I think it's creature + Umezawa's Jitte, Fork of Doom.

EDIT: Doh, I can't read.

I don't believe costs can target.  Also, making the bounce part of the cost and not allowing your opponent to respond to it is very iffy.  I'd word it something like 1UU, T: Return target artifact or enchantment to its owner's hand.  If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on ~this~.

EDIT: Ignore the above.  I can't read .

It seems that no one has much more to say about this cycle, so I'll start the 24h clock.

Never thought of Form, actually.  I just felt that them all being "temporary" 5 point life gain spells was a bit much, especially since the initial concept of it was "1, Artifact: Unless you have -X or less life, you don't lose the game for having 0 or less life".

Yea, that was something I thought about.  However, the 4 point life gain isn't the main part of the spells, and there are artifacts that provide life gain to all colors (Sun Droplet, for example).  In addition, 4 life generally won't make or break games, and if destroyed, the life gain disappears.

By the way, what do you think about the numbers (green and red), and what do you think about white's ability?  White's ability is the only one that doesn't stack for multiples in play, but I couldn't figure out what another mechanic could be for it.  Maybe a double Divine Anthem effect?  That's a bit too conditional for my liking, though...

Maybe it's not synched in real time, but once every hour or something?

EDIT: Confirmed.  Post count still at 118.  Or, posts in this forum aren't counted.

.  I guess this gets closed then.

EDIT: Wait!  I can change them all to CIP: Gain 4 life, and when it leaves play, lose 4 life.  That way, I can set the threshold at 4 life and it'd still be functionally the same except under stuff like Sulfuric Vortex, etc.

EDIT 2: The problem with this now is that playing two or more of them is a lot worse.

A while ago, I thought of a possible card that could keep you alive a bit past the point where your life hits 0 (i.e. you survive until you hit -5 life), sort of like a mini-Platinum Angel.  The problem with this was that it would only function as a pretty bad life gain spell and would require other cards to make it interesting.  Then I thought about making this a cycle, so that each could carry their own effect that could be used when your life dropped below 0.  This is what I came up with.

Fortifying Flame

Enchantment
Unless you have -4 life or less, you don't lose the game for having 0 life or less.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 0 life or less, Fortifying Flame deals 4 damage to target creature or player.

Fortifying Undeath

Enchantment
Unless you have -4 life or less, you don't lose the game for having 0 life or less.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 0 life or less, return target creature card from a graveyard to play under your control.

Fortifying Intellect

Enchantment
Unless you have -4 life or less, you don't lose the game for having 0 life or less.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 0 life or less, draw two cards.

Fortifying Purification
{W}
Enchantment
Unless you have -4 life or less, you don't lose the game for having 0 life or less.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 0 life or less, destroy all creatures.  They can't be regenerated.

Fortifying Growth
{G}
Enchantment
Unless you have -4 life or less, you don't lose the game for having 0 life or less.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 0 life or less, put four 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens into play.

Flavor-wise, these are enchantments that allow a plainswalker to operate beyond his limit, as in when he should be dead.  However, once he needs to draw on these enchantments for support, they create all sorts of other effects as well.  Power-wise, they're high risk, high reward (some of their effects may need to be upped).  If you can safeguard them, then you can mana burn yourself down to 0 and enjoy the quite powerful effects.  If you can't, anything from a bounce spell to a Naturalize to four damage will kill you.

The other thing I considered was to allow the player to sacrifice them for an effect if the player had 0 life or less.  This would have required him/her to have a second one of these or something like a Platinum Angel, Lich, or Transcendence in play in order to use the other effect.  Obviously, this would mean that the effects should be bigger.

Current Version:

Fortifying Flame

Enchantment
When Fortifying Flame comes into play, you gain 4 life.
When Fortifying Flame leaves play, you lose 4 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 4 life or less, Fortifying Flame deals 4 damage to target creature or player.

Fortifying Undeath

Enchantment
When Fortifying Undeath comes into play, you gain 4 life.
When Fortifying Undeath leaves play, you lose 4 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 4 life or less, return target creature card from a graveyard to play under your control.

Fortifying Intellect

Enchantment
When Fortifying Intellect comes into play, you gain 4 life.
When Fortifying Intellect leaves play, you lose 4 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 4 life or less, draw two cards.

Fortifying Purification
{W}
Enchantment
When Fortifying Flame comes into play, you gain 4 life.
When Fortifying Flame leaves play, you lose 4 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 4 life or less, destroy all creatures.  They can't be regenerated.

