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Post by vizionarius on Jun 26, 2023 16:21:53 GMT
Shahrazad  Battle - Trial  (As a Trial enters, you lose control of it. You and others can attack and protect it. When it’s defeated by a player, that player exiles it, then casts it transformed.)When ~ enters the battlefield, all other nonland permanents phase out until ~ leaves the battlefield. Players' life totals can't change. {10} //// Sultan's Decision Sorcery Each other player loses half their life, rounded up. The stories have come to an end...Ruling: A spell or permanent you lose control of that no other player gains control of is treated as controlled by an opponent for all players. Fun fact: I ran Shahrazad in my first EDH deck (Progenitus, back in 2009, before it was banned in the format in 2011).
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jul 10, 2023 17:29:16 GMT
I'll judge this within the next 24 hours. Feel free to submit last minute entries.
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jul 11, 2023 16:45:16 GMT
SilentKobold - A white punisher mill is pretty out there...and yet, when I think of it, especially with the lifegain and group hugginess it's surprisingly White. I think this is a pretty suitable rework that could be printed in a Commander deck while loosely recreating the flavor, but it doesn't stick as closely to the idea of the card as the competition. Idea - Very unusual (but plausible) use of the PW template. I'm a bit iffy on token copies sticking around causing a weird asymmetry but I get what you're going for. It's a functional (albeit wordy) recreation of the subgame that also lets you break the pie for a pseudo-wheel effect. vizionarius - Good use of Battle terminology to make a much more compact version of the card's effects that recreates the key beats, and using boardwipe/phasing flavor to keep it solidly in-color for White as well. I'm a little iffy on this costing WW - might need to be 1WW at least, since it's a effectively a boardwipe if you can keep it protected. But this is pretty close to set ready and probably could straight up be printed in a Standard product - at WW, maybe it'll even fit in MH3? Lol. (Also, I wish I had the guts to legitimately run Shahrazad. Maybe I'll take a crack at it this month...) Winner - vizionarius wins. I like the other designs as well, mind, but in terms of keeping the original card's flavor and recreating the idea of messing with the gamestate this version did it best.
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Post by vizionarius on Jul 11, 2023 17:10:30 GMT
Thanks for the win! I've been experimenting with other Battle subtypes. Glad you liked it!
Next: Let's fix Fable in standard. |
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Post by Idea on Jul 12, 2023 2:43:54 GMT
 Fable's problem was one of efficiency. So I decided to make changes targeting this efficiency: -pseudo-cost increase by turning one mana into another red -token creature made more vulnerable, meaning it could be more easily removed before it can make treasure or right after making one -discard effect split in two, giving an extra turn before Saga flips |
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Post by vizionarius on Jul 31, 2023 17:37:33 GMT
any more entries?
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Post by vizionarius on Aug 10, 2023 17:48:03 GMT
Idea : I actually quite like your solution here. Two things stand out for me as what would really make a difference: Swapping a  to  in the cost, and splitting the discard into 2 turns (1 discard a turn). I think having the Goblin either be a 2/2 or a 1/1 would work well. A 2/1 feels a little strange for me for a Goblin token, but that's just preference. Overall, I think your changes would make the card still very good, but not worthy for a ban. Honestly, the switch from to might actually have made it restrictive enough! Nice fix! Since there were no other submissions, I'll pass on the next one over to you.
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Post by Idea on Aug 10, 2023 22:26:26 GMT
Thank you for the win vizionarius ! I will now offer everyone a choice. These two card were banned for pretty similar reasons, at the same time of the same format, when both were found within the same deck. Energy Temur was a deck that was one of the prime examples of the failures of the Energy Mechanic, it's lack of interactivity and great flexibility combined created a deck that wasn't just very efficient, it was capable of adapting to most opponents. It wasn't the cards that won the game for the deck that were banned though but instead Attune with Aether and Rogue Refiner, both of which enabled the deck and gave it energy, one with mana fixing and the other with cantrip + decent body for its mana value. The challenge is to fix either or both of these cards such that they could've been not banned in standard. Since I'm offering a choice, I will also put a restriction: Your fixed version must still give energy and still cost 4 mana or less. |
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Post by Idea on Aug 26, 2023 10:43:12 GMT
I'll give this a bump! If there are no new entries within a week though, I'll assume the challenge is too hard, and lift the restrictions.
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Post by gluestick248 on Aug 27, 2023 11:50:48 GMT
I’ll take a stab at this Commune with Aether   Sorcery You get  , then you may pay any amount of . Search your library for that many basic land cards, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle. You can technically get the same effect (one land and two energy), but this makes it better to spend more energy rather than stockpile it |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Aug 27, 2023 12:37:02 GMT
Going to do to both to demonstrate two slightly different methods of fixing: Attune with Aether Sorcery  Choose one - • Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle. • You get (two energy counters). Rogue Refiner  Creature — Human Rogue  When Rogue Refiner enters the battlefield, if you have no , you get (two energy counters). Otherwise, draw a card. 3/2 I thought of using revolt but decks using Greenbelt Rampager put a stop to that idea pretty fast. So instead here's a little "Two energy or a card?" subtheme. |
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Post by vizionarius on Aug 30, 2023 21:55:25 GMT
Attune with Aether Sorcery Mill three cards. You may put a land card from among the milled cards into your hand. You get {E} (an energy counter).
Rogue Refiner Creature — Human Rogue Whenever Rogue Refiner deals combat damage to a player, you draw a card and you get {E} (an energy counter). 3/2
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Post by Idea on Sept 7, 2023 11:10:18 GMT
Thank you everyone for your entries! I'll give this just one more day and get to judging.
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Post by Idea on Sept 10, 2023 0:15:50 GMT
gluestick248{Spoiler}When I first looked at this card I thought "there's no way they're going to allow this much land search at this low a cost, especially not with flexibility." Indeed, it seems searching for two or three lands typically starts at five mana, though seemingly always with additional effects. The exception, however, is Nissa's Triumph, which unlike those other cards costs 2 and only searches lands. In light of that, even though this does have an additional effect - the energy - and has added flexibility rather than Nissa's Triumph's condition, your card actually seems pretty balanced on an isolated basis. That being said the problem that I wanted to see fixed and got those cards banned was likely stemmed from the flexibility and efficiency of those cards. What you see in this card is a fairly great amount of energy generated, which you can flexibly turn into simultaneous mana fixing and deck thinning, two things which are quite splashable and coveted in competitive environment in both MTG and other trading card games. Your solution was a well-designed and balanced card but unfortunately I think it would still be banned because it has the same kinds of advantages that made the two I mentioned so exceedingly ubiquitous as enablers of samey energy decks. {Spoiler}Attune With Aether A simple, but likely effective solution. The card retains its flexibility but it's a lot less efficient and that choice might deny the energy decks the tools for the tailored response that made them a problem (well, as far as I know).
Rogue Refiner I think it's balanced based if nothing else on the fact that I don't think it would be fair below this cost but the original Rogue Refiner saw print as something stronger than this. It's also strictly worse choosing between drawing or getting two energy. The efficiency here doesn't matter as much as with the one-mana-card above, (when it comes to the benefits of forcing that choice), but I do think the card stands a much better chance of not being banned, at least certainly closer to other cards that just straight up produce 2+ energy on entry. vizionarius{Spoiler}Attune With Aether That's a clever approach, hitting them in the consistency. In terms of the wider context a mill card like this in energy comes a little too close to comfort to Amonkhet, but that's an extra bit of context that is more of a nitpick than a real criticism of this. I think the card being designed like this helps, but overall it still generally keeps the original's problems whenever it works.
Rogue Refiner This one on the other hand I think is pretty well done. It may have some new issues with repeatability, but those are slightly addressed with the reduction in the amount of energy gained. More importantly the effect is not immediate on that turn (less important for energy which sticks around than other things, but nonetheless relevant) and the opponent gets a chance to interact with your energy gaining and card draw by blocking.
Winner {Spoiler}My favorite entries here were ZephyrPhantom 's Attune with Aether for a simple solution that really managed to cut on the card's efficiency in the short and long term and vizionarius 's Rogue Refiner fix for the added interactivity. I think both of these give more room for opponent's to enact their plan and less room for energy decks to exploit the flexibility of energy. Overall though, I think I prefer ZephyrPhantom 's designs here as I find them more likely to work as a solution without potentially causing new problems like milling or repeated energy gain could, so I'm going to give them the win and give vizionarius the runner-up spot.
