Need a post here!

Yes, a shameless TF2 reference. I got it yesterday off Steam and I'm preparing to play it tonight.

But enough about TF2. This is a magic blog!

So today, I'm going to introduce a new mechanic: Resonate. It's a psudeo mechanic, which means it does different things on each guy. Here's an example:

Reis is special because he doesn't have to be built around, like most of the resonate guys that I've created. I like the concept of resonate, but it feels like a very limited mechanic, like the "C.M.C. six or greater" thing from Scourge, only dumber, since this has to be the exact same C.M.C. So I'm trying to figure out how to make it work better. I'm wondering if I should make a guy that can change the C.M.C. of spells so that you can actually build a resonate deck, or spells with variable mana costs...I dunno.

Let's hear what you people think.

Card of the Day - Clean the Slate

Remember that you can do stuff in between the preview ability resolving and the spell itself resolving. Patron of the Orochi?

By the way, did I mention that it's really hard to find good art for Wrath of God effects? Because it is. Eventually I settled on a piece that shows the aftermath of such a spell but I'm not entirely satisfied with it.

Original Art

Card of the Day - Lightning Strike

Good thing preview resolves before the spell itself. I suppose you could always counter it, but you should really just wait to play this until it'll win you the game.

Original Art

Card of the Day - Strzyga

Preview is a triggered ability. It works (theoretically) much like the Demon's Horn cycle of artifacts. When you cast a spell with preview, the spell goes on the stack and then the preview ability goes on the stack. It is important to note that the preview ability goes on the stack after the actual spell and will thus resolve first. It's also important to note that preview doesn't care about whether the spell resolves or not. Even if the spell is countered, preview shit still goes down (unless your opponent Stifles it).

Preview is like Threshold, Channel, Sweep, Radiance, Hellbent, Grandeur, Kinship, Chroma, Domain, and (yes) Gotcha - a pseudo keyword. None of these actually means anything by itself; all of them are simply ways of grouping a similar complex ability that appears on multiple cards. All pseudo keywords are in italics and are followed by a dash. They are used for abilities that do similar things (or have similar ways of doing things) but do not have an identical effect on cards.

Preview (and most of the others listed above) could have been made a standard keyword. Here's how it would have looked:

Preview - Target player sacrifices a creature (when you cast this spell, target player sacrifices a creature.)

That's fine, I suppose, but it's kinda clunky. Less elegant, if you would. There are times when repeating yourself word for word is a good thing, but this is not one of them.

Oh, and please don't ask me how to pronounce Strzyga. I don't know and would be pretty damn embarrassed if somebody called me on that. That was the name of the art. I liked it so I lifted it.

Preview's kinda tricky to explain flavor-wise. The omen route worked pretty well for this guy (at least as far as I'm concerned), but Shardcrown Brute was just a complete bust. What are those ghosts doing there?

Original Art

Card of the Day - Shardcrown Brute

Ow. Fuck. I needed that leg.

Original Art - Shardcrown Brute

Happy now, Shore Snapper?

Card of the Day - Unnerving Might and Valiant Stand

Flourish has been done before. There's not a whole lot of difference between cards with flourish and cards like Kindle except flourish actually makes new copies whereas Kindle and its kin just grow greater in effect.




Benny freaks out about this one. I don't think it's that scary, especially not with Savanah Lions bustling around in standard again.

Original Art - Unnerving Might
Original Art - Valiant Stand

[Wizard Week] Card of the Day- Deepwilde Sorcerer

Hello and welcome to the last day of Wizard Week. Today, we'll be discussing what Wizards don't usually do, using this card as an example: Let's start with color. You get Blue wizards, obviously, and black wizards. You get some red wizards, most notably Prodigal Pyromancer. You get some white wizards and few green wizards. You've got 16 green wizards (not counting multicolor), 41 white wizards, 31 red wizards, 53 black wizards and 216 blue wizards. Yep. Green doesn't get wizards. In terms of magic, they get shamans and druids.
Here's another thing wizards don't generally do: Aggro. At least, wizards don't generally do aggro on their own. And if they do, they're not generally getting blocked, so they don't have trample. You've got flying wizards and unblockable wizards, but you don't get big tramply wizards. The biggest wizard there is is...well, the biggest size is 5/5. And no trample. So this girl is 1/1 below the largest wizards and she has trample.
So, to sum up, her type line, picture and name all say wizard, but everything else on her says Warrior.
And now, Empathy. It's a psudeo ability, like threshold. It doesn't have a standardized text, only a standardized form. They're fun. It's sort of like Kinship, only more permanent. Vampire Nocturnus could've had Empathy. But then he probably would've been less useful.

