General Custom Cards: The Lab

Aston

Aston

Cursed Scroll Rack - {4}
Artifact - Rare
{1}, {T}: Put any number of cards from your hand on top of your library. Create that many Instant scrolls named 'Cursed Scroll' and put them into your hand. They cost {3} and have 'Choose a card name, then reveal a card at random from your hand. If that card has the chosen name, Cursed Scroll does 2 damage to any target'.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Onderzeeboot said:
Can we discuss this card? I have been having waaay too much fun with it in testing, but is it too strong? The combination of these two abilities is sooooo satisfying, and the card is a really good reward for going into {R/G} ramp, but it does kinda turn into Demonic Tutor in the late game...

View attachment 1953

I should probably at least have it exile itself, right?

The reason it has basic landcycling is to fill out a cycle across all supported color pairs.
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I've been testing this some more, with Anotak's suggested "untap up to X target lands", and it's not often you lose the game after casting this for X = 7+. Upping the cost to {X}{1}{R}{G} seems like making it a horrifically bad Act on Impulse though... What to do, what to do...
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
anotak said:
umm ok so like is it often that you lose any game where u cast a 9+ mana multicolored spell
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Haha, fair enough. That's the thing about testing against the AI. Sometimes you get a lot more time than you ought to, and would, in a normal game. This obviously makes it a bit harder than normal to gauge a custom card's strength! I'll try it out as is then :)
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I think it does what you'd probably want an X spell to do. While it's (Almost always) better than braingeyser, that's not saying a lot. Untap X lands would be the only change I might make, which could be a nerf but also could make the card more interesting, if you've got bouncelands or mana flare effects or somesuch.

I've got a little mini fight club:

Call of the Crusade.jpg vs Ajani Born Leader.jpg

I'd been experimenting with what it would take to remove planeswalkers from my cube. I'd been disappointed with so many that it might not be a ton of a stretch anyways, and now with sagas to work with (once Cajun releases the dominaria patch for magic set editor) I've got more options than I would have before. Ajani, Born leader was always meant to be a replacement for Ajani Goldmane, but I'm not sure I succeeded where I wanted to. His plus ability is useful, but it overlaps so much with the minus, and it turns out lifelink can be a pain. As well, the ultimate is a neat designer idea, but it doesn't really play all that well or read that well either. I think it's still an improvement on goldmane (who might as well have fading) but I think I can do better.

That being said, most of my drafters thought I was insane for making Call of the Crusade. It's got some nice mechanical overlaps, as white has both a prowess thing and a +1/+1 counter thing going on, and it's certainly strong, but is this a 5cc card?
Dictate of heliod was in my cube a while back, and I took it out for being unnecessary not for being too powerful.

What do you guys think?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I doubt that Call of the Crusade at four is better than Ridgescale Tusker, though it's a much better curve topper for aggro decks at four mana. Call of the Crusade at five mana gets blown out of the water by Tusker.

Have you ever tried Great Teacher's Decree? I replaced it with Inspired Charge when I did my round of replacing insular mechanics that weren't necessary for the cube (i.e. a reasonable alternative existed) but I've always been a fan of Decree in my aggro decks.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Onderzeeboot said:
I doubt that Call of the Crusade at four is better than Ridgescale Tusker, though it's a much better curve topper for aggro decks at four mana. Call of the Crusade at five mana gets blown out of the water by Tusker.

Have you ever tried Great Teacher's Decree? I replaced it with Inspired Charge when I did my round of replacing insular mechanics that weren't necessary for the cube (i.e. a reasonable alternative existed) but I've always been a fan of Decree in my aggro decks.
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I haven't, but it would probably be fine. If counters comes out of my cube again that might be worth considering.

Also I'm all about the insular mechanics :p
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I need some help. I'm looking for new artwork for one of my cards:
Protect and Serve.jpg
And I'm sure you can tell why. Having spent a while now looking for ideas, everything was portraying someone too heroic.

Basically what I need is some white aligned figure being a dickbag, preferably to some peasants. Beating them up, extorting them, maybe someone clapped up in the stocks looking sad, something along those lines.
Does anyone have any ideas?
 
