General Custom Cards: The Lab

[NimbusToad]

I've been thinking about adding a few customs. Looking for 1 drops that can see play in semi-aggressive decks.

Sparkling
Creature - Elemental
, Discard Sparkling: Sparkling deals 2 damage to target creature.
2/1

Staunch Reservists
Creature - Human Warrior
: Cycle
2/1

 

[Chris Taylor]

We haven't done this in a while:


Shambling Ghoul meets Grafted Wargear, but you can't swing the turn you equip it.

Also safra, I'm learning! I noticed I forgot punctuation at the end of my sentences on this one

 

[psly4mne]

Also safra, I'm learning! I noticed I forgot punctuation at the end of my sentences on this one

It's "Equip–Sacrifice a creature." It's not an activated ability with a cost of Equip.

Seems like a reasonable card. Doesn't pull off a good Wargear imitation because you can't just throw it on a creature for free, but plays great with Gravecrawler and other cheap recursion/tokens. Even without synergy, the baseline 3/2 for 2 is perfectly good aggro filler by itself, and the ability to turn a wide board into a tall one is sometimes very important.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That's a sweet custom!

I like that psly4mne still found a templating error, all is still as it should be If I may further nitpick, the w in weapon in "Living weapon" should be lower case. The reminder text should read "(When this Equipment enters the battlefield, create a 0/0 black Germ creature token, then attach this to it.)" under the current rules.

The second and fourth line check out completely, but the third line should be the fourth line, and vice versa. So, to wrap it all up...

Living weapon (When this Equipment enters the battlefield, create a 0/0 black Germ creature token, then attach this to it.)
Equipped creature gets +3/+2.
Whenever ~ becomes attached to a creature, tap that creature.
Equip—Sacrifice a creature.

 

[Chris Taylor]

This is the kind of editing I need

 

[Chris Taylor]

Okay, so obviously this is a huge nono for constructed, but assuming there's only one copy of this available in an enviornment, how good is this card?

U
Sorcery
Draw a card
Dredge 3

(two of them really does let your turbo your library upsidown)

 

[Velrun]

Obviously not okay for constructed if the past has taught us anything.

But for cube it might be fine but super boring. It could lead to some very similiar turns and games. How much GY-interaction do you have? Will this card end up in the yard almost all the time? Will it feed the grave (Yes this is my third word for the same) with tons of value?

 

[anotak]

can it dredge itself i forget how that works

 

[Velrun]

No.
It’s a replacement effect that doesn’t use the stack. You simply have to choose which card you want to draw when you’re drawing. The random card from the top or the card with dredge from your graveyard.

 

[Chris Taylor]

can it dredge itself i forget how that works

If that's possible, it wasn't intended. IIRC it's still on the stack, so isn't in your yard and so you can't dredge it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

You're a charm and a champ!
I will test this in a few days. Thank you!

Did you ever end up running scroll cards? If so, I'm curious how they were received!

 

[Velrun]

Did you ever end up running scroll cards? If so, I'm curious how they were received!

I did and I do. My cube has quite many features where scrolls are a small portion of those.

I mainly use scrolls to give Izzet Spells a little more gas and it works perfectly. It’s interesting, fun, creative and reward skillfull players (constructing the right set-up rewards strategic players more than players who just do whatever is available to them.)

I also use scrolls for a few other effects. I have a sorcery scroll that gets shuffled into the deck when a creature die. It serves as an ominous evil all-consuming spell like the white walkers in Game of Thrones or any other fantasy world where you know the evil is slowly coming. In this case it is a black sorcery that creates thirteen 2/2 Zombies for 4 mana.

I also use scrolls to create density for some archetypes that could need it. Miracles for instance which means I have spells that simply makes more spells.

Only downside is the logistics. New players will sometimes forget to remove the scroll tokens from the library, hand, graveyard or exile after the game.

I am, still, currently writing my article about the Fantasy Cube and when it is done, there will be much more info.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Sweet! I still like the mechanic, and the execution, and was contemplating (for the nth time) whether I should add some designs to my own cube.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I did and I do. My cube has quite many features where scrolls are a small portion of those.

I mainly use scrolls to give Izzet Spells a little more gas and it works perfectly. It’s interesting, fun, creative and reward skillfull players (constructing the right set-up rewards strategic players more than players who just do whatever is available to them.)

I also use scrolls for a few other effects. I have a sorcery scroll that gets shuffled into the deck when a creature die. It serves as an ominous evil all-consuming spell like the white walkers in Game of Thrones or any other fantasy world where you know the evil is slowly coming. In this case it is a black sorcery that creates thirteen 2/2 Zombies for 4 mana.

I also use scrolls to create density for some archetypes that could need it. Miracles for instance which means I have spells that simply makes more spells.

