I think that I have an idea where a singular card will have a positive effect on paying the twilight cost. (A colorless spell where all of the generic mana becomes colorless mana in the twilight cost.) Probably would be rare or mythic, since it would change how you would want to use the mechanic.
Regarding archetypes for UB and BR, this is an option that I'm considering
UB - Nightmare/Horror tribal. Control/Midrange
or
UB - Having 3 or more cards in hand. Control
BR - Damaging yourself (Paying/losing life for benefit). Aggro
or
BR - Sacrifice-strategy. Aggro/Midrange
I'm not sure about these, since there are only three big mechanics right now (not including the fact that mechanics will return on a singular cards). I would like to possibly have another mechanic, but I think that it could be possible to have only three (I don't want to force another mechanic if it would only work mechanically and flavorfully for a single planet).
I'll say that unless/until another mechanic comes to mind that seems like a perfect fit, the fact that you'll be having a lot of one-off mechanics suggests you shouldn't have too many others. Avoid a Future Sight/Time Spiral block problem of complexity and all that.
That actually is a good point. On top of that, I've realized that at least for tribal archetypes, there is still at least some small payoff that they have, such as trolls in Kaldheim caring about land destruction. So I guess UB can mix my two ideas. Here's a draft of the mechanics and archetypes:
Here are the mechanics:
Twilight [Cost] (You may cast this spell for its twilight cost. If you do, it becomes colorless.)
Twilight costs are always the same as the original cost, but each colored mana symbol becomes a colorless symbol (Not generic mana). When the twilight cost is paid, the card will have a weaker effect. There may be a rare artifact card that changes its entire cost to colorless mana and the effect will be better instead, but we'll cross over that bridge when we get to it.
Since twilight effects are supposed to be colorless, most, if not all twilight cards will be either White, Blue, Red, or Green. If someone comes up with a good design that doesn't break the color pie, Black could have a twilight card.
Opening a Rift (Exile the top card of your library. Until end of turn, you may discard a card to add that card to your hand.)
A Blue and Red focused mechanic, Rifts are the card advantage mechanic in this set. You may add these cards to your hand at anytime you could play an instant.
Forgotten [Cost] - Exile this card from your graveyard: [effect]. Activate forgotten abilities only at anytime you could cast a sorcery.
A White, Green, and Black mechanic, Forgotten effects will mainly be in White and Green, but black will have some effects to power up some of its strategies.
Featured Mechanics:
Some old existing mechanics will return on a single card each. For example, there will probably be a single card in this set with madness. Most of these "featured mechanics" will be used to emphasize either one of Yungdrotha's mechanics, or reinforce one of the archetypes. Overpowered mechanics such as Storm, and mechanics that don't feel right in this set, such as Ninjutsu won't be in this set.
Here's the Archetypes:
WU - Astral Tribal (Control/Midrange). This archetype cares about Astral creatures and will lock down opponent's creatures while buffing your board of creatures.
WB - Zombie vs. Humans (Aggro/Midrange). This archetype has three possible tribal-based strategies. One, Playing zombies which will give opponent's creatures "-1/-1 until end of turn" type effects. Humans that buff your own creatures until end of turn. Or play a mix of both. There will be multiple cards in this archetype that mix the two tribes together.
WR - Vehicle and Artifacts (Aggro). This archetype will use vehicles as high bursts of damage. Some cards might modify vehicles in interesting ways.
WG - Forgotten (Midrange). This archetype cares about using forgotten abilities, which are similar to scavenge. A good amount of instants and sorceries in this archetype will have forgotten abilities due to WG's lack of sending cards to your graveyard, and a fair amount of the strategy will be to create a lot of tokens and then buff them up.
UB - Nightmare/Horror (Maybe shade?) Tribal (Control). This archetype will have sneaky but weak creatures that allow your hand to stay rather full. Keeping your hand full will be a good thing, as some of your cards will have benefits if you have three or more cards in hand.
UR - Opening Rifts (Aggro/Control). This archetype will interact with opening rifts. Some cards could send useless cards in rifts to your graveyard for a small bonus, some could interact with how you get cards from the rift. With a bit of blue from UB, some cards may return to your hand so you can discard them to get cards from rifts.
