No, just losing two life wouldn't make it uncommon (it's actually the opposite because it would kill you pretty fast, it's the type of things you'd find at higher rarity because they require more careful deck building). It really needs to be conditional (discover only if you meet a requirement) or cost more mana (4 mana would probably be ok, but it'd be a bit dry as a card). The difficulty is finding a condition that would work, it wouldn't work with "whenever you cast your second spell each turn" for instance because you'd likely be out of mana. Renewal would need to trigger at the beginning of the end step which isn't very synergistic with what Discover is doing. Something like "As long as you have serran life" would be ideal (without the last life converting ability on the card, obviously) but it's not in-colours. I'm not sure what would work. Maybe on a creature with "Whenever this creature attacks", the downsides is that you need the creature to survive to abuse it.
BG deathtouch: That's too weak, we have a much better card at common for instance. Also, I'd like to make the archetype care about +1/+1 counters in a slightly different way than usual, so I'd like to explore designs that count the number of +1/+1 counters on your creature and actually scale if you put more +1/+1 counters on the same creature (the idea is that it would synergise interestingly with masterwork).
@LordTachanka123 At uncommon, it's probably better to allow to sacrifice any creature but give a bonus if it's an Art, especially because there's not way that card would compare favorably with just a Thud that's already one mana and works with any creature. However, Red doesn't really care about Art in the set, so I don't think it fits.
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To leave some breathing room for the WU archetype to be the real Storm deck full of cheap cantrips, I'd like to explore a bigger RU Discover deck. So, for the gold signpost, I figure the one I proposed earlier could also go on a monocoloured design, something like that — which is inspired by a conversation with LordTachanka earlier: (old on left, new on right)
Now, here are some designs exploring the UR uncommon signpost slot. Admittedly, some of them turned out more rare than uncommon xD Also, even if I tried to aim at a big-spell archetype, sometimes it ended up in a different place and I let it unfold to see where it was going:
@ningyounk The only thing I'd change from Confident Sailors is the reduced cost. Make it 1 less to cast, otherwise it's just too valuable imho.
Audacious Sparkmage: I don't see what's blue or red about Trample, and the added Haste is not exceptional.
Careless Experimenter: I can see that played somewhat, but then again, does UR actually use creature cards that much?
Dreams of New Worlds: First of, what's the bird token's color? Second, its secondary effect is just stupid good, I can see it on a GW if you remove the Discover from it, but to me it kinda doesn't fit in a UR deck.
Lab Squatter: @The-DM yes, the rat is high. I'd say it is balanced only because you should tap it to discover, but then again... There's plenty of cards that can discover in his place. An easy fix would be: "Whenever Lab Squatter discovers, put X +1/+1 counters on Lab Squatter, where X is the discovered spell's cmc". Also, 0/4? a rat with 4 toughness? Just drop its mana cost to UR and make it a 0/2 if anything.
Having UR be the "huge spells" archetype does seem interesting...
Audacious Sparkmage: Trample is at least secondary in red, so it's fine. It also helps make sure increased power from the second ability translates well to damage. Though haste seems either unnecessary, or just fine as a separate ability.
Careless Experimenter: Caring about creatures seems WG. Maybe noncreature cards and have X = cmc? This might push to rare territory though...
Dreams of New Worlds: Using Flamespeaker Adept and Knowledge and Power from Theros block as a reference, this might be a bit much. Maybe one or the either it would be nice to have one or the other but I just realised it's not quite possible to find the right wording for it: you always discover first, then you decide whether to cast the spell or not.
Another shot: --- Dreams of New Worlds 1UR Enchantment
Whenever you discover, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.
Whenever you cast a spell you discover, target creature you control gets +1/+1 and gains hexproof until end of turn. --- Might be a bit too powerful, so I'm happy to add another cost (e.g. {1} or {2}) to rummage.
Lab Squatter: Agree with @Scaccogaming, but maybe make it a 1/2 or 0/3 that costs 1UR (for either one).
Confident Sailors: Yeah, now that you mention it, 2-mana cost reduction is probably a bit much, especially since they stack with each other! x)
Audacious Sparklage: Trample comes from the red! ^^
Careless Experimenter: UR doesn't necessarily care about noncreature spells, it's a common thing but not mandatory in every set. So far, we won't have a major noncreature theme in UR on Rezatta, though a few one-by-one designs are perfectly fair game. Still, I do agree with you that it feels awkward caring only about creatures. To tell you the truth, that design was supposed to have another ability that triggered when you cast a noncreature spell, but it was too wordy. I'd like this concept to work whatever the type of card you cast while still having a different effect depending on the discovered card. The rat design is probably closer to what I like by caring about CMC, as it also pushes for a big CMC deck which is more branded.
Dreams of New Worlds: The second ability is probably too much yes ^^ It was meant to synergise with the bird but I went a bit overboard with side-synergies. It does give me a new idea though:
Lab Squatter: This type of cards really needs to be clean mechanically, the name and illustration will be changed later, we'd rather change the illustration than the size of the card at this stage ^^ Honestly, I'm not convinced by the +1/+1 counters thing altogether, that's probably a bit swingy, so I don't think there's really a way to make it reasonably balanced. I'd save the CMC-matters idea from that concept though.
Audacious Sparkmage: Yeah, the haste thing doesn't seem to get a lot of love x)
Careless Experimenter: I'd like to avoid the noncreature theme if possible (it's not mandatory in UR, just very common) but yes, the creature restriction is a bit weird. Ideally I'd like it to work with any discovered spell, so the rat caring about CMC might be onto something?
Dreams of New Worlds: Ah yes, you're right, the order of the trigger would get super unintuitive
For your redesign: We'll discuss this a bit later (I'm preparing a first draft of the uncommon set skeleton) but we'll need to decide which archetype(s) get repeatable card draw or loot from blue, and because discover is its own form of card advantage I don't want that archetype to pile up with other types of card advantage (outside discovering or regular-casting a draw spell).
Before I start with the skeleton, here is a summary of the cards I'd want to add first in the set (there are other cards that were proposed that are perfectly fine, but I want to prioritise the high synergy ones before adding cards that can be in any set). No card is actually put in the set, however, we'll add them with the set skeleton, and we'll playtest multiple cards at once for some of the slots to see what plays best.
@ningyounk Now that I think about it, aren't reinassance and effect which activate on N serran life TOO easy to activate given how many "gain (big) serran life" cards are there? Surge of Joy would probably be op for its efficiency alone, correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, we should absolutely make more cards that affect P/T not being equal.
