There you are, sitting at your desk, sipping your morning beverage and answering emails, ready to start the day as the design representative for the development team of the set codenamed Rattle, when I come skirting around the corner, slapping a folder onto your desk.
“We forgot something.”
It turns out, the marquee spot removal, board wipe, and card draw spells for Standard are all rotating out when Rattle rotates in: aggro decks will run amuck if we don’t get a handle on it, so I’m spreading the word: I need designs to fill the holes, and I need them yesterday.
So, who rose to the challenge and gave me the pieces to build a better Standard? Let’s find out!
First up, we have the winning targeted removal spell. In Standard, successful removal spells usually have to be two or three mana, or else they’re too expensive because they cost more than the creature they kill. Every now and then, a removal spell can make it in at four mana if it offers a little extra value. This category’s winner offered that kind of value, and though it probably needs a slight CMC increase, it was my favorite of the spot removal spells. This category’s winner is...
Token Defiance by @magicarasa! Congratulations, you will be rewarded one bonus point!
Up next, we have the best board wipe. This category’s winner actually managed to design a card that fit into all three categories, but it was its work as a board wipe and its flexibility that really caught my eye. It’s my favorite execution on a task many designers tried to tackle this week. This category’s winner is...
Skellis’ Deal by @palaguin! Congratulations, you will receive one bonus point!
For our third category, we have the best of the card draw spells submitted. This category had the fewest entries, but I suppose a giant screaming skeleton looked a lot more like it was ready to kill than impart wisdom. For this winner, I chose a card with some potent flexibility, simplicity, and stood a real chance of being a card that would be played in Standard. This category’s winner is...
Faithful Revelation by @amtgplayer! Congratulations, you will be awarded one bonus point!
Finally, after much examination and theoretical playtesting, we have the one to rule them all: the card that I was most interested in working into a Standard set (albeit with a few tweaks). This card was my prefered execution on the “board wipe with value” that so many designers tried to tackle this week. This week’s overall winner is...
Final Outcome by @outerspace-messiah! Congratulations, you will be awarded two points, and you card will be added to the CFAC Hall of Fame!
Thanks again to everyone who participated in this week’s CFAC! Designing for a specific card niche can be difficult, but I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity and creativity in this week’s cards. I expect to see even more creativity in next week’s contest, which starts tomorrow at approximately 2:00 pm when I post the challenge!
And so, this week’s “build your own Magic Standard format challenge” draws to a close. This is the last of the showcases for CFAC 43, though if you submit one today (as these were all recorded yesterday) I’ll edit it onto the end eventually. Follow the jump to take a look at the competitors, check back in tomorrow to see the announcement of the winners, and join us on Sunday for the next CardsFromArt Challenge!
Art by: Erik Szczygiel
@thekillershrub:
I guess this is a staple draw spell in a madness / hellbent format? Probably not but I couldn’t think of anything else interesting. Pump is red, discard is black. Uncommon because it isnt enough for rare and too niche for a common. Cost is low since it does nothing when it enters the field. RR and tap since it is a repeatable effect and hard to get rid of.
Yeah, this really wouldn’t work as the staple draw spell for a format, especially since it’s discard, then draw. Speaking of which, you’ll want to move that “Discard a card” to be part of the cost, otherwise this is “draw a card” for a hellbent hand which isn’t how Red does its card draw.
I do like the design quite a bit, though: I would love to try it out in a Madness deck, and part of me would love for this to have Madness, you know? This could definitely work well as an anthem for an aggressive Red/Black deck, and definitely wouldn’t show up in anything else. I would probably also like the ability cost to at least be toned down to 1R; as-is it’s pretty oppressive to use.
As a final tweak, enchantments really aren’t supposed to have tap abilities: that makes them much too similar to Artifacts. I’d prefer for this to have the “only once per turn” clause.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@nine-effing-hells:
Looking at the art, it looks kind of… civil; neither foreground figure is really moving much. That ruled out destroy effects for me, and a good/evil conflict tend to lend itself to white and black color-pie-wise, so I toyed around with ways to draw cards that were both of those. I found a pattern I liked for that, messed with the numbers, and decided that it needed blue to justify drawing that many cards.
So, five mana nets you four cards, but costs you three life (and a six-point life swing)? That’s...I’m not sure. Certainly a lot of card advantage, but at a big cost. and five mana can almost draw 4 cards normally, and certainly could for three colors; the drastic downside seems a bit too pushed, but then again, maybe not. I’d have to play with it to know for sure.
I can say that such a downside would make control decks quite wary of playing it, and they certainly would play many of them; usually, the big card draw spell is used to pull ahead, especially against midrange decks, but this one may pull you ahead at the cost of putting yourself within reach of death. At least it’s instant speed, though. Definitely something to sideboard out against aggressive decks.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@108echoes:
It’d be a very strange Standard with this as the main sweeper. Some sort of white token theme would be necessary in order to make this a true sweeper, but then you’d need a token deck which didn’t mind losing its tokens. Tokens with defender, maybe?
It works just as well, possibly better, in a W/B or mono-black Aristocrats deck, where you get your card draw and death triggers, though the life loss is risky if there’s an aggressive deck in the format.
Finally, this implies a hybrid theme, which adds additional weirdness. A W/G deck could play no swamps, but still fuel the black half of Precipice with W/B and G/B creatures.
This card is...weird. I can’t peg it on power level, or really what would play it. Definitely not control, they would never have enough creatures to pay it off. Also definitely not aggressive decks, because losing creatures is death. Maybe some midrange decks could run it as a fail safe, but giving your opponent the choice of which creatures go is still rough...I think you hinted at the deck that actually wants this: a primarily White deck that can play some multicolor Black/White creatures to recuperate the lost value would likely brandish this most effectively.
