WotC Presents: You Make the Card 4

[Pinoy Goblin]

- goblin queen -

creature - goblin sorcerer
1R

when goblin queen enters the battlefield exile target non land permanent,
when goblin queen leaves play return target exiled non land permanent into play and you lose life equal to its casting cost

1/1

this would put my favorite pet deck on tier 1 again!!!

[Nihil Credo]

I think we all agree that making a subtly scalable card is the only way to get something Legacy playable. Going for attacking mana bases is dangerous because it may not support selling tons of Ravnica duals new formats, so CMCs are probably the safest space to mess with. You can go for stuff like anti-blue spells but I think you're much less likely to get something with universal appeal.

This means either:

a) Cards that play well if you have a ton of low CMCs, but much worse if you have a more expensive curve (eg Confidant, Snapcaster)

b) Cards that punish your opponent for having a low curve, but not so much for having a high curve (eg Thalia, Chalice of the Void)

This also means that trying for something that nerfs Griselbrand & Co. is probably a very risky idea. Either it punishes big creatures/permanents in general, in which case it won't make the cut because they don't want Standard 7-mana fatties to "feel bad"; or it only punishes big creatures/permanents when they get cheated into play, in which case it may not make the cut because it doesn't affect Standard at all. If you want to submit an idea along that line, make sure you avoid both of those pitfalls.

Remember, you have to both get put onto the shortlist by Ethan Fleischer and whoever else handles the content, and win the followup vote by the general Magic Internet crowd - which are certainly much more devoted fans than the average, but they're probably still the kind of crowd who picked Glorious Anthem over Crusade. There's no prize for winning one gauntlet and failing the other one.

[Picc]

Goblin Decoy
Creature - Goblin
Flash,Haste,Split Second
When Goblin Decoy enters the battlefield all spells on the stack target it.
2/1

[mini1337s]

"X Card Name" 1R
Creature - Goblin Wizard
At the beginning of your upkeep, "X card name" deals 3 damage to target creature of player.
Everytime "X card name" deals damage, you may draw 2 cards and discard 2 cards.
2/1

[Phelix]

Moar lands please.

"Glass Sanctuary"


Land


You have shroud.

Whenever you lose life, sacrifice Glass sancturary.

[DrJones]

As we are suggesting cards that will never get printed, here's mine:

Lothar the Mindless 1R
Creature - Human warrior
Players can't cast spells with a Brain or Mind in the art and/or name.
2/2

[Kich867]

As we are suggesting cards that will never get printed, here's mine:

Lothar the Mindless 1R
Creature - Human warrior
Players can't cast spells with a Brain or Mind in the art and/or name.
2/2

Brain I get, but now I want to look up every card that has the word "Mind" in it haha.

[Amon Amarth]

I'm digging all the attempts at ridiculous two mana red "goyfs" as well as the hatebears even though I don't think the latter have any chance of seeing print, at least as a YMTC. That said, I voted for land; I really wanna see Volrath's Stronghold for enchantments.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I think we all agree that making a subtly scalable card is the only way to get something Legacy playable. Going for attacking mana bases is dangerous because it may not support selling tons of Ravnica duals new formats, so CMCs are probably the safest space to mess with. You can go for stuff like anti-blue spells but I think you're much less likely to get something with universal appeal.

This means either:

a) Cards that play well if you have a ton of low CMCs, but much worse if you have a more expensive curve (eg Confidant, Snapcaster)

b) Cards that punish your opponent for having a low curve, but not so much for having a high curve (eg Thalia, Chalice of the Void)

This also means that trying for something that nerfs Griselbrand & Co. is probably a very risky idea. Either it punishes big creatures/permanents in general, in which case it won't make the cut because they don't want Standard 7-mana fatties to "feel bad"; or it only punishes big creatures/permanents when they get cheated into play, in which case it may not make the cut because it doesn't affect Standard at all. If you want to submit an idea along that line, make sure you avoid both of those pitfalls.

Remember, you have to both get put onto the shortlist by Ethan Fleischer and whoever else handles the content, and win the followup vote by the general Magic Internet crowd - which are certainly much more devoted fans than the average, but they're probably still the kind of crowd who picked Glorious Anthem over Crusade. There's no prize for winning one gauntlet and failing the other one.

