Three-Halves Cycle

[Ephraim]

A while ago, TheWalkingSponge suggested a mechanic that I jumped on. Although I am not trying to resurrect the Checker mechanic idea, I came up with four cards of a cycle that I really liked and which I wish to propose again, without the checker mechanic. The theme behind these cards is that they have a mediocre, common/uncommon level effect normally, but under certain conditions, the effect gets pumped by three-halves into something quite a bit more potent for the mana cost.

Divine Healing
{W}
Sorcery

You gain 8 life.
If you have 6 or less life, you gain 12 life instead.


Divine Thunder

Sorcery

Divine Thunder deals 4 damage to target player.
If that player has 16 or more life, Divine Thunder deals 6 damage to that player instead.


Divine Wisdom

Sorcery

Draw two cards.
If you have no cards in hand, draw three cards instead.


Divine Genesis
{G}
Sorcery

Put two 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play.
If you control no creatures, put three 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play instead


Divine Malice

Sorcery

Target player discards two cards.
If that player has six or more cards in hand, that player discards three cards instead.

[Ephraim]

Current Wording:


Divine Healing
{1}{W}{W}
Sorcery

You gain 6 life.
If you have 6 or less life, you gain 9 life instead.


Divine Thunder
{1}{R}{R}
Sorcery

Divine Thunder deals 4 damage to target player.
If that player has 16 or more life, Divine Thunder deals 6 damage to that player instead.


Divine Wisdom
{1}{U}{U}
Sorcery

Draw two cards.
If you have no cards in hand, draw three cards instead.


Divine Genesis
{1}{G}{G}
Sorcery

Put two 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens into play.
If you control no creatures, put three 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens into play instead


Divine Malice
{1}{B}{B}
Sorcery

Target player discards two cards.
If that player has five or more cards in hand, that player discards three cards instead.

[Matt]

The black one seems weak, since it's bonus effect will probably never kick by  the time you have four mana availabe, unless you're playing it extremely early, in which case it's probably far too much like Mind Twist.

I would suggest lowering the requirement to 5 cards and not 6. Other than that I abolsutely love these.

[Ephraim]

I changed Divine Malice to look for five cards instead of for six. I also realized that if I wanted to, I could have the suped up effect of Divine Genesis create two 3/3 beast tokens instead of three 2/2 bear tokens. I'm not sure which is better -- I'd like to select the weaker of the two options, just to balance Genesis a little bit against Thunder.

[Matt]

I like getting multiple tokens better, which at least gives this the semblance of being useful without the bonus (i.e. in a deck with Attrition or Spawning Pit or similar).

[Jacob Orlove]

Divine Thunder is really weak. Damage to a player is significantly less good when they're at a high life total, so the bonus has to compensate for that--the black one suffers from the same problem.

The white, blue, and green ones are great, though.

[Alfred]

The Green one seems very strong. I'm thinking about it in a Steel Golemish way. I agree with Jacob about the Black one being too weak, perhaps you could go with something like this:

Divine Malice

Sorcery

Target player sacrifices a creature.
If that player has three or more creatures in play, that player sacrifices two creatures instead.

[combo_dude]

I like that version for the black one, actually. And I second that the green one is too good - I think that making it cost 2GG would be a little better, even if it does break the mana costs of the cycle.

[Ephraim]

I will consider making those changes. I am not going to commit to them yet, though. I was just reading some of MaRo's old articles and something he said in one of them is appropriate right now. Every 5-colour cycle will have its Oath of Druids and every cycle will have its Oath of Mages. Sometimes, the power level of the cards in a cycle simply isn't uniform.

I'm listening to the suggestions, though, so don't think I'm set in stone about these. Regarding the black one, I want it to deal with discarding. It's one of my favourite black mechanics, even if it is weak. I definitely don't want to push the condition down to four cards or more. That would mean that somebody at a full hand would still have enough cards to have to discard three, if two of these were cast in a row. Would it be appropriate to tweak this and/or the red one by decreasing the mana cost? 3R feels right for that one, but this could definitely be 2B and be fair, I think.

By how much damage would I have to increase the red one to make it playable? If 4/6 is too weak, would 6/9 be appropriate? 6 damage for a 4-cc spell seems ridiculously powerful. Do you think I should abandon the three-halves notion and go with 4/8? If the green one is too powerful, would it be too harsh to knock it down to 1/1 insect tokens instead of 2/2 bear tokens? If I were to knock down its cost to 2G as well, that might be appropriate.

In fact, now that I look at them, knocking them down to 2C would probably work well. It makes them more-or-less comparable to various commons, without the bonus, and somewhat better with the bonus

2B -- 2 cards/3 cards
2G -- 2 1/1 tokens/3 1/1 tokens
2U -- 2 cards/3 cards
2W -- 6 life/9 life
2R -- 4 damage/6 damage

This pushes the power of the red one up, but I don't mind the red card being the strong one, as opposed to one of the others.

[Jacob Orlove]

That looks fine.

[Ephraim]

I went with the 3-cc versions. Purely from a flavour standpoint, what creature type should Divine Genesis create? I think I want it to create Saproling tokens, personally.

[combo_dude]

There are some elements of "strictly-better" here (e.g. the Black is strictly better than Mind Rot), so I'd prefer if they all cost 1CC rather than 2C; still, otherwise I like them a lot now.

[Ephraim]

That's a fair objection. My initial thought was that we could solve all such problems by making these rarer than the cards they obsolete. That isn't always the right way to go, though. Since some of the cards these would obsolete are actually pretty good, I have no objection to making these less splashable.

[Ephraim]

24 Hour Clock

[Matt]

Closed and added.[/color]