/ccg/ Custom Card General /cct/

The souls idea was just me thinking of something to add to the whole dark souls flavor. The way that I worded that is kinda dumb.

But yeah. It's an enchantment that's essentially a placeholder for other abilities or spells to be casted or activated from. It also has it's own stand alone use.

>But in exchange, you must tell me what's worded incorrectly in your card (cool design, by the way) and then fix it.
I used whenever instead of when, again. Easily my worst miswording habit. Thanks, man. Here's an updated link with the card fixed:

dropbox.com/s/h1abc4lyu1k6r5l/Time 2.mse-set?dl=0

You can just leave it as "Timeset 2" or something similar for now. I'll work on names in the meantime.

I'm currently working on a poison and -1/-1 counters set that doesn't involve infect, and being poisoned is relevant in other ways.

This creature is meant to do its thing even if you weaken it with -1/-1s, but otherwise operate as is.

And yes, I need to redo Mushroom Child's Power and Toughness. It's better as a 1/1

And just a sampling of other ideas so far, still early into it so nothing is finalized except the premise.

I'll call it your second Time set, so people don't get the wrong idea that it's just an updated version of your other set or something. If you want suggestions for names, let me know.

Oh wait. Second, as in number two. Second, as in a measure of time. Well, that just gave me a few ideas for a set name.

Good luck, because you're going to be hearing "Why not use Infect?" ad infinitum. Though, it is a good question. Why not use it, if you're using both its counters?

>UB evergreen keyword ideas
This one ain't evergreen viable but I was tinkering with a combination of Ninjutsu and Morph because reasons.

I doubt it'll get many counters on it unless you have to emergency block with it or something given that it has flying. Seems fine I suppose.

>enchantment token
I was messing with these for another set, but all my ideas were way more complicated. This is simple, but perhaps too much so? And yeah, glad you are going to re-balance the creature. It's a bit much as-is. I don't think it needs to be 1/1 though, even if it enables the "Soul" ability more easily.

I like the flavor here, and I don't at the same time. I feel like there's a disconnect; John throws people to the wolves for his own gain all the time, and that's a fact, but I feel like this is something that'd make more sense as a regular artifact for the player to use, not something for your creatures, legendary or not as they are. The reason for this is, as it is, you have to enable it. The wearer of the coat isn't throwing people under the bus; the player is. So it comes off as really really strange to me.

>If you want suggestions for names, let me know.
Sure thing, man. I'm always open to suggestions.

Super, super minor nitpick here, but wouldn't the "Rogue" creature type be a lot more fitting with the flavor of this

I agree. Even Soldier would be okay, as it's considered a catch-all for martial types that aren't Knights. Warrior is usually reserved for less civilized fighter sorts, though Khans put them in White because flavor considerations. In a set, it might not be so bad.

>Good luck, because you're going to be hearing "Why not use Infect?" ad infinitum. Though, it is a good question. Why not use it, if you're using both its counters?
It started with me and a few people talking about the old MTG game, Shandalar, which featured the card Marsh Viper. It was seemingly entirely out of place, but it was a funny way to kill off the final boss on the hardest difficulty, given his silly health pool.
Infect has its own issues, because it dominates the entirety of the deck its in. Damage is typically superfluous.
I wanted poison to matter, but not be a win-con in and of itself, although it could happen from time to time, or by comboing in some way.

I think the fact that the soul tokens took president in such weird ways from being alternatives to casting spells to activating abilities on other cards that creates a hell of a lot of empathsis on the power of a soul.

I think for that, I wanna re-balance not just the previous card, but every damn card I've made. Which comes to about around 120 cards.

There's also one more mechanic that I wanted to try out in making the set, and it's charge counters on creatures instead of +1/+1 counters. What do you think I should explore with that?

Khans put warriors in white since fucking EVERYONE was suppoused to be of the more savage and uncivilized sort
But rogue is definitely the correct classing here since the fucking flavortext is a textbook example of "Rogueish behavior"

There are only two black-bordered white rogues in the entirety of Magic, but I could make him a soldier.

Oh, by the way, you may want to consider a keyword for poison counters through combat damage. I actually made one a bit ago.
>Venomous (This deals damage to players in the form of poison counters.)

