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Rezatta, the life-matters Renaissance plane — SET DESIGN PHASE
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Ah yeah, if you look at Embereth Paladin it does go the other way.
I did upload the previous version but I haven't uploaded this one yet. The issue is that uploaded on Untap.in takes a lot of time and at this stage the changes happen too quickly for me to keep everything updated all the time
Hey! Well, I reached an interesting point. By polishing each archetype, I started to reach peak in complexity. I then realised that you should probably not care specifically about each draft archetype at common. That's uncommon's job. So I decided I needed to do some more research, and right now I'm looking at how many different things a single set can care about at common. I also really need to start red-flagging cards to keep complexity in check.
It's quite interesting, almost all draft archetypes in Eldraine have a card at common that cares specifically about it (except GW Adventures and GU Ramp). Thanks to Knights tribal cards encompassing three archetypes at the same type (WB Knights resilience, BR Knights Artifacts, RW Artifacts pump spells) it actually cares about 7 different themes at once with Adamant added into the mix! At the opposite end, the ONLY archetype that gets cards that specifically care about it in War of the Spark is RG Power 4 or more matters, for instance.
I haven't finished yet, and guilds sets aren't ideal for this, but I think I want to create more three-colours themes to drive the two-coloured archetypes. This might require to shake the set skeleton a bunch. So far, I had an "Ixalan-like" distribution of the mechanics:
GWB: Psylian life
UBR: Masterwork
GU: Discover
RW: Elated (this one appears in all colours but more heavily in RW)
I think I need to work more about themes and a bit less about mechanics, so I was thinking of pushing those three-coloured themes and add the mechanics where they're needed, then actually see if I can compartiment them a little colour-wise. In addition to this, I also wanted to increase the life theme across all colors. I'm not sure yet, but I was thinking of something like this:
WUR (Jeskai): Midrange Go Tall (Do-it-yourself giant monsters.)
UBG (Sultai): Combo Art tribal (Blink, recuperate, and bounce to abuse ETB abilities.)
BRW (Mardu): Aggro suicide (Use your life total as a ressource to fuel attacks.)
RGU (Temur): Disruptive storm (Get bonuses for playing multiple spells each turn.)
GWB (Abzan): Control psylian life (Try to protect your life total to get bonuses.)
I also started to think if themes to flavourfully tie them together:
WUR (Jeskai): COMPETITION. I want to lean on the Masterwork ability but making it broader than just the art theme, instead calling it something like "Spotlight", or "Genius", or "Winner", etc. Something that would depict people competing to become the best.
UBG (Sultai): ART. This is where most of the art tropes go.
BRW (Mardu): PARTY. The arrival of the Renaissance era is celebrated all over the plane, the flavour is not unlike the Rakdos guild but a bit less scary.
RGU (Temur): SCIENCE. It's a mix between Simic and Izzet flavour.
GWB (Abzan): RELIGION. We get an GWB church and "Psylian life" becomes "Serran life".
Finally, the life theme is tied to the Renaissance theme itself, Elated probably ends up being called straight-up Renaissance as seen above.
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So what to do to help? You could try designing some commons to flesh out those five themes (WUR Competition, UBG Art, BRW Party, RGU Science and GWB Religion) and see if they have potential. Basically, commons that are especially valuable are:
- Cards that depict a trope in a very flavourful way.
- Cards that synergise with multiple themes at once.
- Cards that do a staple effect but in a way that really only makes sense in this specific set. Usually, it means staple effects that have a unique interaction with a set mechanic. Here are a few examples of such cards:
Memory theft creates a flavourful variation of Dark Inquiry by referencing adventures. Radical Idea is a basically Catalog (draw two cards, discard a card) but in a way that only Jump-Start would make possible. Scuttlegator is the an excellent way of making the staple big blue creature that can't attack until later in the game using the mechanics unique to this set.
