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#that one was Commentary but an instant classic. anyways i mean i was reminded of such truly classic & ye olde Posts while watching
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just finished lotr (films) & throughout i was thinking about all the wealth of posts i’ve seen. remember the one like “going to a place called cirith ungol was just them like ‘spider pass? watch out b/c rumor has it there’s something scary there’” & then i think of a tweet i saw just the other day like “dickpilled i logged in today to defend a lotr plot hole” like yeah you know what. everyone was just assuming it was figurative language
#i also want to know what plot hole. unless it was the The Eagles thing. but in 2021?? yet also ppl are still like. ranking the fellowship so#that's analysis babes...but truly sometimes Posts are as good or better Analysis(tm) than a serious lengthy essay...dobbo. i cant cope??#that one was Commentary but an instant classic. anyways i mean i was reminded of such truly classic & ye olde Posts while watching#but also that i've been seeing Fresh Lotr Posts fairly regularly for like years. a rich vein of media...like w/o looking for any i've seen#a solid handful of related tweets in the past month or 2...production lore...illustrations...humorous references / analysis....#funny Semi Serious Analysis as well like ''cirith ungol would just mean Pass Of The Spider and not even in any obscure language'' like yeah#plus the bonus that frodo is fluent in sindarin...doesn't quite come up in the movies and maybe contradicted by that fotr bit like asking#What's The Elvish Word For Friend...he was just letting gandalf help / pretending he'd only just now figured it out. imagine lol#anyways and other humorous but earnest enough observations like saruman being known for his strong anti weed stance. straightedge#or ''can't stop thinking about the 'meat's back on the menu' line like do they have restaurants in isengard?? what's going on there''#then saw some completely earnest Literary Analysis post a while back like oh i didn't really think about this b/c things simply do not occur#to me but So True how gandalf & pippin spend a good amt of rotk hanging out for a reason in that gandalf's going ''oh right i guess we're#kind of similar'' like Same Name wanderer / pilgrim thing...a fool's hope...being a little chaotic & dealing w/frivolous things...wild card#then also to get back around to cirith ungol 1 of my fave They Definitely Added This movie exclusives is the one like 30 sec scene#where we get galadriel and frodo interacting again tbt lothlorien....could juxtapose the characters as well but really the tl;dr of it is#i enjoy both and it is a delight to me and also ;m; b/c of course...also seeing the extended edition stuff was a journey like Ah...material#going <_< at that mount doom bit about The Star and the Light like. i vaaaguely remember that maybe being a specific moment from The Book#as many of the added scenes were...but then i was like am i just going ham now or are we vaguely invoking that other wild book scene#the He's Like That Sometimes A Light Shines Through But I Love Him Whether Or No....can't say it Wasn't#anyways i can go on and on abt [film] or [book] b/c natch. holding it back in the tags here lmao but what Form can it ever really take excpt#real time endless comments abt Whatever All...everyone is safe as we're clearly not having an irl All 3 Films Marathon Watchalong so.#to just throw out another couple random notes. watching it for the first time in like 6 yrs having a great time towards the end of fotr#where boromir starts monologuing at frodo who is simply warily considering this like King Of Just Not Saying Anything honestly lmfao#role model. this after an instance of my own [i simply do not answer] in the face of what Tf are you talking abt / is the intention here lol#anyways that was fun. an icon....but it wasn't b/c that whole ending re boromir is sad and makes me cry :'/#pros and cons....great moment in ''just don't say anything until the other person clarifies their point'' representation...bummer scene/s...#and one of like a half dozen scenes of having Wariness conveyed by elijah wouldn't going >_> at someone specifically lmfao#or sort of wanguish (wary anguish?) well you know what i mean. all those scenes. and they were right to keep including it#well anyway's it's 7:30a (': better just determinedly lie down...good Streaming Hours don't hit until around 1am or later :/#couldn't fire up a film before that smh. rip to not having physical media onhand...rev up those dvds i'm [impromptu lotr marathons]
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inventors-fair · 3 years
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First Name, Last Name, Occupation Commentary
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You guys really swung for the fences for this one. I was inspired to run this by fun little cards like Cat Warriors, Goblin Assassin, and Dragon Turtle. Cards that do one type by way of another. You guys, for the most part, tried to get as weird as possible, more akin to Urza’s Saga. I purposefully left it open ended to allow non-creatures, but I did not expect about half the cards to be a type other than creature. Some people in the Discord tried to break the rules even more than that. Personally, I wish there were more simple creatures, but I’m happy with what I got.
