Look, I appreciate your natural response and it's interesting to see you miss things (implying a lack of grockabilly in the designs which I'm worried about) but a lot of what your are saying is missing the boat. Experience with you in the past suggests that you will get confrontational if I attempt to correct you, so I'm simply moving on. Thank you for your time and input.
[quote]I think it suffers from the same problem as Kicker - the design space is too big. Heck, look at your sample cards. Some use Encrypt as an alternate hand. Whitewash uses it as a removal
Could be there is too much design space. But I doubt it. I intend to use the mechanic like energy, meaning I'm going to have on the order of 50 Encrypt cards in the set. Balancing the encrypt economy is going to be tricky, but sounds like an interesting design problem to me.
Being able to encrypt spells from elsewhere is only interesting is encrypt does something, and I hate to say it, but right now encrypt's not doing anything. It's not affecting the game on it's own (where as Scry and clash do...), and it's not even clear what the flavor behind it is (especially if you can't decrypt).
Energy and Imprint don't affect the game on their own either. This is why all encrypt cards will have abilities/effects that interact with encrypted cards in some way. Basically, I'm using encrypt in similar ways to energy and imprint. Flavor seems obvious to me, but I may be in the minority. Basically, you are hiding secrets and using these secrets to your advantage. Feels like classic espionage to me.
(To Encrypt N, exile the top N cards of your library face down. You may look at it at any time. If you would draw a card, you may instead put an encrypted card in your hand.)
I've added this variant to the design file. I'll play with it some this weekend and see if it's worth doing.
Thanks for the designs. I'm sure there will be some number of designs similar to things like Spymaster, Decrypt Bolt, krovikan smuggler and Uncover Secrets in the final set.
(To encrypt a card, exile it face down. You may look at it at any time.)
I started with similar reminder text. I'm currently trying out my shorter text to see if players grock the ability. If players grock Encrypt with my shorter reminder text, I'll stick with it, otherwise I'll need to use a longer more explicit reminder text like yours.
Classified Information - 1. Note that on my wording, this reads "Encrypt 2", then blah blah. 2. On it's own, this is really great design. But I suspect there'll be many ways to encrypt in your set, so this will be "choose the best of 7 cards" more often than not, and that's just too powerful.
Your suspicion is false. In general, players will only have a few encrypted cards at any given time. The number can't get too large, or it will become cumbersome. Basically the same logic that is in place regarding hand size rules.
Dead Dropper - Now this is interesting. Maybe make "Decrypt" means putting a card on the top of your library? So if Encrupt's a thing, this is fine. But this is neither an enabler or an abuser; it's just fine; not a signature card to show what the mechanic does. You might just as easily make a 3/2 that Scry 2s when it ETB.
It was designed to be a simple common support creature. It's not a signature card, it is just showing off some of the design space available at common.
Whitewash - And here's where things go south. Now all you're doing is using encrypt as an alternative for exile. If they can decrypt it (to their hand, or whatever), then it's just a slightly worse exile. If not, it's just exile.
Whitewash was designed as a Divine Verdict variant with integrated set themes. It's also fairly flavorful in my opinion.
Note: Maybe make some cards have the ability to play them if they're encrypted by paying their Unencrypt cost (Or ditch decrypt as I've described it above and make Decrypt a madness-like alternate cost?).
I've considered adding a Decrypt keyword to go alongside Encrypt, but I don't think it's worth it. Decrypt would somehow be even more parasitic and just isn't overly interesting. I can include a card or two with "This may be cast from exile" or "this may be cast from exile while it is encrypted." if I want the effect, but it isn't something I would want a ton of.
Smuggler - The best thing about this is it's name, which is clearly black:
It's been given a new placeholder name to be more clear about the flavor reference.
1. Encrypt N: (To Encrypt N, exile the top N cards of your library face down. You may look at it at any time.)
I think being able to encrypt any card is useful and interesting design space. I use it no fewer than three times in the example cards. Further, being able to encrypt specific things feels right from a flavor perspective. Encrypting random things from the top of your library is useful from a gameplay perspective, but not very flavorful. Random things aren't top secret, important battle plans and spy identities are.
