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Renaissance Set — Creative Design
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I really like checkmate, it really add a new kind of strategy to the game.
"Top-Down" refers to a set that has started with an idea about a FLAVOUR focus, then we dress the theme with mechanics to make a consistent set. Here are some examples of Top-Down sets:
- Innistrad: Let's make a Gothic Horror theme! This lead to a graveyard set for obvious flavour reasons, and the tribal aspect was added when they started to overflow with spirits, vampires, werewolves and the likes.
- Theros: Let's make a Roman/Greek mythology set! This lead to an enchantment set because they were looking for a way to depict the influence of the Gods on the plane.
Top-Down is the opposite of "Bottom-Up" where you start with an idea about a MECHANICAL focus, and you dress it up with pretty flavour afterwards. Here are some examples of Bottom-Up sets:
- Zendikar: Let's make a land-matters set! This lead to the theme of explorers, traps, and quests.
- Ravnica: Let's do a multicolour set! This lead to the creation of the ten guilds, which would look great on an all-city plane.
@Tigersol Thank you for the input! We don't always say it but this kind of comments with external feedback really helps to make decision afterward
Yes, religion has also been mentioned once or twice. If multiple people think about it when looking for Renaissance tropes, it probably means it could work as well
@Tigersol Oh since you liked Discover, here's the first version of the mechanic that we discussed in private during the early hours of creative design for the set:
Discover a [THING] (Reveal the top three cards of your library. You may put a [THING] card from among them in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.)
I like the name Discover because it can fit either explorers or inventors
E.g.:
Discover a land
Discover a land, creature, or enchantment
Discover an artifact
Discover a creature with flying
Discover White
Discover a converted mana cost 3 or less
Discover CARDNAME
CONCEPT CARD:
P.S: Yes, there's a typo, it should say "on the bottom" not "at the bottom" my bad
Though I don't know if everyone is on board with this Life theme yet? Maybe we could try to go a little further down this path and if things get stuck we'll switch and try something less original? What do you think?
Yes, I like that idea.
NokiSkaur? I don't think he/she showed up in this conversation xD Bad copy-paste?
@syntheticreign
We definitely can make a few religious cards, though it would be interesting to find a twist to it (and also to make some distance with still-existing religions would be a good idea not to upset anyone). Any idea on how to make a religious theme feel like it was from Renaissance?
For the mechanic, it's intuitive but has limited design space, takes a lot of text, is not super relevant (I would really prefer having one more toughness than 2 prayer counters), and use a specific type of counters which can be mixed with +1/+1 counters. Also, I'm not sure the religion subtheme should be important enough that it gets its own keyword. Unless someone has a cool idea of a twist to it?
Philosophy was a good portion of the Renaissance era as well, so I can definitely see something like that fitting in with a religious twist. Perhaps (if we go with such a sub-theme) different colors would fit different philosophies, but all of them would be tied-in with a more clergy-esque overlay.
I edited the card for fun and for a possibly better mechanic (certainly simpler lol). We don't have to use a religious sub-theme, just throwing ideas out there because I like making stuff up lol.
Sure! Thank you for posting those ideas, I find it very interesting whether or not it will end up in the set. Don't hesitate to share any thought, you saw how the Life-Matters theme starting from someone just suggesting a Cleric archetype ^^
The new version of Pray is clean and interesting while getting rid of the counters which is always a plus ^^ I'm still not sold on the design space though, but it's a good concept.
Now, a few ideas to dig a bit deeper:
1) Secondary theme: Emotions
This is an idea I shared just before we took the break so it never had the chance to be discussed properly. The secondary theme could be "Emotions" which opens a wide array of artworks we can use and originally flavoured cards (think Cathartic Reunion http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=418738 ). Here's a little text I wrote a while ago:
"On the magnificent plane of Monaglia, magic manifests itself in the most extravagant ways. Every day, the most beautiful art pieces literally come to life in the hand of their talented creators. One day, five Muses appear on the plane, inspiring geniuses all across the lands. At first, the inhabitants are delighted by the gifts of the Muse and produce the most amazing chef-d'oeuvres that Monaglia as ever known. But the influence of the five Muses doesn't stop there, as emotions of all living beings seem to become exacerbated. Worried about the insane emotional fever that slowly engulfs Monaglia, a planeswalker decides to find the Muses to discover their true design."
It has a flavour reminding me a bit of Innisrad's madness. The life-matters mechanic could be flavoured as emotions pumping up the spells.
And as a little bonus, here's an example illustration:
— Art by Pete Mohrbacher
2) Digging Ensoul deeper
Ensoul {cost} (Whenever you gain or lose life, you may cast this for its Ensoul cost. Each life you gained or lost pays for {1}.)