So without further ado, here’s the commentary! They’re alphabetical by submitter’s tumblr name or preferred credit.
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@alextfish​ - Fractal Fish
Holy moly that’s some fish, visually and mechanically. So let me try to parse this: the first time, you attack, get two fish, then next time you turn those two fish (which hopefully also got in for damage) into two counters. So every other turn it doubles the number of counters, assuming you get in with it every time. At a minimum, it’s a little Tana/Living Hive that can’t be used moe than once. It feels weird for this effect to be in blue, though I get why from a flavor perspective. This does feel like a fish, though, and it definitely feels like a fractal. This card feels top down, which is fine, but I’m just not super into it. It feels unnecessarily complex for an effect that you probably only want to trigger once, maybe twice. I still think it’s really cool.
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Allie - Urza’s Treasure
It’s a bit of a stretch to have a land named “Urza’s Treasure” but it’s less of a stretch than urza’s saga, so you’re good. The idea of a treasure land in general is cool to me: it’s worse than Tendo Ice Bridge and Aether Hub, but the artifact synergy is notable. Then we get to the last ability: this card is a mox opal. Or maybe a glimmer void? There are a lot of comparisons, but I don’t know which is the most appropriate. A land that effectively doesn’t tap for mana unless you have metalcraft seems awful, but I’ve seen enough affinity to know that that won’t slow it down a bit. So this is essentially a card that’s only good for broken decks, and honestly, I don’t think they need the help. I think the fact that it’s so all or nothing is a bit of a deal breaker. Every part of this card is either massive downside, massive upside, or both. You could argue that makes it balanced, but I’d argue it just makes it broken. I also wish the “Urza’s” part of the typeline played into it more, but I realize the type doesn’t have much of a mechanical throughline.
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@arixordragc​ - Warrior Dragon
Ooh, a bold choice. Dragon Warrior and Warrior Dragon send two completely different feels, and this one is definitely the cooler one. Six mana 6/6 flyer is a good rate, but not so good it doesn’t get good abilities. The abilities it gets are a ghostly prison and two circle of flames. I really like how they both have a similar feels: 2 damage and two mana. However, I think the two abilities are att odds. If you need one, you probably don’t need the other. If your opponent has a lot of 1/1 or 2/2 creatures, they won’t be able to pay 2 for each them, and if they do, they’d just die. The damage does have a little bit of meaning, though, because if they attack with a big creature you don’t have to deals as much damage to it. I also just would have expected a warrior dragon to be more offensive than defensive. This feels more like a guard or defender rather than a warrior. So it might be better to have one be offense and one be defensive. Perhaps one ability could affect blockers and one attackers? This is a good card, and a cool set of effects, I just think it needs to work on multiple angles. I also think this could be a rare: it’s not so powerful you wouldn’t want it appearing more often in packs, and it’s not too complex.
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@bread-into-toast​ - Zombie Mole
I like the flavor of a zombie mole, since it’s already in the dirt. I do think this sounds better than your original entry, Graveborn Mole, but I think the old one told a more complete story. The card itself is pretty neat, it’s a classic red black aggro card with a big body and a risk payoff. There’s some stuff I don’t like about it. First, sacrificing a land is one of those things that players don’t realize how bad it is for you, so this could lead to a lot of players screwing themselves over, especially if it’s as uncommon. Second, the fact that it can be recast with it’s own trigger, such as when you attack, sac a land, let it die, and then get it back because you had a land die is a bit too synergistic, especially because it gets him back untapped. This means that you have a 5/5 on turn two that if you somehow get to kill by blocking they can just pay two to save and untap it. Again, at uncommon, this is very strong, even if the downside is also very strong. The design as a whole is pretty cool, but I think it’s going to lead to a lot of unhappy players on one or both sides of the field. As a final note, I really liked that you put some art direction in the submission (for those at home, it said “Mood: a giant undead mole attacks, startling the giant (living) moles and miners around it”). It’s a cool way to get a lot of the benefits of art without having to make your own or go hunting.
