Some Neat-O Custom Cards
Custom Cards forum
Posted on Nov. 29, 2014, 11:38 p.m. by Jay
I had an idea for some potentially cool cards. Dunno if these are balanced, but here they are anyways.
Pry From Thought - B
Sorcery - Rare
If ~ is in your starting hand, reveal it, then put a card from your hand on top of your library.
If you would mulligan with ~ in your hand, reveal it. You draw one less card in your next hand.
Target player reveals his or her hand. Choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card.
Rearing Grudgebeast - 1G
Creature - Rare
If ~ is in your starting hand, reveal it. You lose 4 life.
If you would mulligan with ~ in your hand, reveal it. You lose 2 life.
4/4
Hazardous Sparks - R
Instant - Rare
If ~ is in your starting hand, reveal it. Discard a card at random
If you would mulligan with ~ in your hand, reveal it. At the beginning of your first upkeep, discard a card at random.
~ deals 4 damage to target creature or player.
Double Blind - 1U
Instant- Rare
If ~ is in your starting hand, reveal your hand and the top card of your library.
If you would mulligan with ~ in your hand, reveal it. Each opponent draws a card at the beginning of his or her first upkeep.
Counter target Spell
Honeypot - W
Sorcery- Rare
If ~ is in your starting hand, reveal it. Each opponent gains 2 life.
If you would mulligan with ~ in your hand, reveal it. Each opponent puts a 1/1 White Soldier creature token into play.
Put 3 1/1 White Soldier creature tokens into play.
So, what do you think? Could we see abilities like this in the future? Are these balanced? Would you use them? Lemme know what you think.
-Jay
I wanted to make them playable by not totally dragging them down, however I think the drawbacks are pretty reasonable. Do you have any specific thoughts?
November 29, 2014 11:49 p.m.
These would single handedly break magic. everyone would play them, no one would want to mulligan. They would each see ridiculous amounts of play and everything would be overrun by control decks. Honypot definitely needs to make 1/1 bees instead of soldiers though.
November 30, 2014 12:08 a.m.
The blue one needs to be 
to match WotC's policy of hard counters requiring 2 colored mana symbols in them. Otherwise I think they are all interesting, but I'm not sure what the drawbacks need to be. The Black one's drawback might need to be "discard a card" if you start the game with it, instead of "put a card back", since in legacy with fetches + Brainstorm that's REALLY good. I also think the White one is a bit too good, and the drawbacks aren't really what I would play with. You may need to rethink how the White one is going to work.
November 30, 2014 12:09 a.m.
The reason I didn't use discard on the black one because it would be really strong in decks with Lingering Souls or reanimation strategies. Put back is a little more oppressive.
The White one was one that I wasn't sure about in a lot of ways. The name was just a joke about "you catch more bees with honey," haha.
DarkHero, I'm not sure they're quite as strong as you're making them out to be. They are very good (which is intentional), but I don't think they're game breaking. Mulligans happen a lot, and these make them worse, especially seeing them 2 or even 3 times in a row. This means they can't all be 4-ofs; seeing 3 of the Red one opening hand would ruin you early on.
November 30, 2014 12:12 a.m.
MSU_Iced_Z says... #7
Cool idea, but not tournament functional. Think about morph right now: in order to keep everyone honest, you have to reveal your morphs at the end of the game. There would be no possible way to enforce the drawback for these cards.
The mulligan one is technically doable, since there would be an opportunity to reveal the cards. But it would add a ton of time to tournaments, because every single mulligan your opponent would have to check your hand to make sure none of these cards are in it.
November 30, 2014 12:18 a.m.
Servo_Token says... #8
So for the black one:
This is probably the most balanced of your cards. The drawback can be pretty backbreaking in a deck that isn't prepared for it, and thoughtseizing without paying life seems fair for losing a card.
The green one is kind of meh, you may as well just play Hooting Mandrills. If it had trample, it'd probably be on par with the rest of your cards. This one seems like the most likely to see play in modern, at least.
The red one is completely busted because the downside only helps fuel Snapcaster Mage and or Treasure Cruise in every format, otherwise it's just a better lightning bolt. Instant 4 of in every deck that can afford it.
The blue one should cost UU and it would probably be fine as a modern Counterspell. Right now it's a bit too splashy, reminiscent of Mental Misstep. Not on par with that of course, but similar.
