I like rebellion, I just need a little more time to think about it before giving my full endorsement. I'm curious what others think about it. Your ally example is an excellent one for showing that a block specific mechanic can be certainly be done (not that rebels don't exist outside the block).
I agree that we want to reference brainwash for sure. I guess that I'm just saying that we can make cards that interact with -1/-1 counters too. Or even some that just reference counters in general (think Kulrath Knight). Overall, I just think there is a ton of room in brainwash. It's kinda sad that we won't be using it in the second set. But I think the reasoning is worth it. Speaking of the second set, I'm thinking that we still drop the implant mechanic in the second set and come with something new for the Brotherhood. Anybody on board with that? Although I guess there is no real reason this needs to be decided now.
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(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
I also like rebellion. It suggests that we want the rebel decks in this limited format to be aggressive, which is a good fit for red and white but requires some work in green. That can be a nice contrast to the brotherhood-colored decks, whic look like they want to mess with counters and control the board.
Those are all good points scrad. Rebellion is growing on me the more I think about it. Each time a rebel hits it emboldens others to join the rebellion, or to lash out in defiance in the case of instants and sorceries. I'm not sure I like the name rebellion though. It's a little on the nose. Would embolden work? Lion? It is your idea.
Edit: I still feel like we need a white based mechanic that just screams oppression, but we are already at 5 mechanics if we go with rebellion. I'm all for adding a 6th ability if we can come up with something that works here.Edit2: After reading a PM from lion, I no longer feel this is actually needed. It looks like we may have all of our mechanics set barring something unforeseen that is discovered during play testing. BTW, I fully intend to print out the cards we make, then force my friends to draft the set with me.
(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
I just wanted to pipe in and say I like Rebellion and Recruit as mechanics, Rebellion is a bit specific but it is fine to have ocassional specific mechanic.
I'm not sure I like the name rebellion though. It's a little on the nose. Would embolden work? Lion? It is your idea.
You managed to find a word I didn't know the meaning of despite being half English! I had to check it in Google Translator! There it's defined as "give (someone) the courage or confidence to do something or to behave in a certain way". This works perfectly as the mechanic's flavor. I also have problems with the name "rebellion" because it's what I've officially called the faction until now, so when I talk about "rebellion" context would be needed to understand if I'm referring to the faction or the mechanic. I used it first as a placeholder name to distinguish the mechanic from the others I was proposing, but I agree about changing the name to avoid the potential confusion I was just talking about. So let's reintroduce:
Embolden COST (You may cast this spell for its embolden cost if you dealt combat damage to a player this turn with a Rebel.)
BTW, I fully intend to print out the cards we make, then force my friends to draft the set with me.
Unforunately, I can't afford such a luxury, so I will have to recur to online methods. We can and should use both, but we'll see when we actually get to that point.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I have no idea how to play with custom cards on the internet. Someone would have to explain this to me, and then I might still not be able to do it. My PC is junk, and I always use my work laptop to post cards. I can't download most programs onto my laptop, so if it involves that, I'm not sure I can even do it. Either way, my Magic-playing friends will help me test it whether they like it or not. (Most of them have no interest in hearing about "fake" cards, but nonetheless, I'm sure they'll help me when the time comes.) I would really like to be able to test it with the team though. That would be great.
So everyone is good with embolden? Name and all? Should it be emboldened? To be honest, the only reason I even came up with the name is because it's the word I naturally used to describe it earlier in the post. I suppose that's a pretty decent reason though.
So we basically just need to hash out the following right?
- How finalized do we think we are story-wise? We already are set for mechanics in the first set (detain, brainwash, implant, recruit & embolden).
- The environment. This includes city/town names and basic setup, as well as the natural terrain. Also, what are the native non-sentient creatures like?
I've always pictured the cities of Ormos being walled, and set apart from nature. I only see beasts of burden within the city walls. Also, I don't see a lot of cities, I picture a somewhat small plane. I also kinda see Dahl making the citizens somewhat fearful of what's outside the city walls. Not a major theme, but just another way for Dahl to keep his people fearful, and dependent upon him to protect them (this is where I can see a few mindless Zombies coming in). "Save me Father Dahl" can mean any number of things in this block.
- What are the rest of the sentient creature types? We still only have Vedalken in blue, right?
I don't have anyhitng on this right now but the following is a list of recurring creature types I have some problem seeing on Ormos. Although I'm sure we could work a few of any of them in if we wanted...
Dragons
Angels
Demons
Sphinx
Merfolk (Should this just be our last blue creature type? I have a problem seeing Dahl control what is essentially another world.)
Faeries (This works better than Merfolk in my opinion.)0
Vampires (I still like mindless Zombies much better than this. If we did do it, it would have to be the monstrous type as suggested by scrad (I think?).
- We also still need to decide if we are going to have multi-color cards, and if so, how many?
For the record, I'm thinking we should have few. That might just be because multi-color cards are my favorite though.
- Last we need to lay out a skeleton, and decide what events and characters in our story we need to represent on cards.
What am I missing here. I'm sure a bunch.
I think I still plan to post a longwinded rambling story-type post at some point. But it would just be to help set the tone a bit more, and wouldn't be anything that would really change the story at all. I'm wondering if I should wait until we answer some of the questions above before I do so though.
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(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
@Tilwin....I know there is ton of back and forth in the thread, and it would be very difficult take the entire thread in at this point, therefore, I highly recommend lion's blog on the set. It is in his signature. The blog does an excellent job of summing up where we are now in a much clearer and more concise way. That way you don't need to try to decipher it from these walls of text. Anyway, glad to see you back and active. I hope your RL is slowing a down a bit for you. I know its hard to stay on top of such a demanding hobby when RL is standing in the way. Stupid real life!
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(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
I have no idea how to play with custom cards on the internet...
Neither do I. We'll see when the time comes. It's useless to discuss this now.
Should it be emboldened?
I like the shorter name best.
So we basically just need to hash out the following right?
I was exactly thinking about what we're missing yesterday night too.
- How finalized do we think we are story-wise?
Pretty much. I think we just have to identify the five pivotal moments we want to represent in the first set, as scrad mentioned a while ago. I am thinking about identifying those and will have a proposal in short order.
We already are set for mechanics in the first set (detain, brainwash, implant, recruit & embolden).
Yes, we are. We'll need two new mechanics, one for the Brotherhood and one for the Rebels, in the second set, and that's where Tilwin's mechanics will come in handy. Feedback on those later.
- The environment. This includes city/town names and basic setup, as well as the natural terrain. Also, what are the native non-sentient creatures like?
This is the major component we lack, and the only real one we need to address before getting to what we all actually want: the cards! Your suggestions are a very nice first step in the direction of worldbuilding.
- What are the rest of the sentient creature types? We still only have Vedalken in blue, right?
Yes, that's correct. We need a secondary race for blue (could that just be Faeries after all?) and I'll eliminate Vampires from the list keeping the mindless Zombies as secondary one for black.
- We also still need to decide if we are going to have multi-color cards, and if so, how many?
For the record, I'm thinking we should have few.
Yes, every large set nowadays has a few multicolored cards, mostly and notably including the "draft archetype" uncommons, which we will definitely need. And draft archetypes are another thing we should establish before designing cards.
- Last we need to lay out a skeleton,
Leave that to me! I wanted to prepare a first layout for the design skeleton last night but in the end I didn't, I might just do it later today.
and decide what events and characters in our story we need to represent on cards.
Again, pivotal moments proposal coming soon.
What am I missing here. I'm sure a bunch.
Actually, I think you're only missing draft archetypes.
I'm wondering if I should wait until we answer some of the questions above before I do so though.
Yes, I'd wait. We can't do everything at once. Let's address things one at a time, otherwise we all lose track of what's going on.
I didn't have time to look over the whole discussion on the story right now.
As Flatline suggested, just check out the story and flavor page on my blog here and you'll be fine.
I did start to make some brainstorming on mechanics for both factions and I will return with a list of ideas as soon as I have it. Feel free to dismiss them or build up different ideas on them as you see fit.
As I said above, these are appreciated, but they'll come in handy later for the second set. We'll need one new mechanic per faction there, and we might use some of these there.
Intel N (If this is the first card you drew this turn, you may reveal it. If you do, put it onto the bottom of your library, scry N, then draw a card.)
For some reason I can't quite understand, I'm fine with this mechanic but it doesn't excite me. It's still a nice and fair variation on miracle though. The flavor is good and I'd consider making it just scry 1. The scrylands showed us how valuable that already is. I don't feel the need to add a cost right now, but if we want this for the second set, we might just discuss it at a later time.
Fanaticism
This is a mechanic ... that bestows various effects on other creatures with Fanaticism in exchange of a given cost.
Ironically, I actually see this as more of a mechanic for the Rebels (obviously with a different name), showing how they work together. And I think it may actually be quite good at that. Again, we might consider this for the second set.
Oppression X (This creature can't be blocked unless defending player pays X for each creature blocking it.)
I corrected the wording here ("defending player", not "blocking player"). This is another alternative for the Rebels in the second set. I still probably like the previous one (renamed fanaticism) slightly more, but I'd be open to this too.
Anyway, I'd say we are fine with mechanics and don't need any more. We have all for the first set and some ideas for the second set which we'll rediscuss once we get there.
Rebellion(now known as embolden, Leo's note) ... will pretty much stick to Limited (though we might accept this with respect to Rebellion too).
I definitely accept this. Not everything can be constructed playable, as real sets show.
But I love the idea of reduced mana cost as a result of something. Very nice, Leo!
So I guess it's locked in, as I see everyone seems to like it.
