YMTC 3: Card Mechanic Submissions

[Nefarias]

I know that we almost always refrain from non-specific card discussion here, but I truly believe that this is the best arena for this topic. If a Mod disagrees, then by all means close it or move it to community or casual, but this is not to discuss the vote itself.

The intention of this thread is to help each other brainstorm and refine ideas for Card Mechanic Submissions for You Make The Card 3. The card is officially an Instant/Sorcery. The whole article can be viewed here.

A few basic things to keep in mind:
1. We are not deciding whether it will be an instant or a sorcery. It will be one or the other, and will be decided upon at a later date.
2. Same goes for casting cost as well as any other costs.
3. It has to fit flavorfully on the chosen art, which can be seen in the link. This likely means that it will be either white green, or black, but this does not necessarily have to be the case.
4. We want a good card that us Type 1ers can play with.

So, if you have any ideas, post them here and maybe we can work with each other to come up with something that can be on the next ballot. They will get thousands of submissions, so the chances of any one idea making their Top Ten is slim. If we work together, I'm sure we stand a better chance of making something eye-popping. Also, if anyone has anything in the Master List that would fit this, that'd be cool.

NOTE: The deadline for submissions is this Friday (18th) by midnight, presumably Eastern (as Hasbro HQ is in RI).

[Ephraim]

I want this to be a black card very badly. The woman has a decidedly sinister appearance. Furthermore, contrary to initial accusaions against this card, I think it's very clear that the white light is falling into her fingertips (notice that the misty, white substance covering her veil is actually a tenuous cloud of the same white light, which is being drawn toward the woman from somewhere beyond the panel), rather than out of them (unlike Spelljack, where you can barely tell that the spell is getting sucked INTO the book.) The woman's eyes are fantastic and they definitely convey the impression that she's looking out of the frame at one of the players. She is also reaching out of the frame toward one of the players. These aspects combine to give the impression of some dark-alligned woman seducing or captivating one's opponent while she steals some vital essence from him or her.

Obvious possible resources are life and cards. Life draining effects, however, are way overdone. Card draining effects are less common, but they wouldn't feel so closely related to the artwork of the card.

Something like this would be splashy and powerful when abused properly, but it would almost certainly require a prohibitive mana cost to be fair:
Remove target opponent's graveyard from the game. Draw a card for each card removed this way.

[JuJu]

Ephraim, wouldn't something more Black Flavored be in order? Something on the lines of

Remove Your Graveyard from the game, Draw a card for each card removed this way

That seems to be more in favor of Black.

Also, Maybe something like a Consultation but for creatures? [/b]

[Malhavoc]

"Draining" is what this card suggests.. what about a mix among mind twist and drain life? something like:

Target player's discard X cards. You draw a card for each card discarded this way

Probably this would become a sorcery with a quite high mana cost... but a wonderful spell to cast after a big mana drain...  

Hmm... I opted for target player in order to make it a suitable target for misdirection, trying to make it a bit weaker, but I noticed that this way one could target himself just to cycle some cards.. maybe "target opponent" is better. This way it would become more balanced, since it's useless when your opponent has a empty hand.

[Ephraim]

JuJu, that might be a little bit more in flavour for black, but...
1. It doesn't really match with the image, which is very much a drain effect, in my opinion.
2. It's very powerful -- precisely the reason why my initial suggestion didn't involve "target player." Filling up one's own graveyard is trivially easy. That's why something like Skeletal Scrying has the kind of cost that it does. As it is, I imagine my suggestion would have to cost at least four mana. Without an X in yours, then the cost is going to have to be quite high. Consider that the cost of Skeletal Scrying is two mana, a card from the graveyard, and a life for just one card. I'd rather see this as a somewhat expensive (four or five mana) spell that simultaneously acts as graveyard hate and card drawing.

