July CCL Signups/Round 2: Better Half

[slimytrout]

CCL July Signups/Round 2

"Better Half"


Young Necromancer, by Paul Scott Canavan and Wizards of the Coast

Welcome to the Card Creation League! Everyone is free to participate in either or both of the first two rounds. Come join us!

Theme

It's Cycles Month here at the CCL! Horizontal, vertical, existing, new -- we're going to go make them all.

Challenge

Design a card that would fit in a horizontal cycle with an existing uncycled card

Clarifications

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• The existing card can be any card that wasn't originally in a cycle, and your card should fit in a five-card cycle with that card.
• Feel free to make clear what card you are referencing if you're not sure if other contestants will recognize it.
• Make sure to include a rarity.

Anyone can enter this first round! Your submissions are due Saturday, July 17th, 23:59 EST.

Schedule

• Round 1 — Open to Everyone (July 1st-July 8th)
  
• Round 2 — Open to Everyone (July 10th-17th)
• Rounds 1 and 2 Critiques (Due July 19th)
• Top 8 — Open to top 8 finishers (July 20th–23rd)
• Top 8 Critiques (Due July 25th)
• Top 4 — Open to top 4 finishers (July 26th–28th)
• Top 4 Critiques (Due July 30th)
• Final (August, winner determined by public poll)

Please note: For this month we will continue asking first and second round contestants to evaluate seven other contestants during the critique and top 3 period, in order to increase the total number of evaluations each contestant gets.

[netn10]

Cycle with Isolate.

Participate G
Instant (Rare)
Put a permanent card with mana value 1 from your hand onto the battlefield.
"Three broken branches, two filthy bandits, one decree - death."
- Elish, Llanowar Scout

[RaikouRider]

Vona's Hunger

Ixalli's Fertility 1GG
Sorcery {R}
Ascend (If you control ten or more permanents, you get the city's blessing for the rest of the game.)
Search your library for a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle. Then if you have the city's blessing, you may put any number of land cards from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.

[Ink-Treader]

Celestial Mantle

Brilliant Cloak 3UUU
Enchantment - Aura (R)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +3/+3
Whenever enchanted creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller scries equal to the number of cards in their hand, then draws that many cards. Until enchanted creature's controller's next turn, that player has no maximum hand size.

[Subject16]

Evolutionary Escalation

Necromantic Escalation 1B
Enchantment (U)
At the beginning of your upkeep, return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand, then return target creature card from an opponent's graveyard to its owner's hand.
"Geralf thinks his little toys are better than my creations, does he? Well, we'll see about that."

[bravelion83]

Edge of Autumn

Edge of Summer 1R
Enchantment (C)
At the beginning of your postcombat main phase, if you control four or fewer lands, add R.
Cycling—Sacrifice a land. (Sacrifice a land, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

[void_nothing]

Glacial Crasher

Seeker of Murk 2WW
Creature - Avatar (C)
1: Seeker of Murk gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Seeker of Murk can't attack unless there's a Swamp on the battlefield.
"I go among the darkness to hold it back. I fear I may begin to wallow in it."
3/3

[kwanyeegor-ii]

Liliana's Mastery

Garruk's Mastery 3GG
Enchantment (Rare)
When Garruk's Mastery enters the battlefield, create a 3/3 green Beast creature token.
Beasts you control have trample and indestructible as long as it's your turn.

[Henlock]

Wolf's Boon g
Enchantment - Aura (u)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and cannot be blocked by more than one creature.
3g: Return Wolf's Boon from your graveyard to the battlefield attached to target creature. Activate only as a sorcery.

[slimytrout]

Bump -- 24(ish) hour warning.

[marioguy3]

Bane of Progress is a comparison card to in the cycle.

Bane of the Moons
Creature—Elemental Werewolf (Mythic Rare)
When Bane of the Moons enters the battlefield, return all other nonland permanents to their owners hands. At the beginning of the next end step, Bane of the Moons loses all abilities and becomes an Island with ": Add "
Blue moon werewolves hate the sun just as much as the fire elemental werewolves before them
6/6

[slimytrout]

Closing the round. Please critique the seven contestants above you on this list (i.e., each person other than the one directly below you):

netn10
RaikouRider
Ink-Treader
Subject16
bravelion83
void_nothing
kwanyeegor-ii
Henlock
marioguy3

[void_nothing]

Critiques

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netn10 - Interesting kind-of-mirror to the original. I'd have to think hard about the best uses for it.

