Just discovered a site called card conjurer, that allows you to make your own card frames. I'm still going to stick to MTG Cardsmith, but if there's an idea that I have for this set that doesn't look great, or I can't do it on MTGCS, I might turn to Card Conjurer for some possible crazy rare or mythic card designs.
For reference, this is probably what type of stuff I'll use it for:
Yes, I'll confirm that Ugin will be one of the planeswalkers in this set, (I think it's fitting with the whole twilight+colorless themes going on). I still don't know if I want to use old planeswalkers or create new ones for the others, but let's cross that bridge when we get to creating mythics.
I'm still going to make the cards in MTGCS (If I can), but for the aesthetics, I will make them here as well.
I just took a quick look at the thread, I really like the concept of a space set, taking the game in a more sci-fi direction as opposed to the usual fantasy world is probably going to open up completely unexplored flavour and design space ^^
I didn't read everything, I got a bit confused by what mechanics are in the conversation or not at the moment so I'm not going to give any detailed feedback on specific mechanics, but I've got some general advice for set building.
1) Try to find the core idea of the set. How does the set should feel like? Zendikar wants you to feel like an explorer, Kaladesh like an inventor, Innistrad is scary, etc. This will help you choose between the potential designs you create. In this case, this is a space set, are we focusing on the feeling of exploring new and strange planets with their own tribes? If so, I'd focus on finding mechanics that feel weird and alien (they did that in Battle for Zendikar, as a reference). I'd also make sure that the creature types feel weird and new (I've seen discussions about tribal archetypes like zombies, humans, etc. I'm not sure that would really fit the alien vibe. I'd create at least a couple completely made-up creature types, for instance.)
2) While every set has a starting point that defines it as bottom-up (if the seed is a mechanical idea) or top-down (if it's a flavour idea, like space in your case), you want both aspect to meet in the middle eventually and merge so you'd ideally wouldn't be able to tell which came first. This means I'd make sure to find a crazy original mechanic that defines your plane. Every set needs to feel like it's pushing the game in a never-seen-before direction but that's especially true with custom sets, you don't want the mechanics to feel like they could all be part of a regular custom set, try to do at least one thing really crazy! x) On that aspect, I've seen some really promising ideas on the first page, maybe push the exile theme even further and see where that leads you?
3) I've seen a list of ten planets somewhere in the middle of the thread. The idea of having multiple planets, each with their own colour identity, sounds like an awesome idea. However, ten planets is going to be a tough challenge; It's possible to do it if you don't focus on it mechanically (Kaldheim does it, but the realms are an extremely light theme) while Dragon's Maze is a good example of a set that suffered from trying to focus on ten guilds at a time (it was notoriously brain-melting in Limited and lacked cohesion). You don't have to jump on the "Magic" number of ten immediately, there are other — more original — ways to divide your colours (think experimentations like Ixalan and its four factions for instance). Here's just a quick example: 1) WUBRG 2) WUBR 3) WU 4)BRG 5) G = 5 planets, each with a different number of colours in their colour identity (don't actually do that because the 5-colour and 4-colour planes would probably feel way too close, but you get the spirit xD)
Good luck with your design! =D Let me know if you're stuck on anything I could help with ^^
EDIT: I forgot something important xD
4) I've seen a few concepts on the page right before, and there are stuff like french vanillas etc. I would advise to design these types of cards as horizontal cycles, five at a time. They are very flexible slots, all you need to do is make sure they don't end up too similar. Keeping up a set skeleton is a good way of knowing what your set is lacking or not. You want to monitor the number of cards in each colour, the ratio of creatures, their mana curve, the evasion (aim at about 5% for each of the three levels of evasion), the removal, the as-fan of your themes and mechanics, the pump spells, and some important cycles you might want in (typically, a cycle of vanilla and/or french vanillas is a good idea for complexity purpose, as well as a cycle showcasing your mechanics in their most simple form, for instance). Then, fill in with some important staples (green will want ramp, blue card draw, etc.) and as much glue as you can ^^
Welp, ningyounk beat me to a lot of what I was going to say on this =P Anyway, I’ve been pretty busy, but wanted to be sure to give this a lookover. I’ll drop my own space set, Galaxia, in for inspiration sake, since this sets seems to be tackling a lot of the same ideas and mechanical space.
Hi! Thanks for the advice, it has given me some food for thought, so I'll just say what some of my own thoughts are.
1) Somehow I didn't mention this at all earlier, but I know that most of the time, space is deeply connected to sci-fi, but I was planning on keeping the majority of this in a fantasy setting. This doesn't mean that I plan it all to have a fantasy theme, as I'm thinking one of the white mythics will be a powerful mech flying around in space (Something similar to a Gundam or Voltron), but I'd like to keep a majority of it fantasy-themed. The best comparison to what I'm looking to make is Targon in Legends of Runeterra (I haven't played League of Legends, so I don't know how much emphasis on each region's themes are in that game), which has a space-feel to it without using spaceships or futuristic technology. This would be like that on a much larger spectrum. My original inspiration for this set was actually just from looking at the art on Time Reversal, so I've kinda wanted to keep the fantasy theme that it has:
It's some pretty cool art.
Because I'm not looking for a sci-fi feel, I don't really want to create a bunch of alien creature types, if any at all. Although I do have one new creature type, Astral, which is hard to describe, here are a few examples:
Basically, they are all giant space-creatures. They aren't all humanoid though, some are animals, some are demons, some can even be dragons.
2) For the set feel, there is a lot going on:
Each planet has its own little thing going on (WB - Zombie apocalypse, RG - A world where animals and monsters are empowered with flames).
The plane is so large that sometimes rifts break spacetime, allowing things to cross planets or bring things from other planes onto it without the need of planeswalking.
One of the mechanics, Twilight, allows cards to be cast as colorless spells rather than colored spells. I haven't thought much about it story-wise yet, but I've been thinking that maybe it's some kind of mysterious and powerful force flowing through the plane.
I think that the feel of the set kinda depends on where you are. One of the other names for the plane is "Yungdrotha, Endless Possibilities", so there will probably be a feeling of the familiarity of the planets and the larger-scale unpredictability of the plane as a whole.
3) On the color identity side of things, I want to take a similar approach that Kaldheim did, so there isn't a specific mechanic for each world. Each planet has its own archetype, but I wanted most archetypes to be loose enough that some cards could be used in multiple color combinations. For example, while returning creatures from your graveyard to your hand does directly benefit BG, it also subtly helps UB's hand size theme.
4) For mechanics, I do want to push them in the realm of crazy, but I don't want to push them so far that they would make a format or specific deck broken.
The original version of Forgotten allowed the card to be turned face-down for a specific effect, but as Potato13 mentioned, it's quite strong with Force of Will or other cards with similar alternate costs. The current version is now a version of scavenge, but each effect is unique (rather than just +1/+1 counters).
For Twilight, I originally planned to make the entire twilight cost generic mana, but I was afraid that the costs could easily be reduced to 0, giving storm decks easy access to a bunch of spells. I guess that I could be overlooking the frequency of reducing the mana cost of cards, so I think that there still is the possibility of changing it to its original form, but I would need to consider if it would be so strong that it's broken.
I don't think this is a problem, but I'm planning that existing mechanics will be one-ofs in this set, so one card may have flashback, and another may have hellbent, etc.
The hard part of this is finding mechanics that are strong, unique, and keeps that flexibility where cards/mechanics can be used on multiple archetypes (On this consideration, I'm thinking that a few archetypes might also change to better fit this flexibility, and WU will probably be reworked entirely to fit the theme of planets are small subthemes in the bigger picture).
