this is from a contest where the criteria was to make a prodigal pyromancer variant, but we've been doing a couple archetype-variant rounds recently so instead let's say make a card with an ability that gets stronger the more times you use it.

grades start Friday. go!

Sitrik, Birth Priest

Legendary Creature - Phyrexian Cleric
The Grand Evolution - , Sacrifice a Creature: You get two experience counters. Then, create an X/X black Phyrexian Horror creature token, where X is equal to the number of experience counters you have. Activate only as a sorcery.
2/3

Banishing Juror
Creature - Vedalken Wizard
Flash
When ~ enters, exile another target creature and put a time counter on that. It gains suspend unless it already has suspend.
: Double the amount of time counters on target card in exile.
Azorius are as strict about criminals serving their sentence as they are convicting of their crimes
[2/2]

Ruin-Blood Shaman
Creature - Ogre Shaman
Haste
, , Sacrifice a land: ~ deals X damage to any target, where X is the number of land cards in your graveyard.
4/2

Bluff
Sorcery (U)
A deck can have any number of cards named Bluff.
Discard your hand, then draw X cards where X is the number of cards named Bluff in your graveyard.
You gotta know when to fold 'em.

Had this lying around, will replace if I think of something more fitting the criterium.

Slime Golem
Artifact Creature - Ooze Golem (U)
When another creature you control becomes monstrous, if this creature isn’t monstrous, monstrosity 2. (If this creature isn’t monstrous, put two +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes monstrous.)
: Double the number of +1/+1 counters on this creature. It gains trample until end of turn. Activate only if this creature is monstrous.
3/3

Banner of Past Saints -
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature has ward , where X is one plus the number of creature cards exiled by ~.
Whenever equipped creature attacks, you may pay . If you do, equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has indestructible until end of turn. Then, create a copy of each creature card exiled by ~ tapped and attacking. At the beginning of the next end step, exile the equipped creature and all copies created by ~.
Equip

Toller of the Bell
Creature - Skeleton (R)
, : Destroy target creature with mana value less than or equal to the number of cards in its owner's graveyard.
"When you hear the bell that no one else hears,
Gather your kin and wipe 'way their tears.
Tell them you're leaving and shall not be back,
For soon you'll be taken by Skeletal Jack."
-Kithkin children's rhyme
2/3

Exploding Sack
Artifact (R)
: Draw a card, then exile a card from your hand.
, Sacrifice Exploding Sack: Destroy each nonland permanent with the same mana value as one of the exiled cards.
"What contains everything until everything contains it?"
—Tolarian riddle

Scribe of the Coastal Tower
Creature - Salamander Wizard
When ~ enters the battlefield, gain an Arcanum counter. Then choose target creature and (based on arcanum)
1 • Tap that creature.
2-4 • Return that creature to its owner's hand.
5+ • Put that creature on top of its owner's library.
2/2

Manaplasm Residual

Creature - Ooze
Trample
This creature enters with two +1/+1 counters on it.
Whenever a spell is countered, double the number of +1/+1 counters on this creature.
When Igor the Lab technician decided to mix up the leftovers of the day's trials, he was expecting to create a harmless brown goo. He was mostly correct, but sadly for him, not completely.
0/0

Grandmother of Runes
Creature ─ Human Cleric (R)
: Put an axiom counter on Grandmother of Runes, then X target creatures gain protection from the color of your choice until end of turn where X is the number of axiom counters on Grandmother of Runes.
1/3
The stories she wove brought sleep, insight and old age.

Ulvenwald Ooze —
Creature — Ooze (R)
Vigilance
: Put a +1/+1 counter on Ulvenwald Ooze, then add for each +1/+1 counter on it.
“Ew.”
—Thalia
1/1

War Drum Enthusiast |
Creature - Goblin Warrior

Haste
Whenever this creature attacks, it gains battle cry indefinitely. (Whenever this creature attacks, each other attacking creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn.)

Whether in victory or defeat, his drums will be the last thing the enemy ever hears.

2/2

Pinegrove Tender
Creature - Treefolk Druid (R)
, : Create an X/X green Treefolk creature token, where X is the total toughness of one or two target Treefolk you control.
The sacred pinegrove grows ever outward, each tree sheltering the next sapling. Over generations, they trace a perfect spiral, just as the bracts of a pinecone do.
1/1

Imagine this is the only Treefolk in its set, not part of a limited typal archetype or anything.

starting grades ya nerds

Ah ha, by strategically waiting until now, I avoided being called a nerd!