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@charmera​ - Giant Golem Knight
I think the name here is pretty close. It feels a little awkward to say, but I’ve seen worse. The card is a little weak and a little poorly templated, but nothing that can’t be fixed. For the templating issue, I think telling a player they can’t do something then telling them they can in a different place doesn’t work. Cards like Manor Gargoyle that do this just remove Defender. Since this also says can’t block, though, you’d need something different. I might suggest just changing it to “~ can’t attack or block unless you sacrificed an artifact this turn.” It would power it up just a little in the process, but I think that’s called for. A 6 mana 6/7 is not really above the curve, and the activated ability is hard enough to activate that it doesn’t really pump up the power level of the card as a whole. Vigilance also seems weird on a card that needs to pay to both attack and block.  I could see a specific format being able to break this card, but as something you’d see in a core set, it would need a lot of support to see play. I really like the design and concept, it just needs to be rebalanced a bit.
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@col-seaker-of-the-memiest-legion​ - Arcane Trap
So, this one is interesting to me. The base rate on this card is good. Glimmer of Genius and Glimpse the multiverse are both super playable and both have a little something extra. In this case, the little something extra is the trap text, and the idea of repeating this card with arcane spells is pretty enticing for the decks that would play it. But there’s something missing here: the trap text doesn’t feel trappy. It’s a bonus, sure, but if you look at all of the existing traps in the game, the difference between hard casting and trap casting is usually massive, sometimes the entire cost! This instead reminds me more of “gotcha!” from unhinged, where the punishment for a player doing something is that you get a card back from your graveyard. It also doesn’t feel very trap-like because it doesn’t punish a player doing the trap-thing. Usually if an opponent is drawing cards it’s a good idea to out-draw them, and splicing helps with that, but it’s not like this is the “ha, you fool!” card that most traps are. It’s just a little bonus. Like when your opponent adds to your storm count. Functionally, I think this card is cool and feels unique, but doesn’t quite feel like it’s representing its types well. Also, nice job giving trap card art to a trap card.
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@davriel-canes-tea-supplier​ - Hellion Demon
You did this for the pun and you know it. Demon straight out of hell...ion. I’d love to see what this guy would end up looking like (not gonna dock points for that or anything, just on my mind). So first, the templating. You don’t need to tell them to sacrifice a totla of X, since X is undefined at that point. You can just say “you may sacrifice any number of creatures. If you do, ~ gets +X/+X until end of turn and deals X damage to target creature you don’t control, where X is the total power of creatures sacrificed this way.” I also might suggest swapping it to a reflexive trigger, AKA swapping “if you do” with “when you do,” which means your opponent will be able to respond after knowing what you sacrificed. Right now, you could target one of their creatures on attacking, then they wouldn’t know what you’re sacing to do it until after they decide if they want to protect their creature. Then again, maybe that’s for the best, since it would also mean if they bounce their own creature in response, you don’t have to sacrifice anything because it wouldn’t do anything. And actually the trigger would be stifled anyway because it has no targets, which is awkward if you were planning to just use it as a pump. What I’m trying to say is that this card has an incredibly complex trigger with a lot of pieces going on. I think it might be worth it, though, because this is a cool effect. A mix between a fling and a nantuko shade effect. It’s a really cool concept, but it’s doing so much that it doesn’t do a great job at mimicking either, and in the end I just wish it had two different abilities that were linked or something easier to parse.
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@Deg99 - Instant Trap
Okay, this is a silly card, and I’ll judge it as such. The blue = water is flavorfully pretty fun and funny, but color hate is always going to perform a little weird. But traps are famous for that! Usually, though, traps care about colors if they are built to be good against that color, and in this case, maybe? I don’t know if casting a free trap is particularly good against blue, so I’m firmly putting the trap text in trinket text land. The card itself does exactly what you’d expect. It tutors and plays a trap. Instantly. None of the traps in the game are super powerful, so you’re kind of avoiding the usual tutor issue of always searching for the same card / having exactly one tutor target that’s good. This is especially cool because the traps are by design extremely situational, so having this as a toolbox option is actually kind of useful. I think you’d usually end up getting needlebite trap, lavaball trap, or maybe mindbreak trap because it would be good in the matchup anyway. As a whole, this card is both kind of silly and kind of cool. I like it, but I wish there was some way to make this more interesting.
