All Hallow's Eve

This is one of those cards that's really cool, has been the inspiration for tons of other cool cards, and is reasonably costed and abusable.

But it's perhaps my least favorite card in the set, and the reason why is just petty. Why does All Hallow's Eve take two turns to go off? The answer's a little obtuse -- it's the eve of All Hallows', so the counters represent the time passing until Samhain. (That's the obvious flavor connection here.) There's a huge problem, though -- and it's not the reference to a real-world holiday.

The rowdy collection of recrafted pagan holidays and Americana kitsch that form the backdrop for Halloween is more focused on Oct. 31 than on Nov. 1. All Hallows' Eve, better known as Halloween (as in All Hallows' E'en, or All Hallows' Evening, or the night before All Holies'/Saints' Day), is what's referenced in the card. All Saints' Day, Nov. 1 -- the All Hallows' after the Eve -- is a Catholic holy day, not a day of goblins and ghosts. So, why is a black, zombie-making card counting down to a good-guy holy day (or, at least, a white-aligned holy day)? If anything, it should bring in creatures immediately and give them a countdown!

From my perspective, the answer is to fix the card's name, moving to a more generic necromancy vibe. I know many people like the All Hallows' name, but I have no such connection -- in fact, I'm a little embarrassed at how much attention the increasingly bloated Halloween season gets.

So, I'd offer that this card would be pretty good with a name like "Culminating Evil" or "Necromantic Convergence." Anything grandiose that implies movement toward an event would be OK. As an aside, I'd also change scream counters; time counters would work, but ones tied into the name would be best.

As for its actual effect -- I wouldn't use the suspend mechanic for a few reasons, but the primary one's because suspend was a block mechanic. I don't like grabbing block mechanics and using them elsewhere; without the supporting structure and advertising of a new set, I feel that named, non-evergreen mechanics feel out of place and are a little jarring. Besides, the card feels OK the way it is -- most of these kinds of Legends cards are really bizarre, with strange if-then clauses and exceptions ruining what could be clean design. (Looking at you, Chains of Mephistopheles.) This one, however, does just about everything in an intuitive, rules-friendly way. It's just that damned logic gap in the name!

Unfortunately, that leaves us in a lurch. The actual ability on the card requires a lot of space, mostly due to that awkward (but required) clause about "if ~ is exiled with counters on it ..."

So, we'll be changing the card a little more. First, we'll get rid of the proto-suspend ability by making this into an enchantment. Second, we'll do two passes at this enchantment -- one more flavorful than the other.

Here's the first:

It's a similar effect, but it's a lot cleaner. Note that the card is designed to be "glanceable" -- it doesn't count up to two counters, but rather counts down. As long as you know what the card counts down to, you can glance at it to know how long you have until it does its thing. The Zendikar quest enchantments bugged me because each had a different number of counters required for the enchantment to go live, meaning that you had to both know what the card did and how many counters it needed; that extra bit of brain space is pretty critical, and easy to muddle. I get that they did that to make the quests play better with proliferate, but it was annoying. Some of the cards are hard for me to keep straight, like Bloodchief Ascension; it costs 1, both its triggered abilities reference 2 life and it needs 3 counters. I get its numbers mixed up all the time.

Here's a version I like more, though:

If this was still 1993, I'd put some complicated baggage on there about how, when there are 12 counters on Necromantic Convergence, you'd sacrifice it and all zombies, but it's not. So I won't.

While this one's wordier -- likely requiring more reads to understand -- I like how it's got a crescendo effect that other players can prepare for. That means that, while the person playing it is likely in the best position to abuse it -- he or she built the deck with it in mind, obviously -- other players will have a few turns to abuse it, too. I like multiplayer support cards that players will go back and forth on defending -- it's annoying when Primeval Titan centralizes a game, because he really doesn't grab that many interesting things, but I think it's really entertaining when everyone's bickering over a Mind's Eye or Hive Mind (that are not locking people out, natch).