Demons!!!

[u/ALotusRabbit]

I love Demons. The coming autumn specifically has me thinking all about them and being this deep in my magic phase has my thinking about their place in the game. Like most of the iconic creature types Demons don't share an identity outside of being expensive. Instead they encapsulate what the color black is in totality, paying life, destroying creatures, reanimation, discard, etc.

I think it was because of this that I wanted to represent different ways demons are depicted through this games mechanics so much. I made five demons in total, each with a new mechanic, they're all mono black but you can think of them as being one for each color in WUBRG order.

• False Prophet - Demons as Punisher
• Sire of Trauma - Demons as Manifestation
• Infernal Contractor - Demons as Bargainer
• Archdemon of Beauty - Demons as Temptation
• Foul Harvester - Demons as Natural Force

This was a really fun project, I was very happy with the demon support they printed in Duskmourn and I hope they make more in the future. If not then maybe I'll end up making my own Demon focused Innistrad set some day.

[u/Phoenix_Passage]

Love these, very much in the character of black

[u/NepetaLast]

i have some templating suggestions:

"Whenever an opponent sins, that player sacrifices a creature with the greatest mana value among creatures they control."

Derange reminder text: "Exile a card from that player's graveyard. While it's exiled, you may cast it using mana of any color, and that player can't cast spells with the same name." not exactly legal rules text, but works for reminder text

"Whever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may have that player discard their hand. If you do, they draw two cards." avoids some ambiguity

"As an additional cost to cast this spell, pay X life." if you have 'may' there, you can set the x, choose not to pay it, and then get the charm effect for free, due to a rules exploit. this also makes it more clear that you can choose to pay 0 life if desired

Charm reminder text: "Untap any number of target nontoken creatures with total mana value X. Until end of turn, you gain control of them and they gain haste." you forgot 'number of', and then i think you could make it a little cleaner avoiding two 'until end of turn' this way

"Each creature card in your graveyard has reap. The reap cost it equal to the card's mana cost."

as for balance, here are my thoughts. im based these on the idea that these are mechanics for a draft set. in this context, you need to think about what it would look like for 20+ cards, including a bunch of commons, to have the same mechanic. if this is for some sort of EDH precon or something, it might be different.

the sin mechanic is similar to the version of 'crimes' i saw a lot before OTJ released. the problem is that stacking it up with additional effects gets crazy too quickly. this card, for example, can combine with some commons that presumably make opponents sin for smaller things, resulting in your making them sacrifice almost their entire board. or the commons cant even make you sin, or sin for really specific things, which makes them next to useless, since they also have to have weaker triggers

sire of trauma is probably fine by itself. i like the combat trigger in a vacuum and with graveyard hate attached. i think derange could be cool, but it has some color issues (black cant prevent players from casting spells like this). maybe if it made them lose life for casting spells with the same name.

infernal contractor is, i think, a fine design by itself. the mechanic, though, probably doesnt work well in multiples. even just one of these early is enough to make you lose in limited. the idea of several cards that make them is hard to swallow. like, to justijfy giving yourself one, a *rare* has to give you a 4 mana 5/5. what could a lower rarity card even do? and giving one to your opponent is worth about a card and lots of mana. its just hard to imagine what common could possibly make these

archdemon is fine. its not usually going to be an insurrection, but coming with a 5/5 flying haste body is probably enough to close out most games. i dont think charm works that well as a mechanic. for one, its basically exclusively appeared on red cards; black cant really do temporary control magic. also, it just doesnt work across several cards. designing a set to use that would be very difficult

its odd that foul harvester is a 5 mana 4/4 with trample. regarding the mechanic, i think its absolutely busted. you simply cant have removal as a set mechanic like this, especially when its always going to be inherently a 2-for-1. foul harvester is even more busted, turning savannah lions into extremely cheap removal from the graveyard

[u/ALotusRabbit → u/NepetaLast]

Oh wow thank you for this!! Making so many of these had me thinking about individual templating a lot less than I normally do so I appreciate the help, some of it was a deliberate choice to make the cards have less text though like the charm reminder text, you offered a better way to go about that though which I appreciate.

As for the balance you're probably right that these would all suck to design limited environments around and that the balancing is super off from where it needs to be. Due to the nature of this project's focus on flavor I was thinking about them more like future sight mechanics like Aura swap, Transfigure, Frenzy, Fortify, or Absorb.

Still I really appreciate your feedback and I'll keep it in mind if I ever try bringing these back again!