Deciding on a set idea

Comments

• ningyounk

  March 2021 edited March 2021

  Here's a personal opinion on each concept:
  
  • I've seen several music-oriented sets at various stages of completion, Rezatta being one of them to an extent, so I can say there's a decent enough amount of illustrations and design space available in that area. The most common mechanical core for those sets seems to be a rhythm mechanic, which connects to your last idea. I've also seen people playing around the idea of aligning things to represent musical harmony, like controlling a creature with power 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. It's usually not enough to support the weight of a whole set though (the problem is not ending up with 8 violonists, 12 harpists, and 7 guitarist that all kind of look the same in the set) so the trick with music sets, I think, is to find the right secondary theme to complement it. Think how the Bolas theme gave some depth to the Egyptian theme on Amonkhet.
  
  • Based on how they were treated in Amonkhet, Deserts seem to have little design space. I would consider them more as a fun side theme to add to a set if it's flavourfully relevant, but basing a set on the idea of deserts will probably have you running in circle after ten minutes of exploring the available design space.
  
  • A priori, token spells seem like they have enough design space to fill several sets, potentially being an evergreen mechanic (which is already the case in other similar games like Hearthstone and Runeterra). I believe they're an excellent starting point for designing a set bottom-up as they have a lot of synergies with other common themes (casting noncreature spells, caring about number of cards in hands, token synergies, etc.) There are many ways you could interpret them from a flavour stand point, I personally associate them with arcane magic — so something like Strixhaven — but that's a low hanging fruits and you might find some more original interpretation that suits you better (the space interpretation was completely valid, it's just harder to pull off but I think it's possible in theory to make this feel like they're from space with a good name for the mechanic etc.)
  
  • The turn-based mechanic seems like a fine place to start a set! Contraptions was interesting to play with and I'm sure there is some interesting design space depending on the rhythm you end up with. I've seen a lot of sets try this concept, one thing I often see is the use of double-face cards, which I should warn you about. While they seem to go hand in hand wonderfully, you should keep in mind that transforming several permanents every turn can be pretty obnoxious from a physical perspective, either in person or in terms of clicks required. It can also be interpreted in many ways flavour wise, the music theme being the most common, I think.
• TheDukeOfPork

  March 2021

  I agree with @ningyounk. The turn-based mechanic seems awesome! Contraptions, unfortunately, are only playable in UN games, so the design space on this one seems wide.
• feralitator

  March 2021 edited March 2021

  Hmmm... I could see a turn-based mechanic work. Transforming a bunch of cards wouldn't be the way to go, which would mean that a day-night mechanic probably isn't the best. A music theme could create a form of repeatable build your own saga type of mechanic, but there probably isn't enough art to make a full music set. There is doing something robotic-related, similar contraptions, but I feel like it would be copying what contraptions do (Not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't too original). There probably are other themes that could work with this type of mechanic, but none are coming to mind at the moment.
  
  I do have some more ideas for mechanical themes (maybe I just take some mechanical ideas that work well, and mix them together) :

  • A weapons theme

  
  I don't think I ever worded these correctly, but the idea is that they are similar to weapons in Hearthstone (Surprisingly, I got the idea for these from Form of the Dinosaur, rather than the actual Hearthstone weapon cards).

  • A rank-up mechanic

  
  This mechanic could also use some work, but it's basically a mix between transform, and pokemon evolution. When a specific requirement is met or a certain cost is paid, a creature will rank up and will be replaced by its ranked-up version. Some cards could rank up once, others could rank up more than once. The example I have with Ganford has a bunch of different ranked-up forms that you can choose from.
  
  I think the only problem with this, is that it would use up a good amount of the card slots.

  • A companion-like mechanic

  
  Yes, this example is very overpowered, but I hope you see how Alliance would work.
  
  Rather than a major deckbuilding requirement, these would need a slight deckbuilding requirement and would have you reveal your hand at the beginning of the game. If you meet those requirements, then they can be your companion (Also they wouldn't have hybrid mana, which means that they would be a little less flexible to cast).
• feralitator

  March 2021

  Token Spells could be a part of a hand-matters set, but I don't know what type of theme that could be. They could also just be part of a majority of set ideas (within reason).
  
  A planeswalker-related set could be fun, but I know that some people didn't quite like how WAR executed that planeswalker idea (And I have a feeling that there is going to be at least a small planeswalker theme in Strixhaven. If you look at Kasmina's lore, and then her new card, you might see why).
• feralitator

  March 2021

  So, I have an idea, where after Sarkhan changed the history on Tarkir, there was a butterfly effect that then rippled across the multiverse, changing the course of history across all planes that a Planeswalker has interacted with. I know that's probably not how time-travel works, but I feel like people wouldn't really care. So, the set would basically explore the idea of how some of these planes would change from Sarkhan messing with time.
  
  I don't think that there would be a mechanic like contraptions, but there would probably be a time-themed mechanic.
• feralitator

  March 2021

  I know that this isn't one of my past ideas, but I think that I want to make a set where most of the plane is submerged in the ocean. So I basically want to make an atlantis set. However, before I make my final decision, I'm just going to make sure that there would be enough art.
• Yonkers11

  March 2021

  that actually sounds like a really cool idea!
• feralitator

  March 2021 edited March 2021

  I have spent only 20ish minutes finding artwork, and it is WAYYYYY easier to find art than it was for space art:
  

  Spoiler

  
  
  
  Not sure if this one will be used, but it sure is cute:
  
  

  The only problem with some of the artwork is that mermaid/merfolk art doesn't always have clothing over the chest area. Usually, the artist uses scales to cover up the area, but I'm probably gonna ask Tomigon to photoshop that type of art, just to stay safe.
  
  
  Also, I think that there's an existing mechanic, used only on a couple of cards, which could work pretty well here.