Innistrad Enshrouded Set 1 of the Innistrad Enshrouded block. (004/264 cards completed.)
Travel back to Innistrad, the heart of gothic horror, returned to its initial state after the effects wrought by Emrakul. Now new mystery unfolds in Innistrad, and the Gatewatch must be tasked with handling it again.
Seeing as this is a return to Innistrad, I wanted to include the following:
Flip Cards
Madness and/or flashback
A new mechanic akin to Morbid and Delirium
But most importantly, I wanted to include a return to clues. Moreover, I wanted clues to be more profound and have interaction in all five colors. Black and Red had little support for clues, and I'd like to remedy that.
Balance has returned to Innistrad after the victory over Emrakul. The Spirits have become malformed, permanently corrupted by the grasp of the Eldritch Moon, but still fight for the good of the plane. Without the influence of Sorin Markov or his Guardian Angel, the plane itself has willed itself to balance. Angels rise again, and I, Sigarda, have ascended to be their leader. Thraben has risen to a new golden age of information, and the humans there work to gain more knowledge. But I worry that something horrid lay underneath, further than the Voldaren vampires or the Kessig Wolfir. Thraben's sleuths work to uncover it, but the evil outside the city, and the treachery and crime within Thraben stop them at every turn. Although we are in an age of light, much of this plane is still enshrouded in darkness and mystery.
Innistrad Enshrouded takes more of a focus on a new Thraben, under a renaissance of information and knowledge. However, each of the color pairs, as well as the shards to a much lesser extent, has a place in the set.
Sigarda works tirelessly to give rise to a new age of angels and a time of enlightenment for Innistrad. Thusly she must call upon new angels and ascend to the new Archangel. Sigarda, Rising Archangel2GUW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, Vigilance, Lifelink
When Sigarda, Rising Archangel enters the battlefield, you may seach your library for a Human or Angel card, reveal it, then put it into your hand.
Angel spells you cast cost 1W less to cast. (The W can reduce generic mana costs.)
3/4
The Sleuths of Thraben take the job of figuring out what new plot lay under Innistrad this time, led by the master detective Astaria. Astaria the Observant1GU
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue (R)
When Astaria the Observant enters the battlefield, investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token onto the battlefield with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Whenever you sacrifice a clue, put a +1/+1 counter on Astaria for each clue you've sacrificed this turn.
2/2
Because of her work and that of Sigarda, Thraben has turned into a cesspool of knowledge and information, spurring a new golden age. Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle
Legendary Land (R)
Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle enters the battlefield tapped. T: Add C to your mana pool. T, Sacrifice a clue: Add two mana in any combination of colors to your mana pool. 4, T : Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
White uses clues mainly as a cantrip, adding it onto cheaper spells and creatures. Clues were tertiary in SOI, and they also are here. Blue uses clues very liberally, also much like it did in SOI. It will also likely have more cards that do additional effects upon sacrificing clues than in its predecessor. Black, one of the colors that did not have access to clues in SOI, plays mainly a role in stopping investigations and/or profiting off of them. Case and Point:
Stupefaction1B
Enchantment (U)
When Stupefaction enters the battlefield, each player sacrifices all clues he or she controls, then each player loses 2 life for each clue he or she sacrificed this turn.
Players can't Investigate. All our leads are coming up empty, our questions unanswered, and a threat still looming. What are we missing?
Red plays a very two-sided coin with clues. Just as red is fickle with emotion, it is also fickle with information, having many cards that stop the flow of information and speed it along, sometimes even weaponizing it. Green, like blue, plays a very similar role in clues that it had in SOI, putting more of a focus on triggered abilities to investigate than other colors.
001 Stupefaction1B
Enchantment (U)
When Stupefaction enters the battlefield, each player sacrifices all clues he or she controls, then each player loses 2 life for each clue he or she sacrificed this turn.
Players can't Investigate. All our leads are coming up empty, our questions unanswered, and a threat still looming. What are we missing?
002 Astaria the Observant1GU
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue (R)
When Astaria the Observant enters the battlefield, investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token onto the battlefield with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Whenever you sacrifice a clue, put a +1/+1 counter on Astaria for each clue you've sacrificed this turn.
2/2
003 Sigarda, Rising Archangel2GUW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, Vigilance, Lifelink
When Sigarda, Rising Archangel enters the battlefield, you may seach your library for a Human or Angel card, reveal it, then put it into your hand.
