Really! Invite Me!

All right, so I’ve come up with some Invitational cards. Hopefully one of these is good enough to get me invited to the Magic Invitational 2007.

Plus, I guaranteed the best Invitational card ever. It would be useful across the board in every format in every deck. Like Jens or Bob only more so. Seriously, Olle won’t even be able to look at my card without weeping at the thought of his.

Paisley Lotus
0
Artifact
1, T: Add 5 mana of any one color to your mana pool.

Right? It’s pretty good, right?

You’d play that.

It’d be like, first turn land, Paisley Lotus, Sneak Attack Serra Avatar.

Every game.

It’s tough, really. The first one I came up with was something like this:

Djinninator
Artifact 5
5, T: Put a 4/4 flying Djinn token into play, deal 4 damage to target creature.

I thought that was pretty cool. I wanted it to be like a redux of Bottle of Suleiman, but it really just ends up winning the game for you, whereas Bottle of Suleiman could end up killing you. I wanted to balance the repeated ability to put a creature into play with the chance of having to kill your own creature if that was the only one out. Of course, how many creatures do you need after the first one that beats for four? None.

Djinninator was going to end up dealing you 4 damage as well, so it was still pretty good but you couldn’t use it too often or you’d die. Unfortunately, that just made it stupid as well.

It could work in an environment with lots of bounce for opponents to save their creatures, or one with lots of really big creatures.

Trepanier
Artifact 2
Trepanier may not be the target of spells or effects you control.
2, T: Search target player’s library for a card and remove it from the game.

Trepanier is probably my favorite card, so maybe I should have saved it for last. It’s a smaller, multiple use Jester’s Cap. I gave it the “may not be the target of spells or effects you control” so that it couldn’t be as easily tapped and untapped to go infinite. Really, you should get one use per turn out of this unless you can send it to the graveyard and use Goblin Welder to bring it out a ridiculously large number of times, and if you’re doing that, I bet there’s a better choice than this.

I would definitely want to build a deck around it.

Xom Township
Land
If Xom Township is in your hand, you may remove a non-land card in your hand from the game and put Xom Township into play. This does not count toward your one land per turn.
Pay 1 life, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

Xom Township should probably be legendary, but I figure if you’re putting more than one into play, you suddenly have far less hand to use. Plus, you’ll be taking hits City of Brass style a lot over the next few turns, so I think that balances out.

Okay, really, it’s BAH-roken. Everybody plays four of these unless they produce only colorless mana or they’re legendary. Plus, I like the fact that you can play this during your opponent’s turn, which makes it strictly better than Unluckyman’s Paradise.

Silent Mine
Artifact 3
Players skip their draw phase.
During your upkeep, each other player draws a card.
During each other player’s upkeep, draw a card.

This card has potential across the board. In the right Standard environment its abilities can probably be utilized somehow. In Vintage, with Welders, this becomes a one-sided Howling Mine. And it’s really, good in any form of multiplayer.

I bet this gets changed to cost at least four or five during testing, but that won’t stop it in Vintage.

Automated Reveilleer
Artifact Creature 4
2/2
You may play creatures whenever you could play instants.
Creatures you control have haste.

This probably gets played in most aggro formats because he’s a 2/2 hasty beater that makes all of your creatures faster all around. He also facilitates control decks by allowing them to play creature threats at the end of an opponent’s turn, thereby leaving countermana open all the time.

Though it won’t show up in eternal formats very often, it will make Goblin Welder and Darksteel Colossus much more threatening. Workshop Aggro will make a resurgence like never before seen. With Metalworker, this is insane.

Expect it to cost 2RR when it comes out of development.

Timmybot
Artifact Creature 5
10/10
Trample
During your upkeep, sacrifice an artifact or creature.
If Timmybot is in your graveyard at the end of any turn, you lose the game.

I had to give a shout-out to everyone’s favorite six-year-old gamer. This won’t see play anywhere but the kitchen table, but if you give it haste (as long as it’s not with Sneak Attack), watch out.

