MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Rezatta, the life-matters Renaissance plane — SET DESIGN PHASE
This discussion has been closed.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
I think so, I don't have any specific plans for demons (they might actually be replaced by the black Angels depending on what we do with them) but they're a really rich vein of beautiful illustrations, we've got to use what is at our disposal. It really depends how we handle the black angels, how do black integrate itself into the church of Serra? (I think it's totally possible, Black has some nicer under-represented sides to explore. Abzan for instance was all about community and Black represented how they relied on the spirit of elders for support.)
Sorry I haven’t been keeping track of this set’s progress much. I just drop in and drop out.
Is Elated still in the set? If it is, Take the wind could be modified a little bit so that if you’re elated, your creatures get +2/+0 until end of turn.
Yeap, Elated is still in the set. It was surprisingly hard to find good illustrations on the theme of emotions though, so the theme was dumped and the name with it. We just call the mechanic"Renaissance" for now, though I'm still looking for a made-up name to say that in a flavourful way.
@LordTachanka123
Not necessarily Ancestry, my point was just that there's a whole side of Black that's not necessarily evil we could tap into. We need to find a part of Black that's compatible with the values of the Church of Serra. For instance, Art is one of the four virtues of the Church of Serra, and Black already has the strongest tie to Art tribal mechanically at common. Maybe the link is beauty, which ties into the egotistic nature of Black and also works with the little "power equal to toughness" theme in Black.
Does that make sense?
And personally I think beauty makes a lot of sense.
Just brain food.
Still, there's this reprint at common that I used as a nod to Da Vinci's research on human wings for instance:
• Leonardo Da Vinci: He's known as an excentric genius, almost as much for his scientific work on aerodynamic and anatomy than his paintings (the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper), I picture him base red or blue.
• Michelangelo: Because of his name and how his most famous work consistently revolve around very religious themes (Pièta, David, the ceiling of the sistine chapel, and the last judgement), I'd picture him base white.
• Donatello: He's most of all a sculptor so I figure he could be base whatever colours is most important to support the Masterwork mechanic, I'm thinking Green.
• Raphael: This one's harder, I have a hard time getting a specific vibe out of his work and life, we could try to find a reasonably well-known element about him that drives his design in a specific direction. For instance, they used the fact that Cleopatra is believed to have killed herself by letting a snake bite her to make her card in Amonkhet:
Which leaves us with one slot to fill. Depending on the colour(s) we assign to the others, we will know which colour(s) they need to be, and Caravaggio might be a good candidate in this spot (I'd picture him base black since his signature seems to be Tenebrism).
Raphael died of a fever at the age of 37. Biographer Giorgio Vasari mentions Raphael’s love of women and alleges that the fever was caused by a night of excess passion, a tale that mythologized Raphael as an indulgent lothario.
Ooh, exciting! You went all the way to three colours? I've been pretty happy with this archetype so far, the emphasis on protecting your life total at all cost regardless of how high it is reminds me a bit of the Monarch mechanic, I think it pushes for unique play patterns.
To share your decks, I believe Untap.in gives you a deck ID?
____
It's been a while (I'm writing my PhD thesis right now so don't be surprised if I disappear completely from time to time, I shouldn't even be here XD), I have some new fixes for the list of stuff I wanted to change since the last iteration.
Red was an unsightly mess to fix, I always struggle with this colour >.< Here were the cards I wanted to remove:
Which leaves us with the following holes:
• A 2-mana agressive creature
• An enchantment
• Two instants and/or sorceries
• A card that cares about losing life
• A mana sink
• A spell that deals damage to any target
• A spell that deals damage to a player specifically
• A treason effect
• An artifact removal
• I also wouldn't mind an Art with an ETB ability
• I also wouldn't mind a repeatable way of losing life
• Aggro needed a bit of help
Spoiler alert, I didn't even manage to fit everything in. Let's start with what I got:
I was uncomfortable with how Cheeky Performer was performing compared to cards like Viashino Pyromancer. So, instead, I went the Bloodhaze Wolverine route. I think it's a bit easier to use now and should bring more punch to the BRW Suicide aggro archetype while not being as oppressive as Prickly Marmoset which is a recent design from Ikoria I really disliked at common.
