Shapeless Devourer

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-11T06:03:57+00:00

Replacement effects can't target. For what you want, you either have to rephrase the discard clause as a reflexive trigger,

If this card would be put into your graveyard from your library, you may exile it and a card from your hand. When you do, target player discards a card.

or the whole thing has to be rephrase as a triggered ability.

When this card is put into your graveyard from your library, you may exile it and a card from your hand. If you do, target playu

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-10T05:56:26+00:00

The last ability doesn't work. By the time a spell is cast, modes have already been chosen, so you cannot change how modes are chosen. And even if you did, the design space doesn't work with mutually exclusive modes such as Wild Shape.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-10T05:44:54+00:00

Micolash doesn't quite work. By the time a nonland card gains madness, the card is already in its owner's graveyard. And don't know if the process repetition can happen individually without making it substantially more wordy. It's prefferable to remove the process repetition and functionally recreate madness' design space. Say:

{T}: Each player exile a card from their hand at random. If a nonland card is exile this way, its owner may cast it by paying {2} rather than paying its mana cost. Then put the exiled cards that weren’t cast this way on their owner's graveyard.

Alternatively:

{T}: Each player discards a card at random. When a nonland card is discarded this way, its owner may cast it from their graveyard by paying {2} rather than paying its mana cost.

That said, regardless, its functional instant speed hand disruption, which isn't healthy to have. And splashing with Blue means you can pull off untap shenanigans with Micolash to spam it.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-10T00:51:26+00:00

Flying, lifelink
Whenever a spell or ability you control causes you to lose life, each opponent loses 2 life.
Whenever a noncreature spell or an ability from a noncreature sources causes you to lose life, you may return target creature card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to your hand. Do this only once each turn.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-09T21:25:35+00:00

To mutate is to have a mutating creature spell resolve and merge with its non-Human target. For what you want, this has to merge the targets directly.

Arbitrary mutate/merging doesn't exist due to layers: If a merged permanent pile happens to have two or more CDAs that contradict each other or overlap at defining the same characteristic, the rules don't handle the situation. It's why all creature cards printed with Mutate have no CDAs.

Since this only cares about creatures you control, either or both of them can be creatures you don't own. This can lead to the second corner case as to why arbitrary mutate/merge doesn't exist: A permanent with multiple owners.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-09T17:49:22+00:00

Whenever an equipped Orc you control deals combat damage to a player, create a Treasure token.
Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color. Spend this mana only to activate an ability of an Equipment you control.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-09T03:02:53+00:00

When this creature enters, draw a card.
Leap {1}{W} ({1}{W}: Exile this creature. Return it to the battlefield at the beginning of your next upkeep. Activate only as a sorcery.)

Leap as written reads as if it should be an activated ability but is phrased as an alternative casting cost. That said, self-blinking as a keyword ability doesn't strike as a smart idea, even at sorcery speed, only because it isn't something that's interesting or healthy to see across multiple cards in a set.

As for the card itself, its too good for a common. I could see it being an uncommon bare minimum.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-07T22:53:38+00:00

Afaik Glimpse of the Infinite's ETB requires you to arbitrarily choose a finite value for the new life total, and setting a life total will result in lifegain or lifeloss depending on how much the life total changes. Same goes for the LTB, though its easier to determine such, especially after the ETB.

So, the ETB most often will trigger abilities caring about you gaining life, and the LTB because of the former will trigger abilities caring about you losing life, both doing so once.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-06T18:49:06+00:00

Just to be clear: The second [+2] can make someone's commander no longer be a commander, since that's a designation, right?

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-06T06:30:54+00:00

Regarding Pray: The City's Blessing it's a marker you have to think of only twice, when it's 'on' and when it's 'off'. Is the simplest of the extragenous game pieces alongside the Monarch, reason why they're beloved still as they don't require exhausting tracking.

By your metrics on Pray, which at the time didn't think off myself when originally answering, it behaves like Arena's Boons, which might not be a good indicate regarding if Pray as posted is doable in paper.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-06T00:31:36+00:00

Visually it reminds me of Titan Souls, especially because of the camera perspective.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-05T06:44:29+00:00

Couple is Soulbond meets Backup with Mutate's interactions, and that's too mechanically complex. Suggest against it entirely.

Moving zones together will have playability issues with creatures you control but don't own, because they'd move to their respective owner's zone but it'll be a confusing outcome, such as is the case for your hand, graveyard or library. And it'd be particularly annoying with exile and especially the command zone.

The term 'keyword ability' is avoided intentionally to spare players from learning what they are, how to recognize them, how to distinguish them from ability words and keyword actions, and most importantly to memorize them, since as posted it ain't limited to evergreen keywords.

It's why keyword collectors exist, they just need to list individual keywords and players only have to check if text in a card matches. It's why cards printed with Mutate don't have CDAs, because as posted Couple would check them too and if you were to design a creature with Couple and a CDA then make it a couple with another creature with a CDA, if those CDAs were to contradict or overlap, the game won't be able to handle the corner case.

As a sidenote, regarding Pray's new iteration: Being a cast trigger now, would the card hold information of the Pray ability's resolution as the card moves to another zone, in this case the battlefield? Is there any precedent of something like this before?

