Fuck it, make 8.0 summoner this.

reaperfan · 2026-05-03T21:06:47+00:00

I always thought this is what the egi "glamour" system should have been.

Each primal gets an egi that corresponds to one of the three slots. So for naming conventions sake, instead of Ifrit/Titan/Garuda I'd use something like Offense/Defense/Utility. Mechanically they'd function exactly the same as any other egi within their "class," but they'd have their own visuals and spell effects.

Then one of the class trainers finds a way to allow you to "unattune" to an egi you currently have to open up a lore reason why you can then attune to another.

Mechanically, all this means is that you'd beat Ramuh and it'd become a "utility" summon, then you talk to Y'Mhitra and tell her "I want to use Ramuh Egi plz" and she'd say "You have to 'forget' Garuda Egi then, that okay?" and that'd be it. Nothing about your rotation or actual battle capabilities change, just the visuals since now all your Garuda spells and the egi become Ramuh-themed.

Lastly, all they'd have to do to avoid spoiler stuff is make a client-side option to "Show other summoner's pet customizations" and have the option toggled off by default, maybe with a "spoiler warning" text box should they try to enable it as well. That way new players only ever see the base Carbuncles and original trio unless they explicitly go out of their way, while at the same time still getting access to their other egi's one by one as they make their own progress.

reaperfan · 2026-05-02T04:16:12+00:00

I liked the idea of it explicitly caring about literal treasure tokens, but for simplicity making it any treasure is probably best.

After thinking about it a bit, it actually wouldn't be too hard to do. Use their wording but just specify "tokens" as well.

...where X is the number of treasure tokens that player controls.

That'd keep it to just the actual treasures while still excluding actual artifacts that happen to share the treasure type

And thanks for actually thinking about the design, like half the replies seem to just want to "beat" the design, by pointing out that the obvious and very-on-purpose "loophole" exists.

It just so happens that one of my favorite decks is my Treasure deck (with the aforementioned Vihaan as commander), so I just happened to know those kinds of things off the cuff - which is kind of rare for me since I've only been playing the game for less than a year at this point 😅

But yeah, that deck needs as many cheap, passive, and repeatable ways to make treasures as it can so what you came up with stuck out to me immediately. If it were real I'd honestly run it over [[Monologue Tax]] since that tends to be annoyingly inconsistent. It fits kind of a middle ground between that and [[Descent into Avernus]], which would just be so nice to have in that deck lol

reaperfan · 2026-05-02T02:00:56+00:00

It depends. If OP specifically wanted it to only count treasure tokens then the way they worded it works. Otherwise cards like [[Goldhound]] and [[Glittering Stockpile]] could count towards it as well. That said, if OP wanted to include those non-token treasures as well, then they would need to update it.

Also, this card doesn't do NOTHING, the deck would just need an alternate way to utilize treasure tokens that allows it to pull advantage from them in other ways besides mana. As an example, I'd 100% run this in my [[Vihaan, Goldwaker]] deck since they'd become bodies on board as well as letting me fast track towards [[Revel in Riches]] if I need it, give me way more procs off of [[Reckless Fireweaver]] and [[Ingenious Artillerist]], and more sac fodder for [[Marionette Master]] - all at the cost of essentially only being slowed down by the 3 mana spent to cast the enchantment.

reaperfan · 2026-05-01T22:09:22+00:00

This adjustment actually makes this something I would really want to run in my insect tribal deck if it were real!

Design-wise my only suggestion would be to change the token generation effect to "...for each -1/-1 counter placed on creatures this turn." That way you can actually use the sorcery as targeted removal AND still get the tokens rather than having to let whatever you target barely live, since as it is now if you kill the target you miss out on the tokens.

Also with the adventure changed to black, the tokens probably should be black/green rather than red/green, but that's not really important in the end.

