I'm looking for extra sets of eyes and minds for a project I've been thinking about for a couple months now: making a Kamigawa set. Of course, this is one of the more popular notions in CCG, as it feels like a challenge to take a history that is largely reviled and try to make a return appealing. I don't want to make a "Return to Kamigawa" set, though. Instead, I'd like to answer a question:
What would Kamigawa look like if it was created today?
What lessons can we take from it's first go-around, and everything in between, and pretend to make it for the first time in a new context?
In this regard, I'm looking for feedback and opinions on my answers to these questions, which I've detailed below.
What's good about Kamigawa? What should we keep?
Bushido: Bushido as a mechanic is elegant, and would be very reusable if not for the name. It's flexible, and a solid creature keyword oriented toward combat. We'll keep it, but rename it to something more generic that can be used in other settings. For the time being, Tenacious is a decent enough replacement.
Ninjutsu: Just as with Bushido, Ninjutsu is an excellent mechanic that suffers from poor naming. It still fits what we want Ninjas to do, so let's call it something like Ambush.
Flavor: Kamigawa was a story-first set and it shows. The lore behind the Kami War is rich, and we can provide small tweaks to bring it into today's mythos. There are several tribes unique to Kamigawa, and I'd like to keep but update their color factions to be balanced closer to the original Innistrad tribes. Spirits vs non-Spirits remains central to the plot of the block.
Am I missing anything?
What's bad about Kamigawa? What should we leave out?
Splice: While a lot of people have tried to make Splice work, I don't think this is the right place for it. Let's make "Splice onto Arcane" something that never happened. Note that this doesn't preclude us from having Arcane as a spell subtype. I hope to replace the intent of Arcane with something more backwards-compatible.
Wisdom: Aka hand size matters, that's absolutely out as it's proven to cause poor gameplay.
Complexity: We'll be bringing Kamigawa into the NWO realm of design.
Am I missing anything?
With those details laid out, here are how I see rewriting the tribal factions for the remade block:
Kitsune no longer live in Jukai, instead inhabiting a setting more appropriate for a WB faction. They have very strong beliefs in their traditions, but are mischievous, cunning and often self-serving.
Nezumi no longer skulk in the swamps, but are clever mage/rogues inhabiting a UR location. They're more chaotic neutral than their chaotic evil predecessors, finding fun in raiding supplies or just about anything else.
Orochi don't change as much as the other races, but dip into black more regularly and become our BG tribe. They're still very much connected to the Kami, and are shamanistic warriors through and through.
Akki are a bit more noble in this vision of the plane, though still zealous enough to fit RW. They're a bit more organized than your average Goblin Burrow, but still fascinated by fire.
Soratami retain their deep connection to the land of Kamigawa, becoming more druidic and GU appropriate. Their extreme indifference is blunted, as they do on rare occasion step in to right the natural order (though they still don't care about the concerns of surfacefolk).
And here are the keywords I hope to explore:
Tenacious N: Just a re-flavoring of Bushido.
Ambush X: Just a re-flavoring of Ninjutsu.
Enshrine N: An action word for the Spirits that replaces and streamlines both Soulshift and Splice. Reminder text: Enshrine 6 (Return a Spirit or Arcane card with converted mana cost six or less from your graveyard to your hand.)
Fealty: An ability word that grants bonuses if you control a Legendary creature. Due to the nature of designing legendary cards, Fealty doesn't appear on commons (like Imprint).
"Cosmic mana": Much like how OGW showed us that colorless mana has existed all along, I propose to make a small tweak to cards like [c]City of Brass[c], so they add one mana that can be spent as though it was any color rather than choosing and adding a color as the mana ability resolves. This doesn't have any particular impact in the first set, but it lays the groundwork for Arcane spells in the second set to have a "Cosmic kicker" ability to supercharge them.
To start with, I plan to construct a set of duel decks on MagicMultiverse.net to serve as proof of concept, and I encourage anyone who has opinions on the ideas in this post to chime in either here or on the set file there. As thanks for reading through these rambled thoughts, I've included one of my favorite art pieces I hope to use once it's time to art the set.
You'd have to make sure that your "legendary matters" theme is based solidly in common, and I think keeping Fealty out of common would be a grave mistake. As MaRo likes to say: "If your theme is not at common, it is not your theme." Legendary theme being limited to uncommon and rare was one of the failings in the original Kamigawa block.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if Kamigawa was made nowadays, the tribes and lore would not be as deep in japanese mythology as it was. Most tropes are pretty unknown to the wider public and people couldn't relate to what was going on. A focus on japanese tropes from a "western" point of view like Samurai, Ninjas, martial Monks vs restless spirits, demons and dragons would find wider appreciation among the predominately western magic audience.
In my opinion, if you really want to approach Kamigawa with a more modern design perspective, you should be brave and do away with more of the original Kamigawa content than simply renaming some mechanics and think of new lore for the tribes.
What colors will the mechanics be in?
Will every rare creature be legendary?
Do you envision any unnamed mechanics (such as the Soritami's original "X, Return a land" mechanic)?
What do you envision for the second set?
I think it's super-important to notice the factors that made Kamigawa insular and eliminate these. One of the biggest problems with Kamigawa is that it didn't fit into the game well mechanically.
Foremost in my mind are the Ninja and Samurai class-types, also known as "Rogues or Assassins, only Japanese," and "Warriors or Soldiers, only Japanese." It's better for tribal compatibility purposes, fitting the block into the larger ecosystem of MTG, to use Rogue/Assassin/Warrior/Soldier instead. Also it's not as racist.
Arcane is another insular feature that I would recommend eliminating. Instead, you could use something different (and eternally compatible) to mark 'spirit magic', like maybe all spirit-associated spells are multicolor and all humanity-associated spells are monocolor.
I think Kaseto makes it problematic for the Orochi to suddenly turn GB. Plus, UR Nezumi? That doesn't make much sense.
Bushido being named is alright, but Ninjitsu feels a little bit too flavorful to be redone. Especially since it has much less design space/isn't as clean as Bushido, so confining it to Kamigawa won't hurt anyone I feel.
Enshrine cannot be a mechanic, "converted mana cost" doesn't appear on commons under NWO.
Feality is fine I guess, like Miracle, only on uncommon+.
Cosmic mana is too gimmicky and doesn't serve much purpose I think. It's just box-checking at this point, because unlike "colorless matters", it doesn't add much to the game.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, just a lot of the ideas here look a little bit messy.
Kaseto, as a one-off, doesn't worry me. The rest of your post is really solid criticism I'll have to consider before moving forward. You're right that Rats have always been black, and I don't have much here to justify putting them in UR. The CMC concern is very relevant, and was a relic of trying to replace Soulshift - it just isn't NWO compatible. I'll have to find some other hook for Spirit tribal. It's okay for the ideas to be messy at this point, that's why I'm bringing them here to be scrutinized.
Quote from schnerbst »
You'd have to make sure that your "legendary matters" theme is based solidly in common, and I think keeping Fealty out of common would be a grave mistake. As MaRo likes to say: "If your theme is not at common, it is not your theme." Legendary theme being limited to uncommon and rare was one of the failings in the original Kamigawa block.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if Kamigawa was made nowadays, the tribes and lore would not be as deep in japanese mythology as it was. Most tropes are pretty unknown to the wider public and people couldn't relate to what was going on. A focus on japanese tropes from a "western" point of view like Samurai, Ninjas, martial Monks vs restless spirits, demons and dragons would find wider appreciation among the predominately western magic audience.