3. Choose a theme for Encrypted cards:
As second sets are no longer a thing (and I probably wouldn't go through the trouble of making one anyway) I'd prefer to explore the design space of Encrypt as much as reasonably possible in its first outing. I intend to use Encrypt in all the ways you mention, and more besides.
I'm getting back into set design for a custom set on Vryn. Long story short, I'm using Vryn as a Cold War Plane (between Trovians and Ampryns) with the first visit to the plane emphasizing espionage themes. To that end, I'm using Encrypt as a mechanic to emphasize this theme. Encrypt is a keyword action. To encrypt a card, you exile it face down and it becomes encrypted. Players may look at encrypted cards they own. Encrypted cards become something like a secondary hand but also act somewhat like a secondary resource pool similar to Energy. Encrypted cards a player owns will be kept together separate from the exile pile, players won't need to track which encrypt effects exiled which encrypted cards for example and players may randomize the order or encrypted cards whenever they like. There will be no effects that care about the order cards are encrypted.
Enigma Encoder 3
Artifact {U} 1 , T : Encrypt the top card of your library. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down) 1 , T : Put an encrypted card you own into your hand.
Notes:
Every card with Encrypt will have abilities/effects that care about encrypted cards
Encrypt will be in all 5 colors similar to energy
Encrypt is parasitic
There will be no "exile face down" effects in the set other than encrypt for similar reasons +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters are never in the same set
Encrypt also shares roots with imprint. Encrypt is to Imprint as Energy is to Charge counters.
Classified Information 1U
Instant {C}
Encrypt the top two cards of your library. Put an encrypted card you own into your hand. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down)
Dead Dropper 2G
Creature - ?
When Dead Dropper dies, encrypt the top card of your library. Then you may put an encrypted card you own on top of your library. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down)
3/2
Mole Hunter 1B
Creature - ?
When Mole Hunter enters the battlefield, you may encrypt a card from your hand. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.) 2B , Put an encrypted creature card you own into your graveyard : Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
2/2
Unknowable Agent 1U
Creature - Illusion
As Unknowable Agent enters the battlefield, encrypt the top card of your library. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.)
When you control no encrypted cards, sacrifice Unknowable Agent
3/2
Whitewash 2W
Instant
Target attacking or Blocking creature's controller encrypts it. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.)
Human Trafficker2G
Creature - ?
When Smuggler enters the battlefield, you may encrypt a card from your hand. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.) 4 : Put an encrypted Creature card you own onto the battlefield.
2/3
Explosive Message 2R
instant
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player.
When Explosive Message leaves exile, you may reveal it and cast it without paying its mana cost.
This text is provisional and incomplete. It is merely meant to try to clarify how the keyword works. I'll be building on this entry as I move forward with the set assuming the keyword stays in the design file. Encrypt
To Encrypt a card, the player exiles it face down. That card becomes Encrypted and may be shuffled into that player's existing set of encrypted cards
Players may look at encrypted cards they own at any time
As usual, names are placeholder. Creature types are filled in when relevant but mostly left blank until I can clear the plane up creatively. Costs are just best guesses and will need to be tuned later. Let me know what you all think. Impressions are welcome. Feel free to offer designs as well if you like.
Renamed "smuggler"->"Human Trafficker" to give it a clearer name to reference its flavor
I'm pretty sure it hasn't been addressed. This design makes the cards look generic, bland, and confusing. I have yet to see a reason in favor of any of the changes in question.
For example, why does my mana cost have to be vertical and take up part of the card frame separate from the card name? Current cards fit both aspects into a single text box; this latest version does not. It's change-for-change's sake that actually does the opposite of the thread's title - De-optimizes. Trading 1 text box for 2 is not helpful, but it's done at least THREE TIMES on the current design.
People have been providing reasons throughout the thread. Left oriented vertical costs have already been addressed. If you are familiar with the history of future sight cards, then you should be aware of the arguments already.
The old argument in favor of doing this is that the bulk of magic players are right handed. So, when they fan out their hand, they can see the top left corner of each card, meaning that's where important information like costs should be. Of course, the difficulty with this is the asymmetry it introduces to the card which I expect would be aesthetically off putting to many people.