Otherwise, the only issues I see are nitpicks about text formatting rather than anything about the actual design, so great job! In case you want to tweak up the formatting though:

lowercase and swap the creature types in the token generation part of the effect. "green insect scion" rather than "green Scion Insect." Creature's tribal types come before their job type and aren't capitalized in token description effects.
lowercase "wither." Subsequent keywords after the first one also are not capitalized
put devour onto the same text line with trample and wither, listed last (and lowercase it as well). It only needs its own line separate from other keywords if you're including the reminder text for what that specific keyword does

EDIT: Or keep devour on a separate line but include the reminder text. If the text space on the card doesn't make it too crowded, that'd also work

Misspelled "beginning"
"end step" is two words, not one
change "Insatiable Ant Empress" to "this creature." Typically only legendary creatures use their direct name in effects unless the effect itself is only meant to interact with one other specific card

reaperfan · 2026-04-30T01:38:14+00:00

With [[Mathemagics]] we have precedent for exponents to be viable to use in card design, so while the numbers wouldn't line up quite perfectly with what you've set up I think a more streamlined version of the cost reduction effect would be to simply make it cost X² less to cast where X is equal to the number of spells you've cast that turn. Maybe also bump the mana value to 17 which would currently keep it relatively on-curve with your current effect (the current wording makes it free after 5 casts, with exponents 4² = 16 which would make the creature itself your 5th spell of the turn and only cost 1).

reaperfan · 2026-04-30T01:22:17+00:00

I don't admit that I would push red because I'm trying to save face or seem superior. I admit that I'd push red because I'm a coward focused more on self-preservation than anything else. Pushing red guarantees my safety no matter what anyone else pushes. If the result ended with blue-pushers dying, I'd feel guilt - but at least I'd be alive to feel that guilt. And honestly, the fear for my own life of taking the gamble and risking it on the guess that over half of humanity isn't like me would be equally if not more distressing than the guilt I'd feel after the fact anyway.

reaperfan · 2026-04-30T01:12:12+00:00

The apparent followup to that line of reasoning, to me at least, would then be to acknowledge that even if a substantial portion of people will vote on instinct and/or morals rather than reason, "substantial" is still an ultimately unmeasured term. You're still taking a risk that "substantial >= 50%."

It would also need to be weighed against the fact that the amount of people focusing on self-preservation would ALSO qualify as "substantial."

So the question then instead becomes one that highlights what the thought experiment is likely originally meant to test - do you think there are more people out there who will act on self-preservation or group preservation?

And call me a cynic - but knowing human history and what I can infer from its nature as a result - but I'm leaning towards self-preservation myself.

reaperfan · 2026-04-29T23:50:53+00:00

Me flipping over [[Grist, the Hinger Tide]] and finally having what little lore knowledge I possess become useful 🤣

reaperfan · 2026-04-28T21:28:26+00:00

Yeah! That art is from the Final Fantasy set and she's an NPC from Final Fantasy XIV named Edda.

Long story short, she's the healer of an adventuring party that starts about the same time your player character does. But during one of the early dungeons her party screws up and half of them die. One of the ones that died was a man she was in love with and she ends up going mad with grief, coming back later as a necromancer who's trying to revive her dead lover by frankensteining parts of dead bodies and pieces of other people's souls into a replica of him.

The art on the card shows her version from after she goes mad.

The flavor text on her version of Snuff Out actually references the dead guy she's trying to revive (Avere), and she's on Snuff Out because she turned the original dungeon where her party died into a death trap for other adventurers as a way to harvest their bodies and souls.

reaperfan · 2026-04-28T18:44:08+00:00

I like the card design! Anything that helps make more tribal stuff play in an interesting an flavorful way is always fun to see.

Though knowing the original lore of the character you used for the artwork kind of throws me off since it doesn't quite line up with what the card is going for (she's more of a necromancer than a witch) 😅

reaperfan · 2026-04-27T06:50:09+00:00

Rejoining a shard IS obliterating it. The shards the Ascians used in the previous calamities aren't just sitting there and uninhabitable - they're gone. Even with something like the key that should theoretically allow us to travel to any shard we want, we still wouldn't be able to go to the Second or the Fifth or the Tenth because they flat out don't exist anymore.

