MTGNexus Single Card Critique Thread/One Card at a Time

[Morpic_Tide]

The issue with a low cost is being able to have it well inside the midrange killing window, and control decks already have a spectacular amount of ways to shut down midrange. The ability to cast three spells is vital to all sorts of board states, and what's effectively a counter-war auto-win like this makes the mirror match hideously slow. For reference, the nearest comparison is Ghost-Lit Warder, which is a creature and thus vastly easier to remove, costs four mana to activate the counter, and the effect is found on Quench for two mana. How much do you value the restriction to the third spell, when such is a very obvious result of the control mirror-match?

At any rate, have another stretching of Mutate design, this time being somewhat overextended from turning Vulpikeet into a Commander:

Sky-Eye, Everlearning Essence www
Legendary Creature - Fox Spirit
Mutate 1w
Partner
Whenever Sky-Eye mutates, or another permanent is attached to it, put your choice of a Flying, First Strike, Lifelink, Vigilance, or +1/+1 counter on it.
1ww: Return target Aura, Equipment, or creature with Bestow or Mutate from your graveyard to your hand.
3/3

---

I say "somewhat" overextended because the initial stream-of-thought draft worked off Bestow and had Totem Armor to reduce the "one basket" effect, was Red and had Haste as a counter option, an extra activated ability to do the P/T improvement, and had Soulbond and Graft in the remaining activated ability alongside the requisite text in the trigger. But that takes up a staggering amount of space and massively distanced from the initial card just being continual Mutate growth.

So I stripped it down to one color, and added just Aura and Equipment payoff, with the recovery ability being the extent of pure addition and only covering the attachments and Mutate. And no, I didn't run into wording issues, it just was too big for a Partner and I really liked the thought of a Voltron Partner that recovers the Voltron pieces.

[CamraMaan]

I like what you're doing with Sky-Eye, Everlearning Essence on pretty much every level, and my knee-jerk reaction was that it was too powerful, but the more I digest it the more it seems it's costs are appropriate, pending rarity (probably mythic). It might need a limit of one +1/+1 counter, looking at the current trends, but I prefer it not limited. I dig it though!

My modern deck building musings brought me to this one...

King of the Hill W
Human Noble (M)
Protection from converted mana cost 1
When another card named King of the Hill enters the battlefield, put this card into its owner's graveyard
2/1

This is inspired by Mistmeadow Skulk and Lavabrink Venturer, but fitting the desires of modern. Its benefits are pretty obvious... avoiding the bolt/path/push/etc, or any 1cc creatures or counterspells, etc, making its early turn value high. I'm also feeling it should have legendary singleton status, but not be legendary, and also allow other players to kind of affect it in a legendary rule kind of way... highly themed after the kid's game. But I'm unsure of the correct wording... don't know if it should be if, when, whenever...?

Also, it's viability in modern would probably force its presence in every modern deck that can run white, both because of its power on its own, and its 1cc removal ability against other King of the Hill cards, without triggering its protection.

[Morpic_Tide]

I think you're wildly overestimating CMC 1 removal and threats. The sort of status you're thinking of would be a direct inversion of Mistmedow Skulk, in Protection from CMC 3 or less, as there's a few CMC 0 removals alongside the entire space of non-copy tokens, and most Modern decks will run 2 or 3 cost removal for Instant speed and unconditionality so as to deal with all the ramp and reanimation threats.

Giving it Double Strike, or even just First Strike, could justify being Legendary, as those would make ambushes get very nasty due to the early unblockability, especially if expanding to CMC 2 or less so it takes some flavor of shenanigan to be allowed to block its first swing. Then the three-drop next turn is technically capable of blocking it, but still likely to be Double Struck from existence for doing so, and First Strike on a 2/1 would still be very much able to cause problems, thereby making it very desperately need to be Legendary so as to avoid board-boosts turning into hideous kills.

At any rate, the "I'm the captain now" game had Alseid of Life's Bounty come up, which seemed an excellent opportunity to cover the more proactive and faster solution to Voltron play in countering the destruction effect. Mixed with Eidolon of Inspiration because that has a named character for me to mine.

Agios, Inspiring Martyr w
Legendary Enchantment Creature - Spirit
Bestow 2w
Lifelink, Partner
Sacrifice Agios: Target creature you control gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Enchanted creature gets +2/+1 and Lifelink.
2/1

---

I could have had it give Double Strike in combat to more closely follow Eidolon of Inspiration, but decided to stick to minimizing complexity and just call the +2 as Bestow. This is almost certainly wildly excessive for a conventional one-drop, but it being an Enchantment Creature with one Toughness and the big selling point being a Sacrifice effect means that it's probably lasting at most two turns before it's cracked to Protect your current stack or someone blows it up.