Hopefully, my theme doesn't seem too large with each planet having its own smaller theme. I don't want the whole set to be everything just floating around in space, and I also don't want to limit myself on art too much (I've found a lot of space art to be sci-fi related rather than fantasy related, so at least in my experience, it's much harder to find that fantasy-themed art).
I dig the feel you're going for with space fantasy, it sounds promising and would definitely still have a lot of never explored flavour and design space! ^^
I'm reading more than a few elements in this description (the feel of the set depends on the planet you're on, each planet is associated with a specific archetype, you have one-ofs mechanics here and there, etc.) that would have me worried you're actually designing multiple mini-sets with very little cohesive tissue. I personally advise finding the connective tissue of your set first — especially because the space aesthetic won't be the connective tissue if you're focusing on the planets themselves. It's like I told you Alara was a space set where you visited five different planets, and I added a couple cards like a space ship, an alien, and a star, I'm not sure it would fulfill the expectation of someone that wants to play an MTG set in space ^^
For the crazy mechanic thing, my best advice is to have "one and a half" crazy mechanics in the set. Find one mechanic that really blows our mind the first time we hear about it, something like double-faced cards, morph, sagas, split cards, mutate, keyword counters, -1/-1 counters, etc. Then, you can maybe have a second crazy mechanic that derives from that first idea if they're really feeding of each other, but overall I'd advise making the rest of the mechanics synergistic but a bit more traditional, just so your crazy idea can shine. If you have too many crazy mechanics, it will be brain-melting. If you don't have any, it might end up boring unless you have really unusual synergies and flavour. Also, I'd strongly advise against the one-of keyworded mechanics. Every set is actually full of one-of mechanics, the goal of the keywords is to label the recurring themes to guide your players towards what's important in your set. Having a bunch of one-of mechanics will drown the signal and the set would be very confusing. It's something you see in very meta sets (Time Spiral, Modern Horizons, etc.) because those sets are a reflexion on the state of MTG as a 25 year-old game, but it would probably be counter-productive in a set that's meant to present a new plane. You can still use all of the same effects, just keep the keywords on what's more important ^^
Last note, you've mentioned colourlessness and exile as potential mechanical cores of the set. While I'm sure there are some super crazy design space available in there, remember that this specific combination was the core concept of Battle for Zendikar block so it might feel not as original as it could be (especially if Eldrazis are in there).
I made a mock-up mechanic just so you get an idea of what I mean by a crazy idea that could give the mechanical direction of the set:
Here, the set would use an additional sheet of cards that are planets, that you put in a separate deck face-down. When you spacetravel you reveal the top card of your planet deck, put it onto the battlefield then you may redistribute creatures you control among planets you control. It could function exactly like contraptions. Let's say, 15 planets singleton decks in Constructed and any planets you want in your planet deck in Limited.
Planets would have enchantment-like effects that only affect the creatures on them. In this example, I've used the planechase frame to increase the "novelty factor" xD
I see what you mean about the feel of the set. I can certainly try to reduce the amount of complexity.
I'm thinking of taking out at least a few planets and reworking the ones that are staying (I want to keep at least a few planets so I don't have to limit myself to just outer space). Probably a few planets can be fused together (for example, WG and BG already felt a bit connected, and the BR and RG planets also had very close themes). Now that I'm thinking about it, there could be something like a small handful of worlds for a few color identities, and the creatures that inhabit outer space can help fill in a few gaps for the missing color combos. So if you wanted to play simic in a draft, but it wasn't one of the main color combos, you could still play it with help from astral creatures.
In regards to the one-of mechanics, I'd like to keep the feel of an unstable plane that allows interplanar travel without the need for planeswalking. Maybe there could be something similar to how Theros Beyond Death did "heroic" with a bunch of creatures that had "whenever you cast a spell that targets this..." effects without actually saying heroic? I'm thinking a single card could have something like hellbent or forecast without the actual keyword. This way, it can still reference old mechanics, without being crazy on keywords.
I see what you mean about crazy mechanic ideas. I like the spacetravel mechanic idea, but since I would like this set to be designed so that it could be draftable, I don't think that it could work (I don't think that planechase sized cards would fit in a normal-sized booster pack ). But that does give me an idea of what level of crazy I should look for. I made one design that I think is around that level, but again, I don't think it would work well in a draft environment, so I don't think I'm gonna use it:
Since I want the set to work in a draft environment, I don't actually want a mechanic that interacts with the sideboard (It's still possible that one or two cards could, but not an entire mechanic). This is just an idea of what level of power I'm looking for.
I know that there was an eldrazi on the first page of this, but I would only want one eldrazi in the whole set if there will be any at all. My vision for twilight was some force that bends spells and mana (rather than how the eldrazi consume mana) on the plane (Something like phyrexian corruption and phyrexian mana, but not in an evil way), and the mechanic is just one that gives cards certain flexibility to them, allowing them to be cast at a weaker state. I didn't actually want the colorless aspect to be the main focus of the mechanic, but it was one of the only ways that I could think of at the time, that would allow permanents to have varying effects based on if they were cast for their twilight cost or not.
For example, a creature that had lifelink as long as you paid its normal cost, but lost that ability if you didn't pay it.
Although, now that I'm thinking of it, maybe casting a spell for its twilight cost could give an effect like exert, where as long as a creature or spell has or doesn't have twilight, it has a specific effect. Also, I'm still considering making twilight costs fully generic mana (It would definitely be better to not feel forced to create cards that generate colorless mana just to cast twilight cards, but it would also mean that the cards themselves would have to be weaker to not break the color pie like how phyrexian mana did).
I actually don't know if I want exile to be a primary theme anymore, but I'm going to compare the eldrazi to opening rifts anyway. The eldrazi in BFZ directly exiled your opponents cards, and interacted with those exiled cards. For something like opening rifts, it doesn't actually care about the exile part, it just uses exile in a way similar to adventure or foretell.
I'm still thinking on if mechanics should stay or go, but I like twilight. I think that it could be at least the "half crazy" mechanic, even if it needs work.
Yeap, using "mechanics" without the keywords is usually how sets will do to emphasise the most important themes. Think about how many cards care about casting your second spell in Kaldheim, for instance, and you see they decided they didn't want to pull attention to it by keywording the mechanic. Try to aim at about 3-to-5 keyworded mechanics in one set if possible.
I actually think a set caring about your sideboard might have some interesting design space, it seems worth exploring to me! ^^ The main problem I see is that it's not Commander-friendly, but there might be a solution. One of which would simply be to declare you have the right to a 15-cards sideboard in Commander for this reason.
I'm seeing a lot of problems with twilight, the main one being: How often would I want to play the card for its twilight cost? In your example, if my deck can produce white mana I see zero reason to play that creature without lifelink, and if my deck doesn't have White I don't imagine myself adding this to my deck just to have access to a 2/2 for 1C. In addition, supporting true colourless costs puts a lot of strain on a set design.
If I have one major advice for you, it's to not get attached to anything in the set at this stage. Let the set tell you where it wants to go by trying a lot of things. Right now, I'd cut Twilight entirely from the set, forcing it into the set will cause more trouble than it's worth, I suspect.
I also like the idea of a sideboard mechanic, and I definitely would like to make Commander-friendly cards, but I don't want to disregard formats like sealed or draft. In something like draft, you may be able to make a sweet deck that revolves around this mechanic, but there could be a chance that you were cut on your colors, and now you don't have any cards in your sideboard that are in your colors. I definitely would like to dabble a little bit in the sideboard, but I don't want to make this set seem like it's favoring one format over another, so I don't think that sideboards should be a major part of the set.
