Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: Recent Activity
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Mechanics | Skeleton |
Recent updates to Soradyne Laboratories v1.2: (Generated at 2025-08-18 17:00:26)
The similarity was an editing error. My gut says to make them identical, so that if it gets milled or killed, it still does its thing at least once.
Well, saying that Equipment is better than Aura for that reason is just an understatement. Angelic Destiny is only SOMEWHAT playable, and that's only because it returns to hand. Outside of the reanimation aura, like Animate Dead and its ilk, I can't think of too many tournament-playable aura. Armadillo Cloak? Rancor? I don't know.
Sword of F&F is a beast because it doesn’t go away when the creature dies. Bear Umbra was effectively neutered by a Terror.
I liked the flavor text, but if it's too long, it's too long. If you change the activated ability, make sure to adjust the Evidence trigger to match. They're too similar right now, while working differently. Also, "Veterans'."
I dropped the “died this turn” clause to simplify it. Is it needed for clarity of concept though?
I meant that as "[maybe it would be better] if it's 'Untap all Forests you control'?" I only put your name there because you were the other party in the conversation, not as some smugly derisive insinuation.
As to the card, all I really know is that in competitive magic Sword of F&F is playable and Bear Umbra isn't, and the primary distinction (in my eyes) is that Sword of F&F also grants very relevant Protection abilities. You could argue that since it triggers off attacking, like Umbra, this guy has a form of Pseudo-protection. But since he doesn't have haste, like the premier Green guys these days (Vorapede, Vengevine, Craterfoot Behemoth), I seriously don't see him doing all that much. And if you really want to compare its effect to a Time Warp, note that Time Warp is very reasonable at 5cc, enough so that it was really only played in narrow combo decks with ridiculous card filtering.
And in EDH, Green mages already have goddamn Seedborn Muse to do any number of preposterously annoying things.
That last one is pretty cool, and probably a lot of fun to play.
I like mine though.
Not a bad idea, but I want to keep things simple — either it goes on the bottom or it shuffles in, and white seems more orderly than that.
SPOILER ALERT!
The overall story requires a hospital to be involved in the Foehr/Day of Silence level of the conspiracies. Foehr, despite looking like a prime villain due to his aggressive intel-gathering and unscrupulous spy network, is actually funneling resources to a secret operation within a veteran’s hospital in order to find a cure for the crossblight. Don’t scoff, it makes sense:
1) He wants to find a cure because there’s money in the treatment. Not in the cure itself, mind you, the treatment. Same way he got into business looking for a way to control the effects of vampirism, he knows that if his labs have something that the families of the Crossblighted want, he makes money.
2) He funds this work in secret because he has prior knowledge of the cause of the condition — he was part of the shadow team that developed the weapon deployed on the Day of Silence, which has caused a blowback in the form of the Crossblight. Having Aricus work legitimately in the Labs on the cure would hurt him by forcing to admit his complicity in what is now seen as a grand government conspiracy. She would also be likely to bring the full cure to the public, rather than the partial treatment that Foehr ultimately wants.
Houk facilitates Foehr’s access to the hospital resources for similar reasons; he needs a way to neutralize the public image problem of the Crossblight, but also needs to avoid having any official connection to the problem. Ideally for him, some doctor in one of the veterans hospital will stumble onto a treatment that some large, industrial-bio-technomancy company can then mass produce more efficiently than the government.
(See parallels to the U.S. government’s downplay of PTSD for so many decades, or George Carlin’s bit on “shell shock”.)
For these reasons, I think it’s feasible to have the hospital tuck those casualties of these skirmishes away where they’re safe but wont be seen for a while. Things happen in there that Foehr and Houk don’t want you to know about.
Side note: I don’t think this card really needs the flavor text, and I think it might reach across the “awesome line” if it had an evidence trigger. After all, roads are going to point to it in the story eventually...
I had a thought the other night, of making a Fighting Hydra:
Stalking Hydra

to pay for
.
,
: Stalking Hydra fights target creature.
Creature - Hydra
Spend only
Stalking Hydra enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it.
0/0
Not sure if the "spend only
" clause is necessary. Would possibly remove that and instead give it an additional ability that could somehow enable an increase in counters.
Or maybe you could go in a hilarious take on Phytohydra:
Fightohydra (Stalking Mycolisk)


,
: Stalking Mycolisk fights target creature.
Creature - Plant Hydra
If damage would be dealt to Fightohydra, put that many +1/+1 counters on it instead.
2/2
All lands is better if for no other reason that it is less confusing and this particular set has no reason to glom onto a land theme like that. (Shadowmoor or Zendikar might, by way of contrast.)
That said: the conjecture about what I would or wouldn't approve of is unnecessary, since I will happily speak my piece.
My piece is simply this: In any environment that isn't pro-level, this card is an absolute beating. Getting to untap all your lands is essentially a Time Walk and since most decks peak out at 5 mana, being able to cast 2x the number of cards in a single turn is a Pretty Big Deal.
Even at pro events, this is fairly sick. That might be OK but the power creep here is, I believe, pretty high and given this creature's size and abilities, putting it at 6 mana might be more appropriate.
On the other hand, having a really serious beater at 5 mana could be invaluable as a selling point for Soradyne and be one of those Big Deals.
Hmm. Will re-concept this.
I could see it either way, or even having him untap a specific set number of target lands.
Throwing it to the committee for consideration.
(I still think the “all lands” is pretty sexy though.)
Putting the creature X from the top would more accurately reflect the functions of a hospital and would be a good change.
I was trying to say that it does need to enter tapped, once I realized that the drawback was minor. Unfortunately, strikethrough HTML doesn't encode on Multiverse. But for some reason, when I generate text at http://adamvarga.com/strike/ it turns into actual strikethrough.
Maybe Bombshell would like it better if it's "Untap all Forests you control"?
I keep hearing and reading all over the place that green gets the shaft every time. And maybe Houlding's right, maybe Romer is just one-turn removal-bait. But I'd like to think that there are still cards that can be designed that make people want to play forests in a constructed deck.
I'm quite positive that balancing cards for Commander is the least concern anyone should have. When Necropotence and the League of Degenerate Combos hang out in a format with infinite tutors, worrying whether your design can produce a bad situation in said format is just not worth your time.
In tournament formats, this is just another dude who can be killed. I don't necessarily like that that's the case, but it's the truth. Be glad Sean isn't churning out 5/5 fliers with hexproof and an ability that tells you to go cry in a corner.
Definitely a good first attempt at the suggested Volrath's Stronghold variant. However, considering the existence of Mistveil Plains (which you, of all people, should remember), I think you can push it a bit farther.
Also, note that WotC is committed to a sparse usage of the Legendary supertype on lands, a design shift that came about during Zendikar. Valakut and company declared that it was alright to put a proper name on lands without making them legendary.
Maybe use Oust technology to represent that healing duration:
Nils Ossmer Veteran's Hospital
: Add
to your mana pool.
,
: Put target creature card from your graveyard into your library third from the top.
Land
I like this.
I'm with dude1818 here. Any deck that's going to use it will use it immediately, and I'm not sure how the name and the ability interact.