Murderous Cult

[Rando]

Murderous Cult
2BB
Creature - Human
3/3
When Murderous Cult comes into play, you may search your library for any amount of cards named Murderous Cult and put them into your hand.  Shuffle your library afterward.
Discard Murderous Cult from your hand: Target Murderous Cult gains +2/+2 until end of turn.
Discard Murderous Cult from your hand: Regenerate target Murderous Cult.
Discard Murderous Cult from your hand: Target Murderous Cult gains Fear until end of turn.

Death Cult
2BB
Creature - Human
2/2
When Death Cult comes into play, search your library for any number of cards named Death Cult, reveal them and put them in your hand.  Shuffle your library afterward.
Discard a card named Death Cult: Choose one -- Death Cult gets +2/+2 until end of turn; or regenerate Death Cult.

[Jacob Orlove]

Way too much text.

[Jebus]

Way too much text.

Indeed, and to template it correctly would require even more text.

[Rando]

Can you all think of a way I can do it right and preserve te original intent?   I think the idea/flavor behind it is cool.

EDIT 2: Nevermind, I'm a jackass.

[Necrologia]

No, there's a maximum number of characters that can fit on a card. Compare this to Time Stop which basically takes up the whole card. Your card has more text than that, which means the card could never exists in real life. Which is the goal of our virtual set mind you.

[Rando]

Yeah, you're right.  Disregard that little rant.  I actually took the time to count characters instead of lines and realized that this does have too much text.  Oh how I love looking like an idiot.  Sorry about that.  

Keep this open please so I can rework it.  I still like the concept.  Maybe I'll just limit it to one or two special "discard" abilities.

[Matt]

One thing to keep in mind is that the proper templating is probably "Discard a card named Murderous Cult from your hand: <effect>". That makes it much longer for each ability.

[Shadow-Walker]

Regenerate target murderous cult isnt exactly necessary, it could just regenerate itself and that wouldnt change much.  Also finding a shorter name would bring down text length although i dont know if that enough to make it fit.

[Alfred]

Maybe pick one ability, and dispose of the rest.

EDIT:

The +2/+2 ability is probably too powerful too.

[Jacob Orlove]

Or give it this ability:

Discard a card named ~This~: Choose one: Regenerate ~this~, ~this~ gets +2/+2 until end of turn, or ~this~ gains fear.

[Ephraim]

Proper format for Jacob's suggestion:

Discard a card named ~this~: Choose one -- Regenerate ~this~; or ~this~ gets +2/+2 until end of turn; or ~this~ gains fear until end of turn.

As for Alfred's suggestion that the +2/+2 ability may be too powerful, it could be moderated by making these a 1/1 or 2/2 creature to begin with. Four mana for a 3/3 creature with a slew of options is really damned good.

[Jacob Orlove]

Actually, with the search ability, these would have to be 1/1 for 2BB.

[Rando]

Changed the p/t to 2/2; re-worded the abilities to Jacob's sugestion; shortend the name.

I would rather see another mana added to the cc then see it's p/t lowered to 1.

[Ephraim]

I'd say it's probably in order to increase the mana cost, then. Compare this to Howling Wolf:

Howling Wolf
{G}{G}
Creature -- Wolf
2/2

When Howling Wolf comes into play, you may search your library for up to three cards named Howling Wolf, reveal them, and put them into your hand. If you do, shuffle your library.

Granted, Howling Wolf is a common, but this is significantly better. You should  also use Howling Wolf as a template for how to word the searching ability on your card. Finally, please review the template that I posted for you to use. The text "discard a card from your hand" is no longer used. It is now simply "discard a card." in this case, "Discard a card named Death Cult: <stuff>." Options within the Choose One ability should be separated by a semicolon ( and should have the word "or" between each option. Creatures don't gain power/toughness bonuses. They get them.

[Laurie Cheers]

The original wording worked fine. The card itself had the ability to be discarded, like Elvish Spirit Guide.

[Ephraim]

Elvish Spirit Guide is hardly an example of clean, elegant card design. Since it can only target other Death Cults, there's no reason why the ability shouldn't be on the permanent in play. By doing it this way, it's easier to streamline the text and ensure that there's enough room for it. Even with the [mostly] streamlined text, though, this still fails the "Spoils of the Vault test" by a long shot. Spoils has about as much text as any card should have. This has significantly more text.

Death Cult
When Death Cult comes into play, you may search your library for any amount of cards named Death Cult and put them into your hand. Shuffle your library afterward.
Discard a card named Death Cult from your hand: Choose one -- Death Cult gains +2/+2 until end of turn, regenerate Death Cult, or Death Cult gains fear until end of turn.

Spoils of the Vault
Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal the named card, then put that card into your hand. Remove all other cards revealed this way from the game, and you lose 1 life for each of the removed cards.

[Rando]

changed the cc; fixed templating.  "gains" sounds so much more elequant then "gets", but oh well.

[Matt]

"Gain" is used for abilities, like "target creature gains flying".

[Rando]

It's funny, but after 9 years of playing, and all the thousands upon thousands of cards that have passed through my hands, after the 5th ed rules changes, after the templateing changes, even after all that, when I first concieve a card, it's still in Alpha/Beta terms and wording.   I sometimes still have to remind myself to write abbilities as "cost:effect" instead of the old original "do this to get this" method.  Weird, but I guess the first cards I read will always be sort of imprinted on my mind.

[Rando]

Screwed around with it even more to shorten and simplify the text.  
I think this is a short as I can go without completely neutering the concept.

[Ephraim]

Woah...that looks like a totally new card to me. It's a Goblin Recruiter now, except it'll get any black creature, instead of just creatures of one creature type. Whatever happened to the just working with Death Cults idea?

[Rando]

EDIT:  OK, I've edited the first post with both the goblin recruiter idea and the original idea with just two special abilities instead of three.    Both have about the same amount of text.

Which is the better card?  I could go with either.

Also, would adding another 10 or so characters to either of those two cards make a significant difference?  If not, I'd like to change the name back to Murderous Cult...it's cooler.

[Jacob Orlove]

The goblin recruiter one is way too good.

[combo_dude]

Agreed. Compare this to [card]Insidious Dreams[/card] - this is obscene, even if the tutor range is limited. You'd need a CMC of about 4BB for that effect, and then it just becomes ugly. The other version might be OK though.

[Rando]

I thought the recruiter one might be a little too much, so it's gone.

As for the other one, should it be 3BB?

[Rando]

24, unless people think the cost should be 3BB.

[Jacob Orlove]

What about limiting it to searching for up to 2 copies?