Cycle of cascade leeching enchantments

[Matt]

Name
{W}
Enchantment
Whenever a spell card resolves, if that spell's controller paid any cascade costs for that spell, gain 5 life.

Just your generic white leeching card. I gave it the wonky "spell card" wording so that it doesn't trigger off cascade copies. Is there a better way to put this?

Name

Enchantment
Sacrifice a nontoken creature: Add to your amna pool. This mana may only be used to pay for cascade costs.

I added the nontoken thing to prevent infinite combos.

Name

Enchantment
Whenever an opponent pays a spell's cascade cost, you may also pay that cost plus . If you do, put a copy of that spell on the stack.

Is too stringent? I thought might be too strong a deterrent. At least this isn't in green, where they can more easily generate lots of mana colors. I normally don't like referencing the stack in card text but in this case I think it's unavoidable, and in any event you'd better be damn familiar with the stack concept if you're going to play with cascade cards.

Name
{G}{G}
Enchantment
Whenever a cascade cost is paid, you may pay . If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.

This is pretty basic. Can be used both in cascade decks and against. I made it double-green to prevent it from being Quirion Dryad on steroids. I added the instead of making it free so we can leave design space open for weird cascade costs.

I still need a blue one to complete the cycle.

[Matt]

Current wording:

Name
{W}
Enchantment
Whenever a spell card resolves, if that spell's controller played any cascade abilities of that spell, gain 5 life. (Copies of spells aren't cards.)

Name
{B}
Enchantment
Sacrifice a nontoken creature: Add {B}{B} to your mana pool. This mana may only be used to pay for cascade abilities.

Name

Enchantment
Whenever an opponent plays a spell's cascade ability, you may also pay that ability's cost plus . If you do, put a copy of that spell on the stack.

Name
{G}{G}
Enchantment
Whenever a cascade cost is paid, you may pay . If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.

Name

Enchantment
Whenever a spell card resolves, if that spell's controller played any cascade abilities of that spell, you may tap target creature. (Copies of spells aren't cards.)

[asmoranomardicodais]

How 'bout this for the blue one?

Name
1UU
Whenever a cascade cost is payed, each player may draw a card.

[MrZuccinniHead]

Blue cascade
1U
Whenever you play a cascade cost for a spell, you may pay .  If you do, Scry 1.

[LordHomerCat]

Shouldn't the Copying effect be a blue card?  I mean, just in this last block, there's Twincast and Uyo, Silent Prophet... Copying spells should belong to blue now.  As far as red, there's always the generic direct damage, kind of like a lightning rift, or else some kind or threaten ability, or changing targets.

[Matt]

Eh I would REALLY like to avoid just doing the generic direct-damage option. It's SO overused.

[Matt]

Bump. Names? Ideas on a new red one, or new blue?

[Anusien]

I don't know about having an easily available cascade bosoter in each color.  It seems like you're pushing the mechanic too hard, but you don't want to push it the way Astral Slide/Lightning Rift was pushed in Onslaught.  Still, I could see where there would be options in most of the colors.

Give Red a Crack the Earth effect, one per Cascade.
Give Blue an optional "You may pay the Cascade cost.  If so" and then either Fork or Control Magic the copy on the stack.

Other than that, I like them.

[Matt]

I made blue a Twiddle. 24 hour clock.

[Jacob Orlove]

I made blue a Twiddle. 24 hour clock.

That had me all worried, but your version is fine.

[JAG]

um, this cycle just seems all wrong to me. 

First off, it seems needlessly complex to have the cards trigger when the spell resolves, no less, when the spell CARD resolves (which I'm absolutely sure is the wrong wording, since, strictly speaking, the card does nothing other than physically represent the spell on the stack).  Why isn't the white one something like:

"Whenever a spell's cascade ability is played, you may gain 2 life."

Simple, clean, still reasonably useful.  Well, as useful as it was before.  If we want to push this, it could probably be "gain 3 life" without too many problems.

The black one has an outdated ability.  Check out Seething Song.  Temporary mana gains is not a black ability.  you were worried about giving the red one a generic overused damage ability?  no problem, give it the old black one, or at least a tweak of it.  The black one could do something with killing guys, discarding, maybe even poison if you want.  I'll throw out the obligatory creature killing option:

"Whenever a spell's cascade ability is played, you may pay 2 and 4 life.  If you do, that spell's controller sacrifices a creature."

It does have to have a significant cost attached to it.  After all, this is much stronger than simply gaining life.  Now, this is a very generic ability, so if anyone can come up with anything more creative than this, I've got no qualms about kicking this version to the curb.

The old black ability seems fine, although in red it makes more sense to be sacrificing artifacts or lands rather than guys.

"Sacrifice an artifact: Add 3 to your mana pool.  Use this mana only to pay cascade abilities."

The green one seems sooooo weak, but the only other option i can think of is a creature generator.  Just as generic, but a bit more useful.  They can both be templated the same way, so I don't think that's much of an isssue.  is there any reason this one is the only one with 2 colored mana in its cost?  are we afraid people will splash it too easily?  I think it should be 1G, or 2G if we're afraid of the implications in Limited.  I think it's best to leave it at 1G and move it up in development if we need to.

"Whenever a spell's cascade ability is played, you may pay 1.  If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature."