I think that twilight might have a similar problem to a sideboard mechanic. I've been thinking of its use in limited formats rather than thinking about it being a mechanic as a whole, as you could put something like a blue twilight card in a red-black sealed deck, and not need to worry about having a useless card in your deck or feel required to put one island in your deck. The problem is that they would be more limited-friendly rather than constructed-friendly. You might be right about cutting twilight, and I think that the other issue would be to create balanced mythic cards with it.
For the one-ofs, I think that some of the mechanics that could be "un-keyworded" could be: Battle cry, Boast, Changeling, Devoid, Devour, Exploit, Forecast, Hellbent, Some form of Madness (Maybe just some small effect that happens when you discard it. Something like Bartered Cow), Something like Spectacle, Undying, Unearth, Surveil, Fateful Hour, Ferocious (I know there have been pseudo ferocious cards after tarkir), Morbid, and Raid. (There are probably others that could fit in this list, but these are just from the list that I made earlier)
Also, maybe a small handful of the more simple mechanics (Things like Battle cry, Exploit, and Ferocious) could have two or three cards that use those abilities.
I'm thinking of the other mechanics:
Forgotten {line} [Cost], Exile this card from your graveyard: [effect]. (Activate forgotten abilities only at anytime you could cast a sorcery.)
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.)
I like rifts. It feels fairly simple that could certainly be an archetype, but it also thematically works well with the unstable aspect of the plane. On the other hand, I think that Forgotten may need to go. The flavor doesn't feel strong at all, and especially without a planet to have a small reason to be in the set, it just feels awkward. I think that rifts might be able to stay, but I still need to come up with some new crazy mechanic ideas.
I think Limited might actually be the funniest format where you could have a sideboard-matters theme! If you could work the mechanic in a way where you can cast the cards from your sideboards as if they were colourless, you'd get a chance to play all the cards you open/draft even if they didn't make the cut for your deck ^^ I'd actually be more concerned about Constructed since this might increase the repeatability of gameplay considerably (just see what happened with Companions, for instance). Finding a way where the mechanic doesn't reduce diversity of gameplay would seem like the biggest issue with a set that interacts a lot with the sideboard, I'd say.
Otherwise, none of the mechanics you've cited seem like they are structural to the set, so far. I suggest not jamming any in the set this early until you actually know what the set wants to do mechanically. Don't put the cart before the horse, and those mechanics definitely don't look like horses Opening a Rift for instance is just a complicated "draw a card, then discard a card."
Your "cart" is you want to build a space set. What is going to be the focus? The different planets? Ok, so you might want to build your set like a faction set. You're going to have to think about how you want to separate the factions at some point (again, ten planets is about twice as much as a normal faction set would have) but what's really going to decide what you can and cannot do is this: What is the glue between your factions? In Ravnica, the glue is the multicolour-matters theme. On Tarkir, the glue is the dragon-matters theme. On Innistrad, the glue is the graveyard theme. If you can answer the question "once each card is set on a different planet, how do I give the player the feel that they're part of the same set, what does it mean to be a space set", then you'll know what mechanics you need to design.
I'm actually starting to think that maybe factions aren't the way to go about this. For example, I don't think that the Astral creatures would be part of a faction (I see these creatures roaming space rather than forming an alliance with people or even other astrals). I think it would make sense to have an approach similar to a set like Dominaria, where there are things like tribal synergies, but the broad focus of the set is on historic spells. I'm not saying that I want the set to be about historic spells, but I hope you get what I mean, where there could possibly be a small bit of tribal stuff, but not specifically factions like Tarkir's clans or Ravnica's guilds.
I think an exile-matters set could work, but I'm honestly not sure it's where I want this to go. I think that I still need to think of what the feel is. I know that Kaldheim's feel was a Viking theme, but there was more than just that, so I think that brainstorming what I want from the set first will help me decide on a primary mechanical theme that brings the whole set together.
So I've been brainstorming a little bit, and I noticed that astrals are quite big. Bigger than planets. One of the primary inspirations I had for this set was League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra's Targon, which is fairly similar to the space-theme I'm looking for. And when I thought of big, I thought of this League of Legends cinematic trailer for one of the characters, Aurelion Sol, who is a giant space dragon.
I feel like this trailer gives the same feeling that I'm looking for. A feeling where some creature may look at a human the same way humans have to look at atoms and molecules with a telescope. A feeling of "nothing you can do will save you". A feeling that there are things in this world that would make even Ikoria monsters afraid. Of course, this may not be the exact primary feel, but I think that it's definitely something to consider when creating cards and mechanics.
> A feeling where some creature may look at a human the same way humans have to look at atoms and molecules with a telescope. A feeling of "nothing you can do will save you". A feeling that there are things in this world that would make even Ikoria monsters afraid.
Large creatures matter, and I mean really large, like 10/10+ A set all about crafting Titans to rule to cosmos, each archetype doing it in their own unique way.
I would say that there will be giant creatures, but I don't want to make it too much like Ikoria. The whole thing about that set was that you get to make monsters through the mutate mechanic, which sounds very similar to crafting titans. I don't think that making giant creatures will be a primary mechanic, but rather there will just be large creatures in the set.
A few of my mechanic ideas are ones that either would be drawbacks to allow for pushed stats on creatures, and mechanics that either give alternate costs (probably the one that I'm leaning toward) or help ramp out into big creatures. However, I don't want to think about mechanics too much yet, because I still don't know what the other focuses of the set are going to be.
Alongside a big everything theme (I don't think it needs to stick to only big creatures), I have thought up a few extra smaller theme ideas to work under the primary theme.
Black Holes/Interdimensional rifts - I know there aren't any mechanics locked in place anymore, but I'd still like to have something to do with portals/rifts/wormholes, especially with how non-planeswalkers can somehow travel to Yungdrotha.
Sun & Moon - I think that it could be cool to have a night vs. day theme that stretches over two archetypes. I think the archetypes shouldn't care if it was facing the other archetype, but I think that they could be trying to do opposite things. Maybe Arlinn Kord could be in the set (You know, with how werewolves transform at night).
Asteroids/Meteorites - Not entirely sure on this one, but an idea I have is something like the asteroids/meteorites on Yungdrotha have hidden power inside of them. Asteroids/Meteorites could be some form of artifact token, similar to food tokens, where you sacrifice them for an effect.
Maybe Aliens? - Again, I want this to be a fantasy-themed space set, so I don't want some hyper-intelligent alien race with super-advanced technology looking to take over the galaxy, but I guess that it's still possible to have alien races if they feel right.
Constellations? - I don't think that the constellation mechanic is a must-use (I don't want to force this to have an enchantment theme), but I think it would be cool to have some cards that represent different star signs, like a scale artifact to represent a sign like Libra (star sign names would change).
If you guys have any other possible themes or opinions on these smaller themes, let me know! I think that there can be a few more smaller themes.
That's what I'm talking about! =D You're definitely asking the right questions, I think, to give the set its core feel ^^
I believe what you've described is the Cosmic Horror genre, the idea that there is something so much bigger than us that we can't really comprehend it, which is both fascinating and terrifying. Lovecraft is the mainstream reference for this kind of feel. Eldrazis are 100% derived from this idea, so you can either find a new twist on them (e.g. Astrals are Eldrazis) or create your own new thing. Either way, you should totally read the articles from Battle for Zendikar block for inspiration, they wanted to give their set an "otherwordly" feel, which seems to fit your vision perfectly at the moment. One of the things they did was try to find really quirky design space. We got the processors and colourless-matters (with the introduction of colourless mana) but they discuss stuff like playing with a D8 (hedron-shaped) or caring about odd/even (this was the first time they ever did it) in the article. In any case, the idea of the space set feeling "otherwordly, on another scale than us" is definitely the kind of idea that can support the emotional core of a set ^^
Your work on "smaller themes" is also great, that's what they call the "tropes" actually ^^ Ideally, you'd start your set with a really long list of them so my advice is don't bother trying to design any mechanical theme for them yet, just try to make the list as long as possible! I really recommend the Vision design handoff file from Eldraine to see how they handle tropes, you'll see the kind of things you should note down in that section =D
So I think that Astrals won't have colorless related stuff because there are a bunch of different types of unique astrals (while yes, eldrazi aren't all the same, astrals are much more diverse in appearances, which leads to unique variations). While I don't think that I want this set to be an enchantment-matters set like Theros, I think that there could be small enchantment themes. Generally, there will be multiple classifications of astrals (similar to how in fantasy settings there are high elves, dark elves, half-elves, etc.), so I'm thinking that some will be enchantments that become creatures, others may be enchantment creatures on their own.