Due to the Commander tax, very frequently using this ends up being very inefficient in short order. Unless, of course, you have Sky-Eye as the other end, which is what got me to pick this up because the two make for a seemingly good enough mono-white Voltron pair, with how one can protect the main body and let you get away with more aggression while the other recovers the first without Commander tax alongside all the other pieces and carries a good pile of important keywords. And since Sky Eye uses Mutate and can give Flying up front, you can generally make any stack into your Commander for Commander damage purposes, greatly lowering the bar for victory.

There's also some good late-game bomb options, with Hundred-Handed One standing out to me as something that's a good Voltron target for being a mass blocker, and getting spectacular benefit from First Strike to make killing the thing a much more spectacular problem. And then you have this left on the board to stick everything on, including Sky-Eye. Given the ease of recovering things, Cubwarden is very useful to generate bodies to stick things on and deal chip damage, which Huntmaster Liger easily makes stop being "chip" damage.

I do admit that a Green Partner would be much, much more powerful overall, due to far easier and wider access to Trample effects to get damage through and access to surprisingly good tutoring, but Flying and First Strike make combat difficult enough up front and some of the potential late-game bodies to stick everything on make for fairly abrupt win conditions, and if anyone has a board that all shares one color then you can crack this to get Protection from that color and just completely ignore blockers altogether.

[CamraMaan]

I think that's too much... for one, there are no 1cc creatures with 2 power and lifelink, so that's kinda crossing a line already drawn in the sand. But then adding bestow, partner, and a sacrifice protection mechanic, I mean... it can't be 1cc and do all that too. Even 2cc would seem cheap. But really it's also just doing too much as well. Probably take out partner and make it WW...? And again, if 2cc, giving it 3 power and lifelink crosses the same line, where the only such examples have temporary lifelink, with Blacklance Paragon and Glory-Bound Initiate. So with 2cc and lifelink we're stuck at 2 power if we agree to play WOTC's game, so to speak. But bumping it to 2/2 and +2/+2 might be plausible. And while it's not necessarily super common, having a bestow cost only 1cc above the CMC is common enough to not need to change that from 2W. With the sac option, this would still be a super-powerful card as such, especially if you bump it's P/T and bestow to 2/2 and +2/+2. Might actually still be too powerful in that form, but it's closer to being less broken.

Regarding your King of the Hill comments, I kinda like bumping it up to protection from casting cost 2 and below, and giving if first strike, but not double strike. But even then, first strike has the same line drawn in the sand as lifelink, where you don't find any non-wall creatures with power greater than their CMC, at least not in the 1cc/2cc/3cc levels, and same with deathtouch. So if I go with 2 power and 1cc I can't really add any of lifelink, first strike, or deathtouch. So, without any of those, would it still be too powerful if it isn't legendary, but maintains the last ability that more or less keeps only one of the BF, and has the bump in protection to 2cmc or less...? Also, I just decided to add a few things and change it up a little... To throw an update out there:

King of the Hill
Human Noble (M)
Haste, protection from converted mana cost 2 or less
If another card named King of the Hill enters the battlefield, exile this card.
If King of the Hill entering the battlefield triggers another King of the Hill to be exiled, put a +1/+0 counter on King of the Hill. If you controlled the exiled King of the Hill, put two +1/+0 counters on it instead.
2/1

The last added part adds a new level of both danger and benefit to running it in your deck... But now I feel it's gotta be 2cc...? Maybe not. But I'm also not 100% on the best wording for the last part. Also, if you know your opponent is running King of the Hill as well, then you will benefit from going second, in case they draw and cast one first. Of course, therein lies the danger... if you can cast one on T1, playing first, do you risk it...? If you do and your opponent plays one next, it's a 3/1 haste on T1, that just removed it's only blocker, and comes otherwise protected for another turn or two... risky indeed... fun dynamics... Then on top of that, if your opponent does not run any, when you draw your second one it behooves you to possibly play it, exiling the other, and bump it's power to 4/1... or hold it and wait for the first topotentially get removed.

[spacemonaut]

If another card named King of the Hill enters the battlefield, exile this card.
If King of the Hill entering the battlefield triggers another King of the Hill to be exiled, put a +1/+0 counter on King of the Hill. If you controlled the exiled King of the Hill, put two +1/+0 counters on it instead.

Templating: when, not if.

Please don't bring back +1/+0 counters. We haven't seen them in 20 years and it's a good thing they're gone.

When another permanent named King of the Hill enters the battlefield, exile King of the Hill.
Whenever another permanent named King of the Hill leaves the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on King of the Hill. If you controlled that permanent, put two +1/+1 counters on King of the Hill instead.