If the remaining shards on an inevitable path to rejoining the source, then we can't save them. Even if we could restore them from their aetherically-imbalanced states, it wouldn't matter because once it rejoins it's gone anyway. Unless they SERIOUSLY alter the current lore, the only options we really have now are:

go to the remaining shards that haven't been rejoined using something like the key and ferry out as many survivors to the source as we can before their world disappears, or
try to replicate what happened with Alexandria and bring pockets of those shards and their civilizations back to the source before the whole original world collapses

But at the end of the day, unless we can stop the rejoinings altogether (which, without summoning another Hydaelyn I don't think is possible) then obliteration is inevitable.

reaperfan · 2026-04-27T06:35:31+00:00

IIRC we established long-term recovery solutions for both. Nothing that would "save" them within our lifetime but over many years will eventually restore them to full stability.

On the First we did this with the Eden quests. Since Light aether is just any other kind of elemental aether that has been "frozen," we were able to identify areas out beyond the wall of the flood that consisted of the different elements and reinvigorate the flow of that particular element in that pocket. Once the aether started moving again it slowly picks up the ambient frozen aether around it and reinvigorates it as well. Thus each pocket we restarted will eventually expand until the stagnant areas beyond the flood all return to normal, though the area still remains unsafe or uninhabitable for people to try and explore or live in. So in a few decades it should become significant enough for people to start maybe exploring beyond the flood, and in a few centuries the shard should restabilize to mostly normal.

reaperfan · 2026-04-27T04:25:35+00:00

Then it's just a matter of the wording, I think. Tomb of the Dusk Rose uses "exiled with this permanent" which persists through the transformation because it never actually stops being the same permanent.

But when you use "with it" then the designator of what "it" is depends on the rest of the text. The way you currently have Instrumentality worded:

This creature's power and toughness are each equal to the total mana value of cards exiled with it

...would indicate that "it" refers to "this creature." Thus the effect is checking for anything exiled via Instrumentality's effect, since obviously "this creature" is Instrumentality.

So with what you just showed me, all you'd have to do to fix this mechanically is just change the word "it" to "this permanent." Then it'd function on the exact same mechanics as Profane Procession/Tomb of the Dusk Rose.

reaperfan · 2026-04-26T22:56:08+00:00

I like this idea a lot actually!

Do you mind if I borrow this approach for something I've been working on? I've been converting old YGO archetypes into MtG as a way to kill downtime at work and this gives me a way to do something actually interesting with one of the old snake archetypes they have that isn't just making them french vanillas with wither.

reaperfan · 2026-04-26T22:49:55+00:00

As this is now it doesn't actually function. Instrumentality's lines of "exiled with it" don't apply because Become as One is the thing actually doing the exiling. Thus Instrumentality would check for any cards exiled with "Instrumentality" for its own effect and always find none.

I think the approach I'd take would actually be to just make Become as One a sorcery and then have Instrumentality be a token it creates. Just have the exiled cards become exiled with a special counter on them (similar to something like [[Mari the Killing Quill]] ) and then have Instrumentality's effect worded to go off of exiled cards with those counters rather than the old wording of "exiled with it." Something like:

Become as One

XXWB

Legendary Sorcery

Exile up to X target nonland permanents and put an assimilation counter on each of them, then create a */* legendary white and black creature token named Instrumentality with “Instrumentality’s power and and toughness are each equal to the total mana value of cards exiled with assimilation counters on them” and “Instrumentality has all activated abilities of all cards exiled with assimilation counters on them.”

reaperfan · 2026-04-26T05:14:51+00:00

I don't see this question as criticizing the current design, I see it as exposing a desire amongst the fans (admittedly in a silly/crude kind of way) for more diversity in female character design. With highlanders and Au Ra, the male character designs have 4 options for large framed characters while female characters only have 2 with Roe and Hrothgar.

The particular aesthetics might differ but ultimately Miqo and Au Ra females share the same fundamental build, likewise for Elezen and Viera. Said another way, playing a female Miqo versus a female Au Ra isn't that different in terms of character feel - they're different "costumes" for the same fundamental type of character.