One last thing: I know I'm stressing you with old cards, but here are my last reprints of my last cards (plus one more extra):
What changed? Faithful is now a mono green, otherwise it is unchanged. Grimwood Lyrist now activates on "leaves the battlefield" instead of just death, to sinergize better with Arts and the like.
Relatively new, this is the rework of one of @LordTachanka123's cards, but I am not sure wether its wording is fine.
We'll see on playtest but, from my experience at common, Renaissance is actually pretty difficult to trigger ^^ For the cards that check for a certain amount of serran life, I'm not sure yet. From the threshold 1 cards at common, I found they're pretty easy to enable but the fun part is trying to keep your serran life once you got it.
Faithful of Mossbark: I definitely like it better in monogreen ^^ I'm not a huge fan of how swingy it looks though, the 6/6 for 4 is definitely a nice reward, but the 0/6 for 4 is really terrible. I think there's a territory where this can be ok-ish without the serran life while still being balanced once you meet the requirement (all without being the common Endangered Winterhowl). Because I'd like to make the GW archetype a sort of ticking bomb that waits on defence and then swings for lethal in one attack, I also think there's a version of this design that would be more interesting with +X/+0 where X is your serran life. I tried something similar at the beginning of the thread though it was a bit unbalanced I think (Faithful Envoy).
Grimwood Lyrist: The gold signposts are a bit of a different animal, we'll probably add them last to the set once we know what the other cards are and what the archetypes are missing. Still, in a vacuum, I'm a bit scared by the "can't be blocked" + hexproof combo, that seems like too much (also, "can't be blocked" needs blue). For the BG slot specifically, I'd like to try a different approach, leaving the graveyard reanimation theme to UB Art, and instead trying a BG +1/+1 counters archetype maybe, see if there's more synergy there. The idea to make it more branded would be to care about the number of +1/+1 counters on a single creature instead of spreading them like usual.
Artistic Damsel: The ally-coloured signposts are pretty restricted by the common themes, the WU one needs to be about second spell matters, while UB needs to be about Art tribal. Because of this, the other signposts should avoid caring about Art to separate the archetypes cleanly, otherwise people that see this card in draft would think there's a lot of Art synergy in white as well, and there's really not that much.
Wording needs a small tweak. Your Izzet signpost uncommons say: Whenever you cast a spell you discover,... It's confusing and sounds like it is telling you to discover whenever you cast a spell (although the punctuation is correct).
Instead: Whenever you cast a spell you discoverED,...
Ah thanks, I genuinely wasn't sure ^^ It's because it happens as you discover (you cast the spell in between the resolution of the ability) so I got confused by how you'd say that in English xD
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Oh, I forgot on top of the cards I put above I also have a list of top-down concepts that weren't fully-fleshed but I really liked and would like to see made:
1) A glassblower-related card that makes something really fragile, for instance "Whenever this creatures becomes the target of a spell or ability, or is dealt damage, sacrifice it." I have a good glassblowing illustration from Sandara in my folders by the way:
2) A pair of equipment based around the masks of comedy and tragedy. The two masks need to have flavourful effects and mirror each other. Ideally, they would also reference each other, maybe adding a bonus effect if the equipped creature has both masks on, or we could put a card in the set that tutors for both masks, for instance. The illustration for the masks themselves have been a bit hard to find on my side, I was thinking maybe using this:
3) A statue card referencing the Thinker by Rodin. Ideally, it's a card that would make you think, so any card draw effect is fair game, but decisions are better so pile draw effects à la Fact or Fiction would be particularly suiting ^^ Here are two examples:
@ningyounk ; The Ponderer: for a 3 drop, it's a very powerful card, since it can activate other Art effects. Is it fair, paying 3 mana for up to 3 other on-death effects? (Given that they would activate, but I'm not sure)
Faithful of Mossbark: I printed it as a mono green because you said that you'd like it better that way, so I got rid of the white mana. I asked you what you would change from the original design to fit better in the GW slot, but I don't think you ever answered... Well, no matter. These are just ideas anyways.
Grimwood Lyrist: as before, you said that it would be better if the effects would activate as a creature leaves the battlefield instead of just dying, so I changed that, and now you say that it doesn't fit...? I can easily change the "can't be blocked" to "gains Menace", and I get that you want BG to be more branded, but you kinda left me baffled, sorry.
Artistic Damsel: Last time I presented you this card you said that it would fit as an uncommon, and it was already a WB card at the time... I'll figure out something better to do, since remaking cards repeatedly isn't that useful to the set anyway.
Sorry! I probably wasn't clear enough on how this works, so let me explain so you feel less baffled. At this stage, we're still brainstorming, which means we're trying to find good concepts that naturally fit. If a concept isn't a good fit it can't end up in the set even if the card is realistic. When a card doesn't fit, I try to explain why and more importantly I try to find the concept within it that might be of interest for the set. But it's 100% the right call to make several new cards instead of trying to push one design, because it's not a problem of numbers, it's a problem of concept. So, for the cards mentioned above:
- Faithful of Mossbark is not realistic yet, because of how swingy it is, but I think the concept of "a lot of serran life = you have a big creature" is good for the set and "caring about having a threshold of serran life >1" is good for the set. I don't know if there's ever a version of this specific card that could work properly however, because the concept of an expensive defender is awkward if it doesn't do anything really explosive on the side. So this one needs to be dismantled and the concepts behind it need to be iterated on a bit more. And again, I'm not talking about iterations on the numbers, I'm talking about the concept itself. For instance, maybe it wants to be a cheap oversized defender type of card like Thoughtbound Phantasm or Lambholt Pacifist:
Or maybe it needs to drop the defender gimmick and focus on the threshold aspect. This kind of iteration.
- Grimwwod Lyricist: I am not saying that the first ability doesn't fit, it's fine ^^ I specifically said it's the second ability that I don't find realistic, because hexproof + can't be blocked has historically led to unfun gameplay (see Invisible Stalker):
In addition, the gold uncommon signposts cards are very precious and complicated slots to fill because there's only one of each in the set. Even if the card is fine, it doesn't mean we can just put it in the set and call it a day. We might find another design that is more synergistic or original, or we might realise after doing the monocoloured cards that we need an enabler more than a pay-off.
For the BG slot specifically, all these iterations have me wondering if reanimation is really the right archetype for this colour combination. It's stepping on the toes of the UB archetype really hard, and I haven't found any original way of making this work so far. So I'd like to explore different options in parallel that might not be related to the graveyard.
