@natew000 A turn-1 discard spell that doesn’t look at the opponents entire hand. Needs to be at least somewhat playable in 1v1 formats.

Thanks for the prompt! It was pretty fun coming up with variations on this theme. My hunch is the black border common or the uncommon are the most playable but I’m not too sure. Solomon’s Baby is my baby of these designs. I thought of it as if black had a Fact or Fiction type spell.

Awesome, I was expecting 1 card, but you delivered 5!

Brain Dicer feels like a pretty fair card. Competitive players wouldn’t like the randomness, but it serves a nice role of being pretty good on turn 1 and being much better when they’re down to 2-4 cards in hand.

I’ll Show You Mine looks like it would play as a straight Thoughtseize in most games, with the downside changed from losing 2 life to revealing your hand. I think it’s overpowered.

Thought Slice also feels like a very good card, but more situational. Death’s Shadow decks would latch onto this as a way to pay any amount of life with Thoughtseize upside. You definitely don’t want to full price cast this and reveal a bunch of Lightning Bolts.

I love Solomon’s Baby. I can’t see any logic flaw that can be exploited — it seems like it works even at 2 cards in hand, and of course at 1.

Excision is underpowered. You never want to pay 3+ mana to choose one card. Maybe if it had delve?

I find it interesting that all of these involve revealing some number of cards. I’ve been trying to figure out a good punisher mechanic to make it work with no reveals, and it’s tough. Here are some of my thoughts.

Punisher Discard B

Sorcery

Target opponent discards a card, then loses 3 life or life equal to that card’s MV, whichever is smaller.

Random Discard B

Sorcery

Target opponent discards a card at random, then all players lose life equal to its MV.

Curse Discard B

Enchantment - Aura Curse

Enchant player.

When Curse Discard enters the battlefield, enchanted player exiles a card from their hand.

At the beginning of enchanted player’s upkeep, that player loses X life, where X is equal to 2 minus the MV of the exiled card. (If X is negative, that player loses 0 life.)

I want to look at your designs first. My response to your comments on my designs are below, as well as one more design idea at the very bottom.

Punisher Discard definitely shows how hard a spot this is to get right, but it feels like this is close. Drop a big card you can’t cast early anyway and lose 3 life. Drop a land you don’t think you need and lose nothing. Then again that might put the wrong emphasis on dropping a land for some players, I’m not sure.

Actually a lot of that goes for Curse Discard as well–while putting the opposite emphasis on what you discard which I think might be the right way to go to avoid a newer player dropping a land they really should have kept. Plus that’s a novel and cool idea that feels so much like a curse. It’s delightful.

Random Discard is the miss for me. Mind Knives, Mind Shatter, and Mind Twist are the closest comparisons I see, admittedly without any downside, all putting randomly discarding one card at at least 2 mana. And my issue here is turn 1 random discard could hit a land that player was counting on and effectively knock them out of the game. And then the punisher bit doesn’t even matter since a land’s MV is 0. I’d look at addressing that specifically. Maybe if it hits a land that player puts the land back into their hand? Or they can set aside any number of lands first (obviously they’d have to reveal those) and then randomly discard from the rest?

Oh yeah, I interpreted the prompt to mean some of the cards can be seen, just not the whole hand. I do like the sort of mental games when you get to reveal cards to choose from. Like is there any way I can misrepresent my strategy with what I show you right now?

I’ll Show You Mine was inspired by the specific ask that got this ball rolling, mainly the idea that if that player doesn’t like revealing their hand to Duress, maybe it’s an appropriate constraint for the person casting it. But yeah, it’s not really much of a cost.

I never considered Death’s Shadow with regard to Thought Slice. Not sure, but if it needs a fix it could be switched to you may pay up to 6 life or something like that. It also can be used to turn on Fateful hour turn 1. ;p

Excision with Delve is probably a good spot. Or even just drop the X bit and say you can exile cards from the graveyard as an additional cost to see more cards.

An alternative design that just occurred to me is Duress minus the reveal bit unless you pay a kicker cost. So B for your opponent to discard a card or like BB to look at their hand and pick one.

Meant to reblog this here, so for posterity’s sake here it is.

@natew000​ A creature that is not removed by Wrath of God (destroy all creatures), Toxic Deluge (all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn), or Descend Upon the Sinful (exile all creatures).

I think this is the prompt design that’s gone through the most stages so far and it’s still not quite there. First iteration had indestructible for Wrath, fixed toughness to one plus the life total of the player with the most life for Deluge (and that still wouldn’t work always), and… nothing for Descend.

The next few iterations were all about figuring out how to deal with Descend and in doing that I realized it was going to be pretty wordy and that I could wrap fixes for the other two cards into it. I also decided while I’m at it to embrace the spirit I think the prompt was getting at and make it so targeted removal and paying for costs (like saccing a creature) still worked for this, while mass bounce would not. If we aren’t concerned about that we can cut some words and the effect becomes more powerful.