Malhavoc, I considered that idea, but I think it would also be nice for the card to be playable in formats besides Type 1. Consider that Syphon Mind costs four mana and only ever gets one card (in a dual) and you're looking at having to cost your suggestion somewhere around {1}{B}{B} for it to be close to fair and that's not going to be even remotely playable anywhere but Vintage. (If you really were only considering Vintage playability, note that there's a much larger fanbase who will be voting on this card -- give them something they know they won't get to play with and they won't vote for it.)

[MrZuccinniHead]

lol I actually wanted this to be white badly becasue white needs a good spell for once, but i could see it being black too.

if it was white...
Spiritual Sumons
XW - Instant
Reveal the top X cards of your library.  Put all Artifact and enchantment cards revealed this way into your hand and put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

if it was black...
i really have no ideas but some of the ones mentioned already are hot.

Feel free to submit my white idea to wizards as i don't have access to submit on their site.

[Norm4eva]

Yeah, with white being arguably the weakest standalone color, do we really want to focus on just making a 'good color' better?  We not only have a chance to avoid getting another bloody 2/2 with a great ability (that dies to freaking StP or Bolt or what have you) but we can fill a nitch that has been wanting to be filled for quite some time.
Question of course being, which nitch is that?
White's goal in the color wheel is to lay down the law; this suits enchantments better as the effect doesn't end at EOT.  The Type 1 community doesn't need bad creature removal, because we already have the bestest removal in the game, StP.  White really likes those 'destroy all' effects but this card clearly is not a destroy all card.  It's siphoning or dispelling or encasing something in that misty mist-like thing.  The idea of siphoning sounds Black, but oftentimes I find opposite colors do share at least one goal.  Black/Green, for example, dabble in growth and ambition together.  Black's is more instantaneous (Dark Ritual) while Green's is more permanent but less explosive (Llanowar Elves) but the goal is the same.  Likewise Blue/Green are both concerned with overwhelming advantage.  Green brings tramply beats that no other color can compete with (creature size), while Blue gains the advantage in massive card drawing; the intellectual advantage (hand size, in a way).
So what do Black/White share?  Oppression.  Black deals with oppression through attrition (Sinkhole, Duress, Diabolic Edict) while White does it through limiting a player's options of action (Rule of Law, Orim's Chant, Moat).  Up until now, though, White's methods are a little slow to come down.  As I've probably ranted about before, there is no 'White Duress'; there are very few 1-2cc 'preanswers' in White's spellbook.  Granted we have Orim's Chant, but this is a stall tactic at best (forget Scepter/Chant for a minute).  White is law and violators of the law will be prosecuted.  This policing aspect has not thoroughly been explored but is absolutely an extension of the concept of White as a rule setting color.
So!  In my opinion, were this to be a white card, it would benefit most to be the following:
A 1-2cc spell
A proactive card that performs a police function

How do we explore this concept within the boundaries of White's domain?  To have a basis for exploration I would propose for discussion this card:

Wizard's Warrant
W
Sorcery

Name a nonland, noncreature card.  Target player reveals his or her hand and discards all cards with the same name as the chosen card.  That player gains life equal to those card's converted mana cost.

... this is just a place to start discussion.  Whether I submit this card or not would probably depend on the response I get and the discussion as to its appropriateness.  The cost of the card is somewhat irrelevant because that will be decided later, I just wanted a complete model for discussion.  Let's hope we never find 3 copies of FoW with this one

[JuJu]

do we really want to focus on just making a 'good color' better?

Yes.

[Matt]

Here are the best ideas for black from the Master List:

Yawgmoth's Whim

Instant
Until end of turn, you may play target card in an opponent's graveyard as though it were in your hand. If that card would be put into a graveyard this turn, remove that card from the game instead.

Aneurysm
{B}
Sorcery
Each player's life total becomes the number of cards in their hand.

Dread Portal
{B}
Sorcery
Shuffle your library and reveal the top card. If that card is a black permanent, put it into play. Otherwise, remove that card from the game and return Dread Portal to owner's hand.
We pried open the door only to discover that within the murk lay deeper dangers.

Phantasmagoria
{B}
Sorcery
Put target opponent's graveyard on top of his or her library in any order.
A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery.