The white one is pretty busted as well. At least they don't have flying, but this card is, I would say, a bit less than twice as good as Lingering Souls.
As for how to make the broken ones better, I'm not entirely certain. I'd say probably putting out a 2/2 token on the white one would make that a bit more fair, and instead of the lifegain, pop out a 1/1 or like an 0/2 for the starting hand.
Red just needs to be redone. Discarding a card at random may be enough to keep Tibalt from play, but this thing is bazonkers. Maybe hitting yourself for X damage? Maybe something like suspending a token (doesn't necessarily need to be a token, but a token that says "Something something this card isn't a normal token"), maybe some form of Chaos Warp ability for the first spell cast.
November 30, 2014 12:19 a.m.
TurboFagoot says... #9
This would never be printed. Literally every game would need a judge on hand to make sure people are revealing these and not mulliganing without taking the penalties.
The cards themselves swing from wildly over powered to wildly unplayable. There is no reason to not just play Thoughtseize over the black one, or counterspell over the blue one, or Goyf over the green one.
Cards aren't well designed, they aren't practical, and a few of them aren't even powerful.
November 30, 2014 1:13 a.m.
The biggest pitfall I saw when designing them was indeed the practicality question, however honesty hadn't come to mind. I hadn't really thought of people cheating with them. I guess MTG players are kinda underhanded, huh?
Also TurboFagoot, you could always play these in addition to their real counterparts.
November 30, 2014 1:17 a.m.
MSU_Iced_Z says... #11
It's not a question of "Magic players are underhanded" it's a question of tournaments that offer tens of thousands of dollars in prizes, and there'd be no way to make sure people were following the rules. Even if everyone 100% honest, the appearance of impropriety crushes this design.
November 30, 2014 1:31 a.m.
I guess they could have different card backings so an opponent would be able to tell if you weren't revealing it, but then there's a problem with sleeves. Like the idea, don't like how easy to cheat they are.
card is balanced perfectly. Completely awesome card, would probably play as a replacement of Inquisition, but still keep TS as my main discard spell.
card is totally busted. Maybe if it only targeted creatures, or if it also dealt damage to the caster, I don't know.
card needs trample. Also, losing life seems somewhat uncharacteristic for Green.
card seems balanced but the mana cost needs to be like someone above mentioned.
card seems fairly balanced. I would play it.
November 30, 2014 1:34 a.m.
Yea, once that was mentioned I sorta realized that they couldn't be real :/
'shame.
The reason the counter isn't UU is because then it's strictly worse than counterspell, and I wanted there to be a solid reason to play this.
November 30, 2014 1:36 a.m.
MSU_Iced_Z says... #14
In the spirit of constructive criticism, let me try to template this so that it might work (because I do like the concept).
"If CARDNAME is in your opening hand, you may reveal it and [PAY COST]. Cards named CARDNAME can't be cast on your first, second, or third turns unless you revealed and [PAID COST] for that number of cards named CARDNAME from your opening hand."
Super clunky wording and changes the function slightly, but it might work.
November 30, 2014 1:41 a.m.
@MSU_Iced_Z: That idea makes them more plausible, but it should probably be worded "Cards named ~ can't be played from your hand etc etc." This allows it to function with other neat little abilities, like Cascade.
November 30, 2014 1:46 a.m.
MSU_Iced_Z says... #16
Fair enough. I'm trying to salvage it, but I'm not sure it works. My phrasing makes sense to the reader (hopefully), but it's definitely not rules-worthy.
November 30, 2014 1:56 a.m.
The red one, if it didn't hit players, would just be a bad Flame Slash. I can see it being pretty bad. I mean in a burn deck, if you draw one of these in your opening hand, you have to discard a card at random. It's likely you discard a card that does 3 damage - therefore this card has given you 4 damage, but you've lost access to a card that does 3. For an extra one damage you've set yourself back a turn. Is that really worth it when red decks are so known for running out of steam? That one turn loss could mean the difference between an Obstinate Baloth or a victory.
November 30, 2014 7:08 a.m.
asasinater13 says... #18
on the cheating, it would work well on mtgo where you can be forced to do their ability. In real life magic the ability would be difficult to manage.
Servo_Token says... #2
Yes, I would easily use these. If this was legacy, the red one is just better than a bolt in every way. No second thoughts about not jamming 4.
I'd probably play all of them, actually. The drawbacks should probably be much bigger because they only have the chance to happen once.
November 29, 2014 11:44 p.m.