Hey all, it’s been a while. I have missed a post and a half so far, I think; I’ve been away to a wedding in Canadia last weekend, and I’ve been working a lot this month and even more in the past two weeks, but sorry for the delay either way.
Picking new cards from 10 years ago and re-making them would take me too long this week as well, so I decided to have an interlude, and present to you a design I made around 7 months ago, as a goofy treat for my girlfriend, who plays magic as well. It’s a fun one, but it’s a little broken so we’ll need to fix it. As you read, try and figure out what actual card from Gatecrash is very similar to this one. The funny story is that even though I did know Gatecrash, I completely missed that card. So in all fairness, I came up with a design that’s reminiscent (yet not as good) that what the folks at wizards came up with, and that makes me happy. Let’s see it.
Tanisha, relentless (we all like a bit of teasing) is a neat idea. Bloodrush (by the way I have a real hard time figuring out the flavor of this ability) goes along with deathtouch very nicely, and what better in green than a serpent for this ability. By now if you do know it you have figure that this design is very similar to Wasteland Viper, a very tasty one drop, which proves I didn’t copy it, cause I can assure you I wouldn’t settle for such little creativity. It’s so similar to my design!
On one side I think regenerate on top of deathtouch is ok for bloodrush. Since the ability is instant speed, you usually have a good shot at making sure your creature survives, same as with Wasteland Viper. But deathtouch on top of regenerate for a creature is not ok. Way to powerful! I’ve tasted Maze Abomination in combination with Trestle Troll or Mortus Strider and I can tell you it is very very good. In fact there is no creature with both abilities, the same way very few creatures have first strike and death touch. What should we do to fix our design then? If we remove regenerate completely it’ll be too close from the viper, and our design is Gruul so it should have a little extra power to it. One the other hand I don’t want to break the symmetry of the creature’s abilities and the ones its bloodrush grants.
I realized another weakness of this design in the fact that both deathtouch and regenerate are keywords associated to green creatures. I thought for a long while about what I could grant a red creature that wouldn’t be broken with deathtouch, as first strike, double strike and trample are, and would be useful with bloodrush, as haste isn’t. Then I came up with an ability that is becoming more and more important in magic, so much that I could imagine it becoming a keyword some day: can’t be blocked by less than two creatures! It comes with all sorts of number of creatures though, which doesn’t help making it a keyword I guess.
What about the cost then? Let’s keep one thing in mind: forcing the defending player to block a deathtouch creature with several of theirs is still very powerful. This is why I’ll keep Tanisha a 1/1. On her own she’ll still be a 1/1 deathtouch, that the opponent needs to pitch two creatures against. Best part is you’ll get to pick which one dies. Its’ bloodrush will only be better than the Wasteland Viper’s in the case where you want to give one of your creatures some kind of evasion. I don’t think it’s all that different form giving a creature +3/+2 for example though, it’s likely to kill two blockers. This time it’ll work giving +1/+1 to a 1/1 though!
I’m pretty fond of this version. It’s a little complicated but it should be fun to play! I’ll try and be back to the main Skies of Arcadia theme last week though. Stay tuned!
Ominous Designs 