I’m not even going to try to cost this appropriately, though the new card from Kaladesh, Eliminate the Competition, hints that you’re around the right cost. I’d actually like to remove the life loss part, since you’re already dumping your entire field and sacrificing a creature to draw a card is quite Black.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@sofacoin:
I tried to go for all three, while maintaining elegance. Sadly, I fell quite short of squeezing in real card draw without cluttering things up.
I’m 50-50 on costing this a mere 3BB: it might be more reasonable to cost it at 4BB due to the innate flexibility. Thing is, I’m a sucker for board wipes (they bring out my inner Timmy), so I decided to go with my gut!
I’ve said before that I value flexibility, but I’m also careful with costing it, so I might would side on the 4BB side, or maybe 2UBB, or even 2UWB in the right block, as hitting a creature and drawing a card feels a tad weird for a mono-black card. I could definitely see this being played in a Standard format as-is: a board wipe that isn’t totally useless against other creature-light decks is always welcome for control, and one or two would likely show up in a midrange deck.
We had a similar card yesterday that also involved cycling, and some of its feedback could apply here, if you want to take a look at it.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@retroactivelyours:
Couldn’t think of a good “pillar” effect that wasn’t already done. Also wasn’t really sure what to cost this as.
So, I see what you’re going for here, and it’s kind of interesting, but it has one major problem: the game can’t track lands by what mana they produce, so “white land” is meaningless to the game because all lands are colorless. You could search up a Plains, sure, but I doubt you really want to trade three of your lands for three more Plains, especially when it took four white sources to cast. So, this is basically happening, what, on turn seven? Other than trigger landfall and thin your deck a tiny bit, this card doesn’t really do much. Plus, the effect is a lot more Green than White.
So, what if we took this basic idea, transforming a bunch of your lands, and tweaked on it a bit. First, since this kind of effect is more Green than anything, lets shift it over to that color. Next, let’s widen the flexibility a bit, and let it transmute to any of the basic land types, but restrict it to getting all the same type. Finally, for the sake of templating and letting the player that just wants to turn a Forest into another Forest be happy, lets take away that restriction. A little cost adjustment, and we’ve got this:
Blessed Rejuvenation 2G
Sorcery
Sacrifice up to three lands. Choose a basic land type. For each land sacrificed this way, search you library for a land of that basic land type, then put them onto the battlefield tapped. Then, shuffle your library.
I bet there are plenty of Johnny ways to abuse a card like that.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@noyan-dar:
Conditional targeted removal, I’ve no idea about strength because in the right situation this can really mess with people and in the wrong one it does almost nothing. maybe would do better at instant speed or common rarity.
Yeah, I definitely think I would push this down to common, and let it be at instant speed. In fact, that would make an instant-speed version of Wretched Banquet, which this card is a slightly more flexible version of. And while it may work as an early-game bit of removal, it doesn’t seem quite powerful enough to cut it in a constructed format. Then again, I wasn’t around during Conflux, so maybe it was?
Another option (though poorly worded) would be to “destroy target creature with the least power or toughness or tied for the least power or toughness among creatures its controller controls.” That way, at least you having a small creature doesn’t make this totally useless.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@ubervores:
Alright so hopefully no one did this already but I didn’t check the showcase because I’m a bit scattered tonight I drew pretty directly from the art this week but here’s my reasoning for this card: What player doesn’t love a big flashy boardwipe? and whats flashier that a double X spell? No one and nothing are the answers to those questions and whats better than wiping the board?wiping the board and getting ahead so I’ve stapled not one but two giant skeletons to this choking smog.
So the nuts and bolts I’m really not sure how this card should be costed at first I was toying with a Gelatinous Genesis style card but that seemed too strong with the blighted board so I stuck with the two skeletons we saw in the art but i still think that maybe the cost is a little weak and maybe it should be xBB or xxB but I decided to play it on the safe side and the skeletons are horrors because that’s what black has in my dream set (although the aetherborns are very cool and have a look that I envy)
Skeleton Horrors for life, yo.
I’m a fan of board wipes that have alternate uses: at least against creatureless decks, this can make a couple of skeletons. Costing on effects like this is really weird; it definitely needs to be XX because of all the value you get from it, but it also takes a lot of mana to effect the board in a meaningful way? Maybe tagging on a bunch of black mana would balance it out instead....I don’t know. It would be a lot easier to cost if it was just one Skeleton. Perhaps it’s not what a control deck wants, anyways.
A Black-based midrange deck, on the other hand, could really exploit that it only shrinks nonblack creatures, so I could see it as a one- or two-of, or sideboarded against aggressive decks.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@luckylooter:
My official submission, for the Bonus challenge. (metaphorical giant skeletons)
This kind of a board wipe would have a weird effect on a Standard format, similar to Crux of Fate, where a specific type (or types, in this case) would be at an automatic advantage. Unlike Crux of Fate, however, this card has nothing to do against Zombie decks or Skeleton decks (or, God forbid, Zombie-Skeleton decks). And I imagine, with this kind of artwork in the set, there will be Zombies and Skeletons that you’ll wish this boardwipe could handle.
As a result, I’m not sure how much I like the idea of this being the “premiere board wipe” of the format, as an entire strategy could just invalidate it, making the control matchup almost an auto-win. I’d like for it to have some kind of fallback, like Crux of Fate, or at least Cycling so you can do something with it.
Also, I get that artifact creatures aren’t really “killable” in a flavor sense, but there’s really no reason to tack on another condition to this board wipe.