Hey! Both are fine (though it's always nice to have an illustration to project ourselves). Keep in mind that in any case the details might change as the cards are meant to be part of a bigger set skeleton. For instance, you could design a really cool common at three mana and I might not have any more room at three-mana so I would adjust it so it fit 2-mana or 4-mana ^^
The following two could probably be reworked to have their abilities be enter the battlefield with Renaissance. Currently, the goblin is supposed to play into the pay the Mardu pay life/aggressive archetype and the Temur spell archetype (provides cycling). The elf is supposed to work with the Sulti enter the battlefield effect and art archetypes.
Removal targeting masterworks, but could probably be turned into an uncommon destroy effect. (I know it’s missing an apostrophe, but for some reason Cardsmith doesn’t let me use them on cards, they turn into other symbols. It may be because I’m doing this all currently off an iPad.)
I know that you have only masterwork (or whatever it ends up being called) as a Black, Blue, and Red effect, but I think white could also apply very easily.
I’ll try to come up with some more ideas, but if there are any directions you would like to point me in, I’d be more than happy to explore them. I also have some ideas for a few higher rarity cards. Would you like me to post those or wait since this is still in the common stage? As said before anything I post is just a suggestion.
Those designs go quite well with the set, you really got the spirit of it!
Prismatic Repulsion: It's a really interesting design, I like it a lot. I'm usually not keen on putting the Renaissance ability word on instants because I don't want the opponent to be afraid to attack for 3 or more and enable their opponent's stuff, but this mostly pushes the opponent to play during their precombat main phase which creates some unique gameplay. Seeing how Adamant was handled in Thrones of Eldraine, I think the set needs a cycle of noncreature spells on top of the cycle already there of creatures that enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter. I just want to make sure that not all noncreature spells in the cycle are removal spells (counterspells count as removal) but if there's room this could definitely be an interesting one. Otherwise, with refined stats, it could also be a cool uncommon à la Wizard's Retort I think.
Goblin Dentist: Quite hilarious illustration XD This one is competing a bit with another design that I think is important as it allows psylian life to appear a bit in red though:
Considering there isn't — so far — an archetype that cares about drawing a lot of cards, I don't think the set can afford too many rummaging effects as it competes with discover for the card filtering slots (in Eldraine, the blue/red archetype with Irencrag Pyromancer and such justifies having both Thrill of Possibility and Merchant of the Vale at common).
Blossom Braider: Those are original stats and I like the idea of having a simple spell that creates two Art creatures to trigger the ETB tribal synergies.
Fault of Passion: A priori I'm a little reluctant on creating hate cards for very specific archetypes as I want all cards to be playable. That being said, cards like Memory theft show that sometimes it's necessary to have a safety valve. But I'd rather put it on a less playable card (Dark Inquiry for instance is pretty bad, even in Limited) and maybe as a sorcery so the Masterwork player at least gets an attack with the bonus before the Masterwork gets killed and it's not a complete blow-out unlike if you can kill the masterwork in response to the Masterwork ability targeting it. At instant speed, maybe something softer like "It's controller has no Masterwork" to erase the bonuses instead.
Thoughtful Poet & Disciplined Smith: Yes, I actually think Masterwork could bleed a bit in other colours as long as the specific cards that care about it are focused in the right colours. I really need to make a list of the keywords that can be done and at what rarity actually, based on existing cards like slivers or Outlast cards from Khans of Tarkir. I do think vigilance is a very healthy common effect to have in the set. It doesn't synergise as much with Renaissance as it's no evasion, but it synergises well with the Abzan control plan. I think lifelink is too strong for common though, it's probably safer to save it for an uncommon or rare card (especially with the life theme going on that increases its appeal).
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As for your other questions:
1) If you're interested in digging in specific directions, here are a number of areas I'm going to need some help with :
• WUR Midrange Go Tall: How to signal to the players that this is a theme, in other words how to care about this in a mechanically unique way?
