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Atlantis-Themed Set
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Ah yeah, I guess you're usually searching your own library anyways ^^ The rules seem fine, there are probably a few things that aren't necessary in there but the most important is that you are aware of the potential issues beforehand. You're probably going to refine your opinion on some of these dilemmas as you start encountering them more during playtest anyways so there's no need to try to create a perfect rules book at this stage.
It's too bad to see Scrycast go because it is a very synergistic and interesting mechanic, but it does create hard-to-avoid issues of repetitive gameplay. Hopefully cards that can be cast from the top of your harbor will be enough to fill that design space.
Also, here's a random design for the harbor mechanic that just popped into my head x)
So I'm thinking of having two different archetypes revolving around harbor. One that cares about the top of your harbor, and the other cares about having X or more cards in your harbor (I'm gonna start at 4, then increase it if it's too easy to achieve).
I don't want to lock in any archetypes just yet, but for playtesting I do want to select some color combination that fits. Should I spread the harbor-matters over four colors (like party and WU and BR archetypes), or should I have the archetypes in three colors, with the other two colors not as invested in harbor?
If I remember correctly, WOTC stated their first play tests at common are made in an archetype-less environnement with filler cards from previous sets in holes they haven't designed yet. You should probably aim for that first, while keeping in mind the potential draft archetypes for later. One of MaRo's most important advice is to get a feel of the cards in a playtest as much as possible. From my personal experience, it can be a bit daunting to playtest a whole set from the start from a logistical perspective, so here's my own advice on this: Create two 40-cards decks, one with 2-colours and one with 3-colours so that all 5 colours are covered. Fill the decks with as many different ways to interact with harbor as you can think of without caring about a specific theme, then play those decks against each other. Once you've done that, you'll immediately have a much clearer picture of where Harbor should go (or not go) in the future.
Shark-Pirate Planeswalker:
Possible colors: UBR
Sorrin:
Colors: WB
Kiora/Another Merfolk Planeswalker:
Possible colors: If Kiora, UG, otherwise, some mix of WUG
I'm fine with the next two ideas being just creatures, but I think they should be in the story.
Surface Protector Planeswalker:
Possible colors: WR(+G?)
Scarecrow-Demon Planeswalker:
Colors: Colorless?
Having both Sorin and Kiorra sounds like a lot of returning planeswalkers a priori, it would mean the story would be centred around mostly existing characters. Out of the two, Kiorra seems to make the most sense in an underwater set but having too many water-related planeswalkers would be an issue as well. You'll need at least one unexpected theme in there at some point so Sorin could be that surprising planeswalker.
Personally, I think the surface protector looks a bit too technologic for a regular fantasy setting. Also, I suspect the proportions of that creature would fit awkwardly in a planeswalker card frame, you should definitely check that before committing to it.
The underwater scarecrow looks really cool as well, but it looks redundant with the shark pirate in terms of themes and colours. Having both of them in the set at same time might be an issue. I'm also unsure how this would fit in a planeswalker card frame. In general, I'd suggest to stay away from colourless planeswalkers, they're horrifying to balance xD
https://www.artstation.com/lightwing
So if I'm not mistaken, the artist's name is "光翼学园 Lightwing Academy"
I kinda see what you mean about the surface protector. Looking closer at the art, it is more robotic than I realized. I would suggest a hyromancer planeswalker, but I'm not sure if having too many planeswalkers in blue is a problem. I know that three of the four planeswalkers in Kaldheim had black somewhere in their color identity.
Also, I see what you mean about the scarecrow art being fairly similar to the shark pirate. But what if its whole schtick is that it imitates stories and legends? So if it was in Innistrad, it would imitate some horror story, and if it was on Amonkhet, it would imitate the legend of some pharaoh. On this plane, it could imitate the notoriety of the shark planeswalker. I could attempt to change the colors with the very limited photo editing skills I have so it looks a bit different.
1) It's going to be hard to balance in Limited because having access to a planeswalker is a strong incentive to play that colour, or at least splash it. If one colour has access to multiple planeswalkers while another has none, it's going to create an imbalance in colour attractiveness.
2) Planeswalkers of the same colours will eat each other's design space, making two planeswalkers feel different while they share similar colours is particularly difficult.
That being said, both these issues can be addressed if it's really necessary as you can warp the set around the solution. But why risk it this early in the development of your set when you could just colour balance your planeswalkers? It's not like illustrations and concepts for good planeswalkers are rare, almost anything could be a planeswalker.
In the specific case of the scarecrow, a mimicking trickster planeswalker could be interesting but having it mimick a planeswalker from the same set causes the obvious issue that they would be redundant in gameplay. You'd basically be giving two planeswalker cards to the same archetype, which would considerably warp the balance of the set — and offer debatable interest in term of gameplay as most players would just play the stronger one and ignore the other in Constructed. The best way to do a mimicking planeswalker would probably be to either focus on the copying theme without mimicking a specific planeswalker (likely cutting off the blue/black colours off other possible planeswalkers), or mimick a well-known planeswalker from a colour-combination that is actually available in the set (but I'm failing to see the point of not having the original planeswalker in this case, and also finding a good illustration to convey that sounds virtually impossible). So, I'd call the mimick idea a lot of trouble for what doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting reward.
For the shark, I've been envisioning them tapping into that apex predator vibe, and I have a feeling that the abilities will show that.
At least I have another Daft Punk song name that sounds like it would thematically work (Sea of Simulation)
I made here are the different types of cards I made:
WR (There will be 3 copies of most cards in this deck):
UBG (There will be 2 copies of most cards in this deck):
And I'm gonna put this in both decks:
For background, Leyglobes are going to be bubbles that are infused with mana. They're mostly just for flavor purposes, except for probably some mana rock like this ^.
What happens if you put cards in your harbor in large quantity ? Or from your graveyard ? Or use your harbor a a way to tutor cards from your library ? How does it feel to interact with cards that search your library or scry or mill ? Can you scale effects based on the size of your harbor ? If so, would you use a threshold? Or would a mythic with power and toughness equal to the size of your harbor work?The playtest is here to answer this kind of questions, let you get a feel of the mechanic.
In the spirit of being effective, I also have a couple tips on how to conduct these "mechanics playtest":
- Make 40 decks cards
- Make singleton decks
- Don't make full-fleshed cards, it takes too long to come up with matching names and illustrations, most likely 99.99% of these cards won't actually be in the set. Personally, I like to just stick a square of paper with a note in front of a sleeved card, but the point is focus on quantity rather than quality at this stage
I also got this idea for another planeswalker, but I feel like the art is a bit too similar to the Shark Planeswalker as well. I imagine them being some form of Law Enforcer/Protector that doesn't mind getting their hands dirty (Growing up on an island of pirates has to be rough), hence the evil-looking flame in their hand.
- Harbor is really fun and has a lot of depth. As expected, it's also really helping the card flow of the game and reduces mana issues.
- Harbor is a complex mechanic in terms of decision making. Having a card on top of your harbor will often slow down the game in the same way scrying 1 at the beginning of your upkeep would since you often need to plan your whole turn before deciding from which library you want to draw.
- Milling is the ultimate counter to harbor and it feels like the right dose of incidental mill will be the key to a successful Limited environment as the interaction between the two is super satisfying.
- Putting multiple cards into your harbor at once can feel a bit clunky since you need to read each card and remember their order. I'd definitely favour putting one card at a time into the harbor since that's when the fun of the mechanic shines at its purest for me.
- The goal of emptying the harbor in the UR deck was very hard but did lead to interesting gameplay. I'd still favour the "Whenever you draw a card from your harbor" trigger overall since it plays similarly but doesn't feel as anti-synergistic with the rest of the cards.
- The goal of reaching six cards in the harbor was also quite difficult but happened at the right moment to emphasise the beginning of the late game. I'd totally playtest more cards with a threshold of just one card in your harbor instead.
- Harbor made everyday staples super fun and interesting. Any interaction with card drawing was a real delight to play with.
- Cards that interacted with the top of the harbor were fun since they weren't random but the ones that looked at a string of cards from the top of your harbor to create sort of combos were really hilarious to play with (e.g. I hit a pocket of lands with "Not-Niv" from the UR deck and drew like 5 cards then distributed 5 damage). A way to re-order your harbor to facilitate those combos would definitely be a plus.
- Harbor can be a little overwhelming and it's not difficult to accidentally bury a card you wanted to draw by adding more cards onto your harbor. You have to act quick if you want to interact with the top card of your harbor.
- Because of the points above, and the fact that putting the top card of your library on top of your harbor seems to be the most efficient way to fill it, I feel like a keyword is needed for this action. More specifically, I would go with "ACTIONNAME (Put the top card of your library on the top or bottom of your harbor.)" similarly to scry to help control the sequence of cards in your harbor. In addition, this would reduce the risk that players just use the top card of their library to fill their harbor out of habit in the more unusual instances where the card needs to come from somewhere else.
- Cards that die into your harbor are absolutely back-breacking. I already hate that phoenix and I only played like two games xD
- The land that starts the game into your harbor is obviously problematic from a meta perspective since every deck in existence would logically want four of them. But I wanted to test its power, see how much it impacted the game and honestly I don't think it played that well. Usually it's not that hard to put a land into your harbor through other means anyways, so I ignored it most of the time.
Also, here are some thoughts on specific cards I've tested so far:1) Those cards have a really cool play pattern and I 100% would recommend adding them to the actual set:
2. Those cards had interesting play patterns but also glaring balancing issues. I'd 100% playtest different versions of them because I think they could lead to something fun:
The phoenix was a little too annoying, it probably doesn't need haste.
I was in way over my head with Harbor Frenzy XD The cards just pile up on top of your harbor as you play more of them and you have very little control about what's happening. A way to stop the madness without having to empty your harbor would definitely be appreciated xD
The 9-mana creature played great but it's not that hard to play it early for 3 or less mana so 6/6 was a bit generous x)
Also, note that I haven't done that much playtesting, those are just first impressions so if a card isn't in one of those lists doesn't mean it wasn't fun — or broken
I know that Boros is typically the color pair with the least amount of card advantage, so I feel like its fitting to have a deck that cares about having as many cards in your harbor as possible. For the Sultai deck, I'm thinking of something that cares about the top card of your harbor, or uses cards in your harbor in some way.
I did have a feeling that a keyword would be a good idea to have. As it is right now, that action could technically put the top card of your harbor on the top or bottom of your harbor. Should it stay worded like that in order to reorganize your harbor?
In terms of the cards that care about drawing from your harbor, I think that the triggered abilities sound cool, but I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about cards that say something like "as long as you have drawn a card from your harbor", since it feels a bit similar to sink.
I'll keep in mind some of the cards you made while finishing up the lists I'm making for playtesting.
Another idea I had is that instead of returning from your graveyard to your harbor, you could put it from your harbor or graveyard onto the battlefield. However, I think that this would need a large requirement.
(I don't think the requirement in this example would be the actual requirement, it's just what came to mind first.)
Bringing card filtering to white is probably a good idea in itself since it alleviates its drawing issues! Here's a design to inspire you:
Ah and yeah, if anyone else is playing with the cards, scratch what I said earlier, playing on little squares of paper is a little dry, you might want to give the cards some names and illustrations if you don't want your father to run away XD
WR 5+ cards in harbor:
UBG Draw or play from harbor:
Game 1 (I played UBG, my dad played WR): In game one, my dad had pretty bad luck and wasn't able to put enough card in his harbor until much later in the game. Throughout the game Raid of the Drowned created probably too much value. The constant 1/1s were very helpful when it came to getting death triggers on darkwater hunter, but I don't think that they were too overwhelming. The activated ability, however, was very powerful. I think that if it were to be used on a card, it would need to be nerfed hard. Overall, I was pretty content with how most cards played out in game one. The only other thing that was probably too good was the free extra draw with Viletide Reaper.
Game 2 (I played WR, my dad played UBG): This game was practically over when I played Dockside Charger turn 4 with Curious Coralfolk on the battlefield. This could have been because I didn't put enough removal in the UBG deck, but I felt like the 6/5 coralfolk and 5/4 Coral Reef Knight I had were too overwhelming for my dad's small creatures. Again, my dad didn't have the greatest luck with putting cards in the harbor.
Overall: Harbor was very fun, and both me and my dad found it very enjoyable to play with. Haul felt great, as it provided both fuel for harbor, and filtering through the harbor in the late game. I feel like there should be at least a few cards in the set that put cards from your hand into your harbor, since it felt disappointing whenever I wasn't able to cast a card from your harbor instead of your hand.
• Common: Make a cycle with a threshold of 1
• Uncommon: Make a cycle that care about the top card of your harbour, maybe its colour.
• Rare: Make a cycle that scales with the number of cares in your harbour.
• Keep "If you have N>1 or more cards in your harbour" to a specific two-colour combination, it's a great marker of when the end game starts but it's also really clunky if you're not a dedicated deck.
E.g.
Also, cards that can be cast from the top of your harbour definitely didn't shine in my playtests either. I don't think this is a particularly fun design space, I'd probably limit it to a couple or higher rarity cards that can put themselves in your harbour, personally, and forget about putting this ability on commons altogether.
For the general playtest, some cards look like they'd be definitely unbalanced but it doesn't matter, the point of this playtest is not to actually put cards in your set file but to get a sense of the mechanic in itself, what is the design space and what is fun or not inside of it ^^ If you're feeling comfortable with Harbor being your novelty mechanic after this playtest, then congratulations, you've just passed a really important—and difficult—milestone! =D
Now, you get to search for other themes and mechanics to give some depths to your set, preferentially things that are synergistic with harbour. I'd suggest starting with a more combat-relevant mechanic now that you've got card flow covered.
WU - No great idea
WB - No great idea
WR - Having cards in your harbor
WG - No great idea
UB - Self-Mill/Sink
UR - No great idea
UG - Cycling
BR - No great idea
BG - Graveyard fuel (Exile cards from your graveyard for value)
RG - 4+ power or "Sea Monster tribal"
Quick thing to note: I added two archetypes that aren't related to any of the mechanics so far, but thought their general ideas were interesting, and I didn't add a "drawing cards, especially from your harbor" archetype to this list of ideas since I felt like it might be too close to cycling.
So it seems like this combat/permanent-related mechanic would probably be focused in white and another color. I feel like it should thematically link to merfolk or the "Atlantis" location in some way, since I they haven't really been focused on so far.
I personally like to think of the possible archetypes in advance because it helps me find the themes, but officially they start to playtest their commons without any specific draft archetypes, it's more a mish-mash of possible themes and cool cards until they isolate the fun parts, make more of that and turn it into an archetype.
Self-mill feels like a good companion theme to go with sink—and harbor if you make an agressive archetype about emptying your harbor.
You're free to handle this how you want obviously, but having harbor/haul in the set would normally rule out any other mechanic aimed at smoothing card draw (outside of Scry, which is evergreen). This means that, in a normal set, you wouldn't have cycling, or explore, or surveil in the same set as haul.
Graveyard fuel is synergistic with a mill theme though it's a bit awkward to have an archetype centred around emptying your graveyard when your set's main focus is emptying the library. It might be distracting from the main theme. Maybe it would help if it was more of an exchange between the graveyard and library for instance. I'd maybe explore a twist on the idea where you put the cards back in your library (meaning that you protect from self-mill but also get card selection if you have a harbor). Actually, now that I "write it out loud", the obvious solution seems to be a graveyard-to-harbor recursion archetype.
Sea monsters tribal seems like the perfect place to start searching for the next mechanic, in my opinion. It branches out your set in a completely different direction that is more combat-focused while still making perfect sense in that world. You could start thinking about how you're going to handle sea monsters in the set and, in particular, how are you going to distribute the different sea creature types between colours to offset the strong bias towards Blue. Think of it at how they made Innistrad and had to deal with the fact that 99% of relevant creature type in this word would have been black in any other set.
Speaking of sea monsters, I feel like it would be hard to have a combat-related mechanic for big creatures. I have a feeling that most sea monsters will be somewhere in Temur colors, so the only mechanic I've thought of is something similar to ferocious, which I don't think any set has multiple ability word mechanics. I know it isn't combat-related, but what about the Sea Monster batching mechanic idea I suggested a while ago to bring Octopus, Kraken, Leviathan, and Serpent closer to having an actual tribal archetype?
Bad example, but demonstrates the idea of the mechanic:
Sea monsters sounds like a flavourful option ^^ Another way to do something similar might be to care about large creatures in general. Maybe there is some original way to do it that haven't been explored yet, for instance "creatures with total power and toughness 8 or more", "creatures with both power and toughness 4 or more", or "creature with power, toughness, or mana value 5 or more."
If you're having big sea monsters, a mechanic that helps players ramp is probably going to be necessary. Obviously treasures would be perfect for this, maybe there's some design space that would feel particularly original that hasn't been explored yet with treasures. For instance, their similarities with food and clue tokens is an interesting property that has barely been explored. An alternative cost mechanic to tie sea monsters together mechanically would also be a strong option, something in the vein of Emerge for example:
Now that I'm writing it, the name is pretty flavourful as well for an underwater set. Maybe there's something there. Also, I'm petty sure there is some interesting and unexplored design space with this mechanic, they only had cast triggers to fit the eldrazi theme but you might find a cool variation for sea monsters? Also of note, it could work on noncreature spells and haven't been done before.
I think I have some neat ideas, but balancing will definitely be required.
For the mythic, I just wanted to play with the idea of a card that can sacrifice more than one creature to pay for an emerge cost, I know it's really powerful. I have a feeling that it will be more like "You may sacrifice up to [#] creatures to pay for [Name]'s emerge cost", so there is a limit.
Here's some more designs I made: