Equipment Matters Set Ideas

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  • The name germ is pretty synonymous with infection/disease so we would need a lore reason to explain those being on the plane though they could be interesting mechanic-wise.

    Gorgons would make sense and they do sort-of have a artifact theme with turning things into stone (turning things into artifacts) so that could work.

    We could use both in some way. Maybe the Gorgons control the germs.
  • edited October 2017
    Gerrrrrrrrms...
    Wash your hands, pit fighters
  • Maybe there's a plague in the world; a blood infection that is spread because of all the battles? Doesn't explain how it animates weapons though...

    Alternatively, the germs are the victims of the plague; reduced to almost nothing; only spreading the disease through infected weapons.
  • Perhaps blue started an alliance with black in an attempt to gain influence over the plane, but their experiments end up creating less of an enhancement and more of a plague. Green is protected from the plague, mostly because they unknowingly cultivate it. Blue is the enemy of almost everybody for creating this virus that reduces people to nearly nothing, and the scapegoat keeps everyone's attention away from the true threat, the plague. It's certainly patchwork, but its fine for now.

    @Stormtide
  • I would like to ask your guys' opinion on an archetype. It's supposed to be UB disruptive aggro, but it might be too controlly. Basically, you can prevent damage that the creature would do to a player, and if you do, you resolve a controlly effect. For example, if you prevent all the damage of a 4/X, you could tap one of their lands at the next upkeep. If you prevent a 2/X, you could Mill two cards. It might not be fun, but it could be interesting.
  • @NokiSkaur Interesting. Fits with blue-black's evasion. So worded like this?

    *Ability word*- If ~ would deal combat damage to a player, you may prevent that damage. If you do, [effect].
  • That could certainly work. I just don't think it would be very fun to play against.
  • Back from my long break from MTGCardsmith XD (internet connection was being a horrible person :P). Hoping to aid in set creation!
  • @ManaChrome

    Thank you for trying to help! I haven't been able to go on Cardsmith often. I'm trying to work on school for the most part. I have today off, but that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
  • Does anyone have any ideas for this set? All suggestions are appreciated, and all ideas are welcome.
  • I will be continuing development on this set on Magic Set Editor, and I will have monthly updates on my YouTube channel (Noki Skaur).

    My current archetypes are...

    WU Midrange: Improvise

    UB Disruptive Aggro: Erode (Erode N: You may prevent all combat damage this creature would deal to players. If you do, that player puts the top card of his or her library into his or her graveyard for every N damage prevented.)

    BR Combo: Sacrifice

    RG Beatdown Aggro: Stompy

    GW Control: Equipment Destruction

    WB Control: Equipment Opression

    UR Disruptive Aggro: Infuse (You may cast this card for its Infuse cost equipped to a creature. This card gains "When equipped creature dies, sacrifice {Cardname})

    BG Beatdown Aggro: Living Weapon

    RW Midrange: Bows and Quivers

    GU Combo: Voltron

    These are subject to change, and you guys can still give me advice on this thread, but I am not going to be using this site for this specific set. Thank you for all your help along the way.
  • Germ tribal FTW!
  • @Gelectrode

    Yep! In the cycle of legends, there will be a Germ lord as well.
  • Go knock ‘em out, Noki.
  • The current state of this set can be found at planesculptors.net/set/karradam
  • So thankful this project is still in motion! Hope to contribute in some way down the line!
  • Heeeey........................ can I join?
  • @Tigersol

    Join what exactly? If you want to help with balance and whatnot, I'd be more than happy to let you 'join.'
  • I was asking if I could help out with the project. Do you want me to read it all? I can if you want.
  • @Tigersol

    Sorry. I was wandering through the 'woods' near my house. You can read through it all if you'd like, but I'm certainly not going to make you. Anyone can give feedback on anything in my opinion.
  • I'm scrapping RU Infuse and replacing it with RU Level Up or RU Multipurpose Weapons. If anyone thinks one would work better than the other, any suggestions would be much appreciated.
  • I have more cards made. I'll upload them after I finish some of my AP Econ homework.
  • Cards have been uploaded.
  • Hey ^^
    So, after looking at the cards on Planescupltors, here's some general feedback ^^

    The equipment theme has the upsides of being very daring and new. It obviously comes with a lot of difficulties as well and I think there are traps that you haven't totally escaped from so far.

