CotW Contest #387: But do not forget: they came as three.

Would a Meld pair count for this? Two cards becoming a third, differently named card?

EDIT: Also what if I really want to do 4 cards for a joke?

Eeeexcellent, now to see if I can actually pull off this *terrible, terrible* joke of a vertical cycle.

I was initially going for an asymmetrical partner team, but that felt wrong given what the keyword is supposed to represent. I decided to try playing with conditional partnering instead.

Disgraced Seraphim
Creature - Angel Cleric
If you have less than half your starting life total when you cast ~, it gains partner with Vengeful Electromancer. (When this creature enters the battlefield, target player may put Vengeful Electromancer into their hand from their library, then shuffle.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a card with partner, you may put that card into your hand and lose 2 life.
2/1
"Would you like to know what happens when angels have their god disproved?"


Vengeful Electromancer
Creature - Elemental Wizard
As an additional cost to cast ~, you may discard a card. If you do ~ gains partner with Disgraced Seraphim. (When this creature enters the battlefield, target player may put Disgraced Seraphim into their hand from their library, then shuffle.)
Whenever you cast a spell with partner, ~ gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
1/2
"Tell me. What happens when science falls to irrational mystics?"

Electromancer turn 1, fetch Seraphim, Seraphim grabs even more cheap partner cards and eats up your life total which leads to future Seraphims searching up more Electromancers which can discard to fetch more Seraphims to get more Electromancers... if they don't kill you first in their endlessly reckless chain.

Decided to split the difference a bit. The first time around, I got feedback that the abilities of the meld didn't seem very fitting, so I reworked them.



The revised version comes with a bit of backstory; Princess Leonette was a lonely and melancholy woman, who seldom left her room in the palace. Orsval, a talented young painter whose work had caught the queen's eye. At first merely hired to do portraits for the royal family, Orsval discovered Leonette's interest and talent for painting, and offered to give her lessons. Through these, the two became close, and fell in love. However, both knew that their love could never be. Yet as the date of the Princess' arranged wedding drew near, the two began to hope more and more for a different life, together. They threw their efforts into a single painting, made together, hoping to create a new world. A perfect world where they could always be together, escaping to a land of imagination where no-one could find them.




Just for the heck of it, I'm including the cards I felt were too tied up in my set's mechanics to stand alone too. As you can tell, they lean heavy into fortification support. Fortifications are something I want my set to use to help highlight a more "developed" civilization, but without the set to show them off, all that's left is one card and an official assessment of them being largely redundant (and maybe they are a little, but I still think there's a niche in the right set). There's also the matter of the tall, elf-like ouphie, which has a reason in its proper context.

Aside from that, both trios of cards include the "Artisan" subtype. That's sort of what the cycle is about. I decided on adding Artisan to my set after seeing that MSEM had "Artist". Artisans in the set represent skilled craftspeople and artists, who achieve magical results purely through the skill and mastery of their craft, as opposed to Artificers who intentionally infuse their creations with magic. For the cycle of meld cards, each includes a master artisan and their patron/muse. When the two are brought together, via meld, the artisan's "great work" is achieved. The meld card is the creator's masterpiece. For which I went with World over Legendary for two reasosns. The first is that I'm stubborn and contrary, and wanted to find a way that World would be an interesting and fun mechanic to play with. Powerful permanents that are difficult to get out seemed like a good way to do that. The setup needed to get out a meld means that I can be more generous in what the cards can do, making them feel more worth the restriction, and since another player using a World card to knock the first out requires the same level of set-up (and is thus also subject to disruption) it fixes the lack of interactivity that the World rule was plagued by. The second is that I think it's thematically appropriate that only one "masterpiece" can be in effect at a time. The power of art comes from its ability to inspire, so the creation of new wonders would naturally take away from the awe the last once inspired.

kefke: Any particular reason you decided your seven mana meld enchantment payoff should be destroyed by an opponent casting Concordant Crossroads? Also why is Orsval... completely worthless? Even Graf Rats is a better member of a Meld pair.