@MagicalMagic We could have Rebirth N yes, it was initially designed with a fixed number of counters because it decreases complexity and because we already had another action keyword with a N variable (Compose N), since sets usually try to mix the different kinds of mechanics.
Really great designs, very clean! The psylian lifelink is something that has been brought up by multiple people, a sign that it's something people really would expect and we should deliver. My gut tells me that ability is too strong for common, but the best way to know is to playtest it, we'll definitely add this to the first playtest ^^ I love how subtle the first design is! We don't have common multicolored cards but it will be just fine as a monocoloured common to playtest with ^^
@brcien Oooooh makes much more sense, that's absolutely brilliant I love it XD Does it respect the Fibonacci sequence though? Right now your version is more F(n) = F(n-1) x 2 than F(n) = F(n-1) + F(n-2). I think it would be even more hilarious if it actually followed the Fibonacci sequence x)
Here's a try, it's a bit complicated because it was tricky to get the beginning of the sequence right (0 1 1 2 3 and not 0 1 2 4) but I still think it's worth the joke:
Obviously, the name would have to be changed to something fictional reminicent of Fibonacci. It's too bad that it can't really be the mathematician himself because of the legends rule Maybe adding "except it's not legendary" could be justified enough by flavour.
Otherwise, this follows exactly the Fibonacci sequence if I'm not mistaken x) Here is a representation of your board at the end of each of your turn if you only play one Mage of Fibonacci and then all players just wait. Each M is a Mage of Fibonacci, the superscript number is the number of echo counters on each one (you can differenciate them by the colours), the red line separates the mages you already controlled at the beginning of the turn from the one that were created during this turn:
@ningyounk These are the blue commons I came up with. Code - Type - Size - CMC - Overview CU-01 - Creature - Small - 2 - Unblockable CU-02 - Creature - Small - 2 CU-03 - Creature - Small - 3 CU-04 - Creature - Small - 3 - Prowess CU-05 - Creature - Small - 3 CU-06 - Creature - Small - 4 - Flying CU-07 - Creature - Small - 5 CU-08 - Creature - Medium - 4 CU-09 - Creature - Medium - 5 CU-10 - Creature - Large - 8 CU-11 - Aura CU-12 - Aura CU-13 - Inst/Sorc CU-14 - Inst/Sorc CU-15 - Inst/Sorc CU-16 - Inst/Sorc CU-17 - Inst/Sorc CU-18 - Inst/Sorc CU-19 - Inst/Sorc CU-01 and CU-06 are meant to have type 1 evasion. CU-04 is meant to have type 2, and CU-10 is meant to have type 3. (Sorry, I know this looks kind of sloppy.)
@MagicalMagic Paying psylian life to get other kind of bonuses: sounds like something we definitely need to try, great job
@Arceus8523 Yeap you're right, it's probably better ^^ I think I found kind of a solution:
Fibonacci (Mythic Rare) 2UU Legendary Creature — Human Wizard 1/1 Fibonacci enters the battlefield with two echo counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove an echo counter from Fibonacci. If you do, if you controlled a creature named Fibonacci at the beginning of your last turn, create a token that's a copy of Fibonacci except it's not legendary.
It's really wordy but then again it's the point of the joke xD One or two headscratchers are actually part of any set design so I think it's well worth it ^^
@LittleDemon All great designs we got to add to the first common playtest! =D I really like how clever the milling card is though I think it's probably going to end up too complex for common. Still, I'm really curious to see how it plays out so we can try it anyway ^^
@TezzeretofCarmot21 No it doesn't look sloppy, this is absolutely perfect You even thought of Prowess even though it wasnt in the original Nuts & Bolts article since that mechanic didn't even exist at that time, great job! Are you up for the remaining colours?
@ningyounk Bring the challenge. I’ll tackle the other colors as soon as I can. (And the only reason I thought of Prowess was b/c you mentioned it in Type 2 evasion :P)
Cheerful Lifepainter (slot #3 for green commons) 2G Creature, human 1/3 At the beginning of your end step, for each color amongst the mana you spent this turn, gain 1 psylian life.
Wings of fury (slot #9 for red commons) 4RR Creature, Angel 4/5 Flying When Wings of Fury enters the battlefield, if an opponent lost life this turn, it gains haste .
Novice chiseller Common green creature (slot n°1) Human 1G When Novice chiseller enters the battlefield, target art creature gains +2/+2 until end of turn. 1/1
[scrapped]
Young Gorgon Common black creature (slot n°2) Gorgon 1B Whenever you lose life, Young Gorgon gains deathtouch until end of turn. 2/1
Mournful chorus common black sorcery (slot n°13) 1BB Up to three target creatures gain -1/-1 until end of turn. If you lost life this turn, they gain -2/-2 until end of turn instead. Before I cook up more concepts: what should be the proportion of life matters cards ?
@Bobman111 Definitely a card we need, though I think it's the right moment to discuss about our nonpsylian life gain politics. For clarity purpose, I think it's best if all cards in the set that gains you life consistently gives you psylian life (barring lifelink.)
@ASubtleGhost I like that a lot of your designs are asking some really important questions! Wings of Fury: How do red cards fell when they care about your opponent losing life but it doesn't work with combat damage? Novice Chiseller: How parasitic boosting effects can be towards Art creatures? (Basically choosing between "Target creature gets +2/+2", "Target creature gets +2/+0, if it's an Art it gets +4/+0 instead", and "Target Art creature gets +4/+4.")
There are a few designs that don't work really well so I put them in the miscellanous section / leave them alone for now: - Cheerful Lifepainter really hints at an non-existing multicoloured theme and do cause some strong memory issues though the concept is very original ^^ - Unfinished Colossus and Mournful Chorus use -1/-1 counters which we don't have in this set.
For now, every mechanic is likely to be over-represented in the first batch of commons we test because we want to explore a maximum of design space to decide what works and what doesn't. Based on the as-fan of other themes like artifact-matters and cycling in recent sets, we should ultimately keep 1 or 2 cards at common that care about life in each colour where life-matters is a less strong theme, and go up to 3 to 5 commons caring about life in the colours where it's the most important. Additionally, each colour should have enough cards at common that specifically help them trigger the other life-matters cards, though the exact number is trickier to get right. It's probably between 2 and 4.
@shadow123 I liked that you looked for different synergies with Compose for overwhelming your opponent. That's definitely something we should try with other staple effects like tapping, bouncing, destroying, etc. If that really works, it opens up a lot of design space, especially at common.
Lost Song asks an important question about psylian life as an additional cost, we should have a card like this (ok this specific effect is probably too much for common) and probably also have a card with psylian life as an alternative cost, like a kicker, so we can compare what feels good or not.
Some of your cards actually hate on the main themes of the set which is not something you want to do (Wings of Fury and Wings of Resent punish people for playing psylian life for instance, we actually want them to play with our mechanics xD You don't put "Whenever a player casts an artifact spell, they lose 2 life" at common in a Kaladesh set for instance ;D)
@LittleDemon All cool and very clean Rebirth cards! Definitely adding all of them to the file ^^ I wonder if it's not a bit weird to have "CARDNAME gets +N/+N as long as it's reborn" because of the counters. That's definitely going to help us define some rules on how to use the mechanics though, let's try it and see ^^
@Faiths_Guide Cool way of linking the two mechanics together, we should try and see if it works, a priori I'm worried that, with this wording, if you have a bunch of reborn creatures you don't need the hasty tokens to win anymore.
Aaah you made some interesting decisions that I think we'll be informative to discuss!
BLACK: - I think there are issues with the mana curve, it's generally too high: 1) Ixalan has 2 one-drops, Amonkhet has 1, Kaladesh has 1, etc. I think you must put either 1 or 2 one-drops. 2) There are only 2 black commons at 6-mana in standard right now (excluding Improvise shenanigans) and no set has more than one 5-drop. - You forgot that Black is secondary in Haste, it *must* have a hasty creature ^^
RED: - Same stuff than Black, the mana curve is too high for Red, it must have at least a one-drop, and not even Green would have that many 4- 5- and 6-drops! - Red doesn't always get a large creature, so when it does you can't give it two large creatures at once. I liked that you respected that the only red flyier would be a top-end dragon or phoenix though - Ok, so it goes a bit everywhere with the keywords: 1) You forgot about menace, prowess, trample and reach (some of them can be dropped in some sets, depending on what other colours get.) 2) Double Strike can't be on common cards, though First Strike is a must.
