Fallen Empires White

Yellow. I have been making cards for a custom set. I wanted to make "Empires" pre-Fallen. This has grown difficult so I wanted to make a place for others to help me out if they so wish.

Here are some I have made so far:
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I prefer White at the moment. I have a red card showing as an example so really you can do any color, just give it the Fallen Empires expansion symbol.

Thank you in advance!
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Comments

  • edited April 2018
    Do they have to be tournament-quality cards? FE had a very uneven power level and that is part of its charm.

    Here is a very vanilla creature that might have been in a FE set.

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  • Love the flavor text. It really has the feel of an Empire getting ready to fall.
  • edited April 2018
    Some of these are more Fallen Empires than others. After reviewing my cards, these are the white ones that I think might fit in a FE-like set. Or, actually a Dark-like set. Even though I was playing at that time, the two sets really run together in my head thematically. They feel like they should be the same set.

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  • Fantastic concepts. I love the medieval art on the Pikemen, I'm guessing watercolors on Motte and Bailey, Martyrs of Farset, Country Gentlemen (have to say I very much enjoy that card has Townsfolk), and the basic land with the bodies in the tree. It gives the feels of a once good Empire falling. Your Lady ideas give the feels of various white religious organizations, giving a world building aspect. The riders from the north, "North Reach Chargers" a very good depiction of the military style. The return of creature type: Hero. Love that. I think I like the classic art styles the best when it comes to something like Fallen Empires.

    I must say, because you did such a good job on all of these, why I like Fallen Empires. My brother and I play MTG and make standard style decks, starting with Shadows over Endistrad. (I'm sure that is misspelled but I'm not going to look it up). I liked Shadows, and from there forward we have tried to stay simi-current on standard play. We have saved cards from when we were much younger, my favorite of these were Fallen Empires. Our older cards were fun, demonic tutor being my brothers favorite card. Mine was Elven Fortress, so Empires had a special place in my heart. I could never get Elven Fortress do anything for me but the art work looked so good. Something about art done on paper or canvas that looks amazing. Not from Empires but something that comes to mind was Tundra wolves that is just dogs with an elk.

    I'm losing direction but because of the art of Empires is why it is my favorite set. I think you captured this with all your picks. It would be a magic world that if it could be made into a video game, I would want to play that game. It sounds funny but when I was a kid and everquest was a big deal I would look at Elven Fortress and think, "that looks like a faction of a game I would want to be a member of."

    Here when I see your world building for white, I think I would want to play for the human faction, wouldn't you? Any who, these are perfect.
  • edited April 2018
    One of the most wonderful things about Magic is that we get to play with all these little pieces of artwork. To me, the art direction and flavor text are just as delightful as pulling off a good combo.

    I will be happy to re-make any cards you see on my page with old-fashioned keywords and templating. If you want I can make function reprints (same effect with a different name to suit your world.)
  • What's the theme? Norse mythology?
  • I have given you question probably too much thought. I'm going to just tell you want I know. The theme is Fallen Empires. I was looking for cards that could predate that expansion and just call it Empires, without the Fallen part. Your question about Norse mythology had me thinking about the core theme of Fallen Empires. The truth is, I'm not sure what they were getting their inspiration from. The art was why I liked this expansion, it was raw talent. Not perfect but good. I think if you make a card with medieval art you can't miss. I've been playing with my cards to be able to play competitively, but the real beauty of this expansion was how baseline these cards were. Think about a 2/2 bear. Scott_Anderson's first card was a one mana drop for a 1/2 with flavor text.

    The art and the flavor text was enough back then.
  • Reading about the storyline of the set gives me a lot of great ideas about how the set would be structured thematically: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Sarpadia

    Reading about the story of design and development and specific themes and card pairs gives me a lot of great ideas about how the set would be structured mechanically: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Fallen_Empires

    What was done by Coldsnap for Ice Age can be repeated, this time with a prequel.

    Based on this, I would suggest a very small set, no bigger than 140 cards but probably more like 100-125. No mythics.

    There can be variant artwork on some cards with different flavor text to tell a story.

    I suggest the name “Sarpadian Empires” and a timeline of about 100 years around the end of the Brothers’ War.

