Introduction
Hello, and welcome to my ultimate custom Magic the Gathering block known as the Shadowheart Block. This first set is known as Rise of Shadowheart. This block is a combination of everything and everyone in my personal fantasy realm shoved all into one storyline. There are thankfully some similarities within that realm to make it easier to transition over to an actual Magic set. Such as Ascendants & PW's, and both share an idea of "the Multiverse."
I highly suggest you read the F.A.Q. at the bottom of this post, as it will answer quite a few of your questions.
Art Disclaimer
All arts used in the renders of this set come from deviantART. As such all artist credits either have the artist's name, or their dA Account Name. The only exceptions to this are the arts done by me... and since I have a dA and a name, I suppose I get knocked in with the rest. If you cannot find an artist, or a dA account, please let me know, as this means that the artist is either wrong on the card, or they've moved on and I need to find their new credit. If you see any arts with the artist credits as "Unknown," please notify me as I am trying to find replacements for such mishaps. I do not own or claim to own ANY art that does not have my name on it. If you see an image of yours and would like to have it taken down, please notify me and I will remove it.
Major MTG Changes
So let's get a few things out of the way, shall we? What this set is doing is taking a very heavy fantasy theme and adapting it to Magic the Gathering. I stress that it is not as easy as it sounds if you want to stay true to both MTG and the other setting. This means that the set is going to function a bit differently then a real set. You might notice some mildly out of color cards, or perhaps some abilities that don't fit the color scheme at all. While these are not rampant or overwhelming, they do occur. There are mechanics and themes that are flushed out way more then a normal magic set, and yes, there are cards that are strictly better/worse then other real cards. And of course, flavor is an incredibly important factor in every card made. All these things are simply how I'm designing the set. While I am keeping to the structure of how a MTG Card and MTG Set work, I am not keeping to the rigid 110% structure that some people prefer. I'm sorry if this upsets you or bothers you, but it's just how it will function. I'm not trying to follow in the footsteps of the WOTC team, nor am I trying to make this set as "authentic" as possible. What I'm doing is envisioning my world as a MTG set the best I can. Thank you for understanding.
Storyline Overview
The Shadowheart block is based off my a personal fantasy realm I created years and years ago to house all my characters and places for stories, games, etc. Within this realm there is a Multiverse (much like MTG) where various dimensions and worlds are separated by a vast empty space known as the Void (not quite as chaotic as the Blind Eternities). Only powerful beings known as Ascendants can traverse this void to see other planes, and even fewer are the Demigods, Ascendants who have discovered the most ancient secrets and unlocked god-like potential (kind of like going from Neo Walker to Old Walker, only different).
Our story starts out on the plane of Terra, the universal home to Earth (Yes, the one we live in now). Terra is a plane unlike any other, as it was forced out of alignment with the mana lines of the Multiverse long ago. You see, Terra used to be the plane at the center of the Multiverse, meaning that all the Void's mana lines flowed through it, and at the same time, kept the rest of the Multiverse in a perfect balance. But through very ancient magic, Terra was forced out of it's center hold and in a very odd sense, forced under the center of the Multiverse. When this occurred, five Dragon Demigods used their powers to create a new plane to hold the Multiverse together while they attempted to figure out how to retrieve Terra from it's odd no-space. This plane was known as Evangelia.
Fast forward several thousand years. The year is 2010 on the Terra planet of Earth and a man named Seth has just moved into a new house in a new state, far away from his dark and sorrowful past. Just as he has settled into this new life, there comes a strange knock at the door and to his surprise it is an old friend. One who has been dead for several years. Even more strange is that she is no longer human, but a wolf on two legs, known as a Lupine. Before the two can get properly acquainted, they are ambushed by a pale skinned man in black robes who throws them into the Void and they arrive safely on Evangelia, where they encounter several other of their old and should-be-dead friends.
Through some strange twist of magic, Earth is realigning with the Multiverse, and Seth's closest friends as have returned from the dead with strange new powers. He too has developed an almost sentient power of his own, and he calls it Shadowheart, following his personal philosophy.
Now Seth and his crew, known as the EvaSouls must learn the history of their home plane, learn why they are all alive, and learn who is behind it all. But the task is always harder as the group struggles to control their own ever growing powers.
WHITE
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
BLUE
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
BLACK
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 15/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
RED
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
GREEN
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
ARTIFACT
Rare: 2/2
LAND
Rare: 5/5
Basic: 5/5
Set Themes
WBR: White, Black, and red is a MAJOR theme of the set and block as a whole. There are two mechanics to show this off, as well as a number of white, black, and red characters. This theme will expand in varying ways in the next two sets.
WRG: White, Red, and Green have a minor +1/+1 counters theme to work with Pride, the mechanic in their colors.
WWhite: White's theme is combat. White also has Shadowheart, Songs, Pride as set mechanics.
UBlue: Blue's major themes are drawing cards and instants & sorceries. Blue has a a few minor Pride cards. Because blue has the least amount of set mechanics, it has been reinforced 10 fold with it's themes, thus blue in this block is rather narrow.
BBlack: Black's main themes are vampires and paying life for things. Black also has Shadowheart, Songs, and the occasional Pride card.
RRed: Red's themes are player punishment and odd ball damage spells. Red also has Shadowheart, Songs, and Pride.
GGreen: Green's themes are creatures and land. Green also has Pride as a mechanic. There are also a minor theme of drakes in green.
Set Mechanics
WBR: White, Black, and red is a MAJOR theme of the set and block as a whole. There are two mechanics to show this off, as well as a number of red. black, and white characters.
Shadowheart Spells: This is a special subtype given to instants and sorceries. Each card will have the word "Shadowheart" as the first word in the card's name. All Shadowheart spells can be any color combination of red, black, and white.
Songs: Another new subtype for enchantments only. Songs are red, black, and/or white enchantments that grant abilities based on rarity and color. Songs have a new mechanic that is specific to them known as Resonance. Songs are White, black and red due to the only known song mage being aligned in these colors.
Resonance (You can only sing one song at a time. Whenever another Song card with a different name enters the battlefield under your control, return CARDNAME to its owner’s hand.)
Pride: Pride is a mechanic for white, red, and/or green creatures. Pride will also show up very sparing in black and blue. A creature with pride enters the battlefield with a specific number of +1/+1 counters on it if it was the first spell cast this turn. All Pride cards have an ability such as "as long as CARDNAME has a +1/+1 counter on it is, it has EFFECT." However some will have a second instance of the above indicating a number of counters higher then the Pride cost. This can easily be achieved by the minor +1/+1 counter theme the three colors have to make pride easier to achieve. Fun fact, this mechanic was one of my old mechanics redone. Originally the creature got the +1/+1 counters when hitting an opponent. Why does that sound so familiar? BECAUSE WOTC DID THAT WITH VAMPIRES IN INNISTRAD. So I changed it... nice to see my ideas come to life though.
Pride <NUMBER> (If CARDNAME is the first spell you’ve cast this turn, it enters the battlefield with <NUMBER> +1/+1 counter(s) on it.)
F.A.Q.
Got questions? I'll answer them! No matter how broad or specific, I answer all who ask, and some of them even make it into the F.A.Q. section below. Note: All new Q/A's are added to the top, not bottom.
Q: Why do Shadowheart cards do things that are totally out of color? A: Because Shadowheart cards represent a different type of spell casting that couldn't be done elegantly in MTG. So I gave it a super type and a color restriction. Considering Shadowheart spells can literally do anything once they're formed, it is easy to get them off color. Obviously I'm not going to have Shadowheart cards do everything in every way, but if it's got the Supertype "Shadowheart" it, you can expect the occasional "wacky" ability.
Q: Why do the three color cards have multicolored borders? I thought those were just plain gold? A: In normal MTG they are. I often wondered why they weren't colored and took it upon myself to change that for my own cards. In general, it is more visually appealing.
Q: What's with not showing the multicolor cards in the Set Design? A: It will not be added until ALL of the multicolor cards are posted up. This is because I have a major fetish for multicolor cards and I cannot stand restricting myself to a set number with them. However I do stick to a pattern when it gets down to the "generic" multicolor cards that are not important to the storyline. This WILL make the set numbers seem a little odd, but oh well.
Q: What's with some of the modern and technologically advanced looking cards? A: Because a major portion of this block DOES HAPPEN ON EARTH IN THE YEAR 2010. Therefore you will see oddities that you would not see in normal magic, Like soldiers with guns, or a dragon fighting a fighter jet. There aren't very many of those style cards mind you, but they are here and they are staying.
Q: I'm noticing cards that are in your other custom sets, some seem tweaked, but others are just the same as before. Why is this exactly? A: Like I said before, I'm literally combing ALL of my stories and characters into one line for this set. So you will see a lot of old themes and mechanics come back, as well as some twists with them.
Q: Why does some of the art not fit the card that well? A: I am VERY picky about art, I like to have art that matches almost perfectly, but sometimes after hours of searching, I just couldn't find anything. So I took the next best thing and stuck with it.
Q: Why is it that some of the legends seem off color. A: Some may seem off color simply because their personalities fit the colors better then their ability. There really is no debating this, as the character colors are finalized and won't be changed. Sorry if this bugs you.
Q: Why do some of the ally color pairs have more cards in them then others? A: This is largely due to the fact I set the legends "personal spells" in the same slot as the normal multicolor cards. But as you'll notice, the character spells are very specific while the others are not. I did consider moving the character spells to another set in the block, but I have already planned out the other sets character cards so I decided it wasn't a big deal and left them in.
Seth is a man of honor and passion from the Planet Earth on the plane of Terra. Everything he does is 110% or nothing at all. From a dark past he watched several of his closest friends and his daughter die in a vicious attack on his home. Being the only survivor he moved far away to a place he never thought he'd see, but thanks to Alsorb's plans he has been thrust out of his home and onto Evangelia.
Seth's nature and way of life cause people to trust and respect him easily. he knows what tactic will work at what time in many situations from armed combat to simple conversations.
Upon his arrival to Evangelia, Seth learns that he has a very special and potent magic within him, and it is almost sentient in its power. With a name and enough thought, Seth learns he can literally craft spells from this hidden power, and does so to create Shadowheart Spells, mana that uses part of his own soul as fuel to increase their effectiveness.
Seth also has a natural affinity for dragons of all things, being able to communicate and understand the beasts with ease.
Sarah Demerest was Seth's best friend in her old life, and his sworn second in her new life. Her cynicism and negative outlook on the world gives her a unique ability to spot the lies that people tell, as well a cold emotionless killing instinct.
Her death was after several shots to her chest, though she is credited with killing two people before finally falling.
Her prowess with weapons of all kinds is unmatched, a master in various fighting styles as well as incredible marksman ship and swordsman ship. In her new life she's found she has a very powerful knack for Death Magic, making almost any assault against her a fatal one. This combined with her quick route to end everything with violence makes her even more dangerous
Sarah's loyalties lie with Seth and Seth alone. While she is friendly and good natured person to her fellow EvaSouls, she takes orders from no one other then Seth and would die for him if asked. This devotion has made her an almost perfect body guard.
Torrie was Seth's first childhood friend. A lover of cold things and knives, She lost her eye in a knife fight shortly before the raid on Seth's house that killed her. When she was returned to the world of the living her missing eye remained gone and she has a taken to storing mana behind her eye patch.
In her new body and power, she embodies everything that is cold. Able to make it snow in localized area, and create ice from the moisture in her skin. She often raises a defensive fog that only she can see through to distort her enemies before slicing them to bits with various ice based spells.
Ever since the loss of her eye, Torrie has shied away from using knives and does not like close combat.
Torrie was also Sarah's lover at one point and as such the two get along more so then Sarah does with the others.
Christy was the group's "mother," and sees Seth as her son. She's very quick on her feet and thinks every little thing through before acting. Before her death she was a doctor, and as such is the groups primarily medical specialist.
Christy also had a fetish for cutting herself, her entire body being a network of scars. In her new life she's found a way use this to her advantage as a Blood Mage, a special wizard who uses their blood to fuel spells of both offensive and defensive types.
While generally a nice person, she is quick to anger when Seth or one of the EvaSouls are threatened or hurt. As such she is right next to Sarah when tossing threats back and forth with the enemy.
Marissa was the last to join their earthly group when they were all still alive. A lover of thunderstorms and cooking, the girl is half Mexican and half Chinese. When she turned 18 she changed her name, not liking the split cultural name she was given at birth.
Rather witty, Marissa always has a smart ass comment in the face of danger, which she backs up with her incredible speed and agility. In her new life she's combined this speed with powerful energy magic, creating bolts of electricity from the smallest bits of energy in the air.
Marissa is also the youngest of the group by a year and constantly makes fun of herself for it.
Emily is the only one to not return to the world as a human, but as a Lupine, a bipedal wolf humanoid. She boasts an IQ of over 200 and is considered the most technologically advanced being in the Multiverse.
Emily is the only one of the group who came to life in a pocket dimension that her own psyche created. This allowed her to literally do anything, and with that knowledge she experimented on herself, melding metal and flesh. Now Emily is over 60% machine, armed to the teeth with various high tech weaponry and an array of different scanners, computers, and tech within herself. All her remaining organs are encased in a supposedly indestructible case within her, and her only real reason for wanting to keep these fleshy parts is to still realize that she is alive and to enjoy being such.
With her machines Emily has given the EvaSouls special nano bots that allow her to track everything within their body, which she can check on her portable laptop. In this way she is the group's eyes and ears when they are in trouble. Often not choosing to fight herself unless backed int a corner, she prefers to sit back and monitor the action from a distance, giving directions and advice to the others on how to beat an opponent and what to watch out for.
The Villains
Alsorb is a vampire Ascendant dating back thousands of years. At this point, no one other then Alsorb himself knows where he came from or how old he really is. What is known is that sometime in the last century, he discovered a secret that could turn the Multiverse on its head, and he wants to use it to remake reality in his image.
Like most vampires, Alsorb is arrogant and flashy. He often sends his minions to do his work for him, tending to conserve his energy for when he changes the whole of the Multiverse. For reasons known only to him, this requires a number of special individuals from Earth and various pocket dimensions.
A master spellcaster in all schools black magic, Alsorb is quick on in body and mind when in combat.
Fallen Syn, or Syn as she's known to many, is Sarah's twin sister. Driven mad in her early teens she blamed Sarah for everything bad that happened to their family and anything she could pin as her sister's fault. This eventually boiled over to a point where she attempted to literally kill Sarah. However this ended in failure as Sarah's combat prowess was leagues higher then her sister's crazed rampage.
Alive once again, Syn has allied herself with Alsorb after learning that he is after Sarah. What Alsorb doesn't know is that she does not intend to hand Sarah over to him, but to kill her, the EvaSouls, and Alsorb himself.
When Syn returned she became quite skilled in the manipulation of fire, even combining some black magic elements into her spells to make them more deadly. This however came at the cost of her body, her skin being charred black and flaming orange tattoos covering her body.
The Planes
Terra is a plane that exists outside the rest of the Multiverse and is home to the planet Earth. Originally Terra sat at the center of the Multiverse until an unknown ancient power thrust it from its place and struck it out. In its place, the plane known as Evangelia now sits. Terra now sits under the center of the Multiverse. Earth is a place dominated entirely by humans with no magic capabilities at all due to it being outside of the Multiverse. With no mana lines to flow through it, the plane cannot generated any kind of magic. Due to this however, the technology of the plane is much higher then that of most planes, relying on skill and hard work rather then spells and enchantments. Thanks to the once magical nature of the plane, many ancient tales tell of spells and mystical creatures that suddenly vanished one day. In reality, these creatures were displaced, unable to survive without the mana lines, and stuck in a "no space" between Terra and the rest of the Multiverse. As well, every human on the plane is capable of some form of magic, but again, due to the plane's lack of mana lines, none has been seen in hundreds of thousands of years.
