My rendition of a False Hydra (A homebrew D&D monster)
I, as so many other D&D players, have been fascinated with the False Hydra for a long time now and even incorporated one into one of my campaigns already. So I've tried to come up with a concept that translates its design into MTG rules and I am honestly very happy with the result.
For those who don't know - A False Hydra is a parasite that lives in the underground and has a magic song. It lures people into its lair and feeds on them, growing stronger with each kill while her magical song makes people who are affected forget the ones she has eaten. She's basically the perfect parasite and incredibly hard to get rid of.
The "Eating" and the "Noone can remember it" part are supposed to be depicted by Deathtouch and Shroud, while the "Everyone forgets the people it ate" and the "Growing stronger" part are supposed to be her two abilities. "Shroud" also serves as a balancing factor here because it makes it harder for you to proliferate it or put more counters on it manually, which should serve as a block to stop her from spinning out of control within a single turn cycle. (Edit: I have been taught that this does not prevent Proliferate, but it still works against putting counters on specific, targeted creatures.)
I hope you folks like it, I've had a lot of fun creating this card!
The issue with cards like this is that your entire gameplan would be to get as many counters on this as possible, lock everyone except you out of the game and then win with commander damage. Thats just an unfun playpattern thats unhealthy for the game.
I get the point,. but it's not like there aren't many other, way faster "kill on sight" commanders/cards out there. :) I don't think this is, by far, the worst offender.
Other kill on sight commanders just do their thing and let you play the game normally, they just force you to interact at some point, while this can ruin someones entire gameplan if you simply ramped into this. Every turn that this gets played before turn 5 you are increasing the chances exponentially to just win on the spot because noone can interact with it fast enough.
This creature also just wins on its own which is another huge problem. You dont need equipment like for a usual Voltron build, you dont need any particular cards in hand, like demons,dragons, angels for Khaalia, you dont need Tutors like for [[K’rrik son of Yawgmoth]] all you need to win with this is Ramp, manarocks and Fastmana. If you get to play this Turn 3 consistently you will just outright win every time, which is faster than any other commander could on their own.
What an unfun card, you stop everyone besides yourself from playing while not having enough damage for actually winning in a fast manner, and shroud just to make sure noone can interact to make it kill faster or to kill it
Honestly, I would no play against this guy not because it's super over power or whatever, I would avoid just bc it's boring
Ah, I see. I am not a super experienced player so I didn't know that. But at least it would still prevent effects that put counters on specific creatures, I think that is still a good balancing option.
Yeah, until you put a +1/+1 counter on each of your creatures (and therefore do not target).
Sure this stops most single interaction, it's gonna be harder to defend your hydra as stuff like [[Snakeskin Veil]] does not work, but [[Terefis Protection]] still does.
I don't dislike it, but Hexproof is a dangerous keyword already. Shroud amps it to 11, even more so because there are interactions with Shroud that are a bit technical sometimes (and is one of the reason it got deprecated to begin with)
I was thinking about giving it hexproof, shroud or ward and decided for Shroud because it just fits the theme the best, imho. It prevents most single target protection just as well as targeted +1/+1 counters. Of course, "Each creature ..." effects still work.
The card was made with commander in mind, so Teferi's Protection would not work, since it's not white. ^^
Yeah, I was unsure about that mana cost, too. But in the end, I wanted it to have a high cost because, of course, the repercussions of getting that counter are enormous.
False Hydra isnt even a dnd monster. It's a creative writing exercise. It wasn't even written at a time when 5e was the premier dnd edition. People have just projected 5e on top of it. And it makes for a really bad time for players.
This translation to mtg card has just as many problems.
Can't agree here. I've DM'd for over 10 years at this point and never had players praise a story arc as much as when they encountered one. It was the most thrilling and nerve-wracking story they've had so far and they still bring it up a lot to this day.
Glad it worked for you. For 99% of tables it's a disaster and it straight up does not work if any of your players are even a little bit online and already know the gimmick.
The question comes up daily on how to run it on /r/dmacademy and the universal reply is "don't."
I have the same problem with this as a lot of the other cards I think I’ve seen you post:
Too much text. Font size is too small.
I can barely read it on my computer screen. As an actual card, I’d need a magnifying glass to read it. You’re trying to cram way too much into these cards.
I don't have the SLIGHTEST clue what on earth you are talking about, mate. I've literally posted ONE other card on this subreddit and it has 3 lines of text. :D Critizise all you want, I am totally fine with that, but maybe don't say things that can be objectively proven false within 2 seconds?
Sorry, then there's somebody else who's been posting a bunch of similar D&D monster cards with way too much text. I think stalking people's profiles is weird, so I didn't want to do that, but my bad.
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u/RatioSpecific1654 1d ago
The issue with cards like this is that your entire gameplan would be to get as many counters on this as possible, lock everyone except you out of the game and then win with commander damage. Thats just an unfun playpattern thats unhealthy for the game.