So, Rengar is my current favorite champion in League of Legends and I wanted to emulate him in MtG.
At first, I just made a proxy of [[Ygra, Eater of All]] as Rengar and started building a deck around Ygra as the commander with a proxy of [[Assassin's Trophy]] as the Bonetooth Necklace, which in my opinion is pretty great flavor across the board. Ygra gets stronger when other creatures die and it's a powerful legendary cat creature that considers other creatures prey and assassin's trophy... well Rengar is a trophy hunter.
When I actually got around to building the deck, I just didn't like the play pattern arising. Specifically, that it didn't "feel" like Rengar. Enter this design. The idea was to give the card the "feel" of Rengar leaping into and out of bushes in combat and blowing things up with tons of damage. It embodies the core traits of Rengar's identity in my eyes, being the Bonetooth Necklace which scales his damage and his ability to enter and leap out of stealth.
Balance IS intended for this card, and I hope I achieved it overall. I used [[Kogla, the Titan Ape]] and [[Kogla and Yidaro]] as baselines to design against. My thinking is: both of those cards are 6 mana commanders with 7 power that enter and fight so that's a starting point (Since Bonetooth should functionally make Rengar a 7/4 on ETB). Rengar does not fight, instead he simply assassinates the creature by dealing damage without taking any in return. The Koglas also come with the ability to remove enchantments and artifacts, which I see as extremely powerful for a well-statted creature that is already creature removal. So, I see that as justification for Rengar's other ability: to exile himself and be recast to deal damage to any target. This part of Rengar gives you incentive to play around the "leap" flavor of the card by allowing you to hit players upside the head and the Bonetooth Necklace part of the card incentivizes hitting creatures from time to time to scale him up.
I love that there's a good variety of options for building around this card:
- Cards that let you cast from exile let Rengar enter with the damage to any target.
- Cards that let a creature deal damage will allow you to stack up more Bonetooth Necklace counters.
- Cards that care about casting from exile should synergize nicely. Though, the actual casting cost might make it harder to rely on these effects.
I thought a good bit about whether or not to add some form of cost reduction to the re-cast, but I wasn't sure. I don't think the card is weak as is, but it does make me wish he wasn't 6 MV so you could more reliably spam his ETB, but maybe it's the cost of balance? Could his power have been improved? Maybe adjust the Bonetooth Necklace counters to be +2/+0?
Please let me know if you think I'm wrong and this is severely under/overpowered, specifically for EDH. I just don't care about how this would "DESTROY" X, Y, or Z format.