@ningyounk I kinda like the "P/T becomes equal to your life total" thing, so here's my take on it.
Shroud of Life Sap (3)(G)(W)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature.
Enchanted creature gains Defender and +X/+X, where X is half your life total.
As for other suggestions, we could use an effect that swaps serran life between players, or an effect that says "Your life total becomes target player's life total", but that would probably be a rare card effect.
Nope, so it's definitely more confusing with Serran life in the mix but here's what would happen (basically life exchanges are just regular life gain and life loss effects):
CASE 1: You have 15 life, including 10 regular life and 5 serran life. Your opponent has 25 life, including 23 regular life and 2 serran life.
If you exchange your life totals: - You gain 10 normal life, your life total is now 25 (20 normal and 5 serran). - They lose 10 life (serran life first), their life total is now 15 (no serran life).
If they exchanged your life totals: - You gain 10 normal life, your life total is now 25 (20 normal and 5 serran) - They lose 10 life (nonserran life first), their life total is now 15 (13 normal and 2 serran life).
CASE 2: You have 20 life (10 normal life and 10 serran life).
- If you activate Tree of Redemption on yourself, you lose 7 life (nonserran life first), your new life total is 13 (3 normal and 10 serran life).
- If the opponent activates Tree of Perdition on you, you lose 7 life (serran life first), your new life total is 13 (10 normal and 3 serran life).
- If your life total was less than 13, in both cases you just gain nonserran life equal to the difference.
Because that effect is mostly rare/mythic territory, I think it would be safer if we controlled the creature that effect is on, auras increase the risk of unwanted complicated interactions and we are already playing on the edge of the sword here x)
@ningyounk yeah I guess that's fair, given how serran life can be a pickle to calculate. But here's my reworked version of my previous suggestion, what do you think? Or did you already judge my card when you talked about Auras? Sorry I didn't really understand there x(
Shroud of Life Sap (3)(G)(W)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature.
Enchanted creature gains Defender and +X/+X, where X is half your life total, rounded down.
(Purpose: Imagine a huge shroud-like shield of sap and lymph, the very matter of life, covering someone
and transforming him in a wall that can block efficiently and kill its opponent. That's a big advantage,
so this card incentivizes to gain as much life as possible to make the most out of this card. It could
easily fit a GRW deck, or even WBG, depending on how you like it the most.)
So let's say you have 17 life and 3 serran life. The enchanted creature would get +10/+10, but with defender. If you gain 1 life and 1 serran life afterwards, the bonus scales up to +11/+11, but still, it has Defender, so unless something else happens, you'll be stuck with a powerful wall that can destroy opponents passively, which is still very cheesy given how some creatures have Deathtouch. So I wouldn't say that it's a broken card, but for its cost and effect overall, that's a big spell.
Yes, sorry that wasn't clear, I was talking about the massive +X/+X enchantment. As I was saying, it's a very risky mechanic, if we want to make it uncommon-friendly, we need to put some safety valves on it, so putting that effect on an aura make it super risky on principle, you never fully know what broken combo you'll accidentally enable XD It could be a cool idea for a rare though ^^
@ningyounk Thanks. One last thing- what if you have 10 life and 3 serran life and an opponent activates tree of perdition's ability on you? Would your life total remain the same?
Sorry for missing In Memoriam! Perhaps something like that is just the best thing for that slot
For Boorish Curator, I'm wondering if at that point the +1/+1 isn't needed since it's less fiddly to remember 'my creature is tapped forever' vs 'my creature is tapped this turn'? It seems a bit too heavily loaded on the bonus to me if the creature also gets larger from it, so I'd lean towards something like; Boorish Curator 2U Creature - Human Advisor When Boorish Curator enters the battlefield, tap target creature and it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. If you've cast another spell this turn, it doesn't untap for as long as you control Boorish Curator. 3/2 That said if your playtesting shows that to be confusing I think that'd be understandable.
