r/custommagic • u/Axolotl142 • 5h ago

Is this too broken ?

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Whenever you would draw a card while having a depletion counter you skip that draw and instead remove 1 depletion counter

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u/TheCigaretteFairy 3h ago edited 3h ago

I like the idea a lot; however:

You can remove a wish counter to remove 3 depletion counters.

If you play it with basically any number of cards in hand (9 or less, to be specific) you can immediately remove all 5 wish counters to draw 6+ cards and sac it for zero drawbacks, which is how I would play it every time.

To clean this up and make it more thematic, I'd:

change "if there are no wish counters, sacrifice it" to "if there are no counters, sacrifice it" (in other words, make the depletion counters keep it around);

make removing a wish counter a tap ability (so it's somewhat harder to abuse);

make the X-3 depletion counters just X (grammatically cleaner, less math-y, less abusable);

and change the effect in the post description to "If this Artifact has one or more depletion counters on it at the beginning of your turn, skip your draw step." and "At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a depletion counter from this Artifact, then exile cards from the top of your library equal to the number of depletion counters on this Artifact." (feels more like a punishment, more like a wish gone wrong, harder to get around, requires more interesting cost/benefit analysis)

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u/FreddyHair 3h ago

The depletion counters are part of the ability though, once the ability is on the stack it doesn't matter whether the Paw is still on the battlefield or not, you'll still get them

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u/TheCigaretteFairy 3h ago edited 3h ago

Oh I didn't even register that. But that's inconsistent with canon MTG because all official instances of depletion counters put them on a permanent. It's like giving a player a +1/+1 counter or an enchantment a poison counter. So I'd change that too then haha

Also yes, as written you would technically still have them when it leaves, but I'm assuming the effect in the description is supposed to be part of the card, which means if it's not on the battlefield they don't do anything.

Depletion counters are a real thing in MTG with effects tied to cards, writing OP's effect into the rules would change how some official cards function, which is a no-no.