When you say enable, you mean because you have to activate the ability on purpose? I mean, do you think it would make more flavor sense if the regen and sac effects were both automatic? Though yeah, I do have a bit of trouble separating regular artifact from equipment.

>Veilstrider
You realize you could lie about the color, right? Otherwise, sorry, but I'm just not seeing much of a difference between this and Morph to really justify the different keyword. I mean, I kinda get the idea of disguising a creature, but I think stuff like Jeskai Infiltrator does it better.

I think that this is one rare case where the flavor justifies it

More like a Noble than a Rogue, unless you're thinking about something akin to the Three Musketeers.

Why make it a Rogue when Soldier works just as well.

Well the three musketeers ARE kinda considered one of the classic "Rogue" archetypes

>Oh, by the way, you may want to consider a keyword for poison counters through combat damage. I actually made one a bit ago.
>>Venomous (This deals damage to players in the form of poison counters.)
I debated it, although in my case it would almost certainly be something more akin to
>Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player gets 1 poison counter.
since i want to avoid the infect style combo kills.

In order to return a creature that shares a color with this card, you'd have to reveal it so your opponent knows what color it is. Otherwise it creates a complicated board/memory state where they have to track the color until end of game or it flips in order to confirm the legality of the action.

Which means turning it face down is kind of pointless.

I'm just giving my two cents here. Either'd be fine

Honestly charge counters don't offer much more in the way of flexibility except for reverse-compatibility with the first Mirrodin set and other cards that use them. +1/+1 counters offer a tangible benefit to the creature in question with little need for other text, so you can easily do things like make vanilla 1/1s for 1C that etb with a +1/+1 counter on them and little else, enabling any +1/+1 counter mechanics you want to do elsewhere. Anything a card can check for regarding charge counters, it can basically check for regarding +1/+1 counters too.

>Khans put warriors in white since fucking EVERYONE was suppoused to be of the more savage and uncivilized sort
That's what I said, user. Why the re-iteration? We both seem to agree on it.

That works for me. The card implies honor, which falls in line with soldiery as well, especially in white, so it fits in my mind, even if he's not in the proper army.

Technically, morph already causes that exact issue about whether or not the card in question actually has morph, so it really doesn't change much, mechanically speaking.

I've done a lot of tribal color-shifting for sets and it usually isn't well-liked or easily accepted, even with justification. I'll stick with soldier this time, but I'll keep what you've said in mind.

I've been in these threads long enough to learn that you have to be VERY precise with your language otherwise people will twist your words

...

I'm sorry, but... how did you mess up the wording that badly? You got it right on Mushroom Child, then completely missed the mark on the token. Wait, even the types are different? Wow. Well, I'm not entirely sure about the viability of the tokens, but sure, go for it. I still think your set is just a bit overly-reliant on them though. I mean, I think most of the cards that interact with Souls should at least make one.

I'm sorry, but poison counters are always going to be a win condition. They were made to be a win condition. It's not exactly something you can just move away from. Even by toning them down, they're still going to be a win-con. They will only stop being a win-con when you neuter them completely. I think you should try experimenting with giving players other tokens that can still represent a similar idea without killing them. Something like corruption tokens.

Not him,but the cost of Morph never changes, it's always the same. With this keyword, you'd have to keep track of what creature was returned with every use of this keyword with the creature that was cast. It's a total pain. With Morph, you just have to say "Hey, this doesn't have a Morph cost!" to know that the player lied.

It's easy to check if a face down card has morph: you look at it. With deceptive you need to remember which color creature you returned to hand for the rest of the game.

>Venomous
Why? Poisonous is already a keyword. I mean unless you just want something new to just streamline a bit, which is fine, since Poisonous isn't tied to the creature's power at all.

>enable
I mean you choose to sac the creatures that create blood counters. So the player, not the "wearer" of the coat, is the one fueling the coat. Flavor disconnect to me.

>Veilstrider
Bouncing a creature you control at any time to save it for 2 mana is pretty good, I think, but to each their own. I suppose you could lie about the color, yeah. That's a problem I can't really solve unless I use colored mana in the ability cost instead to compensate. Infiltrator is a fair comparison for what this does, but I am really just tinkering, as I said. I think there's merit in messing with the concept of Deceptive more, but it needs work.

