Squirrel Girl, The Nuts
Cost: 1
1/1

Activate -> Name two different army character cards. Reveal the top four cards of your deck. If both of the named cards are revealed, put all copies of the named cards into your hand. Put all remaining cards on the bottom of your deck in any order.

"She really is, isn't she?"

No, no, no, Stu... Squirrel Girl needs to introduce the counter concept.

Backup: Activate -> Put the top two cards of your deck into your front row face-down. They are characters named "Squirrel" with the version "Army", a cost of 1, an ATK of 1, and a DEF of 1. Each Squirrel has, "Whenever Squirrel would become stunned, instead, lose 1 END and remove it from the game."

I'm not sure if you can cause game problems there by trying to stun them to pay a cost, but that'd be an interesting solution to the problem of not having enough Army characters. ^_^

Damn. That's even better.

It would be tricky though. When they change zones, don't they check themselves? Like, how would it work with Zazzala 3?

Of course, we could just make new rules for token characters like that. They could retain their characteristics when they change zones.

I love it.

I actually think they'd cooperate with the rules fine, except for the assumption that all face-down characters are stunned and vice versa. The main thing I'd do at UDE is add in some keywording or templating so that the 'token stun problem' can be handled without taking up too much space. I just realized that Only Human would destroy the game with this sort of card as I wrote the effect above. A special templating for 'token' characters and how their stun-replacing event occurs would solve that and clean up space.

So...

Token characters:

Some effects use face-down cards to create token characters. These characters come into play unstunned and ready (even though their card is face-down). A token character's traits and values set as it comes into play are treated as its printed traits and values.

Whenever a token character would become stunned, instead, remove it from the game. Its controller loses END equal to its cost.
* If a token character with invulnerability or some other effect that modifies the END loss taken when this character would be stunned, it applies to the END loss taken when it is removed from the game.
* Effects that trigger off of a character becoming stunned trigger when a token character leaves play due to the stun replacement effect.

Whenever a token character would leave play, instead, remove it from the game.
* Effects that would retrieve the token character (Bodyslide, Fifth Dimension) fail to find the token character, as its card is turned face-up as it leaves play.

So we can clean up the text box from before:

Activate -> Put the top two cards of your deck into your front row face-down as token characters named "Squirrel" with the version "Army", [some affiliation], (visible symbol), cost 1, ATK 1, and DEF 1.

There. That creates more room for extra costs and other powers, as well as stopping the 'Only Human' problem.

Brood Idea time!

(Activate), Exhaust a (Brood Icon) character you control -> Put the top card of your deck into your front or support row face down as a token character named "Brood Swarm" with the version "Army", (Brood Icon), (Visible Icon), cost 2, ATK 3, DEF 2, and range. It has, "When Brood Spawn is removed from the game, you may pay 4 END. If you do, put the card removed from the game this way into your hand."

I doubt that'd fit on a card, but it should be pretty close.

Why not just have proper Squirrel tokens a la creature tokens from Magic? That would get rid of the face-down problem, but make it slightly harder to generate counters on-the-fly at a pre-release etc.... Unless you have them as the participation prizes?

If you did, you could cut the text down to:

Activate -> Put two 1/1 (visible symbol) (affiliation) token characters named "Squirrel" with the version "Army" into play.

Possibily allowing your Brood text to fit on a card. (Just have the token draw you a card when it leaves play by paying endurance)

* A Token does not have a cost (a la 4-drop Superman).
* Whenever a token becomes stunned, place it outside of the game.
* When a Token would leave play, place it outside of the game.
* Effects that trigger off of a character becoming stunned trigger when a token character leaves play due to the stun replacement effect.
* Effects that would retrieve the token character (Bodyslide, Fifth Dimension) fail to find the token character as it has been placed outside of the game.

This would lead to a ruling that removed-from-game is still a zone, but cards outside of the game are not in a zone.

Just my thoughts on it :)

EDIT: Of course, VS R&D decided on using searchable 1-drop characters instead of having to have character tokens, but the key problem is that we can't use the word 'search' in the entries :P

~ TXC

There's your better Phat.

I want to make alot of cards based around reservist. here they are.

Character
Cost 6
Reservist
12/1
Reveal this character from your resource row >>> Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a reservist character. Put that character in your hand and the rest at the bottom of your deck in any order. Lost 1 endurance for each card revealed that was not a reservist character. Use this power only once per turn and if you have no face up resources.