I think I still need the flesh out the design space more.
So a set like Eldraine had a big Camelot theme, but it also had a big fairytale theme. I think that there should also be a focus on how people living on planets survive with all of these giants roaming the universe. I think that the meteorites that land on these planets have crystals inside of them, and the inhabitants of these worlds could use these crystals to prevent astrals from destroying everything.
For the sun and moon idea, I just want to note that I don't think werewolves are necessary (Though I'm open to the idea of using them), I just think that it would be cool to use a planeswalker that could tie into this trope, and I think that Arlinn could work for that fairly well (Maybe its something like "some people get power from the sun, others from the moon, but Arlinn gets power from both due to her lycanthropy"?).
I'm having a hard time thinking of other tropes (A lot of space is just empty void), but I think I do have a few other ideas:
A shooting star/comet burn spell (really close to meteorites or asteroids, but it's just an idea)
Exploration of new worlds
This might fit into the same category as something like black holes, but massive calamity and destruction?
Throwing in some thoughts and ideas I've had from reading over the past few posts.
Playing into the "creatures/things from other planes ending up here" idea, you could play into the Blind Eternities idea some more. While in the story the most anything has dealt with it was the Eldrazi, there have been other things as well, like Shandalar is a plane that drifts through the BE and was what helped stop the Ice Age on Dominaria. So maybe Yungdrotha is a series of worlds almost left loose in the eternities, barely held together?
The asteroid/meteor/comet ideas are neat! Here are some cards that play into those that might be worth looking into; I tried to exclude stuff that was heavily tied into Theros, but included some that were from it/related to it. There are probably more but this is just what I found with some quick searching. I think the meteor cards are especially of note.
Astrals can be "big" without having massive stats, including things like deathtouch or ETBs that have big effects, or static effects that are oppressive or help them grow or change. Rise of the Eldrazi had some issues because most of the eldrazi were big expensive creatures that also had eldrazi spawn tokens that helped ramp into them and were hard to deal with, so that's something to be wary of. The big thing is to help make Astrals stand out and seem unique and interesting.
The idea of looking at how people live and survive on these planets is interesting, although may also lean itself towards overly sci-fi if you aren't specific and careful with it. I'd also be interested to see how people get from planet to planet in a more fantasy than sci-fi way. Something like Treasure Planet's solar sails on naval ships that "sail" through space, or magical portals that lead to other planets, that kind of stuff.
The sun and moon idea is kind of neat, but since we're talking about multiple planets, it would probably need to be focused on just one or two of the planets. Maybe one planet that is always day, or one half of a planet is always day and one is always night/the other half of the same planet is always night.
Like ningyounk said, the concept of an alien/unknown species or group of beings is firmly rooted in Cosmic/Eldritch Horror and Lovecraftian/Cthulhu mythos, which was a big inspiration for the Eldrazi, but has also played into the New Phyrexians a little as well (to a lesser degree). I think it was most on display in it's most traditional form with Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon (both in reference to Cthulhu mythos). Marit Lage is also something that's drawn inspiration from those types of stories and characters.
Here are a bunch of tropes I personally associate with space:
Astronauts / Space suits / Super elite training
Space Ships / Flying Saucer / Escape pods
Space battles / Lasers go pew pew pew / Shields
Travelling at light speed
Wormholes that connect two places very far away in space
Black holes
Space stations
Different gravity according to planet size / Artificial gravity in ships
Space-time anomalies (e.g. when time passes at a different pace between places)
Planets / Moons / Satellites
Stars / Suns
Really massive explosion (involving a whole star / planet destroyed)
Asteroids
Void / Cold / No sound / No explosion / Negative pressure
Extra-terrestrial civilisations
Colonisation / Planting flags
Sending robots or animals as a test / super-intelligent animals that are astronauts
Finding an old astronaut that was stranded on a planet for years
Space pirates / A planet is used as hideout for illegal activities
Also, my favourite otherwordly aliens, which could inspire your Astrals, have to be from the movie Arrival by Denis Villeneuve. The concept is that some aliens arrive on earth but everything about them is super weird, from their ships to how they look so we can't even tell why they're here. That's why they hire a linguist played by Amy Adams to figure out how to communicate with something that's the definition of alien. I can't recommend this enough ^^
Since I want this to be a fantasy-themed space set, I don't think that I'm going to necessarily want things like astronauts, or super-advanced technology. I think that there definitely can be some things that are more common in sci-fi, and turn it into more of a fantasy setting (things like lasers and light speed). Looking at this list, the animals as a test makes me want some monkey-related card in the set (It could be an astral monkey or just some random monkey, but I'd think it would be funny).
Some of the other things that I think could at least work as cards or themes:
Wormholes and black holes- This could either be a mechanic or card.
Gravity - Could be a cool instant that taps something.
Warping space-time - Probably some blue card that revolves around extra turns.
Planets & Stars - Probably land matters for planets, and Enchantment matters for stars.
Really massive explosions - I was either thinking of a land destruction card, or something similar to Vindicate.
Void - I'm not sure about this one yet.
Aliens - I don't know what type of alien race I'd want.
Exploration/Space pirates - As non-planeswalkers are able to travel to Yungdrotha, maybe something like Ixalan pirates come and explore that world.
Wormholes - Possibly how people travel from world to world. Could be a flicker-like mechanic, but could also be something else. Probably a blue effect.
Black Holes - I'm thinking that this could be some form of blue, black, and/or red board wipe that also has some Time Reversal effect.
Sun - I can see there being a WR archetype with a solar theme.
Moon - If Arlinn Kord really does seem like a good fit in this set, I'd say it would make sense to have a UG or BG archetype with a lunar theme since Arlinn would be Red-Green (Red for the sun and green for the moon). This lunar archetype will probably have an opposite strategy to the solar theme (For example, if solar is a Voltron-style archetype, lunar would be a token-based archetype).
Aliens - Since it seems like most of the astral/space stuff is in white and blue, I think it would make the most sense to have either a green alien race, or a black alien race (It seems like they are getting the least love so far).
Meteorites - Something like food tokens from eldraine, or the treasure utility for dwarves in kaldheim. A token type that you sacrifice to gain an effect (I'm thinking either a damage effect, or a buffing creatures effect if people harness the meteor's hidden power). Probably leaning in the red direction.
I've been thinking about what color-combo each of these themes would be, and I thought of a cool middle ground for Sun and Moon, which could be solar/lunar eclipse. It would probably be RG (I think I've been too eager to put Arlinn in this set) and could combine the two opposite playstyles of the Solar and Lunar archetypes. (Also, the lunar archetype will probably be BG. I was going to say UG, but I think that UG could have a cool gravity theme, having to do with flying/non-flying creatures)
Alright, I've gone over the list of themes and tropes to categorize them into color combinations. I did this to accurately see what theme each color combo is, and maybe get some ideas flowing for what each color combo might want to do. HOWEVER, this list isn't finished, so some themes may come, go, or move around.