Fortifying Growth
{G}
Enchantment
When Fortifying Flame comes into play, you gain 4 life.
When Fortifying Flame leaves play, you lose 4 life.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 4 life or less, put four 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens into play.

I have somewhat unconventional two ideas for attacking Oath.  These are just ideas, and I have not tested them, nor do I guarantee that they actually work.

Once, I lost to FCG when playing Oath because I couldn't prevent Food Chain from hitting the table.  By the time he actually allowed it to trigger (he'd sacrifice his creatures in response to the trigger to Food Chain), I had both of my creatures in my hand and couldn't get the mana to cast them before I died.  This may not apply to R/G beats, but if we could side in Goblin Bombardment and maybe some burn, we could essentually turn this deck into a burn deck.  Oath would never be able to trigger until the Goblin Bombardnemt is removed, by which time we could hopefully burn them out.

Another idea draws upon Odyssey/Onslaught T2's R/G Beats.  Against U/G Madness, R/G Beats would side in Ensnaring Bridge for random creatures.  It would then go for some early beats before playing Bridge and burning its opponent out.  This could work against Oath, but they could always side in artifact hate.

Maybe a clause stating "As long as it remains a global enchantment, it blah blah blah."

I've participated in some of these formats before.  They seem to have the problem of the strong decks getting stronger, while the weaker decks only get weaker due to the ante system.  Having a good card get anted will frequently destroy weaker decks.  Allowing the option of generating a new sealed deck does not address the fact that the stronger decks have already gotten stronger, and will likely continue to win.  What if instead of ante, people play only for league points?  There could be an additional option of them trading in 1 league point for a random card in the set (generate a sealed deck, then roll a die to determine which card they get).

If nothing else, we could always model this off the way MTGO does its leagues.  Does anyone know how those work?

By the way, is there a way to buy extra land?  Maybe 1-3 league points for a land pack (although the land packs in Apprentice don't seem to work)?

EDIT: Found some info on MTGO Sealed leagues.


You can find an example of someone's league experience here.

This was a four week Mirrordin block league.  To start, the person purchased a Mirrordin tournament pack (I guess that means starter, although it seems to give more lands) and a booster of Darksteel and Fifth Dawn.  At the end of the first week, the person adds a Mirrordin booster.  At the end of the second week, the person adds a Darksteel booster.  At the end of the third week, the person adds a Fifth Dawn booster (SURPRISE!).

We could just use this format, or we could alter it a bit to fit in league points.  Since there's already a constant influx of boosters, I don't think allowing additional boosters to be bought with league points is a really great idea.  Instead, we could simply opt to keep the trading feature, and maybe add a buy-a-card feature (generate a sealed deck, people bid on the cards?).  Or, to even things out, we could even scrap the league points system and go with a draft system, where the people with the worst records get the first picks (X boosters are generated so everyone gets 1 pick, and the rest is dumped).

In any case, I think league points should be kept seperate from the standings.  For example, going into the last week, people may just decide not to spend their league points when they could clearly use extra booster packs, because they don't want to influence their rankings.

Wow, that looks really impressive.  However, it looks like it has the potential to fizzle if it doesn't draw Skullclamp.  Maybe 2 Swords of Fire and Ice could be added?  They'd function as additional card draw to find your Skullclamps, and they deal extra damage to boot.

EDIT: Whoops  I forgot you could target yourself with Mindslaver.

Now if you had targeted your opponent, you'd take control of your opponent's next turn, and then your opponent would take control of your next turn.

How about making it symmetrical?
During any player's untap step, that player may choose to skip all of his/her draws for his/her turn.  If that player does, until his or her next turn, all players skip all draws.
During any player's untap step, that player may choose not to untap any lands. If that player does, until that player's next untap step, no player may untap any lands.

It actually seems a bit narrow to me, other than the turn 1 Non-Fetch, This, Tolarian turn 2 or turn 1 Fetch, This, Ancestral turn 2.  Having it rely on the graveyard is kind of iffy, since it's easy to fill up.  EDIT: Greater than still has problems of searching for stuff like Ancestral early and Bargain or Desire later on, but it would be much better than equal to.

I'm looking for this to have a converted casting cost of three or less.  Any more and I don't think it'd be very useful.

Here's another idea, but this is in no way final.  Keep the suggestions going, please.

Name
B
Sorcery
Target opponent searches your library for X cards with different names, where X is the number of permanents you control.  Choose one of them and put it into your hand.  Shuffle the rest into your library.

