Set Theme Game

Not entirely pleased with this one, but the idea wouldn't leave my head. Very much a top-down design.

Missing Pieces
Enchantment
Whenever Missing Pieces or another noncreature card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, investigate.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control thirteen or more Clues, exile Missing Pieces, shuffle your hand and graveyard into your library and draw thirteen cards.

This might be a bit too good with self-mill.
Note that it sais noncreature card, so it won't trigger on clues being sacrificed. And yes, the first ability works when you mill Missing Pieces. I thought that would be funny.

... but not before I can add my 2 cents- hopefully.  

Time to choose the winner. The victory goes to...

Oops, after Challenge Slots my next fail... meh.

Akano, Chisei’s Devotee
Legendary Creature - Human Wizard
Flying
Sacrifice Akano, Chisei’s Devotee: Remove all counters form target permanent you control.
1/3

Kind of colorshifted Vampire Hexmage. Can only target your stuff, so no 'walker killing. Still combos with Dark Depths.

Considering Hypothesizzle, this feels like it should cost a little more.  Prolly no more than .  Also, the splice cost seems ludicrously low for what you're doing; mebbe add on or "Pay 2 life"?

ameisenmeister the problem I'm having with the splice cost is that you can do it in any color. Betrayers had a way of dealing with this though.

Here's a spin on an evasive attacker that the black ninjas sorely lack.

Clinging Shadow 
Creature - Spirit 
Whenever ~ deals combat damage to a creature, remove that creature from the game at the end of combat.
The scars of the day only fester in the darkness.
1/1

sdfkjgh - This reminds me of Sphinx's Revelation where you're trying to invest a large amount of mana for a massive card draw effect, which is pretty clever. I think the main thing I don't like about this is that if you are playing Splice cards to begin with the chances of your deck being a go-wide creature deck are not very high, though I guess having a fallback use as a bad Pride of Conquerors or an inefficient Overrun is not bad in it's own right. I think I'm torn because I see the intention of it being closer to an Overrun effect but the colors and the design of it keeps making me wonder why it wasn't more about the card draw. The design has enough raw value and power stapled to it to be playable, but it also promotes two conflicting ideas and I'm not sure if it was supposed to promote one of those ideas or be a pseudo-Charm of sorts.

Also, Kamigawa didn't have 3 color cards, which I think is also an unfortunate strike against this design as it makes it feel more like it was supposed to be for Modern Horizons than it was supposed to be for Betrayers of Kamigawa.

Flo00 - As it turns out, Kamigawa has plenty of counters - Ki counters for things like Petalmane Baku, charge counters for things like Umezawa's Jitte, and so on. I think this is a smart approach because it's relevant within the context of Kamigawa without forcing itself to go too far beyond the set's powerlevel, and cards like Descendant of Masumaro and Pious Kitsune are scattered across the various Kamigawa sets in reference to 'greater' legendaries, so I think this is very flavor appropriate too. Nice job.

ameisenmeister - If I wasn't the judge, I honestly would've said this before judging, but this is a very busted card in the context of Goryo's Vengeance decks, mainly because it's both a discard outlet and a win condition that can effectively be spliced onto Goryo's with very little cost. I'm pretty sure that if this card existed, we would've seen a bunch of busted Emrakul, the Aeons Torn/Draco combo decks arise where this becomes the alternative (or even surpasses Goryo's as the primary win condition) of the deck where, if you fail to see a line where you can discard/reanimate an Emrakul, you just cast/splice this instead, dig a few cards down if needed, and then deal 15-30 damage on turn 2 (an especially plausible notion since Ravnica Shocklands and Autochthon Wurm debut right after Kamigawa block - I suspect this deck would've likely taken away from the diversity of Ravnica Standard). While your drawback is well-intentioned, it is frankly too weak as it simply would require Volcanic Island or Steam Vents to be run in Legacy/Modern respectively, which in itself is not really an impediment as you are probably going to want to rock Force of Will (or eventually, Force of Negation) to protect your oneshot combo. I think your card would've benefitedy much better from the Shivan Meteor approach where you are only able to target creatures or maybe creatures and planeswalkers - that way, you at least have to go the extra hoop of hitting a Stuffy Doll or Mogg Maniac. I would drop the Island/Mountain drawback, and replace it with the limited targeting change I suggested before I'd consider this set ready.

Overall I really like the idea, but it's also good example of why we need to consider how cards fit in broader environments as a whole and tweak them accordingly.

SilentKobold - If Changeling Outcast was any indication even WoTC has conceded how much Ninjas have been missing a proper evasive opening attack in-tribe for all these years. As a Limited pick, I think this is a decent card - it's a cheap evasive guy that helps cheat larger ninjas in and it's got a relevant tribal in Spirits. I also like that you were careful enough to consider that Deathtouch did not exist as a keyword yet (and actually wasn't used at all in this set - only weird sort-of variants of it were as seen in Sosuke, Son of Seshiro.) That said, I don't think this would've made the cut - while there was exactly one top 8 deck in the Standard of its time that ran Dimir Cutpurse and Ninja of the Deep Hours, the lack of prevalence of Ninjas in general (and Dimir Cutpurse's complete absence from Modern) suggests to me that this card would not be playable beyond Draft. Given that the example that I gave, Ninja of the Deep Hours, has seen play all the way up to Legacy, I unfortunately don't think I can say this card is the best at meeting the criteria of the challenge here. At the very least, to make it a workhorse in contemporary Standard, it would need to be one mana, to have it at least be somewhat comparable to the more recent Changeling Outcast.


1st: Flo00 - I think you strike some very clear connections to Kamigawa flavor and mechanical wise and make the card competitively viable without compromising to make the card fit for either goal. I would believe someone if they told me this card was meant to go in Kamigawa.
2nd: ameisenmeister - I like this idea, and I'm glad you made the effort to try and balance it appropriately. It fell short but the core idea is not bad.
3rd: sdfkjgh - The conflicting goals of the card aside (which could've been explained with a writeup suggesting what the intended use was), I think this is the right card for the wrong set.
3rd: SilentKobold - It's an excellent Limited design, but I'd be hard pressed to see how this would've been one of the stronger playable cards in Betrayers of Kamigawa had it been included.

That was a mistake on my part, sorry. My assessment remains the same for the most part though since I feel there's a conflict about if I'm supposed to play this as soon as possible on the offensive or hold it back and try to draw a large amount of cards. (It feels like a fine line between "meaningful tension/flexiblity of a charm" and "feel bad tension", in other words.)

Viridian Hunter 
Creature - Elf Scout
Metalcraft - As long as you control three or more artifacts, Viridian Hunter has deathtouch.
1/2