I think your rules change suggestion is interesting, but what about abilities such as Crackling Triton's? Red ability? Blue ability? Blue/red? By your rules suggestion it'd be blue of course, but the confusion is present.
Does this need to transform? Could it not be this:
COST, Turn this creature's Con face up: If the Con is a land card, TRIGGER EFFECT. Otherwise, put N +1/+1 counter(s) on CARDNAME and it gains KEYWORD(s). (Indefinitely.)
Transform is flavorful and useful in many contexts, but I'm not sold on it here. I think this is a mechanic that can be done Renown / Monstrosity style, with Anavolver style reminders for keywords. It also reduces your complexity considerably... but it is quite wordy. I'm assuming this is going to be complex no matter the implementation, though.
But I'd ask you to compare Jeskai Sage with Jeskai Elder; 1/3s with the latter ability often cost 2U, so I can only assume that prowess costs next to nothing on Jeskai Elder. So if Jeskai Elder is a fair card; I think a 1/2 for U prowess is more than fair; and thus - again - we're talking over +1 for "When this dies, draw a card."
Sorry that I'm not responding to your entire message, but skimming over it this part stuck out to me. Scroll Thief Jeskai Elder ain't. It loots, not draws.
Yes, I can see a Nessian Courser in red at uncommon just fine, in terms of power level. I'm not if it'd ever see print, though, as it doesn't really serve a strong purpose like haste does.
I think this is a format I need to play with to judge these designs, a lot of these are tough for me to mentally playtest. My initial impressions, though:
Home: This doesn't seem exciting to me. When you have a lot of lands to work with, you have a lot more ability to keep Homes untapped, minimizing how interesting of a restriction it is. It is an arbitrary way to keep the increased-land-count down, so I think I get your design goal, but... I'm not sure if this is really that fun at all.
Exhaust: Once again, Exhaust seems to be playing around with the fact that with more lands quicker, you want to find alternate ways to make them count as a resource. But again, when you're adding more lands, you're also minimizing how much of a cost this really feels like, no? It's another way to artificially constrain mana, which seems to be beside the intent of the set, in a way.
Landfall: I think this is too explosive in a set where one turn you can be playing five lands, and in the next you might be playing one. Sure, you can hold lands and trickle them out, but if on any turn this might suddenly become a 5/5 for two mana, that seems insane. It also exacerbates the aggression problem of Landfall. The other Landfall guy in red can deal a lot of damage out of nowhere, too.
Amass: Counting your opponent's spells is really problematic and going to be unintuitive to a lot of players. I see why you're doing it, but it's something avoided nowadays. Might be fine in a custom set with a higher average of skill level and comprehension, though.
Multikicker: Perfect. This is what I was hoping to see.
A lot of your mechanics very specifically call out lands, which is troubling to me. I also think Home and Exhaust basically cover the same design intent (as far a I can see) so I'd cut one of them, both to lower the complexity of the set (less mechanics is good) and because it'd lower the amount of repetition in the mechanics, in terms of theme.
Again, I'm not sure how this format plays out, and these are just initial impressions... The idea of an explosive and high-speed Magic format sounds nice though and it's something I'd like to try to playtest. It's really hard to mentally evaluate such a big change in gameplay, though.
Onto cards:
Blinding Gargantua: This feels way too swingy to me. It needs to be answered with removal, and while you're gonna be burning through cards a lot faster in this format, it's still very frustrating to fight against. With the activated ability it's even tough to outrace it. I think this would be a lot better as a flier.
Naive Conclusion: This is really neat in this format, nice idea. This is definitely very uniquely changed by the format it's present in.
Bakook Drainer: Nasty. I'm curious how this plays out. Definitely very different in this format, a lot more potent. Too potent, perhaps?
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Lastly, a question - isn't milling yourself out way more of a possibility in this format? Do you have any ideas on how to address that?
While I'm unsure how to feel about the exact gameplay here - I'll try to get back to you on that - I'd like to address the concerns of BlazingRagnarok and Watchwolf.
Somewhat? You consider a second turn 2/4 or 3/3 or 4/4 with flash that can only be countered by Stifle to be only somewhat more playable? Cripes, just how much of a drawback do you thing being (French) vanilla is? Even if we ignore all of the unpleasantness that comes with a heavy usage of this kind of design paradigm, these cards are way too pushed.
I like the concept here, although it would work better if it made tokens. Or even if it just cared about a creature type rather than a specific card (although that would be extremely powerful).
Do note that an additional 'cost' of these cards is that they cannot freely sling out these creatures. The cost lies in deckbuilding; in order to get discounts on these creatures, and play them at instant-speed, you not only have to include a sub-par basic land in your deck, but also (for the most part) a sub-par creature. In addition, you have to have this land on the battlefield, and that creature in your hand.
