HMC 4th Printrun Reviews Part V

 

Hopefully this at least works outside of UK, no clue what this looks like now as Imgur has ceased operations in the UK. 

Stone Wall

Design 4

Balance 6?

These minor fortifications that give a land a new tap ability are kindof like utility lands, and as such you somewhat need them to go get a land, or at least do something comparable on EtB to be worth playing them. Sadly even with finding you a Mountain, and thus costing very little in real terms, this still doesn't lure people in to playing it. I do wonder if there is an element of this being sufficiently different as far as conventional magic cards go that is stopping people from playing it? Unfamiliarity being a barrier to entry rather than power or suitability. Perhaps it is more that red is not overly looking to play Maze of Ith style effects. This is a control card but a marginal one. It costs valuable deck space and so you want it to be more significant than it is. I like the flavour of the card but don't love the nature of it as a red card. Nor how fiddly it is for a low key common. I will continue to give this a chance as it seems a lot better than the attention it is getting would suggest but I don't think I can offer much in the way of suggested changes to the card when it seems so on point and I have so little testing information to go on. Realistically the best this is ever going to be is as a way to develop a board at low all round cost, and not doing the thing it looks like it is supposed to do. Devotion and affinity decks both are rewarded for casting this and they never have to mess about with fortifying!

Stromkirk Scavengers

Design 6

Balance 7

Graveyard disruption is one of those things you need for a healthy format but that you cannot afford to pick and play in its own right - often like Disenchant effects in a cube. Designing these tools becomes tricky as you need to have a card that is effectively playable without the disruption aspect, but not that much more improved when it is useful. The Scavenging Ooze model worked very nicely. It is a dork so it is always doing something and it is always interactable. The yard disruption costs mana and thus cannot just be used with impunity. The exile ability also provides perks beyond the yard exile meaning you will sometimes want to fuel it yourself. The exile is sometimes a cost you are paying like escape for the effect, and sometimes you are using it for the disruption to the opponent. This formula is one I have used multiple times across all the colours so as to ensure there is a healthy amount of graveyard interaction. This little dude is pretty low key but it ties in to Blood synergies giving it a pretty wide range of potential uses. This guy rocks up plenty and does OK work. A lot of this is simply thanks to being cheap and useful. I wouldn't call this a good card or an elegant card or a beautiful card. I consider it more of a necessity. It does its job well and earns its place but it is the total opposite of a main character or leading role card.

Supply Lines

Design 2

Balance 5

Much as I have long since learned that cards like his are dodgy design I do still indulge myself now and again. This is a shocker in multiple ways. Firstly the excessive use of the word "or" is enough to turn the stomach and land this a low low design rating. Secondly it is just spewing out far too many different tokens and messing up the board no end. Everything about this card screams clutter. It was a top down design trying to do rebellious seeming things that were not creatures. I do rather like the flavour here. It is also the kind of card I like playing with, hence the indulgence. I figured rebels was at least a safer place for a card like this as its fate is more tied to theirs. I am sure I could tidy this up but I'll have to play with it a bit more to understand which aspects are the desirable bit. It is such a mess of a card because I was trying to design a card that was good with Rebels without being unplayable outside of that one archetype. This is about as far down the priority list as is possible to go but if I manage to fix the rest of the rebels somehow I may well get to some more self indulgence with a rework of this.

Svyelun's Saga

Design 7

Balance 5

My green riff on Urza's Saga proved sufficiently successful that I have been slowly expanding the cycle. This is the blue offering and it has mostly performed admirably. The only significant failure with this card is not actually having a blue mana symbol on it anywhere resulting in what really should be a colourless land. I have remedied with by changing the bounce cost to 1U since this printing and it suitably sorts the issue. While not overpowered the card is certainly on the strong side so a little nerf is no problem. The power of this card, while very high is all safely locked away behind 'if' clauses. Do you have good mana sinks for Powerstones? Do they have relevant things to bounce? Do you have targets in the bin to flashback? You need a healthy amount of yes for this card to be playable but you don't need all yes by any means. It is also noteworthy that it is rare that you can usefully target countermagic with this and so your blue targets tend to be value ones rather than disruptive. When you can usefully fire all three modes on the saga is where the card starts hitting the too good mark! This form of card design - saga land, is a real win as it applies a new kind of tension we don't get in other types of cards. The limited lifespan of a saga land leads to crippling yourself should you use it to early even if the low mana costs are tempting. That beign said, in the heavy artifact deck this thing acts a bit like a Mishra's Workshop as it can dump out three powerstone tokens.  In that situation is a very strong turn one play, something the other saga lands thankfully cannot be. The power level of this saga is both able to be higher than I would like, as well as more fluctuating in performance than I would like, but the card is sufficiently fun and enticing that it gets away with these minor grievances and feels like a big win.

