General Rehabilitating Parasites

[spicewitch]

Feel like each set/block contains a few cards that essentially say "When SET KEYWORD is used, CARDNAME gives you a (TOKEN/COUNTER)." With a pretty conservative amount of sharpie, we can try for a broader form of "set keyword" that works outside of the block.
F'rinstance, there's 222 cards with kicker, which is pretty good, thanks to it being in multiple blocks. But we can exploit over twice as many cards that include "an additional cost"!
(I mean rly, why doesn't skull skaab refer to sacs in general instead of just narrowing it to exploits?)



Tribal cards also have issues with, you have to kinda not use them, or use a bunch of 'em. But what if you universally decreed that constructs also count as golems, soldiers are interchangeable with knights, barbarians == warriors, humans == kor == vedalken, etc?

What else could we patch up without having to change it much?

 

[spicewitch]

The changes with energy and revolt were the best mechanism I think R&D has given us in a long time
...
Energy does an amazing job getting around [the problem of ETBs], because you're always getting something valuable for your mana investment--and you can even convert it into an immediate spell effect--but there is now a currency you have to pay to create that effect.
...
I suppose the best place to start is to just forget everything about energy--its gone

I completely missed kaladesh, but it looks like quite a few people here were very excited about energy at first! Because it was a new resource that's a bit more granular than mana, maybe? But it didn't work out. What if there was a generic way to spend energy so that it can interact with the rest of your cube? If you could even, say, turn into {E}, now every player has the ability to maybe dump a whole 6 mana to put a single +1/+1 counter out there if they really have nothing else to do with it? Maybe +1/+1 counters could also be traded for {E}?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I pulled energy because it was too strong, not because it didn't work. Energy is in fact a very good mechanic!

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

The first thing I’d do is standardise my tokens. No more warriors, kithkin, humans, human warriors, human soldiers. If you’re white and a 1/1 you’re a soldier and you’ll follow orders, maggot.

 

[Karshtakavaar]

I did the Golem == Construct and Ally == Rebel thing for a while. Both of them caused memory/familiarity issues, which I'm sure would get better with reps or even just alters, but my players were pretty used to some of these cards and making the change did have people going "Oh, wait, no this is an x now" mid-game every now and then.

Golem == Construct was either irrelevant a big deal (Blade Splicer and Precursor Golem buffing or wrecking Metalwork Colossus and the Gearhulks), and in the end none of the cards needed the help at my power level. So I cut the rule, kept the cards, and things got better.

The other was a baaaaad idea. Turns out Rebels are still linear and repetitive even when you give them scaling, splashable ETBs across all five colours. Turns out they're, in fact, more linear and repetitive. There was one playable Rebel/Ally deck (In UW), it got drafted three times by two different players, and in the absence of early removal played the exact same game every time. Out of the 8 games played with the deck, 6 were mulligan for cheap rebel and a counterspell, then Amrou Scout -> Lin Sivvi -> Bound in Silence or silver bullet/contextually useful card -> Noyan Dar.
The variation only came from whether or not the player had splashed black, and whether they were forced to cast some counterspells or other interaction in between steps, and if so, how many. The most interesting thing I ever saw happen was when step 2 was Lin Sivvi tutoring Halimar Tidecaller to get back Sheer Drop, as they had drawn their Bound in Silence already.
It was crap, mind - really slow, folded to removal, just held up mana for interaction and tutored if you didn't do anything relevant.
Kazandu Blademaster was just keywords that occasionally wore equipment in a Wx aggro deck, Hada Freeblade the same thing minus the keywords, Drana just went to whoever was in black aggro, and the rest of the non-white allies and rebels unplayable garbo.
So I cut the cards, because man that experiment took up a lot of space and no one liked the results. It also meant I got to cut the awaken package, which similarly went unmourned.

I also used to run Energy cards, and they were cut for basically the same reason as zee - in the end, the ones I ran were all good enough on their own, and would occasionally turbo charge each other and become too good. I wanted to have proliferate shennanigans and stuff work with them, but they don't need any help tbh.

My takeaway would be, if you want to do this, make sure the cards aren't already good enough as-is (Like with Golems and Energy or with Drana), but also make sure that the cards aren't incredibly dull jank that you happen to be nostalgic about for some unaccountable reason. Definitely not saying "don't do it", just saying "take care".

 

[spicewitch]

already good enough as-is (Like with Golems

Yeah, I spose this is one of the things where I wanna raise the floor, but that also raises the ceiling. If Villain's got a Splicer and a Construct, they're gonna wish the cards did something together, the words golem and construct are almost the same! And I got sympathy for that. But if Villain's got 3 Splicers in play and she wants to hurl in some Construct with haste, well dang that could get Too Bananas!

Then again, that construct could have just been a golem in the first place, there's some nice golems out there. So I'll stick with it for now, gives me more options to put into the cube! But I'll definitely tape or write some words onto the cards or sleeves, to avoid memory issues.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The first thing I’d do is standardise my tokens. No more warriors, kithkin, humans, human warriors, human soldiers. If you’re white and a 1/1 you’re a soldier and you’ll follow orders, maggot.
View attachment 7560

Here's a few edits I've done in that vein (TECHNICALLY squirrel rampage is different from pest infestation, but it's different not worse. Shape is Alchemy esika's chariot, which I feel is less swingy)

 

[Karshtakavaar]

Yeah, I spose this is one of the things where I wanna raise the floor, but that also raises the ceiling. If Villain's got a Splicer and a Construct, they're gonna wish the cards did something together, the words golem and construct are almost the same! And I got sympathy for that. But if Villain's got 3 Splicers in play and she wants to hurl in some Construct with haste, well dang that could get Too Bananas!

Then again, that construct could have just been a golem in the first place, there's some nice golems out there. So I'll stick with it for now, gives me more options to put into the cube! But I'll definitely tape or write some words onto the cards or sleeves, to avoid memory issues.

The only one I'd really recommend thinking hard about is Precursor Golem - it's just way too swingy. Try it, get one or two cool stories of huge plays or massive blowouts, then take it out is my advice

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Man imagine if this card's last ability was somewhere between Eye Gouge and Cut Down... I'd love that.

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

@Chris Taylor, those are some lovely designs. The Dominik Mayer art for the knight is particularly good.

 

[LadyMapi]

One of my cubes has an "all spells are arcane" rule, with the following package of cards supporting it:



If I was going to do that in the future, I'd probably just write them up as customs to avoid memory issues.

 

[LadyMapi]

I've also considered replacing Surveil with Scry (or vice-versa). Has anyone given this a try?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I've also considered replacing Surveil with Scry (or vice-versa). Has anyone given this a try?

I have not, but I think this sounds like a good idea. They basically did that in Guilds of Ravnica (when Surveil debuted), so they could get the density they needed for "Surveil matters" as a draft/casual constructed theme. Because Surveil was in the set, no cards with scry were printed.

 

[Karshtakavaar]

I would love a Surveil Preordain and Curator of Mysteries (Maybe upgrading to surveil 2 as well to make it an absolute engine?). It'd make Sphinx of Foresight a lot more appealing, as well. And Cryptic Annelid, but probably only to me

And while I'm at it, would it have killed them to have Mephitic Vapors give -2/-2?

 

[Mown]

And while I'm at it, would it have killed them to have Mephitic Vapors give -2/-2?

yes
the designers all have 2 toughness

 

[Karshtakavaar]

One of my cubes has an "all spells are arcane" rule...

As a clarification, is it "all instants and sorceries are arcane" or can you splice onto like, enchantments and creatures cause that sounds fun as hell (Long Forgotten Gohei reducing everything by and being an anthem would be nuts! p1p1 material!)

 

[Chris Taylor]

yes
the designers all have 2 toughness

 

[LadyMapi]

Oops, sorry, the rule only applies to Instants and Sorceries.

Another version of the same idea that I had post-Strixhaven was to combine Arcane and Lesson into a single type. If you pull up a list of Sorcery-speed Arcane spells and a list of Strixhaven Lessons, they look *surprisingly* similar in overall power level.

You'd have to be a bit more careful with the Instants, though – that's where you get Splice Onto Arcane, and that might make them too tempting of a draft target.

