Creatures with punish gaining lifelink pushes this to rare I would think. Gaining life from punish triggers is one thing, but the life from attacking and blocking would be much more powerful.
All Salvage cards were created with the intent to fill the graveyard. I will reevaluate the cards that would affect graveyard manipulation. Erased in Total may be a problem, but it requires you spending four mana to counter your own spell, which seems very janky. Grave Pauper is probably the biggest threat. Thrashing Enforcer was created with the idea that it would hit the graveyard from being salvaged in the first place, and is additionally only itself. Whispers From Beyond is probably fine as it's only a single creature. Highway Cannibal is probably the second biggest threat as it's ability can occur each combat, though Highway Cannibal is in red and meant to play with Marytr cards that ended up in the graveyard. Heroic Spirit would be the third most problematic, but needs to be cast repeatedly, so I rank it below Highway Cannibal. Jungle Snapper can remove itself, making it a Thrashing Enforcer for green.
Oh, but Salvage was created to help out Recycle, so there's all 15 (potentially more) cards that can filter the graveyard.
Moreso than the salvage number though, I generally increased the CMC to something higher than what the base cards effect would be, ex this costing more than Inspiration. To what degree that will affect play I do not know.
One of the weaknesses of dredge as a mechanic is that the dredge parameter is not something you can change from 2 to 3 or 4 and clarly are able to say whether the card becomes better or worse with increasing the number - its not a developmental valve for balancing.
Salvage is the same. Salvage 0 might be the best for you, if you just want the card already in your graveyard, or salvage 4 might be uch better if you primarily want to fill your graveyard.
The most concerning thing to think about is a salvage deck, that actually knows how to filter the graveyard of lands and other cards to just to recycle salva´ge cards over and over.
I feel "dilluting" the graveyard with random cards from the library is just creating the illusion of balance. I'd hate to be faced with this mechanic in play design.
"that much"? How much? I feel 1 life would be easier to process.
I just realised that this card - and maybe punish in general - is an example of a mechanical space that gets harder to mine with respect to digital play.
If you design with digital play in the back of your mind, you would prefer not doubling the number of triggered abilities from your punish creatures to double with this on the battlefield and add the same number with additional copies.
Would it be too much to use "Creatures with punish you control have lifelink"? That would be actually a minor justification to use damage over life loss in the ability.
Oh yeah, the other benefit to my original suggestion was that it combines both abilities. Effects discard an extra, but costs also get increased by one
You can literally specify "If an effect would cause a player to discard one or more cards" etc. to circumvent the clean-up step issue and be closer to the original wording since the clean-up discard is caused by a rule rather than an effect.
It also helps separate the effect from the cost which is addressed in the second ability.
I think a replacement effect would work. "If a player would discard one or more cards, that player discards that many cards plus one instead." That also makes you discard down to 6 during the clean-up step if you have more than 7 cards in hand, but that's a pretty minor repercussion
No longer filters your own graveyard.
Creatures with punish gaining lifelink pushes this to rare I would think. Gaining life from punish triggers is one thing, but the life from attacking and blocking would be much more powerful.
All Salvage cards were created with the intent to fill the graveyard. I will reevaluate the cards that would affect graveyard manipulation. Erased in Total may be a problem, but it requires you spending four mana to counter your own spell, which seems very janky. Grave Pauper is probably the biggest threat. Thrashing Enforcer was created with the idea that it would hit the graveyard from being salvaged in the first place, and is additionally only itself. Whispers From Beyond is probably fine as it's only a single creature. Highway Cannibal is probably the second biggest threat as it's ability can occur each combat, though Highway Cannibal is in red and meant to play with Marytr cards that ended up in the graveyard. Heroic Spirit would be the third most problematic, but needs to be cast repeatedly, so I rank it below Highway Cannibal. Jungle Snapper can remove itself, making it a Thrashing Enforcer for green.
Oh, but Salvage was created to help out Recycle, so there's all 15 (potentially more) cards that can filter the graveyard.
Moreso than the salvage number though, I generally increased the CMC to something higher than what the base cards effect would be, ex this costing more than Inspiration. To what degree that will affect play I do not know.
How do I word the if clause in?
One of the weaknesses of dredge as a mechanic is that the dredge parameter is not something you can change from 2 to 3 or 4 and clarly are able to say whether the card becomes better or worse with increasing the number - its not a developmental valve for balancing.
Salvage is the same. Salvage 0 might be the best for you, if you just want the card already in your graveyard, or salvage 4 might be uch better if you primarily want to fill your graveyard.
The most concerning thing to think about is a salvage deck, that actually knows how to filter the graveyard of lands and other cards to just to recycle salva´ge cards over and over.
I feel "dilluting" the graveyard with random cards from the library is just creating the illusion of balance. I'd hate to be faced with this mechanic in play design.
Why no intervening if-clause?
"that much"? How much? I feel 1 life would be easier to process.
I just realised that this card - and maybe punish in general - is an example of a mechanical space that gets harder to mine with respect to digital play.
If you design with digital play in the back of your mind, you would prefer not doubling the number of triggered abilities from your punish creatures to double with this on the battlefield and add the same number with additional copies.
Would it be too much to use "Creatures with punish you control have lifelink"? That would be actually a minor justification to use damage over life loss in the ability.
This will stack up scarily; but as a 5-cost that's not a problem.
I guess this is a "go build a punish deck" uncommon.
replaced clans with tribes
Replaced clan with tribe
Oh yeah, the other benefit to my original suggestion was that it combines both abilities. Effects discard an extra, but costs also get increased by one
Fixed wording thanks to dude1818 and SecretInfiltrator
"Effect" is such a poorly defined term in Magic, but I guess that probably works
You can literally specify "If an effect would cause a player to discard one or more cards" etc. to circumvent the clean-up step issue and be closer to the original wording since the clean-up discard is caused by a rule rather than an effect.
It also helps separate the effect from the cost which is addressed in the second ability.
I think a replacement effect would work. "If a player would discard one or more cards, that player discards that many cards plus one instead." That also makes you discard down to 6 during the clean-up step if you have more than 7 cards in hand, but that's a pretty minor repercussion