Swineherd

Design 8

Balance 6

This just made itself as soon as I stumbled upon the art. This is perfect filler. This is what Portal cards should look like! This is on point for power and for flavour and has real good clean design ensuring minimal mental loading. It is everything going for it bar one critical ingredient - excitement. This isn't fun at all. This is just a boring filler dork. It isn't even really fun if you scale it somehow. This is a mono red Watchwolf level of stats that has double scaling with Glorious Anthems, Blood Artists and all that jazz. It also works nicely with flicker effects. There is a lot of potential to do stuff here but none of it gets the juices flowing. I'll happily use this to even up the ratios in cube curating or deck design but I'll just as readily cut it for anything with the promise of doing something threatening to be interesting. 

Sword of Change

Design 7

Balance 3

This is one of the more interesting Rebel cards I made - not to mention one of the few that doesn't recruit... This was pretty busted with other rebels but rather more interesting and reasonable by itself. There was a bit of an Esika's Chariot vibe to the card. You can really go quite all in with it which is interesting. On its own it is a four mana 4/4 with some residuals. Not overly impressive. If you want to start throwing your lands away however you can generate a 2/2 and a +1/+1 to the equipped dork for every turn plus two lands you use. As such, if you make this on turn four with four lands, immediately toss two in your turn and then do so again in their turn with the last of your land you will start your next turn with a 6/6 and a pair of 2/2s all ready to attack. Ten power over three bodies for a mere four mana feels like it is probably a bit much even if it does cost you all your land. It is very all in but it isn't too easy to stop. I think that makes the card dodgy even if it doesn't stop it being interesting. I've not put too much time into solving this card as I don't entirely know where I want it to end up and thus how best to balance. It could be a stand alone card with nothing to do with rebels or it could be predominatly a tribal synergy tool. Interesting but incomplete. 

Take Note

Design 8

Balance 8

A card quality tool aimed at supporting prowess decks. In general, the cleaner the support card the more welcome it is. This is a long way from the most powerful of the support cards I have made but it is super easy to appreciate what this does and so it has been getting plenty of play. It is really versatile and allows you to setup big storm, prowess, or card draw trigger turns. None of those things are that heavily supported in my cube in a way as to make this kind of payoff anywhere near as exciting as this card would be in the real powered cube. Doesn't seem like that matters too much given the play it is getting.

Telim Tor, Rebel One

Design 1

Balance 1

Just in case the rebels were not good enough to beat you first time round they get to have another go at doing so thanks to this dude. I wanted more big top end payoff dudes and already had a lord. This was something different and so I did it. Turns out it is pretty egregious. Both parts as it happens. The haste is somewhat of a colourpie fail too. This will get some kind of full rework before he is allowed out to play again. And he won't be getting that until the rest of the rebels get fixed.

The Dowager Sengir

Design 4

Balance 4

Here we have a bit of a leftovers card. I had a few ideas I wanted to explore that I didn't manage to fit elsewhere in designs so I just made this card and stuck them on. That is why it is a lifegain card and a blood card and a vampire tribal card.... There are a lot of potential synergies on the go here but nothing at all just by itself. For a legend this feels like it should do a bit more, the floor is just a bit too do nothing.

The Frog King

Design 6

Balance 4

This was an attempt to make an interesting +1/+1 counter card that could do some really cool things with proliferate and other synergies. A bit like the Dowager just reviewed, this needs to be a bit more by itself. Perhaps just like a 3/3 reach might be enough, it is just all a bit limp if you haven't got the appropriate other stuff going on. I will likely revisit this both with a bit of mild buffing but also as and when I manage to design a more critical mass of support and payoff for this. It is inline with the kinds of synergy that are lots of fun it just lacks the external support and the raw power itself. 

The Spaniel King

Design 6

Balance 3

Another one of many cards which I somewhat broke by allowing unconditional use. Things without a tap, a mana, a number of uses, or a timing of use restriction all get dangerous real fast. They get dangerous on a power level but also on a logistical one. They provide so many extra options that the game gets hard and slow and draining. Errors creep in to peoples play. Obviously this card is problematic because always all goats. It was like that Elk problem back in Eldraine. You attack, suddenly goats blocking. You pass the turn, suddenly an army of goats there to enjoy Overrunning your face. You can fix this card by slapping on a G to use the ability, making it once a turn, making it only sorcery speed. You could completely ruin the card by making it a tap ability instead if you wanted to! Conceptually I like this, it is food and graveyard synergy overlap and has the kind of scaling I like. On turn three this is very Grey Ogre. Late game and this is rather more card. I think this will sit very nicely for both balance and design once I have settled on the best fix for the forage ability. 