Only downside is the logistics. New players will sometimes forget to remove the scroll tokens from the library, hand, graveyard or exile after the game.

I am, still, currently writing my article about the Fantasy Cube and when it is done, there will be much more info.

Put em in different sleeves, that's what I do!

I'm slowly working in more and more scroll cards as my cube goes on, but it turns out that A) ETB scrolls are the easiest to design and B) Turns out ETB scrolls (Even really weak ones) are still really powerful

Like take for example this innocuous card:

I love that prowess interacts nicely with the spell you're given, and a bear with prowess wouldn't be good enough on it's own (Umara Entangler), but this thing is a subtly powerful card!
(It used to have 2 toughness and blinding light used to cost 1)

And Blinding Light is not a spell that's worth a card, like you wouldn't put that card in your deck.


Oddly enough I think my problem is that there's TOO MUCH design space available
Every time I think of how best to add more scrolls to my cube my brain just explodes

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I remember being quite smitten with the concept when EliteArcanist first brought it up. My mind kept whirring on how to cleanly execute his idea and turn it into something that could fit the Magic rules. Every once in a while you have these "Oh man, I totally cooked up something AWESOME!" realizations, and finding the Scrolls solution to this problem was definitely one of my prouder moments in Magic design. I'm really glad to hear that Scrolls are being used and that the idea works well!

I'm really surprised by Radiant Mage needing to be toned down, but I think I get what's going on. Basically, every card that creates a scroll has the line "draw a card". Sure, you get a specific card, but it's a form of raw card advantage nonetheless. Now evaluate a 2/2 prowess for with "When this etb, draw a card." That shit is bonkers! To balance that, the scroll's value basically needs to be well below the average value of a random card from your deck, or the card that creates the scroll needs to be costed with this "draw a card" rider in mind.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Even if the card they draw is shitty, your still up a card

It's a lot like investigate

 

[Velrun]

Sweet! I still like the mechanic, and the execution, and was contemplating (for the nth time) whether I should add some designs to my own cube.

Do it!

By the time I have finished my article blog (I am probably the only writer in the world who is slower than my biggest love Mr. George Raymond Richard Martin) you will have tested a few different designs and we can compare results

Chris I would love to see which other scrolls you have!

 

[Chris Taylor]

Not a ton made yet.


Stormstrider oni seems scary (That's a LOT of burn) but it seems to be balanced in that A) the kind of red deck that's casting 6 drops tends to have their opponent at a pretty high life total at that point, B) Kokusho is a bigger life swing, and C) It's no garentee that a given creature will die, per say in my cube (Between exile effects and pacifism type stuff)

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

I don't know how to do the conspiracy border for the Scroll, but I came up with this recently. I tweaked the scroll reminder text a little, I think this makes it a bit clearer. Thoughts?

Fabricate is great for building overlap between artifacts, tokens and counters, but there's not a lot of options. I always wished there was a Fabricate dude with 0 toughness, and this seems like a cool way to implement Scrolls while tying into graveyard themes a bit. It's pretty low power, but for a more powerful version you could make it cost 1W instead.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Not sure you can on MTG cardsmith, but if you use Magic Set Editor (Which I recommend) you can download that and many more templates here

A few reasons why I don't love that card. I get what you want for this card with 0 toughness (Servo Expedition or a 3/2) but when your players look at that they'll see a non choice. Unless you graveyard deck is specifically about Morbid exactly, the card ends up making a lot more sense with 1 toughness. There's a bit of an argument if you get the scroll when this card dies, but I'd rework the scroll to something different if you go down that route, since there'll be so little reason to choose the 3/2 mode.

Also I do want to point out that once you add in the (probably necessary, given explore) reminder text, this card's text triples in length It might be better to focus on one of these mechanics rather than having three separate single-set-use keywords on this card (Counting scrolls).

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I don't know how to do the conspiracy border for the Scroll

That's a custom template I made for Magic Set Editor. There's a download link floating around somewhere in this topic.

 

[Velrun]

That's a custom template I made for Magic Set Editor. There's a download link floating around somewhere in this topic.

Once again: Thank you for that!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

InfinityBlack14's thread made me design replicate for creatures. Looks rather promising!



Good in go wide colors, gets (halfway) around counterspells, worse than army in a can cards with reanimator.

 

[Velrun]

InfinityBlack14's thread made me design replicate for creatures. Looks rather promising!

View attachment 1546

Good in go wide colors, gets (halfway) around counterspells, worse than army in a can cards with reanimator.

It’s multikicker.

When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, create a copy of it for each time it was kicked.
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, it deals 1 damage to target creature you don’t control.

 

[sigh]

Multikicker might work here, but the mechanic is still a heinous misuse of design space because it's so broad. Swarm is more flavorful, and also happens on cast for some fringe benefits.