I'm just gonna point out though that the old Legend rules kinda sucked, and KOTH might not be super to play with. In a mirror match, nobody wants to be the first to play theirs unless they have two (but hopefully the opponent doesn't also have two). But putting aside the mirror, it's a cmc-1 permanent which enters as a 2/1 with haste and protection from anything else that has entered already and will enter this turn or next. Alternately, it's (functionally) a cmc-2 permanent that enters as a 3/2 with haste and protection from the same, and is capable of killing a lot of permanents that will enter turn 3 or 4 as well. That might be a little unfun to play against? Definitely fits aggro though.

---

Here's something I bashed together recently:

Sudden Mimic 2UB
Instant
Gain control of target artifact. It becomes a Mimic artifact creature with power and toughness equal to its converted mana cost. Untap it. If it was an Equipment, destroy the creature it was equipping.

[CamraMaan]

I was trying to avoid bumping it's defense up, keeping it somewhat killable. What about dropping it to 1/1, and making them +1/+1 counters...? And the more I think about it, I really think it's too much to have protection from 2cmc and below, and rather just 1cmc and below. But then I feel like if it's a 1/1 it maybe needs more than haste, probably with lifelink? Or is the protection enough? With lifelink, with two in hand you can essentially pay and cast both to get one 3/3 haste, lifelink, protection <= 1cmc... which isn't tooo overpowering, especially since it takes two cards. Without a mirror match, T1 it's 1 damage and 1 life, and T2, after casting a second, you do 3 damage and gain 3 life (but it can get removed T2 with an AssTrophy/etc if you play second and they saved the mana). As is:

King of the Hill
Human Noble (M)
Haste, lifelink, protection from converted mana cost 1 or less
If another card named King of the Hill enters the battlefield, exile this card.
If King of the Hill entering the battlefield triggers another King of the Hill to be exiled, put a +1/+1 counter on King of the Hill. If you controlled the exiled King of the Hill, put two +1/+1 counters on it instead.
1/1

As for Sudden Mimic.... that's really cool! I really dig it! Honestly, no recommendations, really... what would be your intended rarity?

[Morpic_Tide]

The thing you seem to be failing at is that Modern runs on rapid escalation, and you stubbornly refuse anything that scales damage on it. Lifelink would provide it a powerful niche against Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration if it weren't for Insectile Abberation having Flying, and Haste only gives at most 3 damage over not having Haste, unless you burn a lot of boosts. Why would I take this over Monastery Swiftspear in an aggro deck, allowing me to hurl anything, of any cost or purpose, and turn it into extra damage?

And the continued insistence on this highly complicated "uniqueness" mechanic that is actively preventing synergies with anything else because of the Exile component means that the big selling point of current aggro decks in Lurrus of the Dream-Den doesn't help it at all. Making it a Legendary with a Granduer or graveyard exile effect would allow for keeping much the same results with far less complexity and far more opportunity for working with other big names in "don't lose to control" like Lurrus.

I also went ahead and tried to come up with something coherent that shoves Haunt, Cipher, and Adventure on a single card for the Mechanic Game:

Matron of Spies 1bu
Creature - Specter
Haunt
When Matron of Spies or the creature it haunts deals combat damage to a player, put a Flying counter on target creature you control.
2/3

//

Hollowed Memory 2wb
Instant - Adventure
Target player reveals their hand and you choose a creature card from it. Put a 2/2 Black Specter creature token with "when this deals combat damage to a player, that player mills a card" and exile the chosen card. When the token leaves play, return the chosen card to its owner's hand.
Cipher

---

As an Instant with Cipher, it can be used as a combat trick to get two blockers for the following turn and potentially lock away two creatures, thereby giving a very large pressure to force removal before it resolves to avoid the second token, thereby meaning counteracting the Cipher benefits comes before you need to choose to Cipher it. And so if they do remove the unblocked attacker, you can decline to Cipher it and get the Adventure exile instead.

These are not compatible as Adventure only works if it's the Adventure effect doing the Exile, so you're choosing between Encoding it on a creature or having Matron of Spies available later. However, as an Instant, you get the assurance of the second token if used offensively, and the hand reveal gives you the knowledge as to which is the better choice. This is a lot of value to Cipher due being an Instant, but the hand removal is mostly a Tidehollow Sculler token.

The main thing is that a huge amount of the value is in knowledge, as Tidehollow Sculler itself saw play as extra Thoughsiezes just for that, and that's something that doesn't stack so the value of that effect being cloned on the same turn is basically a rounding error. Coming out turn 4 means all the aggro decks have either crashed and burned or gotten off the ground, while other control decks are typically very light on creatures to remove, and in both cases they're likely to have little important for you to learn by then.

