General Custom Cards: The Lab

[ravnic]

Is this card too good for a mid-powered cube?



Jessie's & Jame's Journey
Sorcery
Exile the top X cards of your library, where X is the amount of differently named lands you control. You may cast them until the end of your next turn.

The format has a lot of nonbasic lands, so this can sometimes exile 5 or 6 cards. But how likely are you to use them all? Or is it effectively, at best, a draw three with some selection and timing conditions?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Is this card too good for a mid-powered cube?

View attachment 8895

Jessie's & Jame's Journey
Sorcery
Exile the top X cards of your library, where X is the amount of differently named lands you control. You may cast them until the end of your next turn.

The format has a lot of nonbasic lands, so this can sometimes exile 5 or 6 cards. But how likely are you to use them all? Or is it effectively, at best, a draw three with some selection and timing conditions?

It looks similar in power level to Escape to the Wilds and Showdown of the Skalds to me, and those are perfectly in line for my own mid-powered cube. You're sometimes seeing more cards, but it doesn't have any additional riders, and it makes you work for the upside of exiling more cards, so looks fine to me!

 

[blacksmithy]

Greater Shriekmaw 4B
Enchantment Creature - Elemental
Menace
When this ETB, destroy target creature. Its controller loses 3 life.
Evoke 1B
3/2

sidegrade to the new dalek that is also a shriekmaw reference

 

[Phone]

Is there a reason to make it an enchantment?

 

[blacksmithy]

more permanent types = more synergy opportunities. and the dalek is an artifact

 

[Phone]

Alright, so my brain is stuck on this card and I want it for my powered Vintage cube. I'm currently testing the version below, but I'm curious what other people think the bar is on how far to push a [[Bone Sabres]] before it will be playable in Vintage Cube.



Sidenote: Taking a note from the previous discussions about making the cube feel solidly flavourful, I've redesigned a lot of my cards to will one flavour surrounding a made up plane I'm working on. So the cards will get watermarks based on broad themes they support. The flavour on this one is then a reference to one of the other factions.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Vintage and powered are loaded terms, but I would guess you've got a cube at the extreme high power level, combo is a big part of the enviornment.

Why fuck about with Minsc and Boo but reliant on having a creature?

 

[Phone]

Vintage and powered are loaded terms, but I would guess you've got a cube at the extreme high power level, combo is a big part of the enviornment.

Why fuck about with Minsc and Boo but reliant on having a creature?

Fair point. Combo is reasonably well represented but the cube is a lot more aggressive. Mostly just like the feel of this card and wondering what people think.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm sure it'd be fine, but you really have to look sideways at anything in your deck that isn't a threat (IE creature or planeswalker) or a removal spell.
A given limited deck can only fit so much in that 3rd category, be they creature enhancements, draw spells, recursion, protection spells, etc.

It's not to say that these are unnecessary, but if a deck wants like 2-3 of these at most, how many do you need to run?
Is what your adding cooler/more beloved/has better gameplay/<Insert your personal metric here> than say, Jitte?

 

[Phone]

I'm sure it'd be fine, but you really have to look sideways at anything in your deck that isn't a threat (IE creature or planeswalker) or a removal spell.
A given limited deck can only fit so much in that 3rd category, be they creature enhancements, draw spells, recursion, protection spells, etc.

It's not to say that these are unnecessary, but if a deck wants like 2-3 of these at most, how many do you need to run?
Is what your adding cooler/more beloved/has better gameplay/<Insert your personal metric here> than say, Jitte?

Hmm, that's a really good way to look at it. I'll give that some thought and that'll probably guide my decisions on buffs if I choose to keep it in. Thanks!

 

[Zoss]

Tbf, this turns absolutely anything into a threat and so can kind of be considered a threat in and of itself in a way that something like Trade Routes can't; but yeah, that's a really good way of looking at it.

 

[Velrun]

Sidenote: Taking a note from the previous discussions about making the cube feel solidly flavourful, I've redesigned a lot of my cards to will one flavour surrounding a made up plane I'm working on. So the cards will get watermarks based on broad themes they support. The flavour on this one is then a reference to one of the other factions.

You will for sure be happy about this decision in the long run!
Doesn't matter what faction/plane/storyline you support. As long as there is a unifying trend that players can feel like they are going deep into.

 

[Phone]

You will for sure be happy about this decision in the long run!
Doesn't matter what faction/plane/storyline you support. As long as there is a unifying trend that players can feel like they are going deep into.

Yeah, it feels good and seems like it will help support new players in a really subtle way that doesn't affect gameplay. Thanks for the support!

 

[Chris Taylor]

Tbf, this turns absolutely anything into a threat and so can kind of be considered a threat in and of itself in a way that something like Trade Routes can't; but yeah, that's a really good way of looking at it.

Absolutly! There's plenty of asterisks to what I've said, but as a general basis it's a useful perspective. Ramp decks throw the whole idea out the window, for eg.

I usually consider anything that is a threat but contingent on creatures (Equipment, Auras, Overrun, Anthems, Populate, etc) to be "Threat Asterisk".
You can't count on it, but it does kinda count, you know?

