Prepping for a 2-day D&D Marathon of Storm King's Thunder, so I got Giants on the mind!

Cloud Crusher |
(same kind of style and colour palette as Boldwyr Intimidator)
Creature - Giant Barbarian | {C}
: Cloud Crusher fights target creature with flying. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
[5/5]

Avenger of Storms |
Creature - Giant Wizard | {R}
Spell Mastery—Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if there are two or more instant and/or sorcery spells in your graveyard, untap Avenger of Storms.
, : Avenger of Storms deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
[7/8]

Down the Hatch |
Instant | {U}
Target creature you control fights target creature an opponent controls. If the creature you control wins the fight, gain life equal to the toughness of the creature that lost the fight. (A creature wins a fight if its power is greater than the total power of each creature it fights, otherwise it loses.)

Made a little modification to the "wins a fight" terminology. The idea is that your creature needs to be stronger than the opposing creature, and needs to be tough enough that it would normally survive a fight with the other creature.

Wait, so my 4/4 can "win a fight" against a 3/5, but my 1/3 can't "win a fight" against a 2/1?

I like Cloud Crusher, but it's not a common. A 5/5 for 5 with repeatable card advantage is too much. Uncommon seems more appropriate.

Hmmm... good point. I just don't like the idea that you can win a fight while also dying, but I think dying in a fight you win is better than losing a fight where the other guy died. "A creature wins a fight if its power is greater than the total power of each creature it fights."

I'd make winning contingent on staying alive while everybody else is dead. Comparing power leaves all sorts of oddball cases. A 1/10 with deathtouch should be able to win a fight against a 2/2. Likewise, an indestructible creature should never lose a fight without wither or something being involved.

It's a tricky problem to solve, because nothing actually dies until after the spell finishes resolving.

I guess it could have a flashback type effect that you could play as a follow up? Even that sounds icky. Even if it automatically cast itself from the grave sometime afterward that would be blegh.
Reworking it as an enchantment should work though, right? The etb could make the fighting happen, then the enchantment would still be around to check who won.

Avenger of Storms is sweet and I don't have any useful input for Down the Hatch. However I firmly believe that Cloud Crusher is approximately 1000000000000% a green card. Red doesn't deal with flying creatures, and green is the primary fight colour. I also agree that it should be at least an uncommon, or perhaps cost .

I'd just leave him a common and gave him Reach instead of whatever.

(A creature wins a fight if its toughness is greater than the creature it's fighting's power and its power is greater than or equal to the creature it's fighting's toughness.)



PS: wait no lethal damage is a thing the rules can reference. (A creature wins a fight if the creature it's fighting takes lethal damage and it doesn't.) the second "it" is a bit ambiguous there, though. could use some polish, just not sure entirely how.

I thought, for some reason I can't remember, you couldn't reference "lethal damage" in the way of "if that creature has been dealt lethal damage" or something like that. I have no idea why, because the rules don't seem to forbid doing it. Otherwise, yeah, I'd just say "A creature wins a fight if it doesn't take lethal damage during a fight and the creature it's fighting does."

And yeah, anti-flying is a very green thing, but I like this card in red. It's getting the idea that the Giant is so tall, it can smack creatures out of the air. Fighting is green and red, and the anti-flying here is more of a restriction as to what it can fight in my mind. Red also tends to do things that care either about having flying or not having flying, though it's usually the latter (deals damage to each creature without flying). I know anti-air is green, but I can't help but feel it's something that red should be able to do at times too. Also, yes it's repeatable card advantage, but only if the opponent has small flyers, and this can only be done as a sorcery too.

Anti-flying has been seen occasionally in red. Tears of Valakut is the most recent example.

When that creature dies this turn, if CARDNAME is on the battlefield, do a thing.

Doesn't really work on instants/sorceries. It'd have to then say "Target creature you control fights target creature you don't control. When the creature you don't control dies this turn, if the creature you control is on the battlefield, gain life equal to the toughness of the creature you don't control."

I don't want to say the world "control" 6 times on a single card . Wins/won/loses/lost is much easier to understand, so long as it always feel like a creature legitimately won the fight.

But can't you just keyword this too?

"When the creature you control is victorious, gain life equal to the toughness of the defeated creature. (A creature on the battlefield is victorious when a creature it has fought this turn dies)"

I think Razor's fix is simplest. The question is whether 'lethal' is too technical to put in reminder text. People might not know e.g. whether deathtouch deals lethal damage.