General Custom Cards: The Lab

Velrun

Velrun

I think you can remove the Rogue creature type to make room for rarity set symbol.

I think your “If you do” sentence has to be “If a card is exiled this way, choose one —“

Your green effect lacks a dot. After draw a card add a “.” and cut the “and”.

If you want to cut some text you can always change the ability to trigger on any combat damage and not just combat damage to players. It is unblockable after all. It will make the creature more likely to block of course.

Another option is to make it blockable and then maybe change the stats and mana value.
 
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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
If you use a local copy of CardConurer to create your cards, you can use {fontsize-11} on the type line, and it should fit these card types exactly, along with an expansion symbol.

I agree with @Rusje. At the very least you want to move Prismatic to the top. As an ability it should definitely read "in addition to its other colors" since you could use this ability on any creature, including multicolored ones. You could also create a colorless legendary with two instances of prismatic. Furthermore, if you leave off the reminder text, I don't know that people will get what it does.

Personally I don't really like her abilities for multiple reasons. For one, putting a +1/+1 counter on all creatures you control seems a lot stronger than all of the other abilities in terms of snowballing, but the red one is nasty too, as you're basically casting a recurring (as in every turn and she's a commander) Lava Axe for... {1}{U}{U}. That's where my main complaint comes in. Prismatic is all well and good to grant your players a little bit more flexibility in choosing their commander draft deck's colors, but Imoen basically is a mono blue card with a lot of very nonblue effects. In general, I think the abilities are a bit too strong on a 3/2 unblockable creature as well. Personally I would love this design way more if it played around with hybrid abilities, so {U/B}, {U/R}, {u/g}, and {u/w} effects and toned down the effects a bit. Bonus points if you ignore the conventional order and go in clock-wise order from the card's color.

I don't like the bulleted version as is, because that's not how Magic cards are worded, but you could very easily fix that by having it say: "If you do, choose one —". Sure, usually only one of the choices is going to actually do something so making it a choose one might seem moot, but as an additional bonus (besides using actual Magic lingo) you can't get multiple triggers with obscure effects like Quickchange this way.

Two tweaks that can shorten your text a bit are to make the exiling mandatory, and to make the main ability an attack trigger instead of a combat damage to a player trigger. Imoen's unblockable, and 99% of effects that could remove her from combat, also can prevent her from attacking, so it's functionally pretty much the same.

Personally I would design her something like this...

Imoen, Shifty Trickster.jpg
Art link

(Maybe 3 lands is a bit much, but you can always tune it down...)
 
Brad

Brad

I suppose that you guys don't realize where the design originated from, as it's an alchemy card. The current abilities and wording are based off the HBG Specialize Imoen. I upped the mana cost to 2UU, as it costs 2+1U to Specialize her. She's a "custom." but I'm trying to keep these as close to the originals as possible. Here's the set of Prismatic CLB/HBG commanders:
https://imgur.com/a/n9VdIgq
Basically, the Backgrounds are kind of dumb and they don't fit into a draft very well without running a ton of them, so I swapped these to Prismatic. Some of the CLB ones sucked and I used HBG versions to reach 5 of each color.

I added comments under most cards if you open the album.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Brad said:
I suppose that you guys don't realize where the design originated from, as it's an alchemy card. The current abilities and wording are based off the HBG Specialize Imoen.
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Ugh... to be honest I really hate those Alchemy designs. They blatantly violate the color wheel and are horribly complex. I honestly can't believe someone at WotC actually okayed these designs.

Obviously it's your cube, and if these excite you and your players, by all means add them. Personally I wouldn't be able to justify completely ignoring the color wheel this way though. I believe prismatic shouldn't add any off-color abilities, since you're not actually paying mana of the other color.
 
Brad

Brad

Onderzeeboot said:
I believe prismatic shouldn't add any off-color abilities, since you're not actually paying mana of the other color.
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At least in these cards' cases, they're going to be in a deck that necessarily runs the other color, effectively negating the pie break.

I am starting to wonder if it's easiest to house rule "monocolored commanders get to choose a second color" and leave it at that. I like the variation that it can bring.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Brad said:
At least in these cards' cases, they're going to be in a deck that necessarily runs the other color, effectively negating the pie break.

I am starting to wonder if it's easiest to house rule "monocolored commanders get to choose a second color" and leave it at that. I like the variation that it can bring.
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"Monocolored commanders have partner"

doooooo it... ;)
 
Velrun

Velrun

It’s a pretty damn big color pie break if you have three Islands in play and get your red ability just because the card also is red but doesn’t cost red mana !
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I do get the argument that it’s not as bad because prismatic only works while the card is your Commander. So while it may, for example, have a red effect for blue mana, your deck is blue red, so you are probably tapping a red mana source anyway while casting it.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Onderzeeboot said:
I do get the argument that it’s not as bad because prismatic only works while the card is your Commander. So while it may, for example, have a red effect for blue mana, your deck is blue red, so you are probably tapping a red mana source anyway while casting it.
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Maybe

Maybe not. Maybe your deck is mono blue with a blue-red Commander that cost {1}{U}{U}.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Brad said:
This is scary as hell, but could make for some damn interesting combinations.

