Multiverse Design Challenge: Recent Activity

Vitenka has no clue what this hint means any more. Vitenka is dumbass.

The link loads fine for me, but I have the problem I've never played with avatars so I don't know what abilities exist already or what would be balanced.

Edit: Vitenka, did you remember your hint on http://multiverse.heroku.com/cards/20405 ? Or you can't remember even looking at that. Yeah, I realised you'd said you might do #55, but I don't think jmg noticed. I encourage people to sign up on "upcoming challenges" if they like, having a couple in the pipeline is good.

So, um... yeah. Vanguard? Avatars? No idea what you're talking about. Aha; a linky in your second comment. That would probably help; but seems not to load for me.

And mildly miffed since I had earmarked the next challenge, but as I've forgotten what it was going to be now, not that miffed.

pws were introduced as a type in lowryn, there were none before

Those costs aren't the same, Jack. The first one requires blue, while the second can be cast with just .

To go with everyone else, Shroud here is a no-no.

Flying/shroud could be or , although that doesn't really supply X/1... It's funny how those two hybrid costs are almost the same despite looking quite different.

Oh, also, if this challenge happens to go long, feel free to add non-planeswalkers like Krenko. I don't have a problem with them... it just seems like we should focus on the planeswalkers first.

Oh, and also, also, every Vanguard card's text (and some cool pictures) can be found here. (Hmm... doesn't seem to have the non-online cards. Oh well, it's still a good place to start).

With 5 days passed, and no one claiming challenge 55, I assumed it was cool to cut to the chase and just post.

Avatars have been popular in the past, but have slowly rotated out of favor. I suppose I can understand why... with no way to force players to change up their avatars, they're just 'always on' combo pieces which you can't respond to.

That doesn't make them unfun however. Since we haven't seen any new Vanguard cards since 2010, and since Vanguard always avoided Planeswalkers, it seems natural for a Vanguard relaunch to be centered around the 'new Planeswalkers'.

I'm granting bonus for 'plays well when randomly assigned to any player', since I assume that it's healthy for this casual format to not lock people into playing one Vanguard card. Also bonus points are granted for making the Vanguard card really feel like the Planeswalker in question, as opposed to just be a cool red ability that Chandra's name got slapped onto.

I admit, this is a greedy challenge. If we get enough good Planeswalkers Avatars, I totally plan to print them up and play with them...

I admit, that is a strange flying, shroud creature for .

Shroud is pretty off on this creature.

Pretty much like that. Empyrial Archangel says the first two abilities would be on one line.

It'd probably say "number of exiled cards", since "exiled card" is the phrase used on Riftsweeper and Mirror of Fate. Otherwise, looks good.

Created for Challenge # 054.

­Battle Hymn Angel

I tried to do something simple, with white and red being the colors of angels and the most frequent colors to exile things.

Anyone know how this would be properly formatted?

Created for Challenge # 054.

Heh. Yeah, this really doesn't work, does it?

I could add something like "At ~ ETBs, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a creature card", which might help the trivial tie (or turn this into a Leveler in an otherwise-creatureless deck). Doesn't really help the nontrivial ties though.

If there are no exiled creature cards at all, you have a trivial 224-way tie among creature types, and an infinite-way tie for power and toughness.

(Which isn't going to last long, because half those toughness values are 0 or negative. Pandemonium is going to hurt, though.)

(Also, for multiple P/T values, you normally treat the power like the sum of all powers, but disregarding any negative values there because you can't deal a negative amount of damage. On the other hand, you treat it like the minimum of all its toughness values, because you only need "toughness 0 or less" or "damage greater than or equal to its toughness" once.)

"In case of a tie, wear it."

ROFL.

"Obviously, anything that says "Has power 2 or more" gets to look twice and will match if either are true - but when it hits something?"

I seem to recall it does damage equal to EACH of its powers (effectively the sum). However, that was from a discussion on multiverse, and I'm not sure I remember it correctly. Choosing one seems more sensible (if wizards ever let the situation arise, certainly the comprehensive rules don't officially support it :))

Ok; even crazy me isn't quite sure what happens if something has two values for power.

Obviously, anything that says "Has power 2 or more" gets to look twice and will match if either are true - but when it hits something? (Or checks its power for any other purpose)

Creatures "assigns combat damage equal to its power."

Pick whichever one you choose, probably?

Hm. Yeess. In this case I'm going to have to invoke Vitenka and say "In case of a tie, wear it."

Hm. I think having two different powers works under the rules, but I doubt wizards would print it... :)