Angel spells you cast cost 1W less to cast. (The W can reduce generic mana costs.)
3/4
004 Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle
Legendary Land (R)
Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle enters the battlefield tapped. T: Add C to your mana pool. T, Sacrifice a clue: Add two mana in any combination of colors to your mana pool. 4, T : Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Any feedback after any update would be greatly appreciated so that I can improve my setmaking and this set, thanks!
My thoughts are with the friends and family of the Orlando Shooting victims and with the rest of the LGBTQA+ community.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
Necarg, please don't acknowledge this in any way whatsoever.
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Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
A new update comes with the first cards! Please take a look at Sigarda, Innistrad's protector, Astaria, a master sleuth, and Thraben, along with more!
As always, feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My thoughts are with the friends and family of the Orlando Shooting victims and with the rest of the LGBTQA+ community.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
Necarg, please don't acknowledge this in any way whatsoever.
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
Not at all a fan of Stupefaction, or your direction for black's interaction with clues in general. There's no reason for you to hose the flagship mechanic of a set within that same set. I would reconsider any attempts to stop investigation - it's simply unfun.
As for Sigarda, I think you'd need to word her like this:
Sigarda, Rising Archangel2GUW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, vigilance, lifelink
When Sigarda, Rising Archangel enters the battlefield, you may seach your library for a Human or Angel creature card, reveal it and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
Angel creature spells you cast cost 1Wor 2 less to cast. (You choose as you cast the spell.)
3/4
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH/Commander
(W/U)(W/U)Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage: The New da Vinci (historic control)
(W/B)(W/B)Teysa Karlov: Death Be Not Kind (aristocrats)
(R/G)(R/G)Hallar, the Firefletcher: Yavimaya Burning (kicker and counters)
(B/G)(G/U)Sidisi, Brood Tyrant: Queen of the Damned (dredge)
Maybe Build
(W/U)(U/B)Aminatou, the Fateshifter: And a Child Shall Lead Them (superfriends)
I think that the generic mana thing on the casting cost reduction for Sigarda is unnecessarily complicated. Just a 1W reduction is fine: the vast majority of angels have W in their casting cost, and you would need to reword it as Phosphorus said for it to actually work, W can't reduce generic mana requirements.
Not at all a fan of Stupefaction, or your direction for black's interaction with clues in general. There's no reason for you to hose the flagship mechanic of a set within that same set. I would reconsider any attempts to stop investigation - it's simply unfun.
Agreed. Well, sort of - there should maybe be one or two Clue hosers in the set, just as Coldsnap had a couple of snow hosers. But Coldsnap was aiming to fix the greatest single mistake of Ice Age block: Practically, if not literally, more of the snow-related effects in the original two sets were hosers instead of bonuses.
It's also off-color to have black destroy artifacts even in such a narrow capacity; if any color is going to get to clear the board of Clues it's red.
On Stupefaction, there is an important design principal that took Wizards a long time to figure out: hosers should never be so specific as to only apply to one in-block mechanic. Nobody likes Break Open or Brutal Suppression, but Urgent Exorcism is fine. Hate should never be the focus of design, but when you do make hate, it should apply outside of the block.
You should probably do one of two things: either reword it to hate more than just clues, or give it a secondary function. The easiest way to do that is to put it on a creature, at least that way it does something in a vacuum. (Also, I agree with Void Nothing on the color pie concerns.)
When you say flip cards I presume you actually mean DFCs from Innistrad not actual flip cards from Kamigawa. If not, then I advise to do DFCs instead.
You say you wanted to include madness and/or flashback, have you made a decision yet about which ones you will be using? I recommend not returning madness and flashback seems a reasonable choice to return. Doing it alongside clues and DFCs though might be a bit too many returning mechanics, and flashback isn't all that mechanically distinctive so it's fairly easy to replace with something new in the same mechanical slot. Clues are more distinctive though so I recommend keeping them over flashback, and DFCs are just crucial to Innistrad's mechanical themes.
I agree that black shouldn't be very much at all involved in fighting clues. As Phosphorous said, hating on your set mechanics is not very good, and to expand more on why it's because your mechanics are supposed to draw players into your mechanical themes, so hating on them takes away from that. Set mechanic hate cards are almost always done as one-off cards mainly for an option to counter decks using the mechanics if they get really strong in the meta.
Something I'd do is put down a concise and clear description for the tone of this set and especially how it's different from the previous blocks. And then look at picking a few major ways of bringing that into the game mechanically. This will help you develop an identity for the set.
