General Custom Cards: The Lab

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, it's pretty counterintuitive when there's also a rule that says permanents that are blinked have no knowledge of their previous existence. I.e. if you use Momentary Blink on a unearthed Kederekt Leviathan (aside: the correct pronunciation has to be "get 'recked leviathan', right?), you actually don't exile it at the beginning of the next end step!
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Doesn't unearth specifically exile it if it would leave the battlefield to prevent this exact thing?

Ha, you would think so! But because Momentary Blink already exiles, the Unearth ability goes "oh, guess it's already going where I want it to go, never mind!", and thus Momentary Blink can track the unearthed creature and pull it back. I've once played a terrifically fun peasant deck with Dreams of the Dead as the uncommon. Hard to answer, and together with some blink effects, you can set up a grindy recursion engine :)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Relevant ruling:
If a creature returned to the battlefield with unearth would leave the battlefield for any reason, it’s exiled instead — unless the spell or ability that’s causing the creature to leave the battlefield is actually trying to exile it! In that case, it succeeds at exiling it. If it later returns the creature card to the battlefield (as Oblivion Ring or Flickerwisp might, for example), the creature card will return to the battlefield as a new object with no relation to its previous existence. The unearth effect will no longer apply to it.

Hey, I have taught two experienced players obscure rules they didn't know! I think these should be mandatory questions in judge exams to spread the knowledge :p
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Alright, it's been too long!

It's High Noon
High Noon is the Cowboy themed set I'm sure all of us have brainstormed at one point or another. This one I think is one of the best designed ones so far, which is frustrating since I look at a lot of the ideas and go "Yup, makes sense"
However:
Warning Shot.png
Sometimes someone hits one out of the park :D
This is mostly useless for cube, but oh man I love every bit of it.

Disallow.png
Nice choice for a reprint, but I mostly want to mention this for the flavor text. Given how much we've been looking down on the worldbuilding flavor texts, props here. This says a lot about the world, doesn't overexplain, and isn't over the top.

Fools Gold.png
Love the name/effect pairing here, and a solid but not overpowered card to boot.

Daisite Express.png
This is a sweet little design. Not sure it needs to be rare? It's pretty close to Audacious Thief, but I love the tweak.

Whirling Thoughts.png
I'm not sure how much I like quickdraw. This design is a bit forceful, and I think it's mostly in there just to help justify the pretty far from magic cowboy theme. The actual card seems neat though, even if you're jumping through hoops to get divination.

Ghastly Character.png
Also there to justify the cowboy theme but much cooler is bounties. I think this is a concept that could be carried by a good token to show it. On this card specifically, I've run makeshift mannequin before and it felt pretty solid. This is an interesting take on that same kind of effect.

Spirit of Infamy.png
Black's got a few bounty hunters as one might expect, but I like the idea of this card. It's going to take a big reward to get people to maybe give their opponent extra cards, but if there was a color to do it, black having access to cards like persecute is a prime candidate. I like that it stays at 3 toughness the whole time though, so that this never feels like it's too late to kill it.
Also, this has the flex mode of just throwing up bounties everywhere, helping out your removal spells (something else black's great at).
At the end of the day I can't tell if this needs to cost BB or gain haste at no penalty, and that's a good sign of a well designed magic card.

Stormcall Thunderbird.png
Anything in magic with greater than linear returns makes me exited and scared, but a 6 mana 3/3 flying is probably the spot to put it :p

Dead Mans Hand.png
Okay so if top down is concept --> rules, and bottom up is rules --> concept, I guess this card is Inside out? (Art --> mechanics)
This is the kind of stupid cool idea that can only happen when you don't have a whole million dollar company asking high profile artists to draw things for you :p
Mechanically, I think those numbers are right. Two 8 drops is a big enough ask to be compared to door to nothingness, but an interesting new angle.
Probably should cost 5 just because this style of card shouldn't actually be powerful.

Forgotten Haunt.png
I think this was the only development mistake I found in the file. I don't know how much this ability should cost, but my gut says something in the realm of {4}, given this doesn't enter tapped.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Cross Post from my cube thread:
Hey, I'm making high quality proxies of the fixing lands in my cube, and I'd like your opinion on the art:


I've got a little voting quiz below, and like a good democracy, you're allowed to vote for multiple parties! If you like more than one art, select them, and if you think they're all bad, don't vote on the question.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...6UG3he3HzXtDRW9pJqqjhRNA/viewform?usp=sf_link

Here's a few I'm not taking votes on since nobody's going to change my mind:
011 - Flooded Strand.jpg038 - Tropical Island.jpg035 - Taiga.jpg

Oh, and ignore the rarity, that was for my sorting purposes only. Kinda hard to navigate around a 70 card set that's 100% lands.
 
Real democracies work.. but what Chris is doing right now is pulling a Putin on us. In two weeks he will announce the winner of the voting with 100 % votes on the exact result he, himself, wanted :p

General Secretary Chris Taylor
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Real democracies work.. but what Chris is doing right now is pulling a Putin on us. In two weeks he will announce the winner of the voting with 100 % votes on the exact result he, himself, wanted :p

General Secretary Chris Taylor
Less russia more marriage.
I just get 51% of the vote :p
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I'm saddened by how many of these arts are not of the thing they are illustrating. For one egregious example, a beach is not a tarn.

Then vote as such!
Also actual art of a scalding tarn is VERY hard to find. The real thing to google would be a caldera, which is a lake in a volcano, but no, everyone of those looks like Dragonskull Summit
I still consider both an improvement on the horrible zendikar artwork of "Just an actual volcano off in the distance".
 
Voted!

Those were some pretty good artworks and I respected the game by voting on the one I likes the most, but if it were me, I would still go for the originals.

By the way your Bayou and Underground Sea (and one more I can’t remember right now) has the official Wizards of the Coast artwork for some promotional they did a few years back. In other words you got exactly the right artwork ;) I feel like if you choose a single one of those, then you should choose the official artwork for all 10 duals.

Edit: Found them. Just search on Scryfall for either Bayou, Underground Sea and the third one.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Voted! The Underground Sea one is a single select rather than a multiselect ;)

Motherfucker. I wonder if fixing that now will break everything...
Edit: It's showing multiselect on my end. Weird
Voted!

Those were some pretty good artworks and I respected the game by voting on the one I likes the most, but if it were me, I would still go for the originals.

By the way your Bayou and Underground Sea (and one more I can’t remember right now) has the official Wizards of the Coast artwork for some promotional they did a few years back. In other words you got exactly the right artwork ;) I feel like if you choose a single one of those, then you should choose the official artwork for all 10 duals.

Edit: Found them. Just search on Scryfall for either Bayou, Underground Sea and the third one.

Yes, the MODO printings! I've used a few, but oh lord some of those arts are real bad. The Savannah especially.
I'm definitely mixing and matching though. Same reason we advocate running Cryptic command but not Austere Command: Run good cards, not full cycles.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I've been thinking about this card all day
I think the conclusion I've come to is that there's some definite tension between what is printable and what would be worth casting.
 
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