The Wonderful All-Encompassing Card Clinic

Daij_Djan
I had to try for the flavor. Oh, well. I had a mechanic that used land tokens. Got changed because basically land tokens get mixed pretty easily, has to use actual cards otherwise you cannot tell if it is tapped and the such.

Infiltrator    
Creature - Alien
   
When ~ enters the battlefield Terraform a land you control. (Exile a land you control. If you do put one Waste land token on the battlefield.)
1/1

PS: Making your opponent's Oblivion Sower better and better.

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Found another way to word the Sever mechanic. It is based on this thread.

Sever N land(s) you control (Place a sever counter on it(them). It has/They have "[T]: Add [C]" and loses/lose all other abilities.)

Basically the lands do not need to lose types, which makes it less flavorful in terms of what it is happening in the story but saves the word count by 2. The wording also means that you can sever a land more than once, which does not work with flavor, but I think that for my sanity, I will leave it as is. Makes using multiple colors easier in the set, which was restricted somewhat due to this mechanic, so might need some balancing.

PS: Found out that it takes less words, if you include the reminder text, to word the "you control" part of the ability outside the reminder text. Reduces the word count by 2 if reminder text is there, increases the word count by 2 if there is no reminder text. This also leaves open the possibility of severing opponent's lands if you want to, but more interestingly you can sever swamps, mountains, etc.

What do you think? Works better? or the proposed Terraform works better as a mechanic?

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All this leaves me wanting to just push something for no reason. So, try breaking this card.

Attachment Deleted

Red does have a pseudo card advantage in Impulse like cards. Colorwise I think this could be mono red, but the activated ability gives me pause and the last ability is definitely not red. Cheating spells into play without playing their mana costs is am Izzet thing sometimes. However, Izzet colors tend to focus more on spells. Abilities like prowess and the such. I do not have much to say in terms of balance and cost-reward related questions. I think a CCM 4 3/3 with two situational abilities is fine.

Someone might tell you of a way you can break the card though.

Blue allows for that to happen somewhat. Only on rare occasions from what I remember. The only example that comes to mind is Arbiter of the Ideal.
Temur does have free cast things. Take cascade for example. 

Thanks for the suggestions. And yeah, I think there is no need for :G: to be added in her mana cost, as she does feel particularly blue/red. 

I'll have to think about Eminence. I know it's not necessarily tribal-only, though it was used only in the most recent tribal commander sets. However you are right about the "dream" and yeah, I guess I'll have to see how people feel about it once playtesting begins. 

I have a couple of other cards I've made with commander in mind. These are more general one-offs, as in they don't have their own toolkits (yet). I am not sure if they ever will, but I meant to upload them a while ago and completely forgot:
In relation to the Orzhov one, I was trying to go for something a bit different from what I've seen so far in :W::B:. I did use Extort, but I felt it paired nicely with the other ability I gave her. Let me know what you think -- I'm not sure if the second ability is too lenient, too harsh, just right etc.

The Gruul commander's second ability may be... way too powerful. I know it's technically situational, but if you're playing gruul you're probably going to have some fatties, right? I am now noticing that they are all 3/3s... which isn't exactly on purpose (they were designed at different times with different thoughts in mind). Her cost seems a bit too aggressive for me, as I had played around with 4 cmc and 5 cmc with varying bodies depending on the cmc. Are there any suggestions? Does this seem like something Gruul could use? I also think her second ability is incredibly powerful. Initially I was going to say that she and the creature with the greatest power you control can't be blocked, but that isn't very red/green. I know that second ability needs to change, I just thought I'd open it up to the board here.






Okay, I edited Erran's second ability to read:

"Creatures your opponents control with power less than the attacking creature you control with the greatest power can’t block this turn."

