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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-16 13:10:58)
I like to break the color pie
Instant
Counter target creature spell, or target spell that targets a creature.
This may also be better with (a different casting cost, p/t, etc..) no evasion. I could see people trying to put together the pieces for a rogue mill deck that involve drafting this creature and finding ways of getting him in there. After all, if the card was so good that everyone played it, everyone would draft it and we'd have to depower it so drafts didn't become about how many Mind Washers you were able to snag.
It may not be worth it for double shatter. I like that card, but Alex is right about overthinking, and while we could force the card to check when the card is being cast, many players will ignore what is written and do what sounds right in their heads... which is the way it is worded now. It's probably not worth fighting player expectations on a common.
It's funny. I found a way to 'solve' both problems with:
Put a 2/2 red Elemental token creature onto the battlefield tapped. Then, if all creatures you control are tapped, destroy target artifact.
Which is a funny work around solution, by giving you a creature first, so you can talk about all the creatures you control. I don't know how many sorceries we'd want to do this to... but I don't know how many sorceries we would plan to print with this mechanic, either...
Another "soft counter." Unlike Snakefoil, I don't know how good this one feels. However, I have several different options for it:
"Counter target instant or sorcery spell. Copy that spell twice. You may choose new targets for the copies."
"Counter target spell unless its controller lets you copy it twice. You may choose new targets for the copies." Note that this can copy permanent spells: is that wise and/or possible? I'm sure Riku avoided copying creature spells for a reason.
"Counter target spell unless its controller lets ~ deal 3 damage to him or her and 2 damage to each creature he or she controls." My least favorite option, but there it is.
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Note that I do prefer Snakefoil to any of these.
I think someone already mentioned that exact counter spell somewhere. The other ideas are pretty nice.
Can this be an ant that tends fungus?
Oh, you're right; I just assumed devils don't exist, but they do (three cards). In which case, yes, that's a better fit.
Ah, right, never mind. Yes, I agree there should be a gold counterspell (hopefully this one :)).
Actually, it was red having Devils, which are already a creature type in Magic but haven't been much explored (though it looks like they will be in Innistrad?).
The way red mechanics are going with the "all-or-nothing" thing, they sound like a horde of monstrosities that stop at nothing to destroy, or at least some sort of culture that highly value war.
Of course, we could still go in a different direction. The "all tapped or nothing" cards feel a bit awkward to me, but I don't really have any other ideas except pumping up red's caring about instants and sorceries, like Kiln Fiend.
I already discussed it on Will of the Seas, so it's not so relevant. I do want to make the point that I feel either this or another gold counterspell should make it in, though, so that they're not all pure blue and so Aer has some to itself. As the multicolor faction, it should probably be able to fill the "roles" of all the individual factions by itself.
Again, this is weird, but there's got to be a Llanowar-elf equivalent somewhere.
I made this not a fungus because (a) if it was, it would essentially be better than llanowar elves, and (b) we need some non-fungus creatures to put fungus counters on
This is too fiddly, but I wondered how a cheap creature would put fungus counters on something. Originally it didn't have regenerate, but then it was too much of a downside to make your opponent's creature bigger; hopefully now the cheap regenerate somewhat makes up for that (I didn't just want another creature like Lumbering Mycoshamble ).
I don't like it as is, but we need several fungus-ifying creatures.
My instinct for keyword creatures would be to loosen the cycle a bit and have something like:
2RG 3/3 trample, flying 2GW 2/4 flying, vigilance WU 2/3 flying UB 2/1 flying, deathtouch BR 2/1 flying, haste, attacks each turn
But we may have as many as 10 allied and 5 enemy color spells, which probably want to be divided between vanilla creatures, keyword creatures, creatures with triggered abilities (or other multicolor relevant creatures) and other spells. Presumably pairs with "creature colours" would have more creatures and pairs with "spell colours" fewer. Or we may tone down the number of spells and make the theme multicolored creatures and make sure some of the monocolored spells can fit into a multicolored deck after all
Any more ideas for red flavour? We originally thought a "hell" theme with demons shifted into small red instead of big black (?) but there's not been much development on it.
