keywords i love to see on common creatures

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folding_music
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Post by folding_music » 1 year ago

To me, a great (custom) common creature has enough room for flavour text while presenting its player with one fun option or another. going to walk through the various keywords to define what I think works best! imagine in each case that the keyword is the only thing present in the creature's ability text - sometimes a keyword definition is incomplete without some "When this enters the battlefield" effect, or a payoff, like "Return target creature card in your graveyard to hand." or "(this) deals 1 damage to any target." or "Gain 3 life" but it should generally be as concise as possible.

here's a group of keywords I don't think suit common creatures:
hideaway, soulbond, monstrosity/adapt, amplify, unleash, evolve, renown, reconfigure, disturb, flip/transform/daybound/mdfc
To me, these abilities all represent too much admin work for a random minion. Anything that asks you to take it out of the sleeve, keep track of which types it's lost, whether it can block or whether its "once" ability has been used is a little much. just in my opinion! Disturb's been my recent least fave ability. Amplify is a little different; I just think the ability represents too much of a swing and it has too much gravity during deck construction, but the way the card gets piled under a mass of +1/+1 counters still counts as admin. Hideaway and Soulbond (and usually Monstrosity and Adapt) are also terrible for robbing a card of its entire textbox by itself - remember that I'm hoping to see flavour text!

here's another:
extort, level up
Two effects I think are a little egomaniacal for common creatures, as in, that creature's presence in the game requires a lot of attention from every player. Generally if I'm designing a common creature you pump mana into it'll be some kind of shade which doesn't permanently change itself.

here's another:
echo, fade/vanishing, cumulative upkeep
These are bad taste effects; I generally love drawbacks on as many cards as possible but when constrained to commons you know you're going to see the same card printed very soon (or even within the same set), except without the disadvantages and as a rare, and I just don't like the concept that cards you're more likely to get your hands on should be STRICTLY worse. They should just be more concise, take up less brain space.
These drawbacks can still be used effectively in combination with "when this dies" kinda stuff but solo they can only add up to a disappointing yet very slightly undercosted creature.

Now, my 20 fave keywords for common creatures!

20. Morbid (especially as in, "When this enters the battlefield, if a creature has died this turn, do x") - easy to keep track of rule which helps automate when you cast it. I generally prefer conditional etb effects to vanilla ones to make play patterns obvious and advantageous.

19. Venture into the dungeon (especially as in, "When this creature attacks/connects") - it's strange, but nothing incentivizes attacking as much as a chance to look at the menu does :3

18. Fateful hour (as long as you have five or less life, this creature gets x) - your own life total is fairly easy to keep track of and Fateful hour is NOT a rich-get-richer effect; I like the last chance feel it offers. Also, hardly any creatures have this very evocative ability which means it's custom cards time!

17. Enrage - as a naive payback effect, something like "When this takes damage, make a 1/1 mushroom guy" is simple and effective. Points taken away for enrage not necessarily being the correct flavour for everything you could put it on, which is just the Bushido problem again; the ability is very evocative when contained within the set it originated and almost ludicrous past that point. but that's a silly thing to complain about when you can just rename it on your own designs.

16. Flash - cos it's flash!

15. Emerge (cost) - getting a sizable cost reduction on a big guy singlehandedly makes that big guy interesting to me.

14. Convoke - part two! I love crowdsurfing!

13. Spectacle (cost) - part three! The fact that you set up the circumstances that earned you the bonus makes this the best reduction variant. (Affinity exists too but that never feels like PAYING in the same way these three do.)

12. Grandeur (ie, "You may discard a card with the same name as this creature to have each opponent lose two life and you gain two life.") - no, this isn't on any commons but it seems entirely suitable to me. Where commons are designed primarily for draft, common roadbump guys should be the single card archetype you'll most likely be running multiples of, right? This is just the beginning of the "discard me for your pleasure" section.

