bub-the-voidling

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 18: Investigate

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition. Entries were not open to the public.)

This week of CCC or CCL! I still don’t know what the real name is honestly!

Before this all starts, I’m just going to have to say sorry that the quality of this write up is worse than the others (not that they were good judging on the minimal amount of people who actually read these. No need to lie, I know you’re here for your own cards.) but that’s for a very good reason! It was rushed, and if you don’t know yet why it was rushed. Please go to the CCL chatroom and read the latest message I sent with @card-makers. So the ratings in this write up may be a bit off or I might miss obvious stuff. Sorry guys.

This week we’re being the scoobygang and making investigation cards! Sadly no one made the scooby snox card, but I can always wish. **This is where you imagine me snapping my fingers** First card!

I’ll be honest, I’m starting off with this card because I just find it funny. Just look at the art and then despair when you realize that it’s somehow fitting. It fits the name, the flavor, and the effect. I love and hate it.

But what about the actual card? It’s like a Rhystic Study you have to pay for with benefits. Which in my opinion is how it should work, but even if you disagree with it this effect could be explained as different as it lets you sacrifice some clues for free to get the the dimir scry. Which is a pretty neat effect. The more I look at this card the more I like it. I’m also not sure that this is worse than Rhystic Study either since the power is now in your hands instead of the opponent.

9.4/10, Ape, I’m mad about how good this card is.

And after Long-Term we have another card which would be super fitting with that picture. But this would probably have some serious picture about the Scooby Doo gang being after Emrakul with a mask or something.

Anyway, actual card! A late-ish game slow card engine that if synergized with lets you tutor for “free” any card in your deck and eventually win. I like it, no I love it. This might be my control bias showing (I play Goblin control for crying out loud.) but I just like this card. If you’re in need of a specific card you can sac 5 of your needed 15 to win the game just to get a card that’ll help you secure the win, if you’re desperate you’ll actually read the tokens and use their effect to draw cards. The win part seems like something for against the odds, but still fun. Some games will be janked out by that line and I’m all for it.

This card should’ve been further down if they go in order of points. But I just wanted to tell you guys that this could have the artwork from “Idfk lol”

9.2/10, Don’t have much to say, I just like it.

This… this just screams mill mill, yummy yummy!

Like… If you really want to ruin someone, Ghost Quarter (before playing this to bait the opponent to search), play this card into Archive Trap. From there you basically win the game as you can take an extra turn while gaining 8 life, and in that extra turn you can mill the opponent and get a million clues that you turn into extra turns. The mana shouldn’t honestly be a problem given that some mill players already go Esper to have a stronger sideboard and better interaction in general.

This card honestly needs some extra lines that prevents some general mean things like letting you get clues from mill, or from the enemy casting spells (which is debatable), stopping the life gain from saccing clues to himself. Or just remove the extra turn thing, but that seems like the whole gist of the card, so please don’t. Also, holy moly On The Trail with this would be so silly. Actually this card plays well with all the cards here that alter the use of clues.

6.7/10, Wait… you can draw with clues?

More creatures! Looks like we’re assembling the scooby gang! And it’s a promo version at that.

Feels a bit strange to me that this isn’t a legendary, but she does seem fun in multiples. So, what does she do? She copies artifact tokens, be that Servos, Ancient Stone Idol tokens, or maybe even the intended Treasures and Clues. I must say I find it quite funny that this is not the only “Clues matter, but so does treasures/gold.” Which is quite fitting to both this card and the future card’s flavor.

I like the card but honestly it could pack more of a punch, I love how she can turn clues into mana if you’re in an excess of them (or infinite comboing with something like Whitemane Lion, Bygone Bishop, and this.) but it could do more without breaking the game imo, it’s rare so it’s allowed to have some more punch to it. Maybe it makes either a clue or a treasure upon hit and then makes a copy of target, maybe she copies each differently named artifact token, or maybe she even has some sort of evasion like most Scroll Thief effect cards.

But being a lord for specific tokens seems cool anyway :P

7.6/10, “She either trades information for gold or gold for information.“

Enough creatures for now! Let’s go to something less permanent, a sorcery!

So, the flavor here. Yummy, we have either an enraged creature that gets stronger with their rage for each piece of evidence or an impulsive punch to the face for each piece of evidence gathered this turn. I love it. And the effects? Eeeeh… Not sure. Now I’m no card designer but as far as I know the consensus is that if the when the mana cost is split the card itself should be printable as either color. Like, it should only do things that both colors can do. Investigate, unconfirmed for R as there hasn’t been a single red investigate card but it doesn’t feel off flavor for our impulsive color. Gaining attack, yeah that R/W. And going face… The elephant in the room. Dealing damage to face. There are next to no white cards that can deal pure damage to face, and the only ones I do know about are from waaaay back in the day. Back when red still destroyed creatures. So when colors didn’t have their identities yet. Even if you’re okay with red investigators, it’s hard to justify the last effect.

So, how do we fix the color identity problem? Deflecting Palm. As much as I love hybrid mana, this card should really be RW. That would also allow you to lower the CMC to 2 without making the card too… “I do everythingy.” It’s weird to not have a combat trick at instant speed, but I do know that the creator didn’t want to make to too powerful as it’s a common. So I’ll kind of let it slide.

7.4/10, Questionable artist tag imo.

Literally last-minute submission we have this! :D Another card that cares about Clues and Money!

So a colorless land that can produce clues? Interesting, funnily enough we do know the going rate for normal colorless lands drawing cards. It’s 5 mana, thanks Arch of Orazca. So that means this one is balanced, right? 3 mana to investigate and then 2 to draw, 5 mana total. That’s where the nature of clues comes in and ruins stuff. Creating a clue for 3 leftover mana is immensely better compared to simply not drawing a card if you don’t have 5. Clues are permanents, permanents you can cache in whenever you want for that 2 mana (And technically they can be shattered, but come on.) which makes investigating quite a bit stronger than drawing if it costs less. I’m not sure if I made sense as I can barely think myself right now, but the cost to investigate should be at least 4, even if you want to power-creep Arch of Orazca as it has a secondary effect which is both “Turn those clues we made into mana.” and “You can’t shatter any clues as I’ll just turn them into gold if you do.”

7.3/10, just like this write up. A bit too rushed. It’s still just common.

Flavor bomb time, you even have the right icon for where this would thematically be set.

Card effect! Basically, Cabal Therapy but stronger added to all clues if you pay an additional two mana. Which is spooky when it’s at instant speed, even if the whole ordeal is 4 mana. It’s still probably balanced as you have to play a 3 mana do nothing and then spend 4 mana next turn to draw a card and guess what’s in their hand. Good play and deck building can get around this, like sacrificing clues to some effect for free or Peek-ing into their hand beforehand.

Personally I think the losing life seems like a silly thing to add onto the card, punishing good play isn’t my forte.

8.3/10, “afaik Avacyn won the 1v1.” Also, how is the icon misaligned?

Hearthstone time! I couldn’t think of a longer joke!

Wow… Now this is something unique. It’s roughly a 4 mana 4/4 that makes 1-2 clues with the potential up to 4. The etb is so weird to evaluate. If you use cards such as Brainstorm you can get the MAXIMUM VALUE. 4 cards in the future for 8 mana. Nice. Even the second ability seems fun to play with. Manipulating the top to make Aria stronger and stronger.

The only drawback with this card I can think of is that some people will find the revealing top 4 and putting back in the same order confusing. I’ll be honest and admit I missed that interaction until I was doing the write up. Sorry, Xyrillow. And I’m name dropping you because you were really close to being the winner this week and you should be proud of your craft.

9.8/10, you do know they’re a Nightelf and not Veldaken right?

Next card!

This week it was hard to decide a winner. The last card and this one went back and forth and there was even a while I was thinking about maybe sharing the winning slot. But that feels like cheating, so I have to give the edge over to this card. I love this card. Super elegant. The flavor and flavor text is on point, the effect is on point, all the way down to the evasion that costs a card to gain two cards eventually later on in the game… I just love everything.

This is without a doubt the best designed card, proud to be in any set with investigation.

