I'm making a set based on an RPG setting I created and wanted to know a couple of things before I start posting.
First: I know only one thread is allowed. Even though I'm not posting it right now, I'll use this same thread when I do.
Second: the rules say I need to credit all artists, that's fair of course. But do I need to write down a list of the galleries I picked images from or just having them on the artist line of each card is enough?
While my question (above) remains, I'll post some stuff I'm planning for the set.
UPDATED ON: Feb 11, 2016
PLAYSTYLE:
I want to focus on monocolors. However, with the new abilities splashing on 2 colors each, it would also be good to play with two colors. More than two colors is not discouraged, but is not enforeced either. I'm not sure I'll even add multicolors, probably not.
SETTING:
The set is based on an RPG setting I'm developing with my friends. It's a continent ruled by dragons in disguise. What the common population knows about them is little, they see dragons as rare creatures, even though they exist almost everywhere and are just good at not revealing themselves.
There are six main areas:
- The Northern Seas, where Blue dragons live among Merfolk. It's a mostly unreachable place for land races, but it's still widely known they live there.
- The Everfrost Mountains, to the east, where White dragons live kind of isolated. It's a snow-covered place, so I brought Snow permanents and Snow-covered lands to the set.
- The Great Forest, to the west, where Green dragons live among elves.
- The Deadmist Marsh, to the north-west, connected with the Great Forest. It was originally part of the Great Forest but the dragon rulers decided it should be set as a place for Black dragons. It wasn't necessarily a place of evil and death, but it became like that since the Shard of Dragon God (a Legendary Dragon Avatar) emerged there.
- The Pyrelands, to the south, where the Red dragons live. It's a place ruled by the iron-hand of the most powerful Red dragon, who makes the life of the common population miserable, making them slaves and stuff. Races are kind of scattered there, but the most numerous are gnolls, cause they can live kind of anywhere, and dwarves, who have their own kingdom underground and are relatively free from the Red Ruler.
- The Desert, at the center of the continent. It's a place to travel through and mostly not to stay in. There are a few trade posts and commercial cities there.
CREATURE TYPES:
White - Humans, Cats, Spirits. Blue - Merfolk, Illusions, Birds, Fish. Black - Humans, Undead (I merged Skeletons and Zombies), Rats. Red - Gnolls (I don't like goblins), Dwarves, Elementals. Green - Elves, Centaurs, Bears. (and maybe Fairies)
Comment: I originally had Angels and Demons, but decided to remove them. Dragons are of all colors.
NEW MECHANICS:
RECOLLECTION (Ability word)
Whenever a player puts a card on the bottom of his or her library, <do something>.
- Colors intended to use this ability: white/blue.
Comment: I'm adding enough effects that send things to the bottom of the library, such as "1W: Put target artifact or enchantment on the bottom of its owner's library" or Scry.
Examples: There's a common 0/5 white creature that gets +1/+0 for each card sent to the bottom of libraries. There's a rare white creature that lets you reanimate a creature with same CMC of a card being sent to the bottom of a library.
COMPULSION (Ability word)
Whenever this creature gets blocked, for each blocking creature you may pay <cost>. If you do, <do something to>
- Colors intended to use this ability: blue/black.
Comment: At first I wanted something that "debuffed" the blocking creature, but then I decided to leave it open and the ability became versatile enough to splash to blue.
Examples: None yet (I'm working on it). Black effects might include -1/-1 counters to the blocking creature, simply killing it, life loss to its controller, black mana to your pool... Blue effects might send the creature to its owner's hand, give it -X/-0, tap things, or other control effects; maybe drawing cards if it's on a rare creature.
BACKSTAB <cost> (Keyword ability)
<cost>: Put this creature onto the battlefield and it deals damage equal to its power to target non-blocking creature. You can't activate this ability if there are no blocking creatures.
- Colors intended to use this ability: black/red.
Comment: Not sure if this fits black very well, but to me it seems fitting for red. Backstab costs should probably be higher than the creatures' casting costs, since using Backstab is kind of using a damage instant plus having a creature with flash. But it's not as powerful as having both effects, since you can't deal damage to any creatures and you can't do it whenever you want.
Examples: this is pretty straightforward, so a 2/2 creature would enter the battlefield and deal 2 damage, and so on. The flavor is that the backstabbing creature goes and hits a creature that stayed behind on battle.
OFFSPRING <number> (Keyword ability)
When this creature dies, if it's not a token, put <number> token(s) onto the battlefield that are copies of it, except they're 1/1.
- Colors intended to use this ability: red/green
Comment: most offsprings will be 1, so it's like making the creature become 1/1. I don't know what would be more intuitive: letting it die and putting a token or just making it 1/1. For some reason, I decided +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 counters, and effects that modify the creature's P/T would make it too complex if it just became 1/1. Auras would ruin the flavor unless I stated they had to be removed (which would still kind of damage the flavor).
Examples: this set will use green bears, elves and centaurs, red gnolls (I don't like goblins) and dragons of all colors, but I'll limit offspring to green and red for dragons. Green might have at least one enchantment that does something with offspring, like giving offspring to all of your green creatures or increasing offspring by 1. Red might have something to deal damage or break things when offspring is triggered.
SURGE (Keyword ability)
At the beginning of your combat phase, choose a creature with the least power or tied for the least power among creatures you control. That creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
- Colors intended to use this ability: green/white
Comment: this is intended to be a bit like Exalted, but not so much. Making weak creatures become bigger seems to fit white well, and buffing any creature is in-character for green. I'm not sure if I should limit this effect to happen only when the creature attacks or not. Leaving it like this could help Fight control a bit more with green, while white will probably have more instances of Surge to compensate for the weaker synergy. Sometimes, the flavor points a bit to "other guys helped this guy", so the name of the ability could see a change to reflect that.
