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My last attempt at making a set (Give feedback pls)
Every single time I try to make a set, I get stonewalled by the same things, mostly limited archetypes. The thing is I get really bored by low power level cards that are made for balance issues as well as straght-forward and easy archetypes (Aggro, control, mill). HOWEVER, modern draft archetypes have become more and more interesting, constructed archetype-creating, and daring recently.
This is great beacause if there is one thing I like to do that is creating janky build around cards.THATS WHY this time I'm starting by stating the most interesting archetypes I would like to see and build from there.
FUN ARCHETYPES I WANT IN THIS INCLUDE:
Forced card draw (UR or BU): Black gets this very underused ability of dealing damage when an opponent draws a card, creating a slow clock, the color that can most easily force an opponent to draw cards is blue. Red could, in theory pull this off too.
Play your stuff (GB or GU or GR): Grixis colors get this weird ability to cast your opponents stuff with certain restrictions, but in particular, they can be weakened in vacuum if it would require mana fixing instead of allowing you to pay any color of mana like Hostage taker does. What color fixes your mana you say? GREEN. This archetype would reward you for castng any color other that green.
Throw your lands away (RW): W and R are early game colors, lands become an obstacle at some point. White also gets this weird ability where it can bounce its own stuff, at first glance it looks useless beyond saving something or getting another ETB trigger, HOWEVER you can bounce lands, and we have already seen red caring about lands in the graveyard, plus, when rummaging, you usually want to discard lands.
I WILL BE ADDING MORE FUN ARCHETYPES LATER. What do you think? Is there any fun archetype you have never seen?
This is great beacause if there is one thing I like to do that is creating janky build around cards.THATS WHY this time I'm starting by stating the most interesting archetypes I would like to see and build from there.
FUN ARCHETYPES I WANT IN THIS INCLUDE:
Forced card draw (UR or BU): Black gets this very underused ability of dealing damage when an opponent draws a card, creating a slow clock, the color that can most easily force an opponent to draw cards is blue. Red could, in theory pull this off too.
Play your stuff (GB or GU or GR): Grixis colors get this weird ability to cast your opponents stuff with certain restrictions, but in particular, they can be weakened in vacuum if it would require mana fixing instead of allowing you to pay any color of mana like Hostage taker does. What color fixes your mana you say? GREEN. This archetype would reward you for castng any color other that green.
Throw your lands away (RW): W and R are early game colors, lands become an obstacle at some point. White also gets this weird ability where it can bounce its own stuff, at first glance it looks useless beyond saving something or getting another ETB trigger, HOWEVER you can bounce lands, and we have already seen red caring about lands in the graveyard, plus, when rummaging, you usually want to discard lands.
I WILL BE ADDING MORE FUN ARCHETYPES LATER. What do you think? Is there any fun archetype you have never seen?
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Comments
(I'll help make the archetypes into factions)
I like the ideas for the archetypes and doing a set full of more unique and different ones would be cool but there are a few things to remember:
1.The archetypes you have are going to be difficult to build around, I think the main reason that WotC sticks to the more simple and typical archetypes is that they know that those archetypes are easy to make and will usually be successful.
2.Don't overcomplicate it, players (especially new ones) tend to choose which ever card is easier to understand and use.
3. The only one I'd stay clear from is the Grixis cast your opponents cards, cards like that work best in control decks and building an entire archetype around it is going to be restrictive and hard to do.
other wise the idea for a janky set sounds pretty fun!
@Izitru I know, some sets can have well over 9 archetypes. Obviously, I will fill in the gaps with easier archetypes. One of my goals is to tie the mechanics to make everything run smoothly. Grixis for example got this ability well defined in Ixalan, the problem with it is that, without mana fixing, it absolutely needs to have the text "You may spend mana as mana of any color to cast this spell" that takes some time to read and process, plus it takes a considerable space in the textbox, if you don't put it there, you save space and the first question that arises is "what if I don't have the right mana?" then's when the flagship uncommons make it clear that green is supposed to help you cast those spells!
Mechanics I have created:
Sanity - As long as you are the player with the fewest cards in hand... Otherwise, ...
Resourceful - Whenever this creature fights, blocks or becomes blocked ...
Full Moon (It is full moon every third turn, if players aren't counting, it becomes full moon and start counting.)
Mutate {cost}: Reveal this card from your hand: Traget creature you control that shares a creature type with this card becomes a copy of it until end of turn.
