#Brothers' War

[bace-jeleren]

Oh my god, it's Ashnod of "forcing you to get your homie a drink" fame

[5ecardaday]

Artifact Rumble– The Brothers’ War

If you’d like to see more content like this a week early; vote in polls to determine what I make next; and get exclusive access to d100 tables, subclasses, NPC factions, and more, feel free to sign up and support me on Patr*on! (You can find the link at the top of my page.)

Some older content, this released about 2 weeks ago for my supporters, but I try not to make my newest stuff public until I’ve got new content ready to share there. This was the result of my monthly Artifact Rumble poll, a themed poll for magic items and constructs; sometimes it’s Magic: the Gathering based, but I also regularly do magic items inspired by things like DMC, GoW, Fable, Elder Scrolls, and more.

[niuttuc]

Among the myriad of cards that release nowadays in various places, it’s easy to forget some. So let’s go back and catch up on some of those occasionally, starting with this gem from the Brothers’ War commander precons.

You’d be forgiven for having skipped over this one, it looks like a mana rock that costs FOUR. In practice though, it’s much, much better than that. It gets the best ability of any creature from any player on the battlefield, and unlike a Cursed Mirror, it keeps them forever while also ramping you. But it’s even better than even that, it also stays a noncreature, and while artifacts are more removeable than enchantments, that means you get the best ability of any creature on the board, permanently, that dodges board wipes. And also some blue mana. It can even copy your opponents’ commanders, though I would avoid copying your own since it would copy the name and legendary supertype and legend rule yourself.

This card currently retails for around a dollar and less than that in its extended, new border form. I would probably think about including this in any blue deck, whether it wants clones or not, maybe even over (but more likely alongside) something like Midnight Clock. Try it, outside of cEDH, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

[cardboard-crack]

[edspear]

A few more witchlight trinkets in that Souls-inspired style from Decima's adventures in the feywild.

Current goings on, solved a pop up book murder mystery and consequently did some time travel. Weird.

Pretending to be an "Emissary from Jin" whomever that is.

Decima is good at the Hurdy Gurdy.

Used rage to churn butter.

There are a few more but I'm spacing them out while I settle into new job, and deal with the aforementioned trinket file being corrupted. If I can manage to fix it I'll make even more. Though i worry I'll have to either stop or remake/cobble together a template if I can't fix it.

[neon-dynasty]

One more time

MELDED PLANESWALKER

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Urza, Lord High Artificer (Profile Ver) by Grant Griffin

[littjara-compleated-sage]

Mother Fucking Urza Planeswalker

URZA PLANESWALKER? STUPID IDIOT MOTHERFUCKING URZA PLANESWALKER GOD DAMN FOOL ARTIFACT COLLECTING DUST EATING RAT OLD BASTARD SHITHEAD IDIOT GARBAGE BOY WITH SIBLING ISSUES LAUGHED OUT OF DOMINARIA MAIDENLESS MOTHERFUCKING URZA PLANESWALKER

STOP PINNING ME WHEN I TALK ABOUT URZA PLANESWALKER I HATE HIM SO MUCH WHY DOES HE HAVE SO MANY FUCKED UP ARTIFACTS WHY DID HE DECIDE TO FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT JUST SET THEM LOOSE IS HE DEAD IS HE A BASTARD

MAN HAS SUCH A VISCERAL AFFECT ON ME NOT EVEN IN THE ROOM NEVER SEEN THIS MANS FACE AND I KNOW HE HAS THE WORLDS SHITTIEST BEARD GET AWAY FROM ME

if i wanted to get into heaven and yawgmoth said urza planeswalkers waiting inside i would piss on yawgmoths feet for the sole purpose of getting sent back down

if i have to deal with urza planeswalker speaking one word in person on voice in arena not only will i close the game i will delete the app out of spite and have to reread the entire 30 years of magic story again for the experience of being able to skip all the times when he is mentioned or alive

i dont even know why i hate him so much. he commits war crimes but i am just mad because i am angy

he better have some fucked up backstory to explain this if hes just some rich shithead whos a fan of creepypasta and wanted the irl version ill go ham

