Fake Card: Fumigation, Colorless Instant!!

[Force of Will Smith]

Had it not been shot in the foot, this would single handedly wipe out affinity..

i think it's still amazing as it smears tolarian decks and most t1 quick mana..
thereby slowing the game..
any thoughts?

 

[evan d]

why id it fumigation?

wouldnt fumigigation kill all non-artifacts?

 

[DarthFerret]

About the card name, what evan d says makes sense. Also, I believe this is the first colorless spell I have seen. I like that idea. Otherwise, it should be pretty balanced, because it puts them back in the library.

Blue has Hurykls Recall and that hurts because of the 7 card limit (provided your opponent does not have a Library of Lang in play). This card still allows the artifacts to have a chance to make it back.

Hurykuls Recall
1B
Instant

"All artifacts in play owned by target player are returned to target players hand. Any enchantments on those artifacts are discarded"

 

[Force of Will Smith]

awesome! well.. if anyone can think of a cool, machine related name that matches the art or what it does, you may get to rename my card

fumes are gases ejected from machine parts... and.. hmm.. guess youre right..

 

[DarthFerret]

Malfunction?

 

[Oversoul]

Colorless instants! No. Very bad...

 

[Spiderman]

Can you elaborate why?

 

[Force of Will Smith]

If someone had proposed Artifact lands, everyone would give a similar response.. or calling an ability on a card "fear" "fear". Things change in magic and think before long they'll have to cover this ground..

I mean as long as i specify. "this is not an artifact card" it'll be amazing..

Hell if you told someone in tempest that there would be about 25 variants of rancor that never left.... they'd totally laugh at you (especially if they heard bonesplitter, sword of fire/ice, or Umezawas jitte)

you cant tinker for artifact, you can tutor.. the only problem with them being is that everyone would use a couple of them... like ... say.... type 1 artifacts.... or.... artifacts in general.. i just have to make them high enough to not be amazing... just flexible.. and it fills in holes for respective colors to make stranger decks...

you might say.. .oh no... hes playing blue and he has 5 untapped lands!!
i think that's fun

to each his own though.


Buyback:Wrong
Shifting colors:Wrong
Artifact Lands:Wrong
Splice:Wrong
Free spells with remove: wrong (force of will)
Free spells if you have the land: Wrong (Time spiral)
imprint: oh so wrong
copying any spell: Wrong

 

[Oversoul]

Well Spidey, to me it's strictly flavor.

Buyback:Wrong
Shifting colors:Wrong
Artifact Lands:Wrong
Splice:Wrong
Free spells with remove: wrong (force of will)
Free spells if you have the land: Wrong (Time spiral)
imprint: oh so wrong
copying any spell: Wrong

Buyback seems fine to me. I used to use some of the Buyback spells, but now the only ones that I ever bother to touch are Forbid and Capsize...

Shifting colors? I'm not even sure what you're talking about there. The laces are the first thing that come to mind, and they were only ever disliked because they sucked...

Artifact lands: I thought they might be mildly useful when they first came out (with Academy and the like). I guess they were a lot more than that in Standard though...

Splice: Aside from being somewhat underpowered, what's the problem?

ACC spells: What? Are they too good? I've always found them to be both useful and fun. The biggest problem is that they are unevenly distributed. Blue gets Force of Will and Misdirection (both very good), black gets Contagion and Spinning Darkness (excellent against certain archetypes), red gets Pyrokinesis and Fireblast (the former being decent creature removal and the latter being one of the finest finishing moves the game has ever seen), and green gets Bounty of the Hunt (great for stompy-ish decks) and nothing else of importance (except stuff like Vine Dryad). There have even been a few other decent ACC spells. But what does white get? Scars of the Veteran? Yeah, that's really scary...

Free spells: I've seen a lot of harping on this mistake, but it's not the mechanic that's the problem. No one complained about Priest of Gix. These spells were simply too good. Frantic Search and Time Spiral were the biggest culprits, but Palinchron, Cloud of Faeries, and even Pegegrine Drake were simply overpowered (much like other well-known cards of the same block).

Imprint: I never thought it was necessary to give it a lame keyword. It's a relatively unoriginal concept that was made simpler by defining it with a keyword...

Copying spells: I like Fork. A lot of people tried to abuse Mirari and the stupid thing never scared me. I've never tried Panoptic Mirror, but it sounds fun. The only problem I can think of here is that Mind's Desire is broken (an understatement in this case).

I don't think these were problematic. Concepts aren't usually problematic in and of themselves. It's almost always individual cards that are too good. Sometimes a concept just seems too--stupid (double strike). But, to me, the problem here is different. It's flavor.

