Make a card with one of the following names:

• Boltwave
• Electroduplicate
• Fishing Pole
• Goblin Negotiation
• Hare Apparent
• Homunculus Horde
• Midnight Snack
• Perforating Artist
• Refute
• Stab

I'll start grading sometime around next Tuesday. I'll nominate my favorite designs, but I'll also award bonus points retroactively after previews come out if anyone is close to a correct guess.

Goblin Negotiation

Instant
Creatures attack each combat this turn if able
Draw a card.

Fishing Pole
Artifact - Equipment (U)
Equipped creature has ", : Create a 1/1 blue Fish creature token. Activate only as a sorcery."
Equip

Electroduplicate —
Sorcery (R)
Create a token that’s a copy of target creature, except it has haste. Exile that token at the beginning of the next end step.
The twins arrived at the party with looks so sharp they could break a mirror.

Refute
Instant
Choose one:

• Counter target instant or sorcery spell.
• Counter target activated or triggered ability.

Hare Apparent -
Enchantment
When ~ enters, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
Whenever a rabbit you control dies, you may move any number of counters on it and permanents attached to it to another rabbit you control with a lesser mana value.

Midnight Snack
Instant (U)
As an additional cost to cast Midnight Snack, sacrifice a creature you control.
Create X food tokens, where X is the sacrificed creature's toughness.

Refute
Instant
Counter target spell if it shares a name with a card in a graveyard.
"We've all seen that one before."

Homunculus Horde
Enchantment (R)
You may cast Homunculus cards without paying their mana costs.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control 10 or more creatures with different names, you win the game.
From helpers to helping themselves.

so if the point of Foundations is to be simple and accessible, then I assume the designs here should be as well. let's theorycraft for each of the names:



some interesting names to work with, but I'm most drawn to the last two, 'cause highly reprintable names are always a fun challenge.

Refute-
Instant
Counter target spell unless its controller pays . If they do, draw a card.
Without a point, there can be no counterpoint.

Goblin Negotiation

Sorcery
Target opponent chooses one:
• Goblin Negotiation deals X damage to each creature they control.
• They discard their hand and draw X cards.
Krenko's Goblins haven't quite mastered bargaining yet, but they haven't let a small detail like that stop them.

Hello everyone! Some of the cards already got spoiled, which is much sooner than I realized. I feel like I only just figured out how to draft decently in Duskmourn.


The flavor of this comes through even without flavor text and I think it's really funny. They don't really use this effect that much these days, I guess maybe because it can be situationally weak, but I think that makes it a good candidate for a cantrip. Impressive that there haven't really been a simple execution of this concept without additional effects before. I like this one.


Yup, this does seem like what a fishing pole would do. This one already got spoiled and you were pretty close. Nice!

I think between the equip cost and activation cost, I would like the equip cost to be the higher of the two. You might equip it to something because you have to spare, but then not really have a chance to spend and instead just have a do-nothing equipment on a creature that's attacking and blocking and not fishing. But then it scales almost directly proportionally with your available mana, since activating it twice in a turn only costs , which is not that uncommon to reach. It also encourages people to just move the pole to the fish token as soon as possible and not have to tap an actual creature. If the costs were the other way around it might be more reasonable to use in the early and midgame, instead of just being a boardstall winning machine.

Also wondering if this needs to be blue. The tokens are blue but token-making in general doesn't need to be, and it feels a bit odd to have the mana cost, equip cost, and activation cost all require blue mana in that case.


Wow, this was a very accurate guess, nice job. The design is basically Heat Shimmer without much of a twist, though, so as a contest submission it's a little hard to judge. The name fits well but I'm not feeling the electro part from the flavor text (forgive me if the twins are existing characters I'm not familiar with).


Cool! The name definitely calls for something simple and reprintable, and I think this is perfect. I'm surprised that this variation doesn't exist yet. I love the Stab Wound reference, if that was intentional.

It's probably pretty strong for a common. -2/-2 is a pretty good kill spell, and losing a potential blocker plus taking extra damage sounds brutal if you're trying to stabilize on the draw, so this feels a little more dangerous than something like Savor. But I'm sure it's fine depending on the environment.


I think this is a good Refute, but maybe a little specific. With a name like that I would expect the simplest possible execution of something, like Stifle or Negate. Countering abilities doesn't show up that often, and probably even less often in a set where it makes sense to have a counterspell that only works on instants and sorceries. I think you have some room for some punchy flavor text, too.


I like this card for the name. I think the card is cute, too. The second effect is really niche so I like that it has a weaker but more general baseline effect so that the floor isn't literally doing nothing. The first effect feeding into the second is also cool.

It feels like it's still asking you to jump through a lot of hoops, though. You have to have multiple rabbits, and they need to die in a specific order, and they need to have auras or counters on them. Rabbits seem like an unusual choice for this effect since their theme in the only set that supported them was to go wide with tokens. A 1/1 token isn't a great base to pile counters onto, and it has the same mana value as all your other 1/1 tokens. I suppose it's pretty good with Jacked Rabbit, though.