Also I had some time and had another shot at some red uncommons:
Biting Discourse 2R Enchantment Whenever a source other than Biting Discourse causes you to lose life, Biting Discourse deals 1 damage to any target. ---- Purpose: Repeatable ping damage that synergises with the red self-damage theme. It also has defensive properties for more mid-gamey decks that shouldn't be too powerful given the general life-gain theme of the set. ---- Postulate 4R Sorcery Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. Postulate deals damage equal to that twice card's converted mana cost to target creature. Put that card on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. Discover. ---- Purpose: Impulsive discovery themed creature damage to fulfill that requirement in Red - the swinginess of the damage it could do also justifies creature only targeting. This could maybe be rephrased to not discover. ---- Mock the Divine 2R Instant Renewal - If the sum of all life gained and lost this turn is 3 or more, Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to any target. Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to any other target. Your opponents can't gain life or serran life until the start of your next turn. ---- Purpose: A high aggro 'any target' spell that punishes lifegain. Renewal coming first means that it checks for its bonus shock prior to the caster potentially damaging their opponent. I forgot about Resentful Flames from page 1 while designing this so it wound up being very similar minus the 'use the enemy's renewal as an opportunity' aspect. ---- Heartbreaker Cherub 1R Creature - Angel Flying 2R: Target creature can't attack or block this turn. 1/1 ---- Purpose: A little card that feeds into the angel theming, the emotional aspect of the set, and Red aggression.
Also I was thinking that the "Life total can't change this turn" mechanic could be used as a fog effect for green potentially?
Well now without the concept of making the creature as big as your life total it looks a little random to me. Sure, it's a possible card, but where would it fit in the set, I'm less sure.
I do like the "as long as you have serran life, CARDNAME can attack as though it didn't have defender" though, it could be a cool ability on a big undercosted creature! ^^
If you have 13 life (10 normal and 3 serran) and either Tree of Perdition or Tree of Redemption targets you, your life total is already 13 so you won't lose or gain life and you will still be at 10 normal life and 3 serran life. Your 3 serran life will not be replaced by normal life. The idea is that both regular life and serran life are life, so when an effect sets your life total to a certain number, it doesn't care what the percentage of your life that's serran, it only sees the total value.
Don't worry, you don't need to know every card that's been proposed, I'm here to stir you based on where the set is at ^^ It was just fun to see how we slowly got to the same design, I actually like when two people end up with the same idea because it usually means it makes a lot of sense and should end up in the set x)
Boorish Curator: The +1/+1 would basically be here to help you remember in two turns if you can untap the creature or not. Remembering not to untap a permanent the next turn is usually the limit that will be asked from players memory wise, and this design means they need to keep in mind whether the card way played with or without "surge" two turns later. I don't mind the power swing because you had to pay additional mana by casting the first spell, which is pretty difficult. But yeah, ultimately, we need to test if the fun of the card is worth the complexity ^^
Biting discourse: I'm a little wary of two aspects of this card:
1) Because there are cards that say "Pay N life: effect" I don't want "whenever you lose life" effects to stack too much. Otherwise, if you have this card and a card that says "Pay 1 life: effect", you win the game as soon as your life total is higher than the opponent's.
2) I don't like soft lock cards that prevent people from attacking entirely, I thought Revenge of the Ravens was really unfun in Limited for instance. What I dislike about it is that once you reach a certain point, if your deck doesn't have life gain your are forced to concede as you literally cannot attack anymore.
Postulate: It's fun, my favourite part is that it sets up discover to always find a spell to cast, but after paying 5 mana I doubt you'll often have enough left to cast anything. Overall, I think there's a cool concept there but I'm not very fond of the fact that it's a 5-mana spell that deals a random amount of damage, if you whiff it's really punishing.
Mock the Divine: Serran life is life! Just "your opponents can't gain life" prevents them from gaining serran life as well ^^ I like the concept, it looks very fun, but we need to find the way of templating correctly, I don't think the game would appreciate the "other" target of the second ability when it's possible that the first target doesn't exist, and I'm wondering how wordy the card is going to get once we put everything in the right order.
Heartbreaker Cherub: The activated ability is white, red cannot do that ^^ It's also a bit strong, usually this ability is 4-mana unless there's a downsides attached to it, but it could be a good mana sink if needed.
Fog effect: Yes, we're definitely going to need to shuffle the colours of some of these effects. Green is a good candidate, but I was actually considering this effect for blue as well because it cares the least about life in general. I was thinking it could get stuff that are more "neutral", here are a few effects I considered for Blue:
- Life totals can't change until end of turn.
- Target player's life total becomes 10.
- Exchange the life totals of two target players.
- Your life total becomes your starting life total minus your current life total.
- Your life total becomes equal to [someting super blue like cards in hand or library].
