Lords of Tarkir: Recent Activity
Recent updates to Lords of Tarkir: (Generated at 2025-05-03 00:17:25)
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Page 1 - Older activity
Recent updates to Lords of Tarkir: (Generated at 2025-05-03 00:17:25)
Page 1 - Older activity
Hi Haldarumo!
I don't think Wizards objects to the flavor/power level implications that putting a large non-black creature from an opponent's graveyard into play on your side evokes. This list of 8 cards from Gatherer seem to back up that theory.
here's the list
Sorry the link doesn't work. Brackets don't work well in this forum. Copy/Paste should still do the trick, though. (Admin edit: I fixed the link for you - Alex)
That said, I can definitely understand the impetus to prevent that from happening, if one has some element of control (there is also the Rise from the Grave option, which turns the card into a black zombie in the transfer.
(this is haldaraumo)
The original flavor idea, as implied by the keyword "possess," is that you're using one creature to gain control of a bigger creature - a bit like Emerge. The BG Sultai in this set are more of a hivemind where different beings are constantly competing for mental and physical dominance. So they need a mechanic that allows them to exploit other people's stuff, but it had to be "a" graveyard so you could still use it even if your opponent wasn't putting cards in the bin. Manifest seemed to fit the bill because it could get you a 2/2, then if you'd picked a creature and if you could invest the mana you could get full value.
A variant on persist or undying might also work. I'll have to think about it.
(this is haldaraumo)
Actually, after thinking about it a bit more, I think Renown would work well with the strategy and flavor of the RW deck - it encourages quick attacking and fits with the notion of honor and glory.
I think the Awaken + token mechanic is a great idea and with a couple changes it could replace Defer for the WB faction. The idea of Defer was to allow larger creatures to use smaller creatures to buff themselves. If the W cards create tokens and the high-cost B and WB cards can sac, that would create a similar effect. In that case I think I'd change the mechanic name to Conscript. The WB Abzan are an expansionist empire and the idea of them pressing into service their conquered peoples fits well.
Awaken + tokens seems just what you want:
Artillery Squad
-- 2 (If you cast this spell for 
, also create two 1/1 white soldier creature tokens.)
Sorcery [C]
~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Enlist
Of course, that implies you specifically desire that the "pay to flip" be possible at all. If it were just "Return target card from a graveyard to the battlefield face down", this would be a problem at all (hence why variants of such have been proposed a couple times, including a persist/undying one that seems like a good fit for Sultai).
(this is haldaraumo)
Making it sorcery-speed instead of instant was initially a mistake, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be less broken at sorcery-speed, so I kept it there.
(this is haldaraumo)
Soulwalk is intended to be sorcery-speed, yes, otherwise combat math just gets too awful. I may have forgotten to add that rider to some of the reminder text, though.
Enlist is the mechanic that's given me the most creative trouble and I still don't like it. It's hard to come up with a new RW army-type mechanic. At this point I'm thinking of just reusing Battalion.
(this is haldaraumo)
The reasoning behind making it manifest instead of something else was to force you to pay the mana cost if you wanted the creature proper, so that you couldn't just steal your opponent's 9U card in a mono-B deck or similar. I didn't consider how it might play with cards like Phyrexian Dreadnought though that have alternate costs.
That's still pretty uncomfortable. What about "whenever a creature you control deals combat damage, if ~ entered the battlefield this turn, draw a card"?
Why not just "Target creature can't block or be blocked this turn"? Only one of them will matter, but it's such a cleaner template.
Oh man, super combo card. Xenograft + sac outlet, I guess? Not that you should change it, this is just a perfect engine card.
What do you mean by the deferred power? The value of X, or this thing's power?
This seems way to niche. Even in DTK I wouldn't play this
This is just Arrest
Oh yeah, I don't think Wizards ever prints abilities like this at common anymore. Also Circeus, I couldn't figure for the life of me what Leeches had to do with instant speed pump abilities.
This is a "reprint" of Secure the Wastes. And considering how it did in Standard, you may be right. As a sorcery it should be fine though, if you're intentionally tweaking it.
And part of the reason for manifesting unknown cards was power level issues, I'd assume. If you could intentionally cheat in big creatures with downside ETB effects, that would potentially be a problem. In an extreme example, you can manifest Phyrexian Dreadnought and turn it face up for
. That's a 12/12 trample with no drawback for 1 mana.
Manifest from a graveyard is indeed a possibility, since the whole point of manifest is that it can be from any zone, although they always designed so that the card was not known. Removing that sort of defeats the point of manifesting cards. A return face-down "mummify" mechanic has been proposed multiple times.
I suppose the real question is, "What's the point of keywording Possess?" The card could just read "
, Sacrifice Dutiful Attendant: Manifest target card from a graveyard (This is the reminder for Manifest.)"
...not that I'm sure that using manifest here is right. Shouldn't 'manifest from a graveyard' be another keyword altogether? You know.. kind of like how Islandcycling doesn't say "Cycle this card for an Island from your library."
Soulwalk would need to be a sorcery-speed mechanic, but could possibly work.
Enlist's description reminds me of Leadership and Lodestar, but I've found it difficult to figure out such a mechanic in general.
I really, REALLY don't think that embedding a mechanic inside another is a viable idea. Not that the basic "return a card face down" idea is bad, but manifesting in here seems bad, since it's far too complex for potential evergreen status (only haste and flying, I believe, were ever mentioned in reminder text).
I see two big problems with this mechanic:
1) There is no need whatsoever for it to scale everywhere. This lets would have a whole lot more variety, from versions that got -1/-1 at no mana costs to variations in mana costs for the same P/T variation. This also removed the need to specify a limit on X (while still allowing a one-off Puffer Extract effect)
2) By far the biggest problem, however, is the massive onboard complexity this generates. This doesn't just boost other creatures the way Kithkin Daggerdare does, but it ALSO causes math on itself!
There was a good reason that Suvnica's Leech mechanic (of which this is essentially a reverse, instant-speed version) was designed as sorcery-speed only...
Alliance of Arms seems to infer that this is too cheap. But I honestly don't know.
real version is an instant, though perhaps broken in that