Shadow Dancer
Creature - Human Assassin
Suspend 3 -
First strike, death touch.
When Shadow Dancer deals damage to a creature, exile Shadow dancer with three time counters
2/2

is that enough of a drawback to justify a 5/5 for 3? on-curve it's very expensive for your opponent to interact with, but it does mean you can't draw it late to get back in the game. I suppose also if a control opponent has handled your early threats with spot removal they might be willing to wait a couple turns to trigger this. I still might make it a 5/4 but I think it's ok. anyway seems deceptively counterable in a neat sort of way while still being a pretty powerful threat on-curve, especially on the play.
4/5

I feel like this should have some activation cost, just 'cause it's probably pretty annoying to play against. more so in limited, but if you can generate a tempo advantage by picking on a more expensive creature, it gets increasingly painful the longer this goes on. it's an interesting question of when to activate, though: vigilance implies doing it on their turn, but then they get to cast it right away and you have to deal with summoning sickness, whereas doing it on your turn lets you recast it immediately and it'll be ready to go by the time the thing you targeted comes back. another option if you didn't want an activation cost is to borrow tech from Plot and just say "on a later turn" so you have to deal with the summoning sickness cycle. admittedly the end result does look a bit like an expensive blinding mage, but it's also tying up a bunch of their mana unless they want to just let you keep exiling new things.
3/5

not immediately killing anything is certainly a drawback over, say, fairgrounds warden, but still, if you untap with this with counter protection you can basically run the entire game with your new 3-drop visara the dreadful. the white ability is also so strong that it's hard to imagine wanting to use the blue ability, which makes it not really a great fit for this round. which is a shame because I do like the aesthetics of the symmetry between the two abilities.
2/5

ooh, that's very cute. grave peril/standstill kinda vibes, but with a real bite at the end. I worry the numbers are off, but it's also really hard to use proactively in certain matchups so even if it's strong it's more of a sideboard card. kinda hellish in limited, though, might make it a 3/3 or a 4-drop for that reason. not that important to the concept though.
5/5

cute. I worry that the activation is really weak without the colors, to the point where it might as well cost , but I don't super mind those sorts of things. a sweeper that can duck itself is always fun, and kinda reminiscent of skirk fire marshall, and dodging it with a blink feels appropriate. I also like how it's protected by red's enemy colors. don't know if I get the flavor, but it works well enough.
4/5

I've never really been a fan of Sagas that reset themselves, it feels very artificial and not super in line with the spirit of the type. this isn't exactly that, since it can also blink something else, but I think if it weren't for the criteria it'd just say "another target permanent" and make that mandatory. the card's interesting, though, I like the idea of a flash saga, kinda surprised they haven't done that yet, and the first ability is a good fit for that. I just think it's getting dragged down as a design by trying to fit the criteria, and that's a shame.
3/5

cute! for what it's worth I think if it leaves the battlefield you don't control it anymore so you don't need that part. but anyway this seems fun. strong, and very annoying in limited, but since it still just caps out at a 4/4 unblockable, it's not gamebreaking on its own. the flavor's really good and it seems like it could be really fun to play with, and it's always nice when Dimir gets some aggro options.
5/5

lot going on here. I don't love invoking day/night without actually doing anything with it, and I'm also not a huge fan of crimes as a mechanic but that second one's not really your fault. limiting its targets to outlaws mean there's gonna be a lot of games where it just doesn't do anything, because it needs to survive multiple end steps to lose summoning sickness and attack. which you can get around if you can consistently target things on your opponent's turn, but it just feels like it's working too hard as a design and I think that's down to using some of Thunder Junction's most overreaching ideas. flavor's strong, but the actual design suffers for it.
2/5

solid enabler! comparing to mistmeadow witch the cost seems about right. I think I liked your previous version better, where you could only target creatures with +1/+1 counters: fits more in the graft theme, and provides at least some limit to the abuse potential of a repeatable activated blink in that if you want to keep getting an etb trigger, you have to keep losing graft counters. does prevent you from being able to regraft on things you missed the first time, but I still think it feels better. still I do really like this version too.
4/5

