Keyword Challenge

Let's try it again.
For those who didn't get it, it is Pokémon Evolution.

   

More competition please?

And if not, how about judging vizionarius?

Thanks for the win, the next keyword is shine, shine X, or illuminate and variations.

Is it proposital that Gru is a HuNman?

There is a typo in the fish, it is written "EvoVle". By now you are winning, sorry Flo00 I laughed a lot with your card, but I was thinking in a serious way about this mechanic and how to aplly it.

This contest has been prolongated for too much time, vizionarius wins!

vizionarius, I liked your mechanic, may I use in one card?

... untap, flip, transform. Just to add some trivial ones to the list


The Flag
As a player puts a spell or ability on the stack, one of its targets has to be the creature with the falg if able.
When a creature deals combat damage to the creature with the flag, it captures the flag.

Capture the Flag
Instant
Target creature captures the flag.
Draw a card.

Poison-Scale Charger
Creature - Viashino Warrior
When Poison-Scale Charger enters the battlefield, it captures the flag.
Whenever Poison-Scale Charger becomes a target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, Poison-Scale Charger deals 2 damage to that player.
3/3

Grim Decoy
Creature - Snake Assassin
Deathtouch
Whenever Grim Decoy deals combat damage to a player, it captures the flag.
As long as Grim Decoy has the flag, it must be blocked if able.
1/4

Some Rules:
• There is allways at most one flag in the game. If a creature captures the flag, any other creature having the flag loses it.
• If the creature with the flag dies and there is no creature on the battlefield capturing it, the flag leaves the game.
• If a creature that already left the battlefield tries to capture the flag, nothing happens. If the flag is on another creature in this case, it stays on that creature.

As I thought about this challenge, I figured in the spirit of making a keyword that a creature does as opposed to a player doing it, I'd try to go all in and try to make a mechanic that gives you the opportunity to nudge it, but ultimately the control is in your cards. Something to do with your library seemed the obvious choice for this, as while you can have some control a core part of magic is the randomness of your deck's order. Adding to that, associating it with mana value which is a thing I don't recall a single card being able to change, and making this happen automatically, and I ended up with Aligned.




Aligned gives an occasional boost to a card, and though you can up your chances by controlling the costs of cards in your deck and using effects like Scry, your three mana card is not going to align with a land, and the trade-off of what you do to up your chances will have to be considered. Still, it's not without any help. While Aligned is my submission for this contest as the keyword, I also made a complementary keyword ability called Impart.





While a card with impart is below another, both mana values are considered and can potentially have the permanent aligning, thus giving it the rules text below the line of both cards. Note that the permanent does not have the rules text above the line of the card with impart, only what's below and only when aligned. Impart took a few tries to get working as I wanted without being overbloated in text (in my opinion but you be the judge), being something of a cross between cipher and mutate.





Now some additional rules for align:
1. A card is aligned only during the turn it aligns.
2. The checks for aligning all happen at the same time, at the beginning of the upkeep, when the card from the top of the library is revealed.
3.As implied cards do not have the rules text below the line if they are not aligned. It's treated as though it didn't exist.





And I'll leave you with one last card to show off some potential from impart:

Drop Supplies (If an opponent has more life, gain three life. if an opponent has more cards in their hand, draw a card. If an opponent has more creatures that you create a 1/1 soldier creature thats all colors.)

This ability would fit around an army theme and although its not very good if you are doing well in the game it is a good catch up mechanic that has a roof, even if you drop supplies 1,000 in a turn you'll still only have the same number of creature, same number of cards and at most 2 extra life than the player who is doing the best.

Thanks for the win vizionarius

Next challenge: Extort is the only mechanic that uses a specific color of mana as a fixed part of its rules. Show me some other machanic that does this!
Basically the rule here is: Colored mana in the reminder, and you wouldn't see it without reminder.

The keyword I want to present to you this time is Smith

: Create an artifact equipment token with Equip . If you paid it has "Equipped creature gets +0/+1" and if you paid it has "Equipped creature gets +1/+0", then you may attach that equipment to a creature you control.





To be absolutely clear, when you choose to smith, you pay the cost (red or white), then the token creation happens. "Well, duh.", you may be thinking, but I'm just saying this cause originally I wrote that you "may pay" in the rules text, but I decided to shift that to outside the ability itself because it seemed easier and less confusing to word it this way when there is repetition, as seen in:





While the mechanic would mainly appear in white or red for obvious reasons, it might be interesting even outside of those colors, for a different kind of flavor than dwarves crafting metal:





I think it might be interesting to see the mechanic paired with things like artifact-caring mechanics like metalcraft or creatures that care about being equipped. On that note, I considered making those tokens equip for , but it seemed to me like that would make it too easy to pass along the bonus. A big strength of smith is that the bonuses it gives, equipment tokens, are harder to get rid of than say, +1/+1 counters or auras, in the sense that they stick around even after the creature they are attached to leaves, so the equip cost could help prevent it from excessively escalating.






Lastly, a possible cycle occurred to me of cards that give you new "smithing techniques" so to speak, allowing you to pay other mana to upgrade the smithing tokens you create.