Samsara of Oblivion
Enchantment
Devoid
If you would create a token, instead each player sacrifices a permanent that shares a type with the token that would have been created.
"The cycle has become a spiral, eternity descending into nothingness. Without form, without substance, without end." - Harinder, Empty Prophetcute.
bounty of luxa says that's not how you order those mana symbols, but I assume that was an aesthetic choice. it's a good thing Wizards hasn't followed YMtC in its love of land tokens. this can be pretty brutal, but for a 4-drop, hard-to-cast enchantment with no immediate impact, I think it's probably ok. probably not stronger than
doom foretold, which can just do its thing without support. the effect is interesting, and I like the flavor.
4/5Icatian Tactics —
Instant (U)
Prevent the next 2 damage that would be dealt to any target. For each damage from a source you control prevented this way, draw a card.
The best defense is a good offense. tough to judge power on this one. on the one hand it's two mana off
divination, which is very strong, but on the other, if you want it to work you need to give up some of your own damage, which means you have to consistently
have damage, which means you're probably not a deck that wants to give that damage up. at its best with things that damage your own stuff, like
pyroclasm.
char, actually, is probably the best combo here, but that's niche enough that I don't think it's a balance problem. it's also nice that you can, if you need to, still use it as a terrible
mending hands if you just need that life swing to win the race.
4/5very interesting, although the drawback is huge compared to
phyrexian arena. honestly, it could almost be a wash, since there are decks that don't cast much on their turns, if it weren't for land drops. as is, I think this is mostly only useful as an end-game tool in control mirrors, once you have basically enough lands anyway and can make the strategic decision to skip one for more cards, and I absolutely love it there, so I wish it was pushed enough to justify running for that circumstance. should probably drop to at least
. but that's really my only issue and I'm not sure how much I care about cost in this particular case.
5/5Indecisive Enchantment (R)
If you would win the game, you may instead draw a card.
Options are everything! Rush. come on.
honestly I love this as a work of art, it's super clever, it just... I mean, I don't need to explain why this doesn't work as an actual card. I thought maybe it'd work as a counter to
platinum angel but I'm pretty sure angel isn't a replacement effect, so I don't think you get that option. I feel like giving this card a grade is missing the point, so I'll just say I think it's very cute and move on.
Power Behind the Throne Enchantment (R)
If you would become the monarch, instead put a legendary creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. This ability triggers only once each turn.
Hide from arrows behind a shield, from oblivion behind a legacy. my only issue here is that,to make this work, you want to bring cards like
court of garenbrig to make sure there
is a monarch, but if this comes out first then those effects get replaced and it never happens. that's kind of unlikely, but I'd word around it just in case. it's also a pretty huge drawback: letting your opponent stay the monarch the whole game is a lot for some extra mana. admittedly, the impact of a free legend can be
pretty significant, and monarch is more of a multiplayer mechanic anyway so that effect is slightly diluted, but still, feels a little underwhelming.
3/5Historian's Cipher Enchantment
When ~ enters, exile your graveyard, then investigate for each card exiled this way.
If a card would be put into your graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead, then investigate.
The past may not repeat, but the future will inevitably find a way to rhyme. that's a
lot of cards. even without actively milling, it's pretty trivial for this to get, like, 5-8 clues fairly quickly, between instants and sorceries resolving, creatures and planeswalkers dying, and any
catalog effects you might be running. it's very mana-intensive, which at this scale is a pretty significant limiting factor to its overall impact, and it might wind up too slow against aggro, but in a control mirror this is game-winning on its own, giving every spell you cast the ability to replace itself, like
archmage emeritus if it was a lot harder to kill. admittedly, again, the mana of all those clues does balance that out, and it's honestly really hard to figure out exactly how much it does: looking at comparisons, investigate seems to be costed around the same as looting, maybe a little cheaper, so there's a very real chance I'm overestimating this and reading it as too close to "draw a card", and if so I apologize. they've just never really done this sort of massive clue dump before, and it feels like there's probably a reason.
3/5Quiet Reflection -
Enchantment
If an effect would create one or more tokens under your control, you may draw a card and get an experience counter instead. Do this only once each turn.
Sometimes, all it takes is a quiet moment to find the greatest inspiration. feels like a bit
too much of a transmutation for me.
caretaker's talent does a lot of the same work but you get to keep the tokens. this, though, I'm worried slows the game down too much by encouraging you to run a bunch of token generation and then just, like, stopping you from using them to win. it does only replace the first instance, though, so maybe it works out. not sure I love a thing that makes experience counters without giving you a way to use them, though: I'm honestly not sure experience is coming back, but if it does I think doing it as self-contained cards like they have in the past is probably safer. each one basically scales on its own, but having a bunch of experience enablers risks ballooning way too fast. especially
daxos the returned.
