Card of the Week Contest #228: Your normal everyday hero

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Vineyard Tender
Creature- Human
, Discard two land cards: Flip ~.
1/3
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The Grapevine Whisperer
Legendary Creature- Human
, Exile a land card from your graveyard: Put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature.
2/3

And now for everyone's favorite part of my appearances, the eviscerations reviews:

@shiftyhomunculous: Toil counters scare the ever-living bejeebus out of me. Circumventing tap costs has the potential to do some completely degenerate things, and getting a freebie with every single creature you play? I'd limit them to tap abilities from creatures only, and even then, I'm sure with a half-hour of work I could come up with a half dozen cards that'd snap the game in half if you could tap them a dozen times in a single turn with no mana investment.

Fleur : Bit of unnecessary keyword soup there, and if it takes until the last line of text on a card for me to understand one of its colors, that's not a great sign. I think it'd be better to make him mono-red, slightly cheaper, and have the even-casting be a self-punishing 2 damage. Strikes me as much more... jesterly.

Tesagk : That's a whoooole lotta ramp on a very tanky body. Also, that's not what landfall is. Adding an additional qualifier disqualifies it from using the landfall abilityword (Which is unnecessary anyways, you can just have "When a land enters the battlefield effects" without it.)

fluffydeathbringer : So monstrous that looks better on your resume. I can dig it. Pretty solid overall but I personally equate eating more with healing than producing dudes.

grishnax : That's a pretty low opportunity cost for a land card that stalls the board. I like what you're going for but having that available every turn as a chump-blocker is stronger than you'd initially suspect, in addition to all the other shenanigans always having access to a moderately-inefficient creature lets you get up to.

viriss : I'm... resoundingly not getting this card. It wants you to have plenty of creatures, but also plenty of not creatures, and it makes tokens and draws cards and there's a part of me in the back of my mind that's really concerned about this color-pie-wise. Like, I'm normally pretty flexible, but this is a heavily mono-blue card that's an elf that makes white birds. I dunno. Also, can't put "target" in costs. Costs can't be responded to and don't target.

Neottolemo : I feel like I must be missing something if I have to point this out, but you are aware that being legendary is a downside, right? Like, if you have to Chaplains, and then they find God, one of them murders the other, right? Also, why does this mono-blue cleric worship a kindly claw? Isn't that a very white thing, being clawed but kindly?

ZephyrPhantom : Stylish.
...I got nothin'. It's a gun. Does damage. Perhaps slightly too efficiently but really, who cares?

kazerima : Nostalgia does not excuse terrible designs. Never, ever use P/T boosting counters that aren't 1/1 counters. There's a reason they haven't been used since the Clinton administration. They're a convoluted mess to keep track of on the table.

mrlozano : That's a whooooole lot of mana. I'm not sure you're quite aware of how much mana that boy can produce, and how dangerous that can be. Also, White-Green does not get "Tap a creature: Draw a card." In any capacity.

kinotherapy : What an obnoxious card. "Destroy target creature with the same name as a creature that creature's controller controls." Ick.

@daij_Djan: I'd like a "You may" in there somewhere to prevent accidental paradox shenanigans when you try to protect a spare one with a Flourishing Defenses or something. Outside of that, solid.

@aargh: It's an interesting concept, to be sure. I have no idea why it's Legendary aside from "That's what the contest asked for." Which, to be fair, is the problem with a lot of CotW contests that are basically "Jump through this hoop."

spazlaz : I hate your card on principle. Shovel Knight is in no way, shape, or form a black character. You literally just saw the picture, went "Guy with shovel, must dig graves" and made a repeatable gravedigger. I am OFFENDED, sir. I see you lack any Shovelry whatsoever.

@jinx316: You seem to be going with the "If I make this creature comically undercosted, I can make their ability super obnoxious" route. Which... please don't. Don't make a creature whose only purpose is board stalls longer than most flight delays. Just don't. Would you want to see that across from you at the table? No, of course not. Please, just don't.

gateways7 [a href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[become]+[copy]"]A very interesting List[/a]
Notice anything funny about this list? Specifically the color of the set symbols? Yeah, copy effects are pretty much universally a Rare effect, and one that's also soft-removal and legendary but without keeping its name and legendary status? That's a whooooole lot of complexity on top of it. This is not an uncommon card.

