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Tears of Terriaum version 1.3 Updated 7/29/17
Link to full set here: https://mtgcardsmith.com/user/Baron-777/sets/20370
What is a god? A god is a nurturer, a god is a creator, a god is a shepard. But, can a god be a mortal?
This is the story of a young woman named Saundra Syn, who developed the powers of a god, her journey, and her ultimate masterpiece: the plain of Terriaum.
Welcome one and all to my first ever custom set, Tears of Terriaum. I hope to be able to make this into a full 2 set block but for right now I wish to share this journey with the community. I hope many of you will stick by this journey and be just as eager to see updates, as I am to be making them.
What is a god? A god is a nurturer, a god is a creator, a god is a shepard. But, can a god be a mortal?
This is the story of a young woman named Saundra Syn, who developed the powers of a god, her journey, and her ultimate masterpiece: the plain of Terriaum.
Welcome one and all to my first ever custom set, Tears of Terriaum. I hope to be able to make this into a full 2 set block but for right now I wish to share this journey with the community. I hope many of you will stick by this journey and be just as eager to see updates, as I am to be making them.
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Saundra Syn is an ancient planeswalker from Dominaria; an elf who was a student at the Tolaria Academy. Her aptitude toward precise crystal crafting, a unique variant of fabrication that allowed her to forge, shape, and even give life to crystal structures, made her a rising prodigy in the eyes of Urza. But her dreams of becoming a master artificer were dramatically cut short during the tragic accident that destroyed the academy. Saundra’s body was mutilated; losing most of the half of her lower body and most of her left arm. In a desperate attempt to save her own life, she used the last of her magic to seal her wounds and slowly regrow her body with crystals. Her strength gave out just after finishing her work and she passed out in front of one of the many temporal rifts that had opened up in wake of the accident.
The rift distorted the crystals that she had forged to her body, and caused them to take on a cancerous life of its own. The crystals grew without limit over her entire body as Saundra lay passed out. When she regained consciousness, she was horrified at this entombing, but managed to peel away the gemstone prison around her body. It was then Saundra realized that not only her legs and arm had regrown into crystal appendages, but her entire body had become like one of her own living constructs. She had also saw that her eyes had turned a shimmering, artificial, and frigid blue.
Slowing trying to accept and function in her new body, she learned that she could now apply her magic to her entire body; giving her the ability to change into anything, or anyone. It was when she was testing the limits of these powers that her life would once again violently change. She took on the form of Urza himself; not just his form, but his planeswalker spark.
Neither understanding nor able to control the magic of the spark, she began to planeswalk. However the jump was imprecise causing her to be cast into the Blind Eternities.
The furious magic of the realm began to tear apart her crystal body, but the life dwelling within Saundra’s crystal skin regenerated as fast as it was being destroyed. This trauma awakened her own planeswalker spark, but the chaotic magic and her unstable condition couldn’t allow her to leave the Blind Eternities. For decades, Saundra lived in an agonizing duality of life and death; never aging and unable to regain control of her cursed existence to stabilize her body. Eventually her tourture ended and she regained control of her life and learned to access the near limitless, wild mana of the Blind Eternities.
Applying her own magic, she slowly began to form constructs of crystal. Over hundreds of years, she began to grow these masses larger and larger and diversifying them with synthetic plants and animals. She had also drawn in mana from the Blind Eternities so that her world could regulate itself without her constant guidance. This process, along with the size of the world, managed to anchor itself in the Blind Eternities as a brand new plane of the multiverse. Saundra then decided to give her world a name, Terriaum; a word in her native tongue that meant sanctuary. Her world lived in peace and equilibrium for centuries, before being discovered and disrupted by an intellectual and curious visitor; Tamiyo.
The main focus of this set is flexibility, to keep the game flowing and changing just as the plane itself. The cards are primarily designed to be able to assist you getting your spells out but also keep a safety net in case things aren’t going according to plan. I want players to always have something to play. That is the most exciting part of magic, to have a duel of with ever changing tides of superiority, to think on your feet and adapt to the situation, and to fight your hardest to overcome the odds.
This concept is reflecting in the three new mechanics I designed for this set: upturn, animate, and nightmare.
Upturn is a mana ability that allows you to exile spells from your graveyard in order to add colorless mana to your mana pool. The tricky part is that you can only use this mana to cast spells of the same type as the exiled card. This is a representation of the shifting design of Terriaum and its inhabitants; their form and mana can be reformed into a brand new creation. Typically the spells with Upturn will be green, blue, white, or colorless artifacts but that doesn’t mean you won’t see black or red spells with it.
