Blue/black 'evergreen' creature ability

silver_skeleton
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Post by silver_skeleton » 3 years ago

Hi, this is my first post.

As a long time Magic player who is interested in the game's design, the relative lack of blue creature evergreen abilities has been kind of frustrating to me. Blue/black is a color combination that doesn't have an evergreen ability. Skulk not working as evergreen was disappointing.

I've been trying to come up with a creature combat related ability for blue/black that is easy enough, provides enough design space (especially for common), and feels blue/black.

Cover (This creature can't be blocked if another attacking creature has greater power or toughness.)

It tries to play into the sneakyness of blue/black, representing blending into the shadows behind a bigger or more dangerous attacker, drawing less attention.

What is your opinion on this ability, does it have potential to be an evergreen ability? I think for that it needs to work well for Standard Constructed and Limited.

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Post by user_938036 » 3 years ago

Do you mean creature ability or combat ability? Blue/Black has overlaping abilities in flash and flying. The current deficit is in red/blue overlap as prowess has essentially failed to fill that role.

As for your ability, sounds like an interesting blue-black keyword but in practice, it would get more work out of being a red keyword. It wants to be on a creature with mismatched stats. As written a 4/1 is unblockable if you attack with a 2/2. Neither blue nor black have high power low toughness creatures to benefit from this keyword.

It doesn't sound like this was intended. Fixing it to work as I believe you intended it has a similar problem to skulk in that it really only benefits from being on small creatures and reads as unblockable. Though there is a lot more interesting play on this new one as it can reasonably affect 3 power creatures though after that it's hard to say. Also requiring a second attacker makes it feel off for black and blue which are the furthest behind in the army category.

Going further to be evergreen it has to fulfill some fairly harsh conditions. First, you need to want to put it on a lot of creatures, not all at once but it needs to go on a wide range of creatures to be viable. This won't because after 4 it's nearly worthless and even at 3 it's hard to get active. Second, it has to play nice with other mechanics in those colors without stepping on their toes. This is the problem prowess had, it played too well with red and blues basic themes meaning it was too strong when matched up what a set was doing or essentially did the same thing. This doesn't play well with blue and blacks creatures because they don't have the large creatures to overshadow their small creatures and they don't want to be attacking with an army.

Overall your ability strikes a clear note of more interesting but less viable skulk. It's a good attempt and I hope this criticism doesn't dissuade you from further posting.

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Post by void_nothing » 3 years ago

Welcome to the forums!

Cover is an interesting idea and it's certainly flavorful. However, it does suffer from a number of problems. First, it does effectively nothing on its own - evergreen keywords should ideally function all or most of the time, and the condition of having a bigger creature out is quite limiting particularly in colors that have few large creatures. Second, it's an evasion keyword, and UB already has access to a bunch of forms of evasion, including flying, menace, and straight-up unblockability. This would not really fit a new niche.

I feel like this would be best as a nonkeyworded ability used occasionally like green's "can't be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less/lesser power".
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Post by silver_skeleton » 3 years ago

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

Maybe I should write some more thoughts about my intentions with this ability.

I know that U/B has access to flying, but the problem with that is that it's shared with W/U, that it's used so often for all kinds of creatures, and that it's less often used in black. Didn't know about flash being in B, but it's only tertiary. Menace I think isn't blue, and unblockable isn't black. Unblockable also isn't a keyword and is written as "can't be blocked", so it doesn't fulfill the role of an evergreen, and that at least partially means 10 card multicolored creature cycles with each a different keyword. To me that means that U/B could use another keyword ability.

Another point is that I think interesting evasion isn't absolute, and this provides defending players to shrink or remove another attacking creature to make this creature blockable. That's where I feel Menace is better than Intimidate.

Regarding power and toughness. It's intended that way. Blue and black have at least some 3/1, 3/2, 4/2 and a lot of creatures with low power and high toughness. All those can benefit from this keyword. Though of course, it's a valid point that this only works with multiple attackers. On the other hand I feel that differentiates it from the other evasion abilities.