Evangelia is the plane at the center of the Multiverse, which is also home to the five Origin Dragons, the first beings to become Ascendants and then become Demigods. The plane has many odd magical quirks between it's varying regions, with one large ocean sliding right into an immense desert centered by a massive mountain, with the Church of the White Dragon at it's peak. The Wyvern infested Silverleaf Forest takes many into her arms for those who long for nature, only to run jaggedly against the Dreadspire peaks. Up to the north lies the Spellsnare islands, a massive school coveted by some of the most powerful mages in the Multiverse. Down to the Forests of Darkheart lie some of the planes deadliest secrets that are guarded by vampires that make their homes in the rotted trees and bogs. In the center of the plane stretches the largest city in all the Multiverse, Evangelia city. On Evangelia, Ascendants are a normal thing, like rain or sun. Anyone on Evangelia could tell you a dozen stories of Ascendants and the Five Gods. Most interesting though is that Humans are the only bipedal sentient species on the plane other then the vampires.
On the Great Desert reside the humans of White Gate, a group who believes that the White Dragon of Origin is a god to be worshiped. They tend to deny the other four Dragons of origin and are very devout in their beliefs. They are quick to defend their home and their beliefs, with little care for the other areas of the plane. Unless one comes to seek the Path of White Gate, they heed everyone as an intruder that must be converted or killed.
The humans of Spellsnare are some of the most potent mages in the Multiverse. While secluded on an island in the middle of the northern seas, Spellsnare mages learn every school of magic from anywhere they can. You'll find those that throw fire, those that grow life, and those that end it. High magical energy surrounds the island, causing many gargantuan sea monsters to make home near it. Very methodical in their ways, they try to explain everything through their magic, believing that the Blue Dragon of Origin granted them the island of enchanted magical energy where they reside.
The Darkheart Forest is bleak and dying forest that survives through the corruption of the black mana line. The trees themselves are black with ash grey leaves that fall and regrow almost constantly. Aside from the stray adventurer, or crazed lunatic, the forest is inhabited solely by vampires who live in vast extensive villages in the trees. These vampires are the result of an old vampire Ascendant coming to Evangelia dn infecting the plane. Since then, the forest has been home to those bloodsuckers, and they follow no one since the death of their Ascendant leader. However as of late, many have been making bold moves under a new flag, claiming there is another Ascendant they can ally themselves with.
The Humans of Dreadspire are primitive and Shamanistic, but intelligent enough to understand high technology and other cultures. They often resort to violence and fire before any other humans on the plane and are very strict in their rituals and daily life activities. They love to summon elemental of fire and rage, and believe that the Red Dragon of Origin granted them the power to take what they desire. Despite all of this, the people of Dreadspire rarely attack the other nations of Evangelia, preferring to keep to themselves unless harassed.
In the forests the Silverleaf, tribes of almost elf like humans tame beasts and defend the forest with their lives. They are peaceful until provoked and have a very high affinity for nature magic and the creatures around them. Most do not like to stray from their forests and very, very few enjoy the hustle and bustle of advanced civilization. The forest is home to a unique breed of wyvern, a medium sized drake with a venomous tail. These wyverns hunt in packs and are highly intelligent, some even becoming the pets and mounts of Silverleaf humans.
Viirina is a plane that mirrors Earth in a very scary way. While the time flow between the two planes is different, both are roughly the same in technological advancements and world diversity. The two major differences that can be drawn are very clear. Viirina has no actual human beings, only bipedal humanoid creatures that resemble many of the creatures from Earth (Furries for those that go with social trends). The other is that Viirina has a mana line flowing through it, granting magic to the users. It's unknown how or why Viirina developed so similarly to Earth. The most interesting aspect of the plane is the industrial evolution the plane took with both aspects of technology and magic. This is due to the general open minded nature of the people and the mana lines. Viirina's mana lines flow in a reverse pattern through the plane, making spells harder to cast, but still viable. It is speculated that Viirina's population wanted to use the magic only when needed, allowing them to advance through the ages technologically, with minor magic influence. While not 100% in either direction, many of Viirina's technology uses bits of magic here and there. The people of Viirina know of Ascendants, but only is small pockets over the plane. Viirina's most prosperous country is dominated mostly by Lupines, or wolf-humanoids.
Pocket dimensions are small sub-planes that exist around Terra outside the Multiverse. The uniqueness of these dimensions varies from person to person, as they are created when someone dies. The soul and dormant magical energy of the person is transferred into a pocket dimension that warps itself exactly to their magical needs and recreates their body according to how it would form in the Multiverse. This creates several problems, the first being that many go completely insane due to the structural and mental change of being reborn in a "magically perfect" world that they themselves cannot even comprehend. However there are those that embrace the change, and forever live out their lives believing that they have made it to the afterlife. Then there are those that realize they are not where they should be. These very few learn to harness their magical capabilities within the pocket dimension and seek escape. Some even manage to attain this feat, leaving the plane and being thrown onto another, to sent back to Earth.
Shadowheart
Shadowheart originally was just a name given to a set of philosophies and an honor code for one man to live by, Seth Dracovitch. However when he was forcefully thrown from Earth into the Multiverse by Alsorb, his magical powers blossomed in an odd way. A pocket dimension formed inside his soul, and the two fused into an almost sentient magical energy that fed from Seth's life energy and emotions. This gave life to the Shadowheart spell, a magical force that only Seth was capable of using, powered by life, soul, and emotion. And with being fused with a pocket dimension, this gave Seth the ability to create entirely new spells on the fly. Once Seth became known around Evangelia for this, Shadowheart became a faction. Several hundreds wanted to ally themselves with Seth to Stop Alsorb and seek a greater understanding of magic and the Multiverse. Now Shadowheart is an idea, a code, a spell, and a force to ally behind.
Shadowheart Spells differ from other spells in that they require a great mix of mental and magical force to manifest. Outside of using mana, one must have a concentration of raw emotion, life energy, and soul energy, which in a normal situation is not possible. However due to the unique melding of Seth's Pocket Dimension into his body, he can meld all three of these with little effort for spell casting. Shadowheart spells still require the Multiverse's natural mana, but only to manifest the form and direction of the spell in the physical world. Because of the uniqueness of how the spell is crafted, both the user and the target can have very wild lasting effects. Many times, the target will feel drained from certain attacks and the user will feel energized. This is likely due to the life and soul energy from the spell draining the target and giving it to the user, whether or not this is intended it unclear.v And the most important aspect of Seth's ability, is the creation of new Shadowheart spells due to his pocket dimension. The first few were simple, easy to manifest and cast. However as the spells were used more often, it required more effort and emotion, until new Shadowheart Spells were only able to be created from extreme feelings of certain emotions. Now Seth has a set of ready-to-go spells and in the most extreme of situations he may surprise with a new never before seen attack.
Shadowheart Restoration is a simple healing spell. It works by reversing the molecular damage of the wound to it's previously healed state. However the subject has to be alive the healing to take place. It has no visible form past the healing of the wound.
Shadowheart Needle Spray works by charging mana across a given area and forming it into a hail of arrows. The spell takes the form of several six in black arrows shrouded in red energy. While general not fatal, is is used best as a counter attack.
Shadowheart Lightning is one of the basic Shadowheart damage dealing spells. Itt's form is a simple red lightning bolt fired from the hand. While it does not have enough power to kill stronger enemies, it is perfect for taking down weaker ones.
Shadowheart Blast was the first spell ever created using Seth's unique capabilities. When cast, the spell takes the form of a white ball of energy surrounded by crackling red lightning. In combat, Blast is used as more of a distraction then a finisher, throwing off stronger opponents, but outright killing anyone not strong enough to withstand the blast. Like most Shadowheart spells, when the target is killed, the spell transfers its life energy into Seth.
Shadowheart Delusions is a pure combat trick. While it has no real "form" when cast, the caster's hand glows an eerie red. The target is stricken with weakness, nausea, and mental doubt about its own strength, leaving it both mentally and physically weak. This opening creates a perfect opportunity for a wide variety of fatal attacks to pull through.
Shadowheart blaze is Seth's most used spell, as it is easy to control, and can hit one solid target, or multiple targets if need be. The one downside is that is wholly dependent on Seth's own emotions. When cast, the spell takes the form of three coiling barbed massed of white, black and red energy that wrap around each other constantly. Depending on the caster's will over the spell, Seth can make it a straight line towards a single target, or expand it out into a cone to hit multiple targets.
Shadowheart Multiplicity creates a literal double of Seth, down to every atom, by fracturing his soul. The spell's form is literally the copy of Seth. The backlash of the spell is that both Seth and the copy are at a 60/40 power ratio. Against most weak enemies or a single strong enemy this is no big deal.
Shadowheart Final Flare is Seth's most devastating focused attack. When cast the spells envelops entire lower arm in pulsating red and black energy, surrounded by a helix of white lightning. In order for the spell to work, Seth's hand must make direct contact with the target, causing a violent burst of energy to shoot forth, creating a crater of sorts within the targets body that directly proportionate to the size of the target. On a normal human being the crater would be eight inches deep and about six inches in diameter. Anything within the diameter of the blast is instantly incinerated, killing most on impact. In cases of extreme emotion Seth can cast this spell repeatedly, while in a normal circumstance he would not have the energy to cast it in rapid succession.
Added:A Set Design Tab to catalog the numbers and colors of the entire set Added: A Mechanics And Themes Tab to house easy explanations of all the set's themes and mechanics. Currently not all of the sets themes and mechanics has been spoiled there. Added: Several new cards across a multitude of colors. Updated: Minor wording errors on some legends.
You really shouldn't force the colour combinations; you have almost everyone as part-red, but only Marissa actually is. Seth seems to just be W/B, Sarah's just black, Christy also has no red. In general, it's a bad idea to force a certain group or combination of colours as a major theme, especially when every colour is going to have a balanced amount of cards anyway. The main team could be more balanced, could it not?
More on the RBW - it's probably not a good idea to only have some mechanics in a set number of colours. At least have a few cards in other colours; nobody wants to go to a prerelease or other limited thing and miss out on cool mechanics because of their colour choices. I mean, the transform mechanic in Innistrad, while mostly based on the werewolves in red and green, still had some white, black and blue cards. Yeah, there were only like two of each of those colours, but still. At least they're there. It wouldn't kill to stick in a green song, would it?
Onto songs, you either have the type Song or the ability Resonance. You don't need both; you can just stick it in the rules on Songs that you can only have one on your side of the battlefield at once and can bounce it back when you cast another one.
Quote from adding onto the comp rules »
212.4l Some Enchantments have the subtype "Song". These are similar in most ways to normal enchantments, except each player may only have one Song on the battlefield. 212.4m When a player casts a Song spell, its controller returns all other Songs they control to their owner's hand(s).
Shadowheart is boring, nothing much more to say about that.
I'll be right back and get on the cards, but a lot of them are really underpowered.
Why Lupine? Why not Werewolf instead? Or just Wolf?
I don't understand why these "Wolf-folk" needed a specific type to represent them.
Wolves are canines like dogs. You say wolf I think of a majestic looking canine, all fours and with pretty fangs. Werewolves are based on mythos of a man transforming into a well werewolf as in the most recent set. This Lupine however is an anthropomorphic canine creature. It does not transform and it is not a simple canine, thus it could be seen that it requires its own classification. This is much like Leonin not being lions or "were-lions"
@Seth: tell me if I got it right, if not feel free to correct me.
Wolves are canines like dogs. You say wolf I think of a majestic looking canine, all fours and with pretty fangs. Werewolves are based on mythos of a man transforming into a well werewolf as in the most recent set. This Lupine however is an anthropomorphic canine creature. It does not transform and it is not a simple canine, thus it could be seen that it requires its own classification. This is much like Leonin not being lions or "were-lions"
@Seth: tell me if I got it right, if not feel free to correct me.
You could probably get away with calling them Leonin actually. There's a lot of dissonance between planes on what a given species look like (Compare: Lorwynn Goblins, Mirrodin Goblins, and Dominaria Goblins).
You really shouldn't force the colour combinations; you have almost everyone as part-red, but only Marissa actually is. Seth seems to just be W/B, Sarah's just black, Christy also has no red. In general, it's a bad idea to force a certain group or combination of colours as a major theme, especially when every colour is going to have a balanced amount of cards anyway. The main team could be more balanced, could it not?
Flavor, it is a driving force in this set like any other. If you only use straight and well known mechanics and the strictness of the color pie. You lack flavor.
More on the RBW - it's probably not a good idea to only have some mechanics in a set number of colours. At least have a few cards in other colours; nobody wants to go to a prerelease or other limited thing and miss out on cool mechanics because of their colour choices. I mean, the transform mechanic in Innistrad, while mostly based on the werewolves in red and green, still had some white, black and blue cards. Yeah, there were only like two of each of those colours, but still. At least they're there. It wouldn't kill to stick in a green song, would it?
Onto songs, you either have the type Song or the ability Resonance. You don't need both; you can just stick it in the rules on Songs that you can only have one on your side of the battlefield at once and can bounce it back when you cast another one.
You do realize throughout Magic's history there have always been mechanics in sets that a color specific.
Songs are a flavor mechanic. Flavor, that thing you seem to have a hard time understanding.
Besides, I haven't even spoiled all the color specific mechanics. It's not like this is all there is to the set.
Shadowheart is boring, nothing much more to say about that.
I'll be right back and get on the cards, but a lot of them are really underpowered.
Again, you don't seem to understand flavor. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not a big fan of Kamigawa or it's abilities either. or transofrm and ISD for that matter.
Wolves are canines like dogs. You say wolf I think of a majestic looking canine, all fours and with pretty fangs. Werewolves are based on mythos of a man transforming into a well werewolf as in the most recent set. This Lupine however is an anthropomorphic canine creature. It does not transform and it is not a simple canine, thus it could be seen that it requires its own classification. This is much like Leonin not being lions or "were-lions"
@Seth: tell me if I got it right, if not feel free to correct me.
Slim nailed this one pretty well on the head, BUT I will elaborate.
You see, while I am a fan of the Grand Creature Type Update, I do like seeing new creature types, especially when taking a specifically different creature, giving it a "base point" and then calling it the same type as it's base point.
Leonins are the PERFECT example of this. I honestly despise that they are all "cats" and not "leonin" simply because of the structural change in their fundamentals. Yes, they are both feline, whoop-de-do. But Leonins are bipedal, sentient cat humanoids. To me, that is a big enough gap between them and their quadrupedal feline base point.
So thus given my own set to work with, I took that process and put it to use. I like seeing new create types here and there, and I really do despise it when they rehash common creature types due to a similarity.
We could debate this back and forth all day, but I'd much rather not. In any case, there's my opinion.
Flavor, it is a driving force in this set like any other. If you only use straight and well known mechanics and the strictness of the color pie. You lack flavor.
You know what the other thing to do is besides removing red from their colours? Adding red abilities! If they're red in flavour and character, show that on the card! You can't just randomly go "this person is red because I say so" and not give them any red abilities; that doesn't convey any flavour. I guess Seth's fine because of flavour and him being the Shadowheart guy and all, and Sarah's passable, but Christy's just not right. While the others, not necessarily being fully red, had no non-red abilities, Christy's damage prevention is the epitomy of not red. At least remove the red in the ability's cost...
You do realize throughout Magic's history there have always been mechanics in sets that a color specific.
Only when there were particular factions (eg. Mirran/Phyrexian, shards, heavy tribal). Take a look. Zendikar's mechanics were in every colour 'cos everyone can mess with lands; as were Lorwyn's and Shadowmoor's. So were Time Spiral's. Are the EvaSouls (what kind of name is that, anyway?) the only people that can sing? Or are the songs only sung by people of Evangelia or something?
Songs are a flavor mechanic. Flavor, that thing you seem to have a hard time understanding.
Besides, I haven't even spoiled all the color specific mechanics. It's not like this is all there is to the set.
Songs are a flavour mechanic, I see that. Just like curses and Traps. I don't see the problem with that. I also don't see the flavour of them not being green. I mean, I'm fine with only Seth using Shadowheart, and I guess that can remain in RBW. I just don't understand how songs can be only in those colours. What's the flavour in that?
Again, you don't seem to understand flavor. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not a big fan of Kamigawa or it's abilities either. or transofrm and ISD for that matter.
I understand flavour, but the problem is that this does nothing. Everything flavourful has had something linked mechanically to the flavour; Traps had the alternate costs; Curses enchant players; even your own songs you can only have one out (which is a great idea, might I add). Shadowheart doesn't do anything! Don't say "well it will just wait", because you don't reveal a mechanic and say "yeah it does nothing but it'll do something later".
Anyway, most of Kamigawa was fine, for me and I got all the flavour perfectly. It's just the times when they way overdid the flavour and made bad cards (like a number of dodgy artifacts) that I didn't like. Transform is amazing, thank you very much, but that's because it was a good idea design-wise, giving you greater room on cards to design with.
