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CardName: Law of Emptiness Cost: {3}{B}{B} Type: Legendary Enchantment - Law Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Whenever a player would draw a card, that player discards a card first. If you control a Black God, exile Law of Emptiness. If Law of Emptiness was exiled this way, its abilities still trigger as long as you control a Black God. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: temporary storage None

Law of Emptiness
{3}{b}{b}
 
Legendary Enchantment – Law
Whenever a player would draw a card, that player discards a card first.
If you control a Black God, exile Law of Emptiness. If Law of Emptiness was exiled this way, its abilities still trigger as long as you control a Black God.
Updated on 06 Sep 2020 by Sorrow

History: [-]

2020-09-06 04:47:03: Sorrow created and commented on the card Law of Emptiness

So rummaging should be, discard (as per rummage), discard (from this), then draw a card.

Looting would be, discard (from this), draw, discard again.

The effect of a triggered ability (other than a mana ability, though that isn't an exception either) can never occur before the event that triggers. You want a static ability defining a replacement effect.

You do it just the other way around on the second ability which should be a state-based triggered ability.

There never was much value to the "its abilities still trigger" text, but since the ability referred to won't even be a triggered ability that has to change, too.


Possible solutions:

> If a player would draw a card, that player discards a card first.
When you control a black God, exile ~. For as long as ~ remains exiled that permanent has its other ability.

or

> If a player would draw a card, that player discards a card first.
When you control a black God, merge ~ underneath that permanent. It loses this ability.

or

> If a player would draw a card and ~ is on the battlefield or has a persistence counter on it and is exiled, that player discards a card first.
When you control a black God, exile ~ with a persistence counter on it. Remove all persistence counters from it the next time you don't control a black God.

That last one helps with playing a lot of black God permanents not changing the functionality.


Design-wise the first ability is reminiscent of Chains of Mephistopheles, but not making an exception for the first card drawn each draw step is BIG, as in "a BIG mistake" IMO. As you point out this kind of effect is abused easily enough, severely hampering the main force of driving the game forward by forcing everyone into top-deck mode is not a recipe for a good time.

The second ability is... confusing. It reads like more of a drawback than a benefit and as a drawback it is easily avoided by not playing this in conjunction wit black Gods.

As a benefit it just gets overshadowed by the fact that this just basically turned itself into an Aura with all the 2-for-1 potential.

The story this tells from a top-down perspective is also not clear: Laws remain untouchable until there is a deity, then they are only as stable as our hierocracy?

If I were to make use of this, I would definitely update to skip the trigger during the draw step. Thanks for pointing that out.

So, the exile if you have a Black God thing may not have been clear. What I'm certain of now was that the concept of law I was goinng for was going scientific law, a law of the universe (or in this case, the relative plane). Gods make the rules of how the plane functions.

Without a Black God, this is a normal enchantment. With a Black God, it becomes a law of the universe, a fact. That's why the card was sent to exile. The intention was that once exiled by a Black God, as long as a Black God remained on the battlefield, this enchantment's ability would still trigger. If exiled due to a Black God and then no more Black Gods are on the battlefield, then this enchantment is turned off until a Black God is on the battlefield again. The Law subtype was added to identify these enchantments as there would have been one for each color (not that more couldn't be done, but I thought it best as a five-card cycle).

Based on everything you've said though, it looks like this test may not be worth fixing.

Maybe, but here is one very important wording mistake you should be aware of: The "as long as" (or more properly "for as long as" in modern wording) marks a single time interval i. e. for as long as you maintain at least one God on the battlefield, the triggered ability remains available, but if you ever once not control a black God, the duration is over and never gets turned on again, even if you get a new black God.

What you want is actually even easier to word: An ability that is always around, but only functions while a black God is around; something like that uses "if" because it makes a check on the condition, and doesn't define a time duration.

> If a player would draw a card, that player discards a card first.
When you control a black God, exile ~ and put a fact counter on it.
If a player would draw a card while is in exile and has a fact counter on it and you exiled it and you control a black God, that player discards a card first.

Hmmm, maybe not that simple. If you introduced a keyword action this could be a lot easier since you could skip some aspects e. g.

> If a player would draw a card and this is on the battlefield or you control a black God and this is generalized, that player discards a card first.
When you control a black God, generalize ~. (Exile this.)

Or maybe:

> If a player would draw a card, that player discards a card first.
Aspect of God (When you control a black God, exile this. For as long as it remains exiled, black Gods you control have this card's other abilities.)

The "black God" would be in the rules "permanent of that type that shares a color with this card", or something.

The rules can handle that easily, though it would mean multiple black Gods create multiple instances of the ability.

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