Perfection is impossible, but this is pretty damn near to it.

10/10, could maybe be uncommon. Idk.

I’m lacking words, but please congratulate DrKungFu for such an amazing card. And Xyrillow for being such a close second. And actually a lot of people as this week was quite stacked.

But Mainly DrKungFu.

Now, the next prompt is to make your own guild mechanic, something like Riot, Surveil or maybe even Dredge if you’re ballsy. Sorry that this is rushed, I didn’t even proof read it for crying out loud. But please do read the update in the chat. It’s important.

Thank you for all your submissions, you’re all lovely. Love, Sami.

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 17: Madness

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition. Entries were not open to the public)

This week, we’ve all collectively lost our minds and constructed our own interpretations of that madness!

In case you didn’t understand that, we’re making madness cards this week :P Think [Basking Rootwalla], [Basking Rootwalla], or maybe even [Falkenrath Gorger]. Without further ado, I’m Sami, I like [Guild Summit] [Forbid] control and this is week 17 of the custom card competition!

This is just to keep you from peeping when I link the write up, I’ll come up with a better way to do this.

Anyway! Card time!

Starting off the competition we have a brave soul, someone who dares delving into the scariest and deepest depths of a mad mind. A horrifying little line of text included that makes everyone quiver in fear. “at random.” Funny how much we fear that.

So, what do I have to say about it? This is one of the rare occasions where it’s handled actually well. I will complain about the card in just a minute, but please understand how impressive that little feat is. Someone made a card that randomly sacrifices and discards cards and did it well. That is worthy of praise.

Now, why if I like this card so much is it the first card and obviously not the winner? Because this is a madness competition, and while I agree that randomness is a mad thing what this does with madness is sadly lacking. It continues the card’s theme of making everyone sacrifice some sort of permanent but it kind of feels like it randomly chose planeswalkers and artifacts while adding an unfitting increased price.

What would I do then to improve this card? Actually, I have quite a bit of suggestions, the first one is that I would make the hard casting slightly weaker since it just seems better to hard cast it, it does a little bit of everything for cheaper. Land destruction, creature destruction, and the best kind of non-targeted discard. Maybe move one of them to the second part, like maybe the land destruction. You could also swap out the discard for the artifact, because no one wants to really pay extra to get to destroy someone’s artifacts. Second suggestion, keep the randomness for the madness cost. It’s a bit weird of a change at first, but maybe the card could be just the hard cast part, but once you madness it people lose the ability to choose. Third suggestion in case you don’t want to change the card because of the card identity is that you could simply reduce the cost of the madness part, because honestly it kind of stings paying 6 mana after discarding a card for just sacrifice one of everything.

Also making it just sac opponent’s stuff for madness could be another option, but hopefully you get my point. I really like it, but it’s not quite there.

7/10, someone get the oddly specific dice for our lands…

What’s with you guys and submitting things a week late? >:/ This isn’t equipment week!

Joking aside this is an interesting card. It’s a [Hellbent], or [Heckbent] as it now is madness support card. That’s also an equipment. Now this is one heck of a card, so what does it do? It makes YOU discard cards when your creature deals damage. Now I can’t remember who told me this, but the card really makes me think about the saying “Every downside has some upside.” I’m fairly certain it wasn’t worded that way, but the point is that we’re using this obvious disadvantage in our favor since we’re playing a [madness] deck.

Interesting to note is that it’s not combat damage it triggers on, it triggers on any damage. So, if we equip this on [some] sort of [pinger]. We have a discard on demand, but if you would equip it on one of those two examples they would be effectively turned off until you want to discard cards. Which you usually do since this is a discard card for a discard deck, but you don’t always want to discard. Even if you have cheap spells such as [Fiery Temper] or [Asylum Visitor] you sometimes run out of mana or have to spend said mana on other things.

So, what’s my take on this madness support card? Although I can’t help but to love the weird equipment with its strong downside that tells you, it doesn’t ask it tells you to build around it. As much as I admire that I sadly must admit that this might be over some line in “This is too weak.” I love weakness, I honestly think people usually try to make things too strong without appreciating that it’s okay if a card doesn’t do everything. It’s better that cards have weaknesses than just being all upside. [Technically] [these] [have] [weaknesses], [but] [really]? So why am I saying all of this? Why do I think this is too weak? Wasn’t weakness a good thing thirty seconds ago? Yes, but if the downside is too great you end up with a [Tibalt] instead of a [supreme card that is the pinnacle of card design].

What do I want from the card? Simple, some way to reward you for using the card. Now that might sound really stupid since you’re supposed to use the card to discard other cards, that’s the whole reason to use it! I mean yes, but there has to be some carrot to this stick. Otherwise I would much rather use [Key to the City] to discard for free at will and then get the chance to draw it back again. Or maybe [some] [discards] for 2 mana that literally gives you back new cards. Hell, if you want to go blue [Forbid] is pretty darn cool. The last example might not be too tempting since it costs a lot but hopefully you get my point. You are supposed to get something in return for discarding cards, otherwise you will not use this in favor of something that doesn’t turn off your creatures and gives you some sort of upside.

What can be changed for it? Now, if you’re still reading this just know that I might just be talking out of my ass and that everything you just read might’ve been bullshit. But I believe that to turn this into something great the reward could be something like giving stats once heck/hellbent. But talking with the creator they had a worry that the text would simply be too much, so I have a second suggestion. Remove this little bit “you control.” Now what the hecko does that do? Well, if you discard the mask and pay for it… You can equip an opponent’s creature. Remember the comment about turning off a creature? Oh what I would do to turn off the opponent’s creature~ It’s a minor tweak that has large ramifications. Now the card can be used as an offensive tool that makes the opponent ask “Is it worth blocking or attacking? I’ll discard these if I do…” and so on. That’s at least my take on it.

6/10, lovely idea, just not quite there. (Holy moly that was a wall of text.)

Originally, I wanted to have this card just before the winner because I like the card, but I wanted to talk more about it. But the last two are so ridiculously close that I don’t even know yet who will win. Well as I’m writing this, now that you’re reading this I’ve made up my mind.

Anyways! This seems like a simple card, no? A changed version of [Obsessive Search] which is good since just making better versions of cards is usually not too great. Unless we’re talking about a [Untamed Wilds] into [Rampant Growth] scenario. It’s not strictly better since you can’t cast it at all until you discard it (sorcery doesn’t mean anything). Although I like the idea of non-existent mana cards, the madness cost being absolutely free… It gnaws at me. Probably [breaks] [dredge] but I’m not too sure, dredge is a weird fellow xD But the problem with being a free discard is that it can go into any discard deck you want. If there’s enough [discard] then you can sure as hell just slam this one in to get some extra value, thin your deck or whatever you want. It’s free after all!

I’m going to break the pacing a little bit and throw over one of the ineligible cards here since it’s from the same person.

If you didn’t run away because you saw Phyrexian mana, twice. Let tell you why I think this card is slightly better designed. It’s [well] [known] that a redraw is worth 2 life. A card could just be printed at a blue Phyrexian mana and only say “Draw a card.” at instant speed and be balanced. It would even almost be objectively worse than [Street Wraith] since wraith can be a creature for 5 mana. Something is always better than nothing. That also goes for drawbacks, something is always better than nothing, paying 2 life (or 1 blue mana) to draw the madness card is more balanced than just getting the redraw for free. It kind of goes along the lines of why we don’t play Street Wraith in all our decks. We all know that having smaller decks (IE 56 instead of 60) is better, so having a draw that only costs life should be essentially free. But it’s not, because life matters, even if it’s a constant resource like Energy, in that it doesn’t go away after each phase. That 8 life or even just 2 life simply is not worth it. And same would kind of go for this card, you wouldn’t just slam it into any discard deck because you wanted a free redraw and free discard. You would have to put some thought into it. Even though I’d speculate this would still be really popular because of the madness tag on it.

Also, with this version sorcery actually matters and is fitting.

Anyway, the card you submitted, I like it. But I honestly wish you’d keep your original submission.

