Griselbrand v. Connecticut @orb_warded_kor_warlord@wubrg.social

Currently, Magic has six Peasants and 43 Nobles

This social arrangement is completely untenable and will collapse into revolution imminently

Earl of Squirrel

https://scryfall.com/card/pust/108/earl-of-squirrel

I don’t think I’d seen this promo art until now, and I strongly suspect it’s riffing off a specific famous painting but I can’t pin down which one

Anyway, this is a very good squirrel lord, especially with how it makes other tokens double up as squirrels, and it’s been errata’d to Noble post-Eldraine

https://scryfall.com/search?q=wojek&unique=art&as=grid&order=name

I keep misreading these as “Wojak”

Cube archetype ideas:

BG: Graveyard quantity (Self-mill, Spider Spawning, etc; using the graveyard as a resource without much reanimation)

UB: Graveyard quality (Discard outlets, Surveil/Entomb effects, reanimating a few huge wincons)

WB: Sacrifice quantity (Blood Artist, Morbid triggers, etc)

BR: Sacrifice quality (Fling effects, Disciple of Bolas, etc)

Martial Law

https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/14/martial-law

One of the flavorfully darkest cards in RTR, along with that set's Arrest (perfectly capturing endless bureaucratic harassment) and Azorius Justiciar (handprints...)

I didn't read the GRN-era story, but it'd be neat if it had a theme that Dovin Baan barely needed to change anything.

Obsessive Skinner

https://scryfall.com/card/soi/220/obsessive-skinner

I love the flavor of this cycle, where delirium makes them do the same thing over and over. It’s probably the most flavorful usage of the mechanic, but I get that it would get stale and unfun if the effects were pushed.

I hope to see Delirium return someday, whether on Innistrad or elsewhere, for the weird deckbuilding decisions and lines of play it encourages.

Millikin

https://scryfall.com/card/ema/226/millikin

The sequel to Manakin, and a colorless alternative to Deranged Assistant! I love how much the oracle text has been truncated, and this is one of the few mana abilities that can’t be “rewinded,” since it reveals new information.

This could be a fun archetype-crossover card in Cube...

City of Brass

https://scryfall.com/card/ptc/shr112/city-of-brass

One of the original 5-color lands with a painful drawback, inspiring so many successors - Tarnished Citadel, Grand Coliseum, Mana Confluence, and so on. I wonder if we’ll ever get a riff that taps for any color painlessly but has “at the beginning of your (upkeep/end step), you lose 1 life.”

Murderous Redcap

https://scryfall.com/card/f09/7/murderous-redcap

A classic wincon with any sac outlet plus Melira, Ghost-Anafenza, Grumgully, Solemnity, and probably quite a few more. It’s also a neat card by itself, an elegant hybrid design that works well in Sacrifice strategies, and I love how bonkers the promo art is.

Reya Dawnbringer

https://scryfall.com/card/dvd/13/reya-dawnbringer

Reya is one of the most reprinted legendary creatures ever - tied with Red Kamahl at nine printings each, beaten only by Original Niv-Mizzet and Talrand with ten each. (However, if you count the 10th Edition foils with flavor text and reminder text, it becomes a four-way tie.)

It’s also one of the only cards that can give this ability in mono-white, alongside a scarce few others like Emeria and Debtor’s Knell.

Apocalypse Chime

https://scryfall.com/card/ptc/et101sb/apocalypse-chime

Ah, one of three expansion hosers from Magic’s early days (along with Golgothan Sylex and City in a Bottle) - and the weakest of them, since Homelands is one of the notoriously weakest sets ever made.

This can’t exist now, since a card’s original set can’t matter in black border anymore, this is too brutally unfun, and modern cards hose a set’s mechanics/themes rather than Literally Everythihg.

Evil Twin

https://scryfall.com/card/bbd/222/evil-twin

I remember a story about how at the start of Innistrad design, R&D filled a whiteboard with all the tropes they wanted to hit - including Evil Twin - and its first design went through little or no changes as the set was finished.

It’s a brilliant card, perfect for either sniping big creatures or mowing down tokens, but if only the evil one had a goatee...

Doomed Traveler

https://scryfall.com/card/cns/69/doomed-traveler

A classic card from Innistrad, playing well with sacrifice decks, spirit decks, and token decks - 4 of this guy, 4 Intangible Virtue, and 4 Lingering Souls is a pretty solid foundation.

There have been riffs since, like Hunted Witness and Garrison Cat each with their own synergies, but I’d love to see a variant that makes a Thopter.

Oxidda Golem

https://scryfall.com/card/jvc/46/oxidda-golem

Part of a cycle of “affinity for (basic land type” cards that were fairly reasonable and not utterly broken, since it’s a lot hard to power out lands than it is artifacts (and artifact lands don’t produce double mana for it).

Recent cards have used similar abilities, even - Icebreaker Kraken has (non-keyworded) “Affinity for snow lands,” and isn’t breaking any formats either.

Shimmering Wings

https://scryfall.com/card/10e/107★/shimmering-wings

Tenth Edition had a feature where some foils dropped reminder text and added flavor text, which works pretty well here (and fantastically on Time Stop!)

The card itself is also neat, but nobody is going to use it fairly, the name of the game is doing disgusting things with Heroic/Prowess/Constellation

Outbreak

https://scryfall.com/card/pcy/71/outbreak

Masques block’s “Free” spells range from utterly absurd (Daze, Gush, Submerge) to nigh-unplayable, like this one - it’s a neat idea, like Plague Engineer/Engineered Plague, but a block having multiple cycles of free spells at all rarities now feels deeply absurd - it’s usually kept to maybe one cycle with fairly narrow abilities.

Who called it “Haphazard Bombardment” and not “Probaballistics”

^patch in a clause that the protection from colorless doesn’t remove itself, if it fits