Ephraim's Mechanic Gone Wild Part Quatre

[Godder]

This time we're in Green and Black, where token making and creature sacrifices are nicely complementary abilities. My take on this is that it's great in multiplayer, but not unreasonably so.

<cardname>
B/G B/G
Sorcery
If was spent to play <cardname>, put two 1/1 saproling tokens into play.
If was spent to play <cardname>, each player sacrifices two creatures.

Current Wording:

<cardname>
B/G B/G
Sorcery
If was spent to play <cardname>, put two 2/2 Bear tokens into play.
If was spent to play <cardname>, each player sacrifices two creatures.

Edit: Saprolings changed to Bears.

[Anusien]

Hrm.  Barter in Blood is 2BB, so I'm inclined to say this should possibly be 4 B/G B/G which is a bit excessive.  The problem is if you make this 1B/G B/G it's worse than Cruel Edict.  So maybe put 1 saproling and sac 2 creatures?

[Matt]

This is a black card with green kicker.

[Godder]

This is a black card with green kicker.

Well, not so much a Green kicker as a 'if G is spent on this, it doesn't hurt you', but I take the point. Three saprolings perhaps? Two bear tokens instead?

3GG to make everyone sac two creatures is pretty ridiculous.

Huh?

Hrm. Barter in Blood is 2BB, so I'm inclined to say this should possibly be 4 B/G B/G which is a bit excessive. The problem is if you make this 1 B/G B/G it's worse than Cruel Edict. So maybe put 1 saproling and sac 2 creatures?

If it does two creatures, it has to have CMC 4+, but I think it's fine at CMC 5. A Sorcery that costs 5 has to do an awful lot before it pushes broken, and this isn't broken at 5 by any means, not least because the effect isn't really that big.

[Ephraim]

This is a black card with green kicker.

I agree.  Putting two Saproling tokens into play isn't worth {G}{G}.  On the other hand, what if this said,
"If was spent to play <cardname>, put a 1/1 green Saproling creature token into play for each Forest you control."

As I have noted with other cards in this cycle, I think this card is more interesting if the black ability goes off first.

[Matt]

Bump it to three saprolings, maybe? It would still be much less good than Scatter the Seeds.

[dandan]

Saprolings? Couldn't it put 2 Lhurgoyfs into play instead? That makes it decidedly interesting and far far far from a Black card with Green kicker (unless you are talking about a kick in the staple foodstuff of squirrels)

Note: I thought when I wrote that that is is way overpowered. However wasn't Living Death pretty strong? Two token creatures are fairly frail and quite often the Black part will kill one or both of them anyway. I do like opposing colour Ephraim cards that sometimes work worse if you cast them using both colours. The thought of getting two Goyfs after EMGWPQing in a multiplayer game brings out the Wakefield in me.

[Jacob Orlove]

What if it made a couple Bears? A total of 4/4 for 3GG is fine.

[dandan]

Bears aren't Goyfs. Don't deny the mad synergy of my suggestion!

[Anusien]

Do we want to make the negative or positive abilities go off first?  I've been leaning towards positive, because I like cards that give you options (kicker was really good this way), as you can play a shitty effect in a single-color but a big effect in two colors (somewhat like the colored-kicker spells from Ravnica itself).

[Ephraim]

Negative ability first.  It's a great way of introducing tension between playing both abilities or just one ability.

[Godder]

I've designed mine so that the two effects cancel each other for your board. Hence, the Blue/White one taps their creatures while untapping yours, and in this case, I tried to make it so that the Green effect avoids the Black effect for you. We don't have to do that, but I was aiming to make the gold version of the cards more desireable.

[dandan]

If we go for the Lhurgoyfs, the Green effect has to come first to give the card some sort of balance.