@pixi-Rex: Hey look, another card that's wildly complex being stuck at uncommon because people think rarity is arbitrary. What're the odds? But yeah, no, an ability having a variable number of targets that're determined during the ability, having a positive effect as a cost, as well as being a creature with a three-modal ability it can use each turn? Again, this is not an uncommon card.

@canterburyegg: Hey look, repeatable hard removal. THAT'S DEFINITELY FINE AT UNCOMMON. Also, have you ever actually played with Rhystic cards? It's a nightmare. Please, never again.

augur : That is resoundingly not worth it. Playing this on curve would basically mean you'd have to handicap yourself at two mana, after which you get a... mediocre creature with a highly restrictive, low-impact buffing ability? Like... Why?

And before I go, there's a little something I saw that gave my eye a bit of a twitch:

Zuty, my friend, I don't know how to break this to you, but... you don't get to decide the winner of this week's contest. It's by popular vote. If someone designs a 10/10 card, it won't be for nothing. It'll win. Regardless of whether you think it matches your world in your mind. You are not the arbiter of this competition. You aren't the judge. Your opinion on how this week plays out matters exactly as much as everyone else's. No more, no less.

And also? Don't subcontract your worldbuilding to the rest of us, dude. We're not designing for your set. We're designing for ourselves. You might have given us the prompt, but where we go with that is up to us. And only us.

Agreed, this was painful to read. Remember this is for FUN. We are not here to develop your world or adhere to the lore of your world. I didn't want to spend hours reading through every line. I have a life. So just sit back, relax, and vote for whatever you think is best, not flame us for not creating whatever design you had in your head. It's just for FUN.

the5lacker : Welcome back, and yes, I'm aware toil counters are pretty dangerous; this card may need a redesign because, like experience counters, there's probably a need for a theoretical limit to how many you can get in a turn. (EDIT: Nerfed the actual counters instead for safety. Still strong now, but probably less breakable.)

With respect to your card, though... I hate to pull a tu-quoque, but is that really uncommon? Giving your team exalted for any attacker is mythic, so I can't help but feel that this is a push for uncommon. I guess it depends on your metrics, though - a good number of Dominaria's legends would certainly not have been uncommon were they not needed to make legends-matter work.

It's also kind of sad that she has vigilance but blocks as a measly 2/2 compared to her swole attacker self.

See the twist is I actually think the challenge of "Uncommon legendary" is pretty strong as a baseline. I just took umbrage with someone thinking that just because they gave the prompt, they determine the winner. Not how it works.

@shifty: Experience counters have no inherent rules baggage, quick reminder. And giving exalted to all creatures is certainly mythic, but as is she's just a creature with an uncommon Sigil of Valor pre-attached.

Tesagk : So you think those are exactly identical to "The first land you play each turn" and that you still need landfall? Also by "I could go on" you mean "There are literally two other cards that fit my narrative." Also, you seem to think the only purpose of critique is to make the most minor of obvious adjustments that obviously break things. Obviously not. The actual response to the critique of "This is an overly complicated mess" is to start again from square one and figure out where you went wrong. For example, would "You may play an additional land each turn" be a better fit for your card?

the5lacker: The reason I think that my card (the copying one) works at uncommon is because I think the exile ability makes it more easy to track. I think the reason that almost all copy effects are at rare are that it's hard to remember what the card copied, and that kind of complexity only works at rare. However, the exile ability means that you can take the exiled card and just put it on top of Iira until the end of the turn, making it much easier to track, and less complex to the point where it works at uncommon. However, thanks for your input!

So I have change my entry based on feedback. I'm going with same wibe as before, but trying to implement some rareness to a uncommon, by power it down.

I beleave something like "You may play an additional land on each of your turns." has rare level in terms of power, but powered down.


 

I know its not a powerfull card, but I'm unsure if it would have ben ok just have it as:



You may play an additional land on each of your turns.

1/2

Therefore I chose level up as a solution, to slow that ability down.
Yes is dies to removal, and I can see its a problem, it can die before you get your card, so I will try fix that.

The whole point was to appeal to that sense of antiquity by designing it as if it were from that era, hence the pre-8th card format as well. As peasantry working with the kind of poor quality and outdated materials they have to work with it made sense to force the player to decide between better weapons or better armor, as well as mechanically referencing Veteran Armorer and Veteran Swordsmith, two of the other well known smithy cards.