• UBG Combo Art tribal: What kind of effects in those colours could be repeatable at common ? What kind of ETB effects in those colours would go well together to create a recognisable mechanical identity for the Art creatures?
• BRW Aggro suicide: What kind of cards in those colours would make sense as life payment enablers? (White being especially challenging here.)
• RGU Disruptive storm: What is the appropriate power level of effects at common that trigger on Surge (when you cast your second spell each turn) in those colours? I think we can rely on the UR archetypes in both Thrones of Eldraine and Oath of the Gatewatch to establish a basis, but Green is going to be new territory. Are there other ways to care about Storm at common?
• GWB Control psylian life: What effects at common are good at protecting your life total? How does preventing your opponent from ever hitting you makes you win?
• Glue cards: Any card with one colour or less that synergises with three or more archetypes at once.
2) Absolutely, if you have cool ideas for higher rarity cards you can always share it here, we'll see what we can do to extract what's fun about it and fit it in later with what the set needs once we reach that point.
And a board wipe based on the concept of Kill the Critic. (I see now that there shouldn’t be a hyphen in nonmasterwork, or they should be reworded to be kill creatures that are not masterworks.)
Here is the rest of the common Renaissance spell cycle since you already made the red one. I’m not sure the power level on all of these is correct, but I think that it is not implicitly easy to activate Renaissance, so they might be fine.
I have some more ideas in the pipeline for some Serran life stuff and Masterworks that I will probably post tomorrow. I’ll think about each of the areas you mentioned and see if I can come up with some stuff. Just one clarification question, could you provide some more description and reference to what midrange go tall/build a creature looks like? A few similar examples from other sets would help as midrange has always been the deck strategy type I’ve had the hardest time envisioning.
Edit: I see your point about how Renaissance on most instants, in this case Grand Presence, discourages opponents from attacking. I’ll look for an alternative for green unless you can think of a solution. A bunch of the cards I’ve posted/will post will be like cards you created, but that’s mostly because you already had almost all your bases covered.
WUR: In addition to Masterwork, we can have Exalted-like effects, E.g.
Whenever a creature you control attacks alone,...
Then adding an appropriate effect for that color, E.g.
W: pump, tap a blocker, gain life
U: Gain flying, loot, tap and freeze, pump roughness only
R: Gain menace, rummage, deal damage, pump power only
UBG: Some repeatable effects probably include:
U:
Common: tap and freeze, scry, give flying, loot
Uncommon: card draw, return instant/sorcery, bounce creature/nonland
B:
Common: get -X/-X (small), scry, gain menace
Uncommon: destroy a creature, gain lifelink, return creature card, pay life and draw
G:
Common: destroy artifact/enchantment, gain life, give trample, small pump
Uncommon: large pump, return permanent card, fight
Then for the identity we can have the controller pay something for the effect. It has the feeling of paying extra to make the art come alive? :P
BRW: Potentially some reasons for these colors to pay life:
B: card draw, scry, pump (+X/+X), give something -X/-X, new regenerate (tap and indestructible)
R: Apparently no examples in modern.... and going back gives us only one good excuse of not allowing creatures to block.
Some reasonable guesses might be to: give trample, get +X/+0, rummage (e.g. Burning Cramming), ping a creature/planeswalker (NOT players, otherwise will easily enable Renaissance)
W: gain indestructible, bounce a creature you control, gain an ability
RGU: Referencing OGW, for commons the surge cost seems to be 0/1 mana cheaper than what the effect would normally be, while the card's actual cmc is push quite high.
For uncommons, the surge cost can be 2 mana cheaper, and/or give a bonus.
GWB: Some enablers include:
G: Fog effects, untapping a creature you control, fight (but indirect), deathtouch creatures
W: Tapping down creatures, killing them, pacifism effects, prevent damage
B: Killing creatures, deathtouch creatures, forced sac
Then straightup give benefits for having more life than one's starting life total / having more life than an opponent.