This is at least the second comment you have made which hasn't featured meaningful criticism or critique. Thank you for sharing your impressions. Feel free to withhold them now that you have shared them.
So I think if we put our heads together we can come up with some solutions to these problems and maybe borrow some good features from each other also. What do you think?
I like pretty much all of your changes. Regarding the security holo stamp, if its technologically feasible, I really do think embedding the holo stamp into/as the set symbol makes a lot of sense.
I choose my words carefully. Maybe you should do the same, as you keep saying things that are false and easy to disprove.
What's worse, you never seem to note that, upon this correction, that you misspoke or had a false assertion. It's always my fault for not automatically agreeing with your secret subtext.
It's not subtext. It's just typical design terms and generally used mtg terms. There is no subtext in my quote below.
"The better a lord is as a standalone card, the fewer creatures of the lord's type you will need to print in order to support the lord."
Why not? It's been printed. It wasn't broken. It combines two iconic cards into one practical version. It doesn't strictly obsolete anything (well... anything I can think of).
From a coreset design perspective, what more could you ask for a lord? Especially a lord that might be downshifted to (U)?
Frankly, I think it wraps up too much of its power in its tribal theme in a way that lord of the accursed doesn't. It's fine though and worth testing to see how it actually plays
Not for splashable cards. If I have to choose between a mediocre uncommon card I might run and a build-around-me uncommon that can help an opponent snowball that's also a C- creature on it's own in a color I might splash for removal, I might take the latter to hate draft, knowing that there is a path to me running it should draft go poorly... or really well.
This is literally just you not knowing what hate drafting is. If you take a card in order to open up an option to splash or hedge into a color you aren't otherwise in, this is called speculating. Here is a relevant article to clarify this point for you. There is nothing wrong with players taking things on speculation and you won't be meaningfully reducing speculative picks by switching from 1RR to 2R on otherwise un-splashable cards.
I'm ignoring the rest of your post in an attempt to prevent confusion and also because I'm already tired of trying to help you.
Test: Take a crappy draft common you'll never use again (maybe you were about to throw out your 13th copy of Final Reward), take a black marker to the art and completely black it out. Now look at the card. That boarder is oozing flavor.
I suspect this is a bare bones mockup, but look at the designs both classic and modern cardframes.
"Elemental" detail is present on both classic and modern cards, they look magical. They look special and interesting.
I thought I already mentioned this but apparently I'm wrong. Texturing can be added later to add that kind of effect. Right now I'm only concerned about functionality.
Basically, border textures are being ignored because it doesn't serve a function and can be added later for aesthetic appeal. None of the changes to the card frame at the moment precludes the possibility of border textures. They are being ignored at the moment to make iteration faster and easier.
It is a good choice to support a light goblin tribal subtheme. It's probably not what I would go with personally.
He costs 1RR. This means that he is difficult to splash. Red is notable for being an often splashed card in limited due to removal. "Hate drafting" this if I can splash it... and then maybe go deeper red... would be easy at 2R - He can make my deck if I need him to. But at 1RR I cannot splash him realistically. Thus if I hate draft him, I don't have the change to play him.
There is a huge difference between taking something on speculation and hate drafting something. And no, you aren't going to splash a goblin chiefmate into your WB deck because, as I've already pointed out several times, you won't have any goblins in WB and a 2/2 haste for 3 is an aweful card to splash for. If you are splashing for a 3 mana 2/2 haste, then something has gone horribly wrong in your draft or horribly wrong with set design.
Goblin Chiefmate 2R
Creature - Goblin {U/r}
Haste
Other goblin creatures you control get +1/+1 and have haste.
2/2
You seem to intentionally miss the point whenever the opportunity arises.
Let's try one final time, third time as always is the charm. No more trying to convey two lessons at a time, just a simple straight forward design lesson for you. No examples to get lost in or nomenclature you could be confused by.
The better a lord is as a standalone card, the fewer creatures of the lord's type you will need to print in order to support the lord.
In real terms, what this means is that if you want a tribal subtheme (as opposed to a primary theme or not a theme at all), you want your lords to be mediocre (as opposed to bad, or good) as standalone cards. They should have moderately potent tribal effects to remain balanced.
Yes... it's amazing how giving creatures more power or toughness and/or giving them an easier to play mana cost makes them able to be played better.
