Wednesday, February 15, 2017

CCDD 021517—Chandra's Fire Reflex

Cool Card Design of the Day
2/15/2017 - There's a solution for making the legendary supertype meaningful in a positive way, it's just years too late to implement: Spells that reference your legend are improved while it's in play. Maybe they all cost a little less to cast, or they all have some kicker, or a wild variation of benefits.

We could today implement a new across-the-board rule that any spell with a legend's name in its own costs {1} less, but Wizards doesn't like to mess with cardnames-matters because of variations due to printing across languages. In theory, proper names should be consistent within a given language, but there are still a number of issues, probably including: Cardnames that share a word or word-part in common with a legend's name but were never intended to be related; cards that were meant to be related but do so by art or flavor text and not by name; cards with no generic mana in the cost.

Anyhow, here's a custom card based on the idea:

Or, if that's too scandalous:


  1. I like the latter - I would love one of those for each named 'walker for various core cards in those colors - a counterspell that adds a counter to Jace, a reanimation spell adding counters to Liliana, ramp card for Nissa, token maker for Gideon...

    1. A counterspell would be notably unplaneswalkerlike; I believe Chandra's spells above were intentionally sorceries so that they have the feeling of being a planeswalker loyalty ability.

      ... Also it would be weird to have a spell that's potentially impossible to cast even when you really need a loyalty counter, which is also rather unplaneswalkerlike. As far as I've seen every planeswalker loyalty ability never requires a target that might not be there. (Instant) Counter up to one target spell? (Sorcery) Counter the next spell target player casts before the beginning of your next upkeep?

    2. A cycle would be sweet (anything less would be odd).

      I did keep mine a sorcery because I don't want players adding loyalty to planeswalkers after their opponent's combat step. A counterspell might be the only instant I'd allow, since your opponent can play around it. But yeah, just make a divination or something.

  2. CFF RR
    ~ deals x damage to target creature or player, where X is equal to the number of loyalty counters on a Chandra Planeswalker you control.