I think timestream accelerator is accelerating the life of the creature, aging them super quickly, hence why they "die of age counters" in a few turns.

I really liked the discussion about Learn From The Enemy because it's exactly everything that went through my mind when i designed it

My suggestion for "make the checkmate harder to set up and more flavorful" - isn't "being the Monarch" a pre-existing mechanic? If so, to use the Pawn/Queen you would have to build a deck such that you could make your opponent the Monarch (i.e. the king) and change the Queen's text to "When this creature deals damage to a player, if that player is the Monarch, they lose the game"? XD

I interpreted the Timestream Accelerator as 'aging' all creatures, thus costing mana to keep them alive and going.

they gave us time in the beginning to think about life

23:33 Shrödingers box having hideaway I think is very flavourful. Just because we usually see a mechanic used in a cycle doesn't mean it can't be changed. Also, there are 2 cards with Hideaway that aren't part of any cycles. Smugglers Buggy from the New Capenna Commander decks and the blue 2-mana wizard from Modern Horizons 1.

For the "pawn to queen" card, you could just make it level up. Pay some mana into the 'pawn', maybe call the level up mechanic "traverse the board" instead or something, some number of times, and then it becomes the "queen" at max 'level'.

Actually, there is a magic card that works similarly to Xero, Failed Lich: B.O.B. (Bevy of Beebles). It says "the loyalty of Bob is equal to the number of beebles you control (Create or sacrifice a beeble whenever it gains or loses loyalty.)" It's a silver-bordered card so the rules are a bit wonky but they actually made rules for the card.

Timestream accelerator is a great card, imagine a commander game where your opponent has 30 token creatures, you aren't wiping them, they can still keep them or block with them until their turn but they are going to have 0 mana and basically a board wipe every turn. Someone with just their commander out (so likely behind) is going to have a small set back. It's a great way to level the battlefield without razing it all.

The Queen card is interesting because it doesn't win on damage, only if it can't be blocked. Even if you can block, you don't have too. Which they didn't touch on, but makes it not as strong as phage.

For Awaited Arrival, what if it transformed instead of saccing? Cast what you wanted to cast, then it flips into some aide/lieutenant/bodyguard to the card you wanted to cast, since it telegraphs what that card is. Maybe a 2/2 vigilance that draws on etb or something (instead of the sac/draw), so it can always defend the walker etc.

The last stand makes sense as mono-red because its a legendary sorcery and has more opportunity to flex the color pie and its really an iconic plot-point card. Edit: also looking at the original card, which was a 4/4, I think the +4/+4 is in homage to Mr. Minotaur's stats....maybe change the mana cost?

Ive got a fix for the pawn. Its a Battle called the chessboard. When it enters make a pawn token. When the Battle loses all its counters, you transform it into the queen, but when you cast the queen you have to sacrifice a creature token.

I could also definitely see the pawn and queen card being printed with some minor adjustments in an Eldraine set as a magically animated chess piece. Or maybe an artifact that makes chess piece tokens. A very Eldraine-y design 19:10

Awaited Arrival is a reversed Curse of Silence that is nicely balance. Well done card.

Maybe awaited arrival could transform as soon as you cast the named spell into another entchantment called something like "welcome celebrations" that gives you maybe an extra card drawn or a food token each of your turns for as long as you control the named card.

One thing you overlooked with Awaited Arrival - What if your opponent is playing the card you name? It says "Spells with the chosen name cost 1 less to cast for each wait counter..." So your opponent could take advantage of the discount.

8:49 I’m pretty sure it’s the creatures that are being accelerated. It’s just not in this case, the comunitive upkeep respents rapid aging. Think like 1 second equal one day , then next turn one day equal 1 second equal 1 year, and then this process keeps on repeating itself, until they die of old age.

Glad you liked the card! Some additional design notes: I wanted to make a card designed for commander that works both "face-up" if you play it on a big stompy creature, or as a really mean finisher when combined with deathtouch + an indestructible/protection effect. However, there are no legendary creatures in RG that have deathtouch, so the RG color identity means you have to put in a bit of extra work to get there. Also, if you want to save your creature, you could target one of your opponents' creatures that has high toughness or indestructible so that your creature stops fighting. I like that Thoralf caught the reference to the old Tahngarth card with the fight effect. iirc we don't get to see Tahngarth die in the story, but if Tahngarth did die I imagine he would go down swinging.

