As a quick breakdown, this spell...

...etc, etc, etc.

That's not a particularly powerful effect by itself, so I added a "Draw a card". That might still not be good enough to be playable, but now it's at least arguable. Development might bump up the power, though, by giving the card something a little more powerful than 'draw a card', but Creative would prefer that you don't focus on that part when naming the card.

Baloth-Blood Serum. Flavour text: "Only the strong can benefit from it."

This seems to me to have the flavour of a blue researcher extracting something beneficial from a red/green creature type.

This is a super interesting effect! Maybe my favorite NTC so far :)

Alex's idea is pretty creative, and I don't want to just make another version of his name, so I'm going to go with a different concept. Maybe this isn't an extraction of any kind, maybe it's a wizard casting a spell....

A spell so powerful that it destroys those who cannot handle it. Now, that would make more sense for a card at rare or mythic, but, as I said, I'm going for something different.

So, now just for a name... "Reckless Transmutation" or "Foolhardy Mutation" are pretty good.

Bumbling Brutality

Yeah, it kinda feels like Unstable Mutation could have been this.

But I'm actually seeing this as some kind of a parasitic attachment. It noms on; and either overwhelms or improves. And then at end of turn, you get better.

So.. Sinew Contamination Theme it phyrexian.

Developmental Steroid

­Called Shot

At first I thought this was just too complicated and would be turned into "target creature gets +3/+0 or -3/-0". But I was really impressed by the flavour people found, a lot of those names really do work better with the two-step version.

bump

That was thoughtful of you amuseum, thank you. But it also appears that this system is programmed to ignore the comment 'bump'. While looking through Recent Updates, I found the last comment was made by 'Jack V 17 hours ago'. Unfortunately, by commenting I ruined my ability to show the queue in action.

I can be a second witness that amuseum's comment was ignored on the recent updates page. It's rather interesting, I wonder if Alex specifically programmed that? Or does it have something to do with heroku (I don't know what that is, but IIRC it's got something to do with this site's URL or something).

I don't really support 'bumping', but I guess for the next few days while everyone (including myself) update several dozen cardsets with the new 'mill' thing, it might be appropriate to have active cardsets on top.

I did see this Name the Card pushed to the top of Recent Updates by amuseum's bump, however Jack V's post was listed as the most recent post.

I don't think it's anything special about the comment "bump". I imagine it's probably a bug in my cacheing, though it's possibly something to do with heroku, who are indeed this site's hoster - they provide the computers MagicMultiverse.net is running on.

The poll for NTC #033 is here! Go vote and make my job easier!

I Voted.

Do I get a sticker? :P

Sure! Here you go:

­

It's tough finding non-Americentric 'I voted' stickers in the Google search result. Hello friends across the pond! Is the 'I voted' sticker more of an American trend? Or is Google just biased?

Voter turnout in America is abysmal. It's one part disdain for a two-party system where both parties kind of suck, and several parts massive voter suppression by the government. Voter registration isn't automatic, elections aren't a public holiday so you need to use vacation time to get off work, and active voting suppression (esp in black areas) leads to aggressively inconvenient times and locations to actually cast your vote. Barely 50% of eligible voters did so in the past several presidential elections, which is why there's so much effort in trying to convince people to actually go vote

Yeah, as far as I know, that's not a thing outside of the mad mad land of America. Well; some countries use an indelible ink stamp on the hand; but that's more to stop you turning up and voting a second time.

Australia has the best idea - voting barbecue parties.

I think I've heard of "I voted" stickers in the UK, but it's not a Thing where you expect it to be part of voting.

Yay! Stickers!

Hm... an indelible stamp is actually a pretty good idea... How else would you prevent people from just coming back and voting again?

Also voting barbecue parties sound patriotic and delicious. Win-win.

Normally, they check your name off a list after you vote so you can't do it again

@Jack: In my very rudimentary search for international stickers, I did notice that there were a few UK stickers, mostly themed around remaining or leaving the EU. But I guess that's not quite the same thing, since the American version is party neutral, and the UK stickers were obviously for one side or the other.

@Froggy: The problem with stamps is that it tells everyone you voted, not just the voting stations. If I was from a marginalized group, and I was forced to wear a sign that said "I voted", I would be opening myself up as a target for violence (which may cause me to not vote in the first place.)

@Dude: I'll be the first to admit that checking people off in a book doesn't sound like a very good method of stopping voting fraud. But actual incidence of voter frauds caught is unintuitively low. So it seems to work? It's so weird...

I don't know enough how other countries do voting. In the UK, everyone is assigned to a polling station near their house. You turn up and give your name and address and they cross you off a list. Impersonation is prevented mainly because if the same person keeps coming in repeatedly the polling people will probably notice, if you try to hire a big gang of people it's hard to keep secret, and even once you vote in the name of someone who's already voted they'll notice and there'll probably be a criminal investigation.

The slight problem is with postal voting, where you need an excuse to use it but it's fairly easy to get, but obviously if you have a card, anyone can fill it in and post it if they can pick it up.

In particular, this is just something councils do, the people organising the voting on behalf of local councils (I think??) don't usually sabotage the effort in favour of one party.

And there's no need for ID (aka "enfranchise people with a long term fixed residence and unimpeachable finances, disenfranchise people without") although our current fuckhead government pushed through a trial version of requiring ID which did exactly what people expected and will get rolled out nationally unless the government's frantic footshooting finally outpaces their spin dancing.

PS. Go vote on this card! :)

"Unless the government's frantic footshooting finally outpaces their spin dancing."

Best description of government I've ever read, and I don't know what half the words in that sentence mean :)

@JMG: I hadn't thought about that, good point. I wish I could say that something like that shouldn't be a huge worry, because it doesn't happen often and when it does it's punished, but that's not true (Until recently I was convinced that it was true in Canada, but not confident anymore after some stuff I've seen). Kind of sucks how everything has to be designed to prevent violence, instead of the government just preventing violence ffs. I mean, I'm more than happy to give up my voting sticker for a bigger cause, but it's still not a solution to the issue.

Right, the US also assigns you to a specific local polling station. That's why just having a paper list is enough to check if you've voted already

Alex wins the first majority vote for Baloth Blood-Serum. I apologize about the delay between voting and posting this. I really want to cut that time down to 48 hours.

See you all in (((NTC #034)))!