Astrals - Since astrals are going to be a big part of the set, there are probably going to be astrals in each color. However, the main color combos using astrals are probably going to be WU, WB, and WG. (One will probably care about the creature type itself, another about enchantments, and I don't know about the third)
Sun - WR
Moon - GB
Eclipse - RG
Meteorites - UR
(Void?) - UB (I'm not 100% sure this is the theme I want for UB, but I'll leave UB as void for now)
Gravity - UG
Aliens - BR
Extra Stuff:
Wormholes - This could most definitely be a mechanic, but it could also fit into UB.
Black Holes - While I see wormholes as portals, I also see black holes as dangerous things tearing everything apart. I think that it would be best to have black holes not as a theme for a color combo or mechanic, but rather as a rare or mythic spell.
Planets & Stars - While I think it would be cool to have this as a theme for a color combo, I think it would be best to keep planets as just lands. There could be a planet-based mechanic, but I wouldn't want anything like landfall, and not really any of the themes that I picked above would really need a land-based mechanic.
Stars/Planets Exploding - Similar to black holes, I wouldn't say that this should be a theme for a whole color combo or mechanic, but definitely could work as a land destruction spell.
Warping Space-Time - Could technically be a WU flicker archetype, I think this would be best to keep as some "take an extra turn" card.
If people agree with the list that I made, and unless I'm forgetting something, I think we can start doing in-depth worldbuilding. (flesh out things like "what types of astrals are there?", "What is the story with the Sun(s) and the moons?", "What is the BR alien race going to be?", and unless this should happen after mechanics are chosen, "Who are going to be the planeswalkers of the set?")
Maybe I will create another discussion when worldbuilding starts, to get people up to speed...
Hey! =D You don't have to distribute the tropes into bicoloured combinations, you know? These restrictions might prevent you from achieving a decent archetype table in the future. Most tropes will end up as single cards in your set, you don't need to make whole archetypes about them, only the deepest ones will get to become major themes worth of an archetype and maybe even keyworded mechanic ^^ Something to keep in mind is not to lock yourself too early into anything non-essential to the set! Maybe there will be only one good meteorite design for instance, maybe you'll find a super cool meteorite mechanical theme but it works much better in BR, and maybe you'll realise you don't have a meteorite design you're happy with and you'll put the trope back in the drawer.
When WOTC does it, they said they actually start with designing single cards without keywords or anything, then the mechanics come from the coolest cards of which they make variations. They say the early sets don't really have archetypes yet, they're just a concentrated mismatch of random potentially cool ideas at first.
So, you should probably start by making some cards for the defining features of your set. If that's Astrals for you, let's design some Astral cards first! Once you find an idea that seems promising, make more on the same theme and see if you've got yourself a mechanic on your hand ^^
I have three ideas for astrals right now. Not the greatest, and will probably need some formatting changes, but I'm happy with the direction that they are going in.
I like the idea that they just seem like normal stars at first, but in reality they are giant creatures. (Though I think that not all astrals need to be like this)
Sounds promising, it looks like a good start to find the proper design space ^^ Now let's iterate on the mechanic from the first two cards for instance, what do you like and do not like about it? Personally I'd say:
• I like that the mechanic looks flexible enough to make a bunch of cards at every rarity. While enchantments with static abilities aren't the easiest to design for commons, I think it's very much feasible.
• Mechanics where a card starts as a noncreature permanent and then becomes a creature are difficult to design. I've tried a bunch and I can tell you from experience that, if you don't have access to the creature side early on, most decks won't want more than two or three copies at most.
• I like the feel of enchantment-creatures, the fact that they toggle on and off of creature form is a bit close to Theros Gods, but it does feel like they're in-between worlds.
• I like that this allows for huge creature cards to have utility in the early game.
• It feels quite tame mechanically, it reminds me a bit of monstrous. It could be solid glue for the set but that's not what is going to grab my interest in a custom set.
And here's another, crazier, iteration on the same concept (with its own problems, but its meant to dig up some fresh design space and stir ideas):
Here, they're made weird by the fact that they use negative power and toughness.
I think that Astal mechanic is very cool! Although, wouldn't that wording mean that they can't actually die due to damage? If a creature reached a toughness of 0, they would just become an enchantment and would return to being a creature the next turn. It's a really neat concept, but I think that it would mean that only a handful of cards would have it since it's so close to indestructible. (Also, I think it would be a little confusing to have both a creature type and keyword)
I think I'm going to create a new discussion page so if someone wants to start helping, they don't have to look through four pages just to be more confused than they already were.
I'll link the new discussion to this page once I start it up.
MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Comments
For reference, this is probably what type of stuff I'll use it for:
I just took a quick look at the thread, I really like the concept of a space set, taking the game in a more sci-fi direction as opposed to the usual fantasy world is probably going to open up completely unexplored flavour and design space ^^
I didn't read everything, I got a bit confused by what mechanics are in the conversation or not at the moment so I'm not going to give any detailed feedback on specific mechanics, but I've got some general advice for set building.
1) Try to find the core idea of the set. How does the set should feel like? Zendikar wants you to feel like an explorer, Kaladesh like an inventor, Innistrad is scary, etc. This will help you choose between the potential designs you create. In this case, this is a space set, are we focusing on the feeling of exploring new and strange planets with their own tribes? If so, I'd focus on finding mechanics that feel weird and alien (they did that in Battle for Zendikar, as a reference). I'd also make sure that the creature types feel weird and new (I've seen discussions about tribal archetypes like zombies, humans, etc. I'm not sure that would really fit the alien vibe. I'd create at least a couple completely made-up creature types, for instance.)
2) While every set has a starting point that defines it as bottom-up (if the seed is a mechanical idea) or top-down (if it's a flavour idea, like space in your case), you want both aspect to meet in the middle eventually and merge so you'd ideally wouldn't be able to tell which came first. This means I'd make sure to find a crazy original mechanic that defines your plane. Every set needs to feel like it's pushing the game in a never-seen-before direction but that's especially true with custom sets, you don't want the mechanics to feel like they could all be part of a regular custom set, try to do at least one thing really crazy! x) On that aspect, I've seen some really promising ideas on the first page, maybe push the exile theme even further and see where that leads you?
3) I've seen a list of ten planets somewhere in the middle of the thread. The idea of having multiple planets, each with their own colour identity, sounds like an awesome idea. However, ten planets is going to be a tough challenge; It's possible to do it if you don't focus on it mechanically (Kaldheim does it, but the realms are an extremely light theme) while Dragon's Maze is a good example of a set that suffered from trying to focus on ten guilds at a time (it was notoriously brain-melting in Limited and lacked cohesion). You don't have to jump on the "Magic" number of ten immediately, there are other — more original — ways to divide your colours (think experimentations like Ixalan and its four factions for instance). Here's just a quick example: 1) WUBRG 2) WUBR 3) WU 4)BRG 5) G = 5 planets, each with a different number of colours in their colour identity (don't actually do that because the 5-colour and 4-colour planes would probably feel way too close, but you get the spirit xD)
Good luck with your design! =D Let me know if you're stuck on anything I could help with ^^
EDIT: I forgot something important xD
4) I've seen a few concepts on the page right before, and there are stuff like french vanillas etc. I would advise to design these types of cards as horizontal cycles, five at a time. They are very flexible slots, all you need to do is make sure they don't end up too similar. Keeping up a set skeleton is a good way of knowing what your set is lacking or not. You want to monitor the number of cards in each colour, the ratio of creatures, their mana curve, the evasion (aim at about 5% for each of the three levels of evasion), the removal, the as-fan of your themes and mechanics, the pump spells, and some important cycles you might want in (typically, a cycle of vanilla and/or french vanillas is a good idea for complexity purpose, as well as a cycle showcasing your mechanics in their most simple form, for instance). Then, fill in with some important staples (green will want ramp, blue card draw, etc.) and as much glue as you can ^^
http://www.planesculptors.net/set/galaxia
Hi! Thanks for the advice, it has given me some food for thought, so I'll just say what some of my own thoughts are.