I think there needs to exist a card with the text
"Whenever a nonland permanent comes into play, if its casting cost was not paid the owner of that permanent either pays it's casting cost or return that permanent to it's owners hand." and maybe if you are feeling saucy throw in "cards may not be cast using alternate casting costs" (or however that would be worded)

So in one card you get the foil to any deck that cheats in big things and possibly an anti-FOW. Whether that belongs on a hate bear or an artifact I can't tell you.

Moar lands please.

"Glass Sanctuary"


Land


You have shroud.

Whenever you lose life, sacrifice Glass sancturary.

I think I remember something about WotC not wanting to print any more lands that don't generate mana.

[Megadeus]

Nah man. Just play Nix. The ultimate fuck FOW card.

[Leftconsin]

Moar lands please.

"Glass Sanctuary"


Land


You have shroud.

Whenever you lose life, sacrifice Glass sancturary.

I want this pretty bad, and have wanted so for years. Again, the thing is they don't want to print lands that don't make mana because plenty of people assume all lands make mana and thus this would tap for a colorless if it says it or not.

[Barook]

a) Cards that play well if you have a ton of low CMCs, but much worse if you have a more expensive curve (eg Confidant, Snapcaster)

b) Cards that punish your opponent for having a low curve, but not so much for having a high curve (eg Thalia, Chalice of the Void)

Red has steal effects, copy effects and Shunt effects. That could make an interesting combination. How about something like this:

Spell Thief
Creature - Human Rogue
Flash
When Spell Thief enters the battlefield, you may gain control of target instant or sorcery spell with converted mana cost 2 or less. You may choose new targets for it.
2/1

It's just a concept and needs some work since it's a potential 2-for-0 at 2 mana. Maybe an activated sacrifice ability instead of ETB? The mana cost restriction is there to not endanger Standard while it scales pretty well with the Eternal formats. Stealing Brainstorms sounds like a fun idea.

[(nameless one)]

Brain I get, but now I want to look up every card that has the word "Mind" in it haha.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor

I actually want to see a card that prevents lands from activating non-mana abilities.

Or a balanced Balance. Balancing Act isn't the same because of the way it's worded.

[Julian23]

Tsabo's Web comes to mind. At least kind of.

[TsumiBand]

As we are suggesting cards that will never get printed...

In fairness though, it seems better to start with something that may be a little broken and scale it back if need be. Consider what happened with Forgotten Ancient; if memory serves, he was very nearly a 3-drop for , but was found to quickly get out of hand; however, the appeal of the 3-drop version got the card through to the end. I wonder if the final version of the card would have faired as well.

I mean one can either start safe and make changes or start broken and make changes. And it isn't like starting safe always leads to safe; cards like Skullclamp and Jitte had abilities tacked on at the last minute and this turned out to be the thing that broke the card. Sadly the YMTC doesn't quite work like that; the community needs to finalize the card before it sees print, so an ambitious R&D staff can't probably just tack Flash onto a YMTC at the last minute and see if it breaks anything. So the appeal has to be upfront and immediate.

[Kich867]

In fairness though, it seems better to start with something that may be a little broken and scale it back if need be. Consider what happened with Forgotten Ancient; if memory serves, he was very nearly a 3-drop for , but was found to quickly get out of hand; however, the appeal of the 3-drop version got the card through to the end. I wonder if the final version of the card would have faired as well.

I mean one can either start safe and make changes or start broken and make changes. And it isn't like starting safe always leads to safe; cards like Skullclamp and Jitte had abilities tacked on at the last minute and this turned out to be the thing that broke the card. Sadly the YMTC doesn't quite work like that; the community needs to finalize the card before it sees print, so an ambitious R&D staff can't probably just tack Flash onto a YMTC at the last minute and see if it breaks anything. So the appeal has to be upfront and immediate.

I'm going to just go out on a limb and say the "It was changed at the last minute and not properly tested!" angle is total horseshit. If it happened with skullclamp, and jitte, and Jace, and Intuition, and probably every other hideously good card, that's bullshit. There's no way a group of professionals can't adapt to that and say "Well look everytime this happens we fuck up bad. So let's not do that."

The idea that a company as big as Wizards for something as important and time-consuming as the release of a new set of cards could possibly just "throw shit in last minute and hope it works out" is so amateur and unprofessional you'd think they were a group of high school students or at the very least have no experience doing much of anything important. Furthermore the idea that a group of people who have been doing this for a long time wouldn't be able to fix a simple pattern like that would suggest that none of them are actually fit for their position.

