Historically, there has always been an unspoken overlap between blue and red concerning tokens. Blue for example likes generating bigger flying tokens like with Talrand's Command, Thunderheads, and thopters. Red just likes pumping out tiny little goblins and pumping the team. Although Brudiclad was printed just recently, Blue-Red tokens has generally been unexplored.
Until now.
Blue and red are most famous for their synergies and creativity. As stated by MaRo, "Blue-red, more so than most color pairs, tends to build its decks around interactions happening." I took this to heart by making Blue-Red tokens more explorative and open-ended than traditional Green-White or Red-White tokens. The cards themselves aren't as powerful, but the Blue-Red limited archetype allows a lot more flexibility.
For example:
These two cards are the bread and butter of Blue-Red Tokens. Divergent Genesis gives you the option of an aggressive or defensive start. However, Divergent Genesis's strength lies in its synergy with Improvised Inventions, a colorshifted instant-speed Eyes in the Skies. And if you don't want to create a copy of one of your elementals, you can always create another Thopter.
Goblin Incendiaries is the payoff card for Blue-Red tokens, rewarding players for playing on-curb and tokens. This card is particularly backbreaking with the assortment of Thopters generated by Blue-Red Tokens.
Renegade Reconnaissance provides a more long-term option for Blue-Red tokens. Five mana plus a tapped creature for a Thopter is underwhelming, but as the game continues, your accumulated Thopters will swarm over all. I deliberated about the power level of this card for a while, but it's important to remember even a 2/2 Wind Drake can easily overpower this card.
My final payoff card combines Scroll Thief for an incentive for spitting out tokens (maybe with Renegade Reconnaissance?). Monastery Impulsive is beneficial for both aggressive decks by providing more fuel and slower decks by eking out an advantage over the long run.
And that's Blue-Red Tokens. This was a particularly tricky Limited challenge, but I am proud of my entries. Good luck to all of the other contestants!
@Faiths_Guide@bnew07 sorry, been a bit busy. I should be able to finish before the deadline, but I will know in an hour whether I need more time or not.
I still have a pretty good and super fun casual deck of SOI madness at home, and I really love the playstyle. It still has that traditional Black-Red aggro archetype (which I've replicated), but it gets value out of nowhere and can really surprise your opponent when piloted correctly and/or luckily.
I should say, before we get well and truly "into" this, that I specifically tried not to put these cards into a specific set. Rather, these would, or should, simply be good fits in any incarnation of "the madness deck" at their respective rarities. In addition, I tried to give these 5 submissions cohesiveness in their application of this mechanic/thematic. If these were drafted together with enough support, I think they'd be a blast to play with!
Allow me to start with the two uncommons, one an enabler and the other a payoff: If you manage to draft these two together you run them in playsets together, these guys can really bring the pain. I modified the "Academy Raider" timing on the Picky Robber so that he'd be more useful with combat tricks, Looming Vanguard, etc. Casting cards from exile is something red is fond of anyway, but in a madness deck it's more frequent. The Looming Vanguard can make a lot of little guys do a lot of damage quickly, furthering your aggro gameplan.
Two more enablers. These guys further your aggro strategy. If you have a sac outlet for the Contender he becomes an instant speed madness trigger.
This is an interesting Dynacharge-like payoff that can deliver a finishing blow out of nowhere if you've been following your strategy and have less cards in hand than your opponent. I came up with that restriction as a less difficult and negative hellbent style restriction. It only becomes a possible instant or combat trick if you manage to discard it.
My theme that I went with was a topic that has been explored in U/G multicolored but not as an entire archetype: U/G card draw.
Because card draw is a limited powerhouse by itself, this archetype instead focuses on caring about drawing multiple cards a turn but not necessarily having card advantage, as only one of the enablers actually provides that opportunity. Because of this, I also specifically avoided instant and sorcery cards, as such cards that don't give card advantage are difficult to make powerful enough to matter. The cards are loosely based around the theme of exploration and the intersection of wilderness and magic, but there is no concrete connection among them.
To start off, here are my two common Enablers: Wilderness Ponderer is a cheap land/creature cycler that is playable as a two drop but still picks up value late game. Roil Experimenter is a more expensive and slightly more powerful Stealer of Secrets with the added bonus of being able to dip into green to get evasion through daunt.
