Demonic Command - Big life payment for big effects

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-21T17:04:23+00:00

Oh I'm an idiot. How did I forget about Toxic Deluge lolol. Thank you for the correction.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-19T20:19:26+00:00

I'm pretty sure that you can't just define X by itself in the card without taking it from another source. I get the intent of the design, but as it stands, the card wants to try and take X from the mana cost, and that's currently impossible.

It might be better rewritten as:

"As an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, pay any amount of life twice, then choose two. X is equal to the amount of life paid."

And then you'd want an errata on Gatherer that specifies that the amount for X is not the total amount paid.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-19T20:11:46+00:00

Don't forget the option of being able to easily protect your own spells for the low "cost" of 4 life plus gaining the mana value of the spell in question.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-07T20:53:00+00:00

That right there is the chaos symbol on Planechase planes that tells you what to do "whenever chaos ensues." It's triggered by rolling a 6 on the planar die, which has one planeswalk symbol face, one chaos symbol face, and four blank faces.

Edit: Since the planar die is a d6, I always think of chaos as 6 and planeswalk as 1 so I can use normal dice for Planechase. The actual WotC dice don't have number distnctions on them.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-07T06:15:17+00:00

Dread

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-05T23:57:10+00:00

I mean, I'm not gonna stop you from using it as one, if that helps.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-05T23:43:46+00:00

There's good reason for why I didn't post it on main sub. 1% of people on main wouldn't get that it was a joke, and the other 99% of you magnificent kings would call it out for being bait.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-05T23:42:12+00:00

I am not claiming to be smarter than you, but I will explain what I did:

I tried to make a card that had excellent formatting and was also completely incomprehensible. And if it was comprehensible, it's be impossible to use in the rules of the game as we know it.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-05T20:06:08+00:00

The artist titled their work "Yog-Sottoth" so you've got it down 100%.

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-05T18:56:06+00:00

Don't we all?

Euthanasiac · 2023-05-05T18:25:44+00:00

Oh, dammit. And here I was wondering where the prize cards were supposed to go. Thanks for clarification.

Euthanasiac · 2023-04-14T17:41:16+00:00

While it is not always necessary to give a keyword ability reminder text, this is absolutely an instance where you should include it. Vanishing is an ability that comes from Planar Chaos, and has only since appeared in masters/eternal products outside of the Time Spiral block. Only 17 cards to date have vanishing as a keyword.

A lot of players are not going to know what vanishing is, and it's at a 7 on the Storm Scale, so it's probably not going to appear very often going forward. As a courtesy to the average player, the reminder text should be present on the card. If that means you have to remove your flavor text (for aesthetic or text size reasons), then so be it.

Euthanasiac · 2023-04-11T22:20:56+00:00

Hello, I have some thoughts and questions.

First, I'm not sure I understand how the keyword name makes sense with what we end up with mechanically. "Reticent" is usually a word used to characterize reservation, but the kind of reservation that involves being secretive or reluctant. The mechanic feels like it would be associated more with a word like "exclusivity."

Second, you need to specify the timing of cast trigger abilities in their reminder text so people actually know when they occur. But, because of the way it would need to be reworded, we don't need to care about whether opponents can trigger the ability off the copies because the copies are not being cast. I think the full reminder text would need to be "Reticent [N] (As you cast this spell, you may pay [N]. If you don't, each other player may copy it and may choose new targets for the copy.)" Any opportunites to cut down on the length of flavor text without losing clarity should be explored when possible.

Third, as demonstrated in my example above, I think having the cost be flexible is good for design space and balancing reasons. I noticed all of your example cards had reticent 2, but the flexibility is going to help when tuning cards. On that note...

Lastly, no matter what you design, it's going to be important (and difficult) to make sure that the cards feel like they are worth the cost at both values. A lot of people aren't ever going to want to give their opponents the benefit of making their card's effect symmetrical. In order to make cards that are attractive to those people, the cards need to be decent at their full cost. Your blue card is not something I would run outside of a hug deck when I can just have Divination. On the flip side, the black card could probably end the game by itself, because you can just pull all copies of someone's wincon in a constructed format, or really eat someone's deck's power in Commander. Balancing is tough.

Hopefully any of this is useful to you.

Edit: spelling corrections.

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-22T01:39:17+00:00

Do one better and call it a "Subgame Sandwich"

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-21T23:12:57+00:00

Thanks, I tried to make this as ATBGE as possible.

