Chroma effect is added to the stack immediately after this spell resolves, before anything else does, and the mana costs are preserved on the stack), this particular example fetches you value off a stack of Instants and Sorceries regardless of if they resolve or not, as the effect will resolve before they actually leave the stack. So you could play this after a counter war in Blue/Black control to salvage your removal and discard mana.

Meanwhile, in some specific Red/Black setups, one could clone high-cost reanimation or removal to give this a very large bonus, as the copied Instants and Sorceries would keep their Black mana symbols. But as this requires the stack, you need to invest a large amount of mana into Black mana symbols before you cast this, making it useful only following other spells, and thus nearly worthless as a three-drop on its own. Especially since it's Toughness biased and understatted.

This is something that Devotion cannot do, as Devotion is fixed in what it counts from. However, as Devotion is a player quality, it can then be manipulated by other card effects. For example:

Raidpyre Soothsayer 2(b/r)
Creature - Minotaur Shaman
Mana costs of creatures in your graveyard count for your Devotion to Red and to Black.
1/1

---

This card is enormously overcosted on its own, but radically accelerates the deck it goes in. While it's three mana for one devotion, on its own, it trivially offers more devotion than its mana cost once the game gets going, allowing you to throw away creatures freely without worrying about losing Devotion. It expands applicability in ways that would be far more complicated and prone to errata confusion for Chroma, as ability words aren't mechanical objects.

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Post by M00NSIDIAN » 4 years ago

Morpic_Tide wrote:
4 years ago
Deatheater Cinder 1bb
Creature - Elemental
Flash, Wither
Chroma - When Deatheater Cinder enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it for each Black mana symbol on Sorceries and Instants you control.
1/3

If I understand the stack properly (basically, if the Chroma effect is added to the stack immediately after this spell resolves, before anything else does, and the mana costs are preserved on the stack), this particular example fetches you value off a stack of Instants and Sorceries regardless of if they resolve or not, as the effect will resolve before they actually leave the stack. So you could play this after a counter war in Blue/Black control to salvage your removal and discard mana.
Yeah, this is basically how it would work (with minimal extra rules overhead needed, if any at all). I'm just not convinced this is a very black effect...

I'm surprised we didn't get something like this, though -- something with chroma that at least looked at the stack, anyway. Too niche? Eh. I like it, though.

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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

M00NSIDIAN wrote:
4 years ago
I'm just not convinced this is a very black effect...
My first thought was actually to go all-in on the Blue situation I mentioned, where you salvage a counter-war by playing it to get something with a +1/+1 counter for each Blue mana symbol, but I wasn't sure such an Uber-Prowess effect would be okay, and couldn't think of another per-mana ability. Card draw would be way, way too strong, as would bounces, and having it be a counter or bounce would just be too on-point for something intended to salvage a counter war, not keep it going. Red could also work, to a better degree, but would work too well, given that Red's almost entirely proactive, so you'd just play out your stuff then cast it for a giant creature.

A White version that takes the value as the number of times to put a counter on other creatures could also work out. Good potentially-defensive ability, doesn't concentrate onto a narrow board, a salvage for when you ended up in a big pit of Instant-speed stuff turning out bad... Workable. A Green one that turns it into depth of Creature searching, ala Ancient Stirrings, is a card advantage option that'd scale tolerably, and give Green an on-color form of control resistance.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/21/19 is Mahamoti Djinn.


F̷̶̜͔̗̙ ͍̼͔͕̩̩͎͠A̢̞͉̱̦̞̗̱͢ ̸͕̰̰̩͕ͅͅT̙̫̖̮̥͇̳̀
̤̀
̨̯͙͕͓͎̺͜Ṃ̗̱̭̣̯̼ ͔̲̱̜̺̭̱̼͡Ǫ̮̜̪̪͈̻̫͓͉͟ ̼̬̲̫̳͇͈͘̕͞T̡̘̠ ̵̡̹͖͖̩̥͖̞̘̕ͅI̖̭
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Random Card of the Day for 10/22/19 is Firebolt.