I think Awaited Arrival is a cool card. It feels like it blurs the colorpie a fair amount, but if it is a high profile Rare, I couls see it working well as a riff on both that old Azorius mechanic that revealed your cards for benefits (letting people know your plans), as well as an opposite of the Elite Spellbinder effect: instead of causing one of their cards to cost more, you make one of yours cheaper. I could see it also gaining 1 life per Waiting Counter on it as well - amplifying the benefit of having to wait a long time, just like how much relief you feel when the one you're waiting for *finally* arrives.

I would love if this became a weekly series, this is awesome! It would also be cool if down the road there was a gameplay video somehow playing with the custom cards reviewed so far.

I think basically all the problems (except color) with Tahngarth's Last Stand can be solved by removing "you don't control" from it. It's a bit of a flavour loss, I agree, but the point is that, if the creature beats everything on the board, it will eventually have to fight itself, and it's very unlikely to survive that. (A creature that fights itself deals damage to itself equal to twice its power.)

Honestly an entire set themed around a fantasy chess war would be so cool

Ayako is almost assuredly someone's personal Circle of the Wildfire Druid and Natsu is their Wildfire Spirit. The abilities are all pretty good mirrors for Circle of the Wildfire's actual abilities.

Ayako is a kind of mirror image of an existing card from NEO: Tatsunari, Toad Rider. He also creates a token if you don't have one whenever something happens, and that token has an ability triggering on additional instances of the same event. Tatsunari works with enchantments, Ayako does so with instants and sorceries. Also, Hideaway doesn't always appear in cycles: there is Watcher for Tomorrow.

My 2 cents for the Pawn/Queen card: Have the Pawn only be able to attack if the opponent has a tapped board. If you want to make it to the "end of the board" and get your 5 counters, you wouldn't ever want to advance your piece into a dangerous boardstate. Then, it can flip with a triggered ability to become Queen.

The Graveyard Gargoyle really should have had flying or a means to get a flying counter. Tahngarth's Last Stand is insane with the old phantom creatures like Phantom Centaur.

Joist Knight looks like "please let combat trick tribal be a real deck" the card. It wants you to cast those 1R and 1W cards for hlf the cost to beef up the knight, but I agree it doesn't really work

I would have gone in a totally different direction for the Queen's ability. Something to capture the idea that a queen can easily move to threaten other pieces on the board, so something like: _Check_ - T: Choose target creature an opponent controls. Until your next turn, it gains "At the beginning of your end step, if this creature is untapped, sacrifice this creature." Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.

Xero's drawback is it can get attacked to reduce it's owner's number of creatures, for example a simple Lightning Bolt at Xero could potentially take out three 15/15s due to Xero's effects which does somewhat justify Xero's cost (should still be 4 mana though). Or maybe the opponent responsible for the loyalty loss gets to choose the creature, creating enough risk to justify the 1 mana cost. Also I would've had the abilities reduce loyalty counters to create some cool play with sacrificing your own creatures for effects such as life gain and creating mana which'd fit the lich theme better imo

I would go with the king token that loses when it is dealt damage by the queen, and give the queen "queen must be blocked if able"t

35:18 Maybe from a balance perspective it would be better to make the card more powerful with like +6/+6, BUT this is clearly a flavorful throwback card, and the original Tahngarth is a 4/4, so it makes sense that like your Legend is channeling the spirit of Tahngarth and fighting every enemy in sight.

I love the idea of a Pawn Card. And it dosnt need to be a UN-set card. It could be in a set like wilds of eldraine. I would fix it by making it cost 1 black mana, artifact creature, 1/1, NO haste, it cant attack unless defending player controls untaped creature, if it inflicts combat damage -> transform into 2/2 queen, artifact creature, if it inflicts combat damadge to a player, that player loses the game. Queen could have vigilance and have the same clause that she can't attack unless defending player controls a untapped creature. This way you have to use other cards to set up "checkmate" like rogues passage or some sorceries or instants. Making it a Non-legendary artifact creature makes it so you can have multiple chess pieces on board. I would even make it have a line "tour deck can have up to 8 cards named pawn" Maybe even make them two separate cards and make pawn "if this creature deals combat damage to a player, sacrifice it and bring Queen from graveyard/outside the game into play/hand" But even then it costing 1 or 2 mana, its still better than frodo for who you need to be tempted 4 times and sink a bunch of mana to get the win con

For "Tahngarth's Last Stand" I feel like giving target legendary creature (+4/+4) [for each opponent] might be a good way to balance it for EDH play.

Thanks for doing these! It's always fun to look at other people's designs, even when yours don't get picked. I've still got a mixture of super clean cards that I'm surprised don't exist yet & rather dubious, but spicy ones for the next time you do this.