UG - Twilight (Midrange/Combo). This archetype will interact the most with twilight. Some cards in this archetype will make up for the drawbacks of twilight, giving an upside for paying twilight costs.
BR - Sacrifice Aggro (Aggro). This archetype will care about creatures dying, and will have a lot of sacrifice effects to enable that.
BG - Return From the Grave (Midrange). This archetype will care about cards leaving your graveyard, be it returning to your hand, exiling cards, or shuffling into your deck. I expect a lot of the featured self-recursion mechanics (Unearth, Flashback, etc.) will be on Black and/or Green cards.
RG - Psudeo Enrage (Midrange/Aggro). This archetype will care about dealing small damage to your creatures, which will trigger their abilities if they survive. Since some mechanics from the past will be featured on singular cards, enrage will not be featured because more than one card would need it.
Overall, this will be a large set, because there is a large theme, ten different primary worlds, featured mechanics, etc. The size of this set will be about 315 cards but may be more or less, depending on if there are too many great ideas, or if there are just too many cards. Here's what the number of cards will probably look like:
130 commons
Each color will have 15 cards
15 colorless spells. (Ten of which will be meh mana rocks, one for each planet.)
Each multicolor will have 3 cards.
5 basic lands
5 "voidtouched" lands
95 uncommons
Each color will have 10 cards
5 colorless spells.
Each multicolor will have 3 cards.
10 tap lands with sacrifice effects.
70 rares
Each color will have 7 cards
3 colorless spells.
Each multicolor will have 3 cards.
2 Utility lands. Lands like Animal Sanctuary, or Mobilized District. As someone who almost always takes the rares in drafts (Even if they're not in my colors), I don't like the idea of disappointing someone in a draft with a scry land as their rare (While yes, I agree they are useful, I'd rather get a cool spell during a draft, and buy the lands online some other time). I'd rather give people a higher chance to get some flashy and cool spell.
Around 20 mythic rares
Each color will have about 2 cards, so there will be an emphasis on multicolored mythic spells. There will also probably be one or two mythic artifacts. I haven't really considered anything about planeswalkers yet, so I don't know what colors will have planeswalkers.
If someone makes a really good Mythic land that wouldn't be part of a cycle, I'll consider it, but I'd rather just spells.
If this all looks good (and unless I'm forgetting something), I think that it's almost time to start with the commons. I think that creating the commons can happen here, but I will probably make another discussion once it gets to uncommons, if this discussion gets really long.
A quick question that will be important for starting work on the commons. What is/are your (up to) three main themes of this set? I can identify a "colorless matters" or maybe "color(s)/colorless matters" theme, but I'm not exactly sure what else is the guiding focus. I'll say that I'd be cautious about making the one-off mechanics too strong of a theme, only because you want to make sure your themes can work at all rarities, especially common, and it's a hard thing to build support around. You can certainly have some number of the one-offs at common, but not too many, and avoiding any overly complex mechanics at common. A final note on complexity, just try and be careful with the WB duel tribal stuff. I know Lorwyn block had some issues around lots of tribal interactions. Granted they went overboard with it there so I wouldn't be too concerned, just a thing to watch out for.
A quick balance thing I forgot to mention before is that the "voidtouched" land you had drafted up before should possibly have a generic cost for tapping for colorless since that's going to be a core thing that also allows for a lot of color-diversity/playing stuff you might not be able to normally. Just a thought
A couple random things about returning mechanics and integrating them into the set. You mentioned Madness, and I think the obvious thing to couple that with would be the Rift mechanic because of discarding. Depending on how much color(less) matters stuff might show up, a card with Devoid would be fitting. Some mechanics I would avoid are any made for multiplayer sets (commander and such), things that seemed very set/plane specific (Eternalize, Soulshift, etc.), and any really dated and unfavored mechanics (Fear, Flanking, etc.). Additionally, really unpopular or "bad" mechanics should probably be avoided (Outlast, Support, etc.)