So, this is the last day of Wizard Week. Gotta say, it was a real gas. I look forward to seeing you guys again. Unfortunately, I'm going on hiatus until August 8, due to the fact that I have to go into hiding. So, see you all then!

Original Art

[Wizard Week] Card of the Day- Nameless One X

Hey, loyal readers! Welcome to the first day of Wizard week, where I'll be posting wizard themed cards and discussing wizardly stuff. Here's the card for today:Yes, it is yours truly in an epic evolved form. The evolution keyword is to allow you to upgrade your creatures when they've been on the field for a while. I'm thinking about doing a Krosan Beast style thing with one of them...anyway. Wizards are spellcasters and they're in blue. Naturally, this means they fiddle about with unblockablity, either by flying, fear or just straight unblockable, as well as counterspells. We'll be getting to the cards that epitomize those tomorrow.

Now, back to this card. Nameless One was one of a cycle of Avatars from Onslaught block, which also included Heedless One, Doubtless One, Reckless One and Soulless One. They each had their own mechanics as well as the tribal counting and you know what the Nameless One got? Well, let's go through the others first. Heedless got trample, Reckless got haste, Doubtless got lifelink, and Soulless got the ability to count zombies in the graveyard as well. And Nameless got morph. Boring. Personally, I think it should've had flying. But, since I can't rewrite history, I simply created the evolved form of Nameless One. Yes, adding X onto the end of something's name means it has evolved. Instead of morph, it has evolution. It also costs slightly more, but it's worth it for what you get. If you've got an Evolved Nameless One X and two wizards, say two Cathartic Adepts, you've got two 1/1s and a 5/5 flying first striker. Now that obviously raises the question of how you got the Nameless One to evolve in the first place, but never mind that. I plan to play around more with evolution, since it can be an enjoyable mechanic.

Anyway, enough about me. See you guys tomorrow for day 2 of Wizard Week!

Original Art

Seek and You SHALL NOT FIND

(Started writing this May 3rd, 2009)

Yeah, I don't actually have any arted Seek cards to show you. Sorry. I can tell you what it does, though:

Seek CARDTYPE (While choosing targets as part of casting this, you must chose at least one CARDTYPE if able)

And here are a few sample cards. They all seem to do stuff with creatures.

Hot Hands [1][R]
Instant
Seek creature (While choosing targets as part of casting this, you must choose at least one creature if able)
CARDNAME deals 4 damage to target creature or player.

It LIVES [2][B]
Sorcery
Seek land (While choosing targets as part of casting this, you must choose at least one land if able)
Return target creature or land from your graveyard to the battlefield.

I Hate Enchantments So Much [1][W]
Instant
Seek enchantment (While choosing targets as part of casting this, you must choose at least one enchantment if able)
Exile target attacking or blocking creature or target enchantment.

Card of the Day(s) - Guide of the Wasted Realms, Curse of Camon, Heiml's Hand, Mountain Lion

I am returned, albeit briefly. I've spent pretty much the whole week at UT orientation and when I got back my computer decided to die on me, so updates have been even less usual than usual. I tried putting the cards up in the edit posts section of this site and having Draco post them but for some reason it didn't work. Whatever that reason may be, here's what you missed from Tuesday:




Not a whole lot here. Black/Red does colorless. Not a whole lot of innovation, and not a great name.




Well, that's something. A couple of other lace concepts I thought about:

-Lace with indestructible (too powerful, and the easiest check on power level -high mana cost- doesn't matter on lace cards)
-Lace with unblockable (same deal as indestructible, and having unblockable enchantments doesn't make much sense)
-Lace with basic (no practical application as lace doesn't work on lands)
-Lace with snow (kinda nifty, and I probably should have done it instead of legendary)
-Lace with delicious (too powerful)

The Guide and the Curse share the same original artwork.

