Demonic Tutor

Magic: the Gathering in the UK

Date: Saturday 31st March - 12 noon

Where: Penderel's Oak - High Holborn

 

Concept:  

* Each participator designs 45 Magic cards in Magic Set Editor format

* Send finished cards to sim.okeeffe@gmail.com

* We print them all out, sleeve them up, and shuffle into boosters

* Draft and enjoy!

 

Although there was only four of us who did this last time, many onlookers expressed their interest in being part of the next one.

 

Threads from previous instances:

You Make the Draft I - Initial thread 

You Make the Draft I - Preliminaries

You Make the Draft I - Aftermath (includes link to visual spoiler of all created cards)

You Make the Draft II - Initial thread

You Make the Draft III - Initial thread

You Make the Draft III - Aftermath (includes link to MSE file)

 

Things we learnt from the previous attempts and loose rules:

  • No planeswalkers. Having 8 untested planeswalkers in a draft can be pretty lopsided, especially as people tend not to design simple answer cards as they are dull
  • Super power mythic bombs - try and limit yourself to 1, if you desperately need more, let us know and we can try and accommodate them
  • Cards must have art (designer secret - finding lots of art first inspires lots of ideas for cards!) (DeviantArt is a pretty good resource)
  • Designing heavily linear/parasitic cards, as your 45, that all interact with each other is not really going to work if we get 360 cards total. If you want to do something like this then let everyone know so they can either support your theme or veto it mercilessly
  • Having a theme or design goal would be a great way to help tie different peoples 45 cards together. If you have any suggestions please post them

 

EDIT: We have chosen "land matters" as a theme, so try and include a smattering of cards that interact with lands in some way.

People who have expressed interest so far:

  1. Simon
  2. Tom Baker
  3. Kieran 
  4. Glenn
  5. Andy
  6. Dan
  7. Charlie
  8. Phil
  9. Rebecca

EDIT: Design Skeleton file here: YmtSet.mse-set

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Landfall isn't actually a real ability, it's just an ability word that means the card has something to do with lands coming into play. That means you could possibly template your landfall ability as:

Landfall - T: Add BB to your mana pool if you had a land enter the battlefield under your control this turn.

That way you wouldn't have to worry about it triggering itself and it would only be able to make one extra mana in a turn.

Ah good thinking, so I can basically write whatever I want for the landfall rules. So new version is:

Reeking Crypt 4 comes into play tapped.
T: Add B to your mana pool
Landfall — Whenever another land enters the battlefield under your control, you may untap Reeking Crypt 4.

Means you can get an extra mana most turns, but have the chance to combo if you can get multiple lands into play in the same turn.

honestly Simon, every card you have posted there is broken. Adding multiple mana is a very dangerous territory, especially when the costs for having a card like that are so low (cipt...)

I understand that it doesn't overlap 100% with what you want to do, but how about a land that taps for (1), with landfall, taps for any colour?

Also note that river of tears does something similar to what I am suggesting and was powerful but fair. Variety of mana is quite safe territory, multiple mana creates problems. If you must do a land like that, how about a cost when you tap it for mana (or use the landfall ability, but that isn't really a cost unless the landfall is compulsory). 1 life? (may be a bit much, but I would still take such a card highly in limited, 1-3rd pick if it didn't cipt tapped, 3-5th if it did)

Hey Pete. That kind of objective feedback is just what I need. Sometimes hard to take that step back away from your own creations and evaluate them fairly.

So how about if I word the landfall ability like:

Landfall — Whenever another land enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay 1 life to untap Reeking Crypt.

Maybe still pushing the edge of brokenness here?

I guess the other fix is to maybe add Dan's suggestion from above, where they don't untap as usual.

i think that is still broken.   

when you are hitting your land drops its pretty much a 0 mana elf.

if you have more than 1 in play or play more than 1 land a turn (or both!) it goes nuts

The idea was that you might live the dream of dropping multiple lands and getting some free mana, so I kind of want to keep that functionality. Perhaps I just ditch the Landfall completely and try something else:

Reeking Crypt

Land

Reeking Crypt comes into play tapped

T: add B

Return a land you control to your hand: untap Reeking Crypt

So can still provide you a burst of mana if you want to sabotage your long term mana situation. Also nicely helps out in a mana screw by giving you a land drop.