 

[spicewitch]

Splice onto arcane feels like it has an intimidatingly high power ceiling to me. Especially if you splicing onto spells that only cost 1 mana in the first place! i guess it's sooooooooooooorta like equipment for spells? Or tacking Kicker onto everything? That doesn't sound TOO too wild. I've never played with it though.
...
I wonder if it would be groovy to go colorpieish with it, like blue instants are arcane, red sorceries are arcane, white and green enchantments are arcane, black cards that say "destroy" on them are arcane
...
also, i was just removing a card from my cube because it's a ding-dang Ally and i hadn't noticed yet that it was the only one. Silly parasites! I guess i could write "ally" onto any card that contains the rules text "party". They're clearly the same idea, they just failed to make it backwards compatible because MtG is supposed to be disposable, not reusable!

or maybe even go as far as to put it on cleric-lords, warrior-lords, etc.... some of those are already great tho

 

[Karshtakavaar]

Splice onto arcane feels like it has an intimidatingly high power ceiling to me. Especially if you splicing onto spells that only cost 1 mana in the first place! i guess it's sooooooooooooorta like equipment for spells? Or tacking Kicker onto everything? That doesn't sound TOO too wild. I've never played with it though.

It's basically build you own kicker, and it's embarrassingly weak as a mechanic because of that high power ceiling of "Free card". Doesn't mean it can't be abused, particularly in Pauper Petal Storm, but the fact that both the Arcane subtype usually means they've weakened the effect of a card and the splice costs are inflated means it's not that scary.
Blessed Breath and Veil of Secrecy are underrated though, and Dampen Thought is nasty in both retail draft environments it was in.

Another version of the same idea that I had post-Strixhaven was to combine Arcane and Lesson into a single type. If you pull up a list of Sorcery-speed Arcane spells and a list of Strixhaven Lessons, they look *surprisingly* similar in overall power level.

You'd have to be a bit more careful with the Instants, though – that's where you get Splice Onto Arcane, and that might make them too tempting of a draft target.

See, when Strixhaven was initially spoiled, I genuinely wondered if they were originally Arcane - we knew a Kamigawa set was coming up after all. Felt like they were planning to seed the mechanic into Standard, then didn't end up wanting to revisit it in NEO, so all the Arcane references in Strixhaven were swapped.

Either that, or they just decided that the lesson they were going to learn from original Kamigawa was "Parasitic block specific subtypes are great game design and we should do that again!"

 

[LadyMapi]

The power ceiling honestly depends on the Splice card. They were very conservative with the costs of Arcane cards in Kamigawa.

That said, a lot of the cards with cheap splice costs basically turn into one-card archetypes if you can combine them with ANY instant/sorcery (picking one per color):



Also, a lot of the spiritcraft stuff from Kamigawa looks way more reasonable if it triggers off of instants/sorceries in general:



EDIT: I had to fix the Desperate Ritual art. I don't understand why they decided to use the Duel Deck art for their more recent prints.
EDIT to the EDIT: Ugh, why doesn't the card image tag let you tell it what art you want? I mean:

Spoiler: it beeg

 

[LadyMapi]

See, when Strixhaven was initially spoiled, I genuinely wondered if they were originally Arcane - we knew a Kamigawa set was coming up after all. Felt like they were planning to seed the mechanic into Standard, then didn't end up wanting to revisit it in NEO, so all the Arcane references in Strixhaven were swapped.

Yeah, it was a definite missed opportunity — the problem with non-creature subtypes is that WotC is generally very averse to reusing old ones unless they're very popular (see: all the support Gates got recently).

No one's clamoring for more Arcane or Trap cards, and so they're basically just "forgotten" mechanics at this point.

 

[alvoi]

In my cube How to keep an izzet mage busy is an Arcane and it is overpowered with any splice spell so yeah I guess they also fear that any new arcane could make old cards become too much powerful in some formats(?)

 

[Karshtakavaar]

could make old cards become too much powerful in some formats(?)

I'd buy that line of reasoning if they hadn't printed any cards after RNA

I do like the Arcane HTKAIMB though, that's pretty neat. Would be funny if there was a sort of Instant version of Nearby Planet - Instant - Adventure Arcane Lesson Trap with like, no text. Learn it or Trapmaker's Snare for it to splice cool stuff onto it, copy your custom mega-spell with Lucky Clover.

 

[LadyMapi]

In my cube How to keep an izzet mage busy is an Arcane and it is overpowered with any splice spell so yeah I guess they also fear that any new arcane could make old cards become too much powerful in some formats(?)

I think that's more of a How To Keep An Izzet Mage Busy thing than a generic "new spells might break things" — that card was very consciously designed with the goal of being kinda broken in conjunction with anything that cares about casting Instants/Sorceries, after all.

That said... "all Instants and Sorceries are Arcane" is one of those things that you really have to sculpt the format around. Though it could be cool to put in some cards that have arguably overpowered interactions with Splicing — off the top of my head, Plumb The Forbidden would make a really cool build-around/finisher for a deck.