    The set should focus on the sharing of bounty between aligned color pairs (as opposed to the isolationist themes and intra-color battles in FE); tribal themes; tokens; and card cycles and mirrored pairs.

    You can tell me to stop if you think I’m being too forward on this. It’s a delightful idea and I find myself swept up in it.
  • edited April 2018
    I think this is good stuff. The history can really be pulled upon here and the story may have an important impact on how this set is developed.
  • Please let me know if I can offer you any more assistance. I'll watch this space.
  • edited April 2018
    I think this puts us at 23 cards per color. 12-17 artifacts. This require some thinking and research but I do agree that we shouldn't have any mystic rares. 10c's, 10uc's, 3 rares?


    White has 7 unique creature types from Fallen Empires:

    Oracle / Original

    Human Cleric Soldier / Soldier
    Human Cleric / Cleric
    Human / Townsfolk
    Avatar / Avatar
    Human Soldier / Soldier
    Human Solider Scout / Soldier
    Human Cleric Knight / Cleric

    The question is, do we try and bring our cards towards modern printing. Instead of just,"Soldier" Do we spell it out as, "Human Cleric Soldier" ?
  • Oh that’s interesting, I was just doing the same homework!

    In my opinion, there are a few things that need to be modernized.

    One is that counters need to be +1/+1. Another is that the templating should be modern.

    Here is a link to a short document that talks about
    1) the mechanical elements of Fallen and
    2) the events happening in the world right before the set’s storyline.

    Please take a look!

    https://docs.google.com/file/d/1fbG7zD6DOlLeKdz9rxKVJaT_cRjlVl5w/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword

    It appears there are a couple of obvious choices for legendary creatures and at least one planeswalker - a flip planeswalker at that.

    More ideas in the document
  • On the topic of rarity, there should be about the same number of commons as uncommon as rares. If there are far fewer rares then they show up often enough to actually be more common than uncommons. The same goes for uncommons to commons!

    I think 7/7/6 per color is right. So 20 x 5 = 100. Then just a few artifacts. I’m not sure exactly how many. Ten maybe? Eight?
    Then two cycles of lands. One uncommon and one rare. There are enough places in the storyline to make up two cycles of lands.

    12 Lands and 8 artifacts makes 120 cards. That seems like the right number of cards to shoot for, but not set in stone.

    What do you think?
  • edited April 2018
    Dang, this comes from wiki or did you research all of this? Key players are lined out so if we wanted to make it legit we can. I think making it as legit as possible would be neat. When I first started this I didn't know 80% of all of this. I knew Empires was thick with lore but Holy Cow! Fun read and I would need to work on it from the top down. I work I.T. during the day and things have been very slow so I can get some cards worked on today.

    While I was reading that google doc I was thinking of starting time of our set. The Dwarves for example:
    I think the Dwarves would be in power of their mountains in our set. I guess the question is, how long did the war between the orcs, goblins and Dwarves last in Fallen Empires? Would we have it to where the conflict is just beginning or would they be in the height of their power with some cards hinting at their destruction.

    I saw you mentioned one planswalker, I will have to go back and read what you said about that but you said a flip one at that, hinting at Loneglade turning into https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Tevesh_Szat Szat. If we didn't create Orc and goblin cards then when Szat flipped he would be creating them in bulk.

    I think we need to decide on when we start in this history and if we get to the conflicted parts or do we depict the cultures of these Empires before they fell.

    As a side note, I want to play with the Dungeon Idea for the lands you have mentioned. Fallen Empires had some neat lands, I wonder if these special lands could be Dungeons. But I don't want to force something into this. The idea of creating a history rich set would be reward enough.
  • Yes, the research is from the mtg wikia and wiki. Every set tells a story. There is a TON of backstory for every set and block. I'm not interested in it as a consumer, but it sure helps as a producer to have it.

    I will suggest the time period is the century before Urza set off the Golgothian Cylex to end the Brothers' War. That event changed the climate and led to the changes in red and green and the rise of the Farrelites in Icatia.

    Yes, the flip planeswalker would be Tvesh Szat. I am not sure though whether to make it because he would be one of one or two planeswalkers in the set which would make him very splashy and swingy for one color over the others.

