When Enzanari enters the battlefield, search your library for a land card, reveal it, then you may put it onto the battlefield tapped. If you do, target opponent makes a 2/1 green wolf token.
{b}, Sacrifice a creature: Return Enzanari to your hand. You gain 1 serran life.
"I've traveled these seas for years, converting the people to worship Serra. Not my fault when those who don't mysteriously disappear!"
The wolf makes an opponent a creature, which is a downside, and that downside is to an overall great ability, making it more or less a good ability @Scaccogaming.
Quite a few of those designs are the kind of things we'll probably add last as they're a bit too simple and we want to give priority to new concepts that synergise with the themes of the set. Typically, you'd rather have Karametra's Blessing than Sheltering Light in a Theros set for instance. In the same way, we want to prioritise designs that are particularly synergistic with what Rezatta is doing ^^
Remember that at this point it's not about the nitty-gritty of the mana costs etc. There's no point in spending a lot of time refining cards so they're perfect, what's important is the concept behind it. A vastly misworded and miscosted card with a good concept has a better chance at ultimately making it into the set than a perfectly balanced card that's not synergising with anything specific in the set. That being said, here's a quick review of all those short cards, but know that none of them are really priorities so early in uncommon design.
Church's Wrath: 1-mana removal spells in white are tricky because there's a history of such cards that were too strong and permanently warped some eternal formats in ways that were not intended (looking at you, Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares). Nowadays, you'd need the spell to be conditional, but I like the idea of that downsides.
Serran's Grace: It's definitely better, but now it's actually slightly too strong, though not by much (giving double strike at instant speed is worth 1 mana and a half by itself). A priori, I'd call a 2-mana version of this well-balanced and realistic ^^
Ingenious Planning: The idea is nice, but 4-mana is a little expensive, this slot is typically a 3-mana nonconditional counterspell with a little upside, so I'd say 3-mana is the right cost here.
Actor's Passion: That's pretty original! I would play if the first activation cost a bit less, but I don't think it should be able to target players unless it's rare, and I do think you'd need to pay the mana cost in addition of discarding a card in order for it to be realistic. The main issue with this kind of design would be memory issues, you'd need to give some kind of counter to the player so they know how many times the card has been cast.
Enzanari: I believe it's well-costed (assuming the stats are in the range of 3/3ish), black green doesn't have to be ramp-oriented though, that's more of a Ravnican Golgari thing, but it could be an option on Rezatta I suppose ^^
Church cycle: GW definitely could use a church-flavoured design, remember that BW is also shared by the BRW archetype and BG is shared by the UBG archetype though. If you can find a way of doing it in a cool way, of course, go for it! But remember that a monocoloured cycle W/B/G is also an option and might be easier to slot in a set than taking 3 of the 10 gold slots for it.
Scaccogaming The point of Doran and Assault Formation are slightly different from what Faithful of Mossbark is trying to do, they're enabling a toughness-matters archetype ^^ As I said in my previous comment, if there's a toughness-matters theme it's ok because we can slot in other cards to support it like Aegis of the Heavens. But because there isn't one so far, it just read better to say it gets +6/+0, it virtually does the same and removes some crazy niche interactions.
Any color can get +N/+0 depending on the context of the card ^^ In the case of Faithful of Mossbark, it's really a 6/6 that gets -6/-0 when you don't have serran life if you think about it. What this ability really does is giving it back what its power should normally be. There are multiple ways to write this ability, it's not tied to any colour specifically. Making it deal damage equal to its toughness is one valid way, giving it +6/+0 is just the simplest most efficient one outside specific synergies. On the subject of firebreathing, it's a bit different, it is a red ability but it *has* to be on an activated ability that spends mana. So, for instance, Shivan Dragon has what R&D calls firebreathing, but Adanto Vanguard does not. You can click here if you want to learn more about R&D slang --> LINK.
Grimwood Lyrist: Sorry, it is a little confusing >.< I'll try to explain better what I'd like this slot to be: - It's an uncommon signpost so it has to be very directional. If GB is about the graveyard, it means it has to have an ability strongly related to the graveyard (so far, gaining abilities from creatures in your graveyard is a good thing, it would check that box, reanimating, counting things in graveyards, or even sacrificing are fair game too.) - Because it's an uncommon signpost, it wants to be useful in a general BG deck. That's what made the Lyrist a bit awkward. Because there isn't any large archetype that revolve around activated abilities in Rezatta, for the card to be good we'd need to think of a specific card we'd add to the set to work with it. Think how they added Cauldron Familiar to synergise with Witch's Oven in Eldraine. Grimwood Lyrist, in a set like Rezatta, hints at a two-cards combo, and that's not what signposts are about.
