Standard getting the Tarmogoyf Treatment.
General forum
Posted on Aug. 2, 2015, 10:08 p.m. by kengiczar
So if you haven't heard by now, the original Tarmogoyf at one point was designed to cost 
and base toughness of 0. Well somebody wanted it to be stronger during development/design so they made it cost 
and have base toughness of 1 and the rest is history.
But what if as little thought went into all of our new standard cards? Here's a list of small tweaks me and some friends will be implementing to make standard cards more powerful. This is a great way to use bulk rares and get additional mileage out of many decks, as well as create some entirely new ones. Let me know what you think and feel free to provide your own lists for any format. The magical world of friendship and adventure awaits. Lets begin!
Chasm Skulker for just 
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death for just 
Managorger Hydra for just
Herald of the Pantheon for just
All of the dual color gods requiring only 6 devotion.
Abhorrent Overlord - no longer requires you to sacrifice a creature.
Eater of Hope - Now a 6/6
Master of the Feast - Changed to "At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent may draw a card"
Monastery Siege - Changed to cost
Abbot of Keral Keep - Testing with it simply having haste, and testing with it costing just with no haste.
Ankle Shanker - Now cost 
Corpseweft - Now "Exile one or more creature cards from ANY graveyard".
Cruel Sadist - Now doesn't have to tap to use 1st ability. Second ability text changed to "Remove X +1/+1 counters from Cruel Sadist: Cruel Sadist deals X damage to target creature or player"
Daring Thief - Now costs
Mage-Ring Responder - Removed untapping clauses and related activated ability and has indestructible.
Mahamoti Djinn - We're thinking of straight up using Consecrated Sphinx here. We all own several ; )
Necropolis Fiend - Now cost 
. You may exile cards from ANY graveyard to give something -X/-X.
Pheres-Band Warchief - We can't decide if we want 3/4, or to make it cost .
Pia and Kiran Nalaar - Making it's activated ability cost .
Pitiless Horde - Dash cost and Hard cost are reversed. Now a very dangerous card, but you can't hit with Chord of Calling.
Psychic Intrusion - Instant Speed (may be improved further. hard to tell.)
Rakshasa Deathdealer - Now to pump, to regenerate.
Rakshasa Vizier - Now cost
Revel of the Fallen God - Now cost (total 6 instead of 7)
Scourge of Fleets - Now costs and reads "When Scourge of Fleets enters the battlefield, return each creature your opponents control with toughness X or less to its owner's hand, where X is the number of Islands you control plus your devotion to ."
Scourge of Skola Vale - We are going to either keep the tap and make him cost , or just make him not need to tap. (So yeah, he'd be a much better version of Nantuko Husk)
Scroll of the Masters - Now cost to play, to activate (still have to tap)
Shipbreaker Kraken - Monstrous ability is now only 
.
Silumgar Assassin - Megamorph cost changed to just , inline with Hidden Dragonslayer
Silumgar's Command - Second option changed to "Return up to two permanents to their owners hands", 3rd option changed to "Target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn".Skybind - Text changed to "Constellation Whenever Skybind or another enchantment enters the battlefield under your control, exile target permanent not named Skybind. Return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step." So now you can "slow-blink" cards like Eidolon of Blossoms or Banishing Light.
Soulblade Djinn - This card is just junk. We're not even sure it's worth changing. For those stats it should be an uncommon because frankly if you cast this there's a good chance that the rest of your creatures have all died on your last turn.
Stain the Mind - We're doing trials with it where it just cost 
right now. So far still ok. Bassically if you can guess correctly to name Drown in Sorrow or Languish in a mono shell, against control, you win. If you guess wrong, you lose. Very 50/50 kind of card at CMC 4.
Sultai Ascendancy - Now top 3 cards. Trust me, with a plethora of new cards "playable" the top 3 doesn't matter. Your still giving up T3, a critical turn to play a creature for aggro, or counter for control, to set up for what is bassically T5 even with the next change
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant - Now cost .
Supplant Form - Testing with it at cost .