How insane is it to say all the commanders have partner? Let it be a crazy, but relatable, experience.
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Add a signature spell for each Commander as well and you have a party :p
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Don't forget to let everyone have a background too!

...

I wonder if a better route for the Specialize commanders would be to print all five versions (the unspecialized version + all of the gold "sides"), bundle the sides off to the side, and have drafters cash in the unspecialized version at the end of the draft.

To use a simple example, you'd have something like this in the draft...

Imoen - {1}{U}{X}
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue Wizard
Imoen can't be blocked.
Prismatic — When Imoen attacks, you may exile an instant or sorcery from your graveyard. If you do, [do a color-related thing].
3/2

And then you'd have the following four cards off in a bundle somewhere for people to choose from after the draft:

Azorius Imoen - {1}{W}{U}
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue Wizard
Imoen can't be blocked.
When Imoen attacks, you may exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
3/2

Dimir Imoen - {1}{U}{B}
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue Wizard
Imoen can't be blocked.
When Imoen attacks, you may exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. If you do, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token.
3/2

Izzet Imoen - {1}{U}{R}
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue Wizard
Imoen can't be blocked.
When Imoen attacks, you may exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. If you do, deal 2 damage to each opponent.
3/2

Simic Imoen - {1}{G}{U}
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue Wizard
Imoen can't be blocked.
When Imoen attacks, you may exile an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. If you do, draw a card. You may play an additional land this turn.
3/2
 
Brad

Brad

LadyMapi said:
Don't forget to let everyone have a background too!

...
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I don't like how Backgrounds work. Significantly less flexible than Partner.
LadyMapi said:
I wonder if a better route for the Specialize commanders would be to print all five versions (the unspecialized version + all of the gold "sides"), bundle the sides off to the side, and have drafters cash in the unspecialized version at the end of the draft.
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I hate having extra stuff with me.

I'm kind of liking the two commanders idea. Sounds really crazy.
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

Onderzeeboot said:
Very insane, I'ld imagine XD But hey, what's the worst that can happen? ;)
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If you are curating the pool of commanders that can be combined, you can set you own level of insanity. Certainly you might miss an egregious combination, but learn from it and decide whether to swap out one of the offending pair.

I’d be tempted to go further, and give my two-coloured legends Partner with a monocoloured legendary creature, to allow three (but not four) colour decks. There is precedent with Rowan Kenrith and Will Kenrith to limit which cards can partner.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Colorless commanders have partner with colorless, mono, two and three-colored commanders.

Mono commanders have partner with colorless, mono and two-colored commanders.

Two-colored commanders have partner with colorless and mono commanders.

Three-colored commanders have partner with colorless commanders.

Or just explain that commanders have partner with other commanders as long as the commander’s identity has no more than three colors.

Of course this will lead to everyone having two commanders.
 
Brad

Brad

Velrun said:
Or just explain that commanders have partner with other commanders as long as the commander’s identity has no more than three colors.
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I was thinking something like this.

I'm currently strongly considering a commander plus a signature spell. The signature spell, in a change from Oathbreaker, would be off-color. This way, a monocolored commander gets to run two colors. Maybe no three colored commanders, in that case. I haven't fully decided how the colors will be handled yet.

The other difference from Oathbreaker is that I get to curate a pool of signature spells that aren't completely broken. I'd run decent tier two effects that support particular themes. Something like Volt Charge as a Bad Bolt plus proliferate enabler or Primal Growth as a ramp enabler plus sacrifice/tokens payoff.
 
Brad

Brad

Velrun said:
Are you thinking of having the players draft the Commanders and Signature spells?
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Kinda. I was thinking like a pack of 5-7 commanders, choose one, then given 2-3 signature spells of each non-commander color and choose one. Then given a sealed pool of 100 cards to accommodate the colors. Make a 58(+2) card deck.

I'm also considering simply changing the Background commanders to have Partner. I feel like my commander section needs a bit more flexibility.
EDIT: Did some preliminary testing. With a pack of 7 commanders, I almost only ever wanted to play partners. Getting access to a second free card in the command zone when you know your deck isn't going to be perfectly curated feels like a big deal. Even on edhrec, 2 of the top 5 and 9 of the top 50 commanders of all time have partner. Briefly scanning the cedh decklist database shows around half the decks being led by partners. As a result of this gut feeling combined with some reasonable data, I'm going to cut the partners. Signature spells still a consideration.
 
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B

blacksmithy

Chris Taylor said:
@blacksmithy how often do you get people bugging you for the spellbook lists for your cards? Does it hold up drafting?
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i throw them out at the start of draft, usually they get looked at 2-3 times total during draft and then perused in more detail during deckbuilding. so far it hasnt created any delays. theres always one person at my tables who takes 1.5x as long as everyone else regardless of what cards are in front of them tho, which tends to hide other logistics problems XD

EDIT: that being said, im moving towards fewer (not zero though) spellbooks and more conjuration. conjuration is just as cool and SO much cleaner.
 
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