Rowan_CB

Rowan_CB

Was looking at Nightshade Assassin in my cube, which is almost the Nekrataal variant that I want, and wishing that this card existed:

Agnostic Assassin {2}{B}{B}
Creature - Human Assassin
First strike
When Agnostic Assassin enters the battlefield, target creature an opponent controls gets -2/-2 until end of turn. If Agnostic Assassin’s madness cost was paid, that creature gets -X/-X until end of turn instead.
Madness {X}{B}
2/1
 
M

McMenno

Unfortunately, it doesn't actually work, because of rule 107.3f. "If a card in any zone other than the stack has an {X} in its mana cost, the value of {X} is treated as 0, even if the value of X is defined somewhere within its text." That's why Quarantine Field enters the battlefield with counters.

Some workarounds would be to make it a sorcery that creates a token, or making it enter the battlefield with counters. But those would both be a bit clunky.
 
M

McMenno

I am not sure if "as ~ enters the battlefield" can target, they are mostly used for cards that enter the battlefield with counters (like walking ballista) or choices (like Pithing Needle). It could also be an on cast trigger like Genesis Hydra, although that would make it so that even if the spell is countered, the ability will still resolve.
 
Velrun

Velrun

As enters the battlefield will work fine.

‘As’ happens before ‘when enters the battlefield’ and it does not use the stack. This means it is not a triggered ability that can be countered by Stifle. It will work but will be unelegant as humanly possible.
 
sigh

sigh

These little corner cases where wizards restricts creative possibilities frustrate me to no end. It's a very intuitive custom, so the fact that it doesn't technically work as written by the current rules is infuriating.

You could also make it work by... just having it work. It's a custom. Make a custom rule 999.999 that amends 107.3f to allow it to work. It wouldn't affect any other cards in the cube anyway
 
M

McMenno

I don't agree. The custom carries information from one zone (the stack) to another zone (the battlefield), requiring the game to "remember" information about a card that's in one zone when it was in a previous zone. Obviously you can handwave it if you're making a custom cube card, personally I like my customs to work within the framework of the rules.
 
Rowan_CB

Rowan_CB

McMenno said:
Unfortunately, it doesn't actually work, because of rule 107.3f. "If a card in any zone other than the stack has an {X} in its mana cost, the value of {X} is treated as 0, even if the value of X is defined somewhere within its text." That's why Quarantine Field enters the battlefield with counters.

Some workarounds would be to make it a sorcery that creates a token, or making it enter the battlefield with counters. But those would both be a bit clunky.
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Man, designing cards is hard!
 
ravnic

ravnic

Oh, that's a difficult one.

I also got one. I want an artwork of some creepy guy (or girl, human if possible) who's playing with marionettes of some kind.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Velrun said:
Does anyone have a good picture for an auction house?
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Sweet lord, art for that is extremely hard to find. On top of that there's a million arts being sold by auction, and those are all messing up any search results you're doing! Maybe this piece by Yang Mansik?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/e0/4e/38e04e30bb8aa292a18cad01b28af218.jpg

This particular art isn't on Deviantart, but you can see his other art there: https://www.deviantart.com/yam8417/gallery/

ravnic said:
Oh, that's a difficult one.

I also got one. I want an artwork of some creepy guy (or girl, human if possible) who's playing with marionettes of some kind.
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That one's easier!
https://www.deviantart.com/molee/art/master-of-puppets-196550675
https://www.deviantart.com/anotherwanderer/art/Legend-of-the-Cryptids-Rooney-reg-619917275
https://www.deviantart.com/larbesta/art/Puppeteer-300956729
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Safra I know yours is more unfair cube than mine, but I just cut Dragon Ruby for being too strong an equipment. (I know yours deals 2 but the issue was the flying not the burn)

Flying is a big deal and I sorta felt it being too much when it was going in decks where it was essentially kitesail++ and I didn't feel bad.

Something to watch out for
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
anotak said:
which one is dragon ruby
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Yzg0tNP.png
 
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