Animate is an ability exclusive to a new type of enchantment for this set, Crystal Auras. Crystal Auras are not much different than a normal aura, but have support unique to them in the set. They also have the ability of animate which for a lower mana cost allows you to create an 0/0 Spark and then attach the aura from your hand to it. This allows you to either use it early game to get some extra creatures out, or late game to power up your creatures. It’s identical in concept to the living weapon ability, but it’s enchantments. It may seem strange to have the enchanted creature become a certain creature type and an artifact, but it may help out in the 2nd set later down the line. This ability is pretty spread evenly among the colors.
Link once again to full set: https://mtgcardsmith.com/user/Baron-777/sets/20370
While that would be better wording of it, I have cards coming up that'll allow you to cast or have cards enter the battlefield under an opponent's control. This allows card with nightmare to transform regardless of how they ended up there. The nightmare trigger is just the most direct way.
*6 new cards added to the set.
*Fasten to the Land was changed from Green Black to Green White.
*Creatures with nightmare that transform into auras will now have their abilities change to, "When *blank* enters the battlefield, if you are not *blank's* owner, transform it and attach it to target *blank* of *blank* owner's choice."
New card Highlight: Polymorpher. A throwback to the original Shapeshifter and the more modern Angelic Skirmisher. You get a very flexible creature that can be a solid blocker or attacker. Add a few buffs and you got a truly sturdy creature.
*Added 11 new cards to the set.
*Tamiyo: The First Settler ability has changed from " 0:Target spell in your graveyard gains upturn "X", where "X" is that spell's converted mana cost -1" to "-X: Target spell in your graveyard gains Upturn "X"."
I did this balance out the card to prevent Dredge style players from dumping a high creature to gain access to a ton of mana early in the game. Credit to @Platapusburger for the suggestion of changing her.
*Introduction of this sets rare lands. While they are not dual colored or classified as basic land types (like Sunken Hollow's typing as a Island Swamp). They do allow you to crack them to add 2 mana to your mana pool and while they're in the graveyard they're considered a certain card type (artifact, instant, creature, est.). This is so you can line up your graveyard and use their upturn ability to squeeze out some extra mana from them.
*Working on more support for Crystal Auras and Nightmare as well as trying to make some more simple creatures and spells.
New Card Highlight: Fragmented Skewers. What we have here is a swift comeback card that when at the right moment can leave some nasty holes where creatures internal organs use to be.
Also, for the multicoloured cards (apart from planeswalkers), you can use specific gold borders for each colour combination, you just need to select it while making the card. Those borders look much better than the generic gold ones, imho.
And my favourite card from the set is Buoyant Bauble – it has an awesome name and cool effect.
I will also consider changing the borders on spells with duel colors in them. Glad you're a fan of the set.
Also please note that I am moving stuff to my girlfriend's new apartment all next week so i will not be making a significant update this week and I apologize in advance if I don't promptly respond to comments.
Shouldn't this upturn ability have a form of reminder text as it's a custom mechanic. (In regards to Veering Highlands!)
I really wish I could have fit it in, but sadly I couldn't. If I wanted to I would have had to cut out one of the lines of text, which could only have been the "enters the battlefield tapped" line and I didn't think it would be fair to have a one card source of 2, potentially 3 mana on turn one.
Also how would people feel if I held a contest to have a card added to the set?
First an apology for how long I took to post a new update. Last couple of weeks took a lot out of me and I've barely had time to think of new cards, let alone create them.
But with that anyway, here are the updates:
-10 New cards to the set.
-Introduction of a special set of mana rocks inspired by the original power 9 mox gems.
Now hold on, I have not lost my mind. These are not reprints of the original mox gems, instead they're 1 cost mana fixing artifacts.
You can crack em as soon as they come into play, but like a lot of cards in this set, their true power comes while they're in the graveyard.
Yes, if you have all 5 mana gems in your graveyard you have access to a 3 drop mana rock that taps for all 5 colors of mana.
Wow I just realized how badly I screwed up, the artist for the mana-gems is an official artist at wizards of the coast. I honestly don't like using art from the actual magic the gathering game, so I will have to search high and low for new art.
A simple card with high risk, high reward. I tried to balance it and make it logical by making the two cards to be destroyed be ones without flying, as I doubt a pit is going to stop something with feathers or wings.
Link for rules and where to post cards:http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/3005/tears-of-terriaum-make-your-own-card-challenge
Well it's been a long while for anyone still interested in this set. But I hope you're all glad to see new cards for this set. This is a bigger update featuring:
21 New cards
More vanilla and french vanilla cards
Some unique cards not related to the mechanics of the set.
What I hope for the future is a big 2.0 update that'll have a redesign of some of the older cards with updates and proper wording for mechanics, fixing of some cards abilities, wording or overall design and hoping to get a story going too. Might take a while, but I'll try to keep things going.
Featured new card: Crystal form: Mimic
Here is an advancement of a traditional Crystal Aura, it boasts the potential to become a serious bomb card and it is an evolution of the mechanic.