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Set Idea: Plane of Zolaken
Hello People of the Internet!
I have had an idea that I would like to make into a set
Basis of the Story:
The plane of Zolaken started out of a blank hellscape of grey black darkness in an endless war between the Elder Demon Xorkan and the Distortion Entity only known now as The Grey God. That was all that was on the plane until The Grey God figured the only way to defeat his nemesis was to create a prison to hold him. He had created 5 totems that would imprison the demon and bring life to the world, but to do it he had to imprison his own soul to create enough energy to form the totems. He had used his life force to create the 5 totems which imprisoned his soul and the demon's in a energy field inside the Æther of the plane. The totems where
Elemental Totem
Totem of Life
Totem of Death
Totem of Magic
Totem of Power (Power of Strength and Knowledge)
The totems brought life to the world and created the first creatures
The current story takes place 16,982 years after those events
The cult of Xor is a dark cult trying to bring back the Elder Demon Xorkan
The Hidden Ones are a group of people using The Grey God's power of distortion to keep balance by holding the planes Æther and energy held together
Races:
Humans
Elves
Dwarves
Gnomes
Goblins
Faeries
Giants
Unnamed Race of Creatures that have been messed up by distortion
New Types:
Legendary Artifact: Totem
Legendary Sorcery,Instant,Enchantment: Twincast X ( If you have two cards named you may cast them both for X
Main Characters:
Serafine: Human Katana Wielding Person Red/Blue
Daretti: White/Black
Unnamed New Planeswalker
Unnamed Colorless Distorion Planeswalker
Kari Evangeline: Thought to be one of the best mages on the plane, Owner of the Magic totem White/Blue/Black
The Unknown Lord: Leader of the distorionists Colorless
Jaholion
Amihiyela
Return to Zolaken Block
Pele
More characters soon
I need some help with the story so if you have any ideas please do post them
Amounts:
White 35
Blue 35 :1
Black 35: 1
Red 35
Green 35: 1
Multicolor 35: 2
Artifact 30
Non-basic lands 20
Basic lands 20
Total 280
Rarity:
Common: 110
Uncommon: 90
Rare: 60: 4
Mythic: 20: 1
I have had an idea that I would like to make into a set
Basis of the Story:
The plane of Zolaken started out of a blank hellscape of grey black darkness in an endless war between the Elder Demon Xorkan and the Distortion Entity only known now as The Grey God. That was all that was on the plane until The Grey God figured the only way to defeat his nemesis was to create a prison to hold him. He had created 5 totems that would imprison the demon and bring life to the world, but to do it he had to imprison his own soul to create enough energy to form the totems. He had used his life force to create the 5 totems which imprisoned his soul and the demon's in a energy field inside the Æther of the plane. The totems where
Elemental Totem
Totem of Life
Totem of Death
Totem of Magic
Totem of Power (Power of Strength and Knowledge)
The totems brought life to the world and created the first creatures
The current story takes place 16,982 years after those events
The cult of Xor is a dark cult trying to bring back the Elder Demon Xorkan
The Hidden Ones are a group of people using The Grey God's power of distortion to keep balance by holding the planes Æther and energy held together
Races:
Humans
Elves
Dwarves
Gnomes
Goblins
Faeries
Giants
Unnamed Race of Creatures that have been messed up by distortion
New Types:
Legendary Artifact: Totem
Legendary Sorcery,Instant,Enchantment: Twincast X ( If you have two cards named you may cast them both for X
Main Characters:
Serafine: Human Katana Wielding Person Red/Blue
Daretti: White/Black
Unnamed New Planeswalker
Unnamed Colorless Distorion Planeswalker
Kari Evangeline: Thought to be one of the best mages on the plane, Owner of the Magic totem White/Blue/Black
The Unknown Lord: Leader of the distorionists Colorless
Jaholion
Amihiyela
Return to Zolaken Block
Pele
More characters soon
I need some help with the story so if you have any ideas please do post them
Amounts:
White 35
Blue 35 :1
Black 35: 1
Red 35
Green 35: 1
Multicolor 35: 2
Artifact 30
Non-basic lands 20
Basic lands 20
Total 280
Rarity:
Common: 110
Uncommon: 90
Rare: 60: 4
Mythic: 20: 1
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/tome-of-xorkan
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/xorkan-the-chained
As requested, here are a few thoughts on your set so far:
1) You have defined a number of not-so-important details about your story and your set but you still need to define the emotional and mechanical heart of your set. Tell me why I should be excited about it? Dominaria is the History set, Ixalan is the conquerors set, Amonkhet is the egyptian set, Kaladesh is the inventors set, Innistrad is the gothic horror set, Zendikar is the adventure set etc. What is your set definition? I didn't really undersand that from your presentation.
One of the first step is deciding if you're building your set top-down (you have a flavour idea and you want to find the mechanics to tell that flavour, like Amonkhet was the Egptian set and things like Embalm came from that statement) or bottom-up (you have a mechanical idea and you need to find the right flavour to make it work, like Zendikar was a land-matters set which led to the adventure flavour.)
2) What makes your set truly special? You need to think about something that makes your set unique. If there's nothing daring going on I wouldn't have interest in playing this set if it was real so I certainly won't want to look at it if it's the equivalent of a core set but made by you.
3) Mechanically you mentioned Legendary sorceries. This means you would need to have a really strong as-fan of legendary creatures and planeswalkers in your set. So this would almost automatically lead you to a legendary-matters set like Dominaria. It's a very risky choice to start with such a mechanic because it puts immense pressure on your set skeleton. You don't return Legendary sorceries as easily as something like cycling or kicker. I would recommand forgetting about it for now and asking yourself what you really want to do with this set before commiting to such a restriction.
4) Twincast seems very problematic because you need two copies of the exact same card in your hand (+ enough mana) which will not happen often. Also, what does it represent?
It sounds a bit random, unless I'm missing something?
_________
Overall, my advice would be to cover the basics before starting to commit to anything too specific. It's fine to throw ideas in the air like potential mechanics and characters and story plots but you also need to work on the backbone of your set so you know what to keep from those ideas ^^
For instance, from your little presentation, here are a couple of possible leads for your set (there are obviously countless more):
1) Your story is very short but there were demons involved multiple times and it was overall very dark. Maybe you could go top-down and try to build a Demons world, a little bit like Tarkir was the Dragons world. If so, you will need to convey a demonic feel through the whole set, with mechanics about ruthlessness, etc. Your set could probably become a graveyard set for instance, maybe using -1/-1 counters as well?
2) You talk about the Grey god and a colorless planeswalker. Maybe you want to be a colorless-matters set? In that case, you would have a more bottom-up approach: How could colorless-matters work in a way that's different from the other colorless-matters block Battle for Zendikar? Maybe you have a mechanic that says "Distorsion┬Whenever you cast a colorless spell, EFFECT" for instance? This kind of stuff.
3) You could even fuse both ideas above! My point really is that the options are endless, so take your time to try different ones before comitting to anything !
I hope that helps a little ^^
I think they are quite exciting, it's not often that we see a cycle of artifacts being the selling argument of a set. Of course it's because it's very risky, as usual with artifacts it's very difficult to make them strong without having them appear in virtually every deck (a classic examples would be the swords of X and Y). I suggest adding some sort of coloured cost somewhere in them to keep that in check.
I'm really intrigued with their nonsymmetrical nature (the Elemental Totem being different from the rest) and the fact that it's not immediatly obvious which colours they represent if they represent colours at all?
I'm also exciting to see what they will do, they give me a bit of an Infinity Stones vibes
They are going to be made into a colored Cycle with different combinations