MTG: July 2022’s Custom Cards

Hey, you do know I post these cards to both Reddit and Twitter, right? I just realised that you may not be aware that this is a daily thing, with room for discussion on every card.

uh anyway, July’s custom cards!

Warning: Wizards employees, this post contains primarily custom magic cards.

I hope this one’s been a challenge to work out. Like, what’s the central theme, right? It’s been an equal distribution of colours, including a colourless card. They’ve all had the same body type, but you may have noticed some of them are functional reprints of existing artifact cards.

Why though?

They’re Thalias.

Let me explain:

That’s the structure of these cards. They’re all two mana 2/1s with some kind of combat keyword (where appropriate) and the rules text of existing artifacts.

  • No replicated cycle cards, and no cards that imply a cycle. There’s a bunch of solid mana rocks that I personally wouldn’t think should exist without being green creatures.
  • No colour pie breaks. Each card needs to belong in the place it has in the pie, even though the artifact could be played in a deck of any colour.
  • The fact that these cards are creatures makes them slower and more vulnerable.
  • If an artifact or land enters the battlefield tapped to control a tap ability, I can cut that because creatures cover that with tap abilities.
  • If a card has a particularly obtuse wording because it was a very old card (looking at you, Thawing Glaciers), devotion to the original wording was not important.

The gallery, and the card they reference, follows.

Some trivia about the names and cards:

  • Gross Prophet almost had Dash, but wee, turns out a dash cantrip creature feels really blue-red.
  • A Bloody Nuisance is a term for something small and obnoxious
  • Longstanding Champion’s name was made by trying to anagram things with Scalding Tongs in them
  • Owl of Minds is derived from ‘Howling Mine’ and made so its 2 power would dovetail into more possible Vehicles as a way to keep it tapped.
  • A bwbach is a type of house spirit in Welsh myth

Are there things I’d do differently if I wasn’t trying to replicate the rules text and functionality as close as possible? Yeah, I absolutely would:

  • For Reconfigure creatures I’d honestly make them have their own abilities as well. Though, Finder Bwbach would then have to be something like a -1/-2 as base stats. Cool, but very weird.
  • Similarly, the Seer of the End should get counters at your upkeep and when it attacks and blocks, so the prophecy can be a little more under your control
  • The Wee Xaosomancer, I’d probably just remove the ability to get rid of charge counters on it, save some space.
  • The Bone-Pit Brawler and Sun-Drop Idol split the difference on +1/+1 counters vs Charge counters; I actually think the Brawler getting +1/+1 counters is probably more risky than the Sun-Drop Idol getting +1/+1 counters.
  • The Luxa Memoriant should bring your things back when it dies, rather than a sacrifice trigger in your upkeep.