GREEN: - What do you have against 1-drops?? XD Three creatures at 3-mana or below is really not enough, people want to play their cards Green's mana curve is indeed higher than the other colours but not *this* higher. Even Ixalan with the Dinosaurs and all the ramp that went with it only had three creatures at 5 or higher mana: one 5-drop, one 6-drop, and one 8-drop (and that's an example of set where the mana curve of Green is shifted to its higher end!) - As a consequence, 3 large creatures and 4 medium in the same set is too high, even for Green. - As for the keywords, Green doesn't just get Trample, it has also has access to deathtouch, flash and hexproof at common (not always all of them, but you can make a mix).
For the mana curve problems, I strongly advise looking at already existing sets. Amonkhet has no theme that warps its design skeleton (colorless, multicoloured or double-faced cards) so it's a good place to look at for proportions ^^
For the keywords, the idea is to mix the keywords between colours so they appear at least once in the set at common (if Green doesn't get a common with flash, chances are Blue does, etc.) The Mechanical Colour Pie article is a good place to look for keywords, as well as sets in Standard ^^
Tell me if you need some more help with this, if you need some more tracks?
Even if we don't want to actively discourage the use of our themed mechanics, we do need to make sure that hate cards exist, just like a real constructed set. (Amonkhet and HOU both feature graveyard hate, for example.)
@Lujikul Absolutely! It's just that we have to be careful (and subtle) about it. As I stated a few times, when your mechanic is literally life, every creature and damage effect is hate against your mechanic ^^ But an enchantment card that says "Players can't gain life" is probably a no-no for instance.
Errand Runner Common blue creature (slot n°2 (even though it's a 1-drop)) Human U When Errand Runner enters the battlefield, you may reveal a creature card from your hand. If you do, discover a sorcery or instant card. 1/1
Comments
wb
when _ enters the battlefield, if you control no tapped lands, put a +1/+1 counter on _
2/2 (for psylian life tribal)
2w
psylian lifelink (yknow, lifelink but psylian.)
2/2
4
artifact
pay three psylian life: put a +1/+1 counter on target creature?
We could have Rebirth N yes, it was initially designed with a fixed number of counters because it decreases complexity and because we already had another action keyword with a N variable (Compose N), since sets usually try to mix the different kinds of mechanics.
Really great designs, very clean! The psylian lifelink is something that has been brought up by multiple people, a sign that it's something people really would expect and we should deliver. My gut tells me that ability is too strong for common, but the best way to know is to playtest it, we'll definitely add this to the first playtest ^^ I love how subtle the first design is! We don't have common multicolored cards but it will be just fine as a monocoloured common to playtest with ^^
@brcien
Oooooh makes much more sense, that's absolutely brilliant I love it XD Does it respect the Fibonacci sequence though? Right now your version is more F(n) = F(n-1) x 2 than F(n) = F(n-1) + F(n-2). I think it would be even more hilarious if it actually followed the Fibonacci sequence x)
Here's a try, it's a bit complicated because it was tricky to get the beginning of the sequence right (0 1 1 2 3 and not 0 1 2 4) but I still think it's worth the joke:
Obviously, the name would have to be changed to something fictional reminicent of Fibonacci. It's too bad that it can't really be the mathematician himself because of the legends rule Maybe adding "except it's not legendary" could be justified enough by flavour.
Otherwise, this follows exactly the Fibonacci sequence if I'm not mistaken x)
Here is a representation of your board at the end of each of your turn if you only play one Mage of Fibonacci and then all players just wait. Each M is a Mage of Fibonacci, the superscript number is the number of echo counters on each one (you can differenciate them by the colours), the red line separates the mages you already controlled at the beginning of the turn from the one that were created during this turn:
You could make it fibonacci himself and just have the copies be nonlegendary.
G
Sorcery
Discover a land
1UU
Creature-Human mage
When (blank) enters the battlefield, discover an instant or sorcery spell.
2/1
1G
Creature-Human adventurer
T: Discover a land.
