@MTG_Sappy I like the concept, it's definitely in the spirit of the Masterwork mechanic, especially with the Saboteur trigger, though I would change a few things:
1) It's very wordy and could probably be made simpler. Notably, it's weird that the Masterwork doesn't let you cast the exiled cards but mind control instead, I think the effect should just escalate.
2) As a mythic, it's not meant as a support piece really, so it should have Masterwork itself.
3) Stealing your opponent's stuff is already strong enough, it probably shouldn't let you cast the spells for free as well.
Here's a try:
3UBR Creature 2/3 Masterwork Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to an opponent, exile the top card of their library. If that creature is your Masterwork, exile the top three cards of their library instead.
You may cast cards exiled with CARDAME this turn, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast them.
@EnvyReaper Sure! Here's a link to the latest version of the design skeleton where I've been trying a slightly different set of archetypes: CLICK HERE.
WU Control Classic (Removal, lifegain, counters, and card draw.) UB Midrange Art Blink (Have many Art trigger ETB abilities by blinking, recuperating, etc.) WB Control Removal (Don't let anything survive.)
To see the set skeleton, go to the second tab "DESIGN SKELETON - Common Aug19". You'll see in red all the cards I'm still the most eager to improve with the reasons in the "Issues" section on the far right.
As far as archetypes are concerned, here are my main issues:
- GB Converge feels bad when you don't splash a third colour, and it's very wordy with an X in it so it really needs to pull its weight to be worth the complexity. The effects that work with Converge also aren't super synergistic with each other. It might need to be a rider "If you spent three or more colors of mana to cast this spell" to feel less bad. Or change focus entirely and let the 5-colours archetype be a hidden bonus.
- WB needs more identity. Either by giving some pay-off to the removal theme, or by giving it a more focused nature. For instance, WB tokens. But ideally, it would enable a more controll-y style of play to keep the styles of archetypes balanced.
- The classic archetypes WU Control and RG Go Tall could use a small subtheme to make them more unique, like War of the Spark cared about creatures with power 4 or more on a few commons in RG for instance.
- UB might need to refocus its game plan a bit. If we go full-in with a combo-y feel with blink, recuperation etc. a small graveyard theme could be in order. It could also use some more branded Art tokens that act in a specific and recognisable way (e.g. Create a colorless 2/2 Art creature token with "This creature can't be blocked by creatures whose power and toughness aren't equal." OR Create a colorless 0/0 Art creature token, then put a +1/+1 counter on it for each Art you control.) UB could also be about Saboteur triggers (whenever CARDNAME or another Art creature deals combat damage to an opponent) instead of ETB since those two triggers work well once you mix them with the other non-UB colours anyways. It's more difficult to pull off, but it's more synergistic with a lot of other themes in the set and it's more branded.
@ningyounk I have this image by Beto Lima, which consists of a bard using his flute to cast a teleportation spell.
038 C U 19 Instant CMC 2 Blink Exile target creature you control. Return it onto the battlefield under its owner’s control. If it’s an Art, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
@EnvyReaper Looks like it could fit! =D We'll have a serious creative conversation later, once the cards start to change a bit less often, where we'll redistribute all the illustrations in the best way possible, decide on the creature grid etc. One of the factors is the numbers of flutists we can add in the set for instance, making sure they don't look alike and that we don't have twenty of them.
@EnvyReaper I do think a 2-mana fog is a good idea at common because it could help protect your psylian life, especially in the GW archetype that's all about keeping your psyslian life, so it gives some new interesting utility to the spell. But this is strictly identical to Root Snare. Instead of creating a functional reprint, unless there's a very specific reason for it, I'd rather just use the staple card itself, or find a mechanical twist that would justify changing it.
@MTG_Sappy@SteampunkDragon Yeap, it's still ongoing, though the iterations on the common set skeleton have been so fast that I failed to keep up with updating it as it goes on the thread to let everyone involve, my bad.
Basically, I've waited for the next big checkpoint to show a new version of the common set skeleton. I've finished it, I'm about 3-4 iterations down the one I published in the introduction and I'm just adding some illustrations and names before I publish it.