Set 1 of the Innistrad Enshrouded block. (004/264 cards completed.)
Travel back to Innistrad, the heart of gothic horror, returned to its initial state after the effects wrought by Emrakul. Now new mystery unfolds in Innistrad, and the Gatewatch must be tasked with handling it again.
Seeing as this is a return to Innistrad, I wanted to include the following:
Sigarda, Rising Archangel 2GUW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, Vigilance, Lifelink
When Sigarda, Rising Archangel enters the battlefield, you may seach your library for a Human or Angel card, reveal it, then put it into your hand.
Angel spells you cast cost 1W less to cast. (The W can reduce generic mana costs.)
3/4
Astaria the Observant 1GU
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue (R)
When Astaria the Observant enters the battlefield, investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token onto the battlefield with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Whenever you sacrifice a clue, put a +1/+1 counter on Astaria for each clue you've sacrificed this turn.
2/2
Because of her work and that of Sigarda, Thraben has turned into a cesspool of knowledge and information, spurring a new golden age.
Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle
Legendary Land (R)
Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add C to your mana pool.
T, Sacrifice a clue: Add two mana in any combination of colors to your mana pool.
4, T : Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
White uses clues mainly as a cantrip, adding it onto cheaper spells and creatures. Clues were tertiary in SOI, and they also are here.
Blue uses clues very liberally, also much like it did in SOI. It will also likely have more cards that do additional effects upon sacrificing clues than in its predecessor.
Black, one of the colors that did not have access to clues in SOI, plays mainly a role in stopping investigations and/or profiting off of them. Case and Point:
Stupefaction 1B
Enchantment (U)
When Stupefaction enters the battlefield, each player sacrifices all clues he or she controls, then each player loses 2 life for each clue he or she sacrificed this turn.
Players can't Investigate.
All our leads are coming up empty, our questions unanswered, and a threat still looming. What are we missing?
Green, like blue, plays a very similar role in clues that it had in SOI, putting more of a focus on triggered abilities to investigate than other colors.
001 Stupefaction 1B
Enchantment (U)
When Stupefaction enters the battlefield, each player sacrifices all clues he or she controls, then each player loses 2 life for each clue he or she sacrificed this turn.
Players can't Investigate.
All our leads are coming up empty, our questions unanswered, and a threat still looming. What are we missing?
002 Astaria the Observant 1GU
Legendary Creature - Human Rogue (R)
When Astaria the Observant enters the battlefield, investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token onto the battlefield with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Whenever you sacrifice a clue, put a +1/+1 counter on Astaria for each clue you've sacrificed this turn.
2/2
003 Sigarda, Rising Archangel 2GUW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, Vigilance, Lifelink
When Sigarda, Rising Archangel enters the battlefield, you may seach your library for a Human or Angel card, reveal it, then put it into your hand.
Angel spells you cast cost 1W less to cast. (The W can reduce generic mana costs.)
3/4
004 Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle
Legendary Land (R)
Thraben, Logic's Pinnacle enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add C to your mana pool.
T, Sacrifice a clue: Add two mana in any combination of colors to your mana pool.
4, T : Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Any feedback after any update would be greatly appreciated so that I can improve my setmaking and this set, thanks!
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
As always, feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
As for Sigarda, I think you'd need to word her like this:
Sigarda, Rising Archangel 2GUW
Legendary Creature - Angel (M)
Flying, vigilance, lifelink
When Sigarda, Rising Archangel enters the battlefield, you may seach your library for a Human or Angel creature card, reveal it and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
Angel creature spells you cast cost 1W or 2 less to cast. (You choose as you cast the spell.)
3/4
Agreed. Well, sort of - there should maybe be one or two Clue hosers in the set, just as Coldsnap had a couple of snow hosers. But Coldsnap was aiming to fix the greatest single mistake of Ice Age block: Practically, if not literally, more of the snow-related effects in the original two sets were hosers instead of bonuses.
It's also off-color to have black destroy artifacts even in such a narrow capacity; if any color is going to get to clear the board of Clues it's red.
