YMTC: Poor Man's

{Jartis - Set to Explode}A smaller, sorcery speed brainstorm that leads into damage off the top of your library seems like a fine card. Perfectly usable in decks without red, and still able to pack an extra punch if you need it to. Good job on doing synergistic effects without feeling broken when done together.

{Flo00 - Foolish and Food}Y'know, I've never thought about the idea of split cards for the non-standard card types, so this was a pleasant surprise. The effects seem good for a common card. I wonder though about potential tracking issues with remembering which half was chosen later on. I know you could simply put a die on the card, but people are stupid. It's probably not as big of an issue as I'm making it out to be though.

{viriss - Make it Big and Make it Rain}I don't think Wizards has ever done a split X spell, so this manages to look flashy without actually being too flashy in the long run. The card looks balanced, not much to say about it.

{kefke - Earnest Youth//Call to Adventure}This is certainly interesting. The idea is cute, but I don't think the rules like having a single card representing two permanents on the battlefield. You have to answer the question of what happens if the enchantment gets destroyed or exiled: is the creature also destroyed/exiled? If not, since it's still on the battlefield, can I cast the Fate again? No matter what the answer is, it's going to be un-intuitive. And that's not getting into how you track whether or not the Fate has been cast, since you only have one card, and the creature is already on the battlefield.

{digiman619 - Dare to Be Stupid}To start: I love the name. There's something about it that I find highly entertaining, so thanks for the laugh. The effects seem appropriate, and casting both on the same turn to effectively kill a creature is a significant enough mana investment that I don't think it's problematic.

{thaneofglamis - Multitude and Barbecued}More funny names! YES! Seriously though, I like this rhyming names idea. Barbecued is just a beautifully silly card even without the rhyming split, and it fits the goblin theme. We already know that Multitude is a fine common due to the existence of Hordeling Outburst, so putting that on a split card seems fine. Barbecued seems balanced well, too. Beautiful.

{ZephyrPhantom - Search and Settle}Nice, simple common. You've summed up my thoughts on the card nicely in your post, so I don't really have much else to say. Good job.

{MacabreAurora - Agree to Disagree}Super flavorful card. I like that you took the "everybody draw!" that wizards has given to whit and made it a political tool, assist is really nice here. HOWEVER, this looks like it might be undercosted, see Huddle Up. Disagree, however, is probably fine, as your opponent(s) have to know that it's there and whether or not you have the mana open for it if you want to use it. Split second on a counterspell is a bit worrisome, but we already have uncounterable counterspells for the same cost, albeit at a higher rarity (Overwhelming Denial), and given the drawback I already mentioned, I don't think it's too much of an issue.

{First Thought}This was my first thought. =)
 

{Judging}
viriss - Feels like a very by-the-book approach that takes snippets from the other colors that aren't focused on often. In that sense, I like that your first choice of an ability was one that's occupied a very odd zone for designers - MaRo apparently feels this isn't fitting for Green, but it's clear that this ability's repeated printing in sets indicates other designers think otherwise. It still manages to interact with the 'main' pie in a way that feels intuitive, though I'm not sure about the fact that you're giving this ability to a creature in a color that's situated in between Blue and Black. The execution feels correct, but I can't help but feel like this would've been for "the color in between Black and Green" instead, whatever that would. (In fact, Green is supposed to be Purple's enemy color, so having this ability appear in Purple just feels really off. Skulk or some other kind of conditional evasion would've probably been better.)

What I do really like is that you made your creature a hatebear that can sacrifice itself to counter spells. The few times I've actually played with this variation of Purple the ETB hate creatures and counters were one of it's strongest aspects both in terms of gameplay and standing out as a color, giving it a control niche that doesn't feel quite Blue or Black but somewhere in between the two. I could definitely see a world where Purple gets more of these creatures while Blue gets only non-creature counterspells.

Despite the choice of Townsfolk being a good fit for the City-based flavor of Purple, I feel like this guy feels much more like a Wizard or Rogue - there isn't much that's very civilian-esque about him. I would've gone with Warlock, Monger, or Mercenary if you explicitly wanted a more unusual creature type used by Humans.

kefke - So while I get the point of introducing a new creature type, I think this card's flavor shoots so hard to reach the stars that it forgot that it was aiming for the moon, so to speak. I'm not saying Purple has to be explicitly industrial or steampunk all the time, but the image and presentation make me think "Couldn't this just be a Dimir or Grixis Horror"? Your explanation is well-constructed and has a lot of thought put into it but even after re-reading it a few times I can't help but feel like this is a description for a faction for an upcoming set that could just be represented as Horrors - even prior to Shadows of Innistrad, we had things like Cosmic Horror and Infectious Horror that could represent non-Nightmare/shadow-themed Horrors. Maybe it's just the lack of connection to the other, more implicitly in line with the article facets of Purple like Technology and Psychics, but just from a flavor perspective, I'm not sure if I could sit down with another person and go "This is a different enough entity from Black and Blue that it would be in its own color." I can't help but think that maybe if you'd gone with representing a Mi-Go or something related to it instead, this card would score more strongly for me on the flavor end.

