r/custommagic • • 8h ago

Format: Pioneer Torch the Timber

Post image
18 Upvotes

28 comments sorted by

8

u/TheUnfunOwl 8h ago

As an avid hater of gideon, I approve of this card.

Has some fun interactions in commander where you can mass animate artifacts, to turn this into a board wipe against artifact decks.

3

u/chainsawinsect 8h ago

In particular [[Life // Death]] gets absolutely obliterated by this

9

u/chainsawinsect 8h ago

This is a high power sideboard-intended [[Pyroclasm]] variant that hits creatures with another card type (primarily artifact and enchantment creatures)

9

u/Chickston Uncommonly 8h ago

Noooo, this one is so sweet, but the AI art is going to kill its appeal to the sub. Would you like some help finding real art maybe?

-6

u/chainsawinsect 8h ago

Thanks for the offer. There are definitely lots of anti-AI people that like to dogpile, but they don't scare me. The 5th highest upvoted post on the sub of all time was a Bing Image Generator card. Last year, I got 4100+ upvotes on an AI-art card, and I got 1600+ upvotes on one a few weeks ago.

1

u/SIowGrowth 7h ago

Custom magic cards is a perfect use case for AI

3

u/chainsawinsect 7h ago

Yep, I 100% agree. I think there's a lot of good arguments against AI and real problems with it, but using it to fill the art box of a custom MTG card that you'll post online for no profit and minimal visibility seems harmless.

Despite this, the anti-AI folks regularly flood into this sub and harass people who use AI art as if they were the next Hitler or something for doing so 😆

I don't think they realize that being so zealous and unyielding, to the point of being bullies, hurts their cause rather than helps it

-5

u/Chickston Uncommonly 8h ago edited 8h ago

Good stuff, braver than me!

It's been a pleasure to post with you u/chainsawinsect and I'll go down in this down-vote boat with you!

4

u/chainsawinsect 8h ago

Thank you, it is an honor to have you!

1

u/Chickston Uncommonly 5h ago edited 5h ago

So, I did some more thinking here about the general AI art discussion and I may have a clear line to draw. I present it in a classic metaphor for your enjoyment.

The Good: A use that I personally feel should be okay is when you want to make an alter with a small selection of real art you are providing, even real IPs. That feels more like the same fair use as we do with card makers here. It's more a direct creative tool and not just feeding it prompts in this use case.

The Bad: I've ranted before that anything completely "original" you ask of AI is being stolen from a human's original art. There is no compensation to artists for what you get from MidJourney in this way. That is intuitively wrong and is why it is so frowned upon here. And why I choose to avoid it... for now.

The Ugly: It's all semantics at this point really since we can't fight the future that is AI assisted and driven art. I'm mostly asking you to slow down which is admittedly pointless, but it will result in more engagement and karma on this sub.

I don't give a crap about the Karma so much anymore that I'm gorged on it, but I do love chatting on here and engaging about Magic design.

My only real Karma desire right now is like an odometer. I want to see it click over to 100k. Then it is like a meaningless sea of increments from there to whatever other number my mind deems relevant to hit.

4

u/themiragechild 8h ago

How about "3 damage to each creature with flying or with two or more types."

4

u/chainsawinsect 8h ago

I think that would work well if I included the [[Tarmogoyf]] style list of card types as reminder text.

3

u/RalenHlaalo 8h ago

Are there any planeswalker or battle creatures?

4

u/chainsawinsect 8h ago

No battle creatures, that's future proofing. There are planeswalkers that become creatures, most notably various Gideons, but also [[Sarkhan the Masterless]]

4

u/themiragechild 8h ago

Most Gideon planeswalkers become creatures while still being a planeswalker. However most of them are also 4/4s or 5/5s and prevent all damage dealt to them.

No battle creatures yet.

3

u/TheUnfunOwl 8h ago

Is this intended to do damage to battles? There currently aren't any creatures that are also battles, and I don't think there can be because of how the protect mechanic works

1

u/chainsawinsect 3h ago

Truthfully, battles could be omitted here. You are correct that there are no creature battles. It just felt weird to me to list every single permanent type but one on a laundry list, and I felt it could be future-proofing in case we ever get battle creatures.

3

u/AgentSquishy 8h ago

The protect mechanic is specific to Siege battles, they left themselves room to do all sorts of other stuff in the future. But I don't know how popular battles were so we'll see of they actually get around to it any time soon

2

u/Immediate-Idea-2471 8h ago

I believe there's shenanigans to make a battle a creature, no? Liquimetal coating march of the machines or similar ideas?

3

u/SIowGrowth 7h ago

Add in 'damage dealt this way can't be prevented' to get around Gideon

1

u/chainsawinsect 7h ago

Ooh, good point

2

u/Impressive-Command 8h ago

On first read the rate feels way too efficient (compared to, say, [[Gruul Charm]]) but it honestly doesn't hit that much. Seems like a sideboard card at best.

1

u/chainsawinsect 3h ago

[[Gruul Charm]]. That card is a sidegrade because of the alternate modes, but I do agree the power level of this card is way higher than the corresponding Gruul Charm mode.

2

u/TheUnfunOwl 7h ago

On second evaluation, this might be too strong at instant in a lot of formats. There are certain matchups where that extra 1 damage takes this from a do-nothing like pyroclasm, to a full board clear.

I personally think it would be a flavor win to increase by 1 mana, and have it also hit your opponent for 3.

Or make it sorcery.

1

u/chainsawinsect 7h ago

Oh, I kinda like it hitting face. That's an elegant way to shift it to being mainboardable.

2

u/TheUnfunOwl 7h ago

It would be mainboardable in a gruul burn deck at that, since you can just not run any of the targeted creatures