Testing New Mechanic: Knowledge
Custom Cards forum
Posted on Feb. 2, 2016, 10:50 p.m. by Femme_Fatale
The Owls of the Monastery 
- Sorcery
- You gain 1 life.
- Put a 1/2 blue and white Bird creature token with flying onto the battlefield.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each card in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
- For all the owls have seen, they must know much.
Grind of the Intellect 
- Sorcery
- Each player draws 4 cards and puts the top 4 cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Display of Wisdom
- Sorcery
- Target player draws a card.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Spewing Words 
- Instant
- ~ deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
- Who ever thought an intellect just spewing out whatever is in his mind would give such an enormous headache?
Call of the Lorescale Coatl 
- Sorcery
- Put a 2/2 green and blue Snake creature token onto the battlefield that has "Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature."
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Hellbound Tutor
- Sorcery
- Search your library for a card and put that card into your hand. Shuffle your library.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Elemental Protection 
- Instant
- Target creature gets protection from the colour of your choice until end of turn.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Foretelling
- Instant
- Target creature gets -1/-0 until end of turn.
- Scry 1
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Punish
- Sorcery
- Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Flint Spark
- Sorcery
- ~ deals 1 damage to target creature.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
Bristle
- Instant
- Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
- Knowledge (When you cast this spell, copy it for each chard in your hand. You may choose new targets for the copy.)
I can easily imagine myself playing this with either Zedruu the Greathearted for defense or in an Oloro, Ageless Ascetic deck using Karlov of the Ghost Council to suddenly have him at 12-14 counters : D
I like how it's like giving a spell (Storm) but depends on hand size and not something as hard to keep track of as "storm count". Also a lot of commander decks use unlimited hand-size cards so opponent's won't make them waste cards by forcing overdraw. This gives an alternative and more natural reason to seek no max hand size which is very much appreciated.
All in all I love the mechanic. I just hope that there are a dozen or so good cards with it which all do different things so that you can pick the ones that fit your deck but you don't end up running all of them.
February 2, 2016 11:06 p.m.
Ok maybe the draw ones might be too powerful. Since they change the number of cards in your hand, they could potentially. I might be wrong in terms of rule.
February 2, 2016 11:06 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #6
It doesn't give an immediate infinite combo dbpunk. All the copies are put onto the stack when the spell is cast. The copies are not cast, so therefore the effect only applies once.
February 2, 2016 11:09 p.m.
@ Femme_Fatale - Display of Wisdom seems a little stupid to me. It basically reads "I'm going to get screwed over because player A gave player B a free 7 cards for ".
I can see in standard it might be ok typically being draw 3-4 cards for . I just would hope it gets the crap banned out of it in commander.
February 2, 2016 11:10 p.m. Edited.
Ok then in that case they're a OK. The mill one just seems fun as fuck though. Honestly I'd play all of them cause like U is the draw color and infinite hand size isn't that hard in edh. Honestly mono green or mono red doing this would also be good.
Also Nekusar is laughing somewhere hoping this becomes a reality b
February 2, 2016 11:24 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #9
From testing, this mechanic is pretty restrictive, like storm. It's pretty much exactly like Storm just in reverse cost and easier to put into a deck. No need to build around it. Only a select few effects can be made with it, and the all have to be heavily costed.
February 2, 2016 11:34 p.m.
I think the copy effect is problematic. A way to solve this would be by making the effect be something like gain X life, put X 1/2 fliers on the field where X is the number of cards in hand. Rinse and repeat. Copy makes countermagic shit here.
February 3, 2016 12:13 a.m.
That complaint is the only reason I like the spell. It is a card that doesn't say "can't be countered" that is helpful but not backbreaking against control. Having a few cards like this each set would enable Counterspell to be printed again.
Besides there is tons of hate for this in every standard format. In the card is currently Displacement Wave. Before that it was Whelming Wave.
Here's all the mono hate on this card:
Eyeblight Massacre
Crux of Fate
Languish
Flaying Tendrils
Rising Miasma
Virulent Plague
here's the standard mono hate:
Kozilek's Return
Radiant Flames
Chandra, Flamecaller
Then there is a mono option currently available:
Windstorm
Not to mention mono having a board wipe every fricken block:
End Hostilities
Planar Outburst
There's also some multi-color options such as Death Frenzy or Harbinger of the Hunt.
You can even get rid of them if all your lands are Wastes with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.
It would be silly to change it because one colors one type of card has a hard time with it.
February 3, 2016 12:37 a.m.
Display of Wisdom feels like a permission control players wet dream. Draw-land drop-go, 7 cards hands, plenty of mana and then oh look 4 mana draw 7, followed by oh look I drew another so 4 mana draw 13, thats 20 cards drawn in 1 turn for 8 mana take the 7 cards you want and your set to win the game.
Far to OP in the best case scenario
The problem is the variance from your hand count, take damage the total you could do tops with out any super trickery is 7, so 7 damage should be how much mana say 4/5? But then if you have 1/2 cards in hand 4/5 mana for 1/2 damage is rubbish and totally unplayable. On the other side if you do it the other way around and say minikin 1/2 damage so lets make it 1/2 mana, that then turns into 1/2 mana for 7 damage at best case which is far too OP.
Worst thing is I don't think their is a middle ground between these two options and if there is it will take a lot of testing and rewording to find
Nice idea but really really open to being exploited
February 3, 2016 3:59 a.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #13
Which is why these things are heavily costed Mahna. You will not be having a full hand by the time you cast them.
Display needs to be sorcery however, so that it is only really beneficial when you've got 3-4 cards in hand at the time of cast.
February 3, 2016 4:44 a.m.
jandrobard says... #14
Personally I like the mechanic, but in all but the first one you typed "chard" instead of "card".
February 3, 2016 6:09 p.m.
iBleedPunk says... #15
I would love this mechanic albeit paired with Enter the Infinite its extremely OP for EDH and then DCI would be forced to cast the Banhammer spell
February 9, 2016 11:09 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #16
I've never seen Enter the Infinite once in any EDH game I've played.
February 11, 2016 10:38 p.m.
Lots of bad players believe it to be good with omniscience in things like Narset. It's not.
dbpunk says... #2
I feel like that's really fragile but also extremely powerful.
Like A) it would suck if that's the only card in your hand, and you gain 1 life and get a tiny owl for four mana. Which is horrible late game in any format.
But B) if you draw cards as much as some blue edh decks do, or storm into it, you get essentially an army that could waste a field.
C) Necropotence and that.
February 2, 2016 11 p.m.