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Doombringer
Guest
I was thinking of a way to create a Master Chief card that wasn't overpowered, and thought up two related mechanics as a way to faithfulling represent his recharging Energy shields.
Shielding X (this creature comes into play with X charge counters. If damage would be dealt to this creature, instead remove that many charge counters)
I think this is sort of like an ability that was on some phantom cards, but I havent seen them in a while.
Recharge X (at end of turn, if amount of charge counters on card is not X, add charge counters until it is)
I'm having a hard time wording the recharge rules, cause I don't know the any formal way to put it thats also short.
Once I dwelled on the idea of shielding for a moment, a single thought came up that led to almost all the other Halo related cards in this post: Hey, didn't the opponent aliens have shields too? I took down all the ideas on a piece of paper as they came to me in bouts of mental diahhrea.
So here they are, likely in need of tweaking and balancing, courtesy of my fellow CPA members:
The Master Chief 5RW
Legendary Creature-human soldier
Shielding 4, recharge 4,(maybe vigilance?)
2: target creature blocks or is blocked by The Master Cheif
6/2
In the game, Master Chief is the last surviving member of the SPARTAN II supersoldier program. To sum up his physical prowess and strategic intelligence, He could fight Akroma to a stalemate with only a sharp rock.
The flavour behind his anti-evasion blocking ability is that he is trained to be able to find exactly the sort of sneaky characters who would normally be landwalking silently through the forest and stuff.
The Mjolnir mark VII armour he's tricked out in gives him energy shields and adds to his already considerable strenth and speed
UNSC Marine 2W
creature-human soldier
shielding 2
2/2
The Marines of the United Nations Space Command are the first and last defence of humanity. These are the men(and post Halo 2, women) who help you throughout the game, manning your warthogs back gun, providing cover fire, and being target practice for the Covenant as you increase the difficulty.
Rookie Elite 3G
creature-alien
Shielding 2, recharge 2
3/2
Like the card says, an inexperienced elite with the basics of armour and weaponry, these guys are the blue ones in the game.
Veteran Elite 3GU
creature-alien
Shielding 3, recharge 3
4/2
Red in the game, these are the Elites who got enough scars for a promotion, and are more experienced and tough to kill.
Ranger Elite 2UG
creature-alien
Flying, Shielding 2, recharge 2
3/2
These guys are equipped with vacuum suits and jet packs, and serve as the covenants space troopers.
Zealot Elite 4GU
creature-alien
Shielding 4, recharging 4
(6/7/8)/2
Deez dudes command armies, and are decked out in Gold armour to show it. They usually carry plasma swords, which can kill Halo’s playable character(Master Chief) in one swipe, so I wanted to reflect that with a beefy power stat.
Jackal 2U
creature-alien
shielding 3
2/1
Frail and birdlike, these aliens carry handheld plasma shields instead of the body conforming ones of The elites(and Chief) that don't recharge.
Grunt G
creature-alien
Shielding 1
1/1
These squat, Methane breathing cannon fodder don’t actually have any sort of energy shielding, but they do have their life support backpack/chestplate, which is armoured. The rank and file Grunt has Orange apparel.
Veteran Grunt
Creature-alien
Shielding 1
1/1
A slightly more experienced grunt, with red armour and a slight toughness boost to show its extra experience.
Drone 2G
creature-alien insect
flying
2/2
These aliens are quite weak, but attack in swarms, and can overwhelm the unweary. Because they can be killed so quick in the game, I don’t think they should have a shielding gimmick, so I let them be a green flying creature to make them interesting.
Covenant Engineer 2UG
creature-alien wizard
Other creatures you control have shielding 2 and recharge 2
0/3
Not actually present in the game, Covenant engineers are the mechanical geniuses of the covenant war host. They can fix or reconstruct anything, but are utterly defenceless and weak so I thought they should have some sort of complimenting ability that used the shielding gimmick to tie it in with the other cards.
