Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Ein'Sof's deck is complete

Another update! 

Ein'sof is likely the most powerful of the Nephilim in the abstract. The deck also feels a bit more scattered than Hesed's deck. I like it but hopefully play testing will grind the rough edges down a bit more. 

Imgur album - http://imgur.com/a/cHI6T

Tapped out link to the decklist as it stands - http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/einsof/




Ein is very proactively powerful. The token creation can make a ton of tokens repeatedly. I might want to change it later, but I like the way it helps the abilities feel connected. It'd probably be fine to make it a static number if it ends up being broken.


Raziel hasn't gotten any changes and likely won't. Up until recently I wouldn't have thought of this as very red, but with Tormenting Voices and Magmatic Insight, red has been getting powerful rummaging effects and will likely continue to do so. 


Again, likely to get cut.The mandates are really not doing the job I want since the wording is not intuitive enough for the average player to understand. Also, the card count needs to come down a bit.


I'm debating the wording on this one. Most cards are structured as "Keyword. Other creatures you control have Keyword." The exception appears to be haste as evidenced by Urabrask and Maelstrom Wanderer. The card itself is a riff on Edric/Maelstrom Wanderer, just less bullshit since it has a real mana cost and makes you pay for the other creatures.


The size and type of the token aren't definite. I was just looking for a size of token that hadn't been used by landfall yet.


This card is extremely powerful. I think it has enough knobs to be developed though. It could go to XX or X2WUG. It could be backed down to a sorcery. Any number of tweaks will likely put this is a good place.


I'm not sure about this card. Its hard for me to judge. I want to play with it though and see what happens.


Unfortunately, the reminder text sapped this one of anything else it might have done. I think its fine though. I am not positive that putting Graft on a card sans the Simic watermark is ascetically correct, but the art and name worked really well so I don't think I want to change it.


Overall I think this card balances its color well since its a white ability, a red ability, and a R/W ability. 4 Mana is a bit low considering True Conviction is 6 and triple white. This will probably get bumped to 3RW or 4RW during testing.


This was initially flavored as Knowledge armor. I think that fantasy fits better than Faith since Faith is decidedly nonblue. However I couldn't find a single piece of art that did this justice. 


Considering changing the creature type here. Giant doesn't fit the art. Maybe elemental or something else unique to Theros. The card itself was debated hotly. The closest comparison was to Craterhoof, but there are several factors that I think were not considered that make Radiant not only printable, but much worse than Craterhoof. 
1. Killing Radiant has meaning. Crafterhoof is a trigger, and while you save a nontrival amount of damage by killing Hoof, its trigger is still going to happen. If you have Radiant and attack and it gets Murdered, that's going to stop the p/t boost completely and likely get a lot of your creatures killed.
2. Radiant lets you block. Hoof gives trample. Trample is an enormous bonus for something like Overrun. Trample removes blocking from the equation. Something like Rhys will just never take damage from Radiant.
3. Radiant scales from lands. Scaling from lands is more persistent since lands die less than creatures, but it is harder to get there than creatures. In something like Rhys, Hoof would always be chosen over Radiant. Lands take much more time to accumulate and they are harder to get to large numbers while simultaneously making creatures to attack with. Radiant can be cheating into play the same way as Hoof, but while Hoof would give something like +8/+8 and trample as early as turn 4-5, Radiant would give +5/+5 and not give evasion, and would likely not have 8 creatures to attack with.
4. Haste. Hoof's haste is large part of why the card is broken. The haste means its an extra attacker for the effect. Radiant gets to attack with its bonus, the next turn. So the turn you drop Radiant you give them time to deal with it before you attack.

For all those trade-offs that go in Hoof's favor, Radiant gets to have a persistent bonus and an easier mana cost. The Enchantment supertype will come up more than you think, giving opponents more removal options and also giving you other ways to interact with it, a la Starfield of Nyx and Sterling Grove.


This art is already on a card, so its cheating a bit. Hopefully I'll find something that fits the concept soon. The card itself seems pretty neat.


This card can do a lot of damage. That's a very Timmy type effect altogether. I think the cost will drive people away from this one, but I don't want this to be 9 mana. 

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