Is Epic a Bad Mechanic? P2 Check the bottom to find part 1 if you haven't read it 3. Eternal Dominion {7}{U}{U}{U} Sorcery Search target opponent’s library for an artifact, creature, enchantment, or land card. Put that card onto the battlefield under your control. Then that player shuffles. Epic (For the rest of the game, you can’t cast spells. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, copy this spell except for its epic ability. You may choose a new target for the copy.) This card is very similar to Enduring Ideal. It has choice baked into it and it can give you protection from your opponents attacks. It searches out a much wider variety of types of cards, giving you a lot more options when it comes to how to use it. What's especially fun about it is that it steals from your opponents deck, giving a different experience each time you use it. However, the problems are even more glaring. 10 mana is just far too much to realistically use this card, giving it niche use cases at best. However, what's arguably even worse it the fact that you can't use this to find permanents in your deck. The main way to win with a repeatable tutor that puts things straight onto the battlefield is with a combo. However, with this, you need to find a combo in your opponents deck, which can be difficult depending on how well you know their deck and how good you are at recognizing combos on the fly. It also of course, suffers from the same problems of making you a target and being too slow to win you the game consistently. 4. Neverending Torment {4}{B}{B} Sorcery Search target player’s library for X cards, where X is the number of cards in your hand, and exile them. Then that player shuffles. Epic (For the rest of the game, you can’t cast spells. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, copy this spell except for its epic ability. You may choose a new target for the copy.) This is tied for the cheapest of the bunch, which is a great start. However, the is arguably the worst of the cycle. It offers no protection, which means once you cast this, you need to win fast. Unfortunately, this is not the card to do that, as on your upkeep, it exiles a maximum of 7 cards from your opponent's library. Once again, its restricted by hand size, and I won't repeat why that's a problem again. Sure this does let you remove key cards from your opponents' decks, however there are too main problems with this. Firstly, while you can fairly quickly remove all of your opponents threats from their deck, actually taking them out them takes quite a bit longer, giving them time to eliminate you with any decent attackers in their hand. Secondly, this only affects one player, meaning more often than not, this just hurts you and one other player. letting the rest pull ahead. The card also does offer some choice, but it's more a of a skill check than a real, meaningful decision, and you don't really feel the effects of which cards you pick to exile directly. Overall, it might be a fairly cheap spells but it leaves you vulnerable and it isn't fun to play. 5. Undying Flames {4}{R}{R} Sorcery Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card. Undying Flames deals damage to any target equal to that card’s mana value. Epic (For the rest of the game, you can’t cast spells. At the beginning of each of your upkeeps, copy this spell except for its epic ability. You may choose a new target for the copy.) Undying Flames is much better used in a gimmick deck than anything. It wants lots of high value cards in order to dish out tons of damage. It is hindered a bit by only being able to hit one player at a time, unfortunately. It's not particularly good, but it's cheap and encourages interesting deck-building, and it doesn't seem super threatening because of the luck aspect. However, Undying Flames is also the one that is most interesting in 60-card. Although it's only legal in Penny, Vintage, Legacy, and Modern, it could still make a fun non-meta deck to play. In 60-card, it only needs to hit one player, and dealing 20 damage is fairly reasonable, especially considering it activates every upkeep. After looking at these 5 cards, I have found a few traits that make fun Epic cards: 1. Cheaper mana cost 2. Rewards building around the card 3. Gives the player choices that impact the game 4. Can protect the player while they try to win Well, I'm out of text space, so that's all for now. Check the Studio for other articles: Part 1 Link: Part 3 Link:
