Riria wrote: ↑3 years ago
(I'm actually not sure yet how to balance sagas in design, so someone let me know pls, not today but tomorrow, if it's okay for a saga to have effects that are individually stronger than the saga's entire mana cost as long as they're delayed on late enough chapters)
Once Upon a Midnight Dreary WUB
Enchantment - Saga (MR)
I - Untap all creatures you control. They gain vigilance until end of turn.
II - Look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in any order. You may shuffle your library. Draw a card.
III - Create Lenore, a legendary 3/3 black Zombie creature token with wither.
IV - Create The Raven, a legendary 2/2 blue and black Bird creature token with flying and "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may discard any number of cards to have that player discard twice that number."
My wild-ass-guess is that this is probably reasonable from a balance perspective. It's essentially two very strong creatures with suspend that cantrip. The fourth chapter is potentially very powerful, but your opponent has 5 turns to prepare for the token getting created and then attacking so I think it might be OK. I think the fact that you don't need to worry about the 2/2 flyer because you already got value out of the card, but your opponent has to worry about not letting it hit them makes it powerful, but this is offset by being annoying to cast and also getting worse the longer you have to wait to cast it.
The thing that concerns me more is the complexity. I don't know exactly what your intentions are with this card, but a 4 chapter saga, with 2 that have relatively unique effects is a bit of information overload, and even for the first chapter, while it isn't very complex, adds a bit more complexity than is necessary. I would definitely make chapter 1 either just give your creatures vigilance or untap them (this won't actually be a meaningful difference in most games anyway), and chapter 2 be
Preordain instead of
Ponder, juts because scry is something where players don't have to remember how it works. For the raven's ability, personally I would simplify it - I'd just make it when it deals combat damage to a player, that player discards a card. If you're trying to go with that ability to make it more flavorful, that might be a fine tradeoff as long as chapters 1 and 2 are less unnecessarily complex. Personally if I was going to make an effect that unique and out-there, I'd put it on a normal creature instead of inside of a saga.
For Sale: Boots of +2 intellect. Never worn.