White Card Advantage (I Know, I Know)

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

It's a topic that's been discussed to death, I know.

I'm just curious; could these two cards be printable with today's design philosophy?


Edit: This goes infinite in multiplayer

SPOILER

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Tactful Negotiator
2w
Creature - Fox Advisor
Whenever an opponent draws a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, each other player draws a card.
1/3

New version:

Tactful Negotiator
2w
Creature - Fox Advisor
Whenever a spell or ability an opponent controls causes them to draw a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, each other player may draw a card.
1/3

There, that should do it. The "may" clause allows players to escape drawing to death.


Battlefield Tactician
1W
Creature - Rabbit Soldier
Whenever you attack with three or more creatures, draw a card.
2/2

[Mookie]

Tactful Negotiator might be able to be printed, although you would need to format it a bit differently - as written, it goes trivially infinite in multiplayer.

Battlefield Tactician is a hard no.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Tactful Negotiator might be able to be printed, although you would need to format it a bit differently - as written, it goes trivially infinite in multiplayer.

Oh...oh dear...

EDIT:
New version!

Tactful Negotiator
2w
Creature - Fox Advisor
Whenever a spell or ability an opponent controls causes them to draw a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, each other player may draw a card.
1/3

There, that should do it. The "may" clause allows players to escape drawing to death when two players control a Tactful Negotiator.

[Krishnath]

Tactful Negotiator might be able to be printed, although you would need to format it a bit differently - as written, it goes trivially infinite in multiplayer.

Not in white it couldn't. As a blue card, yes. But white? No.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Tactful Negotiator might be able to be printed, although you would need to format it a bit differently - as written, it goes trivially infinite in multiplayer.

Not in white it couldn't. As a blue card, yes. But white? No.

Could you please elaborate more? I am honestly interested.

[Krishnath]

Tactful Negotiator might be able to be printed, although you would need to format it a bit differently - as written, it goes trivially infinite in multiplayer.

Not in white it couldn't. As a blue card, yes. But white? No.

Could you please elaborate more? I am honestly interested.

White does not get card draw outside of cantrips. It is white weakness. Maro has stated this multiple times on his Tumblr. When people suggested that "what if they only drew cards when other people drew cards", the answer was always a hard No. It is not in whites color pie to draw cards, so they have to find card advantage in other ways.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

White does not get card draw outside of cantrips. It is white weakness. Maro has stated this multiple times on his Tumblr. When people suggested that "what if they only drew cards when other people drew cards", the answer was always a hard No. It is not in whites color pie to draw cards, so they have to find card advantage in other ways.

Now hang on, speaking of straight-up card draw, surely they're relaxing that stance a bit? Just off the top of my head, there's Sram, Senior Edificer, Mentor of the Meek, Puresteel Paladin, and most blatantly Alms Collector and Mangara, the Diplomat.

What they have in common is that they either trigger off things White loves, or tax/punish the opponent for not playing fair. And Mangara's effect is much more one-sided compared to the cards that restrict all players to a single spell each turn; while Alms Collector's ability only effects that player and you, leaving the other players out of the equation.

I would argue that Tactful Negotiator is even more symmetrical than Alms Collector, and maintains "equality" to a higher degree.

[Krishnath]

White does not get card draw outside of cantrips. It is white weakness. Maro has stated this multiple times on his Tumblr. When people suggested that "what if they only drew cards when other people drew cards", the answer was always a hard No. It is not in whites color pie to draw cards, so they have to find card advantage in other ways.

Now hang on, speaking of straight-up card draw, surely they're relaxing that stance a bit? Just off the top of my head, there's Sram, Senior Edificer, Mentor of the Meek, Puresteel Paladin, and most blatantly Alms Collector and Mangara, the Diplomat.

What they have in common is that they either trigger off things White loves, or tax/punish the opponent for not playing fair. And Mangara's effect is much more one-sided compared to the cards that restrict all players to a single spell each turn; while Alms Collector only effect that player and you, leaving the other players out of the equation.

I would argue that Tactful Negotiator is even more symmetrical than Alms Collector, and maintains "equality" to a higher degree.

