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Arceus8523's Bafflem Teaser
A cloaked figure sat at a desk in a small hut. He stared out the window at a strange world. The land he was on ended starkly just a few feet beyond the walls of his abode, floating a couple dozen feet above ground directly below it. A bird flew off in the distance, clearly larger than the figure was tall, and next to it a school of fish swam—through the air! He could see a waterfall on another of these floating land masses, but it flowed upward instead of downward. The figure had no idea how he had gotten to this place, but it wasn’t anything like his home—his home world. He tsked and shook his head in disapproval, and muttered under his breath, “The only sense to this place is that there is none.”
(Image Credit: Tithi Luadthong)
Hello, MTG Cardsmith! I’m excited to say that it’s been nearly five full years since I joined the site. To commemorate my five-year anniversary, I’ve got a custom MTG set to share with you all, and I can tell you I’m very, very excited to share this one. It’s been in development for over a year now as I grappled with how I wanted to tackle everything within. This set is strange, virtually unprecedented, and pushes a lot of traditional MTG design boundaries. Without further ado, let’s get into Bafflem!
Bafflem is a highly unstable plane that occasionally opens up rifts to other worlds that will suck structures, landscapes, and even inhabitants themselves into it. This leads to a world that is a logic-defying “hodgepodge” of all sorts of different landmarks, appearances, and types of life. The world is strange, unpredictable, and largely lacks the sort of “common sense” functionality of the “real world” we as the players are a part of. Bafflem’s aesthetic is targeted at being a surrealist/abstract world. Players should feel like their games of Magic are taking place in a chaotic world, one unlike any they’ve ever seen.
This strange and unorthodox feel isn’t just represented in Bafflem’s art, but in its mechanics as well. The original inspiration for the set was Time Spiral block, and thus this set is highly and unapologetically complex, moreso than any other set I have designed or will design (and possibly moreso than any official MTG set). Bafflem is in part a way for me as a cardsmith to experiment with all sorts of new and unique effects that will undoubtedly polarize (but also hopefully excite) players. That being said, I want to note that it is very unlikely every idea within it will be successful, and frankly the experimentation in this set is rather akin to the experimentation in Ikoria. Furthermore, as is true when I announce any of my sets, this is still merely a first draft of the set and things will likely change and iron out once I can start playtesting it. I don’t expect this set to enter into my eventual custom-standard (Stay tuned for that, by the way!) until months, if not a year plus, after the format launches. All that being said, Bafflem is strange, Bafflem is a huge design risk for me, but I sincerely hope Bafflem is exciting and truly unlike anything the MTCGS community has ever seen.
However, all that being said, Bafflem is not going to just have its set link dropped right away in this post, as I would normally do when launching a set. This time, I’m actually going to have a spoiler season! That begins today with my Mark-Rosewater-style teaser of the set (much like he’s done for new sets since Ikoria). As with official Mark Rosewater set teasers, these are tiny hints and partial information of the set.
(Image Credit: Tithi Luadthong)
Hello, MTG Cardsmith! I’m excited to say that it’s been nearly five full years since I joined the site. To commemorate my five-year anniversary, I’ve got a custom MTG set to share with you all, and I can tell you I’m very, very excited to share this one. It’s been in development for over a year now as I grappled with how I wanted to tackle everything within. This set is strange, virtually unprecedented, and pushes a lot of traditional MTG design boundaries. Without further ado, let’s get into Bafflem!
Bafflem is a highly unstable plane that occasionally opens up rifts to other worlds that will suck structures, landscapes, and even inhabitants themselves into it. This leads to a world that is a logic-defying “hodgepodge” of all sorts of different landmarks, appearances, and types of life. The world is strange, unpredictable, and largely lacks the sort of “common sense” functionality of the “real world” we as the players are a part of. Bafflem’s aesthetic is targeted at being a surrealist/abstract world. Players should feel like their games of Magic are taking place in a chaotic world, one unlike any they’ve ever seen.
This strange and unorthodox feel isn’t just represented in Bafflem’s art, but in its mechanics as well. The original inspiration for the set was Time Spiral block, and thus this set is highly and unapologetically complex, moreso than any other set I have designed or will design (and possibly moreso than any official MTG set). Bafflem is in part a way for me as a cardsmith to experiment with all sorts of new and unique effects that will undoubtedly polarize (but also hopefully excite) players. That being said, I want to note that it is very unlikely every idea within it will be successful, and frankly the experimentation in this set is rather akin to the experimentation in Ikoria. Furthermore, as is true when I announce any of my sets, this is still merely a first draft of the set and things will likely change and iron out once I can start playtesting it. I don’t expect this set to enter into my eventual custom-standard (Stay tuned for that, by the way!) until months, if not a year plus, after the format launches. All that being said, Bafflem is strange, Bafflem is a huge design risk for me, but I sincerely hope Bafflem is exciting and truly unlike anything the MTCGS community has ever seen.
However, all that being said, Bafflem is not going to just have its set link dropped right away in this post, as I would normally do when launching a set. This time, I’m actually going to have a spoiler season! That begins today with my Mark-Rosewater-style teaser of the set (much like he’s done for new sets since Ikoria). As with official Mark Rosewater set teasers, these are tiny hints and partial information of the set.
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Comments
First up, here are some things you can expect:
- A Kitsune from Kamigawa.
- A Homunculus from Ravnica
- A Horror from New Phyrexia
- A Steamflogger from Bablovia
- An oracle from Theros
- A monster from Ikoria
Here are snippets of rules text you’ll see:- (...an Aura card in your hand.)
- (If you would leave the battlefield…)
- (Auras with nothing to enchant remain in your graveyard.)
- (It’s a 2/2 creature.)
- (...into your graveyard from whatever zone it’s in.)
- (...You may turn a creature face up any number of times for its morph cost; it will still be face-down.)
- (...The phases are beginning phase, precombat main phase, combat phase, postcombat main phase, and ending phase.)
- (Then, resolve it as if it has been cast…)
- (...“Until end of turn” and “this turn” effects don’t end.)
- (...multiple instances of lifelink…)
- (on the stack)
And the set features designs, characters, and collaborations from:Well, I hope you all are as excited as I am for this. Spoilers for Bafflem begin on my fifth anniversary here on MTGCS, Monday, November 9th! I will post a link here to the spoiler thread once it’s up, and if you would like to pinged (with an @) when new spoilers are announced, don’t be afraid to drop a comment on this thread or the spoiler thread once it’s up. Trust me, this set is crazy (hopefully in all the best ways), and you won’t want to miss your chance to flame me for my horrible design decisions this! Thanks to everyone who read this far, and see you all soon with the first spoilers!
I saw elk
That is indeed the current plan ^^
This is grand. I have seen one card from the set, (*giggling*), but I really would like to see more. Could you ping me when spoilers are revealed?
https://scryfall.com/card/unh/21/staying-power
Honestly, I am kind of surprised that this kind of effect hasn't been used yet, though it's probably too confusing to keep track of.
The debut project has been taking longer than expected, this on top of an unexpectedly busy week IRL and some personal matters I had to attend to first. I'm trying to finish up the debut project, and I'm pretty close to done, but things got more hectic than I expected.
https://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/5491/debuting-bafflem-arceus8523s-latest-custom-set-first-spoilers#latest