Miscellaneous Card Design Thread

Inspired by Mesa Falcon; for CovertGoBlue:

Mesa Hawk 
Creature--Bird
Flying, vigilance
: Mesa Hawk gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
1/2





Inspired by Bazaar of Baghdad:

Bazaar Trade 
Instant
Draw two cards, then discard three cards.


I had to adjust how abundance worked a bit:

Plentiful Valley
Land
Plentiful Valley enters tapped with a stun counter on it.
When Plentiful Valley enters, abundance 1. (Create a colorless Cornucopia artifact token with “If you would draw a card, you may instead sacrifice this artifact. If you do, choose land or nonland and reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a card of the chosen type. Put that card into your hand and put all other cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in a random order.”)
: Add one mana of any type.

Went back and finished my Urabrask what-if starter deck recently, so some extra cards for that:

Urabrask, Gilded Drifter
Legendary Creature — Beast Praetor
Menace
Whenever an opponent creates a noncreature token for the first time each turn, destroy it.
Whenever you create a token for the first time each turn, create a Treasure.
4/4
"Each journey removes more aged scrap and replaces it with metal I barely recognize. Am I the same being that left New Phyrexia?"

Type change is intentional. The implication in this What-If is that Urabrask has used non-Phyrexian processes and ways of thinking to change his body so much that he no longer qualifies as one. I considered a few types but went with Beast as he doesn't have wings (so unlikely to be a dragon) and I'm not sure Dinosaur or Lizard made enough sense.

No Place to Call Home
Instant
As an additional cost to cast ~, exile a card from your hand.
Draw a card. If the exiled card was an artifact land, draw two cards.
"We razed others' homes, without ever questioning what would happen if ours were razed in turn." - Drifter's Etching, Entry 2

Old Wounds Die Hard
Enchantment
As ~ enters the battlefield, choose a creature type.
Whenever a creature dies, each opponent loses 1 life. If the creature was the chosen type, each opponent instead loses 2 life.
"To live is to know shame, fear, and distrust. It cannot be quantified by Phyrexian death-processing formulas." - Drifter's Etching, Entry 127

Ancient Wards
Instant
Choose one:
- Target creature gains shroud until end of turn.
- Target creature gains shadow until end of turn.
"To deny objective utility is not a rejection of Phyrexian thought. It is merely foolishness." - Drifter's Etching, Entry 703

Pilgrim's Wargear
Artifact - Equipment
Cumulative upkeep - Choose a kind of counter at random that equipped creature doesn’t have on it from among flying, first strike, deathtouch, hexproof, lifelink, menace, reach, trample, vigilance, and +1/+1. Put a counter of that kind on equipped creature.
Equip
"The optimization process continues - but to what end?" - Drifter's Etching, Entry 2451

The Witness of War
Legendary Creature - Beast Praetor
Haste
Whenever a creature blocks ~, ~ gains double strike until end of turn.
Whenever you attack with three or more creatures, ~ gains finishing strike until end of turn. (A creature with finishing strike deals both last-strike and regular combat damage.)
4/4
Legend says that if there is a war, he will follow in its aftermath, melting broken swords and crushing battered shields.

Limited Thermonuclear Exchange 
Sorcery
Destroy all creatures. This spell deals damage to each player equal to the number of creatures that player controlled that were destroyed this way. You draw a card for each creature destroyed this way.

LashSpark Altar
Battle - Structure
Resources 3 (When this permanent enters the battlefield, exile the top 3 cards of your library as this Card’s Resources.)
, Expend 1 Resource: LashSpark Altar deals 2 damage to any target. Activate this ability once per turn. (To expend resources, put [N] of this battle’s resource(s) in its owner’s graveyard.)





CorpseWheat Granary ::W/B::
Battle - Structure
Resources 2 (When this permanent enters the battlefield, exile the top card of your library as one of this Card’s Resources.)
Whenever you sacrifice a creature, you may exile it as one of this card’s resources.
::W/B::, Expend 2 Resources: Create a food token. (To expend resources, put 2 of this permenant’s resources in its owner’s graveyard.)





Arzolt, Arcane Inquisitor
Legendary Planeswalker - Arzolt
Resources 3 (When this permanent enters the battlefield, exile the top 3 cards of your library as this Card’s Resources.)
: You may create a copy of an instant or sorcery from Arzolt, Arcane Inquisitor’s resources. You may cast that copy.
, Expend X Resources: Each Opponent loses X life. You gain life equal to the amount of life lost this way..

Inspired by this:

Opal Lotus 
Artifact
, Sacrifice Opal Lotus: Add three mana of any one color. Spend this mana only to pay for a commander tax.