BETTER have had an artifact make him kill a man cuz if he didnt Im going to make him

paypal.com/IFuckingHateUrzaPlaneswalker

 episodes not even about him. vaguely mentioned what is supposed to maybe be his secret demiplane and i lost it

where the fuck is urza planeswalker if hes still alive im going to so deeply wish he wasnt crusty old man ill punch urza and his sad frail old man twig bones will simply flake apart under my epic huge phyrexian fist and he will disintegrate until all thats left is one final nuke he kept on him at all times simply labeled Now You Fucked Up in ancient thran

im not breathing im hyperventilating at this point

i hope theres a date given for when urza died or will die so i can make it a reminder on my phone

every day once a year i will see it and do anything but pay respects to the man who did so many fucked up if true war crimes

[incorrect-mtg-theories]

Converted Mana Cost was changed to Mana Value in anticipation of the release of the Transformers cards, whose reminder text for More Than Meets The Eye needs to refer to a cost to cast them converted, and to avoid any confusion between mana costs of converted cards and converted mana costs. Since they already had too much text, the only solution they found was to change the magic terminology.

[reuxben]

Here’s our MTGinktober for “Snack,” starring Sarulf, Realm Eater; Mishra, Excavation Prodigy; Urza, Powerstone Prodigy; Saheeli, Sublime Artificer; and Silver Myr! Definitely miss those old, late-night study breaks.

Click this post’s Source link for this piece’s Making-Of.

More MTGinktober here.

Daily art updates on Instagram and Twitter.

Reuxben

[veloelo]

This is all I’m going to be talking about for a month

[bace-jeleren]

*Sees Saheeli is going to be in Brothers' War*

*panics in Bury Your Gays*

[jaebird88]

Also pulled a foil Soundwave from the same pack. Which is great since I had previously obtained both Ravage and Laserbeak tokens.

[niuttuc]

Today’s recent budget commander sleeper is one that made a bit of noise on release with the latest set precons, but ended up drowned in the constant noise of magic these days.

Ramp is good in commander. That’s not news. And it’s hard to come by in white, at least cheaply. Knight of the White Orchid is still the gold standard of white (catch up) ramp, able to fetch nonbasics, and coming on a solid body on turn 2, it’s a white Rampant Growth that sometimes doesn’t work.

This is similar. It’s a turn slower, because it has a tap ability, the land enters tapped and the body it’ll leave behind will end up being a 1/1. However, that’s where the downsides end and the upsides start. Just like Knight of the White Orchid, it can fetch nonbasic Plains, which is even important on a budget nowadays with the two cycles of common typed duals in Kaldheim and Dominaria United.

Scholar of New Horizons also works even if you’re not behind. Granted, it only tutors to hand and doesn’t ramp you then, but hitting every land drop is oftentimes more important than ramping, since you don’t have to spend resources on it. It can also be used cheekily with this with the cycling typed duals (and triomes) to draw a different card. Oh, and the ability can be activated at instant speed which most of the time won’t matter, but will be very appreciated when it comes up that you’re going first and an opponent ramped on turn 3 and suddenly unlocks your own ramp instead of the land draw you’d resigned yourself to.

Beyond that, Scholar, by itself, can be used multiple times for no extra cost, as long as you have counters in your deck, which most decks do, even if incidentally. Have a cathar’s crusade? A Felidar retreat? A luminarch ascension? You’ll have a plentiful supply of counters to feed this turn after turn then, and those are just for mono-white.

In some cases, removing counters might even be an upside, if you expect -1/-1 counters, or, much more importantly, have any saga in your deck. Having the scholar out with the saga allow you to not only keep ramping or making your land drops and keep the saga forever, it also allows you to repeat any chapter from that saga every turn, even the last one should you so wish. It gets absurd with many of them, from Urza’s Saga tutoring every turn and sticking around to the Cruelty of Gix being a free tutor or reanimation every turn. With a Luminous Broodmoth, it’ll make any creature be able to die every single turn and come back.

