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CardName: Phyrexian Invasion Cost: 3bbb Type: Scene - Phyrexia Pow/Tgh: /5 Rules Text: [+3]: Up to one target land becomes also a Swamp. Create three 1/1 black Phyrexian creature tokens. [-21]: **Climax** -- Gain control of all Swamps. Create a X/X black God legendary creature token named Yawgmoth with indestructible, where X is the number of Swamps you control. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Logic: the Processing Mythic

Phyrexian Invasion
{3}{b}{b}{b}
 
 M 
Scene – Phyrexia
+3: Up to one target land becomes also a Swamp. Create three 1/1 black Phyrexian creature tokens.

-21: Climax — Gain control of all Swamps. Create a X/X black God legendary creature token named Yawgmoth with indestructible, where X is the number of Swamps you control.
5
Updated on 03 Aug 2020 by amuseum

History: [-]

2017-10-12 06:31:29: amuseum created and commented on the card Phyrexian Invasion
2018-03-31 20:18:40: amuseum edited Phyrexian Invasion

Hmm. If you can hit your opponent five times; and cast a seven cost sorcery... why didn't you win already?

Stealing lands is just... incredibly rude too.

For clarity, by the time this goes off, you're on at least 12 mana. So the last clause on the card is, basically, "I was too busy humiliating you to win"?

I guess it also works as a stong "Kill me" signal in multiplayer.

Agreed with Vitenka. Someone put on their creative dept. hat and never took it of to consider this as a game piece.

Let's not forget to mention that the +1/+0 means that this likely requires that you dealt at least 10 damage over the course of five turns.

then you tell me why any card would cost 7 or more mana, if everybody could always win before then, or by hitting opponents 'only' 5 times.

+1/+0 is to give your creatures better chance to defeat the opposing armies. but it doesn't guarantee that your creatures survive combat either. thus casualties on both sides.

obviously it gives your opponents a sense of urgency. you are the biggest baddest villain the multiverse has ever known. they'd better be terrified.

someone put on their safe space hat and neglected narrative gameplay.

The issue is that hitting the opponent five times with a 2-power creature (and likely other creatures over the course of the twelf turns this is setting up) would win you the game without the other two clauses of the card, so this card sets itself up as a win-more effect.

Now if the trigger condition was not dealing damage, but e. g. attacking then the alternate win condition would be relevant since it can grind down an opponent without needing to break their defenses.

On a similar note an effect that causes loss on both sides without actually increasing damage would further this, so why not deathtouch (or wither/infect. I'm not certain of the mechanic suite of this particualr set without looking it up) over +1/+0?

A good alternate win condition is something that can win you the game without you already achieving the better part of a standard win condition.

Obviously you could combine this with Annex etc. to speed up the clock, but that's not the story you are selling with this - if you want to make this a Johnnie piece, you make the alternate win condition the stronger focus and remove all the unnecessary "help" and go straight Chance Encounter.

Alternatively you can avoid the "alternate" win condition and replace te arbitrary static threshold with something that aids you in the actual war of attrition e. g. "At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return a permanent card from an opponent's graveyard to the battlefield under your control. If you do, each player loses 1 life for each permanent you control that player owns."

This also means in multiplayer you can be political about it - it would probably also be cool to have an abbility like "Whenever an opponent loses the game, you gain 1 life and draw a card for each permanent that player owns you controlled as that player lost the game."

This still gives you a payoff for "winning" the invasion. And sinc your new win condition is flavored aroundd you winning the war of attrition by raising their dead against them or taking over their destroyed holdings you don't need to add an ability that symbolizes the carnage onto the card - instead the mechanics encourage you to build a deck around the card that fills up the opponent's graveyard.

I don't see how this is not good narrative gameplay or what "safe space" means here at all. I never said, make a boring card, but yours is not even not "safe space" as I understand the term.

Alternatively:

Another issue with this design is (as far as I recall the scene card type correctly) that this just slaps a really large number down there - that number tells me that this card really doesn't want to be a scene. It wants to be an enchantment.

So how about making it something that cares about being a scene with a big destiny number? How about just making it a true finisher? Just a big number down there and something like "At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent loses 1 life, discards a card, sacrifices a creature, then sacrifices a land." if you want a war of attrition or "At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice ~, and each opponent loses X life, discards X cards, sacrifices X creatures, then sacrifices X lands, where X is the number of destiny counters on ~." if you want to just turn this into a game ender that summons Yawgmoth in his Death Cloud form onto the battlefield.

That's also creating a sense of urgency and each of the variants is a call-back to one stage of the Phyrexian Invasion and creates its own sort of urgency to unite your opponents to unite against you and stave of the worst before your next upkeep.

Maybe it would be cool to add "Creatures you control can't block creatures attacking ~" and create a one-turn minigame in which your opponents are really encouraged to stop the invasion rather than just taking out the player, but that's just one option to turn this around.

I would even suggest something like "At the beginnig of your upkeep, you win the game." on a scene, but I don't think that the Phyrexian Invasion is the correct creative treatment for this effect - maybe something more like a scheme to become god-like e. g. Nicol Bolas during the Conflux.

As people said - it's casting a 7-cost, and then winning five combats after that. With +1, so that's probably 10 life you've hit them for, unless you were slipping an Ornithopter through. And after stealing their third land or so, they can't even slightly keep up with you.

If you're able to do all that to an opponent, you've almost certainly already won. The exception would be playing against some kind of lifegain deck that steals lands back somehow.

So the "You win if" clause is just massive overkill. So it would be better to have something that triggers sooner, to put the opponent out of their misery. I mean, this costs 7 - it's allowed to be really good! The simplest change would be to make it let you win on the third steal instead. But even that feels trinket-texty.

Maybe just have it steal a lot more land each time? And rely on the opponent scooping?

2020-02-10 22:20:18: amuseum edited Phyrexian Invasion:

scene with climax

2020-02-10 23:11:57: amuseum edited Phyrexian Invasion
2020-02-10 23:23:26: amuseum edited Phyrexian Invasion:

climax mechanic

2020-02-11 01:37:52: amuseum edited Phyrexian Invasion
2020-08-03 15:55:52: amuseum edited Phyrexian Invasion

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