TL;DR, "flavour" is not an excuse for bad ideas and dodgy design. "You don't understand flavour" is not an argument. Flavour should be used to complement the design, or the design to complement the flavour. My problem is that neither is doing much for the other. You're not showing, you're telling! Most people aren't going to read through all the backstory of a set and go "oh, that's why this card's like this". One of the most important challenges as a designer is being able to convey flavour through your designs while keeping them playable. It's not working for me at the moment.
PS. I heard this great line from some guy somewhere. "If you need to explain that something is because of flavour, then there isn't enough of it."
I look forward to seeing where this set goes in the future, lol.
I admit that I'm a bit of a flavor-creep and I sometimes get too wrapped up in a story to see how I'm improperly transitioning it into a card and I think maybe you have a little bit of that too. NinjaCaterpie's point about flavor serving design is a valuable one, in my admittedly limited experience. Am I right in assuming that because your character have red-tinted personalities they have red in their cards?
Assuming that I am (I really don't believe that you just added red because, hey, that border wasn't colorful enough) changing a character is hard but changing an ability is relatively easy.
All that being said I think that all your cards could be red. Maybe less red (fewer red and more of other colors) but they all have some link. Seth, in particular, is totally fine the way he is seeing as all Shadowheart spells are the same colors as him.
Love the art, btw!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A silent evil where there shouldn't be another.
This awesome signature is tbe work of DNC at Heroes of the Plane Studio!
I have to agree with Caterpie, if only on Christy. The only kind of red she is is her hair color. I don't read R from the card. You talk about flavor but the flavor needs to be in the cards, and that just isn't happening right now. Christy is (in my opinion) WB and there's nothing wrong with that.
Unfortunately I agree, it may be better as a modal spell, even if it loses a little of the flavor. As it stands that feels more mythic to me and even then it's a bit over the top.
I'll get to everyone's posts in a bit, I just find this slightly more important. I'll likely edit this post with everyone's stuff in a bit.
Updated: Both cards for Sarah and Christy now reflects their current character as opposed to their old characters, which the first cards was based off of.
Updated: Seth's Last Resort now has the proper mana cost, as opposed to before where it had the wrong cost... Somehow I totally missed it until everyone started *****ing about it.
Added: Flarebreaker Dragon, first of two dragons in this set.
Updated: Seth's Last Resort now has the proper mana cost, as opposed to before where it had the wrong cost... Somehow I totally missed it until everyone started *****ing about it.
ok now i can agree on cost though not sure on the rarity, to me it has the flavor of "holy ****" if i see that dropped on either giving or receiving end. we can argue rare or mythic later, this is more of a pondering aloud thing and I could well be wrong.
I really like the mechanical concept of Songs. I do however agree with Ninja Caterpie that limiting them to WRB feels arbitrary.
Also, song cards are functionally similiar to the legend rule, minus the opponent not being able to have one. In fact for the player using them, they are often harsher then the legend rule, but the majority of their costs often make them worse then similar non-song enchantments. Some of them could/should be cheaper.
Finally a lot of your legends suffer from being over costed, especially being multicolored. They also feel weird: Human characters with titan esque stats. I don't have the time tonight, but I'll go back and list specific examples soon.
Updated: The Song mechanic now has an errata change so you can play multiples of the same song. Updated: The info on Songs under the "Mechanics and Themes" tab has been updated to hint as to why they're only in WBR. Updated: New mechanic spoiled, Pride. Pride cards have been added to the set as well as their info in "Mechanics and Themes" Updated: F.A.Q. has been updated with why characters seem "off color" and why some of the multicolor cards are oddly numbered. Updated: Final number for the set is 216. Added: All the multicolor cards for the set. As well as some cards in green, white, and red.
ok now i can agree on cost though not sure on the rarity, to me it has the flavor of "holy ****" if i see that dropped on either giving or receiving end. we can argue rare or mythic later, this is more of a pondering aloud thing and I could well be wrong.
The short anser is my OCD wouldn't come to terms with making it mythic...
Kinda cheap excuse, but I suppose it works. Well, at least Pride is in every colour. A bit, at least.
A minor problem I have with the Pride mechanic is that it discourages playing cards. If you have two Pride cards in hand, you'd rather wait to next turn and not play your spell. :| That's not the best thing to encourage in magic, but eh. It's not that major and it's a mechanic people think of often.
I'll go through rating the cards, like I said I would.
[b]Ballad of Determination[/b]: Determined indeed. It seems a bit underwhelming, but it could just be me underestimating the usefulness of first strike. Have you tested it? Is it fair at that or could it go down to 1WW?
[b]Kale's Lyrics[/b]: Fine.
[b]Lullaby of Faults[/b]: This is fair. It's the same price as Ghostly Prison but with a slight downside.
[b]Motet of Power[/b]: It's a little powerful; it's like two Honor of the Pures stuck together and on all creatures. Could cost 1 more.
[b]Reality Transition[/b]: It's an interesting mass-Momentary Blink which then buffs your army. It seems a little powerful, however, considering Titania's Boon is at 4 and this can effectively do that by casting it at the end of a player's second main phase, as well as be used to dodge removal and chump everything.
[b]Shadowheart Restoration[/b]: Boring, mechanically and flavourfully. It's just Seth doing some healing. It doesn't say anything special that means "hey this has Seth's mark!" besides being a Shadowheart spell.
[b]Vigilant Knight-Commander[/b]: 2WW for a 3/3 that gives first strike to everything; kinda like Rhox Pikemaster except for all creatures. Slightly powerful in that regard, especially as it can also give vigilance later. Maybe you could swap them around? So you have to work to the more powerful effect?
Overall, the white shows a clear theme of buffing a team, which is cool. Is there going to be a few token-producers as well so there will actually be multiple "creatures you control"? Or at least a handful of cheap creatures?
[b]Mental Mishap[/b]: I'm almost certain this is meant to read "and" rather than "unless". Because "unless" it does, this is actually almost completely a useless card. A single card of mill is a reeally small effect (this is effectively like "Counter target spell unless its controller pays 1/3 life"). Cancel is already considered a bad counterspell and is just about the limits of where absolute counters can be in terms of bad. Going worse than that surely can't be good. The problem is that if you use this to counter an important spell, they'll just mill themselves. If you use it to counter a weak spell... oh well. You just wasted a counterspell. It's too weak.
[b]Spatial Mix-Up[/b]: This one's fine.
Blue's just counters ATM. I can't say much, but I can say that I like mill. And you're overestimating it.
[b]Alsorb, the Hungerer[/b]: His + ability is almost identical to the one on Sorin Markov. There's gotta be some other way of doing vampiric stuff that doesn't just copy that ability. Maybe if you put loyalty counters on him instead through some twisted means? :| -3 is fine, discarding two cards is alright. The ultimate is sweet.
[b]Harmony of Suffering[/b]: Seems slightly weak, once again. I suppose Æther Sting exists, so it's somewhat fair, but this is technically more expensive and with a drawback (which is what the Song mechanic technically is). Could be cheaper, I think, or common. Not that powerful, after all.
[b]Hymn of Discord[/b]: Should this read "Whenever a spell or ability would cause an opponent to draw a card, they discard a card instead"? Or is this just meant to cancel out draw spells rather than reverse them? At any rate, it seems somewhat powerful, although it's kind of limited except against blue. Then again, blue is black's ally, so I don't know so much about how well it works... Doesn't fit too well at common, either.
[b]Requiem of Undeath[/b]: Flashy and flavourful, a necromancer's song of awesomeness. Love it, reckon it's probably just the right mana cost. Awesome name
[b]Sarah's Gaze[/b]: The dying is unnecessary, although it does work flavourfully. Kind of. Black Mind Control abilities are odd; maybe you could make it so it just returns some creature from any graveyard to the battlefield under your control? That way you can still get the creature you killed before, but it's more than just Enslave but harder to deal with.
[b]Shadowheart Needle Spray[/b]: Once again, this doesn't do anything specially Shadowheart. It's also weak. Bump in the Night deals 3 damage and can come back. This deals 1 and is weak even in multiplayer against like 20 people. You could gain life equal to the life lost this way, which is nice and black as well. I don't know if that's Seth or not, but, the way you've done it, Seth's Shadowheart abilities seem to just use basic colour-related abilities.
Black's meh. A bit of graveyard shenanigans and discard; could be interesting.
[b]Battle Shaman[/b]: At first I thought "holy crap, OP!" but then I realised its basic Pride ability wouldn't get it the super-awesome ability. That is a minor problem though; on cards like this where it doesn't have a 'default' +1/+1 counter ability, it could get confusing; some people (like me lololol) might not notice that this ability doesn't activated until I get an extra +1/+1 counter on her. It could lead to a bit of confusion; just thought I'd point it out.
[b]Cantata of Fury[/b]: Decent, fun-ish. Nice name.
[b]Carol of Annihilation[/b]: Yeah, not sure "Carol" is the right song type for annihilation. One-sided Manabarbs might be a little bit cheap. 2RRR? Ergh, ugly cost. IDK.
[b]Chords of Flame[/b]: Could swap names with the card about. "Chords of Annihilation"? "Carol of Flame"? Yes! My opinion of course, but that sounds ten times cooler. Mechanically, this guy stops X/2s and below; a ridiculously powerful removal spell like that ought to be a rare or at least uncommon. On the other hand, Cantata could be a common.
[b]Flarebreaker Draogn[/b]: Cool dragon. First strike might be a bit OTT though...
[b]Shadowheart Lightning[/b]: Another kinda not-really-special Shadowheart spell. :|
Red's just red. Lotta board wiping.
[b]Village Scout[/b]: Here we go, I can now shout OP!!!!!!!!!! You were doing so well with the other ones and this one is just way too powerful. It's a 3 to cast 4/4 with trample. Needs to be at least 4 to cast, maybe even 5. Maybe it could be a single +1/+1 counter for both Pride and the +1/+1 counter check? That way it's a 3 to cast 2/2 or a 3 to cast 3/3 trampler? 1GG, probably, too.
Green's meh so far. A bit OP though lol. 100% of the cards are OP!
[b]Absorbtion Blast[/b]: Was "Absorption" the word you were looking for? It's a decent counterspell. The art doesn't really... fit though.
[b]Coastal Guardian[/b]: Powerful, pushing the limit, but it's probably just okay. As a guardian, maybe Defender? If you do, you can easily lower the CMC by 1.
[b]Merchant's Truce[/b]: I like this card and its flavour. There's a kinda truce until someone just rambos and you realise "oh crap". The way it works, it also doesn't shut down creature-decks completely. They just have to wait a bit and mass an attack.
W/U; defensive and controlly. That's fine.
[b]Alsorb's Psychic[/b]: Should say "Target player puts X cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the number of counters removed this way", unless you intend it to work with other counter-removing abilities. Seems unnecessarily complex, though. A slight underpowered (especially the mill ability, you're seriously overestimating how much that's worth), could probably cost 2UB, or even 1UB.
[b]Devour the Masses[/b]: Underpowered, actually. Doom Blade and Unsummon combined might be more utility, but it should probably be 4 CMC at sorcery. Flavour text is sweet, although it sounds kinda familiar.
[b]Memory Syphon[/b]: This card would be underpowered if it weren't for the fact it caused hand discard. Could be "Whenever a player casts a spell" just so it encourages the player of the enchantment to go all-out in order to mill their opponent. Ten spells is a long time, after all.
[b]Torrie's Winter[/b]: Mesmeric Orb in a sorcery. Fine, could be cheaper even.
I love mill. Once again though, you're overestimating it. Glimpse the Unthinkable was a two mana mill ten and it didn't break a mill deck in any format. Tome Scour is 1 for 5 and it's considered absolutely terrible.
[b]Christy's Wrath[/b]: Once again fine, works with a -1/-1 counter theme.
[b]Duskfire Assassion[/b]: Like Nekrataal but with Terminate rather than Terror. Reasonable, could be slightly tougher. 2/1?
[b]Fallen Syn[/b]: Hot-dang, that's powerful! Killing all X/2s! Then again, it's not a may, so it's a double-edged sword (good idea, btw) and that's fine, considering it kills your dudes and basically stops your own creature output. It's pretty good.
[b]Meteor Impact[/b]: Generally, mass land-destruction is pretty unfun. However, at 8 really intensive mana, I think it can be okay.
[b]Sacrificial Infringe[/b]: Name doesn't make sense, because Infringe isn't a noun, so you can't describe it using 'sacrificial', which is an adjective... FT is a bit grammar-off too. The card itself is a bit weak; compare it to Fling, where most creatures have similar power to their CMC. It should be a lot cheaper; at most 1BR, easily BR.
[b]Sarah Demerest[/b]: Wording problem; should be something like "Whenever Sarah Demerest deals combat damage to a player, that player loses life equal to the number of exiled creature cards" or something. Also, probably should use the Baron Sengir wording with "this turn"; it's hard to remember damage across turns. Usually that won't matter because most creatures won't survive a 6/6, but it can have an effect. Besides that, decent ability, nice self-synergy.
Black/Red seems to just be chaotic and destructive. Fine by me.
[b]Predatory Frenzy[/b]: The "assigns combat damage as if it weren't blocked" is kinda clunky, but does what you want. Alternatively, you could pull an unblockable and go "Creatures can't block that creature until end of turn" (which is a red ability, surprisingly)
[b]Strength from Savagery[/b]: I think the second ability should be "creatures with three or more +1/+1 counters on them", because "as long as" is usually used for stuff which refer to general criteria, not individual. It's a good card and really strengthens the +1/+1 counter theme.
[b]Warrior Outcasts[/b]: This card is perfectly powered and shows just what a card with Pride does. Good job. I have no idea how you could've made this, then made that ridiculous Village Scout in mono-green. My only complaint is it's a bit wordy for a common, so you could even make it just have the basic single counter ability and make it slightly stronger base (2/1?)
Whoo, heavy +1/+1 counter theme (wow, these sound reeaallly similar to the guilds of Ravnica, just saying. WU control, UB mill, BR chaos, RG power...
[b]Nature's Protection[/b]: It could be cheaper, actually. For more "protection", maybe regenerating it and then putting the +1/+1 counter on it?
[b]Silverleaf Paladin[/b]: Powerful, splashing, nice. I think just one of the types (creature OR land) on that card would be fine, not both.
[b]Will of Nature[/b]: Really really powerful. Scapeshift does something similar and it gets rid of as many lands as it finds. This effectively doubles your land total and thins your deck a bunch, something which a 5 to cast spell shouldn't do. Explosive Vegetation only gets 2 basics. This needs to be at least 7 or 8 to cast.
GW - natural. Seems okey-dokey.
[b]Marissa Hailey[/b]: Likey. Once again, Baron Sengir wording (replacing the counters with untap, of course)
[b]Marissa's Static[/b]: Hm! The first of the Do X and Choose cards. Modal +! That's pretty cool. I reckon the first ability (the tapping) shouldn't have the target; you should be able to target your stuff with shroud. Now, uh... it's too complicated. The entirety of the first ability requires two targets; one to hit and one to untap. You could just leave it at the dealing damage to creature and... urgh, it's a lot of stuff. When the text is that small, you might just want to check whether you're going over the top or not... Also draw three cards is reeeaaaally powerful.
UR is kinda damagy and drawy. Izzzzzzet?
[b]Emily Rikero[/b]: The ETB ability is pretty huge, and her ability is sweet as well. She could well do with an increase in CMC and a decrease in power/toughness. Well, at least toughness.
[b]Emily's Glow[/b]: That's some glow there. Uh, that's pretty powerful though. If you happen to have a lot of creatures, you'll draw a lot of cards. It's a combination of Titania's Boon and drawing cards pretty much equal to the number of creatures you control. It's powerful. Maybe you could put +1/+1 counters on up to X targets, where X is the CMC of the card you revealed? Fits with the CMC theme.
Yeah, +1/+1 counters and creatures. Huh, Simicy.
