Theres not much to judge yet. Personaly i like the "nine titans again" idea. It's not the number, but the fact that i like the idea of a planewalker taskforce. I also like how you try to involve the PWs the in main story. I'm not saying PW does not influence the main story in the recent mtg sets, it's just that they are never really involved. Liliana released Avancyn by acident wth...
I also liked how you did not include the Lorwyn 5 in your list. I think most of then were excessively explored, specially in a incredibly linear fashion. If they don't stop printing two Jaces for every t2 season without giving him any real story or reason to exist, i'm afraid people will start to dislike the main face of magic cause it's starting too feel too much like a face and too little like a character.
And "Apocalypse" is a bad name for a plane.
Mechanicaly wise, looks like you're empty handed... Try to share us what you have in mind !
Theres plenty of good feedback here. I hope you don't loose steam and give up on this set cause it's the best custom set i've read so far.
One of the most relevant ones would be the ghost spell thing. All version should target creatures or permanents in order to avoid protection, which is the primal use of colorless spells (with colored mana cost). Blue could be a colorless unsummon, white could be a colorless pacifism, green could give +2/+2 make your creature colorless until the end of turn, etc...
The other point i would try to bring is the of colorless creatures. I mean, why they aren't artifacts ? Maybe it's just my point of view but one of the few bad things that happened in MTG evolution is that artifacts gradually lost it's meaning. First White lost it's color hate cards (CoP, Protection Creatures) and then Black started to kill artifacts creatures without drawbacks. Then they made colored artifacts, completletly erasing artifacts most important trait: can be used by any color.
Now you've designed colorless creature that does not die to artifact hate, reducing even more the interaction between artifact related cards. Artifacts is a core mechanic of MTG, like Lands and Creature types. We shouldn't need a "artifact set" in order to have a good deal of artifact interactions. In your set artifacts are almost inexistent, you replaced then by colorless cards. It feels like you removed a layer of the game...
Colorless non-artifact spells, the Eldrazi cards, have meaning, at least the creatures. They are the strongest creatures in the game. It's important they don't interact with artifact tutors and retrieval or else they would be insane or much weaker to be balanced. Spells have a meaning to, they are spells that can be used by any color (like artifact sorcery and instants).
Imo colorless non-artifact creatures (Eldrazi exception) and enchantments doesn't really add anything to the game, as those roles are already furfilled by artifacts. I know the flavor are quite different. Still i feel theres too much overlap between your colorless creatures and normal arifacts creatures...
Interpose - too similar to split second imo. And in the vast majority of cases it would only mean uncounterable spells which is in the green slice of the pie.
Undermine - for this creature to actually do some real milling it would need a bigger power then what the casting cost normaly offer. For example, a undermine bear would be just too weak (milling two cards is bad) but a 3/2 for cmc is too strong in combat. It could work but i think it's little difficult to balance. Maybe make then bad blockers (no deathtouch, regenration, little toughness, can't block non fly) to compensate the above avarage power those creatures should have. Maybe undermine could work like this: Undermine x - when this creature deals combat damage to a player you may choose to prevent that damage. If you do so, put x cards from defensing player's library into his graveyard. So you could make 2 cmc 2/2 undermine 4 bear for exemple.
Rakdos - could work ! Red/Black has a story of dealing damage to all creatures. Trading small creatures to bigger one is and then cast earthquake/mutilate like abilities sounds very synergic.
Commune - Very clean ability and pretty cool. Creatures allways get killed and bounced unlike graveyard cards and artifacts. So it's much more interative then Threshold and Metalcraft.
Interpose - I liked this one too. WB is the hardest combination imo because it almost never shows itself, not even in casual formats. Theres too much overlap between W and B (ironicaly). Also most of good white and black creatures have WW and BB mana costs, making it harder to combine with any other color besides splashs. I think this is a nice aproach veyr well done !
Oldencast: reminds me of Odyssey's burst spells. However i think this is bit hard to balance combined with looting effects. Still a interesting one.
Penumbra: i'm a old fan of the apocalypse penumbra cycle too! But this would only shine whe played with sacrifice effects and those do not make alot of sense in green. Not a bad one, but not my fav one either !
Sphacelete: a reverse bushido... I can't think of many differences between those two except the fact that bushido works better with lifelink and double strike. And obviously fits rav's flavor unlike the first one. Like the above case, i don't hate it but i don't like it either hehe
Overgrown: A bit narrow and blue unfriendly ability. I mean, blue is allways bouncing oponent attackers and blockers and using evading creatures. Blue creatures are the ones that avoid combat most of the time. They don't really enter combat in order to take damage and grow. They would grow only if target by a red spell but your oponent would never waste a burn spell wthout killing your creature at once.
If you ask me you should make this your Gruul keyword. Red creatures does not normaly survive the combat in order to grow, but red has the ability to damage it's own creature, forcing then to grow. I think the overall feeling of this overlaps with Rakdos a bit (synergy between keyword and damage all creature effects) still i think it's good idea. Also, Fight is normaly on Red and Green cards and Fight works awefully well with this.
This is also an nice idea on those red creatures with large thoughness, no attack and fire breath. I can only imagine a insane fire giant getting madder and bigger whenever somone beats him. Like the Hulk hehehe
I totally support the opnion that Unleash only makes any sense if a strong trade-off between unleashing and not unleashing exist. As many before me said, if you don't have that trade-off the "~~ can't block" stance would be enough, no need for new keyword.
And this happen very cleary in both cards spoiled this far. The sketon is obvious one - regeneration is a better ability in defense.
The horse thing is on a 6 cmc creature one +1/+1 is certainly weaker then on a 2< cmc creature. You gettign extra beat power but you're loosing blocking, a very imporant ability for finishers. Sometimes you just need to lock down the game for while until you draw some burn spells and not blocking won't help you with that, but an 5/4 first strike certainly will.
Unleash is the most underrated keyword so far. Imo it leads to much more interesting choices than Scavenge and Detent. And its certainly more innovative design then both those mechanics.
You are still underestimating them :/ Actually they were the best mana fixing lands (as in: provides nothing but mana) for limited of all time (including rares - e.g. original duals). They were so good that THEY got splashed (e.g. playing UB in GB without any blue cards)!
Imo they were bad for limited because they represents sort of a luck gambit. If you draw then in appropriate time you have one extra mana. But if you draw it in your first hand without any oher lands you're screwed. And in 40 mana deck, playing 2~3 bounce lands, the chances o drawing only then is even higher.
Imo they are good cards that makes for bad games. Just my opnion though.
Like I said, a common mana rock cycle would have been preferable.
In multicolor sets you just need dual common, despite the existance of artifacts that taps for mana (mana rocks is how you xalled iti guess). Casual and limited reasons. Mana rocks doesnt solve the problem alone because they take up a non land slot. And in any case theres need for both to make a functional limited. Every multicolor set so far have a cycle of common multicolor lands and a cycle of mana rocks.
This is much, much better then RAV bounce lands who sometimes were worse at fixing consistency issues in bugdet decks and limited then basic lands. Theres also some interactions between other cards and those lands.
The comparison isn't between {Vanilla 1/1 for R} and {Unleash 1/1 for R}.
The comparison is between {Unleash 1/1 for R} and {~Can't block~ 2/2 for R}.
Unleash didn't meaningfully add anything to that card.
Of course it does. Sometimes in late games RDW have to block in order to buy some turns and draw burns to finish. Sometimes you 've equipaments on the table and you need your little guys to be able to block. Sometimes you have a load of little guys on the table and you can multiblock and trade for your opponent's finisher.
And yeh, unleash is far better of mechanic if your creature have a good block ability so the trade of is something more relevant. Even something like:
Rakdos Blablabla BR
Creature
Unleash
When ~~ blocks a attacking creature it's controler loose 3 life.
2/1
this is ALWAYS unleash 1 and your creature cant block.
that as a mechanic is horrible. i think the best way to judge a mechanic is to make blank/vanilla cards and put the mechanic on the card. just because a good card has a mechanic on it doesnt make the mechanic good.
unleash is never gonna be good unless the card its on is already good. if theres a card thats like 3/3 for 3 with haste and if you have a +1+1 counter destroy every creature your opponent controls when you attack, the card isnt good because of unleash. unleash as a mechanic is as garbage as they come, its not really even a mechanic
edit: by "the card isnt good because of unleash", i mean the card isnt good because unleash is a good mechanic.
Thats like the worst analysis method ever. You basicaly want all the card design being putted in the keyword. This is severely limiting thinking. Some keywords work that way, others are there just to make certain CARD DESIGN viable text wise.
The reason behind creature with unleash is: you may choose to make the creature a exclusive attacker in the moment you play it in order to make that creature better. Unleash is able to change any creature into a berserking one. Like mentioned above, unleash promotes in game choice between efficient attackers or blocker.
I'm sure alot of people would have better eyes for the keyword if it was worded differently (like Unleash - ~ put +1/+1 counter, Unleash - gain haste). If it was less narrow. I'm also sure the memory issue is why they didn't worded Unleash that way.If unleash only gave "intimadate" for exemple, how would you remember if you unleashed is or isn't on ?
+1/+1 counters is the mechanism the game have to make permanenet non-aura changes on creatures. This keyword will obviously be supported by cards with "[insert evergreen creature keyword] if it has +1/+1 counter on it" or creature with ability such as "T, remove a +1/+1 counter from: target layer discard a card".
Keywords do not work by thenselves. Thats not how things works.
Keep reading on this very page (and most previous): it's been pointed out to death.
The thing is, this doesn't make the mechanic good. It makes the overall card good. Almost any mechanic can be made good by tacking extra words on the card.
Bad 3CMC card text: Banding.
Amazing 3CMC card text: Banding. Take an extra turn. Draw three cards.
That doesn't mean banding is great. This is what will happen with unleash. Unleash is meh. The stuff tacked on it will be good. The spoiled cards is a perfect example of this. Without the regeneration ability, the card would be very bad, something you'd feel bad to include as a 23rd card in a sealed deck. With regen, it becomes playable. It's playability has nothing to do with the mechanic. Yes, this is obviously always true of any mechanic: you can deisng good or horrible cards around it. In this case, the core mechanics is an innately boring skeleton to put meat around. (The fact that your opponent can screw you by putting +1/+1 on it is just anti-gravy).
Keyword doesn't exist outside of cards. You can't judge it by itself. The desing of keywords doesn't matter, because you don't play with then. It's the cards that matter, not a abstract text wall.
Unleash, like many other keywords, is another way to make "double cards". It's like kicker, except it cost the creature's ability to block instead of mana and it has a standard +1/+1 benefict. This is a interesting take if you ask me. It's like you're choosing the creature stance - defensive or offensive one in the moment you play it.
It depends on what would be too good with Sunforger. All I can think of is a WUU counterspell that shuffles back into the library- making it a repeatableRW counterspell that requires a pre-payment of 3.
wow thats a smart idea O.O!
It would be so freaking sweet to see this. And wouldn't even be targatable by SCM !
Anyway, i hope Azorius get real cards! It was by far the guild with worst cards last time (the reason is cleary stated on the linked op article). Control is in really bad shape this time around. A 3 cmc good counter will help.
A keyword that shifts the spell's place in the color pie (althogh it doesn't change the color). And you guys think it's more limited then replicate ?
They can design inverse overloads (cheaper cost). Like "Target player draw two cards" with 4 cmc cost and overload 2. Another cool posibility would be:
Mega Overload U
Instant
Replaces all instances of "target" with "each" on target spell.
Overload UU
This is magic, u/b characters are not allowed to ever be anything except cliche plot making villians. =(
Which kind suck at this point. The upcoming block is all about "choose your guild" right ?
I think it's going to be a terrible decision from R&D to make some guild looks plain and simple stupid. Make Dimir some Bola's outpost in RAV will completletly ruin the guild for the fans imo =/ Make Dirmir Szadek's invisible hand even after his being forced in another plane ? I dunno about that either.
If you ask me, this time around every guild should show it's valor in it's own way. It's annoying how decadent the guilds were in RAV block. I think they realised how guilds creat a good "mood" and sense of identification inside mtg's community. They should focus on the guild's virtues this time around, so we can be proud of our guilds.
Acting as a double agent is execly the kind of nice and badass thing an UB could do !
I also liked how you did not include the Lorwyn 5 in your list. I think most of then were excessively explored, specially in a incredibly linear fashion. If they don't stop printing two Jaces for every t2 season without giving him any real story or reason to exist, i'm afraid people will start to dislike the main face of magic cause it's starting too feel too much like a face and too little like a character.
And "Apocalypse" is a bad name for a plane.
Mechanicaly wise, looks like you're empty handed... Try to share us what you have in mind !
One of the most relevant ones would be the ghost spell thing. All version should target creatures or permanents in order to avoid protection, which is the primal use of colorless spells (with colored mana cost). Blue could be a colorless unsummon, white could be a colorless pacifism, green could give +2/+2 make your creature colorless until the end of turn, etc...
The other point i would try to bring is the of colorless creatures. I mean, why they aren't artifacts ? Maybe it's just my point of view but one of the few bad things that happened in MTG evolution is that artifacts gradually lost it's meaning. First White lost it's color hate cards (CoP, Protection Creatures) and then Black started to kill artifacts creatures without drawbacks. Then they made colored artifacts, completletly erasing artifacts most important trait: can be used by any color.
Now you've designed colorless creature that does not die to artifact hate, reducing even more the interaction between artifact related cards. Artifacts is a core mechanic of MTG, like Lands and Creature types. We shouldn't need a "artifact set" in order to have a good deal of artifact interactions. In your set artifacts are almost inexistent, you replaced then by colorless cards. It feels like you removed a layer of the game...
Colorless non-artifact spells, the Eldrazi cards, have meaning, at least the creatures. They are the strongest creatures in the game. It's important they don't interact with artifact tutors and retrieval or else they would be insane or much weaker to be balanced. Spells have a meaning to, they are spells that can be used by any color (like artifact sorcery and instants).
Imo colorless non-artifact creatures (Eldrazi exception) and enchantments doesn't really add anything to the game, as those roles are already furfilled by artifacts. I know the flavor are quite different. Still i feel theres too much overlap between your colorless creatures and normal arifacts creatures...
Still, very nice set !
Undermine - for this creature to actually do some real milling it would need a bigger power then what the casting cost normaly offer. For example, a undermine bear would be just too weak (milling two cards is bad) but a 3/2 for cmc is too strong in combat. It could work but i think it's little difficult to balance. Maybe make then bad blockers (no deathtouch, regenration, little toughness, can't block non fly) to compensate the above avarage power those creatures should have. Maybe undermine could work like this: Undermine x - when this creature deals combat damage to a player you may choose to prevent that damage. If you do so, put x cards from defensing player's library into his graveyard. So you could make 2 cmc 2/2 undermine 4 bear for exemple.
Rakdos - could work ! Red/Black has a story of dealing damage to all creatures. Trading small creatures to bigger one is and then cast earthquake/mutilate like abilities sounds very synergic.
Commune - Very clean ability and pretty cool. Creatures allways get killed and bounced unlike graveyard cards and artifacts. So it's much more interative then Threshold and Metalcraft.
Interpose - I liked this one too. WB is the hardest combination imo because it almost never shows itself, not even in casual formats. Theres too much overlap between W and B (ironicaly). Also most of good white and black creatures have WW and BB mana costs, making it harder to combine with any other color besides splashs. I think this is a nice aproach veyr well done !
Oldencast: reminds me of Odyssey's burst spells. However i think this is bit hard to balance combined with looting effects. Still a interesting one.
Penumbra: i'm a old fan of the apocalypse penumbra cycle too! But this would only shine whe played with sacrifice effects and those do not make alot of sense in green. Not a bad one, but not my fav one either !
Sphacelete: a reverse bushido... I can't think of many differences between those two except the fact that bushido works better with lifelink and double strike. And obviously fits rav's flavor unlike the first one. Like the above case, i don't hate it but i don't like it either hehe
Overgrown: A bit narrow and blue unfriendly ability. I mean, blue is allways bouncing oponent attackers and blockers and using evading creatures. Blue creatures are the ones that avoid combat most of the time. They don't really enter combat in order to take damage and grow. They would grow only if target by a red spell but your oponent would never waste a burn spell wthout killing your creature at once.
If you ask me you should make this your Gruul keyword. Red creatures does not normaly survive the combat in order to grow, but red has the ability to damage it's own creature, forcing then to grow. I think the overall feeling of this overlaps with Rakdos a bit (synergy between keyword and damage all creature effects) still i think it's good idea. Also, Fight is normaly on Red and Green cards and Fight works awefully well with this.
This is also an nice idea on those red creatures with large thoughness, no attack and fire breath. I can only imagine a insane fire giant getting madder and bigger whenever somone beats him. Like the Hulk hehehe
And this happen very cleary in both cards spoiled this far. The sketon is obvious one - regeneration is a better ability in defense.
The horse thing is on a 6 cmc creature one +1/+1 is certainly weaker then on a 2< cmc creature. You gettign extra beat power but you're loosing blocking, a very imporant ability for finishers. Sometimes you just need to lock down the game for while until you draw some burn spells and not blocking won't help you with that, but an 5/4 first strike certainly will.
Unleash is the most underrated keyword so far. Imo it leads to much more interesting choices than Scavenge and Detent. And its certainly more innovative design then both those mechanics.
Imo they were bad for limited because they represents sort of a luck gambit. If you draw then in appropriate time you have one extra mana. But if you draw it in your first hand without any oher lands you're screwed. And in 40 mana deck, playing 2~3 bounce lands, the chances o drawing only then is even higher.
Imo they are good cards that makes for bad games. Just my opnion though.
In multicolor sets you just need dual common, despite the existance of artifacts that taps for mana (mana rocks is how you xalled iti guess). Casual and limited reasons. Mana rocks doesnt solve the problem alone because they take up a non land slot. And in any case theres need for both to make a functional limited. Every multicolor set so far have a cycle of common multicolor lands and a cycle of mana rocks.
This is much, much better then RAV bounce lands who sometimes were worse at fixing consistency issues in bugdet decks and limited then basic lands. Theres also some interactions between other cards and those lands.
Of course it does. Sometimes in late games RDW have to block in order to buy some turns and draw burns to finish. Sometimes you 've equipaments on the table and you need your little guys to be able to block. Sometimes you have a load of little guys on the table and you can multiblock and trade for your opponent's finisher.
And yeh, unleash is far better of mechanic if your creature have a good block ability so the trade of is something more relevant. Even something like:
Rakdos Blablabla BR
Creature
Unleash
When ~~ blocks a attacking creature it's controler loose 3 life.
2/1
Thats like the worst analysis method ever. You basicaly want all the card design being putted in the keyword. This is severely limiting thinking. Some keywords work that way, others are there just to make certain CARD DESIGN viable text wise.
The reason behind creature with unleash is: you may choose to make the creature a exclusive attacker in the moment you play it in order to make that creature better. Unleash is able to change any creature into a berserking one. Like mentioned above, unleash promotes in game choice between efficient attackers or blocker.
I'm sure alot of people would have better eyes for the keyword if it was worded differently (like Unleash - ~ put +1/+1 counter, Unleash - gain haste). If it was less narrow. I'm also sure the memory issue is why they didn't worded Unleash that way.If unleash only gave "intimadate" for exemple, how would you remember if you unleashed is or isn't on ?
+1/+1 counters is the mechanism the game have to make permanenet non-aura changes on creatures. This keyword will obviously be supported by cards with "[insert evergreen creature keyword] if it has +1/+1 counter on it" or creature with ability such as "T, remove a +1/+1 counter from: target layer discard a card".
Keywords do not work by thenselves. Thats not how things works.
Keyword doesn't exist outside of cards. You can't judge it by itself. The desing of keywords doesn't matter, because you don't play with then. It's the cards that matter, not a abstract text wall.
Unleash, like many other keywords, is another way to make "double cards". It's like kicker, except it cost the creature's ability to block instead of mana and it has a standard +1/+1 benefict. This is a interesting take if you ask me. It's like you're choosing the creature stance - defensive or offensive one in the moment you play it.
Strictly better Terminate ? Not going to happen !
wow thats a smart idea O.O!
It would be so freaking sweet to see this. And wouldn't even be targatable by SCM !
Anyway, i hope Azorius get real cards! It was by far the guild with worst cards last time (the reason is cleary stated on the linked op article). Control is in really bad shape this time around. A 3 cmc good counter will help.
They can design inverse overloads (cheaper cost). Like "Target player draw two cards" with 4 cmc cost and overload 2. Another cool posibility would be:
Mega Overload U
Instant
Replaces all instances of "target" with "each" on target spell.
Overload UU
So you can overload the entire stack. ROFL.
Which kind suck at this point. The upcoming block is all about "choose your guild" right ?
I think it's going to be a terrible decision from R&D to make some guild looks plain and simple stupid. Make Dimir some Bola's outpost in RAV will completletly ruin the guild for the fans imo =/ Make Dirmir Szadek's invisible hand even after his being forced in another plane ? I dunno about that either.
If you ask me, this time around every guild should show it's valor in it's own way. It's annoying how decadent the guilds were in RAV block. I think they realised how guilds creat a good "mood" and sense of identification inside mtg's community. They should focus on the guild's virtues this time around, so we can be proud of our guilds.
Acting as a double agent is execly the kind of nice and badass thing an UB could do !