In my opinion, if you really want to approach Kamigawa with a more modern design perspective, you should be brave and do away with more of the original Kamigawa content than simply renaming some mechanics and think of new lore for the tribes.
The plan with Fealty was to go into it knowing that "Legendary matters" is more of a subtheme than a theme. Considering some of the other feedback in this thread though, I might try out putting Fealty at common and bumping Enshrine to uncommon+ instead. It's interesting that so many top-down card designs were successful in Innistrad, but eastern-inspired top down cards probably wouldn't be as well received (since people don't know the source material). While I still hope to be true to the spirit of the original design, your post has given me confidence to change things that are unnecessary.
Quote from Legend »
What colors will the mechanics be in?
Will every rare creature be legendary?
Do you envision any unnamed mechanics (such as the Soritami's original "X, Return a land" mechanic)?
What do you envision for the second set?
Mechanics would be focused in allied color pairs, but spread out on occasion as needed for the set. I do intend to have some subthemes that might be considered unnamed mechanics - Soratami will be getting some landbounce abilities, but it won't be as common. As far as the rare creatures being legendary, what are your thoughts on it? I'm inclined to not make that a firm rule, and instead make more uncommon creatures legendary to support Fealty. For the second set, I expect the Kami War to come to a tenuous resolution and the spirit realm to become accessible to those "of great heart." Mechanically, I want to expand upon the mechanics used in the first set, and add DFC spirits that flip into Shrines when they die, and use Cosmic mana to super-power some Spirit effects. EG "If you spent {P} to cast this [Arcane] spell, [effect]." and Spirits with activated abilities costing {P}. Open to other suggestions too.
Quote from willows »
I think it's super-important to notice the factors that made Kamigawa insular and eliminate these. One of the biggest problems with Kamigawa is that it didn't fit into the game well mechanically.
Foremost in my mind are the Ninja and Samurai class-types, also known as "Rogues or Assassins, only Japanese," and "Warriors or Soldiers, only Japanese." It's better for tribal compatibility purposes, fitting the block into the larger ecosystem of MTG, to use Rogue/Assassin/Warrior/Soldier instead. Also it's not as racist.
Arcane is another insular feature that I would recommend eliminating. Instead, you could use something different (and eternally compatible) to mark 'spirit magic', like maybe all spirit-associated spells are multicolor and all humanity-associated spells are monocolor.
I super agree with you about Ninjas/Samurai, and the general mission to make Kamigawa not insular. My goal with Arcane is to make it function more like the "Trap" subtype did in original Zendikar. I'm of the opinion that Splice onto Arcane is the culprit much more so than the Arcane subtype itself, and I'm looking for ways to make the subtype matter in ways that don't insulate the set from the rest of magic. I really like that you're making suggestions, and I hope you'll keep making suggestions, but I feel like multicolor vs monocolor has been overdone and am hesitant to make this a block about that.
...but I feel like multicolor vs monocolor has been overdone and am hesitant to make this a block about that.
For sure; I just picked that as a low-hanging example kind of fruit. The underlying point, which I stand behind, is the idea that setting a subtype for (either) spirit magic (or nonspirit magic) and building mechanics that care about the subtype does a worse job of including those mechanics in the larger ecosystem than it would if those mechanics used some other characteristic as a tag.
Another road to a less insular Kamigawa would simply to be to look for ways that make Spirit and earthly gameplay feel different without relying on "characteristic matters" approaches. In my head, recursion is a very important part of existing kami identity, so you could build a dichotomy around Spirit type creatures with recursive abilities vs. non-Spirits who use stuff like cycling and looting to emphasize a feeling of impermanence and transience. I don't know!
As far as the rare creatures being legendary, what are your thoughts on it? I'm inclined to not make that a firm rule, and instead make more uncommon creatures legendary to support Fealty.
It would be fine either way. It would probably be nearly impossible more trouble than it's worth for a few amateur designers to design that many rare and mythic creatures that are legitimately legendary.
Regarding Arcane, I'd also be willing to test Tribal - Spirit spells instead of the spell subtype. Maybe there's an alternative to enshrine that would still enable the recursive nature of Spirits? Perhaps a keyworded triggered ability when a Spirit you control dies, either the spell comes back from your graveyard or you can cast it from your graveyard. It could be enabled by something like: Apparition 2(2, Discard this card: Put a colorless 1/1 Spirit creature token onto the battlefield.)
I'd be interested to hear willows and Truth discuss the merits and hazards of insular creature types.
As a counterpoint, do the tribes take up the space for that uniqueness? There are already Moonfolk that are unique to Kamigawa, along with sentient Foxes, Rats, and Snakes. It seems like each block gets one or maybe two unique types to make it different, but the others remain consistent to keep the game/multiverse intact. Does the inclusion of Moonfolk preclude the inclusion of Samurai/Ninja, based on Official Track Record?
The main problem with splice onto Arcane isn't the splice part, but rather the Arcane part. If there were a way to reuse splice without its reliance on the Arcane subtype, I would argue it to be up for consideration as a returning mechanic. Maybe a new name would be in order, and maybe for instants and sorceries in general.
It would certainly eat up some complexity points, but I think it'd be a considerable mechanic for return.
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The main problem with splice onto Arcane isn't the splice part, but rather the Arcane part. If there were a way to reuse splice without its reliance on the Arcane subtype, I would argue it to be up for consideration as a returning mechanic. Maybe a new name would be in order, and maybe for instants and sorceries in general.
It would certainly eat up some complexity points, but I think it'd be a considerable mechanic for return.
I'll admit I haven't ever tested "Splice onto Sorcery" - if anyone has, does it test well? At the drawing board stage of the project I'm open to considering just about anything.
Problem is that we have only Mirrodin, Ravnica and Zendikar to base ourselves as return sets, and neither set ended up doing any shifts regarding included creature types. Foxes, Rats and Snakes appear all over the place though, only in Kamigawa, they were put into the spotlight a little more. As more sentient beings than normally, but still the same creature types. Hell, even Return to Ravnica had a Rat tribal card. Moonfolk are exclusive to Kamigawa alright, so if we kept Ninjas and Samurais, we'd have 3 Kamigawa-only creature types. Zendikar has Eldrazi and and Allies (and if you stretch it, Kor as well, because we're not going to Dominaria for a longer while still). So I'm pretty sure that having 3 new ones would be good.
But this raises the problem: do we still want to actually re-attempt Kamigawa, or try to design a completly new setting based on the same source material, aka Japanese folklore? Problem with Kamigawa is that it has a lot of baggage we can't avoid, like the creature typing and such. If we did a new setting, we could make it so that just 1-2 new creature types would be all, and the rest would be more streamlined and more akin to what you'd expect from a modern Magic set. We can ditch Splice, Spirit tribal and all of that awkward stuff.
I suppose Warrior and Rogue tribal aren't enough of a thing that it'd be devastating for them to go missing for a set or two. I do want to reiterate though that this isn't "Return to Kamigawa" but is "Kamigawa Redone", so we don't have to rely on just return sets for precedence.
That leads really well into your big question though, which I don't have a solid answer for yet. How critical is it to retain the backdrop for Kamigawa? I don't know. Considering that the story we're telling is still that of the Kami War, I don't think spirit tribal (in some form or another) is ditchable regardless of the answer. The tribes, I agree, are more mutable than I considered when writing the OP.
