The Tarrasque sucks. I made it better.
Custom Cards forum
Posted on July 23, 2022, 11:05 p.m. by TypicalTimmy
The Tarrasque in TFR is a steaming hot pile of garbage, and 5e did her dirty. I remember in 3rd edition, you couldn't kill The Tarrasque; You had to bring her down to just 1 HP and use Wish to exile her from existence. Even then, all you really did was send her to another world, or another point in time.
She is literally undefeatable.
But in 5e? You can play as a clay golem and literally punch her to death inside of her own stomach, because reasons.
So I remade her, in all of her terrifying frightening glory.
May I point out that this Tarrasque can also be killed by a Clay Golem?
And if the 5e Tarrasque is just letting you punch its stomach lining without stomping the nearest castle into gravel and destabilizing an economy or two, you're on easy mode. The 5e Tarrasque is weirdly mortal, I'll grant that, but it can still make a big mess and refuse to clean it up.
As for the card itself, I like this. In EDH, if it's in the 99, I see it in a Jund or Naya build, both of which are dumping out mana and token permanents freely right now. As a Commander, it's a pretty straightforward finisher, or Voltron face-smasher.
Maybe extend the "protection from instants" to include sorceries as well?
July 24, 2022 8:51 a.m.
Nice upgrade on that card that was such a miss. I feel like they really could/should reprint the tarrasque and show her some love. I mean, they did like 5 Minsc variations, so why not do the same for a DnD icon.
July 26, 2022 11:52 a.m.
I remember having to face one of these in an AD&D campaign(2nd Ed)(yes I'm old), it killed 4/5 party members and most of the elite squad we had helping...
Would love to see it have almost an Eldrazi reshuffle to show how invincible it is. Or some mana cost ability for the spell reflection?
Still liking the upgrade :)
July 26, 2022 11:54 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #6
I have, unfortunately, never faced off against one. However, having said that, I've made builds in 3.5 that could theoretically solo a Tarrasque.
I also ran a campaign once where I was hyping up the idea of one, and I was going to pull the rug out from everyone. Essentially, Underdark activity was cropping up as tremors quaked across a desert setting. I had my players venture deep into caverns inspired by the movie The Core.
That's the movie where the scientists had to travel through the planet to "restart the core" because I quit spinning? Well, there is a scene where diamond crystals are as big as the Empire State Building. My caverns were like that, filled with a mixture of Underdark and elementals.
The deeper they all got, the worse the tremors became. Everyone was excited for a Tarrasque but I knew they would be metagaming and try to mess with me. So I switched gears and made the BBEG an elder Demon lord who was seeking to become a God through infernal offerings of massacre and sacrifice.
He dabbled in necromancy, but Lich Kings are overdone.
When they got back, they found half of the city had collapsed into a sink hole. Upon approaching, a Gargantuan or Colossal Undead Construct rose from the pit.
What had happened was the Underdark were blasting charges to collapse the city. And the city was collapsed to gather enough souls in one single instant to unleash this Demon.
This setting was years and years and years before Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis was made. We're talking like over 10 years ago at this point.
By the way, an Undead Construct is such a pain in the ass to balance, because the types don't align at all. For example, Constructs shouldn't have Charisma and yet Charisma is the main stat for Undead.
It took weeks to balance properly.
Unfortunately, the party disbanded just before the big reveal. Everyone either got too busy, or lost interest.
July 27, 2022 12:59 a.m. Edited.
Same DM ran a campaign off Lethal Weapon 4... Finished the campaign then watched the movie... was a weird dejavu feeling seeing the movie and going I remember doing that, and that and that. Even waltzing in to the middle of the exchange at the end and proving the currency was fake.
Have done a few movie scenes in my campaigns but never attempted a whole movie.
July 27, 2022 2:06 a.m.
Ha, these sound like some really fun campaigns. I enjoy The Core, and a underdark The Core sounds kinda awesome : ) But yeah, I just remember when I did DM for a bit I always looked at The Tarrasque as an event rather than a creature. Like, even in the best possible situations it's made to be unbeatable. So if you needed a clean slate it was the creature that could come and make your players say, we need to abandon this plane, and that was the out to do a soft reset on your game.
I think that's part of where they missed the ball on the original card. The Tarrasque is a creature, but it's more of something that happens rather than something to fight. You don't deal with the lizard, you live in it's aftermath.
TypicalTimmy says... #2
I may make small revisions later, such as her cost reduction being instead of .
July 23, 2022 11:06 p.m.