    Equipments is a quite parasitic theme. You usually don't play a lot of equipments in a limited/constructed deck, if you play some at all. I think the proportion of cards caring about equipment is already too high though you still have plenty of room to correct the shot so I don't think it's too worrying for now. Besides, I think you did a good job at planning 10 archetypes that are diverse and synergystic, though there may be one or two more equipment-centered archetypes than needed.

    Equipments remove a lot of creature slots from your sets which needs to be adressed. Think of how many cards were artifact-creatures or created artifact-creature tokens in Kaladesh for instance. Living Weapon is of huge help to your set, but I don't think you're using it at its full potential. Colored artifacts with Living weapon like Toxic Cloak seemed extremely promising for instance, I would advise making more of them.

    From a more general point of view, I was suprised to see three returning mechanics for only one new mechanic (which is not flashy at all, on top of that). Especially for a custom set, I'm expecting some daring new concepts, otherwise it will be difficult to grab anyone's attention. More on the specific mechanics below.

    I don't understand why Erode is in the set. It's a mechanic that's very wordy but has little to no impact on the game and do not synergize with the other mechanics, nor does it bring something important to the set like card filtering, breaking board stall, etc.

    Level Up could be your flashy and visually-challenging mechanic but it's a returning mechanic so it's less interesting. Don't you have a twist to bring to the mechanic? One advice could be to use the levels frame but design a new keyword than "level up" to gain levels. A bit like Meld implemented on Transform ^^

    The Bow subtype got me quite excited but it just ended up feeling very parasitic, not doing anything especially flavourful, and make me look for other subtypes like "Sword" or "Gauntlet." I would consider either removing it or making it more flashy.

    On a completely different note, what's the flavour of the world? It feels a lot like Phyrexia right now, maybe you should consider a Return set instead of a new world? Otherwise, I think you need a flavour element that distinguish this world from other existing worlds like Phyrexia ^^

    Finally, on more specific cards:

    - A lot of commons feel way too complicated/swingy for that rarity. Even things like Mindless Infection would probably be too specificly-directed at an archetype to be common. Other cards could play the same role in a much simpler way, Blazing Knight for instance probably wants to be "Trample. As long as CARDNAME has an equipment attached to it, it gets +1/+1" as it's too swingy and needlessly convoluted for a common.

    - Shimmering Deacon is really really problematic. Cards should not care exclusively about your opponent playing equipments to work. If you need to design an answer to stop your opponent from playing equipments, you should avoid making it look like a combo card that actually wants your opponent to play equipments, you're going to mislead the players. Additionally, it severely breaks the colour pie. Sram, Senior Edificer was acceptable because it forced you to play a lot of enchantments, equipments and vehicle cards in your deck so you'd most likely draw those specific type of cards, which are core to White's identity. Here, you get the card drawing (in a world where your opponent doesn't understand the "Your opponent can't cast equipments" subtitle) without the deck building restriction. It's like having a Black sorcery that would draw you two cards without asking someone to pay life or sacrifice something in exchange.

    - The Rare land cycle is really overpowered, and the symmetry between the card is weird (for instance, Verrentolm Temple acts like a swamp on top of everything else it does, Kendali Academy just gives you a colorless mana without condition, and Vondalan Shrine gives you no mana at all without condition).

    - I like the tutoring cards like Clocktower Sentinel, just make sure you don't overruse them (one per colour may be a bit much) but they're quite fun! You may make them less parasitic by letting the player tutor for any equipment with converted mana cost N or less then giving a bonus (equipping it?) if it has the right name for instance?
  • @ningyounk

    Thank you for your feedback! I agree with a lot of what you said, and I'm only writing this to see how we can fix some of the problems you saw.

    First, Erode. I agree that this is the weakest mechanic I have right now. It's just an aggro strategy, but you're milling instead of dealing damage. While I was reading this, I was thinking that UB could have a graveyard archetype instead, with a mechanic that could exile creatures from the 'yard to make Equipment? Of course, that would push the 'Equipment Archetype Count' to 4-7 depending on whether you count Living Weapon and the two Equipment Hate archetypes. I think that this could also help reduce the number of creature slots we would have to remove.

    I agree that the commons are way too swingy and directional. I think that there are a few that we can keep, but a lot of them need to go.

    I was planning on doing an Artifact-only mechanic with the Level up frame, but it just ended up looking sloppy so I got rid of it. That may just be because I was using the top line, though. I decided to allow Equipment to have Level up, but it's probably not enough to keep people's attention.