1/1
3U
Enchantment
U,T: Target opponent discovers a land card. Each card put on the bottom of the library this way, is put in the graveyard instead.
Code - Type - Size - CMC - Overview
CU-01 - Creature - Small - 2 - Unblockable
CU-02 - Creature - Small - 2
CU-03 - Creature - Small - 3
CU-04 - Creature - Small - 3 - Prowess
CU-05 - Creature - Small - 3
CU-06 - Creature - Small - 4 - Flying
CU-07 - Creature - Small - 5
CU-08 - Creature - Medium - 4
CU-09 - Creature - Medium - 5
CU-10 - Creature - Large - 8
CU-11 - Aura
CU-12 - Aura
CU-13 - Inst/Sorc
CU-14 - Inst/Sorc
CU-15 - Inst/Sorc
CU-16 - Inst/Sorc
CU-17 - Inst/Sorc
CU-18 - Inst/Sorc
CU-19 - Inst/Sorc
CU-01 and CU-06 are meant to have type 1 evasion. CU-04 is meant to have type 2, and CU-10 is meant to have type 3.
(Sorry, I know this looks kind of sloppy.)
Paying psylian life to get other kind of bonuses: sounds like something we definitely need to try, great job
@Arceus8523
Yeap you're right, it's probably better ^^ I think I found kind of a solution:
Fibonacci (Mythic Rare)
2UU
Legendary Creature — Human Wizard
1/1
Fibonacci enters the battlefield with two echo counters on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove an echo counter from Fibonacci. If you do, if you controlled a creature named Fibonacci at the beginning of your last turn, create a token that's a copy of Fibonacci except it's not legendary.
It's really wordy but then again it's the point of the joke xD One or two headscratchers are actually part of any set design so I think it's well worth it ^^
@LittleDemon
All great designs we got to add to the first common playtest! =D I really like how clever the milling card is though I think it's probably going to end up too complex for common. Still, I'm really curious to see how it plays out so we can try it anyway ^^
@TezzeretofCarmot21
No it doesn't look sloppy, this is absolutely perfect You even thought of Prowess even though it wasnt in the original Nuts & Bolts article since that mechanic didn't even exist at that time, great job! Are you up for the remaining colours?
(And the only reason I thought of Prowess was b/c you mentioned it in Type 2 evasion :P)
CB-01 - Creature - Small - 2
CB-02 - Creature - Small - 2 - Deathtouch
CB-03 - Creature - Small - 2
CB-04 - Creature - Small - 3 - Flying
CB-05 - Creature - Small - 3
CB-06 - Creature - Small - 3
CB-07 - Creature - Small - 4
CB-08 - Creature - Medium - 4
CB-09 - Creature - Medium - 5 - Menace
CB-10 - Creature - Medium - 5 - Flying
CB-11 - Creature - Medium - 6
CB-12 - Aura
CB-13 - Aura
CB-14 - Inst/Sorc
CB-15 - Inst/Sorc
CB-16 - Inst/Sorc
CB-17 - Inst/Sorc
CB-18 - Inst/Sorc
CB-19 - Inst/Sorc
Type 1 - CB-04 and CB-10
Type 2 - CB-02 and CB-09
CR-01 - Creature - Small- 2 - "Firebreathing"
CR-02 - Creature - Small - 2
CR-03 - Creature - Small - 3
CR-04 - Creature - Small - 3
CR-05 - Creature - Small - 4 - Double strike
CR-06 - Creature - Medium - 4
CR-07 - Creature - Medium - 4
CR-08 - Creature - Medium - 5
CR-09 - Creature - Large - 6 - Flying
CR-10 - Creature - Large - 6
CR-11 - Aura
CR-12 - Aura
CR-13 - Inst/Sorc
CR-14 - Inst/Sorc
CR-15 - Inst/Sorc
CR-16 - Inst/Sorc
CR-17 - Inst/Sorc
CR-18 - Inst/Sorc
CR-19 - Inst/Sorc
Type 1 - CR-09
Type 2 - CR-01 and CR-05
Type 3 - CR-10
CG-01 - Creature - Small - 2
CG-02 - Creature - Small - 2
CG-03 - Creature - Small - 3
CG-04 - Creature - Small - 4
CG-05 - Creature - Medium - 4
CG-06 - Creature - Medium - 5 - Trample
CG-07 - Creature - Medium - 5
CG-08 - Creature - Medium - 5
CG-09 - Creature - Large - 6 - Trample
CG-10 - Creature - Large - 7
CG-11 - Creature - Large - 8
CG-12 - Aura
CG-13 - Aura
CG-14 - Inst/Sorc
CG-15 - Inst/Sorc
CG-16 - Inst/Sorc
CG-17 - Inst/Sorc
CG-18 - Inst/Sorc
CG-19 - Inst/Sorc
Type 2 - CG-06 and CG-09
Type 3 - CG-10 and CG-11
W
Creature-Human Cleric
1/1
T: You gain 1 life.
