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Renaissance Set — Creative Design
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Harmonize [thing] (Every player {discards/draws or sacrifices perniments} until all players have the same amount of [thing] as you)
Internlize [Abilitys/ ceriin types of spells] ( This card has all____ on the [stack/ battle field] and in grave yards)
here is two card examples...
I do agree that some cards should reward you for having some amount of psy life, but not for having more than an opponent because you can't expect players to all care about the same mechanic.
@pkfdre
On Harmonize, the Balance effect is too strong to be put on multiple cards and it's really not something you want to see at common. It's probably possible to make a more balanced mechanic by making you draw a card if someone has more cards in hand than you for instance. But this is a card flow mechanic, and we have Discover in that slot, I think Discover is more fitting because of the flavour.
On Internalize, again a copy effect is too strong to be put on multiple cards and especially at common. There are more knobs on this one to make it slightly more balanced, but it's still very very strong and encourages unfun combos I think. This is more something you put on one card in the set in my opinion.
Rebirth N (Whenever this creature becomes untapped, you gain N psylian life and you lose N nonpsylian life.)
Here's the idea behing it:
- The name is here to scream "THIS IS A RENAISSANCE SET BY THE WAY" at the face of everybody.
- It transforms regular life in psylian life (I don't know who posted that idea first, but I know someone did at the beginning).
- It doesn't feel like life gain so it's fine in non-life-gaining colours I think.
- It creates huge life swings for cards caring about life/gain loss.
- I was trying to get a cyclic feel when I thought of this trigger, to represent that the Muses return and inspire everyone.
- This is literally the inspired trigger from Theros, tying psylian life to inspiration.
I don't think so. The psylian life reminder points out that your life total is equal to your life plus your psylian life. When your life total becomes zero, you lose the game.
What if rebirth was a keyword ability (whenever this creature deals combat damage, you gain psylian life equal to the damge dealt and you lose that much in normal life) ?
@sanjaya666 Nope you wouldn't die because psylian life is still part of your life total. It's just life with a built-in bonus.
@pkfdre Psylian lifelink is indeed more interesting (because you can interact with it via pump spells) but I'm affraid it would make balancing psylian life too difficult. Psylian life is a potentially very powerful mechanic, and this likely gives you the tools to break it too easily, in my opinion. But if anyone have any idea to make it combat-relevant without it being too easy to break, that would be really cool!
Technically no, although you lose Psylian life before regular life, so (other than overusing Rebirth) it's unlikely that you'll hit 0 normal life before 0 Psylian.
On Ashiok, I think that Xe would be a good villain because emotions/dreams is what Xe's all about. The name, "Ashiok, Eater of Dreams" I think would be better as "Ashiok, Reaper of Dreams."
@Everybody
On tempo: I agree with @ningyounk's justification of psylian life in the set. Since you lose psylian life first, and you can spend it for mana, you're not going to save up on it and cast your Emrakul for 2 mana, because that's just unrealistic. You'll want to spend it to reduce some cheaper cards' mana costs, and also you're probably losing a little to a lot every turn.
Now, for my daily (well, not really; more like comment-ly) examination of archetypes:
As @ningyounk said, we need to move on to bicolor combos and how they would work. I'll do ally colors today.
- WU: Flavor-wise, blue's obsession with perfection and white's struggle for order complement each other perfectly. This results in a controlling strategy, as we saw with the Azorius. Completely off topic, but what the heck do the Azorius have to do with the Azores, the nine volcanic islands in Portugal that are weirdly independent? XD So. Back on track: WU is going to give us control. Blue stalls while white keeps your opponent in check; blue gets you the cards you need to utilize your white. I see this as a fairly basic control build with psylian life for card advantage and maybe a tad of discover thrown in there.
- UB: Blue seeks enlightenment and fulfillment of potential, and black seeks power. This combines into versatility: black will do anything to get to its goal, and blue has a very concrete goal indeed. Mechanically, we have a combo where black provides removal and blue provides card advantage. Patience and manipulation are specialties of both colors, so a fairly slow game in this combo is common. Pretty much the same as WU in terms of the set's mechanics; they're going to be focused on card advantage, so psy life, discover.
