Cosmic Horror

Another card I'm fond of. It's the first undercosted black fatty that was cheap and easy for me and my compadres to get; the fact that Royal Assassin killed it while Nightmare ran roughshod didn't keep me from loving my inky Cthulhu any less. If I played Magic two years earlier, Juzam Djinn would have held this place in my heart, I'm sure.

There's actually a lot to recommend this card. It's brave, for a Legends duder, in pushing the casting cost:power/toughness ratio; it tacks a dangerous, scaling ability -- first strike -- on a fat front end; and it doesn't screw around with its drawback. The card's got a certain gumption that I appreciate.

Of course, none of that changes that it's essentially unplayable. Here, let's take a walk down "what have they done to my Magic?!?" lane.

That's the new Cosmic Horror. Shave off two mana, frontload the offensive abilities, and make a drawback that makes people look around nervously and ask their neighbors, "Um, would you play this?" (I would, by the way.) The implication is clear -- there's just no way that I can play brinksman with "you can't win, your opponent can't lose" as the downside to an undercosted fatty. It's just not gonna happen -- that's Cuban Missile Crisis-level of "dare me?", and my nerve just ain't that brassy.

So, I feel like there's two things we can do with this card. We can play up its "silly fatty with a silly drawback angle," but not to Abyssal Persecutor level. That's fine, but not exciting.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- that's a pretty fierce drawback. It might actually be worse than Persecutor's, now that I look at it. Outright losing is worse than not winning, assuming you're not playing against stax or turbo-Stasis. (I'm probably going to steal this design for my long-neglected set I've been slowly working on. That set actually has a use for things like insanity tokens.) The other thing we can do with this card -- already hinted at in my last mockup -- is to play up its Great Older One heritage. I like the insanity angle, but will do something different with it this time.

The idea is that insane people see things that aren't there -- like opposing Craw Wurms -- and react accordingly. During the insane player's turn, reality isn't working quite right; during the sane players' turns, everything's as it's supposed to be. Since it's a magical world, insanity has a real impact on the board, obviously. Haste is intentionally left off; black's got a good chunk of (and a historical foot in) enters-the-battlefield triggers, and it's not generally known for hasty beats. I'm fine with someone splashing red (or red and green, right?) to get the haste.