Mechanically, I think you convey your Purple's identity very well. I've actually done this concept myself once before, making a color attack the deck as its default form of attack as opposed to the other colors all gunning for health, and I think the results do a very good job of creating a distinct identity without disrupting the game too much. I could definitely believe that Amnestic is meant to be one of Purple's evergreens, and I like that you implicitly set up for synergy with other colors without being too blunt about it. The conditional first strike might've not even been necessary to sell the idea but it does a good job of implying Purple is more aggressive than Blue, which I can believe since it would be allied wih Black, and it does a good job of demonstrating how Purple might get other existing keywords without making it feel like whole parts of the color pie have to be chunked out for its sake. My only real concern is that I don't see how this really ties into the original Purple's suite of effects - Purple is definitely more of a control color than aggro color in its initial Planar Chaos incarnation, and while that might've been easy to overlook by itself the flavor disconnect pushes things like these up a bit more.

For what it's worth, I'm a fan of the "make 5 new colors idea" and have been a very long time, so I totally agree on that point.

Overall I think your card is a strong mechanical submission and has a lot of passion overall. However flavorfully I think it overshoots and manages to land itself back in the regular color pie somehow, perhaps by not establishing enough ties to Purple's identity as a whole and instead going a bit too all in on a specific premise for the set of a color pie I don't truly have the full context for. It feels like this is a Purple that's had a few sets to iterate, but without that context I'm a little lost on how it would become that way.

Jartis - I think it's one thing to make a card that messes with a "special" zone as a special or format specific effect, but it's another thing to go and say "Hey, this is now a regular part of a color's identity." The problem here is that Baneslayer Aspirant aside Purple is the only color that would be able to interact with emblems in this context you're presenting to me. This would create a problem similar to Energy where there is a lot of positive value from various colors creating emblems, but most colors lacking answers to them means that format they feature in turns into value-town spam (think Aetherworks Marvel) or every deck would be forced to run Purple, which gets you results on paper but is probably going to anger players in practice. I think a wiser, more in-line approach with what you would've wanted to do would be to use energy/poison/etc... counters that are part of the main game and feature interaction in all colors (Proliferate), and build off that - in fact, given most of the effects you listed in your writeup, I'm kind of surprised you went with one of the ones that was the least interaction-friendly. The flavor isn't too focused on, but I like the implied idea of an eldritch/dreamer-esque entity being forced to glimpse the mundane, City-like reality of Purple - it gives the color this implied shade of being overly cynical and perhaps too realistic for its own good sometimes. I think letting the card tell the story in that sense definitely played to your favor here.

Your Purple sounds very promising mechanically and flavorfully, but I think a better card could've been picked to represent the hype. I would look at cards like Solemnity and Drannith Magistrate if you want to try and use a hard-counter-type design to represent a big idea in the future, as they are cards that have uses outside of their intended hard counter to varying degrees.

{Spoiler}
1st: viriss - I'll admit I find it ironic that I'm putting the by-the-book approach in first. Your creature type could've been a bit better picked and I think the evasion ability is in the wrong color, but I think you get away with the win here because you took something Purple actually, definitely does on paper and made it feel like a design that iterates on that and establishes what Purple would eventually become as a distinct color had it kept being printed. Purple having counterspell-creatures as its typical form of interaction is absolutely something I'd like to see more of, had it still seen print, and I think it aligns very well with the control (sometimes tempo-control) playstyle I've had in my personal experience as a Purple player.

2nd: kefke - As much as I like the gusto in this entry, I did say in the initial prompt "that is based on or references the the Purple color that was scrapped from Planar Chaos.", and this card definitely struggles in that area. The flavor goes too hard on establishing a completely distinct identity that feels like it should be in a set 3 sets after Purple's debut and while the mechanical design is solid, I think the flavor disconnect brings subtle issues up to the front about if this is really a card that aligns with the intentions for Purple's playstyle. If the prompt was "Make a sixth color", you would've won by a landslide (and I would give this set ready - in fact, if you wanted to follow up on this idea for a whole set, I absolutely give it a set-ready), but as is there's too much context I'm missing between WoTC-Purple and Kefke-Purple for me to really say "Alright, this is definitely the same Purple that has City as a basic land, does weird conditional burn in large amounts, and gets away with having Mana Drain".

3rd: Jartis - You had the most WoTC Purple-friendly mechanical outline and I liked the comprehensiveness of the possible effects, but your card went too all-in on a niche effect to represent Purple's potential. I really would've loved to see a design that worked with something more often seen in general magic like a Proliferate with experience counters design.


In the end, the tiebreaking factor for me was looking back at my history of playing Purple and measuring up if I as a player felt this was a good representation of the color's potential. I ended up preferring the entry that showed the initial design of Purple had some merit, and that there was a potential for a unique playstyle that you could argue the color could claim as its own without feeling too detached from other colors.