This week on custom magic we are going to be looking at a custom black card. As you all may know by now, I have been designing a cube. One of the biggest issues I have while working on my cube is finding cards to help colors other than White and Green deal with artifacts and enchantments. Of all of the remaining colors though, black in particular has been a big challenge.
Sure black can gets colorless sweepers like Nevinyrral's Disk but that really seems to go against a big black design philosophy. They want quick results no matter the price. If it will get you in a good situation in the long run then life is a small price to play. On that note, I present you with (the tenitively titled) Blood Purge.
I think this card is very powerful and to me embodies what black is all about. I have thought about tweaking the life amount and adding the ability to target lands, but that is the kind of thing that would require more play testing to find the right balance. As a first draft though, I really like the feel and raw power that is there. One thing that I really like about the card is that it also gets around the common problem that black has with removing creatures of its own color as well. I know I am ready to sleeve this one up and give it a shot.
What is your take? Good card? Bad card? Worse version of an existing card? Don't quit your day job? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Ouch! Too good. A standard staple; as even versus a sligh deck it would usually be a fair trade, life-wise. I love the feel and overall concept though. Hopefully it could be tweaked to less power. Comparison to "snuff-out" might be a good start.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the card I already have to agree with you. It is way too easily splashable and while my goal was to create a strong card for standard I didn't want to create something that is a must include in every deck the way Baneslayer Angel seems to be. I definitely had my spike hat on when designing this one.
ReplyDeleteAt the very least I think I would bump the cost to BB but I wouldn't really want to bump it up any more for fear that it would fall in the shadow of Ashes to Ashes. I guess I could always explore the idea of making it target non-creature, non-land permanent and bring the life cost down to 2 or 3 and it would be a bit closer to the original use case i designed it for but that might make it a bit weaker than I intended and shift it from a main deck to a sideboard card.
Thanks for your feedback. Every little bit helps me fine tune my design sense. Thank you for the the recommendation of checking out Snuff Out as well. Mercadian Masks was a set I missed out on while on my big, long magic break. I will have to take a look at the sets I missed sometime to see what parts of the design space I have missed out on over the years.
I'm eager to see the result of this endeavor! I dislike the non-creature, non-land clause though. It practically reads : "Destroy target artifact, enchantment or planeswalker.". It doesn't feel very black, even with the life pay.
ReplyDeleteOh, and by the way: I loved Mercadian Masques! It was one of my first sets and the flavor just had me dazed.