7/10 the Phyrexian version is like half a point better, and since math is math it would be 8/10.

The first entry I had this week, also one of the best, if not the best. Now what’s so special about this? Does it interact with madness in a new and interesting way? Does the madness trigger change how you play the game or even build a new deck around it? Kind of and not really. It does kind of interact with madness in a new way. But instead of making the madness on itself important, it applies it to all other madness cards.

So it’s a madness support card, and for the record I would’ve allowed it even if it didn’t have the madness tag for 3 mana. But now it can be cast earlier than T5 if you madness it. And the support it gives is exactly what you’d want in a fair madness deck. A reliable way to consistently get madness triggers. Yes it’s only at your upkeep, but worst case you get to loot deeper into your deck. Which your opponent also gets, not sure how I feel about that.

Anyway, once you do cast a card for its madness cost the madness never ends and you draw another card and discard a card, hopefully continuing the chain of madness. Now this can probably get broken somehow if you’re comfortable with playing a 3-mana enchantment to chain this madness combo. But what you could also do is play [Madness Creatures] or a vampire tribal thanks to [Falkenrath Gorger] and just fairly cast 2-3 or more creatures at the beginning of your upkeep with the madness chains. And that’s what I really wish from this card, that idea is making me love the card. I have this thought that this is like [Experimental Frenzy] in limited. Strong and fair, but honestly it might be broken somehow. Maybe with storms.

10/10, really great entry. Only thing I didn’t like was that it made the opponent draw and discard as well. Might be faulty judgement on my part, but that’s honestly how I feel.

Fun little tidbit, the person who made this was originally not going to enter before they had drawn the artwork for the card, but they didn’t have time to finish it so I kind of forced them to enter without art. Sorry not sorry, this card is great.

This is exactly what I was hoping and looking forward to in this competition. A card that interacts with madness more than just being cast for madness, and this does it in a great way. Hard casting it, you have a worse [Merfolk Looter] as it has no power. And if you discard it and pay the flavorful red mana you might get it out for cheap, but its ability is swapped from looting to [Rummaging], the red version of going through your deck.

Seems well balanced as there’s some tradeoff for the discard effect rather than just making it a 1/1.

I don’t have a lot to say as this is exactly what I would ask from a looter/rummager with madness, even the cost is swapped for red as it should be as rummaging is a red ability, also a [mad ability].

I can’t even come up with anything I’d change, maybe the madness cost to 1R, but that’s probably not even needed. Unsurprisingly, this card is our winner 😊

10/10, we have a winner and he has protection from protection! Congratulations to Ape of Justice for winning this week’s custom card challenge!

I want to do a little update, but first let’s real quick show the ineligible entries this week.

First off we have the person who made the prompt’s card! And… wow, this is interesting. Madness X on a creature (plus BR). This is… quite awesome, if you want the creature and not go minus in cards you’re going to have to pay 4 mana for it and get a 4/3 plus looting 2. But then the other options are really interesting, 2 mana for a 4/3 haste flier where you also discard 2 cards, it could in the [dream] [scenario] work out quite well for you or maybe even be what you intend to do later on in the game to madness some more. But really late game you can even use this as some weird ass card draw spell. Like a [Braingeyser] but with a creature on top of it.

But sadly, the card is a bit too pushed with one little thing. The 1/1 creatures. I honestly think having the 1/1 makes the card do a bit too much, I’m not too big of a fan when cards do everything. You can’t have a reasonable creature, card draw, a large army with relevant creature types, and haste them all. It’s the reverse problem of the helmet card from before.

8/10, teach me the meaning of that word you- Oh wait you can read this. <//-//<

And last off this week we have…

A card you already know what I think of as I used it to compare one entry.

8/10, you know this already.

But this card brings up the point I was talking about earlier. Personally, I’m a slightly conflicted about the scoring system I’m currently using. I’m trying to get it as accurate as I perceive the cards but having flat numbers is kind of limiting. For example, the Tides of Insanity would’ve been 9.5 and the card above I would’ve given a 7.5, but because math works as it works it’s rounded up to 8. And if I would be allowed to go even wilder, I might’ve given it a 7.4 which would translate to a 7 in the current system. I know this all sounds like humbugs and you might not even really care. And that’s fine, in that case just go to the next prompt and good luck ^^ But if you’re still reading this, I want to hear your opinion. I want to know how you want my scoring system to continue, bellow this will be two links to two different polls, and I would like to ask you to please ask you to click ‘em and vote in them. Or just reach out to me and chat about the scoring system. It would help me out a lot.

[Poll 1]

[Poll 2]

Thanks for reading that little wall of text and thank you for being patient with this write up taking so long. Hopefully you guys and girls were enjoying the prerelease as well ^^ But without further ado, here’s the prompt that you already know!

Investor gadget! (Fuck you Ape, I’m keeping it.) We're flipflopping from being mad lads and lassies into being investigators! Make a card that revolves around the investigation mechanic. Examples of this are the one and only [Inspector Gadget!], [Tireless Tracker], [Confirm Suspicions], and since someone's going to ask, yes [Erdwal Illuminator].

Good luck everyone and have a wonderful week <3

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 16: Colored Equipment

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition. Entries were not open to the public)

Welcome one, welcome all to this new week of Custom Card Challenge! This week our prompt was to make a colorful armory~~

“This week we shall be doing equipment! But not just any equipment, colored equipment~~ Some examples of this is [Godsend], [Mage Slayer], and even [Unscythe, Killer of Kings] if you want to go crazy on us 😉”

Also, I was promised a 5C sword, so you better give it to me or heads will roll >:c

Starting off the week we have...

[Gonti]. It’s Gonti again. I can’t say it’s not interesting with the menace and with combat [synergies], but it’s Gonti again. Yes, we all love Gonti and the effect is fun, but it’s [Gonti] again x3

Anyway, the effect is [Thief of Sanity]/[Nightveil Specter] for any creature. Closer to Nightveil but with the mana fixing but minus playing lands. Which means sometimes this thing doesn’t really do a lot, or anything if you’re unlucky. I would’ve preferred that it was either Thief of Sanity or that it’d allow you to play lands, but some people don’t think playing lands are fun smh.

 8/10, Just a good on flavor black equipment. Not much to say. [Gontiiiiiiiii]

So, this is a legendary version of [Scythe of the Wretched], it’s even a Scythe! :D But, what does this do differently from it? Well for one it actually has deathtouch and doesn’t force you to reequip it on someone you might not want it on.

So, what makes this the Sultai weapon of choice? The green would be for reach and black would be for deathtouch and maybe the resurrection. But what is blue in this card? Sadly, that’s the miss in this card, the challenge was to make colored equipment so you want to capture the color identity in the weapon.

I would suggest swapping out the U for its other control friend, W. With white you could argue that both the caring about legendaries (aristocratic fuqs >:c) and the resurrection part are on flavor for the color. And if you’d want to make this equipment really bonkers, you’d make it give vigilance as well. Then you probably have to make the equipment cost higher, since we probably all agree that only having mana symbols in the casting cost is beautiful.

7/10 Good first entry friendo ^^ And thanks for the new artist to follow :P

Next up we have a new little blade from Kamigawa, a blade that takes after the [Myojin of Night's Reach] itself!

Just like a blade from the legendary spirit should, it makes people discard, and discard haaaaard. A [Wit’s End] on a stick! How is that balanced when Wit’s End costs 7 to cast? A handful of reasons actually, one is that this costs a total of 8 mana, 6 of which must be black. The cost is separated into two bits, so you can pay half of it at one point and the other at another, that’s the strange thing with equipment. It costs more but they’re still cheaper since you can curve. Oh yeah and the second reason why this is balanced, it has to smack someone in the face.

With the deathtouch on the blade it makes it a bit more tempting to let it through. But people will just [chump block] at this point, unless they have so few cards in hand that they don’t care about discarding. Same problem Wit’s End faces actually.

So, it’s clearly not busted even though its ability appears so ridiculously strong, that’s amazing design right there. Sadly, I can’t really judge it on the lore all too much, I know this was made because the creator loves the Kamigawa lore but I simply haven’t read it. Sorry.

