Narrowest Card Evar

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, well, it's not as if I was serious with the combo being a reason for this to be printed.

Think for real. If you saw this card in a pack, what would you think? Right, you would think "Wow, what a sucky piece of suck." So it shouldn't be printed.

Theorising about it, however, is a good excercise for the mind :)

Are you sure Stijn is for this card?

[Bram]

BWM: isn't that two-day laugh alone worth this seeing print?

Pyro: damn sure we would break this. And I'm SO in love with this card''s name and flavor text, too

jacob: hmm....he seems abivalent on the matter:

Well, it has a better divident than Iceberg has...this version is pure genius, and I mean it! I would play it myself in my super-superfluent-redundancy-packed-UN deck...Instead of Iceberg

That's exactly the kind of reaction I want to provoke. This card is not dangerous to any environment, it's intersting, it's funny and it's flavorful. It's also, most likely, crap. But crap cards are an essential part of the game. In the past, our own set's 'crap' cards have basically been overcosted effects. There's little or no 'Carnival of Souls'-like possible-combo-pieces-that-every-Spike-tries-to-break-but-fails. Also, since it should be an uncommon at best, ppl wouldnt have to open it as a crap rare, either.

[Matt]

And now you touch on the (a?) real problem: there's no good rarity for this. It can't be common, because it would totally mess up limited to see a bunch of these; it can't be rare, because it's utter shit. The only place this even COULD be printed is uncommon, but it makes a lousy card no matter where you put it.

[BWM]

Bram: Yes, that was kinda the point that I missed to make...


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Common definetely...

[Jacob Orlove]

Common definetely...

Absolutely not. That would make it show up in many multiples in draft, where it's strictly worse than everything.

[BWM]

Yeah well, most drafts already have cards that are strictly worse...


It's just the last pick, last picks are generally useless... Atogatog was useless in draft too...

[brendan]

Atogatog is rare.

[BWM]

true...

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Can't this be reworded to:

"remove one mana from your mana pool: Add one mana to your mana pool"

That'd give you more options to use it with, Thran Dynamo, Mishra's Workshop...

Still narrow though

[Bram]

BWM: interesting. Let's see...

I envision this as an uncommon, like I said before. Matt is right on all counts. No argument there. The only question that remains is: do we want this? I do.

[GerryMander]

let's do it!

its aboot time we make a card that is useful, but not obviously useful.

[Jacob Orlove]

But this just isn't useful. In type 2, it combos with: Vedalken Engineer. That's it. And that synergy isn't even enough to make it limited worthy, unless you somehow got like 4 engineers. Even then, it would be marginal. And that's the ONLY way it would ever see play in any non-T1 card format.

[Upinthe]

I'm against this as well. The only use I can think for it is in a snowfall deck, which  would just abuse it to fuel cheesy draw spells like Stroke of Genius.

[Bram]

So far, people have named like 10 cards this is moderately useful with. That's some 10 cards more than say, Carnival of Souls.

Not all cards have to be useful. The fact that they're cool and flavorful should be enough in some cases.

[Upinthe]

So far, people have named like 10 cards this is moderately useful with

Is not moderately useful with snowfall, it breaks it with it. Especially with all of the free spells from urza block. When a card is either completely useless or broken in a combo deck, thats not a good thing.

[Bram]

No WAY does this break snowfall! come on...it's still a 2U enchantment with cumulative upkeep.

You'd have to run this in a mono-blue (i.e. crap) deck that relies on Snow-Covered Islands to make it even work. In that case you have to invest 2U and two cards to make your Islands produce UUU. Big freakin' deal. You haven't even done anything with the mana yet. That's a multi-card 'combo' you've got there.

So what does this do? It makes people think about breaking various obscure and cards (like Snowfall and Snowcovered Islands and Basalt Monolith) and maybe allow them to see play. And in Type 2, it has a synergy with the Vedalken dude and it's a cheap artifact for Affinity decks. And it's cool!

I really don't see the problem.

[Matt]

The problem is that anytime this would ever try to be in a set, you'd have to justify putting this card in and not some other card, and that's not a fight I can ever see this card winning. So what's the point of making it if it'll never make it to the light of day?

[Bram]

Unless there's a set eventually that has several cards that complement it. It's not unimaginable. They let the fantastically designed Welding Jar sleep for years before it found it's niche.

So I propose we add it to the Master Thread and not to our current set. That way, it can just sit there and be an inspiration to card creators as well as a monument to the idiotic cause of people like me.

[Ocifer]

I've actually been inspired to lean toward letting this be added.

This card can serve one incredibly powerful purpose: it can inspire people to make cards that complement it. This card could lead to the creation of a card, or series of cards, that are interesting on their own but find new depth of interaction when combined with this card.

I say add it, simply as a jumping point for inspiration.