I don't know if there's a good way to do what you want. I see what you're going for, but its impractical. A spell can't be an activated ability; the only way would be to give it the rules text (so it can be played as a spell), and then completely copy that in an ability's reminder text. Like "Endow <cost> (<cost>, Discard this card, Tap an untapped creature you control: <rules text>). Encidentally, the example I'm giving here is something MSE will probably never be able to do for you; you'd have to do this one the hard way.

Maybe if you took Innuendo's wording, and added onto the end of it "This spell can only be countered as if it were an activated ability."? That's inelegant, but I don't think there are pretty solutions to what you're going for, because as Innuendo said, you're drawing such a minor mechanical distinction between counterspells and things like Stifle.

Could you do

Endow {cost} ({cost}, Discard this card, Tap an untapped creature you control: copy this cards effects except for this effect)

Or something like that? Could you just have endow tell it to copy the cards effects?

The only thing that I can think of would be something like a dual card:

Yeah, that seems like a very hacky solution.

What about:
Endow - <cost>, discard this card: target creature gets, ": <Ability>" until end of turn.
OR
Endow - Discard this card: target creature gets, "<cost>, : <Ability>" until end of turn.

I don't think you can put that in reminder text as such, but it's still keyworded. I think this does cover you, but also means you won't be using any big effects. It does mean that you could do silly things with Q creatures, but frankly, if your ONLY goal here is to mess with counterspells then ... well, I'll just leave you to it. Abilities should be fun and cohesive in themselves, not just tackling a very small part of the game.

How about this?

Endow <cost>
If you control a creature, you may pay this card's endow cost and reveal it. If you do, have a creature you control gain this card's effects as an activated ability. Put the ability on the stack then discard this card.

It bypasses directly playing the card on the stack and goes into detail about workings of the keyword. I got used Splice as reference.

Nah, creatures can't control things. Sorry. Also, putting things on the stack (even activated abilities) is a bad idea. They have to be played. If they aren't specifically played, targets and modes aren't chosen.

Sorrow, I have to ask. Why are you so supremely worried about counter spells? I mean sure Green needs some answers to things like that, but that is why shroud, recollect, "this can't be countered," etc. already exist. Endow is going to be so unnecessarily hacky.

How about this for the exact same feel without the hacky "give the creature anything" part of it?

Endow [cost] (As an additional cost to play this, you may pay {cost} and tap an untapped creature you control. If you do, this can't be countered by spells or abilities)

That wording is a little off I think, but the idea is functionally the same as what you want, while still giving a unique way around counter spells.

Actually, I'm getting annoyed now, Sorrow. You aren't actually addressing any of our points, just repeating using the phrase, "as an activated ability" each time you post. We have already explained to you that the phrase doesn't mean anything, we have given you two good alternatives to get the effect you desire in correct Magic terms.

One of the skills of designing is knowing when what you have to rethink from the beginning. This is one of those times.

Sorrow, do you know that what you want is Channel mechanic? As seen on Ghost-Lit Redeemer . It passes Counterspells when it stills can be Stiffled. The example is like this:

Terminator
Creature - Goblin Assassin
Channel - , Tap an untapped creature you control, Discard ~: Destroy target creature. It can't be regenerated.
3/2

Okay, flavorwise my card is wrong, but this could be put at any cards, even lands or Planeswalkers! (Okay, not the 'Walkers since you would be likely to put it on play and it would be awkward (yet) if it has ability outside from play.)

I was wondering on the wording of the effect on this creature:

Name: Tobias
Legendary Creature - Spirit
Tobias costs one generic mana less to play for each basic land type among lands you control in the corresponding color. <- The wording on this effect (if you control a swamp, it doesnt cost black mana, if you control an island it doesnt cost blue mana etc..)
2/4

That sounds very much like a Domain derivative. I think that making it link to the corresponding colour makes it harder to phrase.
Did it occur to you that people will need all 5 basic land types to get the card for free anyway, so that it doesn't matter whether or not the mana taken away from its cost matches the land type in question? If you control a plains, forest, swamp, and island, even if you used that to take UBRG off the cost, it would still not make it free. So i'm suggesting that you leave off the part about the mana reduction corresponding to the type of land in question.

How about

Domain- For every basic land type among lands you control, Tobias costs one less mana of a color of your choice to play.

