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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-18 01:19:50)
Preliminarily, this card seems a bit restrictive. I know I was aiming for a deck archetype to build around it in draft, but I may have overshot with only instants instead of instants and sorceries. Haven't seen it work in draft, however, so I can't say whether it's good or bad yet.
It turns out that fortifications are good with all-in red. At first, I was swearing at myself for having fortified a land, then, next turn, top-decking a yeti. Then my opponent pointed out that I could just tap my land. Sweet!
I snagged a random person at league at got them to play a few games against me. They raised a point about this costing too much to equip, and I think they're right. I think I intended to curve 6 into 7... but nobody curves 6 into 7. When a player plays this with 6 lands up, they want this to fortify for 5, so they can get a swing in next turn. That's fair. We should probably adjust the fort cost, then adjust the p/t later if we feel that's needed.
Too good. While testing the cards today, this thing acted as a complete route. 1cc creature, then 1 CD Flybear, nothing, then Invigorating Melody on 4 and Invigorating Melody on 5 completely shut me down. The fact that I lost two creatures, was down 8 life from the two exchanges, and my opponent was up 16 life was staggering.
I'm pretty sure that the +3/+3 to two creatures combat trick was perfectly fair here, but the lifelink was just too much of a bonus. The card will very commonly read "Gain 8 life" and possibly a lot more. Sorcery speed, upping the casting cost, or reducing the pluses will easily calm this down some. In theory, G/W has always been a poor combination, so this card my be that color's Armadillo Cloak, but I'd rather wait and have that proven to me first.
Heh. Go figure. Obviously, they're doing they're job by sacrificing the land. I assume these forts weren't played with when playing mono? They aren't great answers, but the idea of threatening to sacrifice your lands to shut down blue seems like a start.
It was in the talk about Fortifications. Part of the Fortifications discussion included a grind for where the numbers come from. At the time, I argued, and people seemed to back up, that we don't really need non-basic lands because fortificiations did everything that non-basics wanted anyways. We only have so many slots, and fortifications on non-basics can lead to a lot of confusing interactions in a part of the board that players don't pay much attention to. Having playtested with Fortifications, I can see that a lot of that is relevant. Fortifications kept jumping up from the back row and having an effect on the game, then going back and hiding behind land again. I don't think it's a big problem... people will just have to adjust to how they think about lands, and watch for brown cards hiding among the lands. But non-basic lands really would make that problem that much more difficult to deal with.
Also, I think a Quirion Ranger variant is fine. This is uncommon we're talking about. We're allowed to get a little meaner.
I do like the latest suggestion. I don't know if it chunks up the reminder text, but probably not by much. I do think it unfortunate that
becomes 
wouldn't pop up later down the line (well, unless it was on a red card), but I can live with that.
Our conversation on Soft Filter lead me to think of this card. It didn't make sense there, but seemed like a good uncommon. I like the fact that it doesn't require a line about the various protections not removing Mask of Hospice from the base creature. :)
Having tested the tri-color decks, let me tell you, this was insanely good on a CD flying bear. The only real way to handle a 3/5 Flying, Vigilance, Hexproof creature is to find a creature big enough to block the thing... and that's not a reliable strategy.
So, I'm cool with this card not having blanket untargetability from opponents. Would totem armor be a good choice? You know, without the word 'totem armor'? Or maybe just return it to your hand instead of the graveyard?
I'd say something about this card tapping a creature(s) when you play it, but, by the time you've added white and blue together, you no longer have to worry about evasion. Kind of an odd problem to have.
This could also be a strange restrictive spell if we want it. "Draw 2 cards. Other players can only play one spell this turn". Which seems about right for adding a little white, but tuns this card into an instant. It could say "Until the beginning of your next turn", but I don't think that's wise on a common. Same thing with applies to Propaganda effects.
Edit: Woah. (.s) creates snow mana.
I've been thinking about this, and I think I can see where the problem is. We want this feel for red that it's always one step ahead of the opponent, and, therefore, can always get an all in attack. But, if it got like that, red would just be winning. We don't want to just make red better than the other colors, so its mechanic works.
Ideally, what we want is for red to turn off and on, getting an all out attack every other turn. It should have turns where it can turn every guy sideways, and that makes sense, and turns where it has to hold back and build.
The best way to do this is with 'virtual vanilla'. Cards like Crossway Vampire (that come into play tapped, I suppose), Stingscourger or just some dudes with Haste helps this "Surprise! I got an attack in this round!" In stead of having creatures with evasion, I think we should have a higher density of creatures that grant evasion when they etb, so that you can get some solid hits in, but you've still got to play the game on the ground. Oh, and we missed reprinting some sort of Dwarven Warriors. He seems custom tailored for our needs in all-in red.