As for the blue one, I think it should get the copy ability that the red one used to have, but if we're afraid of the power level of blue in the set (which i think is a development issue and we can have a couple different mechanics in mind for this card) then the Twiddle ability is probably safe and certainly better than, say, Jumping.

I'd say the blue one can easily do any of the following, in order of scariness:

Card Drawing
Forking
Countering
Bouncing
Milling
Twiddlling
Changing Land Types
Doing Nothing At All
"Jump"ing

not at all sure what most of those would look like.  I guess I'll take a shot at retemplating the Forking ability

"Whenever a spell's cascade ability is played, you may pay that ability's cost and an additional 2.  If you do, put a copy of that abiliity on the stack."

I like the idea of a cycle of these cards, but in making one, we have to be aware of the color pie precedents for what colors can do what.  It would also be cool if these cards could actually do something in Constructed as well as limited.

-JM

[Matt]

I made it spell card because we may want to make cards with zero-mana or nonmana cascade costs, which would be abusive with these cards. If you make a card which has cascade -- pay 3 life then with the white one, you'd have infinite life. That's a dumb combo.

The green one is not the only double-colored one. The black one is also.

If the green one isn't good enough, I could have it give like +2/+2 until EOT. That's arguably stronger, since it threatens serious combat tricks. The green one was also supposed to be as much a hoser against cascade, since the rough flavor of the mechanic is throwing big powerful spells (as opposed to creatures) around, which is not green's forte.

I don't entirely agree with the official line on black's mana production. I cans ee the argument about Seething Song being in red, but this is a Culling The Weak. The difference is that black is ALL ABOUT sacrificing creatures. It isn't so keen on throwing away power in its hand - that's more of a red thing. But creature sacrifice? Black to the core. If it were sacrificing any permanent, that indiscriminate attitude would be red, but by specifying creatures, it's made plain that this is a card which entails taking a living body, strapping it to a table, and slicing it with knives to let the blood run forth. That kind of precision and purposefulness is not red at all.

[JAG]

i can see why you made it the "spell card" way, but i really hate the templating on it.  I just think it's cleaner for it to trigger when the cascade ability is played.  You can always tack on a cost to the ability.  Yes, having to pay anything for the life gain is pretty dumb, but it's better than the theoretical infinite life off a Cascade: Pay 3 life.  Actually, the way I wrote it it wouldn't give infinite life, and i think Cascade: Pay 1 life or even Pay 2 life is a little low.

As for Culling the Weak, it's a card from back before the revision of the color pie.  Disenchant was in the next set, as was instant speed card drawing.  The color pie distribution only happened recently, and a card that was printed 7 years ago isn't necessarily indicative of what the pie is supposed to be today.  Keep in mind that Dark Ritual still had another reprinting left in it when Culling the Weak was printed. 

Actually the ability you have on the card reminded me of Ashnod's Altar, which is an ability that I don't think has gotten assigned to a color yet.  I understand your case for black, but it just doesn't seem right to me.  It seems too much like Dark Ritual, which is red now as we all know.  Mana generation just doesn't seem like a thing black does anymore, and if it does, it certainly should make Black mana.

I did misread it, btw.  I for some reason thought the black one was not double-colored.  I still don't think either one should be double colored, and certainly I dont think any of them but maybe the Fork one is powerful enough to put at 4, and 3 is still a little high for the Life Gain and the Creature Pump.  I don't think it hurts to much to push them and see if they are broken in development.  The only one that seems potentially abusive is the Fork one.

-JM

[Matt]

Look, you're not telling me anything I don't know. I KNOW Ritual is now red. I don't care, because I don't think this is the same mechanic as Ritual. The sacrifice changes the flavor pretty drastically, in my opinion. I think black SHOULD be able to do mana generation; in fact, Wizards has ALSO stated that black can get pretty much any effect it wants, if it's willing to pay life and sacrifice things for it. The same as how red can get almost any effect if there's a chance it won't happen (Skullscorch, Browbeat).

The color pie is far from set in stone, and I think that sacrificing a creature for mana is a black thing to do.

[Anusien]

The black one seems severely bad.
Cascade cards with colorless in the mana cost: 13 (Mana cost breakdown: 1: 1, 1C: 11, 3: 1, 2C: 1)
Cascade cards with only colorless in the mana cost: 2 (Scrutizine: Draw + Discard, Maddening Drige: Discard twice)

In other words, this only ever going to do half the work of a cascade spell, and that's rather stiff for 2BB + sacrificing a creature.  What about making it add two mana of any color to your mana pool and keep the cascade restriction?

[Matt]

Of course you do realize that we're not done making cascade cards, right? There will be more to come, and if we have a black card like this that will help us shape the cascade costs.

I am going to make it all black mana instead of colorless though, to play up how much black is in love with itself.

[Anusien]

Of course you do realize that we're not done making cascade cards, right? There will be more to come, and if we have a black card like this that will help us shape the cascade costs.

I am going to make it all black mana instead of colorless though, to play up how much black is in love with itself.

True, but that gives an idea of the direction we're going.  However, you're right to make it in black, because black loves to encourage you to play more Black cards.  Greedy bugger of a color.

[Matt]

Can I clock this? Names will be added in Development of the set's flavor.

[Matt]

I'm not sure what to do with these. I guess they should just be replicate...?

[Matt]

Yes to being added namelessly, no to replicate.