Honestly my argument for insular tribes is supported on the fact that we've been having them in the actual game for a while now. Eldrazi? Zendikar-exclusive. Werewolves? Innistrad-exclusive. Nagas? Tarkir-exclusive. God? Theros-exclusive. A lot of them could be done in more cheaty ways, like making Nagas simply Snakes and Werewolves Human Wolves, but the question is, does an exclusive creature type really put on that much baggage onto the set? Especially in cases as flavorful as Ninja and Samurai. Rogue and Soldier just doesn't have nearly the same impact, and doesn't convey "Kamigawa" enough. Ninja and Samurai does. Just like Werewolf conveys Innistrad and Eldrazi conveys Zendikar. Lack of backwards compatibility isn't even much of a problem anymore, since there's original Kamigawa, so there's already a little support for the tribes we'd be including, and if we have just enough cards to make them worthwile/interesting enough from a single block, there's really no problem in my opinion. You could say that insular creature types make the set seem somehow distant from the entire multiverse, but it's not like we'll be having zero backwards compatibility in the entire set (because that's what original Kamigawa did wrong after all), I think it's important enough to make each set distinct enough from the others, else it all just jumbles into a big pile of Rogues, Warriors, Soldiers and Wizards.
My argument against insular types is that creature types have a purpose and a choice of types should be purposeful.
What are creature types for? They tell you that "this thing is different from other things that have different types" (this is the flavor bit) and they serve as partitions for tribal interaction (this is the mechanical bit.)
So I think that fundamentally a creature's types should serve both purposes and it's a mistake to choose types that don't.
My opinions on the insular types you identified are like...
Eldrazi — Good example of an insular type. Note that Eldrazi denotes "a creature that's not even from a world at all" and it resists co-existing with any types from worldly creatures (with the exception of Drone and one example of Spawn). It correctly captures "not the same as non-Eldrazi" and correctly creates tribal interaction barriers.
Werewolf — This isn't an insular type; Greater Werewolf, Lesser Werewolf, and Treacherous Werewolf all existed outside and prior to Innistrad block. The paucity of Werewolf cards in MTG is a consequence of how hard it is to portray the iconic "transformation" trope in a card without tools like DFC, and when the team had a set with DFC available, one of the first things they did was populate that set with a lot of Werewolves because they were finally able to have a strong mechanical representation. Also it feels correct for Werewolves to have a specific tribal marker that can mechanically identify Werewolves selectively.
Naga — This type is terrible. It creates an incorrect tribal interaction barrier — Nagas are incompatible with Kamigawan Orochi — when flavorwise they are both "humanoid snake people." There is no need for three different incompatible ways for that concept (also covered by Gorgon, but that type has a strongly different flavor identity) to be represented in the game. My preferred solution is to eliminate the Naga type in favor of Snake.
God — This type is much like Praetor, Volver, and Bringer in that it is used to unify a cycle of weird creatures that don't want tribal interactions. I'm cool with that.
The problem with Ninja and Samurai isn't on the flavor end, it's on the mechanical end. It creates a weird tribal barrier: I see no compelling reason that Chief of the Edge refuses to sharpen Indebted Samurai's swords. Refactoring these types opens up new tribal decks that make sense and adds value to the cards.
If we redo everything though, then it isn't even Kamigawa. It's another plane that happens to be based on Japanese folklore. I disagree that keeping bits and pieces is awkward or negative; keeping the parts that were successful and fixing/removing the problems sounds like a recipe for success to me. I'm open to changing the details of the Kami War, but I think it's the one flavor element that's core to Kamigawa's identity.
We don't have to make a final decision about creature types now. We can try them both and see what feels better. Samurai and Ninjas will still have mechanical hooks in Tenacious and Ninjutsu/Ambush regardless of what their type line says.
What ideas can we brainstorm for how Spirits and their faction work? I've thrown a few ideas out there, what sounds best? Are there any other ideas we should consider?
To me Kamigawa was the races. . . including the demon-ogre interactions and all that. It was a really tribal set and to take that out would, I think, defeat the purpose of Kamigawa. . . Even the importance of spirits was a central theme. . .
Also I though soulshift was a success when they brought back in modern masters - people liked it. It was just on such terrible terrible cards the first time around. The addition of tribal supertype really helped it - and I know that's frowned upon now for whatever reason - but I think it should be brought back.
I really would like to explore Kamigawa again - and I am all for re-doing sets rather than just revisiting a setting. Kamigawa's Spirit War is a prime candidate for such a treatment.
I consider much of what has been proposed in the OP interesting. I personally would suggest that thinking about replacement mechanics for the "bad apples" you should use a holistic approach rather than ticking of the list of mechanics and search for a replacement (as you did with enshrine as a replacement for soulshift/spiritcraft).
Something others have missed: Many of the mechanics existed because they co-existed. That's for example why it is a good idea to not include splice in the initial design after correctly identifying wisdom as a weak mechanical theme. Splice and sweep were created in conjunction with wisdom as mechanics that make it easier for you to have a large hand size. There is no real thematic reason for either to be in the set.
So while splice is not "bad" at all, it certainly never was "good" for Kamigawa. I'd say it is a good mechanic that could find a better home somewhere else.
Bushido similarily is a mechanic many designers look at as something "good", but not actually because it is such a great mechanic for Kamigawa, but most often because they hate that they cannot use the mechanic as an evergreen mechanic with such a specific name. I suggest returning bushido with a better name (I personally called it prowess for a while now and recently had to replace that with... steadfast), but not treating it as a set mechanic, but as a freshly introduced evergreen mechanic like vigilance was in the original Kamigawa block.
Something that certainly was bad about Kamigawa block was its main theme. The legendary theme was bad both for Kamigawa and for legendaries at once - even the much more common legendary creatures were not enough to produce a good gameplay, but on the other hand the largely reduced rarity of the legendaries hurt the feel of specialness that a legendary should have. Legendaries could be a subtheme, but even then it probably should be approached from an entirely different vantage point then "tribal for a supertype".
Maybe rather than a "legendary" theme there could be a "hero" theme of some sort - maybe find a unifying mechanical identity to (most of) your legendaries and then rather than directly referencing the supertype legendary you make cards that are synergistic with that mechanic, e. g. if your legendary mechanic was grandeur you could make a mechanic that helps tutor up cards with the same name as permanents you control (except I would suggest choosing a more commander-friendly mechanic for your legendaries).
Off the top of my head I'd consider a death-mechanic for the Mortal heroes reflecting the tragic side of the Spirit War and the inevitability they are facing due to figting essentially small gods (often referenced in original Kamigawan flavor text). Contrasting that with an inevitability mechanic on the Kami side (recursion? experience counters) would drive home the difference between the two sides without relying directly on the mechanics of original Kamigawa block (though staying close to it if e. g. a recursion theme similar to soulshift is chosen).
I like that you want to do something with the tribes, but I think you are being a little too formulaic by trying to fit each tribe into an enemy color pair. I think you could be more open about them and let them find their natural space. I notice that you missed probably the best tribal twist of Kamigawa: The Ogre/Demon dual tribe of the Oni. It is mechanically interesting and a top-down concept which was a strong side of Kamigawa anyway.
I'm not saying to bring it back as it was, but keep it in mind!
One thing to keep in mind when thinking about tribes is that the Kami War has been defined as two-sided: Mortals versus Kami. I don't think that too much attention needs to be put into the separation of Mortals into factions from the get-go. Innistrad did its split to prevent an over-emphasis of traditionally black creature types in black (declaring Werewolves and the main Geists as nonblack tribes went a long way to help with that). The tribes of Kamigawa are already naturally spread out. I don't see a problem with allowing them to bleed around a little (e. g. why not design Orochi Snakes in all three Sultai colors?) - that seems more advisable than forcing the issue e. g. with moving the Rats entirely out of black.
