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Rezatta, the life-matters Renaissance plane — SET DESIGN PHASE
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You're cube I still like. It's fun to make cards for your cube.
Green is one of the three main colours of the Church of Serra xD We probably won't need the blue and red one but we really need the black one xD The four virtues of the Chruch of Serra are Art, freedom, Discourse and Peace. So here's my try:
White — PEACE
They are peace keepers, in a mostly non-violent way. Mechanically, we can put a serran church flavour on cards that have protection or prison-like effects:
Black — ART
They are inquisitors. They obsess over Art and beauty in a borderline discriminatory way and fight against the ugliness of this world (a.k.a. the non-antropomorphised beasts in the RGU deck that are associated with winter, for instance). For instance cards like Museum Thief might actually want to be a black cleric:
Green — FREEDOM
They are evangelists. They explore the worlds to spread the good word of the Church of Serra. Cards like Scour the Wilds and New Landscapes might want to get a cleric flavour:
Obviously this is all very dependant from the illustrations we can find. Green clerics are not easy to get illustrations for, let me tell you that ^^"
As for the Discourse virtue, weeeeeeeeell... They can't all be winners >.<
@ningyounk is truly a mastermind
@The-DM Also thanks!
That's the flavor @KorandAngels
This for filling the role of black cleric and 2 masterworks. @ningyounk
Sorry, I don't see any image attached to that last comment of yours >.<
@ningyounk
Good lord, you do? xD It's easy actually, France is +6h from the east coast of the U.S.A. and +8h from the west coast. But I still can't see what you sent me sorry, it is a special link that sends you to your own account so I see my own cards when I click on it
Yes, that could definitely work, though 2BBB seems a bit restrictive as a mana cost. Making copies of a creature you control is a blue effect so I think you need to have a bit of blue in there. Asking triple black means it's targeted at a monoBlack deck, I don't think it's a good idea since Masterwork is in all five colours and is the most fun when you mix and match all the abilities. It's a bit like slivers, you wouldn't put triple black in the mana cost of a sliver creature ^^
On the good sides:
• I'm really happy with the synergies, the different archetypes interact in many different ways so I feel there's no obvious way to build each deck.
• I feel like there's something for each play style, you really get to try really different strategies.
• The life theme is finally coming strong enough, I'm very happy with what the Odd life-matters theme has done to the set, I feel that the focus on life is at the right level.
• I'm liking this enough that I think we should be able to move on to the uncommons soon, I've started researching how to build a set skeleton for uncommons.
On the things that need to be adjusted:
• The RGU archetype that cares about your life total being odd was struggling to control its own life total. So I rollbacked to caring about EVEN life total instead of odd because it's easier. I also added a life loss on the red 2-mana creature Crafty Ranger, and the green 3-mana creature Serran Druid now produces an odd amount of serran life (see both of them in below points).
• The new Crafty Ranger still wasn't working, the scry was nice but I never really got to sacrifice it so I just gave up on that. Instead, I made it the red mana sink by giving it the 3R: Discover ability that was the green mana sink because I realised that, at this point, green was not that important to discover anymore. As mentioned above, it also pings you for 1 life, which helps RGU control the parity of its life total on top of synergising with the BRW archetype and Renaissance.
• The red enchantment was sweet but a bit swingy for common. As Crafty Ranger got its new ability, it didn't need to be a mana sink anymore so the firebreathing is gone. I liked how it played overall so I kept the same concept but remove the swingy aspect by making the power boost and damage fixed values.
• The green mana sink needed to change because that effect was red now. The 3-mana creature that had the 3G: Discover ability became a simple 4-mana creature with vigilance that discover when it enter the battlefield.
• I had trouble with the Serran Druid because it produced too much serran life in the late game and was dragging things out instead of acting as a mana ability. It already felt like a mana sink, so when Elven Biomage disappeared, I transformed Serran Druid into the new green mana sink. It produced only 1 serran life at a time which helps set your life total odd or even. On top of that, the double green in the activation cost makes sure it's more difficult to pile up on serran life.