Don’t get me wrong, this card doesn’t NEED synergies to be good. I’d play it in any white deck as ramp even if no other card in the deck ever had counters, right behind Knight of the White Orchid and in front of Loyal Warhound. On a budget or not. But it does much more than it would in a vacuum, and basically any deck will have some tools to synergize with it. It might actively up the number of incidental sagas I include in white decks just by existing. (But I’m mostly looking for an excuse, I love sagas.)

The card currently retails for under $1 (with the extended art version where you can read the name and artist for half of that), and I’d encourage you to snag one as soon as you find the occasion, in case this doesn’t get reprinted. It’s just staple-level good, much more than any other card that has been featured on here so far.

[cardboard-crack]

[loreholdlesbian]

Brothers’ War Draft Booster Challenge

Every set, I like to make a booster pack of custom cards that fit the design of that set. I try to be as innovative as I can, but my primary goals with this project are to make realistic, printable, and fun designs that fit within the structure of the set, and it’s difficult to be all that innovative with a set of mostly commons and also while staying true to how mechanics were used within the set. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

Rare

Ayd, Marshal of Production 1WU

Legendary Creature- Human Soldier

If you would create one or more artifact tokens, create twice that many tokens instead.

5: Create a tapped 1/1 colorless Soldier artifact creature token.

2/3

Here’s an old design I liked quite a bit that I adapted to the set. The second ability ups the floor by allowing this card, by itself, to make artifact tokens that it can double, but this card also doubles powerstone tokens and this rewards you for doing so by giving you an outlet for their mana.

Uncommons

Power Plating 3

Artifact- Equipment

Equipped permanent has base power and toughness 5/5 and is a Soldier artifact creature in addition to its other types.

Equip 3

Equip artifact 2U

Here’s a card in the legacy of Luxior. All the “colored” artifacts in this set are designed so that they have some kind of use outside of that color (being a creature, if nothing else), so I chose to make the normal equip cost colorless and only the animating cost require blue.

Conflict’s Genesis 4RR

Sorcery

Two target creatures fight. When either of those creatures die this turn, create a tapped Powerstone token.

I wanted to call this Sibling Rivalry, but a different card in the set already took that name. I like this card for it better though. I know neither Urza or Mishra died in that fight, but I think that was just mechanically better, and i think otherwise this is a great representation of the story. Two creatures on the same side fight, and two powerstones come out of it.

Steel Spinner 2

Artifact Creature- Spider

Reach

2G, T: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. Activate only as a sorcery.

U: Untap ~.

1/3

The set has lots of colorless artifacts with colored abilities, and I thought it would be neat to have a cycle of cards with two different colors of activation, so that it can go in either deck but is best in one with both. I’m particularly happy with this design and how the untap effect combines with a tap ability, and then this also serves as a mana sink for GU’s manaramp archetype. I added the reach to make the untap effect a bit more useful on its own.

Commons

Crystalized Prison 1W

Enchantment- Aura

Enchant artifact, creature, or planeswalker

Enchanted permanent is a Powerstone artifact with “T: Add C. This mana can’t be spent to cast a nonartifact spell,” and “6: Destroy Crystalized Prison” and loses all other types and abilities.

Here’s a weird pacifism variant. Since it turns something into a powerstone, I wanted to make sure they had something to spend that mana on, and I liked the gameplay of the expensive way to get rid of the enchantment. It let me cost this a little more aggressively.

Ruin Scrounger 2

Artifact Creature- Fox

Whenever a permanent enters the battlefield from a graveyard, surveil 1.

Unearth 1W

2/1

Here’s a common payoff for the RW unearth deck. Surveil in white may seem a bit odd, but I basically see surveil as useable anywhere scry would be, and this would absolutely be fine to scry, plus white even got a minor bit of self-milling so clearly this kind of thing is a bend they’re willing to make. I wanted surveil over scry for the unearth synergy, though I don’t love the amount of room it makes all the reminder text take up, and I can’t really skip out on a common. I think this’ll play great though.