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Sept 11, 2023 14:41:05 GMT
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Post by vizionarius on Sept 11, 2023 21:35:19 GMT
Fall from Favor  Enchantment — Aura Enchant creature When Fall from Favor enters the battlefield, you become the monarch. Enchanted creature doesn't untap during its controller's untap step unless that player is the monarch. Removed the "tap enchanted creature" part to allow counterplay against multiple copies without the need for haste.
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Post by Idea on Sept 12, 2023 13:20:05 GMT
 I went a little back and forth on whether to remove the ability to put this on your own creature, and ended up deciding nah, I think becoming the monarch at the cost of one of your own creatures (excluding that creature's static abilities) and a card is fair. I did make it so you only get the benefit of either tapping right away OR becoming the monarch by making being the monarch a pre-requisite for tapping. I think this is enough as you'll either need to spend resources doing one or the other for the card's full former effectiveness. In addition I increased the cost by ::1:: , which given the problem is against aggro decks can be a pretty big deal. Both of these changes make it harder to use this card early enough to be able to fully prevent some attack from getting through, meaning it'll be harder to hold on to the position of monarch. |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Oct 6, 2023 2:42:49 GMT
Judging in 24-48 hours. Last minutes, edits, you know the drill.
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Oct 9, 2023 3:19:22 GMT
Between the two fixes I think vizionarius 's is cleaner and more effective. Idea 's card is interesting but Fall from Favor is typically used as a removal spell in a meta that regularly has creatures so the extra effect on one's own creatures ends up not being as useful and makes the card a bit tougher to quickly read through. vizionarius wins |
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Post by vizionarius on Oct 9, 2023 3:27:09 GMT
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Oct 9, 2023 7:52:40 GMT
Thanks for linking a post explaining why. I think we should keep doing this in the future. Umar's Bag of Tricks Legendary Artifact — Equipment Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage, if ~ doesn't have a charge counter on it, put a charge counter on it. Remove a charge counter from Umar's Bag of Tricks and unattach it from a creature you control: Choose one — • Equipped creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn. • Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn. • You gain 2 life. Equip "A good magician understands the importance of restocking."Two fixes here to rein in the raw power of the card: 1) Prevent the player from hoarding counters so that you can't use them on later turns to combat any number of specific situations that might occur. Whenever you accumulate a charge, you have to use it ASAP or lose the value. This lets us keep the card's flexibility while limiting how far it can run away with the game. 2) Detach the card each time it is used. Mechanically, this now means you have to pay mana to take advantage of repeated instant-speed activations, which I think is more interesting than slapping the card with a sorcery-speed limitation. Flavorfully, you have to spend mana and attacks ('money' and 'effort') to refill the bag. Modern as it currently is prefers cheap cards that can provide immediate value upfront, so I deliberately kept the initial casting and equip cost as is while looking to limit the card in other ways. |
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Post by Idea on Oct 9, 2023 9:04:42 GMT
 There are two main issues with Jitte. The primary one is its sheer versatility, giving it counters to most approaches to defend oneself against it, which can lead things to spiral out of control. The second is that while none of the effects are particularly broken the combination of charge storage, instant speed and aforementioned versatility give you a lot of leeway to target the best possible time and use of each individual charge counter, again quite difficult to play around once the card gets going. I made several changes to the card, but they mainly boil down to two things. First, I narrowed its applications to a combat the equipped creature is involved with. So you can't minus the chump blockers before they can block anymore for instance, and while you can still prevent their damage essentially by killing them with the ability, doing so means risking your card no longer dealing combat damage (so no new counters). Second I concentrated the two counters into just one, mostly keeping the same effectiveness (the +3/+3 from the +4/+4 felt fairer to be weaker, while I felt it made more sense and was again fair to make the creature gain lifelink, potentially giving you more than 4 life and also synergizing with the card itself if you wanted to save up some counters for that), but making it harder to distribute them to exactly the right place you need. While the -1/-1 change was definitely the biggest, being restricted to the involved combat AND only getting one instance albeit doubled, I also think it was the biggest contributor to the card's issues. With it's change though I think the card's effectiveness decreased in a possibly abysmal way. I decided to reduce the equip cost as I felt the new restricted version would be more fun to use but still balanced if you could switch around which creature is equipped more easily. |
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Post by vizionarius on Oct 19, 2023 17:28:36 GMT
FeedbackZephyrPhantom : I feel like the combination of it only ever having 1 charge counter (without other effects) and it unattaching itself make it a little too much of a nerf. I don't think people would play with it. Having to pay 2 mana and hit with a creature to get one of these effects feels a little weak. I think it would be fine without the unattach, since you are already limiting the effect to just 1 use per combat, and only after the first combat. Idea : I like the change to it working only while in combat. I think that's a good direction to go with this. I also like that it gets 1 counter per combat instead of 2. I think the original Equip cost would have been better; as is, it's a little too easy to move around. I like the change to giving only the blocking creature the minus, and upping it to -2/-2 feels fine. I think the +3/+3 might be a little high, but would have to see in playtest. And lifelink is an interesting one to use, which I do like, but wonder if it makes it a little strong still. What I like with your edits is also that tying the effects to combat really feel like an expansion of bushido, which Toshiro already has, making it fit better flavorfully to the set than even the original.