Oh yeah, pet peeve, this equipment doesn’t give stats, but maybe that’s for the best as it gives deathtouch and you want it for the effect. So… ignore my pet peeve?

Funnily this was the only card with color requirement to equip. Also the reason how this can be balanced :P

9/10, You could technically nut this at T4 with unblockable. Can you figure it out?

Next to the chopping block~~

Cardsmith? DISQUALIFIED! THOSE CARDS LOOK BAD D:< Rawr, rawr, rawr! Rabble, rabble! >:c

Cough. But if we would look past the exterior and try to see the card on the inside… Not that we would. Maybe it is, kind of nice? Let’s see here, creating things when hurt… Yes, that’s definitely a green thing with cards like [BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE] nest. Little things that deal damage, yes that’s red. Vigilance? That has to be wh- No wait, that’s a green’s secondary, and it synergizes with the rest of the weapon.

Okay, we have an interesting unique card that’s not busted with a good cost and fits its colors… Maybe the infinite is overpowered? >:D

The most efficient so you need the least amount of cards. [Darksteel Myr] + [Goblin Bombarment] + Well… this card… That’s a total of 9 mana plus 2 for equipping and you need to hurt the Darksteel the first time somehow as well. Okay, honestly that doesn’t sound anywhere near as effective/degenerate as [Storm] or [Hollowed One]. I encourage you all to click those links.

So… The card isn’t broken and the one way you would break it has [counter] [play] and is really slow.

What?! I can’t just judge the card on how the text formating looks?! The Cardsmith card isn’t just good, it’s great! How could this be?!

The only thing I can criticize is that the rose is a 0/2 instead of 0/1. I don’t think the rose should ever survive being [pinged] without buffs. The legendary clause makes it so you (sadly) can’t stack its effect, otherwise you’d have literally infinite chump blockers as with two blades one block creates two Roses. The equipping to Roses and always having a blocker might be enough reason to increase the equipment cost, but equipping costs 2 mana and is sorcery speed luckily, so the enemy can just play around it by having more creatures or killing the token before it equips. Unless they have no interaction, in which case you kind of deserve being blocked by a single Sword wielding Rose forever.

Also… Since the Rose token DOESN’T have defender…

<u<

I had to commission [Azura] to draw this. Too worth it.

There’s nothing I can give this card but the big W in for this challenge. Congratulations :D

10/10, Rose with a sword.

(I noticed that it didn’t say creature token, check for such things next time.)

Congratulations to The Wandering Nightstalker for bringing us a Rose wielding a sword! (That phrase made me and Azura laugh so much)

But before I thank you all for entering and wishing you good luck we have three Ineligible entries to judge and stare angrily at. So let’s greet these three lovely cards. Always fun to see the person who made the prompt join ^^

Starting off, the Vampires are starting a cult! Again!

Hey, DrKungFu. Tell your friend to just join the damn discord. This is 10/10 (9.5 rounded up to 10. Maybe I should start showing the half points as not rounded up…)

Yes, it’s a bit too strong, but it’s on flavor, on color, and just a damn fun card.

Also, flavor text. I love flavor text

Weak actual equipment with a reward if you complete its objective. Just how it should be when making these sort of flip cards. Maybe the objective should be slightly harder or the casting slightly higher (I’d say no because 2 symbols are beautiful), but hot damn this is a good card.

10/10, I want the against the odds where you have smol dudes to sac and big creatures to reanimate.

We will never ever beat this card.

Only complaint is that the stick is hard to see, if that even is a complaint.

20/16, trample at least. Better than 30 Emrakuls.

(I forgot that this last card was an IE, so they got a full on write up. Incase you wonder why this will be long.)

Oh my lordie, this was the first submission of this week and my first thought was “This will be a good week.” Needless to say, I was right. Flash with instant equip? Fuck yeah that’s some unique and interesting design, just what I wanted. I mean once I did some more research, I found out that [Grifter’s Blade] exists. But did anyone of you honestly know that it existed?

So, we know that I like the first two lines here and they’re really fitting for the colors you chose. Yeah, I know white isn’t supposed to be known for flash, but we’re all from a D&T lover’s discord. White flashing is nice. So, what do I think about the actual effects of the equipment? First strike and tapping a dude is nice and once again spot on for the color pairing you have. But indestructible? This makes the card a better version of [Indestructibility]. That saddens me as power creep isn’t really my forte. I really wish you chose something like Vigilance instead, that would even go nicely with the tap ability and annoy non-UW players in limited, and isn’t that what magic is all about?

Oh yeah, pet peeve, this equipment doesn’t give stats, but maybe that’s for the best as it has flash and first strike. So… ignore my pet peeve?

8/10, close, but indestructible cigar.

Thank you all for competing ^^ Hope you’ll have a wonderful week. Before I will take my leave, we shall travel to Sparta for our next prompt!

”Madness! Make an interesting madness card!”

A simple little prompt that reminds at least me about Kate’s first prompt :P Some examples of madess cards are [Basking Rootvalla], [Ichor Slick], [Welcome to the Fold] :^), and [Basking Rootvalla]. Oh and I’d count [Falkenrath Gorger] if you’re curious.

Also, no 5 color weapon :( [Hopefully this will do] <3

[Basking Rootvalla]

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 15: Tribe Support

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition. Entries were not open to the public)

And another week of the custom card competition comes to an end! Exactly on time! I promise! DON’T SAY ANYTHING ELSE. *Cough* Anyway, this week the prompt was “Make a tribal lord or some other kind of tribal support.” And just as a reminder after this week we’ll have less loose prompts. See? I can take feedback :P Anyway, let’s not stall any longer, first card go!

Hey! You’re a week late, commanders were last week!

Now this seems a bit simplistic, or maybe not that good even if you just glance at it. But it gets all the [lords] [to] [buff] [all] [the] [doods], even though it sadly gets missed by the [best tribal support ever].

I’m not even that opposed to giving attacking dudes indestructible for 2 colorless mana, although I cannot deny that I at first wished it’d say “another.” But that would mess up the flavor of this unifier since she wouldn’t be attacking then, so it’s actually good she can make her self indestructible.

Also fun little thing, this card helps me personally. I’m actually making a set where one tribe is two creature types, and this seems like the smoothest way to connect them. Maybe I’ll steal the effect >:) 

9/10, I don’t have much to say other than good job.

Oh lordie how I love this card, get ready for a long one.

This, this card is just amazing. Like, if I saw this card in a “Just make a card this challenge isn’t loose at all” I think this might win it, there would have to be another sort of bomb ass card to beat this! But now you may wonder, why weren’t there a ton of fanfare before this one then? Like, you obviously love it, when will you say it won? Simple, it doesn’t really fit the competition.

Now, let’s take a moment to understand this. Planeswalker usually mess things up, and I love ‘em for it. So, the challenge was to make a tribalistic card, some sort of tribal support or lord. Now this is supposed to fall onto the support side most likely, but... To what?

Is it birds because he makes a token each turn? I mean, in that case it’s as much of a bird tribal card as [Elspeth] is a soldier tribal card or [annoying Gideon] is an ally tribal card. They’re just good cards for control or midrange because they make tokens each turn, like this card. Although this specific bird gets the double buff for the [best card in the universe] and kind of curves and gives you some value for [card you forgot existed] (finally) I’m still not sure this is the kind of support birds wants. Birb tribal is a weird tribal, I like the try. But for bird tribal the second ability doesn’t really make sense as birds don’t care about facedown cards, well at least yet :P Also, even though the ult is just [Dovescape] and I don’t think it makes too sense. Yes it makes birds, but that’s about it. Doesn’t seem synergistic with anything.