11. Cycling (cost) - even in its most naive variation - Saga's "Cycling " with no Slide, no Bidding and no Amonkhet/Ikoria-esque cycle-sensitive army - cycling is a wonderful ability. Sometimes it can be fairly hard to know WHEN to cycle, but at least it's usually more obvious on creatures than it is on insane super-IQ instants like Censor!

10 Evoke (cost) (alongside some sort of "When Transitory Fluffball leaves the battlefield, gain 1 life" effect) - again, I greatly prefer either/or effects like these to things like Kicker. Evoke makes it in over something like Channel because I think Channel is TOO MUCH, practically an MDFC in disguise.

9. Madness (cost) - cos it's flash!

8. Bloodrush (cost) - one of the cleverest abilities ever devised: target attacking creature gets a bonus of precisely my p/t and borrows all my vanilla keywords! For reasons of elegance this is my fave of the discard options and, besides, it incentivizes attacking, which I sometimes forget is the point of creatures. giggle

7. Boast (cost) (especially as in, "This creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn") - speaking of attacking incentives, this is my fave. I generally like the feeling that you PAY for what the creature does, which sets this above things like Mentor and Enlist even before you introduce the flexibility of the payoff.

6. Dash (cost) (where the dash cost is LESS than the standard cost and doesn't trigger anything in particular) - the strategy and bluffing that Dash provides interests me much more than something like Blitz, where the attacking part feels like a byproduct of you wanting to cycle the card. Dash puts opponents in mind of mass removal at times, and at others makes the creature tantamout to unblockable, and you barely need to do a thing!

5. Adventure (where the adventure costs less than the creature) - This is my favourite "ability", er "concept"... card frame? of all time, but I place it fifth because it constrains space that could have flavour text put in it. Those Baldur's Gate dragons with controlling instants attached are so dreamy. In terms of designing custom cards, this is the most satisfying template.

4. Hellbent (especially as in, "while you have no cards in hand, this has flying and gets +1/+1) - I think common creatures should be paired with simple strategies; exhausting yrself of options then relying on your army is the top simple strategy I can think of!

3. Provoke - Krosan Vorine is still my second favourite common

2. Riot - one single elegant decision. Brilliant in the way Unleash isn't in that if you're choosing to give the creature haste, you're making that decision on this turn's board-state and not having to guess at the future, which is more Rakdosian to me.

1. Embalm (cost) - Sacred Cat is still my favourite common. :3 being an absolute Amonkhet devotee I *LOVE* the number of creatures who basically just have Embalm written on them, and how different from other formats that one word makes the game. As a bonus, you can have extra flavour text on the token version of the card you embalm, which leaves Unearth in the dust.

nonsensical? controversial? dead-on? let me know, thanks for reading <3

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OneAndOnly
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Post by OneAndOnly » 1 year ago

I like mechanics that are individually straightforward but have potentially profound deckbuilding or gameplay implications. I also like mechanics that play in their own space; the overlap between evolve / mentor / training / outlast leave me feeling dull toward any other +1/+1 mechanics. (Though modular, graft and fabricate have enough of their own identity to deserve keeping. Riot is a weird exception; granting haste puts it firmly in red's slice of the pie, which limits it greatly.)

There are a handful of mechanics -- take the initiative, venture into the dungeon, become the monarch, gain the city's blessing -- that should have been in an alt-setting like Conspiracy or Planechase. Really don't like encountering those, unless I'm specifically playing a game with those elements. I'll throw party into that list, too.

I might think about mechanics differently than other players. Hellbent, threshold, and delirium are to me virtually identical; they're just "check" conditions, I think hellbent and threshold are more interesting (perhaps, because easier to determine) than delirium.

I like weird tweaks on mechanics -- Braid of Fire was a really cool twist on cumulative upkeep. I could see the same thing happening with echo "costs." I would like fading/vanishing more if there were ways to put counters back on, or determine how many counters were put on in the first place.

I'm not quite certain I agree with your choice on embalm as the number one ability. It's so heavily ties to Amonklhet! But it is nice to get to keep your creatures around -- it's like undying or persist, only more token-centered.

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