 

[Phone]

Absolutly! There's plenty of asterisks to what I've said, but as a general basis it's a useful perspective. Ramp decks throw the whole idea out the window, for eg.

I usually consider anything that is a threat but contingent on creatures (Equipment, Auras, Overrun, Anthems, Populate, etc) to be "Threat Asterisk".
You can't count on it, but it does kinda count, you know?

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. I like the idea for low creature count decks. So maybe the idea of threat* works well there. Like probably best in a deck where Bone Sabres IS the threat. I'll give it some thought as to if that fits the cube or not.

 

[LadyMapi]

Sidenote: Taking a note from the previous discussions about making the cube feel solidly flavourful, I've redesigned a lot of my cards to will one flavour surrounding a made up plane I'm working on. So the cards will get watermarks based on broad themes they support. The flavour on this one is then a reference to one of the other factions.

So, your flavortext is a bit clunky in English — you just kinda have a pair of clauses that need something to glue them together. Something like:

There are dangers at the edge of the continent that few in the empire would appreciate.

Which still sounds a bit off (I'd personally swap the order of the clauses, but that's just me), but it's not too bad.

 

[Phone]

So, your flavortext is a bit clunky in English — you just kinda have a pair of clauses that need something to glue them together. Something like:

Which still sounds a bit off (I'd personally swap the order of the clauses, but that's just me), but it's not too bad.

Thanks! The clauses being the two major parts of the sentence? I swear I'm an english speaker, I just never think about it anymore, haha.

"Few in the empire would appreciate the dangers which lurk at the edge of the continent," works better you mean?

 

[LadyMapi]

Yeah, pretty much.

A hot writing tip: if you're writing something that's supposed to sound good (like, say, flavortext), try reading it out loud. You might not consciously remember any grammar, but your brain is absolutely cracked when it comes to parsing languages you're fluent in.

 

[Chris Taylor]

For eg

 

[Phone]

Yeah, pretty much.

A hot writing tip: if you're writing something that's supposed to sound good (like, say, flavortext), try reading it out loud. You might not consciously remember any grammar, but your brain is absolutely cracked when it comes to parsing languages you're fluent in.

Honestly, I used that all the time when building presentations or writing my thesis but usually coast on the flavour text. I'll have to remember that!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

"Few in the empire would appreciate the dangers which lurk at the edge of the continent," works better you mean?

As a non-native speaker this sentence is weird for two reasons. The first one is that “which” sounds fancy and/or old-fashioned, in a “who still speaks like that” way. Personally I would use “that” every single time. The second is that appreciate in this context immediately scans in its “hold dear” meaning because it is preceded by the word “would”, whereas the context seem to imply to me that you mean to use it in its “be fully aware of” meaning.

To me this reads better (but maybe that’s just my non-native brain?): “Few in the empire appreciate the dangers that lurk at the edge of the continent”

Or even just: “Few in the empire are fully aware of the dangers that lurk at the edge of the continent”

 

[Karshtakavaar]

Not to be a pedant, but as a native speaker, I believe in this case "which" is correct. If it was one specific danger, "that" would be correct. In the case of multiple diverse dangers, it's "which". To be fair, no one cares about that any more and "that" wouldn't cause me to bat an eye but I do know people that would be picky about it.

edit for example: "Danger that lurks" vs "dangers which lurk"

 

[Brad]

Or even just: “Few in the empire are fully aware of the dangers that lurk at the edge of the continent”

In this sentence, either word can be correct. It depends what you are trying to say.

We are concerned with the noun: dangers.

"Few in the empire are fully aware of the dangers that lurk at the edge of the continent."
Here, the description of the dangers is necessary information to differentiate them from, say, "the dangers that burrow beneath the earth." We use "that" to restrict our description to a specific noun of the subset of potential dangers.

"Few in the empire are fully aware of the dangers, which lurk at the edge of the continent."
Here, the only dangers on this entire continent are located at the edge of the continent. We use "which" to add information about the dangers.

In this example, I'd opt for "that," as there are other dangers around the empire that people are generally more aware of.

In the card's original text, it could say:
"There are dangers at the edge of the continent that few in the empire would appreciate."
Again, this is necessary information to separate this subset of dangers from the subset of dangers that "few in the empire wouldn't appreciate." This sentence only cares about the dangers which few appreciate. More appreciated dangers are not noted. Awkward differentiation, considering we're discussing dangers!

"There are dangers at the edge of the continent, which few in the empire would appreciate."
This sentence is talking about the one location of the dangers and then adding that few would appreciate them. Still unsure who is appreciating dangers.

Or, if the comma was placed as a dramatic pause, I'd opt for
"There are dangers at the edge of the continent... few in the empire would appreciate."

I think that the main problem with the original flavor is that we are deeming some dangers worthy of appreciation and others much less so.

Card seems fine.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I would still remove the word ‘would’ from that flavor text then

 

[NAVIks]

do you use Card Conjurer? I don't know what all of the {} codes are for creating text, like the little divider line and stuff like that and it's not on the site. also, what is a cube?