So is it [mighty morphing power rangers] tribal? Let’s be honest, no. It’s not. This clearly was meant to be a bird tribal and morph isn’t actually a tribe anyway. But I love this second ability. Oooooh god how I love this ability. This ability (and the defensive/controly/valuey first ability) just makes me go [YES]! There is so much you can do with this, curve a morph creature from T3 into this and unmorph with this walker! Do you want to go [big] [thicc] [threats]? Gotcha covered! Maybe that’s not your style, maybe you want to stay on color and not rely on this walker [value] [cards] that you can flip on [their] [own]! Or maybe a glorious mixture of [value] and [colorful] [jank]?! There’s so much you could dream about, why not a [giant boogle]?! This is just so fucking great. Seriously, this card would be just the best fan made card I’ve seen in a long while if it focused on it’s -2 instead of trying to birb. Or Maybe that it makes creatures like a control/value engine is good enough :P

This card would be super expensive in real life because it can be played in so many different ways and I would be super sad because I love it.

Oh yeah, before I forget. Insert [Airborne Aid] here, because bird.

9/10, you missed giving the +1/-8 birds a color like [this] card.

Look at this newcomer! Look at them go!

This captures the challenge amazingly, it gives what seems to be the perfect lord/support to a niche tribe. It gives them the stat they need and care about (toughness) without needlessly making them hard hitters, they’re meant to give mana not beat down, then it even makes them better at their trait by [usually] doubling the mana they produce. She seems like a ramp monster without breaking it as you shouldn’t get her before turn 3 and well, she can be killed. Although not easily with that butt. Your wincon could either be a full-on [druid tribal] or just ramp tribal into [great], [fun], [things]~

Usually when I have a winner I can’t say all too much about it and of course it’s true here too. The worst part about this is that I honestly don’t know if the winner knows that there’s a reward for winning xD

10/10, I’m a sucker for ramp

Congratulations to our newcomer to the PK server and PD player Geralf for winning this week’s card competition ^^ I’ll be waiting for your pm :P

But as usual there are some ineligible entries which are quite amazing this week if I do say so myself ^^ But let’s not keep them waiting and introduce first a giant enemy crab!

[MII][III][III][III][ILL]

That is all.

[Perfect]/10, that last bit of reminder text was nice.

Okay what a lovely entry, but I feel we violated some sort of law by praising mill so let’s hear from a lawyer what they think ^^

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, thank bajesus that you edited and included the artist’s name so I wouldn’t remove an extra point. From the flavor text and art to the effect and flavor. It’s great. Although… You forgot to add “nonland.” You accidentally turned this flavor and mechanic beast of a card into land paj (Paj means pie but is also a Swedish slang for “Doesn’t work/Broken”)

9/10, At least it’s not the artist’s name lacking that steals the point.

 Thank you all for entering this week’s Custom Card Competition ^^ Now… Next week we’ll bring some color and life to our colorless and dull weapons 😉 “Make a colored weapon! Some examples are [Godsend], [Mage Slayer], or even [Unscythe, Killer of Kings] if you’re crazy.” See you next week <3

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 14: Commanders

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition. Entries were not open to the public)

Welcome to another week of the Custom Card Competition! This week just as the title suggests we have commanders on our plate! Commandering with an emphasis on new commanders. May that be a new mechanic to build around, a new color pair for an existing mechanic or finally filling out something lacking for an existing mechanic and so forth.

Starting off the list we have… Wait, what’s this? Who is this old lady? Why is she trying to be all correct and stuff? Nononono… Bring me the cool edit, we know you always do these ones buddy.

There we go, might not be factually correct. But damn it looks good, and isn’t that what this is all about? 😉 Fun fact in case you didn’t know this isn’t an OC. This lady exists already in lore, and the flavor seems to be quite spot on for our Te Ju Ki.

Okay, actual card review. It’s pretty cool, a monk and super friends’ deck? Sounds pretty damn funny. It would of course focus more on the planeswalker side of the deck since… y’know, second ability. This could get quite crazy if you have [Monastery Mentor] out, otherwise the monks seem to be sadly lacking, even if you don’t have to care about colors. But if you play that card you want [smol] [noncreature] [spells] and not [big] [noncreature] [spells]. Although this idea of being super friends while caring about a tribe that doesn’t get enough support sounds like a fun idea, I do believe it gets into the “trying to do everything” territory. Instead of being the great 5C super friends commander or the 5C monks commander it’s mediocre at both. While it still is functional as a 5C deck and probably will be the chosen for super friends if this commander existed it would be because it cares about planeswalkers but mainly because it’s 5C. It’s the sort of commander you pick for its color identity.

7/10 Would be a funny Lieutenant as colorless.

Next up we have the first entry! Wait what?... It’s the second… Just because you send it in first won’t make you the first >:/

Hey look, someone did the Partners with ^~^ Instant win! Favorite mechanic :P

For real though, this is a new kind of commander, [or not], a -1/-1 matters commander! The way these commanders cares about the counters isn’t deathtouchy snake value, nay. It cares about ‘curing’ the disease (that they might’ve caused). Let’s just say it, these commanders are a damn flavor bomb, these cards express themselves through their mechanics and them being paired together. Iaculus doesn’t even let his pet kill people (we’ll get back to that) so he can ‘cure’ them.

But if I love this so much, why is this not the winner? It’s kind of strange. The cards are too weak and too strong. Usually I do not care about cards being weak, honestly I prefer cards being weak over being busted as they are more interesting in my opinion that way. I prefer a card like [Electrostatic Pummeler] which is weak unless used in a specific deck more than [Smuggler’s Copter] which was so busted that every single deck ran a playset of it. But with cards like Iaculus if they pay off is too weak you lose any reason to play it other than reasons like “I’ll put a Pummeler into this deck because memes.”

So what is this criminal weakness for Iaculus? It’s simple really. He only single targets stuff. Now you might be confused about why this is such a gripe for me, but it’s because this is essentially what the entire deck is meant to do. Put -1/-1 counters on creatures and poison counters on players and then cure them to death! It sounds really fun, but only being able to ‘cure’ one target per 4 turns (because 4 players) is just way too weak. I honestly think that you can just add “any number of” before target and it wouldn’t just be balanced, it would be a really fun commander aswell!

Since I’ve complained about how the commander pair is weak, I shall now complain about them being too strong. And the problem here is really simple, Jormun has infect and 5 attack. [Beep] [Boop] [Dead]. Now Iaculus tried to keep his pet from killing his ‘clients’ by not letting him bite the infected (this feels more like me roleplaying than reviewing at this point.) But sadly commander doesn’t double your poison threshold like they did with your health so infect is a really broken mechanic for commander. I think you need something more than just not allowing Jormun to attack infected ‘clients’ otherwise it’s too easily broken, so easily in fact that people might just skip out on Iaculus and the interesting new mechanic just to make a top tier Jormun commander. So what would I do to fix that? Maybe add a line that makes people unable to die from effect, make him a 4/3 or make WotC change commander rules so you need 20 poison counters like most good house rules have it.

I seem to complain a lot but I really like it. Just too busted and weak for now though ☹

8/10 Snek should be more grön than blacc.

Wowee that was a marathon of a card, well to be fair it was also 2 cards in 1. I need to chillax, let’s go with two ineligible entries, aka cards that cannot win as I have a vendetta against the creators >:C (They’re utside of PK’s server, made this prompt or sometimes me.)

Rawr, Bear tribal with an almost bear as leader, maybe it should’ve been 1W/G instead of WG. From what I see it seems to want to be a token deck that makes honorary bears along the actual bears while making the other [players] [play] [fair]. Also, I guess bears are white now?

7/10, nothing exciting, might be a bit broken.

Huh, this seems to need a bit more inspection. Seems to be a thief commander deck. Seems really interesting and fun. “Hey what commander will I play today? Oh, you have a full foil deck? I’ll play that today.” But honestly it doesn’t seem like a 5C thing, I would assume it’s because you forgot that “spend mana as if it was mana of any color” exist. Sounds fun, but another worry would be actual accidental (or not) theft. It fits the flavortext though...  🤔

6/10 clean it up and make it Dimir.

Okay, that’s enough of the ineligible cards. Let’s get back to the real list, it is time for our next card! And it isn’t just any card, it’s…

…our winner~

I must say, I’m a sucker for names like this where there’s a deeper meaning. This one is the incarnation of the flame ^^ So, what is this commander? Well, it’s what miss [Olivia] really should have been. The madlad himself, a madness commander. But it doesn’t have the [best] madness cards! It’s not a real madness commander! Well it’s the best we got! It’s the only commander that discards for free, unless you count [Varina] but she’s not in the usual madness colors and she needs some set up with her zombies.