RaikouRider - Effect's perfectly reasonable but to feel like a cycle member with Vona's Hunger I feel like this should have been in the format "[Do something]. If you have the city's blessing, instead [do something directly bigger]." For example, tutor a land card to the battlefield --> tutor three land cards.

Ink-Treader - Celestial Mantle is a pet card of mine so I think this one's pretty cool - and the saboteur effect this grants is very very powerful but hey, it's a hard to cast Aura.

Subject16 - Neat - Evolutionary Escalation does feel ripe for a cycle and continually recurring creatures is a pretty powerful effect.

bravelion83 - Cross-card-type cycles are at least a little odd, and I feel like this is too close in effect to the original Edge of Autumn, only seemingly weaker, to be compelling.

Henlock - Gryff's Boon eh? Flying is a much more powerful ability than singleblock (what I call grapple) but that's kind of compensated with the +1 toughness. Generally not an exciting design but a solid one.

marioguy3 - I basically do not understand this card. This card doesn't really fit with Bane of Progress as a cycle mate, the flavor doesn't make sense to me, and with the fact that this turns into an Island right away I don't even know why it's even a creature card in the first place instead of an artifact with a mana ability or something.

Top 3

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1. Ink-Treader
2. Subject16
3. netn10

[marioguy3]

RaikouRider: Solid design and can get pretty good late.
Ink-Treader: This is an example of a "brilliant" design.
Subject16: Exhume on an enchantment back to hand is interesting.
bravelion83 A very cool ramp card.
void_nothing: Generally okay design and not super powerful. But plays well with specific cards.
kwanyeegor-ii I like this version of Liliana's Mastery. Reads and plays decently well.
Henlock: Fitting design that works in a number of decks; I like the one mana aura cost for immediate casting potential.

Top 3:
3rd: Ink-Treader
2nd: bravelion83
1st: Henlock

[Ink-Treader]

netn10

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A quite interesting choice to form a cycle. This feels like a weird sort of Quicken/Scout's Warning, trading off the ability to replace itself with not requiring any additional mana. I'm not sure this is actually all that good though.

RaikouRider

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Not quite worse than Rampant Growth at base, thanks to the ability fetch any land. The city's blessing bonus is pretty neat, but difficult to effectively get huge payoff with, though even one additional land is a nice rate.

bravelion83

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Interesting. A bit unusual to have this be a different card type, but not entirely unheard of. It's a pretty cool piece of tech for red, that's for sure.

void_nothing

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A common avatar? How curious. I can appreciate how this is a little looser in forming a cycle, focusing purely on the drawback and the (somewhat) out of color other ability.

kwanyeegor-ii

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Ah, mirroring Garruk and Liliana via enchantments. Provides a bit less power than Liliana's, but the keywords are strong, even if Beasts are a bit spottier in support than Zombies.

Henlock

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Apparently meant to go with Gryff's Boon? It's a fine design, if a little unexciting.

marioguy3

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This is all sorts of weird. A very weird transformation into a land, and some odd flavor. This really doesn't feel like it goes with Bane of Progress outside of both being wipes of a kind. Perhaps if you received some benefit based on what or how much was returned to hand.

Top 3

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1. kwanyeegor-ii
2. RaikouRider
3. void_nothing

[bravelion83]

Critiques (done)

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Cycle with Isolate.

Participate G
Instant (Rare)
Put a permanent card with mana value 1 from your hand onto the battlefield.
"Three broken branches, two filthy bandits, one decree - death."
- Elish, Llanowar Scout

I really like this. It fits very well into the hypothetical cycle, and reflects the original card even in flavor text. Also very elegant. Very strong start.

Vona's Hunger

Ixalli's Fertility 1GG
Sorcery {R}
Ascend (If you control ten or more permanents, you get the city's blessing for the rest of the game.)
Search your library for a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle. Then if you have the city's blessing, you may put any number of land cards from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.

Not what I expected from the cycle as I read the card. I expected an effect and then if you have the city's blessing, half that effect. This feels more like a separate card to me than a cycle.

Celestial Mantle

Brilliant Cloak 3UUU
Enchantment - Aura (R)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +3/+3
Whenever enchanted creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller scries equal to the number of cards in their hand, then draws that many cards. Until enchanted creature's controller's next turn, that player has no maximum hand size.