    I'm not sure what else I could do with Bows to make them more flashy. Maybe quivers will help with that, but I haven't made any yet.

    I'm not really sure how the lands are overpowered (except for the Academy). If you have any advice on how to fix them, I'll do my best to implement it. Also, it was an intentional choice to make all of the unconditional abilities work differently.

    I see where you're getting at with Shimmering Deacon, and I'll try to fix it as soon as possible.

    Thank you for all the advice!
  • @NokiSkaur

    For the UB archetype, how about an evasion mechanic maybe (think UB mechanics like Intimidate, Skulk,...)? It does naturally synergize with Equipment since making a creature bigger is especially effective on evasive creatures ^^ You're having another good point: you need to squeeze a little graveyard archetype somewhere, it's something expected of any set, I think.

    About the commons, making the ones you have simpler is already a strong way to go, I think ^^

    I saw the Level Up Equipment, it's definitely interesting and the flashiest thing you did but it doesn't really work with the +N/+N stats in the power/toughness box. Though I like your way of thinking on this x) There may be something to dig in this area, but your mechanics are going to start competing with each other for the Equipment slots. It's probably not a good idea to have multiple keywords dedicated to a subset of cards as small as Equipments. If you keep Living Weapon, I would advise not putting another mechanic specifically for your Equipments. Here's just an example of mechanics that once again accidentally synergize with Equipments, and that uses the Level frame. It's not really ergonomic but my point is that there is a lot more design space to the Level frame than the Level Up mechanic, and that you can synergize with Equipments in subtler ways:

    image


    I would avoid Quivers and put the Arrow counters directly on the Bow cards, there's no need to make it more parasitic than it already is ^^ Now a "bullet" mechanic is probably more frustrating than anything else, I remember that they tried something similar with guns on the custom set Lorado, the only review of the set that I saw ended up complaining about how poorly it played... Anyways, I don't know how to make it exciting, but unless you find a way it's probably going to add more confusion than it's worth it, in my opinion.

    About the lands: I think you're forgetting that lands are 0-mana cards. Put those ability on a legendary artifact, do you think with three different abilities you could make those artifact cost 0 or even 1 mana? Basically, those lands look like the verso of DFC lands from Ixalan ^^"

    WHITE — Lithin Stronghold
    Giving a white mana without entering the battlefield tapped is too much on a land with two additional abilities already. Giving 3 mana is insanely good, and the treshold of having two equipment is way too low. The third ability is a game-breaking combo piece by itself. Compare this with Shrine of the Forsaken Gods for instance: your card gives a white mana instead of colorless, while the second ability gives 3 mana instead of two for the restriction of having two equipments (achievable turn 1-2 consistently) compared to having seven lands. And then you throw in a broken third ability. Ok, yours is legendary, but that doesnt make them even remotely on the same power level.

    BLUE — Kendali Academy
    The first two abilities are fine though the two equipments treshold is probably too low considering how explosive the second ability is, especially for Blue. The third ability should not cost 0 mana, it's on a land so the opportunity cost is too low for such a powerful ability.

    BLACK — Verrentolm Temple
    Once again, a land with two bonus abilities cannot possibly act as a regular swamp on top of it. Paying 3 life does not balance the fact that this land consistently gives you BBB starting the first few turns. If we compare this land to Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, it would already be broken with just the first two abilities. And then you added a repeatable Murder to it.

    RED — Terrar Forge
    The original Desert https://scryfall.com/card/tsb/118 is considered an oppressive card already, which is why it was left out of the Amonkhet file ^^ I can only imagine how oppressive it would be if it could target non-attacking creatures while having two additional abilities. As usual, the second ability is way too explosive for that treshold. The third ability cannot cost 0 mana, it needs to look more like Ramunap Ruins for instance. Right now it's basically an Exquisite Firecraft https://scryfall.com/card/ori/143 except it's free and it sits on the battlefield as a broken land that's a Desert that gives you a Red mana for each attacking creature. Oh also, you can activate it at instant speed x)

    GREEN — Vondalan Shrine
    This one is surprisingly not as broken as the rest. It's still very good as a 3-abilities land but it's much more difficult to abuse. Nevertheless, an ability such as "2G,T: Destroy target Equipment" would need to be severely overcosted to appear on a land (can't be countered, most difficult permanent to destroy, repeatable, 0-mana and does not sit around doing nothing since it has other abilities so the opportunity cost is always very low.)
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