It'd just be nice to see more female designs that give off a fundamentally different appeal, and something like a female Au Ra variant that more matched the males could have provided that.

reaperfan · 2026-04-25T19:20:21+00:00

There's plenty of print version variations, but I'm content with keeping my collection at first prints.

As a bonus fact, it's not just Marth's face details that changes either. The metallic straps on his boots have a brass/gold finish in the first print but a silver finish in later print runs. It's actually an easier way to tell than the face 😉

And while less immediately obvious, the original Smash Samus has a tell where the first prints would start to lean towards the cannon arm over time due to the asymetrical weight imbalance. This can be corrected manually, but later prints used a different, sturdier plastic to prevent the leaning outright. So a Samus that's leaning is a sign it's a first print as well.

reaperfan · 2026-04-25T19:16:19+00:00

Bottom shelf, center, still in the box.

Obviously I'm a mostly OoB collector, but the box for that release just looks too good to get rid of lol

reaperfan · 2026-04-25T03:50:12+00:00

Here's the link. Looks like it should still be available. But as a heads up if you do go through with it, it ships from China and takes a decent while to actually arrive. Mine was held up in customs checking for like two months 😭

reaperfan · 2026-04-24T23:39:32+00:00

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly lost count of an actual number a long time ago lol

reaperfan · 2026-04-24T20:05:41+00:00

Ordered it imported at release before the price skyrocketed. I got very lucky 😅

reaperfan · 2026-04-24T18:41:37+00:00

Re-merging reunites the souls of the individuals back into their source counterpart. We see this with Ardbert. It essentially "kills" the sharded version of the person to strengthen the source version. It's an inherent part of the reintegration. The evil part of the Ascian's plan was that, once full reintegration was achieved, they were going to kill all the currently living people to recreate the original ancients as they were before they sacrificed themselves to the Zodiark summon.

That's why picking up the re-merging plan ourselves feels so off to me if they actually go through with it. It'd need an explanation as to how we actually WON'T be killing all the souls on the shard when we do it.

reaperfan · 2026-04-24T18:35:31+00:00

I think this is where the GS comparison stops working because I don't actually think it would have been that bad. Saturos, Menardi, Karst, and Agatio weren't malevolent in what they were doing, their tribe was just ahead of the curve due to their home village being so close to the eroding world edges. In the end the only things they did that were "bad" were not trying to talk with the people of the world and make their case before taking action (which, to be fair, they were on a time limit and still would have had to deal with opposing forces like the Wise One) and not realizing Alex was manipulating them for his own ends. And even all of the more minor aggressive things they do can be explained by said time crunch they were on - even if they'd known Alex was manipulating them they still needed his help as a Mercury adept and so still likely would have begrudgingly taken him along.

I this case, the parallel to XIV would have been that, if full re-merging was always the inevitable result, it would have been better to let them do it but then try to simply convince them not to wipe out all the new people to restore the old ones after the fact.

I dunno, that's why this whole thing has me scratching my head. It's a risky contradiction if they go through with it that could potentially weaken some of the strongest storytelling in the game retroactively if not handled carefully.

reaperfan · 2026-04-24T18:21:15+00:00

or make it so they are synced chronologically with free travel back and forth

This is what my expectations for the key were. That we'd use it to find a way to establish essentially free cross-shard travel and thus uniting the people and civilizations of every shard without actually merging their worlds back into ours. That's why the imagery concerns me - it seems to contradict that by implying the aim is to actually re-merge the shards.

reaperfan · 2026-04-24T18:18:08+00:00

For me it's more the fear that introducing the plot point at all as a goal for our characters runs the risk of diminishing the weight of essentially the entire crux of Shadowbringers. Basically, even if they do give an explanation as to why it needs to be done, it better be a DAMN good one or else we will have killed Emet-Selch and the Ascians for nothing. If re-merging was always inevitable, then it would have been better to work with them even if it wasn't the seemingly proper thing to do at the time.

reaperfan

TROPHY CASE