Guys video starts 38 seconds with just silent darkness

I think timestream accelerator was miss judged. I think the idea is that you only play that creature and it slows down your aggro opponents who now have to pay to keep their creatures, giving you time to turn the corner and take over with a slower game plan.

I think you'd want to be careful making Tahngarth's Last Stand too big, because if the creature survives its rampage you'll be double-dipping on the buff, both wiping the opponent's board and hitting their face for massive damage.

I've been looking forward to this video. Although the card I linked in your community post didn't get talked about, I'll still say I think your analysis of these cards is pretty good. Thanks for taking a look at people's ideas.

Maybe the Pawn becomes a planeswalker Queen who then needs to build loyalty in order to execute the checkmate? That way you have the part of creating a chain of events that leads to it, while also protecting it from the enemy until the moment when the pressure it creates leads to your victory.

Awaited Arrival would be a pretty sweet card, especially in white that doesn't have the best card draw, or the same kind mana acceleration that other colors have access to while simultaneously having alot of expensive cards. For example look at basically any Angel costing 7 to just be a 3/3 or something.

I have one criticism about the flavor of Graveyard Gargoyle. This might just be me, but I generally think of gargoyles as being protective in some way. So the name Graveyard Gargoyle seems to imply that it would be protecting the graveyard from stuff. As it stands I think that the card would make more sense as like a grave robber or something

The Art of the „Timestream Accelerator“ ist amazing! I want to play it, just because it looks so cool. 😁

I love these videos, looking forward to many more in the future!

I didn't think I'd be that interested in this video, but I'm so glad I watched it. It's amazing the creativity and effort that was put into the various cards. I enjoyed the commentary and it inspires me to maybe try my hand at making a custom card, while also making me appreciate how difficult it is. Lastly, sometimes I fear that the ability and creativity to keep making interesting magic cards will dry up, but this gives me hope that there's still lots of variety left.

For whoever made that human token during the Awaited Arrival discussion, amazing! The picture and the quote are both relevant to the design of the card in question, very cool!

Here's my cool card idea, based around the idea that Backup can target enemy creatures: Saiba Disruptor Cost: 2U P/T: 2/2 Flash, Backup 1, Shroud

Love this video series. Seeing the custom cards is fun and i feel like I learn more about Magic from yhe discussion.

36 min Cardmarket Video... now the evening is perfect❤

Always fun and interesting to see you guys review cards

6:34 THANK YOU for introducing me to the artist Hannah Santos!

Hey! Pawn//The Queen is my card! This was awesome to see discussed and love all the comments so far. ❤ Toralf was right about why it has haste (2 moves 1st turn)... can only attack is opponent has a tapped creature was supposed to represent a diagonal attack. I thought that plus it being a 1/1 would make it hard enough to tranform. I don't even remember why i made it (it was a couple years ago) I thought the queen not being able to be blocked was flavorful (a checkmate doesnt need to take out the king to win the game, just has to be able to show it can get there) and also harder to get to then just dealing damage (maybe.) Would definitely do it differently now but I'll leave that up to everyone’s imaginations. P.S. Love Brian's King version of the drawing! 👑

For the pawn/queen thing how about this: Queen's Pawn 1WB 2/2 Vigilance ETB you become the monarch. As long as you are the Monarch, Queen's Pawn has haste. When Queen's Pawn deals combat damage to the Monarch, flip Queen's Pawn. Backside: Queen of Crowns 6/5 Trample If Queen of Crowns deals combat damage to the Monarch, they lose the game.

Completely agree with Thoful on the Pawn having Haste. As soon as I saw it I thought "makes sense, it's a nod to pawns getting a double move to begin"

nice, more custom magic cards! thanks for rating them, cardmarket magic!

9:17 I thought it was accelerating time so that the creatures would age rapidly, fading into nothingness before too long.

Great video! It's really cool having two different takes on card says well because it really does matter what format and just draws different opinions. Also the one mana knight that kills other mana dorks would definitely be a mythic 😁

All Timestream Accelerator needs is one line of rules text, and one line of flavor to be a 10/10. "When Timestream Accelerator leaves the battlefield, sacrifice all creatures with 3 or more Age Counters." Flavor: "The quicker time goes, the faster they fall."

That last one, is a banger. Like the gang said make it red...id like to add, its screaming out for split second.

Aw man I missed it. That was my main reason for subscribing D: Always love these videos :D

10:00 - It me! Hahaha, yeah, all of your comments are the same that I received when I posted it on /r/custommagic. I have since improved the card, but I wanted to submit the original design because I thought it would be better for the video. The challenge was to design a 1-MV Planeswalker. The flavour is that she sparked trying to become a Lich. Thanks for featuring my card!

