Will of Iron
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant artifact [or] creature
You control enchanted permanent.
Cleave

Know Your Place —
Enchantment — Aura (R)
Enchant creature
You control enchanted creature.
Enchanted creature is 1/1.
Queen Velimar decreed that captured subjects would enter her throne room crawling on their hands and knees, or not at all.

Enthralled By Might
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature has "Whenever a creature enters under a player's control, that player gains control of this creature if the entering creature has the greatest power among creatures on the battlefield. If they do, untap this creature and it gains haste until end of turn."

...you know i really think there might be a better way to word this but i don't know what it is
edit: seems a bit clearer, thanks rush

It does seems ambiguous the way it's currently written. I don't know if this is checking the entering creature's power or the enchanted creature's power. I'd reword it as a quoted ability.

Demon's Pawn
Enchantment - Aura
You control enchanted creature.
Enchanted creature's owner can pay any time they could cast a sorcery to transform ~.

//

Demon Spawn
(black) Creature - Demon
Flying, ward
4/4

Can I have the "activated ability" not really have a source like this? Or do I have to do a "ONly the nechanted creature's owner may activate this ability" monger-style?
Hold for Ransom sadly is no example here.
No real reason to be a DFC instead of making a token other than to enable the pun. Seems like reason enough for me.

okay I'll play nice

Extort Allegiance
Enchantment - Aura (R)
Enchant creature
You control enchanted creature.
At the end of your turn, enchanted creature's owner may pay and X life where X is enchanted creature's mana value. If they do, they gain control of enchanted creature until the end of their next turn.
Raffine never needs to use force to garner recruits for the Obscura.

Forced Labor
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
You control enchanted creature. It can't attack or block and has ": create a treasure token."

gonna start grades now

my card should be 3UW but it's not because I forgot to update it after changing it from an aura

Duplicitous Dispossession
Enchantment - Aura (U)
Enchant permanent
You control enchanted permanent.
Untap enchanted permanent during it's owners' untap step.
"I'm sure it misses you. Aww, look at it shivering in your presence!"

I feel like this should cost 4, since it's pretty much strictly worse than persuasion. and that's supported by the fact that it kind of already exists as frenzied fugue: that's from a Commander set so I don't know that it's the best comparison for power, but still. I do like adding blue, I think that makes more sense since it's still a recurring thing. flavor's good too.
3/5

seems solid. interesting how the two extra colors are bringing an upside and a downside respectively. beyond that, though, I think it's a perfectly functional design but I'm not super inspired by it. it could certainly exist, and the flavor makes sense, but the connection between gaining control and turning something into a manifestation of your own life total feels a bit tenuous. there's nothing really wrong with it, but it also doesn't speak to me, y'know?
3/5

ooh, cute. I think you could get away with -2/-2 but the flavor's lovely and the effect is really interesting. a lot of times, a design that steals and makes a creature bad at combat is just asking you to put it on smaller utility dorks, but here it'll just kill those so you have to find good targets that are large enough that this isn't just an expensive mire's grasp. that's kinda why I think -2/-2 is probably correct, 'cause it gives you access to that range of 2/3s for 3 with a cool ability. otherwise you might want to drop the cost but I think that's probably less interesting and more potentially dangerous.
4/5

interesting! very far on the fringes of a persuasion variant, but it's a pretty binary criteria so I'm not knocking it for that. flavor's really fun, and I like how you can choose to just use it as underwhelming removal a la pongify until you happen to get a food source to pay for it. costing the same amount to activate as food does is also a nice touch, to show the creature itself is eating the food. and while it's technically symmetrical, it's easy enough to build around and give yourself a food advantage that it's not hard to win the tug-of-war even if they do have the resources to play. seems like a fun card.
4/5

oh wow, I really like this. it's an interesting question of how many keywords you can pile onto an aura if you don't give any extra power, and this is maybe pushing it but not crossing that line. the kicker's expensive, but the upside is very strong. I also like how the keywords are skewed heavy toward white, so the blue in the mana cost feels like it's sort of there in waiting for the kicked version, although leading with flying does help the blue feel a bit more justified as well. would've loved some flavor text but overall very cool, and kinda surprised it doesn't exist already.
5/5

ugh why are there so many good designs this round. stop it. stop making good things. anyway I love this so much. again, I'm allowing it for the criteria because it still requires two different colors of mana to get the persuasion effect, but the flavor is so good and the gameplay implications are incredible. I'm almost glad there's no flavor text here 'cause I think the names carry that story so effectively on their own.
5/5

so many good cards. I'm gonna have to normalize this round downward so frickin' hard. anyway this is fun. very flavor-driven but a really effective wrath design, and potentially very impactful to steal a death trigger or use it with something of your own. stretching the definition of persuasion variant by not letting you keep the creature, but hey, if it's in a set where indestructible exists, this could still leave you with their darksteel colossus. but really it's just a gorgeous design.
5/5

