Daily Card Redesign #68: Phyrexian Broodlings

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

This is what the Random Card button in Gatherer gave me. Mountain. And there's absolutely nothing I can do because it's a perfect and fundamental card. Let's try again.

There. Now its redesign:

The original design I'm replacing is awesomely flavorful. The power/toughness on the card represented how many Phyrexians were grouped together. The third one looming in the background represents one of the upcoming +1/+1 counters that comes from your sacrifice to the Phyrexian "cause."

I wanted to do Minion tokens but I remembered what Wobbles had me realize when I designed my version of Entangling Vines: if this is late in development, and art is already locked in, I probably can't come up with a design that calls for a brand new token. Because that would need art, and it's too late by then in this scenario I'm redesigning under. So, no tokens.

EDIT: I had forgotten that token cards didn't exist in booster packs back then, so this was actually a non-issue.

Within Urza's Legacy, a good portion of black's creatures are either Minion or Carrier. These Phyrexians! And the Carriers kill themselves to (hopefully) off an opposing creature. I tried to design something that played well with that while also keeping with the flavor that a creature that "dies" is actually being transformed into a Phyrexian.

It's like a Gravedigger, but one mana cheaper. The drawback is that it has restrictions. And since Carriers kill themselves to kill other creatures, you'll probably have a target to bring back!

Daily Card Redesign #67: Rupture Spire

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

I love land design! It's so restrictive, thus there's a need to get more creative, according that motto of Mark Rosewater's.

The thing with common land design is that when there is more than one color being produced, there is always some drawback that requires you to be paying 1 of your mana. It may come in the form of the land itself entering the battlefield tapped (you just lost a mana), or it may come in the form of paying 1 mana in some other manner. However, when it comes to common lands that can produce one mana of ANY color, there's an even greater restriction. Either you're only paying that "1 mana" and needing to endure a different restriction like only getting the mana once each time (Shimmering Grotto), or you need to pay two mana for a permanent benefit (the original Rupture Spire / Transguild Promenade).

With my route, I've decided upon the "pay 1 mana" restriction with the additional OTHER restriction. You must wait a turn for your color of any mana. This is because, flavorfully, the ground hasn't been ruptured, yet. The ground is just a barren, colorless ground (produces just colorless mana once). Then it RUPTURES! (That's when you put a rupture counter on it.) A spire emerges, and it produces one mana of any color for you!

Now, is this a Vorthos design or what?

This isn't strictly worse than the original Rupture Spire because: 1) It trades one mana for one turn's worth of waiting for colored mana (you can still produce colorless for a turn). and 2) This new version can be played on turn 1 whereas the original design cannot (without it sacrificing itself and being a moot turn 1 play).

ALTERNATE DESIGN

Evan Jones examined my original design through the lens of New World Order. I hadn't done so for this design at all. And he's right - a counter that determines colored-ness on a common isn't a good use of a set's complexity points. 

Instead, I present the above design. It's simple and clean! While it's strictly worse than my original design, it's elegant! And it may even make more sense, flavorfully, since the focus is on the Rupture Spire, which doesn't rupture the ground until later. No focus at all on the colorlessness of a non-Rupture Spire-arrived land. Thanks for inspiring me to create a better design, Evan!

Daily Card Redesign #66: Entangling Vines

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

Huzzah! Yet another card that makes 0/1 green Plant creature tokens! There's only two other cards in all of Magic: The Gathering that makes these Plants. Instead of tapping a creature or saying that creature has become blocked or can't attack, green does this flavorful method of stopping a single creature from hitting you for a turn. 

And because the effect is so weak, I stapled on a cantrip. Perhaps if I came up with a name that implied that what's happening is the plant is holding down the creature for a temporary amount of time while you study the creature for just enough time to gain a bit of knowledge (drawing the card).

Daily Card Redesign #65: Tek

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

Quite a bit happening here! I got excited to do something different with the modes type of effect. Usually, it's "choose one." In the past, there's also been "choose one or both" and "choose two." But never has there been "choose up to X, where X is..." (well, except for the wording in a different context with Discordant Dirge.) I thought it fitting in this slot, since its set, Invasion, cares about having domain. This rewards you more the more basic land types you have.

