Critical Banishment

Custom Cards forum

Posted on Aug. 16, 2021, 5:03 p.m. by TypicalTimmy

Critical Banishment

Instant

Critical Banishment costs less to cast for each spell your opponents cast and each ability your opponents activated this turn.

Exile target spell or activated ability.

"The best laid plans are those which are not." - Shu Yun.

RiotRunner789 says... #2

I like it but to make it feel more white, you could limit the cost reduction to spells/abilities your opponents control.

August 16, 2021 5:17 p.m.

TypicalTimmy says... #3

RiotRunner789, great suggestion! Updated for that.

August 16, 2021 5:51 p.m.

Tzefick says... #4

I really like the idea of more colors getting access to interact with the stack and I really think White is a good color to add some additional design space. Obviously it cannot get on par with blue so it needs some additional conditions or costs associated to get this effect.

I think this is a very good example to fit that space. Nice work.

Just a side note, for the sake of reducing word count could it be written as "... costs less for each spell cast and each ability activated by your opponents this turn." ?

I get the point in being specific about only caring about your opponents' actions but I think it would be consciously misinterpretation of the above line to think it isn't specifically for your opponents' actions.

Why is white a good fit? (wall of text) Show

First of all it seems like counter magic is a vital tool to interact with combo strategies especially when considering the Commander format, and it is the reason we've seen so many "free"-to-cast counter spells especially for Commander and why they drive sales so much. However that is only accessible to Blue, so the rest of the color pie is borderline useless in attempting to interact with most combos. I mean a Silence could work to interact with some combos, but that is such a narrowly applicable card in the rest of the game that it remains a tech card with a heavy drawback. And it might just eat one of the aforementioned "free"-to-cast counter spells and there's not much redundancy available either.

There's a reason why most competitive cEDH decks are including Blue. Coincidentally a lot include Black and Green as well as the three most powerful colors in Magic - at least for single-ton formats.

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White used to have some affinity for artifacts but that seems to have been handed over to blue/red. Right now White is mostly concerned about Equipments within the artifact realm and the synergies are not that widespread nor that powerful.

White used to be the best or on par to deal with artifacts and enchantments with Disenchant and Purify and similar effects but green has mostly taken over in acquiring design space for this mechanic - Bane of Progress Broken Bond You Find a Cursed Idol. The best improvement on the mechanic that white has is Austere Command due to flexibility and Heliod's Intervention to snipe multiple without harming yourself. And that's one of the bigger differences. White leans more on Enchantments and Artifacts than Green does, so Green doesn't have much drawback in including Bane of Progress. Whereas White leans on Artifacts for mana ramp and Equipments and they lean on Enchantments for strong synergies.

White once had their card advantage through ensuring their board survives, either through protection, prevention, regeneration, then shroud to a lesser degree, then indestructible - but only on creatures. However Black has gained exile mechanics, red has "burn to a crisp" mechanics and blue Cyclonic Rift or Curse of the Swine. So indestructible as a safety measure is getting worse and worse. Not to mention they get outdone by Green - again. Only exception is the ever increasing price on Teferi's Protection but that has its drawbacks too - namely you remove yourself from the game and can't interact further - unless you somehow can cast spells without mana from permanents.

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Cards like Rebuff the Wicked or Lapse of Certainty are interesting to expand upon within the design space for white and will grant it back some strengths and uniqueness it used to have. However to be able to properly interact with the stack it cannot just be conditioned behind being the one targeted - that would equate it to hexproof/protection and also make it useless against board wipe or the infamous Cyclonic Rift one-sided board sweep.

Possibly the design space could include some "punisher" mechanics loaned from red but transformed instead of inflicting pain on the opponent, you gain a benefit - for instance:

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Inspection

Instant

Choose target spell or ability an opponent controls. That opponent may have Inspection counter the chosen spell or ability. If they don't, choose one:

• Create three 1/1 white Human Soldier tokens.
• Create two Treasures then gain 4 life.
• Search your library for up to two basic land cards and put them into your hand, then shuffle.

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The flavor being to pass the spell you have to pay the toll (chosen by the Inspector for their benefit) or be rejected.

Taxing is the most recent mechanic that white has expanded upon and embraced but that is usually done on permanents as static or triggered abilities. This means WotC have to water down these cards' immediate impact and make the mechanic less enticing in the short run, which is often when it matters the most. Drawing Thalia, Guardian of Thraben on turn 5+ is often not that impactful, whereas on turn 2 you can cripple some decks. It would be refreshing if WotC would expand on the mechanic for ETBs or instant/sorceries with a here-and-now benefit rather than dragging it out.

Additionally the taxing mechanic could utilize other taxes than just paying mana to do stuff. Inflexibly taxing mana has a good chance to affix unfriendly eyes on you whereas gaining a taxing benefit - say Smothering Tithe is less likely to breed anger toward you but may instill fear.

Anyway, I think it would be good for White to gain a little more design space and I think more colors being able to interact with the stack would be a good thing - even if that means Blue has to share some of their mechanics to a degree with another color.

August 30, 2021 8:45 a.m.