While we want more and more colors so you can play with [all the madness cards] with this commander, we sometimes forget when we design cards that sometimes it’s better to have less things and focus on them to make them better. That goes for colors as well as other things we create. Now let’s get onto the commander? Why is it a good madness commander other than that they discard for free at instant speed? They take back their cards at a high cost only to discard them again! And while they’re doing all of this they keep on with their color identity by turning resources into damage and making us all pay to get it back.

Now, is it perfect? I don’t know, personally I don’t like that it has haste, I feel it’s weird that a commander only deals 1 damage to 1 player instead of all when discarding for [value] and I honestly think the take back cost could be buffed to 3 mana since making an infinite with this would be reaaaally hard given that it needs 2 colors plus 1 of any for each card taking back, rituals don’t go plus 😉

But these here are what we call minor errors which might even be the correct design, I’m not perfect. But what I do know is that it would be a crime to deny our own [Hungrybox] three times in a row.

10/10 Congratulations to adulterousAmpora for finally winning, no longer the bridesmaid! 😉

 Thank you all for reading and entering ^~^ So, for you curious few who may ponder on what the next week will hold. It’s none other than Shanobis prompt. Like everyone else Shanobi wants to go back to the good old days, the... tribal days~~

“Make a tribal lord or some other kind of tribal support.”

Examples for this is [Beckett Brass], [Preeminent Captain] or [Wayward Servant].

Extra points if you make it for one of the lesser played tribes ;) Like seriously, no one wants another merfolk, elf, human lord, especially when it’s just +1/+1. Bend the boundries ;)

That has been all, take care and have a wonderful new years <3

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 13: Un-Keywords

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition.  Entries were not open to the public)

Welcome to week this! This week we had the prompt to make our own unique unset keywords! So things such as “Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental” with Art rampage 2 or Blurry Beeble with an actually good keyword, Blurry. These all being unset themed makes everything very, very subjective. Maybe I love the idea of something you love, and you hate the idea of something I hate! And that’s fine! (Wait a second…) But without further ado, let’s remember the first rule of week 12, get into the silly spirit of the unset, and start week 13!

Oh my! What a crass name! Oh wait, it’s a donkey. Wouldn’t be an uncompetition if we didn’t start off with an ass.This ass cares about our favorite thing in the world! Food crumbs! Yaaaay… It is quite funny as an idea but honestly quite disgusting in practice. Like, imagine someone trying to be slob, we don’t like it when it’s unintentional. Much less so if it’s intentionally getting the table and cards messy.

Also banned from my store as we’re not allowed to bring food into the playing area, not that people obey that. [Bad Ass] is still the best Ass

5/10 Fun in concept and disgusting in practice, you slob.

Next card! Brainsto- Oh no, the keyword is Brainstorm!It seems like an uncard on the surface level, art referencing another card, an effect that references another card and other effects, even the keyword is a joke version of storm. But just as the card maker was worried, it honestly doesn’t feel too much like a uncard.If we look past the silly name and imagery, we actually do have a card that has quite a normal effect. 4 mana cast cards from your graveyard costing 1 going up 1 mana in price after each spell (Obviously that’s not exactly how it works but you get the gist.) Its effect isn’t all too silly nor weird as uncards usually are. Well, the good uncards anyway.

6/10 Could be an honestly interesting normal card.

This weeks seems to be short, as it is. Not only is this confusing to judge, but it’s also confusing to contest in. So we only have 4 entries and a forced ineligible, let’s get to our runner up… This card!

Now this, this is some A tier un… um… something? Words are hard. This could honestly come in the next unset. Minus the dots in the name, I’m uncertain they’d let that fly. The shade mechanic is both flavorful for unsets “Creatures with shades are cool” and implementable, just think about the brick counters from Amonkhet. So this is quite a funny card and definitely could see un-printing. I’ll even give extra props for the cool buff giving plus and minus. Like, it pays to be cool B)

But sadly as much as I like the card I can’t help but have the feeling that this isn’t as much of a keyword as an etb thing. This is a great card, don’t get me wrong. But just like me in like every writing assignment at school “You did great, but this wasn’t really what you were meant to do.”

If this was just “make a uncard” this would’ve been full pot. But it seems like you’re our local Hungrybox (someone please get that reference.)

9/10, [Downtown Coolsville gonna give it to ya]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. The art is nice and all, but since we’re talking money and the week’s winner, let’s pimp this card out a bit.

(Removed full art due to lacking artist credits, it was cool though. Like the runner up card put sunglasses on it and everything.)

Now that’s more like it, the madman here actually made a whole cycle of these cards, which is above and beyond, quite dope that they made it. But as cool as it all is, the only thing that matters is this card they sent to represent the cycle, a money bolt.

For quite a while I was going to give this second place as I thought “Oh no… this is too wild, too crazy even for unsets…” But then I realized that this is exactly what unsets are supposed to do! If they can have a specific kind of walking depending on the opponent’s pants, then we can have a power level tied to their cost on the second market!

So what is this? Well just read it, it’s a silly keyword with a dumb effect that’s probably weak but if people disobey the flavor text and try to buyout this card together it would be bonkers. It’s a silly, weird, and a forth wall breaking keyword, I lack anything to say other than “This is confusing as fu-duck in the the best way. I love it.”

10/10, congratulations Shenobi. Perfect amount of bending the reality of card games.

Okay, that were all the entries for this week. I want to thank you all for entering and say sorry for being slightly late with uploading these results. We do have an ineligible entry that I just kind of want to highlight as it was my absolute favorite card, even though it wasn’t even entered. But first let’s get the last formalities over with. I have been Sami, this has been week 13 of Custom Card Competition and next time we shall see something legendary. (I regret nothing.) Next week will be all about Commanders! Hopefully we’ll see some creative commanders 😉 The rules are explained further in the Custom Card chat.

Okay with the formalities out of the way we can stop celebrating Shanobi and celebrate the true winner of this week!

Shanobi! Wait what?

For some reason still unknown to me, they decided to not go with the keyword “Go Fish”. It’s go fish for crying out loud, literally. I mean it’s not good but this exactly the kind of goofy unset fun I want. You damn fool :P

10/10, Merry Christmas you fools ^~^

See you all after the holidays <3

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 12: Traps

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition.  Entries were not open to the public)

But Sami! Isn’t week 11 after week 12? Not anymore! I did a violent coup and overthrew Kate! I sent in Australian spider infantry to spook her away so I could once more take a dictatorial claim over this competition >:D And now that my word is law, I shall commense the write up for week 12! Traps!

But for real, I am Sami and I am the host of this week’s Custom Card Competition! Since it’s December and Kate is actually an adult with actual responsibilities she hasn’t been able to hold this competition. So for now until life calms down over in Australia I will be holding the competition. Feel free to voice your concerns and disappointment in PK’s Custom Card Competition chat. But that’s enough chit chat, time for the competition.

But week 11... Listen to papa Nick

So, let’s start off with this card! Not because I have anything special to say about it specifically that must be said first. But because it’s the first card in the folder I received. That’s literally it. This could be the winner, you don’t know. YOU DON’T KNOW ME!

But for real though, let’s try and understand this card. The effect is a mass “[Pull from Eternity]” with some slapping on [people that steal]. Or if you [lawfully trade] with them.

I wrote a whole fucking long wall of text about me being confused about the flavor, but it just struck me. After a long time with this card it finally hit me. This hits cards that are exiled face down. This darn card hits those [gluttons] [that] [steal] [our] [cards]. Now it finally makes sense! You punish those who steal and play our cards, (like an entry that comes a bit later) even [Hostage Taker] gets punished. I thought it was some weird anti anti-grave hate, which is probably how it will be played due to the trap activation cost. And that brings me to what is sadly lacking with this card. The trap part of the trap card. Sadly from what I see the activation criteria doesn’t seem to align with the actual card itself, instead of caring about the cards that most likely are getting exiled from your deck or maybe hand instead of your grave. Yes there are some things like [Rise of the Dark Realms] that this card both thematically and mechanically counter, but for the most part this will sadly be used as a counter to [Tormod's Crypt] and [other] graveyard hate. And that makes me kind of sad. This little miss in what activates the trap card sadly kind of changes how the card works. And not for the better. Now it’s just some protective mass [Pull from Eternity] for storm/graveyard decks.

