Debuting Bafflem: Arceus8523's Latest Custom Set! (First Spoilers!)

Arceus8523Arceus8523
in Custom Card Sets
Hello, everyone! As I stated in my Bafflem Teaser, I am running an actual spoiler season for my latest custom set, Bafflem, and I am incredibly excited to share this one with you all. To begin, we have the debut, which is usually livestreamed by Wizards of the Coast on Twitch and YouTube. While I can't organize a formal livestream, I do have a video, explaining many of the exciting cards, mechanics, and story details Bafflem has to offer. As you'll see, this set is relatively unprecedented, even among other custom MTG sets, and I made a lot of bold design decisions putting the set together.

Also, allow me to apologize for taking so long to get this out. I know I said it'd be up almost a week ago, but it took me a lot longer to put the debut video together and get a decent enough uncut read on the debut script, on top of some real-life issues I had to sort out before I could devote more time to putting everything together. That being said, I do hope the wait was worth it, as I put a lot of time and effort into both the set and this debut video.



With all this out now, I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. I am expecting this to be a rather divisive set given a lot of the design choices and mechanics I based it upon. And, as with all my custom sets, this is really more or less a polished first draft that will see a good deal of refining and "buffing-out" in the coming years, so feedback and critique is important to ensuring it turns out as well as it possibly can.

Comments

  • Arceus8523Arceus8523
    Aaaand I believe @HeroKP wished to be pinged for spoiler updates. If anyone else wants to be pinged for future spoiler updates, just leave a comment!
  • FourEyesIsAFishFourEyesIsAFish
    same
  • RandomFandomRandomFandom
    Frick. I was working on a deck order manipulation guild. Awesome stuff, though! It is definitely very creative and interesting! I would love to play this set, but there is one problem I see here. Adding a new color, you fight against the nostalgia of older players and will likely cut a large swathe of the player base out. You also change the mechanical color pie a TON. Once again, older players will be confused and even angry at the changes, since you’re changing the fundamental building blocks of Magic. I mean, even the back of the cards themselves show it. For all these reasons, I don’t think it’s a very good idea to add a new color. Anyway, just my two cents.
  • RandomFandomRandomFandom
    It would definitely be an interesting, yet controversial set.
  • LordFlavorousMaximusLordFlavorousMaximus
    This looks dope!
  • UsaernameUsaername
    ping me
  • joemamajoejoemamajoe
    I agree with RandomFandom. A new color is just not a very good idea. Also, initiative is not needed at all.
  • joemamajoejoemamajoe
    edited November 2020
    I would like to be pinged too.
  • FourEyesIsAFishFourEyesIsAFish
    I really like the new color. You're use of Purple to solve some of the color balance issues is genius and I love the deck manipulation.
  • UsaernameUsaername
    im with fish here: I think purple as a color is super neat and I definitely like the ways it takes away from blue to solidify both of their identities. I disagree with joemamajoe about initiative. I think that it's perfectly reasonable and useful, if not entirely for saving space then at least to allow other cards to reference it. As for a more complex take on purple mana, I think most of the complaints/critiques that people are going to have for it is that it's against the norm, but I personally think that's a good thing. they say it upsets the core fundamentals of magic? that's a really good thing from my point of view. the magic fundamentals are pretty unsteady as is, and I think that reworking them is a super cool neat thing to do. and after all, that's really what making cards is all about. I do however have one huge reservation about purple mana and that's draft and sealed. adding a sixth color has the potential to completely throw off limited deckbuilding. there'll need to be less of each other color in each booster in order to compensate for purple, which leads to less playables for every color
  • Arceus8523Arceus8523
    @Usaername
    I've been doing draft testing in the background and so far the set seems to draft fine (?). It's not up on untap yet so I've yet to see how actual games pan out, but most decks seem to slot into their arhcetypes nicely without needing to pull much outside of two colors, maybe sometimes splashing a third.
  • FourEyesIsAFishFourEyesIsAFish
    I would love to draft this set.
    Also... any names for the inevitable new ravinca guilds that come from purple?
    something's telling me dimir is purple black now
  • RandomFandomRandomFandom
    edited November 2020
    @FourEyesIsAFish

    Someone has to tell you sooner or later that it’s Ravnica, might as well be me.

    Also, I am not the creator of this set, this is total speculation, but I was able to come up with one cool guild:

    Vishogg, the purple-green guild of intuition and weather. They commune with plants to determine destiny, and have some control over weather in Ravnica. They can also predict weather very well, and their members will often be older than members of other guilds. They like wearing long coats embroidered with their guild insignia, which is a storm cloud with a lightning bolt coming out of it, but the storm cloud looks the top of the tree from the green mana symbol.

    In terms of mechanics, their main one is a keyword action, Squall. Squall is similar to scry, except twice as much, and you get to reshape your deck a whole lot more. It’s based off of my card, Mind’s Eye.

    Squall N (To squall N, look at the top N and bottom N cards of your library. You may rearrange them in any order.)

    In the process of making this comment, I wondered, “Is the color pie now WUBRPG?”
  • Arceus8523Arceus8523
    @RandomFandom
    @FourEyesIsAFish

    Honestly I haven't given much thought to a dedicated multicolor environment with the six-color pie, in part because of how six-color drastically alters the number of multicolor combinations. Similarly, Ravnica's lore and construction is so heavily tied around the ten existing guilds that a return to the plane would be nigh-impossible to do without a major overhaul to the set's lore. This was something I was planning to discuss in one of the eventual retrospective articles for this set about the merits and pitfalls of six-color deisgn. Honestly I'm not sure it's truly viable to do a Return to Alara/Tarkir/Ravnica (well, maybe alara but definitely not with its three-color theme, which would really sabotage the set) in a six color environment. It's my personally biggest concern/issue with purple overall, moreso than the break in nostalgia for older players or the implications of draft/sealed in general. The latter of the two at the very least can be worked around with conscious design choices like higher as-fan of mana fixing and rigorous test drafting.

    All the current six-color projects are either core sets or top-down sets focused on flavor.
    ------
    "Did you do it?"

    "Yes."

    "What did it cost."

    "A good-sounding acronym for the colors."

    --Yes it's WUBRPG
  • FourEyesIsAFishFourEyesIsAFish
    edited November 2020
    To be honest, I was just asking because I thought it would be fun to conjecture, but the Vishogg is such a fun concept for a guild. Squall is awesome and feels very purple... though it may run into the opposite issue of the Simic and be more purple than green.

    Also, about the current guilds being too entrenched in Ravnica... have you seen how many times the guildpact has been messed up? I'm pretty sure they could rationalize 5 more guilds (especially if that justification is that purple mana messes up the guildpact). Besides, it's good to speculate.

    Also, purple is a nostalgia win. Purple was first thought up for Planar Chaos, so people would go crazy seeing this if WOTC actually did it.
  • RandomFandomRandomFandom
    @FourEyesIsAFish Also, dunno if you noticed, but the “members are older” thing was a reference to the fact that old people are more sensitive to barometric pressure decrease.
  • FourEyesIsAFishFourEyesIsAFish
    @RandomFandom I didn't even notice that! good job
  • LordFlavorousMaximusLordFlavorousMaximus
    I’m still waiting for this to come out, i was stoked.
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