- Choose two target players. Their life total becomes half the sum of their life total, rounded up.
Serran Grace: White's part of the colour pie can't really make hasty tokens (though it can make them at instant speed which is similar). The hexproof part is also a serious colour bend, they do it very scarcely in White on protective spells but usually white would rather give indestructible, this effect feels very blue or green. Overall, the card doesn't feel very cohesive (why the token?) and three-mana is a really hard bargain for an uncommon protetcive spell. I don't think we could realistically ask more than 2 mana for this slot.
Church of Serra: Lands that tap for two mana have historically been very strong, it's rare or mythic rare territory ^^ I'm really confused as to why you'd want to pay 4 mana to have this untapped, you're still two mana down at the end of the bargain, right?
@ningyounk I wanted to ask something: Do you already know what kind of monsters would wander in Rezatta? In most planes, even kaladesh, there's at least one typical "monster" type. White has the Angels, so that's something, but I've seen a general lack of cards that aren't humanoids. Is that intentional? What if I would like to make, say, a Giant, or even a Dragon? Would it be coherent with the plane?
No, that's also white. The closest thing to a land is a colored artifact, so that's what I'l use. It also looks better than the gold or land frame, too.
@ningyounk One last thing: I made a list of cards I came up with for the multicolors, wanna give me a second opinion?
I'll try to sum them up:
1) Ingenious Copycat: a small UR creature that can copy one spell cast this turn. 2) Envoy of the Golden Church: a life swing WB creature that can ramp up and annoy the opponent. 3) Acrylic Arcanophage: a BG ooze that pumps itself with creatures in the graveyard, especially strong with Arts. 4) Shroud of Nature's Light: a Work-in-progress GW enchantment that buffs a creature depending on your serran life. 5) Fervent Duelist: a cheap RW creature that becomes expecially threatening when your life is even.
And here's the full description of each one of them:
About the "kind of monsters on Rezatta": This is called a creature grid! Each world usually have a few creature types for each colour for small, medium and large slots, each in a flying or non-flying variant (barring stuff like small flying creatures in red and green flying creatures). We will make one eventually but this will be mostly dictated by the illustrations we have at our disposal ^^ We do already have a few creatures types that are tied to art like Sirens and Gorgons, or to the Church of Serra like Angels and Clerics.
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Ingenuous Copycat: Copying spell is not something that's done a lot at uncommon, I think this would benefit from being simpler because there are quite some loops happening here. Overall, I'm not a fan because it's a bit awkward with what I would expect to be the UR Discover deck (and rememember the multicoloured cards need to really enable the wanted playstyle). You want to copy your own spells in this kind of deck but paying 4-mana to cast it after paying mana to discover (most likely) and then paying mana to cast the discovered spell is asking a lot. Also, the fact that it pings you for copying your own spells doesn't help. I'm liking the fact that it promotes playing at instant speed though, I think that would go well with the UR archetype. It also could be a monoRed card, by the way.
Envoy of the Golden Church: I like the feel of it being a slow grindy card about value, I could see that being the gameplay of the WB archetype ^^
Acrylic Arcanophage: I do like that design, though the focus on Art is not necessarily wanted in the GB archetype (that's more a UB primary theme, the enemy themes are trying to offer something new to care about). I think it could be nice as a mono-black card as well, and offer more synergies with both UB Art tribal and maybe WB if it makes a lot of tokens.
Shroud of Nature's Light: Could definitely work, but I don't know how much I want the GW archetype to be a beatdown deck, I would also like to try a more controlling approach with an alternative way to win where you stall the board completely and then win with one big evasive threat or even without attacking. If we go with that aura, I think that aura would need to give you some serran life and offer some more value, either by being very cheap or adding some evasion. Again though, this could be a mono-white or mono-green card.
Fervent Duelist: The GR archetype is the one about even life ^^ The RW coud be about weenies or something else, but I'd like the enemy-colored themes to care about different things from the five wedge commons archetypes, to diversify gameplay. Also, it's becoming a theme, but this is a monoRed card
I like how basically just one of my cards can be printed as a multicolor while the other cards are simple monocolors...
Ingenious Copycat: I honestly thought that the discovered spells would be put on the battlefield without paying their mana cost, that's essentially why copying a potentially powerful spell would at least have a 4 mana cost. My alternative would be that when it ETB, discover, then another effect applies (draw or burn) depending on what you discovered. Would that be better, for a UR card?