Indeed. It's a shame, but I guess I have to fiddle with it more. I'll see what I can think up.

That's kinda where I got my inspiration to try that was the first Mirrodin set. But yeah, it's probably better and easier to do the +1/+1 counters.

When i say i didn't mean for them to be a wincon i should have been more clear, i want poison to be a resource the colors use in different ways, interacting with both poison counters and -1/-1 counters. I'm fine if you get marsh viper in 5 times for the kill, i'm not ok with getting in glistener elf once for the kill.
Pic related probably won't survive as is, but it was fun to make.

>Venomous
Yeah, that's exactly it. Maro even acknowledged that the clunkiness of Poisonous is part of why Infect is so different from it.

>player, not the "wearer"
Ah, I see what you mean. OK, that shouldn't be too hard to change.

>Veilstrider
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about the benefits of bouncing your stuff. Wow, you can tell I don't play much. As for the keyword, I think making it ETB face-up would fix a lot of problems. Maybe make it some sort of lovechild between Offering and Convoke? IDK, spitballing.

The first thing I made was the Token, then I forgot about it. Well it's better that I'm getting a fresh pair of eyes on this. Points out all the retarded mistakes I've made.

See, with this you could have it etb tapped with a +1/+1 counter on it, then have it remove the counter to get +2/+2 and gain hexproof until end of turn. It'd need some rebalancing with the P/T, but if you plan on having any +1/+1 counter mechanics where you can move them around or care about them in other ways, it might be worth it. Blue can have +1/+1 counters as long as it makes you spend them to do things and whatnot. Learned that a long time ago when doing a set.

>Saroo
Holy fuck this is broken as shit. Undying, Persist, Cumulative Upkeep just to name a few ideas.

Ooh, I like this. See, with stuff like this, you might as well start using soul counters instead of tokens.

Basically the sort of thing that you get with Simic.

Yea, like i said, it probably won't stick around like that, but that and pic related were both ideas i was playing with for ways blue and white could play around with the set at the top end.
This also won't probably stay as is, like Saroo its a conceptual thing

The face down aspect is very important to me, to maintain the mysterious nature of the mechanic and the "surprise" factor, so I'll see what I can do. It might end up reading a bit like extort where you have to pay 1B or 1U depending on color/face up effect for all cards that have it, with the cost never changing. It'll look a bit odd being more than one mana though, most likely, but at least you can force the player to pay the mana they should be paying for the effect. Alternatively, I could get rid of the color requirement for the bounced creature altogether, since you're already paying the necessary colored mana to get the face up effect, and adjust that as necessary. If I made Veilstrider cost BB then Deceptive remain at 2, 2BB is a fair cost to have not-Nekretaal and BB is not that painful if I make it a 2/2. What do you think?

And flavored removal to go with it.

That idea alone is kinda forcing me to try that Skeleton design concept that I just read about.

Soul tokens, that Dark-Souls inspired stuffs can use for their assorted magics and special effects. This is MUCH BETTER.

I actually agree entirely, but if Morph didn't exist and was posted here, you'd be getting the same complaints.

*Soul counters not tokens. Derp.

Also that and I think I should figure something to do with a card named Humanity. Any ideas? In the game, it basically restores people from a hollowed state and buffs your stats.

I would treat Humanity like Clue tokens.
Make them an enchantment token if you want, but cards could produce it as an upside, especially when they die, and then have some sort of cost+sac=small benefit.

So Design changes so far:
-Charge counters to Soul or +1/+1 counters.
and
-Humanity as clue token 2.0

Remember, your hand is a hidden zone. Simply getting a card out of it onto the battlefield is usually going to be a surprise by itself. Why do you think Ninjustsu works as a surprise attack? As for those costs, I have no idea, sorry.

You don't have to say "token permanent" a token is by definition a permanent. As for Saroo, there's a cool Kamigawa card I like called Chisei, Heart of Oceans I think you should look into.

It's a lot harder to lie about Morph though.

Skeleton design? Like, skeletons the creature type?

Congrats, you made a Gold token! But seriously, what? Dude, translate for those of us who haven't played Dark Souls. I have close to zero idea what you're going on about.

Ha, i actually didn't have "permanents" but added it immediately before posting, thinking i was wrong.