Of course, you can also use it defensively to make another blocker, check for ambushes, and prune any Flash or Cycling shenanigans, thereby knowing if you're safe to or need to use your Murderous Rider // Swift End to deal with a 1/1 swinging and depriving any remaining aggression fuel, even if you have no blue mana in your deck. Very good suite of use-cases for pretty much every imaginable strain of control able to cast them, even if a single deck actually using all of it probably doesn't work because of the needed room.

[spacemonaut]

Hallowed Memory's text physically cannot fit in an adventure frame. Of all the adventures, Merfolk Secretkeeper // Venture Deeper has the most amount of text of any of them. Its text size is the minimum they'll print on non-planeswalker cards (compare it to Animate Dead). If it's not at the minimum, it's very close. At that size it nearly totally fills the adventure frame. Its text has 17 words and 99 characters:

Target player mills four cards. (Then exile this card. You may cast the creature later from exile.)

Hallowed Memory's text is three times longer, at 54 words and 291 characters, and also has to include a line break for Cipher:

Target player reveals their hand and you choose a creature card from it. Put a 2/2 Black Specter creature token with "when this deals combat damage to a player, that player mills a card" and exile the chosen card. When the token leaves play, return the chosen card to its owner's hand.
Cipher

You can squeeze a couple of extra words out of the adventure frame, but not that many. In fact, Hallowed Memories has enough text to pretty adequately fill up a regular spell's rules box:

(I made this image pretty small, but it should be enough to show how well it fills up the rules text.)

And, honestly, this is exactly what it should be: a single normal Instant spell card rather than an Adventure. It gives it room to breathe rather than be one part of a two-part nonbo. That's a standard text size (34pt according to mtg.design). We're only going to barely fit in the Cipher reminder text if we want to add it, but it's doable.

If I would change anything about Hallowed Memory, it would be to drop the mill ability. It's a relatively complex card with several moving parts and that's the only part that has nothing to do with any of the other parts. Removing that text also makes fitting in the Cipher reminder text more doable.

Hallowed Memories 2WB
Instant
Target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it and exile that card. Create a 2/2 black Specter creature token. When that token leaves the battlefield, return the exiled card to its owner's hand.
Cipher

I've updated to current verbiage as well: tokens are created (not put), and objects leave the battlefield (not play).

This also means Matron of Spies can do its own thing, and honestly, that's good and fine. Both of these cards would be better for just being their own cards.

Matron of Spies is pretty gorgeous and I wouldn't change anything about it beyond, as mentioned, making it a regular creature card and not an adventurer. Functionally it says something similar to "haunted creature can't attack" most of the time, so that's something to be aware of. I could see this card also existing in WB or WU, but it is also just fine in UB.

As for Sudden Mimic.... that's really cool! I really dig it! Honestly, no recommendations, really... what would be your intended rarity?

Yay! Good question! I'm not sure if it'd be rare or uncommon; I imagine it's the kind of card that would switch between those two depending on the draft environment it gets printed into.

[Morpic_Tide]

The underlying idea is that, like Reaper of Night // Harvest Fear, the "Specter" effect is the Adventure, in this case with respect to the lore about Ravnican Specters being the result of people who have their identity erased (hence the token), then Matron of Spies gives the typical evasion to support the on-hit effects, which would probably be Gloambat gifting fluff-wise.

In terms of fitting on the text box, "target player reveals their hand" is 33 characters, so it occupies a third of the text space. Switching to the templating for tokens used more recently brings the size from 60 characters to 42. Since the value is predicated on knowledge as with Gitaxian Probe, going with "and discards a card" at 20 characters would give an effect of "Target player reveals their hand and discards a card. Create a 2/2 Black Specter creature token", which is 95 characters overall.

Compared to Smitten Swordmaster // Curry Favor, which has six lines of text for 93 characters (and is a Common lacking the reminder text) to Venture Deeper's seven lines and 99 characters, it should be able to fit with a point or two smaller font than Venture Deeper, which is visibly possible given Animate Dead is clearly a point or two smaller. It'd be crowded, certainly, but doable. The "Specter-ness" then becomes a concequence of the Cipher property, which can Encode onto the token itself.

As for Matron of Spies, it can target itself first to gain evasion for later attacks, as well as Haunt creatures with innate evasion, and all the sac outlets can have it be used as a combat trick to get the Flying counters going (including Haunting a nasty enemy creature so it hitting you gives you Flyers). Could act as a substitute for Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration in some harder forms of Esper Control, or Geist of Saint Traft's mainboard slot, as it makes more of your stuff evasive to get damage through while still being a useful control effect.