On another note Kamigawa also did some interesting stuff with class tribal. I remember Orochi caring about Archers and Warriors at times.
I have no strong opinion on keeping Arcane. It is a side product of wisdom. No one would necessarily miss it after all the other components of it have been removed. If there will be a mechanical nonparasitic theme for the Kami side of the war, maybe we could return it as a signifier similar to Trap or Processor? A mechanic named not by keyword or ability word, but by subtype? It's too early to decide that without knowing te mechanical identities of the two sides.
Heck, Arcane as a subtype could be entirely replaced by a spell keyword that belongs to the Kami faction.
I have no strong opinion on "cosmic mana". I guess, five-color could work as a Kami-theme due to the fact that they were originally a five-colored tribe as opposed to the splintered mortals. In modern design I expect them to gravitate towards a more assymetric distribution that favors some color pairs as their Limited Draft Archetypes. I could imagine Kami actually gravitating towards green (as well as black-red for onis?). As some of the other ideas I am not seeing why it is the right idea *for Kamigawa* - whoever called it box-checking probably was onto something.
tl;dr: I personally wouldn't commit immediately to returning anything, but keep myself open to return anything that fits with the new themes I'd develop just from looking at the theme - going top-down.
EDIT:
I also wanted to mention that I'm a fan of the "let's brainstorm a Duel Deck and see what works" approach. Thinking about what you would envision the decks like usually gives you a good idea about what is important about the factions.
Tribal supertype would make this a cross between Kamigawa and Lorwyn? Is everyone fine with that? I think it could be interesting since all the creature subtypes are different (except Goblin). Even Human is sort of new (Innistrad didn't use Tribal).
Universal mana seems an interesting idea. Not sure if it's right for this remake idea, but perhaps it might inspire a whole new mechanic or set idea. By universal mana, it means "One universal mana can be spent to pay the cost of one mana of any type." That includes any of the five colors, colorless mana, and even "snow" mana.
e.g. T: Add one mana that is all colors and all types to your mana pool.
or T: Add one universal mana to your mana pool. (One universal mana can be spent to pay the cost of one mana of any type.)
Is colorless Spirits too gimmicky? Probably too soon after Eldrazi that costs colorless mana. However with universal mana, they are more cohesive. Makes it possible to draft 6-color Spirits deck! Add a 16th card in each pack for basic lands, including Waste.
Splice is cool ability, but I think Splice onto Sorcery would be hard to develop. All the Arcane spells they printed had only ordinary, simple effects for a good reason.
Having both Arcane and Tribal - Spirit would be redundant.
Going along with "cosmic mana", is combining the new colorless mana with colored mana in costs.
e.g.
Arcane Banishing CW
Instant - Arcane
Exile target creature. Its controller gains 2 life.
Just from reading your first post and nothing else,
I think spirits should still be a big thing, and have some cool interaction with each other. I honesty liked soulshift but it could use some variance. Maybe if it returned another spirit at random instead of being number based?
Also, rats should stay in black.
All in all though I'd like to see it. I'd like to see a host of legendary creatures as well, (not uncommons though) at least one for each color pair and each single color.
Some really interesting points people have made in the last few posts! I hadn't fully considered the interconnectedness of the mechanics like Splice and Wisdom (though Sweep and Wisdom was on my radar). I agree that it makes the most sense to go top-down once we know what our setting is, and right now the only thing we really know is that there's a "Kami War" between the mortals and the spirits. I suppose we also know that the spirits can still return even if defeated, while the mortals die for good in combat. So, this blank slate needs some broad strokes!
What do we want Spirits to play like? How recursive should they be?
What do we want mortals to play like? What kinds of mortals should we include?
Flavor-wise, how much do we want to reuse the original Kami War plot? How much do we want to update to fit into present-day story/events?
Tribal supertype would make this a cross between Kamigawa and Lorwyn? Is everyone fine with that? I think it could be interesting since all the creature subtypes are different (except Goblin). Even Human is sort of new (Innistrad didn't use Tribal).
I personally have no strong opinion either way. It makes sense (and you raise an interesting point about how little this set would overlap with Lorwyn - which could give this a new slate) and I generally am more open to tribal in custom sets. It won't return in canon seets for a good reason, but usually does little harm in custom sets - as a replacement for Arcane it could work at the very least if that is something one would want.
I just need to nitpick: Tribal is a card type; it's not a supertype.
Universal mana seems an interesting idea. Not sure if it's right for this remake idea, but perhaps it might inspire a whole new mechanic or set idea. By universal mana, it means "One universal mana can be spent to pay the cost of one mana of any type." That includes any of the five colors, colorless mana, and even "snow" mana.
More important nitpick: There are six mana types and non of them is "snow". It's actually just the five colors and colorless. And "snow" actually is defined in such a way that it is probably not worth the effort trying to tie this into "universal" mana. It's all
Is colorless Spirits too gimmicky? Probably too soon after Eldrazi that costs colorless mana. However with universal mana, they are more cohesive. Makes it possible to draft 6-color Spirits deck! Add a 16th card in each pack for basic lands, including Waste.
Depending what colorless Spirits you mean. Spirit tokens in Kamigawa were usually colorless, but I get a feeling they actually fall on the other end of the spectrum and "colorless" to them actually meant more "colorbalanced" and "beyond restrictions in colors" (see below).
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After making my previous post I got a little curious as to what colors the factions in the original Kamigawa block actually would be - obviously Kamis and Mortals encompassed all colors, but intuitively I felt the story and some flavor aspects made the Mortal side feel rallied around a white-blue alliance of Moonfolk and Humans while the Kami fit philosophically into a green spot with a hint of white.
As a reference I wanted to use the colors of the twelve theme decks across the block. I grouped them by Kami-themed and Mortal-themed with one being hard to place.
It turned out there is one monocolored deck for each color that is themed around something clearly Mortal (Samurai, Ninja, Rat, "Spiritbane" Direct Damage, Snake) and a white-blue Soratami/Wisdom deck. So far that fit my expectation.
No Kami deck was monocolored. No Kami deck contained any blue at all. If a Kami deck was not black-red for the Ogre/Demon oni deck, it contained green with another color. Green-white appeared twice.
Seems like my intuition was confirmed here as well - which means to me there is some foundation to use this to e. g. decide on duel deck colorassignment.
I need to mention that there is a black-red deck themed around wisdom/sweep that I didn't want to put into one faction - the deck description made it seem it was built quite mechanically and Spirits and Mortals are thrown together into it.
I would rank the color association of the two factions from strongest to weakest:
Kami:
Mortals:
You'll note these aren't just reversals of one another. This is actually usually a good sign in my experience. (Explanation for the less obvious decisions: black ranks higher than red for spirits thanks to two important appearances of that color combination in the original Kamigawa block: Iname, the only not five-colored multicolored card of the block, and "Kami Reborn", the only KAmi-themed theme deck of the introductory set; the reverse decision for mortals is inspired by the "Spiritbane" theme deck and anti-soulshift mechanic also featured prominently in the first set)
I could see these breaking down into subthemes/archetypes that fit with the expectations of original Kamigawa easily.
What do we want Spirits to play like? How recursive should they be?
What do we want mortals to play like? What kinds of mortals should we include?
Flavor-wise, how much do we want to reuse the original Kami War plot? How much do we want to update to fit into present-day story/events?
