Fat Rat

[MrZuccinniHead]

Fat Rat (placeholder)
3BB
Pack 3 - Whenever a rat comes into play on your side, you may have target creature get -3/-3 until end of turn.
3/3

Current Version:
Jet-Tail the Infector
3BB
Legendary Creature - Rat
Pack 3 - Whenever a rat comes into play under your control, target creature gets -3/-3 until end of turn.
3/3

Changes:
Changed to pack 4 because of pack rulings. - Eph and rules

I wanted to give the rat pack a little fat since many other rats will be smaller.

[Matt]

May I assume this is Creature -- Rat?

That ability is really strong.

[MrZuccinniHead]

yeah but have to think of it as pack 4...the pack ability activates at 3, but you need to play a 4th rat for it to work, but I could still raise it if more people think it's too strong as well.

[Matt]

Well the thing is, -3/-3 kills like 85% or more of viable creatures in any given format.

[Slay]

It triggers upon itself, so you only need 2 other rats in play. I think.

A 3BB rat isn't overpowered at all. By the time you get that out, most other decks in any given format(except maybe block) should already have a fairly dominating board position against your rat deck. Tribal rat decks suck to begin with, why not give them some fairly awesome abilities on an overcosted creature?
-Slay

[MrZuccinniHead]

It triggers upon itself, so you only need 2 other rats in play. I think.

A 3BB rat isn't overpowered at all. By the time you get that out, most other decks in any given format(except maybe block) should already have a fairly dominating board position against your rat deck. Tribal rat decks suck to begin with, why not give them some fairly awesome abilities on an overcosted creature?
-Slay

It doesn't trigger on itself.  You need 3 in play for the ability to be active, but I guess eph can clear that up since he made the pack mechanic.

[Matt]

It triggers upon itself, so you only need 2 other rats in play. I think.

A 3BB rat isn't overpowered at all. By the time you get that out, most other decks in any given format(except maybe block) should already have a fairly dominating board position against your rat deck. Tribal rat decks suck to begin with, why not give them some fairly awesome abilities on an overcosted creature?
-Slay

I would have bet dollars to donuts that the very same would be said about a 3RR goblin, but there's Siege-Gang Commander, tearing up block, T2, 1.x, and 1.5.

[dandan]

Removing the 'you may' part adds a lot of flavour to this, as lacking anything better to do, the rats will start to eat each other. Of course most players wouldn't play more rats but there are some interesting scenarios with Living Death and Prot-Black/untargetanle creatures that I think the change is worthwhile.

IMHO if you have a 5cc creature out plus at least 2 other Rats and then you play another Rat, you are either talking seriously casual or your opponent deserves to lose a creature. Friggin Hand of Justice kills anything if you have 3 other White creatures and Black is meant to be good at killing things.

I dislike random numbers floating around. Where is -3/-3 from? How about -X/-X where X is the Power or Toughness or CMC of the Rat?

[Ephraim]

It triggers upon itself, so you only need 2 other rats in play. I think.

A 3BB rat isn't overpowered at all. By the time you get that out, most other decks in any given format(except maybe block) should already have a fairly dominating board position against your rat deck. Tribal rat decks suck to begin with, why not give them some fairly awesome abilities on an overcosted creature?
-Slay

It doesn't trigger on itself.  You need 3 in play for the ability to be active, but I guess eph can clear that up since he made the pack mechanic.

I'm pretty sure this isn't really my call. It's going to be defined by the rules of the game. If it's the third rat coming down, it's going to trigger itself. One way you could fix that a little bit would be to say, "Whenever another rat comes into play..." That still lets the third rat down kill something, but it requires this to be on the board first. With a casting cost of 5, that doesn't seem like a huge problem.

[MrZuccinniHead]

I think this should be compared to [card]Earthshaker[/card] in terms of what it does.  Earthshaker is one more mana for +1/+2 and it hits ALL non-flyers for 2.  This hits one of anything for 3 with a 3/3 body.