I'm not really sure what the blink is doing here? why couldn't this just be "when ~ enters and at the beginning of your upkeep"? it does create some artifact etb triggers if something like leonin elder is watching for those, but it's hard to view that as the point of the card, especially when it's also got a whole second d20-based thing going on. the balance on that seems pretty fine, but it doesn't really connect with the blinking thing so I'm not sure I really understand what this card is for.
2/5

there's a part of me that wants to recognize this as some sort of wild combo enabler but uh... it's kinda just bad. the payoff isn't nearly enough to justify saccing a land every time I want to use it. maybe just let it be played from exile in general, without a cost? could add "if you do, it enters tapped" if you're worried about the summer bloom interaction, but that way it has a shot at a real utility. this feels like those lands back in the day where they though color fixing was so powerful that a rainbow land needed a preposterous drawback to compensate. y'know, like forsaken city or rainbow vale.
2/5

I'm usually not a fan of sagas that reset themselves, but I do like putting it at the end instead of in the middle. my concern here is impact: this is a 3-drop that makes a free 3/2 every other turn, forever. that's absurd. maybe if the goal is to capture the circle of life, have the III ability require you to sacrifice a creature? that way you have to keep feeding it in order to keep getting your tokens, and it feels like the saga can actually end, which fits the card type. might even be able to up the token to a grizzly bear with that, to increase the chance you have something weaker to give up.
3/5

I might say "other cards" for clarity even though this works as is. anyway it's nice! a blink lord. I wonder if maybe it should be a creature, a la prodigal pyromancer, to make it more baseline relevant and also a bit more killable if it's being abused. but I'm a big fan of unusual enablers. there is maybe a problem with some things that can blink a little too easily, things like oblivion ring chains, but I think those are hard enough to set up that it shouldn't come up. norin the wary's a fun combo, though, as is ghost council of orzhova.
4/5

cute. might do but same basic principle and maybe not even necessary. probably not, even. but I like the flavor of it, and the mechanics highlight it well. I like how it still has some vulnerability: it would've been easy to just exile it on death and have the activation return it, but leaving it as an enchantment gives your opponent the chance to demystify or whatever if it becomes too much of a problem. it's a thoughtful design choice that also makes the card more flavorful.
5/5

ooh, pretty. deathstrike is a very obnoxious ability set to play against, but this tames it down pretty significantly. I might cost it at , mostly to give you more incentive to suspend it early, but that's minor. overall seems very solid, and a fun twist on the arc blade formula.
4/5

good round! gonna give the win to ELC! congrats, nominating now, oh crap I forgot to put up the next round Imma go do that.

Yeah... gave it vigilance less to indicate anything about timing and more because I needed to make it cost more to not be infinite tempo advantage, and it felt better to have a keyword or two so you weren't totally cheated if you made use of it as a creature. Vigilance was both on-brand for an "angel" and meant you could poke for two and still exile something.

It's an extra land every time you have a land play without a land, an extra card if you first play it from exile and can benefit from the saccing, and a free sac outlet for land combos. It's a steep cost, but with that many moving parts, I bet it can live in some fun combo brews.


Letting it be "Lotus Petal if you have land drops and no lands" felt like it crossed the abusability line for me. The enters tapped clause could curb that; I hadn't considered that, but I also wanted it to provide mana immediately.


I see the comparison, but I think my card lives in a world geared more toward silly combos than those. That said, Forsaken City is a way to exile my card for free. Hmm....

Yeah I was waffling between 3 value and 4 value; like body with removal is always strong, but there was also the potential the opponent could play around it forcing you to exile your own creature for what would otherwise be an on-curve body. Maybe a keyword or lower toughness/power may have been more fair to limited players?

Also, do you want to nominate the 5s for the CotW?