Pretty much you mill your deck for a character but the down fall is you could get unlucky and lose alot of endurance. Also it is easy to stun, so you lose more endurance when playing him.

Character
3 Cost
5/1
When this card becomes stun, you make put into play a reservist character from your resource row with cost less than the number of resources you control, If you do put this card into your resource row.


Character
Cost 1
Reservist
2/1
When this character becomes stun, You may KO a resource if you do put this character in your resource row.

This helps with keeping all face down resources.

Or there could be a new keyword.
You may return a facedown resource, if you do put this card into your resource row.
Kinda like terraform.

Matter Replicator ( heh, Killian will get a kick out of this one)
Cost 0
Equipment

When you recruit Matter Replicator you may pay any amount of resource points. If you do, you may reveal a character card from your deck of cost equal to the amount of resources you paid ( wordy and needs to be shortened)replace Matter Replicator's place on the chain for that character card.

Sure, this might get around loyalty in it's current wording, but it would be fun, right? and you'd only be able to use it if you already controlled a character.

Joining the Team
3
You may pay x resource points.If you do you may reveal any number cards from your deck until you reveal a character with cost equal to x that shares an affiliation with a character you control and put it into play.

Reinforcements
PT cost 3
To play, discard a character card cost of X.
Reveal the top X cards of your deck. Put a revealed character card into your hand and put the rest on the bottom of your deck.

Character
Cost 2
3/3
Activate >>> Return a facedown resource you control to the owner's hand, If you do put the top card of your deck into your resource row.

Equipment
Cost 0
To play Ko a resource you control.
Equiped character gets +3,+3.

Moving the thread back to clever ways to fix our curve:

Some guy
7 drop
17/14

Discard ~: Reveal the top seven cards of your deck. Put a character card revealed in this way into your hand. Shuffle the rest of the cards into your deck.

Discard any number of character cards with total cost seven or greater> Return ~ from your KO'd pile to your hand. Play this ability only during the build phase.

Nanda Parbat
Cost: 1
Location

At the end of your build phase, put a spirit counter on Nanda Parbat for each resource in your resource pool if there are no Spirit counters on Nanda Parbat.

Remove all spirit counters off Nanda Parbat>You may put a character card with cost less then or equal to the number of spirit counters removed from in this way into play from your hand. Put a +1/+1 counter on it.

When TDB made this excercise, I'm pretty sure he didn't want you to make an effective search card without using the word search. Revealing cards from your deck until you hit a specific character = search, and this is what 90% of the cards are. Bringing Phat back is also loose.

Look at it like this. A player is going to miss their 5 drop, unless your card does something about that. Find a way to allow that person to effectively use their 5th turn without specfically giving them that 5 drop. Shockingly enough, we already have a decent amount of cards that help you have effective turns without just giving you whatever character you want.

USS Argus
RemRam
Dane Whitman <> Black Knight
The Substructure

The problem with these cards as they are much worse when there are cards that just give you whatever you want. Compare Cerebro and Signal Flare from Origins.

A Pro Circuit Champion once told me that searching for any one card was much stronger than drawing 4 random ones. As disuptable as this statement is, it says alot about how good non-search cards must be for consistency purposes.

Ah, the voice of reason. Ever present to attempt to derail things expressly done for FUN.

The multitudes of ideas flowing in reflect an open mind not likely to be found once restrictions and so-called wiser voices start jumping in.

It's a shame that instead of using some of that infinite wisdom to offer a fun interpretation on the exercise IHP decided to bash the other ideas already expressed.

I challenge you to post again, but this time offer something useful and helpful instead of just bashing what others have tried to do already.

A Clone We Go

1 Cost, Location

During your recruit step, pay x resource points. Put a Clone Token with X atk/X def, where X is twice the resources you paid. When that token is stunned, KO it. You may only use this effect once per turn.

Turn 1: 2/2
Turn 2: 4/4
Turn 3: 6/6
Turn 4: 8/8
Turn 5: 10/10
Turn 6: 12/12
Turn 7: 14/14

Effectively, the first 5 turns you get a slighty powered token character if you miss a drop. In exchange, it losing in battle means you get the consequence of missing a drop anyway. It can lead to decks running way less dudes. I could've just put a "Cannot be equipped" clause, but I want to see where it runs before anything else.