The Seven Deadly Sins

[Lucifer, Sapere Aude]

This cycle will be a part of a larger set of a world inspired by judeo-christian religion. The Seven Deadly Sins are a very evokative and iconic concept, so I'm sure players would love to see those concept depicted as Magic cards to see how we could entwine nicely mechanics and flavor.

Gluttony

GRR

Instant

Sacrifice any number of nonland permanents. Put that many +1/+1 counters on target creature you control.

Wrath

BRR

Instant

Creatures attack this turn if able. Target creature you control gains haste, double strike and death touch until the end of turn.

Envy

UGG

Instant

Up to one target creature you control gets +X/+X until the end of turn, where X is equal to the greatest power among creatures your opponents control. Then choose up to one target opponent. If that player has more cards in hand than you, draw cards equal to the difference.

Lust

WRR

Instant

Gain control of target creature until the end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste and lifelink until the end of turn.

Pride

WBB

Instant

Destroy target creature or planeswalker. Each opponent loses X life, where X is the converted mana cost of the permanent destroyed this way. You gain life equal to the life lost this way.

Sloth

WUU

Instant

Tap target permanent. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. It loses all abilities until your next turn.

Greed

URR

Instant

Gain control of all nonland permanents controlled by your opponents until the end of turn. Draw a card, then discard a card for each permanent you gained control this way.

[user_938036]

I understand the desire to make them color combinations and to try and distribute them among colors but lust and greed are off color because of this and a few others don't sit quite right. There is nothing white about lust and for greed to be anything but black is spitting in Black's face. The effects are interesting an in color and vaguely fit their theme so this is a good path. Because it is a cycle of 7(14) you don't want to be forced into too many constraints such as the casting cost of CMM or all being instants. This causes the power levels to be all over the place from game enders to worthless junk.

As a side note do you plan on doing the seven deadly virtues as well?

[SecretInfiltrator]

Wrath and Lust totally should swap colors from a conceptual perspective. Lust would actually still be fine in those new colors.

Greed is far too good. Sacrifice outlets do exist, you know?

p. s.: I'm increasingly skeptical about that whole "Not being the devil"-thing. ; )

[TearsOfTomorrow]

I'm appalled that this s not a cycle of seven legendary demons, a la Demon Lords in the Digimon franchise.

As [mention]SecretInfiltrator[/mention] pointed out, Greed paired with any sac outlet would essentially become a Planar Cleansing that gives you value first... FOR THREE MANA. Hell no.

[Lucifer, Sapere Aude]

There is nothing white about lust

You mean mechanically or flavorfully? Because mechanically lifelink is a white ability. Flavorfully, Lust is mainly red and a bit white (the life link part) because it symbolize Somebody raptured by the passion because it was seduced from the other (that's why you take a temporary control of the foe creature, like an infatuation) and the lifelink part, which again is white, represent the fullfiment of the carnal pleasures, and gaining life seems an appropriate way to show this kind of hedonistic exstasy of senses.

and for greed to be anything but black is spitting in Black's face.

I just realized a terrible error. Greed already exist infact as a black enchantment (so I should rethink the would cycle in base of that), but red can represent the compulsive avarice as well (Avaricious Dragon is a red card after all) and gaining control of things and drawing compulsively cards it's something that represent greed perfectly, and gaining temporary control of things and card loothing are mechanically perfect red color pie wise with blue reinforcing the concept for a more aggressive mana cost.

you don't want to be forced into too many constraints such as the casting cost of CMM or all being instants. This causes the power levels to be all over the place from game enders to worthless junk.

I think aesthetic is important and makes the cycle clean and elegant, something that the Melvinian type of player loves. Also, where is the worthless junk? Maybe not the all the cards are equally appealing for constructed in every format but you would be happy to draw them each as limited bombs if you play their colors. And even the apparently weakers ones like Gluttony, can be open for exploitations of weird combos. Also, I don't recall a single Magic cycle where all the cards have the same relevance and power level. The fluctuation of power level between cards is physiological and normal in these cases.

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Greed paired with any sac outlet would essentially become a Planar Cleansing that gives you value first... FOR THREE MANA. Hell no.

First of all, if you say "any sac outlet" it's not "essentially a planar cleansing", because almost all the competitively viable at aggressive mana cost and free-mana activation cost in a repeatable way works only for creatures, in modern at least. So if you take for only a turn any other kind of permanent is much, much difficult to make in a viable way, so if you actually manage to do a real planar cleansing with upside, you deserve it, and very probably you will not make it for turn 3 this thing.


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Wrath and Lust totally should swap colors from a conceptual perspective. Lust would actually still be fine in those new colors.

They cannot swap as they are written. Death touch is not a red or white thing, while is very weird to give lifelink on black/red card, there's no precedents in Magic of this, feels off. Also read above and I explain why I decide to make Lust a slightly white thing.

