Ruin of Seffala – Green -1/-1 Counter Hate

With all the Wither floating around in Jund, some colors should have ways around it. According to the MtG wiki, Black is usually the only color that gets to removes counters off things. However, I figured that since most counters are positive, with notable exceptions being -1/-1 counters and poison counters, perhaps the colors that don't often remove positive counters will be able to remove negative counters. For this, I primarily picked green and white, so we'll start with some Green counter stuff.

*Edit 4/29: Witherkin, not witherin.  Oops.

What with -1/-1 counters not necessarily being in every opponent's game plan (what if they were Azorius Shamans/flyers?), each of these cards provides some -1/-1 counter hate, but also does something else, just in case.

Natural Balm has the benefit of targeting two creatures, but it is also an expensive cantrip if you have to use it that way. Also, both Natural Balm and Lift Up are instants, so they can act as combat tricks. The untapping for Lift Up messes with blocks, but the removal of counters in both cases can make a blocker (or even attacker) bigger than they appear.

Like all Djinn, Misty-Eyed Dimmer gives the player two options. In this case, it provides the flavor of a Green creature.

Neutralize, of course, is good sideboard tech, with a normal use case (artifact or enchantment hate), and the expansion-specific hate (counters).

Ruin of Seffala – White Followthrough Combat Tricks

Combat tricks are tricky beasts. These Followthrough shenanigans on combat tricks must usually be thought of as bonuses that overpower the opponent's own combat trick. But when they work, they can lead to blowouts.

Only one of these even vaguely captures the feel of white on this plane. Breaking the bounds of references is hard!

Well, excusing Gift for the Faithful, where the Followthrough bonus is not particularly game-breaking. Hey, not all of them can be amazing.

I don't have much to say about these, since they're just combat tricks. I think with these, since they are played in combat and can end in life or death (of your creatures, primarily), you'd want to play these more conservatively, like don't rush your creatures into battle expecting to turn First Strike on with Trained Instincts.

On the plus side, as I work on the art, I find it gets a little better each day, and it's mostly because I'm discovering tools and taking more time on a piece. Gift for the Faithful I probably just threw together (spending more time figuring out what I wanted the picture to be than drawing it), while I spent much more time on Trained Instincts. I hope my art skills grow day by day, so maybe when I'm done with this set, I'll be nicely bad, instead of terrible. Improvement!

Ruin of Seffala – Blue Freezers

I tried a variety of freeze abilities for blue, with varying requirements or options.

I have discovered I must export to png, not jpg. The only thing bad about my art is the pixelation, obvs.

Skyborne Brighter is the most powerful, and, in the spirit of the Djinni of Seffala, you are given a modal ETB effect. I thought it was interesting to have both a freeze and a bounce ability at once. Bounce means the opponent will have to spend their mana again, but if they do, they have that blocker for the next combat (and if that creature has haste, you don't even get to keep them from attacking), but the freeze ability is for keeping down a blocker or haster, at the "cost" of not gaining so much tempo. Or, you know, bonus card draw. Whatever floats your broom.

Hagridden is another Shaman "payoff"--though you might say it's a card only useful to heavy Shaman decks. The note here is that the freeze part is separate from the tap part, so if there are no Shamans on the battlefield, the creature untaps, and if you play another Shaman, the enchanted creature does not retap. But if the creature becomes tapped another way (another freeze spell, or a White tap spell, of which there are a few coming later), it stays tapped if there's a Shaman around. But whether or not there is a Shaman on the battlefield, the enchantment sticks around; no sacrificing it. So it may be a dead enchantment sometimes, but you can get the effect back if you try.

Numb-Thumb gives another Followthrough ability, this time changing a simple tap to a freeze.

Catch Off Guard is another modal spell, and though a Shaman is in the art, it's very much a Djinni flavor. (This being the only card of the bunch with enough room for flavor text, I gotta take it when I have it.)

Ruin of Seffala – Red Followthrough

A few more cards with the Followthrough mechanic, as well as a Followthrough payoff.

Click to read. Sorry, lots of text on Followthrough!

Although we haven't seen any artifacts yet, Destructive Impulse comes in handy out of the sideboard. There's about five or six artifacts in the set, and some of them are extremely powerful. In true WotC style, it's got the new mechanic of the set tacked on like an afterthought (I think by that point I was running out of ideas, particularly in Red).

Spark Bug and Impulsive Jarren (did not notice two Followthrough cards said "Impulse" in them until I was categorizing cards for this post) are fun little cards to screw up combat math. One of the things I was trying to also add, particularly in Red, was mana sinks, though these are one-shots each turn.

Bite Twice is a "build around me" style card, where you'd pick it up and then try to draft every Jeskai Followthrough card you could. It's one of those cards that looks quite inoccuous on the surface, almost a bad rare, but it works as a one-drop when one-drops aren't often found in limited formats, and can accumulate value over time. I think Aggro Red or Boros wouldn't want this card, but a controlling Izzet or Jeskai build would find ways to utilize it.

Ruin of Seffala – Parasites

Getting back on the wagon of posting this MtG set. I think it's important to post this set, both for the sake of completion and to get back to chugging along working on my art skills. I'd barely gotten started posting this set when my blog went on hiatus, since I got caught up in non-game projects.

But I'm back now and I've got weird cards for everybody!

Click to embiggen. My only regret is the lack of space for flavor text.