I probably would split both factions into two or three "wings" since they are so diverse e. g. Mortals have the honorable warrior wing (red-white Samurai/Human) and the cunning rogues/wizard-advisors (blue-black Ninja/Soratami) while the Kami have the mystic nature spirit (green-white Spirit/Monk) and vengeful evil (black-red Ogre/Demon).
Since recursion cannot equal repetitive gameplay (as e. g. soulshift might cause) maybe the Kami mechanic could be more about caring about the graveyard threshold-style or maybe defying death through card advantage e. g.:
Rebirth N (When this dies, exile it. If you do, scry N. You may reveal a scried creature card and put it into your hand.)
I'm not drawing anything for mortals that does not mirror Mirran or Zendikari mechanics right now.
I see no reason to change the premise of the Kami War. It never seemed it needed "fit" into its surroundings flavorwise due to also being achronological with the rest of the story. There might be the question of planeswalkers to consider. I have no strong opinions, but I can guess there is someone coming to everyone's mind that wouldn't canonically fit into the distant past.
As I mentioned to Legend, in my initial plan the second set would include DFC spirits that come back as shrines when they die. That could be a better mechanic to flow through the whole block for Spirit recursion. EG:
Kami of Vitality2W
Creature - Spirit (C)
Lifelink
When Kami of Vitality dies, return it to the battlefield transformed.
2/3
// Essence of Vitality
• Enchantment (C)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you gain 1 life.
Or it might be worth considering borrowing the Spirit mechanic that Guesswork tried for his Kamigawa set, where the spirits return to your hand if they die while attacking.
How perfect is Ninjutsu already? Are there any tweaks or alternatives we should consider? For example, I've seen iterations where the attacker is sacrificed instead of returning to hand (Wisdom rears its head again!) which allows for higher power level and some other death triggers elsewhere in the set.
Bushido doesn't accurately portray what Samurai are all about, in my opinion. I'd almost prefer the Valor mechanic we often see in Norse sets, where you get an effect when your creature dies in combat. I'm not super knowledgeable about Samurai though, so more alternatives would be great.
So here's a brain dump of possible abilities for mortals, specifically starting with Samurai as I'm relatively happy with how Ninjas and Moonfolk were themed before. Monks we can deal with later. When picking our Samurai mechanic, it's most important to think about how we want Samurai to play as a strategy. I don't have an obvious answer for that besides "not being underhanded."
Adorn (Attach an Aura or Equipment you control to this creature.) Valor - When this creature dies, if it attacked or blocked this turn, [effect]. Fealty - As long as you control a legendary creature, [effect].
Human Shield (If another creature you control would die, you may instead remove all damage from it and sacrifice this creature instead.)
Renown N (When this creature deals combat damage to a player, if it isn't renowned, put N +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes renowned.)
Exalted (Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)
Reinforce N - X (X, Discard this card: Put N +1/+1 counters on target creature.)
Steadfast N (Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N until end of turn.)
I want to point out that "how Moonfolk were themed before" was actually... quite an issue. And their mechanic is also a result of them being the "wisdom" tribe.
As to Samurai... they like Equipment. Equipment has been quite prominent in Kamigawa block as well, so that's alright. Adorn though is a keyword action eplaining a keyword action. Such a keyword is a last resort.
I like the list of returning keywords you suggest and would add heroic. In fact Theros-block was a lot like Kamigawa-block done right. The two mirror each other eerily - right down to the split world and the tragic protagonist who was serving a deity and in the end was not long for the world due to that deity doing them in.
That's probably also why making the Kami enchantment creatures seems so intriguing.
I really dig the flavor for valor, but (and that applies even more so to human shield) these death mechanics seem quite "passive" - you wait for someone to die. This doesn't create a playstyle, though it may encourages it subtly. And flavorwise it doesn't make sense to encourage these plays by e. g. giving them instant speed sacrifice outlets to trigger valor more regularly.
I suggest turning this on its head and maybe go the reverse direction: Not concentrate on the dead and dying, but on the survivors. For example there could be a mechanic about honoring the dead ("creature mastery"?). Kamigawa's story spun its legendary theme from hero reverence. Reverence is a theme to work with. Not only the dead can be revered (s. a.) How about the living legends? Renown goes into that direction. I could also imagine a reverse mechanic based on bushido/renown: "When this creature deals fight or combat damage to another creature, put +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes seasoned."
On a general note for mortals, I mentioned how I dislike fealty, because it is so strongly tied with a high rarity supertype that for diverse reasons cannot be made more common without hurting the set. But I wonder whether we could replace legendary with something else that could overlap with any legendaries we introduce that is still flavorful e. g. there has been a mechanic fling around the forum about a player designating a "champion" or "alpha" that would influence the gameplay (unfortunately "champion" as a name is taken by another mechanic; I would really love to re-make Champions of Kamigawa with a mechanic having that name). This would go into a similar direction as exalted possibly.
"Champion" (When this enters the battlefield or attacks, you may declare this creature your champion and lose all other champions.)
Your champion gets +1/+1 and has trample.
---
Question: Is this hypothetically supposed to cover the flavor of all of the Kamigawa block in one set? Two? Three?
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
I want to point out that "how Moonfolk were themed before" was actually... quite an issue. And their mechanic is also a result of them being the "wisdom" tribe.
As to Samurai... they like Equipment. Equipment has been quite prominent in Kamigawa block as well, so that's alright. Adorn though is a keyword action eplaining a keyword action. Such a keyword is a last resort.
I like the list of returning keywords you suggest and would add heroic. In fact Theros-block was a lot like Kamigawa-block done right. The two mirror each other eerily - right down to the split world and the tragic protagonist who was serving a deity and in the end was not long for the world due to that deity doing them in.
That's probably also why making the Kami enchantment creatures seems so intriguing.
I really dig the flavor for valor, but (and that applies even more so to human shield) these death mechanics seem quite "passive" - you wait for someone to die. This doesn't create a playstyle, though it may encourages it subtly. And flavorwise it doesn't make sense to encourage these plays by e. g. giving them instant speed sacrifice outlets to trigger valor more regularly.
I suggest turning this on its head and maybe go the reverse direction: Not concentrate on the dead and dying, but on the survivors. For example there could be a mechanic about honoring the dead ("creature mastery"?). Kamigawa's story spun its legendary theme from hero reverence. Reverence is a theme to work with. Not only the dead can be revered (s. a.) How about the living legends? Renown goes into that direction. I could also imagine a reverse mechanic based on bushido/renown: "When this creature deals fight or combat damage to another creature, put +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes seasoned."
On a general note for mortals, I mentioned how I dislike fealty, because it is so strongly tied with a high rarity supertype that for diverse reasons cannot be made more common without hurting the set. But I wonder whether we could replace legendary with something else that could overlap with any legendaries we introduce that is still flavorful e. g. there has been a mechanic fling around the forum about a player designating a "champion" or "alpha" that would influence the gameplay (unfortunately "champion" as a name is taken by another mechanic; I would really love to re-make Champions of Kamigawa with a mechanic having that name). This would go into a similar direction as exalted possibly.
"Champion" (When this enters the battlefield or attacks, you may declare this creature your champion and lose all other champions.)
Your champion gets +1/+1 and has trample.
---
Question: Is this hypothetically supposed to cover the flavor of all of the Kamigawa block in one set? Two? Three?
To answer your question first: The new set model is two sets per block, and I'd aim to tell the story of Kamigawa in two sets. And regarding Moonfolk, I'm more interested in them having ties to land more generally than specifically bouncing them for activated abilities. We'll definitely discuss them soon though.