You'll get to see the cards very soon so we can discuss what works, what doesn't, and where to go from there. But here's the basic idea of what changed compared to the previous version I published:
1) I wanted the presence of Living Art to be acknowledged mechanically, so the UB archetype is now an Art tribal archetype that's based on recursion and controlling ETB abilities. This replaces the UW Faerie Tribal archetype that worked similarly. UW becomes a classic control archetype (which was the theme of the old UB archetype) and now has a mechanical emphasis on instants and flash.
2) I thought the White/Black deck was missing some mechanical hook, it didn't have anything specific that drove you to play it. It's now a Go Wide archetype that produces creature tokens. This synergises both with White's aggressive and defensive plans, while Black gets to do more combo-y stuff with the tokens.
3) I couldn't make the BG Multicolour Ramp archetype work. I thought it would work well with psylian life, but the cards felt frustrating if you didn't specifically built your deck with some additional off-colour lands, which requires much more deck building skills than any other archetype. It also struggled to find a common winning strategy between black and green (does the rider go on Midrange cards that build up? On combo cards that create tempo? On controlling cards meant to take over in the late game?) which means I often had a rider like "Where X is the number of mana spent to cast this spell" or "If you spent mana produced by a nonland to cast this spell" on cards that otherwise would not really go in the same deck. On top of that, I couldn't manage to make Black feel as important as Green in this archetype. I still think it's a fun strategy, but I think it's more suited for a secondary draft strategy that will only start at uncommon, and I think it might be better if it spreads across more colours.
So, instead, there's a small +1/+1 counters theme in BG. It works well with the midrange strategy Green is having in the set and Black once again gets to be more combo-y about this.
4) The three previous points lead me to redo the whole skeleton from scratch, though I was still heavily leaning on the previous work that was done, so many cards ended up being identical. The rest is mostly half a billion little changes on a card-by-card basis xD
5) I also haven't implemented anything visible yet but I kept in mind five possible Wedge mechanical themes to drive the cards design because I liked the draft experience of M20 (It's where most of the new archetypes came from):
WUR (Jeskai) Disruptive Instants and Flash spells UBG (Sultai) Combo Art Tribal Tempo BRW (Mardu) Aggro Best-at-Combat RGU (Temur) Midrange Tall-and-then-Taller GWB (Abzan) Control Life-matters
6) Last time I was really filling up the creative elements with the first thing I could find that kind of fitted. This time, I'm a little more conscious about the world and I tried to distribute most of the important themes where they should be to see if I can start to get a sense of the set's flavour and what's missing.
@Faiths_Guide Thanks! Though honestly I'm really shooting in the dark which is why it's taking this long x) But I'd rather take this slowly and really get the feel of what building a set is like. At this point I think it's less about the final product and more about understanding as much as possible about what makes a set tick or not while trying to put it together ^^
I have actually made some watermarks for any musician based cards, seeing as how ningyounk is planning to do a tribal mechanic, I decided to post them here after showing them to ningyounk, if you notice the white pixels don't worry about them as they are too small to be seen really
Alright, here's the update on the set skeleton for commons, with the changes mentioned above. Here's the rough archetype grid I used:
WU Control Flash (Playing during the opponent's turn yields you bonuses.) UB Combo Art Tribal (Abuse ETB synergies on your Art with recursion and blink.) BR Aggro Suicide (Use your life as a fuel to be super agressive.) RG Aggro Go Tall (Make your creatures grow as big as possible to stomp the opponent.) GW Control Psylian Fortress (Protect your psylian life to keep the bonuses active.) WB Midrange Go Wide (Use tokens to swarm your opponent.) UR Disruptive Aggro Masterwork (Make a big evasive Masterwork) BG Midrange +1/+1 counters (Use +1/+1 counters to get big or to pay for abilities.) RW Disruptive Aggro Elated (Keep the pressure by turning on Elated every turn.) GU Combo Discover Tempo (Get out-of-hand value by using Discover.)
Since the Emotion theme is not really on the menu anymore, at least not in large proportions, Elated is now called straight-up "Renaissance" for now. I'm also looking for another flavour for Masterwork to avoid having too many Art-related illustrations in any given color, especially in Blue and Black where it mechanically matters that some of the other creatures are Art.
