Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
If you exile a land, you can play it. It isn’t guaranteed ramp, but seeing that decks typically run ~40% lands, there’s roughly a 64% chance you’ll exile a land with the +1.
General Custom Cards: The Lab
- Thread starter anotak
- Start date
I don't really get why Narset's triggered ability is a thing.
Only if you already haven't already played a land on your turn.
The triggered ability is loose, I agree. I want her to have an exile-heavy kit to represent parallel timelines, stuff moving from exile to the battlefield and vice versa with the flavour that it's causality and timelines stuff, related to Sarkhan's thanos snap. I'm not worried about her ability to guarantee land drops.
What if instead of slowly exiling more cards (which poorly fits the flavour), she ETB'd and exiled target player's graveyard? That would give her a bunch of resources to do the -X with, and is a lot more sudden than gradual (better flavour fit) to represent her shock at planeswalking back to a changed Tarkir. So, maybe something like this:
What if instead of slowly exiling more cards (which poorly fits the flavour), she ETB'd and exiled target player's graveyard? That would give her a bunch of resources to do the -X with, and is a lot more sudden than gradual (better flavour fit) to represent her shock at planeswalking back to a changed Tarkir. So, maybe something like this:
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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Is sol ring card advantage?
Is a hot dog a sandwich?
Is a hot dog a sandwich?
Narset:
I hate how the -X ramps on the nongreen walker. Why not have it be like "cast a spell X or less w/o paying"? That fits into Narset's historically spell-centric theme.
Feels weird to have a nongreen Narset that can ramp with lands but can't cast an instant or sorcery.
The loss of ramp as an option would be a nerf that could be worthy of adding 1 starting loyalty.
Sarkhan:
Needs to say "Dragon or Planeswalker spells."
Personally, I'd like to see the 0 have indestructible rather than shroud, as WotC doesn't use shroud anymore. A previous Sarkhan has indestructible, so there's also precedent for this.
The ultimate feels strong, but it's pretty narrow and potentially difficult to build around. What about "up to one target Dragon and up to one (other?) target Planeswalker"? The walker flexibility would make it a little easier to pull off in a draft without warping a player's deck around it and it would probably be comparable on power level, but with a lower ceiling. Kind of like Patriarch's (Dragon) Bidding vs (Weird) Ever After.
No it isn’t ramp either if you get a fetch land each turn or not.
Define ramp
A card which accelerates your mana, giving you an additional, reusable mana source beyond the usual one land per turn. Examples include mana dorks, mana rocks, and spells which allow you to put extra lands into play beyond the one-per-turn limit.
So unless you want to redefine what ramp is in Magic: the Gathering then it isn’t ramp by the current definition.
One can argue it doesn’t really matter in the late game where you no longer have any other land plays but that is not the topic of discussion.
Define ramp
A card which accelerates your mana, giving you an additional, reusable mana source beyond the usual one land per turn. Examples include mana dorks, mana rocks, and spells which allow you to put extra lands into play beyond the one-per-turn limit.
So unless you want to redefine what ramp is in Magic: the Gathering then it isn’t ramp by the current definition.
One can argue it doesn’t really matter in the late game where you no longer have any other land plays but that is not the topic of discussion.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
The +1 isn’t ramp (which I got rightfully called out on), but the -X is, because it puts the card directly into play, instead of you playing it. Actually, that’s a weird inconsistency within the design, why not have the ultimate be “You may play target face-up permanent with mana value X or less without paying its mana cost.” @safra?
The +1 isn’t ramp (which I got rightfully called out on), but the -X is, because it puts the card directly into play, instead of you playing it. Actually, that’s a weird inconsistency within the design, why not have the ultimate be “You may play target face-up permanent with mana value X or less without paying its mana cost.” @safra?
Yes that one is and that is also why I didn’t call that one out.
Thanks for sharing! I like cards that care about Dragons! I like Scale-Shimmer, Dragon's Fire and Force of Hierophany. About The Passion of Tarkir, isn't this like a really bad card? The mana value needs to be exactly the same? Shouldn't it be mana value X or less?
How do you deal with the problem of having not a lot of Dragons on the battlefield for all those cards that reward Dragons? I saw you had 20 Dragons in your 400+ cube.
Do you have a link to your cube with custom cards?I really love Scale-Shimmer and Fate Reforged!!
Also for Crux of Fate and a few other cards I've seen from your cube, are you putting the Elementals 'on the same side' as the Dragons to help alleviate that the Dragons only show up at higher cmcs?
I also have a few Dragon-centric cards in the constructed segment of my cube ^,..,^
About Narset, the static ability doesn't really match well with the +1. You could change the +1 to: You may play a card you own exiled with ~ this turn. (as the static will exile the top card before this ability).
I think I would change the -X ability to: Return target face-up permanent card with mana value X you exiled with a planeswalker you control to the battlefield.
at X or less it's unprintably strong, way way way too strong. Drown in the Loch is 2 mana and pretty good also. i think probably 'The Passion of Tarkir' is strong enough right now.
I would like both of the walkers to be more reminiscent of their previous kits for sure. I could let Narset's -X cast "a spell" instead of just permanents. With the ETB graveyard hate I think she'll have a lot of options the turn she comes down, which is pretty exciting. A new problem, though, appears: how to prevent her from just casting the same exiled 1 lightning bolt 4 times? Permanents at least are either in exile or in play...
