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CardName: Marthanos the Tempted Cost: W Type: Legendary Creature - Human Knight Pow/Tgh: 1/1 Rules Text: First Strike Whenever Marthanos the Tempted attacks and isn't blocked, you may pay {X}{W}{B}. If you do, the defending player loses X life and you gain X life. Whenever Marthanos becomes blocked, you may pay {X}{R}{W}. If you do, Marthanos deals X damage to target blocking creature. Put a +1/+1 counter on Marthanos. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Link's Unplaced Cards Rare First Strike
Whenever Marthanos the Tempted attacks and isn't blocked, you may pay . If you do, the defending player loses X life and you gain X life. Whenever Marthanos becomes blocked, you may pay . If you do, Marthanos deals X damage to target blocking creature. Put a +1/+1 counter on Marthanos. 1/1
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Sadly, this might be a version of Marthanos that needs to have more than 1 CMC. I really want to keep all versions of him at that cost, though. Maybe if I add to his abilities.
Yeah, I think the effects here are a bit too good for a 1-drop. Costs of and would probably help.
Changed abilities... However, now there are more words.
Hm. You can probably say just "Marthanos" all times after the first, which would help a bit with the excess words. Multiverse isn't doing that because his name doesn't have a comma.
Oh, I didn't even notice. Well, it's not like I'm going to change his name.
Changed ability... again.
I wonder if I could make this version as interesting as (((Marthanos, Battle Paladin))) and Marthanos, Sage of Battle. I think those both have very fun abilities to play with, and while this Marthanos has raw power, I just don't find his abilities as intriguing.
The whole point of this version in regards to the story, though, is that he's given up his subtlety for the power to lay waste to his opponents... so I suppose I succeeded here, flavor-wise.
I think this is an interesting enough card to play with. It's an intriguing one-drop legend.
It does have one point that's arguably a design blemish, though. That's the way that the ability has to be used before you know whether you need to use the ability. So if the opponent has a simple 1/2, you need to either not drain at all (and then the opponent lets him through for 1), drain for 3 less than you could do, or do the full drain (at which point the opponent blocks and kills him on the assumption you don't have a no-mana combat trick).
So perhaps it might be scarier if the ability were limited to "Whenever ~ attacks and isn't blocked".
(BTW, well done on the order of the mana symbols in the abilities. Most people would get that wrong, like I did in my earlier comment.)
Hmmm... I had created that tension purposefully, but if you view it as a negative, maybe it deserves some further review on my part.
Heh. "Tension" was the topic of lots of discussion in the GDS2. I wouldn't go as far as the GDS2 judges did in condemning cards that give you tension, but I think this card would have you wishing it worked differently every time you attacked with it, and that's not a very positive thing.
Yeah... for me, it's a tough choice. As he is now, he can still hurt the player even when he is blocked, which was another factor in how I ended up with his abilities as-is. You're right, though, that it doesn't feel nice to have to decide whether or not you need to burn something.
Tension is very funny. I should write an article about it some day. It has a very weird place in game design, because the people who like tension the most are the same type of people who like to design games...
I wouldn't say that I particularly like tension. I just feel that the tension here is something of a balancing factor for his potential power.
Regardless, I think I'll change it.
Added X counters before; now it's only 1.