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Stormtide (Stormtide Block 1 or 2)
Stormtide is a plane that is plague by eternal bad weather. Since the inhabitence are used to the inclement weather they are learned to harness the powers of the weather so better serve themselves. On the coasts of the Mistveil Cove the mystics of the ports. These soothsayers are adept at looking deep into the shimmering mists to divine the future and alter fate so that the seaside may thrive despite the increasingly difficult passage from the other side of the island. The Storm Sages of the Flashstorm Heights have learned to use arcane metals and devices to capture and the harness the power of the lightning that constantly strikes the highland terrain. The Cult of Nephedross lurk in the Blazenight Mountains that make up the east of Stormtide. The cult uses their knowledge of necromancy, demon worship, and firestorms to strike out and gain sacrifices for their increasingly dark rituals. Deep in the undergrowth that fills the center of Stormtide lies the Spraysoak Bayou that houses the Town of Midnight where the storms are so thick that light never reaches through. The town of Midnight houses every gambler, charlatan, and witch-doctor in Stormtide who use their foul dark magics to steal knowledge and memories from those who pass through while hiding behind a thick gloss of laterns and festivals that draw unsuspecting visitors to the area. Stormtide's jungles also house the shamans of the monsoons that believe that the use of the storms is against nature and constantly clash with the Storm Sages. They believe that the life-giving powers of the rains are the only magic Stormtides needs and they use this power to summon great stormbeasts to defend their sanctuaries and strike out against the other factions of the island.
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FATEWEAVE (X) - Look at the top X cards of your library then return them in any order, you may draw a card then place a card from your hand on top of your library
FATESEAL (X) - Look at the top X cards of an opponent's library, then put any number of them on the bottom of that player's library and the rest on top in any order.
STORM - When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies
CASCADE - When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a non-land card that costs less. You may cast it without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom in a random order.
RITUAL X - You may cast this creature for its Ritual cost if you tap X creatures that share a creature type and share a color
Alright so to start off let me explain that this set is a lot less uniform than Sands of Ajurai as this was my first set design concept and I started work on it before I absolutely knew what I was doing so the design here is a bit rougher than on Sands Block.
To start lets begin with the inspiration for the set. Stormtide is a bottomup set (meaning the concept started as mechanics and then the flavor was built around the mechanics) and came out of a conversation I either heard on a MTG podcast or at my local game store where two players were discussing how crazy it would be to have both Storm and Cascade in the same set as Cascade triggers another instance of Storm which leads to more combos. Since I wasn't well verse in this mechanic I did some research and found out why these two mechanics cannot be in a balanced set. They have too much power. However I like a challenge so I decided to make a set that tries to balance the two mechanics. I'm not sure if I've succeeded yet but I've come closer than anyone else has so far.
So since I had Cascade and Storm I needed a couple of other mechanics that could be fun. I decided to go with Fateseal because I really like the mechanic and it helps stop things like Storm and Cascade from triggering correctly. Along with that I felt I need two more mechanics. Fateweave came out of being the anti-Fateseal where it doesn't put cards out of reach but it does let you choose your fate for that turn. It's like bad Anticipate but can be triggered multiple times. And finally Ritual was the hardest mechanic to come up with as I couldn't figure out a mechanic for R/B. I originally had an idea for something called graveblitz that brought cards back from your graveyard to your hand and burned your opponent but it felt lame and gimmicky. At this point I had the flavor written up and I realized that R/B was the demon worshiping cult of Nephedross so I needed a way to make demons better. So I decided on a way of summoning powerful demons for an alternate casting cost similar to how Shadowborn Apostle's effect works. Thus, Ritual was born.
From there I came up with a plane that was plagued by bad weather thus the Storms and Monsoons that cause massive water damage and flowing, thus the Cascade. Then came the Town of Mistvale where the Fortunetellers can forseen fate through the Mists and are W/U, the Town of Midnight, a Madri Gras, New Orleans inspired settlement filled with Voodoo and Witch Doctors, and of course the Demon Cults of Drossian.
The plot is as such. Itheria an apprentice of the Stormount who after an attack on her Temple decides to find a way to finally stop the storms. On her travels she meets with an exile from the Stormlight Order of Mistvale named Jerish who joins her believing that the storms are the main problem on the island.
On their travels Itheria and Jerish meet with many strange characters like Silas, the Lord of Midnight, various Demons and their respective cults, and a living Elemental, and a Necromantic Planeswalker who teaches Itheria how to control her new power after her duel with Silas.
So here's Itheria and Sitteret:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/itheria-the-storm-seeker?list=user#.VVFvhpOGNWI
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/sitteret-the-reanimator?list=user#.VVFvnJOGNWI
So lets start with Time Stop:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/time-stop-7?list=user#.VVKxIZOGNWI
This is a reprint from Tenth and Kamigawa, it pretty much is what a blue player says when they can't actually stop you with a counter or bounce. This is the reason why people either love playing blue or hate playing against blue, or both. So Time Stop is a reprint so I can't claim responsibility on how awesome this spell winds up being. So when I started designing the set and began thinking of how awesome it would be to combo out with Storm or even combo out with Cascade I realized how much it would suck to be sitting at the opposite end of that table getting combo'd out. I've been on the receiving end of that in EDH and Modern and it's just not fun to be that guy. So I went to the drawing board and began thinking ok how do I stop Storm from combo'ing, well I have a lot of filter hate with Fateseal but that just delays them it doesn't stop Storm outright. I thought "hey maybe a counterspell would be awesome" then I realized that would only counter /an/ instance of Storm, not each copy. So I remembered back to the first time I saw Time Stop and had it explained to me and I realized this is the Storm stopper. This is the solution to all of Stormtide's problems. From there I also realized that it stopped Cascade because it exiled everything on the stack. So it had to be the first one to go in and it started the Mythic Mono-colored spell cycle. Also Time Stop was designed from a Standard perspective as opposed to a Limited perspective because if you pull one of these in Limited either you're using it to clear your combo for victory or you sideboard it in against the Storm deck. I also gave it kick up to Mythic because it's at Rare originally but it was printed before Mythic Rarity was part of MTG.