But the tribes in question are primarily single-color, so splashability merely serves to undermine the focus on that creature type. Why wouldn't you hatedraft a lord in a color you're splashing for lighting bolt or Pacifism? But you're not going to splash for 1CC cards not in your tribe, are you?
It's almost as if these iconic mainstay conventions are taylored to drafting ques.
You understand that when I'm talking about playability, I'm not actually talking about power level. It's about smooth gameplay and letting players cast their spells, and reducing swinginess. The simple truth is that you don't need difficult color costs on these lords because the lords aren't splashable in this format anyway. Lords are only good if you have enough creatures of the relevant creature type. I'm never splashing a typical goblin lord into my BG deck because I won't have any goblins in my GB limited deck. The RR in the cost is irrelevant. So the typical function of the double color cost isn't justified for these designs, meaning we now need to consider the actual impact of the double colored costs for these designs. I'd posit that it merely makes the cards swingier, punishing players needlessly for playing typical two color RX decks they are forced to run, making it harder for these players to play their spells. You don't need the double color cost here. Now, if you switch to rare designers which are actually worth splashing and you want to prevent splashing, by all means, use the double color cost.
2/2 vs 2/3 has similar logic. It's not about power level, it's about how many support creatures players need to get before the lord is worth playing. By making the lord better as a standalone card, you lower set design constraints relating to getting that lord to function in limited.
?
A satisfactory core set should be a base set, providing a skeleton of competitive cards, checks, and balances, and introducing players to the game and lore of magic. Magic is about... magic. So you want to have a variety of creatures with a variety of types to attract players. You can have a tribal skeleton, but not enough that a (mostly non-rotating) tribal deck will stay in standard tier 1 for ever.
Are you asking me what asfan is? If so, it's a measure of how common something is in packs. If a set has 100 commons and exactly one common equipment (and no other equipment at uncommon/rare/mythic), then the set has an asfan of 0.1 for equipment. You expect to see 0.1 equipment per pack.
If you want the lords to function in limited, you are going to need to print many cards of the relevant creature types. You just kind of have to. This is the set design constraint imposed by tribal themes. As I mentioned earlier, you can lower this constraint by making lords better as standalone cards. If you print goblin lord A, you will need a higher asfan of goblins in order to support it than if you print goblin lord B.
Goblin Lord A 1RR
Creature - Goblin {U}
Other goblins get +1/+1. t : Target goblin gains Haste until end of turn.
2/2
Goblin Lord B 2R
Creature - Goblin {U}
Other goblins get +1/+1. t : Target goblin gains Haste until end of turn.
2/3
...Just to offer a final point of clarification. Lord B is strictly better than Lord A, but neither is particularly playable if there are 0 goblins in the format. In order for either card to be viable in limited (or constructed for that matter), you need to support them by printing some number of goblins. The better your goblin lord is as a standalone card, the fewer goblins you need to print to make that lord viable. By making your lords better as standalone cards, you reduce the set design constraints imposed by your tribal sub themes. (note that your lords don't necessarily need to be 2/3s to see this effect, I'm merely using it as an example)
I don't like LoTA for a few reasons. His (oddly worded) symmetrical activated ability is off; his mana cost is too splashable for the lord convention, and he's a 2/3 again defying convention.
Splashable mana costs and 2/3 bodies make the lords play significantly better though. Less swingy and less dependant on support from other cards which works really well when you want tribal sub themes in limited.
As for (U) vs (R), while I have no doubt some people will draft tribal, half of the creatures in a core set wouldn't have supported creature types for those 5 tribes. I've drafted core sets where you got a rare lord and got 2-3 commons to support it.
That is an easy problem to fix though. All you need is a high as-fan for the relevant creature types.
At uncommon we are talking about ~4.5 lords per draft, so on the order of half of players in any given pod would be incentivized to include tribal themes in their decks. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, just make sure there are interesting things to do for players who don't like or are tired of tribal.
Alternatively, if you have the cycle at rare and maintain the needed asfan to support them, you get to make them more interesting/splashy, and reduce the rate of tribal to ~2 drafters per pod, which should make your limited environment more diverse as long as you include interesting things to do aside from tribal.
