General Custom Cards: The Lab

[Onderzeeboot]

So... Ill-Gotten Gains was powerful but pretty backbreaking in certain board states. I've had it function as a one-sided Wrath of God + Thoughtseize multiple times. I've been thinking hard about an alternative, but it's pretty hard. This was looks somewhat fun, tough it basically is a tax spell for your opponent's creatures, the activated ability means you might want to skip playing a creature, even if you have the mana to pay the tax, to avoid the token defecting to your opponent's side. You can also activate it for X=1, and see if your opponent bites. Don't know if the numbers are right on this one.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Two interesting cards I've brainstormed recently


To anyone caught in between wasteland and tectonic edge, here's another option that can basically only be used to kill problem lands.


Guys, I really love recurring nightmare. Victimize doesn't really do it for me, and recurring nightmare itself is WAY too strong and uninteractive in frustrating and unintuitive ways (Seriously, it's from the block with buyback. WHY IS IT AN ENCHANTMENT, IT DOESN'T FUNCTION LIKE ONE AT ALL)

I've moved it from the least interactive card type to the most interactive one, limited it to once per turn, and given it a way to refuel if you draw blank while it's in play.
We could also borrow the wording from goblin welder to make creature removal serve as counterplay as well, but I wanted to start it off here and see how that played first.

As for the flavor, I don't really know of any magic characters who are kinda "circle of life" philosophy wise, and creating one's own characters is a surefire way to make nobody care about a walker. This probably kinda works?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Guys, I really love recurring nightmare. Victimize doesn't really do it for me, and recurring nightmare itself is WAY too strong and uninteractive in frustrating and unintuitive ways (Seriously, it's from the block with buyback. WHY IS IT AN ENCHANTMENT, IT DOESN'T FUNCTION LIKE ONE AT ALL)

I've moved it from the least interactive card type to the most interactive one, limited it to once per turn, and given it a way to refuel if you draw blank while it's in play.
We could also borrow the wording from goblin welder to make creature removal serve as counterplay as well, but I wanted to start it off here and see how that played first.

As for the flavor, I don't really know of any magic characters who are kinda "circle of life" philosophy wise, and creating one's own characters is a surefire way to make nobody care about a walker. This probably kinda works?

I don't know about others, but for me Lim-Dûl being (partly) green is a pretty big flavor fail. If you want to use an existing character for these effects, I'ld rather see you try Meren of Clan Nel Toth. You could also use Ravi (also known as Grandmother Sengir), who is an actual -aligned planeswalker!

Anyway, that +1 seems really, really strong on a planeswalker that already has a lot of loyalty to start with. With the right creatures it's basically ramp and/or removal and/or card advantage in one package. Seems like that should actually be the minus ability, and because you can use it to reuse etb effects and gain some massive mana advantage (saccing a token for a titan for example), I don't think -1 is enough of a cost. The current -1 ability could be a +1 ability if it dumped the creature into your graveyard instead of putting it into your hand, which would also make it a better fit with the other two abilities imo, plus flavor! Lastly, the casting from exile feels just weird from a flavor standpoint. That's not where dead creatures go, that's where vanished creatures go. As a "cycle of life"-walker, you're concerned with bringing the dead back to life, not finding the vanished.

All in all that would lead me to something resembling this.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Meren does sound like a good idea. Kudos on the pickup of Ravi, I've learned something today! (Also I'm stealing that art you found)

The exile clause was more of a gameplay concern. Given the amount of exile based removal in the average cube, that ult might not even be that impactful, but you can't really make it cheaper.

However, I do have one problem with your design: seriously low power level.
The +1 just mills now. it mills one card. That's tibalt levels of do nothing for a planeswalker ability.
Left alone, she can recurring nightmare twice, then take a turn off, then do it once more. That's not much, and assumes a goldfish. Or she can thallid it up and produce value once every 3 turns.

I mean maybe you're looking at this from the perspective of each activation is another hornet queen (Something like this is always going to be modulated by the creatures around it after all) but that -2 isn't always going to defend her. If you swap the places of skinrender and shriekmaw, she's got an activation similar to Venser, the Sojourner after all.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Meren does sound like a good idea. Kudos on the pickup of Ravi, I've learned something today! (Also I'm stealing that art you found)

The exile clause was more of a gameplay concern. Given the amount of exile based removal in the average cube, that ult might not even be that impactful, but you can't really make it cheaper.

However, I do have one problem with your design: seriously low power level.
The +1 just mills now. it mills one card. That's tibalt levels of do nothing for a planeswalker ability.
Left alone, she can recurring nightmare twice, then take a turn off, then do it once more. That's not much, and assumes a goldfish. Or she can thallid it up and produce value once every 3 turns.