Next is probably the most evil burn spell I've come up with:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/blazestorm?list=user#.VVKyn5OGNWI
Blazestorm does something weird that Red doesn't do, give you information. It has a very blue feeling to beginning but from there it turns into the most cruel Fireball you've ever seen. It hits creature your opponent controls and whenever a creature dies, either side of the board it burns your opponent. I wanted to design a red wrath spell that doesn't actually wrath but come pretty close and can be used as an awesome finisher especially to wreck U/R storm decks that draw their entire library to get the storm count up. You'll see that storm hate is actually a very common theme in the design for this set because I realize how powerful it is. U/R Turn-Burn-Storm is my favorite archetype to play and I know how horribly unfair it can be so wanted to make it powerful in this set, but manageable by all the other archetypes so it doesn't feel over powered.
I wasn't sure what to do with the Black Mythic so I decided to go with an old fallback, Zombies:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/march-of-the-damned-1?list=user#.VVKzcpOGNWI
So it's kind of expensive being 8 CMC to cast an in double black (notice all the mythics are X/1/2/3/etc AA in their casting cost?) but it is what I considered to be a strictly better Empty the Pits. I played a Sultai Homebrew for Khans and Fate and I loved Delving and managed to shenanigan into Empty once or twice but it wasn't a viable finisher. So before Dragons came out I came up with a variation of that weird Enchantment that lets you exiled creatures to make Zombie Horrors. Instead of Exiling multiple creatures this chucks an expensive creature out of the game to summon twice that many zombies. Tapped because that's just how Zombie finishers work these days but still it can be cast at the end of your opponent's turn, untap on your untap step then swing in for massive amounts. And the thing is there are a few creatures with really massive CMC, look at Silas Lord of Midnight when I explain the Legendary Creature cycle at Mythic. There's also a common Elemental that I seriously question if it should be at common due to its size.
I really love Cascade as a mechanic but I'll admit I'm not sure how to combo with it to win so I just started making thing that let you Cascade a couple of times in a single turn to give you some fun tricks to pull out regardless of the format. I also really like abilities like Genesis Wave and Genesis Hydra so I wanted to make my own Genesis but work Cascade into it. This is the result:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/monsoon-genesis?list=user#.VVK0nJOGNWI
This card is as powerful as it looks. I plan on having very little ramp so that this will most often not get played on turn 5. If you don't see what it does let me explain it to you. It Cascades twice like that crazy Temur Elemental that was part of the Commander 2011 decks, which is powerful you get two spells CMC 7 or less for 8 mana? that's awesome. No, no, it gets better the second line of text is what breaks this card. Each spell cast from exile this turn gains Cascade. So the first instance of Cascade triggers and you find a spell for 5 CMC it gets cast, however since it was cast from exile from Cascade's mechanics it gains Cascade and then that Cascade triggers and you get a spell with a CMC of 1 and cast it for free but it also gets Cascade so you try to find something for 0 and fail so you just put your entire library back in a random order. Then the second instance of Cascade triggers. Yeah it does that, theoretically if you get lucky (or filter) enough you can get 14 spells out of this for 8 mana. It's over powered but it relies of a lot of luck to get maximum value. Just a warning the original idea was to have it Cascade 3 times to be different from previous crazy Cascade cards. That was quickly nixed by a friend of mine who realized how that can't be printed. Something that powerful actually sits on the Un-Set level of Power.
Finally we come to personally my least favorite, and I think it shows it because though it is exciting it isn't as crazy powerful as the rest of them are:
http://mtgcardsmith.com/view/peer-through-mist?list=user#.VVK2QZOGNWI
Peer Through Mist is the cheapest (except for Blazestorm but anyone casting it for less than 4 is probably playing it wrong) and it actually gets you a lot of things. This one was completely driven by flavor. With Mistvale and the W/U Archetype I wanted to have a Anticipate (I started designing before Dragons but it's pretty much the same effect) ability but also gives you some life in true White form. And that's something that this can do, essentially it lets you draw a card and gain 3 life every turn which if you have a way to keep them at bay (you're playing W/U trust me you do) you can pretty much use it similar to Sphinx's Revelation where you just drew into everything and had a life total so high that no one could touch in limited, and with enough disruption it could just fuel you while you waited for a bomb. Also notice it says "a player" not when you, which means it triggers on someone else using Fateseal. There's a lot of synergy between Fateseal and Fateweave because flavorwise the two factions hate each other but they pretty much do the same thing. So what happens is it actually punishes the other side based on what Archetype you are playing giving some extra value.
Alright tomorrow night should be the discussion on the cycle of Mythic Creatures, they are fun and range from useful to broken in 5 to 7 CMC.
To start off I'm going to explain if you haven't realized yet that the main archetypes of Stormtide are: U/R Storm, B/G Cascade/Reanimation, W/U Angels, B/R Demons, U/B Control. This fits with the flavor and thus each of the Legendary creatures are in these colors. I come from the school of storytelling where I feel like each Legendary creature should play a part in the story of the block or at least be related to it some way.