[b]Christy Helena[/b]: The abilities are fine for her intensive cost, but I'm going to sit here complaining about her red again. Yes, her flavour's red, but you're not showing that to us. Flavour is important, of course, but haven't you ever heard of "show, don't tell"? What you're doing here is telling us she's angry and red. Story this, story that. You're supposed to represent a card's flavour through its abilities; it's okay if the abilities stretch the pie a bit (see Form of the Dragon which sets life totals, not red), but it's not okay if the abilities don't exist. If she's red in character, she has to be shown on the card. The cards need to tell the story, not the guidebook. If someone buys a box of this and cracks a Christy, they'll wonder "why can't I play this in my Selenia deck?" when her abilities are all black and white. You can't stick a piece of paper under each Christy saying "she's red because flavour". Also, the second ability's not red, so, no matter how much you argue that her card's red, that ability isn't. It's not.
[b]Seth Dracovitch[/b]: Really encompasses his Shadowheart skills, fine card. Bit powerful, though. Could lower P/T a bit.
[b]Seth's Last Resort[/b]: "Target player loses life equal to your life total" is way too powerful at any mana cost. This card basically means if you have more life than your opponent, they lose. Not only does it do that ridiculous thing, but it's also a one-sided Wrath of God and a Beacon of Immortality It's just too powerful.
[b]Shadowheart Blast[/b]: It's, er, alright. [c]Baron Sengir[/b]
[b]Shadowheart Blaze[/b]: This is not as alright. It's really weak unless you run a tonne of Shadowhearts. Maybe "Deals damage equal to twice the number of cards revealed this way"?
[b]Shadowheart Delusions[/b]: Fine, fine, although I don't know why the G/U person's on the flavour text of a WBR card... doesn't really make sense, even though I guess they're on a team.
[b]Shadowheart Soulbreak[/b]: Man these names are corny and sound like Yu-gi-oh cards, seriously. It's too much of a downside for a card that costs 4. You might as well just have "exile target creature" for that mana cost and intensity.
[b]Torrie Jagger[/b]: Shroud's been replaced, just sayin'. Just Hexproof now. Torrie's alright. Nothing special, but it does fit the knifey knifey of her character.
[b]Glacial Lake, Flowing Bog, Molten Mire, Rock-Lit Valley, Woodland Village[/b]: I love these lands. They're a pretty small downside, especially if you're playing them in a deck of those two colours, but that doesn't matter. Some of the coolest tap-except lands I've seen in a while. I love their names too... except Rock-Lit Valley. how the heck does a rock light stuff up?
[b]Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest[/b]: I like these arts, but Island is OP. Why are you reprinting such a broken card?
Phew, that's it. Done.
Okay, a comment on something general: Shadowheart. It doesn't do much. It does relate them to Seth and lets some cards interact with them, but besides that... they have no link besides the name and type. I mean, Traps had alternate costs, like "If you do the wrong thing, I UNVEIL MY TRAP CARD!!!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!" kinda flavour. Curses enchant players which is pretty obvious. These guys... have no link. I mean, maybe you could make it so they all relate to a number? Like... Gain 5 life, Each player loses 5 life, Deal 5 damage to target creature or player, Destroy 5 target lands, etc. So they have this link. Or maybe playing with exile. Or something! Just... link them in a more obvious way. You're satisfying Vorthos somewhat, but leaving Melvin going "WTF DOES THIS EXIST" isn't a good idea.
Updated: Numerous card errors dealing with mana cost, grammar, etc, etc. More of these changes, including some name changes will occur over the next few days. Updated: Mental Mishap actually does what it should now since both times added it was not right.
Added: 1 new black card, 1 new blue card both Pride Focused. Added: Lots of new green cards. Added: The first rare artifact of the set.
Coming Soon: Going to be adding the important planes and their specific places to the first page under People, Places, & Things. Coming Soon: Adding a section for Shadowheart spells under People, Places, & Things.
Sorry for the wait, been having some computer issues as of late.
Thanks to everyone who's been helping with set correction, it makes life a lot easier.
Mental Mishap is still terrible. Make it worth the 2 mana cost. I mean, cards which let opponents choose are usually really powerful (eg. Browbeat is 3 for 5 damage or 3 for 5 cards) on either effect for their mana cost. At least mill 10, maybe even higher. Even if you make it U to cast, you'd still need to make it mill like 7.
Also, is it not possible for you to be a bit more specific when you explain what you changed? Y'know, card names or stuff?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're having creature problems I feel bad for you son
You got 99 attackers but I'm blocking with 1.
The Winner is Judge | 7
This Winner is Also Judge | 6
Club Flamingo | Lots
UPDATES Added: Several white cards. Completed uncommons, rares, and mythics for white. 6/15 commons for white complete. Tomorrow White will be finished, current errors will be fixed, and blue will be started.
Mental Mishap is still terrible. Make it worth the 2 mana cost. I mean, cards which let opponents choose are usually really powerful (eg. Browbeat is 3 for 5 damage or 3 for 5 cards) on either effect for their mana cost. At least mill 10, maybe even higher. Even if you make it U to cast, you'd still need to make it mill like 7.
Also, is it not possible for you to be a bit more specific when you explain what you changed? Y'know, card names or stuff?
It's just a filler counterspell. Limited, jank, stupid, whatever you want to call it.
And I usually only elaborate of error fixes if they're something that has been repeatedly looked past, or fundamentally changes a card (name, entire ability rework, etc, etc). Anything 'numerous' is just minor stuff that I either messed up, overlooked, or of course, wording fixes. Really nothing that changes how the card works. If you're really concerned about a certain card, you can either go find it in the spoiler to see if it has been dealt with, or wait and see if it gets a mention in an update. Most of the major updates (name changes, additional info) aren't happening tonight, and maybe not even tomorrow, but it will be soon.
ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTED WORDING IN ITALICS
WORDING FIXES/NITPICKS IN BOLD
Resonance: I really dislike the "same name loophole" you've added here. A lot of the Songs (the red ones especially) become really abusive in multiples, and it encourages people not to play decks with many different Songs if they can ignore the drawback by only playing one.
Pride: Generally reminder text doesn't include the name of the card. Just say If this is the first spell you've cast this turn, it's shorter.
The implementation of this mechanic is problematic because of how all-upside it is - the card gets the p/t bonus and its abilities only turn on when it has that bonus. A lot of your cards (Arrogant Duelist, Blademaster Trainer) are complete garbage when you don't have pride turned on. Bloodthirst in M12 was a good mechanic with interesting choices because, in general, non-bloodthirsted guys were good enough that you would consider playing them, but bloodthirsted guys were good enough that you were willing to work for them. Pride in this set doesn't have this tension because one mode is so obviously better than the other one, so it limits the number of meaningful choices you can make. (Also, casting one spell a turn is not hard, and there's nothing like the werewolf mechanic that would incentivize you to play two or more spells a turn anyway.)
Also, where is blue's major mechanic? Green has one, black has two, and red and white both have three each.
Angelic Appearance: Put an X/X white Angel creature token onto the battlefield.
Angel is a subtype, and subtypes are always capitalized. Remember that tokens need a type! The flavor text confuses me. Why would "few require" protection to survive? Is this a plane full of Highlanders?
Angelic Intervention: Why does this only protect you and not your creatures?
Archangel of Annulment: choose upkeep step, draw step, main phase, or combat phase.
The vast, vast majority of the time, you are going to choose draw step.
Ascending Greatness: Whenever a +1/+1 counter is placed on a creature you control, gain 1 life.
Players can't put counters on creatures. See Flourishing Defenses.
Ballad of Determination: This should be either common or cheaper.
Blademaster Trainer: I like the progression up through the ranks from Adventurous Soldier to this guy, but his ability is sadly redundant with Arrogant Duelist's.
Cleanse the Wound: damage prevented this way.
No "in" is used. Test of Faith.
Desert Turmoil: Tap target creature. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. As long as it remains tapped, if it would be put into a graveyard from the battlefield, exile it instead.
First sentence is a run-on. I think the wording of Amber Prison works here. Remember, there's no such thing as "the graveyard."
Dominating Presence: Why doesn't this give a p/t bonus? Considering it's a rare aura, it's probably fine, since it can range from really meh on a blocker to just killing you out of nowhere.
Hired Muscle: sacrifice it unless you shuffle a Plains you control into your library.
Plains is a subtype, and subtypes are always capitalized. The flavor is confusing me a little. I've already paid mana to hire these guys, why are they blowing up my lands?
Honor in Victory: It's pretty generic, but I have no problem with the effect.
Light of Salvation: At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control a white creature, you may gain 2 life.
Intervening if clauses are always set off by commas.
Lullaby of Faults: unless their controller pays 2 for each of those creatures. Norn's Annex.
Priest of White Gate: As long as Priest of White Gate has a +1/+1 counter on it, it has "T: Prevent the next 1 damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this turn."
We finally have a place-name reference, even if no flavor text!
Reality Transition: Exile each creature you control. At the beginning of the end step, return each of those cards to the battlefield under its owner's control with a +1/+1 counter on it. "Where I come from, the phrase you're looking for is..."
Slimmed down the wording like Otherworldly Journey and corrected some typos.
Stand Off: Creatures target player controls can't attack this turn.
A couple minor typos. I find it amusing that the artwork for a card called "Stand Off" features two people sitting.
Vigilant Knight-Commander: Why is this card neither a Knight nor naturally possessed of vigilance?
Fortune Witch: As long as Fortune Witch has a +1/+1 counter on it...
Let's be consistent here.
Mental Mishap: The mill really ought to be in addition to the counter. Cancel+ is a fine filler card. This card is worse than a basic land.
Spatial Mix Up: This is another fine filler card.
Hymn of Discord: This card is narrow enough that it and Harmony of Suffering could probably have their rarities switched.
Requiem of Undeath: You may cast creature cards from your graveyard.
"From" is now standard for effects that move cards out of the 'yard.
Sarah's Gaze: (This effect lasts indefinitely.)
This card has a small typo.
Withermage Adept: 3/3 deathtouch in black is really stretching it for common.
Chords of Flame: Pyroclasm is not common. Infinity one-sided Pyroclasm is definitely not common.
Flarebreaker Dragon: The flavor text is missing the last quotation mark.
Card is really generic, like someone took a composite of "dragony-feeling" abilities from Magic's history and mashed them together. There's nothing about this card that says "Shadowheart Block" to me.
Ravenous Dragon: double strike as long as it's attacking.
Some typos.
Shadowheart Lightning: Missing a punctuation mark at the end of the flavor text.
Ambush of Foliage: Until end of turn, target Forest you control becomes a 3/3 green Elemental creature that's still a land.
P/T before color. Always capitalize subtypes. "that's" is a wording that works (Animate Land) and it's shorter.
Animalistic Bonds: For each creature you control, search your library for a creature card that shares a creature type with it. Put those cards onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.
"The same type" means nothing in Magic, since objects can have multiple types. Objects in libraries are always "cards." Rest of wording borrowed from Doubling Chant. Doubling Chant is a pretty crappy card, so a green-intensive upgrade is probably fine.
Druid of Silverleaf: Why is "Silver Leaf" two words in the flavor text? And who or what is Relic?
Fungal Armor: At the beginning of your end step, remove all -1/-1 counters from enchanted creature and put that many +1/+1 counters on it.
This does basically the same thing without needing SBA checks.
Gifts of Silverleaf: What's this? A fixed Exploration? Works for me!
Guarded Territory: When Guarded Territory enters the battlefield, put a protector counter on a creature you control.
Whenever a creature you control with a protector counter on it attacks or blocks, untap enchanted land.
This would be an awesome implementation of the "enchant two or more" mechanic I see floating around from time to time. Alas. You don't need to use "choose"; that's just wasting words. It makes no sense for your opponent's protectors to be able to untap your protected lands. An alternative implementation would be to enchant the creature and put the counter on the land, so you don't have three different kinds of counters that can go on creatures.
Rise Up: Cast Rise Up only during an opponent's turn and only during combat before blockers are declared.
Until end of turn, two target lands you control become 3/5 Elemental creatures that are still lands.
No player can cast spells during the process of declaring attackers. See Melee for the correct wording. Subtypes are always capitalized. Don't forget the "creature" card type! Why does this land animation spell make colorless 3/5s when the other one makes green 3/3s?
Village Scout: It's worse than Festerhide Boar in both its "on" and "off" modes, but it's a bit easier to turn on. Again, this is an issue with your pride cards in general.
Will of the Jungle: Why is this card so much worse than Grim Discovery?
Absorption Blast: If an artifact or enchantment spell is countered this way, gain 2 life.
Objects on the stack are spells. MTG excludes the "in" before "this way" - Dissipate. Considering Countersquall, I think this card is fine if the life gain happens no matter what.
Alsorb's Psychic: This card tries to do two things and does both of them poorly. If Alsorb is monoblack, why are his minions part-blue?
Devour the Masses: Return target creature to its owner's hand;
Small typo. I agree with Ninja Caterpie that this could probably cost 4 and be fine.
Meh, I'm tired and I've probably bored you enough with all my edits. I'll be back for Memory Syphon and the rest later.
UPDATES
Updated: Several numerous grammatical errors, some minor rarity fixes, and a couple of mana cost fixes. Updated: Mental Mishap now counters and mills as opposed to one or the other.
Meh, I'm tired and I've probably bored you enough with all my edits. I'll be back for Memory Syphon and the rest later.
No actually, it's far from boring. I'm glad you're so have so much attention to detail when it comes to these things. We may not see eye-to-eye on everything flavor-wise, but otherwise you're right on almost everything, and you know more then enough about the cards to know how they should be worded to make them sound right. I really do appreciate your help.
Resonance: I really dislike the "same name loophole" you've added here. A lot of the Songs (the red ones especially) become really abusive in multiples, and it encourages people not to play decks with many different Songs if they can ignore the drawback by only playing one.
The biggest reason was to get more use out of them, so if you run multiples you don't have to sit there with a hand full of the same card that is just essentially dead unless they destroy the current song.Though yes, the red pones do get a bit degenerate if you get multiples out.
The implementation of this mechanic is problematic because of how all-upside it is - the card gets the p/t bonus and its abilities only turn on when it has that bonus. A lot of your cards (Arrogant Duelist, Blademaster Trainer) are complete garbage when you don't have pride turned on. Bloodthirst in M12 was a good mechanic with interesting choices because, in general, non-bloodthirsted guys were good enough that you would consider playing them, but bloodthirsted guys were good enough that you were willing to work for them. Pride in this set doesn't have this tension because one mode is so obviously better than the other one, so it limits the number of meaningful choices you can make. (Also, casting one spell a turn is not hard, and there's nothing like the werewolf mechanic that would incentivize you to play two or more spells a turn anyway.)
As I said before, the original mechanic that I made a long time ago was putting the counters on them when they dealt damage to a player. But ISD did that with vampires. I really didn't just wanna rehash that at the same time as ISD. I still wanted it to deal with +1/+1 counters and bonuses with a mechanic that hadn't been done. Bloodthirst didn't make sense in white or blue so that was out of the question. Eventually I just settled on something simple that would go off most of the time. Plus I decided to give the block a minor +1/+1 counter theme in white, green, and red to make getting counters and counter bonus' more effective.
Also, where is blue's major mechanic? Green has one, black has two, and red and white both have three each.
Blue, black, and green are all going to have very specific themes within the block. Green is creatures and land (hence all the land creatures and creature/land specific cards). Black very life focused with vampires. Blue is very focused on instances, sorceries and card draw. Almost all the blue cards will reference one or more of the above.
Obviously in all three colors there will be a few cards here and there that don't have anything to do with the theme of the color, but that's to be expected, especially when working with both old and new cards.
Getting back to you on cards. Ill be brief since Im reviewing a lot of them. Heroes:
Seth: Fine. Need to see more Shadowheart cards to see true potential, but I don't think he'd ever be overpowered.
Sarah: Very weak for 8 mana, and her effect is unipressive even if you were exile cards before she hits play. Maybe make her cost 6? (5 might even be reasonable if you keep the 4 dedicated color cost and drop P/T to 5/5)
Torrie: Looks aggressive and powerful, but fair.
Christy: Underpowered with the heavy mana cost. Could probably make it 3WBR or even 4BW
Marissa: Would be a great non legendary uncommon. Right now, very weak.
Emily: The draw effect comes off as a tad strong especially since she'll always at least cantrip. Raise to 7?
Villains:
Alsorb: Cool Ult. The rest is "eh."
Fallen Syn: I'd drop her to cost 6.
White:
Adventurous Soldier: Fine
Angelic Appearance: Solid
Angelic Intervention: Fine, though weak.
Archangel of Annulment: Scary. In a good way.
Arrogant Duelist: Seems weak without many cards to add counters outside of its own pride effects. The card will be good when you add more support I assume.
Ascended Greatness: Could get away with it costing 2 I think.
Ballad of Determination: Probably should cost 3 actually. or at least double white.
Blademaster Trainer: Scary, but possibly fair.
Cleanse the Wound: Good limited trick.
Desert Turmoil: Might be an ok limited card. Still could probably cost 3.
Dominating Presence: Nice!
Hired Muscle: I don't get how the flavor fits into shuffling a land.
Honor in Victory: Nice!
Kale's Lyrics: Fine
Light of Salvation: Good
Lullaby of Faults: About on curve. A little weaker then comparables, but not enough to warrant a change.
Motet of Power: VERY strong. Perhaps too much. Im iffy on this one.
Priest of White Gate: Weak, but acceptably so.
Reality Transition: Favorite card so far.
Shadowheart Restoration: Weak and dull. What makes Shadowheart Special?
Stand Off: Nice! Might be able to get away with it costing 2.
Tactical Mishap: Seems slightly too good at 4. Id put it at 5 because even snagging two creatures would be worth it still. Also the untargetablity is huge.
Vigilant Knight-Commander: Fine, if not aggressive.
Blue:
Fortune Witch: Weak. Overly so. Make her cost 2.
Mental Mishap: Better then cancel most of the time, but so marginally so It doesn't bother me.
Spatial Mix Up: I like it a lot! It's not particularly powerful, but it's a neat idea/combination of abilities.
Black
Harmony of Suffering: Weak. Even as a common Id see this costing 3.
Hymn of Discord: Nice hoser.
Requiem of Undeath: Best song so far!
Sarah's Gaze: Would probably be better templated as as "creature an opponent controls"
Shadowheart Needle Spray: Very weak. Could see it as 2 life loss.
Withermage Adept: Solid, though it doesn't feel like a mage...
Red:
Battle Shaman: I wouldn't consider playing her unless she costed 3, and even then she'd lose out to other cards because of the effort to get her effect to work and trigger. But she still should cost 3.
Cantata of Fury: Solid
Carol of Annihilation: Nice!
Chords of Flame: Very strong, but possibly fair.
Flarebreaker Dragon: Something nags me that this combination of abilities is too strong even for 7. I almost want to see a toughness drop...or some balancing factor. I cant put my finger on it...
Ravenous Dragon: Again, still feels just a tad strong... but at the same time... this one is iffy too.
Shadowheart Lightning: A better shock, if barely. It's ok I guess
---------------
Ill get to the rest later. When I rap it up, I plan to give you some more overall impressions/feedback. Have fun in the meantime.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Rise of Shadowheart
Introduction
Hello, and welcome to my ultimate custom Magic the Gathering block known as the Shadowheart Block. This first set is known as Rise of Shadowheart. This block is a combination of everything and everyone in my personal fantasy realm shoved all into one storyline. There are thankfully some similarities within that realm to make it easier to transition over to an actual Magic set. Such as Ascendants & PW's, and both share an idea of "the Multiverse."
I highly suggest you read the F.A.Q. at the bottom of this post, as it will answer quite a few of your questions.
Art Disclaimer
All arts used in the renders of this set come from deviantART. As such all artist credits either have the artist's name, or their dA Account Name. The only exceptions to this are the arts done by me... and since I have a dA and a name, I suppose I get knocked in with the rest. If you cannot find an artist, or a dA account, please let me know, as this means that the artist is either wrong on the card, or they've moved on and I need to find their new credit. If you see any arts with the artist credits as "Unknown," please notify me as I am trying to find replacements for such mishaps. I do not own or claim to own ANY art that does not have my name on it. If you see an image of yours and would like to have it taken down, please notify me and I will remove it.
Major MTG Changes
So let's get a few things out of the way, shall we? What this set is doing is taking a very heavy fantasy theme and adapting it to Magic the Gathering. I stress that it is not as easy as it sounds if you want to stay true to both MTG and the other setting. This means that the set is going to function a bit differently then a real set. You might notice some mildly out of color cards, or perhaps some abilities that don't fit the color scheme at all. While these are not rampant or overwhelming, they do occur. There are mechanics and themes that are flushed out way more then a normal magic set, and yes, there are cards that are strictly better/worse then other real cards. And of course, flavor is an incredibly important factor in every card made. All these things are simply how I'm designing the set. While I am keeping to the structure of how a MTG Card and MTG Set work, I am not keeping to the rigid 110% structure that some people prefer. I'm sorry if this upsets you or bothers you, but it's just how it will function. I'm not trying to follow in the footsteps of the WOTC team, nor am I trying to make this set as "authentic" as possible. What I'm doing is envisioning my world as a MTG set the best I can. Thank you for understanding.
Our story starts out on the plane of Terra, the universal home to Earth (Yes, the one we live in now). Terra is a plane unlike any other, as it was forced out of alignment with the mana lines of the Multiverse long ago. You see, Terra used to be the plane at the center of the Multiverse, meaning that all the Void's mana lines flowed through it, and at the same time, kept the rest of the Multiverse in a perfect balance. But through very ancient magic, Terra was forced out of it's center hold and in a very odd sense, forced under the center of the Multiverse. When this occurred, five Dragon Demigods used their powers to create a new plane to hold the Multiverse together while they attempted to figure out how to retrieve Terra from it's odd no-space. This plane was known as Evangelia.
Fast forward several thousand years. The year is 2010 on the Terra planet of Earth and a man named Seth has just moved into a new house in a new state, far away from his dark and sorrowful past. Just as he has settled into this new life, there comes a strange knock at the door and to his surprise it is an old friend. One who has been dead for several years. Even more strange is that she is no longer human, but a wolf on two legs, known as a Lupine. Before the two can get properly acquainted, they are ambushed by a pale skinned man in black robes who throws them into the Void and they arrive safely on Evangelia, where they encounter several other of their old and should-be-dead friends.
Through some strange twist of magic, Earth is realigning with the Multiverse, and Seth's closest friends as have returned from the dead with strange new powers. He too has developed an almost sentient power of his own, and he calls it Shadowheart, following his personal philosophy.
Now Seth and his crew, known as the EvaSouls must learn the history of their home plane, learn why they are all alive, and learn who is behind it all. But the task is always harder as the group struggles to control their own ever growing powers.
The Block
Rise of Shadowheart
Shadowheart Ascendancy
Bonds of Shadowheart
The Story
Novel Page
Set Design
Total Numbers (not including Multicolor)
:symw:: 32/32
:symu:: 32/32
:symb:: 32/32
:symr:: 32/32
:symg:: 32/32
:xmana:: 2/2
:snow:: 10/10
Broken Down By Color (not including Multicolor)
WHITE
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
BLUE
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
BLACK
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 15/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
RED
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
GREEN
Commons: 15/15
Uncommon: 10/10
Rare: 5/5
Mythic: 2/2
ARTIFACT
Rare: 2/2
LAND
Rare: 5/5
Basic: 5/5
Set Themes
WBR: White, Black, and red is a MAJOR theme of the set and block as a whole. There are two mechanics to show this off, as well as a number of white, black, and red characters. This theme will expand in varying ways in the next two sets.
WRG: White, Red, and Green have a minor +1/+1 counters theme to work with Pride, the mechanic in their colors.
WWhite: White's theme is combat. White also has Shadowheart, Songs, Pride as set mechanics.
UBlue: Blue's major themes are drawing cards and instants & sorceries. Blue has a a few minor Pride cards. Because blue has the least amount of set mechanics, it has been reinforced 10 fold with it's themes, thus blue in this block is rather narrow.
BBlack: Black's main themes are vampires and paying life for things. Black also has Shadowheart, Songs, and the occasional Pride card.
RRed: Red's themes are player punishment and odd ball damage spells. Red also has Shadowheart, Songs, and Pride.
GGreen: Green's themes are creatures and land. Green also has Pride as a mechanic. There are also a minor theme of drakes in green.
Set Mechanics
WBR: White, Black, and red is a MAJOR theme of the set and block as a whole. There are two mechanics to show this off, as well as a number of red. black, and white characters.
Shadowheart Spells: This is a special subtype given to instants and sorceries. Each card will have the word "Shadowheart" as the first word in the card's name. All Shadowheart spells can be any color combination of red, black, and white.
Songs: Another new subtype for enchantments only. Songs are red, black, and/or white enchantments that grant abilities based on rarity and color. Songs have a new mechanic that is specific to them known as Resonance. Songs are White, black and red due to the only known song mage being aligned in these colors.
Resonance (You can only sing one song at a time. Whenever another Song card with a different name enters the battlefield under your control, return CARDNAME to its owner’s hand.)
Pride: Pride is a mechanic for white, red, and/or green creatures. Pride will also show up very sparing in black and blue. A creature with pride enters the battlefield with a specific number of +1/+1 counters on it if it was the first spell cast this turn. All Pride cards have an ability such as "as long as CARDNAME has a +1/+1 counter on it is, it has EFFECT." However some will have a second instance of the above indicating a number of counters higher then the Pride cost. This can easily be achieved by the minor +1/+1 counter theme the three colors have to make pride easier to achieve. Fun fact, this mechanic was one of my old mechanics redone. Originally the creature got the +1/+1 counters when hitting an opponent. Why does that sound so familiar? BECAUSE WOTC DID THAT WITH VAMPIRES IN INNISTRAD. So I changed it... nice to see my ideas come to life though.
Pride <NUMBER> (If CARDNAME is the first spell you’ve cast this turn, it enters the battlefield with <NUMBER> +1/+1 counter(s) on it.)
F.A.Q.
Got questions? I'll answer them! No matter how broad or specific, I answer all who ask, and some of them even make it into the F.A.Q. section below.
Note: All new Q/A's are added to the top, not bottom.
Q: Why do Shadowheart cards do things that are totally out of color?
A: Because Shadowheart cards represent a different type of spell casting that couldn't be done elegantly in MTG. So I gave it a super type and a color restriction. Considering Shadowheart spells can literally do anything once they're formed, it is easy to get them off color. Obviously I'm not going to have Shadowheart cards do everything in every way, but if it's got the Supertype "Shadowheart" it, you can expect the occasional "wacky" ability.
Q: Why do the three color cards have multicolored borders? I thought those were just plain gold?
A: In normal MTG they are. I often wondered why they weren't colored and took it upon myself to change that for my own cards. In general, it is more visually appealing.
Q: What's with not showing the multicolor cards in the Set Design?
A: It will not be added until ALL of the multicolor cards are posted up. This is because I have a major fetish for multicolor cards and I cannot stand restricting myself to a set number with them. However I do stick to a pattern when it gets down to the "generic" multicolor cards that are not important to the storyline. This WILL make the set numbers seem a little odd, but oh well.
Q: What's with some of the modern and technologically advanced looking cards?
A: Because a major portion of this block DOES HAPPEN ON EARTH IN THE YEAR 2010. Therefore you will see oddities that you would not see in normal magic, Like soldiers with guns, or a dragon fighting a fighter jet. There aren't very many of those style cards mind you, but they are here and they are staying.
Q: I'm noticing cards that are in your other custom sets, some seem tweaked, but others are just the same as before. Why is this exactly?
A: Like I said before, I'm literally combing ALL of my stories and characters into one line for this set. So you will see a lot of old themes and mechanics come back, as well as some twists with them.
Q: Why does some of the art not fit the card that well?
A: I am VERY picky about art, I like to have art that matches almost perfectly, but sometimes after hours of searching, I just couldn't find anything. So I took the next best thing and stuck with it.
Q: Why is it that some of the legends seem off color.
A: Some may seem off color simply because their personalities fit the colors better then their ability. There really is no debating this, as the character colors are finalized and won't be changed. Sorry if this bugs you.
Q: Why do some of the ally color pairs have more cards in them then others?
A: This is largely due to the fact I set the legends "personal spells" in the same slot as the normal multicolor cards. But as you'll notice, the character spells are very specific while the others are not. I did consider moving the character spells to another set in the block, but I have already planned out the other sets character cards so I decided it wasn't a big deal and left them in.
Seth is a man of honor and passion from the Planet Earth on the plane of Terra. Everything he does is 110% or nothing at all. From a dark past he watched several of his closest friends and his daughter die in a vicious attack on his home. Being the only survivor he moved far away to a place he never thought he'd see, but thanks to Alsorb's plans he has been thrust out of his home and onto Evangelia.
Seth's nature and way of life cause people to trust and respect him easily. he knows what tactic will work at what time in many situations from armed combat to simple conversations.
Upon his arrival to Evangelia, Seth learns that he has a very special and potent magic within him, and it is almost sentient in its power. With a name and enough thought, Seth learns he can literally craft spells from this hidden power, and does so to create Shadowheart Spells, mana that uses part of his own soul as fuel to increase their effectiveness.
Seth also has a natural affinity for dragons of all things, being able to communicate and understand the beasts with ease.
Sarah Demerest was Seth's best friend in her old life, and his sworn second in her new life. Her cynicism and negative outlook on the world gives her a unique ability to spot the lies that people tell, as well a cold emotionless killing instinct.
Her death was after several shots to her chest, though she is credited with killing two people before finally falling.
Her prowess with weapons of all kinds is unmatched, a master in various fighting styles as well as incredible marksman ship and swordsman ship. In her new life she's found she has a very powerful knack for Death Magic, making almost any assault against her a fatal one. This combined with her quick route to end everything with violence makes her even more dangerous
Sarah's loyalties lie with Seth and Seth alone. While she is friendly and good natured person to her fellow EvaSouls, she takes orders from no one other then Seth and would die for him if asked. This devotion has made her an almost perfect body guard.
Torrie was Seth's first childhood friend. A lover of cold things and knives, She lost her eye in a knife fight shortly before the raid on Seth's house that killed her. When she was returned to the world of the living her missing eye remained gone and she has a taken to storing mana behind her eye patch.
In her new body and power, she embodies everything that is cold. Able to make it snow in localized area, and create ice from the moisture in her skin. She often raises a defensive fog that only she can see through to distort her enemies before slicing them to bits with various ice based spells.
Ever since the loss of her eye, Torrie has shied away from using knives and does not like close combat.
Torrie was also Sarah's lover at one point and as such the two get along more so then Sarah does with the others.
Christy was the group's "mother," and sees Seth as her son. She's very quick on her feet and thinks every little thing through before acting. Before her death she was a doctor, and as such is the groups primarily medical specialist.
Christy also had a fetish for cutting herself, her entire body being a network of scars. In her new life she's found a way use this to her advantage as a Blood Mage, a special wizard who uses their blood to fuel spells of both offensive and defensive types.
While generally a nice person, she is quick to anger when Seth or one of the EvaSouls are threatened or hurt. As such she is right next to Sarah when tossing threats back and forth with the enemy.
Marissa was the last to join their earthly group when they were all still alive. A lover of thunderstorms and cooking, the girl is half Mexican and half Chinese. When she turned 18 she changed her name, not liking the split cultural name she was given at birth.
Rather witty, Marissa always has a smart ass comment in the face of danger, which she backs up with her incredible speed and agility. In her new life she's combined this speed with powerful energy magic, creating bolts of electricity from the smallest bits of energy in the air.
Marissa is also the youngest of the group by a year and constantly makes fun of herself for it.
Emily is the only one to not return to the world as a human, but as a Lupine, a bipedal wolf humanoid. She boasts an IQ of over 200 and is considered the most technologically advanced being in the Multiverse.
Emily is the only one of the group who came to life in a pocket dimension that her own psyche created. This allowed her to literally do anything, and with that knowledge she experimented on herself, melding metal and flesh. Now Emily is over 60% machine, armed to the teeth with various high tech weaponry and an array of different scanners, computers, and tech within herself. All her remaining organs are encased in a supposedly indestructible case within her, and her only real reason for wanting to keep these fleshy parts is to still realize that she is alive and to enjoy being such.
With her machines Emily has given the EvaSouls special nano bots that allow her to track everything within their body, which she can check on her portable laptop. In this way she is the group's eyes and ears when they are in trouble. Often not choosing to fight herself unless backed int a corner, she prefers to sit back and monitor the action from a distance, giving directions and advice to the others on how to beat an opponent and what to watch out for.
The Villains
Alsorb is a vampire Ascendant dating back thousands of years. At this point, no one other then Alsorb himself knows where he came from or how old he really is. What is known is that sometime in the last century, he discovered a secret that could turn the Multiverse on its head, and he wants to use it to remake reality in his image.
Like most vampires, Alsorb is arrogant and flashy. He often sends his minions to do his work for him, tending to conserve his energy for when he changes the whole of the Multiverse. For reasons known only to him, this requires a number of special individuals from Earth and various pocket dimensions.
A master spellcaster in all schools black magic, Alsorb is quick on in body and mind when in combat.
Fallen Syn, or Syn as she's known to many, is Sarah's twin sister. Driven mad in her early teens she blamed Sarah for everything bad that happened to their family and anything she could pin as her sister's fault. This eventually boiled over to a point where she attempted to literally kill Sarah. However this ended in failure as Sarah's combat prowess was leagues higher then her sister's crazed rampage.
Alive once again, Syn has allied herself with Alsorb after learning that he is after Sarah. What Alsorb doesn't know is that she does not intend to hand Sarah over to him, but to kill her, the EvaSouls, and Alsorb himself.
When Syn returned she became quite skilled in the manipulation of fire, even combining some black magic elements into her spells to make them more deadly. This however came at the cost of her body, her skin being charred black and flaming orange tattoos covering her body.
The Planes
Terra is a plane that exists outside the rest of the Multiverse and is home to the planet Earth. Originally Terra sat at the center of the Multiverse until an unknown ancient power thrust it from its place and struck it out. In its place, the plane known as Evangelia now sits. Terra now sits under the center of the Multiverse. Earth is a place dominated entirely by humans with no magic capabilities at all due to it being outside of the Multiverse. With no mana lines to flow through it, the plane cannot generated any kind of magic. Due to this however, the technology of the plane is much higher then that of most planes, relying on skill and hard work rather then spells and enchantments. Thanks to the once magical nature of the plane, many ancient tales tell of spells and mystical creatures that suddenly vanished one day. In reality, these creatures were displaced, unable to survive without the mana lines, and stuck in a "no space" between Terra and the rest of the Multiverse. As well, every human on the plane is capable of some form of magic, but again, due to the plane's lack of mana lines, none has been seen in hundreds of thousands of years.
Evangelia is the plane at the center of the Multiverse, which is also home to the five Origin Dragons, the first beings to become Ascendants and then become Demigods. The plane has many odd magical quirks between it's varying regions, with one large ocean sliding right into an immense desert centered by a massive mountain, with the Church of the White Dragon at it's peak. The Wyvern infested Silverleaf Forest takes many into her arms for those who long for nature, only to run jaggedly against the Dreadspire peaks. Up to the north lies the Spellsnare islands, a massive school coveted by some of the most powerful mages in the Multiverse. Down to the Forests of Darkheart lie some of the planes deadliest secrets that are guarded by vampires that make their homes in the rotted trees and bogs. In the center of the plane stretches the largest city in all the Multiverse, Evangelia city. On Evangelia, Ascendants are a normal thing, like rain or sun. Anyone on Evangelia could tell you a dozen stories of Ascendants and the Five Gods. Most interesting though is that Humans are the only bipedal sentient species on the plane other then the vampires.
On the Great Desert reside the humans of White Gate, a group who believes that the White Dragon of Origin is a god to be worshiped. They tend to deny the other four Dragons of origin and are very devout in their beliefs. They are quick to defend their home and their beliefs, with little care for the other areas of the plane. Unless one comes to seek the Path of White Gate, they heed everyone as an intruder that must be converted or killed.
The humans of Spellsnare are some of the most potent mages in the Multiverse. While secluded on an island in the middle of the northern seas, Spellsnare mages learn every school of magic from anywhere they can. You'll find those that throw fire, those that grow life, and those that end it. High magical energy surrounds the island, causing many gargantuan sea monsters to make home near it. Very methodical in their ways, they try to explain everything through their magic, believing that the Blue Dragon of Origin granted them the island of enchanted magical energy where they reside.
The Darkheart Forest is bleak and dying forest that survives through the corruption of the black mana line. The trees themselves are black with ash grey leaves that fall and regrow almost constantly. Aside from the stray adventurer, or crazed lunatic, the forest is inhabited solely by vampires who live in vast extensive villages in the trees. These vampires are the result of an old vampire Ascendant coming to Evangelia dn infecting the plane. Since then, the forest has been home to those bloodsuckers, and they follow no one since the death of their Ascendant leader. However as of late, many have been making bold moves under a new flag, claiming there is another Ascendant they can ally themselves with.
The Humans of Dreadspire are primitive and Shamanistic, but intelligent enough to understand high technology and other cultures. They often resort to violence and fire before any other humans on the plane and are very strict in their rituals and daily life activities. They love to summon elemental of fire and rage, and believe that the Red Dragon of Origin granted them the power to take what they desire. Despite all of this, the people of Dreadspire rarely attack the other nations of Evangelia, preferring to keep to themselves unless harassed.
In the forests the Silverleaf, tribes of almost elf like humans tame beasts and defend the forest with their lives. They are peaceful until provoked and have a very high affinity for nature magic and the creatures around them. Most do not like to stray from their forests and very, very few enjoy the hustle and bustle of advanced civilization. The forest is home to a unique breed of wyvern, a medium sized drake with a venomous tail. These wyverns hunt in packs and are highly intelligent, some even becoming the pets and mounts of Silverleaf humans.
Viirina is a plane that mirrors Earth in a very scary way. While the time flow between the two planes is different, both are roughly the same in technological advancements and world diversity. The two major differences that can be drawn are very clear. Viirina has no actual human beings, only bipedal humanoid creatures that resemble many of the creatures from Earth (Furries for those that go with social trends). The other is that Viirina has a mana line flowing through it, granting magic to the users. It's unknown how or why Viirina developed so similarly to Earth. The most interesting aspect of the plane is the industrial evolution the plane took with both aspects of technology and magic. This is due to the general open minded nature of the people and the mana lines. Viirina's mana lines flow in a reverse pattern through the plane, making spells harder to cast, but still viable. It is speculated that Viirina's population wanted to use the magic only when needed, allowing them to advance through the ages technologically, with minor magic influence. While not 100% in either direction, many of Viirina's technology uses bits of magic here and there. The people of Viirina know of Ascendants, but only is small pockets over the plane. Viirina's most prosperous country is dominated mostly by Lupines, or wolf-humanoids.
Pocket dimensions are small sub-planes that exist around Terra outside the Multiverse. The uniqueness of these dimensions varies from person to person, as they are created when someone dies. The soul and dormant magical energy of the person is transferred into a pocket dimension that warps itself exactly to their magical needs and recreates their body according to how it would form in the Multiverse. This creates several problems, the first being that many go completely insane due to the structural and mental change of being reborn in a "magically perfect" world that they themselves cannot even comprehend. However there are those that embrace the change, and forever live out their lives believing that they have made it to the afterlife. Then there are those that realize they are not where they should be. These very few learn to harness their magical capabilities within the pocket dimension and seek escape. Some even manage to attain this feat, leaving the plane and being thrown onto another, to sent back to Earth.
Shadowheart
Shadowheart originally was just a name given to a set of philosophies and an honor code for one man to live by, Seth Dracovitch. However when he was forcefully thrown from Earth into the Multiverse by Alsorb, his magical powers blossomed in an odd way. A pocket dimension formed inside his soul, and the two fused into an almost sentient magical energy that fed from Seth's life energy and emotions. This gave life to the Shadowheart spell, a magical force that only Seth was capable of using, powered by life, soul, and emotion. And with being fused with a pocket dimension, this gave Seth the ability to create entirely new spells on the fly. Once Seth became known around Evangelia for this, Shadowheart became a faction. Several hundreds wanted to ally themselves with Seth to Stop Alsorb and seek a greater understanding of magic and the Multiverse. Now Shadowheart is an idea, a code, a spell, and a force to ally behind.
Shadowheart Spells differ from other spells in that they require a great mix of mental and magical force to manifest. Outside of using mana, one must have a concentration of raw emotion, life energy, and soul energy, which in a normal situation is not possible. However due to the unique melding of Seth's Pocket Dimension into his body, he can meld all three of these with little effort for spell casting. Shadowheart spells still require the Multiverse's natural mana, but only to manifest the form and direction of the spell in the physical world. Because of the uniqueness of how the spell is crafted, both the user and the target can have very wild lasting effects. Many times, the target will feel drained from certain attacks and the user will feel energized. This is likely due to the life and soul energy from the spell draining the target and giving it to the user, whether or not this is intended it unclear.v And the most important aspect of Seth's ability, is the creation of new Shadowheart spells due to his pocket dimension. The first few were simple, easy to manifest and cast. However as the spells were used more often, it required more effort and emotion, until new Shadowheart Spells were only able to be created from extreme feelings of certain emotions. Now Seth has a set of ready-to-go spells and in the most extreme of situations he may surprise with a new never before seen attack.
Shadowheart Restoration is a simple healing spell. It works by reversing the molecular damage of the wound to it's previously healed state. However the subject has to be alive the healing to take place. It has no visible form past the healing of the wound.
Shadowheart Needle Spray works by charging mana across a given area and forming it into a hail of arrows. The spell takes the form of several six in black arrows shrouded in red energy. While general not fatal, is is used best as a counter attack.
Shadowheart Lightning is one of the basic Shadowheart damage dealing spells. Itt's form is a simple red lightning bolt fired from the hand. While it does not have enough power to kill stronger enemies, it is perfect for taking down weaker ones.
Shadowheart Blast was the first spell ever created using Seth's unique capabilities. When cast, the spell takes the form of a white ball of energy surrounded by crackling red lightning. In combat, Blast is used as more of a distraction then a finisher, throwing off stronger opponents, but outright killing anyone not strong enough to withstand the blast. Like most Shadowheart spells, when the target is killed, the spell transfers its life energy into Seth.
Shadowheart Delusions is a pure combat trick. While it has no real "form" when cast, the caster's hand glows an eerie red. The target is stricken with weakness, nausea, and mental doubt about its own strength, leaving it both mentally and physically weak. This opening creates a perfect opportunity for a wide variety of fatal attacks to pull through.
Shadowheart blaze is Seth's most used spell, as it is easy to control, and can hit one solid target, or multiple targets if need be. The one downside is that is wholly dependent on Seth's own emotions. When cast, the spell takes the form of three coiling barbed massed of white, black and red energy that wrap around each other constantly. Depending on the caster's will over the spell, Seth can make it a straight line towards a single target, or expand it out into a cone to hit multiple targets.
Shadowheart Multiplicity creates a literal double of Seth, down to every atom, by fracturing his soul. The spell's form is literally the copy of Seth. The backlash of the spell is that both Seth and the copy are at a 60/40 power ratio. Against most weak enemies or a single strong enemy this is no big deal.
Shadowheart Final Flare is Seth's most devastating focused attack. When cast the spells envelops entire lower arm in pulsating red and black energy, surrounded by a helix of white lightning. In order for the spell to work, Seth's hand must make direct contact with the target, causing a violent burst of energy to shoot forth, creating a crater of sorts within the targets body that directly proportionate to the size of the target. On a normal human being the crater would be eight inches deep and about six inches in diameter. Anything within the diameter of the blast is instantly incinerated, killing most on impact. In cases of extreme emotion Seth can cast this spell repeatedly, while in a normal circumstance he would not have the energy to cast it in rapid succession.
Added:A Set Design Tab to catalog the numbers and colors of the entire set
Added: A Mechanics And Themes Tab to house easy explanations of all the set's themes and mechanics. Currently not all of the sets themes and mechanics has been spoiled there.
Added: Several new cards across a multitude of colors.
Updated: Minor wording errors on some legends.
More on the RBW - it's probably not a good idea to only have some mechanics in a set number of colours. At least have a few cards in other colours; nobody wants to go to a prerelease or other limited thing and miss out on cool mechanics because of their colour choices. I mean, the transform mechanic in Innistrad, while mostly based on the werewolves in red and green, still had some white, black and blue cards. Yeah, there were only like two of each of those colours, but still. At least they're there. It wouldn't kill to stick in a green song, would it?
Onto songs, you either have the type Song or the ability Resonance. You don't need both; you can just stick it in the rules on Songs that you can only have one on your side of the battlefield at once and can bounce it back when you cast another one.
Shadowheart is boring, nothing much more to say about that.
I'll be right back and get on the cards, but a lot of them are really underpowered.
You got 99 attackers but I'm blocking with 1.
The Winner is Judge | 7
This Winner is Also Judge | 6
Club Flamingo | Lots
I don't understand why these "Wolf-folk" needed a specific type to represent them.
- Main Cube
- No Brains, All Feelings Cube
@Seth: tell me if I got it right, if not feel free to correct me.
| Subs | Personal Block | Have/Want | Pack Forum | Edit Sig |
Global Moderator at Magecraft
You could probably get away with calling them Leonin actually. There's a lot of dissonance between planes on what a given species look like (Compare: Lorwynn Goblins, Mirrodin Goblins, and Dominaria Goblins).
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Flavor, it is a driving force in this set like any other. If you only use straight and well known mechanics and the strictness of the color pie. You lack flavor.
You do realize throughout Magic's history there have always been mechanics in sets that a color specific.
Songs are a flavor mechanic. Flavor, that thing you seem to have a hard time understanding.
Besides, I haven't even spoiled all the color specific mechanics. It's not like this is all there is to the set.
Again, you don't seem to understand flavor. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not a big fan of Kamigawa or it's abilities either. or transofrm and ISD for that matter.
Slim nailed this one pretty well on the head, BUT I will elaborate.
You see, while I am a fan of the Grand Creature Type Update, I do like seeing new creature types, especially when taking a specifically different creature, giving it a "base point" and then calling it the same type as it's base point.
Leonins are the PERFECT example of this. I honestly despise that they are all "cats" and not "leonin" simply because of the structural change in their fundamentals. Yes, they are both feline, whoop-de-do. But Leonins are bipedal, sentient cat humanoids. To me, that is a big enough gap between them and their quadrupedal feline base point.
So thus given my own set to work with, I took that process and put it to use. I like seeing new create types here and there, and I really do despise it when they rehash common creature types due to a similarity.
We could debate this back and forth all day, but I'd much rather not. In any case, there's my opinion.
You know what the other thing to do is besides removing red from their colours? Adding red abilities! If they're red in flavour and character, show that on the card! You can't just randomly go "this person is red because I say so" and not give them any red abilities; that doesn't convey any flavour. I guess Seth's fine because of flavour and him being the Shadowheart guy and all, and Sarah's passable, but Christy's just not right. While the others, not necessarily being fully red, had no non-red abilities, Christy's damage prevention is the epitomy of not red. At least remove the red in the ability's cost...
Only when there were particular factions (eg. Mirran/Phyrexian, shards, heavy tribal). Take a look. Zendikar's mechanics were in every colour 'cos everyone can mess with lands; as were Lorwyn's and Shadowmoor's. So were Time Spiral's. Are the EvaSouls (what kind of name is that, anyway?) the only people that can sing? Or are the songs only sung by people of Evangelia or something?
Songs are a flavour mechanic, I see that. Just like curses and Traps. I don't see the problem with that. I also don't see the flavour of them not being green. I mean, I'm fine with only Seth using Shadowheart, and I guess that can remain in RBW. I just don't understand how songs can be only in those colours. What's the flavour in that?
I understand flavour, but the problem is that this does nothing. Everything flavourful has had something linked mechanically to the flavour; Traps had the alternate costs; Curses enchant players; even your own songs you can only have one out (which is a great idea, might I add). Shadowheart doesn't do anything! Don't say "well it will just wait", because you don't reveal a mechanic and say "yeah it does nothing but it'll do something later".
Anyway, most of Kamigawa was fine, for me and I got all the flavour perfectly. It's just the times when they way overdid the flavour and made bad cards (like a number of dodgy artifacts) that I didn't like. Transform is amazing, thank you very much, but that's because it was a good idea design-wise, giving you greater room on cards to design with.