Any of those would work alright with the artwork. The Whim would have the most impact on Type One. Obviously the name would have to be changed.

Whim and Portal are my favorites. Whim would have the best chance of being ratified, but I just love Portal because it's fairly unlike anything that's been done before.

[Matt]

And the best white ones:

Recant

Instant
Return target spell to owner's hand. (That spell doesn't resolve)

Gift of Life
{W}
Instant
Gift of Life can't be countered.
Until the end of your turn, you can't lose the game and your opponent can't win the game.
At the end of your turn, if your life total is less than one, it becomes one instead.
"You never truly appreciate life until you're given a second chance at it." -Hazzar Brenklin, journals

Recant has a surprising number of uses, some of them very subtle. It can win counterwars, or be abused in a tempo-oriented deck. It can also be used on your own spell - saving your Myr Enforcer from Mana Drain...or more sinisterly, doubling Storm cards. It would probably be broken in white-toting Mind's Desire decks in 1.x but a) by the time this sees print Sapphire Medallion and all the Saga cards that fuel that deck will have rotated, and b) Storm cards are clearly the broken effect, not this.

Along with the doubling of storm cards, you could have an Enchantress in play, play an enchantment, which triggers the draw ability, draw a card, then Recant the enchantment and recast it to draw a second card. It can also be used in this way to get double-bonuses out of a spell for Quirion Dryad or Forgotten Ancient (or anything else that triggers on the playing of a spell - go Throne of Bone!).

Gift of Life is just your basic "last ditch" spell. It's like a Time Walk against aggro and control, but its true power is acting like an Abeyance against most combo decks (the kind that launch their entire deck at you). It would be a neat thing to put on a Panoptic Mirror but that's probably not broken since you can still just break the Mirror.

There are no decent green cards for this artwork.

My top white choice is Recant, my top black is Whim.

[MrZuccinniHead]

War-gained Knowledge
2W - Instant
Draw a card for each creature attacking you or draw cards equal to the largest power among creatures attacking you.

Once again I can't submit ideas to the site so feel free to use this one.

[Ephraim]

MrZuccinniHead, that last card feels way too much like [card]Keep Watch[/card] for us to submit it, I think.

[Fall-Titan]

I thought of it as a white card and i wanted to stick with the abeyance/chant flavor and also make it playable in all formats. So i came up with this

1W (or) WW Instant
Until end of turn spells or abilities requiring an activation cost, cost an additional (2) to play.

Just a thought but i think it goes well in standard as well as a decent card in vintage.

[Machinus]

Gift of Life
{2}{W}
Instant
Gift of Life can't be countered.
Until the end of your turn, you can't lose the game and your opponent can't win the game.
At the end of your turn, if your life total is less than one, it becomes one instead.
"You never truly appreciate life until you're given a second chance at it." -Hazzar Brenklin, journals

Does this work? If your life total goes below 1, the game ends and the ability will never trigger. Am I missing something here?

[Jacob Orlove]

Until end of turn effects end well after "at end of turn" triggers are checked.

[Matt]

To clarify: you would go to like -5 but not lose the game because of Gift's effect, then at EOT you'd be reset to 1, then Gift's effect would wear off.

I submitted Whim.

[MrZuccinniHead]

MrZuccinniHead, that last card feels way too much like [card]Keep Watch[/card] for us to submit it, I think.

Oh damn.  Didn't know there was a card like that.

I saw someone on another site submit this White Mana Drain type card...

XWW

Instant

Tap X target lands target opponent controls. Lands that player controls don't untap during that players untap step. At the beggining of your next upkeep add X colorless mana to your mana pool equal to the amount of lands you tapped.

A little broken, but maybe if they took the doesn't untap clause it wouldn't be bad.

[Matt]

[card]Drain Power[/card]

You're really good at designing cards that have already been made. :O

[Norm4eva]

do we really want to focus on just making a 'good color' better?

Yes.