I̟̥͍̠ͅn̩͉̣͍̬͚ͅ ̬̬͖t̯̹̞̺͖͓̯̤h̘͍̬e͙̯͈̖̼̮ ̭̬f̺̲̲̪i͙͉̟̩̰r̪̝͚͈̝̥͍̝̲s̼̻͇̘̳͔ͅt̲̺̳̗̜̪̙ ̳̺̥̻͚̗ͅm̜̜̟̰͈͓͎͇o̝̖̮̝͇m̯̻̞̼̫̗͓̤e̩̯̬̮̩n͎̱̪̲̹͖t͇̖s̰̮ͅ,̤̲͙̻̭̻̯̹̰ ̖t̫̙̺̯͖͚̯ͅh͙̯̦̳̗̰̟e͖̪͉̼̯ ̪͕g̞̣͔a̗̦t̬̬͓͙̫̖̭̻e̩̻̯ ̜̖̦̖̤̭͙̬t̞̹̥̪͎͉ͅo͕͚͍͇̲͇͓̺ ̭̬͙͈̣̻t͈͍͙͓̫̖͙̩h̪̬̖̙e̗͈ ̗̬̟̞̺̤͉̯ͅa̦̯͚̙̜̮f͉͙̲̣̞̼t̪̤̞̣͚e̲͉̳̥r͇̪̙͚͓l̥̞̞͎̹̯̹ͅi͓̬f̮̥̬̞͈ͅe͎ ̟̩̤̳̠̯̩̯o̮̘̲p̟͚̣̞͉͓e͍̩̣n͔̼͕͚̜e̬̱d̼̘͎̖̹͍̮̠,͖̺̭̱̮ ̣̲͖̬̪̭̥a̪͚n̟̲̝̤̤̞̗d̘̱̗͇̮͕̳͕͔ ͖̞͉͎t̹̙͎h̰̱͉̗e̪̞̱̝̹̩ͅ ̠̱̩̭̦p̯̙e͓o̳͚̰̯̺̱̰͔̘p̬͎̱̣̼̩͇l̗̟̖͚̠e̱͉͔̱̦̬̟̙ ̖͚̪͔̼̦w̺̖̤̱e͖̗̻̦͓̖̘̜r̭̥e͔̹̫̱͕̦̰͕ ̗͔̠p̠̗͍͍̱̳̠r̰͔͎̰o͉̥͓̰͚̥s̟͚̹̱͔̣t͉̙̳̖͖̪̮r̥̘̥͙̹a͉̟̫̟̳̠̟̭t͈̜̰͈͎e̞̣̭̲̬ ͚̗̯̟͙i͍͖̰̘̦͖͉ṇ̮̻̯̦̲̩͍ ̦̮͚̫̤t͉͖̫͕ͅͅh͙̮̻̘̣̮̼e͕̺ ͙l͕̠͎̰̥i̲͓͉̲g̫̳̟͈͇̖h̠̦̖t͓̯͎̗ ̳̪̘̟̙̩̦o̫̲f̙͔̰̙̠ ̹̪̗͇̯t͖̼̼͉͖̬h̹͇̩e͚̖̺̤͉̹͕̪ ͚͓̭̝̺G͎̗̯̩o̫̯̮̟̮̳̘d̜̲͙̠-̩̳̯̲̗̜P̹̘̥͉̝h͍͈̗̖̝ͅa͍̗̮̼̗r̜̖͇̙̺a̭̺͔̞̳͈o̪̣͓̯̬͙̯̰̗h̖̦͈̥̯͔.͇̣̙̝
You should probably do one of two things: either reword it to hate more than just clues, or give it a secondary function. The easiest way to do that is to put it on a creature, at least that way it does something in a vacuum. (Also, I agree with Void Nothing on the color pie concerns.)
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You say you wanted to include madness and/or flashback, have you made a decision yet about which ones you will be using? I recommend not returning madness and flashback seems a reasonable choice to return. Doing it alongside clues and DFCs though might be a bit too many returning mechanics, and flashback isn't all that mechanically distinctive so it's fairly easy to replace with something new in the same mechanical slot. Clues are more distinctive though so I recommend keeping them over flashback, and DFCs are just crucial to Innistrad's mechanical themes.
I agree that black shouldn't be very much at all involved in fighting clues. As Phosphorous said, hating on your set mechanics is not very good, and to expand more on why it's because your mechanics are supposed to draw players into your mechanical themes, so hating on them takes away from that. Set mechanic hate cards are almost always done as one-off cards mainly for an option to counter decks using the mechanics if they get really strong in the meta.
Something I'd do is put down a concise and clear description for the tone of this set and especially how it's different from the previous blocks. And then look at picking a few major ways of bringing that into the game mechanically. This will help you develop an identity for the set.
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I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
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