Now here's Wednesday's card:




Heiml's a forest spirit.

And now the card for today:




I don't think spirits talk like that. This was from back when Barlem was human.

Original Art - Guide of the Wasted Realms & Curse of Camon
Original Art - Heiml's Hand
Original Art - Mountain Lion

Card of the Day - Ash Fiend, Numb with Regret, Smog Ruach

Congratulations to lace, the winner of the eighth keyword poll. We're all very proud.

Just so you know, you don't have to vote for the mechanic that's winning. There are other options. Speaking of options, there are two new keywords to choose from - Flourish (which I didn't include in any of the previous polls because I thought I'd already posted a card that had it) and Omit (one of Nameless One's keywords). Get voting.




Lace takes its name (and its function) from the cycle of laces in Alpha. I'm not quite sure what happens if you have two lace cards for different colors in your graveyard. Something exciting, no doubt.




I feel like lace would have been pretty good in Shadowmoor, with its color-matters ideas and its graveyard hate. Keep in mind that Numb with Regret doesn't go to your graveyard until after it resolves, and anyway its target has to be a white creature when you cast it.




Smog Ruach likes being around any cards that change his color, including lace cards. He and Ash Fiend are practically best buds.

Original Art - Ash Fiend
Original Art - Numb with Regret
Original Art - Smog Ruach

Card of the Day - Beam Crusher

Yes! As I promised...a new keyword!

Assist is based on the Yugioh "union" mechanic and "equip", so you can use the things as well, since most equipments don't do anything else (not counting the ones that do).

I'm not sure if I needed to include the "Assisting creature is still a creature" line in the reminder text, but I just wanted to be sure that people would remember that they're still able to be terrored or molten framed.

So yeah, I intend to use this mechanic more, since it seems like it could be fun.

Original Art

Card of the Day - Liguri Skyknight

One of these days, I should put fervor on a creature that has a tap ability. One of these days.

Original Art

Card of the Day - Wearer of Forms and Changeling Blade

Don't worry, oblation fan. You'll get there eventually.




Meld could never work as a keyword. It's incredibly complex. Keeping track of abilities gained cannot appear on too many cards in a set, or at any rarity other than rare (or mythic). Besides, meld is pretty much exclusively a blue ability. To be a keyword, meld has to be vague, using phrases like "permanent that shares a card type." This means that it cannot, in its current form, even be used as a one-of ability on a rare card in a set. However, this version can:

Whenever a creature comes into play, CARDNAME becomes a copy of that creature and gains this ability.

So why don't I use that for meld? Because meld is too riddled with problems for me to put that much effort into fixing it. Because it doesn't work with legendary permanents. And because of this:




What do you do when your creature is equipped with something that suddenly stops being an equipment? Or is enchanted with something that suddenly stops being an aura? I have no idea. Changeling Blade has to keep its old abilities, so it needs the wordy version of meld.

All meld cards are essentially the same. The only thing that varies is their card type. Meld is a cool idea, but a flawed and narrow mechanic. We won't be spending a second day on it.

Original Art - Wearer of Forms
Original Art - Changeling Blade

Card of the Day - Torturous End and Swarm Calling

Torturous End does something entirely different using scatter. The other cards essentially said "Each player does BLANK." Torturous End says "BLANK happens once for each person playing." Those two phrases may sound alike, but they have entirely different meanings. Trust me.

The length of scatter's rules text bugs me. It's just long enough to go onto that third line, but not long enough to have much of a presence there, you know? That little "it" sticking out there, all alone. It doesn't look good. Nor does the isolated "turn." I could just shrink the font by adding flavor text, but I can rarely come up with text I like enough to use.