- It's enemy-coloured so it wants to avoid stepping on the toes of the ally-coloured archetypes UB(G) Art and W(G)B Serran life. That means no ability that directly references the Art creature type, or cares about serran life (note that just giving serran life is perfectly acceptable, just no "as long as you have serran life" and the likes.) - Because it's enemy-coloured, it also needs to synergise with UBG Art and GWB Serran life as much as possible. That's the tricky part obviously, because it cannot directly reference them. But, for instance, reanimating a creature would automatically synergise well with UBG for instance because they're choke-full of ETB abilities, all that without writing the name "Art" on it. It's more about pinpointing what the other archetypes are trying to do, and UBG is about entering and leaving the battlefield. GWB, meanwhile, is about protecting your life total and gaining serran life.
Target creature you control gets +4/+4 until and "If this card were to deal damage to a player, you may gain that much life instead" until end of turn.
@ningyounk I actually disagree about the toughness debacle. The way it's worded is just how that kind of ability is worded, especially for GW. The problem is that that card just shouldn't exist unless we have a minor toughness theme. So I think we should come up with another design or go for the toughness theme.
@LordTachanka123 good concept! This feels more like a 3-mana or even 2-mana card right now... maybe a 3-mana version that's a flier instead of a first striker? Just a thought.
@LordTachanka123 no I mean... my Fervent Duelist IS a white 2/2 cat warrior with vigilance and first strike on conditions I made for Rezatta, but you're free to use the name elsewhere, since it's not a card I plan on keeping.
Serra's Strength: An original concept if we need a creature-based lifegain spell at some point ^^
Actor's Passion: At least now it's easier to track ^^ That being said if your design needs this kind of counters to be able to work you really need to question if it's worthwile because that's a huge complexity cost on the set for a single card. It can be ok on some really flashy rares/mythic but in this case we can find simpler burn spells that would do the same job just as well I think.
The Show Must Go On: The show counters would need to be really tighter gameplay wise to justify making multiple cards asking you to play with them (think something like the Shrines at uncommon), but I think the masterwork mechanic is already occupying this spot of the weird multicoloured side quest in draft. The first ability isn't part of Red's slice of the colour pie though, this needs some black.
Serra's Sanctum: While it's really flavourful, this one specifically is super powerful and doesn't align with the themes of the set so far, so I don't think it's worth it. We can totally make a new legendary land card called "Serra's Realm" or similar that would be more fitted to the need of Rezatta though ^^
Fervent Duelist: That would be a monowhite card but it could definitely be interesting to complete the cycle with the red trample one and the blue flying one.
Neuf Blademaster: That's also a monowhite card, I like it though it's blending the archetypes in a good way, but I don't know how often you'd expect to enable Renewal in the WU archetype before combat. To prevent the archetypes from feeling too much alike, I'd like to keep the life theme a bit lighter in the WUR one (it should mostly synergise with serran life by ramping just enough to play two spells a turn, but I don't want to care about life too heavilty). I think it could be interesting just as "When you play your second spell each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME, it gains double strike until end of turn" in monoWhite. That would really help the RW archetype as well.
Aven Soldier: At uncommon, I think we can be slightly more agressive with the stats and mana cost. Imagine that the fact it's asking for two different colours is like it's costing 1 mana more when you balance those multicoloured uncommons. So it'd be like a 1/1 for 4 mana and we already have a 2/3 for 4 mana at common that does the exact same thing.
Angelic Ressurection: The cleric theme is not going to be strong enough to make an appearance as a rider on support cards, designs that care about it will need to be both enablers and pay-offs. The card is reasonable but the life gain feels a bit random, which I want to avoid because we'll have a limited number of cards that can gain life at uncommon, so we need to make them count. So far, I do prefer the Art version because it has more synergies with what the UBG theme is trying to do (you can still try to make a better design if you think you have a good idea though, it's not fixed yet.)
Song of Beauty: I like the concept behind it, an enchantment that you would sacrifice for additional value once Renewal is enabled feels like it could have some interesting design space. I could imagine this like a pushed version of the omen enchantments from Theros. I'm not fond of this specific design though, paying 3 mana to drain 1 life out of a creature feels a bit weak, while the resurrection feels a bit strong, and the two abilities don't seem to connect very much.