At first, I wanted to find five differently-colored effects (white, blue, black, red, green). But, then I realized how I wasn't giving different rewards depending on basic land type anymore. I was just looking for a number. This freed me up to do something different.

I looked to the art and noticed how Tek is surprising this group of creatures by emerging from the sand. A bunch of creatures being ambushed... which led me to doing five different effects that mess with creatures! Of course, this meant it would have to cost a LOT. And so I did make sure it wouldn't be too broken and costed it at 10. After all, getting to "kill" three creatures, bounce one creature, and tap a final creature is pretty powerful. Plague Wind allows for one-sided killing for 9. But that's black. So, I made this cost 10, even though the restriction of basic land types are there. I figure that even having just two basic land types meaning killing two creatures was still worthwhile, so this had to cost more.

I made sure the effect could only happen when you cast it from your hand, because I'm afraid of reanimator and other effects that cheat this card into play would abuse this card.

Notice that, for this type of effect to be an instant or sorcery, I would either have to make this a colorless spell or make it a white-blue-black colored spell. Colorless instants/sorceries don't really exist normally, and there are rare instances when you can do this as a WUB colored spell. So, artifact creature "enters the battlefield" effect it is!

Daily Card Redesign #64: Scathe Zombies

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development. I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

By now, Scathe Zombies have been outclassed by the likes of Walking Corpse. Back in Alpha, though, creatures were different. A 2/2 Zombie for 2 in black would be pretty good. Now, I would want to make a 1/1 Zombie, but there's multiple Zombies depicted here. I couldn't have made this into a noncreature card because Zombie Master wants more than just Scavenging Ghoul to work with. So, either I keep this a 2/2 and add a small bonus, or I make it bigger. Obviously, I chose to make it larger.

However, I couldn't have made this creature too much larger. A 3/3 for 4 is too weak. And a 3/3 for 3 is too week. So, what do I do? I put a drawback on the creature. A flavorful one at that. Both Diregraf Ghoul and Rotting Legion exist with the "enters the battlefield tapped" drawback to evoke their slow zombie-ness. Here's a creature design that comes in-between!

I would have named it something that begins with "Shambling," (see Rotting Legion's flavor text) but it wouldn't fit between Sacrifice and Scavenging Ghoul, alphabetically. So I settled for Sauntering - not as wonderful, but it'll do. I chose to go with "Zombies" in the name instead of something else like "Corpses" or "Undead" because that would mean only Zombie Master would be the only Zombie in Alpha with "Zombie" in its name.

Daily Card Redesign #63: Silverglade Pathfinder

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

This spellshaper shapes spells into Reclaim! Luckily, there has been no other Spellshaper in all of Magic: The Gathering that has done the Reclaim effect.

There were slim pickings for this art with effects I can go with. I couldn't do artifact or enchantment destruction. No life gain. Because the original fetched lands, I couldn't do that. And so on. Additionally, I couldn't do effects that didn't make sense with the art - like granting trample and such.

Because Spellshapers might come back as a major thing in the future, I didn't want to have this card have a name that ties it down to the world it appeared in with the word "Silverglade." I settled for "Somber" since she looks like she could be it, and this sort of mood happens when you're remembering things that have come and gone.

EDIT: I slipped up and didn't realize that "Somber" came after "Snake Pit," the next card in collector number for the set. Therefore, "Silverglade Reclaimer" will have to do.

Daily Card Redesign #62: Birds of Paradise

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

Redesign:

An island is prominent in the background, but so is the Bird. I didn't want to keep perpetuating the idea that it's O.K. for green to have flying creatures, so I didn't do a creature. Because, otherwise, I would be force to make it flying - because the bird is obviously flying.

Because the island is prominent in the background, I thought of green's ability to get mana of different colors. There weren't any land fetching cards in Alpha. So I went in that direction. And because the bird is a large part of the picture, I also went with having the trigger key off of creatures entering the battlefield.

Because this is a rare card, an enchantment was in order. Otherwise, a rare sorcery or instant land fetching lands would have to be pretty unique - and I didn't want to get too crazy for Alpha. So, repeatable land fetching it is.