There's a lot of question marks on this card. What we do know is that NTC #027 has to fight two of your creatures before it goes on to fight your opponent's creatures. Fighting every turn is super-powerful, so it's probably worth the wait... though that does drop your shields, and/or it might be tactically better to start smashing right now...

All those restrictions made me not want to make this a rare. But it's clearly over the top and a little wordy, so it's a rare. Probably one that won't see print, though. Can't win them all.

Also, I didn't put in a casting cost because whether its color is red, green, or maybe even an artifact creature may affect the cost. Better to just presume it's efficient and move on.

This is different than how the challenge usually works... not a huge fan of it, but it's not bad to change pace.

As for the card, it could probably only be strong in an enrage deck? even, then, i might not play it over other cards.

I think this card would be cool as a Dinosaur called Rampaging Spikehorn or another similar name (there are close to infinite choices that sound cool, imo).

I don't really care what you call the counters, because they are just for a single card...

as long as you don't call them trample or +1/+1 and suddenly you are hurting your guys more and punching yourself in the face (i don't know if you can deal excess damage... to yourself... wait, fighting doesn't even count as attack/block, so it wouldn't matter. which makes it less funny and even more pointless)

This is unfortunate that it is so large, really not an efficient way to trigger enrage... useful when you actually fight with it though, so i guess it's similar to an additional cost of:

sacrifice two creatures AND dormant(ish) for 2 turns.

I guess you could just call it Rampage counters, but IIRC that's an outdated keyword... so maybe just Rage counters, is fine. That's actually pretty cool

I sounded a bit... something... in this post, but I actually like the card i've come up with. As for NTC 027, I'm wondering what other people come up with. This probably fits best into regardless

We'e allowed complicated counters again nowadays, right? :)

Slumbering Ironfist 1G
NTC #027 enters the battlefield with two -1/+1
Creature - Treefolk Berskerer
­, , ...: ...
­: ...
4/3

I really wasn't sure what worked best. I reckoned having a wall-ish ceature gave the fight the most chances to be usable, and tried to cost it so it would be ok as a rare wall, but also worthwhile taking the counters off. And giving a reward for each counter alone makes it more worthwhile to do so too.

I picked green because of the wall-ish beginning, and red for the first fight because fighting your OWN stuff seemed more red than G.

I will try and make a genuine no-effect counter version too.

Corpse Slinger 2RR
Creature - Ogre Warrior
Ammunition Counters
­, Remove:

Why might it need to attack your stuff first? To have something to attack with! :) I don't know how often it actually will, but I tried to steer the flavour towards "you can just attack with it, but if you have any creatures you don't need lying about, you can use them to power it up instead".

You're first suggestion fixes most my issues with this card, and you did it by using -1/+1 counters! Wild times....

Although I don't think jm was looking for effect counters, i like your first card so much it has my vote.

i still love dinos tho

Yeah, I loved the Dino flavour. I forgot about enrage!

Defender counters. You send your creatures to catch or sedate it. After N attempts, it finally complies to you. (In fact a strong case for more drawback keywords.)

Chained Giant.
Creature -- Giant Berserker
­, Remove a defender counter:
­:

So far, I love the flavor, and I'm not against drawback keywords, i just dunno if there'd be a lot of design room for Defender counters specifically...

but Also, this seems pretty weak, I mean, wait two turns and lose two creatures (even weenies) for what? A 4/3 for ?

It's the original design that makes this card 'not a winner' kind of like jm said... It's pretty interesting, but super weak without editing it (I consider using effect counters to be editing, cause it changes the cards function, not just flavor).

Going off flavor, I'm a big fan of Chained Giant and Slumbering Ironist (love treefolk/ents)... Corpse Slinger is funny, but might be hard to show off without art + flavor text... also a bit too silly for magic, but they've been putting more 'humor' in the game recently, so it's not out of the question

(i like corpse slinger because it feels like something they wouldve printed a long time ago, but maybe thats just me getting nostalgia for an era i was never a part of :shrug:)

Mechanically, i'm a big fan of -1/+1 counters and enrage... Both together would be probably -too- strong... but would be extra playable. Although, don't get me wrong, i'm happy they phased out weird counters like -1/+1 and +2/+2 and etc, they suck, but for this particular card, they are useful... Even -1/-1 counters would be better than non-effect counters (mechanically speaking) imo

This definitely feels like a berzerker!