I picked -3/-3 because I wanted something that can kill a lot of creature (as was already mentioned), but I didn't to give it the ability to kill anything outright.  More like a disease-giver.  Think Phyrexian Plaguelord and his friends.

[MrZuccinniHead]

Jet-Tail the Infector
3BB
Legendary Creature - Rat
Pack 3 or 4 - Whenever a rat comes into play on your side, you may give up to three target creatures -3/-3, divided as you choose, until end of turn.
3/3

Opinions on this idea?

[Ephraim]

It doesn't work because it's ambiguous. I suspect that the intent is to distribute three temporary -1/-1's. But what's to keep you from delivering one -0/-1, one -0/-2, and one -3/-0? You may have to pattern this after Bounty of the Hunt if you want to do it this way:

ou may remove a green card in your hand from the game rather than pay Bounty of the Hunt’s mana cost.
Choose one — Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn; or target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn and another target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn; or three target creatures each get +1/+1 until end of turn.

[MrZuccinniHead]

changed based on suggestion.

[Matt]

That's REALY ugly, and moreover much much stronger than the single -3/-3.

[MrZuccinniHead]

but it's a pack 4 now.  Make it a legend?

[Ephraim]

Oh, yeah. Make it a legend if you're going to use that ability. I really liked the name "Jet-Tail the Infector." It's themely, catchy, and describes the mechanic. I agree with Matt that this is "much, much stronger than the single -3/-3" but I don't think it would be out of line, either. It's better than Shambling Swarm, but it does nominally cost more and requires a tribal deck to be built around it. (Looking at Shambling Swarm, that's another possible wording you could use verbatim.) Especially if you make it legendary, I wouldn't balk at that power level.

[Matt]

It's not just the power level - at pack 4 I would be fine with a single shot of -3/-3. The splitting mechanic is very lengthy and confusing, and it doesn't really add enough for all that text.

[MrZuccinniHead]

changed based on debate

[Sanity_XIV]

Why is it "On your side" rather than "under your control"?

[dandan]

I think this would be strong at Pack 3 but OK. Making it Pack 4 dramatically reduces the chance of this this actually doing anything and that is sad. For reference
5 mana in Red gets you
a 4/5 that shocks for R up to 4 times (usually)
a 4/4 that doesn't tap to attack and walks over and pummels some poor creature to a pulp
a 4/4 that does a good impression of Masticore as it mows down anything remotely small but doesn't have an upkeep cost and can shoot players. Throw in a RFG effect just in case you thought this was underpowered.

in Black you could have
a 4/4 flying creature with a minor ability
a 3/3 Pestilence on legs (far superior in terms of weenie control albeit not the most natural addition to a Rat deck)
a Phyrexian Plaguelord (abilities without tapping/mana costs are much stronger than they appear)

So a 3/3 body that has a cool ability (at Pack 3) IF you have another 3 Rats in play and then play another Rat is kind of like a weak card that gets quite good after Threshold although IMHO even Pack 3 is harder to achieve than Threshold.

Dandan votes for Pack 3.

Otherwise a very cool card.

[Matt]

Really, I would be more amenable to lowering the pack number than to splitting up the counters. It's really long and kind of confusing - compare with something like "Pack 3 - When a Rat comes into play under your control, target creature gets -3/-3 until of turn."

Actually I think that would be totally doable, since if the opponent has no legal targets the rats will have to turn on each other. Which sounds very rat-like.

[MrZuccinniHead]

so which shall I do, distribute -3/-3 or just have -3/-3?

[Jacob Orlove]

I'd rather see -3/-3.

[Ephraim]

It probably still wouldn't look good, but you could use a variant of the wording from the new card Seeds of Strength, which reads "Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn." three times.

[49 Cents]

Pack 3 - Whenever a rat comes into play under your control, you may distribute three -1/-1 counters among one, two, or three target creatures. Remove those counters at end of turn

Wouldn't this be: Distribute three -1/-1 counters among any number of creatures? Maybe it should be Non-Black creatures..

[MrZuccinniHead]

24 Hour Clock

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]