Homelands Restored: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Homelands Restored: (Generated at 2025-08-07 19:33:43)
| Homelands Restored: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Skeleton |
Recent updates to Homelands Restored: (Generated at 2025-08-07 19:33:43)
Ah. You're right about the ability vanishing toughness outside of combat. Funny. I originally had this at 2/1 with +0/+2, but considered that too good. Turns out, not so much.
So I suppose the first thing to do will be to change this to "When ~ attacks or blocks... until end of turn." That part's simple enough. Won't perfectly match the Sea Troll's wording, but that's probably okay.
The confusion thing... that's going to come down to a matter of taste I think. Altogether, the simplest way to express this creature would be:
"When ~ attacks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn if the defending player controls an Island.
When ~ blocks, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn if you control an Island."
It's certainly more spelled out. I'm not sure if it's easier to remember, though. One of the nice things about doing it the other way is that it asks the player to think about why it's doing what it's doing. Once you process it, you 'get' it. By spelling the ability out, a player may not take the time to process the card, only looking up whether or not they have the bonus for scenario they happen to be in.
Or maybe I'm overthinking it? To be honest, I'm too close to the card to tell. One more problem: Spelling the ability out may be fine on the common, but by the time the complex Legendary rare creature is designed, it might be too many words.
I like the idea here.
The "attacking or blocking and defending player controls an island" is cute and appeals to the Melvin/logician in me :)
But I think some players may be confused -- if I read it right, it gets +1/+1 on attacking if the opponent controls an island and +1/+1 on blocking if you control an island (which hopefully you USUALLY do, but not always). But I suspect people may be muddled which way round it is, or not realise they could cast this off a non-basic land.
I think the ability plays fairly well -- it's usually a 2/3 defender (except occaisonally) or a 1/2 attacker, but occasionally gets a bonus if defending player has an island (which makes sense, like islandwalk). I like that. But I'm not sure if there's a simpler way to get it across in the rules text...?
Also, there's no point boosting toughness during combat, since it would die afterwards. I think creatures usually get the bonus when they attack or block (though that would be different from Sea Troll). "gets +1/+1 if it attacked or blocked this turn" might work, tho' I don't think it's a standard template. There might be a simpler version, not sure.
Original card, based on vertical cycle with Sea Troll.
I really liked the new wording on Sea Troll, not caring about if you or an opponent has Islands, just as long as there's water where she's fighting. That, and I needed a two drop that could play early blocker. Oh, and I needed a blue common that interacted with Jinx (and the Sea Serpent slot is currently being taken up by Dark Maze.)
This is an upgrade from Minamo Scrollkeeper and Hammerhead Shark, I know. But we've seen a fair amount of power creep since either of those cards, so I'm thinking this should be fine. The tough nut to crack was art. You'd think finding appropriate fantasy art of a sea troll would be easy enough. Meh. Guess these guys are some sort of land sea trolls. Can't say it doesn't match the ambivalence of their ability.
Original Card, designed to fit the cycle that Leaping Lizard inspired.
3/3 for
is unusual. Sure, there's Giant Octopus... but that was generally considered a mistake for being 'too good in Blue for draft' in it's day. If it wasn't for Barrenton Cragtreads and Wanderbrine Rootcutters I wouldn't have any real precedent.
The problem doesn't seem to be that blue can't do it, so much that blue would prefer not to. So would I. But this particular pair of abilities doesn't make sense with a lot of other casting cost to power ratios. I don't want a creature that gets haste and deals 1 damage. And any creature that costs 5 or more is going to push the haste into the irrelevant zone. I suppose this could have been a 3/2 or 3/3 flyer for 5... meh. It can also be a 3/3 for 2UU, so we're going to stick with that.
On a separate side note, the Cragtreads have 1.97 stars. Kind of crazy when you think about it, what with it being one of the best p/t ratio blue (or white) creatures in common. Seems that too many people got stuck on the whole "But red creatures don't block" problem. Funny how perception works.
sigh. I really like this card at common. But as I'm filling in blue common slots, I find I need one more slot to stick in the basics. And even then, I'm still having problems.
There were four blue commons with a casting cost of 3. Too many. So I pushed the Minotaurs cost back to 4 and increased his power by 1. Image update to happen shortly.
Also, did not notice it at first, but I might accidentally be creating a cycle of Auras between this and Sacred Duty.
Whoops. Thank you.
This Aura also needs the "c" of "Enchant creature" to be lower case.
I like this common. May actually manage to be playable, in the Inspired Charge slot.
Pre-print from Ravinca's Flight of Fancy with original art and flavor text.
I should probably make some other cards before adding this one, but I doubt I'd get anything that worked as well. Blue needed a common aura, something that granted flying and a Divination. Had I made this card myself, it would have felt like I was just hot-gluing mechanics together. But I'm just preprinting a card, so hopefully players will overlook the clunky combination of abilities.
Blue commons. Like White, Blue didn't have a clear path to victory. Although, Coral Reef can help blue get there all by itself. And with some repeatable bounce, Dark Maze can become a big problem.
Currently has 7 cards, 3 of which are creatures. Needs 11 total, with 6 creatres ideally. Missing:
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At least one creature with flying
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Something that grants evasion. Probably flying. To make Dark Maze and Reef Pirates serious threats.
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A hard counter
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Bounce. Theoretically repeatable. Maybe 2x
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Divination-ish
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An aura would be nice. Likely to be linked to 'grants evasion'.
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Leaping Lizard cycle.
Things that aren't present, and could be, but aren't as necessary:-
Loot
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Twiddle
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Thirst
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A use for Jinx
Original card.
The 11th slot in common white. I needed a combat trick, but I still need white to get aggressive. By now, though, I've tossed in Angel of Mercy and Sacred Duty in the set, so I don't need to go overboard. Just a small push. Technically, this card should work much better when paired with other colors Hungry Mist springs to mind), but I'm okay with that.
Also, gave some flavor text to Hazduhr, since he didn't have any.
Originally was a 3 cost enchantment which gratned +1/+1 to the enchanted creature. I upped an extra
and an extra +1/+1 to make room for a 3-cost trick. Besides, I was afraid this card didn't have enough oomf. It should now.
There aren't many common 3/3 fliers these days, for what it's worth. They're normally 6 mana rather than 5, and usually blue. It won't break anything, but it'll be one of the Limited defining commons. I think that's pretty much what you were going for, though :)
Oh, yes, that's right. The overlap problem with the card. Or, to be more precise, when you cast this card, the enchanted creature will be +2/+2 until end of turn, though that's not immediately apparent. I was going to have this say "When ~ enters the battlefield, all creatures except for the enchanted creature..." except that comes with a feel-bad. Figured it was best to just give the caster of this spell have what he/she would want.
@that art description: harsh (but justified)
Original card, with art and flavor text taken from the Fifth Edition Serra Paladin
Sacred Duty helps cross off two goals. A beneficial aura in white and a crusade effect. Took me longer than would be expected. The artwork took a while to come to me, too. This is going to get trickier and trickier as we go forward. It's hard to find art that both looks like it belongs in Homelands, and also expresses the mechanic in some way. Not many people who specialize in "average to below average fantasy artwork from the 90s".