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@demimonde-semigoddess​ - Droning Licid
Wait a second, did you just make licids make sense? Putting bestow on a licid makes it feel just like a licid. Turning drone into droning is pretty clever, though you got the types backwards on the typeline. Granting abilities not on the normal creature is something we saw just the barest amount of bestow cards back in OG Theros block. The eldraziness of it I wish was more relevant. I love the idea of using colorless as the alternate cost, since colorless is sort of treated like a bonus, not a given, especially in limited. But the two abilities need keywords. I played that block a lot, and even I kind of forgot what they did. It’s also weird that it grants devoid, but doesn’t have it itself. You could have even given it a colorless mana cost, since nothing it does is particularly black. Every ability on the card was in every color (yes, even devoid, you know what I mean). If this was a purely colorless card it’d be cool, but it’s fine in black. This card has a lot of things meant to make other things easier (enchantments for constellation, devoid for colorless matters, ingest for processing, bestow for heroic), so I’m super curious what set this would go in! But in a normal set, this is just a really weird card. I still think it’s neat, and again I’ll reiterate I’m happy you made a sensible licid, I’m just a little confused by its existence.
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@dimestoretajic​ - Hag Fish
A hag fish is a real thing, and a hag that is a fish is what we have here. This card seems pretty powerful. It’s somewhere between a thallid and a tendershoot dryad and an ant queen. I wish the slime counters had some other use, like granting hexproof or unblockable or something. It would up the power level, which I don’t think this card needs, but it would make it feel more like it was slime on her rather than slime coming off of here. On a grander design level, I think this card requires a lot of paying attention for very little benefit. You get slime counters quickly enough you’ll rarely run out of them, but you will just often enough that you do. The tokens have evolve, which is a hard trigger to remember some times, especially on tokens that you might not have printed versions of. Plus, putting dice on tokens is also hard, since some players use dice for tokens. So while the card’s flavor and concept is pretty cool, I think it’s too complex for how simple it wants to be.
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@fractured-infinity​ - Treasure Goblin
I’ve been told this is a reference, but sadly I don’t get it. Instead, I get golden goblins. The fail state on this card is still pretty good. A 2/1 haste for two mana ain’t nothing! And just using it as a bad skirk prospector can be useful too. I like the utility of it, too, in that once you are unable to attack with it as a 2/1, you can sacrifice it for mana to power out a flying dragon or something. This card isn’t super exciting, but it certainly gets the job done.
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@gollumni​ - Gold Drake
Gold: the long lost parent of treasure. I didn’t even know that it had been errata'd to be its own artifact type. Anyway, the card itself is a reference to gilded drake. It even got hit by the card Gild! However, gilded drake is a super broken card! This is worse in the sense that it costs one extra mana and you ramp your opponent, but the artifact typing makes it easier to tutor and cheat into play, or to kill. Also, the way the last ability is phrased, I think you can sacrifice it to the gold ability and still get your opponent’s creature. If it said “exchange,” it wouldn’t, because exchanging needs both things in play. So this is a three mana permanent control magic that gives you one mana back immediately. I don’t think that was the intent.
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@grornt​ - Skeleton Samurai
Now that is a skeleton samurai! It reanimates itself like a skeleton, it bushidos like a samurai. Three mana feels pretty good for it, since it fights as a 4/3. Now, normally, skeletons enter the battlefield tapped, but I understand not wanting to do that here. After all, it’s got bushido, blocking is a huge part of that! But the reason cards like this enter tapped is to stop you from blocking with it every turn and stonewalling your opponent. But how often is that? Well, this is where it gets tricky. Depending on the standard format, losing life on your own turn is either something you have to build around or effortless. In formats with shocklands, painlands, fetchlands, or even a single mana confluence, you’ll be casting this essentially for free. So assuming it’s in something like current standard, where it’s a little tough, maybe this guy is okay. I just worry about a 4/3 blocker that can’t be easily killed. But I guess that’s why you put it at rare, which was a good choice, but I think almost every player would be disappointed to find this creature as their rare. I do love the name and effects of this card as a pair, but I think it could lead to frustrating games.
