General I Want to Believe // A Question of Red // Is the Rosewater Real?

[Soshi]

I came across this little gem on the mothership today, and I was wondering if others could think of some good examples of this idea (giving red access to unusual abilities, with a shorter duration).

Twinflame is yet another red card that demonstrates an area we are looking to expand red's piece of the color pie. To play into red's impulsiveness, we've been experimenting with giving red access to some abilities it does not normally have, but only for the duration of a single turn.

It also struck me that these cards, might be a great way to make red more interesting in cubes.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

The problem is a lot of the game's mechanics already exist as 'temporary' effects in other ways/in red.

Temporary draw is already being done.
+/+ already exists in regular combat trick/buff cards.
-/- already exists in burn / subtracting power is already in both blue and black as temporary and permanent.
Destroy may as well be can't block in red's case. (Can't attack or block for a turn? Is that even playable?)
Delay as a red card?
Final Fortune already exists.
Threaten already exists.
Rituals already exist.
Weird Angel's Grace?
Red already has game against planeswalkers and artifacts... banish enchantment?
Red could gain a bunch of temporary life in an environment where life payment was a thing, I guess. Blood rage or some ilk.

The problem I have with them saying this 'is a new expansion for red' is that this effect has existed in red for years. Kakki Jakki, Mirror Wakki, heat shimmer, and splinter twin are all basically that card tacked onto three different card types. Red is really shallow and wizards can't deal with it because they're scared of burn. Or something.

 

[Jesse G]

Way Better Than Bolt
Instant
Gain 3 life, or prevent up to 3 damage from being dealt to a single target.
~ Deals 3 damage to you at the beginning of the next end step.


Seriously though, everything i can think of keeps boiling down to the Flickerwisp ability aka, kill their guy, but it comes back at end of turn..
a couple other weird ideas: Regenerate but instead of tapping and removing from combat, the destruction effect just gets delayed until the end of turn. You could keyword this and flavor it as a berserker rage type deal. It's just really narrow, only really matters for combat tricks that would remove your guy.

Ooh here's one: Unearth is kinda like reanimating but for only a turn, and this is something similar.
Return target creature card from you graveyard to your hand. Discard it at the beginning of the next end step.

This isn't really an example of temporary effects bleeding into red, but doesn't cascade feel like a super red ability? It's all random and impulsive and in the moment. It's powerful, but you don't get to sit around and think about whether casting this spell is the right thing to do... you just jam it and go on with your business. It's very red; All the better if you reworded the "may cast" part to be mandatory

 

[Diakonov]

Mul Daya Channelers' ability seems red to me.

Balduvian Channelers 1RR

Play with the top card of your library revealed.
As long as the top card of your library is a creature card, Balduvian Channelers gets +3/+3.
As long as the top card of your library is a land card, Balduvian Channelers has intimidate and "When this creature deals damage to an opponent, discard a card, then draw a card."

2/2

 

[Soshi]

I think I misphrased,

I was actually trying to think of existing red cards which have other colors effects, like Twinflame is a blue effect (copy) but also has precident in red, because I thought those 'odd' cards would have a lot of interesting possibilities.

Unearth is a good example of a shared keyword (r/b) for temporary reanimate.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

But what ARE other colors' effects? Draw cards? Flying? Being big/trampling? Destroy target creature/discard? Everything is tacked into a punisher/choice mechanic or is a planar chaos card.



Mentioning discard reminded me of a " powerful rare to complete the cycle" idea that a friend of mine had- basically reverse bottled cloister, so your opponent had no hand while it wasn't their turn. Too similar to Defense grid, Teferi, and Grand Abolisher IMO. There are some things it would interact with that those cards don't, but it's pretty narrow.

Clearly this is red's 'temporary take' on green:

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah killing it on your turn would eat their whole hand if it was unchanged from bottled cloister (Seems broken)

 

[Jason Waddell]

Unearth is a good example of a shared keyword (r/b) for temporary reanimate.

Unearth is in blue too!

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Yeah killing it on your turn would eat their whole hand if it was unchanged from bottled cloister (Seems broken)

Well it wasn't exactly bottled cloister, that's just the easiest way to describe it in other-card terms. It was one ability.

As far as this 'give red other stuff' thing wizards is trying, I've got low hopes. They'll give us some variant of a card that already exists and pretend it's part of the new red movement, and not just blood lust, flame slash or Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs in disguise.

But here are some more glorious 'red doesn't usually do this but here it is temporarily' !!



Why can't stone idol trap block any number of creatures??

 

[Soshi]

In randomly trolling around today at work, I found Fractured Loyalty which struck me as an almost-sweet card.

​

 

[CML]

back around 2000 when my friends and i were cracking packs we'd note with some disappointment the times when we got a red enchantment, which was a genre to itself even then, in the rare slot. almost without exception these enchantments were what we called them, "strange and bad," and the exceptions (like Sneak Attack) give some hint as to the rule. cool huh

 

[Diakonov]

This is what immediately comes to mind.

 

[VibeBox]

oh cool so i can have some temporary mana boost?
what's that you say? they banned rituals out of existence and refuse to print playable ones?
don't worry i'm sure they have the health and diversity of the game in mind.

 

[Dom Harvey]

 

[Chris Taylor]

Hey man that card does some interesting things thesedays

 

[VibeBox]

i tried to build with it for a while, but then chapin (i think?) started running a godo, bandit warlord build that was p good and i couldn't really see being much better or playable : -(

neat card (and all it took was a pointless bad rules change!)