CFAC #44 Showcase (part 2)
What do black Legendary creatures do? Kill, reanimate, make zombie tokens, gold tokens (while killing), and providing a card advantage engine are all common aspects of Black that Legendary Creatures make use of. Based on the artwork I chose for this week, I imagined we would be seeing a lot of Black Legendary Creatures, and so far, I’ve been spot-on. Follow the jump to check out today’s awesome entries, and check out the challenge here if you want to participate!
Art by Jason Nguyen
@narset-translucent:
no commentary
This is a pretty interesting design. It’s got the classic drawback of “sacrifice a creature” at the beginning of your upkeep, though with a slight benefit, and then has an outlet to expend that benefit when you don’t really need the life. The Night’s Whisper ability seems a bit cheap to me, but with the steep cost of sacrificing a creature every upkeep is already a pretty hefty price, so I’m not sure (though I would still bump it up to, like 1BB).
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@amtgplayer:
This artwork gave me a vibe of “super onyx mage”, so I designed him as such. I imagine this is the heir of Arimaya of Clan Onyx, although actually I don’t even know if Onyx Mage had anything to do with Clan Onyx. Old MTG lore is so obscure.
I know approximately nothing about “Old MTG Lore” so I’m gonna roll with it. I like this design of a creature that spreads around deathtouch (complete with a reminder), though the ability is simply too cheap: two mana for permanent deathtouch, not to mention the ability to grant it to others, at instant speed, is simply too good. I feel like it would have to be close to 2BB to be reasonable. The design overall is solid, though, and I’m going to guess the fact that this card isn’t legendary is more of a typo than a purposeful decision.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@thanatyr:
“What would happen if Vela and Szadek performed a fusion dance?” I asked myself. This was a compromise, a specter of death that ushers in doom, a fallen version of one of my favourite blue/black commanders.
Really interesting fusion of those two creatures. It still mills instead of damages and gets bigger with each hit, but it also floods the board with small creatures that provide the pump to your creature. I would recommend swapping intimidate for menace because it’s better gameplay, but beyond that I definitely like the card (even if it has the potential to roll out a ton of creatures very quickly).
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@dimestoretajic:
So, I really, really like Cipher.
I know, I know, it’s a worse form of an Aura, the most maligned of all evergreen card types, but… cards you effectively get to cast twice on a bad day, guys! Come on!
So yeah. This guy screamed “old dude who helped found/is descended from the founder of House Dimir”, so I made him a bit of a Cipher lord, upping the power level of cards that get encoded and allowing you to get encoded spells back to your hand. Oh, and the “discarded cards” thing, why did I add that?
Transmute spells, of course. Gotta show love for the OG Dimir mechanic!
Seriously? Two cipher cards in the same challenge? Not what I expected, for sure (you can read my anti-cipher rant from yesterday in this post).
However, I do like the idea of making a guild leader that synergizes with both mechanics from the guild. I think the one that buffs encoded creatures and makes them unblockable takes the challenge out of cipher; menace, I could’ve gotten behind, or maybe just a power pump so the opponent has to chose whether to trade their creature to stop the cipher or let you get a copy of the card.
The “discard-buyback” ability is a bit worrying to me; I can’t find a comparable ability to test the costing, and letting a player loop tutors sounds very, very dangerous. I’d have to play with it to know how dangerous, but my gut says this is an effect that doesn’t really need to happen.
I definitely like the idea here, but I imagine it would work better for other guilds. Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@outerspace-messiah:
Obsessed with prolonging his life, but failing nonetheless, Tol’s father imbued his own spirit into the child so that they may find a way to escape the inevitable.
Though they grew into an incredibly powerful necromancer in life, Tol too failed to overcome death. However, Tol’s ambition did not halt in the land of the dead. With an eternity ahead of them, Tol honed their skills even further and plans to escape the underworld with an army of likeminds.
“Why should the dead be confined for eternity when the living have the entire world for mere moments?”
I designed Tol to be like a graveyard version of Yisan, the Wanderer Bard. However, I wanted to stay in flavor and had Tol only be able to bring back creature types that you may find wander out of the underworld. I also wanted the Skeleton ability so I went with a sort of reverse Norin the Wary or something like Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker’s kind of ability.
So, the first ability is too good on this card. It already generates a ton of value for you by reanimating so many creatures over time, and feeding any crazy reanimation strategies you have. It doesn’t need to be so freaking difficult to kill, unless you really want to ramp up that mana cost. Norin’s ability is much different from this, as is Shirei’s: Norin doesn’t have another crazy ability stapled to him, and Shirei doesn’t reanimate himself. I would honestly cut this ability completely, and (like Yisan) let the big ability speak for itself.
As for the big ability, I’m actually quite intrigued. Is it too strong? Perhaps; Yisan did have the restriction of having to match the number of counters, which balanced the fact that it tutors out a creature every turn. My biggest problem here is that if your opponent doesn’t deal with Tol, then even if they kill the creatures you’ll bring back them plus more every turn.
Personally, I would make it mill you more every turn, to make that an actual clock (it’s laughable in something like Commander). I also feel like I would either restrict it to reanimating one creature, or make you always match the number of doom counters with the total, or you get nothing.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!
@awildloganappeared:
You know, between designing a personalized cube, keeping up with this and good news on the school front, this has been an awesome day. Hope you enjoy this one, I’m fairly proud of it. I’m sure once I do enough of these, I’ll have a full set to work with and tweak.
Good days are always good to have. Hopefully my feedback won’t harm that ;P
I like the first ability, letting you turn cards in your graveyard into giant Zombies (or tiny zombies, if you roll that way). And it’s also quite necromantic, befitting a Skeleton Wizard. I would be interested, though, in changing it to not require you to tap it but costing an extra B for every activation. That way, you could make multiples and spread out the power if you want, but couldn’t just turn every card in your graveyard into a 1/1 cheaply. Also, you don’t have to spell out what X is in the ability, as having it for the mana cost and requiring X cards communicates that.
The second ability feels kind of out-of-nowhere, though. Sure, it’s a Blue ability (although White gets a lot more repeated tappers) but what does it have to do with this guy? The zombie aspect felt unique and has interesting play to it. This ability feels like it’s either filling space or just tagging a Blue ability to make this a Blue card. I would’ve loved for this ability to do something to fill your graveyard, maybe self-milling for an amount and then having a small effect that fits Blue, or maybe a Taigam’s Scheming effect.
Thanks for the submission! Two points!