Phasing wasn’t a solution I wanted to turn to but the -X/-X effects cause issues that resulted in me opting for Omega to phase out. Presuming the -X/-X effect ends then you don’t have to worry about Omega constantly looking at state based effects and trying to figure out what to do. But if the effect hasn’t ended then Omega pops in for a moment and phases back out until the end of the following turn.

And I believe this still dies to combat damage like normal, which isn’t the case if it just had indestructible as the answer to the Wrath effect. But this is really weird space so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m wrong there or just flat out missed something else and some part of this doesn’t work how I think it does.

Interesting distinction here and explored a bit more in the rest of your replies. Short answer is I’m not sure except that my design above is probably more silver border than I thought. Spells that kind of care about a creature dying notably just say something like “if that creature would die this turn” precisely because, yeah, state based effects are what check for and cause the dying, not the spells themselves that damage or reduce toughness--destroy is a different beast? see something like Cinder Cloud. I’m not sure how much of a rules nightmare it may or may not be to port than sort of template over to something like this. But they do not and have not done it as far as I can tell so I imagine it would cause some pretty big issues.

@natew000​ A creature that is not removed by Wrath of God (destroy all creatures), Toxic Deluge (all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn), or Descend Upon the Sinful (exile all creatures).

I think this is the prompt design that’s gone through the most stages so far and it’s still not quite there. First iteration had indestructible for Wrath, fixed toughness to one plus the life total of the player with the most life for Deluge (and that still wouldn’t work always), and… nothing for Descend.

The next few iterations were all about figuring out how to deal with Descend and in doing that I realized it was going to be pretty wordy and that I could wrap fixes for the other two cards into it. I also decided while I’m at it to embrace the spirit I think the prompt was getting at and make it so targeted removal and paying for costs (like saccing a creature) still worked for this, while mass bounce would not. If we aren’t concerned about that we can cut some words and the effect becomes more powerful.

Phasing wasn’t a solution I wanted to turn to but the -X/-X effects cause issues that resulted in me opting for Omega to phase out. Presuming the -X/-X effect ends then you don’t have to worry about Omega constantly looking at state based effects and trying to figure out what to do. But if the effect hasn’t ended then Omega pops in for a moment and phases back out until the end of the following turn.

And I believe this still dies to combat damage like normal, which isn’t the case if it just had indestructible as the answer to the Wrath effect. But this is really weird space so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m wrong there or just flat out missed something else and some part of this doesn’t work how I think it does.

I mean the game “understands” what the stack being empty means and has rules about specific things that can only happen when that’s the case, so probably other stuff could care about the stack being empty. That said, I think it’d be more likely to “exile CN until all spells and abilities resolve.” or something like that. Accomplishes the same thing I believe and doesn’t reference the stack.

@natew000​ A creature that is not removed by Wrath of God (destroy all creatures), Toxic Deluge (all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn), or Descend Upon the Sinful (exile all creatures).

I think this is the prompt design that’s gone through the most stages so far and it’s still not quite there. First iteration had indestructible for Wrath, fixed toughness to one plus the life total of the player with the most life for Deluge (and that still wouldn’t work always), and… nothing for Descend.

The next few iterations were all about figuring out how to deal with Descend and in doing that I realized it was going to be pretty wordy and that I could wrap fixes for the other two cards into it. I also decided while I’m at it to embrace the spirit I think the prompt was getting at and make it so targeted removal and paying for costs (like saccing a creature) still worked for this, while mass bounce would not. If we aren’t concerned about that we can cut some words and the effect becomes more powerful.

Phasing wasn’t a solution I wanted to turn to but the -X/-X effects cause issues that resulted in me opting for Omega to phase out. Presuming the -X/-X effect ends then you don’t have to worry about Omega constantly looking at state based effects and trying to figure out what to do. But if the effect hasn’t ended then Omega pops in for a moment and phases back out until the end of the following turn.

And I believe this still dies to combat damage like normal, which isn’t the case if it just had indestructible as the answer to the Wrath effect. But this is really weird space so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m wrong there or just flat out missed something else and some part of this doesn’t work how I think it does.

Would saying “Whenever a player casts a spell that doesn’t target Omega, Omega phases out until end of turn” work, too, for your idea of it? I know there would be particular issue, but I would like to hear your thoughts on it.

That’s a lot cleaner. The biggest thing is that then any spell like Opt or a spell that targets something other than Omega will still cause it to phase out. The goal here, at least for me, was to get as close as possible to something that really was just protected from board wipes and nothing else.

@shadowknight1224​ A non-creature red card that explores a positive emotion, bonus points if the mechanic reinforces the theme!

Here’s the first design. I feel like this one’s hitting close to where I want it, but for me there’s just some sort of disconnect for me. It’s not quite desire exactly. Sort of envy? Maybe it works better for you. But yeah, basic idea is you want what your opponent’s got. The fact that they get to copy it is more a balance thing than anything else.

Aside from the sheer amount of text necessary to make this work, I really love how this turned out. Two creatures from opposite sides of the battlefield fall in love and then spend the rest of their days running around fighting alongside each other. Presumably you’re going to make your 1/1 Goblin fall in love with their Questing Beast or Rankle.

