YMTC: Poor Man's

{Spoiler}
Winner Idea

{Spoiler}Barneby seems like an interesting card but just waiting to be broken. Presumably any deck you run this one in will stuffed with them, perhaps accompanied by a few other key cards. While the life loss is not insignificant when you get to the 'use multiple times' territory, I feel that in a competently made deck it's a cheap version of Griselbrand that can also alternate into making tokens of itself or treasures. The life loss does mean that to tuly take advantage of a card like this you'd need to mix in some lifegain, which would limit its abusability, but at 5 uses in a 20 life format you can get a lot out of your practically guaranteed turn 3 and thats without counting said life gain. It matters a lot less that you have to stuff a lot of these into a deck for its effect when you can draw two cards as
such a draw engine lets you access every part of your deck more. Close equivalents like Heirloom Mirror or Gilt-Blade Prowler have the inherent limitation of tapping. When you go into the repeatable you'll generally need a mana cost, and a steep one as seen with Gibbering Barricade and Spark Reaper. While being legendary and the unique requirement to activate serve as balancing downsides, the relentless rats-style effect makes the second a lot less of a downside, and since you mainly want the rest to discard, having just one isn't as much of an issue either.

As a result of that though, this card addresses the first problem quite well. The second I'm more iffy on. Having countless copies of one card certainly seems like the opposite of feeling like a unique legendary. On the other hand though, this ability is certainly legendary-tier, however I'm not sure if being 'legendary' for being abusable is really meeting that criteria.

Also, while it's natural that a legendary card is a little more complicated than a regular one, this level of complexity seems more appropriate for uncommon.

{Spoiler}Five mana, including two colored, for a 4/4 body that gains life. Looking at cards like Honey Mammoth that does seem to be above rate in that life gain, though one could argue in many circumstances a Grazing Bladeheart is a better card. Either way I really don't see an effect like that on an overall card like this justifying it being legendary. Adding to that, it doesn't address the legend rule on a common issue at all.

{Spoiler}This really feels like it has a reference in it, though the version of Arash I'm familiar with is Fate's, so I can't say.


This is a card that at first I wasn't sure about, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. The way it's intended to work is pretty clear and in how it (presumably) depicts the thing it's based on. I did consider if maybe preventing the damage dealt to and by those creatures would've been a better way to do it, since that would've made the opponent tap before, but from a flavor perspective preventing the conflict and scaring the opponent's creatures out of attacking with his own sacrifice really fits well. It's certainly an effect worth being called legendary over, and simple enough I could see it working at common, other than possible complications with the word checking the power of a creature that is no longer on the battlefield (so potential memory issues). I also wasn't very confident on the card's handling of the first problem, the legend rule, but since this is a card you're clearly meant to sacrifice and buy yourself a turn when you really need it, then if you're winning you may not mind having a couple bricks in hand, but if you're using you'll get more chances to play this card and use it to spare yourself. The one thing I will say that makes this a little bit more complicated as a justification though is the lack of haste, meaning if you're that desperate for one turn, you can't just play this guy and use it that way, you need to wait for it to be able to tap. Perhaps a good fix would be replacing the tap with a straight once per turn clause?

{Spoiler}A name change to all be the same yet ignore the legend rule is certainly an interesting approach. At first I thought "why not just reference the mechanic instead of the name, thus not needing to address the legend rule in the mechanic?", but then I realized this means the legendary creature can have other copies of itself as well. That being said, while I think there might be some potential, especially some great potential with the mechanic's idea, the execution of the card leaves very little to justify it being legendary. Its got a name that seems like a role and not an individual, and not even that big or unique of a role at that. Its effect is simple as expected of a common, but certainly nothing that would make it stand out from a regular ol' common, at least in regards to anything that would make it legendary.

{Spoiler}It's a rather unique effect, credit where credit is due, this card does address the second problem. The first, however, not really. The biggest issue with the card is the balance, if it's at the level where you can describe it that way. This card falls into that One with Nothing territory of cards that are such strictly downside that unless you have some way of shifting the effect to your opponent or abusing it with some combo you have no reason to play such a card. With Aldous in play:

• You immediately have your next draw delayed.
• You are limited to one 'draw' per turn.
• If Aldous leaves the battlefield for any reason, the cards exiled with it are now just gone forever.

The benefits this card gives you are essentially a weaker form of "You have no maximum handsize", weaker in that you can't actually access the cards in your hand, which really acts like a second deck. You won't even get Paradox-esque triggers to go off because you're not casting the card from exile but adding it to your hand.

The third problem is compounded by the card being 1/1 with no protections. With ward perhaps some fringe benefit might give this card long-term value in the right deck. But as is the opponent just needs to have any form of pinging it, or giving it -1/-1 and you might lose a number of important cards in a way you can't recover from.

{Spoiler}Winner is ZephyrPhantom !