For Challenge # 049

I tried to make this a bit swankier, but couldn't think of any additions.

I considered having separate "if is damaged" and "if would be destroyed", possibly exiling your graveyard. That gave a pleasingly dangerous feel: you can use it with dredge mechanics, but you are in fact liable to forget everything at the wrong moment! But it was too cluttered mechanics-wise.

Maybe it should exile the graveyard when it DOES die? But again, that's nice flavbour, but there's little gameplay improevemtn from a drawback mechanic.

In fact, I'm sure this already exists, but I can't remember what the official card for it is, I just hope mine is sufficiently different.

It's a bit like a reverse of Swans of Bryn Argoll or Belltower Sphinx. It's like "prevent all damage", but with a rider which is theoretically a drawback, but often will be a major advantage.

I looked for a more original interpretation: I hoped to have a sphinx that caused opponents to forget, but the grammar didn't work out right for that.

Perhaps you were thinking of Thought Lash? That is a very powerful card... but this isn't that, so direct comparisons are useless. I do think it interesting, though, that the Alliances team decided to use exile. That seems appropriate... as it stands, this card requires approximately 35 total damage to die, and the entire time it's giving you an excellent bonus ability. I'm quite sure people could pass valid arguments as to why I'm wrong, though.

Oh, good point. Yeah, that's a very similar idea, but not one I remembered. But I think being on a creature is sufficiently different.

I think if it's preventing damage to you, exile makes sense since (a) if you can recur your library, it's more of an "I win" and (b) more damage is probably dealt to you than to one creature, so you're more likely to run out.

Presumably that would be lovely in a battle of wits deck :)

This plus Wheel of Sun and Moon is pretty funny, but amazingly not that broken. It's a lot more intensive than Dawn Elemental, for sure.

It does seem pretty cheap. Blue isn't even allowed to have a 3/3 flyer for . Is it allowed a 4/4 nearly-invulnerable for ?

Apart from that, yeah, the basic concept is fine.

SM's idea is amusing. It does just boil down to a Dawn Elemental or Darksteel Gargoyle though.

As for costing, I'd say it's fine at rare. Blue gets 5/5 flyers for 6 all the time at rare; and at uncommon, Air Elemental is pretty frequent and pretty unplayable in Constructed (still jolly good in Limited though).

I don't know whether I agree with wizards' philosophy of rarity, but I generally design cards trying to roughly approximate it except when I say otherwise. And I think the guidelines would say that 3C 3/3 flier at common is too dominating of the limited environment. But that at rare a 4C 4/4 indestructible flier is about right.

In fact, it should probably be 3UU. Possibly it should be mythic, but it didn't seem "wow" enough for that.

@SM: Yeah, I think a two-card combo for an indestructible creature is fine :)