The less said about my absence, the better. When you owe money to an Eldrazi you run as far away as fast as you can. They do things with orifices and tentacles that would make a hardened hentai fan puke and take a vow of celibacy.

In my hiatus, the folks at WOTC decided they needed to feel better about themselves so they decided to give us another shot at “You Make the Card.” You may remember “You Make the Card” from such powerful wunderkinds as [card]Vanish into Memory[/card] and [card]Forgotten Ancient[/card]. They may have farked up once and let [card]Crucible of Worlds[/card] slip though, but the track record of community built cards is less than stellar at this point. For YMTC 4, the dice were cast, the selections were winnowed, and we eventually ended up with a black enchantment:

“Revenge of Necromancy:

Whenever an opponent discards a creature card, put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token onto the battlefield.
Whenever an opponent discards a land card, add BB to your mana pool.
Whenever an opponent discards a noncreature, nonland card, draw a card.”

Oh wow, what’s that sound? It’s as if millions of unwashed, sweaty voices called out in disappointment and were suddenly silenced. Where to begin? First, the mana cost hasn’t been set. So, let’s look at possible Converted Mana Costs to see what we could be getting:

CMC 1: If this card is going to be what the players want it to be, a “You Make the Card” on the [card]Crucible of Worlds[/card] end of the spectrum and not the “We Let the Magic Community Design a Card and They Designed a Frozen Turd on a Stick” end of the spectrum, it has to cost one black mana. At CMC 1 the card can come down early enough to possibly provide an upside. If this turd is going to be mistaken for a candy bar, it has to be at CMC 1.

CMC 2: Probably not good enough, but maybe, just maybe, there’s a deck for it. At CMC 2, you’re gonna be faced with the “do I play my discard spell on turn 1” dilemma, and most times, it’s going to be correct to play it on turn 1. Obviously, the dream is to run this out on turn 2 and follow it up with something like [card]Blightning[/card] on turn 3. You paid 2 mana in that case to, let’s say… make a creature and draw a card. Congrats on jumping through hoops for a 2 power [card]Elvish Visionary[/card]. If you’re lucky they may still have a card in their hands for you to try to do it next turn.

CMC 3+: I hope you like Turdsicles! At this point, the only way you should ever consider playing this card is if you have some kind of combo deck in mind. Or, we could maybe get an [card]Urza’s Guilt[/card] reprint? You just threw up in the back of your mouth, right? And even then, how many 2/2’s do you have to make, how many cards do you have to draw, and how much extra mana (that you have found a way to use!) do you have to generate to make this CMC 3+ card worthwhile? I mean, unless you manage to force your opponent to draw and discard cards, this is just awful.

Other major issues with the card include:

I can’t stress this enough, when we are given a CMC we’re going to have to determine how many triggers we would need to resolve to make the card worthwhile. Even if it’s only CMC 1, we would need 2 activations to be above the curve, as we can regularly get a 2/2 for 1 mana, or draw a card for a mana.

With many discard spells, your opponent is going to get to choose which card to discard, thereby letting the opponent dictate which mode gets activated. Letting your opponent choose is always the way to win in Magic.

Let’s say you run 4 of these in a deck, to ensure that you get it down as soon as possible. How many discard spells would you need to run to make it relevant? 8? 12? At that point almost a third of your deck is discard or related to discard. What are you going to do when you have a hand full of discard spells against a Loxodon Smiter?

Let’s say the heavens part, the angels descend, the Good Lord Almighty gives you the thumbs up, and you’ve managed to use this enchantment to get a couple 2/2 zombies on the board. But, now your opponent has no hand, is playing off the top, has better cards than you since he has been casting relevant threats instead of jerking off with an enchantment that relies on discard to be good, and this card just sits there. And goodness forbid, you draw another one.

What about the games where this isn’t in your opening hand? So, you play your discard spells. And then you topdeck this. You play it out, only to never draw another discard spell, while it sits there mocking you like a disappointed lover.

What happens when you play an aggro deck and they don’t have a hand after turn 3?