Another possibility would be to merge red and black flavour (but not mechanics) as the decadant psuedo-ancient-greek theme with red as decadant warriors instead of dedadent aesthetes; most people preferred all colours to be separate, but I wouldn't mind some being creatively linked.
If we want to flood our opponents' lands with counters, what simple spell effects could key off the number of them? Many of these are much too swingy ("draw a card for each" may appear at uncommon/rare, but will be too useless or too overpowering), so I tried to think of as many as possible effects that could care about x islands in the hope that some would be both (i) useful and not too strong or too weak and (ii) not too punishing as an anti-blue splash:
(Hm, maybe a soft counter could be "counter target non-blue spell" and key off the number of islands its controller controls -- that would avoid the hose-blue spell :))
I don't think it makes much difference to gameplay as there aren't that many cards that remove counters from lands, but the modern template seems to always be "as long as it has a counter on", presumably because it makes more sense in the case where the counter is removed, so we should probably stick to that.
Yeah, I like this too. jmg's right, it's worse than cancel, but it looks so lovely, and the effect is about the right size where you're not losing badly whichever they pick.
L2: go ahead and post the other idea if it's still relevant -- I think we still want lots of ideas and will merge and winnow them as we go on.
Good example of "all tapped". I agree with listing the bigger number as a bonus.
Regarding this spell, what about copping out and adding "as you cast this" to "control no untapped creatures"? Or making an uncommon/rare version that destroys an artifact for each tapped creature you control (not unreasonable given shatterstorm and [[[creeping corrosion])? How do the rules work if you say "destroy target artifact. If you.... destroy two target artifacts instead", does that let you choose which target goes away on resolution?
If we have to we, can always keyword the condition, although I agree that doesn't help much since it'd still have to be clear.
I think mechanic-wise counting or excluding "no creatures" would be fine, the important thing is to avoid being ambiguous. I know some of these spells would go into a creatureless deck, but I think that's ok as long as they don't all do.
So, I would vote for whatever sounds best and is unambiguous (which I think is currently "if you control no untapped creatures", though I'd be happy with the opposite solution if there's a good wording)
You could alternatively reverse it and say "if you control at least 3 tapped creatures" or similar, but I prefer the current approach.
I like mill, but I feel like several people have done a good job of designing sets with milling creatures, there's not that much to do in this one, and we have to commit quite a bit to it to make it a viable (or default!) strategy for blue, espcially if it's not helped by red and black. Opinion seems to be a bit split.
I would much rather keep flood, as it seems a lot more new, however, we probably do want a second mini-theme.
One possibility inspired by this card would be to have a number of cards that mill a little and somehow care about cards in the graveyard (probably particular ones, not just number). If they're useful even if the player isn't decked, that might catch the flavour of "agh, the horrors are eating my mind" without needing to be all-or-nothing. But that at least sometimes, someone can get enough of them to be a mill deck.
For instance, a spell with "Target spell's controller puts the top N cards of their library into their graveyard, then counter that spell if it shares a name with a card in their graveyard". Spells depending on cards in a graveyard are not normally great as the player has normally got the spell or creature once already, but it would get more powerful if you played multiple of these, whilst not being useless if you didn't.
Edit: Also, I agree there should be about a soft and hard counterspell in blue (more or less, probably plus one multicolor?) Probably one that gets cheaper based on islands (either wave burst in some form, or "1 less for each island") or one that floods, and one other, one soft and one hard, and it's not clear which way round they should be.
I agree that "unless its controller pays X" is not the most interesting, but is a reasonable placeholder -- I think it's fine to put something like that in, with a note to say "replace this with something set-appropriate when we realise what cards we're short of and/or someone comes up with a cool idea".
Milling for each island is a nice idea because it's a way of making a large number of islands matter (although I'm still not sure about milling in general).
We probably want one card that both floods and island and benefits from it at common. But my instinct is this would probably be better as two separate cards (or at uncommon, maybe as a 3/X).
It is pretty simple, but it would be fighting with the other islandwalkers for space-we should probably only have two at common. Also, we should probably stick with mill or flood, not both.
Fixed a typo, changed P/T slightly.
It's a lot of words for common, I know, but the first two abilities are quite simple.