slimytrout wrote: ↑1 year ago
Mindwringer 2UB
Creature - Snake Horror (U)
Whenever Mindwringer or another Horror enters the battlefield under your control, descend toward insanity.
(Move your sanity marker down one level.)
1UB, Sacrifice Mindwringer: Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate only if Mindwringer dealt damage to a player this turn.
"squeeze unease disease please"
-Words carved into the 12,738th stair
3/4
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Sanity
Sane
Paranoid - When you reach this level, surveil 1. Up to one target creature gains menace until end of turn.
Delusional - After your draw step, mill a card. Up to one target creature gets +1/+0 and gains menace until end of turn.
Raving - After your draw step, mill two cards. Up to two target creatures each get +2/+0 and gain menace and deathtouch until end of turn.
Insane - After your draw step, mill three cards for each creature you control. Creatures you control get +3/+0 and can't be blocked until end of turn.
Design
Appeal 2.5/3 - Timmy loves the flavor here and likes to reanimate his dead creatures, not minding too much that he has to attack to do that. He would attack anyway, and he also likes a lot the effects on the tracker card. Johnny likes the abilities and the self-mill on the tracker card allowing him to do tricks with his graveyard, but he doesn't like that restriction on the activated ability forcing him to attack to be able to access the effect. He will also try to find ways to manipulate sanity if they exist. Spike likes reanimation at a low activation cost and doesn't mind the restriction too much. She also likes the evasion on the tracker card.
Elegance 3/3 - No problems here.
Development
Viability 2/3 - I see no need for this card to be blue. Monoblack would work perfectly, everything this card does is doable in black, Horror-tribal feels black as most Horrors are black, and the flavor of going insane is a perfect natural fit for black. I think uncommon is acceptable. I see no problems implementing this in the rules (see Subchallenges for details, I've actually written that before this.)
Balance 3/3 - Playable in limited. Reanimation at three mana is tempting for constructed too, even if this creature has to connect to turn on that ability. The effects of the tracker card also look potentially relevant in constructed, they already give you evasion and get even better if self-mill is a viable strategy in the environment. I see no problems in casual or multiplayer.
Creativity
Uniqueness 3/3 - The challenges this round just required unique designs, and this submission doesn't disappoint. I feel like I will just copy and paste this line in all judgments...
Flavor 3/3 - No problems here. All the different elements work perfectly together to create a very flavorful card and mechanic. In the tracker card, I like how the mechanics repeat themselves going from one level to the next, only growing in size and with added effects. The progression fits very well with the flavor of a descent into madness. I'm not a fan of the horror genre at all, but I feel like the flavor of this card comes straight out of a horror movie. The feeling I get is the same, which I guess was exactly the intention. Well, it works perfectly in that.
Polish
Quality 1/3 - Hyphens instead of em dashes everywhere (type line, flavor text, and tracker card), but no deduction for that as your opponent didn't use em dashes correctly either, so I can just ignore that here. In the tracker card, the text of the abilities is not in italics, so I assume it's meant to be rules text. In that case, there is no "After your draw step" trigger condition, that should be "At the beginning of your precombat main phase". It's worded like that on Sagas for space reasons, but that's reminder text so it can be less precise. There are three instances of this (the "delusional", "raving", and "insane" abilities), so three times -0.5 makes -1.5. In the "insane" ability, "can't be blocked until end of turn" is non-standard templating, and in fact a Gatherer search for that text returns zero results. It should be worded like this: "...get +3/+0 until end of turn and can't be blocked this turn." (-0.5)
Main Challenge 2/2 - All good.
Subchallenges 1.5/2 - You've defined the tracker card, so Subchallenge 1 is met. For Subchallenge 2, sanity would probably be implemented in the rules as a designation a player can have (not an emblem), that can only have five values, necessarily called "levels" because of the paranoid ability, that are ordered in a sequence: "sane", "paranoid", "delusional", "raving", and "insane", and each level has an inherent static ability associated with it: "As long as your sanity is at least (name of the level), (effect)." Then, you have a keyword action, "descend toward insanity", that moves your sanity up (or down actually?) one level. If you set up the rules like this, you're not using any counters, that's true. But how would that tracker card be actually printed? Clearly in some way like the Ring, or the text box of planeswalkers, with different stripes containing each one ability in order from top to bottom. Really, just picture the Ring with one extra line and that's it. Physically, not in the rules but practically I mean, how would you use that card? You'd pick some kind of object like a bead, a die, or a coin, and you'd place it on your current level of sanity. You even talk about a "sanity marker" and how you're required to "move" it "down" in the creature's reminder text yourself, that's essentially acknowledging there is actually supposed to be some kind of marker acting as a counter on this tracker card. I don't see any other practical way. And if you do that, you're just using a counter in practice. So I'll say that the letter of Subchallenge 2 is met, as you're not using any counters in the rules, but not the spirit, as everybody would use some counter-like object in practice to keep track of their sanity. That's why I'm deducting half a point for Subchallenge 2.
TOTAL 21/25