I swear, I think WOTC only breaks out the “You Make the Card” feature when they need to ensure job security or give themselves a major ego boost. I can just see R&D gathered around a table watching the votes pour in, laughing their asses off. “They think designing cards is easy!” We get it guys, your job isn’t as easy as 10,000,000 armchair QBs think it is. Now, can you give us a good black enchantment to make up for this?

In other major, huge, pants-crappingly-unbelievable news, we recently got a rules update. It seems WOTC has decided that Legendary permanents needed a shake-up and Planeswalkers weren’t powerful enough. So, we get new rules for unique permanent interactions. It goes something like this:

This is Bob. Bob has bitch tits, and a [card]Liliana of the Veil[/card] on the board in the Jund mirror match. Bob is slowly putting his number one girl to work, picking apart Jack’s hand and creatures. But, this is Jack’s Incessant Resourcefulness. He topdecks a Liliana of his own, and slams her on the board with all the rage his wee Edward Norton-esque frame can muster. In the olden days, his Liliana world have caused Bob’s girl to go face down, ass up, but now the two Lily’s create a parallel dimension where they can both coexist and MTG flavor actually matters. Jack uses Liliana’s -2 to destroy something beautiful and sends in his dudes. The smoke clears and Bob has nothing but Lily on his side of the board. Jack still has two dude bros and his own Lily. The wurm, as they say, is on the other foot.

But, the Force is with Bob and his pimp hand is strong. He topdecks… another Liliana! It seems Lily Puddin’ has an identical twin! He activates the first Lily to take out one of Jack’s guys (not named [card]Thragtusk[/card]), and then plays the second Lily with the haste of an unfed Meatloaf at dinnertime. Before the rules change this would have been considered the type of play your typical 5-year-old would pull, right before he pees his pants and runs back to mommy crying. Now, Bob’s a baller! He sacrifices the first Lily and activates the -2 on the new Lily to get Jack’s last creature (I am Jack’s Bitter Resentment). In the end, we’re left with two men glaring across the board at each other with a Liliana in play with 1 Loyalty counter.

Flavor wise, this is a huge fail. Huge. Epic. A Legendary failure, if you will. How “Legendary” is a creature/Planeswalker if there can be more than one of them taking place during a battle? Are we prescribing to the “infinite parallel worlds” theory where there are an infinite number of each Planeswalker to call on, and if so, I’M CALLING ON YAWGMOTH, BITCHES. I feel like WOTC took poor Vorthos out back and made him squeal like a pig while praising his purdy mouth.

Gameplay wise… well… yeah, this is good. Really good. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that this will drastically improve gameplay, especially in mirror matches. For example, the Tron and Jund matches in Modern no longer grant a magnitude of value to the person that plays their Planeswalker first. In fact, Tron may devolve into a game of chicken, where the person to play [card]Karn Liberated[/card] first is the biggest loser. Sure, the first time you have an opponent activates [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card] ‘s [card]Brainstorm[/card] ability, pops a fetch land, then plays another JTMS using the Brainstorm ability to find the card he needs… yeah, you’re going to feel justified reaching across the table and throttling him with a bag of dice. I can sympathize.

Or, when you finally draw the card you need to break through a stalemate in Modern, but your opponent casts a second [card]Vendillion Clique[/card] mid-combat, despite having a copy on the board, to ruin your attack. You’re going to want to take someone’s life with a blunt instrument. But, I still think this is good for the game. It diversifies board states in a way that won’t make players feel like the Fist of an Angry Deity has descended on them every time they draw a legend while having a copy in play. And, this gives Planeswalkers a boost in power (not that we needed it). Currently, I’m a fan of these changes, but we’ll see how many people I want to strangle once we actually get to play with them.

Also, there was some weird change where you can sideboard like you do in limited now in constructed, but who cares about that unless you’re playing Mill. And remember, if you’re playing Mill, you’ve already won.

And this pretty much cements that Theros block will be Kamigawa 2.0: Legend Harder With a Vengeance.

Well, that does it for this time. Remember, you can always drop me a question on twitter, @mcplaneswalker. If you want to probe the intricate mysteries of the Planes, or just need to find out what color underwear Jace wears (for science!), I’m more than happy to give you the details.