MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2
This discussion has been closed.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
I think that something flavored as a Neverending Piece should either be a sorcery that can recur to your hand or be an enchantment, perhaps one with masterwork.
Nice design, but I do have two issues with it.
- Black isn't able to untap lands, only green can do that.
- I don't really feel the flavor of mana production representing ghost although I would like to hear your opinion on this.
Black mainly has to do with death and sorrow, but keep in mind that isn't always a bad thing, and if you look at the flavor text it clearly shows someone grieving over their dead wife, now also on the untapping issue, honestly the card wouldn't look good if I had it be green and black, so I just chose for it to be black
Okay, I think this is just a case of you misinterpreting the colour pie, the sacred law of card design. Black cannot untap lands, period. Also, black is most likely the least likely colour to feel sorrow, as it is always looking out for number one. Black cards can inflict sadness upon their opponent, but it is not the colour that experiences it. That title would have to go to red, the colour of emotion.
Assuming cycling stays in the design, we have all our mechanics. What is our next step?
Gorgeous illustration you found here!
So this is a good example of how we're trying to make a set in the way R&D would ^^ There are basically two ways we could make a card:
1) There are a number of blank slots we have to fill with good stuff that don't necessarily synergize with the set but are cool by themwelves in a vaccum. This way people who don't necessarily like the set's theme can still find something to like. Those cards are usually very flavourful or mechanically unique higher rarity cards.
2) We make a set skeleton where we decide what the set needs, then we design to fill each slot. That applies to almost all the lower cards rarity because they're especially important to make Limited work.
So, while Neverending Piece is fine in a vaccum, there's really no telling if we would need it at all in the set, because it depends so much of all the other cards and we have to start with what the set really needs to work. I'll give you an example of things that seem fine in a vaccum but are actually problematic if you think about them in the context of this specific set:
- There are a limited number of cards in the set that can have Masterwork (by the way we still are exploring other options for this mechanic slot), is this effect the funniest way the mechanic could be used? The same can be said with multicoloured card, we'll likely have room for a single Black/Green uncommon card in the whole set, so it has to be super synergistic with the limited archetype. This is the kind of slot we need to choose the archetype before we can fill in the slot.
- Does the set need this effect at all? Well we have psylian life in the set that's a big ramping mechanic so that's very unlikely.
- Hybrid mana is a deciduous mechanic in itself. If we put it on a card, we have to use it for the whole set which restricts us on other mechanics we can do. Do we want hybrid mana? Once again we have psylian life that can fix your mana colours so this set probably won't need it.
My point is that making a set is a little different than just making cards. It's like designing the blueprint of the house before starting building walls
Your card is good for inspiration, we'll definitely use elements of it like the illustration, but it's unlikely it will be put in the set as-is. Which doesn't mean you should stop if you're inspired, because you're stirring idea and we'll pick what's useful from those when we need them
Sure, Elated is what we call an ability word, which means it has to care about "if at least 3 life was gained and or lost this turn" but the reward could be anything you want. It could even be that te card has a downsides unless the condition is met.
When Magic the Gathering was first created, Richard Garfield (the creator of magic) designed five archetypes for the game each built around a type of PHILOSOPHY! It's something Mark Rosewater has written over fifteen design articles on and made about twenty-five podcasts on. The entire game of magic is designed with a balance of the philosophies. You saying 'there are no definite colors you must put when it comes to the sentimental aspects on a card' is probably the most incorrect thing to say when it comes to colours, as the idea of the philosophies came before what mechanics colours can use.
What I'm trying to say is that magic has a strict clour pie, a sacred round of what can and can't be done in certain colours. As I said earlier, black has ALWAYS been the colour of self preservation and victory at all costs. It won't ever be the colour of selflessness nor the colour of self-inflicted sorrow.
I may be incorrect, but should we begin to think about limited archetypes?
Tricks and deception is blue's thing (i.e tapping effects, counterspells, hexproof giving combat-tricks, freezing effects)
On death:
White sees it as a terrible thing that must be avoided.
Blue sees it as the end of life, and not much more.
Black sees it as a means in which to deal with your enemies and something that it must avoid.
Red sees it as a bad thing in the future.
Green sees it as the eventual and necessary end.
Psylian life
Elated
Masterwork
Cycling (maybe? And maybe Psylian cycling?)
Assuming these are the ones we're working with, I guess we should at least confirm what colors they are going in.
At the moment, it seems like Masterwork is blue and red, while the rest are in all colors. This ... looks weird. (I'm tempted to say the colors don't balance, but Kaladesh had only one mechanic (Fabricate) that was absent in some colors and seemed fine as a standalone.)
