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Description

An executioner from the realm of Skylanders. It's Hood Sickle!

Note: The entire design has changed! I'll put down what the card down below originally looked like so the original description still makes sense.

Basically, he is now a fully fledged executioner. Has an ability that lets you destroy things. In fact, anyone can hire his aiblities for the low low cost of 3 mana! But only if you agree to it.

This is clearly meant for multiplayer goodness. However, it still works in 1v1! It just turns into a repeatable tap to kill for 3 mana. You still need to agree with the choice, but that's okay. Cause you always agree with your own decisions. Right?

To prevent this from being an absolute bomb, he can only kill nonlegendary creatures. It's relevant enough in both commander and single player that it's a significant limiter to his power.

VERSION 1

----

Hood Sickle, Executioner

1BB

Legendary Creature - Reaper

Whenever ~ enters the battlefield, put a Fatal counter on target creature.

T: Destroy target creature with a Fatal counter.

3BB: Exile ~, then create a 0/1 Shadow creature token with "When this dies, return Hood Sickle from exile to the battlefield. It gains haste"

2/3

Old Description

This has been, without a doubt, one of the hardest designs I've done. As it turns out, I had to resort to secondary and tertiary abilities in black's color pie to get this guy right. More on that later.

This is a top-down design of the hero Hood Sickle, who is a double bladed scythe wielding executioner themed enemy turned ally. As with any top-down design, the goal was to capture the character's concept and identity with a cool mechanical function. The problem in this case though, was that Hood Sickle's abilities didn't really match his identity as a character. To explain, here's a list of what he can do:

* Swing his scythe

** Scythe Whirlwind (that also shoots energy balls of darkness)

* Teleport a short distance ahead.

** Teleport a short distance ahead and leave behind ghosts of himself that explodes after a short time

** Teleport a short distance ahead and leave behind balls of darkness that can be picked up to power him up.

** Teleports behind you (nothing personal), and swings his scythe down in a very slow, very telegraphed motion.

* Summon a gravity well that slows enemies down

* Detonate any gravity well

So basically, he can swing his scythe, teleport and do a gravity well thing. None of the magical abilities is really representative of his identity as a reaper-crossed-executioner, and the only one remaining is a purely physical ability, which is quite difficult to represent in a game about magic. So here was the problem. How am I going to make a card for a reaper-cross-executioner, while still staying true to his character?

First things first, I knew from the beginning that I wanted an activated ability to destroy creatures. I couldn't miss the opportunity to use something like that for a character with a bloody scythe. However, it's difficult to just say "Tap: Destroy target creature." because being able to repeatedly remove creatures is extremely strong. There had to be some sort of limitation built in. (Plus, limitations make abilities more interesting) But what sort of limitation was right for this guy?

The answer, as it turns out, was to tie the tap to another one of his abilities. I liked his teleport ability, so I tried to put in some sort of self-flickering ability in. This is when a creature has the ability to temporarily remove themself from the battlefield, and then return some time after. This is an ability that is very rare for black to have. It's more common to see it in blue. However, it is a tertiary ability, meaning black is allowed to have it once in a blue moon.

As a side note, I could have made Hood Sickle part blue part black, especially given how blue his mechanical abilities seem to be. (Ghosts, Illusions, Teleporting, Slowing Enemies). However, as a character, he is definitely not at all blue. Zero interest in seeking the truth or perfecting anything. So I wanted him to be mono-black. Plus, it felt more right to have a mono black reaper-crossed-executioner type character.

So now that I have a self-exiling ability on the card, there was now a few options to how to limit his tap-to-destroy ability. The first thing I tried was something cool like "Hood Sickle can only destroy things while he sits in exile." In this version, he doesn't come out of exile until something happens. I liked the idea that he left a ghost of himself whenever he teleported out of existence, so I made it so he left a spirit token and came back when it died. This part stayed until the final version of the card. But back to the destroy only in the shadow realm thing - there was a few problems with this design. One - it meant he couldn't do anything until he got to the shadow realm. Two - It makes him pretty slow. Three - The way he came back (spirit dying) doesn't really play nice with black since its pretty bad at protection. I had to basically find another ability.

I'm not going to go through all the iterations I went through since that will take too long. Basically what I ended up with is the version above. When he enters the battlefield, he marks an enemy for death. Then he can kill that creature. So he can kill a maximum of one creature every time he etb's. This plays into his exile ability because it lets him etb again once the spirit dies. I gave him Haste on his re-enter since I wanted it to be more powerful and splashy. The inspiration for this was basically the visual imagery of Hood Sickle teleporting back in from the darkness and killing something instantly. However, he can only come back once his shadow is removed. This creates this cool minigame where you need to kill off your own shadow token to get the reward of removing another creature.

The easiest way to kill it off without any help is to use it as a blocker. So even without using any cards, you can sort of force the opponent to not attack or else you'd kill of one of his creatures.

Also, since black has lots of removal, it's easy to kill it off again.

The best way is probably some sort of sacrifice engine, which can repeatedly remove the shadow.

Well anyway, with all that being said, that's him in a nutshell. There was a lot to him and it took a lot of tinkering around. I'm not sure if he's 100% perfect, but I'm pretty happy with this version as it is. Maybe I'll tweak him a bit more in the future. But for now, this is Hood Sickle, the reaper-crossed-executioner.

Changelog

31/12/2018 - Rehauled to the version you see now!

1/1/2019 - Added "Tap" to the ability cost. The ability now untaps hood sickle if the controller refuses. Also added another ability that lets each player untap hood sickle when their turn begins. Also the execution ability can now only be activated by a player during their turn.

Art from Skylanders (It's really difficult to find art of this guy)

Skylanders published by Activision and Square Enix
Magic the Gathering (C) Wizards of the Coast

Description

An executioner from the realm of Skylanders. It's Hood Sickle!