ResultI liked the direction that Idea took with this more, so they win! My own idea was to do away with the counters completely and just have a "choose one" effect triggered on attacking ("+2/+2 to self; -1/-1 to target; +2 life"), keeping the versatility, but tying it to combat.
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Post by Idea on Oct 19, 2023 21:51:02 GMT
Thank you for the win vizionarius ! For the next challenge... Let's try unbanning Prophet of Kruphix in commander! There are two reasons this card is banned. The first is the that while in a two-player format the cards untaps your stuff one extra time, giving your mana and creature tap abilities one extra use, in commander this happens 3 times, so that's a lot more mana and usage of abilities than the card is balanced around. The second issue is that fact combined with it also giving you flash-casting means one player is hogging most of the time in the commander game and in a sense gets all the turns, warping the game around this card and potentially slowing things down too much. |
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Post by vizionarius on Oct 19, 2023 22:16:21 GMT
Prophet of Kruphix Creature — Human Wizard  At the beginning of your end step, choose an opponent. Untap all creatures and lands you control during that player's next untap step. You may cast creature spells as though they had flash during that player's next turn. "Time is fluid as a dance, and truth as fleeting."2/3 Attempting to mimic how this card functions in 1v1, ported to a multiplayer game. Making it work only once between your turns feels better, and having to make the choice up front whose turn you get to do it on leans more into this being a "prophet" in that you'll have to predict who is the best player to choose.
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Post by Idea on Oct 27, 2023 16:17:23 GMT
Will be reviewing this on Sunday in case anyone wants to make any further entries!
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Post by fluffydeathbringer on Oct 27, 2023 17:59:53 GMT
Prophet of Kruphix Creature - Human Wizard At the beginning of each other player's untap step, untap up to one target creature, up to one target artifact, and up to one target land. Sacrifice Prophet of Kruphix: You may cast the next spell you cast this turn as though it had flash. 2/3
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Post by Idea on Oct 30, 2023 0:23:03 GMT
vizionarius{Spoiler}Simple, practical, elegant. It reduces the power and time problems quite effectively. Further while the choice of player seems like a pure limitation, it's also a matter of choice skill since one has to assess the best opponent in whose turn to interfere in. The issue I see is I feel this bites a bit into the point of the card, the core idea that you can play during any player's turn. This is definitely part of the problem though. fluffydeathbringer{Spoiler}Quite a huge nerf for the card. Wish I had your reasoning here to read, but honestly it feels like serious overkill but there may be more to this than I am seeing. Winner {Spoiler} vizionarius is the winner. I think both approaches nerfed the card, though both also chewed a bit on its point. That being said I think vizionarius 's entry better preserved the goal of the original (admittedly by making only a very localized change) and was overall simple and effective.
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Post by vizionarius on Oct 30, 2023 17:53:29 GMT
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Post by Idea on Oct 31, 2023 10:50:19 GMT
 The combo potential and difficulty of interaction are the main issues here, so my approach for a fix is twofold: 1. I made the trigger slower and require more interaction. You can use creatures with protection, tap it, destroy it... That being said I also left both combat and non-combat damage available, and it doesn't just have to be to players either. This way other cards might enable a same-turn play. But more combo pieces needed, even if not necessarily specific, can still quite tone down a combo. 2. I added exiled cards to the pool of cards that go into your deck. This should make it harder to have that few cards in your deck, as even if your spells self-exiled to stay out of your GY, or even if you use a mass-exile from the GY, those would still end up filling the deck afterwards. |
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