I've been staying up late and drinking green tea again, so here's another fever dream of a set idea

kandra127 · January 2020

I want to join this!

stormbreath · January 2020

If I may offer up a mechanic I can not claim, but know about, for use in the Jeskai colors:

Damocles: pay a certain cost(could be fixed, could be other), and exile this card from your hand. You may cast it at any legal time for its Damocles cost.

Sort of a mix between Morph and Suspend, where you can threaten your opponent with a spell in exile that they can't deal with. After all, you're less likely to play any creatures if you know your opponent has a Bolt-equivalent spell in Damocles, just waiting for you to make a wrong move.

Balancing issues: the combined total cost of Damocles casting should ideally be around the same as a normal cast, with changes based on ETB effects.

of course, if this set is sort of "just for fun" then custom keywords aren't really needed, but I thought that I'd just throw this out there, since it's a really cool concept, and i'd love to see what could be done with it.

HeroKP · January 2020

@kandra127 Sure! Any help is welcome

@stormbreath I really do like that mechanic, but as you said, this is a fun set, and while I definitely think we need custom mechanics, a mechanic like that is a little too far into control (that's not an insult, about 50% of my decks are control), and might ruin the 'we're here to party' feel.
I'll definitely use that mechanic somewhere else, though.

@everyone Remade Thornbloom in mtg.design to make it look less awkward

stormbreath · January 2020

@HeroKP It's fine. If I could offer the Fated keyword, which triggers an effect on a permanent when you scry, instead? This one's my own design. For example:

Could use a bit of balancing, but a nice riff on a card I think should get more attention than it gets, even if it is situational.

HeroKP · January 2020

@stormbreath

That's... actually very fitting for the Esper faction, we could really use that, thank you.
Would you like to design the Esper signpost uncommon?

Arceus8523 · January 2020

Bump

stormbreath · January 2020

@HeroKP

I would be delighted to offer my services, if I understood how a Signpost Uncommon is supposed to function.

HeroKP · January 2020

@stormbreath

It is basically an uncommon that makes it very easy to get into a certain archetype (like Thornbloom with tokens and Viyona Manifested with a gimmick in anti-human racism)

stormbreath · January 2020

After a bit of research, here is the Signpost uncommon for the Esper faction/archetype:

HeroKP · January 2020

@stormbreath

Nice! But wouldn't it be easier to say "whenever you scry, you may draw a card"?

stormbreath · January 2020

@HeroKP It's a holdover from when I had it read 'whenever you scry, after your scry you may look at the top card of your library and put it either on the bottom of your library or back on top" to get around infinite scrying. Wording is funky, but it does sidestep some draw triggers, which can be both good and bad.