Next up on the Custom Set Reviews (Completly Sober this time):
Carpe Arcanum
This set was strange: 90 cards, 100% rares. I'm not sure if that's an intentional choice or just an unfinished design (probably the latter), but I'll post the cool stuff anyways. Rare's about where I like the power level of my cube anyhow.
I'm not sure I want a mechanic to reward you this hard for curving out, or even if this creature is the right place to put it, but this certainly gets my "protect the queen" gears churning. Kinda like evolve, but not tied to a card type. Probably a net positive change I think.
A neat split card of fork/creature. The rate's pretty poor on both, so I'm not 100% on it, but the idea is there.
Archeomancer has always felt a bit weak for me, and I think the addition of flash does a lot to make me like the card.
Not a huge fan of the League artwork, but this is a cool idea. You can pay life to get some pretty sweet effects, but you always have to pay some amount of life. That's black as hell right there.
This one is cool: It's basically
hero's downfall with huge upside, but most of the creatures in this set grow, and cmc is hardly reflective of current power level. I don't think I'd run it unless I could replicate that downside, but I kinda love the idea.
Another mechanic of the set, Conjure is basically evoke VIA flashback. Partly I'm just interested here because creature flashback has always been of the
firebolt variant, where you use it later for value. That's fine, and it has its place, but I'm interested in exploring the
roar of the wurm style where discarding it for value is the main draw.
As this is, I think the ETB probably doesn't need to be this strong. This could be
terror and I'd be happy.
Probably just too strong to be interesting, but having to attack and lose lands to kill things is interesting tension. Plus you can kinda mark a 7 toughness creature with "Can't block ~" if you want.
This cadence card is much cooler
I don't know if it's actually good or not, but this would be about where I'd start testing the mechanic.
Funny we should be talking about P/T on things that aren't creatures
I don't know if this is a more or less intuitive way to do manlands, but it's a different one.
And this is the weird "deffinitly custom magic" thing about this set: Every bit of rules text mentions "libraries", and the plural is really really weird at first read.
There's a rare cycle of these, and each affects 5 cards. If there's not going to be any other cards with this mechanic, I'd see if we could move the reminder text on other cards mentioning your library onto these cards instead, just for ripple effect.
As it is, this card is pretty sweet and pretty green. It's a draw 5, but with a pretty hefty asterisk on it, since you don't get your choice of what to play, and they all have to be permanents for it to work. Plus if you get stuck with a spell on top, you're bricked on the other 4 cards until you can shuffle
one of your libraries. (See how weird this sounds?)
I think the way this works is the cards just sit there, not in exile but unable to be played if the enchantment ever goes away, which is probably wrong. If you play the enchantment again you get a whole new library of 5 under it since it's a new object, so maybe this needs polish.