Oh man, I completely forgotten about gold tokens.
But yeah, in Dark Souls, there's a few mechanics to the game as follows:
Souls are your "EXP" and your money.
Souls are lost when you die.
When you die, you're no longer in human form, but a zombie thing called a hollow.
A black soul that restores your human form is called humanity.

Also that and I meant from the Nuts and Bolts articles. That whole meaning.

That looks more like a fish than a dragon

No offense, but reposting a card just to show that you fixed something as minor as a wording issue usually doesn't do more than take up one image from the image limit. Though I guess I'll actually comment on your card this time. The Pro-DTouch seems like it's just begging to have Indestructible instead. Second, you realize that most of that second ability is Black, right?

So... Humanity is basically a lifegain thing?

That's the thing that I haven't really figured out.

What to do with Humanity. So I gave it a place holder as a "Gold Token" or a "lotus petal" and had other cards make use of it.

Like guys, what do?

>Caring about the image limit we never hit
>Using up the image limit with a non-custom card

desu, that's a good removal spell right there, and then mixing that with a fatty is kinda too good to be true.

>Pyromancer's Apprentice
Well, he's certainly not prodigal. I feel like you could at least make it a 2/2 or a 2/3 or something. Or maybe change it so it does something special with the counters?
>spellshaper
Why do people keep misunderstanding this type? Spellshapers have you discard a card, and their effect at least references an actual printed card. The entire point of spellshapers from flavor is that they're turning a card in your hand into another card. Just make this a wizard.

>Souls are your "EXP" and your money.
>Souls are lost when you die.
Easy to understand. But are these literal souls harvested from living beings?
>When you die, you're no longer in human form, but a zombie thing called a hollow.
I'm curious, how many Bleach jokes have you had to put up with?
>A black soul that restores your human form is called humanity.
What?

>Simply getting a card out of it onto the battlefield is usually going to be a surprise by itself.
True, but the addition of face down adds more flexibility to the surprise, where with something like Ninjutsu, it has to be an attacking and unblocked creature, which is far more narrow. I did experiment with a version of Ninjutsu that actually wanted the creature you bounce to be blocked instead, but it has the same limitations. I suppose one could fuss with a mechanic that cares about bouncing blocking creatures, but that's not very UB. More UW or something.

Fair enough on the costs. I'll mess around with it when I feel like doing so at a later time.

I actually didn't realize that effect had been printed like that, i'll have to take it back and play some more.
>getting us closer to 300

To echo this, I'd say that both Souls and Humanity NEED to be treated like Clue tokens in order for half your cards to not have a fuckton of words on them. This means that they need rules baggage to support the actions "gain a Soul" and "gain Humanity", which translate to
>“Gain a Soul” means “Put a colorless Soul enchantment token onto the battlefield. It has ‘{2}, Sacrifice this enchantment: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.’”
>"Gain Humanity" means “Put a colorless Humanity enchantment token onto the battlefield. It has ‘{2}, Sacrifice this enchantment: Gain 3 life.’”
Tweak effects to your liking. Can a set support two times the fun that Investigate brought? Probably not, but that's up to you to work out.

Because of how Magic identifies cards, they have to have the TYPE "Soul" or "Humanity", or otherwise the wording is "a permanent named Soul" which is about four times the character count. Not good when you want to use them to fuel potentially word-heavy effects.

These souls are always from someone else, enemy or some NPC, or from 'soul items' that contain a cluster of souls.

>What?
That kinda make me lol, it's weird, when you look at it without playing Dark Souls.

>Bleach Jokes
Surprisingly little, if anything people remember the "Praise the Sun" and Jolly Co-operation meme instead.

We've hit it a few times. And posting the official card is just to make a point clear to people.

It's actually 310 now. Also, look up Thief of Blood and Vampire Hexmage. Oh, and Dark Depths. And now you know why Dark Depths is banned in modern!

>with something like Ninjutsu, it has to be an attacking and unblocked creature, which is far more narrow.
That has nothing to do with being face-up though. Granted, turning a weenie into something not so weenie is a big surprise, but it's basically the same result as turning a face-down creature face-up: You are revealing your true intentions at a time most inconvenient for an opponent.