Next up are my two payoffs, 1 common and 1 uncommon: Shaman's Blessing is a small combat trick that gives a minor upside when you've drawn multiple cards this turn. It works well with both Wilderness Ponderer and any instant speed draw two card (which I didn't actually make, but isn't something that would necessarily be unusual to be printed in a set). Foregone Protector signifies that it cares about drawing cards in two separate ways: first, the Maro ability for power gets a boost if you happen to have card advantage (even though my cards don't necessarily focus on that), and second, drawing multiple cards allows a decent strength defender become able to turn into a formidable attacker for a turn.
Finally, I have a multicolored enabler/payoff: Mystic Expedition gives the player an immediate understanding of what this archetype is about, as multicolored cards typically do: You want to draw multiple cards a turn, and you get bonuses the more times you do so. It was a bit hard to judge its power level, and it may be too powerful, but it isn't easily broken or abusable by itself.
Those are my entries. I put this a bit too close to the last minute, but I'm satisfied with my result. Good luck to everyone!
All right everyone the results are in! Refer to the google doc link below for all the written feedback and scores. Let me know if anyone has trouble with the link.
@Faiths_Guide, unfortunately you came up short this challenge and are eliminated. You get 8 favorites of your choice.
Congrats to the top 3!!! I will post the final stage's challenge in the next few days. Buckle up, because it will be, by far, the hardest one yet!
The top 3 placing Cardsmiths from this stage can request the following amount of faves of their choice from me: 3rd Place: 1 fave 2nd Place: 2 faves 1st Place: 3 faves
I also owe some favorites from both this and from previous challenges so please request the following total amounts:
Comments
As for what storm itself is as a mechanic, here's one of the more infamous cards with it:
The reason the storm scale is called the storm scale is because MaRo has said storm will probably never return to standard (or any new cards), ever.
In the Madness archetype, an enabler would be anything that lets you discard and a card with madness would always be a payoff?
Yes to both, although your examples are not the only types of payoffs/enablers possible for a madness Archetype.
Right, thanks.
Historically, there has always been an unspoken overlap between blue and red concerning tokens. Blue for example likes generating bigger flying tokens like with Talrand's Command, Thunderheads, and thopters. Red just likes pumping out tiny little goblins and pumping the team. Although Brudiclad was printed just recently, Blue-Red tokens has generally been unexplored.
Until now.
Blue and red are most famous for their synergies and creativity. As stated by MaRo, "Blue-red, more so than most color pairs, tends to build its decks around interactions happening." I took this to heart by making Blue-Red tokens more explorative and open-ended than traditional Green-White or Red-White tokens. The cards themselves aren't as powerful, but the Blue-Red limited archetype allows a lot more flexibility.
For example:
These two cards are the bread and butter of Blue-Red Tokens. Divergent Genesis gives you the option of an aggressive or defensive start. However, Divergent Genesis's strength lies in its synergy with Improvised Inventions, a colorshifted instant-speed Eyes in the Skies. And if you don't want to create a copy of one of your elementals, you can always create another Thopter.
Goblin Incendiaries is the payoff card for Blue-Red tokens, rewarding players for playing on-curb and tokens. This card is particularly backbreaking with the assortment of Thopters generated by Blue-Red Tokens.
Renegade Reconnaissance provides a more long-term option for Blue-Red tokens. Five mana plus a tapped creature for a Thopter is underwhelming, but as the game continues, your accumulated Thopters will swarm over all. I deliberated about the power level of this card for a while, but it's important to remember even a 2/2 Wind Drake can easily overpower this card.
My final payoff card combines Scroll Thief for an incentive for spitting out tokens (maybe with Renegade Reconnaissance?). Monastery Impulsive is beneficial for both aggressive decks by providing more fuel and slower decks by eking out an advantage over the long run.
And that's Blue-Red Tokens. This was a particularly tricky Limited challenge, but I am proud of my entries. Good luck to all of the other contestants!
Just over 16 Hours left to get your entries in!
If you need an extension let me know AsAP
Where are you, dude?
sorry, been a bit busy. I should be able to finish before the deadline, but I will know in an hour whether I need more time or not.
I still have a pretty good and super fun casual deck of SOI madness at home, and I really love the playstyle. It still has that traditional Black-Red aggro archetype (which I've replicated), but it gets value out of nowhere and can really surprise your opponent when piloted correctly and/or luckily.
