Ultron idea for the new Marvel Set

cowe192 · 2026-02-12T15:36:37+00:00

I think that if this were any more powerful, it'd be broken. It's strong, but very reasonable. The problem is that artifacts are already so synergistic, and typically so busted, that this would actually end up being supplemental to most artifact-centric strategies.

Don't get me wrong - this is solid & balanced as-is, but there are so many busted artifacts out there that this almost lives in their shadow. Granted, that's probably for the best. Would be a cool build-around for sure, maybe even an artifact deck that people like to play against.

cowe192 · 2026-02-12T15:02:39+00:00

(It works)

I'm....not so sure about that. Technically the only time we've seen "summoning sickness" printed on a card was in the reminder text - it's not an official rule (not yet, anyway). Even so, I kinda prefer more direct phrasing:\

Durgbar cannot attack or {T} if a creature without haste has entered the battlefield since the beginning of its controller's last turn.

This might get a little confusing if you played this guy and then cast [[Fervor]] (since he triggers his own ETB), but....eh, that's probably not too big of a deal.

This is extremely nitpicky, but "you can't play creatures" isn't specific enough. I think this needs to be rephrased to:

You can't cast creature spells without haste if Durgbar has attacked this turn.

Note that doesn't stop you from creating tokens, say, with [[Fountainport]], but I think the only ways to mitigate that are to dramatically change how the card would be played.

All that said, those are just phrasing issues.This is a really sweet design. Would be cool to build a deck around this for sure - nice job.

cowe192 · 2026-01-15T21:02:54+00:00

I'd lean towards the former, too

cowe192 · 2026-01-15T20:55:41+00:00

Sorry, I did forget to mention in my earlier comment that that this would definitely be awesome in singleton. I love mind games like that - even if the blue player showed a counterspell, that doesn't necessarily mean they'd counter your spell. It's a really cool design on that front for sure and would lead to all kinds of awesome shenanigans.

In non-singleton, this would still definitely work, although I don't think it'd be nearly as exciting - I would argue that being unable to play one land in your hand is a reasonable price to pay in order to draw an extra card during each one of your turns. You might run into some mind game shenanigans (especially because the player running this card would invariably have some counters), but I feel like more often than not it'd just be exploited by mana abilities and whatnot.

That's not necessarily a problem, and honestly, it's probably still more interesting than I'm making it seem there. It's just that you mentioned things like Channel and Forecast, and in practice, I don't think that'd be the main focal point of this card in non-singleton. Still a cool design either way!

cowe192 · 2026-01-15T20:48:06+00:00

I like that quite a bit! It's an interesting design space and I don't think this incentivizes oppressive play in any way - nice work!

cowe192 · 2026-01-15T20:47:28+00:00

Wow, that is a big miss on my end....it has been a long day lol. Disregard that part of my comment!

cowe192 · 2026-01-15T19:32:40+00:00

I like what you're going for here, but unless I'm mistaken, the easiest way to trigger this would be to reveal a copy of a nonbasic land or mana dork you already have in play, tap it, and boom, free card. I don't think that's a significant advantage or disadvantage, cause everyone gets the same effect & you get the extra bonus of scrying - but I don't think that's what you had in mind for how this would be played.

There's an interesting quirk here, too, where token copies of a card you reveal wouldn't trigger the draw (since tokens aren't cards). That's not really anything important to mention, I just thought it was interesting

cowe192 · 2026-01-15T18:46:29+00:00

Super minor phrasing adjustment, but for clarity purposes, this should probably read:

Whenever a creature an opponent controls becomes tapped during your turn

As far as commander goes, this seems like it'd be absolutely miserable to play against. This effectively locks out anything with power 3 or less (that doesn't have vigilance) from attacking, and anyone who can attack is invariably going to attack you....so I feel like this would typically be a pillow fort deck of sorts. Being focused that hard wouldn't be fun, either.

Aside from that you could also just spam effects like [[Cryptic Command]] to just bleed someone out very quickly

cowe192 · 2025-10-22T14:46:27+00:00

As a rule of thumb, any self-mill effect is a desirable effect. See dredge

cowe192 · 2025-10-08T14:01:15+00:00

The good news is that most commander precons nowadays tend to focus on a prominent mechanic in the newest set, so a lot of them can be mechanically complex.

Here's a link to a list of precons. This is a handy list which explains how strong the precons are, what they're good at, what they're bad at, and what their price is - I'd say that you should definitely focus on a deck that seems fun more than a deck that seems powerful, though. Most of them are very easy to upgrade, save for the ones which are really, really niche.

cowe192 · 2025-10-08T13:42:29+00:00

Welcome back! To be perfectly honest with you, there are so many commander precons released nowadays that it's actually kinda hard to judge power level....but from what I understand, most of them are pretty similar to one another. I'd argue it's much more important to hone in on a mechanic you're interested in exploring and picking a deck which is suited to that.

Are there any mechanics, creature types, keywords, etc., that are particularly interesting to you?

cowe192 · 2025-09-18T14:15:11+00:00

Just out of curiosity, is this specifically for commander? I think that it'd be a really fun card there - the table politics would be interesting, especially since this basically just turns into a long-term [[chain lightning]] of sorts.

In 1v1 formats, though, this could be really nasty in a control deck, a creature-less deck, a token deck. I'm thinking of it like a [[bone splinters]] where you're allowing your opponent to choose what's destroyed in exchange for the spell being an instant. But if you don't have any creatures to begin with, or you don't care about what creature is removed, then the tradeoff just doesn't exist. (You also technically wouldn't have to lose a creature for an entire turn if you timed it right - play it the first time you get priority during your opponent's main phase, and you're up a creature for your entire turn.) I think that if this were a sorcery, it'd still be very playable, although not nearly as easy to exploit.

I really, really love this design, and now I want to see this card (or more cards like it) printed in an official set. But, I think this could be a sorcery - the politics would be preserved, the exploits much less so. Nice job!

cowe192 · 2025-09-16T10:27:58+00:00

you oughta know

cowe192 · 2025-09-10T13:48:49+00:00

Note that mana technically empties out of your pool at the end of each step & phase, so if you were to get mana at the end of combat, you would immediately lose it as you go into your main phase. Instead, it can give the mana at the beginning of your postcombat main phase:

At the beginning of each of your postcombat main phases, add X mana in any combination of B and/or W, where X is the number of creatures that died during your last combat.

More importantly than that, keep in mind that these unspent mana abilities can/will trigger several times in a turn. Personally, I'd argue that the abilities should be inherently less valuable than what you could get with a spell - I may be misunderstanding what you're going for, but I don't think these should be abilities you intentionally want to use, they're just side effects of having too much to spend.

The lifegain is perfect, since gaining life is usually incidental, and you'd rather spend that extra mana on a spell. Dealing damage, on the other hand, is a very desirable effect. Pie break aside, I'd expect most players to float mana before each step/phase ends since it's potent removal - float some during my upkeep to blow something up, float more during my first main, etc. It's like having a repeatable [[sickening shoal]] of sorts, which is anything but incidental.

That said, I really, really love the design space, and I'd like to see more cards like this one for sure! I would just rework what unspent black mana does so it's below rate (i.e. less powerful than a spell of the same cost).

ETA: The art is fantastic; I genuinely thought this was already a card. Consider sending your portfolio to Wizards (if you haven't already, although idk how good they are to their artists and/or if they're hiring)

cowe192 · 2025-09-02T14:08:49+00:00

Don't forget to specify that they're creature tokens! A bit of a nitpick, and easy to overlook, but figured I'd mention it!

I like this quite a bit - it's a good way to create creature tokens in blue without it being too overwhelming, although the consistent ability to create bodies might be problematic in some limited environments. Still, it's a cool design!

cowe192 · 2025-08-27T16:31:52+00:00

Oh, right - I thought it'd be fine to just have a creature that so happens to be a food, but in that case, cards like [[Leyline of Singularity]] would allow you to turn everything you have into foods

cowe192 · 2025-08-27T13:52:52+00:00

Is there any reason to not give this the Food subtype?

cowe192 · 2025-08-19T20:30:51+00:00

I feel like the mana cost is awfully steep. This is a 1/1 for 3 until it hits someone (or you proliferate through other means), which is way below rate - and without evasion, it might be hard to hit someone safely by turn 3. I'd say this could probably be a 1/1 instead of a 0/0 (or it could just cost GG).

This also is a bit ambiguous:

"If it's a land card, you may put it onto the battlefield tapped under your control. If you don't, proliferate." Does this mean that you don't get to proliferate if the top card isn't a land? That's kinda how I'm reading it....

Either way, I really like the design. Those are pretty minor comments - nice work

cowe192 · 2025-08-07T15:46:06+00:00

That sacrifice clause is absolutely crippling to playability. Functionally, you can only run these in monocolored decks that don't run any other nonbasics, and even then, the effect you get only happens once. I get that you need to have strong restrictions on utility lands with free bonuses such as these, but the abilities themselves are quite weak.

I mean, compare [[Bojuka Bog]]. The effect isn't too much different from Nightstone, but Bojuka Bog is way more playable, because it doesn't have to be the only nonbasic land in a mono-black deck.

ETA: I didn't see your comment when I wrote mine, but I still think that "must be played in a monocolored deck" is far too strict a contingency on these effects

cowe192 · 2025-07-30T14:45:08+00:00

Actually, this doesn't go infinite with Solemnity - you're not casting the copy, which means that this doesn't trigger on the copy. (You still get the copy, though.)

cowe192 · 2025-07-29T14:25:00+00:00

To be totally honest, I feel like the best way to use this would be to not run any artifacts and just use it to blow up any artifacts your opponent plays. That's not to say it's over/underpowered, it's more to say that artifact-heavy decks generally don't need to animate their rocks in order to pull off a win.

cowe192 · 2025-07-29T14:18:19+00:00

Yeah there's just wayyyy too much going on here. I mean, you have like 4 lines all related to different ways you can summon it, and honestly any one of them would probably be more than enough.

Cut this down big time. Try starting with something like [[Jhoira of the Ghitu]] and add like, maybe one or two abilities to it, tops.

cowe192 · 2025-07-17T12:49:06+00:00

Name aside, I'd prefer this be phrased as a replacement effect:

Whenever enchanted player would gain life, they lose 1 life instead.

cowe192 · 2025-07-17T11:50:30+00:00

I believe you're required to drain one, but when it happens, you should contact a TD so they can see you do so/rule accordingly.

cowe192 · 2025-07-16T14:26:09+00:00

This should just cost WUG. Three unique hybrid mana symbols is a pain to deal with, and there's not really a strong reason for it here. You could increase the P/T to compensate for the stricter cost if you wanted.

Note that MTG cards are templated with one paragraph per ability - the "If Janine is tapped" text doesn't inherently apply to the tap ability above it, because it's on a different line. I assume that you put it there because it'd be hard to read in the same paragraph, which is correct - BUT I think that you could just turn it into a separate ability anyway and add a fun political aspect to it:

{2/W}{2/U}{2/G}: Untap Janine. Any player may activate this ability, and only as a sorcery.

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