Comments on: Crash Test Magic — Gallows Road

By: Ed Grabianowski

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:01:15 +0000

You’re right about Hexmage and similar creatures. At best, you can use the Gallows Road before you do something that your opponent would want to use the Hexmage on. Say you’ve got Beastmaster Ascension out, you use Gallows Road before combat on a Hexmage. Now your opponent has to decide if he wants to sac it now to remove the counters, or next turn. At best it makes things slightly awkward for your opponent, but it’s clearly not the best use of the card.

By: ggodo

ggodo — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:49:52 +0000

The first part of that comment was directed at creatures with sacrifice abilities. Gallows road won’t stop you from sacrificing you Vampire Hexmage because it can sacrifice as a cost, which happens before the ability hits the stack, so it’s already dead before you can target it. I wasn’t sure about the upkeep thing though, it hasn’t come up often enough in my playing to know the timing for that,

By: Ed Grabianowski

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:18:54 +0000

Yes, you can activate abilities during Upkeep. You wait for the the Call to the Grave trigger (or Anowon, the Ruin Sage or Eldrazi Monument) to go on the stack, then activate Gallows Road in response. Sacrifice choices are made on resolution, not on activation/triggering, so this works.

By: ggodo

ggodo — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:03:10 +0000

The trick to this would be the timing and the use. if timed wrong all it means is the creature gets sacrificed in response. Can you activate abilities during the upkeep? if not that seriously lowers the usefulness of this card with respect to call to the grave. other than that it’s a pretty good thing there.

By: Gavin O'Brien

Gavin O'Brien — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:51:09 +0000

Works now.

By: Ed Grabianowski

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:19:38 +0000

Is it fixed now? There was an update to the plugin.

By: Gavin O'Brien

Gavin O'Brien — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:03:42 +0000

I understood how the card could be used when I saw it. Based on your description after, I don’t think there was any confusion on my part.

The popups aren’t working for me, Ed. I have to click and it takes me to a page with just the card.

By: Ed Grabianowski

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:58:59 +0000

Question: are you guys getting the pop-up graphic showing the cards when you mouseover the card names? Or do you have to click the link to see the card?

By: Ed Grabianowski

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:58:16 +0000

Regarding the templating:

I guess I just don’t get the obviousness thing. It seems really clear to me, but of course, since I created it I knew what I had in mind to begin with. So I’m not saying there isn’t an issue with people understanding what it does, I just can’t quite grasp how someone could see this and not “get it.” I’d like to hear what Gavin thinks, because he understands Magic’s rules but is a relatively new player – Gavin, I’m curious if this card’s implications were clear to you before you read the article.

Making it work like Tajuru Preserver is interesting, and not a bad design by any means, but it’s definitely not a black card at that point. It also suffers from being…well, too similar to Tajuru Preserver.

By: Ed Grabianowski

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:53:48 +0000

Robbit! Always good to have your opinions on these.

Well, we’re looking at two different issues here. First, legendaryism vs. balance. You’re right, I don’t really like it as a legendary land. I’m not really sure it needs a drawback to be non-legendary, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that it does. How about:

“Gallows Road comes into play tapped, and does not untap during your Untap Step.”
Then…
“Sacrifice a creature: Untap Gallows Road.”

On one hand, that seems to make it much weaker for its original purpose and likely an uncommon rather than a rare. Except…it makes it into a combo card, and allows you to power into huge Consume Spirits relatively early using Eldrazi Spawn generators. So that’s kind of interesting, but probably too wordy in any case. A much simpler drawback is that it CipT unless you sac a creature as it comes into play.

By: robbit

robbit — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:30:43 +0000

The drawback of being a legendary land sucks in gameplay. You have to ask “got any Gallows Road?” every time you play the land. Even MaRo admits that the legendary lands from Kamigawa were not that great of a design. I would argue for it being nonlegendary, and giving it some other drawback, like lifeloss or coming into play tapped. Or conditional coming into play tapped! What if it said “Gallows Road comes into play tapped unless you sacrificed a creature since the end of your last turn.” Or if you don’t make it follow Tajuru Preserver’s template, you can make it say “anyone” rather than “you.”

The template is clean, but hard to balance. There is also the obviousness problem. Most people won’t get that it stops you from choosing the creature for sacrifice choices, and it was not obvious to me at first either. There are a number of things that make you sacrifice your own stuff that Taiuru Preserver does not interact with for good reason. You might want to change it to his template for sanity’s sake, and say “Choose target creature. Spells or abilities your opponents control can’t cause you to sacrifice that creature this turn.”