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Recent updates to Multiverse Design Challenge: (Generated at 2024-05-18 18:19:32)
See Challenge # 165.
I made Throne of Eldraine.
I fear this isn't white. Blue is the colour that gets by far the most "tap and they don't untap" effects... white has a couple, but quite a long time ago - Entangling Trap, Kor Hookmaster and Ajani Vengeant. Red can do it to lands, bizarrely enough, and there were a few Kamigawa snakes where they tried it in green, but on creatures and nonland permanents I think it's been squarely blue for some time now.
Rare white tempo 4-cmc sorcery: Weight of Lethargy
Rare white tempo 4-cmc sorcery: See Challenge # 167.
Hm. There's a lot of "tap two creatures" instants, fewer sorceries and fewer that hit land. But white's always had "can't cast spells this turn" occaisionally so this feels appropriate, although I don't know if it's right for recent mtg.
I'm not sure if it's too weak (because it doesn't actually do that much) or too strong (because you can tap down lands).
I wonder what you were thinking of with "win-button creatures" if not End-Raze Forerunners, which does have trample? I guess Craterhoof Behemoth can't be found by the -6 since it doesn't have trample printed on it, though it effectively does.
I agree Kiora is the best UG choice for midrange. Nissa has also been UG but she's more likely to be ramp, and Oko is more likely control or tempo.
As for colour identity, did you mean this ended up not very blue? The top ability is a great blue/green hybrid ability, but the second and third are both mono-green.
6-cost UG midrange planeswalker: Kiora, Greatcaller
6-cost UG midrange planeswalker: See Challenge # 167.
So, Kiora, then? Planeswalkers are really hard. Anything with good value is plausible for a mid-range-y deck. But I wanted to shore up the important aspects. Not to run out of creatures, or get controlled out. And make sure you win the ground game.
I debated variants on the last ability. I originally started with "vanilla creature". But I didn't solely want passive creatures. Rather I wanted stompy creatures as opposed to win-button creatures. I guessed trample was close, although probably not right.
It ended up not very green. An earlier version had "untap two permanents" but once you're at 6, midrange doesn't want that much ramp any more. But search and can't counter are blue-ISH :)
I also wanted a zingier name. Somehting that conveyed Mistress of Stomp. But nothing quite worked.
ROFL. Yes, I know what you mean, I love the open-endedness of "whenever" :)
Oh yes, this does feel combo-friendly without actually having any abilities, although it does feel verging into uncommon, common token-producers seem to be fairly unpushed.
Another possibility would be some other sort of card that combo wants other than a combo piece, like card filtering, although that might also be hard to make common. There are SOME combo effects that feel common, like "when this enters the battlefield, untap target creature". But people are probably wisely leery of them by now, especially any related to mana :)
2-1-1-3-5: common artifact, CMC 3, for a combo deck. I created Nuisance Engineer.
See Challenge # 167. 2-1-1-3-5: blueish common artifact, CMC 3, for a combo deck.
Whew. Common combo pieces are a little tricky. I don't know if Dross Scorpion would be common these days. The magic word "whenever", my favourite word in Magic, tends to be red flagged at common.
I think an ETB trigger is probably the way to go. At common you want something that provides an effect once, the kind of effect that doesn't dominate Limited on its own, but is the kind of effect that combo decks would like to loop with the help of some uncommons or rares.
I tried to tread the middle ground here between "interesting enough for a constructed combo deck to potentially want it" and "too good at gumming up the ground in limited". Not sure how well I hit the target...
Only after I hit Create did I realise how close this comes to Sengir Autocrat :) But I think the artifactness makes it interesting for a different set of decks. I know my Sludge Strider deck would love a card or two like this.
My first thought was "4 CMC sorcery for midrange - easy, that's Circuitous Route or Vastwood Surge. Then I realised that's not midrange, that's ramp, it's just my idea of "midrange" has been so corrupted by how good ramp is at the moment...
This is delightful. Against aggro, awesome, it gets you a 5- or 6-drop, probably with reach or vigilance or something. Against control, you probably don't cast it on turn 4 unless you really want a particular 1-drop (though it's comparably priced to Eladamri's Call if you are doing that). And it has fun combo potential with things like, I don't know, Forbidden Orchard or Varchild's War-Riders or Hunted Phantasm :)
Interesting 🤔
Green rare midrange sorcery, cmc4. Cry of Desparation
See Challenge # 167.