[spacemonaut]

[...] an effect of "Target player reveals their hand and discards a card. Create a 2/2 Black Specter creature token", which is 95 characters overall. [...] It'd be crowded, certainly, but doable.

Yep, that'd work! : )

Also, I somehow totally forgot that Haunt could also haunt your own creatures. I like that interaction with Matron setting up future haunt candidates, and having the option to grant itself flying so as to be able to more easily grant others flying.

I didn't say, but I also get fully that the card was the way it was because it was designed to go all-out in meeting challenge criteria. Within that scope you did a great job, barring the issue of text fitting.

I think part of the reason I didn't connect the Adventure back to the Matron was because of the adventure having cipher: making the most of the Adventure specifically means never even seeing the Matron again, and using the Matron means never seeing the Adventure, so that sets me up to think of them as two wholly separate cards, where I might use one or the other.

The version without Cipher on the Adventure feels better since it means the Adventure naturally leads to the Matron.

[BaconCatBug]

So, after some good feedback on Reddit and Discord, I'd like your thoughts on this:

Flavour: It gets overgrown and goes back to nature.
Mechanically: I've always liked level up, the thought is you spend spare mana to pump this up, and get a nice but not overly strong effect at the end.

I'm working on making this a full cycle but I'll make a dedicated thread for that. Thoughts?

[void_nothing]

I don't dislike level up on noncreatures mechanically but it seems odd flavorfully. Leveling up is something that characters do in RPGs.

A four-mana mana rock that generated two mana per tap and gained life at the same time would be relatively strong, especially on an installment plan payment thing, but consuming a land drop is also a significant cost.

I don't think I have any severe changes to suggest for Overgrown Temple, I'd just play around with the numbers.

...

Oona's Scorn 3B
Sorcery (U)
Choose two colors. Creatures of the first chosen color get +1/+1 until end of turn and creatures of the second chosen color get -1/-1 until end of turn.
Retrace

[Morpic_Tide]

Retrace is the "discard a land to recast", right? This card has a lot of use as a combat setup effect, but as a Sorcery doesn't offer the shenanigans of a 2/2 swing across the board. Being four mana further cuts into the chances of allowing a big blowout by making it take eight to get two in one turn. The main power case is thus the repeated clearing of 1/1 tokens, which is liable to require first removing Lords or Anthems, except you then probably can't really use token floods yourself because then you'd be wiping your own alongside, making its low color identity not liable to be a cause for breaking things because most of the heavy breakdown cases would mean mirror-matches that don't have it be particularly useful.

Overall, seems balanced from not really lining up anything crazy as it's specifically terrible in the mirror and it costs too much to get any properly stupid multi-casts going. Life from the Loam seems the biggest cause for combo concern, but in that case you still have to get to eight mana for the second cast to be able to wipe just 2/2s of a color and go from "chumps" to decent threats. Basically, it punishes narrow weenie strategies like Red Rush, but leaves all the more complicated stuff more or less alone since it's symmetrical.

I'll be explaining some reasoning and analysis on my fresh post in "I'm The Captain Now" here so I can get feedback without cluttering the game thread, as is basically a usual for me at this point:

Ekruthen, Risen in Bogs {g/u}{b/g}
Legendary Creature - Fungus Nightstalker
When Ekruthen enters the battlefield, you may add the same amount and kind of mana spent to cast it to your mana pool.
1U: Draw two cards, then discard a card.
1B: Sacrifice a creature, then destroy target creature.
1G: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
At the end of your turn, if UUGGBB was spent on Ekruthen's activated abilities this turn, you may exile it, search your library or graveyard for a card named Muldrotha, the Gravetide, and put it onto the battlefield.
1/1

---

This is almost certainly pushing the very edge of what fits on a card, and is pretty much certainly broke as all hells from the layers of cost efficiency, but the idea for targeting Muldrotha for the fetch is that it is not that good in the Commander slot between the mana cost being high enough to be later in the game and being payoff rather than fuel, which is generally inferior for the actual Commander slot because you then need to build the entire rest of the deck around assuring you have good fuel, which means more dedicating cards to self-mill and simultaneously fitting good recursion targets, with a side of needing sacrifice triggers if you're recurring ETBs.

In this permutation, two of the abilities are solid tie-ins to the fetched "General"/"King", giving card access and grave-filling to advance your game plan, alongside a sacrifice to return ETBs to the graveyard for further recursion. Being partly generic, you can meet the full identity condition by using any of them twice, then activating one of the other two with the missing piece, allowing for pure fuel plays beforehand instead of needing to use the Green ability. Being Exile acts as a small note of balance for any non-Singleton format it ends up in or using it in the 99, compromising resilience of Muldrotha as a "lieutenant" to Commanders able to fuel it like Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.