Prismari Freshman
Creature - Merfolk Shaman Apprentice (C)
, : Discard a card, then draw a card. Put a study counter on each Apprentice you control. This ability costs less to activate for each study counter on it.
Prismari students eagerly anticipate group projects, knowing that a chance to work with others is the quickest way to learn.
2/1

experience counters are an obvious way to go, given that it's a pre-existing keyword that already does this, but they're effective. the card itself seems reasonable. I wonder if it's too good with other experience cards? like, there was always some potential to combine multiple sources in a single deck, and a lot of them have conditions that aren't too hard, but doing two at a time is spicy. might say just do one and then make X equal to twice the number of counters, for safety's sake. it's also really aggressive, coming down really cheap and making very large bodies very quickly, but considering it has to untap first, I think that's ok. I've said it before but I don't love the fake ability-word thing: unless The Grand Evolution is supposed to be an actual mechanical cue, I would've left it off.
4/5

similar sort of vibe to the prompt card in that it uses doubling, but to a very different effect. I like how hard it has to fight at the beginning if you really want it to keep the card gone: if you play it on 3, you have to spend your whole next turn's mana on it to avoid the 1-turn treadmill, but once you do you get some solid breathing room, and later if you have some spare mana you can give yourself more of a head start. it also a nice pseudo-banisher priest since once it dies, you probably can't keep the creature suspended much longer. plus it can blink your own stuff too. overall seems really flexible, not too strong but potentially impactful in an interesting way. I'm having trouble parsing the flavor text grammatically, but I like what it's going for.
4/5

cute, and nicely subtle. I was hoping to see some designs here that avoided just stacking counters or doubling things, and this gets stronger as it goes without having to spell itself out. I dunno if haste does much on a 4-drop with a 3-mana activated ability, especially in a deck that wants to sac lands, but I suppose I can always attack with it too. would've loved some flavor text but the mechanical design is solid.
4/5

technically, I think the effects of an instant or sorcery are pretty much the only rules text that isn't an ability, but I'll let that technicality slide. cute that, if you have extras to discard, they effectively skip the line and draw you more cards now too. not sure what's bluffing about it: is the idea that you were bluffing your hand having good cards, but it's actually all these? I'd save that name for something more general-purpose reprintable. you do need to be running a lot of these for them to be any good, and I think at 3 mana they're just not compelling enough to dedicate that much space. they do feed each other, and thus both scale over time and dig for more copies, but since they don't count themselves, your first one is likely to only draw 1-2 cards even with a pretty heavy ratio, which isn't enough to reliably get you to your next one. you wind up wasting a lot of turns playing mediocre draw spells before you start getting much value from your investment, especially since probably like a 3rd of your deck is this one card that doesn't affect the board state or progress any win condition.
3/5

god I hate that "monstrosity" is the verb for this keyword action, but that's not your fault. I like the idea of piggybacking on another monstrosity activation, but I do feel like the activation is a bit tacked-on: the first ability is by far the more interesting one, but it's also not the one that meets the criteria, which is a shame. still, doubling counters does do a good job with the criteria, and the trinket trample becomes more and more relevant the more times you've done it.
3/5

I don't know if this is fun to have in a format. it's probably fine, it likely just eats some removal on its first turn, but unblockable, hard-to-kill threats are the root of a lot of really annoying decks. then again, a lot of the time that's about getting them out cheap and then tempoing them with your extra mana, which this doesn't really do, so maybe it's better than I'm giving it credit for. in fact, yeah, on further reflection I doubt this does all that much, especially since it takes a couple castings to really get itself going. it's certainly no invisible stalker, which is probably for the best. I dunno. still having a hard time getting excited about it, but I don't think it's a problem either.
3/5

ooh, that's interesting. flavor's nice, and the numbers feel about right. it's a big ask the first time you do it, but if you just keep going then you slowly wind up building a pretty solid army of ghosts. which, arguably, doesn't do a lot more than just using the creatures normally, but it does make them resistant to removal, and especially sweepers. I wonder if it's too mana-thirsty to really work, since I can really only justify using it if I can do it every turn, and that requires 4 mana on top of the cost of playing a new non-token creature to attach it to. I think with the exile you could maybe drop the activation to . maybe even less, since they can interrupt it with instant-speed removal. but I really like the ward thing, and going indestructible makes it a lot easier to get your creature to the end of combat in the first place, which is a nice touch, and the numbers are a playtesting thing.
5/5