I'm going to design some cards and test how it plays, though I've been sheltering at home for several months now, so atm that's somewhat inconvenient.

Also I'm working on more keywords for all other color combinations with blue, so I'm going to post a keyword for UR in the future. GU will be a variation of hexproof, though I'm not fully satisfied with its current form.

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Post by void_nothing » 3 years ago

I think hexproof is a well-designed mechanic. I just don't think it plays well a lot of the time. Simply put it's too uninteractive. Taking an entire category of cards - targeted removal - out of relevance is so powerful that Bogles.dek sprung out of the existence of hexproof.

So I agree with you about replacing it - or at least about replacing it as GU's shared evergreen. I think hexproof would benefit from moving up to what I call the "premium keyword" tier of things like indestructible and double strike: mechanics that are very splashy despite their simplicity and that should almost always be on higher rarities and cost a large mana premium.

In its stead on the lower rarity cards I would personally just use any number of its variants - Frost Titan spelltax, hexproof from quality, Tromokratis "hiding" outside of combat - and add in a less game-warping keyword to use with regularity as well. What form that'd take, I'm hard-pressed to say. But you've lit a bit of a fire under me to actually go through with the additional-evergreens project I've had in mind for a long time. I already use grapple for "Can't be blocked by more than one creature", seize for "Must be blocked if able", and stalwart for "Can block an additional creature" in my custom designs as "evergreens".
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Post by silver_skeleton » 3 years ago

Agreed on all of that. I'm glad that Wizards is working on tweaking hexproof.

I was thinking about the spelltax variant, but I'm going more in the direction of Tromokratis, even though I didn't know that card (I paused from Magic for the last 3 or 4 years)

It's awesome that you're also working on 'evergreen' ability candidates, can't wait to see them.

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Post by JovialJovian » 3 years ago

Well, the two basic ways to 'fix' hexproof would be to place limits on it ie: Knight of Grace, which has already appeared in small numbers as a less-oppressive form of the ability, or to bring back Shroud ie: Mist Leopard, which while powerfully blocking targeted removal, also has the built-in drawback of also blocking your own interaction, so no Auras, no Equipment, no Giant Growth, you just get your slippery creature as-is.

I think Hexproof totally supplanting Shroud was a mistake
I'm in favor of just bringing back Shroud, and shifting Hexproof to be the premium-keyword tier version of it as void-nothing has suggested, and really asit used to be before Hexproof was formally keyworded and people called it Troll-Shroud. And frankly, blue-black would be a pretty good place for Shroud to settle. Green always had problems playing with shroud, due to it's desire to buff its own creatures, and especially now with its reliance on Fight to act as removal, which is why it was getting Hexproof in the first place. With the loss of Regenerate, black has an opening for a common defensive mechanic, which is what Supernatural Stamina's family of cards are trying to cover for, and although I like that mechanic, it's not really possible to put it directly onto a creature at low rarity.

Shroud also sounds very flavor-matched for black, and for Rogues, which are blue-black. And that's my pitch for bringing back Shroud as the blue-black evergreen keyword.

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Post by silver_skeleton » 3 years ago

The reasons to prefer Shroud are all valid, but in the end I think what Maro said about the question of Shroud vs Hexproof has to trump all that. A lot of players didn't get that Shroud doesn't let you target your own creatures. And if your mechanic fights against what a lot of players naturally want to do, you're on the losing side.

In another thread I showed my hexproof variant, maybe you can give some feedback about that. It takes a different path than "Hexproof from".

Also regarding Regeneration missing from black, the action of phase out may be able to take its place. I have some hope that we're going to see it more often in the future.

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Post by Sporegorger_Dragon » 3 years ago

silver_skeleton wrote:
3 years ago
Cover (This creature can't be blocked if another attacking creature has greater power or toughness.)
Suggestion: Make it two ways?