First, I should say, I didn't think of these counters. But I guess I left the door open to use them, so they're fair game.

I like the flavor of all four cards, though I think the Chained Giant flavor is right on point, so I'm giving it to him. The artist really has a lot of work to do to 'sell' this particular story. This card is already at maximum word count... it can't even be a mythic anymore, since mythics need to be easier to digest than this.

Froggychum makes a good point that defender tokens aren't going to be welcomed by a lot of people. So this card is drawbacks stacked ontop of drawbacks. When I used to make my According to Gatherer series, that was a recipe for how you got one star cards. Betray players in as many ways as possible. But the end result of jumping through all these hoops is something the game has yet to do (a creature that can fight every turn. Not counting Ulvenwald Tracker which has a different feel) so I'm hoping this card would be forgiven.

That said, I think defender tokens themselves are super useful on a level akin to poison counters. You could stick them on maybe 40 cards in just one set if you wanted. Here's an example of something that could be in a common cycle.

Tomb Guardians
­
Creature - Illusion
Flying
~ enters the battlefield with a defender counter on it (creatures with defender counters on them can't attack.)
­: Remove a defender counter from ~.
3/2

Done. Five creatures at common designed. A cycle of five at uncommon could follow with bonus abilities. It's about as flexible and simple as landfall. Just give the world a flavor similar to the story in Invasion. "Isolationists must come together to fight a world-shaking threat" is roughly a description of the world of The Lord of the Rings.

Here's another common just to further cement that defender tokens have legs:

Weight of Duty
­
Sorcery
Put a defender counter on up to two target creatures. (Creatures with defender counters on them can't attack.)

Works for me.

As an aside, I'll say that while I was pleasantly surprised by the -1/+1 counters, I don't think they work well here. Let's say you have a 2/5 NTC #027 with two -1/+1 counters on it. You activate it to fight one of your own creatures. How much damage does it deal? Three. Because it removed a counter. Surprise.

Not that players wouldn't figure that out with a few interactions (maybe), but it's something to remember, and some people are bad at remembering. Had this been -1/-1 counters, maybe it would be easier to remember? Because NTC would need to start off as a 2/1, and how are you expected to not kill your own .... oh, that's right. It becomes a 3/2. It's not a perfect solution, but players are more likely to get it right.

Now removes any counter, and fights if there are no counters of any type. Just trying to cut back on the words. R&D would probably cut out the sorcery restrictions for this reason, unfortunately.

No other keyword counter cards use reminder text for the counters, so you can leave it off this one. This is more experimental, but what if you removed the sorcery restriction from both activated abilities and gave it the static ability "Activate ~'s abilities only any time you could cast a sorcery." I'd try to figure out a Mythos wording, but changing both cost and targeting restriction makes that a tonguetwister

You're right about the reminder text. At the very least, this is a rare that presumes that defender tokens probably appeared at common. The reminder text can go on common if it's deemed necessary at all.

As for saying "Activate at sorcery speed" once, that's a good idea. But the second ability still would require "Activate only when there are no counters" which is combined with the sorcery speed line. So the actual number of words shaved off would only be 8, and it would still require a line break. Considering that that would be a functional change that would affect cards like Manriki-Gusari, it probably wouldn't be worth it.

That at least could use an intervening if. "T: If there are no counters on ~, it fights another target creature."

Ah, yes. That's fair.

­Nightfall Predator is a comparison for "repeatable fight after the right hoops", perhaps.

Oh yes. That's a good enough comparison.

Toughness should be higher if you expect it fight that much and still survive to keep fighting. 3/4 or 4/4.

Also switch mana costs on activated abilities. 1st one cost no mana; 2nd one OR

I like the changes you made, and that discussion is pretty interesting about wording, though I guess it depends how much the custom card community is supposed to deviate from official wording in the sake of the spirit of sounding better (something WOTC strives for, so might approve of?)

Amuseum's points are also good, but that would be actually changing the card. I mean, I'm never not up for fixing a card, but IIRC you wanted to avoid rewriting NTC cards... maybe that was just during the competition though.

I think 4/4 would be reasonable for this price. I mean, it's off-curve, but it's got a significant drawback. I also dunno any cards or combos you could pull off that would cost less mana to make it worth getting a +2/+2 bonus on one creature, tbh.

I mean, it would be pretty funny if you mindslaved an opponent with counter removal on board and then exalted your own giant, but it's unlikely (BUT AWESOME)