Other than colorless matters, I think that the other big themes are related to the graveyard and hand. For instance, BU cares about how many cards you have in hand, UR cares about having enough cards to discard for rifts, and WU might also have some bounce-related effects. For graveyard stuff, there is BG recursion, WG has forgotten, WB and BR will have effects related to cards dying (though not a recursion-like or forgotten focus). I also have a feeling that there will definitely be some synergy between hand and graveyard matters, but I don't want to give too much synergy with each other that they outshine Twilight. If graveyard and hand matters aren't (or shouldn't) be primary themes, I don't mind going back and figuring out some new primary themes.
(Another note on archetypes, I think that there will be a small handful of cards that take a small aspect of another archetype into its own, such as a vehicle that crews itself by sending a card(s) in a rift to the graveyard. This would be where some of the synergies between archetypes could show. Though, it's just an idea, and doesn't need to happen.)
I didn't actually define WB correctly. Basically, I just want a temporary +x/+x and -x/-x theme in these colors. I don't know why I called it tribal, where it's just that the humans (mostly mono-white, with a few exceptions) give buffs and the zombies (probably exclusively mono-black, I think that mono-white zombies are pretty weird) will give debuffs. The middle ground will be multicolored cards, which can buff or debuff creatures, in addition to other death-related shenanigans. I don't think that there will be much zombie and/or human tribal synergies, though there may be one or two multicolored cards that do.
I guess that the "Voidtouched" lands could be filter lands, though I like the idea where mana that is produced could be treated as a specific color or colorless mana. Although, I don't think that anything about any of the lands is decided on yet.
In a little bit, I'll compile a list of mechanics that I think should be featured in the set so bad mechanics aren't being put on cards once the card-creation process begins.
Here's a list of the one-off mechanics I think should be featured (The ones in parenthesis are mechanics that I think may not work here, but I could be wrong):
(Afflict), (I would say Aftermath, but MTGCS doesn't have that type of card border), Battle cry, Bloodthirst, Boast, Cascade, (Changeling), Convoke, Cycling, (Delve. I'm strongly considering no here), Devoid, Devour, (Escape), (Evoke), Evolve, Exploit, (Extort), (Fabricate), (Fading), Flashback, Forecast, Foretell, (Fuse. Another card border MTGCS doesn't have), Graft, (Hideaway), (Improvise), (Jump-Start), Kicker, (Level Up), Madness, (Mentor), Miracle, Morph, Overload, Persist, Prowess, Rebound, (Reinforce), (Renown), Riot, (Scavenge. Probably not because Forgotten is so similar to it), (Spectacle), Suspend, Undying, Unearth, (Wither), (Explore), (Investigate), (Manifest), (Proliferate), (Surveil), (Constellation. Despite the name fitting very well, there isn't much enchantment synergy that I planned for, which is why I'm unsure of this one), (Fateful Hour), (Ferocious), (Inspired), (Landfall), Morbid, and Raid
A lot of ones that I'm unsure about, but the idea is that planes will bleed into Yungdrotha, bringing characters onto Yungdrotha from their home plane (Characters won't always some legendary creature or planeswalker-type of character, sometimes it could be a random creature from _____). Since characters are coming from their home plane, I do think that some set-related mechanics could work, but obviously, not all of them should be included.
I counted 58 different mechanics as of now. Though I expect this to be lower later. Also, some mechanics don't have to stick to the colors that they were in the original set that they were in, so something like Graft wouldn't need to be a green or blue card.
I think that when considering the mechanics, there should probably be a limit to how many your going to use that do any one similar thing, like only so many that give +1/+1 counters. Also leaning towards more simple mechanics is a wise choice, so I'd rule out some stuff like Hideaway for just being a very long and busy mechanic without a lot of payoff for inclusion.
A few mechanics that I do think could work well that you listed as unsure of are Changeling, Fabricate, Surveil, Explore, and Evoke. I might have more specific synergies in mind than flavor though. I'm pretty strongly against Delve unless you have a really good reason to include it. Just seems like it could cause problems.
Yeah, I was also strongly considering not to include delve, since it was a fairly strong mechanic. Here's an improved list:
Battle cry, Boast, Cascade, Changeling, Convoke, Cycling, Devoid, Devour, Evoke, Exploit, Fabricate, Flashback, Forecast, Improvise, Madness, Miracle, Morph, Prowess, Rebound, Spectacle, Undying, Unearth, Explore, Proliferate, Surveil, (There could be a constellation card, though I don't want to force it because its name is constellation), Fateful Hour, Ferocious, Morbid, Raid.
