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Renaissance Set — Design Phase
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If we did do Elspeth where would we find art of her with an Underworld mask?
To highlight a slightly different topic, let's think about our legends in addition to our 'walkers:
- All five Muse-touchers. I think that if only one is a Planeswalker, it wouldn't make sense in the set.
- The big baddie (unless he or she is a 'walker)
- A couple slots for cool legends that aren't quite as central to the story
- The Muses
Just the Muse-touchers and the Muses bring us to 10 legends. We don't have very many slots, so we need to be careful
- Doing one muse-toucher emphasizes how crazy of an idea this is to try and poke the embodiment of an emotion.
- Avoiding the five-colour cycle makes it less predictable.
- Avoiding the five-colour cycle allows us to make less than five heroes (five is really a lot to follow.)
- Avoiding the five-colour cycle allows us to make multicoloured heroes.
- Avoiding the five-colour cycle prevents the Gatewatch comparison.
- Avoiding the five-colour cycle prevents the problem you mentioned of having way too many legendaries in the set.
- Avoiding the five-colour cycle prevents the heroes from competing for the same slot of exciting legendary cycle than the Muses.
Basically, everything that's good about the story of someone touching a Muse and getting a spark from it, and the story of the person replacing a dead Muse not only works with one single character instead of five doing the same thing, but actually works better since it feels much more natural! ^^
Very nice!
Now, the most important part here is that Sparring Mummy also happens to be a Zombie which naturally helps the WB archetype, so the more archetypes a single card can help the better—especially at common. I'm probably coming up with a first design skeleton of commons in a few more days, but meanwhile here are some random "glue" designs that are meant to work with different archetypes at the same type. I'm starting with White, feel free to jump in with other ideas for White or pursue with other colours ^^ Just remember they are commons ^^
WHITE
WU Control Long-Game vs. GW Midrange Rebirth
2W
Creature
2/2
Rebirth 3WW
As long as CARDNAME is reborn, it has flying and vigilance. (= Serra Angel)
WU Control Long-Game vs. WB Midrange Psylian Life
1W
Enchantment
Enchant creature
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you gain 3 psylian life.
As long as you have psylian life, enchanted creature can't attack or block.
WU Control Long-Game vs. RW Aggro Go Wide
2W
Sorcery
Choose one —
• Create two 1/1 creature tokens with vigilance.
• Create a 2/2 creature token with lifelink.
GW Midrange Rebirth vs. WB Midrange Psylian Life
W
Creature
1/1
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you gain psylian life equal to its power.
Rebirth 3W
GW Midrange Rebirth vs. RW Aggro Go Wide
3W
Creature
2/2
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, create a 1/1 creature token with vigilance.
Rebirth 4W
WB Midrange Psylian Life vs. RW Aggro Go Wide
2W
Creature
3/2
Whenever you gain life, untap CARDNAME.
___________________
Mostly unrelated, this is me trying to play with weird rebirth costs:
- Rebirth—Reveal a card named CARDNAME from your hand.
- Rebirth—Sacrifice three creatures.
- Rebirth—Pay 7 life.
- Rebirth—Discard your hand.
- Rebirth—Skip your next turn.
- Rebirth—Tap three untapped Art you control.
- Rebirth—Reval the top card of your library. (With additional effect depending on it.)
But it just seemed to fit an uncommon two-mana conditional black removal spell really well ^^
@Lujikul For the location, here's an arbitrary list of places we could use and would need a name:
- The capital (should probably sound italian)
- The royal court inside the capital (do you know of High Garden in Game of Thrones? Maybe a name along those lines?)
- The rogue district inside the capital
- At least two other rival archipelagos that compete for best art and discoveries and are more tied to other European countries so they bring a different flavour? (UK, France, Germany, or Spain probably?)
- A flavourful name for terra incognita? (To name the undiscovered territories)
Anyway other idea as a starting point?
Royal Court: No idea.
Rogue district: Everything I had for this sounds so, so Russian.
Rival archipelagos: Galenio, Zalentinas, maybe?
Undiscovered territories: No idea.
It also occurred to me that this is Ixalan on the other side of the globe.
Capital: Prosperare
Royal Court: The Corte Magnifica
Rogue district: Ombra District?
Rival Archipelago: Gallania, Remus, Valerno, Sophitia, Antares?
Undiscovered territories: Clementine?
- I'm concerned when it comes to names with the For-/Fior- root that they sound too close to Fiora (the plane from Conspiracy) that kinda have that italian Renaissance feel to it.
- Galenio is my favourite of the two because it's not too long and is easy to pronounce, though it does sound pretty italian. Sanjay just proposed Gallania as well, is there a reference I'm missing?
@sanjaya666
- I like the "prosperity" root for the capital, it sounds very optimistic ^^ Prosperare may be a little long though, maybe Prospera? Is it too obvious?
- I really really like "The Corte Magnifica" it's an instant crush on this one for me!
- Ombra District could work, it's simple and obvious enough ^^
- A lot of good names for the different archipelagos with good length and easy pronunciation, though they all sound quite italian, it could be fun to have at least one name a little more exotic ^^
- I was picturing something a bit mysterious for the undiscovered territories, Clementine has a funny/cute aura to it —being both a fruit and girl name, maybe it could work for a rival city actually?
For me, the Galenio was a reference to the gaelic people.
Also, Prospera may be a bit too obvious. But eh, that would not be a problem I suppose.
Puntellare Sconosciuto is both a bit too long and a bit too hard to pronounce I believe
Regina is an actual name, but it does sound cool and comes from the Latin rex, regis I believe which means king so it could be a good fit for a queen or princess actually?
Any thought on how to implement Fog in Blue without breaking the game? Any idea for a twist?
I'd put it in white for this specific set though. While I think the colour pie could handle this, the problem would be that this need for a blue Fog comes from the blue "don't lose life" theme, and your reset ability doesn't work with it. Basically, to have a strong life-matters theme, one of the way is to make each colour care about it in a different way. So here's one of the propositions, based on each colour's main emotion (they're not locked, it's just one version):
WHITE - Joy - Gain life
BLUE - Fear - Don't lose life
BLACK - Sadness - Lose life
RED - Hate - Make opponents lose life
GREEN - Love - Have two players gain/lose life
On top of this, the WU archetype right now is set on a control defensive archetype where most of those "if you didn't lose life since your last turn" cards could end up.
So something that helps you enable those cards would be especially useful in that blue Fog slot. Of course, one of the solutions could be to reduce the number of ways the set care about life and forget about the "don't lose life" theme altogether. But I tried a version at the beginning where there was only "life gain matters", "life loss matters" or "life changes matter" cards, and Blue is a really tough nut to crack, it's a colour that really doesn't care about life in any way ^^"
Maybe we could use the Gazeous Form mechanic which is already allowed in Blue? (Target creature can neither deal nor be dealt damage?)
That's where my mind went. My thoughts had immediately gone to cards like Fog Bank.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/166400034453/hi-mark-do-you-think-allowing-blue-to-have-fog