General Custom Cards: The Lab

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Crosspost from my own cube thread:

Our dear host's podcast has had me thinking about a few recent strixhaven cards I was excited about, but for various reasons I now wish were different
Thankfully, I wish things were different all the time, and just change them. That's how I got into this whole mess in the first place, and I'm not about to stop!

938cee8f-ac2c-49a5-9ff7-1367d0edfabe.jpg

This card is actually somewhat interesting. Vigilance I think is actually good here as this is the kind of card where under most circumstances getting to swing with it just leads to better sequencing, rather than the Brimaz effect where it removes all the decisions about the card.
But I do not need the other side in the slightest, and it would only confuse and distract. So much so I'm not posting it, look up the other half yourself if you want, it's a 4 mana black pinger -_-

Anyways:
Majestic Keeper.png
Simpler, not a legend, and plus I get to put more Peter Morbacher art on a card.
I already bought a mousepad from the man, might as well keep going.

Also also:
e900c1eb-968b-4046-b824-c167a7a5b682.jpg

Love this thing. Dom brings up a good point in that having a relavant body on it's own really does help spellslinger cards, softening the fail case where it gets drawn late or even slightly in the wrong order.
But black prowess is a dubious prospect in cube, (Believe me, I've tried).

Basically your draws are thoughtseize effects which I don't love running in the first place for reasons I'm sure Grillo explained better than I can, and Unearth does this sort of La Croix impression of a protection spell (That is to say, not a strong impression)

So I ported it:
Flameshell Mystic.png
And now it's a turtle because that's the cool art I found :D
It is in most ways actually worse: not gaining life off tokens, ward technically being better in some edge cases than this ability would be, and also the copy clause from Magecraft which I feel is too many words to be worth its use.
Magecraft's presence in the set leads to bullshit like this:
0dbb1230-a465-4499-bb9c-35a06712a08b.jpg

A card I maintain I would be (rightly) ridiculed for making myself, but gets a pass because all of R&D decided "Yes this card is dumb, but it makes sense in the context of the other bad decisions we've made"

More to follow I'm sure
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Velrun said:
Easy, triple hybrid it then
Click to expand...
It has to follow the convention of the other ... Summoning lessons in casting cost :) I'm going to test straight up 4 satyrs for {3}{R/G}{R/G} next. It's slightly better rate that way, but the problematic part of the card was the X in the casting cost in ramp decks.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Are you saying you have confirmation that the original five has a convention?

One could argue they share some information: They are all sorceries, they all cost double hybrid, and they all have mana value between 2 and 5.

On the other hand they also differ a lot: All but one creates a single token but the fifth one creates two tokens. Three of them summon a token with no abilities and two summon token(s) with abilities. Four of them have fixed cost but the fifth costs X. Three of them costs the same amount of mana to cast and the rest are different.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Velrun said:
Are you saying you have confirmation that the original five has a convention?

One could argue they share some information: They are all sorceries, they all cost double hybrid, and they all have mana value between 2 and 5.

On the other hand they also differ a lot: All but one creates a single token but the fifth one creates two tokens. Three of them summon a token with no abilities and two summon token(s) with abilities. Four of them have fixed cost but the fifth costs X. Three of them costs the same amount of mana to cast and the rest are different.
Click to expand...

Right, so there are clear areas where the existing five Summoning cards follow exactly the same convention, and there are clear areas where they differ. To keep the custom cards recognizable as part of the cycle, it's best to stick to the clearest common characteristics of the existing cycle. The Summoning cycle all adhere to the following pattern:
  • Each card in the cycle is named XXX Summoning, where XXX is the name of the token(s) summoned.
  • Each card in the cycle has double (matching) hybrid mana in the casting cost.
  • Each card in the cycle has the common rarity.
  • Each card in the cycle has the Sorcery and Lesson card types.
  • Each card in the cycle summons one or more tokens that are relatively on rate for the mana value and rarity.
I think the only one you of these you can break for a custom Summoning lesson and still have it feel like it's part of the cycle is the sorcery card type. I did keep both of my customs a sorcery though. Currently I'm testing these.
Scelet Summoning.full.jpg Satyr Summoning.full.jpg
I don't run {B/G} in my cube, so the only "wordy" token creator in the original cycle, Pest Summoning, is not an option for me. I feel like that card does show that it's okay to make slightly more complex tokens for these cards. Both have been okay so far, which is pretty much where you want to be with lessons I've discovered. I've even maindecked Scelet in one draft because I had a lack of two drops and ninjas in my deck that would gladly return a Scelet to the void to enter tapped and attacking while also drawing a card. Either that or the Scelet gets blocked and you still draw the card :)
 
Velrun

Velrun

I wish to make 5 custom lands to complete the Campus cycle



Does anyone have a good idea for the names/flavor?
Like what plane could have 5 factions where there actual is a campus in each?
 
Velrun

Velrun

It also seems like a cycle that is unlikely to be finished anytime soon. Simply because the odds of there being a Campus on other planes are guarenteed but we're unlikely to visit them because it would be somewhat boring.
 
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