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CardName: Reckless Ninjitsu Cost: 1UR Type: Instant Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Attacking creatures get +3/+0 until end of turn. At the beginning of the end step, if a creature dealt combat damage to a player this turn, return it to its owner's hand. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Multiverse Design Challenge Uncommon |
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For Challenge # 052. Evil Maro sez: "For a slightly more restrictive cost than Trumpet Blast, players push one more damage per creature on their opponents. This comes with a drawback, however... creatures that pushed their Ninjitsu and hurt a 'master' in the process will find themselves punished and returned to their opponents hands. Sometimes, though, that's just where a Ninja wants to be! To strike from the shadows once more! In an emergency, you could always play this during your opponent's turn to return their creatures... but why would you be willing to take all that damage?"
Is this meant as a one-sided Evacuation? You can certainly cast this in end-of-combat or second main to avoid suffering from the +3/+0 penalty. But the return wouldn't actually do anything, because none of your opponents' creatures dealt combat damage "to an opponent". Should it be "to a player"?
Ug! Hoisted on my own petard! Yes, the card should read 'player' not 'opponent', and you get a prize for seeing through the Murky Rosewater card to find the Evil Rosewater card behind it.
And then Wizards go and print Aetherize to suggest that actually this might be moderately fair even with the deliberate loophole. This is one mana cheaper than Aetherize, but crucially, requires you to get hit by the creatures first.
Aetherize? Wouldn't Restore the Peace be the better comparison?
I think the card originally just sent attacking creatures back to the owner's hand, instead of creatures that deal damage. That wasn't the intent, though, so I altered the card to enforce damage dealing as a prereq. I assume. The truth is, I don't even remember designing this card, or challenge 52 for that matter. Weird.
Aww! Challenge 52 was awesome. It was like "Set a puzzle in the form of a Magic card".
I remembered it when I looked at all my entries. But, yeah, it's a weird experience when you see a Magic card you designed, don't recognize it, think about it for a little while as if it belonged to someone else, then scan down to notice it was your idea all along. I should have known better with this design, too. It's got me written all over it. Including the part where I was supposed to design a secretly broken card, but probably ended up designing a balanced/underpowered card.