New Mechanic - Ordained

[Sorandu]

Sunstriker Firstblade 1W
Creature - Human Soldier (C)
Sunstriker Firstblade has first strike as long as its ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, or counters on them are ordained.)
3/1

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Purge the Unworthy 2WB
Sorcery (R)
Destroy all creatures that aren't ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, or counters on them are ordained.)

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Mist Hopper 1UU
Creature - Merfolk Shaman (R)
1U, T: Counter target noncreature spell. Exile Mist Hopper, then return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control. Activate this ability only if Mist Hopper is ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, or counters on them are ordained.)
2/2

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Elven Revilifier 3G
Creature - Elf Shaman (R)
You may cast Aura cards from your graveyard.
2/4

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Underground Sanctum
Land (R)
T: Add C.
4, T: Put a +1/+1 counter on target land. Activate this ability only if you control an ordained creature.
As long as Underground Sanctum is ordained, its a 0/0 Elemental creature that's still a land.

[SecretInfiltrator]

I like it ordained is also open to being expanded if a new card type/subtype or game object is created to go with these.

I'm not too much a fan of Mist Hopper.

[Krishnath]

Personally, I like Mist Hopper, because it resets it's ordained status when used. (counters are removed when it exiles itself, auras on it go to the graveyard as a state based effect, and equipment fall off).
That said, I do think it is a wee bit overpowered as it is a reusable counterspell. Even at rare those effects tend to be very powerful when repeatable.

[Amuzet]

ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, or counters on them are ordained.)

Since you have a land that cares about being ordained, perhaps include the one Fortification or any future cards that can attach themselves.

ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, Fortification or counters on them are ordained.)

Future proof
ordained. (Permanents with counters, or permanents attached to them are ordained.)

[TurkeySloth]

Elvish Relivifier, not Elven Relivifier, has a wonky name, which may prevent its printing in the first place. Also, "relive" would indicate some regeneration-like mechanic to most people. Green naturalizing things makes enchantment fetching a hard break for green. Please don't try to refute this this pre-modern or Planar Chaos cards.

[user_938036]

ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, or counters on them are ordained.)

Since you have a land that cares about being ordained, perhaps include the one Fortification or any future cards that can attach themselves.

ordained. (Permanents with Auras, Equipment, Fortification or counters on them are ordained.)

Future proof
ordained. (Permanents with counters, or permanents attached to them are ordained.)

This needs to combine three attributes to best fit with human nature. You could add or subtract if absolutely necessary but it's best to go with human nature.

Elvish Relivifier, not Elven Relivifier, has a wonky name, which may prevent its printing in the first place. Also, "relive" would indicate some regeneration-like mechanic to most people. Green naturalizing things makes enchantment fetching a hard break for green. Please don't try to refute this this pre-modern or Planar Chaos cards.

Green can get any permanent from the graveyard so getting a specific type is a bend at worst. If a set had an enchantment theme then it would be reasonable for green to specifically get back enchantment. Though it is more in whites wheel house.

A color being able to destroy something usually means it works well with that something. Black and creatures, red and artifacts, white and enchantment. So this is possibly the worst argument you could come up with.

[void_nothing]

Green - the color of enchantress effects - being able to cast Auras from graveyards isn't a "hard break", it isn't even a bend.

[spacemonaut]

I think TurkeySloth has something there at least going by current color pie standards. I think it makes a lot of sense to make Elven Revilifier white-green rather than mono-green.

The case of it not quite fitting in color pie:

Mechanical Color Pie 2017 lists "Cast spells out of graveyard" primarily in black and secondarily in blue and red — and no other colors. Here "spells" includes permanents.

Green gets a lot of recall effects (Wildest Dreams, Eternal Witness) which return cards from the graveyard to the hand. Distinctly those require you to pay for the recall, then later you can also pay to cast the spell. They don't get to cast it directly out of the graveyard. Only two green cards have been able to do that.