Think of the times you draw these lands, but don't draw the corresponding creature until it's too late. Those lands are now just inferior basic lands. On the other hand, think of the times when you draw the creatures, but not the lands. You'll have a hand of Gray Ogres and Shivan Dragons and think, "Man, I wish these were better creatures".
This is why making these create tokens would completely undermine the inherent balancing of the cycle, and take away the interesting exploration of design space. Is it design space that should be printed? Is the balancing enough to justify the clearly aggressive costing of these lands? I'm not sure. They are definitely powerful, when all the stars align. But it's certainly a factor worth considering. But, the idea itself is certainly really cool!
entombedhydra, I appreciate the little touches to vary each card in the cycle, but I think it distracts from your core (and cool) premise. I'd stick to just shaking up the actual mana amount rather than the other touches. Still, they are cool.
The black land and blue land, however, are problematic. Getting them from the yard is a lot more abusable than cheating them from your hand, and the life payment doesn't justify that utility. In addition, it's going to lead to extremely repetitive gameplay.
The blue land's cost is unfun for both players. For the player using it, they now have to rebuild their mana base, which isn't too exciting. More importantly, for the opponent, it's a completely unpredictable 5/4. The others, at least, can be predicted by the mana you leave open; however, this one requires no mana to be left open, so it can come at literally any time, which is very concerning. I strongly advocate against this reference to Gush.
I really appreciate Vorthos Grove the most; I think simple and sweet is good for something with such a unique idea as these. Likewise, Shivan Mountain is quite good. (Though I'd recommend a name like Shivan Peaks or something; a Mountain Mountain is kinda boring.)
For Reap, I really recommend you keep it to permanents. The modal ones are interesting but just not as compelling as the permanents, where the choice is more meaningful.
Ahhh, that's a great point Apoquallyp. I can't believe I missed that. Yes, that'd cause some serious play/feel dissonance.
Alright, what about a flavor of pride or hubris then? Maybe 'boast' or 'vaunt' or something like that? They get more successful and more arrogant, and demand more for their services. Then you can make the remove-counter stuff have flavor like disgracing someone, humility, and stuff like that?
I think here it feels less negative because it's both a bit more humorous and characterizing, and it doesn't directly imply weakness or cost.
I like this a lot, but I agree with others that the teamwork feel of Boros works better with a condition of two tapped creatures, and it pushes players more towards a unique deckbuild, focusing on resilient creatures and utility tap-as-cost creatures. The problem of "a single mana dork turns on Supply until removed" is a big problem; requiring two tapped creatures makes it harder to get away with boards like that.
However, definitely playtest it to see whether that's actually problematic or not. It's better to test it at one tapped creature than two, for the reasons of fragility that you mentioned; it's tougher to keep attacking creatures alive post-combat.
All together, I think this is a really great take on Raid with more than enough difference to be worth it. I definitely agree with all of your points. Another big one is that you can tap pre-combat and use Supply effects pre-combat to help combat; Raid struggled with design space due to that constraint, if I remember correctly.
Big problem I have with this mechanic: Disentomb isn't a white thing. It's a black and green thing. White can return small creatures directly from graveyard to battlefield, but besides a few exceptions that were bleeds, it's not a white mechanic.
This also creates really repetitive and same-y gameplay. I don't think it'd be very fun to go up against, honestly.
Inflate makes me imagine balloon animals, and unfortunately Escalate is already a keyword. What about 'Magnify', 'Intensify', 'Advance'... maybe even 'Train' or 'Improve', to imply that they're getting more skilled, but that also means they demand more for their services?
The tokens it makes are blue and green, so it's gotta be Simic.
COST, Turn this creature's Con face up: If the Con is a land card, TRIGGER EFFECT. Otherwise, put N +1/+1 counter(s) on CARDNAME and it gains KEYWORD(s). (Indefinitely.)
Transform is flavorful and useful in many contexts, but I'm not sold on it here. I think this is a mechanic that can be done Renown / Monstrosity style, with Anavolver style reminders for keywords. It also reduces your complexity considerably... but it is quite wordy. I'm assuming this is going to be complex no matter the implementation, though.
Sorry that I'm not responding to your entire message, but skimming over it this part stuck out to me. Scroll Thief Jeskai Elder ain't. It loots, not draws.
Yes, I can see a Nessian Courser in red at uncommon just fine, in terms of power level. I'm not if it'd ever see print, though, as it doesn't really serve a strong purpose like haste does.
Home: This doesn't seem exciting to me. When you have a lot of lands to work with, you have a lot more ability to keep Homes untapped, minimizing how interesting of a restriction it is. It is an arbitrary way to keep the increased-land-count down, so I think I get your design goal, but... I'm not sure if this is really that fun at all.
