follower-of-liliana:Shout out @sultaiascendancy for helping me tune this design! Also tagging @flavo
follower-of-liliana:Shout out @sultaiascendancy for helping me tune this design! Also tagging @flavoracle because Lorwyn of course! I still believe!So this is my take on an Eminence Faerie tribal commander. I picked Oona (no surprise there) and I gave her Sultai colors, because I wanted to experiment a bit with green flyers (that appear in my previous posts), but as far as her abilities are concerned, she also might as well be Esper or in Atraxa’s (non red) colors. Speaking of abilities, Oona has two abilities like all 4 cover legendary creatures of commander 2017 (and Oloro). Her eminence ability is inspired by the two low-key themes Faeries had in Lorwyn. Casting spells during your opponent’s turn and the self bouncing were both intended, in my opinion, to highlight the trickster and sneaky nature of Fae. Seemingly harmless, but persistent and interruptive. You can use it to save your permanents from removals or just blocking, generate value from enters the battlefield effects, and practically untap a land in case you didn’t manage to play a land during your turn. A pretty important part of Eminence cards, and part of the reason I believe they are hard to make, is the second ability. You need to give the player a good reason to cast their commander and not have it lying relaxed in the command zone as it was an emblem. Looking at you, Inalla and Oloro. Oona’s second ability rewards you for playing/ creating Faerie permanents, by giving you the choice to increase or decrease the size of any creature you want. This plays into the duality of the plane, +1/+1 counters for Lorwyn, and -1/-1 counters for Shadowmoor, and also Oona’s involvement in the nature and occurrence of the Aurora, the spell that the transforms the entire plane.An early version of the ability went like this, Whenever a Faerie permanent enters the battlefield under your control, distribute up to two +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters (in any combination) among one or two target creatures. but I thought the amount of choices and the fact that you got to use two counters at the time would create too big a swing.I tried something entirely different next, but I ended up returning to counters, but in a more subtle way. I think it was for the best :)So that’s it for today folks! I’d love to hear your opinion! Have a nice day!I really, really like this card! And not just because it’s flavor fully tied to Lorwyn (though that doesn’t hurt.) I think the color identity matches the abilities really well, and I like that the added green enables the deck to faeries from early Magic and Groundling Pouncer (which doesn’t get enough love.) As always, I’ll point out that I’m terrible at assessing casting cost, so I’ll ask others to chime in on that. Having said that, I do have two suggestions for the card. One is mechanical, the other is flavor. The mechanic suggestion is to change the last ability from granting counters to granting +1/+1 or -1/-1 until end of turn. I suggest this for a few reasons: The current ability seems overpowered and unfun to play against. The -1/-1 counters in particular just make it way to easy to kill anything, even with indestructible. The ability is especially strong because it can trigger off faerie tokens, not just faerie spells. Maro has said in the past that Magic doesn’t put +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters in the same set together, so putting both on the same card seems implausible. Changing it to an end of turn effect stays within the color identity, and also plays well into the flavor of faeries being flighty and ephemeral. It increases how skillfully the card can be played. (With counters, the right decision is usually “play it as soon as you can,” rather than having to choose the best time.) My flavor suggestion tied to change the name of the card to “Maralen, Oona’s Heir” and make the creature type “Faerie Elf Wizard” (if all three fit on the line for a legendary creature.) My reasoning behind this suggestion is tied to the conclusion of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor story where (SPOILER!) Oona is defeated and her role as Queen of the Fae is taken up by her clone/offspring/ace in the hole, Maralen. (It’s kinda confusing.) But although the Oona/Maralen relationship is confusing, I think that making that change does some really cool things: Helps clarify what actually happened to the fae after Oona’s death. Further justifies the green in this card’s color identity (she is part elf after all.) Provides the first card since Eventide that actually moves the story forward at all for my favorite plane. OK, those are my notes, for whatever they’re worth. As always, feel free to keep what you like and toss the rest. Great job on this card, @follower-of-liliana! Thanks for tagging me!! -- source link
#mtg lorwyn#mtg commander#mtg tribal