Overshield 2G
enchantment - aura
enchant creature
Enchanted creature has shielding 5
Pretty much what it sounds like, the overshield gives your shields a temporary boost in power, that fades over time(in multiplayer) and doesn’t recharge like normal shields. I hoped to emulate that in the card.
Plasma Pistol (1)
artifact-equipment
equipped creature has:
TAP: put a charge counter on PP
TAP, remove a charge counter: remove all shield counters from target creature. That creature doesn’t recharge shield counters this turn.
This is quite the interesting weapon, in game. It has a weak regular attack, but if one holds down the trigger, plasma gathers at its end and can be released all at once to overload shields completely, even if they have an overshield on. It works exactly the same way in Magic, but I’m not sure if its already limited ability gets too weakened by having to have a charge counter on it already, which is mainly just a flavour mechanic.
Fragmentation Grenade (3)
artifact
(2), sacrifice frag grenade: deal dive damage to target creature or player
These are the humans grenades, and they keep within the humans red colour with a direct damage ability.
Plasma Grenade
Artifact
(2), sacrifice plas grenade: destroy target creature or artifact.
The covenant’s common grenade, they stick to you if you get touched by one, and are always lethal if they do stick. They can also stick and destroy vehicles, hence the artifact kill, which is also a green sort of ability too, and green is one of the two covenant colours
Warthog (6)
Artifact creature-pig vehicle(heheh. . .)
As Warthog comes into play, attach 2 creatures to it. It gains landwalk of those creatures colours and P/T = to +2/+2 of the sum of the 2 creatures P/T.
0/0
Well, the warthog needs a driver and a gunner, and gets better if the fighting skill of its two passengers is increased. Not sure quite how “attaching” creatures would work, but it sounds cool and would stand to reason that people sitting in a car would have to stay in said car for it to keep working.
Now we get to a group of cards based on the flood. In the game, the flood are a parasitic life form that take over the nervous systems of dead or dying bodies and mutate them into combat forms and carrier forms to spread more flood. Because having to have dead bodies to play them would be just too restrictive, I’ve made it so that if one has spore tokens(infection forms being the things that actually crawl into the chest cavities of victims and take them over) already in play, they can be used to make big spells cost less.
Flood infection 3BB or 4BB
Sorcery
Flood infection may be played for 3/4 less if you sac a spore token while playing it.
Return target creature in a graveyard to play under your control.
Not much to this, a regular black card with the flood gimmick.
Flood Carrier Form 2B
creature-zombie
Sacrifice Flood carrier form: deal 2 damage to target creature blocking or blocked by it.
When Flood Carrier form leaves play, put 3 1/1 black spore tokens into play.
0/1
In the game, these bloated looking things waddle up to you and explode forcibly, doing damage and releasing a whole lotta little infection forms. Their damage ability represents this, but if you managed to shoot them before they got close to you, they still blew up and released their payload.
Flood Infestation 3B
enchantment-aura
Enchant Land
During your upkeep(or should it be every upkeep?) Put a black 1/1 spore token into play.
Well, if one wants to sac tokens to help spells, one needs ways to get tokens, eh? That’s the main reason for this card.
Lesser Combat Form 3B
creature-zombie
Lesser combat form costs 3 less to play if you sac a spore token while playing it.
3/2
Mostly just another card to use the floodly gimmick
Greater Combat Form 4BB
creature-zombie
Greater combat form costs 4 less to play if you sac 2 spore tokens while playing it
Fear
4/2
A bigger, more costly floodling. Even if you play it by sacking tokens
I’d include a whole bunch of spells that put increasing numbers of spores into play for increasing mana costs, but they’re just too boring to write about, and you could make them as easily as I.
Well, that’s the full of my ideas for Halo based Magic Cards, reply and tell me which ones you like or don’t like please.
(ps, this was typed in a word processor then pasted into the text bubble on site, so blame that for any mistakes like spelling.)