MaRo has long held the stance that Mentor of the Meek should have been a green card, not white, and is thus a break. Alms Collector is likely a break as well, as MaRo is not involved in the creation of the commander decks, and often laments the color pie breaks that sneak into the game that way (like Chaos Warp), Mangara is a borderline case, as its a taxing ability that is very easy for an opponent to avoid. If your opponent isn't attacking you or a planeswalker you control, you don't get a card, and it is fairly easy to not cast more than one spell. Finally, Sram and Puresteel Paladin require you to build extremely specific decks, that do something white is good at already, that being using auras, equipment, and vehicles. What your card does is something white is not supposed to do, exploiting other players card advantage to feed your own. Just because the ability grants all other players the ability to draw a card, it doesn't mean the card is within whites part of the color pie. White's card advantage is supposed to be more about reusing resources and locking down your opponents resources (usually creatures or artifacts), not drawing cards. The problem is that this strategy lacks any true power cards that are in color, they have been getting better at this in recent years, by giving white cards that produce a lot of tokens, repeatable effects on permanents (or with spells with buyback), and even one-sided wrath's. But they still have a long way to go before white starts to feel strong in the eternal formats (including commander). Your card is as big of a color pie violation as Harmonize.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Hmm, interesting points.

But Tactful Negotiator, unlike Hullbreacher and Notion Thief, does not "steal" the opponent's draw, just compensates everyone else.

And since the card lacks flash, the punishment/tax is easy avoid, by simply withholding all your card draw until you get rid of it.

[Krishnath]

Hmm, interesting points.

But Tactful Negotiator, unlike Hullbreacher and Notion Thief, does not "steal" the opponent's draw, just compensates everyone else.

And since the card lacks flash, the punishment/tax is easy avoid, by simply withholding all your card draw until you get rid of it.

And both Hullbreacher and Notion Thief are either blue, or partially blue, so that argument is very poor.

White does not gain card advantage in the form of card draw unless it is tied specifically to something white already does that forces a specific deck build. It can not do it by "leeching" of another player. All of white's in color card draw is either in the form of cantrips (because they exist in all colors), or tied to either playing enchantments, artifacts, or subtypes thereof. Everything else is a break.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Hmm, interesting points.

But Tactful Negotiator, unlike Hullbreacher and Notion Thief, does not "steal" the opponent's draw, just compensates everyone else.

And since the card lacks flash, the punishment/tax is easy avoid, by simply withholding all your card draw until you get rid of it.

And both Hullbreacher and Notion Thief are either blue, or partially blue, so that argument is very poor.

I'm not sure I understand this part correctly. What I meant that Tactful Negotiator is different from Hullbreacher/Notion Thief, in that it doesn't steal the card but compensates everyone else

White does not gain card advantage in the form of card draw unless it is tied specifically to something white already does that forces a specific deck build. It can not do it by "leeching" of another player. All of white's in color card draw is either in the form of cantrips (because they exist in all colors), or tied to either playing enchantments, artifacts, or subtypes thereof. Everything else is a break.

Would this work then?

Military Genius
1ww
Creature - Spirit Soldier
Whenever you attack with three or more creatures, draw a card.
At the beginning of your end step, if you gained 3 or more life this turn, draw a card.
2/2

[Mookie]

IMO, the problem with creating a white card draw effect is that it simply isn't well-defined. There aren't many white card draw effects, period. Simultaneously, of the ones that do exist, a lot of them have been declared either bends or breaks. More critically, they're almost all one-off effects - we could point to Puresteel Paladin and Sram, Senior Edificer indicating that 'cast an equipment = draw a card' is a valid white ability.... but unless we see another card with Mangara, the Diplomat or Alms Collector's abilities, it's hard to say that those cards aren't bends.