Cover (As long as this creature is attacking, other attacking creatures with lesser power or toughness can't be blocked. This creature can't be blocked if another attacking creature has greater power or toughness.)

Now smaller creatures with low stats can utilize bigger creatures, and bigger creatures can provide cover for smaller creatures.

This also leads to the hilarious scenario of starting off with a 1/1, then play subsequently larger creatures each turn so that each one covers the one below it.
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Post by void_nothing » 3 years ago

Sporegorger_Dragon wrote:
3 years ago
Suggestion: Make it two ways?

Cover (As long as this creature is attacking, other attacking creatures with lesser power or toughness can't be blocked. This creature can't be blocked if another attacking creature has greater power or toughness.)
I like this a lot. It's exceedingly powerful, as all mass unblockability is, and I'm wondering if it's too strong to be a normal evergreen or if it's on the indestructible/double strike tier. But it feels right for the colors.
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Post by OneAndOnly » 3 years ago

Now that we've made mill a thing, I like the idea of 'mill-strike' -- when this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player mills that many cards. Perfectly blue-black, it just needs to be keyworded carefully.

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Post by folding_music » 3 years ago

^Ingest got keyworded but is more of a dead-end than milling! could also name yr millstrike idea "Daze"!

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Post by user_938036 » 3 years ago

The usual problem with millstirke and variants is that its too easy to kill an opponent long before the mill is relevant. There are some variants with promise such as you mill twice as much as the damage or mill some amount instead of damage. But it starts feeling an awful lot like infect at some point.

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Post by Lorn Asbord Schutta » 3 years ago

So maybe instead of milling at contact, make it prowess-like?

"Whenever a card enters opponent's graveyard from library, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn."

With some fancy name alluding to psychosis.
Alternatively - but this would be much stronger - something more synergistic with discard and removal:

"Whenever a card enters opponent's graveyard from anywhere, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn."

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Post by OneAndOnly » 3 years ago

I would go with, "If this would deal damage, you may have it mill that many cards instead," with the possibility of milling a fixed number instead. So you could make a 1/1 that mills five cards every time it hits. I also enjoy that you could use it defensively -- ie, put it on your opponent's beater so you lose cards from your library instead of life.

@Lorn, I like the second of those, except that it may penalize casting spells just a little too much. I think "discards or mills a card" is probably straightforward enough.

.

Also, I like blue-black cards that have some sort of living-past-death ability; "If this would die, you may put it on top of its owner's library instead" as opposed to regeneration.

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Post by Lorn Asbord Schutta » 3 years ago

OneAndOnly wrote:
3 years ago
@Lorn, I like the second of those, except that it may penalize casting spells just a little too much. I think "discards or mills a card" is probably straightforward enough.
I am afraid I have not thought out all consequences of such keyword, even in the "mill-only" version. Creatures with such ability would have to top-end in terms of converted mana cost, because simple Tome Scour giving +5/+5 all of sudden. In formats with Glimpse the Unthinkable there would be new kind of - rather dominant - aggro, with an alternative win condition - milling - to boot. No way this happens.
OneAndOnly wrote:
3 years ago
Also, I like blue-black cards that have some sort of living-past-death ability; "If this would die, you may put it on top of its owner's library instead" as opposed to regeneration.
Now, this one might look fun. Blue is the color that would be the least "locked" with such recursion - because if you are not drawing multiple card per turn, you will never get further in your deck - and black is not lagging much behind. With this being keyword, there could be some cards caring if they are in GY or in library - to explore the tension in "may" - without too much wordiness and therefore lower rarities.
However, it could lead to endless supply of chump-blocker for Dimir, which should not be the best color combination for such.

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Post by OneAndOnly » 3 years ago

Depending on the exact wording, Tome Scour might give +6/+6 -- it counts itself. (eep!)

Oh, and I agree on the eternal chump-blocker thing -- like regeneration, it would need some sort of cost or condition attached to it.

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