Something like this is great proof of concept for a mechanic - what will flashback be good for, you can imagine R&D members asking during Odyssey design? Well, double removal is a good thing.
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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

The biggest issue I have with that vein of Flashback design is that it only works if you have a considerable excess of mana and no other options, or your win condition revolves around dealing that damage directly to the enemy player. Such little strength for such a high cost is, bluntly, making it entirely a last-resort option, only useful in long formats. The later mechanics in that vein do better, in my opinion, as well as buyback and the variants thereof, such as Salvage. Yes, the costs tend to be high, but it's a similar premium to activated abilities.

I'll give my thoughts on what I feel would be a better balance point for this general "slot":

Echoed Lightning 1r
Instant
Deal 3 damage to any target
Flashback 3r

---

It's one damage per mana, and reaches a much more valuable spot. The hand-cast is less efficient, but still useful late-game, while the Flashback cost isn't much of a premium over hard removal. Given Forked Bolt, target splitting isn't beyond the premium in the "rounding" of depowering burn from Lightning Bolt to Shock and a general pattern of superb inefficiency as removal, so the target-splitting element doesn't seem beyond the "frills" of a 6-mana, 6-damage Red spell.

Comparing Lightning Axe, it looks a lot better. However, it's a non-bo with graveyard strategies, acting as burn/removal that's accessable if it gets milled or discarded, rather than being a source of discard itself or being improved by it. Lose less, not gain more. Lightning Axe isn't supposed to be cast for 6, it's supposed to be practically hard removal with upside for 1, with the only requirement being something you want in your graveyard in hand. Which is very, very easy to make a deck around.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/24/19 is Conversion.

Delightfully bizarre and old-school but please don't design hoser cards like this nowadays.
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Post by M00NSIDIAN » 4 years ago

Seems like your random card selector keeps coming up with stuff that's hard to talk about.

Anyway, forget the bad design for a second (although, let's be real, this design is really, really bad, and I kind of hate the "enemy color" concept so much that spinning off some sort of "white hates on red" thing for this still seems dumb). Conversion is one of the most bizarre cards in Magic. Flavorfully it does not make a lot of sense for white at all (even at the beginning of the game -- it's just straight-up not tied in), even aside from the fact that it shuts down a lot of decks entirely. Also I always thought the art looked a lot grosser than what it's actually supposed to be, but maybe that's just a consequence of primarily encountering it in the PC version where the mound looks very, very red.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

I think they made Conversion as a white card as a Biblical reference (Isaiah 40:4), but you're right that it doesn't make a lot of sense even for its time.
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/25/19 is Subterranean Tremors

Well! I think this will be easier to talk about. Love this design and I think there's a lot more design space for "scale up the amount of X to get more effects".
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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

I love the design space of this card: if X is {number} or more provides great scaling to effects that might otherwise have pretty poor scaling, or encourages you to play it in one of its "ult" modes, or just otherwise gives you an optional nice kicker to engage in. I'd like to see more effects like these. In Banefire it protects your mana investment if you cast the spell at a high cost.

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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

Spacemonaut already mentioned one angle of it, that the "If X is N or more" allows for scaling properties on cards that would normally be poor to use later on. A few other examples would be Molten Disaster and Illuminate, the former being a small cost to secure the spell over a slight touch more damage, and the latter allowing you to spend a much more significant amount to either generate damage to face, or draw a considerable amount of cards. The notion also works for an Adapt variation, requiring being over a particular total of +1/+1 counters.

I'll instead be mentioning its value on its highest casting, that of being a (partial) boardwipe before a creature comes into play. This latter property is an extremely good late-game effect, allowing more aggressive decks to get through a deadlock without the balance issues of needing to care about the board they can't get to the enemy's face with. For example:

Village-pyre Wyrm 3rr
Creature - Dragon
Kicker 2r
Flying
If Village-pyre Wyrm's kicker cost was payed, it deals 3 damage to each creature without Flying.
4/4

This particular example opens up the board for later creature generation, as well as unclogging Reach, but does little to clear the way for itself as a Flyer. Another example of an effect that can be used for such clearance:

Bewitching Stampede 2ggg
Sorcery
All creatures target player controls lose all abilities and become 2/2 Green Ox with Trample until end of turn.