I like that fix actually. I just wanted to say the reminder text is wrong. If an effect makes creatures cost B extra to play, then it's not that it doesn't cost B to play, it's that it costs B less to play. I think the Daeres fix, while not identical, is still very similar.

I've got a variant of the Pacifism type Aura's commonly seen in white, and I'm wondering what color it should fit in:

Insignificance
1C (C being whatever color it ends up as)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature cannot attack, block or use activated abilities while an opponent controls a creature with higher power than enchanted creatures toughness.

Obviously, the first color that comes to mind is white, as white does plenty of this kind of thing, but I'd quite like to put it in red, see various Ironclaw cards for precedence. I admit however that red mostly did this kind of thing in either old cards, or time spiral wackyness.

Any thoughts on whether something like this could fit in red using the current pie? If not, could this be white, or should it be red-white multicolor as a combination of two things in seperate colors of pie?

I think red is a good choice, though the card is definitely white. Depending on the name, I suppose it could possibly be black and a case could maybe be made for green, but I'd say if not white, then red, and possibly black depending on flavor.

Thanks, that pretty much mirrors where I feel it could go so I'm feeling better about putting it as just red.

That is an amazing idea, thanks alot.

If you wanted, you could easily make it R/W, since it fits in either.

Personally, I think the card is a little too wordy as-is, although I can't think of a way to fix that without changing how powerful it is.

Okay, so looking for more art suggestions here if anyone can. I'll put four up today.

So that's all for now. Hopefully, I get some good responses *coughunlikelasttimecough*.

Isn't Kidnap ? Besides having prowl, I mean.

Gaining control of creatures is normally blue/red yes, but I have it a blue/black thing in my sets too. I never really understood the flavor of red having gain control of creatures, even as a temporary thing. Blue gets it as mind control, and I see black having it as, well kidnapping is a perfect example, or along the theme of double agents, eg Sleeper Agent. Having it in red always felt like a stretch to me.

See, I agree with that. This felt like a blue/black kind of thing to me, too. Hence, why I wrote it this way. Anyway, I figured that I needed some good art for this if anyone knew of any...as well as the other cards I put up, too.

I've got a new one here.

Firstly, and formostly (is that a word?), even with the drawbacks you have, I think you card is way overcosted. Oh, and for cumulative upkeep, you don't need to specify adding an age counter unless you want to add two every turn. I'd say cost-wise, at least or maybe . Wait, I got it. How about . Also, haste, I think is overmuch or else the cost has to go up further.

And no one ever gave me art...*sigh*. Oh, well.

Yeah, I wanted it to have an exponential growth on the Upkeep cost, i.e.

first upkeep after playing - lose 2 life
second upkeep after playing - lose 4 life
third upkeep after playing - lose 8 life
fourth upkeep after playing - lose 16 life

and so forth.

Maybe something like this

Liferender

Legendary Creature - Demon {R}
5/4
~ comes into play with one age counter on it.
Cumulative Upkeep -- Put an age counter on ~, then lose 1 life.
Pay 1 life: Add or subtract an age counter from ~. Any player may play this ability when they could play a sorcery.

Desmonthesis, please use spoilers when posting renders. You should also consider a text version; its easier for copying and fixing wordings, and is more practical when posting cards that are just plain artless renders.

As written, the ability on Liferender is very confusing, and could be mistaken for the same as "Cumulative upkeep - Lose 2 life". A much better (clearer!) way of getting the exponential effect you want is to use a doubling effect in there somewhere.

If you want that, I'd suggest ditching cumulative upkeep, it doesn't do what you need. Instead:

"~ comes into play with an age counter on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, double the number of age counters on ~, then lose 1 life for each age counter on ~."

I like Muse's suggestion, although I would suggest not using Age counters to avoid confusion with cumulative upkeep.

I was about to write that I think it needed to be , but then realised that actually it's a very risky card. Players are putting out turn 2 doran's etc and still losing so, without haste anyway, I think it's workable. It would require testing.

A little help with wording, since "Equipment" was a mechanic added after I stopped playing regularly.
I posted a card in the challenge thread with this line.
"Gain control of target artifact equipped to an attacking creature, only CARDNAME may be use this artifact."
Um, I have a bit of a hunch that's nowhere near the proper way to express that ability. Any suggestions? IN that thread, I didn't really care since was going for flavor, and not worried too much about proper design, but now I want to learn.

I'm not sure what you were going for here. Maybe "Gain control of target Equipment equipped to a creature..." As for the second half, I'm not sure what you mean.