Note: The entire design has changed! I'll put down what the card down below originally looked like so the original description still makes sense.

Basically, he is now a fully fledged executioner. Has an ability that lets you destroy things. In fact, anyone can hire his aiblities for the low low cost of 3 mana! But only if you agree to it.

This is clearly meant for multiplayer goodness. However, it still works in 1v1! It just turns into a repeatable tap to kill for 3 mana. You still need to agree with the choice, but that's okay. Cause you always agree with your own decisions. Right?

To prevent this from being an absolute bomb, he can only kill nonlegendary creatures. It's relevant enough in both commander and single player that it's a significant limiter to his power.

VERSION 1

----

Hood Sickle, Executioner

1BB

Legendary Creature - Reaper

Whenever ~ enters the battlefield, put a Fatal counter on target creature.

T: Destroy target creature with a Fatal counter.

3BB: Exile ~, then create a 0/1 Shadow creature token with "When this dies, return Hood Sickle from exile to the battlefield. It gains haste"

2/3

Old Description

This has been, without a doubt, one of the hardest designs I've done. As it turns out, I had to resort to secondary and tertiary abilities in black's color pie to get this guy right. More on that later.

This is a top-down design of the hero Hood Sickle, who is a double bladed scythe wielding executioner themed enemy turned ally. As with any top-down design, the goal was to capture the character's concept and identity with a cool mechanical function. The problem in this case though, was that Hood Sickle's abilities didn't really match his identity as a character. To explain, here's a list of what he can do:

* Swing his scythe

** Scythe Whirlwind (that also shoots energy balls of darkness)

* Teleport a short distance ahead.

** Teleport a short distance ahead and leave behind ghosts of himself that explodes after a short time

** Teleport a short distance ahead and leave behind balls of darkness that can be picked up to power him up.

** Teleports behind you (nothing personal), and swings his scythe down in a very slow, very telegraphed motion.

* Summon a gravity well that slows enemies down

* Detonate any gravity well

So basically, he can swing his scythe, teleport and do a gravity well thing. None of the magical abilities is really representative of his identity as a reaper-crossed-executioner, and the only one remaining is a purely physical ability, which is quite difficult to represent in a game about magic. So here was the problem. How am I going to make a card for a reaper-cross-executioner, while still staying true to his character?

First things first, I knew from the beginning that I wanted an activated ability to destroy creatures. I couldn't miss the opportunity to use something like that for a character with a bloody scythe. However, it's difficult to just say "Tap: Destroy target creature." because being able to repeatedly remove creatures is extremely strong. There had to be some sort of limitation built in. (Plus, limitations make abilities more interesting) But what sort of limitation was right for this guy?

The answer, as it turns out, was to tie the tap to another one of his abilities. I liked his teleport ability, so I tried to put in some sort of self-flickering ability in. This is when a creature has the ability to temporarily remove themself from the battlefield, and then return some time after. This is an ability that is very rare for black to have. It's more common to see it in blue. However, it is a tertiary ability, meaning black is allowed to have it once in a blue moon.

As a side note, I could have made Hood Sickle part blue part black, especially given how blue his mechanical abilities seem to be. (Ghosts, Illusions, Teleporting, Slowing Enemies). However, as a character, he is definitely not at all blue. Zero interest in seeking the truth or perfecting anything. So I wanted him to be mono-black. Plus, it felt more right to have a mono black reaper-crossed-executioner type character.

So now that I have a self-exiling ability on the card, there was now a few options to how to limit his tap-to-destroy ability. The first thing I tried was something cool like "Hood Sickle can only destroy things while he sits in exile." In this version, he doesn't come out of exile until something happens. I liked the idea that he left a ghost of himself whenever he teleported out of existence, so I made it so he left a spirit token and came back when it died. This part stayed until the final version of the card. But back to the destroy only in the shadow realm thing - there was a few problems with this design. One - it meant he couldn't do anything until he got to the shadow realm. Two - It makes him pretty slow. Three - The way he came back (spirit dying) doesn't really play nice with black since its pretty bad at protection. I had to basically find another ability.

I'm not going to go through all the iterations I went through since that will take too long. Basically what I ended up with is the version above. When he enters the battlefield, he marks an enemy for death. Then he can kill that creature. So he can kill a maximum of one creature every time he etb's. This plays into his exile ability because it lets him etb again once the spirit dies. I gave him Haste on his re-enter since I wanted it to be more powerful and splashy. The inspiration for this was basically the visual imagery of Hood Sickle teleporting back in from the darkness and killing something instantly. However, he can only come back once his shadow is removed. This creates this cool minigame where you need to kill off your own shadow token to get the reward of removing another creature.

The easiest way to kill it off without any help is to use it as a blocker. So even without using any cards, you can sort of force the opponent to not attack or else you'd kill of one of his creatures.

Also, since black has lots of removal, it's easy to kill it off again.

The best way is probably some sort of sacrifice engine, which can repeatedly remove the shadow.

Well anyway, with all that being said, that's him in a nutshell. There was a lot to him and it took a lot of tinkering around. I'm not sure if he's 100% perfect, but I'm pretty happy with this version as it is. Maybe I'll tweak him a bit more in the future. But for now, this is Hood Sickle, the reaper-crossed-executioner.

Changelog

31/12/2018 - Rehauled to the version you see now!

1/1/2019 - Added "Tap" to the ability cost. The ability now untaps hood sickle if the controller refuses. Also added another ability that lets each player untap hood sickle when their turn begins. Also the execution ability can now only be activated by a player during their turn.

Art from Skylanders (It's really difficult to find art of this guy)

Skylanders published by Activision and Square Enix
Magic the Gathering (C) Wizards of the Coast