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| Mechanics | Skeleton | Common Breakdown Ref | All commons for playtesting |
Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-16 13:10:57)
There seem to be a lot of flying+ first strike creatures at common in multicolor.
Had a chance to test Mono-White v. U/B/R today. It seems that, at least in white, having a non-flying color play against a flying color was plenty of twist turns and switcheroos. In fact, there seemed like more interaction was going on in this matchup then in many past draft matchups where all-flying decks would pop up (Birds in Onslaught, or Fairies in Lorwyn, for example).
Of all the cards in White, though, this buster put down the kibosh, holding back whole armies. I'm rather impressed by this Crossbow Infantry. I didn't see it turning MVP in the right matchups, but it's clearly clutch in block.
Would changing the trigger to enter the graveyard make the card more dynamic? Or just plain annoying?
Sounds good to me. Bud seems fun enough to play on it's own, without the fiddliness. As a player, I'd be annoyed if I didn't see any fungus interactions, but we got a few in common, and more bound to come up further down the line, so we're probably fine.
The is hardly too dangerous. I was going to suggest running it down to
, but when I looked at it today, I spotted that it hit target permanent, and not target creature. Still, as the card stands, it's worse than Boomerang in two ways. Minor Johnny potential doesn't make up for that, and I think that gives the card charm anyhow.
To me, however, this is still a potential candidate for a cc of
...
This one looks kinda reasonable to me (though I've not played with it).
I think this is fine as a more splashable Yavimaya Wurm. Somewhat scarily splashable, admittedly, especially given we're expecting some gold cards to tempt red-black decks or blue-white decks to splash a little green.
Hollowhenge Beast says that's just fine even at common; but this would be better than a 5/5 for 5, which is a bit dubious for common. Not beyond the realms of possibility though.
"All Fungus get +0/+1" is every bit as fiddly as this; probably even worse. Really, since the counters are +1/+1s, I'd be inclined to keep the P/T manipulation out of common entirely. I do like the Silkvine / Skywarper Mass ability, but I don't think it's remotely suitable for common.
In fact, IIRC green common felt rather over-wordy as it was. I think we could use another near-vanilla Fungus.
I think Jack's idea is very sensible.
I think that particular situation is fine. Takes quite some setting up, after all.
I wanted to try fortifications in the mono decks, but we didn't have time to add them before the games started. I think several monocolour decks will like a fort or two, hopefully different ones.
Any words on this common? I think the other keyword for Chain is out of contention, and I was wondering if this one worked, or failed to work for similar reasons. I hate to pull back into "Black is all about sacrificing in this block" because it happens so often. But, it seems like we've painted two layers onto black - Fortifications and 'Work 'till you die'. A third mechanic probably takes away from all mechanics, and both forts and 'work 'till you die' seem inappropriate to remove.
In retrospect, when asking for black mechanics, I think I should have assumed up front that we would be working with a sacrifice mechanic, and worked with people to make the sacrifice mechanic to be as unique as possible. Hindsight, eh? We still may want to brainstorm around that. First, though, opinions on this card, please?
"I never drew this, but I would have been pleased if I did."
Well, that's a good reaction, even if it never came up, and you were just thinking about if it did come up. I know a lot of people made stink-eye faces when they first saw this card. We'll have to wait and see what kind of faces they make when they instead play with the card.
Hmm... that's interesting. I think I went with 5 and 4 because it opened up the most possibilities without leading to degenerate combos. I can't help look at this card and think to myself "People like Coal Stoker. People should like this card. After all, if you have a 5cc creature kill spell, wouldn't you normally play it as soon as you have access to 5 mana"?
But, I got to be honest, I don't know why people like Coal Stoker so much. I think it's the whole package more than the ability. And storm is in Timespiral, and Coal Stoker seems fair with storm.
On top of that, if black has a 'fortification' theme, it's bound to either paly mid-game or control. This version of Chain does excite me, but I feel like it belongs in Gruul, Boros or Rakdos, not in Mono-Black. Without, either a storm mechanic, or a feeling of rushing things onto the table, I think we're wasting a good mechanic on a color that doesn't want it. It does happen to accidently drop things like Cutwork Knight on the table, a thing you would have missed if you were playing mono only... but that seems more like a reason to pull it, than keep it.
Shrug. I like it as it stands. Granted, it's going to confuse some players, but pointing to what we're getting at is a bit like explaining a joke. That, and I feel we tapped into something that could legitimately be done, and hasn't been done yet. If I was to gamble, I'd say that, in 7 or so years, this wording will be used... it only feels odd because we're not used to it.
Put another way, the current wording is a straightforward way of describing killing multicolored and non-black mono-colored creatures. If you monkey with that, you're just going to confuse a different subset of players.
Compared to the 6/1, I'd admit that this could use a point of toughness. Not counting the targeting clause or the manacycling, some players would play Giant Cockroach over this in mono-black. That's a bit telling.
It pretty much reads "Scratch your head, then Destroy target creature"
I did get it to chain - it was nice, but not wonderfully game winning to do so.
I am finding it hard to like this card; it just reads very clunkily imho. I'm probably in a minority though :)
Wondering aloud here: "
, Instant: Destroy target multicolored creature". Fits flavourfully, loses some (ok, a fair amount) of versatility.
Last week we didn't try fortifications at all. This time I made a black+fort deck to try out, although we only played a couple of games.
V: was there anything that you thought did work well? There were some cards I was fairly happy with, but I can't really decide.
Not sure about P/T. This felt about right, if there were any fortifications I urgently wanted to equip, but there weren't really; I most wanted the big creatures, but they either became unnattached every turn, or required a sacrifice to activate.
I never drew this, but I would have been pleased if I did. I think it could probably cost 3BB given that it also needs a creature sacrifice, but then it would feel appropriate black: it hurts to give up a creature, but it's probably worth it, and then you'll have to decide whether you can use the lifelink ability...
I only got this to happen once, but it was satisfying when I sac'd it to "serve through death"
I may have just been unlucky, but several times I found myself with this in hand and nothing much else I could cast with it. I'm not sure if that's just because I wasn't used to it and didn't plan ahead, or if it's inherently problematic in 5-cost removal spell.
This was surprisingly fairly nice. It was hard to play many fortifications, so this felt like a very solid but not overpowered card.
This was perfectly servicable as a doom blade, but V commented that the ability still sounds a bit confusing. I like the message sent by r/g/w/u, but I agree it sounds a little odd. I wonder if "Choose a non-black colour. Destroy target creature of that colour," is any better.
We only played a couple of games, but this was a little underwhelming compared to the other CCC creatures. I think partly it so happens that almost none of the commons have four toughness, so it never really mattered that it was 4/1 not 3/1. Although it's partly because the black deck was a little slow in general; if this had been able to start hitting on turn 3 it would have been good.
Really, that bugs me too. Had this been a wish that wished for artifacts and was blue, I probably wouldn't have blinked. Funny that.
I did try to line some of the fortifications up with a 'needs black to be efficient' slant, but one got shifted to uncommon, and the other removed sacrificing the black creature type to be more universally useful. It's probably safe to assume, though, that of the 10 fortifications that 2 should lean heavier on black for one reason or another.
Like I pointed out in Black Commons Submissions, the "Black Having No Theme" problem was planned obsolescence. Black was designed to have no clear theme to see what worked, then ramp up that. After we ramp that up, we'll have to take a look at the fortification tutoring sub-theme and see if we need to make it blacker. I do think that we should align those two fortifications up front, though.