So I wanted to make a fan set based around Sound Horizon (a series of japanese rock operas. They're good, you should check them out), but I wanted it to have good mechanics and a well balanced set of cards, so I've been researching how to build a set. Before I start working on a preliminary list of commons I wanted to get advice on how I might improve these mechanics, and any mechanics I might want to bring back to compliment them.
The general theme of the set is abilities that interact with what's in the graveyard, or ones influenced by what's in the graveyard. The mechanicsI've thought up so far are:
Renewal (name TBD): By paying a card's renewal cost while it's in your graveyard, place it on the bottom of your deck and then shuffle your deck. White has a lot, blue a little less, green less than that, red less than that, and black has the least.
Second Cast (name TBD): Realized this was just flashback. ood to know, I'll use that instead.
Momento (name TBD): When this permanent comes enters the battlefield, exile a card from a graveyard as a memento that remains "attached" to the permanent until it leaves the battlefield, at which point the momento returns to the graveyard. The type of card that can be exiled and what effect it has varies card to card.
Origin (name TBA): "If you paid COLOR mana to cast CARDNAME, then CARDNAME is COLOR in addition to its other colors". It can also effect creature type. Example:
Soldier dude (C)
Creature-Human Soldier
W/2 mana cost
1/1
Origin-If B was used to cast Soldier dude, it is a black zombie in addition to its other colors and creature types.
While this card is black, it has +1/+1.
The main theme of interacting with the graveyard will work differently with each color. Each color has its own "primary theme" of how it interacts with the graveyard and a "Secndary theme" to give it more to work with.
White: It's primary theme is how it doesn't want cards in the graveyard, yours or your opponents. white cards might have abilities that only work when you have 2 or fewer creatures in your graveyard, or your opponent as 1 or fewer sorceries in theirs, etc. Has a lot of renewal and graveyard exile. Secondarily it gets extra mileage out of equipment.
Green: It's primary theme is using the memento mechanic. Secondarily, it is good at getting a lot of different mana colors besides green, and some of its activated abilities have costs in non-green mana.
Red: It's primary theme is getting rid of lands and artifacts from both sides and getting buffs for lands and artifacts being in the graveyard. Secondarily, it has hellbent effects and often discards its own cards for powerful effects.
Black: It primarily makes use of non-black cards in any graveyard. It can do things like exiling a non-black card to get a 2/2 black zombie for 1 mana. Secondarily, a lot of cards can become black zombies through origin, so it naturally has multicolored cards and puts non-black cards in its own graveyard.
Blue: It makes use of the Second cast mechanic, and its mill cards can also self mill in order to get cards into the graveyard. It also uses the renewal mechanic quite a bit, partially to shuffle your deck if you look at the top few cards of your deck and decide you don't like them. Secondarily, it handles artifacts, especially ones with activated abilities. It has ways of generating non-blue mana that only works for artifact activated abilities.
So what do you think? Concerns? Any tweeks? Mechanics I should add? Card ideas, maybe?
First off, welcome to MTGSalvation and specifically Custom Card Creation! I'm glad you found our community, and I hope you get valuable feedback and insight here.
Before getting too ahead of myself, let me first ask if you have a design goal for your set? There are a couple guys here who do a fantastic podcast about custom magic cards, and they have an episode explaining the importance of design goals - it's their first episode so it's a little less polished than the more recent discussions, but there's still plenty to be gleaned from it. There's also this great article written by one of them about how to break into custom design. I strongly encourage you to determine a design goal to help guide your design.
As far as deciding on set mechanics, I actually wrote an article about some things you want to consider when developing mechanics for your sets. Renewal has some troubles, in that it doesn't feel like it does anything, while still taking a lot of time for shuffling in paper magic. Second cast reads a lot like Flashback to me, which is a very solid mechanic. Memento sounds like it could be a lot of fun! Origin again seems like it doesn't do anything directly (or at least has to be really wordy to do anything tangible), and also distracts from your graveyard theme.
Second Cast -- this is flashback. How does second cast differ?
Because I forgot flashback existed. Good to know, thanks.
Oh, and thanks mondu. I'll make sure to read those things, so far I've only read nuts and bolts.
Origin I mostly included in order to work with the source material I designed this set to work with. The main idea I ad was to have cards that were originally of one color, but could either be used in a black deck or could be brought back by a black card in order to change it. There's a whole play in Sound Horizon about people coming back from the dead changed in order to exact their revenge. I suppose there could be a good way to do that that's less clunky, so i'll start thinking about that.
Renewal was something I came up with when I thought about Sound Horizon's theme of a cycle of life and death. I also intended this set for limited, which usually means smaller, 40 card decks, so the impact of shuffling a few cards back into your deck may actually be significant, especially since this will probably be on a a fair number of strong uncommons. I also wanted it to interact with a the graveyard interactions. As white you could take cards out of your graveyard for their effects. You could counter someone bringing back one of your cards with, say momento, or a revival spell, by shuffling it back in as a sort of counter. And you'd have to keep mana open to do this if you think the opponent has something in the wings like that.
I feel there is a level of elegance to how many things you could do with just shuffling a card back in your deck, but I agree it does sound like it could be a lot of work. Not to mention when designing cards I often feel like I may be designing cards just so I can use the mechanic a reasonable amount. And I feel like that's a red flag. I'll keep it as a possibility, but I may have to think of something else. I might include things in the first playtest, maybe not.