Edit: I completely forgot about Adventure! I think that it could probably work well here.
There are a few instances where I think that there's one mechanic I should keep, and one I should get rid of, but I'm not 100% sure which one yet:
(Reinforce or Riot. leaning towards Reinforce because I think that it would work flavor-wise with WB)
(Foretell or Suspend. I think Foretell would be better balance-wise, and I think suspend is a 9 on the storm scale)
(Kicker and/or Overload. Both wanting more mana for a better effect.)
This time, there are 32-ish mechanics. I don't think that there are too many of a single type of mechanic anymore.
Some reasoning for keeping or getting rid of some mechanics:
I got rid of Bloodthirst because Spectacle is a bit similar, and I like Spectacle more than Bloodthirst.
Got rid of Wither, Persist, and Investigate to reduce the number of unique counters and tokens for the set. This is another reason why I'm leaning towards Foretell rather than Suspend.
Another reason to get rid of Persist was that it was too similar to Undying. This is a similar reason why I got rid of Jump-Start (Similar to Flashback), and while Rebound is similar to these two mechanics, I think it's unique enough to stay.
I kept both Convoke and Improvise because even though they do similar things, they require different types of cards to be tapped. Improvise could be used for WR and convoke for another color combo.
Of course, I got rid of things like Graft, Delve, and Hideaway because they were too strong or too complex.
Lastly, I'm considering adding Hellbent. I don't know how well it was received back in the day, it is only a 5 on the storm-scale, and while it would interfere with UB's archetype, it could be some form of refueling your hand back up if you have an empty hand.
I just made this quick common, as it seems like Twilight is set in stone, and this card would seem like the perfect card to showcase what Twilight effects are about. This card is just like opt, but not opt.
Though it's also a believable scry effect for a 1 mana colorless spell as well if you want to shove it in a red-white draft deck. Flexible, but not broken. (I hope)
Just a note: I changed the planned size of the set because 370 cards for one set seemed like a lot. It's now 315 cards, which is still rather large, but not as large as before.
Also, unless anyone has any objections about the new set skeleton, I think that this can start with creating commons tomorrow. (I made the one Opt-like card just because I was bored)
The final list of one-off mechanics will be: Adventure, Battle cry, Boast, Cascade, Changeling, Convoke, Cycling, Devoid, Devour, Evoke, Exploit, Fabricate, Flashback, Forecast, Hellbent, Improvise, Madness, Miracle, Morph, Prowess, Rebound, Spectacle, Undying, Unearth, Explore, Proliferate, Surveil, Constellation (Fitting for this set), Fateful Hour, Ferocious, Morbid, Raid.
That list makes 32 mechanics that will only be on one card each. Though if you think that a rather tame mechanic could be added, you can make a card with it during the creation phase, and I'll consider it.
So it seems like there aren't any objections with the new set skeleton, so it seems like it's time to start with creating commons! (Yes, I did say that it would start tomorrow, but I am a little impatient and excited to do this, and it would be halfway through the schoolday that I would be able to start the common process tomorrow, so whatever.)
There will be 15 common cards of each color
First in wubrg order is white, so white commons come first.
For convenience, here is the archetypes with white in them:
WU - Astral Tribal (Control/Midrange). This archetype cares about Astral creatures and will tap down opponent's creatures while buffing your board of creatures. WU's world is Tarluria, a quiet planet where travelers go for meditation and peace.
WB - Zombie vs. Humans (Aggro/Midrange). This archetype uses humans that buff your creatures, and zombies that give debuffs to your opponent's creatures. Not a tribal-based strategy, but the flavor is more or less a battle between humans surviving in a zombie apocalypse. WB's world is Xantria, a planet of plagues and apocalypse where humans are fighting against an army of zombies called the festering horde.
