Savior Girl
Legendary Creature — Human God
When Savior Girl enters the battlefield, return target creature card with converted mana cost 1 from your graveyard to the battlefield. For each creature beyond the first that died this turn, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield with a different converted mana cost less than the number of creatures that died this turn.
1/1
Elder Lich Spawn
Creature — Elder Zombie Spawn
At the beginning of your upkeep, Elder Lich Spawn deals 6 damage to target creature and it's controller unless that player sacrifices a land.
6/6
Jess Winthorpe
Legendary Creature — Human Nomad
Partner with Ali Winthorpe
Other creatures you control with partner abilities get +1/+1.
3/2
Ali Winthorpe
Legendary Creature — Human Nomad
Partner with Jess Winthorpe
Choose the name of a creature card. Search your library for a creature card with the chosen name. Reveal it. If it has a partner ability, put that card into your hand. Shuffle afterwards.
2/3
More Urban Horror/ Fantasy
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void_nothing
Look On My Sash... - Posts: 15076
- Joined: 4 years ago
- Pronoun: he / him
- Location: Tal Terig, Zendikar
Savior Girl - Interesting ability that seems like it could be formatted better, and I think even the base reanimation ability could be too much for one mana, to say nothing of the bonuses you get if creatures have died. Try "When this enters the battlefield, choose up to X target creature cards in your graveyard, where X is the number of creatures that died this turn. If each of those cards has a different converted mana cost that's less than or equal to X, return them to the battlefield."
Elder Lich Spawn - Way overpowered. The drawback of having to possibly eventually target your own creatures is absolutely meaningless when you have a 6/6 that is either locking your opponent out of the game with LD or killing all their creatures AND crushing their life total for three mana.
Jess Winthorpe - Fine. Narrow, but fine. You'd have to be all-in for partner tribal, though - assuming this would go in a set that would bring back partner with in largeish numbers, which is something you have to be very careful with considering all of those cards is also an extra card in hand.
Ali Winthorpe - You put in a lot of words here that don't really mean or do anything when you can just say "Search your library for a card with a partner ability, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library."
Elder Lich Spawn - Way overpowered. The drawback of having to possibly eventually target your own creatures is absolutely meaningless when you have a 6/6 that is either locking your opponent out of the game with LD or killing all their creatures AND crushing their life total for three mana.
Jess Winthorpe - Fine. Narrow, but fine. You'd have to be all-in for partner tribal, though - assuming this would go in a set that would bring back partner with in largeish numbers, which is something you have to be very careful with considering all of those cards is also an extra card in hand.
Ali Winthorpe - You put in a lot of words here that don't really mean or do anything when you can just say "Search your library for a card with a partner ability, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library."
Psst, check the second page of Custom Card Contests & Games! Because of the daily contests, a lot of games fall down to there.
The greatest (fake) pro wrestling on the internet - Collaborative Create-A-Booster - My random creations (updated regularly)
Important Facts: Colorless is not a color, Wastes is not a land type, Changeling is not a creature type
The greatest (fake) pro wrestling on the internet - Collaborative Create-A-Booster - My random creations (updated regularly)
Important Facts: Colorless is not a color, Wastes is not a land type, Changeling is not a creature type
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spacemonaut
Bauble reclaimer - Posts: 1378
- Joined: 4 years ago
- Pronoun: she / her
- Location: Scotland
I gather Savior Girl's intention is that if one creature dies I get to reanimate another creature with CMC 1 (or 0?), and if four creatures die, you can reanimate up to four creatures creature with CMC 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. (void_nothing's suggestion is a good reformulation of how to express that.)
That's a pretty neat method of handling reanimation. It's definitely a bit much for one mana though. I drop a board wipe, then I pay , get (most of) my stuff back easy peasy and/or some other things that were there from previous turns or milling or discarding. It makes it too easy to cheat on mana for too little a cost. The closest comparison is Brought Back which returns only 1 or 2 creatures that were on the battlefield and died this turn, for .