7/10, So close and yet so far away.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Are you [Stretching Time] or punishing people for doing it themselves? For real though, people forget that instant speed ending the turn doubles as a counterspell. [This] is my favorite counterspell of all time. Okay, the hard cast part is still under costed at 9 mana (I dun care about that added symbol at these costs >:c) but let’s be honest, it doesn’t really matter since if this ever would be hard cast something went terribly, terribly wrong. Or you’re playing commander. Now, to the trap part. Here we get to punish people who don’t think it’s quite enough with one turn, which on top of my head is mainly mono U Tron and taking turns, for obvious reasons. If they are attempting to take those extra turns you get a free trap that punishes that action, getting your trap for free is a theme we’ll see in half of the submitted cards. And I’m really torn on it. On one side it kind of breaks the game rules in an awkward way where you don’t pay at all for an effect, even strong effects such as [mass ultra countering] and [casting creatures for free]. But on the other hand that makes you able to make incredibly specific trap answers, such as the two examples. [Anti storm] and [anti control]. Mill is the exception because mill is just so bad, I won’t even go through the effort of linking the card. We all know who it is! And… we all actually love it ;c

So, is this an interesting card? Yes. Is it realistic? Yes. Would I make it weaker? Yes, maybe something like not getting a free turn and somehow skipping the countering part. Am I a coward? Yes.

8/10, I’m a sucker for flavor text. Extra so for beauties like Teferi 😉

Now next tra- wait a second… Didn’t you have a silver border? Get back to your unset you foul demon >:c

Let’s clear this up as I do believe this will be your first question, how is this allowed? It is because it is still trap themed. We ran into this issue when Kate was going to hold this week, I wanted to submit almost immediately a non-trap trap card. And since she allowed it these will be allowed.

Anyway, onto the card. I kind of hate the fact that I kind of like it. But, luckily for my conscience the card is too weak. I usually am an advocate for weaker cards being better cards (Insert 2 mana humility and a planeswalker with +1 tutor) but this one is too far on the weak side. Let’s see what this is. It’s a stick, it gives you reach and you can sacrifice it by throwing it into a trap to counter said trap. It’s on flavor and feels like a DnD thing, but the costs are a bit too high and the non counter payoff is a bit too low. It’s just not worth it, so instead of being flexible like the adventurer’s best friend should be it’s a really weak weapon with a way too specific counter attached to it.

7/10, thank god the numbers are wrong. Because I’d be upset if “10 foot pole” was a contender. Which I t kind of is. I’m upset.

-Insert quirky intro thingy, and don’t forget Sami. Don’t forget to not forget, it’s important to have one. Also, why isn’t this Swedish? Is this some sort of wall breaking?-

This card! Someone has taken the liberty of using Eldrazi technology against them! Or Tron, that works as well. Now the effect, it’s interesting, but let’s be real you’re never hard casting it with the current wording. Well maybe sometimes when Tron doesn’t use colorless and when you put in a trap against simply the wrong deck. Anyway, the effect, what does it do? With this wording almost nothing due to a confusing little detail about permanents. Now I’m not a judge but to my understanding with the current wording it only actually cares about spells that target, aka instants and sorceries that target. Sadly, the main colorless spell that’s not a permanent is something that doesn’t have targets and has a static bad effect for colored permanents. But now you may ask, “what if I target [mister pantsless] or [mister thot] here?” As far as I know since it doesn’t say anything about who controls the creature or walker once it becomes a permanent it should go to its owner. But as this is really complicated, I must admit that there’s basically a 50/50 that I’m wrong here. But let’s ignore that little questionable mess and see at what the card does. It’s a mixture of [Redirect] and maybe [Desertion] for 3 mana. Which is of course obscene. “Countering a TKS or maybe even Karn and getting them yourself.” A bit too much swing ding for 3 mana.

7/10, unique but Karn shall not be a slave no longer.

Wowie, what can I say about this card? It’s really fucking interesting. A trap card that you sometimes don’t want to cast for it’s activated cost? Sign me the fuck up! This is exactly how you make a trap card with 0 cost without having to make it hyper specific. Hard casting it, it’s a slightly harder/worse [Recollect] with the upside of adding white’s ability to put weak stuff on the battlefield. But here comes the trap part, if they destroyed an artifact or an enchantment, you may get it back for free (or another artifact, creature or unrelated creature) but because you’re not paying anything it returns to your hand.

I just love the idea of having to pay for the alternative cost with something as interesting as making the card slightly weaker (or stronger if you want the cast triggers).

Like all good things though, there are flaws, I do not like one little word on the card “creature.” And that’s it, otherwise it’s an interesting card that I just cannot get out of my head, I cannot stop thinking about this darn card. This card was set to winning until I looked through the cards once more and decided that it was slightly lacking, even if I really love the idea it presents.

9/10, I feel kind of bad snatching this win away from you now.

And as winner, we have the one. The only, the best card I’ve ever seem BAM! It’s Rexxar!

Oh what a wonderful card, truly 10/01. I’m impressed, pushing the boundaries on what a trap card is with this amazingly crafted planeswalker. Truly a masterpie-

Wait what? I’m being informed that I, the one and only Sami who took over this week’s competition in a violent coup where I deployed spider infantry am ineligible to compete? Only because I’m the judge?! Unfair >:(

No, but let’s get real, let’s applaud the actual winner, DrKungFu with “Memory Trap”

Hey this is the card I referenced with the first card, do you remember that? This card would validate the first card’s existence ever more :D Fun little tidbit.

Okay card time, we have a [Gonti] effect but one card deeper. Fair card. And given that people made decks about just flickering Gonti, I’m going to be risqué and say that people generally like this effect. You can say thief rouge isn’t a good deck, but you can’t deny that it’s fun! So the effect is fun, what do I have to say about the trap effect? “If you’re taking something, I’ll have one as well!” Thank the goddess that it doesn’t make it free, traps shouldn’t be free without good reason.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say, this is just a great card. The closest thing to a complaint I have is that I don’t know if the name is super fitting. It’s kind of okay, but I don’t know if it’s as great as the design on it itself. Fun little tidbit, this was set to be the bridesmaid for a really long time. But as I could find flaws with the old winner, I just couldn’t with this. Congratulations DrKungFu for winning.

10/10 Fun balanced and works well as a trap.

(I spent fucking 3 days on mine you little punk >:c)

Now that concludes this week, but we do have quite a bit of ineligible entries, one of which somehow manages to hop into the competition :^) But before we start checking those cards out, I’ll just tell you how this competition will work for the next few weeks. As your new dictator you will submit to me... your submissions for the next week with the unmechanics ^~^ I’m going to hold the tournaments until Kate can come back again.

Oh yeah, I don’t even need to make a comment about what next week’s thing is, you all know it’s “making a card with a new unmechanic” and that the deadline is in two days. But I said it anyways. Dammit. SAVE ME IE ENTRIES!!

Umm, I was told to not focus too much on these cards. So, looks like quite a strong card for [colorless decks] against combo decks, or storm.

I feel like I should spend more time on these but I want people to see the actual competition.

7/10, would play in sideboard for BW

UNSET AAAAAARGH!

Seriously though, if you skip the watermark thingy it’s actually quite an interesting and solid card, well slightly on the too weak side.

9/10 I hate how uncards are doing so well.

Exactly what Temporal Loop Trap should have been. It even has amazing flavor text like it. If this was an entry for the competition it would’ve had a really high chance of winning.

10/10, rip in pepsi time lords.

Gut instinct, too strong of a reaction for unpaid labour. I don’t like it.

