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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-16 10:37:02)
You know, that was my first thought. But then I considered "Then, if you control no untapped creatures, deal an additional damage to that creature or player." to be a bit more new player friendly. Now, I'm not so sure. And I assume some players would expect the 'instead' line, so I'm going to replace it with your suggestion.
Minor templatey quibble - I would be tempted to use an "instead" here: "~ deals 1 damage to target creature or player. If you control no untapped creatures, ~ deals 2 damage to that creature or player instead."
This conversation starts on Passion Rouser.
Which brings us to card number three. Getting bonus abilities to go off because you don't have any creatures in play seem wrong with cards like this. We're supposed to be rewarding people for getting in there... not for playing creatureless decks. So this card has an added restriction that you must have a creature in play... which I kind of don't like, but it seems better than the alternative.
See Passion Rouser for the beginning of this conversation. Here we have "no untapped creatures" popping up. A very confusing sentence which seems necessary with this creature. Why? Well, if the card said "if you only control tapped creatures" and someone killed the Spellscorcher in response, the second ability wouldn't go off. You don't control all tapped creatures, because you don't control any creatures. That doesn't play well with player expectations.
Conversation continues on Smash and Smash
Compare to Vulshok Berserker, and maybe Veteran Swordsmith. There are three ways to write this mechanic... and I'll be adding two more cards with the alternate wordings on the cards they would be appropriate for. This version is the cleanest, and reads best... but it kind of requires us to only have creatures with the "all-in tapped" ability on them to be functional... and not all creatures, either. It is possible that using all three templates is preferable, since each card looks best with their individual template. I don't know.
Conversation continues on Mad Spellscorcher.
There's a number of really old cards that used to say "Use counters to represent this change" but the effect wasn't officially tied to the counter. Alex, being the insane fount of Magic lore that he is, probably knows them off the top of his head. That's a crazy ability of yours, Alex.
I'm not 100% sold that the ability shouldn't be tied to the counter. In fact, I've championed the concept of counters with abilities in the past (you know, besides +1/+1 and -1/-1), so you think I'd start arguing about that here. Both ways, though, seem correct. If I may:
Counters have abilities written into them:
Counters used as a reminder:
I think that's the majority of it... but feel free to add to this list if you can think of anything else.
Heh, that's funny. Cancel is an obviously better card, but this card looks so much better than Cancel. That, and in a multiplayer match, someone is bound to let you have your snakes...
That was similar to my thought, too, but I wanted to see how people reacted to this. Actually, I thought "When this creature comes into play, flood all lands" would turn more heads on a Mythic. The saboteur has its charm, but Mythic Rarity is more about punching your opponent in the face.
Agent of Masks is spectacular in multiplayer... even in star she roughly says "At the beginning of your upkeep gain 4 life, and deal 1 to each player". She just stinks in 1 v. 1 matchups. The ability here is clearly a 1 on 1 basis, so not as bad.
Although, this does show off a direct comparison to the way Enlighten works now to how combo decks work in general. Had this card been around during the Urza Block, it would have gone directly into the Yawgmoth's Bargain deck. Auto-win. Obviously Bargain is broken. I only bring it up because Enlighten threatens to break open a number of 'not-quite-there" combo cards. In the same way the Storm mechanic sounds fun at first, but devolves into turn 3 wins...
I like this mechanic, but I'm afraid of what it could turn into.
I'm cool with a little blue v. blue, I just didn't want this descend into "the best thing about this set is all the sideboard options blue has to fight blue decks".
Personally, I'm cool with an anti-blue counterspell, but, in my mind, it needs to be costed so that it is barely better than Cancel in the blue v. blue match up, and obviously worse when you can't get it to work. So if we costed this
, and reduces by 
when your opponent has an island for a splashable counterspell costing 
, I'd be cool with that. Although... the more I think about it, the more this sounds cool...
Doesn't Hate Blue Anymore
less to play if your opponent controls an Island.
Instant
Counter target non-blue spell.
~ costs
Huh? Huh? Now it's never better than a Counterspell, and seems best against players who aren't playing blue, but you're giving them islands. There will also be very few mono-blue decks where this is completely useless, since it still counters artifacts for
.
Most sets have both a hard and a soft counter; this is one possibility for a soft. I really like multicolor counterspells, so here's a
option, though I have at least one other idea.
Flood could change. I'm sorry if I seemed like I had a problem with the Aquitect's Will version of the effect, because I don't, and it would probably be more flavorful and more flexible.
Also, for a second counter spell (sets usually have at least two, right?) I had a few different ideas. The first was "Counter target spell. That player mills X, where X is that card's CMC." This could be either a blue-black gold card or a blue card, depending on what faction we wanted it to belong to. The second is Snakefoil.
Can we make this more like Stoic Rebuttal, a conditional Counterspell that's usually Cancel?
Yes. Sensei Golden-Tail, is what springs to mind, thought I believe there are others. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Our version is closer to Aquitect's Will than Quicksilver Fountain. Perhaps it is wrong to make the change permanent, and we should have the mechanic perform like Aquitect's Will. We haven't actually discussed that in-depth.
Ugh. I didn't read CU09 Dam Break. Well, let's do what all the sets are doing these days and put Cancel in this slot.
So, I was thinking this might also work with "costs
less for each flooded land [your opponents control]"
(I was also thinking how much more difficult Hex Parasite-like effects make the current flood mechanic)
So, to be clear, our implementation of flooding is subtly different to that of Quicksilver Fountain, in that the duration of our flooding is permanent as opposed to "tied to flood counter", and the flooding is additional instead of a replacement for the mana ability.
Out of interest, it seems like most of the "put a counter on X, it has a static ability" abilities are durational and tied to the counter. Are there any examples in Magic of putting a counter on something and it permanently having a static effect (not tied to the counter)?
Probably true. I was comparing it in my head to Suture Priest, but your example is a better comparison.
I'd be inclined to cut the middle ability, and shave about 3-4 mana off the cost. At the moment it's a Serpent of the Endless Sea without the drawback, but still without any benefit except the saboteur trigger. I do love the saboteur trigger, but I think the card would draw more attention to it without the middle ability.
Remember that our keyword lets you type [flood target land.] and it'll add the reminder text; on rares/mythics, it may be okay to omit the reminder text and just say "flood each land that player controls."