templating for a piracy/threaten style land stealing enchantment

Stankweed Imp
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Post by Stankweed Imp » 3 years ago

Just need templating input for the MCC

Mercenary's Respite
Enchantment
Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may gain control of target land that player controls until end of turn, untap that land.
Whenever you tap a land you control but do not own you may have target creature you control explore.
No matter the place only hot food, drink, and a bed will complete the day.

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spacemonaut
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Post by spacemonaut » 3 years ago

Really interesting effect. :)

I've revised the templating in these quotes.
Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may gain control of target land they control until end of turn. Untap that land.
  • "that player controls" → "they control".
  • When a card says "gain control ... untap that thing", the "untap" bit is always a subsequent sentence: Scryfall search.
Whenever you tap a land you control but don't own, you up to one target creature you control explores.
That very last bullet point deserves its own explanation.

Nowadays when a spell targets for an optional effect, it says "up to one target creature [does thing]" and not "you may have target creature [do thing]". It plays better because once you've chosen your target you're committed to that effect and you can't back out. Here's a Scryfall search.

An excellent example is comparing Affectionate Indrik (old, "you may") versus Pheres-Band Brawler (new, "up to one").

For Affectionate Indrik ("you may"), you choose the target as you put the triggered ability on stack, but you choose whether to fight or not (the "you may") as part of resolution. This means after I play my Affectionate Indrik and choose to fight your Goblin, if you play a combat trick that makes that fight unfavorable for me (you make that goblin larger, or give it deathtouch with Bladebrand) I can just choose to make the fight not happen on resolution. I keep my Indrik and you sorta wasted a combat trick.

For Pheres-Band Brawler, I can choose a target or not as part of putting the trigger on the stack. That makes the fight optional. But once I've chosen my target, I'm committed, and the fight will happen. If you play Bladebrand I can't back out; I either have an answer or my Pheres-Band Brawler dies.

There's a ton of other situations in which that's mattered entirely aside from fighting, but that's just an easy example. The second dynamic plays much better for both players so the game's been rolling with it. Prefer "up to one target" over "target thing may".

(This is specific to targeted effects and doesn't mean all "may" effects are obsolete. Cards like Proud Wildbonder and Reptilian Reflection which do not target still use "you may" and that's fine.)

Stankweed Imp
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Post by Stankweed Imp » 3 years ago

spacemonaut wrote:
3 years ago
Really interesting effect. :)

I've revised the templating in these quotes.
Amazing thank you! I was surprised to see it's completely unexplored space but it could be because wizards considers it poor, awkward or uninteresting design atm or it could just be the design space is hard to manage since threaten on lands end up losing you mana so it needs a mass trigger to be good or cheaper manacost grabbing multiple lands. :)

Stankweed Imp
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Post by Stankweed Imp » 3 years ago

Found time to make the changes and here's what I got:

Mercenary's Respite
Enchantment (R)
Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may gain control of target land they control until end of turn. Untap that land.
Whenever you tap a land you control but don't own, up to one target creature you control explores.
No matter the place only hot food, drink, and a bed will complete the day.

Pygyzy
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Post by Pygyzy » 3 years ago

Stankweed Imp wrote:
3 years ago
Found time to make the changes and here's what I got:

Mercenary's Respite
Enchantment (R)
Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, you may gain control of target land they control until end of turn. Untap that land.
Whenever you tap a land you control but don't own, up to one target creature you control explores.
No matter the place only hot food, drink, and a bed will complete the day.
That is a really cool effect and extremely unique. Reasons I love this:

1: Perfect for my Marchesa deck.
2: Temporary land steal is completely unexplored. I can't think of anything that does it. And feels balanced at the same time.
3: Feels very piratey to me.
4: I'm a grixis player at heart. I'm tempted to riff on this in grixis colors. And give it pirate flavor hehe.
5: Johnny loves it!

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