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Recent updates to Xianlu: (Generated at 2025-05-01 07:24:39)
Hm, that's a good point. I'll remove Haste and Trample for now, but yeah, might be a bit tricky to balance. The other thought is making this a plain land with the ability to animate itself for some amount of
.
Cool! I am really enjoying the flavour, and several of the mechanics.
Isn't it weird that this can be used as a finisher in any deck that plays (a lot of) lands? So it's a haste trampling dude in any color. Then there's all the wacky combos. It's certainly good, but the point was that it hardly seems that it could be reworked so that it would be good and balanced (&& operator).
Added flavor text.
Repeatable spells suck. Trying out this alternate design.
Forgot "instead".
This design might be a bit controversial.
Red "hexproof" traditionally exists in the form of punishing mechanics, like Retromancer or Lava Runner. Since Red actual hexproof is a straight break, I'm looking for other ways to provide Red a somewhat resilient creature. This ability - basically reverse Standard Bearer - is what I came up with. It's very strong, but hopefully on a 1/1 it shouldn't cause too much issues and should function as a 1/1 with Hexproof most of the time. This also allows spells and abilities that have the traditionally anti-fun rider "an opponent controls" to have an additional use, by limiting the amount of available targets in order to get rid of the one you actually want to get rid of.
Flavor-wise, this basically signifies that a permanent or creature is "lucky" - kind of like those Roadrunner or Tom & Jerry cartoons where Jerry or Roadrunner avoid every single trap set out to nab them, sometimes backfiring on the one who set up the trap too. Mechanics-wise, it's more at home in
or 
I feel, but redirecting targets is something that happens in both 
and 
. The resultant effect - "anybody as long as it's not me" - is something that feels flavor-wise at home in 
. You could also flavor this as spellsneak or spellskulk.
Some quick FAQ: -Multiple target spells cannot choose it as a target unless no other target exists.
-Redirecting a spell to target this works.
-Multiple Lucky Rats on the battlefield cannot be the target unless no other target exists.
-"target creature or player" while there is only this on the battlefield cannot target this. The player is a legal target and can be chosen.
Not sure if I'll go through with this design, but I'm trying to push the envelope for Red a bit.
I thought about it, and it would certainly save a lot of words. I forget why I actually decided to go with this version. Changed.
"of the next step"... there's gotta be something mad you can do with that. Can you skip out on 'stuff wearing off at end of turn' perhaps? Probably not, since you exiled it which makes most stuff wear off.
Would the "exile until..." tech be nicer here?
This cardset is now about 80%-85% done as of now, with all of the mechanics at a place where they're unlikely to have major changes made to them in the final (first) draft. What do you all think about the cardset as a whole? Don't like a mechanic? Too complex? Too simple? Too boring? Don't understand the flavor? Worried about how fun limited might be? I'd love to hear your opinions on the set as a whole right now.
Oh sure, I do generally like it. It's nifty.
But traditionally the land is on top of the turtle; but on the table, it'll be the other way around. So that's a slight mental glitch.
I could make it a nonland, but I actually prefer it as a land. I'm not really concerned with it being good, especially because it has a couple of extra uses outside of being a beater. If you have a sacrifice outlet on board, you can use it to untap all lands you control in place of a land drop. It also begs the player to use Armageddon/Worldslayer-esque effects as well. Those uses alone make me confident that as long as this isn't better than Dryad Arbor, it's okay as a Mythic.
I think I like this. Dropping it late game to give spare lands a use; or mid-game as a big risk.
The flavour doesn't quite feel perfect - the lands are inaccessibly underneath the turtle, not on top of it. But maybe the imagery can fix that well enough.
Making this a land makes balanced and good a herculean task. How about using a nonland card?
Still have no idea what I'm doing. Adding haste and trample so you might think about playing it in Limited.