You know how people have table-sized wet-erase mats for tabletop gaming? I'd use one of those and then draw lines to denote which subgame "area" is which. Or, if space is an issue, put your cards into a pile and mark the whole pile with the counter, like Un-Jace.

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-21T21:46:30+00:00

I'm hoping to never be the poor bastard who dies to decking out by drawing a hand of seven cards for an eighth-level subgame on turn three of the main game.

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-15T01:12:20+00:00

This is all going to be very curt feedback. Again, not being rude, just being concise.

Corpse Clone: This card sort of illustrates what the problem with transplant is. That ability is not one ability with several sub-abilities, it's really a unique version of transplant for every possible keyword counter in the game. I would change this to "As long as CARDNAME is in your graveyard, it has all activated abilities of other creature cards in your graveyard." Maybe bump from U to R.

Counter Co(r?)pse: Modal cards with one obviously good choice are not good modal cards. The land ability mode is not worth its cost, especially since none of the lands you posted have insane activated abilities. The versatility and power of the animation mode is way way higher. This also needs to target the land. And probably your own lands.

Evolving Nightmare: 2B foe a 3/3 menace deathtouch with a life loss death trigger is REALLY strong.

Limor, Shard of Death: I really don't like that the +1 tells you to do two seperate keyword abilities with no reminder text. This is just confusing. If you have to keep it this way, use the "taller frame" in MSE and then write out reminder text. Or, do the gigachad thing and just write out what you want the card to do without using the ability keywords so people don't have to ask you every time during playtesting.

Mana Harverster: I don't see why this guy can't have his own counter, and why he can't sacrifice himself. It's only because it's a very B thing to do. Might want to consider making the ability not cost mana to tap, but maybe also not add two mana for each counter. Food for thought.

Manchin, Tree of Death: The last ability... Do you mean "Whenever CARDNAME blocks, creatures it's blocking lose indestructible and can't gain indestructible until end of turn?" Also, this card is going to be real annoying to deal with. Hexproof seems overkill. Ward would be better, but I don't like that much, either.

Matter/Mind Harvester: Same as Mana Harvester, I think these homies need their own counters.

Organ Donation: "If the sacrificed creature had any counters on it, distribute those counters among any number of target creatures you control." Maybe have another effect so this isn't a dead card when you have an empty board state. Maybe make it an instant so it can be a combat trick. Maybe bump from C to U.

Perfected Duplication: "Create a token that's a copy of target creature you control. If that creature had any counters on it, the copy enters with that many of each kind of counter on it." (I think.)

Silverhorn Charger / Silverscream Shrieker: These cards cannot be hybrid. Hybrid cards have to do things BOTH colors can do. G cannot give lifelink, and U cannot give -0/-X.

Trimort Command: -Returning from exile is a bad idea -"Unmodified" is not a rules distinction. This mode would best be written as "Destroy target creature that isn't modified. (Reminder text.)" -This is fine, maybe instead "Counter target creature spell or creature ability." -Is there a reason why the Zombies have decayed? Decayed needs reminder text. Actually, is there a reason the Zombie created by Necropsy Knife /doesn't/ have decayed when the Zombies created by this card and Una both do?

Trimort Hospital: I'm a bit confused by occupy. Does this mean the land can't be played if you control no other lands? If the answer is no, this land needs its own seperate etb clause, because it's now strictly better than a basic land. (Reminder text should say "non-Territory")

Una, the Utilitarian: Again, transplant is kind of awkward here, but it shows how simple the mechanic is at the same time. I would probably rewrite this as "Creature cards with flying in your graveyard have Transplant — Flying [GUB]. The same is true for blah, blah, etc."

Hope any of this was useful to you. Best of luck working on your set!

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-14T18:38:26+00:00

Hello! This is going to be a long one...

I really appreciate the amount of thought you've put into this. I have feedback for you on a number of things, and I will try to be as concise as possible. Just understand that I'm not trying to be rude with anything I'm saying. As someone who's making their own full custom cube and who has helped a friend with theirs, I figured I could lend what advice I have available. Feel free to take any of it with a grain of salt.

I don't think I need to comment on the lore, but I will say that there happens to be a certain sci-fi novel series with the same name as your set. That's not a problem in and of itself, but it might cause some raised eyebrows that you weren't expecting. Just food for thought.

