Spark Reflector
Custom Cards forum
Posted on July 28, 2020, 1 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
There are some cards that allow players to copy planeswalker abilities, but those cards are few in number and limited in scope, so I am designing a card that can copy any planeswalker ability without restriction, and here is the result of my effort:
Spark Reflector Show
This card is modeled after Mirari, but I decreased its initial cost, because I feel that Mirari is too expensive, by today's standards. I also added the life-gaining ability from Interplanar Beacon, except that I changed the conditions under which it triggers, so that a player is not forced to hard cast a planeswalker.
What does everyone else say about this card? Do you like it? Is too low of a cost for it?
DemonDragonJ says... #3
July 28, 2020 2:04 p.m.
I think that looks good, barring a slight semantic change. The semicolon after the and the comma after "ability" should both be periods:
Whenever you activate a loyalty ability of a planeswalker, you may pay . If you do, copy that ability. You may choose new targets for the copy.
(See both Mirari and Chandra's Regulator).
July 28, 2020 2:11 p.m.
This is just a side note since you already removed the lifegain ability, but there is a reason Interplanar Beacon triggers on cast instead of entering the battlefield. In fact, it originally was an ETB trigger but was changed. The issue was that planeswalkers activate at sorcery speed. They have to wait for the ETB trigger to resolve before doing anything with the walker, giving the opponent a chance to kill the planeswalker before it even activates once. They changed it to cast so the player can at least use a loyalty ability before anyone else has a chance to kill it off.
July 28, 2020 3:12 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #6
Caerwyn, why did WotC decide that?
Lanzo493, that makes sense, but it means that they player cannot "cheat" planeswalkers into play.
July 28, 2020 5:01 p.m.
True, DemonDragonJ, but fewer than 10 cards can cheat them out. I think. I know Eerie Ultimatum and Arena Rector are among the more playable ones. Anyway, if I were to make this card, I would have the lifegain trigger every time you activate a loyalty ability. Yes, it is a lot of lifegain, but you’re always guaranteed one life for each planeswalker and it doesn’t interfere with the stack the same way ETB does. Lifegain isn’t that strong, so it’s okay to get a lot of it. This is also the only way I can think of making sure this card isn’t strictly worse than Rings of Brighthearth. At the moment, it costs more mana to cast and more mana for the trigger and is less versatile.
July 28, 2020 5:19 p.m.
That is the way these type of effects have been worded for years.
"Whenever . . . . If you do" effects were originally styled like an activated ability, but that was not in-line with how the effect played. See Alpha Crystal Rod printing. Around the time of Sixth Edition, they changed it to the two sentence system used today. See Sixth Edition Crystal Rod printing.
Grammatically, this makes sense--they are two different clauses. The first creates a conditional triggered effect "Whenever X, you may Y." The second creates a second condition "If Y, then Z." They are different effects and different types of conditional phrases, so really belong in different sentences.
Splitting the copy and "new targets" language into two sentences has been a part of this game from the very beginning. Fork's Alpha printing, for example, uses slightly different wording, but still splits "Any sorcery or instant spell just cast is doubled" and "Copy and original may have different targets" into two sentences. This has been the case with all subsequent copy effects.
Again, this is a grammatical point for clarifying the rules. The first sentence creates the copy effect. The second sentence then instructs you that you are permitted to modify a pure copy effect by changing the targets. Different clauses dealing with different parts of the spell; therefore given different sentences in text boxes.
July 28, 2020 5:21 p.m. Edited.
DemonDragonJ says... #9
Lanzo493, I completely forgot about Rings of Brighthearth, so I shall modify my own card, even further, to make it more appealing, and here is my new version:
Spark Reflector Show
The card now has multiple triggered abilities, and each ability triggers separately, so that they may be put onto the stack in any order.
Now, what does everyone think of this card?
August 2, 2020 7:58 p.m.
I don't think this should be that much better than Rings of Brighthearth.
The ability to utilize planeswalker abilities to draw cards seems a bit too much tacked on also gaining life passively AND the ability to copy powerful planeswalker abilities.
I think something like this is more balanced
Spark Reflector Show
Copying planeswalker abilities are already pretty powerful and often the chosen use for Rings of Brighthearth. Limiting it to only planeswalker abilities would justify the lower casting cost. Seeing as it only has one not overly complex ability, I dropped the legendary status.
I feel like if you make this card do more, it could quickly tip over to become extremely powerful in a planeswalker heavy deck and useless in a deck without a heavy focus on planeswalkers. Similarly if you stack it up with abilities, you may need to balance it out with higher costs or restrictions that disables it from doing what you initially wanted: Copying planeswalker abilities.
Sometimes it's better to not load a card with abilities but rather make it efficient but fair at what it wants to be doing.
Caerwyn says... #2
I would not add the life-gaining ability. Looking at this from a card advantage perspective, Mirari only triggers once per card--one instant/sorcery card gives you one instance of Mirari triggert.
Planeswalkers, on the other hand, can trigger each turn. You are going to get at least one Spark Reflector trigger per Planeswalker card, but are quite likely to get multiple triggers per card.
I do not think that distinction is so big that the casting cost or the trigger cost would need to be changed; but I do think it is a sufficient distinction that the card should not get another ability.
July 28, 2020 1:05 p.m.