When they are supported as sub themes, lords can work well. My guess is uncommon lords in all 5 colors would be too loud though as it would basically force tribal themes into everyones decks. A cycle of 5 rare lords seems more interesting for limited. Or just choose one or two tribes to support in one or two non-overlapping color pairs and make the archetypes for those color pairs tribal.
They typical white characteristic race is Human, not soldier.
Reaper is probably the toughest nut to crack, as it's a bomb in limited, although a bit slow, and helps to hinder zombify strategies... yet in constructed, he's not much of a driving force as you'd almost never use his tap ability.
If you are sticking to uncommon lords, why not just use Lord of the accursed then?
I'm going to try to get through each of your design changes and talk about them individually.
Mana Wheel based Costs - While I love the idea of putting a mana wheel on the front face of the card where people can see it, I think this sollution to displaying mana costs isn't particularly space efficient and doesn't offer obvious ways to support more complex mana costs with hybrid mana, phyrexian mana, 2brid mana, etc. I personally think the best way to do mana costs is in a future shifted style, with the mana cost simply being moved from horizontal in top right corner, to vertical in top left corner. The old argument in favor of doing this is that the bulk of magic players are right handed. So, when they fan out their hand, they can see the top left corner of each card, meaning that's where important information like costs should be. Of course, the difficulty with this is the asymmetry it introduces to the card which I expect would be aesthetically off putting to many people.
P/T in top left corner - I like this idea but not the implementation. If possible, it would be nice to have P/T in top left corner instead of bottom right by similar logic as above. Just make it normal sized though and don't duplicate P/T in the bottom right.
Inverted P/T in bottom right - First off, its duplicated information which is undesirable. Second, it looks bad. Third, opponents will still need to flip the card around to read the card text, so this seems like a design element that helps no one.
Split type and sub type line - I don't think this is a good idea. Its taking what used to only be one line of text and splits it into two, which means you are using space less efficiently.
Security Foil Set Symbol - I love this idea, but there are probably cost related reasons not to do this including: Needing many types of security foil, one for each rarity but common, requiring better security foil tech capable of cutting and using almost arbitrary security foil shapes. Maybe these problems aren't actually problems, I'm not familiar enough with card manufacture to know.
You like Skyrider Elf even though Nimbus Swimmer exists? I just cannot understand that. Converge feels like a restriction; a drawback here.
The cards aren't comparable. They are aesthetically similar but share almost nothing in terms of gameplay. Skyrider elf is a 2/2 for 2, a 3/3 for 3, a 4/4 for 4, or a 5/5 for 5, but sets increasingly difficult deck building challenges as you try to get more out of the card. Nimbus swimmer is just a traditional X spell. Its flexible and fits into any GU deck but is never efficient.
At this point, I don't think we'll ever agree that Converge is a bad mechanic. But can we at least agree Domain is a better mechanic that occupies much of the same design space? Given Domain has a storm scale of 4, and Converge of 6, it seems Wizards thinks this.
I would say that converge and domain are similar but non-comparable. They have similar design space, but different set design constraints. Which one will work better as a mechanic will depend on the environment the mechanic would exist within. The storm scale isn't about stating that one mechanic is better than another. It's just an estimate of how likely you are to see that mechanic again.
Best in what sense? It's an X burn spell that doesn't do X damage; that's a rules nightmare, right? It's Elf Skyraider on a burn spell, and judging from the discussion here no one liked that card.
I really liked skyrider elf myself. And neither skyrider elf nor Burning Conflux are rules nightmares. They both function just fine.
Its true that X is being used differently in these converge spells than in typical X-cost spells, but that isn't off putting to me in any way. Its interesting to see basic game technology like X costs used in new ways to support different kinds of gameplay.
Look, I appreciate your natural response and it's interesting to see you miss things (implying a lack of grockabilly in the designs which I'm worried about) but a lot of what your are saying is missing the boat. Experience with you in the past suggests that you will get confrontational if I attempt to correct you, so I'm simply moving on. Thank you for your time and input.
Could be there is too much design space. But I doubt it. I intend to use the mechanic like energy, meaning I'm going to have on the order of 50 Encrypt cards in the set. Balancing the encrypt economy is going to be tricky, but sounds like an interesting design problem to me.