It's a creature with a control artifact ability, but that only allows the equipment to target itself.

Sounds like a memory issue. Best way I can think of to avoid that is with "Gain control of target Equipment equipping a creature and attach it to ~. Equip abilities of Equipment attached this way cannot be played." That might work.

Three new cards, mostly of the silly variety because it's what I do best.

This Land is Your Land

Sorcery {R}
Target opponent gains control of target land you control. ~ deals 5 damage to them.

This Land is My Land

Sorcery {R}
Gain control of target land an opponent controls. ~ deals 5 damage to them.

This Land Was Made For You And Me

Enchantment {R}
Whenever an opponent plays a land card, you may put a token into play that is a copy of that land.

I like This Land is Your Land. It's kinda funny. As for wording, I wouldn't bother with targeting the land. So something like this: "Target opponent gains control of a land you control, then ~ deals 5 damage to that player." This Land is My Land seems a bit overpowered. You might want to cut down the damage if you ask me. As for the last one, one way you could make it even more interesting is to say something like "Whenever a player plays a land, each other player puts a token into play that's a copy of that land." I guess that's not necessary, but it would be pretty interesting.

Oh, and I might as well try this yet again. I'll put up more cards for (hopefully) some art ideas or suggestions if anyone's seen any art that would fit them.

> This Land is Your Land
> Target opponent gains control of target land you control. ~ deals 5 damage to them.

Really, this could be 3 mana, or even 2.

> This Land is My Land
> Gain control of target land an opponent controls. ~ deals 5 damage to them.
Seize land effects are 5cmc, so 6 multicolour seems fine for this. It probably wouldn't make standard decks, but you never know.

> This Land Was Made For You And Me
> Whenever an opponent plays a land card, you may put a token into play that is a copy of that land.

I think this is awkward because you would have to keep tons of different token lands around. Admittedly we have had sorceries which clone creatures, but then creatures also die easily. I would suggest:
... you may put a land token into play with ": add to your mana pool."
OR
... you may put a land token into play with ": Add to your mana pool one mana of any color that a land an opponent controls could produce."
(exotic orchard)

No ideas about art.

I like This Land is Your Land, you could make it cost 3 but I even at 4 I still like it. (not that many 4mc burn spells that deal 5) Then again, something like Shrapnel Blast makes it seem overcosted and doesn't actually give your opponent anything, but a distinction is that an artifact is not something any deck has to begin with whereas lands are always available as sacrifice.

This Land is My Land -seems- gratuitous. At 6 mana, who really cares if you get you opponent's land or not. (Annex only costs 4) Also, if your goal is to deal damage, you would just play something more efficient in favor of this. Granted, for one mana more than Lava Axe you get to steal a land, and for only one mana more than Frenzied Tilling or Conquer you get to deal 5 damage. Maybe it's just that the two abilities seem unrelated to me, but other than that the card is sound.

This Land is Made for You and Me - In control-control matchups where you can actually never have enough mana this could have application. Thinking about it, it reminds me of Mirari, but perhaps more along the lines of Journeyer's Kite, simply without having to pay an activation cost, as well as the advantage of accelerated land drops on top of it all. Yep, ok, this is a cool card. Very nice. Well Picks-At-Flies obviously makes a good point about the memory issue, and his ideas for land tokens is an excellent revision.

I'll show one of my cards now, it's a split card: Whale/Wife

that's:
Whale, , Creature - Whale, flying, shroud, 5/5
Wife , Sorcery, You gain 9 life.

edit: See, yea, it would have been a plus if you could rotate the Power/toughness on a card, ideally the P/T on a split card would be sideways, like this:

oh and that's Lions Tigers / Bears

Lions, Tigers, , Sorcery. Put four 2/1 white cat creature tokens in play.
Bears , Creature - Bear, Trample, 2/2

I think you would be better served with a discard effect than having them as splits

something like cycling or what not. Or even like faerie macbre where it's just a "3W, Discard ~: You gain 9 life."

Seems much less messy than working with a split card.

well gee... I'll think about it I guess

but if I do that, I suppose I'd use the "Channel" keyword from Saviors of Kamigawa? (Ghost-Lit Redeemer, etc)

anyway, let's have another card. This one might be a five card cycle.