The most immediate nerf that comes to mind would be bumping the costs on the activatables to 1MM and raising the total to three of each, making Muldrotha into a true "Hail Mary" game-closer when accessed this way and forcing all three to be used in the same turn, but this breaks some symmetries I appreciate aesthetically and makes the counter so expensive that you either have a major part of your deck built around it or it's only used as an outlet for any excess Green mana. In that case, it's still an enabler for almost everything you can do in Sultai colors at good efficiency, being effectively free to cast and giving useful outlets for any mana you don't have a card for, keeping it as a very solid pick acting as a "safe" Sidisi outside hardcore aggro or Zombie tribal builds.

[cadp_]

First note: that last ability needs to be split into two sentences. "...you may exile it. If you do, search your..." is the proper wording.

So, abilities. We have Bone Splinters for extra, Catalog for less, and Battlegrowth for extra. One of these things is clearly not like the others; fixing the blue ability to be similar (an extra over a "draw two" for ) gives us Careful Study. Bump the discard to two cards there. (If you want to keep it as draw two/discard one, the ability should cost 3u, and making the other two abilities symmetric to that gives us something like Mind Extraction or Victimize as the black ability, and... uh, somewhere between Give and Invigorating Surge in green. At that point, the EOT ability would need to be looking for something ridiculous in mana composition that makes it unwieldy, but it's then probably a good enough card to be a commander in its own right and not need that ability.)

Also, something about the mana cost in conjunction with the "and then you get the mana back" ability bothers me slightly. I can deal with it in blue, I can deal with it in mono-green... it feels off with the gb option, though. Dunno why.

[Morpic_Tide]

The effects are actually derived from Sift Through Sands, Urborg Panther, and Kyscu Drake, as the card was devised as part of one of the Custom Card Contest threads, specifically one where people suggest cards not legally able to be Commanders to make Commanders out of, and those were the ones suggested. Bumping to 1MM for the abilities would mean finding similar 2M cards to key to for the abilities, which apparently keeps the Blue. Atemsis, All-Seeing, while at the CMC 6 mark I consider decidedly overdoing it for a Commander, just flatly has Catalog without markup, and color identity markup is often more impactful than an extra generic in Commander for the issues with ultra-reliable color fixing brought on by singleton.

Going with counters on the Green was already a compromise, though done for the sake of avoiding the color pie bleed from keying off such an old card. I'd go with Courage in Crisis in this case. Maybe add Shroud until end of turn instead of Proliferate, comparing to Woodcutter's Grit or have it be a ghetto Stonewood Invocation, so you have a cheap removal shutdown and can still sacrifice it, but can't stack further buffs later. For Black, I'd lean more on Tormented Thoughts than Mind Extraction, and they both have the issue of the "finisher" being the recursion engine of Muldrotha causing you to almost instantly go completely insane from cycling bomb after bomb. Maybe adapting Tribute to Hunger or Soul Shatter, so you don't have hard control over what's being gotten rid of.

Edit: The lack of the "if you do" is actually somewhat intentional, as that mandate introduces a few complexities that make things a bit difficult, mostly surrounding ambiguities of conditional effects on Commanders. The Exile can be phrased as a cost and the condition can be reformatted to leave out the "may" and "end of turn" portions, keeping the clarity that it can go back to the command zone and making reactivity clearer, so I'll go with that to keep the clarity that it can land in the Command zone and also have it work on more friendly timing.

And partly for the sake of reducing the spectacular blowup capacity, the "refund" is getting shifted to land untapping, as it is with the existing "free" cards. Can still pre-tap them to allow the untap, but it sets a limit to non-land mana before you start actually spending it. Not too impactful with Green in the picture, but keeps niche Dark Ritual plays and mana dork/rock pileups from breaking things entirely.

So, adding up these changes:

Ekruthen, Risen in Bogs {g/u}{b/g}
Legendary Creature - Fungus Nightstalker
When Ekruthen enters the battlefield, untap lands up to the amount of mana spent to cast it
1uU: Draw two cards, then discard a card.
1bB: Each player sacrifices a creature. You gain life equal to the total Power of creatures sacrificed this way.
1gG: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. It gains Shroud until end of turn.
Exile Ekruthen: If you've spent UuUGgGBbB on abilities of Ekruthen this turn, search your library or graveyard for a card named Muldrotha, the Gravetide, and put it onto the battlefield.
1/1

[cadp_]

Atemsis, All-Seeing, while at the CMC 6 mark I consider decidedly overdoing it for a Commander, just flatly has Catalog without markup

It is important to note here that the difference with Atemsis is that it's not repeatable Catalog on a stick without an untap enabler added in. (The difference is, basically, do you think "4uuuu: Draw eight cards, then discard four cards." - which would have been a realistic end-of-opponent's-turn move - would have been reasonable?)