Instants or sorceries in magic have always had a sort of identity. It's a spell that you cast using a certain type of mana or (ever since Legends) a combination of types. An instant always has colored requirements because it's a certain type (color) of magic. The same goes for enchantments. Artifacts are different, because they are machines or relics that have their own power. The creatures that are colorless are always (the ones you summon are, but obviously some colorless tokens are not) artifacts too. The idea of a colorless instant wouldn't work under this, and so far none have been created. I hope it stays that way, although I wouldn't put it past WotC to change this...

 

[Spiderman]

Well Spidey, to me it's strictly flavor.

Instants or sorceries in magic have always had a sort of identity. It's a spell that you cast using a certain type of mana or (ever since Legends) a combination of types. An instant always has colored requirements because it's a certain type (color) of magic. The same goes for enchantments. Artifacts are different, because they are machines or relics that have their own power. The creatures that are colorless are always (the ones you summon are, but obviously some colorless tokens are not) artifacts too. The idea of a colorless instant wouldn't work under this, and so far none have been created. I hope it stays that way, although I wouldn't put it past WotC to change this...

I don't think this means it's "very bad"

I agree with your thinking as it elaborates what I said in another post about the idea of colored instants, but thinking about Rosewater's articles, I think it's also a narrow view without any real substance behind it. Yeah, sure, it's always been "done this way" but like FoWS said, artifacts lands weren't done before and though they may have been overpowered in conjunction with Affinity, they were still a "new" idea. And now you have instants with subtypes... I honestly can't say colored instants are a bad idea by just speculating about them and not having any real playtest data behind them.

 

[Force of Will Smith]

by color shifting i actually meant things like green disenchants and the like..

I'm waiting for my black counterspell

what was the manakin? im sure it could of been any creature but they were clueless so it became an artifact.. some spells i think are simply made artifacts because they can serve to be generic.. which is just what these would be..

i think they've held off on colorless instants because in order to make them balanced.. they would all have to suck... like a 7cc terror...
maybe in blue youd run 2... maybe.... but more likely a counter..

or maybe a 5cc stone rain... again..why?

armageddon would cost 8 or 9...
wrath for 6 or 7? im pretty sure they'll do them someday... theyll just be rehashes of old bad spells..

and perhaps with the card type, free, splice or whatever it is with particular cards... i could easily say that glacial ray is broken... but waking nightmare... not so much....

i bet they held back completely on splice's power since they were afraid to take away even more after ravager..

I only say artifact lands are wrong because its too friggin wierd..
thats what i meant by most of those... too bizarre.. unheard of things that people originally flipped their lid about..

but some like imprint i personally think are complete cheese.

 

[Oversoul]

I agree with your thinking as it elaborates what I said in another post about the idea of colored instants, but thinking about Rosewater's articles, I think it's also a narrow view without any real substance behind it.

I haven't read the articles you're referring to, so I can't say whether I agree with Rosewater or not. It's narrow-minded to avoid changing something simply because it's the way things have always been done. The same could be applied to making changes for the sake of making changes...

Which is really not what colored instants would be about. It could be, but as long as the cards are held to the same standards as other cards, it won't be any more of a problem than printing artifact creatures or colored instants.

I would say that there is already a reason to make colored instants (adding fun new cards to the game).

But there is also a reason not to make colored instants. As I've already said, it goes against the flavor the game has been built upon. The same was once said of changing "summons spells" to "creature spells." Now, I think forcing that change was probably not at all necessary and might have been a bad thing. But it was pretty minor. It seems to have turned out okay, but it's really just a little word between the picture and the text box. Colored instants would be a more serious issue (although, to the credit of the other side, there's actually a reason for making colored instants, whereas changing summon to creature was really quite nonsensical).

 

[Spiderman]

The Rosewater articles are the ones where he talks about card design (usually when there isn't a theme week). If you don't go to magicthegathering regularly, then that would be why you haven't read them

Now I get to nickpick you: you mean colorless instants, right? There's already colored instants

Anyway, I can't start to agree with you about "it goes against the flavor the game has been built upon" when I'm not sure that's the case without a Magic designer saying such. But I agree that it works fine now and if colorless instants are added, I have high hopes that they'd be thought out.

 

[DarthFerret]

Anyway, I can't start to agree with you about "it goes against the flavor the game has been built upon" when I'm not sure that's the case without a Magic designer saying such. But I agree that it works fine now and if colorless instants are added, I have high hopes that they'd be thought out.

Which is why it think it is pretty cool for FoWS to be putting these cards up here like this. It lets us all get a chance to help him 'think them out" but at the same time, we all get to have a little taste of what WoTC's designers must go through when making a new expansion set.

Plus, I admit, it is a lot of fun!

 

[Force of Will Smith]

YAYYY!!! *blush* oh man... thanks a lot!
well.. there comes a point where you can only be so creative with deckbuilding... i've got about 42 decks and every now and then i make one worth keeping... but this is something new and fun and most importantly..free

well... price of cardstock and prints.. but... free to design digitally..
plus in my local area im working on circulating some fakes around.. it would be so awesome to play a group game with my fakes !!.. oh man....

I think its ironic how richard garfield doesnt even really have a hand in the development anymore.. I think he stopped at mirage ...
i mean i try to put together some good cards.. some names will be bad.. some concepts rehashed.... some i just can..
like my phrexian stalker.. blech...

I think the most annoying thing about fakes is that wizards remakes mine and makes them better!! My sundering titan was a mono-white 6/6 with called sand gorgon.. i should change it to something that isnt almost an exact duplicate of a wizards card... maybe i could get u guys to help me with that..

I'm not trying to defend why colorless instants SHOULD be used..its just new and it fits, and i think its pretty cool.. thats all.. im sure i wont make more than 8 or 9 colorless instants total.. it was initially dictated by the artwork
i thought... um ok.. thats definately an artifact... but.. its doing soemthing... hmmm.. OO! instants!..

Basically if i have an idea that i think has potential.. ill fight and compromise for it.. but if its totally bad.. i'll try to change the concept (and keep the art) cause appropriate magic artwork is slightly hard to comeby, or abandon it..

some of the designs i think are really cool, some are filler, some suck( i usually change those almost from the very beginning. I just try to minimize the filler.

which reminds me... i have a few cards..
abyssal blade, abyssal minion, and abyssal warrior, and i think abyssal overlord..
a series of black creatures/cards that involve removing themselves from the game (not like abyssal gatekeeper or faceless butcher, more like a defense ability.)
the artwork is sick.. ill post the text descriptions later.

 

[Oversoul]

The Rosewater articles are the ones where he talks about card design (usually when there isn't a theme week). If you don't go to magicthegathering regularly, then that would be why you haven't read them

Now I get to nickpick you: you mean colorless instants, right? There's already colored instants

Anyway, I can't start to agree with you about "it goes against the flavor the game has been built upon" when I'm not sure that's the case without a Magic designer saying such. But I agree that it works fine now and if colorless instants are added, I have high hopes that they'd be thought out.

I have read SOME articles by Mark Rosewater. But which ones specifically apply to colorless instants (or did you mean something more general when you brought his articles up)?

Yes, of course I meant COLORLESS. How silly of me.

Anyway, I would expect that not everyone would agree with me about flavor. It's all based on personal perspective. Since colorless instants have not yet been added to the game, either the designers have the same sentiments as I do (which might not necessarily be the best thing--we could have some warped idea that we don't yet realize is totally messed up) or they have other reasons for not making colored instants. I wonder what those might be...

 

[DarthFerret]

Will be waiting to see what you have in store for us next. I love picking apart cards!!

 

[Spiderman]

I think its ironic how richard garfield doesnt even really have a hand in the development anymore.. I think he stopped at mirage

That's actually false... he has worked on a couple of later sets, though which ones escape me right now. Rosewater mentions that a couple of times in his articles too when he talks about R&D. I want to say Urza's Block and Mirrodin, but again, not positive which ones they are.

Oversoul: Rosewater hasn't talked about colorless instant (or spells) specifically that I can remember - it's more general articles about the R&D process and why they make certain spells or mechanics and why some didn't make the cut for a particular block. Along that vein however, he always says when they brainstorm for a new block what the mechanics or themes should be, they always end up with tons more than can be put in so I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of colorless spells is on some list somewhere, waiting to be put in the right block.

 

[DarthFerret]

Another block along the same theme as Antiquities? All dealing with artifacts and affecting artifacts? That would be cool. Been about 10 years since that was done huh?

 

[Oversoul]

Rosewater hasn't talked about colorless instant (or spells) specifically that I can remember - it's more general articles about the R&D process and why they make certain spells or mechanics and why some didn't make the cut for a particular block. Along that vein however, he always says when they brainstorm for a new block what the mechanics or themes should be, they always end up with tons more than can be put in so I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of colorless spells is on some list somewhere, waiting to be put in the right block.

And not long after that, we'll be seeing cards with "protection from colorless." Ugh...

DarthFerret: Yeah, it's been such a long time since we've gotten artifact-heavy sets...