That's:

Hot'n'Juicy Pit
Land
At the beginning of your first main phase, add to your mana pool. When this mana is used to play a black spell, flip Hot'n'Juicy Pit.

becomes:

Drake World Park
Legendary Land
Add , , or to your mana pool.

No comments about your land, but I want to echo Innuendo's concerns about split-permanents. The general fear among custom designers is that it could lead to confusion about the sides of the card in play and all that.

And yes, Channel is essentially what you are looking for. But you don't have to use the word "Channel" if you don't like it. The ability overall is just more elegant though, than a split-permanent.

I actually really like that land, although I think I would change it to 2nd main phase so it makes mana the turn it's played (otherwise it's strictly worse than the cip tapped lands from alara). Balance-wise, I think many players will prefer the consistency of the cip tapped lands, but any tri-land will be played in its format - especially if it fits with the theme of the block.

maybe the first mainphase after you played this land add B to your mana pool ?

Voidland

Land

: Add 1 mana to your mana pool for each removed from play card.

what do you think of it ?

Eh, nice idea, but you'd really have to build a deck revolving around RFG effects to make it tick. That and there's the potential that those decks may be able to abuse it easily. There's been a lot of remove graveyard from play cards in the past few blocks (with good reason when Haakon was hanging around).

To be honest, I get a Yu-Gi-Oh! vibe from this card as well. All the Different Dimension (aka D.D.) cards running around that is. To me, it seems like a card that's either seriously underpowered or seriously overpowered depending on how you run it and in what deck you use it.

In a more extreme case, I see a person running four copies of Simian Spirit Guide, cards with "you may remove a [color] card in your hand from the game rather than pay this card's mana cost," and Tormod's Crypt with this land to generate insane amounts of mana.

I think it would be too hard to fix this to be both playable and fair.

wow I didn't realize that it was such an established taboo. Kinda makes me feel bad about getting in a chat argument over this once.

Yea, right before I registered here I saw the thread where it was linked to MaRo's article about his original pitch for Shriekmaw and when reading it, that's when I started becoming self-conscious of the whole issue. (Even though MaRo's prototype Shriekmaw is clearly a bigger offender than split card permanents.) In the past, but even now, I never was able to understand how rules issues would need to arise out of split card permanents when it should be common sense, it seemed to me like something that isn't the least bit complicated unless you tried to make it so.

Thing is, I can't 100% refute the idea of putting it on one card as a Channel-like mechanic. It's actually an okay idea. Well there are some disadvantages such as 1) a completely different aesthetic, not really what I was going for, 2) Some of the best names could go to waste, such as "Whale/Wife" and "Lions, Tigers / Bears", and 3) Players searching for white cards will find Whale/Wife, but will not find it if it's a blue card with a white Channel cost. Slapping off-color discard costs onto creatures might be perplexing or aesthetically unintuitive (if people don't realize that it's "supposed" to be a split card) whereas a split card is self-explanatory.

On the other hand, one of my favorite split card permanents, I have to admit actually works extremely well as a normal card. See:

I thought of Stamp/Send years ago, but I just whipped up Underestimated Growth. I was confused as to whether or not Underestimated Growth should say "reveal" or "discard". Seems gratuitous to have to discard it in this particular case, even though all other cards with this mechanic will obviously say discard. But during this, something important occurred to me. Split cards are spells and thus can be countered... but these are abilities, they're effectively uncounterable. Is that bad? hmm... Oh and I only just realized that these are instant-speed, even though I made all my creature split cards have sorceries. ha

Now, as for Voidland, that seems really broken at first glance. So does it count any card that's removed from the game? (not including sideboard) Or does it have to be removed "from play"? (whatever that means)

Imagine this card with something like Psychatog, or what about simply any card that removes the top X cards from your library from the game. The fact that it counts your opponent's removed cards too makes it even more wow. Oh, and Leveler. Common graveyard removal like Withered Wretch or Carrion Beetles or Morningtide make Voidland very powerful. And on top of that it's something that your opponent can't really undo. (you can remove cards in a graveyard to fight reanimator or bridge decks, but how do you remove RFG'ed cards?) It's also a land, which isn't commonly targeted, compared to a creature and maybe even an artifact.

edit: aaaahhhh almost forgot. Hot'n'Juicy Pit. I realized it's essentially a comes-into-play-tapped land. But I decided that was offset by the fact that --it can produce two mana in one turn--. But I have to admit, I had no idea those Alara cipt lands existed. Sure does make my land feel a little redundant. Maybe I should scrap it.