If you thought that last card was crazy... This thing is sick even in two-player. They may get insects, but you'll have twice as many. After all the copies (and the original) have resolved, you will control at least half of the creatures on the board, no matter how many people are playing. And consider multiplayer for a moment. Let's say Timmy, Jhonny, Spike, Melvin, and Vorthos each have one creature. Timmy plays Swarm Calling and it scatters. The Callings resolve from the top down. Vorthos gets 5 insects. Melvin gets 10. Spike gets 20. Jhonny gets 40. Timmy gets a whopping 80 insects. He smiles a Timmy smile, passes the turn to Jhonny, and dies end of turn to Hidetsugu's Second Rite. Don't act so surprised. Melvin always plays this deck and every time he manages to pull off the Rite. It's uncanny.

EDIT: I already used the art for Swarm Calling on another card. You got a problem with that?

Yeah, me too.

Original Art - Torturous End
Original Art - Swarm Calling

Card of the Day - Blessings of the Sun, Scarfire Ritual, Dreamcraft

What scatter basically means is that each player plays the spell. It's slightly more complex than that, but that's mostly nitpicky rules issues that won't matter most of the time. Here's how it goes down:

You play a spell with scatter. The spell goes on the stack.
The scatter ability goes on the stack.
Each other player puts a copy of the spell on the stack. If there are two or more other players, the put the spells on the stack in turn order. Since these spells are copies, the scatter ability does not trigger.
The spells resolve. Because of the way the stack works, they should resolve in reverse turn order. Barring any (as of yet nonexistent) stack-order-manipulation, your spell will resolve last.




Scatter isn't a wuss mechanic like ripple or cascade. There is no "may" in the text. Each other player must play his or her copy. Mana production is my favorite thing to be even-handed with as the same amount of mana can seriously help you and seriously hurt your opponent. Unless, of course, Wizards gets rid of mana burn. That would be tragic.




Hey now! You remember reclaim? There's a whole lot of copying going on here, so let me clarify things:

Both reclaim and scatter are triggered at the same time, so I believe you get to choose how to stack them.
When the scatter ability resolves, each other player copies this spell. Since their versions are copies, their scatter abilities don't trigger. However, the reclaim abilities of these copies still trigger, so your opponents are given the option of reclaiming two lands to copy their Dreamcrafts.
When the reclaim ability resolves, if you reclaim two lands, you can copy your Dreamcraft.

Because of the way it works, scatter will only trigger once (on the original spell). I want reclaim to work so that it only triggers once for each scattered spell and once for the original. Unfortunately, I believe the current wording means that you can use reclaim on each of the copies created by reclaim abilities, which was not my intent. The easiest fix would be adding an "if it's not a copy" clause to reclaim, but that would change the way Dreamcraft functions. Currently (at least in my ideals), it makes each player draw a card and then gives each player the option of bouncing two of their lands to draw another. If I added a "not a copy" clause to reclaim, it would each player draw a card and then give only you the option of another.

Quite a conundrum.

Original Art - Blessings of the Sun
Original Art - Scarfire Ritual
Original Art - Dreamcraft

Card of the Day - Flametrail Efreet

Gonna get together with some friends for a random standard tournament later today. We all were assigned random blocks and a random core set to make decks from:

Draco - Urza Block, Lorwyn, Ninth
Frank - Tempest, Onslaught, Tenth
Benny - Odyssey, Time Spiral, Seventh
Grell - Mirage, Invasion, Eighth

I have a W/U Griffin deck that I made to win a bet (it's actually fairly good); a R/W aggro deck that never seems to get the job done; a G aggro deck that runs Rogue Elephant, Harvest Wurm, Fallow Wurm, and Emperor Crocodile and works spectacularly when it works at all; and a W/B control deck that wrecks aggro. If you think I have a lot of white decks, you should know that I'm considering adding white to the mono-green one. Savannah Lions and Armadillo Cloak are so damn inviting. I know Draco has a Druid deck (he made it for the same bet), a Treefolk deck, two different elf decks, a Reveillark combo deck, and a Guile control deck. He was thinking about making a Faeries variant that ran Donate and Carnival of Souls but he might not have it done by then. I don't know what Frank's running and I'm not sure he knows either. Benny says he has eight decks, which is quite believable. I know one is mono-black control and I know one is a white weenie. After that, it's all a mystery. He probably has a madness deck, though.

Wish me luck!