The case of it being white-green:

Midas Touch by Mark Rosewater says two-color cards get to do something "shiny and new". He also lists that white and green care the most about enchantments. This seems shiny and new, not 100% in anyone's color pie, and cares an awful lot about enchantments, so white-green seems good.

[void_nothing]

White is the color that likes Auras the most specifically, both white and green can recur permanents from graveyards, and GW historically loves enchantments. Yes, I would say those two colors are the absolute best choice.

[spacemonaut]

On the mechanic itself —

Ordained seems cool, but I feel it would be more flavorful and more mechanically effective if it only cared about Auras and Equipment. On a flavor side they are quite special things to give to a creature that certainly feel "ordaining" it. Mechanically, auras and equipment are two of the weaker card types and need help, and giving you a boost for using them seems great. Also, they are quite costly to use, requiring you to devote a whole card to another permanent and mana to get it there, which justifies giving you decent rewards for using them.

Contrast to those, counters are on a different level. Flavor-wise it doesn't have the same "ordained" feel—you're not specially singled out with a rare gift, you're just a little bit stronger or something. Mechanically, it's much easier to get a counter on anything you control (lots of effects do it for free or as a side benefit), and counters are not wanting for strength—lots of things already care about them. The flavour difference washes out Ordained a bit. Meanwhile the ease and low cost of getting counters onto things means we have to be careful to not give too powerful bonuses attached to Ordained status, meaning they can't be as strong as if they only rewarded Auras and Equipment.

If it is on just Auras and Equipment, then that makes it great for encouraging you to use some weaker card types that can help make it worth it to jump through the cost and card hurdles and risk the inherent two-for-ones and feels like a special-feeling flavor win.


That gives us the following redux on Underground Sanctum:

Underground Sanctum
Land (R)
T: Add C.
As long as Underground Sanctum is ordained, it's a 2/2 Elemental creature that's still a land. (It's ordained if it has an Aura or Equipment attached to it.)

There's a problem in an Ordained Manland intersection though: if you want to use Underground Sanctum as a creature, you want it to have an aura that improves its power as a creature. However land auras focus on improving lands' power as lands, usually mana production. Sometimes they add special effects (Underworld Connections) but there's benefit in them being on something that's hard to remove like a land, you don't want them on something easy to remove like a creature for that cost.

This means Ordained Lands should probably focus on being better lands, like the following:

Flowering Sanctum
Land (U)
T: Add G.
T: Add two mana of any one color. Activate this ability only if Flowering Sanctum is ordained. (It's ordained if it has an Aura or Equipment attached to it.)

But the fact this land will never have an Equipment attached — only Fortifications — makes me want to keep Ordained just on Creatures. (After all, not all things we can do with a mechanic are things we should do.)

[barbecube]

Over at the custommagic Discord, we arrived at the same conclusion as spacemonaut: it makes the mechanic (as used over there, empowered) too hard to use if you can turn it on with counters.

[CubJay]

This is really cool space. It feels like an expansion on the "batching" technology that wotc tested out with Hostoric (the keyword, not the format ). Maybe if it only checked for particular types or amounts of counters it might be less abusable? Cuz I honestly like that including counters rewards you for *all* types of suited-up creatures, but as others have pointed out the sheer number of counters and cards that make counters easily is problematic.

[Sorandu]

Elven Revilifier
I'm in agreement with making the card multicolor (GW).
I had a custom set layout in my head where I separate Auras (GU) and Equipment (RW) into distinct colors for better theme distribution, but overall the multicolor pairing for that single card makes sense.

Ordained
Dropping counters from the mechanic is the consensus reached here, and I'm also in agreement after giving it some thought. I didn't want to fall into the same trappings that Theros block did with their enchantment theme and the mechanics that synergize with enchantments. That is why I expanded the mechanic to include counters. With counters dropped, the text could be shortened up a bit or made into an ability word.

Ordained (Enchanted or equipped permanents are ordained.)

Ordained - This creature gets +2/+2 as long as it has a permanent attached to it.

Future-proofing the mechanic could also be done, but the phrase (Permanents with permanents attached to it...) sounds confusing to me.