I thought with the Saga frame, I could also do instants and sorceries that work a bit like sagas. Something like this:

The Great Warrior
Instant - Story
(When you cast this, add a lore counter. If it resolves with I or II, exile it and you may cast this from exile. It keeps its conters until III resolves.)
I: Target creature gains haste until end of turn.
II: Target creature gains menace until end of turn.
III: Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.

There might be some better way to do the reminder.
The lore counters determine what mode resolves and the official (not reminder) text would be some Skullbriar-like stuff.

And for this specific card: Is it too powerful as an instant? Or should it be ?

@gorgonzola
There is a way to do it without the babble, but the card does change zones doesn't it? Exile to stack and stack to exile. Aside from the obvious han to stack.

Flo00
I think the card would have it easier with a suspend like wording instead of the complicated counters and the often changing of zones.

Try something like:
Story cost
You may cast this card for its story cost. If you do put it in exike with three lore counters in it. At the beginning of your upkeep remove a lore counter and do foo.

Normal casting would just do an effect of your choice, or the first effect or the last one. Up to you really.

Something like that. This obviously need working.

@gorgonzola
It has to keep the counters on the stack, otherwise it will always cast I or II.

Take this for example, player has 14 ::R::.
Cast the card, effect, gets exiled with one counter. Cast the card loses all counters due to the changing of zones, does either effect I or II, not sure which one happens. Gets exiled, place a counter on it. Card has one counter in exile, cast it from exile, loses all counters casts effect I or II.

Unless it keep the counters through the zones, it will always have one counter when it enters exile.

Well, to be fair the Skullbriar does allow the counters to stay while changing zones - obviously as it's pretty much the point of the ability. I'd interpret the third sentence of the reminder text to be meant this way (and as we all know reminder text can be a bit vague) which indeed fits Flo00's explanation - so I have to admit I don't really understand the discussion about whether it works within the rules? It does work as intended, question only is if it's a good idea, no? As to that question, I'm personally not sure - simply because the current Sagas basically already are delayed sorceries to begin with imho.

You are right, maybe something like this?

Flo00
Okay, now that we have one thing out of the discussion. Let's start with another.

The idea for the mechanic is interesting, however I think you are going to find it is hard to make the mechanic's identity distinguishable enough from the Saga mechanic. Sure, it offers more flexibility on when you get the effects, but you still gain those effects like a Saga. Thematically it is also hard to distinguish a story from a Saga as they are basically the same things (irl).

The cards with said mechanic offer virtual card advantage, and your design space is affected a little as casting the card from exile means it is hard to disrupt the second and third abilities using hand disruption. Giving the card flashback will make it reusable in the intended version of it. It is like having cards with aftermath for exile.

Finally, sorcery versions of this mechanic will look even more like sagas.

On the power level of the card. Consider the card as being a ::R::::R::::R:: target creature gets haste, menace and first strike. With such a low casting cost it is better to evaluate the card as such. There are not many cards that have those abilities combined, nor that grant all three at once. So just by being one of the few that allows that flexibility and does that it becomes extremely useful. The individual abilities are fine by themselves at CCM 1. Overall, it might be a little powerful, though not sure if we have no tests done.

It is an interesting idea, and as a instant and sorcery version of the saga mechanic it works.

Works for me

I would not have Path of Bravery type mechanics as a keyword in any context, because those abilities will never trigger in limited unless

1) you're maindecking lifegain (why)
2) you have a lot of lifelinkers at common, in which case the game never ends because no one can win the race

I would definitely not have both Flagellate and Nirvana in the same set because they are mutually exclusive. I'd have a pseudo that cares if you gained/lost life this turn so that they're less useless

mrchristianpunk
I think it would be best as a pseudo keyword, as each rune would be substantially different. In this case, something like:
"Etch - , Exile ~ from your hand: Create a colorless Rune artifact token with ", : Exile target creature or planeswalker."

Its wordy, but is probably the best way to do it, as I don't think you can cast a copy of a card unless it was exiled by the object itself, a la Isochron Scepter. I could be wrong tough.