WR - Vehicle and Artifacts (Aggro). This archetype will use vehicles for high bursts of damage. Some cards might modify vehicles in interesting ways. WR's world is Polina, a planet where an extinct race has left robots and mechs that are named "Rust-Ruin Machines"
WG - Forgotten (Midrange). This archetype cares about using forgotten abilities, which are similar to scavenge. A good amount of instants and sorceries in this archetype will have forgotten abilities due to WG's lack of sending cards to your graveyard, and a fair amount of the strategy will be to create a lot of tokens and then buff them up. WG's world is a planet of dreams, where people's spirits leave their body any journey into the unknown.
The mechanic that white shares with green and black is Forgotten. Although WG will focus the most on this ability:
Forgotten {line} [Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: [effect]. (Activate forgotten abilities only at anytime you could cast a sorcery.)
And while there isn't a focus on twilight in white, there still are some uses for it in white:
Twilight [Cost] (You may cast this spell for its twilight cost. If you do, it becomes colorless.) (Remember, Twilight costs are the same as the normal mana cost, but all colored mana symbols become colorless mana symbols.)
There are also one-off existing mechanics that will only be used on one card each. You can see the list of those mechanics in the last comment on this thread.
So, if you have any ideas for white commons, I would love to hear them!
I made a cycle of simple twilight creatures that lose their keyword if you paid the twilight cost. Yes, they aren't all white, but it's a cycle of cards, and it just feels better to make them all together, rather than make them each when it's time for that color.
Edit: I deleted this cycle here because I fixed them, and reposted them in a later comment on this same page. (Just scroll down and you'll see them.)
Venomtongue is probably going to be the only black card with twilight. I just think that most black effects (Destroy creatures, drain life) don't quite feel like they could be seen on colorless cards.
I didn't specifically make this for the set, but I was excited to try out Twilight, so I figured I'd share the creation with you. I worked under the assumption that the card would remain colorless if it was cast using Twilight, which I think allows for it be (or at least feel like) less of a memory issue to remember than the method of casting for static abilities. However, I could be wrong in that, and it could just mean that while the spell is on the stack it's considered colorless but afterwards it's normal.
Also, I think the formatting of Forgotten might be a little off, but I'd need to try and look at some similar examples to figure out what's off about it.
I think basing the effects on if the card is a specific color or is colorless is better. The ruling on cards like Blind Seer says that a spell that has its color changed will stay as that color(s) after entering the battlefield, so I think that the "If ____ is colorless" wording is correct.
I think for my cycle of twilight-keyword creatures, it could either be "If ____ is [color], it has [keyword]" or "____ has [keyword] unless ____ is colorless". I think that the first option would be better.
Edit: I changed them, and they look much more straightforward (I also changed the red one to an artifact creature because WR is artifact/vehicle-based).
For forgotten, I was also a bit unsure of the wording. All cards with mechanics that remove themselves from graveyards always seem to have the same result depending on what the mechanic is (Scavenge, Encore, Unearth, etc). I was just looking at all of the mechanics in magic to find one that I could compare it to, and I noticed Forecast, and I think that's what the formatting should be based on (Here's Steeling Stance, one of the cards with Forecast). So I've changed the one card I had made with Forgotten to have the same formatting as Forecast (I must say, it looks much better):
So, I've made 15 white commons, and while they aren't all perfect, I like their ideas. I don't think I'm forgetting a major white effect (I have removal, buffs, lifegain, and more or less simple creatures)
If you have any objections or balance advice, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I'll soon start on blue commons. (I also just remembered about one-off mechanics, I might go back to one or two of these cards to add one or two of those mechanics.)
Not much to say right now for balance or anything (although I might not be looking super closely at the moment). Really happy with the minor edits/changes on the mechanics/wording, really cleans them up some and makes them a little more straight-forward. Generally speaking, don't be afraid to only have like, 5 "vanilla" creatures in the set/at common at most. WotC has moved away from doing a lot of them over the past few years, standard only has 20-30 at most right now, with some of them still being a little different (like a cycle of enchantment creatures without abilities in Theros) with the heaviest concentration of them in core sets. So don't be too afraid to slap a keyword on a card or two here and there haha.
WU - Astral Tribal (Control/Midrange). This archetype cares about Astral creatures and will lock down opponent's creatures while buffing your board of creatures.
