Thursday, July 9, 2015

CCDD 070915—Hellsong Reaver

Cool Card Design of the Day
7/9/2015 - A demon. I love this ability for allowing the demon to benefit from your misery without actual being a drawback mechanic.



I did have to stop myself from adding another ability to help this feel mythic, and I'm still not sure whether that was the right call or not:


17 comments:

  1. There's no reason mythic cards can't be elegant, too (:
    I like the first one. It may be too powerful, though.

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  2. Do you understand that damage caused loss of life?

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    1. (Sorry if that came off snarky, I was typing on my phone so I was trying to be brevitous, but it came off ruder than I intended)

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    2. But yeah, this should have reminder text about that.

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  3. I like the first version a lot more. The second one having life loss in its extra ability is going to mislead people into thinking that does something with its first ability, and then make them feel a little disappointed when they realize it doesn't.

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    1. Not in terms of final comprehension, but initial read? Fair point.

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  4. I did something similar for a Commander Supplemental that I was working on. It turns out that making effect +1/+1 counters is really really strong. Oh course that card was trying to do other things, so here its probably fine. I like the first card more as a rare. It'll be strong, but to me its Siege Rhino strong. The second definitely feels more like a mythic.

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    1. From a balancing perspective, check out Retaliator Griffin.

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    2. If anything Retaliator Griffin shows how strong this card is. The Griffin is 3 colored, whereas this is mono colored. The Griffin requires that your opponents be doing the damage to you to grow. This can be used proactively with cards like Night's Whisper. In fact, this card basically says, "When you lose life, target opponent loses that much life." That seems outrageous, but its actually stronger than that since it does that much extra damage every turn.

      I think its still prinatable, but its way stronger than Retaliator Griffin. I actually think the correct mana cost is BBBB, since a blacker effect is probably not to be found anywhere.

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  5. The first one is probably a fine rare, although it'd have to be less aggressively costed (3BB? 4BB?).

    To make it mythic though, I agree it needs something extra. I like:

    Pay 2 life: Hellsong Revier gets -1/-1 until end of turn.

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    1. "Any player may activate this ability"

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    2. That is a really sexy line Pasteur. especially since my life payments counter yours.

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  6. It's cool, but scary and overpowered. I'd tweak the ability as follows: "Whenever a player loses life, put that many +1/+1 counters on CARDNAME. Remove those counters at the beginning of the next end step. (Damage causes loss of life.)"

    Now your opponent can attack you freely, but you can still feed your pain to your Demon using painlands and Necropotence - or your opponent's pain using burn spells.

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    1. "Whenever a player loses life, ~ gets +1/+1 until EOT for each point lost."

      But I must say, making it symmetrical is pretty sweet.

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  7. The second ability I think will be frustrating since you would at first think it synergises with the first, when in fact it doesn't. Also, the ability is so fantastically cool, the first time it's done it feels like anything else just waters it down.

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