5/10 Leave reanimator alone >:C

Reminds me of a reverse [Pitfall Trap], not much to say. Simple and good design, cost is a bit harsher since the non-trap effect is better.

7/10, I’m not paid to review these cards and I have this fear that I’m disrespecting both the creators of these and the creators for the competition.

I don’t know how to end this post. But I do hope that you enjoyed it, the write ups will come up more reguraly again now that someone who doesn’t have the responsibilities of being pantslegal is holding it. For better and for way way worse, Merry Christmas.

[bub-the-voidling]

Custom Card Competition wk 9: Bub

(This is a post about a private Card Brewing competition.  Entries were not open to the public)

Okay, so this was harder to make than I expected due to multiple reasons. One, I'm not Kate so by definition I'm not that great at grading, secondly I like what you guys did with him (although no one did a planeswalker >:C), you even made tribal with different tribes :P But enough stalling, hopefully you'll find these cards as enjoyable as me.

But anyway, I am Sami and I am the guest of this week on Katelyn’s weekly Custom Card Competition! This week the challenge was to make a card based on this picture of Bub!

The picture is drawn by one lovely Nirana Den Uijl (Dutch names kills me)

But without futher ado, let’s start with the competition!

Let's start off with a Tribal one!

"Bub, Myr Champion"!

Apparently he forsake being a Voidling to become a Myr, and a Myr lord at that! Now, this seems like a better version of a certain [Sliver lord] out there. Which it technically is, but I would say this might be balanced due to Myr being a tribe with slightly weaker tribe members compared to slivers. (Seriously, they only have 1 [Buffy Myr])

And the second thing that he has is untapping everything. Now this might look weak compared to the [Myr lord], but honestly I like it. It's not something good of course, 1 colourless mana and tap for the same thing is waaaay better. But it's not about that right now, it's spot on flavourwise for a Myr lord. (Maybe that's why Miss Galv Even if it's neigh impossible to go infinite with this, it's still an amazing addition!

6/8 Bub's going to be a robo commander :)

Second card! This time he abandons being a Voidling to become... an insect! Bub is now multicultural~~ Or is it multiracial? idk.

So let's take us an inspection of the UW Bub! "Bub, Queen's Champion."

I quite took a fancy to this card, but just like Danni said to me "This card is green. Why do I not see a green mana symbol?" As the card is right now, it really should've been a green white card. I don't see the blue in it.

Now, that being said, I actually do like the card. Who would've thought Sami likes a 4 mana 0/1 First Strike? :P

It seems like a kind of interesting battle cry card. Instead of just buffing everyone else he also buffs himself. Literally no other battlecry card does that. Although, personally I would've liked the buff if it wasn't +X/+X but +X/+0. That would remove the criticism that it should be a green card and change it to it should be a mono W card :P It seems more interesting to me personally with a glass cannon first striking leader.

But as the card is right now, it's a nicely balanced card with some color issues.

7/8 It's Battle cry my dude.

Now, to the closely ranked number two and one. They were so close in ranking that I regretted making my scale out of eight. I'm going to reveal them both at the same time just so when you two read this you'll be slightly panicking about if you won or not. Because that's what friends are for :^) "Bub, One of the Swarm" and esper, Jesper "Bub, Voidling Seeker".

See? If you make him a Voidling, or Voidspawn since it sounds more like it’s from mtg's multiverse, it goes better >:C (No, it's just a coincidence)

I flipped a coin and I got that I have to start by talking about "Bub, Voidling Seeker".

So let's talk about it.

“Bub, Voidling Seeker”

Goes infinite with [Food Chain]. Busted card 0/10.

No but for real, this is quite a cool Esper finisher atleast for my taste ^^ A hard to cast 3 mana 2/2 with lifelink that the start of your next turn if it dies drains for 1 and makes it castable again. Why does this seem so sweet to me? Let's try and inspect the card.

It's a control finisher with the likeness of a [certain goblin]. Why is it a finisher? Because they can never be removed. Kill it, you exile it at the start of your next turn and cast again. Exile it, you cast it again. The only ways to actually remove it is to [face] [down] [exile] [it] or [AWOL].

So, it can't be removed. So what? Same goes with the Squee. But here's the thing that's controversial with the card. The 1 point drain when exiling it from the graveyard. That's a 20 turn [uninteractable] [clock].

But for real, most decks won't have a way to interact with this. The closest they can get is to exile Bub before the enemy can drain. But that might just be slightly a waste. So is a 20 turn clock that the opponent usually can't stop fair?

[Cough]

Yeah I think it's fair. And I like it.

Lifelink, incidental life gain that's always nice but over all it's a finisher card that helps you gain back some life from the beating you take by being control. Oh yeah and so I don't forget to say it, all colors are represented :D W, lifelink. U, toying with the exile. B, draining. Although the effects are actually a mixture of the colors, I had to put something on the colors. But you get my point, the card fits its colors.

8/8 I love control, and I love this. Even though you didn't update the pic as you promised >:(

And the last card, a flip card actually! "Bub, One of the Swarm" / "Bub, Chosen of the Prophet!"

Some madlad actually made a flip card. And they somehow actually found another drawing of an OC. I'm impressed... (The artist is [Kokokat/Rabbitz] and I know her aswell x3. Her name links to her DA although she's mainly active on League Amino.)

I'll allow it 😎 So, onto the card. Wowie, there's a lot. Two card's worth!

So let's start with the frontside! A 5 mana 0/3 with shroud! I should love this~~ It also makes a weak [Assemble the Legion] when he enters or flips back. And after 5 turns he flips into the lord of Voildings Voidpawns!

Bub, Chosen of the Prophet! Indestructible big first striker that buffs all other Voidspawns. And if they all die he flips back into his incognito mode.

So what can we compare this to other than as a Assemble the Legion? Well, it's almost like a slow version of [history]. Instead of getting the pay off 2 turns later you get it 5 turns later and the pay off is instead of a small buff it's a more permanent effect. And you still generate dudettes. Given that your opponent doesn't feel the need to deal with 1/1s.

At first this card seemed like a strong card, then I thought it was on the weaker side. Now I think it's actually quite balanced if not slightly on the weak side. Yes, even if the opponent kills your 0/3 Baby Bub you still have the token enchantment that generates 1/1s in anticipation of your next Bub. And we all know that enchantments are harder to deal with compared to creatures, but if you want an enchantment that generates tokens Assemble seems like a better fit for the exact same cost. But it has different colors, and if you do get it going, it doesn't flip like Bub here does. That's the big pay off here, if your opponent can't deal with the creatures and enchantment Bub will rise up and lead them to victory.

The things I would've liked to have seen is to maybe give your voidspawns haste when Bub flips, It fits given that he UBR. Also, this might be madness. But I think maybe "Call of the Void" should be nonlegendary. Yes that would open to shenanigans [with] [combos] [like] [these] [here]. But, I think that would be fine, it's harder to combo with Bub's etb since he has shroud which was meant as a defensive mechanism, but I think it could actually be used as a balance check if you'd want to make him stronger.

Oh yeah, and colors. I always forget to talk about them until the last second. This doesn't really feel grixis-y. It does have keywords from them like U's Shroud or R's First Strike, but overall it doesn't really feel like a UBR card.

8/8 Really interesting card which gets 10 extra cool points since you found an old friend's old drawing of Bub.

So... Who wins? Well, I kind of hate being here since both the last two cards could easily be the winners. Me and Danni were actually split on who should win, but since my friends usually call me a dictator and power abuser I shall have the honor of deciding a winner.

Our winner tonight will have a converted mana cost of... 3!

Congratulations for the two time winner, NichGee with the esper jesper "Bub, Voidling Seeker"!

So, what have we all learnt from this competition? Respect green more, disrespect blue more and don't use a out of 8 rating system. It's slightly less accurate.

Thank you guys for entering and Thank you Kate for letting me hold this week. After this week we’re going back to the usual with Kate as the host ^~^

And the next weeks prompt will be...

MAKE IT COLD~~ Make a cool card that cares about snow permanents  😎

I do not regret that pun <3