The Wonderful All-Encompassing Card Clinic

"Creatures your opponents control don't untap during their controllers' untap step.

At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent may pay any amount of . If they do, they may untap up to that many creatures they control."

I don't think this is completely correct, but it's my best guess at the moment.

Not sure about the first, but for the second:
"Discard your hand. For each card you discarded this way, search your library for a card and put that card into your hand. Then shuffle your library."

Looking for some specific card feedback for a set that is nearly complete. The set is based on Hindu mythology and has kind of an adventure theme where the main mechanics are discard based. I've also introduced a new batching word, "ancient" which includes artifacts, enchantments, and temples. Temples are a special land type I've been using for several sets on the same plane and function essentially like deserts. 

The following cards are designed for different archetypes, but I'm mainly wondering if the abilities are clear, balanced, interesting, and in colour. Any feedback is appreciated.  



I'm playing around with the idea of an enchantment that tutors for an ancient card as you cast it and then allows you to make use of your permanents in order to generate mana. This is meant to be a value engine that can combo with specific cards to potentially lead to a win very quickly. Treasure is also featured in the set, so this card would allow you to use two treasures as an extra source of mana without the need to sacrifice them.



The set has a very minor artifact creature archetype that could work with maybe four or five other cards if put together in a deck. As this is a mythic, I want it to be a way to generate significant card advantage and mana that can snowball quickly if it isn't dealt with. I haven't been able to playtest this one much, but it seems interesting as it is. The cost is perhaps my biggest concern, but if anyone notices interactions that could make this immediately busted, let me know.



This card features two custom mechanics, guardian and reincarnate. I've playtested reincarnate extensively over three sets so I know it's fun and pretty balanced. I'm less convinced about guardian, which is new for this set. For this particular card, however, I'm more interested in feedback on her activated ability. I was looking at the liege cycle from shadowmoor and wanted to reward players for having red and green creatures somehow (and reward you even more if you play gruul creatures that have both colours). 



Mill is the dimir mechanic of the set so I wanted a hate card in an enemy colour to shut it down. Khini is that card, and she also helps protect you from mono-black, which features extensive discard effects. Potentially you could also build a deck around discarding cards yourself in order to generate faeries, and that's where I think this one might be a bit busted. If you had a repeatable outlet to discard with, of which there are several in the set, you could potentially drop Khini and then unload your hand to make four or five faeries right away. Of course you'd be leaving yourself with an empty hand, but this could be possible as early as turn two and the opponent might have a hard time recovering at that point, especially with the life you'd be gaining. 



This card was made with a lot of flavor in mind. I imagined a maze that you would want to escape from, but it wouldn't be straightforward. When you finally "escape", you get to replace this land with another one, but it will cost you some life. It's actually pretty similar to a fetch land in the way it functions, but much less reliable. I'm worried that the life cost is too high and that you would never want to take the risk to use its ability. Another use for this card is to purposely mill yourself and not take the land option even if you find one. There are various reasons why you would want to do that, but the life cost is the still the largest issue. Any way I can make this card less painful while still keeping some type of scaling effect (obviously I could just have you pay a few life to activate the ability, but I wanted it to be higher the more you are willing to dig with X).

murder3

If you actually want the ability to trigger X times, that's not something you're going to be able to do with the current rules language for mage without some shenanagainery.

But you can get similar results with "repeat this process X times," and "copy this ability X times."

So you've: "Whenever this triggers, foo. Repeat this process X times, where X is [largest scry you did this turn (we'll get to how to word this one).]" This is a single ability on the stack and can be stifled.
And you've: "Whenever this triggers, Whenever this triggers, if this ability is not a copy, copy it X times, where X is [...]. Then foo." This is multiple abilities on the stack and would need to be counterfluxed or better.

The catch with both of these is that they foo X+1 times; maybe that's close enough to your request maybe it isn't. If it isn't, you can change X to X-1 in either of them, or change the "Then" in the copy option to "Otherwise."
So you'd get "Whenever this triggers, if this ability is not a copy, copy it X times, where X is [...]. Otherwise foo."

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Now, the hard part, decideding which scry you base your X value on. You'd probably end up with something like "Where X is the greatest value you've scry'd this turn."

I ended up keeping the X activation but having it cost 1 life each time. If you take the land, you sac it

I don't want to be the guy that says an idea feels like a non-starter, but for me this card as it's currently writ gets pretty close. There's a reason Karn Liberated is the only card that restarts the game, Enter the Dungeon is a silver border, and Shahrazad is banned in everything. It's because starting a new game of magic without finishing the current game feels, in my opinion unsatisfying (and also because EtD and Shahrazad are a big time commitment for barely any effect).

This card as writ hits both red flags. Imagine, taking seven turns to build up this guy and ulting him and restarting the game with a hasty boy 2/2. Being able to transform him back isn't relevant until you've got at least six mana (not counting what you have to pay for the instant, so typically turn six or seven), and your opponent kills it on their turn one before you even get to attack with it. Or, imagine popping off with him, getting to turn seven in the new game, transforming him, and then seven turns later restarting the game again.


There's just a heckin lot of effort for not a lot of payoff, and the payoff you do get is really fragile. The other parts of the card don't really do enough to make you want to play him either. I'm sorry if I'm sounding really harsh, but this card isn't ready to be balanced yet; you need to make it playable first (not viable for play mind you, plenty of non-viable cards are playable).

Oof, this is a hard one, because playability is one of those trixy things that's hard to define outside of the tautological: A playable card is a card people see as playable. Honestly this kind of question is so broad and 'all-encompassing' if you'll pardon the witty reference, that it'd probably be suited to its own thread rather than a reply buried 11 or 12 pages into this one.

This is more of a litmus test than a definition; but, a playable card tends to be a card you'd want to see in the draft pool. Not the card you'd pick first or the card you pivot to pick around, which are viable cards, but the type of card you pass on when you see a pack for the first time, but you hope that it's still there when the pack comes back around. The problem with this litmus test is that not everything is designed for draft nor should it be.

I honestly can’t think of a great way to word it the way you want, but it tangentially brings up the really interesting idea of using hybrid mana for dual lands. Mechanically it wouldn’t change how most of these lands work at all (triomes would be a bit interesting tho).