TL;DR, "flavour" is not an excuse for bad ideas and dodgy design. "You don't understand flavour" is not an argument. Flavour should be used to complement the design, or the design to complement the flavour. My problem is that neither is doing much for the other. You're not showing, you're telling! Most people aren't going to read through all the backstory of a set and go "oh, that's why this card's like this". One of the most important challenges as a designer is being able to convey flavour through your designs while keeping them playable. It's not working for me at the moment.
PS. I heard this great line from some guy somewhere. "If you need to explain that something is because of flavour, then there isn't enough of it."
You got 99 attackers but I'm blocking with 1.
The Winner is Judge | 7
This Winner is Also Judge | 6
Club Flamingo | Lots
I admit that I'm a bit of a flavor-creep and I sometimes get too wrapped up in a story to see how I'm improperly transitioning it into a card and I think maybe you have a little bit of that too. NinjaCaterpie's point about flavor serving design is a valuable one, in my admittedly limited experience. Am I right in assuming that because your character have red-tinted personalities they have red in their cards?
Assuming that I am (I really don't believe that you just added red because, hey, that border wasn't colorful enough) changing a character is hard but changing an ability is relatively easy.
All that being said I think that all your cards could be red. Maybe less red (fewer red and more of other colors) but they all have some link. Seth, in particular, is totally fine the way he is seeing as all Shadowheart spells are the same colors as him.
Love the art, btw!
This awesome signature is tbe work of DNC at Heroes of the Plane Studio!
Magic Wars: DaesseclusMagic Wars Reboot Race:Emesmaa
Orammis Bhasir
Asirri Rokhane
Ursinus Koliel
My Pauper Cube ♤ The Pauper Cube Thread Common Knowledge — 1 2
| Subs | Personal Block | Have/Want | Pack Forum | Edit Sig |
Global Moderator at Magecraft
I'll get to everyone's posts in a bit, I just find this slightly more important. I'll likely edit this post with everyone's stuff in a bit.
Updated: Both cards for Sarah and Christy now reflects their current character as opposed to their old characters, which the first cards was based off of.
Updated: Seth's Last Resort now has the proper mana cost, as opposed to before where it had the wrong cost... Somehow I totally missed it until everyone started *****ing about it.
Added: Flarebreaker Dragon, first of two dragons in this set.
| Subs | Personal Block | Have/Want | Pack Forum | Edit Sig |
Global Moderator at Magecraft
Also, song cards are functionally similiar to the legend rule, minus the opponent not being able to have one. In fact for the player using them, they are often harsher then the legend rule, but the majority of their costs often make them worse then similar non-song enchantments. Some of them could/should be cheaper.
Finally a lot of your legends suffer from being over costed, especially being multicolored. They also feel weird: Human characters with titan esque stats. I don't have the time tonight, but I'll go back and list specific examples soon.
Updated: The Song mechanic now has an errata change so you can play multiples of the same song.
Updated: The info on Songs under the "Mechanics and Themes" tab has been updated to hint as to why they're only in WBR.
Updated: New mechanic spoiled, Pride. Pride cards have been added to the set as well as their info in "Mechanics and Themes"
Updated: F.A.Q. has been updated with why characters seem "off color" and why some of the multicolor cards are oddly numbered.
Updated: Final number for the set is 216.
Added: All the multicolor cards for the set. As well as some cards in green, white, and red.
The short anser is my OCD wouldn't come to terms with making it mythic...
A minor problem I have with the Pride mechanic is that it discourages playing cards. If you have two Pride cards in hand, you'd rather wait to next turn and not play your spell. :| That's not the best thing to encourage in magic, but eh. It's not that major and it's a mechanic people think of often.
I'll go through rating the cards, like I said I would.
[b]Ballad of Determination[/b]: Determined indeed. It seems a bit underwhelming, but it could just be me underestimating the usefulness of first strike. Have you tested it? Is it fair at that or could it go down to 1WW?
[b]Kale's Lyrics[/b]: Fine.
[b]Lullaby of Faults[/b]: This is fair. It's the same price as Ghostly Prison but with a slight downside.
[b]Motet of Power[/b]: It's a little powerful; it's like two Honor of the Pures stuck together and on all creatures. Could cost 1 more.
[b]Reality Transition[/b]: It's an interesting mass-Momentary Blink which then buffs your army. It seems a little powerful, however, considering Titania's Boon is at 4 and this can effectively do that by casting it at the end of a player's second main phase, as well as be used to dodge removal and chump everything.
[b]Shadowheart Restoration[/b]: Boring, mechanically and flavourfully. It's just Seth doing some healing. It doesn't say anything special that means "hey this has Seth's mark!" besides being a Shadowheart spell.
[b]Vigilant Knight-Commander[/b]: 2WW for a 3/3 that gives first strike to everything; kinda like Rhox Pikemaster except for all creatures. Slightly powerful in that regard, especially as it can also give vigilance later. Maybe you could swap them around? So you have to work to the more powerful effect?
Overall, the white shows a clear theme of buffing a team, which is cool. Is there going to be a few token-producers as well so there will actually be multiple "creatures you control"? Or at least a handful of cheap creatures?
[b]Mental Mishap[/b]: I'm almost certain this is meant to read "and" rather than "unless". Because "unless" it does, this is actually almost completely a useless card. A single card of mill is a reeally small effect (this is effectively like "Counter target spell unless its controller pays 1/3 life"). Cancel is already considered a bad counterspell and is just about the limits of where absolute counters can be in terms of bad. Going worse than that surely can't be good. The problem is that if you use this to counter an important spell, they'll just mill themselves. If you use it to counter a weak spell... oh well. You just wasted a counterspell. It's too weak.
[b]Spatial Mix-Up[/b]: This one's fine.
Blue's just counters ATM. I can't say much, but I can say that I like mill. And you're overestimating it.
[b]Alsorb, the Hungerer[/b]: His + ability is almost identical to the one on Sorin Markov. There's gotta be some other way of doing vampiric stuff that doesn't just copy that ability. Maybe if you put loyalty counters on him instead through some twisted means? :| -3 is fine, discarding two cards is alright. The ultimate is sweet.
[b]Harmony of Suffering[/b]: Seems slightly weak, once again. I suppose Æther Sting exists, so it's somewhat fair, but this is technically more expensive and with a drawback (which is what the Song mechanic technically is). Could be cheaper, I think, or common. Not that powerful, after all.
[b]Hymn of Discord[/b]: Should this read "Whenever a spell or ability would cause an opponent to draw a card, they discard a card instead"? Or is this just meant to cancel out draw spells rather than reverse them? At any rate, it seems somewhat powerful, although it's kind of limited except against blue. Then again, blue is black's ally, so I don't know so much about how well it works... Doesn't fit too well at common, either.
[b]Requiem of Undeath[/b]: Flashy and flavourful, a necromancer's song of awesomeness. Love it, reckon it's probably just the right mana cost. Awesome name
[b]Sarah's Gaze[/b]: The dying is unnecessary, although it does work flavourfully. Kind of. Black Mind Control abilities are odd; maybe you could make it so it just returns some creature from any graveyard to the battlefield under your control? That way you can still get the creature you killed before, but it's more than just Enslave but harder to deal with.
[b]Shadowheart Needle Spray[/b]: Once again, this doesn't do anything specially Shadowheart. It's also weak. Bump in the Night deals 3 damage and can come back. This deals 1 and is weak even in multiplayer against like 20 people. You could gain life equal to the life lost this way, which is nice and black as well. I don't know if that's Seth or not, but, the way you've done it, Seth's Shadowheart abilities seem to just use basic colour-related abilities.
Black's meh. A bit of graveyard shenanigans and discard; could be interesting.
[b]Battle Shaman[/b]: At first I thought "holy crap, OP!" but then I realised its basic Pride ability wouldn't get it the super-awesome ability. That is a minor problem though; on cards like this where it doesn't have a 'default' +1/+1 counter ability, it could get confusing; some people (like me lololol) might not notice that this ability doesn't activated until I get an extra +1/+1 counter on her. It could lead to a bit of confusion; just thought I'd point it out.
[b]Cantata of Fury[/b]: Decent, fun-ish. Nice name.
[b]Carol of Annihilation[/b]: Yeah, not sure "Carol" is the right song type for annihilation. One-sided Manabarbs might be a little bit cheap. 2RRR? Ergh, ugly cost. IDK.
[b]Chords of Flame[/b]: Could swap names with the card about. "Chords of Annihilation"? "Carol of Flame"? Yes! My opinion of course, but that sounds ten times cooler. Mechanically, this guy stops X/2s and below; a ridiculously powerful removal spell like that ought to be a rare or at least uncommon. On the other hand, Cantata could be a common.
[b]Flarebreaker Draogn[/b]: Cool dragon. First strike might be a bit OTT though...
[b]Shadowheart Lightning[/b]: Another kinda not-really-special Shadowheart spell. :|
Red's just red. Lotta board wiping.
[b]Village Scout[/b]: Here we go, I can now shout OP!!!!!!!!!! You were doing so well with the other ones and this one is just way too powerful. It's a 3 to cast 4/4 with trample. Needs to be at least 4 to cast, maybe even 5. Maybe it could be a single +1/+1 counter for both Pride and the +1/+1 counter check? That way it's a 3 to cast 2/2 or a 3 to cast 3/3 trampler? 1GG, probably, too.
Green's meh so far. A bit OP though lol. 100% of the cards are OP!
[b]Absorbtion Blast[/b]: Was "Absorption" the word you were looking for? It's a decent counterspell. The art doesn't really... fit though.
[b]Coastal Guardian[/b]: Powerful, pushing the limit, but it's probably just okay. As a guardian, maybe Defender? If you do, you can easily lower the CMC by 1.
[b]Merchant's Truce[/b]: I like this card and its flavour. There's a kinda truce until someone just rambos and you realise "oh crap". The way it works, it also doesn't shut down creature-decks completely. They just have to wait a bit and mass an attack.
W/U; defensive and controlly. That's fine.
[b]Alsorb's Psychic[/b]: Should say "Target player puts X cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the number of counters removed this way", unless you intend it to work with other counter-removing abilities. Seems unnecessarily complex, though. A slight underpowered (especially the mill ability, you're seriously overestimating how much that's worth), could probably cost 2UB, or even 1UB.
[b]Devour the Masses[/b]: Underpowered, actually. Doom Blade and Unsummon combined might be more utility, but it should probably be 4 CMC at sorcery. Flavour text is sweet, although it sounds kinda familiar.
[b]Memory Syphon[/b]: This card would be underpowered if it weren't for the fact it caused hand discard. Could be "Whenever a player casts a spell" just so it encourages the player of the enchantment to go all-out in order to mill their opponent. Ten spells is a long time, after all.
[b]Torrie's Winter[/b]: Mesmeric Orb in a sorcery. Fine, could be cheaper even.
I love mill. Once again though, you're overestimating it. Glimpse the Unthinkable was a two mana mill ten and it didn't break a mill deck in any format. Tome Scour is 1 for 5 and it's considered absolutely terrible.
[b]Christy's Wrath[/b]: Once again fine, works with a -1/-1 counter theme.
[b]Duskfire Assassion[/b]: Like Nekrataal but with Terminate rather than Terror. Reasonable, could be slightly tougher. 2/1?
[b]Fallen Syn[/b]: Hot-dang, that's powerful! Killing all X/2s! Then again, it's not a may, so it's a double-edged sword (good idea, btw) and that's fine, considering it kills your dudes and basically stops your own creature output. It's pretty good.
[b]Meteor Impact[/b]: Generally, mass land-destruction is pretty unfun. However, at 8 really intensive mana, I think it can be okay.
[b]Sacrificial Infringe[/b]: Name doesn't make sense, because Infringe isn't a noun, so you can't describe it using 'sacrificial', which is an adjective... FT is a bit grammar-off too. The card itself is a bit weak; compare it to Fling, where most creatures have similar power to their CMC. It should be a lot cheaper; at most 1BR, easily BR.
[b]Sarah Demerest[/b]: Wording problem; should be something like "Whenever Sarah Demerest deals combat damage to a player, that player loses life equal to the number of exiled creature cards" or something. Also, probably should use the Baron Sengir wording with "this turn"; it's hard to remember damage across turns. Usually that won't matter because most creatures won't survive a 6/6, but it can have an effect. Besides that, decent ability, nice self-synergy.
Black/Red seems to just be chaotic and destructive. Fine by me.
[b]Predatory Frenzy[/b]: The "assigns combat damage as if it weren't blocked" is kinda clunky, but does what you want. Alternatively, you could pull an unblockable and go "Creatures can't block that creature until end of turn" (which is a red ability, surprisingly)
[b]Strength from Savagery[/b]: I think the second ability should be "creatures with three or more +1/+1 counters on them", because "as long as" is usually used for stuff which refer to general criteria, not individual. It's a good card and really strengthens the +1/+1 counter theme.
[b]Warrior Outcasts[/b]: This card is perfectly powered and shows just what a card with Pride does. Good job. I have no idea how you could've made this, then made that ridiculous Village Scout in mono-green. My only complaint is it's a bit wordy for a common, so you could even make it just have the basic single counter ability and make it slightly stronger base (2/1?)
Whoo, heavy +1/+1 counter theme (wow, these sound reeaallly similar to the guilds of Ravnica, just saying. WU control, UB mill, BR chaos, RG power...
[b]Nature's Protection[/b]: It could be cheaper, actually. For more "protection", maybe regenerating it and then putting the +1/+1 counter on it?
[b]Silverleaf Paladin[/b]: Powerful, splashing, nice. I think just one of the types (creature OR land) on that card would be fine, not both.
[b]Will of Nature[/b]: Really really powerful. Scapeshift does something similar and it gets rid of as many lands as it finds. This effectively doubles your land total and thins your deck a bunch, something which a 5 to cast spell shouldn't do. Explosive Vegetation only gets 2 basics. This needs to be at least 7 or 8 to cast.
GW - natural. Seems okey-dokey.
[b]Marissa Hailey[/b]: Likey. Once again, Baron Sengir wording (replacing the counters with untap, of course)
[b]Marissa's Static[/b]: Hm! The first of the Do X and Choose cards. Modal +! That's pretty cool. I reckon the first ability (the tapping) shouldn't have the target; you should be able to target your stuff with shroud. Now, uh... it's too complicated. The entirety of the first ability requires two targets; one to hit and one to untap. You could just leave it at the dealing damage to creature and... urgh, it's a lot of stuff. When the text is that small, you might just want to check whether you're going over the top or not... Also draw three cards is reeeaaaally powerful.
UR is kinda damagy and drawy. Izzzzzzet?
[b]Emily Rikero[/b]: The ETB ability is pretty huge, and her ability is sweet as well. She could well do with an increase in CMC and a decrease in power/toughness. Well, at least toughness.
[b]Emily's Glow[/b]: That's some glow there. Uh, that's pretty powerful though. If you happen to have a lot of creatures, you'll draw a lot of cards. It's a combination of Titania's Boon and drawing cards pretty much equal to the number of creatures you control. It's powerful. Maybe you could put +1/+1 counters on up to X targets, where X is the CMC of the card you revealed? Fits with the CMC theme.
Yeah, +1/+1 counters and creatures. Huh, Simicy.
[b]Christy Helena[/b]: The abilities are fine for her intensive cost, but I'm going to sit here complaining about her red again. Yes, her flavour's red, but you're not showing that to us. Flavour is important, of course, but haven't you ever heard of "show, don't tell"? What you're doing here is telling us she's angry and red. Story this, story that. You're supposed to represent a card's flavour through its abilities; it's okay if the abilities stretch the pie a bit (see Form of the Dragon which sets life totals, not red), but it's not okay if the abilities don't exist. If she's red in character, she has to be shown on the card. The cards need to tell the story, not the guidebook. If someone buys a box of this and cracks a Christy, they'll wonder "why can't I play this in my Selenia deck?" when her abilities are all black and white. You can't stick a piece of paper under each Christy saying "she's red because flavour". Also, the second ability's not red, so, no matter how much you argue that her card's red, that ability isn't. It's not.
[b]Seth Dracovitch[/b]: Really encompasses his Shadowheart skills, fine card. Bit powerful, though. Could lower P/T a bit.
[b]Seth's Last Resort[/b]: "Target player loses life equal to your life total" is way too powerful at any mana cost. This card basically means if you have more life than your opponent, they lose. Not only does it do that ridiculous thing, but it's also a one-sided Wrath of God and a Beacon of Immortality It's just too powerful.