Flavour wise, I could also use some themes to use in Red, I used a lot of very generic illustrations in that colour.
@ningyounk, one question, can every color do something explicitly with psylian life. If that is true, can you tell me what each color is able to do with psylian life?
@EnvyReaper So, to respect the colour pie, only white, black and green can really gain psylian life. They can gain psylian life the same way that they would gain regular life, just in smaller quantities. For instance, black can't just gain life as a rider on a spell, it needs to come as a cost either paid by the opponent (drain effects) or yourself (sacrifice to gain life, death triggers, etc.)
Now, because psylian life is the splashy mechanic of the set and it's a life-matters set, I tried to find a way to bend the colour pie a bit so even red and blue have a little bit of life gain. So all colours, including blue and red, can have access to what I call "life cycling" where your transform some of your normal life into psylian life. The rules is that, for red and blue, you can't end up with a higher life total than you had before, you just converted some of your life into psylian life. Note that I copied the looting/rummaging separation of blue/red on Escape Winter and Burning Cramming since blue gains psylian life before losing regular life while red has to pay regular life before gaining psylian life.
@Faiths_Guide The mechanic is already very strong, being able to play lands from the top of the library felt like too much (also, I'm not sure this wording works at instant speed.) I like that lands are a blind spot with the mechanic where it's just a Scry. It could be reconsidered in the future if the mechanic feels too weak, but so far I'm more concerned about accidentally breaking it and making it overpowered.
@Faiths_Guide Thanks! Yes, Ink Predator is meant to be a Cat. The thing about Swirling Faerie and Valiant Missionary is super weird, I didn't even realised I changed wording halfway through O__O I actually like the Swirling Faerie wording better, it uses less commas.
Comments
I like the concept, it's definitely in the spirit of the Masterwork mechanic, especially with the Saboteur trigger, though I would change a few things:
1) It's very wordy and could probably be made simpler. Notably, it's weird that the Masterwork doesn't let you cast the exiled cards but mind control instead, I think the effect should just escalate.
2) As a mythic, it's not meant as a support piece really, so it should have Masterwork itself.
3) Stealing your opponent's stuff is already strong enough, it probably shouldn't let you cast the spells for free as well.
Here's a try:
3UBR
Creature
2/3
Masterwork
Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to an opponent, exile the top card of their library. If that creature is your Masterwork, exile the top three cards of their library instead.
You may cast cards exiled with CARDAME this turn, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast them.
what about this
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/xizhen-bard-of-many-tales-1
Sure! Here's a link to the latest version of the design skeleton where I've been trying a slightly different set of archetypes: CLICK HERE.
WU Control Classic (Removal, lifegain, counters, and card draw.)
UB Midrange Art Blink (Have many Art trigger ETB abilities by blinking, recuperating, etc.)
WB Control Removal (Don't let anything survive.)
To see the set skeleton, go to the second tab "DESIGN SKELETON - Common Aug19". You'll see in red all the cards I'm still the most eager to improve with the reasons in the "Issues" section on the far right.
As far as archetypes are concerned, here are my main issues:
- GB Converge feels bad when you don't splash a third colour, and it's very wordy with an X in it so it really needs to pull its weight to be worth the complexity. The effects that work with Converge also aren't super synergistic with each other. It might need to be a rider "If you spent three or more colors of mana to cast this spell" to feel less bad. Or change focus entirely and let the 5-colours archetype be a hidden bonus.
- WB needs more identity. Either by giving some pay-off to the removal theme, or by giving it a more focused nature. For instance, WB tokens. But ideally, it would enable a more controll-y style of play to keep the styles of archetypes balanced.
- The classic archetypes WU Control and RG Go Tall could use a small subtheme to make them more unique, like War of the Spark cared about creatures with power 4 or more on a few commons in RG for instance.