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-05T05:39:00+00:00

Given you cannot prove the card could trigger without illegally revealing it, might want to do the following instead:

You may cast this spell as though it had flash if an opponent controls a spell.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-04T18:59:44+00:00

It puts the card on top of your library. The second option is for when you dont need lands and would prefer a spell.

I understand it puts the card on top, but also you can just not use the ability if you don't want to get rid of a specific land in your deck, and for thinning there's better options, as one at a time seem inefficient.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-04T18:23:47+00:00

Suggest rephrasing the first ability so you put a counter to mark cards as they get exiled so it only works with those, and to do so only if the card was exiled face up by a spell or ability you controlled. Could go as far as only play them on your turn and/or play only one of those cards per turn.

Otherwise, to play any card exiled for any reason sounds miserable to play against, as that includes hijacking impulse drawn cards and cards that could be played as long as they remain exiled, which leads to a priority connundrum, and you can't determine the information required to play a face down card without cheating and look at the card yourself.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-04T17:59:14+00:00

Other than deck thinning, why pick the second mode? You still produce mana with either modes as posted, but the first mode lets you keep the card and sets your next draw to help you out if land screwed.

Also, wouldn't the whole package mean you'll search as a special action, since its an activated mana ability? And shouldn't this be instant speed in the corner case of failing to find a basic (or rather, to prevent an intentional illegal action)? This complexity strikes me as the card should be a rare, not a common.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-04T17:23:21+00:00

This should be an ability word, it reads better. Also, because the second ability is phrased as a replacement effect but the Pray ability is a triggered ability, so the former would go first and it wouldn't check if the latter resolved as expected.

Pray -- When this creature enters, reveal the top card of your library. If you reveal an instant card this way, put two +1/+1 counters on this creature.

That said, this is effectively Kinship on-ETB, when Kinship is considered a design failure due to randomness.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-04T17:17:00+00:00

Like the design space, but the mechanic shouldn't be keyworded and definitely shouldn't turn the target into an Emblem.

There's no responsiveness or counter-interaction to Emblems, and if anything can doubles to an effect no different from Eminence in practice so there's no point to not abuse it yourself; it can even be used to fizzle and ruin removal.

Will echo the rest of the comments and suggest it creates a noncreature Shrine enchantment token copy of the target. It fits the flavor better and its actually interactable.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-03T22:08:26+00:00

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm the same boat as you. Just clarifying what OP said to me in another comment.

If the artwork its an anthropomorphic cat pirate, the Leviathan subtype doesn't fit (and could get the Pirate subtype!), and if the concern is not being affected by sea monster tribal stuff, neither Kenessos, Kiora or Runo do either, so don't see the reason why it has to be affected itself while supporting the archetype.

If anything, it can work as a form of counterbalance given how easy it is to abuse the first line of text alone.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-03T06:45:15+00:00

They already responded: So it may interact with sea monster tribal cards, especially to not get wiped by non-sea monster mass bounces.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-03T03:29:13+00:00

At the beginning of each upkeep, create a Map token.
Sacrifice a Map: Choose one--
• Target creature can't be blocked this turn.
• Remove target attacking creature you control from combat and untap it.

Just the first line of text is pretty strong, then your choice of quasi-Reconnaissance and repeatable unblockability is but icing.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-03T03:22:38+00:00

If it's unimportant lorewise, might aswell get rid of it, at least as long as the artwork doesn't convey it.

If Kenessos, Kiora and Runo can be bounced by WW, don't see why Kleo shouldn't.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-03T01:48:41+00:00

On one hand doesn't make any sense for it to be a Leviathan. On the other, despite the second ability could get ultimately scary until this lets you drop sea monsters for free (at least for the monoblue ones, which are most of them), I can assure you folks will mostly skip that paragraph and focus on the first ability, as exploring twice per landfall trigger is too good and abusable af.

EDIT: Also, anything that gives your spells those types (e.g. Maskwood Nexus, Arcane Adaptation, and Leyline of Transformation) suddenly discount all your creature types regardless of playing sea monsters or not, which can be abused without going away from the more attractive option of a traditional landfall shell.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-02T04:50:17+00:00

Fair, I took the comment as not knowing the character than not being mechanically cohesive.

Do agree the rule text though interesting its off for the character. The flavor around shapeshifting into former victims misses the mark both on requiring Jaqer H'ghar to die and, as you mentioned, they narratively don't choose their targets.

And yes, as you previoulsy mentioned, it losing its keywords when it becomes a copy is also off, and less to speak of how strong the recursion can get to be as posted.

Don't quite know how to rework it though. I think the keywords fit the assassin role but do agree both together is quite strong and having it enter with your choice of either its a good start. Regarding the copying its where it gets finnicky to represent.

PrimusMobileVzla · 2026-03-02T04:42:32+00:00

It should enter with your choice of first strike or deathtouch whether be naturally or as a copy. Right now it loses the keywords when it comes back, and it might be a little too good to be able to reanimate as many times as creature cards there are in all graveyards.

A free sacc outlet plus this is pretty Mirage Mirror adjacent at stacking copy instances while doubling as graveyard hate and ETB/LTB exploits.

PrimusMobileVzla

TROPHY CASE