UB - Nightmare/Horror (Maybe shade?) Tribal (Control). This archetype will have sneaky but weak creatures that allow your hand to stay rather full. Keeping your hand full will be a good thing, as some of your cards will have benefits if you have three or more cards in hand.
UR - Opening Rifts (Aggro/Control). This archetype will interact with opening rifts. Some cards could send useless cards in rifts to your graveyard for a small bonus, some could interact with how you get cards from the rift. With a bit of blue from UB, some cards may return to your hand so you can discard them to get cards from rifts.
UG - Twilight (Midrange/Combo). This archetype will interact the most with twilight. Some cards in this archetype will make up for the drawbacks of twilight, giving an upside for paying twilight costs.
Here are the blue commons I have made so far: Edit: One more for now.
Despite being rather basic, I'm really proud of this design that I came up with like 5 minutes ago:
Works well with both UB and UR strategies. I'd say this is a solid card that wouldn't need changes unless the cost of the ability should be changed to {1}{u}.
And every set has at least one counterspell, so here's one:
MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Comments
Here's what one of the creatures on Bellania looks like:
or
UB - Having 3 or more cards in hand. Control
or
BR - Sacrifice-strategy. Aggro/Midrange
Here are the mechanics:
Since twilight effects are supposed to be colorless, most, if not all twilight cards will be either White, Blue, Red, or Green. If someone comes up with a good design that doesn't break the color pie, Black could have a twilight card.
Here's the Archetypes:
130 commons
- Each color will have 15 cards
- 15 colorless spells. (Ten of which will be meh mana rocks, one for each planet.)
- Each multicolor will have 3 cards.
- 5 basic lands
- 5 "voidtouched" lands
95 uncommons- Each color will have 10 cards
- 5 colorless spells.
- Each multicolor will have 3 cards.
- 10 tap lands with sacrifice effects.
70 rares- Each color will have 7 cards
- 3 colorless spells.
- Each multicolor will have 3 cards.
- 2 Utility lands. Lands like Animal Sanctuary, or Mobilized District. As someone who almost always takes the rares in drafts (Even if they're not in my colors), I don't like the idea of disappointing someone in a draft with a scry land as their rare (While yes, I agree they are useful, I'd rather get a cool spell during a draft, and buy the lands online some other time). I'd rather give people a higher chance to get some flashy and cool spell.
Around 20 mythic raresIf this all looks good (and unless I'm forgetting something), I think that it's almost time to start with the commons. I think that creating the commons can happen here, but I will probably make another discussion once it gets to uncommons, if this discussion gets really long.
I'll say that I'd be cautious about making the one-off mechanics too strong of a theme, only because you want to make sure your themes can work at all rarities, especially common, and it's a hard thing to build support around. You can certainly have some number of the one-offs at common, but not too many, and avoiding any overly complex mechanics at common.
A final note on complexity, just try and be careful with the WB duel tribal stuff. I know Lorwyn block had some issues around lots of tribal interactions. Granted they went overboard with it there so I wouldn't be too concerned, just a thing to watch out for.
A quick balance thing I forgot to mention before is that the "voidtouched" land you had drafted up before should possibly have a generic cost for tapping for colorless since that's going to be a core thing that also allows for a lot of color-diversity/playing stuff you might not be able to normally. Just a thought
A couple random things about returning mechanics and integrating them into the set.
You mentioned Madness, and I think the obvious thing to couple that with would be the Rift mechanic because of discarding.
Depending on how much color(less) matters stuff might show up, a card with Devoid would be fitting.
Some mechanics I would avoid are any made for multiplayer sets (commander and such), things that seemed very set/plane specific (Eternalize, Soulshift, etc.), and any really dated and unfavored mechanics (Fear, Flanking, etc.). Additionally, really unpopular or "bad" mechanics should probably be avoided (Outlast, Support, etc.)
(Another note on archetypes, I think that there will be a small handful of cards that take a small aspect of another archetype into its own, such as a vehicle that crews itself by sending a card(s) in a rift to the graveyard. This would be where some of the synergies between archetypes could show. Though, it's just an idea, and doesn't need to happen.)