Also, there's a glitch I suspect you didn't intend: two savior girls can go infinite with themselves and reanimate almost my entire graveyard, specifically because of the legend rule, and it costs to do it. Here's how:
Generally ETB resurrection is high-risk since it leads to reanimation loops like this one being trivially achieveable.
I suggest boost Savior Girl to to make her harder to trivially cast beside wipe spells before turn 7-8, buff her stats to match (make her a 3/3 with Vigilance and maybe also Flash, for example), and consider making her nonlegendary or return the cards to hand as a way to resolve the above loop issue.
Another way to handle the resurrection would be: "When ~ enters the battlefield, return up to one target creature card with converted mana cost X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, where X is the number of creatures that died this turn." This still lets you indefinitely loop two Savior Girls if you put some work in and KO someone with Warstorm Surge though.
Elder Lich Spawn: a 6/6 for 3 always requires a major additional cost. This one's a 6/6 for 3 with upside.
The upside is repeated land removal, which in and of itself is far too much. CMC 3 is the starting point for one-off land destruction on spells, and in Standard it's exclusively CMC 4 or higher. Repeated land removal at CMC 3 means the opponent will basically never develop beyond 3-4 mana, and if they miss a land drop they're going backwards. This would be too much just on a CMC 3 enchantment, but it's also got a 6/6 creature body. The alternative of course is the player takes 6 damage a turn, which is also too much for CMC 3.
Jess & Ali: I'm not sure about partner tribal. It seems kind of at odds with what Partners do. They exist to support many disparate tribes and strategies, and Wizards has been specifically designing them to help fill many different gaps. This means they don't have much overlap with each other, so you usually don't want to play that many of them in one deck since they won't have much cohesion. Instead, you want to play other (non-partner) creatures that your partners will have cohesion with. Personally I feel this is a good thing to perpetuate: partner deisgn should continue to focus outwards, not inwardly on other partners.
At least, that applies to the Rare and Mythic partners. The Uncommon ones from battlebond were more just useful uncommon cards with a 2HG-oriented upside. Those are fine to have in multiples, but then again after tutoring those out you're just left with a bunch of varied useful uncommons that all operate around very different functions, and that's usually not what you're aiming for.
Functionally, these are fine, but the tutor should cost some mana. I agree with void_nothing's revision of the tutor text.
Maybe focus on an existing tribe that needs a lord and a tutor?
That's a pretty neat method of handling reanimation. It's definitely a bit much for one mana though. I drop a board wipe, then I pay , get (most of) my stuff back easy peasy and/or some other things that were there from previous turns or milling or discarding. It makes it too easy to cheat on mana for too little a cost. The closest comparison is Brought Back which returns only 1 or 2 creatures that were on the battlefield and died this turn, for .
Also, there's a glitch I suspect you didn't intend: two savior girls can go infinite with themselves and reanimate almost my entire graveyard, specifically because of the legend rule, and it costs to do it. Here's how:
- Cast Savior Girl A and let her resolve; her ETB does nothing important at this stage.
- Cast Savior Girl B and let her resolve.
- Put either Savior Girl into the graveyard as a state-based action. This occurs before any triggered abilities go on the stack. Now I have one on the battlefield and one in my graveyard.
- Savior Girl B's ETB goes on the stack. One creature has died this turn so I get one target at CMC=1. I choose the Savior Girl in my graveyard.
- The ETB resolves and I have two Savior Girls on the battlefield again. As part of state-based actions before triggered abilities go on the stack, I put one of them into my graveyard. Now I have one on the battlefield and one in my graveyard again.
- The new Savior Girl's ETB goes on the stack. Two creatures have died this turn, so I get one target at CMC=1 and one at CMC=0 or 2. I choose Savior Girl and optionally choose any other creature for her targets.