Lover's Loss is a bit much for a common, it's basically a Cruel Revival. Kill the Critics is definitely a cool variation on the 2-mana uncommon conditional destroy spell, it could work though usually you want it to be a bit more difficult to use in the set it's in. I do like the "destroy all non-Masterwork creatures" rare, but I'd see it more like a slight upside since it's easier for you to build around it, so I'd have the the spell be one of the 5-mana wraths with upsides like Fumigate and such.
Carving's Curse, Grand Presence and Guard Parade all share a core problem: the Renaissance bonuses have effects that aren't common. The Renaissance condition is fairly difficult to trigger and therefore should indeed grant higher reward than let's say Spectacle from Guilds or Ravnica, but the final result should still be within the common realm.
For the Midrange Go Tall archetype, it's a bit difficult because I'm aiming at something a bit new. The idea would be to use effects that would grow the creatures, make them better in combat, and harder to remove. Enchantements, equipments, Masterwork, +1/+1 counters are probably going to be a big part of it. Still, figuring out a way of conveying that this is one of the main theme is part of the challenge, the set really needs a unique way of doing so, and using Masterwork to its full potential with "attacks alone" effects might be one way of going about it for instance.
@LyndonF
I like the idea of using "attacks alone" triggers to synergise with Masterwork, it gives some recognizable identity to the archetype. We have to be careful though that those triggers don't play in the same design space as Masterwork. Typically, I think it could work as long as we keep the combat-relevant abilities with the Masterwork cards, and give other kind of effects to the "attacks alone" trigger. For instance, Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis and Angelic Benediction work, but Battlegrace Angel and Rafiq of the Many would probably take too much design space away from Masterwork.
Those are some pretty useful lists, thanks a lot! It will be very handy when I try to create the mechanical feel of each archetype
For the "Storm/Surge" archetype, keep in mind that the keyword itself won't be in the set so mana cost reduction is only a fraction of the design space available. I was thinking more of cards that could reward you for playing spells you discover, like Jori En, Ruin Diver. But maybe "whenever you cast a spell at a time a sorcery could not have been cast" or other kinds of triggers could work in the same design space.
For the Abzan life archetype, I'm actually really happy with the "if you have serran life" line because it creates a whole new style of gameplay that only works with serran life where you try to protect your life total at all cost and take blocks you wouldn't usually take otherwise. It also gives the opponent a window of opportunity when they manage to remove your psylian life and suddenly all your bonuses go away until you gain some again, allowing the players to feel that anything is possible until the end even if the control player have a strong grip on the game at any moment. It kind of plays like Monarch in a sense, which was one of the inspiration. So the question was more "How do we win once we manage to take control of the game and protect our life total?" or in other words how do we transform "not losing" into "winning"?
Making Guard Parade a sorcery might fix it, since sorcery speed +1/+1 buff to your creatures is a common white effect.
Alternatively it could be something like:
1W
Instant
Target creature gets +2/+2 until the end of the turn (plus vigilance maybe?)
Renaissance — Instead put two +1/+1 counters on that creature.
There are a couple white counter effects at common that this semi-mirrors.
For green even though you have New World Exploration, I think something like this could replace it.
2G
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land and put it onto the battlefield tapped.Then shuffle your library.
Renaissance — Instead search your library for two basic lands and put them onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library
I’m still working on the black one because the idea I had conflicts with In Memory of the Fallen, and I like that one better.
3B
Sorcery
Put two target creature cards from your graveyard into your hand.
Renaissance — Create a 2/2 black Art creature token.
The rough idea I have right now is
1B
Instant
Target creature gets +2/+0 until the end of the turn. Regenerate it.
Renaissance — It also gains deathtouch until the end of the turn.
