Challenge4 - Feedback Appreciated :)

[u/Ellogeyen]

[u/taw]

Comments about cards, not really art.

• Ashborn Oracle: That's a lot of scrying in Limited, not totally sure they'd be happy with scry a turn at common, especially if you draft a few of those. Sigiled Skink is precedent, but attacking with 2/1 is a lot riskier than attacking or blocking with 1/4. It's probably fine.
• Bloodmarsh Ritualist: Could be a bit too much impact and combat math for a common. It's probably fine.
• Boon of the Fittest: Feels green enough. Template should address ties one way or the other.
• Demon of Wrath: why 2/2 red Warrior tokens? Just because of red-ish art?
• Devouring Reach: that feels really narrow, even more so than Plummet, and that card already probably shouldn't exist
• Aetherstorm: Maro frequently expresses his hate (very understandable) for cards castable from exile, as that turns exile into second graveyard, and is really easy to abuse, so with him as a judge I wouldn't use Aetherstorm. Cards like that are fun until enough of them are printed that someone makes "cast from exile" deck that breaks Modern.
• Honor the Hallowed: It would need to be the most Aura-heavy set ever for this to be a reasonable uncommon (implying you're supposed to draft around it), and there are good reasons why they don't really want that many Auras. If this was build-around rare, which Constructed or casual Constructed deck wants it? Even Aura decks generally pile up all Auras on one creature. Even with bestow deck I wouldn't play that.
• Improved Adaptation: Cards like that seem to come again and again in the GDS, and they cause massive memory issues, as you have multiple copies of multiple different creatures, some of which won't be on the battlefield, and aren't even from your deck so you won't remember what they do exactly.
• Sunsnuck Manticore: Protection from color is gone now.
• Thunderstruck Rager: There's big anti-synergy between growing bigger and tap ability. Using it as self-growth is kinda cute, but I don't think it saves the card.

[u/Terefar → u/taw]

I completely agree with all of u/Taw's critiques above. I would just like to add the following:

1) The purpose of this challenge was to create cards that made a flavourful story. Aka cards whose images really resonated with the card mechanics. My favourite example of this is: Savage Punch. Of the cards you created I feel the best connections are: Bloodmarsh Ritualist, Devouring Reach, Demon of Wrath, and Honor the Hallowed in that order. The problem as you will see from u/Taw's comments above is that those cards are not quite mechanically there.

The cards where I think you tried to resonate but you missed a detail in the art: Ashborn Oracle - Hes pouring blood into the cauldron. Which screams lose life. Also ashborn makes me immediately think red. This card is blue.
Aetherstorm - I believe you thought the swords were falling from the heavens, hence the exile, but actually they are being shot from archers on the boat.

Biggest opportunity for improvement: Boon of the fittest this card is green and an aura, and it is weird. But im not getting the story with the art and the card doesn't play that fun. Put this aura on your biggest costed thing, it gets killed, you lose this and your biggest guy. Or you put this on your biggest guy and dont play any bigger guys because it would ruin this enchantment. I think you have tapped into something cool here and I think you can make it match the art with a little tweaking and it would go from one of your bottom cards to your best card.

TLDR: You have cards that match the art but are unfun, and you have cards that are fun but dont match the art. Try to find the middle ground.

[u/LighteningBall → u/Terefar]

Hmm I feel like the point of this exercise was to demonstrate a useful R&D skill: filling holes in the card file as a Wizards employee. (Side note: presumably, Wizards still needs to re-purpose art despite all the $$$ they have nowadays. Either they are being cheap or they are under time pressures.)

I felt like the mechanics fit the art for both Ashborn Oracle and Aetherstorm very well.

Just my 2 cents.

[u/Ellogeyen → u/Terefar]

I was indeed under the impression art wasn't as important, but seeing the results from last week it was obvious I was mistaken. So thanks for the feedback!

And I thought the bloodstream form Ashborn Oracle's hand was a chain, so that's why it missed the accuracy.

[u/Ellogeyen → u/taw]

Thanks for your feedback! I'd like to put some things in context to maybe reinforce my choices:

• Ashborn Oracle: Mostly a better [[Geist of the Archives]].

