The problem with many white-collar jobs is that you never really let go of your work. Your brain is always working on something. I have realized in my dreams that there’s a bug in my code, woken up, went to read the code and seen that I was right. I have solved mathematical problems in while sleeping. Yesterday, I came up with a very interesting card design in a dream.
First, there’s a myth that you can’t read in dreams. This is total and utter bullshit. I read all the time in my dreams. I guess most people just forget that when they wake up, because you lose the specifics first.
However, as I woke up, I had a very clear idea on this card. Except that it doesn’t have a full name. The funny thing is that the dream itself was more like road trip with an ex-girlfriend. The card itself had nothing to do with it. It just fell out of nowhere.
XXXX the Master Politician 1UU
Legendary Creature - Human Advisor
Hexproof
If the game would end in a draw, you win instead.
If two or more counters would be put on a permanent another player controls, you may put one of those counters on a permanent you control instead.
If another player would gain two or more counters, you may gain one of those counters instead.
If another player would draw two or more cards, you may draw one of those cards instead.
0/4
It should probably be blue-black or even Esper, because even though permanently stealing something is generally blue, it has been sort of established that stealing cards and counters is more on the black side (as in [scryfall]Notion Thief[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Thief of Blood[/scryfall] for example) and the rules change feels more like a white ability, but this was the way I saw this in my dream (well, as far I remembered at the moment I wrote it down).
It’s a weird card. I’m not sure it would work within the rules as they currently stand and I’m not sure how important those abilities actually are, but I love it. It’s flavorful in the sense that it’s like that representative in the parliament or congress, who is always able to pull strings and be the deciding vote and can therefore always get some little extra for their constituents.
However, the card is also strangely political. Is an opponent’s creature having two -1/-1 counters put on it from Wither? You can just take one of them and put it on your land. There are no limits to what kind of counters a permanent can have. You can have loyalty counters on your lands. They won’t do anything, but it’s possible.
I’m not sure this card would be very usable in most contexts, but I’m willing to bet quite a few Commander players would be interested in trying to force draws in order to win. It’s not a very deep challenge, but something some people would like to try. Also, it can mess with various other strategies, at least slowing down Planeswalker based decks.
Not that any of this matters, because in the end it was just a dream, but I found it interesting enough to share.