Another issue is that there haven't been any effects established at common or uncommon - white card draw is pretty much always rare or mythic. I'll also note that almost none of white's existing effects allow it to actually go up in cards - stuff like Puresteel Paladin, Sram, and Kor Spiritdancer simply make a subset of cards cantrip. It's possible to go up in cards by stacking those effects or using recursion, but they don't refill your hand by themselves. I'll note that even Dawn of Hope arguably needs a card investment - it does self-enable by generating tokens to draw cards with, but given how expensive those tokens are (and their size meaning they'll rarely live through combat), it's clearly intended that it will be triggered by using other cards to gain life.

Anyway, saying 'I want to design a white card draw spell' is sort of like saying 'I want to design a red lifegain spell' or 'I want to design a black enchantment removal spell' (well, until that was actually added to black's color pie....) - it's simply not well-defined what that would even look like.

....that said, I would say a hard no to Military Genius's Military Intelligence effect - it doesn't require any expenditure of resources, and it's already established that is a blue / green ability (since it's effectively a Curiosity effect). The second effect is a maybe - Dawn of Hope suggests white might be able to draw cards from lifegain, but it's unclear whether that is actually the case, or if the card is a bend.

Looking at Mangara and Alms Collector, I would hypothesize that punisher card draw is in white's color pie - in other words, it's possible to draw cards when your opponent takes a preventable action. Your opponents can trivially deny you the cards by just not attacking with multiple creatures / casting multiple spells / drawing multiple cards. As a result, I would say that Tactful Negotiator's ability might be in white's color pie, since, again, your opponents can negate it by just not drawing extra cards. However, again, it isn't well-established whether Mangara and Alms Collector are bends / breaks or not.

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Thank you both for elaborating.

In honesty, I was having difficulty in parsing Rosewater's explanations and rationale for white draw, so I mostly came up with this design experiment hoping someone could explain more clearly why these cards wouldn't be printed under the current philosophy.

It really captured my attention a few weeks back when someone complained that all the colors had straight-up card draw except white: blue the purest and most dedicated to drawing, black (blue but with life loss/sacrifice), green (creature-based), and red (rummaging, temporary exile-draw). White really does stand out in this regard.

Now I present to you the second worst card I ever designed:

Mutually Assured Destruction
3ww
Sorcery (R)
Destroy all creatures and planeswalkers. Each player draws a card for each permanent they own that was destroyed this way.

[Krishnath]

Thank you both for elaborating.

In honesty, I was having difficulty in parsing Rosewater's explanations and rationale for white draw, so I mostly came up with this design experiment hoping someone could explain more clearly why these cards wouldn't be printed under the current philosophy.

It really captured my attention a few weeks back when someone complained that all the colors had straight-up card draw except white: blue the purest and most dedicated to drawing, black (blue but with life loss/sacrifice), green (creature-based), and red (rummaging, temporary exile-draw). White really does stand out in this regard.

Now I present to you the second worst card I ever designed:

Mutually Assured Destruction
3ww
Sorcery (R)
Destroy all creatures and planeswalkers. Each player draws a card for each permanent they own that was destroyed this way.

Should be a black card. You haven't been paying attention. White does not get card draw unless it is in the form of cantrips or if it requires the decks to be built in a very specific way tied to artifacts or enchantments (or subtypes thereof.)

[Sporegorger_Dragon]

Should be a black card. You haven't been paying attention. White does not get card draw unless it is in the form of cantrips or if it requires the decks to be built in a very specific way tied to artifacts or enchantments (or subtypes thereof.)

Oh you , I was just being silly.

Still, an interesting experiment, since each player gets compensated for their permanents destroyed by the board-wipe. May not be in white's current pie, but perhaps in the future.

[Krishnath]

Should be a black card. You haven't been paying attention. White does not get card draw unless it is in the form of cantrips or if it requires the decks to be built in a very specific way tied to artifacts or enchantments (or subtypes thereof.)

Oh you , I was just being silly.

Still, an interesting experiment, since each player gets compensated for their permanents destroyed by the board-wipe. May not be in white's current pie, but perhaps in the future.

Not as long as MaRo works for WotC.

White's card advantage is usually tied to creature token creation or reusable spells. The only in color pie card draw that isn't cantrips is tied to either artifacts or enchantments, and require very specific deck building.