In this set, one of the issues I wanted to address was the two-for-one aspect of Auras. I wanted Tron to be a viable strategy for Black, mostly in the form of Golgari, but to also work out the two-for-one Aura kink by introducing a new Aura subtype: Parasite. The subtype doesn't do anything on its own, but it acts as a keyword to remind the player that all of these Parasite auras have a similar theme: when the enchanted creature dies, you get a 1/1 with the bonus of the original aura tacked on. This allows Tron strategies to have a backup plan of going wide, or at least having chump blockers with a little extra value until being able to build back up on another creature.

The above image shows the Aura Parasite on top, and below it, the matching Parasite token that appears when the enchanted creature dies.

Dripping Symbiont, Sucking Leech, and Venomous Worm all all fairly self-explanatory, giving the enchanted creature Lifelink, Wither, and Deathtouch, respectively. In the case of Sucking Leech, for instance, when the enchanted creature dies, you get a 1/1 Parasite token with Wither.

The oddball of this group is Protecting Parasite, which stops the enchanted creature from gaining -1/-1 counters (any -1/-1 counters already on the creature remain on it). Since this is a -1/-1 counter-heavy set, particularly with Wither, this can allow the enchanted creature to get away with blanking a Wither creature without worry.

I've debated over whether there should be at least a power/toughness boost of +1/+1 on each of these, but as we'll see later on, some Parasite Auras are better attached to an opponents' creatures, and have a negative effect. Then, when the enchanted creature dies, that opponet creates a 1/1 Parasite token with the same negative effect! But in any case, that comes later.

Also to come later are the "Parasite matters" cards and other payoffs, which is why I gave the Aura the subtype that matches the creature type of the token, instead of simply making a reminder keyword.

But for now, this is just a quick introduction to the type.

Black (as you can see) is the primary color for parasites, but it is also secondary in Blue and Green.

Ruin of Seffala – The Moss Wall token

So much to unpack here.

To start with, I'll reiterate that this is a nostalgic set. Nostalgia is different for everybody, but for some reason, one thing that is nostalgic for me in Magic is walls. I remember cards like Wall of Roots and Wall of Brambles. With these walls in mind, in Ruin of Seffala, I gave green a Wall sub-theme, specifically in the form of wall tokens.

Click to see bigger

One of the problems I hear about walls is that they only stop one thing while the rest of the opponent's creatures go around. I decided to address this problem two ways: first, I made them tokens, which means they can be repeatably made, rather just being one card in the deck; and second, I gave them Toughlink, so an opponent wishing to slam a creature into a wall (or even chump check) will have to calculate how much you stand to gain in life by that exchange. With one wall token out, and nothing else, suddenly the opponent needs not just two creatures out, but two creatures with power 4 or greater to do any damage at all.

I also have a Defender-matters payoff in green, as well as life gain payoffs elsewhere. As well, the green/white archetype of Ruin of Seffala is primarily a token strategy, where you'd make green walls on the ground and white flyers to hit from the skies. The green tokens also work great for a green/black tron player who wants to protect their enchanted creature (we'll see black's tron enchantments coming up soon).

With all of these cards, multiple Moss Wall tokens can be made. Lichen Grower is like Sly Charlatan, and Moss Song is like Call the Volantile (both in white, shown in an earlier post). Twig Witch offers a repeatable option for those who want to go really wide on the walls.

Ruin of Seffala – U/R Djinni Tribal

We've seen Shamans as the white/blue tribe, and Witherkin as the black/red/green tribe, and now the final tribal option is blue/red Djinni. There are other kinds of decks that can be made, of course, that don't utilize tribal synergies (white/green tokens, for example, the green half forthcoming), but I figured for Seffala some tribal options would be good for players who want to draft something somewhat simple. I liked how in Ixalan you could basically just try to draft every Vampire, or every Merfolk, and you'd come up with something good, without thinking too hard, because the tribe types were enough to get you started. Advanced players can try for other kinds of decks to draft, but I wanted new players to be able to open up pack one and say "oh, a bomb rare of tribe X, that's easy."

Click to enlarge.

Apart from standard tribal payoff that you see in Bloodkin Dimmer and Wishborn here (Wishborn conveniently also a Shaman tribal payoff), one of the bigger themes of the Djinni are choices, or 'granting wishes'. Often on enter-the-battlefield, a Djinn will give you a choice. The Growing Dimmer and Growing Brighter are a pair of opposites (perhaps a mini-cycle of sorts) that give just such a choice.

In Seffala, Djinni classify themselves into two kinds: Brighters and Dimmers. Mechanically, Brighters are usually the ones that give the interesting choices, while Dimmers offer fewer options. This is not a hard and fast rule, but just a rule of thumb that allows for some good puns. In the case of the Growing Brighter and Growing Dimmer, the two both offer two choices, because flavor-wise the Growing Brighter will 'grow' into three, while the Growing Dimmer will 'grow' down to one (like the Bloodkin Dimmer).

Another magical theme of the set is the idea of wishes, but not just of the Djinn-granting variety. Some Shamans have learned to control their powers to grant their own wishes, so they have some of the power that Djinni have, which is here evidenced by Wishborn.

The aesthetic I was going for with Djinni is something close to the classic Aladdin-and-the-lamp look, but darker in tone. These Djinni have no arms, for instance (which incidentally will make expressive art a little harder), but who needs arms when you can wish everything into existence?