I didn't actually define WB correctly. Basically, I just want a temporary +x/+x and -x/-x theme in these colors. I don't know why I called it tribal, where it's just that the humans (mostly mono-white, with a few exceptions) give buffs and the zombies (probably exclusively mono-black, I think that mono-white zombies are pretty weird) will give debuffs. The middle ground will be multicolored cards, which can buff or debuff creatures, in addition to other death-related shenanigans. I don't think that there will be much zombie and/or human tribal synergies, though there may be one or two multicolored cards that do.
I guess that the "Voidtouched" lands could be filter lands, though I like the idea where mana that is produced could be treated as a specific color or colorless mana. Although, I don't think that anything about any of the lands is decided on yet.
In a little bit, I'll compile a list of mechanics that I think should be featured in the set so bad mechanics aren't being put on cards once the card-creation process begins.
(Afflict), (I would say Aftermath, but MTGCS doesn't have that type of card border), Battle cry, Bloodthirst, Boast, Cascade, (Changeling), Convoke, Cycling, (Delve. I'm strongly considering no here), Devoid, Devour, (Escape), (Evoke), Evolve, Exploit, (Extort), (Fabricate), (Fading), Flashback, Forecast, Foretell, (Fuse. Another card border MTGCS doesn't have), Graft, (Hideaway), (Improvise), (Jump-Start), Kicker, (Level Up), Madness, (Mentor), Miracle, Morph, Overload, Persist, Prowess, Rebound, (Reinforce), (Renown), Riot, (Scavenge. Probably not because Forgotten is so similar to it), (Spectacle), Suspend, Undying, Unearth, (Wither), (Explore), (Investigate), (Manifest), (Proliferate), (Surveil), (Constellation. Despite the name fitting very well, there isn't much enchantment synergy that I planned for, which is why I'm unsure of this one), (Fateful Hour), (Ferocious), (Inspired), (Landfall), Morbid, and Raid
A lot of ones that I'm unsure about, but the idea is that planes will bleed into Yungdrotha, bringing characters onto Yungdrotha from their home plane (Characters won't always some legendary creature or planeswalker-type of character, sometimes it could be a random creature from _____). Since characters are coming from their home plane, I do think that some set-related mechanics could work, but obviously, not all of them should be included.
I counted 58 different mechanics as of now. Though I expect this to be lower later. Also, some mechanics don't have to stick to the colors that they were in the original set that they were in, so something like Graft wouldn't need to be a green or blue card.
A few mechanics that I do think could work well that you listed as unsure of are Changeling, Fabricate, Surveil, Explore, and Evoke. I might have more specific synergies in mind than flavor though. I'm pretty strongly against Delve unless you have a really good reason to include it. Just seems like it could cause problems.
Battle cry, Boast, Cascade, Changeling, Convoke, Cycling, Devoid, Devour, Evoke, Exploit, Fabricate, Flashback, Forecast, Improvise, Madness, Miracle, Morph, Prowess, Rebound, Spectacle, Undying, Unearth, Explore, Proliferate, Surveil, (There could be a constellation card, though I don't want to force it because its name is constellation), Fateful Hour, Ferocious, Morbid, Raid.
Edit: I completely forgot about Adventure! I think that it could probably work well here.
There are a few instances where I think that there's one mechanic I should keep, and one I should get rid of, but I'm not 100% sure which one yet:
This time, there are 32-ish mechanics. I don't think that there are too many of a single type of mechanic anymore.
Some reasoning for keeping or getting rid of some mechanics:
I got rid of Bloodthirst because Spectacle is a bit similar, and I like Spectacle more than Bloodthirst.
Got rid of Wither, Persist, and Investigate to reduce the number of unique counters and tokens for the set. This is another reason why I'm leaning towards Foretell rather than Suspend.
Another reason to get rid of Persist was that it was too similar to Undying. This is a similar reason why I got rid of Jump-Start (Similar to Flashback), and while Rebound is similar to these two mechanics, I think it's unique enough to stay.
I kept both Convoke and Improvise because even though they do similar things, they require different types of cards to be tapped. Improvise could be used for WR and convoke for another color combo.
Of course, I got rid of things like Graft, Delve, and Hideaway because they were too strong or too complex.