Maybe we can consider adapting Conspire to something more general that does not involve colors?
Again, let's consider this for the second set.
Lawbreak...
No problem, that mechanic doesn't exist anymore! Its creator (I wonder who that might be... ) already killed it!
Recruit - We can make it less similar to rally if we choose to trigger an effect strictly related to the creature entering the battlefield...
That's a nice suggestion. Let's keep this in mind when we get to design cards.
As for potential creature types, we need to have some Hydras and Dragons around...
Might they be part of the wildlife outside the cities?
Maybe the Brotherhood can have some Angels under their control...
I feel kind of neutral on this. I could accept either way we choose. Flatline?
I wouldn't involve Demons though on Ormos because it turns into a whole "Good versus evil" thing and I'm not sure where they would fit in the story.
I've also started doing some thinking on the dual lands we might include in this format.
Good. Nobody did that so far.
To be honest, I am getting quite bored with lands entering the battlefield tapped so I started considering other types of restrictions on the lands to offer more diversity.
Me too, but often that's just the cleanest way to do it.
1. Sorcery Lands
The drawback is practically "you can only use the colored mana during your turn excluding combat". I'd just turn it into "you can activate this ability only during your turn". I think it's cleaner, and simpler in gameplay as you don't have to think "wait, is this the upkeep? or the combat phase?". As long as it's your turn, you can use it. That's nice and clean, while totally preserving the spirit of this design as I perceived it. With this change, I like this design very very much. I think the colorless mana just has to be included, otherwise this land does nothing on turns that aren't your own.
2. Color-biased Lands
I honestly like these quite less, and I'm not even sure they work in the rules. I'd have to check that if these are the chosen ones.
3. Permanent-check Lands
I had these in one of those custom sets of mine I designed just for fun. To me, here they feel like the safe alternative we can use if nothing else works.
Of course if we decide not to include a new set of dual-lands I am perfectly fine with that too.
I'd say we need it unless major reasons. One thing I've always wanted to do is doing the whole cycle of ten rare dual lands. Maybe not all in the first set, maybe with a 5/5 split between the sets (and them being both large helps here), but I want to do all ten. I don't like when certain color pairs just have more mana fixing that others. That's one of the reasons I like Ravnica, because it treats all ten color pairs equally.
And that ends the huge reply post. You had been warned! More action by me will probably follow later today/tonight.
PIVOTAL MOMENTS
I just relooked at the story page, underline those that I think should be the five pivotal moments in the first set that should be represented on cards:
• Freigh is caught as she first tries unsuccessfully to destroy the last device of the Isolation Network.
• 137-F is caught as she tries to escape from Workcamp 78.
• Freigh and 137-F successfully escape the Correction Camp together.
• Freigh hits the last device of the Network with her sword (artifact destruction card).
• The consequent explosion that kills Freigh and makes 137-F's spark ignite (THE pivotal event of the first set, may be a pseudo-Chandra's Ignition?).
WHERE ARE WE NOW?
What we need before we can start designing cards:
• Story: check.
• Mechanics: check.
• Worldbuilding: We only have a few ideas by Flatline. Major lacking area.
• Draft archetypes: zero. Major lacking area.
• Design skeleton: I'll work on this real soon. EDIT: here is the spreadsheet skeleton. It is public to view but only I can edit it for the moment.
• Pivotal moments: see above.
• Characters: for planeswalkers + 137-F see "planeswalker breakdown" in the flavor page. Other characters to represent as legendary creatures, such as heads of Ministries, to establish. There's been a little talk about that between the end of the last page and the top of this one, but nothing more.
COMMON DESIGN SKELETON
As MaRo always says, we have to start with commons. Here is the skeleton. It's public to view but only I can edit it for the moment. To know what a design skeleton is, check out this article by MaRo. To know what a card code is and how it works, check out this other article by MaRo.
As this is not supposed to be a multicolored set, I put no multicolored cards at common, nor mana fixing lands. I just assumed to have one common land like Evolving Wilds for limited. As we wanted a little more artifacts than normal, also to have enough Implants to be relevant, I included ten artifacts at common. That left me with 90 common cards, which means 18 per color.
Following MaRo's reasoning from the design skeleton article above (see #2 in the article), we've got the following. Half of 90 commons makes 45 creatures, which is an average of 9 per color. So the number of creatures per color goes like this, in WUBRG order: 11, 7, 9, 8, 10. While MaRo takes out creatures from white to fit in artifact creatures, for now I won't do so, considering drones and such artifact creatures we're going to want separately.
I'm going to ignore keywords for now, but not size. I'll use the same definitions MaRo uses: "Small means anything from a 0/1 up to about a 2/3. Medium is a 3/3 up to about a 4/5. Large is 5/5 or larger."
Based on what MaRo says in that article, I propose the following distribution at common:
W - 11 creatures total: 7 small, 4 medium, no large.
U - 7 creatures total: 5 small, 1 medium, 1 large.
B - 9 creatures total: 5 small, 4 medium, no large.
R - 8 creatures total: 4 small, 4 medium, no large.
G - 10 creatures total: 4 small, 4 medium, 2 large.
For now I won't push myself any further, but we will have to decide how we want to distribute our block mechanics throughout the colors. Again, let's just focus on commons now.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I've also started doing some thinking on the dual lands we might include in this format. To be honest, I am getting quite bored with lands entering the battlefield tapped so I started considering other types of restrictions on the lands to offer more diversity.
1. Sorcery Lands
This is a very old idea of mine I had. Basically sorcery lands do not give the flexibility of using the mana anytime you want. There are various variations I had in mind, with the following examples:
Fulgent Nihility
Land (R) T: Add 1 to your mana pool. T: Add B or R to your mana pool. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery. (It is still a mana ability.)
It can of course be balanced to include or exclude the colorless mana. We can also tamper with the second ability to decide whether we want to tap as sorcery, or tap only on your turn, and/or rephrase it however we see fit.
I actually like all your dual land ideas quite a bit, but this is the one I think fits best in the block. I see this as the oppressive Brotherhood making people wait their turn. They don't want people stepping out of line. I think this fits the block perfectly. I will say though, I think I like it being limited to your turn only (as lion suggested), instead of at sorcery speed. I think that does a better job of conveying the flavor I'm referring to. Does that work for you Tilwin?
My comments are in bold below. Hopefully they make sense. I probably shouldn't have deleted my original comments, but I was trying to lessen the wall of text. All I ended up doing was making things harder to follow ...
Pretty much. I think we just have to identify the five pivotal moments we want to represent in the first set, as scrad mentioned a while ago. I am thinking about identifying those and will have a proposal in short order.
I think the story is basically set too. What I'm talking about posting is more a scene setting type post. Things like how the Brotherhood views women, and non-Human creatures.
Yes, we are. We'll need two new mechanics, one for the Brotherhood and one for the Rebels, in the second set, and that's where Tilwin's mechanics will come in handy. Feedback on those later.
I also think we are set for mechanics. Unless someone has major objection to one of the existing ones (or it playtests poorly), I say we revisit Tilwin's ideas when we get into set 2.
This is the major component we lack, and the only real one we need to address before getting to what we all actually want: the cards! Your suggestions are a very nice first step in the direction of worldbuilding.
I will begin to focus my attention on world building now.
Yes, that's correct. We need a secondary race for blue (could that just be Faeries after all?) and I'll eliminate Vampires from the list keeping the mindless Zombies as secondary one for black.
I'm just not sure about Faeries. I suppose they could work though. My votes are: Vampires-No, mindless Zombies-Yes.
Yes, every large set nowadays has a few multicolored cards, mostly and notably including the "draft archetype" uncommons, which we will definitely need. And draft archetypes are another thing we should establish before designing cards.
Good. I like multi-colored cards. I think I'm going to need to read up on draft archtype development. It is not something I know a lot about to be honest. I'm sure I can do it though.
Leave that to me! I wanted to prepare a first layout for the design skeleton last night but in the end I didn't, I might just do it later today.
Sounds good, and thanks. I'll check it out ASAP.
Yes, I'd wait. We can't do everything at once. Let's address things one at a time, otherwise we all lose track of what's going on.
OK.
I will try to post a response to the second half of lion's post tonight (which will also be a response to Tilwin's). Right now my 6 yr old needs me for his Jedi council meeting.
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(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
I'm just not sure about Faeries. I suppose they could work though.
What are the alternatives for the secondary blue race? We've already excluded Merfolk and all others I can think about. I'm not able to come up with anything better. In the end, maybe we will have to create another new race ourselves? Or use theAmphin, since we already have Viashino, even if they (the Amphin) live on Shandalar if I recall correctly? I'm in the dark here.
My votes are: Vampires-No, mindless Zombies-Yes.
Already accounted for in the last blog update from earlier today (the same one where I underline pivotal events in the story).
I think I'm going to need to read up on draft archtype development.
You won't find many resources about that, if they exist at all. I vaguely remembered a Latest Developments article on the mothership about something like that, but I'm not able to find it anymore (I just tried). Maybe my memory is failing. I wouldn't base ourselves strictly on limited archetypes though, we just need to know in general terms what we want them to be so that we can take that into account when designing cards.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
A quick response to some of Tilwin's thoughts... I'm not going to comment on the ability suggestions right now though. Although I like many of these suggestions, unless someone objects to one of the five chosen mechanics already laid out, I think we are set for mechanics in the first set. So does anybody majorly object to one of them? Of course, if Tilwin really likes one of these ideas and wants to push it, I would be more than happy to hear him out. On a related note, I think we should make 2 new Brotherhood mechanics for the second set, replacing brainwash and implant. But I suppose we don't really have to talk about that now.
I can see some hydras and dragons in the wilds of Ormos. I think the dragons should be the more animalistic variety though. No dragon wizards or anything.
I can also see a few Angels on the Brotherhood side I suppose. I'm still a bit up in the air about them though. I think I like Archons, as suggested by Indighost at one point, better.
It would seem we are agreeing on Demons.
And now a few more general response before I get thinking about the world more....
The last blue race is a real stumper for me. I just am having a hard time with Faeries in the block. I wish I wasn't since they are one of my favorite races, but I am. I'm starting to think maybe we should just make a new race since technically Ratillions are just Nezumi with a different name (in my mind Nezumi is just Kamigawan for Ratillion). Or maybe I could see Merfolk with Dahl commanding them to come out of the water and live on the land with the rest of your brothers. "Now is the time for your next evolution my children."
Your 5 pivotal moments looks right on the money to me lion. I will look at the skeleton as soon as I can and comment on it then.
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(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
Again, we agree on almost everything. The only point I don't agree with is that we need two more mechanics for the Brotherhood in the second set. That means losing the 3/2 to 2/3 reversal in the number of mechanics, which is a great way to show the shift in focus from the Brotherhood to the Rebels. But I agree we can and should discuss this at a later time, when we actually arrive at the second set.
There is not much to comment on the skeleton right now, just if we agree on the numbers. When we're ready to design cards, that same file will turn into our card list / database. At that point, everybody on the team will give me their Google Account email (if you don't have a Google Account you will need to make one) so I'll add you as editors to the file and all of us on the design team will be able to edit it, not just me. It's a further advancement on my spreadsheet for Extinctia. But I'll walk you through all the technicalities myself when the time comes.
Are you all on the team aware of the change to draft starting with Oath of the Gatewatch (OGW, second set in BFZ block)? Starting with that, draft for the second set will include two packs of the newest set and just one of the old one, for example OGW/OGW/BFZ rather than OGW/BFZ/BFZ. But in our case, each set is drafted separately, so we just don't care about that, right?
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Again, we agree on almost everything. The only point I don't agree with is that we need two more mechanics for the Brotherhood in the second set. That means losing the 3/2 to 2/3 reversal in the number of mechanics, which is a great way to show the shift in focus from the Brotherhood to the Rebels. But I agree we can and should discuss this at a later time, when we actually arrive at the second set.
I'm still with the 3/2 - 2/3 mechanic split, I was just confused. All I meant was that I will probably want to replace implants with something else for the Brotherhood in the second set.
There is not much to comment on the skeleton right now, just if we agree on the numbers. When we're ready to design cards, that same file will turn into our card list / database. At that point, everybody on the team will give me their Google Account email (if you don't have a Google Account you will need to make one) so I'll add you as editors to the file and all of us on the design team will be able to edit it, not just me. It's a further advancement on my spreadsheet for Extinctia. But I'll walk you through all the technicalities myself when the time comes.
This all sounds fine. I have a Google e-mail account, so no problem there.
Are you all on the team aware of the change to draft starting with Oath of the Gatewatch (OGW, second set in BFZ block)? Starting with that, draft for the second set will include two packs of the newest set and just one of the old one, for example OGW/OGW/BFZ rather than OGW/BFZ/BFZ. But in our case, each set is drafted separately, so we just don't care about that, right?
Correct. I would say we don't care about this because of the nature of our block.
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(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
About draft archetypes: I'm thinking about something along the lines of:
WU: Normally this would be a tempo/aggro deck. Maybe in this set it can be the control archetype? White tends to be aggressive in limited though, so we might just stay with tempo (A pacificm effect can be flavored as imprisonment, and so on.)
WB: This might be a better fit for the grindy control deck. This archetype is going to have a lot of removal and restraining cards, so this might be a better fit that UW.
UB: I like the idea of messing with brainwash and with -1/-1 counters for this color combination, but maybe that's just me. What do you think?
UR: Maybe this is the archetype that deals with the chips, implants and drones. Magic origins had 8 artifacts of cards that care about artifacts at common, and only 5 common artifacts (7 if you count Ghirapur Gearcrafter and Aspiring Aeronaut), and the artifact theme in this set was quite popular and sometimes worked out really well. We have more common artifacts than in origins. Maybe we should have a theme of caring about them in blue (a brotherhood color) and sacrificing them in red (a rebellion color). If can't think of any other possibilities at the moment, but maybe you can.
BR: The steal-n'-sac deck is also quite a popular archetype. I can definitely see the brotherhood sacrificing it's minions for the "Grater Good", while stealing creatures in red can be flavored as rebelling against the brotherhood.
BG: I'm not sure. I don't think this is the set for major graveyard synergies. Any suggestions are most welcome!
RG: This might be the "curve out into giant things" midrange deck that is normal for RG. I don't think artifacts are a big enough thing in this set to have a hosing mechanic for them. Any other ideas are again, very welcome.
RW: I think this will be an aggro deck focusing on recruit. Plain, simple, and fast.
GW: Maybe this can be a token strategy focusing on rebel tokens and embolden? I'm not sure.
GU: This might be better suited as the "fun with counters" deck, with blue brainwashing and moving counters around and green passing them to the opponent or removing them altogether.
I haven't though much about the limited archtypes yet, so I'll comment on scrad's post later, but for now, I'm wondering what colors we plan on having mechanics in? Here's what I'm thinking...
Implant: These are colorless. Do we think we might want some/all of the equip costs to be colored (Esper colors)? Or should it just be colorless? I've always pictured it as colorless, but I'd be open to the other idea if anybody though it was a good one. (Maybe some of the drones could have colored activated abilities too?)
Brainwash: To be honest, I see this in everything but green, but centered in Esper colors (W/U/B). What do others think?
Detain: W/U. I see no reason to change this.
Recruit: W/R/G. But I might be able to a bit in U/B as well, but we probably don't want that. Maybe we make this in everything but blue to offset brainwash if that's everything but green. That might not make sense though.
Embolden: W/R/G? I'm not sure about this one. Since it is a rebel mechanic it would make sense to have it in Naya colors, but that leaves black with only one mechanic (brainwash), unless we do want to make the implants have colored mana costs. Is that ok? Also, the way I have it laid out, white has access to every mechanic in the set. I'm actually fine with that. It makes sense in our white dominated world that it would permeate its way into everything. As I've said before, I think in the second set, the Brotherhood can start to more openly show its black side in a desperate attempt to cling to power. Our new mechanic for them should somehow reflect that I think.
BTW, most of what scrad has in his archtype list makes some sense to me, but as I said, I'll have to think about this more before really commenting.
Edit: Sorry if we've talked about what colors the mechanics are before and I missed it/forgot.
Edit2: I looked at the skeleton. It looks good to me so far. Thanks lion! You continue to do stellar work.
(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
I'm pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It's time for another... long reply post!
Let's start with mechanics.
Implant
Quote from Flatline »
These are colorless. Do we think we might want some/all of the equip costs to be colored (Esper colors)? Or should it just be colorless? I've always pictured it as colorless, but I'd be open to the other idea if anybody though it was a good one. (Maybe some of the drones could have colored activated abilities too?)
I too have always seen them as just colorless, but having some (not all) of them and the Drones have activated abilities in the Brotherhood's main colors (Esper) looks a very nice thing to do to me.
Quote from Tilwin »
Is great! I would actually make this a completely separate subtype (Artifact - Implant) with the keyword Implant.
It is a subtype. It's useless to have it as both a subtype and a keyword at the same time. Check my Weakening Chip example in the mechanics page. The rules are attached directly to the Implant subtype, so there's no need to also have the word "Implant" as a keyword in the rules text, reminder text is enough there.
Not sure if you should attach it to your creatures too,
This was already discussed, and it was decided to let Johnny do it. After all, no one else will anyway as the effect is negative, so why limit Johnny in whatever strange thing he can do?
Sounds like a limited mechanic too
I'm personally perfectly fine with this. Most mechanics are seen only in limited with maybe the occasional rare specifically pushed for constructed.
I think we need more implants.
I've only made the skeleton for commons now. There will also be Implants at other rarities. Anyway, I can see that 4 at common may be too few, we can make each color have 17 commons and have 5 more common artifacts to have more space for Implants and Drones. Actually, thinking about it, I like this suggestion coupled with Flatline's colored activations, that lets us have artifacts that still lean towards certain colors. I think I'll edit the skeleton in this direction.
Brainwash
Quote from Flatline »
To be honest, I see this in everything but green, but centered in Esper colors (W/U/B). What do others think?
I agree. All but green. Also because we already have a red card I don't think we want to let go (the enchantment version of Shock Therapy).
Quote from Tilwin »
It feels a lot like a weaker Poisonous cross-bred with Renowned. Doesn't really break the color pie though so if everyone is on the boat with Brainwash I guess I could go with it too. Feels a lot like a limited mechanic though.
Again, I'm ok with limited mechanics.
Detain
Quote from Flatline »
W/U. I see no reason to change this.
I think I agree, and I'm going to explain why in response to:
Quote from Tilwin »
I see black as a color that could prevent creatures from blocking, and so does red.
This is true, but remember detain also prevents attacking. Black and red do not have that ability in the color pie.
And sometimes green has been seen as doing so.
I can't think of anything except Arachnus Web in recent times, and that card is considered a mistake.
Maybe we can incorporate it into all 5 colors? Just like Convoke saw play in all colors, it doesn't feel like breaking the color pie.
It does to me, unfortunately, for the reason I just explained.
Detain is pretty much a limited mechanic.
Again, no problem with that.
Recruit
Quote from Flatline »
W/R/G. But I might be able to a bit in U/B as well, but we probably don't want that. Maybe we make this in everything but blue to offset brainwash if that's everything but green. That might not make sense though.
I see no problem limiting this to Naya colors. In the end, those are the colors most interacting with creatures.
Quote from Tilwin »
I already stated here we should consider something else rather than Enter the Battlefield "Rally" style. But the idea is good and I like it.
I think using effects that are not "all creatures you control gain X" will be enough to differentiate it from rally, which seems to always be affecting all creatures you control. For example, I can see cards that say: Recruit - Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, CARDNAME gets +1/+1 until end of turn. (in white or green) Recruit - Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may draw a card. (in green) Recruit - Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, CARDNAME deals 1 damage to target opponent. (in red and probably not at common)
Might see competitive play.
I think it mostly depends on what kind of effects we attach to it. That's good.
Embolden
Quote from Flatline »
W/R/G? I'm not sure about this one. Since it is a rebel mechanic it would make sense to have it in Naya colors, but that leaves black with only one mechanic (brainwash), unless we do want to make the implants have colored mana costs.
I'd say colored activation costs. I'd also say this mechanic can make sense in black too, after all black was the primary color for prowl. I'd have this focused in Naya with a few Rebel-flavored black cards with it.
white has access to every mechanic in the set. I'm actually fine with that. It makes sense in our white dominated world that it would permeate its way into everything.
Agreed.
As I've said before, I think in the second set, the Brotherhood can start to more openly show its black side in a desperate attempt to cling to power. Our new mechanic for them should somehow reflect that I think.
We'll think about that when the time comes. Not now.
Quote from Tilwin »
Reducing costs is also cool and as we know is highly coveted for competitive play. Count me in,
Good!
though I don't really like the name - sounds a bit pompous. It may just be illiterate me though here :))
Consider that I also didn't know what the word meant even though I'm half English! After checking it I'd say it's about right.
Other replies to Tilwin's post
I feel the brotherhood interacts mostly with opponent creatures.
I didn't notice it, but now that you mentioned it I kind of see it as a nice side effect. The Brotherhood cares more about opposing creatures because it wants to control/brainwash them flavorfully, while the Rebels are focused on themselves (recruit requires creatures, that are more abundant in the Rebels' main colors, and embolden requires Rebels, that are also obviously more abundant in Rebel colors), reflecting an attitude like "we can make it if we stand united!". I see this as a very nice mechanical representation of flavor.
we could rename the Ministries as "Clergies" instead
I still like the name "Ministries" better, but if the majority wants to change I won't object.
But if you guys feel like Archons fit better than Angels, sure. Maybe artificial Archons?
I'm mostly indifferent to this, I personally don't feel strongly one way or another. Others?
Draft ... Not sure how relevant it is now though.
It's not. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew about the changes. We'll talk about that later for the second set.
We could come up with a completely new type for blue, or we could split the merfolks between those who joined Dahl, and those who became part of the Rebellion. Not all merfolks are wild so to speak, some like opulence and could be corrupted one way or another. Or were those the Naga?
I don't have anything against Merfolk, but I also don't feel strongly about them. I'd accept either them or a new race, I have no problem with that. The Naga definitely like opulence, while I don't remember any Merfolk, though there still might be some.
Draft archetypes
First of all, a premise. For flavor reasons, I think all the archetypes containing only main Brotherhood colors should lean towards control and all those containing only Rebel main colors should lean towards aggro. Those containing mixed colors can be anything.
WU: Normally this would be a tempo/aggro deck. Maybe in this set it can be the control archetype? White tends to be aggressive in limited though, so we might just stay with tempo (A pacificm effect can be flavored as imprisonment, and so on.)
I'd avoid aggro, this are two Brotherhood colors. I think tempo can fit here.
WB: This might be a better fit for the grindy control deck. This archetype is going to have a lot of removal and restraining cards, so this might be a better fit that UW.
Ok, I'd say this fits.
UB: I like the idea of messing with brainwash and with -1/-1 counters for this color combination, but maybe that's just me. What do you think?
We can make this a brainwash deck. I'd say the colors are right for that.
UR: Maybe this is the archetype that deals with the chips, implants and drones. ... Maybe we should have a theme of caring about them in blue (a brotherhood color) and sacrificing them in red (a rebellion color).
I like this, particularly the separation between blue caring about artifacts and red sacrificing them. It's very flavorful and should also work very nicely mechanically.
BR: The steal-n'-sac deck is also quite a popular archetype. I can definitely see the brotherhood sacrificing it's minions for the "Grater Good", while stealing creatures in red can be flavored as rebelling against the brotherhood.
This is one of the few that doesn't fully convince me. Yes, the flavor would be there, but I'm not sure it's exactly what we want mechanically. If others like it, I have no problem accepting this though.
BG: I'm not sure. I don't think this is the set for major graveyard synergies. Any suggestions are most welcome!
I don't think either. I'll think about this.
RG: This might be the "curve out into giant things" midrange deck that is normal for RG. I don't think artifacts are a big enough thing in this set to have a hosing mechanic for them. Any other ideas are again, very welcome.
This also doesn't convince me fully, do the Rebels really want to ramp into giant creatures? I'd prefer something a little more aggressive here.
RW: I think this will be an aggro deck focusing on recruit. Plain, simple, and fast.
100% agree. I love this one! It's definitely my favorite of the bunch.
GW: Maybe this can be a token strategy focusing on rebel tokens and embolden? I'm not sure.
We need a deck focusing on embolden, though I'm not sure this is the best place for it. Maybe RG?
GU: This might be better suited as the "fun with counters" deck, with blue brainwashing and moving counters around and green passing them to the opponent or removing them altogether.
I like this. The "counter deck, but not the counterspell one"!
Summary in traditional multicolor order
WU: tempo
UB: brainwash
BR: ? (steal and sacrifice?)
RG: ? (ramp?) (embolden?)
GW: ? (embolden?)
WB: grindy control
UR: artifacts/Implants (blue cares about them, red sacrifices them for value)
BG: ?
RW: recruit aggro
GU: playing with counters: brainwash + counter-moving effects
I'll revise the skeleton in the light of the suggestions above later today.
And for now... that's all, folks!
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Here's a quick response to just the archtype thing since I'm off to dinner. I'll try to respond to the rest tonight. My comments are in bold as usual....
WU: tempo - Agreed
UB: brainwash - Agreed
BR: ? (steal and sacrifice?) - I don't mind steal and sac, but let me keep thinking about this one.
RG: ? (ramp?) (embolden?) - I think I like this to focus on embolden.
GW: ? (embolden?) - I can see this as either tokens (the obvious choice), or maybe something that has a lot of protection for you and your creatures. Maybe this is the color combo that remembers that religion can be a positive thing when it's not twisted by Human minds. I could see W/G being the one color combo that still longs for the "old ways".
WB: grindy control - Agreed.
UR: artifacts/Implants (blue cares about them, red sacrifices them for value) - Agreed. Although red is the Ministry of Industry, so I can see it interacting positively with artifacts too.
BG: ? - I'm stumped for now too.
RW: recruit agro - Agreed.
GU: playing with counters: brainwash + counter-moving effects - Agreed.
As you can see I agree on most everything. Excellent job scrad!
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(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
I too like RG for embolden more than GW. I completely forgot about the Ministry of Industry, you're right. So forget about the red sacrificing part. So we only lack BR, GW, BG.
In other news, I updated the skeleton, laying out also the uncommon and the rare ones, even if we'll think about those later, because I wanted to put the rare lands in. For now I put allied colors in the first set, assuming to put enemy ones in the second, but we can decide to make a different split with no problems.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Lurker, vorthos, and huge fan of the set concept here. If you still don't mind the occasional outside voice, I have a thought or two:
-Could BG be the ramp archetype? It's less common than RG, but black has the same number of medium creatures and more creatures overall; plus, black has some nice top-end cards in limited (I'm thinking Drain Life-y effects and regenerating flyers) that work well with excess mana. Flavorfully the black side of the archetype could be "enforcers" or some such inside the Ministry of Guilt helping to keep the criminal populace in line.
-The problem I see with GW being aggro tokens is that they're not terribly resilient to brainwashing (or indeed -1/-1 counter-heavy Limiteds), which it looks like will be a stumbling block. I like the idea of them being about the good of religion, since a faction of the rebel force that still believes in religion will set up an interesting moral choice in the second set, I feel like, when the Rebellion is starting to beat back Dahl. The protective nature is good; is "self-sacrifice" a workable archetype? Sort of like WB in Innistrad limited but perhaps less twisted? Especailly since GW is a fully rebel color pair, there can be all sorts of martyrdom for the cause within it.
1. I think we need more implants. If we want to make it a feasible mechanic, I would consider multiple Implants. Think Scars of Mirrodin, that featured 15 equipments, or Mirrodin Besieged that featured 11. Since the Brotherhood is dominant in the first set, we should consider more implants and maybe some colored artifacts too (they don't even need to be Esperian only since now both factions feature all 5 colors).
I don't disagree with this. Although I'm not sure we want colored artifacts, but I can definitely see some colored activated abilities on them. I would like to keep some of the implants with colorless equip costs though, since that was how I envisioned them when I first developed them (last July I think).
2. The only reason why I included more mechanics is because Flatline suggested in a PM that maybe we should have something more oppressive for the Brotherhood. I don't mean to be annoying and come up with "I don't like what we have so far". That was not my intention. As for the mechanics chosen and the colors they fit:
Sorry Tilwin, since that PM, lion convinced me that we shouldn't/didn't need another mechanic. There is nothing annoying about suggesting some though. Even though I'm satisfied with where we are for mechanics right now, if you came up with something that was mind-blowingly perfect for the set, I would certainly want to hear about it.
Detain - I don't see why it needs to stay U/W only. I see black as a color that could prevent creatures from blocking, and so does red. And sometimes green has been seen as doing so. Maybe we can incorporate it into all 5 colors? Just like Convoke saw play in all colors, it doesn't feel like breaking the color pie. Remember, Detain is pretty much a limited mechanic.
I think this seems wrong outside of W/U. I agree with lion's post below above on this. I'm fine with it being a limited mechanic. I feel like most mechanics are "limited" mechanics. It's cards that are constructed playable. It is possible to design a card with detain that would be constructed playable, even if detain wasn't the main reason why.
Brainwash - I just noticed the mechanic after reading the blog. It feels a lot like a weaker Poisonous cross-bred with Renowned. Doesn't really break the color pie though so if everyone is on the boat with Brainwash I guess I could go with it too. Feels a lot like a limited mechanic though.
I absolutely love this mechanic. It's one of my favorite mechanics I've ever made so far (I hope it tests well ). I feel like this mechanic has a ton of flavor and design space. Also, I disagree that it has to be a limited mechanic. I think this could definitely be made into build around me block constructed type mechanic. Not that people play a lot of block constructed. I would almost say it could see play in standard, but that would be tough to do if it's not in the second set.
Implant - Is great! I would actually make this a completely separate subtype (Artifact - Implant) with the keyword Implant. Not sure if you should attach it to your creatures too, we need to decide here how much of a design space we want to leave here. Sounds like a limited mechanic too - Equipments are so good specifically because you can stick them on YOUR creatures to power them up. If your opponent has no creatures, the implant will not be so great.
I'm glad you like implant. I see what you're saying about it relying on your opponent having creatures, but that can be said about any creature control spell. Path to Exile isn't a good card if your opponent doesn't have creatures either. That said, there's nothing saying we can't make a few that have a positive effect too. We have discussed Father Dahl using implants on himself for long life and power. We could have a few like this perhaps...
Soul Governor
Artifact - Equipment Implant (This Equipment can be equipped to creatures your opponents control. You still control it when it's equipped to a creature an opponent controls.)
As long as you control equipped creature, it gets +1/+0. Otherwise it gets -1/-0
Equip
Bottom line - I feel the brotherhood interacts mostly with opponent creatures. You interact with and rely a lot on the opponent. For a more complex environment I strongly suggest we think of at least one mechanic that does not have such an interaction. The Brotherhood also conveys information as well as religious control. Why not use a bit of that?
I actually really like your Intel idea, and would listen if you wanted to push it, but otherwise, I agree with everything lion says in his response to this. I also am seeing the fact that white has access to each mechanic the same way.
Recruit - I already stated here we should consider something else rather than Enter the Battlefield "Rally" style. But the idea is good and I like it. Might see competitive play.
It's really unfortunate that rally came out a few days after I thought of this, but I still really like the simplicity and flavor of it for the set. It's not like rally was the invention of creatures having abilities that trigger off of a creature entering the battlefield. It's more like nontoken creature-fall than rally really. That is what I thought of it when I came up with the idea.
Embolden - Reducing costs is also cool and as we know is highly coveted for competitive play. Count me in, though I don't really like the name - sounds a bit pompous. It may just be illiterate me though here :))
I think the name is good, although I'm open to others. It hadn't occurred to me that the word would be considered pompous though.
3. I still think since they are religion-related, that we could rename the Ministries as "Clergies" instead, which mean "Ministries of Church". Fits the religious - focus better perhaps.
I just think ministries is the way to go here. It's the perfect blend of religion and government. Clergy would be my second choice, but I think I'd only change it if Orwell threatened to sue me (or haunt me more like it). Of course, I am not Father Dahl, so if everybody else wants to change it, I'm fine with that too.
4. Archos - not sure how much they would let themselves warped by religion. But if you guys feel like Archons fit better than Angels, sure. Maybe artificial Archons? (not sure how much sense that makes but we can come up with something)
"Archons symbolize White's harsher aspects like it's moral rigidity and ferocious retribution, while angels have a more varied role, generally leaning towards compassion and mercy."
This description of Archons, taken from MTGS Wiki is why I like Archons better than Angels for the block.
5. Draft - we can go the official way. What harm can it do since we are just starting the design? Besides, a 1st-2nd-2nd draft sounds really cool and offers more diversity. Not sure how relevant it is now though.
We can't draft the sets together if we intend to switch to +1/+1 counters in the second set, which everybody seemed down with. Also, the second set is a ways away still.
6. We could come up with a completely new type for blue, or we could split the merfolks between those who joined Dahl, and those who became part of the Rebellion. Not all merfolks are wild so to speak, some like opulence and could be corrupted one way or another. Or were those the Naga?
I have the feeling we're gonna get stuck with Merfolk. It's not that I dislike Merfolk (I've got Modern Merfolks built), but I'm just am not thrilled having them in the set.
(gotta go now so these are the responses I could come up with right now...)
(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
Tilwin, what do you think of the numbers in my skeleton? I'm not sure you saw it, as you mention uncommon lands and I don't think I put any in there. Of course if needed, I'll find a way to change it. It's the way it is now for mathematical reasons.
Please explain this more in depth guys, cause I am a bit confused now about how we actually want to perform the split. I was under the impression both "sides" featured all 5 colors, and if that is the case, shouldn't their mechanics reflect in all 5 colors?
Yes, both factions are in all colors, but they have main colors they are focused on (Esper for the Brotherhood, Naya for the Rebels), and their mechanics have to make sense in the faction's main colors or at least part of those. Just because the factions are in all colors doesn't mean the mechanics should too. The mechanical side is the reason for the splits. For example, detain doesn't belong mechanically in colors other than white and blue, and blue is already a stretch, but I'm sure one could come up with some way of flavoring it in black, red, or green. That doesn't mean it mechanically makes sense in those colors, though. Flavor is just much more flexible than mechanics, so the restricting factor is mechanics. What makes mechanical sense in which colors? That's the question we have to answer to decide how mechanics are distributed throughout the colors. Convoke is accessible to all colors because it's essentially an alternative way to pay mana, and mana is the fundamental resource all colors need. I see a big difference between convoke and detain in that.
The -1/-1 counter for brainwash is meant to act as a marker for brainwashed creatures, like +1/+1 counters are for monstrosity and renown. Diversification will come in the other effects of brainwash cards. Think of it like monstrosity: it always puts +1/+1 counters, but then each card has its own particular effect. One can gain hexproof and indestructible, another can deal damage, another can block additional creatures, and so on. I think we'll want to do the same with brainwash, using the other abilities of each card to add diversity. The same goes for embolden.
I think the points Tilwin raises about Implants can be addressed adjusting their mana cost, but we'll see in playtest.
Do we have with white the same problem Innistrad had with black, that everything wants to be that color? If we want a more strict distribution of mechanics I'll think about that, but I think that shouldn't exclude the occasional card in another color where that makes mechanical sense (example: Shock Therapy for brainwash).
I didn't know of that quote about Archons. It definitely makes me too want those here.
I think producing colored mana only on your turn is enough of a drawback for now, but of course only playtest will give us the final answer on that. If it isn't, we can change to "only during your main phase" without any problem. "only as a sorcery" has strange timing implications that I don't think are that intuitive. For example, you wouldn't be able to activate the mana ability during the casting of a spell, so you'd have to remember to draw mana from those lands before you start casting the spell. In real life it probably wouldn't be much of a problem because of out-of-order sequencing, but online it would be a nightmare and give many players feel-bad moments, such as "wait! I need that mana to cast my spell and I can't use it because I wouldn't be able to cast a sorcery in the middle of the process of casting a spell?". We just need to playtest those lands. We'll think about it when the time comes.
I'm not sure we need uncommon lands, but if we do, I like the Tower more than the Peak.
The reason Safe Haven isn't reprinted and probably never will is that it's a land without a mana ability, and that's a no in modern Magic design. You'd have to make a pseudo-functional reprint adding "T: Add 1 to your mana pool" to its Oracle text to make it acceptable today. We can make exactly that in our set if we want.
@ Indighost: I'm fine with that, but we're not at the phase of designing cards yet. We still need to do at least some worldbuilding before that. (Flatline, would you mind start thinking about that? It's the only real big thing we still miss.)
I like the idea of BG being a ramp archetype. There aren't any real alternatives without using the graveyard. I spent a good amount of time yesterday night relooking at the BG challenge from the Remaking Magic podcast and relistening at both that podcast and MaRo's one about BG looking for ideas that don't use the graveyard. The best I had from all of it was from a quote by MaRo, that in his podcast makes us notice that black and green both "use creatures as resource". I thought of revolving around that for the BG archetype, but ramp is a cleaner idea that can make sense in black. It still has the ability to care about Swamps and such, check out the infamous Liliana of the Dark Realms.
The only thing I know about GW is that I'd like to avoid tokens too. I don't see those playing well in an environment with brainwash and Implants. A self-sacrifice theme could work, but I'm not 100% sure. Are there any alternatives?
I have no other ideas for BR other than the aforementioned "steal and sac".
Blog update coming soon.
EDIT: While I was listening to MaRo's podcasts he posted today, I had an idea. In KTK #4, he talk about how they came to have Warriors in WB and he explains that nowadays every block has a small tribal component that they often exploit in limited archetypes. We don't have that yet, and we talked about Leonin being the first to join the Rebellion together with elves. What if we slightly bleed Leonin into green making both them and Ainok secondary races for green and we have GW as Cat tribal?
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I am working on a world-building post right now (which I hope to be done with by tonight), so I'll comment on the last few posts later. For now though, I am wondering if the G/W archtype could just be Rebel tribal? Or is that already basically covered in R/G with the embolden focused archtype? If Rebel tribal doesn't work, the races I see being the best option for tribal are Humans or Elves. With that said, and since white already has access to all the set's mechanics, do we really want white to also have a tribal element? Maybe we could have B/G be tribal Elves? With the black Elves being the ones that are willing to help keep the Elves under Dahl's control. Or perhaps some Elves have resorted to black magic as way to try to combat Dahl's suffocating white magic? Also, as I've been trying to world-build, I came up with another idea for B/G. I'll include it in the world-building post later.
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(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
The problem with tribal archetypes is that we separated the main races in single colors, so it looks a bit weird to have all races in one main color except for one race that is in two main colors. I'm also wondering if we can give a few Rebel tribal elements to the RG embolden archetype and go with that. In this moment, I think that's our best option.
I'm looking forward to the huge worldbuilding post! It may be the last thing we need before getting to cards. I'm also looking forward to your proposal about BG, if it's a good idea we can use that and tentatively move ramp to GW (white has also searched for Plains occasionally).
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
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I agree that we want to reference brainwash for sure. I guess that I'm just saying that we can make cards that interact with -1/-1 counters too. Or even some that just reference counters in general (think Kulrath Knight). Overall, I just think there is a ton of room in brainwash. It's kinda sad that we won't be using it in the second set. But I think the reasoning is worth it. Speaking of the second set, I'm thinking that we still drop the implant mechanic in the second set and come with something new for the Brotherhood. Anybody on board with that? Although I guess there is no real reason this needs to be decided now.
Edit:
I still feel like we need a white based mechanic that just screams oppression, but we are already at 5 mechanics if we go with rebellion. I'm all for adding a 6th ability if we can come up with something that works here.Edit2: After reading a PM from lion, I no longer feel this is actually needed. It looks like we may have all of our mechanics set barring something unforeseen that is discovered during play testing. BTW, I fully intend to print out the cards we make, then force my friends to draft the set with me.You managed to find a word I didn't know the meaning of despite being half English! I had to check it in Google Translator! There it's defined as "give (someone) the courage or confidence to do something or to behave in a certain way". This works perfectly as the mechanic's flavor. I also have problems with the name "rebellion" because it's what I've officially called the faction until now, so when I talk about "rebellion" context would be needed to understand if I'm referring to the faction or the mechanic. I used it first as a placeholder name to distinguish the mechanic from the others I was proposing, but I agree about changing the name to avoid the potential confusion I was just talking about. So let's reintroduce:
Embolden COST (You may cast this spell for its embolden cost if you dealt combat damage to a player this turn with a Rebel.)
Unforunately, I can't afford such a luxury, so I will have to recur to online methods. We can and should use both, but we'll see when we actually get to that point.
EDIT: blog updated with recruit and embolden.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
So everyone is good with embolden? Name and all? Should it be emboldened? To be honest, the only reason I even came up with the name is because it's the word I naturally used to describe it earlier in the post. I suppose that's a pretty decent reason though.
So we basically just need to hash out the following right?
- How finalized do we think we are story-wise? We already are set for mechanics in the first set (detain, brainwash, implant, recruit & embolden).
- The environment. This includes city/town names and basic setup, as well as the natural terrain. Also, what are the native non-sentient creatures like?
I've always pictured the cities of Ormos being walled, and set apart from nature. I only see beasts of burden within the city walls. Also, I don't see a lot of cities, I picture a somewhat small plane. I also kinda see Dahl making the citizens somewhat fearful of what's outside the city walls. Not a major theme, but just another way for Dahl to keep his people fearful, and dependent upon him to protect them (this is where I can see a few mindless Zombies coming in). "Save me Father Dahl" can mean any number of things in this block.
- What are the rest of the sentient creature types? We still only have Vedalken in blue, right?
I don't have anyhitng on this right now but the following is a list of recurring creature types I have some problem seeing on Ormos. Although I'm sure we could work a few of any of them in if we wanted...
Dragons
Angels
Demons
Sphinx
Merfolk (Should this just be our last blue creature type? I have a problem seeing Dahl control what is essentially another world.)
Faeries (This works better than Merfolk in my opinion.)0
Vampires (I still like mindless Zombies much better than this. If we did do it, it would have to be the monstrous type as suggested by scrad (I think?).
- We also still need to decide if we are going to have multi-color cards, and if so, how many?
For the record, I'm thinking we should have few. That might just be because multi-color cards are my favorite though.
- Last we need to lay out a skeleton, and decide what events and characters in our story we need to represent on cards.
What am I missing here. I'm sure a bunch.
I think I still plan to post a longwinded rambling story-type post at some point. But it would just be to help set the tone a bit more, and wouldn't be anything that would really change the story at all. I'm wondering if I should wait until we answer some of the questions above before I do so though.
PLEASE CHECK THE EDITS AT THE END OF THIS POST!
Neither do I. We'll see when the time comes. It's useless to discuss this now.
I like the shorter name best.
I was exactly thinking about what we're missing yesterday night too.
Pretty much. I think we just have to identify the five pivotal moments we want to represent in the first set, as scrad mentioned a while ago. I am thinking about identifying those and will have a proposal in short order.
Yes, we are. We'll need two new mechanics, one for the Brotherhood and one for the Rebels, in the second set, and that's where Tilwin's mechanics will come in handy. Feedback on those later.
This is the major component we lack, and the only real one we need to address before getting to what we all actually want: the cards! Your suggestions are a very nice first step in the direction of worldbuilding.
Yes, that's correct. We need a secondary race for blue (could that just be Faeries after all?) and I'll eliminate Vampires from the list keeping the mindless Zombies as secondary one for black.
Yes, every large set nowadays has a few multicolored cards, mostly and notably including the "draft archetype" uncommons, which we will definitely need. And draft archetypes are another thing we should establish before designing cards.
Leave that to me! I wanted to prepare a first layout for the design skeleton last night but in the end I didn't, I might just do it later today.
Again, pivotal moments proposal coming soon.
Actually, I think you're only missing draft archetypes.
Yes, I'd wait. We can't do everything at once. Let's address things one at a time, otherwise we all lose track of what's going on.
As Flatline suggested, just check out the story and flavor page on my blog here and you'll be fine.
As I said above, these are appreciated, but they'll come in handy later for the second set. We'll need one new mechanic per faction there, and we might use some of these there.
For some reason I can't quite understand, I'm fine with this mechanic but it doesn't excite me. It's still a nice and fair variation on miracle though. The flavor is good and I'd consider making it just scry 1. The scrylands showed us how valuable that already is. I don't feel the need to add a cost right now, but if we want this for the second set, we might just discuss it at a later time.
Ironically, I actually see this as more of a mechanic for the Rebels (obviously with a different name), showing how they work together. And I think it may actually be quite good at that. Again, we might consider this for the second set.
I corrected the wording here ("defending player", not "blocking player"). This is another alternative for the Rebels in the second set. I still probably like the previous one (renamed fanaticism) slightly more, but I'd be open to this too.
Anyway, I'd say we are fine with mechanics and don't need any more. We have all for the first set and some ideas for the second set which we'll rediscuss once we get there.
I definitely accept this. Not everything can be constructed playable, as real sets show.
So I guess it's locked in, as I see everyone seems to like it.
Again, let's consider this for the second set.
No problem, that mechanic doesn't exist anymore! Its creator (I wonder who that might be... ) already killed it!
That's a nice suggestion. Let's keep this in mind when we get to design cards.
Might they be part of the wildlife outside the cities?
I feel kind of neutral on this. I could accept either way we choose. Flatline?
I definitely agree here.
Just go here.
In fact, we already thought of Elves as the first to join the Rebellion. Leonin might be too, I see nothing wrong with that.
I thought it was a given, but it's always nice to establish it for good.
Good. Nobody did that so far.
Me too, but often that's just the cleanest way to do it.
The drawback is practically "you can only use the colored mana during your turn excluding combat". I'd just turn it into "you can activate this ability only during your turn". I think it's cleaner, and simpler in gameplay as you don't have to think "wait, is this the upkeep? or the combat phase?". As long as it's your turn, you can use it. That's nice and clean, while totally preserving the spirit of this design as I perceived it. With this change, I like this design very very much. I think the colorless mana just has to be included, otherwise this land does nothing on turns that aren't your own.
I honestly like these quite less, and I'm not even sure they work in the rules. I'd have to check that if these are the chosen ones.
I had these in one of those custom sets of mine I designed just for fun. To me, here they feel like the safe alternative we can use if nothing else works.
I'd say we need it unless major reasons. One thing I've always wanted to do is doing the whole cycle of ten rare dual lands. Maybe not all in the first set, maybe with a 5/5 split between the sets (and them being both large helps here), but I want to do all ten. I don't like when certain color pairs just have more mana fixing that others. That's one of the reasons I like Ravnica, because it treats all ten color pairs equally.
And that ends the huge reply post. You had been warned! More action by me will probably follow later today/tonight.
PIVOTAL MOMENTS
I just relooked at the story page, underline those that I think should be the five pivotal moments in the first set that should be represented on cards:
• Freigh is caught as she first tries unsuccessfully to destroy the last device of the Isolation Network.
• 137-F is caught as she tries to escape from Workcamp 78.
• Freigh and 137-F successfully escape the Correction Camp together.
• Freigh hits the last device of the Network with her sword (artifact destruction card).
• The consequent explosion that kills Freigh and makes 137-F's spark ignite (THE pivotal event of the first set, may be a pseudo-Chandra's Ignition?).
WHERE ARE WE NOW?
What we need before we can start designing cards:
• Story: check.
• Mechanics: check.
• Worldbuilding: We only have a few ideas by Flatline. Major lacking area.
• Draft archetypes: zero. Major lacking area.
• Design skeleton: I'll work on this real soon. EDIT: here is the spreadsheet skeleton. It is public to view but only I can edit it for the moment.
• Pivotal moments: see above.
• Characters: for planeswalkers + 137-F see "planeswalker breakdown" in the flavor page. Other characters to represent as legendary creatures, such as heads of Ministries, to establish. There's been a little talk about that between the end of the last page and the top of this one, but nothing more.
COMMON DESIGN SKELETON
As MaRo always says, we have to start with commons. Here is the skeleton. It's public to view but only I can edit it for the moment. To know what a design skeleton is, check out this article by MaRo. To know what a card code is and how it works, check out this other article by MaRo.
As this is not supposed to be a multicolored set, I put no multicolored cards at common, nor mana fixing lands. I just assumed to have one common land like Evolving Wilds for limited. As we wanted a little more artifacts than normal, also to have enough Implants to be relevant, I included ten artifacts at common. That left me with 90 common cards, which means 18 per color.
Following MaRo's reasoning from the design skeleton article above (see #2 in the article), we've got the following. Half of 90 commons makes 45 creatures, which is an average of 9 per color. So the number of creatures per color goes like this, in WUBRG order: 11, 7, 9, 8, 10. While MaRo takes out creatures from white to fit in artifact creatures, for now I won't do so, considering drones and such artifact creatures we're going to want separately.
I'm going to ignore keywords for now, but not size. I'll use the same definitions MaRo uses: "Small means anything from a 0/1 up to about a 2/3. Medium is a 3/3 up to about a 4/5. Large is 5/5 or larger."
Based on what MaRo says in that article, I propose the following distribution at common:
W - 11 creatures total: 7 small, 4 medium, no large.
U - 7 creatures total: 5 small, 1 medium, 1 large.
B - 9 creatures total: 5 small, 4 medium, no large.
R - 8 creatures total: 4 small, 4 medium, no large.
G - 10 creatures total: 4 small, 4 medium, 2 large.
For now I won't push myself any further, but we will have to decide how we want to distribute our block mechanics throughout the colors. Again, let's just focus on commons now.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I actually like all your dual land ideas quite a bit, but this is the one I think fits best in the block. I see this as the oppressive Brotherhood making people wait their turn. They don't want people stepping out of line. I think this fits the block perfectly. I will say though, I think I like it being limited to your turn only (as lion suggested), instead of at sorcery speed. I think that does a better job of conveying the flavor I'm referring to. Does that work for you Tilwin?
My comments are in bold below. Hopefully they make sense. I probably shouldn't have deleted my original comments, but I was trying to lessen the wall of text. All I ended up doing was making things harder to follow ...
I will try to post a response to the second half of lion's post tonight (which will also be a response to Tilwin's). Right now my 6 yr old needs me for his Jedi council meeting.
What are the alternatives for the secondary blue race? We've already excluded Merfolk and all others I can think about. I'm not able to come up with anything better. In the end, maybe we will have to create another new race ourselves? Or use the Amphin, since we already have Viashino, even if they (the Amphin) live on Shandalar if I recall correctly? I'm in the dark here.
Already accounted for in the last blog update from earlier today (the same one where I underline pivotal events in the story).
You won't find many resources about that, if they exist at all. I vaguely remembered a Latest Developments article on the mothership about something like that, but I'm not able to find it anymore (I just tried). Maybe my memory is failing. I wouldn't base ourselves strictly on limited archetypes though, we just need to know in general terms what we want them to be so that we can take that into account when designing cards.
We seem to agree perfectly on all the rest.
You'll find the skeleton at the end of that post.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I can see some hydras and dragons in the wilds of Ormos. I think the dragons should be the more animalistic variety though. No dragon wizards or anything.
I can also see a few Angels on the Brotherhood side I suppose. I'm still a bit up in the air about them though. I think I like Archons, as suggested by Indighost at one point, better.
It would seem we are agreeing on Demons.
And now a few more general response before I get thinking about the world more....
The last blue race is a real stumper for me. I just am having a hard time with Faeries in the block. I wish I wasn't since they are one of my favorite races, but I am. I'm starting to think maybe we should just make a new race since technically Ratillions are just Nezumi with a different name (in my mind Nezumi is just Kamigawan for Ratillion). Or maybe I could see Merfolk with Dahl commanding them to come out of the water and live on the land with the rest of your brothers. "Now is the time for your next evolution my children."
Your 5 pivotal moments looks right on the money to me lion. I will look at the skeleton as soon as I can and comment on it then.
There is not much to comment on the skeleton right now, just if we agree on the numbers. When we're ready to design cards, that same file will turn into our card list / database. At that point, everybody on the team will give me their Google Account email (if you don't have a Google Account you will need to make one) so I'll add you as editors to the file and all of us on the design team will be able to edit it, not just me. It's a further advancement on my spreadsheet for Extinctia. But I'll walk you through all the technicalities myself when the time comes.
Are you all on the team aware of the change to draft starting with Oath of the Gatewatch (OGW, second set in BFZ block)? Starting with that, draft for the second set will include two packs of the newest set and just one of the old one, for example OGW/OGW/BFZ rather than OGW/BFZ/BFZ. But in our case, each set is drafted separately, so we just don't care about that, right?
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
About draft archetypes: I'm thinking about something along the lines of:
WU: Normally this would be a tempo/aggro deck. Maybe in this set it can be the control archetype? White tends to be aggressive in limited though, so we might just stay with tempo (A pacificm effect can be flavored as imprisonment, and so on.)
WB: This might be a better fit for the grindy control deck. This archetype is going to have a lot of removal and restraining cards, so this might be a better fit that UW.
UB: I like the idea of messing with brainwash and with -1/-1 counters for this color combination, but maybe that's just me. What do you think?
UR: Maybe this is the archetype that deals with the chips, implants and drones. Magic origins had 8 artifacts of cards that care about artifacts at common, and only 5 common artifacts (7 if you count Ghirapur Gearcrafter and Aspiring Aeronaut), and the artifact theme in this set was quite popular and sometimes worked out really well. We have more common artifacts than in origins. Maybe we should have a theme of caring about them in blue (a brotherhood color) and sacrificing them in red (a rebellion color). If can't think of any other possibilities at the moment, but maybe you can.
BR: The steal-n'-sac deck is also quite a popular archetype. I can definitely see the brotherhood sacrificing it's minions for the "Grater Good", while stealing creatures in red can be flavored as rebelling against the brotherhood.
BG: I'm not sure. I don't think this is the set for major graveyard synergies. Any suggestions are most welcome!
RG: This might be the "curve out into giant things" midrange deck that is normal for RG. I don't think artifacts are a big enough thing in this set to have a hosing mechanic for them. Any other ideas are again, very welcome.
RW: I think this will be an aggro deck focusing on recruit. Plain, simple, and fast.
GW: Maybe this can be a token strategy focusing on rebel tokens and embolden? I'm not sure.
GU: This might be better suited as the "fun with counters" deck, with blue brainwashing and moving counters around and green passing them to the opponent or removing them altogether.
Implant: These are colorless. Do we think we might want some/all of the equip costs to be colored (Esper colors)? Or should it just be colorless? I've always pictured it as colorless, but I'd be open to the other idea if anybody though it was a good one. (Maybe some of the drones could have colored activated abilities too?)
Brainwash: To be honest, I see this in everything but green, but centered in Esper colors (W/U/B). What do others think?
Detain: W/U. I see no reason to change this.
Recruit: W/R/G. But I might be able to a bit in U/B as well, but we probably don't want that. Maybe we make this in everything but blue to offset brainwash if that's everything but green. That might not make sense though.
Embolden: W/R/G? I'm not sure about this one. Since it is a rebel mechanic it would make sense to have it in Naya colors, but that leaves black with only one mechanic (brainwash), unless we do want to make the implants have colored mana costs. Is that ok? Also, the way I have it laid out, white has access to every mechanic in the set. I'm actually fine with that. It makes sense in our white dominated world that it would permeate its way into everything. As I've said before, I think in the second set, the Brotherhood can start to more openly show its black side in a desperate attempt to cling to power. Our new mechanic for them should somehow reflect that I think.
BTW, most of what scrad has in his archtype list makes some sense to me, but as I said, I'll have to think about this more before really commenting.
Edit: Sorry if we've talked about what colors the mechanics are before and I missed it/forgot.
Edit2: I looked at the skeleton. It looks good to me so far. Thanks lion! You continue to do stellar work.
Let's start with mechanics.
Implant
I too have always seen them as just colorless, but having some (not all) of them and the Drones have activated abilities in the Brotherhood's main colors (Esper) looks a very nice thing to do to me.
It is a subtype. It's useless to have it as both a subtype and a keyword at the same time. Check my Weakening Chip example in the mechanics page. The rules are attached directly to the Implant subtype, so there's no need to also have the word "Implant" as a keyword in the rules text, reminder text is enough there.
This was already discussed, and it was decided to let Johnny do it. After all, no one else will anyway as the effect is negative, so why limit Johnny in whatever strange thing he can do?
I'm personally perfectly fine with this. Most mechanics are seen only in limited with maybe the occasional rare specifically pushed for constructed.
I've only made the skeleton for commons now. There will also be Implants at other rarities. Anyway, I can see that 4 at common may be too few, we can make each color have 17 commons and have 5 more common artifacts to have more space for Implants and Drones. Actually, thinking about it, I like this suggestion coupled with Flatline's colored activations, that lets us have artifacts that still lean towards certain colors. I think I'll edit the skeleton in this direction.
Brainwash
I agree. All but green. Also because we already have a red card I don't think we want to let go (the enchantment version of Shock Therapy).
Again, I'm ok with limited mechanics.
Detain
I think I agree, and I'm going to explain why in response to:
This is true, but remember detain also prevents attacking. Black and red do not have that ability in the color pie.
I can't think of anything except Arachnus Web in recent times, and that card is considered a mistake.
It does to me, unfortunately, for the reason I just explained.
Again, no problem with that.
Recruit
I see no problem limiting this to Naya colors. In the end, those are the colors most interacting with creatures.
I think using effects that are not "all creatures you control gain X" will be enough to differentiate it from rally, which seems to always be affecting all creatures you control. For example, I can see cards that say:
Recruit - Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, CARDNAME gets +1/+1 until end of turn. (in white or green)
Recruit - Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may draw a card. (in green)
Recruit - Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, CARDNAME deals 1 damage to target opponent. (in red and probably not at common)
I think it mostly depends on what kind of effects we attach to it. That's good.
Embolden
I'd say colored activation costs. I'd also say this mechanic can make sense in black too, after all black was the primary color for prowl. I'd have this focused in Naya with a few Rebel-flavored black cards with it.
Agreed.
We'll think about that when the time comes. Not now.
Good!
Consider that I also didn't know what the word meant even though I'm half English! After checking it I'd say it's about right.
Other replies to Tilwin's post
I didn't notice it, but now that you mentioned it I kind of see it as a nice side effect. The Brotherhood cares more about opposing creatures because it wants to control/brainwash them flavorfully, while the Rebels are focused on themselves (recruit requires creatures, that are more abundant in the Rebels' main colors, and embolden requires Rebels, that are also obviously more abundant in Rebel colors), reflecting an attitude like "we can make it if we stand united!". I see this as a very nice mechanical representation of flavor.
I still like the name "Ministries" better, but if the majority wants to change I won't object.
I'm mostly indifferent to this, I personally don't feel strongly one way or another. Others?
It's not. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew about the changes. We'll talk about that later for the second set.
I don't have anything against Merfolk, but I also don't feel strongly about them. I'd accept either them or a new race, I have no problem with that. The Naga definitely like opulence, while I don't remember any Merfolk, though there still might be some.
Draft archetypes
First of all, a premise. For flavor reasons, I think all the archetypes containing only main Brotherhood colors should lean towards control and all those containing only Rebel main colors should lean towards aggro. Those containing mixed colors can be anything.
I'd avoid aggro, this are two Brotherhood colors. I think tempo can fit here.
Ok, I'd say this fits.
We can make this a brainwash deck. I'd say the colors are right for that.
I like this, particularly the separation between blue caring about artifacts and red sacrificing them. It's very flavorful and should also work very nicely mechanically.
This is one of the few that doesn't fully convince me. Yes, the flavor would be there, but I'm not sure it's exactly what we want mechanically. If others like it, I have no problem accepting this though.
I don't think either. I'll think about this.
This also doesn't convince me fully, do the Rebels really want to ramp into giant creatures? I'd prefer something a little more aggressive here.
100% agree. I love this one! It's definitely my favorite of the bunch.
We need a deck focusing on embolden, though I'm not sure this is the best place for it. Maybe RG?
I like this. The "counter deck, but not the counterspell one"!
Summary in traditional multicolor order
WU: tempo
UB: brainwash
BR: ? (steal and sacrifice?)
RG: ? (ramp?) (embolden?)
GW: ? (embolden?)
WB: grindy control
UR: artifacts/Implants (blue cares about them, red sacrifices them for value)
BG: ?
RW: recruit aggro
GU: playing with counters: brainwash + counter-moving effects
I'll revise the skeleton in the light of the suggestions above later today.
And for now... that's all, folks!
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
As you can see I agree on most everything. Excellent job scrad!
In other news, I updated the skeleton, laying out also the uncommon and the rare ones, even if we'll think about those later, because I wanted to put the rare lands in. For now I put allied colors in the first set, assuming to put enemy ones in the second, but we can decide to make a different split with no problems.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
-Could BG be the ramp archetype? It's less common than RG, but black has the same number of medium creatures and more creatures overall; plus, black has some nice top-end cards in limited (I'm thinking Drain Life-y effects and regenerating flyers) that work well with excess mana. Flavorfully the black side of the archetype could be "enforcers" or some such inside the Ministry of Guilt helping to keep the criminal populace in line.
-The problem I see with GW being aggro tokens is that they're not terribly resilient to brainwashing (or indeed -1/-1 counter-heavy Limiteds), which it looks like will be a stumbling block. I like the idea of them being about the good of religion, since a faction of the rebel force that still believes in religion will set up an interesting moral choice in the second set, I feel like, when the Rebellion is starting to beat back Dahl. The protective nature is good; is "self-sacrifice" a workable archetype? Sort of like WB in Innistrad limited but perhaps less twisted? Especailly since GW is a fully rebel color pair, there can be all sorts of martyrdom for the cause within it.
Yes, both factions are in all colors, but they have main colors they are focused on (Esper for the Brotherhood, Naya for the Rebels), and their mechanics have to make sense in the faction's main colors or at least part of those. Just because the factions are in all colors doesn't mean the mechanics should too. The mechanical side is the reason for the splits. For example, detain doesn't belong mechanically in colors other than white and blue, and blue is already a stretch, but I'm sure one could come up with some way of flavoring it in black, red, or green. That doesn't mean it mechanically makes sense in those colors, though. Flavor is just much more flexible than mechanics, so the restricting factor is mechanics. What makes mechanical sense in which colors? That's the question we have to answer to decide how mechanics are distributed throughout the colors. Convoke is accessible to all colors because it's essentially an alternative way to pay mana, and mana is the fundamental resource all colors need. I see a big difference between convoke and detain in that.
The -1/-1 counter for brainwash is meant to act as a marker for brainwashed creatures, like +1/+1 counters are for monstrosity and renown. Diversification will come in the other effects of brainwash cards. Think of it like monstrosity: it always puts +1/+1 counters, but then each card has its own particular effect. One can gain hexproof and indestructible, another can deal damage, another can block additional creatures, and so on. I think we'll want to do the same with brainwash, using the other abilities of each card to add diversity. The same goes for embolden.
I think the points Tilwin raises about Implants can be addressed adjusting their mana cost, but we'll see in playtest.
Do we have with white the same problem Innistrad had with black, that everything wants to be that color? If we want a more strict distribution of mechanics I'll think about that, but I think that shouldn't exclude the occasional card in another color where that makes mechanical sense (example: Shock Therapy for brainwash).
I didn't know of that quote about Archons. It definitely makes me too want those here.
I think producing colored mana only on your turn is enough of a drawback for now, but of course only playtest will give us the final answer on that. If it isn't, we can change to "only during your main phase" without any problem. "only as a sorcery" has strange timing implications that I don't think are that intuitive. For example, you wouldn't be able to activate the mana ability during the casting of a spell, so you'd have to remember to draw mana from those lands before you start casting the spell. In real life it probably wouldn't be much of a problem because of out-of-order sequencing, but online it would be a nightmare and give many players feel-bad moments, such as "wait! I need that mana to cast my spell and I can't use it because I wouldn't be able to cast a sorcery in the middle of the process of casting a spell?". We just need to playtest those lands. We'll think about it when the time comes.
I'm not sure we need uncommon lands, but if we do, I like the Tower more than the Peak.
The reason Safe Haven isn't reprinted and probably never will is that it's a land without a mana ability, and that's a no in modern Magic design. You'd have to make a pseudo-functional reprint adding "T: Add 1 to your mana pool" to its Oracle text to make it acceptable today. We can make exactly that in our set if we want.
@ Indighost: I'm fine with that, but we're not at the phase of designing cards yet. We still need to do at least some worldbuilding before that. (Flatline, would you mind start thinking about that? It's the only real big thing we still miss.)
I like the idea of BG being a ramp archetype. There aren't any real alternatives without using the graveyard. I spent a good amount of time yesterday night relooking at the BG challenge from the Remaking Magic podcast and relistening at both that podcast and MaRo's one about BG looking for ideas that don't use the graveyard. The best I had from all of it was from a quote by MaRo, that in his podcast makes us notice that black and green both "use creatures as resource". I thought of revolving around that for the BG archetype, but ramp is a cleaner idea that can make sense in black. It still has the ability to care about Swamps and such, check out the infamous Liliana of the Dark Realms.
The only thing I know about GW is that I'd like to avoid tokens too. I don't see those playing well in an environment with brainwash and Implants. A self-sacrifice theme could work, but I'm not 100% sure. Are there any alternatives?
I have no other ideas for BR other than the aforementioned "steal and sac".
Blog update coming soon.
EDIT: While I was listening to MaRo's podcasts he posted today, I had an idea. In KTK #4, he talk about how they came to have Warriors in WB and he explains that nowadays every block has a small tribal component that they often exploit in limited archetypes. We don't have that yet, and we talked about Leonin being the first to join the Rebellion together with elves. What if we slightly bleed Leonin into green making both them and Ainok secondary races for green and we have GW as Cat tribal?
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I'm looking forward to the huge worldbuilding post! It may be the last thing we need before getting to cards. I'm also looking forward to your proposal about BG, if it's a good idea we can use that and tentatively move ramp to GW (white has also searched for Plains occasionally).
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)