The Pinery: Recent Activity
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| Mechanics |
Recent updates to The Pinery: (Generated at 2025-08-18 12:11:37)
| The Pinery: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to The Pinery: (Generated at 2025-08-18 12:11:37)
I don't see how exactly. At base level redundancy with cards seems ok, and Align mostly is a value and mode changer that fits into a tribal deck and hopefully can support some lesser filled out tribes.
Much cleaner comparison with braingeyser, too. Seems fine to improve on that nowadays, though.
I still feel that align is gonna eat up design space "Why would I play this tribe-specific card when I can play this any-tribe card?"
XU/2U => XUU/XU. Looks much cleaner now.
Mm. It's also kind of weird that if you have five land and three creatures, you're probably better off tapping five land.
for four cards still gives you an incentive to only tap three lands and forgo the last card.
I'm not sure what the theme of three is, but in a vacuum I'd suggest making this cost XUU with align XU. Then the upgrade is obvious for any X, plus they print minor upgrades to Mind Spring pretty regularly.
Changed 3U and Align XU to XU and Align 2U. Reversed the rewards to match.
The relation to threes was unintentional, but now it represents that a bit better with a equal mana to card value with it's align cost.
This seems like a failure due to the reversal of the three-theme. "I get to draw three cards, but that changes to a dynamic value when I reach my threshold of three" is less intuitive than "something happens, but something three-related happens if I reach my threshold of three".
Changed to instant
Not every card can be lightning bolt. It's supposed to be worse than lightning strike one way and better than it the other.
In hindsight it should just be instant in the first place, or not care about creature type for flash.
eww at the repetition of sharing creature type. Yay for nearly being lightning bolt. Boo for.. why isn't this just lightning bolt? (i.e. shouldn't it have a slightly bigger upside? Maybe be 4 damage?)
The alternate casting cost was to give a mechanical wheel to dial forward and back from the normal CMC that can be interacted with and referenced to easily.
It could theoretically be used as an ability word, but I wanted the spell to function fully under its intended form once cast, not once resolved. This avoids the "I destroy your Merfolk and now Align is turned off." scenario that might confuse players.
I initially designed it with differentiation from a very similar ability word mechanic: Goblin Lift-Operator showcases the collaborate mechanic. One is having a modular focused tribal creature type and the other asks you to go 'wide' with creature types.
If I had to change the name I would go with Alike to represent the sameness, align was also initially a flavor name to show lining up intentions.
I like the cardname - much more flavorful than the term you chose to use for the keyword name. I also appreciate that you double-down on the numerical theme of 'three' in the effect beyond the keyword. There is a part of me that seriously is disappointed not seeing used "scry 3" instead of that effect.
Between this card and Extinguished Distinguished I wonder whether you really want this to be an alternative cost or more of an ability word that can change different aspects of an effect - which is sometimes the cost (compare Metalcraft on most cards vs. on Stoic Rebuttal).
Note also that controlling three creatures is already a threshold and adding a restriction to them like this doesn't necessarily makethe gameplay better.