1) Somehow I didn't mention this at all earlier, but I know that most of the time, space is deeply connected to sci-fi, but I was planning on keeping the majority of this in a fantasy setting. This doesn't mean that I plan it all to have a fantasy theme, as I'm thinking one of the white mythics will be a powerful mech flying around in space (Something similar to a Gundam or Voltron), but I'd like to keep a majority of it fantasy-themed. The best comparison to what I'm looking to make is Targon in Legends of Runeterra (I haven't played League of Legends, so I don't know how much emphasis on each region's themes are in that game), which has a space-feel to it without using spaceships or futuristic technology. This would be like that on a much larger spectrum. My original inspiration for this set was actually just from looking at the art on Time Reversal, so I've kinda wanted to keep the fantasy theme that it has:
It's some pretty cool art.
Basically, they are all giant space-creatures. They aren't all humanoid though, some are animals, some are demons, some can even be dragons.
2) For the set feel, there is a lot going on:
- Each planet has its own little thing going on (WB - Zombie apocalypse, RG - A world where animals and monsters are empowered with flames).
- The plane is so large that sometimes rifts break spacetime, allowing things to cross planets or bring things from other planes onto it without the need of planeswalking.
- One of the mechanics, Twilight, allows cards to be cast as colorless spells rather than colored spells. I haven't thought much about it story-wise yet, but I've been thinking that maybe it's some kind of mysterious and powerful force flowing through the plane.
I think that the feel of the set kinda depends on where you are. One of the other names for the plane is "Yungdrotha, Endless Possibilities", so there will probably be a feeling of the familiarity of the planets and the larger-scale unpredictability of the plane as a whole.3) On the color identity side of things, I want to take a similar approach that Kaldheim did, so there isn't a specific mechanic for each world. Each planet has its own archetype, but I wanted most archetypes to be loose enough that some cards could be used in multiple color combinations. For example, while returning creatures from your graveyard to your hand does directly benefit BG, it also subtly helps UB's hand size theme.
4) For mechanics, I do want to push them in the realm of crazy, but I don't want to push them so far that they would make a format or specific deck broken.
- The original version of Forgotten allowed the card to be turned face-down for a specific effect, but as Potato13 mentioned, it's quite strong with Force of Will or other cards with similar alternate costs. The current version is now a version of scavenge, but each effect is unique (rather than just +1/+1 counters).
- For Twilight, I originally planned to make the entire twilight cost generic mana, but I was afraid that the costs could easily be reduced to 0, giving storm decks easy access to a bunch of spells. I guess that I could be overlooking the frequency of reducing the mana cost of cards, so I think that there still is the possibility of changing it to its original form, but I would need to consider if it would be so strong that it's broken.
- I don't think this is a problem, but I'm planning that existing mechanics will be one-ofs in this set, so one card may have flashback, and another may have hellbent, etc.
The hard part of this is finding mechanics that are strong, unique, and keeps that flexibility where cards/mechanics can be used on multiple archetypes (On this consideration, I'm thinking that a few archetypes might also change to better fit this flexibility, and WU will probably be reworked entirely to fit the theme of planets are small subthemes in the bigger picture).Hopefully, my theme doesn't seem too large with each planet having its own smaller theme. I don't want the whole set to be everything just floating around in space, and I also don't want to limit myself on art too much (I've found a lot of space art to be sci-fi related rather than fantasy related, so at least in my experience, it's much harder to find that fantasy-themed art).
I'm reading more than a few elements in this description (the feel of the set depends on the planet you're on, each planet is associated with a specific archetype, you have one-ofs mechanics here and there, etc.) that would have me worried you're actually designing multiple mini-sets with very little cohesive tissue. I personally advise finding the connective tissue of your set first — especially because the space aesthetic won't be the connective tissue if you're focusing on the planets themselves. It's like I told you Alara was a space set where you visited five different planets, and I added a couple cards like a space ship, an alien, and a star, I'm not sure it would fulfill the expectation of someone that wants to play an MTG set in space ^^
For the crazy mechanic thing, my best advice is to have "one and a half" crazy mechanics in the set. Find one mechanic that really blows our mind the first time we hear about it, something like double-faced cards, morph, sagas, split cards, mutate, keyword counters, -1/-1 counters, etc. Then, you can maybe have a second crazy mechanic that derives from that first idea if they're really feeding of each other, but overall I'd advise making the rest of the mechanics synergistic but a bit more traditional, just so your crazy idea can shine. If you have too many crazy mechanics, it will be brain-melting. If you don't have any, it might end up boring unless you have really unusual synergies and flavour. Also, I'd strongly advise against the one-of keyworded mechanics. Every set is actually full of one-of mechanics, the goal of the keywords is to label the recurring themes to guide your players towards what's important in your set. Having a bunch of one-of mechanics will drown the signal and the set would be very confusing. It's something you see in very meta sets (Time Spiral, Modern Horizons, etc.) because those sets are a reflexion on the state of MTG as a 25 year-old game, but it would probably be counter-productive in a set that's meant to present a new plane. You can still use all of the same effects, just keep the keywords on what's more important ^^
Last note, you've mentioned colourlessness and exile as potential mechanical cores of the set. While I'm sure there are some super crazy design space available in there, remember that this specific combination was the core concept of Battle for Zendikar block so it might feel not as original as it could be (especially if Eldrazis are in there).
Here, the set would use an additional sheet of cards that are planets, that you put in a separate deck face-down. When you spacetravel you reveal the top card of your planet deck, put it onto the battlefield then you may redistribute creatures you control among planets you control. It could function exactly like contraptions. Let's say, 15 planets singleton decks in Constructed and any planets you want in your planet deck in Limited.
Planets would have enchantment-like effects that only affect the creatures on them. In this example, I've used the planechase frame to increase the "novelty factor" xD
I'm thinking of taking out at least a few planets and reworking the ones that are staying (I want to keep at least a few planets so I don't have to limit myself to just outer space). Probably a few planets can be fused together (for example, WG and BG already felt a bit connected, and the BR and RG planets also had very close themes). Now that I'm thinking about it, there could be something like a small handful of worlds for a few color identities, and the creatures that inhabit outer space can help fill in a few gaps for the missing color combos. So if you wanted to play simic in a draft, but it wasn't one of the main color combos, you could still play it with help from astral creatures.
In regards to the one-of mechanics, I'd like to keep the feel of an unstable plane that allows interplanar travel without the need for planeswalking. Maybe there could be something similar to how Theros Beyond Death did "heroic" with a bunch of creatures that had "whenever you cast a spell that targets this..." effects without actually saying heroic? I'm thinking a single card could have something like hellbent or forecast without the actual keyword. This way, it can still reference old mechanics, without being crazy on keywords.
I see what you mean about crazy mechanic ideas. I like the spacetravel mechanic idea, but since I would like this set to be designed so that it could be draftable, I don't think that it could work (I don't think that planechase sized cards would fit in a normal-sized booster pack
Since I want the set to work in a draft environment, I don't actually want a mechanic that interacts with the sideboard (It's still possible that one or two cards could, but not an entire mechanic). This is just an idea of what level of power I'm looking for.