This helps, thx bro.

>It's actually 310 now. Also, look up Thief of Blood and Vampire Hexmage. Oh, and Dark Depths. And now you know why Dark Depths is banned in modern!
Those i actually knew about, but being an unusual effect, and having it stapled to Leeches, on a mythic at the time made me feel like it was fine, at least conceptually. Seeing it directly on a 5cmc sorcery tells me i need to change it though.
Which is the entire reason i posted any of it here anyway, feedback so i can fix wrong things

I might be a bit off, but I believe humanity is what stops you going from going crazy after becoming undead and it takes the form of a black soul.

How is it even possible for you all to be this bad at formatting and coming up with shit that isn't just flat-out cringeworthy

It's impressive

You're right on the dot.

At least we're not making animu cards crammed with retarded abilities.

Although I'm not too far off by making a set based on a japanese hardcore game.

Like, just, why is it called humanity? I mean, I know a bit about the story, which I think is pretty interesting. The Furtive Pygmy's lord soul is the dark soul which humanity inherited. Oh wait, I'm retarded. That's why. Wow, never though about that much before. Though it's probably surprising to people playing the game for the first time hearing that. But why does it de-zombify people? And why do people turn into zombies anyway? Why don't they just die?

>Sleepless Remains
See, I always have a bit of a problem with cards that can't enable themselves. Though Wizards does it, so that's probably just my inexperience in design.

Poisoned?

Try 'With a poison counter'

Or try not using obsolete mechanics that were replaced.

To those of y'all who haven't played Dark Souls, the setting and lore is more than a little vague. The TL;DR of it is that the world is ending in a very LOTR-esque way. Civilizations are failing, humanity's outlook is getting bleaker, and the world seems to be slipping into darkness. The most obvious of these is something called "hallowing." Those cursed are unable to die and slowly slip into becoming unthinking zombies. You can stave off this by consuming "humanity", which is what it sounds like, some primordial essence of what separates unthinking undead from a real breathing human.

Also critical are Souls, some sort of crystallized essence of what makes powerful things powerful. You kill things, you get their souls, and spend them to make yourself stronger (like EXP) but also to buy things (like Gold). If you die, you drop them in a pile where you died, and you can go collect them. If you die again, you lose that pile, and poof, they vanish.

On that note, have some cringe-worthy cards patterned after fantasy book characters! Taniel is Tamas's son, so one's Sunforging is supposed to supplement the Prowess/Pinging of the other. Costs probably need work, because Tamas seems sort of broken with, say Lightning Greaves.

Don't respond to him. Every thread or so now, we have a guy who says there are so many problems with cards here, but never links to any. He's just trying to start shit.

Not him, but try Oracle.

A player is Poisoned if they have any poison counters on them.
>121.1c If a player has ten or more poison counters, he or she loses the game as a state-based action. See rule 704. A player is “poisoned” if he or she has one or more poison counters. (See rule 810 for additional rules for Two-Headed Giant games.)

>>Sleepless Remains
>See, I always have a bit of a problem with cards that can't enable themselves. Though Wizards does it, so that's probably just my inexperience in design.
True, but at its worst its 1 power less than drudge skeletons as an indefinite blocker.
"is poisoned" is the correct wording.

The haste seems pointless and out of place.
If you attack with it, no person would bother to block it and deal damage on that first turn anyway.
9/10 you'll either need to hit it yourself, or block with it to get any value.

Because that's the curse of the Dark Sign, it's also why that I made that card *back in the first post that I made to this thread* a mythic. Whenever you die, you lost a bit more of yourself mentally. Humanity restores your form as it's the physical manifestation of your sanity.

Anyway guys, Thank you for everything. I'll come back on the next thread sometime tomorrow and work on rewording and reworking this Dark Souls set and possibly expand it. I just spent a good portion of today playing it and Dark Souls 3 to gather images for these damn cards.
Here's a weird cantrip.

>If you die, you drop them in a pile where you died, and you can go collect them.
Does your soul come back to collect them? How does resurrection work here?

>Tamas
Soemthing about powder mages, right? Read a TVTropes article with that guy on a book cover that was on the page. Series any good? Looking for something in fantasy that isn't the same done to death cliched LOTR ripoff horseshit that fucking everyone does. SOrry, I'm cynical and cranky about uncreative hacks. and tired.