An oldy but a goody, it hasn't been printed in a minute and in a life matters set i feel it fits well.
Cheerful Lifepainter (slot #3 for green commons)
2G
Creature, human
1/3
At the beginning of your end step, for each color amongst the mana you spent this turn, gain 1 psylian life.
Wings of fury (slot #9 for red commons)
4RR
Creature, Angel
4/5
Flying
When Wings of Fury enters the battlefield, if an opponent lost life this turn, it gains haste .
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/quieting-performance?list=user #19 white
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/shaper-of-fire?list=user #4 red
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/angel-of-the-spectrum?list=user #12 white
I know, it’s uncommon
W #18
Common green creature (slot n°1)
Human
1G
When Novice chiseller enters the battlefield, target art creature gains +2/+2 until end of turn.
1/1
[scrapped]
Young Gorgon
Common black creature (slot n°2)
Gorgon
1B
Whenever you lose life, Young Gorgon gains deathtouch until end of turn.
2/1
Mournful chorus
common black sorcery (slot n°13)
1BB
Up to three target creatures gain -1/-1 until end of turn. If you lost life this turn, they gain -2/-2 until end of turn instead.
Before I cook up more concepts: what should be the proportion of life matters cards ?
4BB
Creature - Angel
Flying
When this creature enters the battlefield, if an opponent gained life last turn, that player loses 2 physian life.
4/4 (#11 black commons)
Minion of the Reborn
1R
Human Servant
T: Put a +1/+1 counter on target reborn creature.
1/1
Worthy Slave
2R
Human Servant
Rebirth 3RR
As long as (blank) is reborn, it has +2/+2 and has Flying
2/2
(this one is an uncommon or rare)
Song of the angels
2WW
Enchantment
Whenever a creature is reborn, you gain 2 psylian life.
(I know i need to work on my names :P)
Animated Exposition
At the beginning of your upkeep, compose 1 X times, where X is equal to the number of reborn creatures you control.
Could also be on a creature.
Definitely a card we need, though I think it's the right moment to discuss about our nonpsylian life gain politics. For clarity purpose, I think it's best if all cards in the set that gains you life consistently gives you psylian life (barring lifelink.)
@ASubtleGhost
I like that a lot of your designs are asking some really important questions!
Wings of Fury: How do red cards fell when they care about your opponent losing life but it doesn't work with combat damage?
Novice Chiseller: How parasitic boosting effects can be towards Art creatures? (Basically choosing between "Target creature gets +2/+2", "Target creature gets +2/+0, if it's an Art it gets +4/+0 instead", and "Target Art creature gets +4/+4.")
There are a few designs that don't work really well so I put them in the miscellanous section / leave them alone for now:
- Cheerful Lifepainter really hints at an non-existing multicoloured theme and do cause some strong memory issues though the concept is very original ^^
- Unfinished Colossus and Mournful Chorus use -1/-1 counters which we don't have in this set.
For now, every mechanic is likely to be over-represented in the first batch of commons we test because we want to explore a maximum of design space to decide what works and what doesn't.
Based on the as-fan of other themes like artifact-matters and cycling in recent sets, we should ultimately keep 1 or 2 cards at common that care about life in each colour where life-matters is a less strong theme, and go up to 3 to 5 commons caring about life in the colours where it's the most important. Additionally, each colour should have enough cards at common that specifically help them trigger the other life-matters cards, though the exact number is trickier to get right. It's probably between 2 and 4.