Acrylic Arcanophage: I don't want to give it "+1/+1 for each creature in all graveyards" because that's what Necrotic Ooze and Experiment Kraj do, and they are Rare cards. Instead, this card both enhances graveyard plays, which is usually black, and rewards ypu by pumping this card, which is mostly green. That's my thinking, at least.
Shroud of Nature's Light: You said that GW would be a control/midrange that focuses around life. I doubt that your idea of GW can be achieved in THIS stage, because a card that says "if X happens you win the game" would be a mythic imho. Or at least rare. I could put a "you gain 2 serran life" in the description, so that the aura effectively gives you at least +2/+2, which is kinda big given how easily it would scale up.
Fervorous Duelist: I'm not sure wether Vigilance is a red keyword, but the secondary effect was written so that this card would be also useful in a GRW deck, as I said before. I could potentially make it a mono red, but I'm not really convinced about it.
To be fair, WOTC themselves sometimes print cards that could be monocoloured in multicoloured slots which can become confusing XD But it's mainly in heavily multicoloured sets like Ravnica, or when they really want a specific effect as the signpost ^^ We'll try to avoid doing that a priori, but we might end up doing the same if we have a design we really like afeter testing. It's actually a good thing to be a monocoloured card, because it leaves more room for other cards in the set and it's used more often!
Ingenuous Copycat: Absolutely, I'd really like to see some blue and red cards that care about the kind of spells you cast after discovering them, I'm convinced there is some interesting design space there.
Acrylic Arcanophage: Green actually has a strong connection with the graveyard just as black, and creatures of basically any color can grow themselves with +1/+1 counter, that's why it's probably better to have it as a monocoloured card so it can be used by more archetypes (the UB one for instance might actually want this for recursion purpose) ^^
Shroug of Nature's Light: Yeah, we're not doing any alternative win-cons at uncommon, but things like "whenever something happens, target opponent loses 1 life" are uncommon-friendly ways of winning without attacking. That being said, it's true it's a little ambition to try this in green/white xD Maybe we do need to choose a clear path to victory for green/white, and it's probably going to be midrange-y unless someone gets a very original idea. The idea is that it needs to reward you for not getting hit for several turns and keeping your serran life protected.
Fervent Duelist: Sorry I actually missed the Vigilance in here ^^ It could be monoWhite be the even life theme does hint at red/green/blue. The main point here is that the RW signpost probably shouldn't care about even life.
The idea is nice but I don't want "whenever you lose life" effects to stack too much because of cards that let you pay life repeatedly as a cost to activate an ability. I'd rather have effects that don't stack, or at least have a ceiling that's lower than your life total.
@ningyounk I took some of your suggestions, so instead of just writing everything down, I made some card prototypes instead.
This guy. This guy gave me a lot of trouble while trying to design him, since its first design (Ingenious Copycat) was not fit for uncommon, but eventually I gave up on the whole "copy a spell" or "effect depending on spell cast" and wanted to focus more around Discovery and instant speed plays, which is something very important for a UR deck. But at least it rewards you with 2 damage dealt on cast OR a drawn card, plus the discovery effect as it Enters the battlefield. Kudos to @LordTachanka123 for helping me with the previous iteration of this card.
I swear this is the third time I remake this card, mostly because of typos, but now I HOPE that everything is alright and I won't have to remake this a fourth time. Feel free to change its name if needed. I'm kinda sad I couldn't fit the lore about the inquisition, since I did it on the first iteration of this card, but I hope that will give you guys some inspiration.
Edit: I ended up remaking the card because I'm dumb and I didn't write down "put +1/+1 counters", so that makes it the 4th print of this card. Thank you @tookie1 for the quick clarification.
I'm not sure if I like it as a mono black card. I mean, yes, it would fit well in both UB and BG, but what to do... I'll sort something out for the bicolour version, maybe it'll be an Art which adds mana whenever and art dies, dunno.
Ok, so, I did want to try making this a WR card, but the typical "deal damage to target" seemed out of place. I'll make a new one, possibly revolving around tokens, but I'm still not sure. Is it cheap and small enough to be included in this color combination? Also, I may or may not have forgotten a "for" after "cheering", but I plan on reworking this card if it doesn't feel uncommon anyways.