Occupy also named Settle thanks to Steampunkdragon who refined it. ... This creature settles (Tap it, gain control of target land while this creature is tapped. Untap that land.)
Concatenate (Counter any number of spells you control) For each spell concatenated...
Returning mechanics I love:
Exert, Evoke, Haunt, Populate, Dash, Embalm (Maybe renamed), Exploit, Improvise, World supertype, Morph, Prowl, Retrace, Jump-start, Skulk, -1/-1 tricks, Wither, Ninjutsu (Maybe renamed), Energy.
RW hit yourself: Enrage has been present in boros for a long time, more recently we saw a bit of it in ravnica, it is really fun, not entirely original, fun anyways.
GRW Break your own stuff: have you ever had a card that's a bomb if you're against artifacts but you aren't, well, with artifacts designed to be broken and RGW wraths that scale for each thing hit, you get a bomb finisher.
WB? Not legendary go wide: This is based off this ability. You get the point, create tokens, you can stack more than one legendary if you have enough
GU throw and shoot: Green's flier removal has always been WAY too narrow, even for constructed, but what if we forced our enemie's creatures to fly, that would turn this into a game off throwing your opponen'ts stuff into the air and shooting them!
I appreciate comments on wich ones should stay and wich should go
Thopter tokens fill three archetype's necesities at once: Artifacts for break yout own stuff, tokens for Not-a-legend and fliers for throw and shoot, so that could make things flow more easily. Plus thopters are cool!
So, here's a posible keyword that fills that spot, it might look familiar
Hangar (When this permanent goes to the graveyard, create a 1/1 colorlessThopter artifact creature token with flying for each +1/+1 counter it had.)
RG exactly that cmc: Basically, you use X mana costed spells to always trigger things that need an exact amount of cmc
Matrix set:
Basically a set within or revolving around virtual reality. I had previously suggested an imaginary plane with illusions, demons and horrors as the main races, but this is more interesting.
Mechanics: Cipher is super flavorful since it uses programming words like "encoded"; artifacts
Zero gravity set:
Space travel is almost a no-go in Magic, but nothing says there can't be a plane with a weak graviitational pull. Another story arch I once wrote involved Nissa being called by Emrakul in the presence of a larger threat, Emrakul using Innistrad's silver moon as a Cocoon transformed into a perfected form but needed Nissa to free her, so Nissa tries to find a way to get there.
Mechanics: Flying becomes a main theme of the set. The only excluded color would be green, but that would only make its flying hate more relevant. Full moon.
Latin america/brujería set:
I have said this a million times but I want a proper latin amrica-caribbean set. Folk magic in latin america in surprisingly colorful, dark and nature centric. It is mostly unexplored but other real-life issues like organized crime can be portrayed:
Mechanics: Curses, Artifacts, Lands.
Microscopic set:
Yeah, I know, Segovia is a thing, but I really mean a problem that's about diseases, fungi, insects, and not a human or dragon-sized villain.
Mechanics: Skulk, -1/-1 counters, Devour.
-Rural world, with serfs (I mean entirelly farms and villages)
-Extreme terrain world (Uses lands that add 2 or more mana of the same colour.
-Steampunk world
-Lots of worlds on the same plane (Alara-like?), sometimes colliding. (My idea for this is that the worlds are comets flying nearby to each other)
-Quantum physics based world, with X costs representing different scientific 'Elements'
-post-apocalyptic world were everyone's undead.
-Summoning magic (Not a plane)
1. Extreme terrain I like, plus, it isn't mutually exclusive with a lot of other themes. Like microscopic, only microorganisms were able to survive extreme conditions.
2. Quantum I'm not sure how to pull it off, but X as different elements is so clever. Obviously it is more on the sci-fi side.
3. Surprising we haven't seen a post apocalyptic world. Also not mutually exclusive with extreme terrain.
Hanger {X}: Exile this card from your graveyard then do X
You could make it something similar to scavenge but more diverse, it could work well in the post-apocalypse set to represent scrappers and junkers reusing old parts. And you could use it to fill in different archetypes where needed
Scavenge is actually pretty good in the storm scale, wich means similar mechanics are not off the table. The thing is I still don't know wich fun archetypes should stay and wich should go, that determines what the mechanics should look like.
Even though most of my archetypes are enemy colored. I'd want to go for allied colored groups because there's a lot of lands in allied that need reprints, more for the pioneer format: Fastlands, Painlands.
For archetypes my favorites are:
GRW break your own stuff (could change W to B this does seem like a B thing)
WR lands matter
The ones I would stay clear from are:
GU “throw enemies creatures” it’s waaaay to janky and unplayable And the RG use X to meet the mans requirements.