Original Art

Card of the Day - Shadowcloak Stalker, Frigid Rebuttal, and Clear Away

There's a card an awful lot like this in Alara Reborn, it seems, only it isn't an elf, it costs one [U] more, and it has flying. Oh, and it doesn't have quicken. I can't really claim Wizards copied me on this one because I made it after I had seen their card, but I'm going to anyway.

I'll get you for this, Wizards, you no-good thieving rat-fink bastards!




The five cards with quicken I've shown you up to this point have been a cycle, of sorts. However it might be more accurate to call them a four-card cycle and a blue card that hangs out with the others on occasion. See, the others are just normal cards going about their business that just so happen to have quicken. Frigid Rebuttal has quicken and knows it. And it bases its ability off this knowledge. It breaks the fourth wall, if you will.

That is actually a completely inappropriate phrase for the occasion.

Regardless, quicken is more than a neat gimmic with Frigid Rebuttal; it is an integral part of the card.




Clear Away doesn't have quicken, but it chills with cards that do. I wonder why the hunter from Left 4 Dead is in its art, but only a little. He's not hurting anybody. Is it a crime to wear a hoodie and feast on the uninfected? I don't think so.

P.S. It has come to my attention that I am not consistent with the names of Card of the Day posts that showcase three or more cards. Sometimes I include the word "and"; sometimes I do not. This is a very tragic situation. Please join me in weeping.
P.P.S. I would again like to point out that I do not own any of the cards I create, so they are impossible to steal.

Original Art - Shadowcloak Stalker
Original Art - Frigid Rebuttal
Original Art - Clear Away

Card of the Day - Remember Agony, Incite Fury, Whitetower's Call

Quicken, if not my absolute favorite among keywords I've designed, is certainly in the upper echelons (I think fervor probably takes home the gold). Like cycling, it's fairly simple and it doesn't really have that much impact on the rest of the card (for most cards). However, also like cycling, it causes you to think about, and possibly play, the card differently.

Here's how it works, basically. You play a spell with quicken just like you would any other spell. You pay all necessary costs of the spell and it goes on the stack. From that point on until the spell with quicken resolves, it's as if all spells have flash. Since any spells played during this time go on the stack on top of quicken, they resolve first. Note that players may only play spells as though they have flash during this time. Quicken has no effect on abilities, so it doesn't let you sacrifice your Bloodpyre Elemental.




One of my favorite things about quicken is that it's a different ability depending on which type of card it's on. On sorceries, it's a minor drawback, allowing your opponent to respond to the card with spells they wouldn't normally be able to play during your turn. In Remember Agony's case, this might mean that they get rid of a card that they absolutely don't want to lose. Of course, your opponent is unlikely to hold on to their spells just on the off chance that you play a quicken card. That's why quicken would have been a good thing to have in Prophecy or better yet a full rhystic block, but with rhystic done right (yes, that is possible). With players leaving lands untapped to pay for rhystic spells and to power up reverse Scoria Cats, quicken would be much more of a drawback on sorceries, and could allow for both more interesting and more powerful cards.




On instants, quicken is an advantage. Cheap instants with quicken act like more versatile variants of the namesake spell but with different side-effects.

The most fascinating things you can do with quicken aren't actually on the quickening cards themselves. Given an abundance of quickening cards at common, you can create sorceries that have different effects when it's not your turn. You can do seemingly nonsensical things like giving a creature the ability "When CARDNAME comes into play, counter target spell." In a quicken-free format this is useless, barring some Elvish Piper action. Ideally, you could use that creature to counter your opponent's Incite Fury or have it ride on the back of a Whitetower's Call to do some instant-speed countering. Of course, when you're messing around with quicken, everything's instant speed.

P.S. Remember Temporal Adept? He's all about quicken.
P.P.S. I really dislike Incite Fury's name. Not a huge fan of the art, either.
P.P.P.S. Whitetower's Call used to be called Idle, but it seemed a shame to waste such an elegant name.

Original Art - Remember Agony
Original Art - Incite Fury
Original Art - Whitetower's Call

Card of the Day - Hungry Horror

So... so powerful. Four power! I hope I don't get eaten.

He is monstrously hungry.

Original Art