Card feels like it needs something to separate it from Sunforger, could just be me though. Last ability feels kinda random.

Taniel feels like he could be broken. Might want to make it a single target. Either that, or divide the damage between the targets instead of making each one get full damage.

Why is it blue. All colors are allowed to cantrip, and direct damage is explicitly not in blue any more.

how is it an instant and sorcery. this is why i hate "make your own card" faggots. they are complete shit at the game, and are gross neckbeards who go on about the flavor of magic. just stop.

How else do I represent a creature that constantly evolves due to being attacked? Make it damage itself?

Happy to help. And please remember what I said about looking at official cards through Oracle. It's also not a bad idea to look up the comprehensive rules if you ever find yourself at a lose for how a mechanic works. Oh, and what said. Also, what the fuck is up with the types here?

That is a red card...and not even a very good red card.

There is nada blue about it.

It's basically another misaligned color, kinda like Hornet Sting.

I knew I'd get a response like this. Top kek, but seriously. I figured that I'd run into this issue when I decided to make a branch of cards similar to Arcane from Kamigawa.
so I made three to split the three disciplines that were in Dark Souls.
Miracles
Pyromancy
and Sorceries.

So no, that instant is not a sorcery. It's given a "Sorceries" subtype akin to Arcane.

Personally, i would go with Indestructible+Fungasaur, although Reverse Phantom is stronger.
The haste just doesn't mesh at all with the rest of the design, and could be dropped with no change in the way its played.
Alternatively, give it something that forces it to be blocked whenever it attacks, either by everything for a much higher cmc, or just Must be blocked if able.

You're right, so I'm going to figure out how to rework the spells and whatnot tomorrow, probably abandon the spell subtypes as well.

>So no, that instant is not a sorcery. It's given a "Sorceries" subtype akin to Arcane.

Why? Why not just make it them Sorcery then rather than making a type with basically the same word as an existing rule.

>It's basically another misaligned color, kinda like Hornet Sting.
Misaligned effects are both supposed to be unusual and weaker, cantripping on top of an already misaligned card and putting it in a color that can use it better isn't the way to go.

>It's basically another misaligned color, kinda like Hornet Sting.
Yeah, and nobody likes Hornet Sting either. Everyone agrees that it's out of color.

>Sorceries
You shouldn't use this name because it will probably cause confusion. Please choose something else, I don't want to read a card that says "Sorcery - Sorceries"

>Does your soul come back to collect them? How does resurrection work here?
This is where I just sort of shrug at gameplay and flavor. You just sort of wake up at the last checkpoint, which are called bonfires. The bonfires are ostensibly bright lights in a bleak world (figuratively and literally) where souls gather, so that sort of explains it? If you were "alive", because you had consumed Humanity, dying makes you "hallowed", which means you look a little bit like beef jerky, and experience some sort of penalty that varies from game to game, typically a life penalty.

And yeah, it's from the Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan. And no, it's completely fine to be tired of LOTR-style fantasy, and I think modern fantasy has done a lot in the last ten years to break from the mold of LOTR/Shannara/WoT/Dragonlance/etc. I liked them, and I thought that the magic systems (both Powder Magery and the more traditional "fireballs and lightning" Privileged Sorcery) were handled well. The narrative flip flops between characters of wildly different power levels, from Field Marshall Tamas, to his ace gunfighter son, to an old beat up detective who's way over his head, so I think its pretty good.

Back to ACTUAL CARDS, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Making it Forked Bolt for Taniel is probably a lot safer. As for Tamas, the idea was that he was more as an EDH-card. You Sunforge out all the good cards from your deck, sacrifice him to shuffle them back in, and then they're able to be Sunforged again. I really like Sunforger, because its such a uniquely Boros effect, but I'll dig for something more fresh.

Perhaps consider just making Miracles "White spells matter", Pyromancy "Red spells matter" and Sorceries "Blue spells matter"? This is where design gets hard because flavor and mechanics clash. Also, try "Crystal" instead of "Sorceries".

Also, what said, spell subtypes are pretty much useless. Any mechanic to take advantage of it is probably going to be parasitic as fuck, just as it was in Kamigawa.