More Paradox format stuff:

Forgotten by Trends
Instant
Timewarp five years into the future. (The year becomes five years after the current year.)
Return target permanent with mana value less than the last digit of the current year to its owner's hand.

Desecrated by Greed
Sorcery
Timewarp five years into the future. (The year becomes five years after the current year.)
Destroy target land. If the year is an odd number, its owner creates a Powerstone token. If the year is an even number, its owner creates a Treasure token.

Fear of the Future
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
When ~ enters, timewarp five years into the past. (The year becomes five years before the current year.)
Enchanted creature can't attack if its power is greater than the last digit of the current year.

Face Reality
Sorcery
You may cast ~ only if you control four or less token artifacts.
Destroy target creature, then create a Blood token. Reset the game year. (The game year becomes the current year it is in real life.)

Heritage Site
Land
~ enters the battlefield tapped.
: Add .
,, Sacrifice ~: Timewarp X years into the past. Then you gain X life if you timewarped 5 years. Then create X Forest land tokens if you timewarped 10 years. Then put X +1/+1 counters on each land you control and lands you control become 1/1 Elemental creatures that are still lands if you timewarped 20 years.

I'm mostly going at these from a top-down/flavor-first approach, but that is a pretty good bottom-up/mechanics-first design.

Inspired by the section on Rooms:

Master Lockpick 
Artifact
, : Choose X. The same mode can be chosen multiple times, and you may choose new targets for each instance of a chosen mode—
• Tap target permanent.
• Untap target permanent.
• Lock target door.
• Unlock target door.
• Target creature can’t be blocked this turn.
• Target creature must block each combat this turn if able.

Is there a separate template for the AFR d20 cards?

Catfish Noodler 
Creature--Human¹ Ranger
Whenever this creature attacks, roll a d20.
1 | Sacrifice Catfish Noodler and defending player creates The Behemoth, a legendary black, green, and blue 5/7 Giant Fish creature token with vigilance, trample, swampwalk, and ward .
2-10 | You create a Food token.
11-19 | You create two Food tokens.
20 | Untap target permanent defending player controls and gain control of it. If that permanent is a creature, you may tap it. If you do, that creature is now attacking its former controller.²
2/3





¹I figure that out of all the sapient races of the Multiverse, only we Humans are stupid enough to stick our bare hands sight unseen into strange aquatic ceremoniesholes, in an attempt to drag a creature that outweighs us by around three to one (and oftentimes, much more) out of its element and onto our dinner table.

²I'm also unsure how to properly template this ability.

Bar of Rusted Slag
Legendary Artifact--Equipment
Level up—Equipped creature wins a fight, an attack, or a block. (Whenever equipped creature wins a fight, an attack, or a block, put a level counter on this.)
Equip
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level \ This permanent’s name is Excaliber.
 3-5  /  Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike, vigilance, reach, trample, and lifelink.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level \This permanent’s name is Infinity +1 Sword.
  6+  /Indestructible
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 for each level counter on this permanent and has double strike, vigilance, reach, trample, lifelink, and ward .

Digging in the Dirt
Enchantment
If a card would be put into a graveyard from any zone other than the hand, battlefield, or stack, exile it instead.
Players can cast spells and play lands only from their graveyards and not from any other zone.

Idea : Teferi's Realm or Teferi's World?



Bloodmage Class 
As an additional cost to cast this spell, pay 4 life.
----------------------------------------\/----------------------------------------
Pay 20 life:                                                                   Level 2 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fateful hour—When this Class becomes level 2, if you have 5 or less life, exile all nonland permanents your opponents control and you gain 2 life for each permanent exiled this way.
----------------------------------------\/----------------------------------------
Pay 50 life:                                                                   Level 3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whenever you pay 2 or more life, you gain half that much life rounded up. If you gained 5 or more life this way, draw a card.
Legendary Enchantment--Class



I remember playing a series of Dota-style maps in WarCraft III & The Frozen Throne that had a Bloodmage hero.  He had no mana pool, instead casting all his spells using his own blood.  You really needed to load up on rings of regen to play that guy.

Ndebe, Vitality's Chosen 
Legendary Creature--Avatar
Vigilance, first strike, trample, lifelink
Ndebe, Vitality’s Chosen has hexproof as long as you’ve gained life this turn.
Whenever you gain life, Ndebe gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is that much life.
Whenever Ndebe attacks or blocks, you gain life equal to its power.
At the beginning of each end step, put a number of +1/+1 counters on Ndebe equal to the amount of combat damage it dealt this turn.
3/4

This is kinda all over the place.  doesn't normally do fighting (that's mure 's thing), and the momentum counters don't actually do anything.  The latter is easy to fix, just change to "Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you may remove a momentum counter from Heretic Chapter Jaeger. If you do, Heretic Chapter Jaeger fights up to one target creature you don't control."