• I realised that Springborn Spirit and Serran Inquisitor were both 4-mana 3/2 that gained 3 serran life when they entered the battlefield and were designed to go in the same deck. They were too close, so I moved Spingborn Spirit to three mana, and the new Serran Evangelist (see above) took its place at 4-mana as the new Elven Biomage. Spring Spirit still gains 3 serran life instead of 2 just because it allows the RGU archetype to change the parity of its life total.
• I wasn't super happy that there was no Art creature bigger than 3-mana that was interesting to blink in the UBG Art deck. Since I was a bit scared of having a 3-mana bounce creature since the start, I switched the mana cost of Breathing Waltz (3-mana) with Caring Sculptor (4-mana).
• I felt that the recursion cards were too similar on top of beating you over the head with the Art theme, I think they would make you feel like those cards weren't worth picking up if you weren't building an Art deck. In addition, the cards Pick up the Pieces and Sudden Animation were feeling too close. Because both Green and Black already each had a card caring about Art entering the battlefield, I removed the Art rider from Restore Beauty and replaced Pick up the Pieces with the reprint Macabre Waltz. This plays into the suggestion of LordTachanka123 to have a cycle of dance cards. We'll try to represent the dance aspect by cards changes zones successively. The blue creature Breathing Waltz (name can be changed) or Sudden Animation could be the blue member of the cycle. Restore Beauty could also be the green member maybe.
• The Evolving Wilds variation was feeling awkward and not very synergistic. Because the set already has a lot of colour fixing with serran life, I tried something different. The idea behind Recovering Landscape is that it synergises with Discover: you can ditch lands from the top of your library into your graveyard, then recuperate them with Recovering Landscape. It also pings for 1 life you to synergise with the various life themes.
• I increased the power of various creatures over all those changes to try to reduce the probability of board stalls (see above) and the weirdly high number of 1/3 in the set, in that process Animated Tragedy got more agressive while not changing otherwise:
• On the same note, Cheeky Performer did such a wonderful job at improving the aggressiveness of the BRW Suicide Aggro archetype that it lost a point of toughness so it could die more easily.
I am imagining some flavor for multiple cards here...
When is the flavor step?
@ningyounk, if we are doing something different, just say.
Well there are two different kinds of flavour step:
1) Flavouring the cards (name, illustration, subtypes, flavour text). This usually happen last in a set, once all the cards are finished. Now, because there are many people who are more into flavouring than mechanistic design, we don't have to wait that long. I just want to wait until we start the uncommons to start re-flavouring the commons, because before this stage we'd be investing a lot of time in cards that could be erased from the file in an instant. They would still change a bit, but at least not as fast (hopefully).
2) World building. This part is actually supposed to be done before we start making the cards, but we got stuck so we decided we'd see if gameplay would give us some answers. In a sense it has, since we now have a better idea of the themes that work or don't (the serran theme is much stronger than when we started, the emotion theme went from second most important theme to a background theme,...) But we could use a fresh look over the world building and story of the set in order to make things more defined. Notably, we are still missing a conflict and a main character >.<
shadow123
You think the land is a bit strong for common? In my head, this ability is much worse than Evolving Wilds because it's like tutoring from your graveyard instead of your deck, that's why it can produce mana by itself. It does "synergise" with other tutoring lands like the fetch lands and fabled passage, but it makes them come into play tapped so I don't expect this to be problematic in older format, unless I'm forgetting an obvious combo?
Yes, but is it that strong? Here's the best case scenario I could come up with:
- You have Amulet of Vigor onto the battlefield with Recovering Landscape and Arid Mesa.
- You crack Aris Mesa (lose 1 life), fetch a land.
- You crack Recovering Landscape (lose 1 life), get back Arid Mesa, Amulet of Vigor untaps it.
- You crack Arid Mesa again (lose 1 life), fetch a land.
Conclusion: You have traded Arid Mesa, Recovering Mandscape and 3 life for two other lands. That's good colour fixing for sure but I don't think it's especially powerful and you had to throw an Amulet of Vigor in there. I'm fine with this, I think.
Also, for the mechanic renaissance, would it trigger if you gained 2 life, then lost 1 or something like that?
Yeap absolutely, it would even trigger if you gained 1 life and your opponent lost 2 life. I'm still unsure how is the best way to phrase this at that point.
Of course ^^ Right now, story wise, the biggest question is: "What is the conflict?" Is there a big bad guy? Or is there a catastrophe looming?