General Custom Cards: The Lab

ravnic

ravnic

Rusje said:
If we look at both cards:
Mewtoo has immediate and tremendous value. Mew not, but mew has inevitability. Leaving mew alive for one turn is doable, but probably already game over. However, mew leaves the opponent at least searching one turn for an answer.

Mindslaver, even this weaker variant plays out as follows: either the opponent can play its answer card, if in possession of and mana wise available or they are used against the opponent. Similarly, very bad attacks are made. Hence, having the slaver ability as an etb will work out as follows: oppo looks at the board, hand, etc, and has an answer or very very likely concedes.

You seem hellbent on slavering, but immediately slavering leads to either nothing to slaver or conceding. You also wish that the opponent keeps on playing to find an out. So a solution would be to have the slaver ability later and “answerable”, e.g.,

mewtwo 4
Kicker x put x +1/+1 counters on ~
Flying (or shadow?)
At the beginning of your upkeep add a +1/+1 counter on ~.
At the end of combat, if ~ attacked, you may remove 4 +1/+1 counters from ~. If you do you gain control of target opponent during that player’s next turn. After that turn, that player takes an extra turn.

sacrifice 2 permanents: remove a +1/+1 counter from ~. Any player may play this ability.

2/2

There, a tad wordy but it is strong, has the slaver ability, leaves the opponent playing for an out, wins the game if that out is not found.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your input, your concerns are reasonable and you are right. However, a 4 mana 2/2 would just feel too weird for Mewtwo and I don't love the wordiness of your design. So I tried to come up with a simpler solution for the same problem.

Mewthree {9}
Legendary Pokémon - Psycho
Flying, Ward {4}
At the beginning of your upkeep, if the last turn wasn't an extra turn, tap Mewtwo. If you do, you gain control of target opponent during that player’s next turn. After that turn, that player takes an extra turn.
10/7

This way, the mindslaver would happen before they get destroyed by the 10-power flier. And during that turn, they couldn't have their creatures suicided into Mewtwo.
 
Rusje

Rusje

ravnic said:
Thank you for your input, your concerns are reasonable and you are right. However, a 4 mana 2/2 would just feel too weird for Mewtwo and I don't love the wordiness of your design. So I tried to come up with a simpler solution for the same problem.

Mewthree {9}
Legendary Pokémon - Psycho
Flying, Ward {4}
At the beginning of your upkeep, if the last turn wasn't an extra turn, tap Mewtwo. If you do, you gain control of target opponent during that player’s next turn. After that turn, that player takes an extra turn.
10/7

This way, the mindslaver would happen before they get destroyed by the 10-power flier. And during that turn, they couldn't have their creatures suicided into Mewtwo.
Click to expand...
That does fix the problem to. However, it does not have the build in answer. May I suggest tweaking the last part to:
…, tap mewtwo. If you do target opponent chooses one:
* that player sacrifices 3 permanents, discards a card and loses 3 lifes.
* your mindslaver effect.
In this way you get a mini game.
 
Mown

Mown

Make it Innistrad Emrakul except you control their second turn instead.

I've never really conceptualized Mew as a "bomb" of any kind. If I were to design Mew I'd probably have it let you cast Wish every turn.
 
Rusje

Rusje

Mown said:
Make it Innistrad Emrakul except you control their second turn instead.

I've never really conceptualized Mew as a "bomb" of any kind. If I were to design Mew I'd probably have it let you cast Wish every turn.
Click to expand...
Second turn makes it even stronger… you control their turn and then your own turn begins…
 
Mown

Mown

Rusje said:
Second turn makes it even stronger… you control their turn and then your own turn begins…
Click to expand...
After they have had the opportunity to use their resources optimally, instead of you blowing all their removal spells on their own permanents. If your deck is only big dumb creatures it's going to be worse, but in most games of interactive magic, giving the opponent agency first is going to be to their benefit.
 
Rusje

Rusje

Mown said:
After they have had the opportunity to use their resources optimally, instead of you blowing all their removal spells on their own permanents. If your deck is only big dumb creatures it's going to be worse, but in most games of interactive magic, giving the opponent agency first is going to be to their benefit.
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Not in this case. Yes they blow all their removal, which they otherwise do on your turn (if they have the mana open). You are forgetting one huge part: you attack for them, tap their creatures or whatever, and then you swing in and win. If you get the first turn this can not happen. Note that slaver effects are expensive. So most likely the opponent does not have many cards left in their hand.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Yeah it does kind of depend on what their deck is full of.

If it's a mix of creatures and removal, you want the first turn to expend their whole hand killing whatever they had in play.
If it's just a pile of creatures, you want the second turn because you just shouldn't cast anything and make bad attacks.

