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Recent updates to Multiverse Design Challenge: (Generated at 2025-05-17 20:27:42)
Challenge accepted. I stole the zero-cost away from you guys with Jolrael's Charm. Hey, Link! Did you mean a mana cost that hasn't previously been done before? Because we're going to run out of converted mana costs pretty fast. 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 are technically not options.
For Challenge # 081. Since Link asked for converted mana cost, I snagged the one that seemed most obvious to me before anyone else could. :-p
I'm not sure how easy it would be to base 10 abilities around sacrificing a land, but I think you can get there. By the time I was done, I wasn't sure what the middle ability should end up being. So I went back and filled in the flavor, and decided that this card must be a return to Prophecy (even though I'm the only person who would like that) what with the sacrificing a land and the alternative casting cost. Jolrael's Favor is a flashing regeneration, and I like the symmetry of sacrificing a land to emergency save a creature. Done.
I agree artifact is odd. The flavour of "Scared of the Woods" should be an enchantment or land.
I think the card is better without the activation cost.
I don't know if an opponent-only Ankh of Mishra but halved would be fine at
. It probably would. But 
didn't look crazily overcosted to me when I saw the card.
It's a little odd having the woods as an artifact. Maybe this could be "The Sign of the [evil woodland creature]"? With flavor text that tells players that the sign keeps appearing with each new land found, or something of that nature?
For Challenge # 079
I kept thinking of things in Faerie Tales, and realised one of the most basic is "be scared to go into the woods". This is my attempt to capture that in a card.
I wasn't sure about the cost. "deal 1 damage a turn" can be quite cheap, eg. just for
or 
. That probably means 
for an artifact. But I decided it was safer to make this cost 
, to allow for combos, and because locking the opponent out of playing lands isn't fun. But it's a shame it looks a lot less attractive. Maybe it should be cheaper but have an activation cost?
Forbidding Woods
I preferred this to the original.
It doesn't have timing issues. Planeswalkers would be put into a graveyard only if SBEs are checked, which aren't in the middle of an ability's resolution.
"When Isolation Tower leaves the battlefield, return the exiled card to the battlefield under its owner's control, then put a number of loyalty counters on it equal to the number of loyalty counters on Isolation Tower." would work fine.
Ah, yeah, it should probably be "another Bear".
I think it triggering on itself is a bit pushed. But good design nonetheless.
Sorcerers Apprentice is an excellent example. The story of Faust seems apt as well.
Many of the tales from the Arabian Nights aren't. 'Then the Djinn gets to kill you horribly' bit is generally because a person encountered a bad djinn, and he did bad things... he wasn't corrupted by a djinn that offered him good things, but slowly lead him down the path of corruption.
There's plenty of that sort of thing going on in The Bible/Torah/Koran... but fairy tales are a casual oral tradition, while holy book stories were trapped in Latin/Ancient Hebrew/A Perfectly Memorized Arabic Oral Tradition. I'm not arguing from a point of strength here, since I'm an amateur in this field. But it seems to me that the concept of corruption doesn't really strike a nerve with people until the printing press printed enough Bibles and the public was literate enough to read them. But, you know, that's mostly me BSing. I couldn't tell you if that's true or not.
Well the full words are something like "Return all cards exiled with ~ to the battlefield and move the loyalty counters from ~ onto them." But even that probably has timing issues. I think the intent was clear enough.
put what back?
Mmm, well - older tales of Djinn do rather include the whole "And then the Djinn gets to kill you horribly" bit.
There's the bag containing death, for the age old "This seems really good, but is actually a freaking bad idea" moral - which is relatedly similar, but not quite right. (And of course, the ring of the ring saga but that's probably counted as a modern fairytale too.)
Sorcerers apprentice? Kind of?
"Instant evil combo; just add bears."
ROFL.
On this being a fairy tale item: You know, that's a really interesting question. I've been wracking my head for a fairy tale with an artifact that works, but will slowly kill you, but I can't think of one.
So I went on the hunt at TvTropes, figuring I could center on The One Ring from the Hobbit... which is almost a fairy tale in its own right, but kind of isn't. Really, it's an early precursor to modern fantasy... it carries tropes from both worlds... but the Artifact of Attraction has much closer ties to fantasy. (See also: Stormbringer or The Dark Side of the Force). Even Alladin's lamp, which was only written in the 19th century doesn't really contain an Artifact of Attraction, like more modern renditions of the movie would have you believe. it's just an item of incredible power... there's no down side to using the lamp.
So it seems to be a defining trope of modern ironic or dualistic fantasy. But I'm sure there's some fairy tale exceptions that I can't think of. At the very least, the spinning wheel that turns straw into gold in Rumpelstiltskin is a bit of an Artifact of Attraction... even if the wheel itself isn't causing the problem.
make it an artifact
Nice. Reminiscent of Mentor of the Meek. Not as good a card-drawing ability, but more powerful in her base stats.
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Shard of Ice, Isolation Tower And I kinda want to do something with that comb you drop behind you that forms a barrier - but that keeps wanting to be a green wall creature or enchantment. Huh, I didn't do any artifact creatures; and I had intended to subvert the challenge wording by doing so. Oh well.
For Challenge # 079 - there's plenty of stories with something worming closer and closer to the heart, before true love cures the problem. The one I'm using here directly flavours from the snow queen - where it's actually a shard of mirror in his eye that makes him see ugliness everywhere. Which lets me use the old-magic "Ice means blue!" and also channel Unstable Mutation a bit. Probably activation is too low.
I don't THINK the theme of "It makes you stronger now but kills you in the long run" is very fairytaleish; but it probably appears somewhere. The flavour I like the subversion of, since in the original the queen was being nice and witholding the third kiss;not threatening it as here.
For Challenge # 079, we have the splendid tower that traps the princess forever in sleep. Protected, but asleep. Sleeping beauty, Rapunzel et al.