I want to make a case about Ensoul because I think it has some potential:
- It cares about something that happens in every game, just going to combat will trigger Ensoul, it's on the softer side of A/B mechanics.
- It's definitely original, I can't think of an existing mechanic that cares about something similar, yet it feels familiar because it's just a cost reduction mechanic.
- It shouldn't be that difficult to balance: the separate ensoul cost makes it easier to twitch, and the colored mana in the cost gives us a safety valve. On top of that, we have examples of already existing cost reduction mechanics like Convoke that should use similar numbers since we can expect a 2 or 3 mana reduction most of the time, with some big events going up to 5 or 6 but much more rarely.
- It has a wide design space. It can go on creatures as well as noncreature spells, and there are a few tricks you can do with it. Here are some examples of concept cards:
______________________
Ensoul Bolt
2R
Instant
Ensoul 3R (Whenever you gain or lose life, you may cast this for 3R. Each life you gained or lost pays for {1}.)
CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
______________________
Not-Gurmag Angler
6G
Creature
5/5
Ensoul 6G (Whenever you gain or lose life, you may cast this for 6G. Each life you gained or lost pays for {1}.)
______________________
From under the Renaissance Floorboards
3BB
Sorcery
Ensoul X3BB (Whenever you gain or lose life, you may cast this for X3BB. Each life you gained or lost pays for {1}.)
Create three tapped 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens. If CARNDAME's ensoul cost was paid, create X of those tokens instead.
______________________
Hasty Goblin
1R
2/1
Ensoul 2R (Whenever you gain or lose life, you may cast this for 3R. Each life you gained or lost pays for {1}.)
If CARNDAME's ensoul cost was paid, it gains haste.
______________________
I do foresee a few problems as well though:
- It would play terribly on Magic online I guess? I have never played online on an official software, but I'm guessing it would ask you if you want to cast each of your spell every time your life total changes? But considering this will never hit an official Magic software, I don't think we should put a veto on a mechanic because of this.
- It makes attacking tricky. This is probaby my biggest concern: it makes attacking not always the best decision because your opponent could get a cost reduction thanks to you which encourages board stall. But I do think we can overcome this issue by building the set in a more aggressive way.
- It has a weird interaction with creatures, like Madness, as it gives them pseudo-flash. But I think it also brings some interesting design possibilities, so I wouldn't concern myself too much over this. Also, you can't cast a surprise blocker just by taking a hit from your opponent, you would have to actively pay life.
3) Other mechanics
If the set cares about life, we will need a life gain mechanic. It can be incidental life gain, not the focus of the mechanic to avoid having two main life-matters mechanic. A discovery mechanic fitting both explorers and inventors would also be super interesting from a flavour point of view. Here I tried mixing those elements together.
I kinda liked the first Discover so I put it back here:
Discover (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card in your hand and lose 2 life. Otherwise, put it in your graveyard and you gain 2 life.)
Here's another one:
Discover (Exile the top card of your library. When this creature dies, you may put a card exiled with it in your hand. Put the rest in your graveyard, you gain that many life.)
E.g:
Renaissance Explorer
1G
2/2
Whenever you play a Forest, discover. (Exile the top card of your library. When this creature dies, you may put a card exiled with it in your hand. Put the rest in your graveyard, you gain that many life.)
______________________
Renaissance Inventor
1U
2/2
Whenever you cast an articat spell, discover. (Exile the top card of your library. When this creature dies, you may put a card exiled with it in your hand. Put the rest in your graveyard, you gain that many life.)
On Ensoul: Fair enough, it's true it can be a little difficult to monitor life changes the way we can monitor a number of creatures. It depends a lot of its environment though, and this won't exist outside its own environment so we could make sure we don't have huge life gain spells everywhere maybe? To me it seems about as hard to balance as Improvise, a mechanic that can reduce the cost of spells to their coloured component pretty easily in the appropriate deck like an Investigate deck.
Otherwise, do you have another life-matters mechanic you like more?
On Discover: Which version do you think is best/worse so far? It's true the last one may be a little underpowered. I'm unsure. I do think the first one (either draw and lose 2 life or mill and gain 2 life) is pretty powerful. The old version (search the top 3 cards of your library) sounds quite fun also but it doesn't play especially well with the life-matters theme. Which is not mandatory though, as long as one other mechanic takes care of incidental life gain (in my opinion, that's important whatever the life-matters mechanic ends up being).
As for discover, I like the last version the most. But I agree it doesn't boast a life gain theme.
I'm honestly unable to think of much original things with life gain atm.
Random brainstorm
Cards that become creatures until eot when you gain life
Cards that you may flip top when gaining life--If they have the keyword as well, it comes into play.
Experience Counters based on changing life total representing years of practice or exploring
Well if you pay for Hero's Reunion, you still have to pay one or two colored mana for your Ensoul spell, which means it still costed you 3 or 4 mana in the end. I don't find this especially revolting, since we obviously would not make a 2-mana "Gain 7 life" spell in this set anyway, so we're talking "Hypothetic Modern combo" and I don't think that would break a format like Modern even if it was real.
Here's an hypothetic average play:
- Cast a 3-mana spell that gains you 6 life like Renewed Faith
- Cast a 6-mana Ensoul spell for only two colored-mana
- You end up having spent two cards and 5 mana to cast a 6-mana spell and gain 6 life, that seems like a decent combo but hardly game-breaking
About those three mechanics you brainstormed:
Cards that become creatures until eot when you gain life
==> Could work well with an enchantment theme but design space is narrow, it only serves life gain archetypes and my biggest issue is the complexity of it. It has kind of a vehicle feel to it though. I see it more like a one-of design, maybe a cycle.
Cards that you may flip top when gaining life--If they have the keyword as well, it comes into play.
==> Putting cards from the top of your library into play without checking their mana cost is more Mythic Rare material than something I would be willing to keyword x) But I like how you made the life-matters mechanic a card flow mechanic as well.
Here's an idea:
Whenever you gain or lose life, you may look at that much card from the top of your library. Put one of them on top of your library and the rest back in the same order.
==> This way if you have multiple triggers, you can still order multiple cards on top of your library. It sounds quite strong though.
Experience Counters based on changing life total representing years of practice or exploring
==> That sounds like A LOT of tracking to do. It's basically asking you to track every life change during the game. That sounds very tedious, but there's a concept that can do almost the same thing with much less tracking: caring about the difference between your life total and your starting life total. It sounds difficult to balance an effect that goes from 1 to 20 (or even more if you start gaining a ton of life) though.
About the Ensoul balancing:
Maybe something that reduces for each time you have lost/gained life in a turn, since that only seems busted if you are already comboing off.
Yes, maybe there are ways to make it less swingy:
Ensoul (This spell costs {1} less to cast for each time you gained or lost life this turn.)
Ensoul {cost} (If you gained or lost life this turn, you may cast this spell for its ensoul cost.)
What do you guys think?
The top card flipping one is only with cards that also have that ability. Think
Camaraderie (When you cast this card from your hand, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it is a creature with Camaraderie, you may put it into play).
Which actually sounds really shallow in safe design space
Experience counters might be too tedious, but was meant a little differently. Think "Whenever you gain life, you get an experience counter" thing
Ensoul at that degree is affinity for life gain storm which is way less strong than it sounds but could work.
Oh, oops. I'm so sorry. I had just left the Fall of Ravnica Forum when I posted that.
The top card flipping also have the problem of extreme parasiticism: what are the chances of flipping a card with that ability from the top of your deck? If I count 25 creatures with a third of them having the keyword (which is A LOT for limited) this already drops to less than 8%. It still sounds really swingy to me. Maybe something closer to Cascade could be more reasonable?
Actually what if the Life-Matters mechanic was just an ability word? This way we can get more design space and keep it not too swingy:
Ensoul — If you gained or lost 3 or more life this turn, EFFECT.
Cards like Lone Rider http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=415216 taught us this is a fun mini-game that is actually easier to achieve than it looks at first. And I'm sure loosing 3 or more life is even easier.
E.g:
Ensoul — If you gained or lost 3 or more life this turn, this card costs 2 less to cast.
Ensoul — If you gained or lost 3 or more life this turn, draw a card.
Ensoul — If you gained or lost 3 or more life this turn, CARDNAME has double strike.
Etc...
But yes, Ensoul definitely has potential.
I like the idea of Ensoul in general, but I'm a little confused on how it would fit into the theme of the Renaissance in general. Discover makes sense thematically, but I'm trying to figure out Ensoul.
If you end up using Ensoul as a keyword, I think the best way to balance it (I know it restricts it a bit but I honestly can't think of another way) is to make it so it pays for {1} of the card only if you LOST life. If you gain life, and you also get to cast a card for cheaper because of that, there's no real downside there. You could easily make a lifelink deck and cast a bunch of cards for cheap. Grixis decks rely on life loss, but life loss is inherently more dangerous than life gain. If Ensoul only works with life loss, it would balance it out imo.
If you make it an ability word, you could fit in the life gain or loss by having it provide binary effects. Eg. "If you lost life this turn, EFFECT. If you gained life this turn, DIFFERENT EFFECT" or something to that end.
I like the overall idea behind Ensoul, but I'm not quite getting its flavorful connection to the Renaissance. If you could explain that that would be awesome!