I mean maybe you're looking at this from the perspective of each activation is another hornet queen (Something like this is always going to be modulated by the creatures around it after all) but that -2 isn't always going to defend her. If you swap the places of skinrender and shriekmaw, she's got an activation similar to Venser, the Sojourner after all.

I do feel the Recurring Nightmare ability is fairly costed at -2. Comparing it to Venser is pretty misleading, because Venser can't get that Shriekmaw back if it's in the yard instead of in play, and Venser can't upgrade a cheap, worthless creature to a six+ mana creature with a lot of impact. Also, Venser is very powerful (too much for my tastes even). Another "problem" with using Recurring Nightmare for the + ability is that it promotes repetetive lines of play. That said, I guess you can easily spice up the + ability if you want. I personally like the planeswalkers that don't have an enormous impact with their + ability better than the ones that do, I love the new Tezzeret for example, but to each their own. If you really want to spice it up you could make it +1 for Entomb, although that's very powerful. I would definitely lower the starting loyalty if you're going with a super strong effect like that, even though it is "do nothing" (because let's face it, even if the PW bites the dust you are going to get that creature back into play thanks to Eternal Witness or Necromancy or whatever).

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think I may have found something for my custom Esper slot

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So, a while ago I was looking for a Grixis card, and came up with a curse that let you fateseal 1, then play the top card from your opponent's library. I think it might have been a little bit too subtle (I called it deceptively powerful). To make it have a bit more immediate impact I dropped the fateseal but added immediate removal that, naturally, combines with the exile and play ability in an evil way. I'ld like some opinions!



Edit: Card's a house. Added life loss for balance.

Edit 2: Well, that didn't feel right either. Why are you losing life when your opponent is having the nightmares? Tucked the card a bit deeper instead, now fourth from the top instead of second. It's coming!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Found another design for the fabricate Abzan custom. This one plays a lot better than the Siege Rhino wannabe!

 

[Chris Taylor]

So I've got the beginnings of an idea here:

Probably a Black/White card?
"At the beginning of your end step, investigate
Whenever an artifact you control dies, each opponent loses N Life"

There's a lot of ways you could take this.
Maybe N is 3, and it's designed to be a powerful finisher on it's own?
Maybe N is 1, and it's more a cheap source of card advantage with a reach condition built in?
Maybe N is [CARDNAME'S POWER] and you're expected to throw a bonesplitter on it or something
Maybe you want to go off the walls and N is "1 for each artifact you control" because you like making your drafters do math

Is it a creature? An Enchantment? If it's a creature, is it a control finisher, maybe a 4/4 lifelink? Maybe it's a 2 drop 2/2?
Maybe it costs hybrid mana? (I dunno this is probably possible)

Maybe it's got the powerful dies trigger, but a small body and cheap cost, like a 1/1 for 3 or something.

I dunno. I'm not even sure my cube wants something like this, but maybe yours does!

 

[Chris Taylor]

Also flavor wise, I'm thinking corrupt cop, but I probably can't name a card "Corrupt Official"

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Also flavor wise, I'm thinking corrupt cop, but I probably can't name a card "Corrupt Official"

Venal Functionary? Crooked Bureaucrat? Greedy Officer? Sordid Staffer? Unscrupulous Sycophant?

 

[Velrun]

Nothing's wrong with going beyond what Wizards wanted. I just want you to know (not that I'm accusing you of not knowing. If it sounds like that, then I'm sorry!) that Investigate keyword has only been a Bant keyword so far. So no black. However I do like your design.

 

[vennythekid]

This feels like it should play like an extort card, maybe?

Corrupted Bureaucrat
Creature - Human Advisor
Vigilance
At the beginning of each end step, if you cast a spell this turn, investigate.
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from play, you may pay . If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life.
2/5

 

[Velrun]

Then maybe just give it extort and remove the vigilance.

This way the investigate tokens will fuel the extort by drawing more gas.
And the gas will damage will drain the opponent twice.

 

[Chris Taylor]

You're already paying 2 to sac the clue, why make them pay another W/B to drain when the clue dies?

 

[Velrun]

Chris is on fire! Totally agree

 

[sigh]

I really want WotC to explore the "rebinding"/"recycling"/"composting", or whatever you'd like to call it, aspect of green more. The depth of cards that interact with lands in the GY is amazingly shallow. So I took a stab at a card I would for-sure play in my environment as a cog in the engine archetype.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

?

God so ADD today

 

[Chris Taylor]

I really want WotC to explore the "rebinding"/"recycling"/"composting", or whatever you'd like to call it, aspect of green more. The depth of cards that interact with lands in the GY is amazingly shallow. So I took a stab at a card I would for-sure play in my environment as a cog in the engine archetype.
View attachment 1318

Interesting card. Provided this isn't Rain of Salt (appropriately named) with flashback, it seems interesting.

 

[psly4mne]

I'm going to try this out in my next draft:


The seed of the idea came from a card in Eternal, but I think it will play well in cube. Obviously the main draw is a somewhat sticky threat for reanimator (in that it starts making tokens again if it's killed), but it supports token and sacrifice strategies well. It's obviously much better (borderline too good) with Entomb or a discard outlet. Also, I got to write "When you cast ~, counter it."

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'm going to try this out in my next draft:
View attachment 1326

The seed of the idea came from a card in Eternal, but I think it will play well in cube. Obviously the main draw is a somewhat sticky threat for reanimator (in that it starts making tokens again if it's killed), but it supports token and sacrifice strategies well. It's obviously much better (borderline too good) with Entomb or a discard outlet. Also, I got to write "When you cast ~, counter it."

I love the concept, but am not in love with the execution. 8/8 trample, flying, haste seems a smidge too good, especially since it can get itself into the graveyard if you're lacking an enabler and actually does something relevant while it resides in said graveyard.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Eternal is a bit above the curve from magic in general, so that probably explains the power. Good old famous 4 mana 5/6 vigilance all creatures lose flying

 

[psly4mne]

The Eternal card is 6 mana requiring 4 black, it only works if you cast it, and there's no efficient reanimation. It's unplayably bad.

I agree 8/8 flying/trample/haste is probably too good for the easy reanimation. While it's competing against stuff like Sheoldred and Griselbrand as a reanimate target, it's easier to bin and has the graveyard effect, so it should be a bit weaker. Maybe just dropping the haste would work.

I was also thinking Champion a Demon would work instead of the self-counter ability. I like that it also works with Regrowth effects, and I'm okay with the combo with Mirror Entity (my only Demon at less than 5 mana), but I think dying to Fire//Ice in response to the trigger is too much of a risk and kills the idea. Giving the tokens hexproof would work but seems too weird.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The Eternal card is 6 mana requiring 4 black, it only works if you cast it, and there's no efficient reanimation. It's unplayably bad.

I agree 8/8 flying/trample/haste is probably too good for the easy reanimation. While it's competing against stuff like Sheoldred and Griselbrand as a reanimate target, it's easier to bin and has the graveyard effect, so it should be a bit weaker. Maybe just dropping the haste would work.

I was also thinking Champion a Demon would work instead of the self-counter ability. I like that it also works with Regrowth effects, and I'm okay with the combo with Mirror Entity (my only Demon at less than 5 mana), but I think dying to Fire//Ice in response to the trigger is too much of a risk and kills the idea. Giving the tokens hexproof would work but seems too weird.

The champion a Demon idea is awesome! They won't always have the Fire//Ice, and if you know they have it, you just keep on making more demons (which should be pretty good against a deck running Fire//Ice I reckon) until you have too many to burn away in response. Go for it!

Edit: Except, have it make some other token and champion that token. It's kinda weird that this makes puny demons. Thrulls or some other appropriate servile race would fit better

 

[EliteArcanist]

I really like spells matter archetypes in Magic (My first deck was an Izzet deck and I haven't looked back since.) Recently I've been trying to brainstorm some ideas for making a completely custom cube, and the idea for a new mechanic popped into my head. I've been playing a lot of Online TCG, where it is easy to have spells which generate copies of other spells and effects. And, if you think about it, Magic already has creature tokens to represent getting more than one creature for card. So how about spell tokens? This is basically a way to make it easier for spells matter decks to get a critical mass of cast triggers without running 20+ cantrip effects. It also does a good job of toning down ETB creatures, since you can make them pay extra mana to get the effect. Here are a few examples:

Spelldrifter
Creature - Elemental
Flying, when Spelldrifter enters the battlefield, create two copies of a spell token which says, ", Sorcery, Draw a card."
2/2

Ragecaster Mage
Creature - Human Wizard
When Ragecaster Mage enters the battlefield, create two copies of a spell token which says, ", Sorcery, deal 2 damage to target player."
2/2

Rampant Regrowth
Sorcery
Create two copies of a spell token which says, ", Sorcery, Return target land or creature from your graveyard to your hand, then gain life equal to the number of cards in your graveyard."

Like tokens, the spell tokens would exile themselves once they hit the graveyard, just like creature tokens. The wording needs some work, but I think the mechanic can be both balanced and fun. Any thoughts?