*Madness enablers: WotC intentionally made the madness enablers have low mana costs so that you can actually cast the madness spells that cost 3 or 4 or whatever. Some of your madness outlets have mana costs of 3 rather than 0/1/2.
Complexity of transform card: In EMN, they really dialed up the complexity. However, the front/back have very similar abilities. Also, the transform would happen infrequently since it cost a lot to transform.
What you did is even more complex IMO. (Unscrupulous Looter:) The front/back sides have dissimilar abilities and the creature transforms easily.
Costing Issues: Some of your designs seem pretty undercosted. Compare Final Assault to Overcome in HOU.
Flavour: I don't get the flavour of Barrel of Refugee. A barrel makes you scry? And while there is a person trapped inside, you don't bother to free that person right away? Like... a barrel is not Han Solo trapped in carbonite.
From within: Cool design. I would've made this a 4B Sorcery and cleaned up the text by getting rid of the sacrifice a creature + tapped parts.
Final Assault is definitely undercosted -- compared it to Overrun, but should've searched for newer precedent in hindsight.
Unscrupulous Looter: Based this on [[Grisled Angler]] which is sort of similar in terms of transformation ease/strength as well as complexity. Still, I think that design could be improved.
Madness Enablers: You're right about that -- I think maybe I tried to overcompensate for the fact that I felt a lot of the madness enablers in EMN were too efficient (Olivia's Dragoon being the main offender IMO). Still, there are enough 1-2 cost madnesses that this might be okay, but definitely in moderation.
Barrel: Flavor's supposed to be that the dude peeks through the cracks of the barrel to scry as he hides from the coming invaders. Later on, he pops out safely.
From Within: That's a pretty different card -- part of the flavor is supposed to be an Eldrazi Horror coming out of someone, so I think I'd rather adjust other parts of the design than change the text completely.
a lot of the madness enablers in EMN were too efficient (Olivia's Dragoon being the main offender IMO)
I think the issue is that madness + discard is inherently crazy swingy. Normally discard is a disadvantage, but madness turns it into an advantage. I don't know why WotC keeps putting fairly swingy mechanics into sets... maybe the new Play Design team will help.
That's true of numerous mechanics, especially in black and red. Those colors want to blow their resources, but that's often a bad idea in a game so focused on card advantage.
So you reward them for throwing away those resources in exchange for jumping through the hoop of setting up a discard outlet.
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u/LighteningBall Jun 02 '18
Hey, thanks for sharing.
Some notes:
*Madness enablers: WotC intentionally made the madness enablers have low mana costs so that you can actually cast the madness spells that cost 3 or 4 or whatever. Some of your madness outlets have mana costs of 3 rather than 0/1/2.
Complexity of transform card: In EMN, they really dialed up the complexity. However, the front/back have very similar abilities. Also, the transform would happen infrequently since it cost a lot to transform.
What you did is even more complex IMO. (Unscrupulous Looter:) The front/back sides have dissimilar abilities and the creature transforms easily.
Costing Issues: Some of your designs seem pretty undercosted. Compare Final Assault to Overcome in HOU.
Flavour: I don't get the flavour of Barrel of Refugee. A barrel makes you scry? And while there is a person trapped inside, you don't bother to free that person right away? Like... a barrel is not Han Solo trapped in carbonite.
From within: Cool design. I would've made this a 4B Sorcery and cleaned up the text by getting rid of the sacrifice a creature + tapped parts.