I couldn't think of a creature to put it on that'd demonstrate the idea of a mono-green "all your stuff is something else" with Flying, but this particular card turns a wide board (which should not be in mono-green) into a board that has to be fully blocked, which Green's rightful buff spells then leverage into a very strong board. Mix in another color for good flyers and you use this to make those flyers unblockable, regardless of the enemy's creatures.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/28/19 is Ascendant Evincar.

Of course, this card SHOULD have been named "Crovax, Ascendant Evincar" but because it was, IIRC, the first time a legendary creature got a "new version", R&D was afraid people would assume the "legend rule" applied to it alongside Crovax the Cursed.
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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

This particular card is an important color pie catch, alongside Crovax, Ascendant Hero. In-color support isn't color specific, nor is off-color hate. The effects wouldn't be printed now because color hate has become a matter of what fits the color, coming in at an extreme discount, and has since become more firm on the enemy colors for ever color. Additionally, Eventide was the last time such color supports were printed, the current off-White Anthem effects are tribal.

Ascendant Evincar in particular fits the nature of Black at the time much better than his Planar Chaos mirror fits White, because Black had "Screw non-black" effects, while White has generally tended not to have debuffs. The only vaguely recent example of such that comes to mind is Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and pre-Time Spiral nonwhite hate like that is almost nonexistent, unless it's part Black.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/29/19 is Mortify.

Classic card. Like to see it.
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/30/2019 is Trained Orgg.

Wow, I don't want to talk about a below-rate vanilla. Uh, Orggs are only seen on Dominaria and are the result of Orc-Ogre breeding, which is not pleasant to think about but damn nicer than a textless 6/6 for seven mana outside of Limited.

(The half-Orc-half-Ogre origin story for this most forgotten of Magic-original races always seemed to me like a hurried bit of throwaway information and not particularly fitting with what Magic's Orcs and Ogres are actually like, but hey.)
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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

void_nothing wrote:
4 years ago
(The half-Orc-half-Ogre origin story for this most forgotten of Magic-original races always seemed to me like a hurried bit of throwaway information and not particularly fitting with what Magic's Orcs and Ogres are actually like, but hey.)
Let's say Urza did it in his early eugenics days and then didn't want anyone to know he'd done it.

Orggs are so weird. They come up at the beginning of the game's history, then again in 7e/Onslaught during the game's "we market exclusively to teenage boys" period.

Lesson for custom cards is, uhh ... if you come up with a race, make them something cool and distinct and not "halfway between two things that are often pretty much the same anyway except with one slightly bigger"?

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 10/31/19 is Bala Ged Thief.

The only spooky thing about today's card... is how much better Allies were in original Zendikar than BFZ.
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

The Custom Card Creation Random Card of the Day for 11/2/19 is Balduvian Barbarians.

Wow, another vanilla. Well I have more to talk about here! For example, it's interesting the base rate for a vanilla red 3/2 has only changed from 1RR to 2R although you sometimes now get a 4/2 for that. Also, where's the Barbarian type gone? Split into Warrior and Berserker henceforth, surely, but is Warrior tribal THAT popular as to not occasionally use it? (If it's a sensitive term for a group of people still extant then I completely understand not using it anymore, but I don't know of any.)
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Post by Morpic_Tide » 4 years ago

void_nothing wrote:
4 years ago
If it's a sensitive term for a group of people still extant then I completely understand not using it anymore, but I don't know of any.
Probably just the general notion of "uncivilized swine" that Barbarian brings to mind. I'd expect a specific issue to be had with Berzerkers, if anything of those, because the reality is that they were actually the closest Nordic analogue to Knights of the period. The literal translation is "Bear Skin-er", a quite literal bear hide being given by a ruler in recognition of martial prowess.

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