A crazy idea for a return to Alara

zenlos_the_travelerzenlos_the_traveler
in Custom Card Sets
I was brainstorming on three-color based blocks, and had this simple idea. Which is, that post-conflux, all the 3 color shards would change to 3 color wedges, that share some similarities with the old shard, but with the new color identity worked in. The idea comes from the exposure of the shards to different colors of mana during the conflux, thus getting a little confused, well still keeping some parts of the core identity.

So each shard potential themes.
Bant- Bants original mechanic was attack-focused, so I simply switch it out with the Mardu mechanic of raid (An ability word which cares if you attacked this turn), A reworked form of bushido could also work.
Esper- I wanted Etherium to come into play here, so my mechanic of choice is energy, rebalanced of course (Mostly reducing the number of self-fueling energy cards). Also plenty of colored artifacts still.
Grixis- I have no idea on this one, but certainly, something based on the graveyard.
Jund- Metabolize (Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature), Jund had +1/+1 counters, and Jeskai likes spells, so this slightly more narrow but notably stronger prowess works well.
Naya- A rework of delve, that can only exile creatures and lands in the graveyard, not sure on a name yet.

Then throw in some 5-color spells on top, and a multi-colored matter mechanic.


Comments

  • DJK3654DJK3654
    Messing subtly with the shards of Alara I think is a cool idea but turning them into wedges I think is not. We've seen other worlds with a wedge theme but Alara has a shard theme. Changing the colours would piss people off much more than it would interest them.
    As far as more subtly messing with the shards I could see shifting the focus on the shards to different colours e.g. Jund but now green is the main colour. Or having a theme of cross-shard cards perhaps including a select number of four and/or five colour cards. Which is something you touched on in your description.

    Raid is a fine mechanic to bring back but might be a little unexciting. I would definitely explore other options before deciding on using it in something like this.
    Bringing back energy in a faction set is I think a mistake as energy already has significant set infrastructure needs so it wants more room to breathe. Reducing the number of self fueling energy cards might be the opposite of helpful, as the biggest problem with energy is it being parasitic i.e. energy cards all want to be played together. The number of self fueling energy cards was done partly to try and make some of those cards more playable in a deck with a small number of energy cards. Meanwhile the big problem Aetherworks Marvel done already ran a bunch of energy granting cards so self fueling wasn't really the problem.
    Metabolize feels like worst prowess. Prowess is already a reasonably powerful ability, and while this is more restricted in what it triggers of, the upgrade to counters is pretty big. i think it will be tricky to make a large number of well balanced and fun cards with this effect. I also think it's not very exciting in a world were we have seen prowess and many prowess like individual card effects.
    Like actually sounds like a reasonable mechanic. I don't know how it would be received in a world were delve exists, but it's promising. It is, effectively, fixed delve but I think the differences introduce a new strategic element and I think can be flavoured onto to feel notably different.
  • AboveAndAboutAboveAndAbout
    I personally think turning the shards into wedges would be a really cool idea. It might be interesting to see something about how after the Conflux, the colors got mixed and resulted in new color wedges.
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