Ikoria: Cryptids

Ikoria: Cryptids by fishMaster

17 cards in Multiverse

12 commons, 3 uncommons, 2 rares

5 white, 2 blue, 3 black,
2 red, 4 green, 1 multicolour

12 comments total

Strange, elusive new creatures have begun to appear on Ikoria.

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Mechanics

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Recently active cards: (all recent activity)

 R 
Enchantment
Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters would be placed on a non-token creature you control, Crystalize (Create a 0/0 colorless Crystal creature token. Then, you may move any number of counters from creatures you control to it.)
 R 
Creature – Dinosaur
Sighting {1}{g}

Hermetic Hellmaw costs {1} less to cast for each lair counter on lands you control.

When Hermetic Hellmaw enters the battlefield, put a lair counter on target land you control.
Illus. RAPHTOR
7/7
 C 
Sorcery
Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control, then Crystalize (Create a 0/0 colorless Crystal creature token. Then, you may move any number of counters from creatures you control to it.)
 C 
Creature – Beast
When Gemskin Baloth enters the battlefield, Crystalize (Create a 0/0 colorless Crystal creature token. Then, you may move any number of counters from creatures you control to it.)

Gemskin Baloth enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter and a trample counter.
Illus. Aurora Scaioni
2/2
 C 
Creature – Scorpion
When Gemstinger Scorpion enters the battlefield, Crystalize (Create a 0/0 colorless Crystal creature token. Then, you may move any number of counters from creatures you control to it.)

Gemstinger Scorpion enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter and a deathtouch counter.
0/1

Recent comments: (all recent activity)
On Tanglesnare Trap:

yeah sorry haven't gotten around to actually fixing this card yet, I just noticed it didn't have a rarity at all and that was like a 2-second fix. I'll get around to this.

On Tanglesnare Trap:

You; uh; didn't make the horrific wording change that was the impetus for raising this to uncommon.

It's a shame Magic makes it so difficult to express some ideas. "That attacking creature? Give it paralyze" seems like a perfectly simple idea.

On Deepgrowth Stickbug:

Fixed the cost, that was always a typo. I just thought a stickbug was neat! Made for a good cryptid in Disco Elysium, thought it could work here too. I'm still trying to decide what I want to do with Sighting, but I'm also not quite happy with it yet.

On Gemtooth Howler:

Huh; this is an interesting tweak on modular. Occuring on ETB instead of death makes it a lot less flexible; and so you have to consider keeping some of the tokens spread about rather than piling them all on a single super-creature. Decisions like that are good.

Haste counters are kind of weird for that - once you have one, you probably don't need another one. So this is more of an enabler than a core part of the mechanic. Seems like a nice card to me.

On Deepgrowth Stickbug:

Mmm, this is at last a bear for {g} which is too cheap. There's also no reason to ever evoke it, since it's no cheaper.

Apart from that - I've no idea what the theme behind giant stick insects is. Granting a +1 is a perfectly reasonable thing for a small green creature to do, though.

On Deepgrowth Stickbug:

The mana cost for hard-casting seems too low.

A cool thing with sighting you could do is put the card N cards from the top of the library to avoid shuffling and also make it so early sightings lead to repeat sightings. You'd need to be careful about repetitiveness though.

On Gemhorn Stag:

This needs a timing e. g. any of these

  • Crystalize (When ~ enters the battlefield, create a 0/0 colorless Crystal creature token. Move any number of counters from creatures you control to it.)
  • When ~ enters the battlefield, crystalize. (Create a 0/0 colorless Crystal creature token. Move any number of counters from creatures you control to it.)

I'm a fan of using verbs as keyword actions, so I suggest the second one. You then also can do some cool stuff on higher rarities with it, e. g. "If ~ would die, crystalize instead, then put it into your graveyard." or "{?}: Crystalize." etc.

On Luminous Unicorn:

This is evoke without the benefit of graveyard interactions, but with the aforementioned issue of shuffling.

I think it would be neat if rather than losing the card to the library you would just foretell it afterwards - probably more useful for higher cmc designs.

On Tanglesnare Trap:

Couple of things, first, "enchant" ability shouldn't say target. Second, the problem with having the card be worded this way is that once that creature is no longer attacking, it's no longer a legal enchant target for the Aura so the Aura will drop off.

You want to do something more akin to Dream Leash / Enthralling Hold.

Flash
Enchant creature
You can't choose a creature that isn't attacking as this spell's target as you cast it.
Enchanted creature doesn't untap during its controller's untap step.

In any case, that means it's going to read out a bit glunkily (double negatives are nasty) as well as be wordy, so it will prolly end up being a better fit for uncommon rarity overall.

On Luminous Unicorn:

Could "Sightings" perhaps put the card on the bottom of your library or something like that? Repeated shuffling actions are disruptive to the gameplay flow at common - at least as far as IRL playing goes. Also, is there a reason as to why it isn't tucked back into your deck on ETB rather than at the end step?

(All recent activity)
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