This does feel like a cycle to me. The same bonus and trigger than the original card with a different but splashy effect. Now this was what I expected from this challenge. Good work.

Evolutionary Escalation

Necromantic Escalation 1B
Enchantment (U)
At the beginning of your upkeep, return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand, then return target creature card from an opponent's graveyard to its owner's hand.
"Geralf thinks his little toys are better than my creations, does he? Well, we'll see about that."

Again, this fits well in the cycle: I do something then I do the same thing to my opponent. Not something I'd personally play, but it's just me. What I love of this card is the flavor text, I'd just add an attribution to Gisa, who is clearly the speaker here.

Liliana's Mastery

Garruk's Mastery 3GG
Enchantment (Rare)
When Garruk's Mastery enters the battlefield, create a 3/3 green Beast creature token.
Beasts you control have trample and indestructible as long as it's your turn.

The card is fine, but the cycle feels a little looser here. The bonus is only granted during your turn, while the +1/+1 to Zombies in Liliana's Mastery is permanent, and the number of tokens created is different, even if Beasts are right for Garruk to summon. I would have probably given a permanent +1/+1 to Beasts, and then created two 3/3 Beast tokens, with an adjustment in the mana cost.

Wolf's Boon g
Enchantment - Aura (u)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and cannot be blocked by more than one creature.
3g: Return Wolf's Boon from your graveyard to the battlefield attached to target creature. Activate only as a sorcery.

This card is also fine but I don't recognize the cycle, and that's a problem in this challenge. I don't know whether it's my fault, but I can't have memorized every non-cycled Magic card in existence. I'm sorry.

Bane of Progress is a comparison card to in the cycle.

Bane of the Moons
Creature—Elemental Werewolf (Mythic Rare)
When Bane of the Moons enters the battlefield, return all other nonland permanents to their owners hands. At the beginning of the next end step, Bane of the Moons loses all abilities and becomes an Island with ": Add "
Blue moon werewolves hate the sun just as much as the fire elemental werewolves before them
6/6

The only thing this card and Bane of Progress have in common is that they have an ETB trigger, which is far too generic to make them a cycle. I would change the delayed end-of-turn triggered ability to putting a +1/+1 on this for each card returned that way. I'm also not sure how much I like this as a non-transforming Werewolf, and in blue.

Top 3

1st place: netn10
2nd place: Subject16
3rd place: Ink-Treader

[slimytrout]

I'd love to get at least 1 more critique for this round, so I'm leaving it open until at least midnight ET tonight.

[Henlock]

RaiikouRaider: City's blessing bonus. This can be already played a lot bynthe sole reason of being able to search for any one land, and each copy brings you closer to the city's blessing. One thing I really don"t like here is that, unlike Vona's Hunger, you:ll want to play this as soon as you can and you miss the decision-making part of holding vs casting.

netn10: Right now I can't think of many things to do.qith it, but this is the kinf.of catd that finds its used quickly.

voidnothing- Great choice for a cycle, as these.work a bit as support, a bit as hose. The shade ability is a bit odd in whitw (althought.not unheard of), but the presence od black on the battlefield as a requiremwnt for it to be.relevant works very well.

Bravelion- This is a bit too similar in effect to the original card, and it left me.wondering how have you pictured the rest of the cycle.

subject16: Black has plenty of ways to make this one sided and your choice for a cycle is pretty bountiful in possibilities.

Ink-Treader: I can see what you want to do here and I quite like it, but I feel that leaving it at "draw cards equal to your hand" would have made it more elegant and versatile. Either way, with so much draw potential the scrying is a bit unnecessary as it might take some time.

kwanyegor: I think this one suffers the same.issue as my design, shich is that room for drsign is ratjer limited. The card is.of.course, fine given there are Beasts aplenty, as.it adds a bit of support which, compared to white Humans, black Zombies and red Goblins, is not that plentiful.


1. voidnothing
2. subject16
3..netn10

[slimytrout]

Ok, it seems like that's all the critiques we're going to get (big thank you to those who submitted them!), so I'm going to move on to Round 3 today. I'm cutting to 6 people given the relatively low participation in Round 2 (and the fact that no one who participated only in Round 1 moved on), and those people are:

Ink-Treader
Henlock
bravelion83
netn10
void_nothing
Subject16

Congrats to them! Round 3 to come this afternoon.