I should say, before we get well and truly "into" this, that I specifically tried not to put these cards into a specific set. Rather, these would, or should, simply be good fits in any incarnation of "the madness deck" at their respective rarities. In addition, I tried to give these 5 submissions cohesiveness in their application of this mechanic/thematic. If these were drafted together with enough support, I think they'd be a blast to play with!
Allow me to start with the two uncommons, one an enabler and the other a payoff:
If you manage to draft these two together you run them in playsets together, these guys can really bring the pain. I modified the "Academy Raider" timing on the Picky Robber so that he'd be more useful with combat tricks, Looming Vanguard, etc. Casting cards from exile is something red is fond of anyway, but in a madness deck it's more frequent. The Looming Vanguard can make a lot of little guys do a lot of damage quickly, furthering your aggro gameplan.
Two more enablers. These guys further your aggro strategy. If you have a sac outlet for the Contender he becomes an instant speed madness trigger.
This is an interesting Dynacharge-like payoff that can deliver a finishing blow out of nowhere if you've been following your strategy and have less cards in hand than your opponent. I came up with that restriction as a less difficult and negative hellbent style restriction. It only becomes a possible instant or combat trick if you manage to discard it.
Anyway, thanks for looking. Good luck all!
I commented on Expedition! By the way, I'm super impressed by how fast you pulled that together.
Because card draw is a limited powerhouse by itself, this archetype instead focuses on caring about drawing multiple cards a turn but not necessarily having card advantage, as only one of the enablers actually provides that opportunity. Because of this, I also specifically avoided instant and sorcery cards, as such cards that don't give card advantage are difficult to make powerful enough to matter.
The cards are loosely based around the theme of exploration and the intersection of wilderness and magic, but there is no concrete connection among them.
To start off, here are my two common Enablers:
Wilderness Ponderer is a cheap land/creature cycler that is playable as a two drop but still picks up value late game.
Roil Experimenter is a more expensive and slightly more powerful Stealer of Secrets with the added bonus of being able to dip into green to get evasion through daunt.
Next up are my two payoffs, 1 common and 1 uncommon:
Shaman's Blessing is a small combat trick that gives a minor upside when you've drawn multiple cards this turn. It works well with both Wilderness Ponderer and any instant speed draw two card (which I didn't actually make, but isn't something that would necessarily be unusual to be printed in a set).
Foregone Protector signifies that it cares about drawing cards in two separate ways: first, the Maro ability for power gets a boost if you happen to have card advantage (even though my cards don't necessarily focus on that), and second, drawing multiple cards allows a decent strength defender become able to turn into a formidable attacker for a turn.
Finally, I have a multicolored enabler/payoff:
Mystic Expedition gives the player an immediate understanding of what this archetype is about, as multicolored cards typically do: You want to draw multiple cards a turn, and you get bonuses the more times you do so. It was a bit hard to judge its power level, and it may be too powerful, but it isn't easily broken or abusable by itself.
Those are my entries. I put this a bit too close to the last minute, but I'm satisfied with my result. Good luck to everyone!
No more entries and edits!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sWM-ZsKrdUwijOQuNE8YguIZBce2FvMzWjKgFM_aFhM/edit?usp=sharing
Announcing the Top 3!
4th Place: @Faiths_Guide with 71 pts
2nd Place: @TheCenterOfTheUniverse with 88 pts
2nd Place: @Temurzoa with 88 pts
1st Place: @ningyounk with 89 pts
@Faiths_Guide, unfortunately you came up short this challenge and are eliminated. You get 8 favorites of your choice.
Congrats to the top 3!!! I will post the final stage's challenge in the next few days. Buckle up, because it will be, by far, the hardest one yet!
The top 3 placing Cardsmiths from this stage can request the following amount of faves of their choice from me:
3rd Place: 1 fave
2nd Place: 2 faves
1st Place: 3 faves
I also owe some favorites from both this and from previous challenges so please request the following total amounts:
@ChuckTesta: 7 faves
@Lujikul: 4 faves
@ningyounk: 4 fave
@TheCenterOfTheUniverse: 5 faves
@Temurzoa: 4 faves
@Faiths_Guide: 8 Faves
Congrats @TheCenterOfTheUniverse, @Temurzo, & @ningyounk. Good luck in GCDS 7!