another week, another old Card of the Week to make new cards about!



we haven't done a flavor criteria yet, so let's try that: make a card that depicts seeking or receiving wisdom from elders of some kind.

as always, you have until this time friday to finish your designs. go!

Tanissi, Guided by Ancestors —
Legendary Creature — Human Warrior (R)
As an additional cost to cast Tanissi, exile exactly two creature cards from your graveyard. When you do, create two 1/1 white Spirit creature tokens.
, Sacrifice a Spirit: Tanissi fights target creature you don't control.
, Sacrifice a Spirit: Tanissi gains indestructible until end of turn.
Her parents gave their lives to bring her into being. They would gladly give their afterlives to see her to hers.
2/3

Graceful Master
Creature - Human Monk
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, each creature you control with power less than Graceful Master's gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
3/1
"If you are eager to learn, then I am eager to teach."
-Seri, Jeskai teacher

Beseech the Ancestors

Sorcery
X can't be greater than 3.
Exile X creature cards from your graveyard. For each card exiled this way, do one of an opponent's choice (The same mode can't be chosen more than once) -

• Draw cards equal to the exiled card's power.
• Gain life equal to the exiled card's toughness
• Add an amount of equal to the exiled card's mana value.

Ancestral Teachings
Enchantment (R)
Enchant creature you control
Enchanted creature has all activated abilities of creature cards you own in exile with lineage counters.
When enchanted creature dies, exile it with a lineage counter on it.
When Ancestral Teachings is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, return Ancestral Teachings to its owner’s hand.

Monastery Elder

Creature -- Human Monk
2/2
Ward
: Put a lore counter on another target creature you control. It gains ": Draw a card."

Resent
Instant
As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard X cards.
Return X cards at random from your graveyard to your hand. Exile Resent.
"Why do we hate the Stonefall Clan? Do you ask why the stones of these halls still stand or why the runes of our laws still bind? If what has been always will be, then so will we." — Omdar Rockdrop

Eager Learner -
Creature - Human Wizard
Flying
When ~ enters the battlefield, reveal the top card of your library.
If the revealed card is a dragon card, put two +1/+1 counters on ~.
If the revealed card's mana cost is 5 or more, draw two cards .
2/3
////////
Brave the Elder Halls -
Adventure - Sorcery
Scry twice of X.

Art of Assassination
Instant (C)
Destroy target creature. If that creature was flat-footed, draw a card. (A flat-footed creature is any creature that could not attack if its controller could attack this phase.)
"Anyone with the desire and means to kill can do so; what makes us better than others is that we do not squander any opportunity to do so efficiently." - Grandmaster Hiei.

Notes on flat-footed: the basic gist is asking "if this turn was its controller's combat phase, could it attack?" So if it is tapped, no; if it still has summoning sickness, no; if it has Pacifism attached or is a Loyal Pegasus, no. I dont know how murky the comprehensive rules might get, or even how to properply phrase the reminder text, the general idea is there I hope.

it's receiving wisdom from an elder god
also this doesn't work in casual games where you play with nonsensical rules for what's regarded as outside the game
I mean it does, if you don't mind randomizing your collection

Tl;dr, contest is about card types. My submission is Chaotic Transformation.

Do I win?

Captivating Tale
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature can't attack or block
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on enchanted creature and its controller gains 1 life
Grakk could listen to grandma's stories for days

this is closed! grades hopefully tomorrow!

bit wordy, but I like the story here. even though it's not actually forced by the mechanics, I like the implication that she's getting different advice from her two parents. I'm not sure how strong fight is on a 2/3, but the balance overall seems right. on wording, you don't need the "exactly" because it's a cost. also interesting that you get the tokens even if the spell gets countered, but the wording is better that way, both narratively and in terms of space. overall a solid design.
4/5

it's an interesting approach to the challenge, showing an elder teaching instead of directly having someone learn, but I'm alright with that. not the strongest flavor resonance, but solid. the card is neat, as a sort of mass Prowess. I like how it buffs toughness but only has 1 itself, so you can keep your other creatures alive but it's still hard to swing with the Master. these days, they do seem willing to do strictly-better blade of the sixth prides, but this still feels like maybe too pushed? mass pump can be very strong, and while it's a limited one, there's a very strong synergy between non-creature spells and small creature tokens, especially in white, that could easily make this incredibly scary.
3/5

using solve the equation as a reference, I think this should probably cost 5. that aside, I like the idea. might be a bit too inclined toward degenerate uses, but basically all tutors are so that's fine. on wording, I think you could probably simplify it by taking a cue from Nissa's Encouragement. the flavor's nice, in that it seems to imply consulting not just one set of elders, but a pool of elder wisdom that passes down through generations.
4/5

it's a bit unfortunate that there's such a clear power difference between the options, so you're basically only getting any real value out of this if if you cast it for X=3. honestly I'd just drop the X thing entirely and make it always exile three things. even then, your opponent will almost always give you the thing that draws the fewest cards, and then the thing that adds the least mana, with whatever's left over going toward life gain, but at least then it's not inviting you to make decisions that don't matter. that said, beyond that I really like the story of the card, and it seems interesting to play with. the different effects mean you really have to load your graveyard with big things in order to get what you want, which makes the other things big too in a fun way.
3/5

this doesn't really feel like it does enough in the end to justify doing so little in the beginning as well. beyond assembling some sort of infinite combo (say, horseshoe crab and axebane guardian) it's unlikely to offer all that much, and most of those combos are more easily assemblable in other ways. the flavor's strong, but the card is difficult to get excited about.
2/5

this feels like it could get out of hand pretty quickly. plenty of limited games will be decided entirely on whether or not your opponent can remove this immediately. it's a potentially exciting card, though, and a clever idea. the flavor's there, although feels less like consulting an elder and more like just a normal teacher, if that makes sense. like, the flavor feels less like this person is particularly wise and more like the people they train are novices. maybe some flavor text would've helped.
3/5