Assuming you have a land in hand if it is t2 (most keepable hands will have this), you can make the following amounts of mana with a crypt and N lands in play at the beginning of the turn:

    1 (tap Crypt) + N * 2 (tap and return each land) + 2 (play, tap and return a land for turn)

at the cost of ending the turn with the Crypt as your only land in play.

You can also have one more mana than you should by missing a land drop any time.  When you don't have a land in hand that's pure upside.

"Turn 2", N = 0 : 3 mana, +1 mana to intentionally miss a land drop

"Turn 3", N = 1 : 5 mana, +2 mana to intentionally miss a land drop and return a land to your hand

"Turn 4", N = 2 : 7 mana, +3 mana to intentionally miss a land drop and return two lands to your hand

"Turn 5", N = 3 : 9 mana, +4 mana to intentionally miss a land drop and return three lands to your hand

"Turn 6", N = 4 : 11 mana, +5 mana to intentionally miss a land drop and return four lands to your hand

...

On any given turn you can also choose one of the lesser options.

So the question is does the possibility of this fast mana coupled with the "all upside" when you don't have a land in hand make this too strong, I guess.  It seems pretty damn good to me.  Net an extra mana when it would make a big difference, sweep up your lands to win the game, and the only cost is playing a citp tapped land.  The normal use case is probably not to use it at all until you can't make a land drop and then just use it as a BB land.  Also helps double costs in all colors.

I wouldn't be opposed to trying it out but I doubt it would get printed.

Also tasty with Aggro Loam for the big Seismic Assault finish ... no need to choose between playing and saving lands ... play them out then flip them back up as burn spells or discard spells later!

Ah science, math and logic are proving my card is broken!

I had intended for these to be a cycle, one for each colour. Perhaps I just switch it to a single rare land that taps for colourless that has more downsides.

Colourless Crypt

Land

Colourless Crypt comes into play tapped.

Colourless Crypt does not untap as usual.

T: add 1 to your mana pool

Pay 1 life, return a land to your hand: untap Colourless Crypt

 

So can still give you that one shot burst, and is a landfall enabler, but not good at fixing, and actively bad at providing consistent mana.

Yup, you have made it actively bad alright :)

I think if you add "does not untap as usual" it becomes a truly terrible land.  I guess you could play it in a spell slot to get fast mana the turn before you "go off" with some combo deck?

Maybe you colud try something like this:

T: Add 1 to your mana pool

T: Add B to your mana pool. Return this to its owner's hand.

You could get landfall every turn and it would make BB if you really needed it but you couldn't keep using it in a turn and it isn't that great early on.

I don't think that its worth making the card BAD, as this is a casual draft, you can erata between drafting if its too broken :P

 

some quick comments:

1) Returning lands to hand to untap is EVEN MORE broken than the landfall activation. An ability like this will ensure that the cards is only playable in broken combo decks (although I could see it with liliana 2 etc.). Colourless crypt is basically unplayable, unless you intend to win the game that turn, in which case its a powerful ritual.

 

2) Consider as a test, Dan's cipt, doesn't untap, add BB, landfall untap. This card is interesting, and might not be as broken as it looks (compare to say... lotus cobra). If it is too broken, you can erata it to something weaker. My thoughts are that it is comparable to cards like sandstone needle (cipt tapped, 2 depletion counters, tap to add RR). Its better to play with a card that has potential to be too overpowered than one which will definitely be bad. Make it legendary to avoid being broken in constructed ;) (yes yes, I understand the point of you make the draft)

Okay so after some brief chats with people last night, here is the lay of the land:

Kieran - 45 cards done

Tom - 45 cards done

Simon - 45 cards done

Andy - 0 cards done, but has art and ideas and will work on them this week 

Dan B - # cards done. Wasn't there last night but has indicated that his are underway

Rebecca - forgot to ask her, but I'm guessing 0 done?

Charlie - unknown

Phil - unknown

It looks like no one is doing any heavy tribal support, but we are generally sticking to the creature types Tom outlined on the first page:

White - Clerics, Soldiers?

Blue - Wizards, Turtles

Black- Zombies, Wizards

Red - Shamans, Beasts?

Green - Druids, Bears

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