Fixing The Color Wheel: Part 1 (Unstable Mutation)

[TheWellknownBrownie]

Yeah, I'll probably tackle this subject again for other old cards I like and would enjoy seeing come back in the appropriate color. For now, Unstable Mutation; a very playable card with great flavor, but sadly well outside of the bounds of logic as far as the color wheel is concerned. Given Red's "I want to win now, screw the future" thinking, that seems the best home for this mechanic.


Consuming Hate
R
Enchant Creature
Enchanted creature gets +3/+3. At the beginning of your upkeep, put a -1/-1 counter on enchanted creature.
"The goddess tells me I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either I return home to the land of my fathers, and my glory is gone, though I live a long life; or I stay and fight by the city of the Trojans, and my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting."

- Achilleus, from Homer's Illiad


Current Version:

Consumed by Hate
R
Enchant Creature
Enchanted Creature gets +3/+3
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a rage counter on enchanted creature. Enchanted creatures gets -1/-1 for each rage counter on it.
"The goddess tells me I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either I return home to the land of my fathers, and my glory is gone, though I live a long life; or I stay and fight by the city of the Trojans, and my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting."

- Achilleus, from Homer's Illiad

[Jacob Orlove]

Are you sure that's an exact quote? Google isn't finding it.

Also, "consuming hate" sounds very black, not red.

[Ephraim]

The Iliad has been translated many times. It shouldn't be surprising if one particular translation doesn't show up on Google. That's close enough to the text with which I'm familiar that I wouldn't doubt that it's genuine.

[Nova442]

Yeah hate is black, rage is red.  Do we still use permanent -1/-1 counters now? It seems like all counters besides the +1/+1 type are being phased out.

This is absolutely the right color for the card though.

[Machinus]

Why don't you just add 3 +1/+1 counters, take them away, and then have the creature blow up when there aren't any left?

[TheWellknownBrownie]

Here's my logic; there are two distinct flavors of Black. There's the self-serving, capitalism given spiritual form, entropy and terror and fear slice of the color wheel Black; and then there's the, lets-jame-everything-unpleasant-here aspect of Black. The latter falls more and more out of flavor with R&D, which I agree with (Witness how the main villain of Kamigawa block is White, for instance). There are evil and good aspects to all colors. Hate never made sense to me in Black; Hate and love are the two strongest emotions, and as such belong in the color that lives by emotions, which is Red. Black covers malice and deceit (with some help from Blue on the latter), but when it comes to hate that consumes, we've abandoned self-interest (in other words, it's no longer Black) in favor of being dominated by our emotions (Red).


On translation; truth be told, I just fudged around with the Lattimore translation, because, while that section is great as is within the context of the story, it doesn't convey the message as well when snipped. So I changed a couple of things (the order that the fates are listed, for instance, is more dramatic this way).

I do feel kind of bad about it, but not quite as bad as I'm not altering the original author's words per se, merely paraphrasing a translation.


RE, Machinus: While that would be a fine card, I'm kind of tempted to keep it as just a functional reprint of Unstable Mutation except for color. It also has different applications; the card becomes stronger with some cards like Triskelion or the Spikes, but weaker in general since it kills a 3/4 much faster than Unstable Mutation.

[Godder]

Why don't you just add 3 +1/+1 counters, take them away, and then have the creature blow up when there aren't any left?

That's basically fading (see Parallax Dementia as a very basic example). The difference between Fading and the current template is that the creature doesn't die when it runs out of counters.

[rvs]

Even though you have good intentions, I thought the point of all this was to not copy existing cards. By the same token, we don't make random Vanillas that have good flavor text either (right?). I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but it's hardly worth any discussion

On the quote I agree with Ephraim. It's close enough to be acceptable.

[Jacob Orlove]

Actually, we have made a fair number of close to vanilla limited creatures, for the set. We want to show Wizards that it's possible to make all kinds of cool cards, but we also want a balanced, playable, cool set where half the cards aren't terrible.

[Marco]

I love the name, I love the flavor text, and I like the idea of making Unstable Mutation a red card. However, I'm not sure that the name fits the flavor text...

[Ephraim]

Nova is right that Wizards of the Coast no longer endorses the use of -1/-1 counters. They have specifically mentioned that they will no longer use them. (It's one of the reasons why they haven't reprinted Serrated Arrows.) There's a way you can dodge that problem, however.

Enchanted creature gets +3/+3
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a consumption counter on Consuming Hate.
Enchanted creature gets -1/-1 for each consumption counter on Consuming Hate.

The bonus of that wording is that the ability is totally contained on the card. If the enchantment gets destroyed, there are no messy -1/-1 counters hanging around with no card to clarify their identity.

I am not certain I like the mana cost on this, however. +2/+2 costs {R} (Giant Strength); +2/+2 with a mild drawback (Maniacal Rage) costs . +3/+3 with a stiff drawback seems like it ought to cost at least as well. After all, over the course of three turns, this is going to generate 6 additional damage.

[Anusien]

That makes the enchantment about 100% times better Ephraim, which is ironic because you're raising power level concerns.  If you do it that way, they'll get in like 3 swings  and then bounce the enchantment and re-cast it.  It makes the wording much simpler, but if you did that I think it might be fair to have some sort of, "if this leaves play, destroy enchanted creature" phrase.  It's not like it's not already a walking 2 for 1, but this wording keeps it closer to the original ability.

[Ephraim]

It does make the card better, but I am not afraid of somebody recurring this with bounce. If somebody is packing both this and Boomerang, Capsize, etc. – the cards that can actually bounce this, they're contorting their mana base something fierce for a mediocre interaction. If some Johnny figures out a way to make it work really well, power to him! And if it happens that somebody picks up a couple of such synergistic tricks in a limited game, so be it. I really don't think a "leaves play" clause is necessary. My concerns about the cost aren't because I think this would be broken with a cost of -- merely because I think that more modern precedent than Unstable Mutation suggests that this needs to cost more.

[Jacob Orlove]

A self-contained version would combo with Crack the Earth, but who cares?

[TheWellknownBrownie]

Ephraim; Those cards are actually around five years old at least. Given the power that has been introduced in Equipment, counteracting that by making/reprinting Enchant Creatures that don't suck seems like a good idea.

Changed to a tweaked version of Ephraim's wording (putting the counters directly on the creature instead, so as to avoid both useless counters and extra text).


RE, Marco: Somewhat of a concern of mine, but it makes more sense in the context of the quote. Although that is a little shaky of a connection, but I can't think of a better fix at the moment.