Green rare sorcery, CMC4, midrange.
That's... not really a lot to go on. But ok. It wants to survive the early game (ideally keeping the opponents side clear) and then go stompy a little bit before a traditional big deck would.
Clearly, at cmc 4, this card can't be much of anything about the early game. So this must be during the "Now I hit you with stompy stuff" kickoff. Which... this is taking up what would be your big creature drop. That's not good!
So it probably has to fetch a creature into play? Bifurcate and Natural Order seem like they already fill that need. Defense of the Heart suggests quite a nice variation on it - "Ooops, guess I didn't win that early game well enough, win harder now".
Still, there's more room for that. I think we can do something that scales based on amount of opposition instead. Which feels like a kind of a green way to deal with a token swarm. And probably doesn't scale up to silly levels, unless things have gone very wrong for you (and it only gives you one creature, so that limits how much better it can make things)
Name is terrible, but I'm stuck for a good one.
Rare blue 1-cost enchantment for a control deck: Magical Hitch
Rare blue 1-cost enchantment for a control deck: See Challenge # 167.
OK, blue control deck, enchantment. Can we get a counterspell? I'm not sure if this activation cost needs to be cheaper or more expensive. Having a counterspell visible means its less effective because everyone can play round it. But it also means you don't need to leave much mana open, and that opponent will have to set themselves back a fair amount even if you never use it.
And the game of "do I use it now?" "do I risk playing into it now?" is very blue-control-y.
Likely it's not interesting enough to be rare, though, but there's only so much I can put into a 1-cost enchantment.
Yeah, I keep finding variants on prepare that I NEARLY want to print :)
I find it hard to judge. i was expecting some "sac this for mana" cards to compare it to but found very few. It probably is quite weak because it's only useful if that ramp is exactly what you need. But I'm still worried it's broken somehow :) And with the prepare ability it can serve other duty, eg untapping a creature, or letting you play a reactive spell when you're tapped out.
Thank you!
Thank you for finding some good comparisons, I glazed over trying to analyse what was available :) Yeah, this wasn't especially strong, but it depends very much what environment it's in.
I considered making the base effect stronger -- -4/-4 or -5/-5 would be entirely possible -- but then I thought it was more like an "every deck" card than an aggro deck card. And I considered making it -3/-3 with a different bonus, e.g. draw a card. But the only bonuses I could think of were "draw a card" which felt mildly less aggro, and "controller lose life" which felt wrong with the life loss condition already.
Completely agreed!
Hm. My first reaction is that it's a pity this is so much worse than Blood Curdle, but that was pretty pushed: normally the 4 CMC "destroy target creature" common card is either (Bake into a Pie), sorcery (Eviscerate) or both (Daring Demolition, Impale). But actually Blood Curdle really was pushed, and this is comparable to Flatten / Fatal Fumes / Strangling Spores with a more aggro slant, which is exactly what you were going for.
(Rare and uncommon of course have more of the instant Murder-with-upside: Eat to Extinction, Hour of Glory, Price of Fame, plus Silence the Believers, Hagra Mauling, Drag to the Underworld and Vraska's Contempt at 2BB.)
LOL. Oh, amazing. Mythics are so hard, but that looks very fun.
Felt like this name has a nice ring to it. (You have seven choices to make.)
See Challenge # 167: 1-4-6-2-1.
I roll mythic a LOT.
Black instant 4-cost common aggro: Exploit Weakness
Black instant 4-cost common aggro: See Challenge # 167.
Aggro is happy to have plenty of black instants, but ideally they cost 2 not 4. 4 cards are ideally finishers.
I debated something that just caused life loss in one way or another, which seemed like a good finishing card, but I couldn't find a way to justify it being instant. I wasn't sure if "each/target player loses 5 life" was ok at black, being so similar to red cards. And I debated something that could temporarily eliminate multiple blockers, but they all felt uncommon.
Yeah, apparently they've never printed them together. I guess it could be RW, but that feels like it should just be N damage, N life, or it could be GW or RB but GW feels too nice to fight and RB feels too evil to fight fair :) BG feels just right.
Yeah, I thought so. Angrath, Captain of Chaos gives you the menace half for 2 mana less, but increasing everything's power (without toughness) is something black can do that synergises rather nicely with having menace.
That +1 is potentially devastating in the perfect way.
Lifelink plus fight is very interesting.