Adorn was definitely a first stab at giving Samurai an Equipment mechanic, but I'd rather iterate on it than use it. I really like the idea of reverse renown/Glory, but Truth is right that it would likely cause board stalls without either (a) taking away from the elegance of the mechanic, or (b) warping to format to support it. I'm open to warping a format a little bit around a great mechanic, but I anticipate this would be too extreme a warp as-is. I do want to continue to pursue the mechanic since it's a perfect homage to bushido. It's possible my mental playtests are off-base and a real playtest would change my mind.
Champion is cool, but I don't think it fits well into this set. It'd be a great fit for Kolbahan (one of my dead projects).
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What would Kamigawa look like if it was created today?
What lessons can we take from it's first go-around, and everything in between, and pretend to make it for the first time in a new context?
In this regard, I'm looking for feedback and opinions on my answers to these questions, which I've detailed below.
What's good about Kamigawa? What should we keep?
What's bad about Kamigawa? What should we leave out?
With those details laid out, here are how I see rewriting the tribal factions for the remade block:
And here are the keywords I hope to explore:
To start with, I plan to construct a set of duel decks on MagicMultiverse.net to serve as proof of concept, and I encourage anyone who has opinions on the ideas in this post to chime in either here or on the set file there. As thanks for reading through these rambled thoughts, I've included one of my favorite art pieces I hope to use once it's time to art the set.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if Kamigawa was made nowadays, the tribes and lore would not be as deep in japanese mythology as it was. Most tropes are pretty unknown to the wider public and people couldn't relate to what was going on. A focus on japanese tropes from a "western" point of view like Samurai, Ninjas, martial Monks vs restless spirits, demons and dragons would find wider appreciation among the predominately western magic audience.
In my opinion, if you really want to approach Kamigawa with a more modern design perspective, you should be brave and do away with more of the original Kamigawa content than simply renaming some mechanics and think of new lore for the tribes.
UR Mizzix of the Izmagnus ~~~ Build your own win-condition: Finite Spellslinging
UR Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer ~~~ We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic ~~~ A Guide to dying slowly
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose ~~~ Marchesa's undying Marionettes
RGW Mayael the Anima ~~~ All Hail the Big Chungus
GWU Chulane, Teller of Tales ~~~ Permanents Only ETB Shenanigans
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant ~~~ Sidisi's Restless Servants
WUBRG The Ur-Dragon ~~~ Dragons eat your face
Will every rare creature be legendary?
Do you envision any unnamed mechanics (such as the Soritami's original "X, Return a land" mechanic)?
What do you envision for the second set?
Foremost in my mind are the Ninja and Samurai class-types, also known as "Rogues or Assassins, only Japanese," and "Warriors or Soldiers, only Japanese." It's better for tribal compatibility purposes, fitting the block into the larger ecosystem of MTG, to use Rogue/Assassin/Warrior/Soldier instead. Also it's not as racist.
Arcane is another insular feature that I would recommend eliminating. Instead, you could use something different (and eternally compatible) to mark 'spirit magic', like maybe all spirit-associated spells are multicolor and all humanity-associated spells are monocolor.
The plan with Fealty was to go into it knowing that "Legendary matters" is more of a subtheme than a theme. Considering some of the other feedback in this thread though, I might try out putting Fealty at common and bumping Enshrine to uncommon+ instead. It's interesting that so many top-down card designs were successful in Innistrad, but eastern-inspired top down cards probably wouldn't be as well received (since people don't know the source material). While I still hope to be true to the spirit of the original design, your post has given me confidence to change things that are unnecessary.
Mechanics would be focused in allied color pairs, but spread out on occasion as needed for the set. I do intend to have some subthemes that might be considered unnamed mechanics - Soratami will be getting some landbounce abilities, but it won't be as common. As far as the rare creatures being legendary, what are your thoughts on it? I'm inclined to not make that a firm rule, and instead make more uncommon creatures legendary to support Fealty. For the second set, I expect the Kami War to come to a tenuous resolution and the spirit realm to become accessible to those "of great heart." Mechanically, I want to expand upon the mechanics used in the first set, and add DFC spirits that flip into Shrines when they die, and use Cosmic mana to super-power some Spirit effects. EG "If you spent {P} to cast this [Arcane] spell, [effect]." and Spirits with activated abilities costing {P}. Open to other suggestions too.
I super agree with you about Ninjas/Samurai, and the general mission to make Kamigawa not insular. My goal with Arcane is to make it function more like the "Trap" subtype did in original Zendikar. I'm of the opinion that Splice onto Arcane is the culprit much more so than the Arcane subtype itself, and I'm looking for ways to make the subtype matter in ways that don't insulate the set from the rest of magic. I really like that you're making suggestions, and I hope you'll keep making suggestions, but I feel like multicolor vs monocolor has been overdone and am hesitant to make this a block about that.
Another road to a less insular Kamigawa would simply to be to look for ways that make Spirit and earthly gameplay feel different without relying on "characteristic matters" approaches. In my head, recursion is a very important part of existing kami identity, so you could build a dichotomy around Spirit type creatures with recursive abilities vs. non-Spirits who use stuff like cycling and looting to emphasize a feeling of impermanence and transience. I don't know!
It would be fine either way. It would probably
be nearly impossiblemore trouble than it's worth for a few amateur designers to design that many rare and mythic creatures that are legitimately legendary.I'd be interested to hear willows and Truth discuss the merits and hazards of insular creature types.
It would certainly eat up some complexity points, but I think it'd be a considerable mechanic for return.
[c]Lightning Bolt[/c] -> Lightning Bolt
[c=Lightning Bolt]Apple Pie[/c] -> Apple Pie
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Maximum number of identical cards: 4
Ban list: Cards whose English names begin with a consonant, Unglued and Unhinged cards, cards involving ante, Ancestral Recall
I'll admit I haven't ever tested "Splice onto Sorcery" - if anyone has, does it test well? At the drawing board stage of the project I'm open to considering just about anything.
I suppose Warrior and Rogue tribal aren't enough of a thing that it'd be devastating for them to go missing for a set or two. I do want to reiterate though that this isn't "Return to Kamigawa" but is "Kamigawa Redone", so we don't have to rely on just return sets for precedence.
That leads really well into your big question though, which I don't have a solid answer for yet. How critical is it to retain the backdrop for Kamigawa? I don't know. Considering that the story we're telling is still that of the Kami War, I don't think spirit tribal (in some form or another) is ditchable regardless of the answer. The tribes, I agree, are more mutable than I considered when writing the OP.
What are creature types for? They tell you that "this thing is different from other things that have different types" (this is the flavor bit) and they serve as partitions for tribal interaction (this is the mechanical bit.)
So I think that fundamentally a creature's types should serve both purposes and it's a mistake to choose types that don't.
My opinions on the insular types you identified are like...
Eldrazi — Good example of an insular type. Note that Eldrazi denotes "a creature that's not even from a world at all" and it resists co-existing with any types from worldly creatures (with the exception of Drone and one example of Spawn). It correctly captures "not the same as non-Eldrazi" and correctly creates tribal interaction barriers.
Werewolf — This isn't an insular type; Greater Werewolf, Lesser Werewolf, and Treacherous Werewolf all existed outside and prior to Innistrad block. The paucity of Werewolf cards in MTG is a consequence of how hard it is to portray the iconic "transformation" trope in a card without tools like DFC, and when the team had a set with DFC available, one of the first things they did was populate that set with a lot of Werewolves because they were finally able to have a strong mechanical representation. Also it feels correct for Werewolves to have a specific tribal marker that can mechanically identify Werewolves selectively.