@Scaccogaming With the Acrylic Arcanophage, I am not exactly positive, but since it has protection from Arts, and it is an Art, shoudn't you not be able to activate it's ability, since putting the +1/+1 counters on it is targeting it? If it had hexproof from Arts it would fix that.
It's ok, you really need the word "target" in the ability for it to target so "put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME" works around that in the same way as you could have done "put a +1/+1 counter on each creature named CARDNAME" ^^
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I've been trying to refine the feel of each archetype, here are mirrored examples of enchantments meant to give white/black life swings a grindy value gameplay while synergising with the other archetypes in their respective colours:
@ningyounk Like the enchantments! I believe the black one has a couple wording/text errors.
The first ability should be worded: Whenever a creature you control leaves the battlefield, each opponent loses 1 life.
You also have an extra period at the end of the Renewal ability. Also, since repeatable tokens can be really powerful, I might consider increasing the cost of the white enchantment to match the black one at 4 CMC.
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Shroud of Life Sap
(3)(G)(W)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature.
Enchanted creature gains Defender and +X/+X, where X is half your life total.
As for other suggestions, we could use an effect that swaps serran life between players, or an effect that says "Your life total becomes target player's life total", but that would probably be a rare card effect.
Nope, so it's definitely more confusing with Serran life in the mix but here's what would happen (basically life exchanges are just regular life gain and life loss effects):
CASE 1:
You have 15 life, including 10 regular life and 5 serran life.
Your opponent has 25 life, including 23 regular life and 2 serran life.
If you exchange your life totals:
- You gain 10 normal life, your life total is now 25 (20 normal and 5 serran).
- They lose 10 life (serran life first), their life total is now 15 (no serran life).
If they exchanged your life totals:
- You gain 10 normal life, your life total is now 25 (20 normal and 5 serran)
- They lose 10 life (nonserran life first), their life total is now 15 (13 normal and 2 serran life).
CASE 2:
You have 20 life (10 normal life and 10 serran life).
- If you activate Tree of Redemption on yourself, you lose 7 life (nonserran life first), your new life total is 13 (3 normal and 10 serran life).
- If the opponent activates Tree of Perdition on you, you lose 7 life (serran life first), your new life total is 13 (10 normal and 3 serran life).
- If your life total was less than 13, in both cases you just gain nonserran life equal to the difference.
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Scaccogaming
Because that effect is mostly rare/mythic territory, I think it would be safer if we controlled the creature that effect is on, auras increase the risk of unwanted complicated interactions and we are already playing on the edge of the sword here x)
Or did you already judge my card when you talked about Auras? Sorry I didn't really understand there x(
So let's say you have 17 life and 3 serran life. The enchanted creature would get +10/+10, but with defender. If you gain 1 life and 1 serran life afterwards, the bonus scales up to +11/+11, but still, it has Defender, so unless something else happens, you'll be stuck with a powerful wall that can destroy opponents passively, which is still very cheesy given how some creatures have Deathtouch. So I wouldn't say that it's a broken card, but for its cost and effect overall, that's a big spell.
Yes, sorry that wasn't clear, I was talking about the massive +X/+X enchantment. As I was saying, it's a very risky mechanic, if we want to make it uncommon-friendly, we need to put some safety valves on it, so putting that effect on an aura make it super risky on principle, you never fully know what broken combo you'll accidentally enable XD It could be a cool idea for a rare though ^^
For Boorish Curator, I'm wondering if at that point the +1/+1 isn't needed since it's less fiddly to remember 'my creature is tapped forever' vs 'my creature is tapped this turn'? It seems a bit too heavily loaded on the bonus to me if the creature also gets larger from it, so I'd lean towards something like;
Boorish Curator
2U
Creature - Human Advisor
When Boorish Curator enters the battlefield, tap target creature and it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. If you've cast another spell this turn, it doesn't untap for as long as you control Boorish Curator.
3/2
That said if your playtesting shows that to be confusing I think that'd be understandable.
Also I had some time and had another shot at some red uncommons:
Biting Discourse
2R
Enchantment
Whenever a source other than Biting Discourse causes you to lose life, Biting Discourse deals 1 damage to any target.
----
Purpose: Repeatable ping damage that synergises with the red self-damage theme. It also has defensive properties for more mid-gamey decks that shouldn't be too powerful given the general life-gain theme of the set.