- Repeat the last two steps indefinitely, with one additional death having occurred this turn each time, granting us access to arbitrarily high CMCs. Note that Savior Girl is always the CMC=1 choice, so I cannot resurrect any other CMC=1 creature this way yet. At some point after enough loops I have reanimated every creature in my graveyard with CMC≠1.
- To exit the loop, simply stop choosing Savior Girl for the ETB. This is my opportunity to resurrect one non-Savior Girl creature with CMC=1 if there's one in my graveyard. The loop concludes with one Savior Girl on the battlefield, one in my graveyard, every creature with CMC≠1 reanimated, and one non-Savior Girl creature with CMC=1 reanimated.
Generally ETB resurrection is high-risk since it leads to reanimation loops like this one being trivially achieveable.
I suggest boost Savior Girl to to make her harder to trivially cast beside wipe spells before turn 7-8, buff her stats to match (make her a 3/3 with Vigilance and maybe also Flash, for example), and consider making her nonlegendary or return the cards to hand as a way to resolve the above loop issue.
Another way to handle the resurrection would be: "When ~ enters the battlefield, return up to one target creature card with converted mana cost X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, where X is the number of creatures that died this turn." This still lets you indefinitely loop two Savior Girls if you put some work in and KO someone with Warstorm Surge though.
Elder Lich Spawn: a 6/6 for 3 always requires a major additional cost. This one's a 6/6 for 3 with upside.
The upside is repeated land removal, which in and of itself is far too much. CMC 3 is the starting point for one-off land destruction on spells, and in Standard it's exclusively CMC 4 or higher. Repeated land removal at CMC 3 means the opponent will basically never develop beyond 3-4 mana, and if they miss a land drop they're going backwards. This would be too much just on a CMC 3 enchantment, but it's also got a 6/6 creature body. The alternative of course is the player takes 6 damage a turn, which is also too much for CMC 3.
Jess & Ali: I'm not sure about partner tribal. It seems kind of at odds with what Partners do. They exist to support many disparate tribes and strategies, and Wizards has been specifically designing them to help fill many different gaps. This means they don't have much overlap with each other, so you usually don't want to play that many of them in one deck since they won't have much cohesion. Instead, you want to play other (non-partner) creatures that your partners will have cohesion with. Personally I feel this is a good thing to perpetuate: partner deisgn should continue to focus outwards, not inwardly on other partners.
At least, that applies to the Rare and Mythic partners. The Uncommon ones from battlebond were more just useful uncommon cards with a 2HG-oriented upside. Those are fine to have in multiples, but then again after tutoring those out you're just left with a bunch of varied useful uncommons that all operate around very different functions, and that's usually not what you're aiming for.
Functionally, these are fine, but the tutor should cost some mana. I agree with void_nothing's revision of the tutor text.
Maybe focus on an existing tribe that needs a lord and a tutor?
Thank you all for the enlightening feedback. I'll try to touch on your points as best I can.
Savior Girl — @void_nothing Yes I ran into trouble trying to format this. I think your format works. Might adjust slightly if need be but otherwise looks legit. I share your concerns as well about power level. This could be a really strong card but once I've adjusted the cost and streamlined the ability it would make for a strong but not overpowered safety valve card. Its pretty much supposed to be "indestructible your team + upside".
@spacemonaut Thanks I appreciate that, it was the result of a imposed design constraint and yes you got it right. I was trying for "converted mana cost 1 though x, sequentially, X equals number of dead creatures". Obviously it became a templating nightmare so I tried as best I could.
I realized the combo you mentioned as I posted. Probably should cost this at least 2-3 but I figured I'd just add nonlegendary to cover my behind. I'm not against a combo like that, after all Myr servitor and Myr Retriever are my jam, but if I did enable that combo I definitely don't want to see it before turn 4 at least.
Elder Spawn — I did worry about it's power but I though if you can have a mono color 5/5 for 4 a 3 color 6/6 would be ok. I compared it to Magus of the Abyss Also I figured if you had no creature it would kill itself or kneecap a 3 color deck by making it sac lands then you just Pacifism it or whatever and watch as it slowly killed your opponent.
I did intend to push it but I will recalibrate it cuz it does seem too strong.
Jess and Ali - Jess- Good points void it did feel very insular which I wanted to avoid. I wanted to tie it into number of creature with partner you control but couldn't figure out a good way.
Space- That was kinda my thought too but I was looking for a way to portray partnership outside of just the partner ability. This is for a very much Innistrad-style with the humans teaming up against the monsters so I'm looking for a way to show that.
Ali- Yeah this is the result of re-templating gone awry. I wanted it to have another function outside of just partner but as with Jess there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of design space which leaves me struggling.
To your last point spacemonaut - To achieve the Urban horror vibe I'm going for it's supposed to feel like the average everyday joe vs some OP horror movie monster. Razor Gazer is Jeepers Creepers for example, he's killed by high school kids. I have an It, same idea. Specter of Naught is Drag Me to Hell.
Nomads and Advisors are some of the tribal I intended to support so I could tie it all together, but I need more than that it seems. Partner seemed to fit so I went with it.
One thing I wanted to try is Savior Girl and the Winthorpes I wanted to make them Allys because it works for the whole humans teaming together but if they don't feel like Allys it doesn't work. There would be a lot of Nomads and Advisors to support Human tribal but trying to get them cohesive like Allys is the problem.
Savior Girl — @void_nothing Yes I ran into trouble trying to format this. I think your format works. Might adjust slightly if need be but otherwise looks legit. I share your concerns as well about power level. This could be a really strong card but once I've adjusted the cost and streamlined the ability it would make for a strong but not overpowered safety valve card. Its pretty much supposed to be "indestructible your team + upside".
@spacemonaut Thanks I appreciate that, it was the result of a imposed design constraint and yes you got it right. I was trying for "converted mana cost 1 though x, sequentially, X equals number of dead creatures". Obviously it became a templating nightmare so I tried as best I could.
I realized the combo you mentioned as I posted. Probably should cost this at least 2-3 but I figured I'd just add nonlegendary to cover my behind. I'm not against a combo like that, after all Myr servitor and Myr Retriever are my jam, but if I did enable that combo I definitely don't want to see it before turn 4 at least.
Elder Spawn — I did worry about it's power but I though if you can have a mono color 5/5 for 4 a 3 color 6/6 would be ok. I compared it to Magus of the Abyss Also I figured if you had no creature it would kill itself or kneecap a 3 color deck by making it sac lands then you just Pacifism it or whatever and watch as it slowly killed your opponent.
I did intend to push it but I will recalibrate it cuz it does seem too strong.
Jess and Ali - Jess- Good points void it did feel very insular which I wanted to avoid. I wanted to tie it into number of creature with partner you control but couldn't figure out a good way.
Space- That was kinda my thought too but I was looking for a way to portray partnership outside of just the partner ability. This is for a very much Innistrad-style with the humans teaming up against the monsters so I'm looking for a way to show that.
Ali- Yeah this is the result of re-templating gone awry. I wanted it to have another function outside of just partner but as with Jess there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of design space which leaves me struggling.
To your last point spacemonaut - To achieve the Urban horror vibe I'm going for it's supposed to feel like the average everyday joe vs some OP horror movie monster. Razor Gazer is Jeepers Creepers for example, he's killed by high school kids. I have an It, same idea. Specter of Naught is Drag Me to Hell.
Nomads and Advisors are some of the tribal I intended to support so I could tie it all together, but I need more than that it seems. Partner seemed to fit so I went with it.
One thing I wanted to try is Savior Girl and the Winthorpes I wanted to make them Allys because it works for the whole humans teaming together but if they don't feel like Allys it doesn't work. There would be a lot of Nomads and Advisors to support Human tribal but trying to get them cohesive like Allys is the problem.