Wasn't Tahngarth given a new printing in a commander deck that was red green?

Awaited arrival is awesome! Would love that in many edh decks (elesh norn, Tivit, anything that costs 5+)

Awaited Arrival could make the named spell uncounterable: that could be quite good. Could be nice as an enabler to a control finisher.

The art on pawn/Queen is amazing

i think you forgot the intro

I think Joist Knight (Champion of the Lists?) maybe should have picked slices Provoke and Raid, as opposed to the whole keyword? If its abilities were: When Joist Knight attacks alone, it gains indestructible until end of turn. When Joist Knight attacks, add (1) to your mana pool. You may have target creature defending player controls block it if able.

Definitely having to change the board state to be a specific amount of tapped and untapped creatures would be really cool.

I think you guys didn't quite understand Tahngarth's Last Stand cause the legendary creature gets the effect of when it kills something to fight something else but also on resolution of the card he gets to fight something,nonethless loved the vid keep up the great mtg content😄

I find the pawn kinda interesting with the Queen part. I see two things with what you said, thinking about the king token before you said it too! -First would be transforming at the end of combat, if opponent end up with something like 4hp or less. The Queen the other side would be really similar with winning the game if it connects. The transformation actually would make lifegain useless once the queen is here. -Second was having the king, but it has to be damaged by a chess piece to make it's controler loose the game (balance has to be made for that token)

I think with the Queen card its if an opponent is UNABLE to block (not that they die from combat damage), so you do have to engineer a bit more of a complex board state (though attacking an empty board will still work the same).

Timestream Accelerator accelerates the timestream. Creatures that normally live for a long time will grow old and die in what we perceive as a short amount of time. Makes sense to me. If you want it to work more evenly across the board, it gets a counter during your upkeep. In each player's upkeep, for each creature that player controls they pay X or sacrifice it. That sucks though because it basically turns off your ability to play creatures until he leaves the battlefield. At least the way it's written, you can play your powerful creature when TSA has 5 counters on it and be pretty confident that it won't be around for that many more turns, so you probably won't have to upkeep your new creature that much. However, I would add "When TSA leaves the battlefield, remove all age counters from all creatures." to clean up the board state. That also prevents the player from flickering TSA to remove its own counters while leaving everyone else's. I think to make Xero work as a PW it would a bit more wordy. You could have it ETB with counters equal to the number of creatures you control and increase or decrease when creature ETB and LTB, but what if you steal a creature from another player? What if another player steals a creature from you? What if another permanent you control becomes a creature? What if a creature you control stops being a creature? Do we add more lines of text to iron out those situations? How long until we have an undecipherable wall of text to make sure every case is covered? A clever idea, but a rules nightmare. Not worth the hassle, imo.

I liked the video a lot, maybe a question that could be added for next time, its what kind of set they would print this on. (Commander product or core set)

For Tahngarth's Last Stand, that effect is very difficult to word in a sensible or shortened way. Maybe change the text given to the card to: "When a creature dies to this one, have this creature fight another target creature you don't control." I think something like that might work. Additionally, if the point really is as a last stand and you don't want it surviving after all the fighting, you could also add some text that says "this creature is exiled at the beginning of the next end step"

The last card discussed would be sweet with Rhonas. :D

Pawn/queen could be the new battle type with protection from non-chess type creatures. On etb create the pawn and when flipped creates the queen and another battle that is the king and only has 1 counter on it.

I love the flavor of "When my Awaited Arrival enters the battlefield, I will name Emrakul, the Promised End." You're actually PROMISING your opponent's End with Emrakul, and making them dread when it comes out.

For the chess piece I would do have the front side etb give your opponent a king that is a middling creature (like a 4/4 with hexproof against non-chess pieces lol) that says "when this would dies you lose the game". Snd then I'd give the queen side an ability like "when this attacks target creature gets -4/-4 until end of turn". That way the game revolves around killing/defending the king, and using the queen to do it

For the colour flavour on Tahngarth's Last Stand. There is some precedent, one of the 2019 commander decks included a new legendary creature of Tahngarth, called Tahngarth, First mate, which was red and green.

I love Awaited Arrival, Gravestone Gargoyle, and Tahngarth's Last Stand. Super fun and flavorful.

I maintain that cumulative upkeep is a good mechanic that has not been explored properly. Braids of Fire and Herald of Leshrac show such potential and I love Timestream Accelerator for showing another use for it.