I'm a bit confused by the flavor here. feels like the name and flavor text are telling one story while the mechanics are telling a different one. both those stories work for the criteria, I'm just not sure how they connect. is it that the "wisdom" of the elders in this case isn't all that reliable or insightful, so you're trading the things you know for whatever insights they happen to throw at you? I guess I could see that, but I feel like a different name could've made that clearer, and if that's not what you were going for then I'm lost. but it's a cool design either way. I'd probably make it cantrip (and maybe up the cost to to compensate) 'cause losing a card in order to get back nothing in particular doesn't sound particularly powerful.
2/5

I think this is pretty cute. tells a solid story entirely with mechanics, but still clear exactly what it's going for. a 4/5 flier for 4 that cantrips seems really powerful, especially when it can set itself up, so the numbers definitely need some tweaking, and I don't know that you could actually fit all that in a text box on an adventure card, but I like the idea a lot.
4/5

so, my concern with flat-footed is that it introduces a pretty thorny question that I don't think has a good, intuitive answer: is a tapped, attacking creature flat-footed? if it were time to declare attackers, you couldn't declare it, because it's tapped, but it's also currently attacking so maybe that counts? it's unclear, and neither answer feels satisfying, so you're inviting a lot of kitchen table arguments. there's also, as you say, the issue of loyal pegasus-type cards: are they flat-footed? what if I have another creature? does it only count if that other creature could also attack? and, in another example, what if I have ghostly prison? are all your creatures flat-footed, or does that only kick in if you can't generate the mana? how do I know whether you can generate the mana without making you try? there just seem like a lot of branching decisions that have to be made to account for all the different attack restrictions in the game. I also don't think the flavor quite fits: it's fine on its own, but if I remove the word "Grandmaster" from the flavor text there's no indication that it meets the criteria.
1/5

pretty big stretch on the criteria, but that's Mown for ya. the card's interesting, although pretty impossible to use in most circumstances. as you say, it breaks in formats without sideboards, which is a shame because this sort of weird nonsense effect is most at home in casual decks: constructed doesn't want this, you have to build your entire sideboard around it to have a solid shot at getting what you need and even then you can just get screwed by chance. I think it's a really fun idea as a build-around junk rare in the vein of one with nothing, but it's a real shame that it doesn't work in the one place that wants it to.
2/5

I love the story here, but I feel like, as a piece of removal, it's too fiddly. obviously, that's not its main purpose, you're supposed to put it on a thing that cares about its P/T but doesn't want to do combat (spikeshot goblin, for instance) and in those cases it seems fine, but because it's formatted like a pacifism I think it needs to be prepared to be used as one, and that results in stacking a lot of counters on a card that doesn't want or need them. still, I'm not sure I'd prefer it with a "you control" clause, so I'm not gonna worry too much about it, and again it's a really nice take on the criteria.
4/5

ok, well, maybe it's just 'cause I was tired when I did the grades but we don't have any 5/5s. all the cool designs had at least some issue that kept them from getting a perfect score, so I'll have to pull the winner from the 4/5s. and of those, I think the one that I liked the best was... ty! congratulations, nominating now, see you all on Monday!

I was going to do something that was more directly related flavor wise, but I realized I wanted a stronger gameplay connection to the theme of receiving advice, so I changed it to one where the agency of what you got was taken away from the player, instead of e.g. a tutor where you basically choose what "advice" you want. So for once I wasn't just trying to be a contrarian, ancient old ones just worked thematically best with what I ended up with mechanically.

Personally I think constructing a sideboard that lets you effectively weigh the randomness of the card would be a fun challenge. bo1 arena also operates on 7-card sideboards for whatever that is worth, not that I recognize it as a real format. I was personally pretty happy with the design overall.

I intended it to be a weird little versatile thing that could be a pacifism that sucks if they have disenchant later or gives you a weird sort of drawback of them gaining life or cripple your own thing for the same benefits idk. Thanks for the contest though

oh, yeah, flavorfully the card is a home run. I didn't even really hold that against you much in judging, I was mostly just commenting on how it felt like a very Mown direction to take the challenge in.

Dangit! I had time for one post before heading out for dinner last night and I used it elsewhere. And worse than that my evil stepmother showed up. And then the next day Razorborne didn't even acknowledge that my very real submission should've won!

The flavor is just holding on to the grudges of the past regardless of rationality or what makes sense now, that's the wisdom received. It's like a reversal of Cathartic Reunion using similar mechanics.