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Recent updates to Multiverse Design Challenge: (Generated at 2025-08-24 10:02:57)
Zendikar Resurgent contains one notoriously incomplete cycle. (Well, two, but the rest of the Pathways are apparently coming in Kaldheim.) Inscription of Abundance, Inscription of Insight and Inscription of Ruin apparently did have red and white siblings, but R&D couldn't find designs they're happy with. Your challenge is: Design a red or white card to complete the cycle.
A good entry will:
This is probably quite hard, given that Maro said WotC R&D couldn't come up with anything satisfying. But there's more of us than of them, so maybe we can find something they missed :)
Hee! I made Essence Backlash. I guess it is pretty obvious.
Hence the suggestion that you could only prepare one card a turn, or some other restriction other than mana payment. I had other ideas but I was just brainstorming them, I didn't have any very certainly.
Ohh, the
to set it up. Gosh. Interesting idea.
I don't think we quite want people to be going "Turn 1, prepare 4 cards, play a 1-drop, go", though, do we?
I didn't remember all of it, but my point was, if you get rid of the
to exile it, you could get more flexibility in the cost to cast it, and hopefully those other limits mean it still matters of you can predict which ones you need next turn.
The version in my Code Geass set did have "you can't play this till next turn": the reminder text says something like "On future turns". IIRC it also had a cost to cast it from prepare, so you get colour restrictions apart from the free cycle... yes, Prepare for Ambush and friends are free so it has the fiddly land wording, but Gefjun Disturber and Return on the Other Side and Zero Requiem need the right colours. Modulo a Supply Drop, of course :)
I'm still thinking more about prepare. It always felt like a big limitation was needing to invest mana in preparing it, making it hard to have any cheap effects, or to impose colour restrictions.
I wonder if it would work to capture the "plan ahead" flavour to prepare a card for free, but with some other restriction like only one a turn, or not being able to play until next turn, or playing multiple cards in LIFO order or FIFO order.
I can't believe I overlooked that. Lol.
I'm still fairly new to this. Thank you. 🙂
The first ability of the artifact could be shortened to "Creatures you control get +5/+5."
Likewise the second ability could just reduce the costs by
.
You know... since you'll always control this five-colored card right here.
I tried to make the adventure part a little less sloppy.
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.