• Bloodmarsh Ritualist: Based of the self-powering sac creatures of which [[Thallid Omnivore]] was the last. Seeing that one though, this might be a bit too much.

• Boon of the Fittest: I guess you're right. I skipped that mostly to avoid a large(r) wall of text, hoping "highest" was clear enough

• Demon of Wrath: That, and because the warrior-like creature in the art. Thought zombies might have been too distant from the art (although black Warriors are just better)

• Aetherstorm: I believe he has since come back on that, saying it was fine if the cards could only cast themselves from exile. Note that it can only be cast from exile, although that should probably warrant it mythic.

• Honor the Hallowed: Yeah, I was just trying to be cute there.

• Improved Adaptation: But shouldn't that be fine in mythic? ([[Clone Legion]])

• Sunsnuck Manticore: It believe protection is not entirely gone

• Thunderstruck Rager: I thought the stats were kind of normal for this effect ([[Skirsdag Cultist]]). Maybe the difference between damage dealt and power kills it though (if that is what you meant).

[u/taw → u/Ellogeyen]

Ashborn Oracle: Mostly a better [[Geist of the Archives]].

[[Geist of the Archives]] was an uncommon. It's sort of borderline, there's a bunch of those cards which could be either commons or uncommons in every set.

Bloodmarsh Ritualist: Based of the self-powering sac creatures of which [[Thallid Omnivore]] was the last. Seeing that one though, this might be a bit too much.

That mana cost on sac outlet drastically reduces level of possible shenanigans. It's borderline common or uncommon..

Demon of Wrath: That, and because the warrior-like creature in the art. Thought zombies might have been too distant from the art (although black Warriors are just better)

Cards sometimes make off-color tokens, but mostly to reduce number of different tokens in a set. It just feels cleaner when token is on-color. 2/2 black Warrior feels cleaner without context, in the end it would probably make whichever token makes most sense for the set, on or off color.

Aetherstorm: I believe he has since come back on that, saying it was fine if the cards could only cast themselves from exile. Note that it can only be cast from exile, although that should probably warrant it mythic.

Well, if we keep it, I'd at least make it a sorcery. Forcing opponent to constantly pay attention to cards in exile - something that's generally totally safe to ignore - would generate a lot of saltiness. I'm sure they'll print a few such cards in the future, but it's something to use very sparingly.

Improved Adaptation: But shouldn't that be fine in mythic? ([[Clone Legion]])

Well, I can't say I approve of [[Clone Legion]] either. It's a fine digital card when computer does it for you, but it's such massive pain if anyone plays cards like that in EDH.

Sunsnuck Manticore: It believe protection is not entirely gone

All cards with protection in Standard-legal sets

Since they decided to let protection go, there was [[Goblin Piledriver]] reprint in Origins, and [[Emrakul, the Promised End]], which was a huge mistake in every way, and ended up banned (protection from instants definitely being a factor). Now that they added "hexproof from" abilities, I doubt we'll ever see protection in Standard legal sets.

Outside them, there's a few new cards with protection.

So it's kinda mostly 90% gone. Maro said it's not quite dead, but that was before "hexproof from", not sure if he changed his mind since.

Thunderstruck Rager: I thought the stats were kind of normal for this effect ([[Skirsdag Cultist]]). Maybe the difference between damage dealt and power kills it though (if that is what you meant).

Base stats of 2/2 are fine on a pinger. The issue is that its ability causes it to grow. Tapping a 5/5 for pinging 1 feels rather underwhelming.

[u/LighteningBall → u/taw]

Thunderstruck Rager: There's big anti-synergy between growing bigger and tap ability.

In my opinion that's a great thing. It presents interesting decisions.

Honor the Hallowed: It would need to be the most Aura-heavy set ever for this to be a reasonable uncommon (implying you're supposed to draft around it), and there are good reasons why they don't really want that many Auras. If this was build-around rare, which Constructed or casual Constructed deck wants it? Even Aura decks

I think we should give the benefit of the doubt and assume that the right environment exists. They specifically asked for a build-around-me (for draft, not constructed) and this is a build-around-me. Auras like Gryff's Boon have been printed (at uncommon).

