YMTC: Poor Man's

Attachment Deleted


Helpful Librarian - 1U

Creature - Human Wizard [Common]

When Helpful Librarian enters the battlefield, each player may draw a card.

2/2


<aahh how do i make the pic big TAT>

judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin judgin makes me feel good

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While I mostly just talked about limited/constructed playability here, that was only a partial factor of how I chose the winner, I did also look at, you know, how good the cards are designwise and that kind of shit. Anyway:

shiftyhomunculus Oops lol I misread deploy and thought it cared about Humans and not Soldiers, which is why I was going on about Humans. Everything makes sense now

kino: do you think izzet might just get prowess for their mechanic? 🤔
shiftyhomunculus: WotC wouldn't be that boring


(reused art to go with a reused mechanic)

Boros Battlemaster
Creature - Human Soldier 
Champion a soldier (When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile another soldier you control. When this leaves the battlefield, that card returns to the battlefield.)
Double strike
4/4

Profits for Parishioners 
Sorcery 
Gravestorm (When you cast this spell, copy it for each permanent put into a graveyard this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.)
Put a bribery counter on target creature you don’t control. Its controller draws a card. (Creatures with bribery counters on them can’t attack or block.)

I know Rosewater said it probably wouldn't come back, but doesn't it just sound like an Orzhov thing?

Gargled Fireblast
Sorcery
Gargled Fireblast deals 2 damage to any target. If ~ deals damage to a player this way, that player discards a card.
Madness

More flexible Blightning at the cost of reduced magnitude of effects.

Underhive Shambler -
Creature - Plant Zombie
Retrace (You may cast this card from your graveyard by discarding a land card as an additional cost to cast it.)
2/2

Pontiff of Omissions 
Creature - Human Cleric Assassin 
First strike
Exploit (When this creature enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice a creature.)
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, destroy target tapped creature if it exploited a creature.
"Your lives shall serve a higher purpose - the church."
3/2

Oh God, you ever get that thing where you build up a task in your head until it's way bigger than the relatively small job it actually is? Well, that. Let's do this quick and dirty so the challenge can start rolling again.

Kino, your card's fine but I can't say I'm excited by it, but I guess that's prowess, babe.

Tesa, raid is a good choice for the Rakdos but distributing free Shocks is very strong and the mana cost is unnecessarily complex - 1BR would be way easier to cast and more aesthetically pleasing.

Fluffy, another good, thematic choice of mechanic, and I like the design a lot, but I don't think that sabotage ability is common-appropriate. I also don't love that the back face lacks evasion, but that could be hard to balance around.

Icarael, undying is a really good call for Golgari and this is otherwise a very nice clean design. My one qualm is that the first ability is something of a bend in black.

viriss, this design is a pretty smart callback to Boros' heavy Soldier presence, but excluding support staff and angels feels a bit sad, and I don't know how much space champion really has at common given how reliant it is on tribal backup. Fine one-off card, questionable choice of mechanic.

sleepy, I don't think this card is necessarily too powerful but it should probably be rare for the sheer card advantage reasons you cite. I'm also not seeing the white in this design.

Jartis, that's two mechanics, and I don't think either of them are good calls for Orzhov. Gravestorm has developmental and design space issues and is very hard to work with at common, and bribery counters are both awkward to track alongside P/T-altering counters (another no-no for anything that's going to show up at common) and not black in the slightest.

_, this runs into the problem of multiple instances of scry 1 getting redundant fairly fast, and skulk is, as you say, a narrow mechanic to design for.

Zephyr, while I do love me some madness, this reads a bit like a poor man's Fiery Temper. The discard if it goes face is a neat little cherry but also puts the card on shaky color pie ground, as you can pay the madness cost with pure red mana (and Shock in mono-black is questionable too).

Monger, oof, buyback. A draw and damage spell with buyback, no less. This is problematic in that it's a repeatable source of card draw and possibly damage that's all but impossible to interact with for every color except blue (a common problem with all buyback spells). I like the self-damage as a safety valve to stop the gameplay getting too repetitive, but if every significant buyback card has to have that kind of safety on it, which I suspect they would, that's a serious stranglehold on design space.

amechra, this is a nice simple design that's also indicative of the repetitiveness inherent in retrace. Retrace creatures may actually be less serious offenders than retrace spells in this respect, so I do like this twist, but I still don't think I could put this card at common in good conscience, and that's an issue for a prospective mechanic.

gluestick, this card's quite strong. Luminous Bonds is in the top three best white commons in every draft format it's been in; adding the blue is a notable hurdle but the payoff is not negligible. This is certainly in-flavor for Azorius, though, and mostly fitting mechanically. (I'll leave the discourse about white investigate at the doorstep for now.)

Yoshi, exploit's a great, flavorful choice for Orzhov and I like the card it's attached to here. Wording on the last line is a bit weird - I'd move the condition clause at the end to the middle, for clarity's sake.

gateways, smart use of tribute but probably a notch too powerful and, more importantly, disqualified for not having a two-color identity.

Fleur takes the runner-up spot, but our winner this week, despite the slight bend, is Icarael . I'm a sucker for cleanness and smart use of existing mechanics, and this card has both in spades: it's a tenacious threat that feels Golgari as all get-out with eleven words of rules text. What's our next challenge, chief?

I went though several ideas, so I might change this, but this one got done first. The plane is Kephalai if that wasn't incredibly obvious.Chandra stole the Dragon Scroll from a museum there, and it's incredibly bureaucratic and totalitarian.

Kephalai Prelate 
Creature - Human Advisor 
Creatures don’t untap during their controller’s untap step unless that player pays  for each of those creatures.
1/1

Tesagk : Here you go. www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/5yn5ae/planes_we_know_exist_but_have_yet_to_visit/derh7t8/

Fomori Ritualist  
Creature - Giant
: CARDNAME gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
Impact - Whenever you cast a spell with converted mana cost 5 or greater, add .
One after the other, the chanting never ends.
1/3

Arcun/build around for Impact.