Energy and Imprint don't affect the game on their own either. This is why all encrypt cards will have abilities/effects that interact with encrypted cards in some way. Basically, I'm using encrypt in similar ways to energy and imprint. Flavor seems obvious to me, but I may be in the minority. Basically, you are hiding secrets and using these secrets to your advantage. Feels like classic espionage to me.
I've added this variant to the design file. I'll play with it some this weekend and see if it's worth doing.
I started with similar reminder text. I'm currently trying out my shorter text to see if players grock the ability. If players grock Encrypt with my shorter reminder text, I'll stick with it, otherwise I'll need to use a longer more explicit reminder text like yours.
Your suspicion is false. In general, players will only have a few encrypted cards at any given time. The number can't get too large, or it will become cumbersome. Basically the same logic that is in place regarding hand size rules.
It was designed to be a simple common support creature. It's not a signature card, it is just showing off some of the design space available at common.
Whitewash was designed as a Divine Verdict variant with integrated set themes. It's also fairly flavorful in my opinion.
I've considered adding a Decrypt keyword to go alongside Encrypt, but I don't think it's worth it. Decrypt would somehow be even more parasitic and just isn't overly interesting. I can include a card or two with "This may be cast from exile" or "this may be cast from exile while it is encrypted." if I want the effect, but it isn't something I would want a ton of.
It's been given a new placeholder name to be more clear about the flavor reference.
I think being able to encrypt any card is useful and interesting design space. I use it no fewer than three times in the example cards. Further, being able to encrypt specific things feels right from a flavor perspective. Encrypting random things from the top of your library is useful from a gameplay perspective, but not very flavorful. Random things aren't top secret, important battle plans and spy identities are.
As second sets are no longer a thing (and I probably wouldn't go through the trouble of making one anyway) I'd prefer to explore the design space of Encrypt as much as reasonably possible in its first outing. I intend to use Encrypt in all the ways you mention, and more besides.
Enigma Encoder 3
Artifact {U}
1 , T : Encrypt the top card of your library. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down)
1 , T : Put an encrypted card you own into your hand.
Notes:
Classified Information 1U
Instant {C}
Encrypt the top two cards of your library. Put an encrypted card you own into your hand. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down)
Dead Dropper 2G
Creature - ?
When Dead Dropper dies, encrypt the top card of your library. Then you may put an encrypted card you own on top of your library. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down)
3/2
Mole Hunter 1B
Creature - ?
When Mole Hunter enters the battlefield, you may encrypt a card from your hand. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.)
2B , Put an encrypted creature card you own into your graveyard : Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
2/2
Unknowable Agent 1U
Creature - Illusion
As Unknowable Agent enters the battlefield, encrypt the top card of your library. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.)
When you control no encrypted cards, sacrifice Unknowable Agent
3/2
Whitewash 2W
Instant
Target attacking or Blocking creature's controller encrypts it. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.)
Human Trafficker2G
Creature - ?
When Smuggler enters the battlefield, you may encrypt a card from your hand. (to encrypt a card, look at and exile it face down.)
4 : Put an encrypted Creature card you own onto the battlefield.
2/3
Explosive Message 2R
instant
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player.
When Explosive Message leaves exile, you may reveal it and cast it without paying its mana cost.
This text is provisional and incomplete. It is merely meant to try to clarify how the keyword works. I'll be building on this entry as I move forward with the set assuming the keyword stays in the design file.
Encrypt
As usual, names are placeholder. Creature types are filled in when relevant but mostly left blank until I can clear the plane up creatively. Costs are just best guesses and will need to be tuned later. Let me know what you all think. Impressions are welcome. Feel free to offer designs as well if you like.
Renamed "smuggler"->"Human Trafficker" to give it a clearer name to reference its flavor
People have been providing reasons throughout the thread. Left oriented vertical costs have already been addressed. If you are familiar with the history of future sight cards, then you should be aware of the arguments already.
This is at least the second comment you have made which hasn't featured meaningful criticism or critique. Thank you for sharing your impressions. Feel free to withhold them now that you have shared them.
I like pretty much all of your changes. Regarding the security holo stamp, if its technologically feasible, I really do think embedding the holo stamp into/as the set symbol makes a lot of sense.
It's not subtext. It's just typical design terms and generally used mtg terms. There is no subtext in my quote below.
"The better a lord is as a standalone card, the fewer creatures of the lord's type you will need to print in order to support the lord."
Frankly, I think it wraps up too much of its power in its tribal theme in a way that lord of the accursed doesn't. It's fine though and worth testing to see how it actually plays
This is literally just you not knowing what hate drafting is. If you take a card in order to open up an option to splash or hedge into a color you aren't otherwise in, this is called speculating. Here is a relevant article to clarify this point for you. There is nothing wrong with players taking things on speculation and you won't be meaningfully reducing speculative picks by switching from 1RR to 2R on otherwise un-splashable cards.
I'm ignoring the rest of your post in an attempt to prevent confusion and also because I'm already tired of trying to help you.
This has already been addressed.
Basically, border textures are being ignored because it doesn't serve a function and can be added later for aesthetic appeal. None of the changes to the card frame at the moment precludes the possibility of border textures. They are being ignored at the moment to make iteration faster and easier.
Did you cast Void Winnower? Its just astounding to me how you are woefully missing the point here. I can't....
It is a good choice to support a light goblin tribal subtheme. It's probably not what I would go with personally.
There is a huge difference between taking something on speculation and hate drafting something. And no, you aren't going to splash a goblin chiefmate into your WB deck because, as I've already pointed out several times, you won't have any goblins in WB and a 2/2 haste for 3 is an aweful card to splash for. If you are splashing for a 3 mana 2/2 haste, then something has gone horribly wrong in your draft or horribly wrong with set design.
Goblin Chiefmate 2R
Creature - Goblin {U/r}
Haste
Other goblin creatures you control get +1/+1 and have haste.
2/2
Let's try one final time, third time as always is the charm. No more trying to convey two lessons at a time, just a simple straight forward design lesson for you. No examples to get lost in or nomenclature you could be confused by.
The better a lord is as a standalone card, the fewer creatures of the lord's type you will need to print in order to support the lord.
In real terms, what this means is that if you want a tribal subtheme (as opposed to a primary theme or not a theme at all), you want your lords to be mediocre (as opposed to bad, or good) as standalone cards. They should have moderately potent tribal effects to remain balanced.
You understand that when I'm talking about playability, I'm not actually talking about power level. It's about smooth gameplay and letting players cast their spells, and reducing swinginess. The simple truth is that you don't need difficult color costs on these lords because the lords aren't splashable in this format anyway. Lords are only good if you have enough creatures of the relevant creature type. I'm never splashing a typical goblin lord into my BG deck because I won't have any goblins in my GB limited deck. The RR in the cost is irrelevant. So the typical function of the double color cost isn't justified for these designs, meaning we now need to consider the actual impact of the double colored costs for these designs. I'd posit that it merely makes the cards swingier, punishing players needlessly for playing typical two color RX decks they are forced to run, making it harder for these players to play their spells. You don't need the double color cost here. Now, if you switch to rare designers which are actually worth splashing and you want to prevent splashing, by all means, use the double color cost.
2/2 vs 2/3 has similar logic. It's not about power level, it's about how many support creatures players need to get before the lord is worth playing. By making the lord better as a standalone card, you lower set design constraints relating to getting that lord to function in limited.
Are you asking me what asfan is? If so, it's a measure of how common something is in packs. If a set has 100 commons and exactly one common equipment (and no other equipment at uncommon/rare/mythic), then the set has an asfan of 0.1 for equipment. You expect to see 0.1 equipment per pack.
If you want the lords to function in limited, you are going to need to print many cards of the relevant creature types. You just kind of have to. This is the set design constraint imposed by tribal themes. As I mentioned earlier, you can lower this constraint by making lords better as standalone cards. If you print goblin lord A, you will need a higher asfan of goblins in order to support it than if you print goblin lord B.
Goblin Lord A 1RR
Creature - Goblin {U}
Other goblins get +1/+1.
t : Target goblin gains Haste until end of turn.
2/2
Goblin Lord B 2R
Creature - Goblin {U}
Other goblins get +1/+1.
t : Target goblin gains Haste until end of turn.