[b]Shadowheart Blast[/b]: It's, er, alright. [c]Baron Sengir[/b]
[b]Shadowheart Blaze[/b]: This is not as alright. It's really weak unless you run a tonne of Shadowhearts. Maybe "Deals damage equal to twice the number of cards revealed this way"?
[b]Shadowheart Delusions[/b]: Fine, fine, although I don't know why the G/U person's on the flavour text of a WBR card... doesn't really make sense, even though I guess they're on a team.
[b]Shadowheart Soulbreak[/b]: Man these names are corny and sound like Yu-gi-oh cards, seriously. It's too much of a downside for a card that costs 4. You might as well just have "exile target creature" for that mana cost and intensity.
[b]Torrie Jagger[/b]: Shroud's been replaced, just sayin'. Just Hexproof now. Torrie's alright. Nothing special, but it does fit the knifey knifey of her character.
[b]Glacial Lake, Flowing Bog, Molten Mire, Rock-Lit Valley, Woodland Village[/b]: I love these lands. They're a pretty small downside, especially if you're playing them in a deck of those two colours, but that doesn't matter. Some of the coolest tap-except lands I've seen in a while. I love their names too... except Rock-Lit Valley. how the heck does a rock light stuff up?
[b]Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest[/b]: I like these arts, but Island is OP. Why are you reprinting such a broken card?
Phew, that's it. Done.
Okay, a comment on something general: Shadowheart. It doesn't do much. It does relate them to Seth and lets some cards interact with them, but besides that... they have no link besides the name and type. I mean, Traps had alternate costs, like "If you do the wrong thing, I UNVEIL MY TRAP CARD!!!!!!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!" kinda flavour. Curses enchant players which is pretty obvious. These guys... have no link. I mean, maybe you could make it so they all relate to a number? Like... Gain 5 life, Each player loses 5 life, Deal 5 damage to target creature or player, Destroy 5 target lands, etc. So they have this link. Or maybe playing with exile. Or something! Just... link them in a more obvious way. You're satisfying Vorthos somewhat, but leaving Melvin going "WTF DOES THIS EXIST" isn't a good idea.
You got 99 attackers but I'm blocking with 1.
The Winner is Judge | 7
This Winner is Also Judge | 6
Club Flamingo | Lots
Updated: Numerous card errors dealing with mana cost, grammar, etc, etc. More of these changes, including some name changes will occur over the next few days.
Updated: Mental Mishap actually does what it should now since both times added it was not right.
Added: 1 new black card, 1 new blue card both Pride Focused.
Added: Lots of new green cards.
Added: The first rare artifact of the set.
Coming Soon: Going to be adding the important planes and their specific places to the first page under People, Places, & Things.
Coming Soon: Adding a section for Shadowheart spells under People, Places, & Things.
Sorry for the wait, been having some computer issues as of late.
Thanks to everyone who's been helping with set correction, it makes life a lot easier.
Also, is it not possible for you to be a bit more specific when you explain what you changed? Y'know, card names or stuff?
You got 99 attackers but I'm blocking with 1.
The Winner is Judge | 7
This Winner is Also Judge | 6
Club Flamingo | Lots
Added: Several white cards. Completed uncommons, rares, and mythics for white. 6/15 commons for white complete. Tomorrow White will be finished, current errors will be fixed, and blue will be started.
It's just a filler counterspell. Limited, jank, stupid, whatever you want to call it.
And I usually only elaborate of error fixes if they're something that has been repeatedly looked past, or fundamentally changes a card (name, entire ability rework, etc, etc). Anything 'numerous' is just minor stuff that I either messed up, overlooked, or of course, wording fixes. Really nothing that changes how the card works. If you're really concerned about a certain card, you can either go find it in the spoiler to see if it has been dealt with, or wait and see if it gets a mention in an update. Most of the major updates (name changes, additional info) aren't happening tonight, and maybe not even tomorrow, but it will be soon.
WORDING FIXES/NITPICKS IN BOLD
Resonance: I really dislike the "same name loophole" you've added here. A lot of the Songs (the red ones especially) become really abusive in multiples, and it encourages people not to play decks with many different Songs if they can ignore the drawback by only playing one.
Pride: Generally reminder text doesn't include the name of the card. Just say If this is the first spell you've cast this turn, it's shorter.
The implementation of this mechanic is problematic because of how all-upside it is - the card gets the p/t bonus and its abilities only turn on when it has that bonus. A lot of your cards (Arrogant Duelist, Blademaster Trainer) are complete garbage when you don't have pride turned on. Bloodthirst in M12 was a good mechanic with interesting choices because, in general, non-bloodthirsted guys were good enough that you would consider playing them, but bloodthirsted guys were good enough that you were willing to work for them. Pride in this set doesn't have this tension because one mode is so obviously better than the other one, so it limits the number of meaningful choices you can make. (Also, casting one spell a turn is not hard, and there's nothing like the werewolf mechanic that would incentivize you to play two or more spells a turn anyway.)
Also, where is blue's major mechanic? Green has one, black has two, and red and white both have three each.
Angel is a subtype, and subtypes are always capitalized. Remember that tokens need a type! The flavor text confuses me. Why would "few require" protection to survive? Is this a plane full of Highlanders?
Angelic Intervention: Why does this only protect you and not your creatures?
Archangel of Annulment: choose upkeep step, draw step, main phase, or combat phase.
The vast, vast majority of the time, you are going to choose draw step.
Ascending Greatness: Whenever a +1/+1 counter is placed on a creature you control, gain 1 life.
Players can't put counters on creatures. See Flourishing Defenses.
Ballad of Determination: This should be either common or cheaper.
Blademaster Trainer: I like the progression up through the ranks from Adventurous Soldier to this guy, but his ability is sadly redundant with Arrogant Duelist's.
Cleanse the Wound: damage prevented this way.
No "in" is used. Test of Faith.
Desert Turmoil: Tap target creature. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. As long as it remains tapped, if it would be put into a graveyard from the battlefield, exile it instead.
First sentence is a run-on. I think the wording of Amber Prison works here. Remember, there's no such thing as "the graveyard."
Dominating Presence: Why doesn't this give a p/t bonus? Considering it's a rare aura, it's probably fine, since it can range from really meh on a blocker to just killing you out of nowhere.
Hired Muscle: sacrifice it unless you shuffle a Plains you control into your library.
Plains is a subtype, and subtypes are always capitalized. The flavor is confusing me a little. I've already paid mana to hire these guys, why are they blowing up my lands?
Honor in Victory: It's pretty generic, but I have no problem with the effect.
Light of Salvation: At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control a white creature, you may gain 2 life.
Intervening if clauses are always set off by commas.
Lullaby of Faults: unless their controller pays 2 for each of those creatures.
Norn's Annex.
Priest of White Gate: As long as Priest of White Gate has a +1/+1 counter on it, it has "T: Prevent the next 1 damage that would be dealt to target creature or player this turn."
We finally have a place-name reference, even if no flavor text!
Reality Transition: Exile each creature you control. At the beginning of the end step, return each of those cards to the battlefield under its owner's control with a +1/+1 counter on it. "Where I come from, the phrase you're looking for is..."
Slimmed down the wording like Otherworldly Journey and corrected some typos.
Stand Off: Creatures target player controls can't attack this turn.
A couple minor typos. I find it amusing that the artwork for a card called "Stand Off" features two people sitting.
Vigilant Knight-Commander: Why is this card neither a Knight nor naturally possessed of vigilance?
Fortune Witch: As long as Fortune Witch has a +1/+1 counter on it...
Let's be consistent here.
Mental Mishap: The mill really ought to be in addition to the counter. Cancel+ is a fine filler card. This card is worse than a basic land.
Spatial Mix Up: This is another fine filler card.
Hymn of Discord: This card is narrow enough that it and Harmony of Suffering could probably have their rarities switched.
Requiem of Undeath: You may cast creature cards from your graveyard.
"From" is now standard for effects that move cards out of the 'yard.
Sarah's Gaze: (This effect lasts indefinitely.)
This card has a small typo.
Withermage Adept: 3/3 deathtouch in black is really stretching it for common.
Chords of Flame: Pyroclasm is not common. Infinity one-sided Pyroclasm is definitely not common.
Flarebreaker Dragon: The flavor text is missing the last quotation mark.
Card is really generic, like someone took a composite of "dragony-feeling" abilities from Magic's history and mashed them together. There's nothing about this card that says "Shadowheart Block" to me.
Ravenous Dragon: double strike as long as it's attacking.
Some typos.
Shadowheart Lightning: Missing a punctuation mark at the end of the flavor text.
Ambush of Foliage: Until end of turn, target Forest you control becomes a 3/3 green Elemental creature that's still a land.
P/T before color. Always capitalize subtypes. "that's" is a wording that works (Animate Land) and it's shorter.
Animalistic Bonds: For each creature you control, search your library for a creature card that shares a creature type with it. Put those cards onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.
"The same type" means nothing in Magic, since objects can have multiple types. Objects in libraries are always "cards." Rest of wording borrowed from Doubling Chant. Doubling Chant is a pretty crappy card, so a green-intensive upgrade is probably fine.
Druid of Silverleaf: Why is "Silver Leaf" two words in the flavor text? And who or what is Relic?
Fungal Armor: At the beginning of your end step, remove all -1/-1 counters from enchanted creature and put that many +1/+1 counters on it.
This does basically the same thing without needing SBA checks.
Gifts of Silverleaf: What's this? A fixed Exploration? Works for me!
Guarded Territory: When Guarded Territory enters the battlefield, put a protector counter on a creature you control.
Whenever a creature you control with a protector counter on it attacks or blocks, untap enchanted land.
This would be an awesome implementation of the "enchant two or more" mechanic I see floating around from time to time. Alas. You don't need to use "choose"; that's just wasting words. It makes no sense for your opponent's protectors to be able to untap your protected lands. An alternative implementation would be to enchant the creature and put the counter on the land, so you don't have three different kinds of counters that can go on creatures.
Rise Up: Cast Rise Up only during an opponent's turn and only during combat before blockers are declared.
Until end of turn, two target lands you control become 3/5 Elemental creatures that are still lands.
No player can cast spells during the process of declaring attackers. See Melee for the correct wording. Subtypes are always capitalized. Don't forget the "creature" card type! Why does this land animation spell make colorless 3/5s when the other one makes green 3/3s?
Village Scout: It's worse than Festerhide Boar in both its "on" and "off" modes, but it's a bit easier to turn on. Again, this is an issue with your pride cards in general.
Will of the Jungle: Why is this card so much worse than Grim Discovery?
Absorption Blast: If an artifact or enchantment spell is countered this way, gain 2 life.
Objects on the stack are spells. MTG excludes the "in" before "this way" - Dissipate. Considering Countersquall, I think this card is fine if the life gain happens no matter what.
Alsorb's Psychic: This card tries to do two things and does both of them poorly. If Alsorb is monoblack, why are his minions part-blue?
Devour the Masses: Return target creature to its owner's hand;
Small typo. I agree with Ninja Caterpie that this could probably cost 4 and be fine.
Meh, I'm tired and I've probably bored you enough with all my edits. I'll be back for Memory Syphon and the rest later.
Avatar by Numotflame96 of Maelstrom Graphics
Sig banner thanks to DarkNightCavalier of Heroes of the Plane Studios!
Updated: Several numerous grammatical errors, some minor rarity fixes, and a couple of mana cost fixes.
Updated: Mental Mishap now counters and mills as opposed to one or the other.
No actually, it's far from boring. I'm glad you're so have so much attention to detail when it comes to these things. We may not see eye-to-eye on everything flavor-wise, but otherwise you're right on almost everything, and you know more then enough about the cards to know how they should be worded to make them sound right. I really do appreciate your help.
The biggest reason was to get more use out of them, so if you run multiples you don't have to sit there with a hand full of the same card that is just essentially dead unless they destroy the current song.Though yes, the red pones do get a bit degenerate if you get multiples out.
As I said before, the original mechanic that I made a long time ago was putting the counters on them when they dealt damage to a player. But ISD did that with vampires. I really didn't just wanna rehash that at the same time as ISD. I still wanted it to deal with +1/+1 counters and bonuses with a mechanic that hadn't been done. Bloodthirst didn't make sense in white or blue so that was out of the question. Eventually I just settled on something simple that would go off most of the time. Plus I decided to give the block a minor +1/+1 counter theme in white, green, and red to make getting counters and counter bonus' more effective.
Blue, black, and green are all going to have very specific themes within the block. Green is creatures and land (hence all the land creatures and creature/land specific cards). Black very life focused with vampires. Blue is very focused on instances, sorceries and card draw. Almost all the blue cards will reference one or more of the above.
Obviously in all three colors there will be a few cards here and there that don't have anything to do with the theme of the color, but that's to be expected, especially when working with both old and new cards.
Heroes:
Seth: Fine. Need to see more Shadowheart cards to see true potential, but I don't think he'd ever be overpowered.
Sarah: Very weak for 8 mana, and her effect is unipressive even if you were exile cards before she hits play. Maybe make her cost 6? (5 might even be reasonable if you keep the 4 dedicated color cost and drop P/T to 5/5)
Torrie: Looks aggressive and powerful, but fair.
Christy: Underpowered with the heavy mana cost. Could probably make it 3WBR or even 4BW
Marissa: Would be a great non legendary uncommon. Right now, very weak.
Emily: The draw effect comes off as a tad strong especially since she'll always at least cantrip. Raise to 7?
Villains:
Alsorb: Cool Ult. The rest is "eh."
Fallen Syn: I'd drop her to cost 6.
White:
Adventurous Soldier: Fine
Angelic Appearance: Solid
Angelic Intervention: Fine, though weak.
Archangel of Annulment: Scary. In a good way.
Arrogant Duelist: Seems weak without many cards to add counters outside of its own pride effects. The card will be good when you add more support I assume.
Ascended Greatness: Could get away with it costing 2 I think.
Ballad of Determination: Probably should cost 3 actually. or at least double white.
Blademaster Trainer: Scary, but possibly fair.
Cleanse the Wound: Good limited trick.
Desert Turmoil: Might be an ok limited card. Still could probably cost 3.
Dominating Presence: Nice!
Hired Muscle: I don't get how the flavor fits into shuffling a land.
Honor in Victory: Nice!
Kale's Lyrics: Fine
Light of Salvation: Good
Lullaby of Faults: About on curve. A little weaker then comparables, but not enough to warrant a change.
Motet of Power: VERY strong. Perhaps too much. Im iffy on this one.
Priest of White Gate: Weak, but acceptably so.
Reality Transition: Favorite card so far.
Shadowheart Restoration: Weak and dull. What makes Shadowheart Special?
Stand Off: Nice! Might be able to get away with it costing 2.
Tactical Mishap: Seems slightly too good at 4. Id put it at 5 because even snagging two creatures would be worth it still. Also the untargetablity is huge.
Vigilant Knight-Commander: Fine, if not aggressive.
Blue:
Fortune Witch: Weak. Overly so. Make her cost 2.
Mental Mishap: Better then cancel most of the time, but so marginally so It doesn't bother me.
Spatial Mix Up: I like it a lot! It's not particularly powerful, but it's a neat idea/combination of abilities.
Black
Harmony of Suffering: Weak. Even as a common Id see this costing 3.
Hymn of Discord: Nice hoser.
Requiem of Undeath: Best song so far!
Sarah's Gaze: Would probably be better templated as as "creature an opponent controls"
Shadowheart Needle Spray: Very weak. Could see it as 2 life loss.
Withermage Adept: Solid, though it doesn't feel like a mage...
Red:
Battle Shaman: I wouldn't consider playing her unless she costed 3, and even then she'd lose out to other cards because of the effort to get her effect to work and trigger. But she still should cost 3.
Cantata of Fury: Solid
Carol of Annihilation: Nice!
Chords of Flame: Very strong, but possibly fair.
Flarebreaker Dragon: Something nags me that this combination of abilities is too strong even for 7. I almost want to see a toughness drop...or some balancing factor. I cant put my finger on it...
Ravenous Dragon: Again, still feels just a tad strong... but at the same time... this one is iffy too.
Shadowheart Lightning: A better shock, if barely. It's ok I guess
---------------
Ill get to the rest later. When I rap it up, I plan to give you some more overall impressions/feedback. Have fun in the meantime.