----
Postulate
4R
Sorcery
Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. Postulate deals damage equal to that twice card's converted mana cost to target creature. Put that card on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Discover.
----
Purpose: Impulsive discovery themed creature damage to fulfill that requirement in Red - the swinginess of the damage it could do also justifies creature only targeting. This could maybe be rephrased to not discover.
----
Mock the Divine
2R
Instant
Renewal - If the sum of all life gained and lost this turn is 3 or more, Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to any target.
Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to any other target. Your opponents can't gain life or serran life until the start of your next turn.
----
Purpose: A high aggro 'any target' spell that punishes lifegain. Renewal coming first means that it checks for its bonus shock prior to the caster potentially damaging their opponent. I forgot about Resentful Flames from page 1 while designing this so it wound up being very similar minus the 'use the enemy's renewal as an opportunity' aspect.
----
Heartbreaker Cherub
1R
Creature - Angel
Flying
2R: Target creature can't attack or block this turn.
1/1
----
Purpose: A little card that feeds into the angel theming, the emotional aspect of the set, and Red aggression.
Also I was thinking that the "Life total can't change this turn" mechanic could be used as a fog effect for green potentially?
Instant
Make a 1/1 white knight token with haste. Target creature gains hexproof until end of turn.
Can always take out first part and reduce mana to 1w.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/church-of-serra-1
"Church of Serra enters the battlefield tapped unless you pay (3)(w).
(T): Add (w). If you have 4 or more serran life, Add (w)(w) instead."
Why is it supposed to be solid gold? It's clearly white.
You used the artifact frame instead, and the closest we have to colored lands as of now, is Solid gold.
But nevertheless, you might want to use this card as an ispiration.
Anyway, it's not so important as long as the card is fine by itself.
I'll try to sum them up:
1) Ingenious Copycat: a small UR creature that can copy one spell cast this turn.
2) Envoy of the Golden Church: a life swing WB creature that can ramp up and annoy the opponent.
3) Acrylic Arcanophage: a BG ooze that pumps itself with creatures in the graveyard, especially strong with Arts.
4) Shroud of Nature's Light: a Work-in-progress GW enchantment that buffs a creature depending on your serran life.
5) Fervent Duelist: a cheap RW creature that becomes expecially threatening when your life is even.
And here's the full description of each one of them:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
About the "kind of monsters on Rezatta": This is called a creature grid! Each world usually have a few creature types for each colour for small, medium and large slots, each in a flying or non-flying variant (barring stuff like small flying creatures in red and green flying creatures). We will make one eventually but this will be mostly dictated by the illustrations we have at our disposal ^^ We do already have a few creatures types that are tied to art like Sirens and Gorgons, or to the Church of Serra like Angels and Clerics.
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Ingenuous Copycat: Copying spell is not something that's done a lot at uncommon, I think this would benefit from being simpler because there are quite some loops happening here. Overall, I'm not a fan because it's a bit awkward with what I would expect to be the UR Discover deck (and rememember the multicoloured cards need to really enable the wanted playstyle). You want to copy your own spells in this kind of deck but paying 4-mana to cast it after paying mana to discover (most likely) and then paying mana to cast the discovered spell is asking a lot. Also, the fact that it pings you for copying your own spells doesn't help. I'm liking the fact that it promotes playing at instant speed though, I think that would go well with the UR archetype. It also could be a monoRed card, by the way.
Envoy of the Golden Church: I like the feel of it being a slow grindy card about value, I could see that being the gameplay of the WB archetype ^^
Acrylic Arcanophage: I do like that design, though the focus on Art is not necessarily wanted in the GB archetype (that's more a UB primary theme, the enemy themes are trying to offer something new to care about). I think it could be nice as a mono-black card as well, and offer more synergies with both UB Art tribal and maybe WB if it makes a lot of tokens.
Shroud of Nature's Light: Could definitely work, but I don't know how much I want the GW archetype to be a beatdown deck, I would also like to try a more controlling approach with an alternative way to win where you stall the board completely and then win with one big evasive threat or even without attacking. If we go with that aura, I think that aura would need to give you some serran life and offer some more value, either by being very cheap or adding some evasion. Again though, this could be a mono-white or mono-green card.
