Card of the Week Contest #231: Spells and abilities

Alright gonna try some Feedback

Tesagk : I'm not sure how this actually works on a technical level; does the ability cause it to immediately cast the other side when it resolves? If so, it sounds like it's just part of the spell's effects. Also Allow won't count any spell already cast, or any spell cast while it's on the stack, so if that was your intention it might be better as something like "You gain 2 life for each spell an opponent cast this turn."

sdfkjgh : Weird! Personally I'd key the effects off of the mana spent to cast it (e.g. Draw a card for each spent to cast it) since there's a weird gap between it not counting itself for the cost calculation but counting itself for the effects (e.g. it does nothing as the first spellcast of the turn but as the second it's an instant speed Forked Bolt or a draw two for )

ZephyrPhantom : Cool design, though its resilience to counters seems unfair to me. Should it exile if it leaves the stack for any reason?

spazlaz : Confused since the ability and reminder text seem to mean different things. Is it that it only works with alternate costs, or would any cost modifier (e.g. Thalia) do?

jynx316 : Which is the non spell ability here? It just seems to be a regular instant to me.

inverness : Which zone does is the ability supposed to operate from? Something seems to be missing here.

sleepyjackdaw : Well, if that were keyworded I could see it being problematic, so it's lucky it's not. For wording, it should be a comma between the mana cost and the reveal cost instead of 'and', 'this card' be its actual name (and so should 'card with the same name' judging by Squadron Hawk), and 'Play' should be 'Activate'.  Otherwise 👌

Jartis : As the others said the first ability needs rewording, but personally I think it would make more sense just being added to the spell effects itself, since it's less of a cost and more of a sort of consequence. It would still be a valid entry thanks to the last ability. If you're worried about fog in white, you could use tapping instead, since it's similar mechanically and can fit the same flavour while also allowing it to be used more aggressively.

Fermat : I must admit that I preferred the previous blue version, since it felt like a much better fit for spirits (though obviously had bigger problems). In its current state it seems similar to Repeating Barrage, so you could look at that for inspiration.

Mahx Michael : I honestly have no idea about this. Does Virulent Wound have a triggered ability? I think it just creates one through its spell ability, but I'm not sure.

kazerima : This one seems somewhat forced since the first ability would make way more sense as just being part of the second ability, but doing so would invalidate its entry. It's also very strong, as just a 3 mana 2/2 that shocks a creature on entry is great but being able to recur it probably pushes it over the edge.

Akai Ryu : Not sure if this is intended but as written flashing back requires both life payments. (I think you can actually do them in any order, so you'd generally want to pay 3 life then half your life. I think.)

gateways7 : Woof

Sure thing cuties, I skipped cards I either wasn't sure how to evaluate or ones that I didn't have anything to say about. I'll look at yours more closely now:

bagz : This card's a in weird spot where it would be dangerous if it were much more efficient, but it's pretty unplayable where it is since the sheer amount of mana necessary to attack your opponent's hand means it'll often be empty by the time you get there. Personally I think a "Target player discards a card" is bad enough at 1 mana that you could safely make the card cost 1 less and the return cost 1 more (though I'm not really sure if you even need to do that.)

viriss : I'm not a fan of the dense mana cost, particularly as the only green part is the fight, though that's more of a personal thing. The base rate of the card is average, but is only made slightly better by the removed counters to the point where I'd rarely want to do it, particularly if I'm playing black and can just play a kill spell anyway. The "you may" and the "up to one" parts of the first ability so you can remove one of them, though there is a little confusion about whether you have to remove a counter from each creature you control if you can: personally I'd go for "remove a +1/+1 counter from any number of creatures you control."

EDIT:

Mahx Michael : I'll say it's fine, since I didn't really consider those kind of triggers (or understand them, honestly) when I set the challenge. They fit much better than the triggers-on-resolution cards in any case.

And since we apparently enter our own contests now, here's this simple thing I made recently. dont vote for it

I almost included some stuff about reducing the cost of yours but deleted it because I had self-doubts. Was going to compare it to Thrilling Encore which also led me to believe it could be two mana cheaper, so it worked out /shrug

bagz : your mechanic is exactly aftermath, btw.

I think spazlaz meant to tag the post above so:

hkeenan18 : Hi welcome welcome. Cool card, but as spazlaz said, your mechanic is very similar to an existing mechanic named Aftermath. The contest also specifies against named keywords - you can easily fix this by removing the "Recreate" text and turning the reminder text into its actual rules text, and while it's still quite similar to Aftermath it would be less of an issue. Rewritten World has an issue where it can't actually track the cards exiled by its other half, but I'm less sure how you could fix that.