A possible second red theme could be masks, Mardi Gras, and partying like you said. I also like the idea of “when you cast a discovered spell” being a trigger for the Temur stuff, so I’ll try and think of some cards to represent that effect. Thanks for giving me direction on the themes and ideas, I’ll try and post some more concepts I have in a bit. A question though, since you have a whole bunch of almost overlapping themes, would it make sense to have an enemy colored common cycle? Or would those be better at uncommon? I don’t have concepts for these really right now, I’m just asking.
This is really useful in mapping the kind of effects that can go with Renaissance at common, thanks! For the cycle, it's becoming clearer that in order to diversify the effects I'm going to need at least one removal, one pump spell, and one card advantage card. The pump spells though are clearly the trickiest to get right. Ideally you would have an effect that would make sense after combat when Renaissance is most likely to be enabled, which is why I find the idea of the +1/+1 counters especially interesting. (Even though the white card is still too generous for just two mana, but add a mana and you're mostly good.)
At common, we won't have multicoloured cards since this is not really a theme of the set. Still you're right that we should mathematically have five ally-colours combinations that are not shared between three-mana archetypes and therefore should really focus on the essence of those three-mana archetypes, and then five enemy-coloured combinations that are going to create bridges between two three-coloured archetypes.
On that topic, I was playing a bit with the mana wheel yesterday night and I realised something a bit odd with my current colours combination: the ally-coloured core of the Science archetype right now is red/green. It could still work if science is focused on playing instants and pump spells for instance, still I really imagined blue being part of its core. RGU seemed like the best colour combination to put discover, but it doesn't have to overlap perfectly with the Science theme, actually it's probably more interesting if it doesn't.
So I went back on the colour wheel and worked on it a bit. Right now, there are really two archetypes that are firmly locked in their place:
WU(R):
UB(G):
BR(W): Aggro Suicide. This is *THE* colour combination for aggro.
RG(U):
GW(B): Control life. Because those are the only three colours that can gain life easily.
Which left three archetypes that I could rearrange:
- Disruptive Science (has to be part blue)
- Midrange Go Tall
- Combo Art tribal
RG(U) couldn't be Disruptive Science, so it could be either Midrange Go Tall or Combo Art tribal (which is supposed to be about abusing ETB abilities). Since neither red or green can really blink, bounce, etc. I put the Midrange Go Tall archetype in there instead.
WU(R):
UB(G):
BR(W): Aggro Suicide
RG(U): Midrange Go Tall
GW(B): Control life
Both WU(R) and UB(G) are very good fit for the playstyle of Art tribal (blue is an excellent core to abuse ETB abilities, white brings blink while black brings recursion from the graveyard). For the Disruptive Science theme, WU(R) could have the original Jeskai theme based around noncreature spells. On the other hand, UB(G) could be more focused on card advantage. Honestly, I still don't know which is best, so I'm going to explore a bit both design space. Basically, this means there are two options to choose from:
1)
WU(R): Combo Art tribal
UB(G): Disruptive Science
BR(W): Aggro Suicide
RG(U): Midrange Go Tall
GW(B): Control life
2)
WU(R): Disruptive Science
UB(G): Combo Art tribal
BR(W): Aggro Suicide
RG(U): Midrange Go Tall
GW(B): Control life
It really boils down to what the playstyle of the Science archetype is going to be which I'm still unsure yet. A priori, WU(R) seems a better option both if it cares about noncreature spells or about storm. But UB(G) would be the most original choice. I still have a slight preference for option 2 right now, but I need to think about it.
P.S: You an disregard all flavour elements like card name and illustration entirely, I just put that so they are not blank placeholder cards.
The others I'm not so sure about. Sylvan Researcher I think is to powerful a set up card as it stands. I'm not sure the others feel completely right either. Maybe for some of these instead of unlimited effect it just applies to like the next 3 spells or something. Again I like the idea, but it needs some tuning. I'll try to think of some cards that could apply.
Here are a bunch of possible higher rarity masterworks.
Someone else already suggested that the Blue Uncommon master work provide Hexproof and I think that works.
