aztec rare and uncommon creature cycle

[orgcandman]

This is a two cycle set, and the creatures are not only decently powered, but I don't feel that
they're over powered and I think that it gives the "priests are powerful" and "human sacrifice"
aspects of Aztec culture. Feel free to suggest any changes, and also to suggest some flavor
text for any cards that don't have it yet.

--------------------------------------RARE CREATURES------------------------------------------

Foul Calmeca
2B
2/2
Creature - Cleric
Creatures you control have "B, Pay one life: This creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn"

Mystical Calmeca
2U
1/2
Creature - Wizard
Creatures you control have "U, Pay one life, T: Look at the top 3 cards of your library. Put any number on the top and bottom of your library in any order."

Enraged Calmeca
2R
2/1
Creature - Shaman
Creatures you control have "R, Pay one life: This creatures deals one damage to target creature or player"

Stubborn Calmeca
2G
2/2
Creature - Druid
Creatures you control have "G, Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool"

Vengeful Calmeca
2W
1/3
Creature - Cleric
Creatures you control have "W, Pay 1 life: Tap target creature"

CURRENT WORDING

Foul Calmeca
2B
2/2
Creature - Cleric
Creatures you control have "BB, Pay one life: This creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn."

Mystical Calmeca
2U
1/2
Creature - Wizard
Creatures you control have "U, Pay one life, T: Look at the top 3 cards of your library. Put any number on the top and bottom of your library in any order."

Enraged Calmeca
2R
3/1
Creature - Shaman
Creatures you control have "R, T: This creatures deals one damage to target creature and one damage to you."

Stubborn Calmeca
2G
3/2
Creature - Druid
Creatures you control have "G, T: Untap target land you control."

Vengeful Calmeca
2W
2/3
Creature - Cleric
Creatures you control have "W, T: Tap target creature"

EDIT #1:
* Removed uncommons for separate thread
* Updated Black creature to play as a sorcery and not pump toughness
* Updated Red creature to damage only creatures you control. Combo mechanic with both new blue uncommon, and new red uncommon.
* Updated White creature to give tap ability.

EDIT #2:
* Addressed odd loss of life in certain colors
* Changed p/t levels to fit rare status creatures.
* made green creature ability only target basic lands (this would be useful making 5cG types of decks, AND help color fixing in limited. Solid, yes. Broken, no)

EDIT #3:
* Fixed the green rare to Tap. After some brief testing, he sucked without it, as the flavor wasn't really all that great. As a mana fixer now, he's damn good as he allows all your creatures to untap any land. I thought this was balanced by the Tap ability.

EDIT #4:
* Changed the black to instant speed, but with BB restriction.


Here are the uncommons

[Matt]

Yes. Put the uncommons in another thread.

[Jacob Orlove]

The four nonblack Calmecas don't make a ton of sense. The blue on at least gives them a tap ability, but it looks like a really strong effect.
For the others, it makes no sense to give all your creatures that ability, since one creature with that ability is enough. You need abilities that make sense, not random ones.

I'm not sure the apprentices even work, rules-wise.

[Necrologia]

Maybe just have the Wizards give apprentices the bonus directly.

Creatures you control have "W, Pay 1 life: Tap target creature" Apprentices have T: Prevent the next 1 damage to target creature or player"

It'd probably be need to be Vigilance over the second ability for length reasons but the idea remains the same.

[dandan]

Enraged Calmeca makes Orcish Artillery seem like an amateur. In fact there are times when it makes Masticore seem like an amateur.

If you consider that a mainly Red deck or a Black creature swarm is likely to be ahead in terms of life the abilities read:

Red: Cast a Fireball as many times as you have mana for without using a card. Add 1 damage to each and every Fireball. Do it at instant speed. The Fireball can't be countered by normal means.

Black: Cast a Howl from Beyond as many times as you have mana for without using a card. Add 1 damage to each Howl from Beyond. Pump the creatures toughness as well just for fun. Don't worry if you have untargetables or creatures that die if targetted, this works just fine with them too.