Well, speak up, how do you figure?
To me this mentality is damaging to the game as a whole.  It's like back in the day, when a good Blue card saw print and people went "oh great.  a new card for keeper" or during Mirrodin Block, when just about any functional artifact could be squeezed into Ravager Affinity.  When a deck in Block/Standard establishes itself as a competitive archetype, any new cards in that block that are worth playing have a way of worming into those decks.  Honestly, during OdBC, if it wasn't UG Madness what was it?  People thought they could play Mono Black Control but they were wrong; about 10 people had any real success with White Weenie, and Red was really, really bad.
So apply that concept to a color.  The hardest duals to come by are UB and UR.  It's a pretty hard fact that Blue and Black are the 'good ones'.  The other colors tend to get splashed for that diamond in the rough; see FCG, any deck with Goblin Welder, Oath, etc.  I tire of that trend and would just as soon see a color re-establish itself instead of one add to an already impressive arsenal.

[virtual]

"Not sure about the casting cost.  Should be White or Green.  

Until end of turn, whenever a player would draw a card, instead he or she gains 3 life.  

Splashable, useful in a few ways, doesn't need the broken casting cost of plagiarzie.

Thoughts?
-Virtual

[Matt]

Hey, it's like an STP that targets Ancestral and AK instead of creatures!
It's also neat against combo. I like that a lot.

[virtual]

So I just realized that this may be too good w/ Yawgmoth's Bargain.   Maybe it's just that bargain is too good with bargain.  

Is 1 life too little?  

I'd like it to be weak enough that it could be either 1 or 2 CC.  

White or Green.. probably white, though green is pretty weak too.  I guess the picture looks better in white...

[cssamerican]

Well I didn't see this thread before I submitted my idea; however, I am kinda glad because I wanted to do submit an idea based on what I thought the art projected. I felt the sand in the art symbolized land, so I based my idea on a land effect that would be costed in such a way that it would be playable. This rulled out anything that would turn all the lands into 2/2 creatures, and since creatures came in last in the voting I felt that wasn't where the card should go. So this is what I came up with:

Returning Sands - {G}
Sorcery
Return all lands from your graveyard to play.
Cycling When you cycle Returning Sands, you may search your library for a forest card and put that card into play. Shuffle your library afterwards.

It offsets all the land destruction that as been going on as of late, and it lets you build your mana base up fast in the face of Triniphere. It would be a good card in other formats and stronger in Vintage.

The one card (Other than mine of course) posted in this thread that I really like is Recant.

[Pern]

@Virtual -

Perhaps it should be target opponent.
Sure would wreck the guy casting Brainstorm.
White card, not green.
I like the Swords analogy.

[Matt]

That Sands card is strictly better than Planar Birth which was about as powerful as I'd like that effect to ever be.

And yeah, "broken with Bargain" isn't exactly a compelling argument, cause you know, fucking [card]Renounce[/card] was broken with Bargain.

It would be pretty annoying to put on a Scepter, though. Totally lock opponent out of cards? Is it worse than Chant?

[Pern]

Yah, that's game on a Scepter.
It'd have to cost 3.

I found a better way to make it Bargain-safe.

Swords To Brainshares
Until the end of the turn, if a player would draw a card,
instead remove the top card of their library from the game
and they gain three life.

[Matt]

SOLUTION TO SCEPTER:

Swords to Brainshares
{W}
Instant
Until the end of the turn, if a player would draw a card, instead remove the top card of that player's library from the game and they gain 3 life.
You may tap an untapped white creature you control rather than pay Swords to Brainshares' mana cost.

We still want it to be free so that combo can't just wait for you to play an Exalted Angel and then kill you.

[Pern]

I like it a lot.
Should I submit it,
or does somebody else want to?

[Ephraim]

I don't know if I like it, but it's definitely an idea worthy of submission. I already submitted the first idea I suggested in this thread -- I think everybody ended up wandering off and doing their own thing, so you can/should probably submit it yourself.

[Matt]

It kind of annoys me that we can't include any explanation with these - since WotC isn't going to see the 2W mana cost, they'll wonder what the second ability is for, and we just have to hope that they realize how abusive Brainshares would be on Scepter.