That being said, I think it's unlikely opponent doesn't have some amount of removal. 23 creature decks just aren't good, so I think the card is more powerful overall if you get the first turn, a la promised end.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I wonder how much it being a 9-drop matters. I have no experience with Emrakul 2.0, but as it is Mewtu goes off quite a few turn later than your average Mindslaver activation. Maybe it isn't that bananas when people haven't left much in their hands and the slow deck casting 9-drops is somewhat far behind at this point?

Also, a lot of the removal in this cube has cycling, because the attack cards require you to have something more or less specific in play.
 
Rusje

Rusje

Chris Taylor said:
Yeah it does kind of depend on what their deck is full of.

If it's a mix of creatures and removal, you want the first turn to expend their whole hand killing whatever they had in play.
If it's just a pile of creatures, you want the second turn because you just shouldn't cast anything and make bad attacks.

That being said, I think it's unlikely opponent doesn't have some amount of removal. 23 creature decks just aren't good, so I think the card is more powerful overall if you get the first turn, a la promised end.
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No. You are both seriously underestimating the strength of setting up a perfect attack which is possible when you control the second turn. You get their turn followed by your own. It is simply game over.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I think that if you make it to 9 mana, you deserve to play a haymaker. My main concern with Mindslaver designs is recursion. It's really not a fun experience on the other side of the table when you don't get to play Magic because your opponent is playing Magic for you.

As an alternate design, you could do something like:

Mewtwo {9}
Legendary Pokémon - Psycho
Flying, Ward {4}
Mewfour enters the battlefield with three charge counters on it.
Remove a charge counter from Mewfour: Choose one that hasn't been chosen:
* Gain control of target spell. You may choose new targets for it.
* Tap target creature. It deals damage equal to its power to its controller.
* Mewtwo phases out until end of turn.
9/7
 
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Rusje

Rusje

Onderzeeboot said:
I think that if you make it to 9 mana, you deserve to play a haymaker. My main concern with Mindslaver designs is recursion. It's really not a fun experience on the other side of the table when you don't get to play Magic because your opponent is playing Magic for you.

As an alternate design, you could do something like:

Mewtwo {9}
Legendary Pokémon - Psycho
Flying, Ward {4}
Mewfour enters the battlefield with three charge counters on it.
Remove a charge counter from Mewfour: Choose one that hasn't been chosen:
* Gain control of target spell. You may choose new targets for it.
* Tap target creature. It deals damage equal to its power to its controller.
* Mewtwo phases out until end of turn.
9/7
Click to expand...
A haymaker yes. But not win a game. No card deserves that unless that card requires a lot of workaround.
 
Rusje

Rusje

It is truly great to play a game where cards do not require an immediate answer! The lack of fixing/card filtering is less great, but one can work around that by using custom rules.
 
Brad

Brad

https://imgur.com/a/JkBkj9t
Is there a better way to word this? Anything shorter? It's the combination of all the Specialize abilities enabled by my self-made keyword, Prismatic. It's somewhat easy to understand and you can skip half the text once you've locked in a color, but it's a novel on the first read.
 
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Rusje

Rusje

Brad said:
https://imgur.com/a/JkBkj9t
Is there a better way to word this? Anything shorter? It's the combination of all the Specialize abilities enabled by my self-made keyword, Prismatic. It's somewhat easy to understand and you can skip half the text once you've locked in a color, but it's a novel on the first read.
Click to expand...
I would move prismatic to the top, as is often done with property defining cards and would change the ability parts after if you do to bullets and start with the colour restriction. If you do, then do the following:
* if ~ is white then add a 1/1 ….
* if ~ is black …
With bullets you do not get less words, but it reads much easier.

if Imoen is white and black, do you want the zombie to get a +1 counter or not? If yes, change the order or add a rider that you can choose in what order you do the abilities.
 
Brad

Brad

Rusje said:
I would move prismatic to the top, as is often done with property defining cards
Click to expand...
I'm not totally sure on this part. Background and Partner are at the bottom of cards, as they only affect the card during deckbuilding.
Rusje said:
and would change the ability parts after if you do to bullets and start with the colour restriction. If you do, then do the following:
* if ~ is white then add a 1/1 ….
* if ~ is black …
With bullets you do not get less words, but it reads much easier.
Click to expand...
The problem with this is, while it's more organized, it adds a lot of dead space to the text box. It looks a little cleaner, but that's because I HAD to remove the Prismatic reminder text. Maybe that's worth it, as the ability is kind of easy to explain for the rare occasion where someone pulls only Imoen as their first ever Prismatic card.
https://imgur.com/a/UdelKYG
Rusje said:
if Imoen is white and black, do you want the zombie to get a +1 counter or not?
Click to expand...
Luckily, the format won't include a way to do this, so it won't matter. I'd like this kind of card to be set to one ability.

EDIT: After looking at both a few more times, I think that I prefer the bullets. I also fixed the indentation on the bulleted version.
 
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