- UB might need to refocus its game plan a bit. If we go full-in with a combo-y feel with blink, recuperation etc. a small graveyard theme could be in order. It could also use some more branded Art tokens that act in a specific and recognisable way (e.g. Create a colorless 2/2 Art creature token with "This creature can't be blocked by creatures whose power and toughness aren't equal." OR Create a colorless 0/0 Art creature token, then put a +1/+1 counter on it for each Art you control.)
UB could also be about Saboteur triggers (whenever CARDNAME or another Art creature deals combat damage to an opponent) instead of ETB since those two triggers work well once you mix them with the other non-UB colours anyways. It's more difficult to pull off, but it's more synergistic with a lot of other themes in the set and it's more branded.
038
C
U
19
Instant
CMC 2
Blink
Exile target creature you control. Return it onto the battlefield under its owner’s control. If it’s an Art, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
Idk, this seems like a good fit
Looks like it could fit! =D We'll have a serious creative conversation later, once the cards start to change a bit less often, where we'll redistribute all the illustrations in the best way possible, decide on the creature grid etc. One of the factors is the numbers of flutists we can add in the set for instance, making sure they don't look alike and that we don't have twenty of them.
095
C
G
19
Instant
CMC 2
Fog
Prevent all combat damage this turn.
I do think a 2-mana fog is a good idea at common because it could help protect your psylian life, especially in the GW archetype that's all about keeping your psyslian life, so it gives some new interesting utility to the spell. But this is strictly identical to Root Snare. Instead of creating a functional reprint, unless there's a very specific reason for it, I'd rather just use the staple card itself, or find a mechanical twist that would justify changing it.
Yeap, it's still ongoing, though the iterations on the common set skeleton have been so fast that I failed to keep up with updating it as it goes on the thread to let everyone involve, my bad.
Basically, I've waited for the next big checkpoint to show a new version of the common set skeleton. I've finished it, I'm about 3-4 iterations down the one I published in the introduction and I'm just adding some illustrations and names before I publish it.
You'll get to see the cards very soon so we can discuss what works, what doesn't, and where to go from there. But here's the basic idea of what changed compared to the previous version I published:
1) I wanted the presence of Living Art to be acknowledged mechanically, so the UB archetype is now an Art tribal archetype that's based on recursion and controlling ETB abilities. This replaces the UW Faerie Tribal archetype that worked similarly. UW becomes a classic control archetype (which was the theme of the old UB archetype) and now has a mechanical emphasis on instants and flash.
2) I thought the White/Black deck was missing some mechanical hook, it didn't have anything specific that drove you to play it. It's now a Go Wide archetype that produces creature tokens. This synergises both with White's aggressive and defensive plans, while Black gets to do more combo-y stuff with the tokens.
3) I couldn't make the BG Multicolour Ramp archetype work. I thought it would work well with psylian life, but the cards felt frustrating if you didn't specifically built your deck with some additional off-colour lands, which requires much more deck building skills than any other archetype. It also struggled to find a common winning strategy between black and green (does the rider go on Midrange cards that build up? On combo cards that create tempo? On controlling cards meant to take over in the late game?) which means I often had a rider like "Where X is the number of mana spent to cast this spell" or "If you spent mana produced by a nonland to cast this spell" on cards that otherwise would not really go in the same deck. On top of that, I couldn't manage to make Black feel as important as Green in this archetype. I still think it's a fun strategy, but I think it's more suited for a secondary draft strategy that will only start at uncommon, and I think it might be better if it spreads across more colours.
So, instead, there's a small +1/+1 counters theme in BG. It works well with the midrange strategy Green is having in the set and Black once again gets to be more combo-y about this.
4) The three previous points lead me to redo the whole skeleton from scratch, though I was still heavily leaning on the previous work that was done, so many cards ended up being identical. The rest is mostly half a billion little changes on a card-by-card basis xD
5) I also haven't implemented anything visible yet but I kept in mind five possible Wedge mechanical themes to drive the cards design because I liked the draft experience of M20 (It's where most of the new archetypes came from):
WUR (Jeskai) Disruptive Instants and Flash spells
UBG (Sultai) Combo Art Tribal Tempo
BRW (Mardu) Aggro Best-at-Combat
RGU (Temur) Midrange Tall-and-then-Taller
GWB (Abzan) Control Life-matters
6) Last time I was really filling up the creative elements with the first thing I could find that kind of fitted. This time, I'm a little more conscious about the world and I tried to distribute most of the important themes where they should be to see if I can start to get a sense of the set's flavour and what's missing.