@shadow123
I liked that you looked for different synergies with Compose for overwhelming your opponent. That's definitely something we should try with other staple effects like tapping, bouncing, destroying, etc. If that really works, it opens up a lot of design space, especially at common.
Lost Song asks an important question about psylian life as an additional cost, we should have a card like this (ok this specific effect is probably too much for common) and probably also have a card with psylian life as an alternative cost, like a kicker, so we can compare what feels good or not.
Some of your cards actually hate on the main themes of the set which is not something you want to do (Wings of Fury and Wings of Resent punish people for playing psylian life for instance, we actually want them to play with our mechanics xD You don't put "Whenever a player casts an artifact spell, they lose 2 life" at common in a Kaladesh set for instance ;D)
@LittleDemon
All cool and very clean Rebirth cards! Definitely adding all of them to the file ^^
I wonder if it's not a bit weird to have "CARDNAME gets +N/+N as long as it's reborn" because of the counters. That's definitely going to help us define some rules on how to use the mechanics though, let's try it and see ^^
@Faiths_Guide
Cool way of linking the two mechanics together, we should try and see if it works, a priori I'm worried that, with this wording, if you have a bunch of reborn creatures you don't need the hasty tokens to win anymore.
____________________________________________
About making the commons set skeleton:
@TezzeretofCarmot21
Aaah you made some interesting decisions that I think we'll be informative to discuss!
BLACK:
- I think there are issues with the mana curve, it's generally too high:
1) Ixalan has 2 one-drops, Amonkhet has 1, Kaladesh has 1, etc. I think you must put either 1 or 2 one-drops.
2) There are only 2 black commons at 6-mana in standard right now (excluding Improvise shenanigans) and no set has more than one 5-drop.
- You forgot that Black is secondary in Haste, it *must* have a hasty creature ^^
RED:
- Same stuff than Black, the mana curve is too high for Red, it must have at least a one-drop, and not even Green would have that many 4- 5- and 6-drops!
- Red doesn't always get a large creature, so when it does you can't give it two large creatures at once. I liked that you respected that the only red flyier would be a top-end dragon or phoenix though
- Ok, so it goes a bit everywhere with the keywords:
1) You forgot about menace, prowess, trample and reach (some of them can be dropped in some sets, depending on what other colours get.)
2) Double Strike can't be on common cards, though First Strike is a must.
GREEN:
- What do you have against 1-drops?? XD Three creatures at 3-mana or below is really not enough, people want to play their cards Green's mana curve is indeed higher than the other colours but not *this* higher. Even Ixalan with the Dinosaurs and all the ramp that went with it only had three creatures at 5 or higher mana: one 5-drop, one 6-drop, and one 8-drop (and that's an example of set where the mana curve of Green is shifted to its higher end!)
- As a consequence, 3 large creatures and 4 medium in the same set is too high, even for Green.
- As for the keywords, Green doesn't just get Trample, it has also has access to deathtouch, flash and hexproof at common (not always all of them, but you can make a mix).
For the mana curve problems, I strongly advise looking at already existing sets. Amonkhet has no theme that warps its design skeleton (colorless, multicoloured or double-faced cards) so it's a good place to look at for proportions ^^
For the keywords, the idea is to mix the keywords between colours so they appear at least once in the set at common (if Green doesn't get a common with flash, chances are Blue does, etc.) The Mechanical Colour Pie article is a good place to look for keywords, as well as sets in Standard ^^
Tell me if you need some more help with this, if you need some more tracks?
Absolutely! It's just that we have to be careful (and subtle) about it. As I stated a few times, when your mechanic is literally life, every creature and damage effect is hate against your mechanic ^^ But an enchantment card that says "Players can't gain life" is probably a no-no for instance.
Common blue creature (slot n°2 (even though it's a 1-drop))
Human
U
When Errand Runner enters the battlefield, you may reveal a creature card from your hand. If you do, discover a sorcery or instant card.
1/1
Can you post a link to the discover mechanic, if it isn't part of the set?
I'm wondering if I accidentally copied the idea. If so, I'll remove it, as discover sounds cooler.