I know that there was an eldrazi on the first page of this, but I would only want one eldrazi in the whole set if there will be any at all. My vision for twilight was some force that bends spells and mana (rather than how the eldrazi consume mana) on the plane (Something like phyrexian corruption and phyrexian mana, but not in an evil way), and the mechanic is just one that gives cards certain flexibility to them, allowing them to be cast at a weaker state. I didn't actually want the colorless aspect to be the main focus of the mechanic, but it was one of the only ways that I could think of at the time, that would allow permanents to have varying effects based on if they were cast for their twilight cost or not.
For example, a creature that had lifelink as long as you paid its normal cost, but lost that ability if you didn't pay it.
I actually don't know if I want exile to be a primary theme anymore, but I'm going to compare the eldrazi to opening rifts anyway. The eldrazi in BFZ directly exiled your opponents cards, and interacted with those exiled cards. For something like opening rifts, it doesn't actually care about the exile part, it just uses exile in a way similar to adventure or foretell.
I'm still thinking on if mechanics should stay or go, but I like twilight. I think that it could be at least the "half crazy" mechanic, even if it needs work.
I actually think a set caring about your sideboard might have some interesting design space, it seems worth exploring to me! ^^ The main problem I see is that it's not Commander-friendly, but there might be a solution. One of which would simply be to declare you have the right to a 15-cards sideboard in Commander for this reason.
I'm seeing a lot of problems with twilight, the main one being: How often would I want to play the card for its twilight cost? In your example, if my deck can produce white mana I see zero reason to play that creature without lifelink, and if my deck doesn't have White I don't imagine myself adding this to my deck just to have access to a 2/2 for 1C. In addition, supporting true colourless costs puts a lot of strain on a set design.
If I have one major advice for you, it's to not get attached to anything in the set at this stage. Let the set tell you where it wants to go by trying a lot of things. Right now, I'd cut Twilight entirely from the set, forcing it into the set will cause more trouble than it's worth, I suspect.
I think that twilight might have a similar problem to a sideboard mechanic. I've been thinking of its use in limited formats rather than thinking about it being a mechanic as a whole, as you could put something like a blue twilight card in a red-black sealed deck, and not need to worry about having a useless card in your deck or feel required to put one island in your deck. The problem is that they would be more limited-friendly rather than constructed-friendly. You might be right about cutting twilight, and I think that the other issue would be to create balanced mythic cards with it.
For the one-ofs, I think that some of the mechanics that could be "un-keyworded" could be:
Battle cry, Boast, Changeling, Devoid, Devour, Exploit, Forecast, Hellbent, Some form of Madness (Maybe just some small effect that happens when you discard it. Something like Bartered Cow), Something like Spectacle, Undying, Unearth, Surveil, Fateful Hour, Ferocious (I know there have been pseudo ferocious cards after tarkir), Morbid, and Raid. (There are probably others that could fit in this list, but these are just from the list that I made earlier)
This was the original list of one-of mechanics:
I'm thinking of the other mechanics:
I think Limited might actually be the funniest format where you could have a sideboard-matters theme! If you could work the mechanic in a way where you can cast the cards from your sideboards as if they were colourless, you'd get a chance to play all the cards you open/draft even if they didn't make the cut for your deck ^^ I'd actually be more concerned about Constructed since this might increase the repeatability of gameplay considerably (just see what happened with Companions, for instance). Finding a way where the mechanic doesn't reduce diversity of gameplay would seem like the biggest issue with a set that interacts a lot with the sideboard, I'd say.
Otherwise, none of the mechanics you've cited seem like they are structural to the set, so far. I suggest not jamming any in the set this early until you actually know what the set wants to do mechanically. Don't put the cart before the horse, and those mechanics definitely don't look like horses
Your "cart" is you want to build a space set. What is going to be the focus? The different planets? Ok, so you might want to build your set like a faction set. You're going to have to think about how you want to separate the factions at some point (again, ten planets is about twice as much as a normal faction set would have) but what's really going to decide what you can and cannot do is this: What is the glue between your factions? In Ravnica, the glue is the multicolour-matters theme. On Tarkir, the glue is the dragon-matters theme. On Innistrad, the glue is the graveyard theme. If you can answer the question "once each card is set on a different planet, how do I give the player the feel that they're part of the same set, what does it mean to be a space set", then you'll know what mechanics you need to design.
I think an exile-matters set could work, but I'm honestly not sure it's where I want this to go. I think that I still need to think of what the feel is. I know that Kaldheim's feel was a Viking theme, but there was more than just that, so I think that brainstorming what I want from the set first will help me decide on a primary mechanical theme that brings the whole set together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAAnY_L4Pp4
I feel like this trailer gives the same feeling that I'm looking for. A feeling where some creature may look at a human the same way humans have to look at atoms and molecules with a telescope. A feeling of "nothing you can do will save you". A feeling that there are things in this world that would make even Ikoria monsters afraid. Of course, this may not be the exact primary feel, but I think that it's definitely something to consider when creating cards and mechanics.
Large creatures matter, and I mean really large, like 10/10+ A set all about crafting Titans to rule to cosmos, each archetype doing it in their own unique way.
I would say that there will be giant creatures, but I don't want to make it too much like Ikoria. The whole thing about that set was that you get to make monsters through the mutate mechanic, which sounds very similar to crafting titans. I don't think that making giant creatures will be a primary mechanic, but rather there will just be large creatures in the set.
A few of my mechanic ideas are ones that either would be drawbacks to allow for pushed stats on creatures, and mechanics that either give alternate costs (probably the one that I'm leaning toward) or help ramp out into big creatures. However, I don't want to think about mechanics too much yet, because I still don't know what the other focuses of the set are going to be.
- Black Holes/Interdimensional rifts - I know there aren't any mechanics locked in place anymore, but I'd still like to have something to do with portals/rifts/wormholes, especially with how non-planeswalkers can somehow travel to Yungdrotha.
- Sun & Moon - I think that it could be cool to have a night vs. day theme that stretches over two archetypes. I think the archetypes shouldn't care if it was facing the other archetype, but I think that they could be trying to do opposite things. Maybe Arlinn Kord could be in the set (You know, with how werewolves transform at night).
- Asteroids/Meteorites - Not entirely sure on this one, but an idea I have is something like the asteroids/meteorites on Yungdrotha have hidden power inside of them. Asteroids/Meteorites could be some form of artifact token, similar to food tokens, where you sacrifice them for an effect.
- Maybe Aliens? - Again, I want this to be a fantasy-themed space set, so I don't want some hyper-intelligent alien race with super-advanced technology looking to take over the galaxy, but I guess that it's still possible to have alien races if they feel right.
- Constellations? - I don't think that the constellation mechanic is a must-use (I don't want to force this to have an enchantment theme), but I think it would be cool to have some cards that represent different star signs, like a scale artifact to represent a sign like Libra (star sign names would change).
If you guys have any other possible themes or opinions on these smaller themes, let me know! I think that there can be a few more smaller themes.I believe what you've described is the Cosmic Horror genre, the idea that there is something so much bigger than us that we can't really comprehend it, which is both fascinating and terrifying. Lovecraft is the mainstream reference for this kind of feel. Eldrazis are 100% derived from this idea, so you can either find a new twist on them (e.g. Astrals are Eldrazis) or create your own new thing. Either way, you should totally read the articles from Battle for Zendikar block for inspiration, they wanted to give their set an "otherwordly" feel, which seems to fit your vision perfectly at the moment. One of the things they did was try to find really quirky design space. We got the processors and colourless-matters (with the introduction of colourless mana) but they discuss stuff like playing with a D8 (hedron-shaped) or caring about odd/even (this was the first time they ever did it) in the article. In any case, the idea of the space set feeling "otherwordly, on another scale than us" is definitely the kind of idea that can support the emotional core of a set ^^
Your work on "smaller themes" is also great, that's what they call the "tropes" actually ^^ Ideally, you'd start your set with a really long list of them so my advice is don't bother trying to design any mechanical theme for them yet, just try to make the list as long as possible! I really recommend the Vision design handoff file from Eldraine to see how they handle tropes, you'll see the kind of things you should note down in that section =D
I think I still need the flesh out the design space more.