I'm repeatedly impressed by your knowledge and perseverance.
Thanks! Though honestly I'm really shooting in the dark which is why it's taking this long x) But I'd rather take this slowly and really get the feel of what building a set is like. At this point I think it's less about the final product and more about understanding as much as possible about what makes a set tick or not while trying to put it together ^^
Totally, it is way more complex than we realize until we try!
https://imgur.com/gallery/F7Ub8Jm
I have actually made some watermarks for any musician based cards, seeing as how ningyounk is planning to do a tribal mechanic, I decided to post them here after showing them to ningyounk, if you notice the white pixels don't worry about them as they are too small to be seen really
WU Control Flash (Playing during the opponent's turn yields you bonuses.)
UB Combo Art Tribal (Abuse ETB synergies on your Art with recursion and blink.)
BR Aggro Suicide (Use your life as a fuel to be super agressive.)
RG Aggro Go Tall (Make your creatures grow as big as possible to stomp the opponent.)
GW Control Psylian Fortress (Protect your psylian life to keep the bonuses active.)
WB Midrange Go Wide (Use tokens to swarm your opponent.)
UR Disruptive Aggro Masterwork (Make a big evasive Masterwork)
BG Midrange +1/+1 counters (Use +1/+1 counters to get big or to pay for abilities.)
RW Disruptive Aggro Elated (Keep the pressure by turning on Elated every turn.)
GU Combo Discover Tempo (Get out-of-hand value by using Discover.)
Since the Emotion theme is not really on the menu anymore, at least not in large proportions, Elated is now called straight-up "Renaissance" for now. I'm also looking for another flavour for Masterwork to avoid having too many Art-related illustrations in any given color, especially in Blue and Black where it mechanically matters that some of the other creatures are Art.
Flavour wise, I could also use some themes to use in Red, I used a lot of very generic illustrations in that colour.
WHITE —
BLUE —
RED —
COLORLESS —
Oh yeah it's totally supposed to sacrifice itself, thanks, good catch! (That'd be a fun common for sure wihtout the sacrifice XD)
So, to respect the colour pie, only white, black and green can really gain psylian life. They can gain psylian life the same way that they would gain regular life, just in smaller quantities. For instance, black can't just gain life as a rider on a spell, it needs to come as a cost either paid by the opponent (drain effects) or yourself (sacrifice to gain life, death triggers, etc.)
Now, because psylian life is the splashy mechanic of the set and it's a life-matters set, I tried to find a way to bend the colour pie a bit so even red and blue have a little bit of life gain. So all colours, including blue and red, can have access to what I call "life cycling" where your transform some of your normal life into psylian life. The rules is that, for red and blue, you can't end up with a higher life total than you had before, you just converted some of your life into psylian life. Note that I copied the looting/rummaging separation of blue/red on Escape Winter and Burning Cramming since blue gains psylian life before losing regular life while red has to pay regular life before gaining psylian life.
What was the reason we went with "cast" instead of "play" on discover?
The mechanic is already very strong, being able to play lands from the top of the library felt like too much (also, I'm not sure this wording works at instant speed.) I like that lands are a blind spot with the mechanic where it's just a Scry. It could be reconsidered in the future if the mechanic feels too weak, but so far I'm more concerned about accidentally breaking it and making it overpowered.
Should Ink Predator be a Cat?
River Sampling shouldn't say "return" it should just be "Put target creature on top of its owner's library."
Valiant Missionary and Swirling Faerie appear to have the only ETBs with a +1/+1 counter abilities that you worded backwards.
Loxodon Peacemaker needs an "s" at the end of its ability's first sentence.
Thanks!
Yes, Ink Predator is meant to be a Cat.
The thing about Swirling Faerie and Valiant Missionary is super weird, I didn't even realised I changed wording halfway through O__O I actually like the Swirling Faerie wording better, it uses less commas.