Shielding X (this creature comes into play with X charge counters. If damage would be dealt to this creature, instead remove that many charge counters)
I think this is sort of like an ability that was on some phantom cards, but I havent seen them in a while.
Recharge X (at end of turn, if amount of charge counters on card is not X, add charge counters until it is)
I'm having a hard time wording the recharge rules, cause I don't know the any formal way to put it thats also short.
Once I dwelled on the idea of shielding for a moment, a single thought came up that led to almost all the other Halo related cards in this post: Hey, didn't the opponent aliens have shields too? I took down all the ideas on a piece of paper as they came to me in bouts of mental diahhrea.
So here they are, likely in need of tweaking and balancing, courtesy of my fellow CPA members:
The Master Chief 5RW
Legendary Creature-human soldier
Shielding 4, recharge 4,(maybe vigilance?)
2: target creature blocks or is blocked by The Master Cheif
6/2
In the game, Master Chief is the last surviving member of the SPARTAN II supersoldier program. To sum up his physical prowess and strategic intelligence, He could fight Akroma to a stalemate with only a sharp rock.
The flavour behind his anti-evasion blocking ability is that he is trained to be able to find exactly the sort of sneaky characters who would normally be landwalking silently through the forest and stuff.
The Mjolnir mark VII armour he's tricked out in gives him energy shields and adds to his already considerable strenth and speed
UNSC Marine 2W
creature-human soldier
shielding 2
2/2
The Marines of the United Nations Space Command are the first and last defence of humanity. These are the men(and post Halo 2, women) who help you throughout the game, manning your warthogs back gun, providing cover fire, and being target practice for the Covenant as you increase the difficulty.
Rookie Elite 3G
creature-alien
Shielding 2, recharge 2
3/2
Like the card says, an inexperienced elite with the basics of armour and weaponry, these guys are the blue ones in the game.
Veteran Elite 3GU
creature-alien
Shielding 3, recharge 3
4/2
Red in the game, these are the Elites who got enough scars for a promotion, and are more experienced and tough to kill.
Ranger Elite 2UG
creature-alien
Flying, Shielding 2, recharge 2
3/2
These guys are equipped with vacuum suits and jet packs, and serve as the covenants space troopers.
Zealot Elite 4GU
creature-alien
Shielding 4, recharging 4
(6/7/8)/2
Deez dudes command armies, and are decked out in Gold armour to show it. They usually carry plasma swords, which can kill Halo’s playable character(Master Chief) in one swipe, so I wanted to reflect that with a beefy power stat.
Jackal 2U
creature-alien
shielding 3
2/1
Frail and birdlike, these aliens carry handheld plasma shields instead of the body conforming ones of The elites(and Chief) that don't recharge.
Grunt G
creature-alien
Shielding 1
1/1
These squat, Methane breathing cannon fodder don’t actually have any sort of energy shielding, but they do have their life support backpack/chestplate, which is armoured. The rank and file Grunt has Orange apparel.
Veteran Grunt
Creature-alien
Shielding 1
1/1
A slightly more experienced grunt, with red armour and a slight toughness boost to show its extra experience.
Drone 2G
creature-alien insect
flying
2/2
These aliens are quite weak, but attack in swarms, and can overwhelm the unweary. Because they can be killed so quick in the game, I don’t think they should have a shielding gimmick, so I let them be a green flying creature to make them interesting.
Covenant Engineer 2UG
creature-alien wizard
Other creatures you control have shielding 2 and recharge 2
0/3
Not actually present in the game, Covenant engineers are the mechanical geniuses of the covenant war host. They can fix or reconstruct anything, but are utterly defenceless and weak so I thought they should have some sort of complimenting ability that used the shielding gimmick to tie it in with the other cards.