Thraben Conscripts

Design 3

Balance 5

The next four cards are a little package I made in an attempt to give white more fun things to do. Pretty sad that this is as fun as I could manage for white. Pretty desperate that this counts as more fun than what is already in place... The idea was a kind of human soldier tribal synergy support package. This is a low key Savannah Lion that gets the ball rolling. It ensures you have follow up of some sort if you want. Consistency but ultimately just a narrower and wordier iteration for the 2/1 white dorks with scry or cycling that already exist in the meta. This wound up just being a dull card that is narrow and on the low end of power with too many words.

Thraben Leuitenant 

Design 4

Balance 5

A bear that dies into a bit of value that is similar looking. Potent but pretty boring. Human is sufficiently common that you can play this anywhere pretty safely. Indeed, it is probably better in the more control shells where you will have less targets. They will tend to be more specifically useful and knowing what you are more likely to hit helps with planning. While the card is OK it failed the design brief fairly impressively! Both being better outside of the cycle and the intended archetype, all while not managing to avoid being dull, or even being all that well balanced....

Thraben Captain

Design 3

Balance 6

Yet more dull filler. This is a two for one but it is such low steaks value that it might as well not be. A 3/2 is not making the difference in most games, it is barely going to be relevant in most games... For a three mana card there needs to be more threat. Either ongoing potential for value or a more relevant beater of a body. Double white in the cost makes this narrow as well. That is the first thing I would change here, reducing the colour intensity. Filler wants to be broadly applicable. Given that this somewhat failed on all fronts I doubt I'll be rushing to apply any fixes here. 

Thraben General

Design 2

Balance 3

And the big Thraben series payoff? This idiot... I thought this was a cute lord but no, absolute shocker of an effect. If you have this active and they can't disrupt then it is such a massive pile of extra stats that you just win. That happens too often to be healthy but not enough for this card to be good on average. Not helped by being a 2/3 for 4 when not active which is well below an acceptable floor. What is even worse is that there is still lower you can go with this big turd. You naturally want to get stuck in when you have a big old board advantage. The thing is, it is very easy to turn this off mid combat with almost any instant removal spell. Turns out that results in a pretty blowout combat. This card has a range where it is a total blowout for each player at the extreme ends making it about as polar as possible. Bad pump effect, bad creature, bad card.

Tome Owl

Design 8

Balance 6

This is one of my preferred prowess adjacent dorks. I love the various self balancing feedback situations as well as the way it scales. It just feels very blue while also being a fairly viable cheap beater. At worst this is hitting for 1 in the air or chump blocking. Toss in some cycling or some card quality effects and this will start to slap a bit harder a bit more consistently. The odd big draw spell lets you do a sizeable hit as well, balanced by the fact that you are not adding further tempo or immediate pressure to the game when you use these kinds of effect. Do blue stuff and make this guy good. Support this guy with dorks and other attacking less blue stuff and suddenly this hits a lot softer and fairer. While both scale very differently this feels like a balanced Delver of Secrets and hits with a comparable punch, just in a much more controlled and reasonable way. As far as flavour and balance go I should probably have this be just a power buff and not both ends. The potential to turn Ancestral Recall effects into Giant Growth combat tricks can be a bit blowout. You will be forced into trying to block this eventually and that can be dangerous. That will sometimes let card advantage turn into tempo as well.

Trade Caravan

Design 6

Balance 6

Top down design akin to the blue Merchant Ship I also made in this set. I like these in both concept and flavour but find them to be quite unlike actual magic cards. There is something just a bit off feeling about them. Perhaps they are the wrong pacing for magic which feels more like a dual than a long term thing. This is more the pace of (Sid Meier's) Civilization! Perhaps it is the stretching of what the colour pie allows for that is what is off with these? Perhaps it is just that they are different cards and thus finding out how and where to use them optimally takes significantly longer. Perhaps it is just that this is a low impact card that, while balanced, can offer more to the opponent than you and as such is a high risk card with more unknowns than one is comfortable with. Both this and the blue one got play. This is probably the better of the two as white can put small bodies to more aggressive use and has more capacity than most archetypes to expend resources. This just works with what you want to be doing, and with itself. Even so, I think this is one to retire. Interesting but not for now.

Traumatized Summoner

Design 6

Balance 6

Bit of a wierd one here. Blue is not at all a colour I would associate with this sort of token generation but somehow, likely thanks to Simic, this one feels reasonable. It also took some fiddling around with so as to get it working how I wanted. Turns out evolve on a token producing dork can go infinite real easily. I could probably remove the on death trigger and neaten the card up but I wanted to make it playable. I feared blue wouldn't have enough dorks or enough dork based strategies to fuel this sufficiently without a bit of insurance. So far all has seemed well with this one. It plays fine. It isn't that quick or threatening in what it does but it does do it quite well. My main concern is that this isn't a card with a great play pattern if used defensively. This can pretty much make you a chump blocker for every dork you make and just clog up the board safely and cheaply. If that becomes an issue I'll look to make the token dorks unable to block. Presently it is just winding up in the more proactive blue decks, and in those it is quite a cute alternate Young Pyromancer. It is to Young Pyromancer what Cloudfin Raptor is to Delver of Secrets, or even Dragon's Rage Channeler and that is a nice place to be I would say.