Hahaha omg I absolutely LOVE these! Desire is extremely fun and surprisingly fair, and you don’t feel bad if it misses, and In Love is just *chef’s kiss*, just absolutely perfect. The only think I’m a little iffy on is that I think because In Love says “Enchant creature you control” and later gives away control of the enchanted creature (but not of the aura) would that cause the aura to fall off? Maybe you could make it “Enchant creature” and write down that you can only cast it on a creature you control, since all that matters is that first cast?

Yeah, you’re right about that. I think the shortest thing for the text box might be to make that last ability give away control of the auras as well. A little weird, but it should work then.

1. yeah, I think that was the cleanest and shortest bit of text to accomplish that though. The first trigger to resolve is all that matters though. Maybe a little confusing, but I’m not sure the game has a great way to handle situations like this.

2. yeah, again just the wordiness of this as is didn’t leave room to deal with anything else. So make sure you pick a creature you’re okay with committing to being a roving lover for the rest of their existence. In my head I think of it as those stories where a surviving spouse goes to their usual anniversary dinner spot every day on their anniversary even when their spouse passed years ago.

@natew000​ A creature that is not removed by Wrath of God (destroy all creatures), Toxic Deluge (all creatures get -X/-X until end of turn), or Descend Upon the Sinful (exile all creatures).

I think this is the prompt design that’s gone through the most stages so far and it’s still not quite there. First iteration had indestructible for Wrath, fixed toughness to one plus the life total of the player with the most life for Deluge (and that still wouldn’t work always), and… nothing for Descend.

The next few iterations were all about figuring out how to deal with Descend and in doing that I realized it was going to be pretty wordy and that I could wrap fixes for the other two cards into it. I also decided while I’m at it to embrace the spirit I think the prompt was getting at and make it so targeted removal and paying for costs (like saccing a creature) still worked for this, while mass bounce would not. If we aren’t concerned about that we can cut some words and the effect becomes more powerful.

Phasing wasn’t a solution I wanted to turn to but the -X/-X effects cause issues that resulted in me opting for Omega to phase out. Presuming the -X/-X effect ends then you don’t have to worry about Omega constantly looking at state based effects and trying to figure out what to do. But if the effect hasn’t ended then Omega pops in for a moment and phases back out until the end of the following turn.

And I believe this still dies to combat damage like normal, which isn’t the case if it just had indestructible as the answer to the Wrath effect. But this is really weird space so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m wrong there or just flat out missed something else and some part of this doesn’t work how I think it does.

Norin did come to mind, but not the bit about twaeking it to care about untargeted stuff. That’s a pretty solid spot for this idea I think.

And yeah, definitely the most rulesy haha, but still pretty fun. I got a nice diversity of tasks in these prompts. Though I did notice I designed all rares or mythic rares. Which is part just what the prompts necessitated but I could have gotten some common or uncommon designs for some of them.

@shadowknight1224​ A non-creature red card that explores a positive emotion, bonus points if the mechanic reinforces the theme!

Here’s the first design. I feel like this one’s hitting close to where I want it, but for me there’s just some sort of disconnect for me. It’s not quite desire exactly. Sort of envy? Maybe it works better for you. But yeah, basic idea is you want what your opponent’s got. The fact that they get to copy it is more a balance thing than anything else.

Aside from the sheer amount of text necessary to make this work, I really love how this turned out. Two creatures from opposite sides of the battlefield fall in love and then spend the rest of their days running around fighting alongside each other. Presumably you’re going to make your 1/1 Goblin fall in love with their Questing Beast or Rankle.

Hahaha omg I absolutely LOVE these! Desire is extremely fun and surprisingly fair, and you don’t feel bad if it misses, and In Love is just *chef’s kiss*, just absolutely perfect. The only think I’m a little iffy on is that I think because In Love says “Enchant creature you control” and later gives away control of the enchanted creature (but not of the aura) would that cause the aura to fall off? Maybe you could make it “Enchant creature” and write down that you can only cast it on a creature you control, since all that matters is that first cast?

Yeah, you’re right about that. I think the shortest thing for the text box might be to make that last ability give away control of the auras as well. A little weird, but it should work then.

@dimestoretajic​ A card based on an MCU character or element.

So you get two for the price of one. Cosplayer is the first idea that came to mind for me, but that isn’t anything specific to MCU necessarily. That and it’s basically just a modified Spark Double. I like it, but it does feel a little like already tread ground.

Which brings us to the second design. I’m not the first to tackle a Thanos design, but I dare say this one conveys story better than most with a unique ability that will create novel board states. I get that the MCU story line originates from the comics so maybe this doesn’t stand out as inspired by the cinematic universe specifically, but my only experience with this story is the movies so for me that’s the clear source of inspiration.

How’d I forget that?! Like I was honestly looking for a Magic comparison to guide this a bit and somehow the things with titan in their name never even occurred to me. I’m making that change, thanks for the reminder.