Sorry that had like nothing to do with your post it's just very convenient for Wizards PR to say "Well hey it changed last second nothin we could do about it!". They printed overpowered shit, they know they did, and internally it's fine with them. They're professionals who have been doing this for a very long time, understandably they can't see all angles, but unless they do absolutely no playtesting, it's virtually impossible that some of the blindingly obvious interactions between certain cards / the overall powerlevel of a card go unnoticed.

[xfxf]

Sorry to spoil the fun but this voting thing seems like bullshit. It only checks whether you've voted previously from your cookies so you can actually vote multiple times. You can even write a script to vote for you a number of times each day. I know this is not national elections but do they even give a damn about the actual results or are they going to design a big fatty anyways?

[SpikeyMikey]

I'm going to just go out on a limb and say the "It was changed at the last minute and not properly tested!" angle is total horseshit. If it happened with skullclamp, and jitte, and Jace, and Intuition, and probably every other hideously good card, that's bullshit. There's no way a group of professionals can't adapt to that and say "Well look everytime this happens we fuck up bad. So let's not do that."

The idea that a company as big as Wizards for something as important and time-consuming as the release of a new set of cards could possibly just "throw shit in last minute and hope it works out" is so amateur and unprofessional you'd think they were a group of high school students or at the very least have no experience doing much of anything important. Furthermore the idea that a group of people who have been doing this for a long time wouldn't be able to fix a simple pattern like that would suggest that none of them are actually fit for their position.

Sorry that had like nothing to do with your post it's just very convenient for Wizards PR to say "Well hey it changed last second nothin we could do about it!". They printed overpowered shit, they know they did, and internally it's fine with them. They're professionals who have been doing this for a very long time, understandably they can't see all angles, but unless they do absolutely no playtesting, it's virtually impossible that some of the blindingly obvious interactions between certain cards / the overall powerlevel of a card go unnoticed.

I don't know. I find it very believable. First of all, you have to remember that these people actually *aren't* very good at their jobs. We're talking about a company that hasn't been able to put together a decent website in the entire history of their existence. A company that puts guys like Tom "Great Sable Stag" LaPille in charge of developing their sets. There is a culture of incompetence in Renton and the incompetents at the top find like-minded individuals to work for them. When the incompetents leave, there's another incompetent waiting to take their place.

As far as last-minute changes, I imagine there are a lot more last minute-changes than the few serious mistakes that they talk about. Whenever 1 card in a set changes, multiple other parts of the set have to shift to cover that change. You cut a common white instant removal spell? Now your balance is off. Now you're changing 6 other cards to cover so that your limited formats aren't a total CF. I imagine last minute changes happen all the time.

Wizards does playtest. But that playtesting isn't Conley Woods vs. Caleb Durward in a battle to see who can brew the most busted things for Standard, Modern and Legacy. People are given assignments. Test this card. Test this mechanic. Build a deck around x, y and z. And most of their testing is for limited. They're less concerned with how a set will impact high level competitive play than they are with how "fun" it is for casual players. Notice that while there have been numerous constructed formats broken by mistakes, the only ridiculously imbalanced draft/sealed format has been Pack Rat RtR. Sit and consider that for a minute. There have been draft formats that were lame. There have been draft formats where a certain color or combination was an obvious strongest choice. But until just a few months ago, there has never been a broken draft format. That's incredibly impressive, considering how incompetent we just discussed that they are.

[DrJones]

There have been draft formats where a certain color or combination was an obvious strongest choice. But until just a few months ago, there has never been a broken draft format. That's incredibly impressive, considering how incompetent we just discussed that they are.

How quickly we forget Mirrodin and Loxodon Warhammer, or Urza's Saga and Pestilence. I also remember that article from Aaron Forsythe in which he acknowledged that merely having Wurmcoil Engine in your deck basically guaranteed you would win a Scars of Mirrodin sealed tournament. It was from a statistical study he made after hearing pro-players complain about Overrun being broken, and the end result was that they will no longer print Control Magic effects as uncommon. heh.

[Barbed Blightning]

As someone who tried out the idea of fast Thalias + Glowriders (see signature link), I can assure you that Glowrider does jackshit against creature-heavy decks (which are quite few in the format).

As for a red dude, how about this:

*insert name here*
Creature - Human Shaman/Wizard
When ~ enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a red instant or sorcery card with converted mana cost of 2 or less, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If you you, shuffle your library.
2/1

Creates CA and provides some utillity (blasts, artifact destruction, etc). The restrictions make sure it can't be abused.

This I like.