Sick, I am glad I can still make use of my 14-year history of making up magic cards on the internet for something.
With regards to power level I normally have a somewhat reasonable understanding of where I want my cards to lie, but since I am designing it for cube enthusiasts it becomes very hard to know where to land. I mentioned that under normal circumstances I wouldn't have made the dual land work with fetchlands, which is an interaction I think is broken, but in cube you have to spend actual picks on getting that interaction, and it gives an interesting play pattern of whether you want to actually fetch a land or get another one since this one serves as a better topdeck.
Meanwhile, with the Spirit, I have to make a judgment of whether I want it to compare to actual Reanimate, Animate Dead, Persist, or the unplayable 4-mana options. One aspect of the card I didn't end up being too fond of is how much stronger it is played altogether than piecemeal, I enjoy the synergy I baked into it, but I wish it didn't overshadow the option of splitting it up.
And for your remarks on Trisanda, I'm not actually that invested in the design I ended up with, but for the comments about the creature itself, I wanted it to replicate some of the play patterns Fell Stinger have which really excite me, and the minute details around how it can be awkward to play are there to make it more of a sidegrade (plus I'm a boomer and I like those kinds of drawbacks).
As a last remark on the designs, while I liked a lot of the submissions, and I felt like several of them did a more elegant job of tying together two effects than I managed to, I do want to say that I think Jinx Merchant was design-wise probably the most flawed of blacksmithy's designs, as there is not only no opportunity cost to using the adventure half (outside of playing around negates and codex shredders), it also makes the card effectively mono-green, which is rather questionable considering it doles out -1/-1's.
Thanks for the context. Jason will sadly have to keep holding on to his money, I don't much care for it.
With regards to power level I normally have a somewhat reasonable understanding of where I want my cards to lie, but since I am designing it for cube enthusiasts it becomes very hard to know where to land. I mentioned that under normal circumstances I wouldn't have made the dual land work with fetchlands, which is an interaction I think is broken, but in cube you have to spend actual picks on getting that interaction, and it gives an interesting play pattern of whether you want to actually fetch a land or get another one since this one serves as a better topdeck.
Meanwhile, with the Spirit, I have to make a judgment of whether I want it to compare to actual Reanimate, Animate Dead, Persist, or the unplayable 4-mana options. One aspect of the card I didn't end up being too fond of is how much stronger it is played altogether than piecemeal, I enjoy the synergy I baked into it, but I wish it didn't overshadow the option of splitting it up.
And for your remarks on Trisanda, I'm not actually that invested in the design I ended up with, but for the comments about the creature itself, I wanted it to replicate some of the play patterns Fell Stinger have which really excite me, and the minute details around how it can be awkward to play are there to make it more of a sidegrade (plus I'm a boomer and I like those kinds of drawbacks).
As a last remark on the designs, while I liked a lot of the submissions, and I felt like several of them did a more elegant job of tying together two effects than I managed to, I do want to say that I think Jinx Merchant was design-wise probably the most flawed of blacksmithy's designs, as there is not only no opportunity cost to using the adventure half (outside of playing around negates and codex shredders), it also makes the card effectively mono-green, which is rather questionable considering it doles out -1/-1's.
Thanks for the context. Jason will sadly have to keep holding on to his money, I don't much care for it.
I'ld probably change the creature ability to "
