Card of the Day - Way of Enlightenment

This is meant to be a cross between Master the Way and Sphinx's Revelation.  A question that I posed last Friday at FNM was, "How much life would you have to gain to play a spell that only gains you life?"

Card of the Day - Arkoli Farseer

Card of the Day - Moriac Waterfowl

Card of the Day - Cursed Amulet

Here's haunt on an artifact.  This seems like a pretty powerful repeatable effect, albeit slow and conditional.

Card of the Day - Mournful Mammoth

More haunt!

Card of the Day - Tormenting Longhorn

This iteration of haunt isn't mine, but it caught my eye and my design-brain is going nuts with it.   Rest assured, I will be making more haunt cards in the future.  Link to the original here.

Card of the Day - Brutal Seizure

The main problem with Thoughtseize is that your opponent may just draw into the same thing or something similar.  This spell gives you a little more information before you make your choice.

Card of the Day - Stoic Stance

Card of the Day - Windwhirl

Card of the Day - Imperfect Recurrance

Card of the Day - Wallowing Swine

Card of the Day - Putrid Otyugh

This card is powerful, but like a lot of black cards, has an insane drawback.  Suicide Black never had a better poster child.  I really want to play this with lifelink.

Card of the Day - Stalking Vulpes

Card of the Day - Stoneskin

Card of the Day - Heist

Card of the Day - Goblin Stooge

There has never before been a 2/2 Goblin for 1R without some sort of drawback.  Now is the time for it to exist.

Card of the Day - Divert Energy

Card of the Day - Price of Power

I originally had this read "When you cast this, lose 30 life,"  but decided to change it because of the commander issue.  This way makes it difficult to turn on no matter what format you're playing.

Card of the Day - Dig Under

Card of the Day - Avenger, Who Sees Ahead

Caw!

Card of the Day - Ray of Frost

Card of the Day - Chris de Burgh, the Possessed

When Duncan Trussell takes over Kumail's character, you can be sure he will leave much more mutilated than when he arrived.  Am I the only one who hates this?

Card of the Day - Mulraine, of Two Arrows

Presented without comment.

Card of the Day - Tylenol with Codeine

Greg Proops embodies the spirit of the most insane unicorn in the multiverse.

Card of the Day - Chris de Burgh

Since /r/Harmontown has asked me to do the entire party, here is another.  Keep an eye out for a possessed Chris de Burgh in the future. 

Card of the Day - Sharpie Buttsalot

This card is an homage to a real person.  If you are familiar with the Harmontown podcast, you will have no trouble identifying who Sharpie is.  If you're not, go listen.  It's free.  The first ability is Ray of Frost, the second is Shocking Grasp, and the third is Scorching Ray.

Edit:  Forgot to make him Legendary!

Card of the Day - Propogator Sliver

Card of the Day - Rotten Rations

Card of the Day - Sideshow Freak

Card of the Day - Rise//Shine

Card of the Day - Fuzzy Mindmelter

This card is based off a tweet by @inkwell_looter.  I made it in the old frame since he was wondering if he'd make the cut for Alpha.

Playtesting Frostmere - Day 2

If you're not up-to-date on my current project, you can start here. Part 2 is here.

There have been quite a few changes in the few rounds of playtesting that I've done.  This may be the most fun I've had since creating this blog. 

I'll be posting original versions of cards and then the "fixed" version, explaining the reasoning for each one.  The new versions are going to be playtested soon, and I will give a full report on those cards, as well.

First, we have our snow "tri-lands."  Since the Coldsnap duals just entered the battlefield tapped, I wanted to something a bit different.  My original version didn't have enough drawback, so I tried again.  The Legendary status creates a flavorful experience, while at the same time being enough of a drawback where this wouldn't be an automatic 4-of.  This card is also promoted to Rare on account of the Legendaryness of it.

A small change here, but a significant one.  This card, along with Disciple of Gargut, can be backbreaking.   A slight tweak is all it needs, methinks.

While I previously thought a small tweak we necessary here, after a few more rounds, it turns out that this is the 2nd most powerful card I've played with.  (The 1st most powerful is a doozy!)  The changes are numerous here.  Mana cost, power, rarity, and activation cost tweaks should make this guy a little less broken.  We will see soon enough.

Oh, Icy Excavation. This card is, by all accounts, the #1 most broken card I've played with.  Every time this card was cast, it was the end of the game.  When you pay 4 mana to draw 8 cards, there is a problem.   I changed the mana cost to make it less disgusting and hopefully that's enough.

One small tweak to make this feel more like a weird hybrid between a shock land and a fetch land.  I think it succeeds in that regard.

 Mammoth Lair is still functionally the same, with better language.  Playtesting helps you figure that stuff out, too. I modified the wording from the Hidden cards in Urza's Saga. 

  Another wording fix along with a slight toughness boost for the sake of easier math.  I also feel that this should be a common. 

Winter Bolt as a sorcery fixes is a fair trade for the ice counter.

That's all for today!  Stay tuned for the next episode of Playtesting Frostmere.

Playtesting Frostmere -- Day 1, Part 2

For part 1, click here.

Thanks for coming back!  The second deck that I made was a Red/Black ice deck.  It manipulates ice counters to do mean things.  Here's a rundown on some of the more important cards in the deck -

Below Zero was busted in its original incarnation.  Originally it only gave a counter when it ETB, but at the beginning of your upkeep, it dealt damage equal to the number of ice counters on it to a creature or player.  In combination with a few of the other cards in the deck, its original abilities made it way too strong.  What you see is the nerfed version.  We haven't tested this version yet, but it seems more reasonable.

These four cards form the rest of the core of the Red/X Ice counter deck.  Disciple of Gargut was less impressive than I expected, but still really good.  I was thinking about adding 1 colorless to his mana cost, but more playtesting is needed. Cover in Frost is the card that, when combined with Below Zero, is an absolute killer.  I like it in this deck to help get rid of a creature with the Disciple, and I think it will play nicely with the rest of the Ice counter team.

Both of these cards are singletons in the deck, but only Icy Excavation came up.  When I cast it, I drew 6 cards and lost 1 life.  This card needs to be tweaked.   I'd say adding an X to the mana cost and getting rid of the life loss might be the right fit.  A verdict is still out for the Parasite, but a colorless Control Magic probably needs to cost more, even with the drawback.

 Snowy Apex (and the rest of the cycle) was completely overhauled.  They originally only read" 1: Add R to your mana pool."  The clever part was that they were snow lands, so you could filter for a single color and for snow mana.  When I overhauled the snow costs to make it easier for players unfamiliar with the snow rules, I added the ability to tap it for S. It just feels bad not being able to tap your land for mana unless it's a really cool land (see Mammoth Lair from yesterday).

The last card I wanted to mention was Set Fire.  This is an homage to Electrostatic Bolt.  It's also awesome.

Thanks again for listening.  Make sure to tell your friends to check out the blog, and follow me on twitter and like the page on Facebook.