The White Uncommon as you said should give lifelink.
I think the Black Uncommon should give Deathtouch
The Red Uncommon could give First Strike.
I also have ideas for three rare masterworks.
The White Rare could be like a 2WW 2/2 that gives indestructible.
The Red Rare could be a 3RR 3/3 that has something like "when your masterwork attacks if this is the first combat of the turn, at the end of combat untap it and after this phase there is an additional combat phase." There is certainly a better way to word that.
And the Blue Rare could be 3UU 1/1 Shapeshifter with "This creature is a copy of your masterwork. All masterwork effects that are being applied to it are also applied to this creature." Again there probably could be some better wording.
I like the distribution of the keywords except indestructible which is probably a bit much, I agree that it would be a nice reward at rare or mythic but we need to find a way to give a window of opportunity for the opponent to kill the Masterwork. Maybe "indestructible as long as it's attacking" or something lie that?
The red rare sounds interesting! I'm not sure it's possible to make the blue one work cleanly within the rules though, even if it sounds quite interesting as well. Funnily enough, when I was playtesting Masterwork, the blue rare I used was also a shapeshifter! It went a bit like this:
The idea is that it enters the battlefield as a clone of any creature, but the trick is that you can then make another creature your masterwork (the mirror then becomes a 0/5) and if you make it your masterwork again later it becomes a copy of another creature.
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I gave a quick try to the spells that boost the next spells in the turn and quickly realised that it wasn't doing what I wanted, I probably should have playtested before talking about it xD Basically it's much too hard to trigger it with Discover because you need to play one of those cards, then play a spell that discovers, and then hit a spell that you can play. All in the same turn. So I think I'll just try to develop the design space with "whenever you cast your second spell each turn" which has been used a few times in MTG without being fully fleshed out in any set.
This way if at any point you cast a spell that discovers and get to cast a spell discovered this way, you automatically enable the trigger.
For now I'm just using placeholder illustrations (this is not even a mirror if I'm honest XD) and card names so it's easier to imagine it as a real card but once we reach that point in the set everything will get proper flavouring!
By the way, I'm still looking for a new name for Masterwork that basically would convey that some creature is the man/woman of the century à la Da Vinci / Galileo / Newton / Einstein etc. If anyone has any idea don't hesitate to share ^^
Could “Pinnacle” work?
The spirit is there but if I'm not mistaken (I'm not a native speaker) it's not the person themselves, just the peak they reach. It could work, we just need to find a way to phrase it the right way. For instance:
____
Pinnacle (As this resolves, choose a creature you control to reach the pinnacle. You can have only one creature at the pinnacle.)
The creature you control at the pinnacle get +1/+1.
____
A priori, I think it's a bit wordy, if possible I'd like to find a way to name the creature itself so you could say "your NAME gets +1/+1" like right now we say "your masterwork gets +1/+1".
As for the Mirror thing, I was just saying that it should be called that if it makes it into the set, I know it's still being developed.
As for the "Kind of storm" subtheme, I absolutely LOVE the synergy with discover and I think it'll work great, that kind of card was always pretty cool. Just make sure it doesn't overlap with Surge, which was an ability from the newer Zendikar blocks that represented a bit of a Storm-ish subtheme too. I really like the mockups you did (Kind Mentor, Burning Cramming, etc.) to represent it, too.
I also like what you're doing with the archetypes, but I'm not experienced with that kind of thing so I'm not sure how to improve it.
Can the ability masterwork be on an artifact or enchantment?
@ningyounk For masterwork, what if you don’t want to choose a card to become your masterwork? Do you think “You may choose a creature you control...” would be better than “Choose a creature you control...” ?
I just got an idea for dual lands in this set!
Does this work?
(Land Name)
Land
Renaissance - (Land Name) enters the battlefield tapped unless the sum of all life gained and lost this turn is 3 or more.
{t}: Add {first color} or {second color}.