Voidland is basically unprintable for the same reason Tolarian Academy is restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy (well, not exactly the same reasons, but very very similar ones). If you make a land produce more than one mana, you've inherently got balance issues with cards like Frantic Search and (an even worse offender) Time Spiral, and that's not even counting Candelabra of Tawnos. If it's like the Ravnica twinlands that produced a mere two mana, it's only a mildly interesting combo. When the amount of mana is variable with a theoretical maximum of "as many cards as you can remove from the game" (or Tolarian Academy's "as many artifacts as you can get into play"), the imbalance becomes absurd.

First, I gotta be honest; I was hoping "Whale // Wife" and "Lions, Tigers // Bears" were playtest names, not finished ones. I mean, they just sound sorta corny, and too real life oriented. I mean, don't feel bad - I've used some pretty corny names too.

If you make cards with off-color activated abilities; players will find them. The game's three multicolor oriented sets tell us that.

As for the difference between split permanents and a spell with a discard ability, you're right - they're not exactly the same. And if one is too powerful, remember that you can flip them around too. Like, Whale // Wife could be either of these:

<name> 6U
Creature - Whale
Flying, shroud
3W, Discard ~: Gain 9 life. Play this ability only as a sorcery.
5/5

<name 2> 3W
Sorcery
Gain 9 life.
6U, Discard ~: Put a 5/5 blue Whale creature token with flying and shroud into play. Play this ability only as a sorcery.

Here's a card I thought up for Final Destiny. Give me some thoughts:

Willchanneler
Creature - Elf Zombie (Uncommon)
, : Target creature gets -2/-0 until end of turn.
, : Target creature gets +2/+0 until end of turn.
2/2

I like the basic concept you've got there. However, the first ability is feeling more white than black. It's preventing an offense without harming it... on the other hand, black has no lack of power-draining cards, so if the flavour is good, the card still works.

On the other hand, I'm always a little wary of two-mana untap costs... and I'm especially wary of them in green, which is the color of mana acceleration. I'd consider making the second ability , to avoid potential balance issues.

regarding Willchanneler: power reducing is justifiably black, according to Cabal Trainee and Merrow Grimeblotter. Plus don't overlook that Willchanneler requires green to play - green also had power reducing effects such as Briar Patch and Fog. Now that I mention it, you could switch the colors on Willchanneler's abilities ( for +2/+0 and for -2/-0) and that works too.

Pichoro - Well I gotta tell you about my names. You say playtest names, but that's generally what I treat names as to begin with. But at the same time, the flavor of my sets are rather tongue-in-cheek and often satirical and I do take the names seriously in that context. That said, I like the names "Lions, Tigers / Bears" and -especially- "Whale / Wife". In fact, for a portion of my split cards, the names came before the actual effects for them were decided.

By the way, thanks for the feedback! But look, having Wife make a whale token is simply pointless since I might as well just leave it as a split card in that case. In fact, that's what the card was originally before I decided to adopt split card permanents in my set and make Whale a creature instead of a sorcery.

And I think if I don't like the idea of having Wife be an uncounterable instant, I can simply increase the cost or reduce the # of life gained. a 3W Sorcery spell gains 8-9 life, but a 3W uncounterable instant can gain 6-8 life, for 2W it can gain 5-7...

ok now

In acknowledgment of the Alara cipt lands, here's an updated Hot'n'Juicy Pit, it's Small Business:

And the reason the card doesn't tap for mana upright is to keep the card from being flipped when untapping. But I don't know if that should be a concern or not. Truth is, I thought of this card when thinking of using flip cards as a new take on Onslaught fetch lands. (in which the intention was merely for the player to have to permanently decide on either color) Something like this:

Mountainside
Land
When this comes into play, you may flip it.
: Add to your mana pool.
---
Forestside
Land
: Add to your mana pool.

But it seems easy to get away with flipping this card without your opponent noticing, or maybe even forgetting which side you/they were using. I considered having the card not tap for mana at all, and simply add mana during your main phase, but then what's the point? But then I thought of an idea. So what if a player flips it during their untap... if it's actually part of the card's text? See:

It's not as good as a dual, either... the choice to go red or green for that turn can be critical if you're playing both 1RR or 1GG costed spells, not to mention you don't even know what you're going to topdeck.

But it is strictly better than a basic, which is a huge no no.