    I did a master design document that we can fill in piece by piece as we go. It is quite primitive and quite incomplete.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o7fhvwb5upd9XfNSu2x1Ek6UJD-ZJoxb/view?usp=sharing

    Please make all the changes you want to it since you are the lead on this; I'll just follow along. I'm unsure whether I have the correct number of creature cards in red and blue at common. It's hard to parse out such a small set of commons.

    Dungeon would be a good theme and signature mechanic. I think the set should be heavy with special lands.

    Other mechanics: moving +1/+1 counters; a creature mechanic called Cooperation.

    Coorperation - the creature has "If you have (creature of a different color or subtype) in play, this creature gets (some bonus)."

    Here is an example:

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  • edited April 2018
    Thallids and Thrulls should be primitive - just a hint of what they would be in Fallen. I suggest only two spells of each kind. This is a kind of a callback to Fallen without being a main theme. Both Thallids and Thrulls are new at this time. Thallids just coming from southern areas and Thrulls magically engineered beasts.

    Saproling farming is also new. There should be 0/1 or 1/1 Saproling token creatures created by cards, but they should not get a creature card.

    Here is an example of what I mean when I say moving counters:

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  • I like it. I also like Coorperation. I guess it's time to get to work on my part. I will need to read up on Urza. I only know his land cards and I don't know about, " the century before Urza set off the Golgothian Cylex to end the Brothers' War. That event changed the climate and led to the changes in red and green and the rise of the Farrelites in Icatia." The climate change must be in reference of Ice Age. I just need to read on that and then I will try to make some cards.
  • The Cylix went off, destroying everything in the northern continent. The Dark happened because there was like magical nuclear fallout and a nuclear winter. All the colors got messed up for a while. Tribes became important. Fallen Empires is on the southern continent. It's the story of new creatures invading or expanding their power at the expense of existing ones because of the climate changing. Ice age is back to the north, tracking the changes after Antiquities.
  • edited April 2018
    https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/cards_ip/1524067479304899.png?t=261808

    I have this in the shoot. I'm trying to think of Flavor Text that will go with the Sapradian Empires set. I'm thinking of something like: The approaching end draws nigh. When the light will turn to darkness and powerful allies will be no more

    I thought about getting into specifics but prophecies don't always do that.
  • Also, who should I have say it? - Old man? Let me see.
  • edited April 2018
    It's a good card. There should be Clerics in black and white at common. For some reason I made all my guys militant rather than religious. But that's an example of how things can change.

    I created mockups of white commons here:

    https://mtgcardsmith.com/account/sets/30284

    They are certainly not set in stone! It's just an example of how to do it.
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    I went back and forth on making him a cleric. I would have done it if I saw your post. I just had a hard time making it a cleric with no abilities. Should I make him a Cleric?

    Also I get a 404 card when I click on your latest hyperlink. They are funny but still.
  • Now hold on. I need to go over how many cards each again. Let me go back and read that. I don't want to make duplicates if we don't have to. For some reason I thought white had two creatures that were one mana cost with no abilities. Let me get refreshed.
  • edited April 2018
    I am sorry about the broken link. Try this?

    https://mtgcardsmith.com/user/Scott_Anderson/sets/30284

    Rambling Prophet - It's a good card. There should be Clerics in black and white at common. For some reason I made all my guys militant rather than religious. But that's an example of how things can change.
  • I'll remake him a Black Cleric. I think he fits Black. I am getting the plan. This is all fun from here.
  • You can make a set of white commons or a cycle of cards, whatever you want. This is just the very beginning of the skeleton.
  • Another issue: because there are such a small number of creatures, maybe the CMCs should go higher? Especially in green and blue but all the way across.
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    Rambling Prophet remade lol. Hmm. Let's see how it plays out I guess. I say keep your plan as is unless you are sure. It sounds like it would be necessary but I can't tell at this point.
  • One worry of mine is that mtg will keep getting more powerful with each new set that it will get out of control. I'm sure they are aware of this but making weak cards for history and a timeline might be a good thing. We could make some gems here and there that will make it work. I guess our rares will need to be impressive, but not o.p.
  • Trying to understand the timeline is going to require a doctorate in MTG lol. I think antiquities in the timeline is after Fallen Empires but was release first? Things like that are going to be hard for me to wrap my head around.
This discussion has been closed.