Greed is far too good. Sacrifice outlets do exist, you know?

Yes, the sac outlets for creatures are very common. But Reins of Power is also a card and I don't see people abusing it with sac outlet in competitive environments. Sacrifiying other types of permanents is much, much harder. Also the stolen permanents doesn't even have haste, so if you don't have any other card support or you steal valuable planeswalkers, you will most of the time just do the card filtering part.

[Lucifer, Sapere Aude]

The be fair the only Magic card that I recall that can sac any kind of thing is Infernal Tribute, and not only that force a UR deck to run a BBB card, not only the card is legal only in legacy, vintage and edh, not only doesn't work with tokens, not only you will never do the trick at turn 3 ever possibly, but with that activation of "2" doesn't make it a worthly and viable sac engine for this particular combo with Greed at all lol.
So I confirm that this will basically combo out only with creature sac outlets, and still that would make it a very good card, but not ban-worthy,
imho. So all the "Planar Cleansing at 3 mana" it's pretty much a non-issue. One sided wrath of god at best and still require a setup to use it like that. In a format, modern, where 2 cards setup are used for infinite combo, and not only gaining raw value.

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Whooops sorry. totally forgot of Claws of Gix. Now that's efficent yes. but it's not a free sac outlet so won't work turn 3 anyway.

[spacemonaut]

On Greed sac outlets: There are lots of effects that just let you sacrifice a creature. Standard has rarely been without having several options at a time: here's all the cards from standard-legal sets including reprints (or only the most recent prints).

A third color is not a big ask if it means I get to make a one-sided creature wipe as early as turn 3 (though I probably won't need or want to use it until turn 5).

So yep, one-sided board wipe it is. Discarding your hand won't even necessarily be a downside in a Grixis deck. Greed would see the banlist very quickly in standard and modern. You might not be able to remove their enchantments and artifacts, but that won't matter in most cases they'll be crippled.

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Wrath should grant first strike. Granting double strike and death touch is usually a nonbo: your second strike has nothing to do because the first strike already killed everything. There's three cards that specifically grant a form of strike and deathtouch, and they all grant first strike. (Not including those two ability sharers, as they're just being ability sharers.)

Wrath and Envy do too much for CMC 3 instants, even at rare. They should each be CMC 4 or 5. I know you're going for a thing with the mana costs, but you need to tone down the effect strength.

Pride does way, way, way too much for a CMC 3 removal spell. Let's take a look at rare removal spells: for CMC 1 I get Fatal Push. For CMC 2 or 3, I can destroy a creature or one other type, or I can destroy only a creature but I get a tiny upside. That's peak removal spell efficiency.

Pride, on the other hand, means when you play your favourite bomb creature or planeswalker, I destroy it, and you lose 5-10 life and I gain 5-10 life, for a 10-20 life difference. That's far, far too much.

Really, it would make more sense for me to be able to destroy a creature or planeswalker at CMC 2 and then lose that much life. Alternately, I'd expect to see this as a XWB spell that destroys a creature with CMC X, makes you lose X life, and makes me gain X life.

Sloth is perfectly reasonable.

Lust I'm on the fence about as to whether it's OK at CMC 3 or should be CMC 4. That lifelink on any creature your opponent has is sort of a big deal.

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Overall: reign in your design power level or be willing to vary the mana costs. You've got a neat pattern, but you're breaking it, and trying to stick to the mana cost gimmick is probably harming your designs more than it helps them. It's OK for the sins to at different CMCs.

[Lucifer, Sapere Aude]

So yep, one-sided board wipe it is.

It's very easy for opponents to play around any sac-outlet once they know how the decks works. By destroying the sac outlet or just playing one treat at time.
A normal wrath of God is always a one side board wipe for control decks against any aggro deck (and that is one, not two cards setup), but even aggros can handle the virtual card advantage of control of killing many things with only one card.

Greed would see the banlist very quickly in standard and modern.

Never, in the history of banlist of any format, I ever heard of a card banned only because, in combo with another, is one side board wipe. Especially when is so trivially easy to work around it, once you know the opponent plays that card.

Wrath should grant first strike. Granting double strike and death touch is usually a nonbo: your second strike has nothing to do because the first strike already killed everything. There's three cards that specifically grant a form of strike and deathtouch, and they all grant first strike. (Not including those two ability sharers, as they're just being ability sharers.)

There's a couple of things you are missing here. First of all, double strike is there to emphatize somebody that is seriously in "Berserk mode" (see the flavor of Avatar of Massacre) and that means it's a perfect keyword ability to depict a totally enraged person for the sin of Wrath. Secondly, the Death Touch is the only black keyword ability that make sense if I want this to be both a black and red card, which are the colors of hate and destruction (which again are totally appropriate for Wrath). Yes, maybe the 2 keywords are slightly redundant, but they helps to reinforce the flavor of an absolutey determined creature ready to kill anyone and everyone. Also notice that you can use the card in opponent turn to force to attack and do a one side trading. First strike I believe would be more elegant, but wouldn't feel a "raged" creature much like double strike does (with first strike would feel just quick and swift, but not really mad with the world). So double strike is basically there for flavor reasons.