Naga — This type is terrible. It creates an incorrect tribal interaction barrier — Nagas are incompatible with Kamigawan Orochi — when flavorwise they are both "humanoid snake people." There is no need for three different incompatible ways for that concept (also covered by Gorgon, but that type has a strongly different flavor identity) to be represented in the game. My preferred solution is to eliminate the Naga type in favor of Snake.
God — This type is much like Praetor, Volver, and Bringer in that it is used to unify a cycle of weird creatures that don't want tribal interactions. I'm cool with that.
The problem with Ninja and Samurai isn't on the flavor end, it's on the mechanical end. It creates a weird tribal barrier: I see no compelling reason that Chief of the Edge refuses to sharpen Indebted Samurai's swords. Refactoring these types opens up new tribal decks that make sense and adds value to the cards.
What ideas can we brainstorm for how Spirits and their faction work? I've thrown a few ideas out there, what sounds best? Are there any other ideas we should consider?
Also I though soulshift was a success when they brought back in modern masters - people liked it. It was just on such terrible terrible cards the first time around. The addition of tribal supertype really helped it - and I know that's frowned upon now for whatever reason - but I think it should be brought back.
I consider much of what has been proposed in the OP interesting. I personally would suggest that thinking about replacement mechanics for the "bad apples" you should use a holistic approach rather than ticking of the list of mechanics and search for a replacement (as you did with enshrine as a replacement for soulshift/spiritcraft).
Something others have missed: Many of the mechanics existed because they co-existed. That's for example why it is a good idea to not include splice in the initial design after correctly identifying wisdom as a weak mechanical theme. Splice and sweep were created in conjunction with wisdom as mechanics that make it easier for you to have a large hand size. There is no real thematic reason for either to be in the set.
So while splice is not "bad" at all, it certainly never was "good" for Kamigawa. I'd say it is a good mechanic that could find a better home somewhere else.
Bushido similarily is a mechanic many designers look at as something "good", but not actually because it is such a great mechanic for Kamigawa, but most often because they hate that they cannot use the mechanic as an evergreen mechanic with such a specific name. I suggest returning bushido with a better name (I personally called it prowess for a while now and recently had to replace that with... steadfast), but not treating it as a set mechanic, but as a freshly introduced evergreen mechanic like vigilance was in the original Kamigawa block.
Something that certainly was bad about Kamigawa block was its main theme. The legendary theme was bad both for Kamigawa and for legendaries at once - even the much more common legendary creatures were not enough to produce a good gameplay, but on the other hand the largely reduced rarity of the legendaries hurt the feel of specialness that a legendary should have. Legendaries could be a subtheme, but even then it probably should be approached from an entirely different vantage point then "tribal for a supertype".
Maybe rather than a "legendary" theme there could be a "hero" theme of some sort - maybe find a unifying mechanical identity to (most of) your legendaries and then rather than directly referencing the supertype legendary you make cards that are synergistic with that mechanic, e. g. if your legendary mechanic was grandeur you could make a mechanic that helps tutor up cards with the same name as permanents you control (except I would suggest choosing a more commander-friendly mechanic for your legendaries).
Off the top of my head I'd consider a death-mechanic for the Mortal heroes reflecting the tragic side of the Spirit War and the inevitability they are facing due to figting essentially small gods (often referenced in original Kamigawan flavor text). Contrasting that with an inevitability mechanic on the Kami side (recursion? experience counters) would drive home the difference between the two sides without relying directly on the mechanics of original Kamigawa block (though staying close to it if e. g. a recursion theme similar to soulshift is chosen).
I like that you want to do something with the tribes, but I think you are being a little too formulaic by trying to fit each tribe into an enemy color pair. I think you could be more open about them and let them find their natural space. I notice that you missed probably the best tribal twist of Kamigawa: The Ogre/Demon dual tribe of the Oni. It is mechanically interesting and a top-down concept which was a strong side of Kamigawa anyway.
I'm not saying to bring it back as it was, but keep it in mind!
One thing to keep in mind when thinking about tribes is that the Kami War has been defined as two-sided: Mortals versus Kami. I don't think that too much attention needs to be put into the separation of Mortals into factions from the get-go. Innistrad did its split to prevent an over-emphasis of traditionally black creature types in black (declaring Werewolves and the main Geists as nonblack tribes went a long way to help with that). The tribes of Kamigawa are already naturally spread out. I don't see a problem with allowing them to bleed around a little (e. g. why not design Orochi Snakes in all three Sultai colors?) - that seems more advisable than forcing the issue e. g. with moving the Rats entirely out of black.
On another note Kamigawa also did some interesting stuff with class tribal. I remember Orochi caring about Archers and Warriors at times.
I have no strong opinion on keeping Arcane. It is a side product of wisdom. No one would necessarily miss it after all the other components of it have been removed. If there will be a mechanical nonparasitic theme for the Kami side of the war, maybe we could return it as a signifier similar to Trap or Processor? A mechanic named not by keyword or ability word, but by subtype? It's too early to decide that without knowing te mechanical identities of the two sides.
Heck, Arcane as a subtype could be entirely replaced by a spell keyword that belongs to the Kami faction.
I have no strong opinion on "cosmic mana". I guess, five-color could work as a Kami-theme due to the fact that they were originally a five-colored tribe as opposed to the splintered mortals. In modern design I expect them to gravitate towards a more assymetric distribution that favors some color pairs as their Limited Draft Archetypes. I could imagine Kami actually gravitating towards green (as well as black-red for onis?). As some of the other ideas I am not seeing why it is the right idea *for Kamigawa* - whoever called it box-checking probably was onto something.
tl;dr: I personally wouldn't commit immediately to returning anything, but keep myself open to return anything that fits with the new themes I'd develop just from looking at the theme - going top-down.
EDIT:
I also wanted to mention that I'm a fan of the "let's brainstorm a Duel Deck and see what works" approach. Thinking about what you would envision the decks like usually gives you a good idea about what is important about the factions.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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Universal mana seems an interesting idea. Not sure if it's right for this remake idea, but perhaps it might inspire a whole new mechanic or set idea. By universal mana, it means "One universal mana can be spent to pay the cost of one mana of any type." That includes any of the five colors, colorless mana, and even "snow" mana.
e.g.
T: Add one mana that is all colors and all types to your mana pool.
or
T: Add one universal mana to your mana pool. (One universal mana can be spent to pay the cost of one mana of any type.)
Is colorless Spirits too gimmicky? Probably too soon after Eldrazi that costs colorless mana. However with universal mana, they are more cohesive. Makes it possible to draft 6-color Spirits deck! Add a 16th card in each pack for basic lands, including Waste.
Splice is cool ability, but I think Splice onto Sorcery would be hard to develop. All the Arcane spells they printed had only ordinary, simple effects for a good reason.
Having both Arcane and Tribal - Spirit would be redundant.
Going along with "cosmic mana", is combining the new colorless mana with colored mana in costs.
e.g.
Arcane Banishing CW
Instant - Arcane
Exile target creature. Its controller gains 2 life.
........................
I think spirits should still be a big thing, and have some cool interaction with each other. I honesty liked soulshift but it could use some variance. Maybe if it returned another spirit at random instead of being number based?
Also, rats should stay in black.
All in all though I'd like to see it. I'd like to see a host of legendary creatures as well, (not uncommons though) at least one for each color pair and each single color.
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I personally have no strong opinion either way. It makes sense (and you raise an interesting point about how little this set would overlap with Lorwyn - which could give this a new slate) and I generally am more open to tribal in custom sets. It won't return in canon seets for a good reason, but usually does little harm in custom sets - as a replacement for Arcane it could work at the very least if that is something one would want.