Maybe putting less Elated in blue (since it doesn't seem to care a lot about life totals) will help a bit.
Don't forget Inspire!
While we take care of the sentimental aspect of colours as well, the colour pie will prevail as in a regular standard set, which means that Black indeed can't untap lands for instance though it has other ways of "ramping" like sacrifice ressources to gain mana. Note that hybrid mana doesn't mean that it can't be played in a monoblack deck, so it's not enough to repair the colour pie break.
@Tigersol
You're right that we'll need to define the ten bicoloured limited archetypes soon
@LyndonF @EnvyReaper
So, right now the mechanics are:
1) Psylian life (would need a new name screaming "Renaissance" btw)
2) Elated (what do you think of calling it "Thrills" instead?)
3) An Art mechanic. I've started to talk about how I'm more in favour of using Masterwork, but there are still partisans of Vivify so we'll explore that option as well. Inspire is the third option but it has less of a shot so far because Masterwork plays in the same area with less complexity. This does mean that there won't be two of those mechanics at the same time.
4) The fourth mechanic. At this point it really could end up being anything, but we've started exploring the idea of using cycling or a variant of it.
We will indeed refine in each colour which mechanic appear but we first need to actually test where there's the most potential. Basically, letting the mechanics tell us where they feel the most at ease mechanically. They also need to complement each other, we can't have one colour having access to all mechanics and another colour having access to just one mechanic.
By their nature, we can already foresee where they would be the most interesting:
- Psylian life: Because it's life gain, it makes the most sense in white, black, and green
- Elated: Synergises with every colour but Blue. I'd suggest giving every colour access to it at least a little because it's the core of the life-matters mechanical theme of the set but focusing especially on Red and only one of the Abzan colour so we minimize the overlap between colours.
- The Art mechanic whatever it ends up being can go in three colours that complement the other two mechanics.
- If we focus the fourth mechanic in the right two colours, each colour will end up having heavy access to two different mechanics on top of dipping its toe in the other mechanics if necessary.
As an example, here's a repartition of focus:
- Psylian life: WHITE / BLACK / GREEN
- Thrills: WHITE / RED
- Masterwork: BLUE / BLACK / RED
- Cycling: BLUE / GREEN
Which would give us the following repartition by colour, making each colour play differently:
- WHITE: Psylian life + Thrills
- BLUE: Masterwork + Cycling
- BLACK: Psylian life + Masterwork
- RED: Thrills + Masterwork
- GREEN: Psylian life + Cycling
And that's just an example among many possibilities
As you may see there is a new set called Peace in Dumaran, can you help me set up the forum page?
(sorry that came off harsher than it was meant to)
another returning mechanic would probably be cooler than cycling, honestly. Even Fabricate would be ok - perhaps the servo could even bit a little art token rather than a servo. And you could even add additional depth with some +1/+1 counter synergies to encourage the counter, as well as the other art tribal cards.
I haven't seen Peace in Dumaran, can you send me a link?
@KJMartin
No, you're right, I'm not sold on cycling myself at the moment. My main concern is that it feels too disconnected mechanically from what the set is trying to do. And it's indeed not the most exciting mechanic. I tried different things but I haven't found the perfect match yet. Here are a few examples, it's mostly variations of cycling that cost more mana so it synergises better with psylian life:
- Exactly cycling but on permanent cards with "Whenever CARDNAME enters the battlefield or is cycled".
- Lifecycling, what I proposed earlier where you cycle a card AND turns two life into psylian life.
- Multicycling where you pass on the ability to cycle to the card you're drawing so you can keep digging further into your library as long as you have the mana.
This idea of cycling mostly came from the idea that the set could use a filtering mechanic and that would go well with the scientific progress theme. But we can do that theme without a dedicated mechanic and filtering can be done in other ways, especially now that scry is evergreen.
If we dont rename psylian life, we're going to miss a mechanic that really screams "Renaissance", maybe we can start again on the idea of a Rebirth mechanic. I really see elated/thrills as the mechanical core of the set. Psylian life allows you to both gain and lose life, what would be really cool is a mechanic that helps you damage your opponent to complete this. Maybe an evasion ability that you trigger on a huge mana investment?
Lets say i play a card where i gain 1 life, where does it go? Normal or special?
Normal ^^
That's definitely the tricky part about this mechanic, I see a lot of people getting confused. There are designs that should help educate players, and we definitely need to nail them if we want the set to work.
Here's an example, please tell me if this helps you understand how the mechanic works: