Lift The Ban Challenge

Idea wins.
I like the idea to have the effect be tied to something more interactive than a simple ETB. But it feels a bit strange to tie it to damage (especially even damage to non-players). Adding the already-exiled cards into the grave is an interesting addition that actually makes this better as a 4-mana 6/6 flyer since multiple copies of it won't kill you so badly with a low GY count. However, it comes with it another issue of triggering effects that care about cards entering the grave "from anywhere."

Companion (If this card is your chosen companion, you may put it into your hand from outside the game for as a sorcery.)

/j

I feel like history has proven that stapling the value of a Commander/extra card in hand on a card at the start of the game can be like walking on eggshells if you're not careful - see Once Upon a Time.




Essentially, a Companion does two things for free - guarantees a specific effect in your hand, and gives you an extra card in your hand. Neither of these effects should be free, and yet here they are. Sure, they costed for a bit, but that clearly isn't enough by itself when you look at things like Lurrus of the Dream Den. So we're left with three angles to address this problem:

- Hike up the cost. We've already seen this doesn't work by itself and we don't want to create a bunch of 20 cost cards either.
- Make cards extremely minor effects, like Sentinel Dispatch. This results in fairly bland designs and and might not solve the problem anyway.
- Card disadvantage - Essentially, force the player to start with less options in exchange for having a guaranteed option. I think this is a potentially fair option in the sense that it leaves players much more vulnerable to Turn 1 Thoughtseize and restricts their use of mulliganing for combo hands because it's a lot harder to juggle having a manabase and optimal plays when you have to get rid of more cards. Discard decks are all the rage with Grief right now, so at the very least this nerf would make Servitors unable to get a leg up on them.

I pondered between having Servitors come to the top of the library and come directly into the hand, but I decided to keep it as the latter so that discard decks could immediately respond to it on turn 1 to minimize any ambiguity or shenanigans.

To keep the effect straightforward, cost increases are directly factored into the actual card's mana cost. This is for two reasons:
1) It's generally assumed you're going to use Servitors for the guaranteed effect (really, who doesn't?).
2) This lets individual cards be tweaked based on the actual power of the effect they provide as a Servitor. I don't showcase that in this cycle, but the potential is there.

Painter of Ashes
Creature - Human Artist
Servitor (At the beginning of your first turn's upkeep, you may reveal ~ from your library and exile two cards from your hand. If you do, add ~ to your hand, then shuffle. You may only reveal one Servitor per game this way.)
Whenever a red spell you control deals damage, exile the top card of your library. Until end of turn, you may play cards exiled this way.
3/1
"By this oath, I remember those lost to injust flames."

Witch of Din Gremreth
Creature - Human Warlock
Servitor (At the beginning of your first turn's upkeep, you may reveal ~ from your library and exile two cards from your hand. If you do, add ~ to your hand, then shuffle. You may only reveal one Servitor per game this way.)
Whenever a creature dies, you may put a -1/-1 counter on Witch of Din Gremreth.
, , remove a ~ counter from ~: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature.
1/4
"By this oath, I bring you a long-promised death."

Seer-Dancer of Irisva
Creature - Human Rogue
Servitor (At the beginning of your first turn's upkeep, you may reveal ~ from your library and exile two cards from your hand. If you do, add ~ to your hand, then shuffle. You may only reveal one Servitor per game this way.)
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, scry 2.
2/2
"By this oath, I dance the path to your unseen future."

very well, I am closing this contest!

I think your analysis was pretty spot-on ZephyrPhantom. Your solution is overall elegant, though I wonder if a large cost that needs to be paid all at once plus exiling two cards from your hand on your first turn isn't a bit too much. These servitors don't have the deckbuilding restrictions companions had to be able to use them as companions, so it makes sense to make them costly to obtain, but if they are like that they should probably be more effective once you do have them.


Painter of Ashes Pretty interestingly balanced, I think it would be difficult to make a good comparison argument for this one's case as it has a pretty commander-like effect. I do think this might be a bit too fragile though. Low stats make sense given what you want to do, but making this have 1 toughness makes it incredibly vulnerable for a card that not only costs 5 mana, but wants you to play other cards alongside it preferably in the same turn. It's a good example of what I was talking about above: Its hard to obtain but the extras also have consequences on other aspects of it's usefulness, making such a card much harder to justify including even in deck that specifically use its gameplan.

Witch of Din Gremreth A creature dying will easily make this borderline useless in combat, and it can only put -1/-1 counters on things and that's assuming it's weakened first. I think without ever needing an effect this clunky you could make much better alternatives for her gameplan. Painter was strong but too fragile, but this one is costly, fragile AND weak.

Seer-Dancer of Irisva This one I think is pretty good. Her effect isn't crazy or anything, but it has repeated synergy and while 2/2 isn't quite tough, it's a lot better than 1 toughness.


The winner naturally is ZephyrPhantom

Plagued Potency
Enchantment
~ enters the battlefield with three plague counters on it, then draw three cards.
Indestructible, shroud.
Whenever you would draw your first card during your draw step, remove a plague counter from ~ instead. Then, if there are no plague counters on ~, sacrifice it and lose 3 life.


Limit the amount of cards, and make the drawback an actual drawback.

First, I increased the mana value by 1 generic to slow the initial play.
Second, I increased the draw restriction to any card draw.
Third, I removed the "face down" part of the activated ability.
And finally, I took away life as a cost. I considered having the activated ability cost 2 black, but I thought that was too expensive.
(I also downgraded the rarity to Rare.)

To summarize, now this is a turn 4 play that doesn't see a great benefit until turn 5 (when playing honest Magic). Even then, when you can get this to go off, your opponents can see what is coming.

I hope you think this is still playable and I didn't butcher it too badly.

This was a really good competition because even though I'm sick atm you guys forced me to think a lot about this. I think there were issues with designs but nothing that couldn't be improved for a proper set.

melono - A warped Ancestral Recall, neat. Treacherous Blessing suggest this should be 3 mana for Standard, I could see it being 2 mana in Modern - I'm pretty sure some decks, especially the recently banned Up the Beanstalk ones, would be over the moon if they could get instant 3 cards for one mana. Storm is also very concerning here - basically there are enough decks that don't care about having a next turn that they'll gladly cram their deck with 4x of these at 1 mana and proceed to win earlier than they should. Bit pushed for the prompt but it's close enough.

One afterthought to this, actually - you could've had this negate all draws and it would be a lot more plausible to print, even at 1 mana. That would at least stop decks from cramming 4x of them.

Idea - This was a bit tough to digest but once I understood I agree with your logic. Enchantment removal in SB is extremely common in competitive formats and would act as a buffer against this type of card dominating. I think this should cost BBBB though if only because 4 mana is usually where the big card advantage engines in Modern usually start to appear - The One Ring, Karn, the Great Creator, Jace the Mind Sculptor, to name a few. Even then it's a bit concerning since it doesn't have a built in turn-cap like the others, but I think the big delay would keep it in check.

kingofohio - This definitely reads as being a lot safer and fairer - if I only had JTMS to compare this against I might've rated it too powerful, but in a One Ring world I actually think this is roughly comparable to it.

vizionarius - In MaRo's words, the words "lose the game" are like dynamite - you must be balancing out something really extreme for it to be used as opposed to any other drawback. Despite the card that this is, I don't think Necro (or more precisely, Yawgmoth's Bargain) is that card and I worry the drawback doesn't necessarily do that much to subvert what it does as you can still set things up to empty your hand somehow (shoals, discard, etc...) and then draw to six again. I would've much rather seen a harsher hand limit and a different kind of drawback - like, if you have 2 or more cards in hand, anything you draw must be exiled, for example - see Null Profusion. I don't think this card is would be safe below Legacy, and at minimum if you were trying to print it to direct to Modern it'd need to cost 4BB like Yawgmoth's Bargain. (It probably doesn't need to be 8 mana because it'd be harder to reanimate than Griselbrand, but cheating it out should still be a challenge.)

So this really comes down to two questions:

1) How much is the card still recognizably Necropotence? Some of you opted to rework the card entirely and make it resemble a different card in the process. I was tempted to rate solely on this, and it still plays a big role in judgement - but that's not the question I actually asked.
2) Is your card getting into Modern or below as-is? This is the question I asked and I think it really separates the winner from the runner ups here because everyone made a lot of pushed designs but there was a recurring trend of being 1 mana too cheap or being one nerf away from preventing easy exploits. I ended up comparing to The One Ring a lot more than expected but it asks a lot of similar questions and makes me realize like I mentioned in Idea's review that the most iconic examples of these things are still pretty firmly at 4 mana.

kingofohio wins for answering 2) the best, with Idea as runner-up for following 1) the best.

Alright then.

For the next card, let's unban Dread Return!

bonus points for more creative approaches.

Here is the reason for ban.

Dread Return
Sorcery
Sacrifice a creature. When you do, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
Rebound (If you cast this spell from your hand, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of your next upkeep, you may cast this card from exile without paying its mana cost.) 
Those who forget the horrors of the past are doomed to re-meet them.

Note: This allows you to bring back the same creature that you saced.

Will be reviewing tomorrow! Any last minute entries are welcome!

Thanks for the win Idea !

Next: Unban Second Sunrise from Modern. Reason for the ban is here, with examples of Eggs decks here.

I'll give this a bump and wait around 48 hrs before judging.

Feedback

Idea: This makes the card even stronger! The deck that got this banned plays Conjurer's Bauble to get it back to the bottom, and Ghost Quartering yourself to shuffle the deck to re-draw it. This takes care of the "shuffle it back in" all on its own! I guess it does save on steps to get the combo off!

ZephyrPhantom: Haha, this feels like a buff just to make the point that the deck is annoying. It does make the game end faster, that's for sure. I also like that it has a bit of a reference in theme to Approach of the Second Sun. I just fear that it would also find new uses as a "cast once with 20 permanents out and win," which is not too difficult to get between lands and tokens.

Result

I think both submissions actually buff the card in pretty significant ways, which feels like the opposite of the spirit of the challenge. However, the solution that does the most to at least deal with one aspect of the ban (namely that a game becomes a long solitaire game), is ZephyrPhantom, so they get the win.

(I think an "exile after resolving" would have been a decent fix.)

Ancient Lotus 
Artifact
Delve (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting this spell pays for .)
, Sacrifice ~: Add three mana of any one color.

Note: You can still cast this turn 1 with a Mental Note, Seed of Hope, Stitcher's Supplier, or Otherworldly Gaze. Or other 0-cost cards like the Pacts, the evoke Incarnations, or the Baubles and friends (and I'm sure there are more obscure ways too), but hopefully that forces deck construction enough to where it's less oppressive. It also makes you use multiple cards or a mana to get it going. I'm thinking only about Vintage and Legacy here.

Crystal Lotus
Artifact
, Sacrifice ~: Add . You can't cast any spells until end of turn.


You can of course pay abilities with it. But is it worth it to have a boost of 3 colourless mana later in the game when your ability needs activating? Probably. But a probably makes it way more balanced.