I just need to nitpick: Tribal is a card type; it's not a supertype.
More important nitpick: There are six mana types and non of them is "snow". It's actually just the five colors and colorless. And "snow" actually is defined in such a way that it is probably not worth the effort trying to tie this into "universal" mana. It's all
Depending what colorless Spirits you mean. Spirit tokens in Kamigawa were usually colorless, but I get a feeling they actually fall on the other end of the spectrum and "colorless" to them actually meant more "colorbalanced" and "beyond restrictions in colors" (see below).
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After making my previous post I got a little curious as to what colors the factions in the original Kamigawa block actually would be - obviously Kamis and Mortals encompassed all colors, but intuitively I felt the story and some flavor aspects made the Mortal side feel rallied around a white-blue alliance of Moonfolk and Humans while the Kami fit philosophically into a green spot with a hint of white.
As a reference I wanted to use the colors of the twelve theme decks across the block. I grouped them by Kami-themed and Mortal-themed with one being hard to place.
It turned out there is one monocolored deck for each color that is themed around something clearly Mortal (Samurai, Ninja, Rat, "Spiritbane" Direct Damage, Snake) and a white-blue Soratami/Wisdom deck. So far that fit my expectation.
No Kami deck was monocolored. No Kami deck contained any blue at all. If a Kami deck was not black-red for the Ogre/Demon oni deck, it contained green with another color. Green-white appeared twice.
Seems like my intuition was confirmed here as well - which means to me there is some foundation to use this to e. g. decide on duel deck colorassignment.
I need to mention that there is a black-red deck themed around wisdom/sweep that I didn't want to put into one faction - the deck description made it seem it was built quite mechanically and Spirits and Mortals are thrown together into it.
I would rank the color association of the two factions from strongest to weakest:
Kami:
Mortals:
You'll note these aren't just reversals of one another. This is actually usually a good sign in my experience.
(Explanation for the less obvious decisions: black ranks higher than red for spirits thanks to two important appearances of that color combination in the original Kamigawa block: Iname, the only not five-colored multicolored card of the block, and "Kami Reborn", the only KAmi-themed theme deck of the introductory set; the reverse decision for mortals is inspired by the "Spiritbane" theme deck and anti-soulshift mechanic also featured prominently in the first set)
I could see these breaking down into subthemes/archetypes that fit with the expectations of original Kamigawa easily.
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EDIT:
I probably would split both factions into two or three "wings" since they are so diverse e. g. Mortals have the honorable warrior wing (red-white Samurai/Human) and the cunning rogues/wizard-advisors (blue-black Ninja/Soratami) while the Kami have the mystic nature spirit (green-white Spirit/Monk) and vengeful evil (black-red Ogre/Demon).
Since recursion cannot equal repetitive gameplay (as e. g. soulshift might cause) maybe the Kami mechanic could be more about caring about the graveyard threshold-style or maybe defying death through card advantage e. g.:
I'm not drawing anything for mortals that does not mirror Mirran or Zendikari mechanics right now.
I see no reason to change the premise of the Kami War. It never seemed it needed "fit" into its surroundings flavorwise due to also being achronological with the rest of the story. There might be the question of planeswalkers to consider. I have no strong opinions, but I can guess there is someone coming to everyone's mind that wouldn't canonically fit into the distant past.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Kami of Vitality 2W
Creature - Spirit (C)
Lifelink
When Kami of Vitality dies, return it to the battlefield transformed.
2/3
//
Essence of Vitality
• Enchantment (C)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you gain 1 life.
Or it might be worth considering borrowing the Spirit mechanic that Guesswork tried for his Kamigawa set, where the spirits return to your hand if they die while attacking.
How perfect is Ninjutsu already? Are there any tweaks or alternatives we should consider? For example, I've seen iterations where the attacker is sacrificed instead of returning to hand (Wisdom rears its head again!) which allows for higher power level and some other death triggers elsewhere in the set.
Bushido doesn't accurately portray what Samurai are all about, in my opinion. I'd almost prefer the Valor mechanic we often see in Norse sets, where you get an effect when your creature dies in combat. I'm not super knowledgeable about Samurai though, so more alternatives would be great.
Adorn (Attach an Aura or Equipment you control to this creature.)
Valor - When this creature dies, if it attacked or blocked this turn, [effect].
Fealty - As long as you control a legendary creature, [effect].
Human Shield (If another creature you control would die, you may instead remove all damage from it and sacrifice this creature instead.)
Renown N (When this creature deals combat damage to a player, if it isn't renowned, put N +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes renowned.)
Exalted (Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)
Reinforce N - X (X, Discard this card: Put N +1/+1 counters on target creature.)
Steadfast N (Whenever this creature blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N until end of turn.)
As to Samurai... they like Equipment. Equipment has been quite prominent in Kamigawa block as well, so that's alright. Adorn though is a keyword action eplaining a keyword action. Such a keyword is a last resort.
I like the list of returning keywords you suggest and would add heroic. In fact Theros-block was a lot like Kamigawa-block done right. The two mirror each other eerily - right down to the split world and the tragic protagonist who was serving a deity and in the end was not long for the world due to that deity doing them in.
That's probably also why making the Kami enchantment creatures seems so intriguing.
I really dig the flavor for valor, but (and that applies even more so to human shield) these death mechanics seem quite "passive" - you wait for someone to die. This doesn't create a playstyle, though it may encourages it subtly. And flavorwise it doesn't make sense to encourage these plays by e. g. giving them instant speed sacrifice outlets to trigger valor more regularly.
I suggest turning this on its head and maybe go the reverse direction: Not concentrate on the dead and dying, but on the survivors. For example there could be a mechanic about honoring the dead ("creature mastery"?). Kamigawa's story spun its legendary theme from hero reverence. Reverence is a theme to work with. Not only the dead can be revered (s. a.) How about the living legends? Renown goes into that direction. I could also imagine a reverse mechanic based on bushido/renown: "When this creature deals fight or combat damage to another creature, put +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes seasoned."
On a general note for mortals, I mentioned how I dislike fealty, because it is so strongly tied with a high rarity supertype that for diverse reasons cannot be made more common without hurting the set. But I wonder whether we could replace legendary with something else that could overlap with any legendaries we introduce that is still flavorful e. g. there has been a mechanic fling around the forum about a player designating a "champion" or "alpha" that would influence the gameplay (unfortunately "champion" as a name is taken by another mechanic; I would really love to re-make Champions of Kamigawa with a mechanic having that name). This would go into a similar direction as exalted possibly.
"Champion" (When this enters the battlefield or attacks, you may declare this creature your champion and lose all other champions.)
Your champion gets +1/+1 and has trample.
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Question: Is this hypothetically supposed to cover the flavor of all of the Kamigawa block in one set? Two? Three?
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Adorn was definitely a first stab at giving Samurai an Equipment mechanic, but I'd rather iterate on it than use it. I really like the idea of reverse renown/Glory, but Truth is right that it would likely cause board stalls without either (a) taking away from the elegance of the mechanic, or (b) warping to format to support it. I'm open to warping a format a little bit around a great mechanic, but I anticipate this would be too extreme a warp as-is. I do want to continue to pursue the mechanic since it's a perfect homage to bushido. It's possible my mental playtests are off-base and a real playtest would change my mind.
Champion is cool, but I don't think it fits well into this set. It'd be a great fit for Kolbahan (one of my dead projects).