I definitely need a few more dragons per colour, but a lot of the top-end cards are also dragons, so they'll be represented in more games than a random card from the cube. Scale-Shimmer then serves to protect the queen (murktide, any Tyrant) kind of like a Not Of This World might, right? while also 'supporting' 'a dragons deck'. Green can get away with just 2 dragons but white and black need more. Gonna re-jigger a few of the customs to up dragon-density.
Brad: TY for formatting notes. i'll stick with shroud though because indestructible doesn't meaningfully protect the dragon IMO and also makes for weird flavour with wraths. I also like that Shroud isolates him and sets him apart from even his owner's spells. IDK. Going up to 5 loyalty is something I was gonna figure out from playtesting but I think she can start at 5 and be largely minus-based. Nice suggestion.
Re sarkhan's ult: it has to bring back all the dragons regardless of who would come out ahead as a result. hopefully that's still the caster who has more dragons-matter stuff going on.
Maldar: nice thoughts. thank you. definitely I need more dragons, I've let that become less important to me while tweaking the cube, but it's a non-negotiable part of the flavour. Gotta have 'em. I don't think I'll weaken "from exile" to "that was exiled by a planeswalker" - I like a lot of the narrative of the extra edge cases, like o-rings and delve.
Here are the walkers as they currently stand, with the feedback from this thread gratefully appreciated.
-Narset's -X can't recur lands
-Narset changed to 5 starting loyalty (but i've got my eye on this)
-Sarkhan's +1 now adds mana useable "only to cast Dragon or Adventure spells". I was on the edge of changing this one anyway and the new adventure critters from the new set tipped my hand.
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I am also working towards a Dragon theme in my cube, similar to yours. My idea of the lore is something that could be called the Siege of Tarkir or Last Stand of Tarkir. A city that defends against the Dragons. Citizen tribal against Dragon tribal. Something like Allies vs Eldrazi on Zendikar.
Before I tried to represent the citizens with Warriors, Wizards, Rogues and Shamans. But four tribal types wasn't really working. So I am now thinking of doing Citizen tribal which I haven't created yet. My idea is to modify tribal cards to use the Citizen type like Goblin Lackey, Champion of the Parish, Priest of Titania, Spellstutter Sprite and Gravecrawler. Each color or two colors should be able to play a Citizen tribal deck that does something different related to those colors. Like black Citizen tribal would be recursion for example.
To create more interesting powerful Dragons I modified existing cards into Dragons, like these for example. Link to all 9 Dragons.
But I also do need more Dragons. That's why I have created something new for my cube:
This works similar to conjure. I made a stack of custom Tempest Dragons that aren't in the draft. You can find them here in the maybeboard. I added Dragonstormas well and modified it to also get the Dragons from your hand.
Apart from the above I have a few Dragon matters cards. These are more for flavor as I don't have enough Dragons for it to really matter.
Last weekend, I did an 8 player draft of this cube with friends and it was great! It was the first time with these conjure Dragon cards. I let the Dragon cards wheel first but nobody took them, so I made an awesome blue red Displacer Kitten Dream Hall Regent Dragon storm deck!
Before I tried to represent the citizens with Warriors, Wizards, Rogues and Shamans. But four tribal types wasn't really working. So I am now thinking of doing Citizen tribal which I haven't created yet. My idea is to modify tribal cards to use the Citizen type like Goblin Lackey, Champion of the Parish, Priest of Titania, Spellstutter Sprite and Gravecrawler. Each color or two colors should be able to play a Citizen tribal deck that does something different related to those colors. Like black Citizen tribal would be recursion for example.
To create more interesting powerful Dragons I modified existing cards into Dragons, like these for example. Link to all 9 Dragons.
But I also do need more Dragons. That's why I have created something new for my cube:
This works similar to conjure. I made a stack of custom Tempest Dragons that aren't in the draft. You can find them here in the maybeboard. I added Dragonstormas well and modified it to also get the Dragons from your hand.
Apart from the above I have a few Dragon matters cards. These are more for flavor as I don't have enough Dragons for it to really matter.
Last weekend, I did an 8 player draft of this cube with friends and it was great! It was the first time with these conjure Dragon cards. I let the Dragon cards wheel first but nobody took them, so I made an awesome blue red Displacer Kitten Dream Hall Regent Dragon storm deck!
A dragon-centric format might give a rare opportunity to use Atraxa's Fall, etc, in a meaningful way. Always nice to have flexible Naturalizes.
Also I would like you to know (just in case you missed it) that from a lore perspective your cards come off as being from the old Tarkir. You know the one before Sarkhan’s time travel shenanigans.
In our new timeline there was no longer any war between humans cities and the dragons. It is just pure dragon domination. So no sieges for instance.
Again, just in case you didn’t know.
And there is nothing wrong with having cards from the erased timeline either way!
In our new timeline there was no longer any war between humans cities and the dragons. It is just pure dragon domination. So no sieges for instance.
Again, just in case you didn’t know.
And there is nothing wrong with having cards from the erased timeline either way!
Yeah... I should have also noted that I hate the way this is worded. Make it like "Add a random card from the Dragon Spellbook to your hand" or something.