Wrath and Envy do too much for CMC 3 instants, even at rare. They should each be CMC 4 or 5. I know you're going for a thing with the mana costs, but you need to tone down the effect strength.

And how about changing the effects? Would you propose something else appropriate for that mana cost that would "feel" to represent the sin in act?

Pride does way, way, way too much for a CMC 3 removal spell. Let's take a look at rare removal spells: for CMC 1 I get Fatal Push. For CMC 2 or 3, I can destroy a creature or one other type, or I can destroy only a creature but I get a tiny upside. That's peak removal spell efficiency.

You forgot that black and white at cmc can already get rid of any permanent (Vindicate, Anguished Unmaking) or being a swiss-knife tool (Kaya's Guile). Yes, maybe the upside of gaining and losing lifes it's a bit too much, but just destroying a creature or PW is plain and fair. Still, I choose to add the "drain" effect not only to emphatize the grandeur of being the best of all (first I "dethronized" someone because I think I'm the best one, then to prove that I'm superior I slap everyone making myself even greater in the process), but also because like this really feels like a black and white and not only monoblack card. Maybe a good compromise is to just gain 1 life and lose 1 life to all the opponents, that the tiny upside that still would give that idea of flavor of Pride I'm trying to expose here.

Overall: reign in your design power level or be willing to vary the mana costs. You've got a neat pattern, but you're breaking it, and trying to stick to the mana cost gimmick is probably harming your designs more than it helps them. It's OK for the sins to at different CMCs.

I think the cmc gimmik is so neat that I would prefer to nerf the cards at this point. For example, if you think that Greed does too much suggest me a nice way in UR to represent well that concept, that would be appreciated.

[spacemonaut]

I think the cmc gimmik is so neat that I would prefer to nerf the cards at this point. For example, if you think that Greed does too much suggest me a nice way in UR to represent well that concept, that would be appreciated.
[...]
And how about changing the effects [of Wrath and Envy]? Would you propose something else appropriate for that mana cost that would "feel" to represent the sin in act?

I don't have designs to suggest but I have concepts to suggest you can play with within the CMC 3 bracket.

Envy can be related to hating your opponent for what they have. Lust is already handling taking what they've got, so let's stay clear of that. Within this flavour you can do:

• Create token copies of a creature your opponent has
• Turn one of your creatures into a copy of one of your opponent's creatures
• Boost damage to your opponent or their creatures
• An effect like Netherborn Phalanx and Stronghold Discipline: opponents lose life for each creature they control; this hasn't been done at Rare yet
• Mill your opponent

Other concepts that you can play around with in Greed, interpreted as wanting more and more of what you can get, :

• Create Treasure tokens
• Creating token copies of your own stuff
• Draw cards
• Tutor some things, perhaps to the top of your library

Wrath can just be outright destructive, so you're already in a good direction with the combat tricks. If you're happy with the current wrath then OK.

Never, in the history of banlist of any format, I ever heard of a card banned only because, in combo with another, is one side board wipe. Especially when is so trivially easy to work around it, once you know the opponent plays that card.

Two-card combos that win the game too soon do get banned. Remember Saheeli's Copy Cats combo during Kaladesh?

I haven't heard of this specific kind of thing getting banned before in Standard, but I also don't remember Standard ever receiving such a combo that can go off on turn 3.

You forgot that black and white at cmc can already get rid of any permanent (Vindicate, Anguished Unmaking) or being a swiss-knife tool (Kaya's Guile). Yes, maybe the upside of gaining and losing lifes it's a bit too much, but just destroying a creature or PW is plain and fair. Still, I choose to add the "drain" effect not only to emphatize the grandeur of being the best of all (first I "dethronized" someone because I think I'm the best one, then to prove that I'm superior I slap everyone making myself even greater in the process), but also because like this really feels like a black and white and not only monoblack card. Maybe a good compromise is to just gain 1 life and lose 1 life to all the opponents, that the tiny upside that still would give that idea of flavor of Pride I'm trying to expose here.

I haven't forgotten. Vindicate is a CMC 3 that simply destroys with no upside. Anguished unmaking is also CMC 3, and has an upgrade to exiling but at an additional cost (you lose 3 life). At CMC 3 the current Pride destroys with a major upside, one that will probably swing the whole game, which puts it a fair way out of the CMC 3 range.

Adjusting down to lose 1 life would be fair: destroys a narrower range than vindicate, but with a separate upside.