Nightmare Familiar

[JuJu]

Nightmare Familiar
1B
Creature - Spirit
1/1
Flying.
Sacrifice a Swamp: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!

I decided I wanted a card that would interact with Nightmare. Nightmare has been in the core set for many years and it remains to be a great card for newer players(remembering my first days...). I came up with a familiar, after reading the Nevinyrral thread. I decided on a familiar to be a type of follower to Nightmare and it's 'legend'. At first I wanted to find something that would help Nightmare but not make the effect custom made for Nightmare itself. Originally, I wanted this to have Fear, but that would require the ability to be damage based, which wasn't really what I wanted. The ability is still pretty open but so far I've come up with this, or a Bad Moon type of ability.

[JuJu]

Current Wording:

Nightmare Familiar
1B
Creature - Spirit
1/1
Flying.
Sacrifice a Swamp: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true![/B]

[Nova442]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't you wanted to make a card that would help Nightmare?  How does a card that has only a single ability which, if played, permanently weakens Nightmare help it?  I think this familiar is working for the enemy or something.

I wanted to suggest something that would bring swamps back from the grave at upkeep but that's like 1/5 a crucible of worlds.  Maybe you can make it repeat by adding a mana cost or something.  But at least explain why Nightmare's familiar is like his worst enemy, capable of killing him instantly for 0 mana.

[Slay]

It's perfectly fine to have it be a crappy Crucible of Worlds, because
a) Nobody gives a damn about recurring Swamps, and
b) There shouldn't be any Swamps in the graveyard anyway.

Let's jack up the power.

Sacrifice Nightmare Familiar: Retuarn all Swamps from your graveyard to play. It's a combo, who cares?
-Slay

[JuJu]

I was thinking of making his ability a fetchable ability. like;
Pay 1 life, Sacrifice a land: Search your library for a basic swamp and put that card into play, shuffle your library

EDIT: Also, to that ability make it something like "You may only play this once each turn, and only when you can play a sorcery"

[ELD]

Saccing tapped lands to get an untapped swamp into play is very interesting.  It thins the deck, generates mana and puts lands in the graveyard. 

[JuJu]

Would the sacrificed land have to be tapped though? I'm aware that you could generate one extra mana this way compared to other players(giving you a distinct advantage) but wouldn't that be kind of good?

[Jacob Orlove]

That name sounds a LOT like Nightscape Familiar.

[Slay]

That would be a reprint of Channel. Badddddd idea.
-Slay