EDIT #2:
I just realized that this may have a problem.  It probably needs to be "reveal your library," to prevent your opponent from fail searching.

I think you need to format it so the X is before the 2.  So, X2.

Other than that, you could compare this to Braingeyser.  Braingeyser draws the same amount of cards for the same amount of mana, but all at once.  This, however, can be cast off Mishra's Workshop and doesn't require U.  Still, this doesn't even replace itself instantly, leaving it vulnerable to artifact destruction.

What if it's costed at X4, but it comes into play with X+3 tokens?  That way, it'll draw one more card than Braingeyser for the same amount of mana, but it can't be cast off just a Mishra's Workshop.

Hmm... Ok.  I guess I'll have to change it from relying on words, but I'd still like it to be based on some condition, i.e. permanents in play, cards in hand, or cards in the graveyard.  Any suggestions?

The other 1/1's for 2 have a useful ability as well.  Beloved Chaplain only acts as a Maze of Ith against creatures that don't trample if not attacking.

It really wasn't meant to be an Unglued type card.  I'll take suggestions for changes, though.

(Will be out of town for this weekend, so it may take a while for me to make changes.)

Masticore is a creature, so it can't kill the Chaplain either.

All in all, though, the Chaplain is just awful in T1.  It's a 1/1 for 2, which will cause you significant tempo problems.  Besides, it's only useful against a couple of archetypes.

Hopefully, I won't lose interest in this as I have in the past.  If you're interested in sponsoring this card, say so.

Literary Tutor
2U
Sorcery
Choose a non-italicized word in the rules text box of a permanent you control.  Search your library for a card that has that word in its text box, reveal that card, and put it in your hand.  Shuffle your library. (Mana Symbols and Tap Symbols are not words.  Use the Oracle wording for all cards.)

There is an obvious wording issue (rules text box?).  Flavor text suggestions would be nice.  I also really wanted to make it black, but the mechanic and the name seems to fit blue so much better.

By the way, brownie points goes to anyone who can figure out where I the idea for this card.  Hint: it's a book.

I could easily see this:

Keeper of the Vise
B
Creature - Human Cleric
0/0
Keeper of the Vise gets +X/+X, where X is the number of cards in your opponent's hand minus four.
Trample

Going first against a G/x deck, this will probably be a 3/3 for turn 2, a 2/2  that gets chumped by Sakura-Tribe Elder turn 3, and a 1/1 that's eaten by Viridian Shaman or Eternal Witness turn 4.  This means it will probably only do about 4 or 5 damage before dying, and it'll only be good on turn 1/2.  If your opponent is playing Freshmaker, it has a good chance of dying to a Magma Jet turn 2.  Against Affinity, it dies an obviously horrible death.  This may be too good against Mono-U, but I just don't see it working too well against anything else.  

Maybe if it starts off being a 1/1 or a 0/1?  In that case, it could be worded:
If your opponent has at least 4 cards in his or her hand, Keeper of the Vise gets +X/+X, where X is the number of cards in your opponent's hand minus four.
If your opponent has less than 4 cards in his or her hand, Keeper of the Vise gets -X/-X, where X is four minus the number of cards in your opponent's hand.
This wording also removes the possibility of enchantments or equipment keeping it alive when the number of cards in an opponent's hand drops below 3/4.

Have you tested Soulless Revivals for the CHK list?  Soulless Revival allows Hana Kami to become ridiculous and chain off more arcane spells than you can count.  Granted, this takes a while to get off the ground, and it may necessitate the playing of Kodama's Reach for further mana fixing.  However, you don't need to play that many (say, 2x or so).

By the way, even if it wasn't, you'd still be able to take out his remaining land.  Balance would resolve all the way, and then Sundering Titan's ability would go on stack.

This probably doesn't belong in the rules forum, but it allows Affinity to play Mage without having to worry about the UW casting cost.  Mage can stop crucial spells like Energy Flux and Deed.

JDizzle is right.  If you Duress a Circular Logic, you have to pass the phase in order to play anything without having it countered by the Logic.  When both players pass priority with an empty stack, the game moves to the next step or phase.  If you pass priority and your opponent passes priority, Circular Logic will go to the graveyard and the game moves to the next phase.  So if you're playing against Madness, play that Duress during your first main phase.

Are decks that win on the second turn allowed?  If so, can decks that can win on the first turn be allowed, but not be allowed to win until the second turn?

Are you going to ban Null Rod as well?

Meh, you're right.  But the instant speed functions as an anti-falter in Limited, since this would remove two attackers from combat.