So a set like Eldraine had a big Camelot theme, but it also had a big fairytale theme. I think that there should also be a focus on how people living on planets survive with all of these giants roaming the universe. I think that the meteorites that land on these planets have crystals inside of them, and the inhabitants of these worlds could use these crystals to prevent astrals from destroying everything.
For the sun and moon idea, I just want to note that I don't think werewolves are necessary (Though I'm open to the idea of using them), I just think that it would be cool to use a planeswalker that could tie into this trope, and I think that Arlinn could work for that fairly well (Maybe its something like "some people get power from the sun, others from the moon, but Arlinn gets power from both due to her lycanthropy"?).
I'm having a hard time thinking of other tropes (A lot of space is just empty void), but I think I do have a few other ideas:
Playing into the "creatures/things from other planes ending up here" idea, you could play into the Blind Eternities idea some more. While in the story the most anything has dealt with it was the Eldrazi, there have been other things as well, like Shandalar is a plane that drifts through the BE and was what helped stop the Ice Age on Dominaria. So maybe Yungdrotha is a series of worlds almost left loose in the eternities, barely held together?
The asteroid/meteor/comet ideas are neat! Here are some cards that play into those that might be worth looking into; I tried to exclude stuff that was heavily tied into Theros, but included some that were from it/related to it. There are probably more but this is just what I found with some quick searching. I think the meteor cards are especially of note.
https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/263/chromatic-star
https://scryfall.com/card/thb/2/archon-of-falling-stars
https://scryfall.com/card/leg/288/north-star
https://scryfall.com/card/thb/59/one-with-the-stars
https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/92/scholar-of-stars
https://scryfall.com/card/bng/139/setessan-starbreaker
https://scryfall.com/card/sok/28/shinen-of-stars-light
https://scryfall.com/card/m20/39/starfield-mystic
https://scryfall.com/card/jou/114/starfall
https://scryfall.com/card/7ed/49/starlight
https://scryfall.com/card/por/30/starlit-angel
https://scryfall.com/card/c20/160/starstorm
https://scryfall.com/card/bok/54/sway-of-the-stars
https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/411/comet-storm
Astrals can be "big" without having massive stats, including things like deathtouch or ETBs that have big effects, or static effects that are oppressive or help them grow or change. Rise of the Eldrazi had some issues because most of the eldrazi were big expensive creatures that also had eldrazi spawn tokens that helped ramp into them and were hard to deal with, so that's something to be wary of. The big thing is to help make Astrals stand out and seem unique and interesting.
The idea of looking at how people live and survive on these planets is interesting, although may also lean itself towards overly sci-fi if you aren't specific and careful with it. I'd also be interested to see how people get from planet to planet in a more fantasy than sci-fi way. Something like Treasure Planet's solar sails on naval ships that "sail" through space, or magical portals that lead to other planets, that kind of stuff.
The sun and moon idea is kind of neat, but since we're talking about multiple planets, it would probably need to be focused on just one or two of the planets. Maybe one planet that is always day, or one half of a planet is always day and one is always night/the other half of the same planet is always night.
Like ningyounk said, the concept of an alien/unknown species or group of beings is firmly rooted in Cosmic/Eldritch Horror and Lovecraftian/Cthulhu mythos, which was a big inspiration for the Eldrazi, but has also played into the New Phyrexians a little as well (to a lesser degree). I think it was most on display in it's most traditional form with Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon (both in reference to Cthulhu mythos). Marit Lage is also something that's drawn inspiration from those types of stories and characters.
Also, my favourite otherwordly aliens, which could inspire your Astrals, have to be from the movie Arrival by Denis Villeneuve. The concept is that some aliens arrive on earth but everything about them is super weird, from their ships to how they look so we can't even tell why they're here. That's why they hire a linguist played by Amy Adams to figure out how to communicate with something that's the definition of alien. I can't recommend this enough ^^
Some of the other things that I think could at least work as cards or themes:
- Astrals - Since astrals are going to be a big part of the set, there are probably going to be astrals in each color. However, the main color combos using astrals are probably going to be WU, WB, and WG. (One will probably care about the creature type itself, another about enchantments, and I don't know about the third)
- Sun - WR
- Moon - GB
- Eclipse - RG
- Meteorites - UR
- (Void?) - UB (I'm not 100% sure this is the theme I want for UB, but I'll leave UB as void for now)
- Gravity - UG
- Aliens - BR
Extra Stuff:- Wormholes - This could most definitely be a mechanic, but it could also fit into UB.
- Black Holes - While I see wormholes as portals, I also see black holes as dangerous things tearing everything apart. I think that it would be best to have black holes not as a theme for a color combo or mechanic, but rather as a rare or mythic spell.
- Planets & Stars - While I think it would be cool to have this as a theme for a color combo, I think it would be best to keep planets as just lands. There could be a planet-based mechanic, but I wouldn't want anything like landfall, and not really any of the themes that I picked above would really need a land-based mechanic.
- Stars/Planets Exploding - Similar to black holes, I wouldn't say that this should be a theme for a whole color combo or mechanic, but definitely could work as a land destruction spell.
- Warping Space-Time - Could technically be a WU flicker archetype, I think this would be best to keep as some "take an extra turn" card.
If people agree with the list that I made, and unless I'm forgetting something, I think we can start doing in-depth worldbuilding. (flesh out things like "what types of astrals are there?", "What is the story with the Sun(s) and the moons?", "What is the BR alien race going to be?", and unless this should happen after mechanics are chosen, "Who are going to be the planeswalkers of the set?")Maybe I will create another discussion when worldbuilding starts, to get people up to speed...
When WOTC does it, they said they actually start with designing single cards without keywords or anything, then the mechanics come from the coolest cards of which they make variations. They say the early sets don't really have archetypes yet, they're just a concentrated mismatch of random potentially cool ideas at first.
So, you should probably start by making some cards for the defining features of your set. If that's Astrals for you, let's design some Astral cards first! Once you find an idea that seems promising, make more on the same theme and see if you've got yourself a mechanic on your hand ^^
• I like that the mechanic looks flexible enough to make a bunch of cards at every rarity. While enchantments with static abilities aren't the easiest to design for commons, I think it's very much feasible.
• Mechanics where a card starts as a noncreature permanent and then becomes a creature are difficult to design. I've tried a bunch and I can tell you from experience that, if you don't have access to the creature side early on, most decks won't want more than two or three copies at most.
• I like the feel of enchantment-creatures, the fact that they toggle on and off of creature form is a bit close to Theros Gods, but it does feel like they're in-between worlds.
• I like that this allows for huge creature cards to have utility in the early game.
• It feels quite tame mechanically, it reminds me a bit of monstrous. It could be solid glue for the set but that's not what is going to grab my interest in a custom set.
And here's another, crazier, iteration on the same concept (with its own problems, but its meant to dig up some fresh design space and stir ideas):
Here, they're made weird by the fact that they use negative power and toughness.
I think I'm going to create a new discussion page so if someone wants to start helping, they don't have to look through four pages just to be more confused than they already were.
I'll link the new discussion to this page once I start it up.
https://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/5629/yungdrotha-the-cosmic-plane-set-design/p1?new=1
I might leave this open for a bit longer before closing it, just in case.