I actually like the Pawn /Queen thingy, especially the haste being an adapted mechanic from Chess. As it stands as a Phage the Untouchable with extra steps isn't super great, but the idea of an archetype of several Chess related cards would be pretty cool, and they build up to a win the game scenario. Also Checkmate isn't a bad keyword either, although extremely rare there have been several cards printed that say when they deal combat damage to a player, that player loses the game, that a keyword might be a good idea to simplify things. Additionally with a name like Checkmate it's pretty intuitive that it's a win the game ability.

Xero is like a Beebles walker but in a different color and not entirely hashed out yet. That being said, I really like the card for the options it has and the loyalty static. I could see it being an enchantment with once per turn effects that can be dealt damage like a creature or walker to remove loyalty but Beebles was so complex that it wasn't reasonable in a normal game of magic.

I really like the custom cards at 0:00 to 0:36 Those should be real ones!

Haha the art of the 'Pawn' Made me laugh. Not in a mean way, but because I like it 😂

I can see a Pawn/Queen card (with different mechanics) being made in a premier set. It doesn't have to be literal chess pieces, the front side can be a soldier and the back side is the queen

8:15 I think the intent is more 'time's speeding up so they age super quickly'

Wrt Pawn/Queen: Keep the idea of the Pawn needing to successfully deal combat damage once (no haste & no attack restriction), but the Queen draws you a card at the start of each turn - conditional Phyrexian Arena is already costed at 2 mana, and it'd be a nice wink to the Monarchy mechanic.

As someone who spent their life working in philosophy and physics, i love Schrodinger's box. Always wanted to make a custom vs deck with plato v nietzsche. Plato being UW and Nirtzsche being BR

For awaited arrival it would be thematic to give you a treasure, like a spouse bringing home jewelry after a trip

King: has protection from everything except queens. Cant attack. Must block if able. Queen: summons king token for opponent and has deathtouch.

More of these videos please :)

I think awaited arrival should flip when you cast the named card into an enchantment that gives the named card 'Ward 2'. That way it gives you a strong reward for casting that named card

The first card I would make 4 and a phyrexian, and put it into commander. Also, studying the opponents after their first loss is pretty flavourful

Tinestream Accelerator seems fun for commander. In constructed though it seems way too powerful. After one dies, you play another, the counters staying on the other creatures suddenly just makes things crazy. Counting on the creature itself is a great fix idea in my opinion. Really cool concept either way.

Schrodinger's Box feels like a perfect Arena card. I havent played in a while, so I forget the keyword, but you conjure or whatever from a spellbook of overpowered cards so neither player knows and it can be high impact.

Pawn and Queen: We could change pawn 1/1 to "Haste. Whenever pawn attacks put a space counter on it. If it entered the battlefield this turn, put 2 on it instead. (Since pawns can move 2 the first turn) Whenever pawn has 6 or more space counters on it, promote it. (It takes pawn 6 spaces to reach the other end of the board in chess and then promote could be a key word for the set) I was also thinking maybe we could make pawn a 1/8 with the same text, but pawn takes damage in the form of -0/-1 counters, since you have 8 pawns in chess and they often die. Promote: A promoted creature has base power and toughness 4 and vigilance. Whenever a promoted creature attacks or blocks, choose one -Move Forward - This creature gets +3/+0 until end of turn. (Choose only if this creature attacked this turn? Maybe? But if promote is the whole point of the set, then maybe it's fine to able to choose this one when blocking also) -Move Diagonal Forward - This creature gets +2/+1 until end of turn. -Move Diagonal Backwards - This creature gets +1/+2 until end of turn. -Move Backwards - This creature gets +0/+3 until end of turn. (And like with the move forward mode, maybe we should be able to choose this when attacking, maybe not) That's my pawn fix and flavor for it. I was also thinking maybe promote could be something else entirely and be much more powerful than +x/+x modes, and we could have queen, bishop, rook, knight, pawn, and king tokens, like wicked role or monstrous tokens, with various +x/+x modes and other key words or abilities.

I imagine the pawn / queen card working a bit like Coalition Victory, maybe with other chess themed cards required. Like if "If you control a pawn, knight, rook, and bishop, you win the game", and maybe make it so you have either multiple pawn to other piece two sides or have pawns able to become other pieces via creating tokens. It's not perfect, but you could bring in a bunch of other chess themed ideas, like the rook being able to redirect spells to itself (like castling in chess) or the knight being unblockable or requiring multiple creatures to be blocked. Regardless, it'd be clunky to pull off.

5:40 It's even more powerful than you're thinking. Provoke untaps the opponent's creature.

Great video!