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Recent updates to Xianlu: (Generated at 2025-05-01 14:26:47)
White Unsubstantiate. I didn't want to make it strictly worse than the Blue one (since it was already fairly bad), so I added an extra clause that makes it feel a little more white. Probably better in some cases, too.
Removed all multicolor uncommons/rares from the set. Adjusted to be a blue 2/1 flying on attack. Still has a green activation cost.
Removed all multicolor uncommons/rares from the set. Adjusted to be purely White combat trick.
I'm okay with punishing nonbasics. There needs to be more ways to punish greedy decks in constructed, and this is a relatively soft way to do so - it won't punish two-color decks that heavily, but three or four color decks missing a certain color of mana might be punishing. In limited, this is more aimed at filling the same role that Bramblecrush does.
As for the flavor, it doesn't really match up, but it's supposed to be reminiscent of old kung-fu movies where the old man (usually the master) tests his student with a mundane task and proceeds to prevent him from doing said task, like the famous "snatch this pebble from my hand" scene here or this scene from The Fearless Hyena here. I figure exiling a (presumably) important part of an opponent's gameplan fits in the flavor of what I'm trying to go for.
"untapped" usually would want an extra ability to say "You may choose not to untap ~ during your untap step", which I think is a whole lot of extra text for an effect that isn't as good as the Banisher Priest effect.
Yeah, the similarities with the "reanimate cmc 2 or less" are intentional, since it's replacing typical token generation in this set. It's not really a mechanic because it's still showing up much less frequently than token generation does, but I do want to have some forms of card advantage at common that aren't just "draw a card". I realize it's redflagged, but I think that for balancing purposes, it's fairly necessary. I'm not one for caring too much about redflags, anyway - commons should be relatively simple, but I'm not going to worry too much if more than 20% of my cards are redflagged.
I think tapped bounce works better in Red, mechanically. Red already has a good number of ways to deal with untapped creatures (AKA blockers) - X can't block, menace, attacks each turn if able. But it has relatively few ways to deal with aggression other than racing. Tapped bounce allows it to be a bit more tempo-oriented (which is what I'm going for) without improving its aggressive suite.
In the "Mechanical Color Pie 2017" article MaRo heavily alludes to
having
> "Banisher Priest–like effect (When this card enters the battlefield, exile target creature/permanent until this card leaves play.)"
by listing it as the first thing on the "Green - Secondary" section. This possibly means that such designs have already been made (but not yet printed) or that at least decision to "bleed" the said effect into
has already been confirmed in some "Council of Colors" meeting.
As for the card here, it's obviously the "nonbasic" part here that might raise an eyebrow. Exiling lands in constructed where most of the lands are nonbasic might be nasty though I don't see this as being "super effective".
If the flavor is that he sits on whatever, shouldn't it be like
> "... until ~ becomes untapped"
or something?
Hmm, I find that comment somewhat amusing since I've been going with the idea of bouncing untapped - not tapped - creatures in
.
Kinda feels weird having both this and Replace Soul in the set. Btw, in case you didn't know and you care about it, I'm pretty certain that cards with the phrase "converted mana cost" in their rules text are red flagged.
@Tahazzar I find that the loner mechanic actively punishes people for doing things they want to do i.e. play creatures. It's a bit annoying when you're playing a color known for being #1 in creatures and you can't play your cool creatures because it would make this creature less cool.
@SecretInfiltrator I think the current wording works just fine - see Exalted wording and Battlegrace Angel. "enters combat" seems a lot smoother, but I'm not going to rock the boat since it's not a phrase that I'd use that often in the set.