This means that, so far, the card has a low chance of ending up in the set because even if you find a more balanced bonus to give for the second ability, the first ability is probably going to be taken by a monoBlack card, the concept is not promoting what's unique about the BG archetype (it's fine, but the signpost card needs to be a paragon of what the deck is doing), and the graveyard theme might go away altogether. I just would move on to a different concept and try new things, we might go back to this later if stars align once we add more cards to the set and realise it has a lot more synergies now.
- Artistic Damsel: Again, the role of the signpost cards is very clear, I doubt I said this would be fine as a WB uncommon either because it's not fitting the WB slot better than the WU slot. The thing that's fine about it is that it refills the hand of the WU deck which will really need it. But again, there's no point in trying to remake this card with different numbers, the concept is not a fit for the slot, this wants to be a monoblue card that draws cards for the WU deck, it shouldn't care about casting Art spells (especially since all Art synergies are on ETB/LTB) and it shouldn't care about converted mana cost 3 or less.
I hope this long explanation has left you less baffled as why I'm pushing back on some of the cards. The take-home message is that, at this stage, it's better to churn through 10 different concepts than trying to force one concept 10 times in different way because the concept might not just fit. We don't get attached to individual cards at this stage because 80% of the things we're putting at first will change anyways.
Here's a first draft for the uncommons. Because there is so much more flexibility at uncommon than common, think of it more like a checklist. I put every basic thing we need in there in almost any set, but we might need some items more than once (for instance there won't be only one card in each colour dedicated to each archetype, that's just the bare minimum) and the idea is to move things around as we add card to see what's missing and what we have too much of (for instance, it's ok-ish to have two repetable source of card advantage in blue if they are really dedicated to specific and different archetypes, but a third one is going to be a had bargain — note that it's still possible, Eldraine did it in Green for instance).
"Catch-up feature" something that helps you turn the tides of the match, I'm counting the "massive threat" slot in every colour as a catch-up feature as well, the second one is more meant to be mass removal or something like that.
"Pushed MMM" means that it's purposefully a little stronger, they're meant as reasons to splash the enemy colour in the usually-ally strategy to create more diversity.
"Directional MM" means a card that's not glue, it's very specifically geared towards one archetype and will tend to stop in the right hands during draft as they tend to be passed around by other players in draft.
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Also, there is a few additional effects that are specific to this set I'd really like (it's far from exhaustive, just stuff we discussed already a bit but didn't flesh out completely):
- Instant speed discover spell - Player's can't gain life this turn - Discover twice (or thrice!) - Renaissance — target opponent discards a card - Whenever your masterwork deals combat damage to a player, draw a card - Spell that care about what you discover qualitatively
-Spell that care about what you discover qualitatively
Maybe a red card with this ability? Whenever you discover a card with converted mana cost 4 or greater, you may exile it. Until the end of your next turn, you may play that card.
I think the concept of saving the discovered cards for later if you can't cast them is interesting but this wording specifically sounds a bit weird to me as it's proposing you to cast a card on top of an ability that is already proposing you to cast it. Maybe we could explore something that went very frontally into this concept and saved the cards if you mill them with discover instead of casting them, similar to what Bag of Holding is doing:
It's not really the spirit of this cycle because they won't necessarily all be creatures (I just put them there for now but they'll move through the skeleton as we decide what suits each archetype better). Also, just to be sure that's clear, those cards are aimed at the tricoloured common themes but they will be monocoloured, there are no tricoloured cards in the set. On the other hand, a cycle of legendaries is exactly what the "exciting cycle" in the first slot of each colour is for, it's similar to Demigods on Theros, Syrs on Eldraine, etc. We were thinking either a cycle of artists, or a cycle of Arts that reference famous pieces of art ^^ We need to find the illustrations first before going into it though.
@ningyounk Could the cycle cards revolve around the Muses, maybe? You said that they would be present in the setting. Not exactly original as a concept, but they might fit for legendary uncommons, much like the Demigods and Syrs, don't you think?
Quick examples (color/muse befitting the color/the correlated art or science)
Also, IF you actually like the idea, here's the very first try at Urania:
(couldn't find a better artwork, sorry. BUT Arcadia-art on Deviantart has a whole collection of illustrations such as this one representing all the Muses, so we could use that possibly. But given her design I thought "hey, let's make it an art for the fun of it")
I figured, since Urania is the muse of astronomy, I should give her some kind of ability that would fit some sort of divinator, hence the Scry effect. The second effect doesn't really have an explanation honestly, I just wanted to give her some added value overall. The third effect is actually the theme I wanted to try, for the cycle, much like the demigods gain power through devotion, Muses obtain power by the acts of mankind: Urania would, in my head, gain power thanks to the knowledge that people would gain, and the sheer will to discover new things.
So the Muse cycle's common effect could be "[cardname]'s power (or toughness) is equal to the number of [stuff depending on the muse]"
I've found myself with some free time again and had some further ideas after looking over the skeleton, and a revision on an older design from when I was posting a few weeks ago. Most of these are red again since it's the most lacking colour in the skeleton still.
Mock the Divine 2R Instant Opponents can't gain life until the start of your next turn. Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to any target. If your life total is even, Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to another target. ---- Purpose: Rework and more aggressive version of a card I designed about 6 pages ago. The previous version used renewal to trigger the second hit, but this was clunky and counter-intuitive to the point of the card. This version reads better and is easier to activate. Fills the 'blast any target' spot. ---- Startling Concoction 3R Creature - Elemental If you discover this spell it costs {2} less to cast. When Startling Concoction enters the battlefield, it deals 3 damage to target creature. 3/1 ---- Purpose: An option for the 'good removal' spot in red with a big payoff when Discovering it. ---- Raucous Audience 3RR Creature - Monkey Citizen Trample Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, Raucous Audience deals 2 damage to any target. 3/3 ---- Purpose: Pushed WUR 'second spell' payoff that provides repeated and versatile damage. This could also just go for opponent's faces like Guttersnipe. ---- Delve into the Unknown Sorcery 2R Discover. If you don't cast this spell, Discover. If you've cast a spell from the top of your library this turn, Discover. ---- Purpose: Potentially a catch-up mechanic for Red in which they can discover between 1 and 3 times, and can get 1 to 2 spells cast out of discovering. The last line is a bit weirdly worded, but I think would be the correct way to phrase 'if you've cast a spell via discover, discover again' without ambiguity. Gives a potential double/triple discover as well. ---- Recede Into Study 1U Instant Target player mills 3, and their life total can't change until end of turn. ---- Purpose: I'm not sure if this would fit into the skeleton so this is more of a speculative design on the idea of blue stopping life gain from some comments around when I last commented. This can be used either as a fog on yourself with a drawback, or as an offensive tool to prevent a big life swing. ---- Chart the Horizon 1G Sorcery Search your library for a basic land, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library. If serran life was paid to cast this spell, untap one of the lands put onto the battlefield this way. ---- Purpose: A ramp spell that rewards having and using serran life aggressively by 'refunding' the mana portion of the cost of spending serran life on the spell.
