This is tricky to evaluate. There's a bunch of weaknesses that come up for me looking at this.
Most of them aren't dealbreakers though:
- The two halves aren't connected. Compare this to fuse cards and aftermath cards which are a one-two, or evoke which evoke which gives me the same effect via the ETB/LTB ability, just I choose whether I get a creature body as well (and in the case of LTB abilities, whether I get the effect immediately or later). However, classic split cards don't do this, modals often don't, and adventure cards have few one-two combos as well. (Fewer than I remembered: mainly Bonecrusher Giant and Lovestruck Beast and Realm-Cloaked Giant, and that's about it. Many of the rest are just thematically connected, or it's handy to have the creature on the battlefield and then still cast the Adventure spell.)
- Rules box size. Because you have two fit two fundamentally separate sets of text on the same card, each card only gets half as much space. Adventure cards indicate this isn't a huge problem. Aftermath cards and Mutate cards are an indicator of the space you have to work with in a vertical layout.
- Communication to players. Wizards is dealing with circumstances where, for example, they introduced the flavor text separator bar because newer players often enough confused flavor text for also being rules text. How do you convey to them how these spells work? But, OK, let's rule this off as not important—this set's only going to be seen by more advanced players anyway.
There are a couple of more significant issues to address.
Issue #1: Rules changes around having a spell effect on a non-instant non-sorcery.
Craftedlavaistrue wrote: ↑3 years ago
The one errata that will be needed for this to work is the one that states that instants/sorceries can't enter the battlefield (which is a weird rule because "non-permanents can't enter the battlefield" is also a rule and covers that?)
The rules issues run a bit deeper than this.
Another thing is that this is an instant/sorcery on the stack with a spell effect in its text: "Destroy target enchantment." This means I choose targets, and the spell effect occurs on resolution. I cannot cast the creature spell without a target to choose. Those need changes too. So this isn't just not an instant on the stack, it also doesn't have its Elicit effect on the stack either.
This means you may need to handle Elicit like this:
Elicit 1W—Destroy target enchantment. (If you cast this spell for its elicit cost, it's not a creature. Otherwise, it doesn't have this ability while it's a spell.)
I'm not super comfortable with that running entirely on negation though.
Alternately, you may need to errata that instants/sorceries that are also permanents have their spell text ignored, and you need to communicate that to players on the cards somehow. This also means players need to clearly understand what is/isn't spell text somehow.
Adventures and split cards can deal with this more easily because when you cast the spell, it has
only the characteristics of the part you've cast, and the fact they're in different frames makes this much easier to recognise and handle.
Issue #2: Combos and nonbos with "instants and sorceries matter" effects
You're building this mechanic because it's an instants/sorceries matter set, but this mechanic actually interacts really strangely with instants/sorceries matter abilities.
- Flashback (or similar): I can't use Snapcaster Mage or Past in Flames on these cards despite them being instants/sorceries. I can't pick two alternative costs, so I can't cast this for Elicit and for Flashback. So I can only flashback this spell as a creature. But instead of getting a creature for doing this, it gets exiled and does nothing.
- Flashback-like: Mizzix's Mastery exiles this card, and again I can only cast the creature portion for an alternative cost ("without paying its mana cost" is an alternative cost), but a copy of a creature spell on the stack isn't defined in the rules yet and doesn't really do anything.
- Rebound: If I have Cast Through Time or Taigam, Ojutai Master, that actually wreaks havoc. If I cast the creature, instead it goes away then gets cast again next turn. If I Elicit the card though, it comes back next turn as a creature and not an Elicited spell (alternative cost again), and that's nice.
- Instant/sorcery spell copying: Melek, Izzet Paragon and similar spells want to copy these cards even when they're cast as creature spells, but thats not defined.
There may be others.
Things that just care about you casting instant/sorcery spells are safe.
Basically, Magic has been built on a bunch of assumptions that Instants and Sorceries are always only that, and never also permanents, which lets them make all the instants/sorceries matters abilities handle them in particular ways they wouldn't want to handle permanents. This structural assumption gives them a lot of freedom, because they can just grant all your instants/sorceries flashback without having to worry that you might also want a permanent out of it.
Alternatives
We have actually seen effects
like this a lot. Beside evoke, the closest things to this mechanic are cycling triggers ("When you cycle this card") which can turn cards into cantrip spells, and adventures. There's also simply the capacity to say this instead:
Elicit — 1W, Discard this card: Destroy target enchantment.
But all of these make the creature not an instant/sorcery and the effect not one either.
I think the best way to navigate this space would be to make this a spell first, and
not a creature. This winds up comparable to Awaken. So instead of a creature that can be cast as an instant, you have:
Sol's Judgement 1W
Instant
Destroy target enchantment.
Elicit
(You may pay an additional as you cast this spell. If you do, put it onto the battlefield as a Creature as it resolves.)
This creature is a Spirit.
Flying
[1/2]
This fares a little better, but you still can't usefully use Elicit with Flashback, instant/sorcery copying, etc, but players might think they can and misplay. You could also create a token, but that is going to need a lot of tokens (see Embalm/Eternalize) or not many Elicit spells
or Elicit spells should re-use tokens (e.g. several green Elicit spells could just be ordinary instants/sorceries that create varying numbers of 2/2 Wolf tokens).
As a final note, I'd caution that you be careful you're not simply box-checking, or put differently, doing something just because it hasn't been done yet. Mark Rosewater talks about this a lot, but I don't know if he has a specific article about it.
Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded is a famous example he offers up: R&D noticed they hadn't done a CMC-2 planeswalker yet, dared themselves that they could, and made one, but it was a complete flop. (Their next attempt, Wrenn and Six, fared a lot better.) We haven't seen an instant/sorcery set yet, but that's because there's a lot of structural issues around doing that, and just because it hasn't been done isn't alone necessarily an indicator it should be done.
I bring this up because you're running into one of those structural problems—needing a certain mass of instants and sorceries. None of the previous solutions (like cycling triggers as mentioned) are ones you can use on account of the structural needs. But this also has its own structural problems.
That said, if you're working on this for other reasons than "it hasn't been done yet so I'm gonna", then that can be fine. Be careful about the structural issues you're running into though.