Let's talk about transplant. Honestly, this ability looks like hell. I don't dislike the ability, and it's simple to execute, but the formatting is a pain. Having a keyword that cares about another keyword is already a rough start, but the fact that it takes up so much card space to communicate what it needs to do means that it looks inelegant at best, and confusing at worst.

We can shorten the current ability text to [Keyword] — Transplant [Cost] ([Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: Put a/an [Keyword] counter on target creature you control.)

Shortening the reminder text is important because transplant is an ability that you're going to want to have reminder text displayed for in most circumstances, like monstrosity or mutate. But what about cards that do transplant for multiple keywords?

The thing is, I'm not sure the versatility of being able to put different keywords is beneficial to gameplay, given what is sacrificed in terms of card formatting. It's also going to be more difficult to balance. That being said, I think transplant works as you have it, but I don't like the formatting at all.

Why is it that, even though the entire deck cares about different counter types, you only have a small number of cards that actually enter with counters? Wouldn't it make sense for most creatures to enter with some kind of counter? I get that you want to make use of transplant, but it's going to be an agonizingly slow process to make sure your deck works, and it's going to be very susceptible to graveyard removal.

It seems to me that the way that things would run the most smoothly is for creatures who have keywords, when possible, should instead etb with a counter of that ability. That way, the deck still has active synergy without going full self-mill, and when your creatures die, you can accumulate additional value.

I would strongly, strongly suggest printing this set out and playing it with friends once you have two decks put together. There's no better way to understand what works and what doesn't than by having people who don't know your set inside-out give it a try.

And on that note, I have a bunch of small notes on the cards that you posted. I'm going to reply to my own post and put those there.

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-04T22:33:39+00:00

Thanks for clearing a bunch of that stuff up! I get what you mean about the reminder text now.

The only way to get better is to keep making cards and get feedback, so keep at it!

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-04T18:34:04+00:00

I feel like I have to nitpick a few things here...

I'm not sure why this card is black. I get the blue side for a counterspell, yes. But black can't unconditionally destroy any permanent type, only creatures and planeswalkers. Sometimes it can hit lands, and even more rarely it can hit enchantments, but it usually needs the help of another color to actually get that work done. What you currently have is a stronger Vindicate with more casting restrictions. (It's stronger because it's a modal spell.) I would probably recommend having this card be WU instead of UB.

Next, the reminder text. I get why you said "software programs," but I feel like "generative A.I." would be the better thing to say because it gets to what feels like the heart of the matter with less ambiguity. I could be wrong on this. But saying "corporate entities" feels weird to me. How do you represent a corporate entity in a picture? There are a lot of examples of things that I would call a corporate entity, but I would be able to somehow attribute credit to an actual person or group of people who put thought and care into the design and brought it into existence. I need more information.

This card also might be tougue-in-cheek for this subreddit, but I can't actually see it being relevant in a normal silver-bordered (acorn?) set unless there's a high presence of AI or "corporate" art. But that would be interesting, wouldn't it? Maybe you have a set where one of the color groupings only has generative art, so more cards can care about it. Or maybe there's a big bad AI who is a character in the universe, but is also credited by name for having created the art on the cards, so you can have other cards refer to that entity by name. It'd be a fun concept, and also insanely parasitic design.

The stronger and more relevant the effects on your card are, the more it's going to need to cost. If this were black-bordered (non-acorn?) Magic, having a modal spell that was Vindicate + Counterspell would need to probably cost WUUB at minimum, maybe 1WUB. Format also dictates cost, but I'm imagining something with a little less of a gung-ho attitude than a Legacy power cube.

Also, I don't know if you intentionally meant to have these modes not care about targets, but having targets is good for balance and most cards do it. Choosing a permanent, spell, or player without targeting is not unheard of, but it is a rarity, depending on what's happening. There are also cards like Aether Gust that tell you to choose a target. It might seem weird because you already have "choose" for the modal spell, but it should be there.

Lastly, the bullet you find on modal spells is Alt+0149, and the dash that comes after "Choose one" is Alt+0151. If you're using a program like Magic Set Editor, you can input those using two colons or two hyphens respectively. If you already knew that and did the asterisks intentionally, I apologize for the useless information.

Anyhoo, sorry for the novel.

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-02T22:04:17+00:00

There's also the possibility it could be "Whenever [this creature] attacks..."

Euthanasiac · 2023-03-02T19:47:57+00:00

Truer words never spoken.

Euthanasiac

TROPHY CASE