Tainted Remedy - Testing with cost with Flash and at cost with Flash.
Temur War Shaman - Testing with cost of .
Thousand Winds - Testing with flip cost and .
Thunderbreak Regent - Testing with added ability haste. (A lot of mardu player's were extremely disappointed with this guy. It's amazing how bad a creature with free lightning bolts attached can actually be.)
Trail of Mystery - Testing with it costing .
Volcanic Vision - Now costs and doesn't exile.
Whims of the Fates - Testing with it having Instant and with it having "can't be countered if you cast it on your turn". We haven't actually tested this one yet, but the concecous (there are 5 of us) is that both would be to strong if you can't Bile Blight or Down in sorrow the tokens away.
Whelming Wave - Text changed to "Return all creatures to their owners' hands except for Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, Serpants, Squids and Merfolk". The merfolk portion is the most exciting part, but also works with Chasm Skulker's tokens if it died.
Willbreaker - Testing with Flash.
Yasova Dragonclaw - now reads "At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may pay 1Blue or RedBlue or Red. If you do, gain control of target creature an opponent controls with power less than Yasova Dragonclaw's power, untap that creature, and it gains haste until end of turn." In other words assuming it's smaller than yasova, you steal it forever.
So now to the whole point of the thread: What would you do to modify cards so that none of the rares, mythic rares, or uncommons are "bad". And by "bad" I mean "Unviable because other rares, mythics or uncommons are just so much better". Try to focus on things like making creatures that cost a ton not be killed by super cheap spells, or making spells that are expensive and lackluster playable. I await your suggestions and aspirations.
Epochalyptik says... #3
This thread was moved to a more appropriate forum (auto-generated comment)
August 2, 2015 11:17 p.m.
Cruel Sadist was the first one on the list that actually seemed broken as all hell - like, banned-in-Modern-level broken. Imagine a deck with that and Hardened Scales in it. ", pay 1 life: Cruel Sadist deals 2 damage to target creature or player". Wow.
Some ideas:
Starfield of Nyx: "Enchantments you control are indestructible". BOOM.
Day's Undoing: remove the end the turn clause... naaaah. Add "[each player] untaps all lands he or she controls".
Zurgo Bellstriker: haste. Standard legal Goblin Guide, yay!
Elspeth, Sun's Champion: have her cost the same mana as Elspeth, Knight-Errant.
Silumgar's Command: cost
, or change the planeswalker part to "nonland permanent".Kytheon, Hero of Akros Flip: "when Kytheon enters the battlefield, put two white 1/1 Human creature tokens onto the battlefield."
Liliana, Heretical Healer Flip: hexproof.
I went really over the top with some of those, but I guess that's the spirit, right? This is fun.
August 2, 2015 11:22 p.m.
reverendvile777 says... #5
Master of the Feast - Changed to "At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent may draw a card"
This 'gotcha' effect doesn't actually work in the rules. If the trigger is missed, it's your trigger, which means two things:
1) If your opponent remembers, they get to choose whether or not the trigger happens.
2) Since it's your trigger, failure to remember it is a rules violation.
August 2, 2015 11:24 p.m.
@ reverendvile777 thanks for the heads up. Looks like we'll keep him the same thing. Paying for a 5/5 flyer that can't die to Stoke the Flames has to have some downside I suppose.
@ Epochalyptik sorry about that. I know it's impossible to balance cards, we're just trying to eke out some extra fun with what cards we have, especially those that are just to slow to ever see play or will rotate soon.
August 2, 2015 11:59 p.m.
Why do people continue to try to make Standard into something more like Modern? Are people somehow not enjoying the most diverse Standard in ages? We have viable combo decks in Standard and not just one - 2 ascendancy decks, 1 Rally deck, a weird 4 card combo with Starfield of Nyx..., Midrange, Control and aggro are also equally viable. A format that is not limited where Whirler Rogue is an actual threat is an awesome format. There are downside, like worse spikes that Modern (Jace, Vryn's Prodigy Flip and Deathmist Raptor), but they are negligable.
