June CCL, Signups/Round 2: Tools of the Shinobi

[RaikouRider]

T3:

1) Sojourner Dusk
2) Jimmy Groove
3) Subject16

[Henlock]

Subject16: I like the mechanical flavor here. I like it as a scrying tool, too. The unblockable.part can be unreliable and is quite uneffective for bñue.

JimmyGroove: Nice set of abilities. The discard equip coat if very fit for the shoe-phone flavor of the card. A grrat deal of sneakiness here.

monoredmage; Thia reminds me a lot of destructive urge and Latulla's Orders kind of auras, but in equipment form. Which makes them.more reliable. The fact that it grants evasion and has to be sacced balances it very well for nowadays LD standards.

Phyrexian editor: A good way to effectively give myriad to commanders, and legendary-matters is bery Kamigawa. That said, I would have kwpt this way simpler. Balancing the equip ninja with the unblockability hit the cost very hard.

Pygzy- This is very fun indeed. Masako the Humorless ability turned inaide out. Of course, this will.lose its surprise factor and incentivize attacks from your opponents after it is played, but in multiplayer this can be a headache for the opponent. The equipment swap is nice and an awesome asset for equipment decks as they tend to be in Boros and have a hard time accelerating.

Apellosine: Nice manaless.equip that can be self fed. The skulk.is a bit odd because it comes with a power increase, but it's a fair evasion ability.

kwanyegoe; A bit of evasiosn, a bit of pump, a bit of ramp and a bit of removal. Lots of stuff going on but in quite swissknifey way.

Again, lota of good stuff here

1. Pygzy
2. monoredmage
3. JimmyGroove

[Jimmy Groove]

Crits

Crits

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Sojourner Dusk - Masterwork Lockpicks: Repeated fateseal is hard to balance. This on anything with decent protection almost copletely insures that one player will be having horrible draws, which can be downright gamebreaking. Would probably be safer with that ability if it didn't grant complete unblockability so it wasn't as easy to Voltron-up a lock that is almost impossible to escape. Still, solid flavor and design templating and whatnot. Cost seems right for if they were to print a card like this.

Lorn Asbord Schutta - Poison in Tooth: As a general rule you shouldn't use mechanics that Magic has discontinued (except when it is required by the challenge in some way, of course). And Tribal has been discontinued, so that's a bit of a problem. The bigger problem is that there is just very litle use for this. It would literally be much better if it just gave the creature "0: Sacrfice this creature." because at least then it could be used as part of an engine. You don't even get to decide when the creature would die. If you are caught on this idea, I'd redo it as "Sacrifice Poison in Tooth: Sacrifice equipped creature. Draw a card." A one-shot cycle-away like that isn't gamebreaking and would have a decent amount of uses.

netn10 - Dimir Spyrobe: A good example of how a strong lower-rarity design that does less can be for the beter. That's a very strong combination of ablities, but the cost of playing and equipping it is high enough that only Dimir can do it in the midgame. I'd feel more comfortable with this at uncommon but common could be doable, especially if the set this was in had enough similar equipment to warrant everyone playing removal.

slimytrout - Flickerslash Blade: Phasing has just made a tiny comeback, enough to mean it's no longer a "mistake from the past that should not be repeated" mechanic like banding, so this is solid. It's a very flavorful effect, and it makes an aggressive creature much harder to deal with. Probably pushed right to the limit at uncommon, but stil possible.

RaikouRider - Tools of the Trade: This seems potentially doable, but it is hard to evaluate how solid this would be. It would swing wildly in power between various metas based on the creaturebases in those metas. I fill like this would be safer with a slightly higher cost and some non-situational buff as well. But the biggest thing is that it seems backwards from the flavor that makes sense to me: it would made sense that if you are leading an army of elves and beasts and you want to spy on a human, you'd send in your human ally. So I would expect the abilities to be active while your opponent controls a creature that shares a type. The spy taking advantage of people trusting them because they seem native.

Subject16 - Azurine Spyglass: Flavor and design is very solid, tells a story very well. Hard to say if the cost is right. In order to play this and get an unblockable swing the next turn, you have to pay five mana, and you have to stack your deck in a way that at least occasionally might not be ideal. Seems printable and probably on the safe side price-wise.

Henlock - Grandmistress' Teogi: I don't know what a Teogi is, and google ain't being terribly helpful. That's a problem. Seems reasonably balanced and printable, if pushed, but doesn't seem terribly covert.

Top 3:

Top 30

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1. slimytrout - Flickerslash Blade

2. netn10 - Dimir Spyrobe

3. Subject16 - Azurine Spyglass

[void_nothing]

And the critiques are closed! Here are your top 8 finishers:

(Edited due to a calculation error in Excel)

slimytrout
Subject16
RaikouRider
Pygyzy
MonoRedMage
Jimmy Groove
Phyrexian Editor
Lorn Asbord Schutta

Next round to come later.

[Jimmy Groove]

Woot.







They it is.


Congrats everyone and whatnot.