The Blue one looks good but the tap ability saves it from the extremes of the other cards. Green has mana washing on more efficient creatures and without life loss so the Green one is not a problem. The White one gives you Opposition but without tapping your creatures - paying WW and 2 life to tap an opponents creatures sounds pretty strong to me. It is a tribute to the power of the Red and Black ones that I consider this one to be only the third strongest of the three as it is not game ending in the short term without backup and White is less likely to be ahead in terms of life.

In short I think the Red, Black and White ones are way too powerful. The Blue one might be too but the other 3 are sick.

Am I missing something as Matt and Jacob have commented without concern over these?

[Jacob Orlove]

I wasn't even looking at the power levels, since those abilities need to change for mechanical reasons anyway.

[orgcandman]

*obligatory bump after edit*

[Matt]

I didn't even read the cards I still haven't, waiting for Jacob's response.

[Jacob Orlove]

I really don't like how these make you pay life. It's really inelegant, except maybe for the black one. Although that one is so toned down that you probably don't need the life payment anymore.

The red one is good, but again, probably doesn't need the life payment. Could be 3/1.

The green one desperately needs to give a tap ability--untapping lands for G and 1 life is broken. If they tapped, you can cut the pay one life. I would also up this guy to 3/2--remember, these are rares.

Can the blue guy just say "have scry 2" instead of its current wording? That way you could get rid of the life loss.

The white one definitely doesn't need the life payment. It could probably be a 2/3, also.

[dandan]

First of all, adding Tap to the abilities solves most of the power level issues I mentioned.
I agree the life loss is a little strange for some of the colours. Certainly the Red one could be

R, T: This creatures deals one damage to target creature and one damage to you."

That is very Red. Red is not very life loss but collateral damage is fine.

I can live with the Blue one and life loss as FoW reminds us that deep thought and pain are closely related (at least with my limited mental capacity).
I don't think the White one should have life loss for flavour reasons. In addition, White has got plenty of tappers and a King of the tappers is strong but probably not wrong. Drop the life loss. If you do then 2/3 isn't necessary IMHO.
I'm not sure about the Green one. Life loss seems out of place there although the ability does have shades of Channel. I don't think the ability is broken but it is dangerous. If you remove the life loss you need to add a Tap and do something with P/T (3/2 or 2/3 are fine)

[orgcandman]

*bump after edit 2*
Ok, I made a few tweaks again. I'm convinced that the green ability, only able to target basics, makes it weak enough that it's not a concern, but a solid ability.

One thing I was wondering, does the current wording allow the creatures to retain the ability if the rare leaves play. I don't think so, but if it did, I think that would boost the powerlevels a little too high. I could always add a "While CARDNAME is in play, " clause, but I want to try and avoid that.

As far as the blue paying a life, I thing it's appropriate. I'm pretty sure there's no precedent of putting a keworded card ability into an activated ability, so I didn't change that.

I changed the red ability to do "collateral damage" to keep it more with red's flavor as someone suggested.

As always, I'm looking for any flavor text or story flavor that would be appropriate.

[Jacob Orlove]

The green one is still a little small for the "creature color". Also, that creatures is exactly the same as:

Stubborn Calmeca
2G
2/2
Creature - Druid
G: Untap target basic land you control.

Unless your opponent has Arrest or Humble, the above card is mechanically identical to the original. That is why I wanted it to have a tap ability--otherwise, giving the ability to each creature makes no sense.

Also, if you aren't dropping the life loss from the black guy, then drop the sorcery speed restriction.

[dandan]

Sorry, I don't agree. Giving all your creatures the potential to pump is a very strong ability. If you are ahead on life it will get nasty very quickly. Dropping the toughness bonus is logical but if all of your creatures are 'Sewer Rats' blocking sensibly is pretty much out and not blocking is suicide unless you have some instant creature kill (in which case, why is the Calmeca still alive?).