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@helloijustreadyourpost​ - Phyrexian Druid
This card has a lot of style and flair, but I’m a little cautious of it. A good comparison point for this card is Oasis Ritualist. Both can tap for one mana or two mana but at a higher cost. The mana cost and body are an important difference, and I think might balance each other out, as well as the fact that the phyrexian can only tap for green or green black. I do like that it implies that the set leans black, which feels right for return to new phyrexia. I’m having a little bit of difficulty judging power level: the life payment doesn’t really power down the card that much, but we’ve seen double ramp at 3 mana before, albeit never this versatile or at common. Still, maybe it’s fine in 2021 magic? After all, this is new phyrexia we’re talking about. Speaking of, I like how the life payment mimics phyrexian mana, and specifically phyrexian black mana. That’s a cool bonus for experienced players. I think this is a very well designed card, but I’d be very scared to print it unless I was certain there weren’t any green 6 drops at common that would be oppressive to the format when played on turn 3.
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@hypexion​ - Skeleton Knight
Undead in white are something I wish we’d see more of. The idea of duty extending beyond life feels super white, but is only ever represented in spirits. But here we have a skeleton! I like the base body, and it does feel pretty skeletonny, though the knight aspect is a little weak. Vigilance is cool but at 1 toughness I don’t know how often it will be able to attack and still block. The reanimation clause is also a little funky, since it returns it to play on attacks, but doesn’t put it into play attacking as I’d expect. It’s also odd that it comes back tapped, though for gameplay reasons I understand. You don’t want to give players a creature that can block for free every turn. Templating-wise, I should also bring up that there needs to be and “if ~ is in your graveyard” between the words “knights” and “you may.” I’m using cards like Auntie’s Snitch and Master of Death for reference there. My final thoughts on the card is that it’s fine, but the two types don’t mesh as well together as I had hoped.
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@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes​ - Spirit Shade
What a strange little creature. Shades are weird, because their signature ability is incredibly powerful and they need a pretty big downside to make them balanced. In your case, tying them to swamps is pretty clever! They already like swamps because of their heavy black costs, so this is a cool way to reinforce that. I still think this is pretty aggressive for a common, but I might be being a little too cautious. My bigger complaint is how awkwardly the sludge counters feel. This is a creature who’s already going to be tough to track since it’s constantly changing P/T, so having counters on it that change a bunch is a lot of complexity, especially at common. If there were also +1/+1 counters in this set, this card would be impossible to track in paper. I also think I would have preferred the name the other way around, but I’ll admit that’s a preference. I like this card in general, but I wish it were more player-friendly.
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@loreholdlesbian​ - Sand Elemental
Sand is a creature type not a lot of people expected, but I have a friend with a Hazezon Tamar deck so I knew. It’s a really clever answer to the prompt, especially since you’re using the word “sand” as an adjective, but it is still also made out of sand! A colorless 3 mana 3/2 is good power level for a common I think, and the ability on it is tough enough to make work that it doesn’t push the card too hard. The fact that it’s asking you to pay 7 mana also means that, so long as you have at least a few deserts in your deck, you’re probably going to have one in play or in your graveyard. The graveyard clause fits the theme of other desert cards, but I don’t know if you’d need in a theoretical future set with deserts. Their inclusion in Amonkhet block was mostly so players wouldn’t feel bad for cycling their deserts in the early game. But hey, maybe that’s just what deserts are now! So as a whole I think this card is pretty well designed, if a bit bland, but it works well with the theme of the week and possibly the set it's in. Good work!
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@morbidlyqueerious​ - Nightmare Spider
This card has a lot going on. The name feels okay. It’s a little odd, but it works in context. The ability feels creepy and scary, which is both a nightmare thing and a spider thing, but a spider without reach will always feel strange. As the for the ability, it needs a little work. There’s some strangeness with the revealing. It only really matters during a multiplayer game, otherwise just revealing every draw would be simpler and save some text, which I think this card needs. Second is the split payment: you lose 1 life, but you also pay two mana. One is optional, one isn’t, and one is 1 and one is 2. I could see this getting confusing to players. I could see swapping some things around to either make them all optional, all life, and/or all 2’s. Lastly, and this is the important one, this card isn’t fun. WotC is pretty solid on not wanting fateseal effects in the game. It makes what is already a frustrating part of the game (the variance of topdecking) into a more frustrating part. Because of the mana payment, is also means that both players will probably end up doing nothing on their turn. The fact that it can’t hit lands is actually kind of odd. Often that’s what you’ll be doing with this card anyway: forcing them to draw lands. I also sort of wish you would have swapped the P/T. I know spiders usually have higher toughnesses, but I’d like this card if it were easily killable but would end the game quickly if it really did take control of the game. Plus, the fact that you keep losing life regardless of if you pay the two means this kind of has a downside that would be more fitting on an aggro card. So while I think it fits the theme of the contest pretty well, and flavorfully it feels very nightmarish and spidery, I worry that it’s too complex and could lead to frustrating games.