Fluid Metamorph 5

Artifact Creature- Shapeshifter

Prototype 1/3 1U

1: ~ gets +1/-1 until end of turn.

3/5

This card was made because I had a) no prototype designs and b) no blue commons, so I tried to make a card that filled both holes. Technically, the common prototypes all came in a cycle so this breaks that pattern but. Eh. I might have done a bit more with prototype, it’s a neat mechanic, but I didn’t have a prototype frame and that annoys me.

Microtog 1B

Creature- Atog

1, Sacrifice another creature or artifact with mana value 3 or less: ~ gets +2/+2 until end of turn.

1/2

The first atog card was in antiquities, and it has been wayyy too long since we’ve gotten an atog so I thought making one would be a fun throwback. I took a look at set themes, and thought about what kind of atog I could make that hadn’t been done, and this is what I came up with, tying into the WB theme of caring about cheap stuff and of course, the RB sacrifice theme.

Fleshscrap Scavenger 4

Artifact Creature- Phyrexian

When ~ enters the battlefield, mill three cards.

Unearth 6B. This ability costs 1 less to cast for each other creature card in your graveyard.

3/3

Something I wanted to do with unearth was try out variable costs, and this was one of the simplest ways to do it, especially since other cards in the set care about the same thing. This might need a second black mana pip but I think ultimately, 1 mana for a very temporary 3/3 and milling three cards with a lot of setup is probably fine.

Intelligence Poacher 1R

Creature- Human Soldier

Menace

Prowess

Whenever ~ deals 2 or more combat damage to a player, scry 2.

1/3

Here’s a design I’m quite proud of, in terms of innovation at common. Having a threshold for the damage it needs to deal in order to trigger means you need to cast a spell to trigger prowess, or have some other means of boosting the power. I think it’s a really cool way of caring about noncreature spells on a prowess creature, by tying it to the prowess.

Traitor’s Banner 1

Artifact- Equipment

When ~ enters the battlefield, you may pay 2R. When you do, gain control of target creature until end of turn. Untap it and attach ~ to it.

Equipped creature has haste.

Equip 1

This is another design I’m quite proud of, I like how the base effect of the equipment ties in with the kickeresque effect, since that effect needs haste to work. I’m really happy about this as a common, and how viable it is in either mode.

Power Surge 2G

Instant

Choose target creature you control. Create a tapped Powerstone token. That creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact that entered the battlefield under your control this turn and gains trample until end of turn.

Really not much to say here. There’s a GW theme of caring about artifacts entering the battlefield, and this plays into that and uses a Powerstone token to give it a base use case and the trample helps with that too.

Mishra’s Panther 3

Artifact Creature- Cat

When ~ enters the battlefield, you gain 3 life if mana produced by an artifact was spent to cast it.

3/2

I’ve always liked cards that care about artifact mana, I made a similar one in my booster for MH2, and with powerstones all over the place I wanted to revisit that here. Originally this scaled with each mana spent to cast it from an artifact, but I decided to make it a flat on/off instead for the sake of simplicity and being more usable in general decks, especially since “artifact mana” isn’t really a theme other commons care about.

Archive

Sigiled Wheel X2

Artifact [rare]

~ enters the battlefield with X charge counters on it.

Creatures you control have protection from the mana value equal to the number of charge counters on ~.

2, T: Add or remove a charge counter from ~.

Reprint slots are always hard for a project like this, since I have to make a new card. The conclusion I came to was to create a card that doesn’t feel like it would have been created for this set, and that fits in with the other reprints. One of the best ways to do this is to use a mechanic that isn’t really used in the set. Here I made a card that would have felt right at home in mirrodin block, but this set isn’t really doing much with charge counters, so it doesn’t quite fit in with what this set is doing, making it perfect for the reprint slot. I went with the mystical archive frame cause I didn’t have the old frame available.