Red (the home of firebreathing) have to pay 2R to give all of its creatures this ability as an instant but got an Enchantment rather than a 2/2 body (beatdown decks prefer to have creatures).

To be honest I'd prefer to have BB and 1 life as a cost per pump and keep it as an instant ability than B and 1 life as a Sorcery. Although this breaks the symmetry of the cycle a little, it does have shades of pump knight.

Letting beatdown decks do a little more damage is a strong ability. Don't even think about Double-strikers!!

[Jacob Orlove]

Red (the home of firebreathing) have to pay 2R to give all of its creatures this ability as an instant but got an Enchantment rather than a 2/2 body (beatdown decks prefer to have creatures).

That card was unplayably bad and uncommon. With the life payment AND sorcery speed, this card is really weak. Dropping either drawback makes it strong, but by no means overpowered.

[stolen]

You mentioned the sacrifice aspect, and it was present in the original design, but is lost now.  What I would like to see for clerics is abilities that sacrifice creatures, so the cleric could either have, for example, "U, sacrifice a creature: look at the top three..." or "Creatures you control gain 'U, sacrifice this creature: look at the...'"

Granted, I'm not very familiar with TMD's theme set, but I do fail to see any flavour outside of the color wheel.

EDIT: I didn't notice that they all had different creature types.  Why?  I guess I just need to read up on the set...

[orgcandman]

re: black creature
I don't think he's too weak, nor do I think he's too powerful. For black a 2/2 for 3 with a decent black ability is about on-par with what I was looking for.

re: red creature
I don't think he's overly powerful. At 2R, he's a solid 3/1 body. He will basically net you a few possible whacks, but as his ability can only hit creatures, he's not an "I WINz0r NOW" card. I think it's fine the way it is, but if people are REALLY that concerned....

re: flavor outside color wheel
I thought of it as the priests will gather the masses and 'control' them by giving them a small taste of power. The masses will then do whatever the priests want.
The sacrifice part on the uncommons was for the aztec sacrifices. Although they should really be "common" for the amount of human sacrifice that I've been led to believe the aztecs performed, I feel that to put some good abilities I'd need them to be uncommon.

re: different creature types
we are trying to keep to known creature types. It doesn't really make sense for a black druid, just like a green cleric isn't very common (although not unheard of). I was just trying to keep them on color. If we introduce something like "Calmeca" or "Calmencan" as a creature type, these should have that in addition to other types.

* obligatory bump after edit as well *

[dandan]

Red (the home of firebreathing) have to pay 2R to give all of its creatures this ability as an instant but got an Enchantment rather than a 2/2 body (beatdown decks prefer to have creatures).

That card was unplayably bad and uncommon. With the life payment AND sorcery speed, this card is really weak. Dropping either drawback makes it strong, but by no means overpowered.

Don't you remember Sewer Rats? Damned hard to block. IMHO the life loss is a relevant as taking 1 damage from Pestilence i.e. not usually a consideration. In an aggressive build the Black one would be very strong indeed if you dropped the Sorcery speed (your opponent can't block without doing bad trades and you can't afford not to block). I must admit I don't like the speed restriction as it takes a lot of strategy from the ability but I honestly think it is too strong as an Instant for B and 1 life. Hence the 'pumpknight' suggestion of BB and 1 life at Instant speed.

[orgcandman]

I did a lot of thinking on the black rare, and thought that BB, one life payment was flavorful, and made the instant speed "combat trix" feel that I like.

also, bump afer edit

[Jacob Orlove]

These are good now.

[orgcandman]

clock

[orgcandman]

the clock expired long ago
I sent 3 pms
they're still in my outbox for some reason (is there a bug in the forum software?)

I'm bumping this hoping a mod will see it.

Aaron

[Matt]

I got the PM. I add cards in batches, and the clock ran out just after I added the last batch. It'll get closed soon enough.

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]