Making cards arbitrarily more powerful (specifically to "match up" to the power of a design mistake) does not make them viable all of a sudden. It just makes them design mistakes.
Plus, I do not know why it is specifically Tarmogoyf that must be the basis for comparison. There are much more broken cards, like Umezawa's Jitte or Necropotence or even sometihng as simple as Seat of the Synod.
Most of the changes you propose are not actually making the cards better, they are either making them cost one mana less (Supplant Form will be awful even at 5 cmc) or you arbitrarily removing existing limitations for no reason whatsoever (Thousand Winds, which is a one-sided Evacuation stapled to a flying body, an already powerful card should cost less mana?).
Others, like Sultai Ascendancy going from 2 to 3 cards make absolutely no sense, since I do not think you understand the reason why some cards are playable. This particularly ascendancy is bad because it does not draw cards.
In summary: a set's cards are not made just for standard or to have only modern-like power level or just be a good limited format. Making changes with such a broad stroke will just end up hurting experiences, rather than helping anyone - most people do not care about arbitrary things like power level, they would be casting Managorger Hydra for , since the effect is cool.
Designing cards is not a job done for a single format or a specific group of people - with tens of millions of magic players and a multitude of popular formats and tons of kitchen table magic, as designer, you have to satisfy everybody in every format in a bit more than 200 cards every set.
August 3, 2015 3:12 a.m.
Once again, somebody has missed the point of what we're doing entirely: We're trying to goof off and have fun by making bulk rares not suck as hard. We're not trying to make standard for modern, we're not trying to make it legacy, we have no benchmark for "playable", we're not trying to balance cards and we are not doing this for other players. We're doing this for ourselves, not you, for us. So please stop assuming we care about balancing the format for other players.
The reason I put Tarmogoyf is to illustrate how powerful something like adding 1 toughness or reducing the CMC by 1 can be and because we know a bit about the design story. In this case the story is one guy arbitrarily decided it cost to much.
So in summary: Please stop assuming you understand why we're doing this. Please stop assuming you know who we're doing this for. Please stop assuming what our goals and intentions are. Please stop assuming we give a damn about set design when we do this. Please stop assuming. We're doing this because it's fun to us and I'm sharing it because it may be fun for others.
August 3, 2015 3:40 a.m.
If you do not want your goal to be misunderstood, please do not state a completely different goal than the one you actually have in your thread. Having more fun with reworked "bad" cards is COMPLETELY different from this:
"So now to the whole point of the thread: What would you do to modify cards so that none of the rares, mythic rares, or uncommons are "bad". And by "bad" I mean "Unviable because other rares, mythics or uncommons are just so much better"."
My entire previous post was based on that.
This is an impossible goal. Your goal is different - make flavorful, but generally overcosted or less powerful cards more powerful or better costed.
Cards are powerful for only two reasons: they are powerful on their own or they are powerful because they are the best enablers for a certain strategy.
For example, Volcanic Visions will only be playable if it cost no more than 4 mana. Making it not able to exile itself is nice, but that is not what hinders the card's playability.
Soulblade Djinn will be playable at least as a 1UU 3/3 flier with that ability.
Trail of Mystery - same cost, but make it put the basic lands on the battlefield instead of the hand. Only thing that card needs.
Supplant Form - 2UU - choose one - return target creature to its owner's hand; or put a token on the battelfield that is a copy of target creature.
What I am now trying to say is - if you want to see how to balance a card, push it as far as possible, then scale back from there if necessary. This will also let you experience the maximum amount of fun (your actual end goal of this exercise) before scaling back to reasonable amounts.
August 3, 2015 6:06 a.m.
RussischerZar says... #10
Your description of Whims of the Fates doesn't make sense. I think you got the wrong card there.
Epochalyptik says... #2
It's not possible to modify all cards such that no card is "bad" based on your definition. In fact, it's not even a worthwhile endeavor. Cards are good or bad by comparison with other cards; there will always be cards that are better or worse than other cards because different cards are, well, different.
This also isn't a KT post.
August 2, 2015 11:16 p.m.