Card of the Week Contest #274: Let's Get This Party Sparked

Tibalt, Fiend of Nephalia
Legendary Creature — Devil Human
Whenever Tibalt, Fiend of Nephalia attacks, discard a card. If you do, Tibalt deals 2 damage to any target.
Whenever you cast a spell, if you have no cards in hand, exile Tibalt, then return him to the battlefield transformed under his owner’s control.
2/1

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Tibalt, Devil Consorter
Legendary Planeswalker — Tibalt
: Discard a card at random, then draw a card.
: Create X 1/1 red Devil creature tokens with “When this creature dies, it does 1 damage to any target.”
: Target opponent gets an emblem with “You can’t gain life” and “If a source would deal damage to you, it deals six times that much damage instead.”


Tibalt was a stitcher in Innistrad but he was really shit so instead of stitching things he tortured them instead. Then a bunch of devils showed up in his house, then the police showed up in his house, then he cast a spell which like merged him with the devils and made him experience all the suffering he'd inflicted on others, which was like. Quite a lot. So then he sparked and went to I dunno rabiah or somewhere

Yeah, I did worry about that, but ultimately I assumed that the community would be lenient if the art in the render was not an exact 1:1 match if it was close enough. Like, you could probably use a picture of Jaina Proudmoore from WOW with her hood up and pretend its Kasmina and nobody would hold it against you. Lord knows I've taken fan art of one character to illustrate another one a couple times. 

I love simic so I made my girl Kiora. Maybe her passive is a little bit busted looking at her other abilities so let me know.

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You'd think there would be more good MTG fanart out there, but...

Curious. Does a sparker have to be a creature at the start? I have an idea for a Saga -> Planeswalker.

I'll leave a link to Ob Nixilis's back story but I'll try sum it up here: 

Ob Nixilis was a warlord and was losing. So in a last ditched effort he sacrifices his last two soldiers to activate a dark ritual, but it works too well. He not only kills his enemies but everyone and everything on his plane except for himself of course. His spark ignites when he's the only one left alive and goes on to conquer other planes.

Full story from magic.wizards.com: magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ur/first-world-hardest-2014-11-05

Ob Nixilis the Conqueror
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior
Menace
Sacrifice two other creatures: Draw a card. If you control no other creatures, exile ~, then return him to the battlefield transformed under his owner’s control.
4/2

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Ob Nixilis Worldender
Legendary Planeswalker - Nixilis
Starting Loyalty:
: If you control no creatures, create a 5/5 black Demon creature token with flying.
: Target opponent chooses up to one creature they control, then sacrifices the rest.
: Target opponent gains an emblem with "At the beginning of your end step, sacrifice a creature. Then, if you control fewer creatures than each opponent, you lose the game."

theamazingkamahl: I see another Elspeth fan!

Forgive me if mine is a little over-complicated. I've been experimenting with levellers that don't advance their stats and turn into planeswalkers with a single signature ability. Lots of planeswalkers end up only ever using one ability, and we've already seen one ability with a minus cost, but I wanted to see how a planeswalker with a single plus loyalty ability would work.

Made a custom frame, and called them paragon sparkers. Meant to be very story focused on a planeswalker's progression in their story and learning their talents, before sparking in a finale where they have mastered their most signature spell. Felt as though it was appropriate to bring out for a sparkers prompt.




The mechanical idea is that after jumping through the hoops to transform them, the player is rewarded with a strong (but not ultimate) ability that they want to use every turn. Meanwhile their opponent can choose to ignore a very one dimensional planeswalker, but doing so very quickly gets them out of reach.

It requires some tweaking to the formatting of levellers. Mainly, changing the "Level 1-4" format to "Level 1+". It's always confused me that they keep the abilities they unlock at each level, but this is marked with a tag that makes it seem as though they only apply from levels 1 through to 4, while different abilities are in place for levels 5 onwards. I hope it makes it clearer that abilities that unlock at early levels remain unlocked.

Also, if people are having trouble finding art for the walkers, I recommend going for the masterpiece series ones. They're unfamiliar enough, at least to me, that it doesn't feel weird reusing their art. Finding the right art is a chore sometimes, especially when restricted to characters with established appearances.

I like the idea of having a deathtouch commander in green black for Giant Growth or Hatred shenanigans. Maybe the -X is a little too strong, but it's a little throwback to Abrupt Decay.

By this point, Tezzeret is already a decently well-known planeswalker, having had an important role in some the latest few sets. Still for a quick summary of how he got his spark:
1. He was born to a "bit" of a dysfunctional family and lived as a scrapper in Esper.
2. Discovered he had a talent in rhabdomancy, so he was pretty much left alone to search for the metal. Ended up stealing etherium for himself.
3. Once he felt he had enough he ran away. Pursued goals of education and his mastery with etherium was prodigal. Nonetheless his low birth got in the way and he ended up murdering a lot of people (never got caught).
4. After losing a certain duel he got impatient and stole a precious artifact, nearly got killed by "security". Boom, spark.



PS: Oh boy were the pics hard to find that were neither already part of existing cards, based on post-Bolas Tezzeret or just generally unfit for a magic card.

That is a good idea that I didn't consider but it's rather late now so I'll leave it as it is. Except for the typeline. oops. fixed. ty