That said, the changes definitely make it a more balanced card, and I like it.

[Morpic_Tide]

So, @Oskeo, since you decided to go for a highly experimental entry you "hope it kills", I'll bring some commentary over to this thread:

Kirin's Haunt 1br

Legendary Sorcery

Until the end of your next turn, whenever a creature you control dies, you get an experience counter, and whenever a noncreature artifact you control leaves the battlefield, ~ deals one damage to each opponent. At the beginning of each end step, if ~ is your commander, ~ marks each player who took damage this way with 3 commander damage.

Create X colorless Treasure artifact tokens with "t, sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool." and X 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature tokens, where XX is equal to the number of experience counters you have, rounded up.

Flashback - 3br

~ can be your commander.

You took my work, my life, my lover, but you will never have my talent.

(Tried something experimental, hope it kills.)

The biggest fundamental problem with this card is "At the beginning of each end step, if ~ is your commander, ~ marks each player who took damage this way with 3 commander damage.", as this line does not note a point where it halts. Consequently, after the first time you cast it, everyone else is on a 7-turn timer before they lose. Also, you seem to have been intending having half of each or something given the mention of "rounding up".

And to demonstrate the current state of this, let's assume you have a no-limits sac outlet and five creatures to feed it. Cast this, sacrifice the creatures, now you have five Experience Counters. Then you cast it for its Flashback cost, generating another five creatures and five Treasures. You sacrifice those, get another five experience counters, cast this from the Command zone for the second time from the Flashback's Treasures, generate ten mana and creatures. Thus you have gone infinite.

My most immediate suggestion for a "fixed" version would be something like this:

Kirin's Haunt 1br

Legendary Sorcery

As an additional cost to cast ~, you may sacrifice any number of non-creature Artifacts. If you do, create half that many 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature tokens, rounded down.

Until the start of your next turn, whenever a creature you control dies, you get an experience counter, and whenever a non-creature artifact you control leaves the battlefield, ~ deals one damage to each opponent.

Create X colorless Treasure tokens, where X is equal to half the number of experience counters you have, rounded down.

Flashback - 3br

~ can be your commander.

You took my work, my life, my lover, but you will never have my talent.

This keeps a lot of the desired properties, but doesn't easily hand you large quantities of recasting, and "chokes" the loop to need enough that you'll win the game long before you go infinite just from how many Treasures you crack. And a rule on Legendary Sorceries and Instants that's important to note is that you need a Legendary Creature or Planeswalker to be allowed to cast them, which makes for a good roadblock to infinite recursion. Also Treasures are a rule-defined token type, so they don't need their properties defined.

[Oskeo]

Thanks for the analysis! I definitely meant for the commander damage ability to check each turn if a player took damage from the ability "this turn" so that's definitely a design error. I considered adding a limit to when it would check, but figured since the damage effect that triggers it has limits, it was unnecessary.

I'm not against combos, but I definitely prefer designs that don't have obvious or easily obtainable setup requirements, so I appreciate your balancing in that regard, but I also felt I was definitely handed a loaded prompt with cards that had a hostile effect triggered on sacrificing a permanent, so if it combos I'm sure whoever offered the prompt is happy. (One sec to check who's prompt...)

Chochky's prompt! So thanks, @Morpic_Tide for the rework, and @chochky, check out this re-tuning of your prompted commander!

[Pygyzy]

Bonk! RB
Instant
Bonk! deals 2 damage to target creature. Turn that creature face down.

[spacemonaut]

Bonk! RB
Instant
Bonk! deals 2 damage to target creature. Turn that creature face down.

This is pretty funny, but it's also super strong. It's like a super-exile, or like Elking something then destroying it, except the Elking also removes all types, colors, names, and every other attribute except for being a 2/2 creature.

Like exile, this circumvents indestructible as well as any other ability that might prevent the death. Like exile, it also circumvents "dies" triggers by removing the ability, so a God-Eternal Kefnet who gets Bonked won't come back to its owner's library. (Note this even sidesteps Keftnet's attempts to interact with getting exiled!) Like being Elked, anything that cares about a Goblin dying won't see the Goblin die if it gets Bonked.

Unlike exile though, it even circumvents "leaves the battlefield" abilities: if I Bonk a Spell Queller nobody gets the spell back.

It does however interact with regeneration and damage prevention, and the creature does go to the graveyard.

I would cost this at CMC 4 or 5 and strongly consider making it a sorcery.

