Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Card of the Day - Embue Venom/Venomous Assault

Today's card is an evolution of an idea.  It started as a black instant and evolved into a multicolored sorcery. 

Let's see how it happened.

At first I wanted a black combat trick to punish blockers.  I came up with this:


As you can see, it is quite powerful, and can rip though an unsuspecting opponent's defenses like a spark plug through window glass.   The first thing I changed was the name.  Embue Venom sounds more like an Aura than an Instant, and it doesn't feel like a whole team kind of thing.  The new name is Venomous Assault.

Once the name was changed, the card felt less black than it had previously.  Assault to me is a very red/white feeling word.  Also, I didn't like this card as an Instant. It felt too swingy. I reworked it and came up with this.

In this iteration, it forces the opponent to make a tough choice.  The little boost is nice, too. 

I like the dual hybrid cost.  It's such a strange thing, but it totally works on this card.  You can play it as Selesnya, Orzhov, Gruul, or Rakdos.  I really hope this is something WOTC explores in the future. 

For more on 4 color cards and Dragon's Maze, check out Bradley Rose's article about them, here.


1 comment:

  1. Dude. You're awesome for calling me out here. Thank you! =D

    Yeah, man, I love this as a four-color solution. But the only problem, as you might be aware of, is that there's a chance that it's too confusing for the average casual player that the spell can't be cast with both white and red, despite it being a white and red card.

    But maybe it won't be that bad. In that case, this would be AMAZING in Dragon's Maze! It's genius that this a four-color card but you end up needing to select two colors to play this card - selecting a guild combination to play it. That's strong as it ties into the guild theme of the block, even in its subtle way.

    And I like that it's a sorcery. Very good in preventing blowouts from happening!

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