I should also point out that while counters have a specific rule that lets you "move" them from dead creatures using last known information for effects like this, you can't move an aura with a trigger after the permanent it's attached to has died, because the aura will also be in the graveyard before the trigger resolves, so this mostly just works with equipment.


This is a sick combo with Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar and stuff but I don't love that it's just so weak by itself. They don't tend to print that many cards anymore that are just unplayable in limited, and I'm having a hard time imagining a format where this has enough support. Some of the classic things you want to sacrifice aren't great with this: sacrificing a 1/1 token barely does anything, and sacrificing a Threaten target is still card disadvantage with this (plus Threaten is an aggro card and food is not useful for aggro decks). Maybe it's okay to sacrifice a Pacifismed creature or a Murder target in some matchups, but you can usually get more useful effects for one mana and a sacrifice (Corrupted Conviction, Final Vengeance).

At the same time, having to fight through like 15 extra life sounds like a bit of a slog, and it probably complicates card balance for food synergy cards in the format if there's a super cheap source of tons of food.

I wonder if it would be better attached to a cantrip, a creature, or some other effect?


Neat! This is pretty bad in limited and probably standard but it might get a little spicier in non-rotating formats where people go through cards quicker and there might be more overlapping staples (Force of Will, Lightning Bolt?). It's interesting to think about. I also like that it has synergy with mill. Lots going on despite the simple rules text. The flavor is very nice and fits the name well, too.


Cool, I like this twist on amass. The balance feels about right. I think this could probably fit flavor text. although amass is pretty evocative by itself and the name fits the effect well already. Not much to criticize here.


I do enjoy the genre of "totally broken enabler for a really niche subtype." It's pretty strong if Borborygmos and Fblthp is your commander, and it goes infinite with two Graveshifter and a sac outlet, or one Moritte of the Frost. I don't immediately see any two-card combos that would destroy Modern or anything, although I still feel like a three-mana Omniscience is so strong it could restrict future design space.

That aside, I feel the two abilities are both potentially interesting but probably don't make sense on the same card. If you're making a Homunculus deck I'm not sure there are even ten good options to include, while if you're trying to win with ten different creatures, maybe you'll include some Homunculi since they're free, but after the first few, they kind of fall off in utility.


I wish this could charge 1.5 mana or so. It feels a little weak at . Don't Make a Sound isn't particularly good, and by the time your opponent is most likely to be paying the mana, "draw a card" starts to lose its edge over "surveil 2," since you're probably looking for specific cards at that stage of the game. It's also a bit worse than Censor most of the time.

"Refute" as a counterspell is a safe bet, and for the card name I like the simplicity and the generic-ness of the mechanics. It feels like my expectation for a foundations card. Although, to be a little pedantic, it doesn't feel like much of a refutation if your opponent can pay and have their point be correct after all.


It's interesting how the costs scale in opposite directions, so unlike most X spells you're not necessarily incentivized to dump all your mana into it. Here's my thinking on this:

• If X is one, it's an overcosted Blazing Volley that your opponent can opt out of if they really need to.
• If X is like four or more, it's super expensive to cast and your opponent will probably be happy to draw the cards.

The sweet spot seems like two or three. There are probably certain games where you might play this on turn four and get a nice two for one because your opponent still has five cards in hand or so. It's a little harder to evaluate because there are so many factors and it depends on your opponent more than you. But my inclination is that things are unlikely to work out such that both options are totally unbearable for your opponent, and this card is too weak. Plenty of decks just won't have a very wide board with small creatures, and of the ones that do, many of them are likely to dump their hands too quickly to be really hurt by the other mode. If they're ahead enough in cards, maybe they don't even care about their board. Or, if their board is that strong, maybe they don't even need the cards in their hand and you just tapped out for zero tempo. Sometimes that's just how it goes with punisher effects, but I feel like this also kind of lacks the flashiness of something like Browbeat that makes it exciting. Instead of imagining drawing three cards for three mana, you're targeting your opponent with Dangerous Wager and trying to figure out if that's even a good deal.

I probably should have included a flavor text, but I basically made it a riff on Goblin Diplomats. Sadly (for my score) not the riff Wizards decided to go with.

yeah, I think I was too cautious. I was mostly positioning it in my head as a halfway point between force spike and runeboggle, but maybe runeboggle isn't strong enough to use as a benchmark. I hadn't seen Don't Make A Sound (I haven't followed Duskmourne very closely) but between that and the censor comparison I could probably have gotten away with charging . my bad.

yeah, but to be fair that's true for a lot of mana leak variants. you could say the same about override, crush dissent, or make disappear.

It's called that because it makes a creature with power 1 or greater disappear, right?

With the whole set spoiled, I think Parad's Electroduplicate and BelangiaJo's Stab are probably the closest to the real cards. The real Stab just being Disfigure is super weird.