[void_nothing]

Yeah, what we have here is a considerably stronger Terminate, and Terminate is a top 10 common ever printed imo. Rarity is important here because removal is a bigger deal in Limited than in Constructed, even though it's already huge in Constructed in just about every format, but removal this arms-racey shouldn't be cheap or low in rarity. (Five mana's a bit much though except at common.)

[Pygyzy]

Ok how about this?

Dropkick BbR
Sorcery (R)
Dropkick deals 2 damage to target creature. Turn that creature face down.

[Morpic_Tide]

This new mana cost has a direct comparison in Bedevil, and offers a variety of important differences. In essence, it's trading Artifacts and Planeswalkers for bypassing Indestructible, "improper" Regenerates, and anything the creature itself has to do with dying. Compared to the classic Murder, it's subject to damage-based prevention (boosts especially, as compared to Heartless Act) and costs Red instead of generic, again at the upside of bypassing one of the major barriers to removal and shutting off everything specific to the creature dying.

This could almost be 1br, but then it runs into issues where you're having a lot more consistency than is really safe in catch-bypassing removal. One of the biggest is a major reason Oko's banned from Brawl, because that turn-down essentially deletes the creature in question unless somebody finishes it off, so any Commander that has a +1/+1 counter or Toughness-boosting equipment/aura/whatever on it suddenly becomes a blank creature save for those counters. Zur the Enchanter isn't really going to notice if he's off the ground, but almost everything else is going to crash and burn in one way or another if its Commander's been Elk'd.

For my own card, it won't be a crosspost this time. Because the previous post is a headache and a half of just blunt-forcing something top-down design to kick off Specters for the Creature Type ABCs. Instead, have a semi-errata'd version of a post pulled up from what is for now on the last page of Custom Card Creation (specifically Keyword Kombinator):

Supply Caravan 3w
Artifact - Vehicle
Ration 5 (This permanent enters the battlefield with 5 +1/+1 counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, move a +1/+1 counter from this to a creature you control with the lowest toughness or tied for lowest toughness)
Crew 2
0/0

The change to the mechanic is partly a simplification and partly to avoid prospective power creep on Melira, Sylvok Outcast causing the mechanic to crack open accidentally from exposure to something designed to shut off Heartless Act.

[OneAndOnly]

The cardname and ability name are a little too specific to just this one card. I can't imagine too many other vehicle-slash-food-truck combinations that could exist, outside of, say, Mr. Frosty and the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. (Both of which could, conceivably, end up in the same expansion set as the Walking Dead characters. Just sayin'.)

As a card, it's a little busy. Do I use it for cheap early beats? A +1/+1 counter bank?

If I have one 2/2 creature to crew it with, the next turn it's a 3/3 .. crewing a 4/4 Vehicle. That's no longer a really good deal. The turn after that, it's no longer generating value.

If, on the other hand, I have two 1/1s, the following turn one of them's now a 2/2, so I get a 4/4 Vehicle and a 1/1 on its own. The next turn, it's a 3/3 Vehicle and a 2/2 ... yeah, these numbers just don't excite me.

I'd rather go for the simpler design of a cheap 5/5 that begins each turn by moving a +1/+1 from itself to another creature .. but that sounds an awful lot like graft, evolve, or (maybe) modular.

.

Wretched Land -- 2BB
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant land
Whenever enchanted land is tapped for mana, put an age counter on Wretched Land, then enchanted land's controller loses one life for each age counter on Wretched Land.

Better wording? And is it fair to make Cursed Land so obsolete?

[void_nothing]

Wretched Land - Age counters are certainly an odd choice here. Those have only ever been used for a mechanic - cumulative upkeep - and the flavor of this card doesn't seem to have anything to do with the age of the land (which is presumably, like, as old as the plane anyway for most lands). This hardly obsoletes Cursed Land, too, and that's not a great card in the first place: effects like this are substantially worse than land destruction, because the land's controller can simply choose not to tap the land for mana, can take the damage if necessary, can still use other activated abilities, etc. Cursed Land and its ilk are something entirely in a different sphere from LD. Bottom line - if anything that mana cost could come down. I think Caustic Rain could be printed in a Standard-level expansion these days no problem - R&D doesn't want cheap LD but four mana seems to be the "fair" point - and that's a much better effect than this one generally.

Vitu-Ghazi Phytohydra 4GG
Creature - Plant Hydra (M)
Convoke
When Vitu-Ghazi Phytohydra enters the battlefield, for each creature that convoked it, choose up to one target creature an opponent controls. The creature that convoked fights the creature your opponent controls.
If Vitu-Ghazi Phytohydra would be dealt damage, you may untap that many other tapped creatures you control. If you do, prevent that damage.
5/5