Overshield 2G
enchantment - aura
enchant creature
Enchanted creature has shielding 5
Pretty much what it sounds like, the overshield gives your shields a temporary boost in power, that fades over time(in multiplayer) and doesn’t recharge like normal shields. I hoped to emulate that in the card.
Plasma Pistol (1)
artifact-equipment
equipped creature has:
TAP: put a charge counter on PP
TAP, remove a charge counter: remove all shield counters from target creature. That creature doesn’t recharge shield counters this turn.
This is quite the interesting weapon, in game. It has a weak regular attack, but if one holds down the trigger, plasma gathers at its end and can be released all at once to overload shields completely, even if they have an overshield on. It works exactly the same way in Magic, but I’m not sure if its already limited ability gets too weakened by having to have a charge counter on it already, which is mainly just a flavour mechanic.
Fragmentation Grenade (3)
artifact
(2), sacrifice frag grenade: deal dive damage to target creature or player
These are the humans grenades, and they keep within the humans red colour with a direct damage ability.
Plasma Grenade
Artifact
(2), sacrifice plas grenade: destroy target creature or artifact.
The covenant’s common grenade, they stick to you if you get touched by one, and are always lethal if they do stick. They can also stick and destroy vehicles, hence the artifact kill, which is also a green sort of ability too, and green is one of the two covenant colours
Warthog (6)
Artifact creature-pig vehicle(heheh. . .)
As Warthog comes into play, attach 2 creatures to it. It gains landwalk of those creatures colours and P/T = to +2/+2 of the sum of the 2 creatures P/T.
0/0
Well, the warthog needs a driver and a gunner, and gets better if the fighting skill of its two passengers is increased. Not sure quite how “attaching” creatures would work, but it sounds cool and would stand to reason that people sitting in a car would have to stay in said car for it to keep working.
Now we get to a group of cards based on the flood. In the game, the flood are a parasitic life form that take over the nervous systems of dead or dying bodies and mutate them into combat forms and carrier forms to spread more flood. Because having to have dead bodies to play them would be just too restrictive, I’ve made it so that if one has spore tokens(infection forms being the things that actually crawl into the chest cavities of victims and take them over) already in play, they can be used to make big spells cost less.
Flood infection 3BB or 4BB
Sorcery
Flood infection may be played for 3/4 less if you sac a spore token while playing it.
Return target creature in a graveyard to play under your control.
Not much to this, a regular black card with the flood gimmick.
Flood Carrier Form 2B
creature-zombie
Sacrifice Flood carrier form: deal 2 damage to target creature blocking or blocked by it.
When Flood Carrier form leaves play, put 3 1/1 black spore tokens into play.
0/1
In the game, these bloated looking things waddle up to you and explode forcibly, doing damage and releasing a whole lotta little infection forms. Their damage ability represents this, but if you managed to shoot them before they got close to you, they still blew up and released their payload.
Flood Infestation 3B
enchantment-aura
Enchant Land
During your upkeep(or should it be every upkeep?) Put a black 1/1 spore token into play.
Well, if one wants to sac tokens to help spells, one needs ways to get tokens, eh? That’s the main reason for this card.
Lesser Combat Form 3B
creature-zombie
Lesser combat form costs 3 less to play if you sac a spore token while playing it.
3/2
Mostly just another card to use the floodly gimmick
Greater Combat Form 4BB
creature-zombie
Greater combat form costs 4 less to play if you sac 2 spore tokens while playing it
Fear
4/2
A bigger, more costly floodling. Even if you play it by sacking tokens
I’d include a whole bunch of spells that put increasing numbers of spores into play for increasing mana costs, but they’re just too boring to write about, and you could make them as easily as I.
Well, that’s the full of my ideas for Halo based Magic Cards, reply and tell me which ones you like or don’t like please.
(ps, this was typed in a word processor then pasted into the text bubble on site, so blame that for any mistakes like spelling.)
Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery. This card comes into play unattached and stays in play if the creature leaves play.)