2/3
...Just to offer a final point of clarification. Lord B is strictly better than Lord A, but neither is particularly playable if there are 0 goblins in the format. In order for either card to be viable in limited (or constructed for that matter), you need to support them by printing some number of goblins. The better your goblin lord is as a standalone card, the fewer goblins you need to print to make that lord viable. By making your lords better as standalone cards, you reduce the set design constraints imposed by your tribal sub themes. (note that your lords don't necessarily need to be 2/3s to see this effect, I'm merely using it as an example)
Splashable mana costs and 2/3 bodies make the lords play significantly better though. Less swingy and less dependant on support from other cards which works really well when you want tribal sub themes in limited.
That is an easy problem to fix though. All you need is a high as-fan for the relevant creature types.
At uncommon we are talking about ~4.5 lords per draft, so on the order of half of players in any given pod would be incentivized to include tribal themes in their decks. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, just make sure there are interesting things to do for players who don't like or are tired of tribal.
Alternatively, if you have the cycle at rare and maintain the needed asfan to support them, you get to make them more interesting/splashy, and reduce the rate of tribal to ~2 drafters per pod, which should make your limited environment more diverse as long as you include interesting things to do aside from tribal.
When they are supported as sub themes, lords can work well. My guess is uncommon lords in all 5 colors would be too loud though as it would basically force tribal themes into everyones decks. A cycle of 5 rare lords seems more interesting for limited. Or just choose one or two tribes to support in one or two non-overlapping color pairs and make the archetypes for those color pairs tribal.
They typical white characteristic race is Human, not soldier.
If you are sticking to uncommon lords, why not just use Lord of the accursed then?
Mana Wheel based Costs - While I love the idea of putting a mana wheel on the front face of the card where people can see it, I think this sollution to displaying mana costs isn't particularly space efficient and doesn't offer obvious ways to support more complex mana costs with hybrid mana, phyrexian mana, 2brid mana, etc. I personally think the best way to do mana costs is in a future shifted style, with the mana cost simply being moved from horizontal in top right corner, to vertical in top left corner. The old argument in favor of doing this is that the bulk of magic players are right handed. So, when they fan out their hand, they can see the top left corner of each card, meaning that's where important information like costs should be. Of course, the difficulty with this is the asymmetry it introduces to the card which I expect would be aesthetically off putting to many people.
P/T in top left corner - I like this idea but not the implementation. If possible, it would be nice to have P/T in top left corner instead of bottom right by similar logic as above. Just make it normal sized though and don't duplicate P/T in the bottom right.
Inverted P/T in bottom right - First off, its duplicated information which is undesirable. Second, it looks bad. Third, opponents will still need to flip the card around to read the card text, so this seems like a design element that helps no one.
Split type and sub type line - I don't think this is a good idea. Its taking what used to only be one line of text and splits it into two, which means you are using space less efficiently.
Security Foil Set Symbol - I love this idea, but there are probably cost related reasons not to do this including: Needing many types of security foil, one for each rarity but common, requiring better security foil tech capable of cutting and using almost arbitrary security foil shapes. Maybe these problems aren't actually problems, I'm not familiar enough with card manufacture to know.
The cards aren't comparable. They are aesthetically similar but share almost nothing in terms of gameplay. Skyrider elf is a 2/2 for 2, a 3/3 for 3, a 4/4 for 4, or a 5/5 for 5, but sets increasingly difficult deck building challenges as you try to get more out of the card. Nimbus swimmer is just a traditional X spell. Its flexible and fits into any GU deck but is never efficient.
I would say that converge and domain are similar but non-comparable. They have similar design space, but different set design constraints. Which one will work better as a mechanic will depend on the environment the mechanic would exist within. The storm scale isn't about stating that one mechanic is better than another. It's just an estimate of how likely you are to see that mechanic again.
I really liked skyrider elf myself. And neither skyrider elf nor Burning Conflux are rules nightmares. They both function just fine.
Its true that X is being used differently in these converge spells than in typical X-cost spells, but that isn't off putting to me in any way. Its interesting to see basic game technology like X costs used in new ways to support different kinds of gameplay.