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CardName: Foundation Shaker Cost: 4RR Type: Creature - Wurm Pow/Tgh: 4/4 Rules Text: Erupt 2RR (You may cast this for its erupt cost. It gains haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the end step.) When Foundation Shaker erupts, you may destroy target artifact. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Multiverse Design Challenge Uncommon |
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For Challenge # 083
Goblin Artisans brainstormed sandwurm mechanics. I particularly liked "sacrifice two lands, return ~ from your graveyard to hand", since it lets you play large creatures which are somewhat (but not totally) resistant to removal. I also liked some of the "swallow whole" mechanics, but none were just right.
This tries to capture the feel of a sandwurm erupting from the desert beneath you. The idea is that sandwurms will have different ETB abilities (probably "when this erupts" on commons and uncommons, and "when this ETB" or "when this attacks" on rares?) which capture their destructive nature, but aren't part of the mechanic.
A common sandwurm might have no ETB effect at all, so I picked something in the middle that has a standard red ability. Other sandwurms might have abilities that combo with erupt more, eg. "target creature can't block" or "fight target creature", but those would be stronger so need to be developed more.
I resisted the urge to make these "Creature - Sand Wurm", since "Sand" isn't used on other sand-dwelling creatures :)
I rather like this concept. It would be hard to make a lot of commons out of it, since wurms don't do small. Maybe a single 3/5 green wurm would be fine. Four in common doesn't sound terrible, though (6 if black and white join in for a single card).
Good question. I'm actually less worried about size -- red can have one giant monster, and green can have a big one and a nearly-big one. And I think if wurms are a theme it would be fine to have some immature wurmlings with the same creature type, as long as they're reasonably chunky for their mana cost.
I was more worried about haste. I compromised by giving black a small-ish overcosted wurm with a cheap evoke cost, and green a big wurm with an expensive evoke cost.
I used this mechanic in desert frontier, though it remains to be seen if it works. There's a list of cards using it on the mechanic page at: http://multiverse.heroku.com/cardsets/507/mechanics
I went with two red, two green, one white and one black at common, which seems plenty. Most are at least 4/4, but there's two smaller ones which are immature and/or tamed.