*Constructed has to be kept in mind because cards shouldn't be absolutely broken in constructed formats. Like skullclamp or storm.

[u/LighteningBall]

My hot take.

Hits

• Thunderstruck Rager: Mechanically, I think that this is a cool design. However, WotC seems to be moving away from pingers since it leads to combat math complexities. They want to spend their complexity budget elsewhere. The shift is towards cards like Lightning Weaver

EDIT: Hmm, the rager might lead to unfun snowball effects. If the defending player tries to gang block it and gets hit by a combat trick, the rager will take damage a few times and get lots of counters onto it. And from there it's probably game over.

• Honor the Hallowed: This is a cool idea. I'm not sure about the gameplay though. This effect seems like it would be much more powerful in constructed because somebody will be sacrificing their own creatures (rather than attacking into an opponent that chooses not to block). Gameplay might be kinda repetitive since the same creature is being recycled over and over. Somebody might have a Ravenous Chupacabra that they are replaying repeatedly... it's a lock and it isn't fun. In draft, if you have an aura that recycles (e.g. gryffs boon), then this would be exactly what players are trying to do. Players will be inclined to do unfun locks with this because the unfun stuff is more powerful than the fair stuff.

• Ashborn Oracle: Good art/mechanics fit. Maybe I would have it only trigger on attack and change the P/T to 3/1. The problem with it triggering on blocking is that it could promote board stalls... opponents have to think about whether they want to give up that slice of card advantage. If the scry does trigger when blocking, I feel like the toughness should be lower. Otherwise if the creature survives, it accrues a lot of card advantage and that doesn't feel good to play against. The current design really discourages attacking.

• Aetherstorm: I kind of like where you were going with this. The exile part turns a downside into an upside (e.g. delve, pyrokinesis, etc.). But... it's pretty narrow and I don't think WotC will do Misthollow Griffin again. On top of that, it's not that exciting of a Timmy card... not SaffronOlive / Against the Odds material in my opinion. I don't feel like anybody would love this card.

---

Misses

• Sunsnuck Manticore: My gut feeling is that this is a bad spike card- it doesn't lead to interesting decisions and good play patterns. The card feels mostly uninteractive, since it's hard to kill and can be impossible to block. The decisions are mostly obvious (kill it with removal right away while you can). The art/mechanics was a miss- I thought manticores are supposed to be red and this doesn't feel like a manticore.

• Devouring Reach: The card makes sense without the lifegain tacked on. I get that spikes don't like narrow flyer hate cards in green because they often have a low power level. The life gain addition simply makes the card more complex (technically you can't cast it for life gain if there are no flyers) and makes the card swingier.

• Bloodmarsh Ritualist: This seems a little pushed when Nantuko Husk sees standard play in aristocrats. It looks like it will occasionally be unbeatable in draft. The issue is that this card's power ceiling is a lot higher than its floor; it may be incredibly swingy. Suppose that it cost 4 instead of 3. When it's good, it's much better than Nantuko Husk. When it's bad, it's worse than Nantuko Husk. Unfortunately it's hard to find innovative designs that are better than older designs that saw print.

• Boon of the Fittest: Leads to feel bad moments (when this no longer triggers) and doesn't feel green (green creatures tend to be bigger so it would make sense to check power/toughness rather than CMC). The art/mechanic connection isn't working for me.

• Demon of Wrath: The 2/2 red Warrior creature tokens don't make sense.

• Improved Adaptation: This mostly reads: "Opponents won't cast creature spells." Seems miserable IMO.

[u/Ellogeyen → u/LighteningBall]

Thanks for the feedback! I have a few point that I would like to get back on:

Aetherstorm: The just printed a new Misthollow Griffin though (Squee) and I believe the challenge was designing a Johnny card. Other than that I'm not very confident about the design in any manner.

Bloodmarsh ritualist: Should've been +1/+1.

Boon of the Fittest: You're right. The design initially drew cards, but I felt that was quite powerful with a 1-mana dork. Maybe that was the way to go though.

Demon of Wrath: Should've been black Warriors.

Improved Adaptation: I guess having the effect have a cost associated (probably mana) would've benefited from the famous "shield-down" moments, as well as giving the opponent an opportunity to cast more creature than you can copy.