Violent Pulsion kept the firebreathing text because I really needed a mana sink somewhere, but I moved the direct-damage-to-the-face from the Cheeky Performer to this card, so this creates a cool new interaction where you can pump the rest of your mana into the firebreathing ability *BEFORE* it resolves. For the mana cost I had in mind Gravitic Punch from Guilds of Ravnica, except you trade Jump-Start for the firebreathing.
I already presented a slightly different version of Sparks earlier. It can be used like a weak 1-damage-for-1-mana spell, a bit like Gut Shot, or you can see it as a variant of both Shock and Twin Bolt where the versatility of twin bolt is converted not as an additional mana but as a payment of 2 life. I like it because it uses choices in a unique way (it's basically kicker — pay 2 life) and it allows red to trigger Renaissance for just one mana.
For the Treason spell, I simply converted Goatnap to play into the Art theme, allowing it a reference while keeping the tribal archetype out of red.
On top of those four cards, I made a series of small adjustments to various colours:
I increased the cost of Underwater Guide's ability by one because I realised I was uncomfortable with having your two biggest creatures unblockable every turn for just six mana. This ability varies greatly in cost depending on the set, I think this is a good compromise if you looked at other similar cards like Amphin Pathmage and Coralhelm Guide.
Because Cheeky Performer, the other 2-drop, got First Strike, I removed it from Crafty Ranger to respect the ratio of evasion. I was uncomfortable with the idea of making people sacrifice it and finding a land on top of their library, so I added a Scry trigger so you know when to sacrifice it. I dislike how wordy the card looks with the reminder text, but it's actually two very straight-forward abilities.
As I mentioned some time ago, I felt that Reborn Jester was playing a bit weird in the Reborn cycle with Haste since it felt more like an alternative card than a straight upgrade because you often had to wait after combat where haste becomes irrelevant to cast it with Renaissance. Someone suggested to use Menace instead and I think it looks better this way. I just removed a point of toughness because 5/3 menace for 4 seemed strong enough already.
I liked the simplicity of Melting Frostfang and Endangered Winterhowl but they were just a little too close to vanilla creatures to my liking so I added a simple keyword ability to them. Since vigilance can be a bit potent, I reduced the toughness of the wolf by 1. Additionally, I changed all the cards in this cycle so they care about having an ODD life total instead of EVEN, this way you need to work a little for them to be really good as your starting life total is even.
I really liked the original idea behind those cards where the second part of the card could interact with a creature you would discover. I just didn't realise it wouldn't work because the creature spell went on the stack but didn't resolve until the discover spell was done. As I was struggling to find a good alternative design for those cards, I decided to just try and make my old idea work. A static ability that triggered in a delayed manner was feeling weird for common, so in the end I made them enchantments, so you can get the second part of the ability when needed.
While the idea behind Springborn Spirit was that it allowed you to protect your psylian life with a good blocking body, I found that the 2/4 version was a little too difficult to pass. So instead I went with a 3/2 that still deters you from attacking, but will die more easily if you decide to crash a creature into it anyways.
___
My main problem right now is that I don't have an artifact removal in Red at common. I was thinking either adding it to the First Strike slot (but I already have a choice spell in Red with Sparks and I don't want to overdo it), or I was considering adding this slot to the big artifact creature slot, but it's probably a severe colour pie break...
Burn the Cathedral 4R
Sorcery
Destroy target land and up to two target artifacts.
If that's too good, you could go with a land or two artifacts, but I was mostly trying to make a better Demolish, as that's not usually seen as too good a card, and making a better effect for 1 more mana hopefully shouldn't be problematic.
My main problem is actually finding a slot to put it
And does anyone else like the name TOE?
It's actually a good idea, that's the spirit of what the solution would require. In this specific case though it's not an option because the green enchantment is already an artifact removal:
@LordTachanka123
It's a bit tricky, this design would still need to take the spot of another one, and I'm keeping serran life to colours that usually gain life (white/black/green) — barring one little twist in blue and red. If you look at the food cards in Eldraine, you'll notice they are only in white/black and green as well (there was a single exception with a mono-blue card that made food and I still have no idea why they did that, I think they really needed an artifact in that spot). So red gaining life would be a colour break, and without red being able to properly gain serran life, it wouldn't be fair to ask the red artifact removal to pay serran life to work.