- BR: Black is ambitious and red is free. "No regrets" is personified by this combo. Red does whatever it wants, and black doesn't care what it does as long as it reaches its goal. Black keeps things motivated, and red follows blindly. This results in disruptive aggro, where we pump out threats as fast as we possibly can, while simultaneously preventing our opponent from doing the same. A tad slower than pure aggro, but it can hold up better against controlling builds. Mechanically: psylian life to make your aggro and removal faster, and Virtuoso to get out aggressive threats fast.
- RG: Red follows its heart, and green believes in destiny, so these two colors get along pretty well. Green says that nature is the right system, and red represents the aggressive nature of well, nature. Here we have aggressive ramp. Green is getting us extra mana, as well as big creatures later in the game, while red churns out cannon fodder, which in turn is pumped by green. Psylian life for the mana, and discover for card advantage.
- GW: White believes in order and law, and green believes in following the balance of nature, so it's natural that these colors are friends and allies. This results in a deck that gets you an army of synergistic little creatures that together, are infinitely more powerful than on their own. Psylian life to get your itty bitties out quicker, a bit of discover for card advantage, and maybe a smidgeon of Virutoso to add to your army.
That's it for today, folks. Tomorrow: Enemy colors! MagicChess, signing off XD
Hi
@MagicChess I'm going to bed, don't worry I'm not ignoring you but I'll have to wait until tomorrow for an answer x)
: (
rebirth (when this creature deals combat damage you gain psylian life equal to its base power and lose that much normal life)
@MagicChess Actually, I think it's more interesting to let you finish the archetype grid before giving the complete feedback ^^ I would say it's very good so far! My only doubts would be that it's a bit classic for this first half and there are two control archetypes that are a bit too similar (WU and UB) but there are ways to make them feel a bit different, and in the end it strongly depends on the last 5 archetypes ^^ I'll let you finish then we'll go from there! ^^
I'll just summarize what you said a little:
- WU Control
- UB Control
- BR Disruptive Aggro
- RG Beatdown Aggro Ramp
- GW Go Wide
but with the way i have it it is repeateable
@pkfdre, what do you mean by "repeatable"? And why would you want to prevent pumping? If it's for balance, you've balanced it plenty (some would say too much) by adding the normal life loss. By causing you to lose life equal to the creature's toughness, you're essentially changing normal life into psylian life, which you're going to spend right away, most likely. I think that this kind of effect would be very interesting on one card, but I don't see its value as a mechanic, other than reminding us of Renaissance.
The mechanical objective would be two-fold:
-Accelerating mana.
-Allowing huge life swings for cards that care about it, as it counts both as life gain and life loss.
But I agree it's not the most exciting mechanic, there's probably better to depict Renaissance ^^
_________________________________________________
Here's a new try.
So far we have "Discover [thing]" and "Virtuoso N" that both work as action keywords even though Virtuoso is not. I think we want either an ability word (NAME — Variable effect) or a keyword ability with a cost (NAME {cost} (Constant Effect)). Something relevant in battle might also be useful to give the set a stronger identity.
E.g:
Renascence — {cost}, Untap CARDNAME: [EFFECT]
Inspired Librarian
1U
Creature - Human
1/3
Renascence — 3U, Untap CARDNAME: Draw a card.
1U, T: Scry 2
==>This one is an ability word that has a cost. (Yes, it's technically cheating ;p) It's somewhat relevant in combat because of pseudo-vigilance (though I wasn't thinking of that when I said combat-relevant) but more importantly it's an excellent mana sink once you couple this with a tap ability. Note that the untap is part of the COST so you can't use it if your creature is not tapped.
As for the name, there are several options: we've considered "Rebirth" and now "Renascence," but just to get some more ideas out there we could try "Enlighten," maybe?
Funnily enough, Inspired Librarian could plausibly have Inspired XD (not that we want that in this set).
If it's always going to untap itself, we can simplify:
Renascence — {cost}, {ut}: [EFFECT]