Booster Pack Game

Common #8

Starved Lunatic
Creature — Human Citizen
When ~ enters the battlefield, you may exile an artifact card from a graveyard. If you do, create a Food token.
"Give me something to eat! Anything!"
1/1

A little dark, but...

Common #10

Seelenite Ore
Artifact
: Add one mana of any color.
Madness  (If you discard this card, discard it into exile. When you do, cast it for its madness cost or put it into your graveyard.)
Even unprocessed, its mana-channeling properties are wondrous.

Uncommon #2

Resource Hunter
Artifact Creature — Construct
Hysteria (Each card you discard from your hand while casting this spell pays for .)
Whenever ~ deals combat damage to a player, draw a card.
Until it eventually powers down, it will follow the desperate commands of its previous controller.
3/3

Rare #1

Thomar, Hand of the Horror
Legendary Creature — Human Advisor
Menace
Nonland cards in your hand have hysteria.
Whenever you discard a card, ~ deals 1 damage to any target.
"Ah, the cacophonous cries of the crazed are simply exquisite."
3/2

so, on a holistic level, I don't think Hysteria's a very effective mechanic because I don't think discarding a card is only worth a reduction when compared to convoke, even in a grave environment. especially given that this booster doesn't really illustrate enough grave value recovery to justify hysteria only reducing , if that makes sense. when looking at the way wizards uses discard outlets in other madness environments like Time Spiral and Eldritch Moon, discarding a card isn't really equivalent to convoke in my eyes. I can be convinced otherwise, though. this does affect my judging but I'll try to evaluate the cards on their own merits

vizionarius:
- Nightmare Trinket: Dredge is an interesting direction to take, but in comparison, canon dredge commons are fairly simple, and Nightmare Void gives precedent to hand attack dredge being uncommon at lowest. in terms of simplicity and repeated value, I don't think this is appropriate at common. cool card otherwise, though. 3/5
- Ruinous Urge: honestly underpowered given how it needs you to discard a card for it to do anything at all, and the 1 damage doesn't doesn't justify "1 damage, destroy target artifact" as needing both R and a discard. 2/5
- Seelenite Cathartic: I appreciate the flavour attempt, but not sure if worse Treasures are a worthwhile thing to add to a hypothetical set. balance-wise, at this MV, I think this card could just make a Treasure and be fine. still, that'd be fairly high-ceiling as far as common effectiveness goes, so as it is, the Seelenite token version is also fairly within balance. 3/5
- Induced Reverie: a tightly-balanced way to use madness cost reduction and its instant-speed nature. adding a minor buff is appropriate, and the increased base cost is justified without being overly unplayable. just a tight package all around. 4/5
- Scavenging Troll: cost's a bit high considering the Hysteria balance issues I outlined in the default, I think this'd need to discard at least two cards to be "on par" with a non-Hysteria version. but I like the attempt to introduce a possibly BG mill archetype, and I think the passive ability's done well, so it edges out into a 3/5
- Heedless Maniac: a cool possible archetype signal for a RG "sac/discard artifacts" direction, maybe? on its own, I think the draw is balanced for the hoop you're jumping through for it, and the madness condition is a good addition to avoid the kind of anti-synergy this kind of card would otherwise have in a madness environment. 4/5
- total: 3.1666666.../5

melono:
- Paranoid Citizen: simple and clean common, nothing too troublesome complexity-wise, has a high power ceiling but needs enough outside support to be fine. considering [Phalanx Vanguard], the 1 power is justified considering the breadth of the effect. pretty tight with no major issues. 4/5

Fermat:
- Wall of Garbage: another simple and clean common, the defensive power when compared to the removal is a bit pushed but not too much so. 4/5
- Manic Dismantling: discarding a card to be a Naturalize and discarding two cards to be a one-mana naturalize is underbalanced, given how Wilt already seems to indicate green gets Naturalize with mild upside at common these days. 2/5
- Starved Lunatic: could use an evergreen given green's the most powerful creature color, but besides that, I think having a condition for making a food as a onedrop at common is healthy balance-wise. 3/5
- Seelenite Ore: balanced and set-appropriate way to do the "all-color mana rock with upside" trend. no complaints here. 4/5
- Resource Hunter: I think the Hysteria issue isn't that wonky here, given that I'd conservatively price this at anyway. this is a fairly reasonable use of the mechanic. 4/5
- Thomar: I think this is the best kind of use case for Hysteria among these entries; it supplements the Hysteria decrease with another benefit and gives you more incentive to actually Hysteria cards away. on top of that, it's also a cool and effective discard synergy on its own; balanced for its diversity and effectiveness in terms of mana cost, too. good combat stats, too. 5/5
- total: 3.66666.../5

this judging's a bit weird, because I do believe that these kinds of multiple-entry challenges need to be evaluated in a way that gives people an equal chance to win no matter how many entries they put in so that people can't just put in quantity over quality, but vizionarius and Fermat did put in a lot of effort and engagement that I do appreciate, and it feels off to push them down to runner-up just because melono put in a single, but solid entry. to be fair, most of the 3/5's and 2/5's I gave them are because of Hysteria, which I'm willing to have my mind changed on.

so I'm posting this judgment now with melono as the provisional winner, but I might change that if my mind gets changed on Hysteria.

Congratulations, melono! 

fluffydeathbringer: Indeed, I was only looking at Hysteria from a mathematical standpoint, i.e., most cards that have an additional cost of discarding any card typically cost less to cast; Hysteria only makes it a tad more flexible. The discount can be larger if a specific card type needs to be discarded, but this discerning characteristic wouldn't really fit flavor-wise.

Manic Dismantling really was my downfall here. Indeed, Wilt seems to imply that the base cost for this effect at instant speed is now just . Nevertheless, as someone who has always used Disenchant as the costing reference, this makes me uncomfortable.

fluffydeathbringer: Yeah, the cost discount seems to be very variable. For cards like Honor the God-Pharaoh, Pirate's Pillage, Quarrel's End, Seize the Spoils, Tormenting Voice, and even an old card like Sonic Seizure, the discount only seems to be . However, there are other cards, even at common, in which discarding a card provides a much larger discount, e.g. Bone Shards and Thrill of Possibility. On further inspection, most of the cards that have a discount of are card-draw spells, but even this pattern is broken by Thrill of Possibility. I figured using the lowest possible benefit would be the way to go, but perhaps this was too erratic of a cost-reduction effect, not to mention not worth it value-wise outside of specialized decks that focus on discarding, to attempt to standardize with a keyword.

how much creative liberty can we take here to work off this prompt, since it's based on a setting you've already made for a campaign?

If it fits within the parameters established, or stretches them a bit, it's all fine. I see this as something seperate from the world I DM, as this world is created further by you all.

C#07



Porous Turtlefolk
Creature - Zombie Turtle
Absorb 3 (If a source would deal damage to this creature, prevent 3 of that damage.)
Revive (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its revive cost.)
"There is life yet in those bleached remains!"
--Ikutar, the Final Dream
2/1