Exhaust: Once again, Exhaust seems to be playing around with the fact that with more lands quicker, you want to find alternate ways to make them count as a resource. But again, when you're adding more lands, you're also minimizing how much of a cost this really feels like, no? It's another way to artificially constrain mana, which seems to be beside the intent of the set, in a way.
Landfall: I think this is too explosive in a set where one turn you can be playing five lands, and in the next you might be playing one. Sure, you can hold lands and trickle them out, but if on any turn this might suddenly become a 5/5 for two mana, that seems insane. It also exacerbates the aggression problem of Landfall. The other Landfall guy in red can deal a lot of damage out of nowhere, too.
Amass: Counting your opponent's spells is really problematic and going to be unintuitive to a lot of players. I see why you're doing it, but it's something avoided nowadays. Might be fine in a custom set with a higher average of skill level and comprehension, though.
Multikicker: Perfect. This is what I was hoping to see.
A lot of your mechanics very specifically call out lands, which is troubling to me. I also think Home and Exhaust basically cover the same design intent (as far a I can see) so I'd cut one of them, both to lower the complexity of the set (less mechanics is good) and because it'd lower the amount of repetition in the mechanics, in terms of theme.
Again, I'm not sure how this format plays out, and these are just initial impressions... The idea of an explosive and high-speed Magic format sounds nice though and it's something I'd like to try to playtest. It's really hard to mentally evaluate such a big change in gameplay, though.
Onto cards:
Blinding Gargantua: This feels way too swingy to me. It needs to be answered with removal, and while you're gonna be burning through cards a lot faster in this format, it's still very frustrating to fight against. With the activated ability it's even tough to outrace it. I think this would be a lot better as a flier.
Naive Conclusion: This is really neat in this format, nice idea. This is definitely very uniquely changed by the format it's present in.
Bakook Drainer: Nasty. I'm curious how this plays out. Definitely very different in this format, a lot more potent. Too potent, perhaps?
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Lastly, a question - isn't milling yourself out way more of a possibility in this format? Do you have any ideas on how to address that?
Wording sucks, but that might work?
Do note that an additional 'cost' of these cards is that they cannot freely sling out these creatures. The cost lies in deckbuilding; in order to get discounts on these creatures, and play them at instant-speed, you not only have to include a sub-par basic land in your deck, but also (for the most part) a sub-par creature. In addition, you have to have this land on the battlefield, and that creature in your hand.
Think of the times you draw these lands, but don't draw the corresponding creature until it's too late. Those lands are now just inferior basic lands. On the other hand, think of the times when you draw the creatures, but not the lands. You'll have a hand of Gray Ogres and Shivan Dragons and think, "Man, I wish these were better creatures".
This is why making these create tokens would completely undermine the inherent balancing of the cycle, and take away the interesting exploration of design space. Is it design space that should be printed? Is the balancing enough to justify the clearly aggressive costing of these lands? I'm not sure. They are definitely powerful, when all the stars align. But it's certainly a factor worth considering. But, the idea itself is certainly really cool!
entombedhydra, I appreciate the little touches to vary each card in the cycle, but I think it distracts from your core (and cool) premise. I'd stick to just shaking up the actual mana amount rather than the other touches. Still, they are cool.
The black land and blue land, however, are problematic. Getting them from the yard is a lot more abusable than cheating them from your hand, and the life payment doesn't justify that utility. In addition, it's going to lead to extremely repetitive gameplay.
The blue land's cost is unfun for both players. For the player using it, they now have to rebuild their mana base, which isn't too exciting. More importantly, for the opponent, it's a completely unpredictable 5/4. The others, at least, can be predicted by the mana you leave open; however, this one requires no mana to be left open, so it can come at literally any time, which is very concerning. I strongly advocate against this reference to Gush.
I really appreciate Vorthos Grove the most; I think simple and sweet is good for something with such a unique idea as these. Likewise, Shivan Mountain is quite good. (Though I'd recommend a name like Shivan Peaks or something; a Mountain Mountain is kinda boring.)
Alright, what about a flavor of pride or hubris then? Maybe 'boast' or 'vaunt' or something like that? They get more successful and more arrogant, and demand more for their services. Then you can make the remove-counter stuff have flavor like disgracing someone, humility, and stuff like that?
I think here it feels less negative because it's both a bit more humorous and characterizing, and it doesn't directly imply weakness or cost.
However, definitely playtest it to see whether that's actually problematic or not. It's better to test it at one tapped creature than two, for the reasons of fragility that you mentioned; it's tougher to keep attacking creatures alive post-combat.
All together, I think this is a really great take on Raid with more than enough difference to be worth it. I definitely agree with all of your points. Another big one is that you can tap pre-combat and use Supply effects pre-combat to help combat; Raid struggled with design space due to that constraint, if I remember correctly.
This also creates really repetitive and same-y gameplay. I don't think it'd be very fun to go up against, honestly.