Vengeful Summoner

Design 7

Balance 6

Inspired by Vengevine and the return trigger it has. This card is hard to fuel and even harder to abuse. If you are playing two dorks in a turn then recurring a dork with yet lower mana value then there is a good chance you are getting something small, even late game. The only real way to game the system here is with cost reduction dudes. There are a couple of these but it is all sufficiently rare that is just makes this a bit fun and spicy. It is a lot worse than Vengevine both in that you have to cast this to get any value from the trigger, you can't just toss it in the bin. And secondly, because it is a Grey Ogre at base and offers pitiful tempo. Even the ward doesn't do too much to offset the risks of playing a Grey Ogre. With this all in mind I need to be playing a creature heavy deck with some graveyard support, and perhaps some sac synergies, before I am too interested in this. I could probably afford to buff this a little. It doesn't need it but it is fun and it would help it to be less narrow.

Vodalian Soldier

Design 5

Balance 6

Fine but a bit safe for the kind of card it is. Probably this needs to come in tapped or be a 1/1 or something. There is just too much free tempo to be had here for a blue card. This is great offensively and defensively and thus winds up getting pretty universal play. It is really is just the kind of card that elongates games. Consistency like this is what I desperately want more of in real magic and so I overdid it for the homemade cube to the point of having the reverse problem. Games that go on too long and are just full of minor incremental edges like those Vodalian Soldier offer are hard on the brain and not what you want too many of. 

Voldaren Vampire

Design 6

Balance 8

Boring but fine. Acceptable stats with pretty broad utility thanks to the flying. Blood is looting as a floor making this card a great support tool in and out of Blood decks. This is a pretty perfect level for a low end common support card. It is clean, easy to parse, and yet offers a reasonable amount of card and game. In the real world this is a bit good for a black common and would likely need to pay a cost to gain flying or be unable to block or something. Power level wasn't a significant factor in my selection of card rarity. Neither did I put too much effort into getting it right! I have noticed it being more off in the later printruns. What I really like about this kind of cheap card is that it will tend to gain ongoing value if left in play but will tend to put you behind if answered quickly. It is very easy to answer but then it is also still cheap enough to not be too big of a risk. A gamble within ones means but that has significant potential payout.

Wake Celebrant

Design 5

Balance 5

Speaking of Blood payoff cards... This one is one of my larger concerns. It has real "Carrion Feeder but blocks" vibes. This sits around getting value or becoming a threat or a bit of both as required. It works well in a variety of places, really only needing creatures to be supported. It does however excel when you pair it up with other blood cards or sacrifice strategies. Being able to grow this in size at any speed and without any cost beyond the blood is possibly a problem here. I think I need to add a cost to it or make it sorcery. It might be acceptable if this was a 3 or 4 mana card (with a bit more starting stats) but as a two drop this is doing a bit too much. Always active effects like this end up taxing rather more mental resources than is ideal for a cheap support card. Regardless, it has yet to be a problem despite plenty of play so perhaps I am worried about nothing. 

Yawgmoth's Saga

Design 9

Balance 8

This style of land saga is great and so I am exploring them. They entice and intrigue and they don't even need to be that powerful to do so, as demonstrated by this little card. This does a fairly disparate array of black things but without any real cohesion in the effects. If we were describing this card like a wine connoisseur then it would be the body of Phyrexian Tower come Lake of the Dead with notes of Edict and Entomb. I love the tension land sagas offer between getting them out early to get the goods quickly and staving off deploying them so as not to hamper your mana development too severely. This one is especially uncomfortable as the first phase requires you to further sacrifice development to put to use. You can wind up a lot of lands down through using this! I have often enough just skipped using the first phase. It is rare to find all aspects of the card to be highly useful in any given build, let alone any given situation. Luckily the card is versatile enough and sufficiently potent that it gets play in spite of this. Much as this is an unexpected design triumph it is one I can only attribute to luck. I ignorantly threw some appropriate looking effects on a land saga in an attempt to be flavourful and playable and the result is much greater than the sum of its parts.

Zoological Expedition 

Design 4

Balance 3

The setup for this is not at all difficult but it is enough to keep this from being exploited. You will get mana advantage out of using this but not so much nor so quickly that is overly impacts the game. You may well be choosing to pay more to use this so as to retain things in the yard for later escape costs. Where this card falls down is that it plucks a powerful card out of your deck. When you are as in need of support as this card you might as well just play another threat in its place. The total amount of threat you can cram into a 40 card cube deck is important, more so in the homemade cube than other cubes. This might be a great tutor for a combo deck one day but it is no general use card in the meta I have created.