Card of the Week Poll #355: Hate Bearers

{Explanation} Is there anyone who hated the "i-take-million-extra-turns-and-I-still-can't-win-the-game" deck (looking at you, Nexus of Fate and Wilderness Reclamation)? 

{Explanation} Alrighty kids, time to take a trip with Uncle Inferno in the Wayback Machine^TM to time and place long past!

The year is The Recent Past, Sometime Approximately 4 Years Ago. The setting is Your Friendly Neighborhood Local Game Store. There I was, 16 years old and minding my own business with my causal Red-White Aura kitchen table deck just chilling while a few friends finished up their round in small draft we had put together. And then walks in Spike, who smells like tobacco smoke and beer that's been stale for a week (literally giving me a migraine from across the table) and offers to play a few games with me. What could possibly go wrong?

Then he pulls out his tuned for Modern blue mill you out in 3 turns deck and proceeds to clobber me with it 4 times in a row.

Dickweed.

Anyways, that's why I hate mill with a burning passion. Don't get me wrong, I think the concept on a small scale is fine, but it's super unfun to play against a deck where the entire point of it is "I'm going to kill you by taking away the one resource you actually need to win the game and you have virtually no way to get back."

Rant over, here's the card:


(I think mill could be tertiary in red if you find a way to make it chaotic.)

{Explanation} When I saw the given challenge, two possible approaches came to my mind instantly.

• Cards getting too wordy. (If you know me, you know I prefer clean cards.)
• Magic's "recent" choice to remove downsides of cards and rather taking an "all upside" approach.

So in the end, I decided to take the second choice and go all out. I'm not sorry (ok, maybe a little bit )

{Explanation} mass land destruction
this is like that, but people don't get completely boned

{Explanation} So my most disliked aspect of recent Magic design is the fact that cards feel like they're designed with Arena in mind. What I mean by this is the abundance of cards that are difficult to keep track of without the automation that Arena has, and are annoying to track on paper. To me, Ikoria had not only all of these ideas, but featured them front and center as part of it's set design, making what is in my opinion, the worst set Magic has produced in a long time.

{Explanation} The things that make me the most salty in 1v1 and free for all formats are boggles, infect, and dying to commander damage, so I figured I'd make a card that was the best of all those terrible worlds.

{Explanation} I got back into Magic for Lorwyn/Shadowmoor (and I'm a Timmy), so I was fond of the Tribal mechanic. But, the Tarfire/Tarmogoyf interaction always rubbed me the wrong way (Goyf doesn't even care about Gobbos!). Delirium is a whole mechanic dedicated to that same rules space I hate, so I knew I had to make this.

{Explanation} I get that Armageddon isn't fun, but things like Thalia, Guard of Thraben, Steelshaper's Gift, Giver of Runes, Knight of the White Orchid, and many more cards across White's history show that there are plenty of ways to make White interesting and/or have interesting card advantage/manipulation without just slapping raw card draw on everything. While I don't disagree with the idea of counterspells in White as much, I feel like it also gets often taken too far without considering the limitations they typically get (Battlefield Medic, Dawn Charm, Mana Tithe, etc...) that are clearly done in the interest of making White's counterspells feel distinct - in particular, most White counterspells are either conditional or soft counterspells. I don't mind wanting to a fix a color or play with its pie, but doing it with some grace goes a long way.


I tried to go for a Smothering Tithe/Alms Giver take on this idea that would parody the the typical "white bad" memes (specifically, the multiple card draw without any strings attached suggestions) while still trying to retain some semblance of White's conditional counterspell design. In this case you're probably not going to be able to spend this well against something like a Lightning Bolt as opposed to a Omniscience, which is part of the idea of White trying to keep things 'fair' by controlling out your opponent's big bad plays. I also wanted to avoid letting this easily hit 'creature-esque' stuff, so I decided to specify noncreature and nonplaneswalker. It might seem odd to leave instants and sorceries within this card's range, but I'm willing to argue a bend for that and suggest that that would roughly be the equivalent to prevent damage or lifegain effects trying to stop burn spells.

{Explanation} I made a midrange bomb that basically wins the game by itself

{Explanation} I hate planeswalkers, especially how much fucking text is on them. Oh, you don't know exactly what this planeswalker does? Have fun reading a book in the middle of the game and remembering exactly what everything does as the boardstate changes. It's open information, but because of how much planeswalkers do, they're a chore to play against and they become essentially unknowns. And then they made planeswalkers with four bloody abilities and passives as well... Though, the uncommon ones with a passive and a minus ability I do enjoy. Simple fun those are.

{Explanation} You all know how much I hate Control with a burning passion, so here's an Un- card :

{Explanation} Any guesses for my pet peeve?

{Explanation} I've always disliked the rarity of decent dual lands. Everyone needs them, and so they get printed in the rare slot to drive up the value. People who can afford it load up their decks with stacks of expensive lands that give them an edge.

So I made this uncommon dual land that's fantastic as long as you keep your deck's nonbasic land count to a minimum.

{Explanation} I hate mono-red. Especially burn.

{Explanation} As Daij_Djan said, a recent trend for magic cards is for them to be super wordy. I personally hate this trend, especially on cards that just staple a bunch of effects together like Uro. I also especially hate Uro because I love Simic and having Simic be considered OP by the community makes me want to play it less. So, introducing...

Wordy Simic Value Mythic With Protection and/or Recursion! (tm)

{Explanation} I'm not a big fan of cards which feature the "you lose the game" drawback.

{Explanation} I don't like cards that are self synergistic, namely stuff like Griselbrand that have you pay life and that also gain you life. In this case the card gets you more cards which while synergistic with the end step ability at least cycles threw cards, plus even though its a modal doublesided card to best work you still benefit from having other cards that make treasure.

{Explanation} You know what's worse than control? Prison.

One of the awkward things you can do with this that's not intentionally a part of the design is skip the declare blockers step during your turn.

{Explanation} Here's one that I somewhat hate: milling that one card you need.

I actually tried to design a balanced mill card, but man this would still be annoying to play against. 

{Explanation} My least favorite trend in Magic right now is the push for more extremely busted 5 color commanders. One of the coolest things about Commander is that changing your color identity changes so much of your deck and it's weird to think "well I could just run Golos" every time I'm building a new deck.

My attempt to fix it is to make a Commander that cares about something that really deserves 5 colors, ie versatility. Charms are fun for their versatility also, so why not have a 5 color commander who cares about charms? I also made it an elemental bird because, imo? If Ajani's pridemate gets to count as a cat, phoenixes get to be birds.

{Explanation} I get annoyed by how often Wizards is doing an artifact theme. Also anyone who plays commander with me knows that I have an irrational urge to destroy planeswalkers. Lastly I'm kind of bad at timing counterspells. Put all of that together and you'll probably end up with Tezzeret.

{Explanation} I don't really like building pillow fort style commander decks, I've built enchantment decks before but I don't care to include things like Ghostly Prison or Propaganda. I find they just slow down the game and take up slots in the deck that could be more win cons. So this is my compromise, a pillow fort card that requires you to have creatures and to be doing something proactive with them.

{Explanation} One of the more annoying things that has been popping up in magic design is taking an older card that saw a decent amount of play, and would be considered good, and putting its effect on an efficient body. Examples I am thinking of are Terror of the Peaks being the a pushed Warstorm Surge, and Tegrid, which is an improved it that betrays for a 7 mana discount that also has a card printed on its back. For my card I took an old favorite of my green decks, and gave it the standard green beater rate we have now.