The other way for red to do this, is to let it take a step out of Green and White's playbook and sit back and slowly build on turns it isn't casting anything or swinging. Unfortunately, the cleanest way to do this is with +1/+1 counters and/or token creatures. But green has bud in block, and those token creatures will all have to turn sideways when you attack. This is still a doable strategy, but it may need to pop up in the uncommon sheet, since I think filling the board with imps will discourage some players to all-in attack, even when they really should. Alternatively, we can look into cards that use counters in different ways. For example, an enchantment that uses counters in some fashion to 'level up' your team. It should take some time, but give you a nice reward that can let you push over the top when it does. Again, this might be better reserved for the uncommon slots.
Well, I could cite Dawnglare Invoker, but that isn't moving the conversation forward. Let's talk about 2cc tappers.
I don't know. I know I don't really want to reprint Blinding Mage, but outside of that, I don't have much of a preference. We could play on the "Tap target blue, black, red or green creature." trick we've used before. In fact, that's my suggestion. Let's reinforce that mechanic. Maybe slap it on a 1/3? Maybe with an activation of
?
I vote no on Sweep, and yes for either a Quirion Ranger cycle or something like Power Conduit.
I missed where we said "no nonbasic lands." Where/when was that?
Yeah, I think I prefer flood answers if they also interact one way or another with the rest of the set. There are a few Fortifications which do it, and I think those can count as black's answer.
An anti-flood measure that can also serve as a way to get a little extra mana. Probably not very playable at
/
, but obviously insane at Fortify 
. Much better with landfall.
Might want to be a completely different effect of the ability; the cost is the important part.
I note that Dispersal Cannon, Terrible Altar and Guardian Collosus also work as anti-flood measures to some extent, as do Infected Leyline and Mined approaches at uncommon.
Yeah, you could use it as mono fixing if you have a splash. I'm not sure if that's good or not.
Oh, "two mana in any combination of this card's colours" is a remarkably sensible suggestion. Interestingly it lets Senate Jurist give you
, 
or 
, any of which might be useful in the set.
We could make sure to put mono manacyclers on WW cards, and then both interpretations would agree (although not "one mana of each color this card has"), and we can avoid deciding which is the official interpretation :)
I honestly don't know which I prefer. At first I didn't like "each coloured mana symbol" because I didn't think it was intuitive, but now I like it about equally with the others because it's the simplest to understand once it's explained.
I think "one of each colour of this card's colours" is best conceptually, but it doesn't work well on mono cards (cycling for
is rarely going to pleasing). (That it gives a bonus to 4-color cards is neutral to me -- it's interesting, but a little complicated.)
I think "2 mana, one of each color, or two of the same, or something else for >= 2 colours" is easiest mechanically (you always get two mana), but hard to explain the exact rules where you get WW for a W card and WR for a WR card.
Alternatively, it could be "two mana in any combination of this card's colours (or
for colourless)"?
Certainly the -2/2 looked very bad, much worse than Flamekin Brawler.
Heh. SM's point is accurate, but not exactly comprehensible to new players. Link's interpretation is indeed the other interpretation of manacycling; we hadn't had to distinguish between them before monocolour-manacycling came along and people wanted that to make CC.
I have to say again that I really don't like the idea of negative power.
I think I was thinking of Wall of Omens when I made this.
For some reason I had assumed that manacycling added all of the card's colored mana symbols to your pool.
There's nothing Manacycling does that can't be expressed as "Cycling -
, add 
to your mana pool", other than the fact that costs can be paid in any order so it can be played as cycling 
.
Something that bounces lands sounds like a good answer to flood. I'm not sure about sweep specifically. Things like Quirion Ranger / Scryb Ranger, and perhaps Kor Skyfisher, might be fine approaches instead. (Amusingly Quirion Ranger works even better against red than against blue.)
We could also have something like Power Conduit / Chisei, Heart of Oceans, especially since that works with the green mechanic too.
Seems reasonable :) Yeah, there are several ways we could write the Comp Rules for manacycling at the moment. We really don't need to go there yet. Let's bear it in mind as a discussion topic for a month or few down the line.
Reminds me of Crowd Favorites. It's probably better to keep common tappers themselves tapping.
Heh. Jack already mentioned that over on Blue Commons Submissions, which spawned the discussion at Controlling Flood in the Uncommon Slot :)