Custom Cards

L'oreal Sændars is a 16th level Wood Elf with levels in Eldritch Knight Fighter and Bladesinger Wizard. He specializes in the Archery Fighting Style and his primary weapon of choice is his magical hand crossbow, in addition to his array of Wizard spells.

L'oreal's primary Magic color is Red. In personality, L'oreal is a quick-thinking and passionate person who fights against monsters and multiversal threats with no second thoughts. He does also suffer from slight insanity due to a curse. He is also a strong and fast physical combatant with a theme of spells and abilities that boost his speed.

He is next in Blue: he is studious and dedicated to his training in Wizardry, which is primarily self-taught. He desires to learn everything he can about magic to keep up in a world full of more powerful casters and monsters.

Finally, as a Wood Elf, he is also in Green. He grew up spending much of his time in the woods, and his Mask of the Wild feature lets him use his innate magic to blend into nature.

The reach keyword represents his Archery skills. Haste represents his enhanced speed abilities and his tendency to be the first to jump into battle.

L'oreal constantly uses spells to enhance his defenses and damage output, which can make him very strong while his spell slots last. The prowess keyword is a simple way to represent his ability to boost himself with a variety of spells. (Existing cards keep prowess with Jeskai color identity, but appear in Blue and Red on their own, so this shouldn't be a color pie break.)

The key ability of L'oreal's card represents his aggressively magical playstyle and is inspired by the War Magic feature of Eldritch Knights, which allows L'oreal to both attack and use magic on the same turn. The free-equip benefit encourages using equipment, which is too flavorful to not use with him but would otherwise not work smoothly with in-combat casting; it also flavorfully relates to his Weapon Bond ability, which lets him summon his weapon to his hand. The whole ability requires L'oreal to be modified as a way to balance out the equip benefit, and as a nod to how L'oreal's spellcasting focus is his weapon that he never fights without.

L'oreal's 3/3 base stats are nothing special for his cost, just as his Strength score and hit points are middling for his level, given his multiclass. He depends a lot on his magic to keep him safe in combat, and the same is true in Magic, where you'll need to keep a spell available or else he'll die to Bolt. But his abilities allow for a number of strategies to keep him buffed in some way and make him into a threat.

The card is inspired by similar cards like [[Narset, Enlightened Exile]], [[Narset, Enlightened Master]], and [[Tetsuo, Imperial Champion]]. I think L'oreal is in a fair spot as he's not a strict upgrade or downgrade to these cards (and I'm sure he isn't as good as the OG Narset). Haste is generally very good paired with an attack trigger, but since he needs to be modified, it's harder to immediately get the attack trigger when casting him on curve (it's not impossible of course, but I think that adds to the strategy and fun). The free-equip ability has lots of potential, but I think it's limited enough by only being usable at that specific time and only being able to attach to L'oreal himself, compared to other free-equip cards like [[Bruenor Battlehammer]]. Five mana feels more reasonable than four given that he has haste, and six is seems too high given the requirements on his abilities, and since he dies to Bolt if not boosted.