Other than those I’d say the rest are usable but not quite there
I'm writing on it. This also reminds me of a thing I had previously created:
Scraps tokens. They are Artifact tokens with "Tap, add one colorless mana" wich coincidentally is very synergystic with X costed spells.
Break your own stuff for value: some of the survivors of the apocalypse now scrap and reuse the remnants of the “old world” (could use hanger)
-1/-1 counters: The rot and zombies of the world, the -1/-1 counters could represent an infection slowly taking hold of a creature and you could incorporate the “stealing opponents creatures and permanents” to represent the infection taking hold.
Those are the two I can think of, you might want to think about a lands matter graveyard or non-human creatures
Races by colour:
White: Spirits, constructs. (The constructs aren't actually white, but have white activated abilities.)
Blue: Certain Mutants, certain Fungi, Spirits.
Black: Zombie, Certain insects.
Red: Certain Mutants, Skeletons (Animated by magic fire inside their rib cages?), Golems. (See constructs)
Green: Certain Fungi, Certain Mutants, Certain Insects.
@korandangels spirits are new, but it does make sense since so many people died. Red seems to be the less defined races... hmmm. Maybe they should share space with automatons?
Whats good about this is that theres a lot of art out there for these themes.
(Constructs and Golems are the main artifact creature types; they will be automatons.)
I think that archetype solidified on its own.
Jeskai Automatons: (Center color: R, secondary: U, W)
The survivors of this plane barely stay afloat, The only source of energy is controlled by Automatons designed to take care of the inhabitants. This same mysterious energy source was the origin of the cataclysms in the plane. The Automaton keeper's calculations predict the plane cannot be restored and have decided to exploit the resources until eventually, the same disasters wipe the entire population, They are Jeskai aligned because (1. RW) they believe in short term good for the community and (2. RU) they believe in the use of resources to their máximum potential. Plus (3. UW) they believe they know whats best for society.
Abzan Survivors (Center color: B, secondary: W, G)
Self-preservation centered, the survivor people of this plane wish to stay alive and refuse the idea of being treated like children until they eventually die. They Will take fate in their own hands and will do anything to avoid the final cataclysm. They believe the a long life Is worth fighting for, to suffer a programmed death Is to die like a dog. (BW) Preservation of their lives and independencia, (GW) Preservation of community.
Sultai stitchers: (Center color: G, secondary: U,
These people have used any means necessary to redesign their society. The use of zombies, symbiotic relationships with other surviving species and systematic recyclng of usable soil has given them a sustainable method of survival. (GU) Redesign of damaged enviroments, (UB) systematic explotation of undead.
RW break your stuff: Using wrath effects with on-death triggers in their stuff, the automatons don't fear utter end, they will achieve victory through anihilation.
RU forced card draw [To be decided]: I was suggested this should be forced card draw, but that is a traditionally black ability, will decide as design goes on
Survivors archetypes:
GW handle your lands: white struggles with lands late game, Green allows this aggro-mid game strategy to continue on the fight when It Is flooded with lands, making use of them.
Stitcher's archetypes:
UB Zombie tribal: this Is one we've seen before, that makes It easier to design.
Shared Archetype:
GB alliance [Death matters]: the alliance between the stitchers and the survivors Is representes in GB cards, knowing they have nothing to lose, they use the momentum of Death triggers to push against the automatons.
The short of it is try it out. Once you're happy with an environment (or even before), start putting a few cards onto the battlefield together and see what happens. You'll learn a lot by simply putting things into the crucible of play over simple thoughtcraft.
That reminds me, given what I have planned, some mechanics that can fill more than one spot:
Overload: It helps get death triggers for both GB and turn simple spells into wraths for RW. Even Forced draw can use it:
[CARDNAME XUUU - Sorcery - Overload XU, Target player draws X cards]
[CARDNAME 1R - Instant - Overload 1RR, CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature]
Persist: This one is simply because this plane is all about poverty, harsh conditions and surviving.
Battery tokens (They are artifacts with 2, Tap, sacrifice this token: Add CCC) or (They are artifacts with 2, Tap, sacrifice this token: Add three mana of any one color)
Generator tokens (They are artifacts with Tap: You get an Energy counter) ... At the beginning of your upkeep pay E or put a -1/-1 counter on this creature, or something along those lines.
@korandangels I had never taken the time to read those and didn't realize they were about sets at all,XD thanks.