Any other ideas for mechanics I can add? because right now I just have momento and some returning ones (hellbent and flashback).
The general theme of the set is abilities that interact with what's in the graveyard, or ones influenced by what's in the graveyard. The mechanicsI've thought up so far are:
Renewal (name TBD): By paying a card's renewal cost while it's in your graveyard, place it on the bottom of your deck and then shuffle your deck. White has a lot, blue a little less, green less than that, red less than that, and black has the least.
Second Cast (name TBD): Realized this was just flashback. ood to know, I'll use that instead.
Momento (name TBD): When this permanent comes enters the battlefield, exile a card from a graveyard as a memento that remains "attached" to the permanent until it leaves the battlefield, at which point the momento returns to the graveyard. The type of card that can be exiled and what effect it has varies card to card.
Origin (name TBA): "If you paid COLOR mana to cast CARDNAME, then CARDNAME is COLOR in addition to its other colors". It can also effect creature type. Example:
Soldier dude (C)
Creature-Human Soldier
W/2 mana cost
1/1
Origin-If B was used to cast Soldier dude, it is a black zombie in addition to its other colors and creature types.
While this card is black, it has +1/+1.
The main theme of interacting with the graveyard will work differently with each color. Each color has its own "primary theme" of how it interacts with the graveyard and a "Secndary theme" to give it more to work with.
White: It's primary theme is how it doesn't want cards in the graveyard, yours or your opponents. white cards might have abilities that only work when you have 2 or fewer creatures in your graveyard, or your opponent as 1 or fewer sorceries in theirs, etc. Has a lot of renewal and graveyard exile. Secondarily it gets extra mileage out of equipment.
Green: It's primary theme is using the memento mechanic. Secondarily, it is good at getting a lot of different mana colors besides green, and some of its activated abilities have costs in non-green mana.
Red: It's primary theme is getting rid of lands and artifacts from both sides and getting buffs for lands and artifacts being in the graveyard. Secondarily, it has hellbent effects and often discards its own cards for powerful effects.
Black: It primarily makes use of non-black cards in any graveyard. It can do things like exiling a non-black card to get a 2/2 black zombie for 1 mana. Secondarily, a lot of cards can become black zombies through origin, so it naturally has multicolored cards and puts non-black cards in its own graveyard.
Blue: It makes use of the Second cast mechanic, and its mill cards can also self mill in order to get cards into the graveyard. It also uses the renewal mechanic quite a bit, partially to shuffle your deck if you look at the top few cards of your deck and decide you don't like them. Secondarily, it handles artifacts, especially ones with activated abilities. It has ways of generating non-blue mana that only works for artifact activated abilities.
So what do you think? Concerns? Any tweeks? Mechanics I should add? Card ideas, maybe?
Before getting too ahead of myself, let me first ask if you have a design goal for your set? There are a couple guys here who do a fantastic podcast about custom magic cards, and they have an episode explaining the importance of design goals - it's their first episode so it's a little less polished than the more recent discussions, but there's still plenty to be gleaned from it. There's also this great article written by one of them about how to break into custom design. I strongly encourage you to determine a design goal to help guide your design.
As far as deciding on set mechanics, I actually wrote an article about some things you want to consider when developing mechanics for your sets. Renewal has some troubles, in that it doesn't feel like it does anything, while still taking a lot of time for shuffling in paper magic. Second cast reads a lot like Flashback to me, which is a very solid mechanic. Memento sounds like it could be a lot of fun! Origin again seems like it doesn't do anything directly (or at least has to be really wordy to do anything tangible), and also distracts from your graveyard theme.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Because I forgot flashback existed. Good to know, thanks.
Oh, and thanks mondu. I'll make sure to read those things, so far I've only read nuts and bolts.
Origin I mostly included in order to work with the source material I designed this set to work with. The main idea I ad was to have cards that were originally of one color, but could either be used in a black deck or could be brought back by a black card in order to change it. There's a whole play in Sound Horizon about people coming back from the dead changed in order to exact their revenge. I suppose there could be a good way to do that that's less clunky, so i'll start thinking about that.
Renewal was something I came up with when I thought about Sound Horizon's theme of a cycle of life and death. I also intended this set for limited, which usually means smaller, 40 card decks, so the impact of shuffling a few cards back into your deck may actually be significant, especially since this will probably be on a a fair number of strong uncommons. I also wanted it to interact with a the graveyard interactions. As white you could take cards out of your graveyard for their effects. You could counter someone bringing back one of your cards with, say momento, or a revival spell, by shuffling it back in as a sort of counter. And you'd have to keep mana open to do this if you think the opponent has something in the wings like that.
I feel there is a level of elegance to how many things you could do with just shuffling a card back in your deck, but I agree it does sound like it could be a lot of work. Not to mention when designing cards I often feel like I may be designing cards just so I can use the mechanic a reasonable amount. And I feel like that's a red flag. I'll keep it as a possibility, but I may have to think of something else. I might include things in the first playtest, maybe not.
Any other ideas for mechanics I can add? because right now I just have momento and some returning ones (hellbent and flashback).