For White Commons Submissions

I like this quite a lot. I do wonder if 3 tokens is a bit much for common... I note that Spectral Procession, Battle Screech and Lingering Souls have all been uncommon (and Icatian Town was rare! although not by modern standards). Combining a 3-token-maker (even if inefficient) with a removal spell is probably a windmill slam first pick. I think this would be plenty good enough at 2 tokens (either at or probably even at ).

Fair enough. Changing to two tokens. CC may change depending on skeleton's needs.

This is basically a 5-mana Pacifism. It feels a bit bad paying 5 mana for a Pacifism, but it's still playable. It'll be very rare for this to be on something bad enough that you want to sac it.

But, if we have a Day of Judgment variant, you don't feel like your "Pacifism" was wasted if you use it later. Then again, this costs MORE than Day of Judgement, so...

I'm cool for dropping this to 4cc (I assume we don't want 3cc, right? It seems better than Arrest to me...) but I don't know how to proceed with changing values of cards right now. The common slot is in a temporary harmonious balance. Pulling this out of 5cc... should I be shifting a card up from 4cc in the process?

I guess a better question than "Should this card cost less?" is "Can we give this card more value without killing the fundamental nature of the card." In this case, I don't see why a person can't get 3 1/1 creatures instead of two. That still seems common. It also balances the two sides... it's very possible that you'd rather have 3 1/1s than to stop an opponent's creature from attacking you.

I don't know what we're supposed to do with these card, or what my role is, going forward. I kind of imagined that when the full file is handed off, that it would be 'developments job' whoever would be in charge of that. As is becoming apparent right now, though, we'll be developing the commons while designing the uncommons. Am I supposed to be taking care of this? I think we need to have a conversation about this soon. For now, I'm just going to increase this card to 3 token creatures.

@Link: Tie in Ribbons and Day of Judgment is a bombo. If you sac the ribbons in response, your creatures die. If you don't, the ribbons goes to the graveyard. We could, however, turn this into a combo with a enters the graveyard trigger. Do you think that makes the card better/more interesting?

Oops, that was silly of me. I like it at three tokens and sacrifice, because that will lead to some interesting play situations. I do have an odd desire foe this to work with board sweepers, though. Om a vaguely related note, what if the Day of Judgment variant for this set was "Destroy all nonland, non-enchantment permanents?"

I like the idea of the tension "do I want to keep the pacifism, or do I want to trade it in for the tokens". But I think the problem is that it almost never will matter: a pacifism effect will typically eliminate a creature sufficiently good that letting it go for three tokens will very rarely be correct, and 80% of the time, the opponent will have no way of getting rid of it. So 80% of the time this will be an expensive pacifism, which 20% of the time will have a random upside when you didn't expect it.

I definitely like the idea, but I somehow feel there'll never be an interesting choice between pacifism and tokens, even if they're equally good, I feel people will just feel bad about making the choice. I don't know if I'm too pessimistic, but my instinct is to rework it so both effects are more likely to matter.

Eg. Make this cheaper and switch the enchantment-dig effect onto this from Enchantment Digger, so when you have a sufficiently good enchantment creature in the graveyard, you can sacrifice this to bring it back to hand and cast it, possibly big enough to hold off whatever was pacified.

Eg. Make it cheap but make it naturally expire somehow, for instance, requiring an upkeep cost, or expiring when your opponent has their last other creature die.

Ooh, I like Jack's ideas, particularly switching it for the effect from Enchantment Digger.

Thank you!

@Jack: I think you underestimate how often 3 1/1s would be a better choice than a Pacifism. I'd push my percentage up, and would favor the 1/1s as being the more likely choice if we had common equipment. That being said, you're right. There are legions of people who hate having to make this choice. Sometimes its worth ignoring them, and sometimes it isn't. We probably shouldn't ignore them on an otherwise simple common.

I'm not changing this over immediately to Enchantment Digger's ability, only because we aren't square with what we want exactly. See Enchantment Digger. When we do, I'll change this and request a 5cc creature, probably with evasion.

@jmg: That's quite likely, it probably depends what I'm most used to playing with. I agree if there's powerful equipment, the tokens will be very powerful. (Although that's still a problem, because most sets have a white pacifism, not a white pacifism you don't play :))

@jmg: If people are convinced to change this, I would start by changing this to be whatever we want (probably, 2W pacifism. W, sac: return another enchantment from the graveyard to hand. Although come to think of it, that could be annoying if two of these keep bouncing each other!), then replacing Enchantment Digger by a simple evasion creature (I like Lightmare), then looking at the file and bumping something else up in size to 5CMC if we think that's necessary.

Beyond the playing the numbers game with the skeleton, I don't know if we want two removal spells with similar costs in common. I think I intentionally kept TiR high because Lance was low. I have no idea if that's really something worth keeping decisions around, however. Can we think of a modern environment that had a 2cc removal spell and a 3cc removal spell? Is such a thing "Okay?"

Good point, I'd forgotten that, I think avoiding bottlenecks at CMC are important, although I'd guess that most white removal spells want to be in the 2-4 range so they probably do get close.

Edit: Innistrad has bonds of faith, rebuke, and smite the monstrous at 2, 3 and 4

Two bouncing each other might not be any worse than Shackles. In fact, maybe this should just be Shackles.

I agree the costs don't want to be identical, but as long as they're somewhat different I don't think it matters much where they are.

True. We shouldn't be wedded to this design because it's a nice design, if pacifism or shackles would be better for the set. (There's plenty of other cards that can do enchantment digging if we don't want it here, it should just be somewhere.)

Ah, well, I just passed the reigns over to you Jack, so the decision is yours now. Also, I'm allowed to argue more. Grrr.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to argue about. I'm cool with people's suggestions.

LOL. Fair enough. I'm cautious here because the suggestion I find most interesting was my own, so I don't want to seize it unilaterily :)

Ah, isn't that the rub? Part of the problem stems from people throwing ideas in the air... it's great for getting a sense of what you want, but doesn't tell you what people really desire. That's fine. If someone has a real problem, I'm sure they'll pipe up.

I think this is interesting but fiddly. And I think two removal spells plus a tapper may be too much in 13 common cards. I suggest making this Pacifism, which fits the set perfectly, moving Soulcapture Lance to uncommon, and moving the "recur an enchantment from the graveyard" onto a creature.

ETA: (I know I suggested putting recursion on this card in the first place.)

Opinions?

I guess Soulcapture Lance is more complex than ideal for a common. (Sadly.) We even have Enchantment Digger sitting around to reactivate if we wanted.

Oops. I just moved Runearrow Archer to uncommon based on the suggestion here on How can monocolor deal with flying?

But I got to admit, Soulcapture Lance does 'feel' like an uncommon. I suppose it's probably best to argue which of those cards belong in uncommon in one of those card's threads, though.

As for Tie in Ribbons, I agree, kind of feels too Chinese Menu. But I think part of the problem was that we were trying to shove as many 'enchantment matters' effects on white cards as we could find. By my count, if we don't count Disempower, then there are only three 'enchantment matters' cards in white common, including this one. I'd think we'd want to maintain three.

We could pull Enchantment Digger forward, but that means something else would need to go. Is there any way we could make this card not be as awkward instead? Oh, hold it... we're shipping one of the uncommons up. Should I just move Enchantment Digger into its slot? Possibly as a 6-cost 3/5? That, or make Thread Gatherer a 6-cost 5/1?

My suggestion was to replace this with pacifism, and replace Folded Light with Enchantment digger. I think that ought to keep the number of enchantments and the number of "cares about enchantments" the same, while simplifying common -- am I missing something with that suggestion? We may also need to tweak the sizes of the creatures, I've not looked at the outline in white.

No, I think I was counting cards that were being removed, while not counting theoretical cards that were being added... but that was the point, and I was missing it. I highlighted your remark Jack so I don't forget to change this card if no one says anything.

Mostly, I'm just waiting to see if anyone wants to contest Pacifism over something else. Personally, I think Cage of Hands might make more sense, since we already got a "When an enchantment enters play" card, and we'll probably end up with at least one more in uncommon.

Cage of Hands sounds good to me, I only suggested pacifism because it was simple. It may change again, but I agree it'd be nice to have the ETB trigger.

Looking at mana costs, white common noncreature has two two-mana enchantments - Bolstering Light and Soft Filter - and no three-or-more except for this, so Cage of Hands is probably better than Pacifism. But we should note on it that we could switch it around if those other cards' mana costs change.

Sounds like a consensus to me. Edited to a reprint of Cage of Hands. Activated ability used to read ", Sacrifice Tie in Ribbons: Return an enchantment card from your graveyard to your hand."