- Oh also, as a point, shouldn't Empty Frame sacrifice itself when its ability is used? This would be in line with Shamble Back, and otherwise it spits out a 2/2 token for 1 mana each turn potentially.
@GameQnQ Just wanna say that I really lime your card concepts, I think they would fit right in, but I have some problems with a couple of them:
Delve into the Unknown: I like it, but the wording is quite clunky. What does the "if you don't cast this spell, discover" part mean? Here's how I'd word it: (2)(R) Sorcery Discover. If you've already cast a spell by discovering it this turn, Discover again. If you discard this card, Discover. -------- That way it should make you able to discover 1 to 3 times, fitting for a second-spell matters theme. Overall I just wanted to try polishing out the wording, dunno if I did a good job tho.
Aside from that, here's my idea for a anti-life card: Curse of Malebranche (spelled Mal-ae-bran-ke) (1)(B) Instant As an additional cost to cast this spell, discsrd a card. Target player discards a card and cannot gain life this turn. ------------------ (Purpose: generally, anti-life spells are black in my book, the spell itself is cheap and works well with Art recursion, Graveyard and Suicide aggro. The theme of the card revolves around the possible presence of Demons in the plane, opposing to the presence of Serra and Angels. The added cost to cast also fits the Demon abilities, if I recall correctly (nobody said we can't have demons here, since they, alongside Devils, are quite fitting for a reinassance theme). About the name, Malebranche is the name of the group of 12 demons that, in the Divine Comedy, torture the damned and control the Malebolge, leading Dante and Virgil down the bolge of the Fraudolents.
About the Uncommon muses: For the exciting cycle, I'd really favour artists or their art if possible because it's more on theme. The muse idea is supposed to be like the cherry on top of the cake, it goes well with the cake but it's not fully part of the cake itself, it brings something different. That's why they're scheduled to be huge and exciting rares or mythic and not simply uncommons. In addition, the set won't revolve around the Muses — Renaissance was originally supposed to be the emotion mechanic, but it's surprisingly difficult to find good illustration for this theme, so I removed it. This means that it won't be like the Gods in Theros or Amonkhet who had full cycles with their names in it at lower rarity, the Muses will be a more secret cycle, we might make an additional cycle of spells to go with them like the Apex of Ikoria, but otherwise it's more something like the Gearhulks of Kaladesh, for instance:
That being said, those illustrations look beautiful, I'm sure we can find a spot for them ^^
Delve into the Unknown: I've answered below about the card itself (I do think it's too complicated for what it's doing) but for templating, I think I'd like to go with "spell you discovered" whenever we reference the things you cast with discover ^^ Also, discover doesn't discard, it mills So, just for science, I think the correct wording (which you'll see is not particularly pretty and one of the reasons why I'm lukewarm about this design) would be: "Discover. If you cast a spell you discovered this way, discover. Then, if you didn't cast a spell you discovered this way, discover."
Curse of Malebranche: Black could also be a candidate for an anti-lifegain card ^^ That being said, Red will be at a disadvantage in this set because of all the life gain that will nullify its usual burst potential, so I want Red to have priority on this slot. Which leaves the question: Do we want two anti-lifegain cards in the set? We might very well, it's a tricky balance between keeping serran life in check and not smothering the fun interactions from the set. We'll have to wait for the first playtests to see if the set can support this kind of cards in black. For the discard part, I'd remove the additional cost of discarding a card, otherwise you two-for-one yourself which is pretty harsh, and making an opponent discard a single card is actually not worth much, as you can see with this example at common from Guilds of Ravnica, Vicious Rumors:
It's a bit awkward because if you already cast two spells you probably won't have the mana to cast a third one >.< I think it would be better if it helped you cast your second spell instead, by saying "Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, discover". Obviously, this is much more powerful, but I think it makes more sense. I'd go all the way and make it a full rare or mythic, maybe something like this:
Invoke the Renaissance: It's a bit too weak to justify taking a whole slot ^^ This is more the kind of effect you'd put on top of another design to add about half-a-mana of value to it. Think "Scry 1" for instance, you'd probably not play a 1-mana card that just said "Scry 1".
Mock the Divine: I like the concept of putting the no-life effect on a damage spell because Red will be at a disadvantage in this set due to the higher than normal life gain, so it needs some really strong staples. We'll have to see for the exact numbers, this will depend on the other burn spells in the set. A priori, separating it in two reminds me a bit too much of the common Sparks, also I'd be down for a 3-or-4 damage spell in this slot, and preferably a two-mana spell if possible but that might be impossible with the no-life clause.
Startling Concoction: "If you discover this spell" is a super difficult condition to meet, you'd need an amazingly strong reward for that. I do like that you made it still playable if you don't discover it though ^^ Alternatively, I've proposed something a bit similar but with more applications above by using "if you didn't cast it from your hand". This allows cross-synergies with blink spells and reanimation spells on top of discovering the spell, so it's a bit easier to turn on. It might apply in this case too.
Raucous Audience: That's exactly the kind of effects that would push players to go explore red with their Storm deck even if there are less red cards dedicated to the archetype, I like it very much ^^ I do think that the 5-CMC is a bit antisynergistic with the Storm archetype (you might be out of cards by the time you play this). I'd consider something cheaper, similar to Pyromancer's Assault. Maybe something like this (might be too strong):
Delve Into the Unknown: I think it's too complicated and I wouldn't want to miss the occasion for a simple but exciting design in this slot. That being said, Faiths_Guide also proposed something similar that is meant to create a safety net for discover for when you can't cast the card, and you two are not the first ones. So I think at this point it's an expected design and we definitely will have to deliver on it ^^
Recede Into Study: Incidental mill will only be valuable if we decide to go for a mill secondary theme (which we could), so I can't tell if it fits yet ^^ However, the second ability is something new that the set could be trying, but as far older sets are concerned it's a bend/break for blue (I just think it's the perfect set to give blue a few new tools to interact with life points). This means that I'd like the global design of the card to really sell the idea, I want the mechanical flavour to say "See? This could make sense in blue". So I'd be looking for something more flavourful with the first effect, that would explain why life totals are frozen, maybe it freezes a creature too, for instance.
Chart the Horizon: Haha, you're not the first one to propose this kind of design, unfortunately you don't pay serran life to cast the spell, you pay serran life to add mana, and then you pay the mana. The easiest way to do this is actually to create an alternative cost of 1 mana and 2 serran life. I don't think the GW serran life would be the most interested in the green ramp spell staple though, I think I'd try to aim this slot more towards the RG archetype, or towards a glue card that any green deck is happy to pick.
Empty Frame: Oops, you're 100% right it's meant to sacrifice itself, it's a typo x)
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As long as CARDNAME has a counter on it, it has deathtouch
1/2
No, just losing two life wouldn't make it uncommon (it's actually the opposite because it would kill you pretty fast, it's the type of things you'd find at higher rarity because they require more careful deck building). It really needs to be conditional (discover only if you meet a requirement) or cost more mana (4 mana would probably be ok, but it'd be a bit dry as a card). The difficulty is finding a condition that would work, it wouldn't work with "whenever you cast your second spell each turn" for instance because you'd likely be out of mana. Renewal would need to trigger at the beginning of the end step which isn't very synergistic with what Discover is doing. Something like "As long as you have serran life" would be ideal (without the last life converting ability on the card, obviously) but it's not in-colours. I'm not sure what would work. Maybe on a creature with "Whenever this creature attacks", the downsides is that you need the creature to survive to abuse it.
BG deathtouch: That's too weak, we have a much better card at common for instance. Also, I'd like to make the archetype care about +1/+1 counters in a slightly different way than usual, so I'd like to explore designs that count the number of +1/+1 counters on your creature and actually scale if you put more +1/+1 counters on the same creature (the idea is that it would synergise interestingly with masterwork).
Sorcery
Sacrifice an art. Deal X damage, where X was the art's power.
Anyways, if that does work, I credit Ranshi with a lot of the balance.
At uncommon, it's probably better to allow to sacrifice any creature but give a bonus if it's an Art, especially because there's not way that card would compare favorably with just a Thud that's already one mana and works with any creature. However, Red doesn't really care about Art in the set, so I don't think it fits.
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To leave some breathing room for the WU archetype to be the real Storm deck full of cheap cantrips, I'd like to explore a bigger RU Discover deck. So, for the gold signpost, I figure the one I proposed earlier could also go on a monocoloured design, something like that — which is inspired by a conversation with LordTachanka earlier: (old on left, new on right)
Now, here are some designs exploring the UR uncommon signpost slot. Admittedly, some of them turned out more rare than uncommon xD Also, even if I tried to aim at a big-spell archetype, sometimes it ended up in a different place and I let it unfold to see where it was going:
Audacious Sparkmage: I don't see what's blue or red about Trample, and the added Haste is not exceptional.
Careless Experimenter: I can see that played somewhat, but then again, does UR actually use creature cards that much?
Dreams of New Worlds: First of, what's the bird token's color? Second, its secondary effect is just stupid good, I can see it on a GW if you remove the Discover from it, but to me it kinda doesn't fit in a UR deck.
Lab Squatter: @The-DM yes, the rat is high. I'd say it is balanced only because you should tap it to discover, but then again... There's plenty of cards that can discover in his place. An easy fix would be:
"Whenever Lab Squatter discovers, put X +1/+1 counters on Lab Squatter, where X is the discovered spell's cmc".
Also, 0/4? a rat with 4 toughness? Just drop its mana cost to UR and make it a 0/2 if anything.
Having UR be the "huge spells" archetype does seem interesting...
Audacious Sparkmage: Trample is at least secondary in red, so it's fine. It also helps make sure increased power from the second ability translates well to damage. Though haste seems either unnecessary, or just fine as a separate ability.
Careless Experimenter: Caring about creatures seems WG. Maybe noncreature cards and have X = cmc? This might push to rare territory though...
Dreams of New Worlds: Using Flamespeaker Adept and Knowledge and Power from Theros block as a reference, this might be a bit much. Maybe one or the either it would be nice to have one or the other but I just realised it's not quite possible to find the right wording for it: you always discover first, then you decide whether to cast the spell or not.
Another shot:
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Dreams of New Worlds
1UR Enchantment
Whenever you discover, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.
Whenever you cast a spell you discover, target creature you control gets +1/+1 and gains hexproof until end of turn.
---
Might be a bit too powerful, so I'm happy to add another cost (e.g. {1} or {2}) to rummage.
Lab Squatter: Agree with @Scaccogaming, but maybe make it a 1/2 or 0/3 that costs 1UR (for either one).
Confident Sailors: Yeah, now that you mention it, 2-mana cost reduction is probably a bit much, especially since they stack with each other! x)
Audacious Sparklage: Trample comes from the red! ^^
Careless Experimenter: UR doesn't necessarily care about noncreature spells, it's a common thing but not mandatory in every set. So far, we won't have a major noncreature theme in UR on Rezatta, though a few one-by-one designs are perfectly fair game. Still, I do agree with you that it feels awkward caring only about creatures. To tell you the truth, that design was supposed to have another ability that triggered when you cast a noncreature spell, but it was too wordy. I'd like this concept to work whatever the type of card you cast while still having a different effect depending on the discovered card. The rat design is probably closer to what I like by caring about CMC, as it also pushes for a big CMC deck which is more branded.
Dreams of New Worlds: The second ability is probably too much yes ^^ It was meant to synergise with the bird but I went a bit overboard with side-synergies. It does give me a new idea though:
Lab Squatter: This type of cards really needs to be clean mechanically, the name and illustration will be changed later, we'd rather change the illustration than the size of the card at this stage ^^ Honestly, I'm not convinced by the +1/+1 counters thing altogether, that's probably a bit swingy, so I don't think there's really a way to make it reasonably balanced. I'd save the CMC-matters idea from that concept though.
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LyndonF
Audacious Sparkmage: Yeah, the haste thing doesn't seem to get a lot of love x)
Careless Experimenter: I'd like to avoid the noncreature theme if possible (it's not mandatory in UR, just very common) but yes, the creature restriction is a bit weird. Ideally I'd like it to work with any discovered spell, so the rat caring about CMC might be onto something?
Dreams of New Worlds: Ah yes, you're right, the order of the trigger would get super unintuitive
For your redesign: We'll discuss this a bit later (I'm preparing a first draft of the uncommon set skeleton) but we'll need to decide which archetype(s) get repeatable card draw or loot from blue, and because discover is its own form of card advantage I don't want that archetype to pile up with other types of card advantage (outside discovering or regular-casting a draw spell).
Also, we should absolutely make more cards that affect P/T not being equal.
One last thing: I know I'm stressing you with old cards, but here are my last reprints of my last cards (plus one more extra):
What changed? Faithful is now a mono green, otherwise it is unchanged. Grimwood Lyrist now activates on "leaves the battlefield" instead of just death, to sinergize better with Arts and the like.
Relatively new, this is the rework of one of @LordTachanka123's cards, but I am not sure wether its wording is fine.
We'll see on playtest but, from my experience at common, Renaissance is actually pretty difficult to trigger ^^ For the cards that check for a certain amount of serran life, I'm not sure yet. From the threshold 1 cards at common, I found they're pretty easy to enable but the fun part is trying to keep your serran life once you got it.
Faithful of Mossbark: I definitely like it better in monogreen ^^ I'm not a huge fan of how swingy it looks though, the 6/6 for 4 is definitely a nice reward, but the 0/6 for 4 is really terrible. I think there's a territory where this can be ok-ish without the serran life while still being balanced once you meet the requirement (all without being the common Endangered Winterhowl). Because I'd like to make the GW archetype a sort of ticking bomb that waits on defence and then swings for lethal in one attack, I also think there's a version of this design that would be more interesting with +X/+0 where X is your serran life. I tried something similar at the beginning of the thread though it was a bit unbalanced I think (Faithful Envoy).
Grimwood Lyrist: The gold signposts are a bit of a different animal, we'll probably add them last to the set once we know what the other cards are and what the archetypes are missing. Still, in a vacuum, I'm a bit scared by the "can't be blocked" + hexproof combo, that seems like too much (also, "can't be blocked" needs blue). For the BG slot specifically, I'd like to try a different approach, leaving the graveyard reanimation theme to UB Art, and instead trying a BG +1/+1 counters archetype maybe, see if there's more synergy there. The idea to make it more branded would be to care about the number of +1/+1 counters on a single creature instead of spreading them like usual.
Artistic Damsel: The ally-coloured signposts are pretty restricted by the common themes, the WU one needs to be about second spell matters, while UB needs to be about Art tribal. Because of this, the other signposts should avoid caring about Art to separate the archetypes cleanly, otherwise people that see this card in draft would think there's a lot of Art synergy in white as well, and there's really not that much.
Instead:
Whenever you cast a spell you discoverED,...
Ah thanks, I genuinely wasn't sure ^^ It's because it happens as you discover (you cast the spell in between the resolution of the ability) so I got confused by how you'd say that in English xD
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Oh, I forgot on top of the cards I put above I also have a list of top-down concepts that weren't fully-fleshed but I really liked and would like to see made:
1) A glassblower-related card that makes something really fragile, for instance "Whenever this creatures becomes the target of a spell or ability, or is dealt damage, sacrifice it." I have a good glassblowing illustration from Sandara in my folders by the way:
2) A pair of equipment based around the masks of comedy and tragedy. The two masks need to have flavourful effects and mirror each other. Ideally, they would also reference each other, maybe adding a bonus effect if the equipped creature has both masks on, or we could put a card in the set that tutors for both masks, for instance. The illustration for the masks themselves have been a bit hard to find on my side, I was thinking maybe using this:
3) A statue card referencing the Thinker by Rodin. Ideally, it's a card that would make you think, so any card draw effect is fair game, but decisions are better so pile draw effects à la Fact or Fiction would be particularly suiting ^^ Here are two examples:
The Ponderer: for a 3 drop, it's a very powerful card, since it can activate other Art effects. Is it fair, paying 3 mana for up to 3 other on-death effects? (Given that they would activate, but I'm not sure)
Faithful of Mossbark: I printed it as a mono green because you said that you'd like it better that way, so I got rid of the white mana. I asked you what you would change from the original design to fit better in the GW slot, but I don't think you ever answered... Well, no matter. These are just ideas anyways.
Grimwood Lyrist: as before, you said that it would be better if the effects would activate as a creature leaves the battlefield instead of just dying, so I changed that, and now you say that it doesn't fit...? I can easily change the "can't be blocked" to "gains Menace", and I get that you want BG to be more branded, but you kinda left me baffled, sorry.
Artistic Damsel: Last time I presented you this card you said that it would fit as an uncommon, and it was already a WB card at the time... I'll figure out something better to do, since remaking cards repeatedly isn't that useful to the set anyway.
Sorry! I probably wasn't clear enough on how this works, so let me explain so you feel less baffled. At this stage, we're still brainstorming, which means we're trying to find good concepts that naturally fit. If a concept isn't a good fit it can't end up in the set even if the card is realistic. When a card doesn't fit, I try to explain why and more importantly I try to find the concept within it that might be of interest for the set. But it's 100% the right call to make several new cards instead of trying to push one design, because it's not a problem of numbers, it's a problem of concept. So, for the cards mentioned above:
- Faithful of Mossbark is not realistic yet, because of how swingy it is, but I think the concept of "a lot of serran life = you have a big creature" is good for the set and "caring about having a threshold of serran life >1" is good for the set. I don't know if there's ever a version of this specific card that could work properly however, because the concept of an expensive defender is awkward if it doesn't do anything really explosive on the side. So this one needs to be dismantled and the concepts behind it need to be iterated on a bit more. And again, I'm not talking about iterations on the numbers, I'm talking about the concept itself. For instance, maybe it wants to be a cheap oversized defender type of card like Thoughtbound Phantasm or Lambholt Pacifist:
Or maybe it needs to drop the defender gimmick and focus on the threshold aspect. This kind of iteration.
- Grimwwod Lyricist: I am not saying that the first ability doesn't fit, it's fine ^^ I specifically said it's the second ability that I don't find realistic, because hexproof + can't be blocked has historically led to unfun gameplay (see Invisible Stalker):
In addition, the gold uncommon signposts cards are very precious and complicated slots to fill because there's only one of each in the set. Even if the card is fine, it doesn't mean we can just put it in the set and call it a day. We might find another design that is more synergistic or original, or we might realise after doing the monocoloured cards that we need an enabler more than a pay-off.
For the BG slot specifically, all these iterations have me wondering if reanimation is really the right archetype for this colour combination. It's stepping on the toes of the UB archetype really hard, and I haven't found any original way of making this work so far. So I'd like to explore different options in parallel that might not be related to the graveyard.
This means that, so far, the card has a low chance of ending up in the set because even if you find a more balanced bonus to give for the second ability, the first ability is probably going to be taken by a monoBlack card, the concept is not promoting what's unique about the BG archetype (it's fine, but the signpost card needs to be a paragon of what the deck is doing), and the graveyard theme might go away altogether. I just would move on to a different concept and try new things, we might go back to this later if stars align once we add more cards to the set and realise it has a lot more synergies now.
- Artistic Damsel: Again, the role of the signpost cards is very clear, I doubt I said this would be fine as a WB uncommon either because it's not fitting the WB slot better than the WU slot. The thing that's fine about it is that it refills the hand of the WU deck which will really need it. But again, there's no point in trying to remake this card with different numbers, the concept is not a fit for the slot, this wants to be a monoblue card that draws cards for the WU deck, it shouldn't care about casting Art spells (especially since all Art synergies are on ETB/LTB) and it shouldn't care about converted mana cost 3 or less.
I hope this long explanation has left you less baffled as why I'm pushing back on some of the cards. The take-home message is that, at this stage, it's better to churn through 10 different concepts than trying to force one concept 10 times in different way because the concept might not just fit. We don't get attached to individual cards at this stage because 80% of the things we're putting at first will change anyways.
"Catch-up feature" something that helps you turn the tides of the match, I'm counting the "massive threat" slot in every colour as a catch-up feature as well, the second one is more meant to be mass removal or something like that.
"Pushed MMM" means that it's purposefully a little stronger, they're meant as reasons to splash the enemy colour in the usually-ally strategy to create more diversity.
"Directional MM" means a card that's not glue, it's very specifically geared towards one archetype and will tend to stop in the right hands during draft as they tend to be passed around by other players in draft.
_ _ _
Also, there is a few additional effects that are specific to this set I'd really like (it's far from exhaustive, just stuff we discussed already a bit but didn't flesh out completely):
- Instant speed discover spell
- Player's can't gain life this turn
- Discover twice (or thrice!)
- Renaissance — target opponent discards a card
- Whenever your masterwork deals combat damage to a player, draw a card
- Spell that care about what you discover qualitatively
Maybe a red card with this ability?
Whenever you discover a card with converted mana cost 4 or greater, you may exile it. Until the end of your next turn, you may play that card.
I think the concept of saving the discovered cards for later if you can't cast them is interesting but this wording specifically sounds a bit weird to me as it's proposing you to cast a card on top of an ability that is already proposing you to cast it. Maybe we could explore something that went very frontally into this concept and saved the cards if you mill them with discover instead of casting them, similar to what Bag of Holding is doing:
@IzItTru
It's not really the spirit of this cycle because they won't necessarily all be creatures (I just put them there for now but they'll move through the skeleton as we decide what suits each archetype better). Also, just to be sure that's clear, those cards are aimed at the tricoloured common themes but they will be monocoloured, there are no tricoloured cards in the set. On the other hand, a cycle of legendaries is exactly what the "exciting cycle" in the first slot of each colour is for, it's similar to Demigods on Theros, Syrs on Eldraine, etc. We were thinking either a cycle of artists, or a cycle of Arts that reference famous pieces of art ^^ We need to find the illustrations first before going into it though.
Quick examples (color/muse befitting the color/the correlated art or science)
White: Calliope (epic poetry)
Black: Melpomene (ragedy)
Blue: Urania (astronomy)
Red: Erato (passionate petry)
Green: Thalia (comedy)
Also, IF you actually like the idea, here's the very first try at Urania:
(couldn't find a better artwork, sorry. BUT Arcadia-art on Deviantart has a whole collection of illustrations such as this one representing all the Muses, so we could use that possibly. But given her design I thought "hey, let's make it an art for the fun of it")
I figured, since Urania is the muse of astronomy, I should give her some kind of ability that would fit some sort of divinator, hence the Scry effect.
The second effect doesn't really have an explanation honestly, I just wanted to give her some added value overall.
The third effect is actually the theme I wanted to try, for the cycle, much like the demigods gain power through devotion, Muses obtain power by the acts of mankind: Urania would, in my head, gain power thanks to the knowledge that people would gain, and the sheer will to discover new things.
So the Muse cycle's common effect could be "[cardname]'s power (or toughness) is equal to the number of [stuff depending on the muse]"
Creature
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, discover.
To synergise with the ur and wu
Mock the Divine
2R
Instant
Opponents can't gain life until the start of your next turn.
Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to any target.
If your life total is even, Mock the Divine deals 2 damage to another target.
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Purpose: Rework and more aggressive version of a card I designed about 6 pages ago. The previous version used renewal to trigger the second hit, but this was clunky and counter-intuitive to the point of the card. This version reads better and is easier to activate. Fills the 'blast any target' spot.
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Startling Concoction
3R
Creature - Elemental
If you discover this spell it costs {2} less to cast.
When Startling Concoction enters the battlefield, it deals 3 damage to target creature.
3/1
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Purpose: An option for the 'good removal' spot in red with a big payoff when Discovering it.
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Raucous Audience
3RR
Creature - Monkey Citizen
Trample
Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, Raucous Audience deals 2 damage to any target.
3/3
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Purpose: Pushed WUR 'second spell' payoff that provides repeated and versatile damage. This could also just go for opponent's faces like Guttersnipe.
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Delve into the Unknown
Sorcery
2R
Discover. If you don't cast this spell, Discover.
If you've cast a spell from the top of your library this turn, Discover.
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Purpose: Potentially a catch-up mechanic for Red in which they can discover between 1 and 3 times, and can get 1 to 2 spells cast out of discovering. The last line is a bit weirdly worded, but I think would be the correct way to phrase 'if you've cast a spell via discover, discover again' without ambiguity. Gives a potential double/triple discover as well.
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Recede Into Study
1U
Instant
Target player mills 3, and their life total can't change until end of turn.
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Purpose: I'm not sure if this would fit into the skeleton so this is more of a speculative design on the idea of blue stopping life gain from some comments around when I last commented. This can be used either as a fog on yourself with a drawback, or as an offensive tool to prevent a big life swing.
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Chart the Horizon
1G
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.
If serran life was paid to cast this spell, untap one of the lands put onto the battlefield this way.
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Purpose: A ramp spell that rewards having and using serran life aggressively by 'refunding' the mana portion of the cost of spending serran life on the spell.
- Oh also, as a point, shouldn't Empty Frame sacrifice itself when its ability is used? This would be in line with Shamble Back, and otherwise it spits out a 2/2 token for 1 mana each turn potentially.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/invoke-the-renaissance
Delve into the Unknown: I like it, but the wording is quite clunky. What does the "if you don't cast this spell, discover" part mean? Here's how I'd word it:
(2)(R)
Sorcery
Discover. If you've already cast a spell by discovering it this turn, Discover again.
If you discard this card, Discover.
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That way it should make you able to discover 1 to 3 times, fitting for a second-spell matters theme. Overall I just wanted to try polishing out the wording, dunno if I did a good job tho.
Aside from that, here's my idea for a anti-life card:
Curse of Malebranche (spelled Mal-ae-bran-ke)
(1)(B)
Instant
As an additional cost to cast this spell, discsrd a card. Target player discards a card and cannot gain life this turn.
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(Purpose: generally, anti-life spells are black in my book, the spell itself is cheap and works well with Art recursion, Graveyard and Suicide aggro. The theme of the card revolves around the possible presence of Demons in the plane, opposing to the presence of Serra and Angels. The added cost to cast also fits the Demon abilities, if I recall correctly (nobody said we can't have demons here, since they, alongside Devils, are quite fitting for a reinassance theme).
About the name, Malebranche is the name of the group of 12 demons that, in the Divine Comedy, torture the damned and control the Malebolge, leading Dante and Virgil down the bolge of the Fraudolents.
About the Uncommon muses: For the exciting cycle, I'd really favour artists or their art if possible because it's more on theme. The muse idea is supposed to be like the cherry on top of the cake, it goes well with the cake but it's not fully part of the cake itself, it brings something different. That's why they're scheduled to be huge and exciting rares or mythic and not simply uncommons. In addition, the set won't revolve around the Muses — Renaissance was originally supposed to be the emotion mechanic, but it's surprisingly difficult to find good illustration for this theme, so I removed it. This means that it won't be like the Gods in Theros or Amonkhet who had full cycles with their names in it at lower rarity, the Muses will be a more secret cycle, we might make an additional cycle of spells to go with them like the Apex of Ikoria, but otherwise it's more something like the Gearhulks of Kaladesh, for instance:
That being said, those illustrations look beautiful, I'm sure we can find a spot for them ^^
Delve into the Unknown: I've answered below about the card itself (I do think it's too complicated for what it's doing) but for templating, I think I'd like to go with "spell you discovered" whenever we reference the things you cast with discover ^^ Also, discover doesn't discard, it mills
"Discover. If you cast a spell you discovered this way, discover. Then, if you didn't cast a spell you discovered this way, discover."
Curse of Malebranche: Black could also be a candidate for an anti-lifegain card ^^ That being said, Red will be at a disadvantage in this set because of all the life gain that will nullify its usual burst potential, so I want Red to have priority on this slot. Which leaves the question: Do we want two anti-lifegain cards in the set? We might very well, it's a tricky balance between keeping serran life in check and not smothering the fun interactions from the set. We'll have to wait for the first playtests to see if the set can support this kind of cards in black. For the discard part, I'd remove the additional cost of discarding a card, otherwise you two-for-one yourself which is pretty harsh, and making an opponent discard a single card is actually not worth much, as you can see with this example at common from Guilds of Ravnica, Vicious Rumors:
@LordTachanka123
It's a bit awkward because if you already cast two spells you probably won't have the mana to cast a third one >.< I think it would be better if it helped you cast your second spell instead, by saying "Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, discover". Obviously, this is much more powerful, but I think it makes more sense. I'd go all the way and make it a full rare or mythic, maybe something like this:
Je_Suis_Oluwa
Invoke the Renaissance: It's a bit too weak to justify taking a whole slot ^^ This is more the kind of effect you'd put on top of another design to add about half-a-mana of value to it. Think "Scry 1" for instance, you'd probably not play a 1-mana card that just said "Scry 1".
Mock the Divine: I like the concept of putting the no-life effect on a damage spell because Red will be at a disadvantage in this set due to the higher than normal life gain, so it needs some really strong staples. We'll have to see for the exact numbers, this will depend on the other burn spells in the set. A priori, separating it in two reminds me a bit too much of the common Sparks, also I'd be down for a 3-or-4 damage spell in this slot, and preferably a two-mana spell if possible but that might be impossible with the no-life clause.
Startling Concoction: "If you discover this spell" is a super difficult condition to meet, you'd need an amazingly strong reward for that. I do like that you made it still playable if you don't discover it though ^^ Alternatively, I've proposed something a bit similar but with more applications above by using "if you didn't cast it from your hand". This allows cross-synergies with blink spells and reanimation spells on top of discovering the spell, so it's a bit easier to turn on. It might apply in this case too.
Raucous Audience: That's exactly the kind of effects that would push players to go explore red with their Storm deck even if there are less red cards dedicated to the archetype, I like it very much ^^ I do think that the 5-CMC is a bit antisynergistic with the Storm archetype (you might be out of cards by the time you play this). I'd consider something cheaper, similar to Pyromancer's Assault. Maybe something like this (might be too strong):
Delve Into the Unknown: I think it's too complicated and I wouldn't want to miss the occasion for a simple but exciting design in this slot. That being said, Faiths_Guide also proposed something similar that is meant to create a safety net for discover for when you can't cast the card, and you two are not the first ones. So I think at this point it's an expected design and we definitely will have to deliver on it ^^
Recede Into Study: Incidental mill will only be valuable if we decide to go for a mill secondary theme (which we could), so I can't tell if it fits yet ^^ However, the second ability is something new that the set could be trying, but as far older sets are concerned it's a bend/break for blue (I just think it's the perfect set to give blue a few new tools to interact with life points). This means that I'd like the global design of the card to really sell the idea, I want the mechanical flavour to say "See? This could make sense in blue". So I'd be looking for something more flavourful with the first effect, that would explain why life totals are frozen, maybe it freezes a creature too, for instance.
Chart the Horizon: Haha, you're not the first one to propose this kind of design, unfortunately you don't pay serran life to cast the spell, you pay serran life to add mana, and then you pay the mana. The easiest way to do this is actually to create an alternative cost of 1 mana and 2 serran life. I don't think the GW serran life would be the most interested in the green ramp spell staple though, I think I'd try to aim this slot more towards the RG archetype, or towards a glue card that any green deck is happy to pick.
Empty Frame: Oops, you're 100% right it's meant to sacrifice itself, it's a typo x)