Fervent Duelist: The GR archetype is the one about even life ^^ The RW coud be about weenies or something else, but I'd like the enemy-colored themes to care about different things from the five wedge commons archetypes, to diversify gameplay. Also, it's becoming a theme, but this is a monoRed card
@LordTachanka123
My bad, I messed up my copy/paste!
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Also, random design:
Ingenious Copycat: I honestly thought that the discovered spells would be put on the battlefield without paying their mana cost, that's essentially why copying a potentially powerful spell would at least have a 4 mana cost. My alternative would be that when it ETB, discover, then another effect applies (draw or burn) depending on what you discovered. Would that be better, for a UR card?
Acrylic Arcanophage: I don't want to give it "+1/+1 for each creature in all graveyards" because that's what Necrotic Ooze and Experiment Kraj do, and they are Rare cards. Instead, this card both enhances graveyard plays, which is usually black, and rewards ypu by pumping this card, which is mostly green. That's my thinking, at least.
Shroud of Nature's Light: You said that GW would be a control/midrange that focuses around life. I doubt that your idea of GW can be achieved in THIS stage, because a card that says "if X happens you win the game" would be a mythic imho. Or at least rare. I could put a "you gain 2 serran life" in the description, so that the aura effectively gives you at least +2/+2, which is kinda big given how easily it would scale up.
Fervorous Duelist: I'm not sure wether Vigilance is a red keyword, but the secondary effect was written so that this card would be also useful in a GRW deck, as I said before. I could potentially make it a mono red, but I'm not really convinced about it.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/noble-bloodletter-2
The idea is nice but I don't want "whenever you lose life" effects to stack too much because of cards that let you pay life repeatedly as a cost to activate an ability. I'd rather have effects that don't stack, or at least have a ceiling that's lower than your life total.
This guy. This guy gave me a lot of trouble while trying to design him, since its first design (Ingenious Copycat) was not fit for uncommon, but eventually I gave up on the whole "copy a spell" or "effect depending on spell cast" and wanted to focus more around Discovery and instant speed plays, which is something very important for a UR deck. But at least it rewards you with 2 damage dealt on cast OR a drawn card, plus the discovery effect as it Enters the battlefield. Kudos to @LordTachanka123 for helping me with the previous iteration of this card.
I swear this is the third time I remake this card, mostly because of typos, but now I HOPE that everything is alright and I won't have to remake this a fourth time. Feel free to change its name if needed. I'm kinda sad I couldn't fit the lore about the inquisition, since I did it on the first iteration of this card, but I hope that will give you guys some inspiration.
Edit: I ended up remaking the card because I'm dumb and I didn't write down "put +1/+1 counters", so that makes it the 4th print of this card. Thank you @tookie1 for the quick clarification.
I'm not sure if I like it as a mono black card. I mean, yes, it would fit well in both UB and BG, but what to do... I'll sort something out for the bicolour version, maybe it'll be an Art which adds mana whenever and art dies, dunno.
Ok, so, I did want to try making this a WR card, but the typical "deal damage to target" seemed out of place. I'll make a new one, possibly revolving around tokens, but I'm still not sure. Is it cheap and small enough to be included in this color combination? Also, I may or may not have forgotten a "for" after "cheering", but I plan on reworking this card if it doesn't feel uncommon anyways.
Just kidding, I fixed it and now it should be fine.
Don't worry you don't have to make the cards perfect at this stage, this is still just brainstorming ideas x)
@dragonbornletter
It's ok, you really need the word "target" in the ability for it to target so "put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME" works around that in the same way as you could have done "put a +1/+1 counter on each creature named CARDNAME" ^^
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I've been trying to refine the feel of each archetype, here are mirrored examples of enchantments meant to give white/black life swings a grindy value gameplay while synergising with the other archetypes in their respective colours:
@ningyounk Let's just say that when I make a card, even if it's just an idea, I try to make it as best as it can be.
...am I too meticolous?
Also, Council of Traitors could be also called Danse Macabre, since it's the polar opposite of the other card and brings back the dead creatures.
Like the enchantments! I believe the black one has a couple wording/text errors.
The first ability should be worded:
Whenever a creature you control leaves the battlefield, each opponent loses 1 life.
You also have an extra period at the end of the Renewal ability.
Also, since repeatable tokens can be really powerful, I might consider increasing the cost of the white enchantment to match the black one at 4 CMC.