I think the idea here is that you get punished if you use it to take a big thing, but if you just take a small thing instead, it winds up like a one-sided humility. in fact, it can even go on your own creatures, so running it with, say, khalni garden just blanks their entire board until they remove it. it's definitely more vulnerable than humility, since it still goes on a creature, but it still seems pretty annoying to play against in a way that doesn't seem properly accounted for in the cost. I dunno. I'm struggling to connect to this card, and even with those fixes I'm having a hard time imagining it as fun. I do really like the flavor, though.
2/5

cute! straightforward combination of effects that feels pretty well-connected, and justifies the slightly higher cost with a conditional upside that fits well with the flavor. I don't have a lot to say here beyond that I think this is solidly printable and well-designed.
4/5

unfortunately this gets hit by layers: control-changing effects happen before P/T changing effects, so even with something like sekki, seasons' guide, I couldn't hold onto a mons's goblin raiders. as a rule, things that compare P/T in order to influence pretty much any other characteristic of a card need to do it as stack-based events in order to work intuitively, so the best approach here would probably be an upkeep trigger or something. not sure how to word that to get the precise play pattern you're looking for, though. still I do like the idea a lot, the flavor's good and everything, it just doesn't work and unfortunately would require significant revisions to fix that.
2/5

iiiiiiinteresting. very evocative, and cleverly restrictive. I like that it's a 3-drop persuasion that still has room for an upside. the upside itself seems a little arbitrary but I think it flows well with the overall flavor of the design, and it's very Bolas-y to turn your opponent's tools against them.
5/5

I love this design but I think it's overpowered. 3 is a very dicey spot for persuasion effects in general, and often your opponent won't be able to trigger it back so the drawback isn't real. I assume this is aimed for a set with a legend theme, though, in which case there should be more stray legends flying around, but even then, also coming with a free body is a significant boost even if that body is a chump blocker. I'd cost this at 4 for sure. I'd also make it only enchant non-legendary creatures, partly for flavor reasons but also because again I think it belongs in a set with a legend theme and that's an interesting drawback there.
3/5

same basic thing as confused: I really like this but layers are rude. this is probably more fixable because it's trying to do less, but you'd still have to word it around as a trigger and that does mess up the elegance of it. it's one of the more annoying aspects of magic design, but there are good reasons why P/T is set last, and losing these sorts of designs is an unfortunate byproduct of those mechanical needs.
3/5

wow. congrats on making, I believe, the first Cleave card I've ever seen that I don't instinctively hate. something about the way it actually changes the grammar is really fun. probably makes the card difficult to translate, but that sounds like the formatting department's problem. but also, beyond the templating, it's a legitimately interesting design where both forms seem interesting and viable. nice work.
5/5

flavor's excellent here. mechanically similar in vibe to Jim's, but a little more gentle in its execution. I might also cost this at 4, but it serves a very different purpose. possibly interesting metagame impact in that if it's a popular removal option there's more incentive to run things like master of the feast that it can't effectively remove.
4/5

I still think there's probably a way to clean this up. "Whenever a creature enters, if it has the greatest power among creatures on the battlefield, its controller untaps enchanted creature and gains control of it." should do the trick, and you can just grant haste natively since it'll only matter when control changes anyway. anyway it's a solid design, although a little unfortunate that there's no good way to make it work when the card enters, so if I already have a really big dude it's hard to play an even bigger one for the steal. but I do appreciate that, of the three have-a-big-guy designs this round, this is the only one that doesn't blow up thanks to layers.
3/5

yeah I'm not sure why this isn't just an activated ability. ": Transform Demon's Pawn. Only enchanted creature's owner may activate this ability." isn't any less clean and also doesn't arbitrarily introduce a new kind of timing for no clear reason. anyway! the card is cool though. fun little punisher, and I like making them actually pay for it, so even if they do immediately pay the cost you still get some summoning sickness out of it. (in addition to your 4/4, of course.) it's definitely one of those ones that seems too pushed but is probably actually fine for a punisher, especially since often you won't even have a good enough target on 3 to be worth stealing in which case you can't get your demon.
4/5

you're probably right that CMC 5 is better, the pariah ability is mostly a sidegrade and possibly an upside, but my main thing is just... why isn't this an aura? the flavor fits Haunt I guess, but it feels so unnecessary. even if it just, like, had a real body, I think it'd be more interesting, but as a 0/0 it's just gonna die right away anyway, and it's not like the flavor wouldn't work as an aura too. I dunno. I think it's trying too hard to be cute.
2/5

the cost of getting it back is so significant on anything more than, like, maybe a 2-drop that it's barely worse than persuasion, so a 2-mana discount feels like way too much. maybe if the Xs were fixed? this sort of removal is typically best on expensive things anyway, so you're not really pushing it in an interesting direction by punishing that even more. honestly it's hard to convince myself this doesn't still need to cost 5 given how small the drawback is, but maybe with three colors you can get away with 4. also, and this isn't your fault so I won't hold it against you in grading, but I can't believe I never noticed how silly a name "Obscura" is for a crime family. I miss Ravnica names. but anyway, I think a version of this that set the values automatically, probably to a relatively low number like 2, could work, or possibly one that only asked for the payment once, but as-is I think it's just too costly for too little benefit and the card is basically just a 3-mana persuasion.
2/5

cute! the treasure token is a nice touch, you're probably stealing something with some other utility, but if that's not a tapping ability, it gives you something else to do, and it complements the flavor nicely. I was gonna ping you on color since glittermonger puts that ability in green, but looking it up there's a couple black cards that do it as well, like treasure dredger, so sure, why not. and the cost feels right: even with the upside, it's unlikely that the treasure token outweighs the pacifism in most cases, so shaving off one mana is solid.
4/5

unfortunately the criteria specified gold so I can't grade this fairly against the other entries, but for what it's worth I do think it's a cool idea. could maybe cost 6 but I don't hate 7, and the flavor's good.

ok so honestly when I scored this I had 7 5/5s, and that felt like too many. even on a second pass I was only able to whittle it down to 5, so if you think your score is too low please assume it should be one point higher, that happened a lot this round. still, for me the winner has to be Knifethrower! congrats, nominating now.

it's not trying, it is cute

I do not envy you grading this round. So many great cards.

I think it'd be cute as a 2/2. as an 0/0 I'm not sold.

Man, some tough competition here.