Really, I could see Timmybot being popular with all the player types. Timmy likes the stats, Johnny wants to build a deck around it, and Spike will want to throw it into every deck because it’s 10/10 and when aren’t you going to have another artifact or creature to throw to it or be able to otherwise deal with its drawback?

Yawgmoth’s Factory
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool
Pay X Life, X, T: Put an X/X Assembly Worker token into play, where X is the number of Yawgmoth’s Factories you control. Play this ability as a sorcery.

Wizards R&D won’t like this card because the tokens it makes can be all different sizes. I think it’s cool, though. It’ll get used because it’s like Mishra’s Factory too, and lots of people will want to get 20 lands into play so they can make 4 4/4 creatures every turn.

I think my favorite part about this is that Mishra’s Factories can be used to pump the Assembly Worker tokens, which is neat. I congratulate myself on being able to remember the classic cards.

Beach
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T: Remove target attacking creature from the game. Return that creature to play at the beginning of your next upkeep.

The picture for this would be awesome because it would be me at the beach, dressed in black wizards robes.

Unfortunately, the ability for this is strictly white, so this land would end up being part of a cycle or something.

It’s a cool idea, but not something I’d like to see printed.

Last but not least:

Perkus Market
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
1, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
W, T: Prevent the next two damage that would be dealt to target creature or player.
U, T: Draw a card and discard a card.
B, T: Target player loses one life and you gain one life.
R, T: Deal two damage to target creature.
G, T: Regenerate target creature.

Everybody can use it for something because it does a little bit of everything. It’s like playing the Land Game only you need more than one land in play to actually be able to do anything.

Plus, it’s not entirely too broken because all of the abilities are actually pretty fair, except for in Dragon Combo where this becomes uncounterable and unremovable game over for just one card. It can even help get Dragon in the graveyard.

Trust me, though, it’s not as bad as its first incarnation:

Perkus Market
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
1, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
W, T: Prevent the next two damage that would be dealt to target creature or player.
U, T: Draw a card and discard a card.
B, T: Target player loses one life and you gain one life.
R, T: Deal two damage to target creature.
G, T: Regenerate target creature.
1W: Target creature gains first strike until end of turn.
1U: Target creature gains flying until end of turn.
1B: Target creature gains fear until end of turn.
1R: Target creature gains haste until end of turn.
1G: Target creature gains trample until end of turn.
2W, T: Destroy target enchantment.
2U, T: Return target artifact, creature, or land to its owners hand.
2B, T: Destroy target non-black creature.
2R, T: Deal three damage to target player.
2G, T: Destroy target artifact.
2WW: Gain 10 life.
2UU: Draw three cards and discard one card.
2BB: Put a 3/3 black horror token with “During your upkeep, lose 1 life,” into play.
2RR: Destroy target land. Play this ability as a sorcery.
2GG: Creatures you control get +2/+2 until end of turn.
WWWW, T: Destroy all creatures.
UUUU, T: Counter target spell.
BBBB, T: Draw 4 cards, lose half your life rounded up.
RRRR, T: Deal 8 damage to target creature or player. Creatures damaged in this way cannot regenerate this turn.
GGGG, T: Destroy target permanent.
WUBRG: Untap Perkus Market.

Pretty awesome, huh?

That’s 250 words of text that I think would have to be about 2 point font to fit onto a card. Copy and paste that into Word if you want to see what that looks like. They’d have to include magnifying glasses in card packs.

I bet there would be decks build that focus on using just one of the abilities, though. Can you imagine a mono-blue deck using this as one of its main counterspells? That’s a hard counter every single turn starting, probably, turn 5. I would seriously say that UUUU is worth that.

And if I ever had an infinite mana combo available with this card, I would definitely just toy with my opponent rather than finishing them off. They’ll never be able to stop you.

Given my druthers, I’d see Perkus Market get printed as a full-text card, no pictures. It should look like some kind of rules card so that people unknowingly throw it away. That way the price will go up since there will be fewer copies of them. Feindish.

All right, smart guy, which do you want to see printed?