Design Dump: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Design Dump: (Generated at 2025-09-07 06:08:49)
| Design Dump: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Recent updates to Design Dump: (Generated at 2025-09-07 06:08:49)
Cool.
The activated ability rarely comes up in practice, and people just stop casting spells once Ruric Thar hits play in my experience
I agree with both of dude's arguments.
I think James is right about making this a 4/2, though I definitely think this shouldn't be pushed to 2 damage, 1 is plenty. It does seem kind of weak to me, but considering this could trigger easily a few times per turn (maybe even several in a round), this is quite decent already. Also, against the right decks, this basically forces them to either not combo, or do as much of their combo as they can without being burned to death (which means they may likely leave themselves in Lightning Bolt range, or Shock range, too perhaps).
This should definitely not have 3 health. I would even say give it 1 health, but that's normally kept for a Spark Elemental style card. This should have low health, so it can be killed in combat, since spells can't be cast on it.
I really like this flavor by the way, and the card mechanic itself is pretty good too.
You could get away with a 4/2 or even 4/3 that deals 2 damage each time.
The body is way too pushed, but I don't think this ability is mythic-worthy. Ruric Thar is way better for that half, and Burning-Tree Shaman has its half as minor upside
I originally made this back in 2016, combining my disappointment toward Ulrich of the Krallenhorde with my virulent hatred towards the Prossh players that made up half my EDH playgroup at the time.
faze is confusing for both players. more importantly, one must ask questions like how often do you want it to happen, since it's not optional? how often does it matter?
PS there already is a topic for Blue/Red keyword ability in Conversation set.
looks at faze with wishful eyes
UB gets flash, although it doesn't always work as well. UR is missing a keyword, and MaRo has said that while they'd like to find one, they're not actively working on it
I wonder if skulk was included because there were considerations for skulk to be the UB evergreen keyword, though it didn't pan out. With prowess back off evergreen, is wizards still seeking potential evergreen keywords for UB and UR?
Prowess was an awful choice for evergreen.
And prowess got to be evergreen for a little while, but you'd never want to use it for this kind of "all the abilities" design. And Odric listed skulk, which was only ever a single set mechanic
""If a creature would gain an ability identical to an ability counter, put an ability counter on that creature instead." That's the best I can offer and I think that's too vague as it requires the player to be absolutely knowledgeable on ability counters.
Not all evergreen keywords are still in use. Concerted Effort references fear and landwalk (I guess protection got to stick around), which are no longer with us in present design.
I do believe there should be a way for this ability to work that's intuitive without being a tedious checkbox. Drawing from the dying Elder Scrolls: Legends digital card game (I'm sure other digital card games have done this or something similar, ESL is the only I've ever played though), there could be a rule that defines evergreen keywords. The problem is, that rule would probably only be relevant for cards like this, Concerted Effort, or Odric, Lunarch Marshal, and that seems tedious to look up or reference for the knowledgeable player. Dang, this got me so confused I'm feeling sympathetic with hypothetical players not knowing something.
I totally agree, I don't know why they haven't done it yet (probably a rules issue of some kind), but I recall Maro saying that they don't use errata to change functionality, unless something doesn't actually work.
Meaning, if they changed all these like cards to use your suggestion, they would be adding and removing abilities, which is against their policy.
It kind of sucks, especially since whenever a card is made to use this kind of ability, it's intention is much more in line with your suggestion than just a list, but Maro has basically said it cannot be done.
To me, it seems like poor design caused by good design. Really, nobody is going to complain if the oracle text is changed to work properly. This is one of the most unsightly things in magic, and the fact that these abilities are meant to be 'the same' or 'similar' except they contain utterly different actual rules, is a huge design AND rules failure.
Alas, I don't think we'll ever see this 'fixed'. It's one of the things that bothers me whenever I think about it. Maybe with the introduction of ability counters, they have started to realize they can do things because they are cool and make sense even if they otherwise thought it would be a bad idea.
Literally the only reason not to make this change is because they decided that they couldn't. Almost seems silly.
No trample?
For that matter, this keyword soup is so unsightly and takes up so much space. They should make an official rules term that refers to the "evergreen" keywords. Besides avoiding such keyword soup and possible erroneous omission of some keywords, Such umbrella term will inherently auto-update as keywords are added or fallen out of favor.
Ex. "If a creature would gain a evergreen keyword, put a counter of that keyword on it instead."
Old cards with keyword soup would have better chances of reprint if they didn't use obsoleted "evergreen" keywords. Instead merely mention this official umbrella term would save physical space on the card and open up design space. Ex. Concerted Effort.
I suggest making exiling the card an additional cost to the activation ability rather than a consequence of the activation retrace-style. This makes the order of actions a little clearer and less prone to questions.
EDIT: I know, it's supposed to be big for a Slug, but that name sounds 6/6 or at least 4/4. Reminds me of the disappointment of Giant Slug.
So it gets to have the names of instant and sorcery cards? That's just asking for trouble.
*silver border
Was originally going to be a purely defensive version (+0/+1). But that's more likely to lead to stalled board states so I raised it to +1/+1. It doesn't really solve that problem, though. Will definitely tweak it later to be less discouraging.