@SteampunkDragon Ideally the secondary themes would be synergistic with what the set is already doing, but taking it in a slightly unexpected direction. We can't push themes just to accommodate one card into the set. That being said, there could be some use for a toughness-matters theme if we find something new and original to do with it, there's a reasonable amount of overlap with it and the RGU Growth archetype as well as the GWB Serran archetype that is all about protecting your life total.
For the toughness thing, what I meant is that you won't find creatures that say "this creature deals combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power", you will only find that wording on cards that grant that ability to other things. That's because the "normal" way of doing that is setting the creature's power, it's just easier to read and it helps that all cards that boost their power do it in a consistent way. It's the same thing as having Pestilent Spirit say "Spells you control have deathtouch", that doesn't mean you should make removal spells that says "Deathtouch. This spell deals one damage to target creature" instead of "destroy target creature". For instance, see Snubborn Sentry, it doesn't say that it assigns damage equal to its toughness once you have the City's Blessing, it just gets +3/+0.
Faithful of Mossbark: That's pretty reasonable, it points that the archetype is very defensive and a 6/6 for 4 is actually a surprisingly more effective reward than a 6/6 for 5 ^^ I don't hate it as the GW signpost as it points very heavily at what the archetype want to do which is nice, but it could also be a good monoGreen design, maybe with less swingy stats. It does remind me of the first designs I made for the commons though, and I did purposefully ended up separating the stats boost (that went to the "If your life total is even" cards) from the abilities boost (that went to the "if you have serran life" cards) so the two archetypes would feel more different. It does step on the line a bit in this case.
Grimwood Lyricist: Yeah, that could totally work as a black/green signpost, that's the spirit ^^ I would use "leave the battlefield" instead of dies just because it's what the UBG archetype uses for Art triggers (it's meant to synergise with blink and bounce while making it slightly more branded).
@ningyounk I'm happy you like them now What would you add to Faithful of Mossbark in order to make it more white-ish instead of pure green? Anyway, I think I'll go print Grimwood Lyrist for good, using the "leaves the battlefield" instead of "dies".
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Legendary Creature - Elf Pirate Cleric
When Enzanari enters the battlefield, search your library for a land card, reveal it, then you may put it onto the battlefield tapped. If you do, target opponent makes a 2/1 green wolf token.
{b}, Sacrifice a creature: Return Enzanari to your hand. You gain 1 serran life.
"I've traveled these seas for years, converting the people to worship Serra. Not my fault when those who don't mysteriously disappear!"
3/4
@Scaccogaming
Quite a few of those designs are the kind of things we'll probably add last as they're a bit too simple and we want to give priority to new concepts that synergise with the themes of the set. Typically, you'd rather have Karametra's Blessing than Sheltering Light in a Theros set for instance. In the same way, we want to prioritise designs that are particularly synergistic with what Rezatta is doing ^^
Remember that at this point it's not about the nitty-gritty of the mana costs etc. There's no point in spending a lot of time refining cards so they're perfect, what's important is the concept behind it. A vastly misworded and miscosted card with a good concept has a better chance at ultimately making it into the set than a perfectly balanced card that's not synergising with anything specific in the set. That being said, here's a quick review of all those short cards, but know that none of them are really priorities so early in uncommon design.
Church's Wrath: 1-mana removal spells in white are tricky because there's a history of such cards that were too strong and permanently warped some eternal formats in ways that were not intended (looking at you, Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares). Nowadays, you'd need the spell to be conditional, but I like the idea of that downsides.
Serran's Grace: It's definitely better, but now it's actually slightly too strong, though not by much (giving double strike at instant speed is worth 1 mana and a half by itself). A priori, I'd call a 2-mana version of this well-balanced and realistic ^^
Ingenious Planning: The idea is nice, but 4-mana is a little expensive, this slot is typically a 3-mana nonconditional counterspell with a little upside, so I'd say 3-mana is the right cost here.
Actor's Passion: That's pretty original! I would play if the first activation cost a bit less, but I don't think it should be able to target players unless it's rare, and I do think you'd need to pay the mana cost in addition of discarding a card in order for it to be realistic. The main issue with this kind of design would be memory issues, you'd need to give some kind of counter to the player so they know how many times the card has been cast.
Enzanari: I believe it's well-costed (assuming the stats are in the range of 3/3ish), black green doesn't have to be ramp-oriented though, that's more of a Ravnican Golgari thing, but it could be an option on Rezatta I suppose ^^
Church cycle: GW definitely could use a church-flavoured design, remember that BW is also shared by the BRW archetype and BG is shared by the UBG archetype though. If you can find a way of doing it in a cool way, of course, go for it! But remember that a monocoloured cycle W/B/G is also an option and might be easier to slot in a set than taking 3 of the 10 gold slots for it.
Scaccogaming
The point of Doran and Assault Formation are slightly different from what Faithful of Mossbark is trying to do, they're enabling a toughness-matters archetype ^^ As I said in my previous comment, if there's a toughness-matters theme it's ok because we can slot in other cards to support it like Aegis of the Heavens. But because there isn't one so far, it just read better to say it gets +6/+0, it virtually does the same and removes some crazy niche interactions.
Any color can get +N/+0 depending on the context of the card ^^ In the case of Faithful of Mossbark, it's really a 6/6 that gets -6/-0 when you don't have serran life if you think about it. What this ability really does is giving it back what its power should normally be. There are multiple ways to write this ability, it's not tied to any colour specifically. Making it deal damage equal to its toughness is one valid way, giving it +6/+0 is just the simplest most efficient one outside specific synergies.
On the subject of firebreathing, it's a bit different, it is a red ability but it *has* to be on an activated ability that spends mana. So, for instance, Shivan Dragon has what R&D calls firebreathing, but Adanto Vanguard does not. You can click here if you want to learn more about R&D slang
Grimwood Lyrist: Sorry, it is a little confusing >.< I'll try to explain better what I'd like this slot to be:
- It's an uncommon signpost so it has to be very directional. If GB is about the graveyard, it means it has to have an ability strongly related to the graveyard (so far, gaining abilities from creatures in your graveyard is a good thing, it would check that box, reanimating, counting things in graveyards, or even sacrificing are fair game too.)
- Because it's an uncommon signpost, it wants to be useful in a general BG deck. That's what made the Lyrist a bit awkward. Because there isn't any large archetype that revolve around activated abilities in Rezatta, for the card to be good we'd need to think of a specific card we'd add to the set to work with it. Think how they added Cauldron Familiar to synergise with Witch's Oven in Eldraine. Grimwood Lyrist, in a set like Rezatta, hints at a two-cards combo, and that's not what signposts are about.
- It's enemy-coloured so it wants to avoid stepping on the toes of the ally-coloured archetypes UB(G) Art and W(G)B Serran life. That means no ability that directly references the Art creature type, or cares about serran life (note that just giving serran life is perfectly acceptable, just no "as long as you have serran life" and the likes.)
- Because it's enemy-coloured, it also needs to synergise with UBG Art and GWB Serran life as much as possible. That's the tricky part obviously, because it cannot directly reference them. But, for instance, reanimating a creature would automatically synergise well with UBG for instance because they're choke-full of ETB abilities, all that without writing the name "Art" on it. It's more about pinpointing what the other archetypes are trying to do, and UBG is about entering and leaving the battlefield. GWB, meanwhile, is about protecting your life total and gaining serran life.
Instant
Target creature you control gets +4/+4 until and "If this card were to deal damage to a player, you may gain that much life instead" until end of turn.
Sorcery
CARDNAME deals 4 damage minus 1 for each show counter on you to any target. Put a show counter on you.
You may cast CARDNAME from your graveyard by discarding a card. If you do, it can't be countered.
Instant
Return target creature from target graveyard to the battlefield under your control. It gains haste. At the end of your turn, exile it.
Remove a show counter from any target.
I know I shouldn't be making up new mechanics, sorry...
Creature-Cat/Human Soldier
First strike
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
2/1
@LordTachanka123 good concept! This feels more like a 3-mana or even 2-mana card right now... maybe a 3-mana version that's a flier instead of a first striker? Just a thought.
Creature-(Creature type) Soldier
Renewal - CARDNAME gains double stike until end of turn.
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
1/1
CARDNAME 1wu
Creature-Aven Soldier
Flying
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
1/1
@SteampunkDragon
Sorcery
This spell costs 2 less if you control a cleric.
Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. You gain Serran Life equal to it's cmc.
Enchantment
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, it deals 1 damage to target creature and you gain 1 serran life.
Renewal-Sacrifice CARDNAME, then return target creature from your graveyard to the battlefield under your control.
Serra's Strength: An original concept if we need a creature-based lifegain spell at some point ^^
Actor's Passion: At least now it's easier to track ^^ That being said if your design needs this kind of counters to be able to work you really need to question if it's worthwile because that's a huge complexity cost on the set for a single card. It can be ok on some really flashy rares/mythic but in this case we can find simpler burn spells that would do the same job just as well I think.
The Show Must Go On: The show counters would need to be really tighter gameplay wise to justify making multiple cards asking you to play with them (think something like the Shrines at uncommon), but I think the masterwork mechanic is already occupying this spot of the weird multicoloured side quest in draft. The first ability isn't part of Red's slice of the colour pie though, this needs some black.
Serra's Sanctum: While it's really flavourful, this one specifically is super powerful and doesn't align with the themes of the set so far, so I don't think it's worth it. We can totally make a new legendary land card called "Serra's Realm" or similar that would be more fitted to the need of Rezatta though ^^
Fervent Duelist: That would be a monowhite card but it could definitely be interesting to complete the cycle with the red trample one and the blue flying one.
Neuf Blademaster: That's also a monowhite card, I like it though it's blending the archetypes in a good way, but I don't know how often you'd expect to enable Renewal in the WU archetype before combat. To prevent the archetypes from feeling too much alike, I'd like to keep the life theme a bit lighter in the WUR one (it should mostly synergise with serran life by ramping just enough to play two spells a turn, but I don't want to care about life too heavilty). I think it could be interesting just as "When you play your second spell each turn, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME, it gains double strike until end of turn" in monoWhite. That would really help the RW archetype as well.
Aven Soldier: At uncommon, I think we can be slightly more agressive with the stats and mana cost. Imagine that the fact it's asking for two different colours is like it's costing 1 mana more when you balance those multicoloured uncommons. So it'd be like a 1/1 for 4 mana and we already have a 2/3 for 4 mana at common that does the exact same thing.
Angelic Ressurection: The cleric theme is not going to be strong enough to make an appearance as a rider on support cards, designs that care about it will need to be both enablers and pay-offs. The card is reasonable but the life gain feels a bit random, which I want to avoid because we'll have a limited number of cards that can gain life at uncommon, so we need to make them count. So far, I do prefer the Art version because it has more synergies with what the UBG theme is trying to do (you can still try to make a better design if you think you have a good idea though, it's not fixed yet.)
Song of Beauty: I like the concept behind it, an enchantment that you would sacrifice for additional value once Renewal is enabled feels like it could have some interesting design space. I could imagine this like a pushed version of the omen enchantments from Theros. I'm not fond of this specific design though, paying 3 mana to drain 1 life out of a creature feels a bit weak, while the resurrection feels a bit strong, and the two abilities don't seem to connect very much.
@SteampunkDragon
Ideally the secondary themes would be synergistic with what the set is already doing, but taking it in a slightly unexpected direction. We can't push themes just to accommodate one card into the set. That being said, there could be some use for a toughness-matters theme if we find something new and original to do with it, there's a reasonable amount of overlap with it and the RGU Growth archetype as well as the GWB Serran archetype that is all about protecting your life total.
For the toughness thing, what I meant is that you won't find creatures that say "this creature deals combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power", you will only find that wording on cards that grant that ability to other things. That's because the "normal" way of doing that is setting the creature's power, it's just easier to read and it helps that all cards that boost their power do it in a consistent way. It's the same thing as having Pestilent Spirit say "Spells you control have deathtouch", that doesn't mean you should make removal spells that says "Deathtouch. This spell deals one damage to target creature" instead of "destroy target creature". For instance, see Snubborn Sentry, it doesn't say that it assigns damage equal to its toughness once you have the City's Blessing, it just gets +3/+0.
Scaccogaming
Faithful of Mossbark: That's pretty reasonable, it points that the archetype is very defensive and a 6/6 for 4 is actually a surprisingly more effective reward than a 6/6 for 5 ^^ I don't hate it as the GW signpost as it points very heavily at what the archetype want to do which is nice, but it could also be a good monoGreen design, maybe with less swingy stats. It does remind me of the first designs I made for the commons though, and I did purposefully ended up separating the stats boost (that went to the "If your life total is even" cards) from the abilities boost (that went to the "if you have serran life" cards) so the two archetypes would feel more different. It does step on the line a bit in this case.
Grimwood Lyricist: Yeah, that could totally work as a black/green signpost, that's the spirit ^^ I would use "leave the battlefield" instead of dies just because it's what the UBG archetype uses for Art triggers (it's meant to synergise with blink and bounce while making it slightly more branded).
Enchantment
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, it deals 2 damage to target creature and you gain 2 serran life.
Renewal-Sacrifice CARDNAME, pay 2 life: Return target creature from your graveyard to the battlefield under your control tapped.
Enchantment
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, exile target creature you don't control until CARDNAME leaves the battlefield.
At the beginning of your turn, you gain 1 serran life and 1 life as long as exiled creature is exiled.
4: Destroy CARDNAME. Any player may activate this ability.