Lastly, I'm considering adding Hellbent. I don't know how well it was received back in the day, it is only a 5 on the storm-scale, and while it would interfere with UB's archetype, it could be some form of refueling your hand back up if you have an empty hand.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/navigate-the-stars
Also, unless anyone has any objections about the new set skeleton, I think that this can start with creating commons tomorrow. (I made the one Opt-like card just because I was bored)
The final list of one-off mechanics will be:
Adventure, Battle cry, Boast, Cascade, Changeling, Convoke, Cycling, Devoid, Devour, Evoke, Exploit, Fabricate, Flashback, Forecast, Hellbent, Improvise, Madness, Miracle, Morph, Prowess, Rebound, Spectacle, Undying, Unearth, Explore, Proliferate, Surveil, Constellation (Fitting for this set), Fateful Hour, Ferocious, Morbid, Raid.
That list makes 32 mechanics that will only be on one card each. Though if you think that a rather tame mechanic could be added, you can make a card with it during the creation phase, and I'll consider it.
There will be 15 common cards of each color
For convenience, here is the archetypes with white in them:
The mechanic that white shares with green and black is Forgotten. Although WG will focus the most on this ability:
(Remember, Twilight costs are the same as the normal mana cost, but all colored mana symbols become colorless mana symbols.)
There are also one-off existing mechanics that will only be used on one card each. You can see the list of those mechanics in the last comment on this thread.
So, if you have any ideas for white commons, I would love to hear them!
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/rust-ruin-maintenance
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/dissipating-soul
Remember, suggestions on balancing cards or ideas on new cards is always welcome!
Edit: I deleted this cycle here because I fixed them, and reposted them in a later comment on this same page. (Just scroll down and you'll see them.)
Venomtongue is probably going to be the only black card with twilight. I just think that most black effects (Destroy creatures, drain life) don't quite feel like they could be seen on colorless cards.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/keeper-of-lost-memories-2
Also, an artifact creature that deals with vehicles:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/battlespark-automaton
And a removal spell:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/smite-the-arrogant
I worked under the assumption that the card would remain colorless if it was cast using Twilight, which I think allows for it be (or at least feel like) less of a memory issue to remember than the method of casting for static abilities. However, I could be wrong in that, and it could just mean that while the spell is on the stack it's considered colorless but afterwards it's normal.
Also, I think the formatting of Forgotten might be a little off, but I'd need to try and look at some similar examples to figure out what's off about it.
I think for my cycle of twilight-keyword creatures, it could either be "If ____ is [color], it has [keyword]" or "____ has [keyword] unless ____ is colorless". I think that the first option would be better.
Edit: I changed them, and they look much more straightforward (I also changed the red one to an artifact creature because WR is artifact/vehicle-based).
For forgotten, I was also a bit unsure of the wording. All cards with mechanics that remove themselves from graveyards always seem to have the same result depending on what the mechanic is (Scavenge, Encore, Unearth, etc). I was just looking at all of the mechanics in magic to find one that I could compare it to, and I noticed Forecast, and I think that's what the formatting should be based on (Here's Steeling Stance, one of the cards with Forecast). So I've changed the one card I had made with Forgotten to have the same formatting as Forecast (I must say, it looks much better):
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/guide-of-lost-souls-1
If you have any objections or balance advice, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, I'll soon start on blue commons. (I also just remembered about one-off mechanics, I might go back to one or two of these cards to add one or two of those mechanics.)
Really happy with the minor edits/changes on the mechanics/wording, really cleans them up some and makes them a little more straight-forward.
Generally speaking, don't be afraid to only have like, 5 "vanilla" creatures in the set/at common at most. WotC has moved away from doing a lot of them over the past few years, standard only has 20-30 at most right now, with some of them still being a little different (like a cycle of enchantment creatures without abilities in Theros) with the heaviest concentration of them in core sets. So don't be too afraid to slap a keyword on a card or two here and there haha.
Here are the blue commons I have made so far:
Edit: One more for now.
Works well with both UB and UR strategies. I'd say this is a solid card that wouldn't need changes unless the cost of the ability should be changed to {1}{u}.
And every set has at least one counterspell, so here's one:
A small control card that can untap the enchanted permanent if you somehow gain control of it.