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@nicolbolas96​ - Urza’s Fortification
This is… a weird one. So, you have made a land that can attach to other lands. I would be much more okay with that if it couldn’t still tap for mana. As is, it performs more like soulbond, since both things can still do the same stuff, they just get a little better. I’d also like it to turn off the original because the ability it’s granting is bonkers. Paying three mana to turn a land into a tolarian academy is an incredibly low cost. The land itself being an artifact also means you don’t even get the normal downside of tolarian academy not tapping for anything if you don’t have another artifact. You can even attach it to a land, tap that land for mana, then use some of that mana to tap another land. This means once you have four other artifacts, each of your lands tap for two mana or more. Being legendary and coming into play tapped isn’t enough of a downside for that. This would be strong even in a modern horizons set. I will say this: I do love the flavor. This really feels like an Urza’s land, which is not easy to do. The idea of a land that moves to other lands and is also a machine somehow feels cool and flavorful, too.
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@nine-effing-hells​ - Constructed Cleric
Remember when they printed an artifact cleric in Guild of Ravnica and no one knows why? Well, here’s a robot cleric that feels more clericy. The name is a great fit, and I love the flavor of it. The twobrid mana symbols are a cool way to make it feel more artifacty, but I think they weren’t particularly necessary. No one is going to play this in a colorless deck, and splashing for it doesn’t seem worth the effort. The difference between 4 and 8 mana for the activated ability is huge. So yes, I think this card would see play almost exclusively in mono-white decks. And how is it there? Pretty good! Granting lifelink to your whole board every turn is very powerful, it makes it nearly impossible to race, but you do need at least a bit of a board. I think this is a solic card in a lot of decks, pretty well balanced, so far as I can tell, and the only real issue I have with it is how weird the twobrid is in it.
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@pocketvikings​ - Hamster Advisor
What a pleasant little fellow. Not something I’d normally expect to see in MtG, but I’ll let it slide. I wish there were some flavor text explaining what he’s advising me on. Is he just telling me not to eat my food? So this card is very similar to the card Tajurur Preserver, what with being two green and preventing sac effects (primarily a counter to annihilator), but this guy has the upside of making a food but the downside of turning off your own food. I might suggest using that card’s templating or Angel of Jubilation’s templating. Maybe “You can’t sacrifice permanents or discard cards to activate abilities,” then on another ability the text from Tajurur preserver but with discard added on. It seems strange to see this card at uncommon, since it feels mostly like it’s protecting you from very specific effects that may or may not be in the format. It’s actually a pretty big downside in some decks, like turning off fetchlands, and of course if you’re playing this in a food deck you won’t want in play for long. That’s cool, and we’ve seen that on some black cards like Priest of the Blood Rite. I think this card feels out of place in a lot of formats and a lot of decks in particular, but I’m interested in the implications of it.
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@partly-cloudy-partly-fuckoff - Aetherborn Angel
This is one I didn’t see coming, but not in abad way. This feels like a natural name, and immediately conjures an image in my mind. The fact that both angels and aetherborn are sort of non-natural creatures makes he combination feel fitting, but them being opposites of the color pie and origin intrigues me. The card? It feels alright. Artifact matters seems pretty aetherborn-y, though that’s mostly just because they're in Kaladesh. Counters feel pretty angelly, but that’s usually just because white has +1/+1 counter themes all the time and big white creatures are often angels. What I’m trying to say is that while this does feel like it’s an aetherborn angel, it doesn’t feel like it’s THE aetherborn angel. But I still think the card has a place in whatever set it’s for. It seems powerful, and I like that it’s usually the best place to put your counters, but has some utility, plus I’m sure there are ways to go infinite, but when you’re paying seven mana for it that seems fair. I love powerful commons because there’s nothing saying a common can’t be powerful, just not complex, and while this does add a little strategic complexity, it’s not gonna burn any brains. This is a well made card.
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@reaperfromtheabyss​ - Goblin Knight
It sure is. This feels pretty right on the money, not just because the name feels real and the creature types fit well, but because the text on the card feels like how a goblin would be a knight. They aren’t particularly any better at fighting or better equipped, but it at least can scare some people or keep them at a distance. I very rarely ever say this but I think there was room for flavor text here. I’d like to know how this goblin got in this position, and what they’re doing to stop creatures from blocking. The cost also seems great, perfectly in between fervent cathar and voldaren duelist.
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@shootingstarhunter​ - Island Turtle [the 0/4]
One of two island turtles this week. So it’s a 0 mana 0/4 (or U if you count coming into play tapped as paying a cost). I think with literally no other text, that would be a pretty cool card, if a touch strong. There’s also the issues with land creatures, which there are some weird rules for that mostly just annoys judges more than players. However, you decided to put on some… interesting text. It can turn another land into a creature, one with a little bit more power and toughness. That seems… okay? I think if it had just said something like “Adapt 1: sacrifice a land” it would be almost identical mechanically but far, far easier to understand. I think you made this card to fit a very specific idea you had in your head, but I think you needed to step back and look at the final card and see if there was some way to make it simpler, or if not, what that extra complexity would get you.
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@snugz​ - Island Turtle [the 0/2]
Interesting. I like the simplicity of it on the surface. It’s just a Dryad Arbor but with a little more toughness, and it’s blue. A 0 mana 0/2 is on curve, I think, though I don’t know what kind of deck would want it. It doesn’t block anything but the smallest of creatures, which decks you’d need to block against probably aren’t playing. But it can chump, and doesn’t die to 1 damage from stuff like Chandra Pyromaster or Goblin Chainwhirler, so that’s something. The reminder text is appreciated, though the “isn’t a spell” feels less necessary considering the first line, but reminder text can be there anyway! The first line I feel like is trying to fix something, but most of the issues with land creatures are about integrating them into the comprehensive rules, which Dryad Arbor is already forcing WotC to do. But I guess it has it’s uses here and there. Rules aside, I think this card is fine. Like I said, I’m not sure what decks would want this, but it’s unique enough I think someone could find a use for it.
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@starch255​ - Enchantment Class Saga
Oh boy, what did I do to deserve this? First, the elephant in the room, no one at wizard’s would ever call this Enchantment Class Saga. Is it supposed to be the story of a class about enchantments? Mechanically I guess it’s at least tied to everything. I don’t think I have to tell you this is too complicated. This has more words on it than a pack of homelands. I also don’t know if it’s phrased right, because we don’t even have the comprehensive rules for classes out yet. Setting X to a certain number at the top of the card also may or may not work? We’ve yet to see a saga with a static effect like that. I also think just playing it and waiting till turn four to level it up gives you a crazy amount of advantage, digging 4 cards deep every turn if you have another saga, plus getting through those sagas even quicker. I’m having an extremely difficult time judging this one, but I can at least say it’s too complicated, and that’s enough to keep it out of the running.
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@thedirtside - Treasured Clue
This is a really cute card, but I don’t think it quite hits the mark (pun intended?). One mana for a treasure is kind of weird. We saw a lot of people thinking like that for a while with golden goose, which generated a mana on turn one and rarely did anything else, but let you ramp out a three-drop on turn two, and doing this on a colorless card just feels kind of dangerous, especially because being common means you could crack two on turn three for a 5 drop two turns early. But I also like the combination of the two types, since if you don’t need the treasure then you probably need the card. Reminds me of the Horizon lands. The name is also really close, better than some this week, but feels kind of forced. I wish there were a little more you could do with this guy to make him worth tacking on an extra mana. As is, it’s just a little too swingy to be fun.
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@wolkemesser​ - Orgg Hag
I actually had to double check to see that these were both existing creature types, but lo and behold, they were. And they’re both pretty thematic! Orggs are just like big 4 armed goblins, and hags are I guess like witches? But now witches are warlocks. Anyway, the card. I think it’s alright. Trample feels very Orgg, lifelink feels haggy, but that last ability just seems odd. Orgg itself had an ability that cared about size, and the sort of curse flavor of it feels haggy, but it just feels so out of nowhere. I feels like if you removed the white mana in the cost and the ability it would feel just as appropriate a card. Humility in general also has a lot of rules issues that don’t really make them worth it unless they are on big, swingy cards, which this isn’t quite. Still as a whole I think the card is perfectly fine, but a bit off for this week’s contest.
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And that’s everybody! If you want to get a hold of me, you can contact me on the Discord. Thanks again for entering! Good luck next week!
-Mod Mr. ShinyObject
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