I like the idea, and the flavor's nice, but the power scale is way off. at most points in the game, even without any extra effort, this'll be able to take out the expected threats, at instant speed, for 1 mana. that's nuts on a 3-drop. unless they have a way to empty their yard, this is basically visara the dreadful. (and in the very early game, where they might just not have anything in their yard yet, a 2/3 is a solid enough blocker to take something down the old-fashioned way.) I do quite enjoy the subtlety of it in regards to the criteria, but I think graveyard size and CMC don't scale in similar enough ways to make colliding them interesting.
3/5

ha. technically the ability that gets stronger isn't the one you're using repeatedly but whatever. I'm assuming here that the intended functionality is more along the lines of "Destroy each nonland permanent that shares a mana value with one or more of the exiled cards." because the current wording could also be read as you pick one of the cards and then engineered explosives off it, but I don't believe that's the intent. and I do like this version. the more you use it, the bigger an explosion it becomes. I tried to find precedent for a jalum tome with a free activation cost, but while matzatlanti, the great door does exist, it's the only one, and it seems out of line with how these things are typically balanced. I'd have put some cost on here, if for no other reason than these effects are more interesting when there's some reason not to use them, but maybe the fact that it exiles is enough of a downside, to prevent graveyard shenanigans. anyway beyond that I like it a lot.
4/5

I'm not sure how I feel about just doing experience counters again with a different name, but then again at this point there's a couple dozen mechanics that are kicker with a different name, so maybe it's fine. I assume all the arcanum cards follow this template of having options that scale in power as you increase your arcanum. pretty parasitic but I'm more partial than most to parasitic design. I'd have slapped a "you may" or an "up to one" somewhere in there to avoid the man-o'-war problem of having to bounce itself if there are no other creatures, but the power comparison to man-o'-war is interesting: if you're in the arcanum sweet spot, it's exactly the same, but with some extra incentives around the edges. I like it.
4/5

flavor's excellent, let's get that out of the way first. I also like moving it to a trigger, that's less obvious but also within the criteria. I was initially hesitant on the doubling-counters thing 'cause it seems like such an obvious direction, but the more I think about this card the more I like it. it's simple but it flows really well, and it's expensive enough that a tempo deck's gonna need to be careful in how it's used while being cheap enough to feel possibly usable. lot to like here.
5/5

unfortunately for you this doesn't work, and there's no easy way to make it work. targets are chosen when the ability is activated, and they're chosen before costs are paid, so the only way to get this to scale like you want to is to have it enter with a counter, and then have the ability add a counter after, not before. (it'll do that anyway, but you should word it that way so that's clear.) I'm also not sure I want this card to exist: mother of runes was famously obnoxious, and this isn't that much more expensive while being a heck of a lot more powerful. there's also just not a lot of protection these days, especially from colors, and I think that's for the best. it's kind of a messy mechanic.
2/5

feels like a very solid utility. weaker than llanowar elder on its first activation but outgrows it pretty fast. does a lot of ramp work, and then also becomes an increasingly scary beater. my one thing is I think vigilance is a bad fit: I get the idea, but I think it's more interesting if you have to choose whether to grow it or turn it to attacking instead of getting to do both every turn. I mean, you still potentially have the choice of using the mana on your turn or blocking and activating it at end step, which isn't nothing, but still, feels a little too much like it's trying to do everything when it'd be more fun if you had some more significant decisions to balance.
3/5

some formatting things to get out of the way: first, this should probably use ability counters, since we have those now. and second, it should use a delayed trigger to grant them at end of combat, so it's clear that the ability doesn't trigger this turn. neither one changes the functionality, so I won't weigh them too heavily against you, but just as a note. anyway! the card's cool. a goblin chariot body is gonna have a hard time surviving its first swing, which limits the practical potential of this and makes it probably worse on average than bolt hound, but if you can get it working it does become very scary after a couple swings. flavor's also really fun.
4/5

I don't love doing "one or two target", it reads very artificial to me. could probably just do "up to two", since while that does leave the option of choosing zero, a) making an 0/0 doesn't nothing, and b) you'll always have at least one Treefolk to target anyway. that aside, I dunno. I want this to grab me but it's not. it feels simultaneously too slow to build interestingly, and too cheap for what it does anyway. like, the dream is making a bunch of giant treefolks by tending each other, but even if it just winds up pumping out 1/1s, thraben standard bearer says 2 is probably too cheap for that on a 1-drop. (there's other precedent too, like rhys the redeemed, or usher of the fallen, but those are a bit more complicated.) I think this needs to cost 1 and be cheap to activate if you have any chance of growing it into the space where it does the work it wants to do, but then when you give it those numbers, it winds up too efficient as a much more boring utility.
2/5

I like it, but especially for this round I really wish you'd gone with something a little more expensive, so you actually get room to feel that growth. also slightly awkward that you keep stacking counters even once the ability is full discounted. I'm torn on letting it affect all apprentices, but I think making it hybrid means you can fit a lot of different ones into one deck without much mana trouble, so the idea of a full apprentice deck is interesting enough to justify that. again, though, I just wish it had some way to stop adding counters once it was done.
3/5

oh my god I love this.
5/5

solid round, wound up having to bump down a couple 5s so if you got a 4 feel free to pretend that happened to you, anyway winner is clearly Mown! congrats, nominating now, go join the next round ya nerds. (including Temjen this time!)