2/5I've never really liked the commander damage rule, it's always felt like a weird artifact of when EDH was this niche format that a handful of judges played, so this doesn't super resonate with me on that level. this does give it some level of purpose beyond just being a weird win condition, but it feels like by the time this does much, you'd probably rather just win, since getting it to a reasonable number means your deck is built to deal commander damage already. although I suppose the effect is powerful enough that you don't need
that much to get something out of it. still, for 5 mana, I'm hoping to hit a fairly high count, especially in a format like commander where a lot of the cards I'm gonna see are probably expensive so I need to get a lot of mana out of it. dunno.
2/5I like the card, although it feels a little against the spirit of the criteria to use something that already only exists to be exchanged for other things. beyond that I think it's a pretty solid design, very printable and maybe even a decent signpost. flavor text is fun, too.
3/5Protect the Nest Egg -
Enchantment |
RWhen
Protect the Nest Egg enters, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
Creatures you control with +1/+1 counters on them have defender.
Whenever a creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it dies, draw a card.
not sure how unrelated those two things are, but it's an interesting card, reminiscent of
dormant sliver. definitely encourages some interesting decks, generates a lot of value if you use it right but requires you to play a pretty different game from the standard one in order to get that value.
dark prophecy says it's probably not overpowered. I suspect if this were real it'd inspire some pretty fun decks. my one knock is that it feels a little orthogonal to the criteria, but I see what you were going for.
4/5Vidad, Lojann's Opus Legendary Artifact Creature - Golem (M)
Vidad, Lojann's Opus's power is equal to the number of Treasures you control.
You may cast creature spells from your hand for their mana cost reduced by
. If you cast a spell this way, it enters as a Treasure artifact and has "
, Sacrifice this permanent: Add one mana of any color".
(It's not a creature.)"Art that begets art, what greater splendor could there be?"
—Lojann, Court Sculptor*/4
so this lets me exchange cheap creatures in my hand for
lotus petals? or, wait, treasure's not a land type so they keep their other abilities, don't they? got it. I'd mention that in the reminder text, it's easy to lose that nuance when you're adding a new ability as well. this is expensive enough that its discount targets need to cost even more, which pushes you to find expensive creatures whose value isn't primarily from their body.
trostani's summoner comes to mind, or
gigantomancer. I don't know how I feel about the treasure ability itself, it feels unlikely to come up and kinda trinkety but it does work with the flavor. scaling power is nice, although it encourages you to run a bunch of other treasure gen, and decks with a lot of treasures floating around are less likely to need discounts. dunno. solid, though.
4/5Ringmaster Vold, Smuggler Legendary Creature - Human Rogue (R)
If you would create a Treasure token, instead create a 2/2 white Cat creature token.
"Oh, you don't want to look in those boxes. There's dangerous circus animals in there." —Ringmaster Vold, to customs2/2
cute! wondering if it's overtuned. compared to
young pyromancer, the thing it needs is more specialized but the token it makes is bigger, and if you build into it it's capable of producing more of them per card. then again, the cards you can run with pyromancer are mostly just good on their own, whereas setting yourself up for value from this means running a bunch of things that, if they immediately shock your ringmaster, don't really do much.
mine raider comes to mind: great as a follow-up, pretty underwhelming without. then again, pair it with other treasure enablers like
professional face breaker and I dunno, maybe you have a deck. although then it's stepping on the toes of those other cards, since it stops you from getting the treasures they want to use. that seems fine in this case, though, since the value is still being found elsewhere. I dunno. I'd have to playtest it and I wouldn't be surprised if a
grizzly bear body was too much, but I also could believe that it wasn't, and given modern magic's balancing standards for rare creatures, if I'm even a little willing to believe it could work then it's probably fine. anyway I really like the mechanics of it, I got sidetracked following the balance question but it does feel like a really fun card to build around and whether it should cost 3 or be a 1/1 or whatever feels like not really the point here.
5/5interestingly, both 5/5s got critiques about maybe being the wrong costs, but this was a round about innovation and those were the designs that most stuck that landing for me. anyway, hard to pick but I think I'm gonna give it to
Shazzeh! congrats, nominating now, go join the next round.