Examples: There's a rare one mana 0/3 white creature that has this ability (it's basically 1/4 when alone), with Defender to keep it down, but loses Defender if its power is 3 or higher. There's a white enchantment with Surge that taps a creature and gives it Surge. Didn't work on green yet, but there are probably going to be only a couple of green things with this. For now, I don't want to have creatures with both surge and offspring, but it could happen if green needs more power.
Second: the rules say I need to credit all artists, that's fair of course. But do I need to write down a list of the galleries I picked images from or just having them on the artist line of each card is enough?
4. Always provide artist credit!
- If you post a render of your designs that shows art created by anyone other than you, you must properly credit the artist.
-Properly crediting the artist means including:
a) The artist's full name or screen name.
b) A link to the website from where you got the art. Be as specific as possible.
- You should include the artist's name in the render and the link in your post.
- If you, or somebody you know personally (such as a significant other) created the art and you have permission to use it here, please mention this in the post.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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]
Thanks SecretInfiltrator.
I didn't notice that last part of the first line under "b)". I'll make a list of the artist galleries and post with the renders too.
Comment: some of the pictures were cropped, so they might look different than the original versions. Some had the colors changed to make them more saturated or to raise the contrast to match the flavor of the card. Some were slightly editted to remove elements that wouldn't match the flavor. Others, especially the ones with characters with no background, were editted to a new background - these cards will show up in more than one artist gallery with what came from each one specified.
Some pictures were used in other games, but the artists are getting credit over the product they were used for.
This set is just for fun and is not to be sold or traded. I'm not claiming to be the owner of any of those arts, except of the card texts and the expansion symbol.
Also, I may have named some cards with pre-existing card names, since I didn't check (I was planning to do that when all cards are done) and I don't remember the name of every card ever printed by WotC. If you see one, please let me know and I'll change it. Same goes for pictures; I noticed one and changed it, but there could be more.
Come on man... if you're doing to have the return of snow lands... just make all of the lands snow lands.
Desert City - Terrible storage land.
DiverseEnvironment - You mean 2 that don't share a name.
Labaryth - No.
Northern Port - too much going on here.
Underground City - what does this so, except combo with "untap target land" effects in a clunky way?
Legendary Lands: Too much text, and the red one is broken.
Crown - shouldn't this be an equipment?
Book - Scry is okay, but you really want to make it a reoccurring effect?
Obelisk - why not aether vial text? Also, this is useless. If I've attached 5 times with a dragon, I've won the game.
Dragonstone - so... overcosted.
Engine - what??? This is useless, overcosted, makes no sense, AND requires -1/-1 counters? What?
Carefe - Uh... I'm not sure this'd be playable at 1 and 0.
Mox - Broken. Also obviously broken.
Soul Collector - terrible name, great "ability" word, terrible costing. MAYBE if it let you tap it to put something on the bottom, thus charging it...
Sword - so you've got ONE equipment and ONE living weapon use? Ignoring the odd effect and the bizarre costing.. come on guy.
Shivering - non-land snow = nothing. Useless.
Siane - Shroud? Nope.
Recaller - what? Since I haven't seen a trigger, I can't gauge it. But it's needlessly complex and 'boltable.
Everfrost - non-land snow = no.
Hermit - Protection from Snow. So useless or broken. Problem. ice counters?
Disciple - Uh... sure. I wish this was a 2 drop with better stats, but whatevs.
Everfrost - ice counters AND -1/-1 counters? so much counter nonsense and for a card I'd never use in constructed.
Priest - SURE! But why not player?
Elite - oh, so it's a triggered ability to stop graveyard recursion? Why not just exile? Exile is so much easier.
Lightfist - ugh. I'm sorry, but this is a hill giant that occasionally is unblockable. SO generic and useless and unfun.
Horseman - this needs to be a 2/2 for 1W.
Labarith - thanks for your feedback, I'm going to look at each of your comments and see if I can fix the cards that really need it! For now, I'll leave them like this for other people to see the original effects and see what they agree or disagree.
Snow Lands: do they normally do that on sets with Snow Lands? I don't really know, but I'll take a look.
Desert City: I'll take a look at pre-existing similar lands and see if I can make it a bit better.
Diverse Environment: it's the exact same text of Myriad Landscape, I just copied it into a "remake" of that card, so I guess the text is acceptable.
Labyrinth: ??
Underground City: you can combo it with things that untap, yes, but you can also gain one extra mana the turn you exile it, because it can already be tapped when the Landfall triggers. I believe it's possible that this is more powerful than it should instead of the opposite, but there are many OP lands around these days. I'll look at it and compare some more too.
Legendary Lands: I don't think there's that much text, but what are you comparing them with? Also, what is broken with the red one? The haste effect?
Beastform Crown: I could make it an equipment, yes. I'll try to re-design it as an equipment and see if I can create the same flavor.
Book of Incantations: it won't be so reoccurring unless the player uses no cards or finds a method for drawing a lot of cards. How powerful do you think it is like this?
Obelisk: I partially agree with the dragon attacking five times is almost winning the game, but the set will have not so powerful (even common) dragons. But I'll try to make it easier to use.
Dragonstone: reduced the Casting Cost to 3 and activating cost to 4. Is it too low? Still high? (I don't think so)
Engine of the Deep: it doesn't require -1/-1 counters, it PUTS -1/-1 counters. The idea is to be a "dragon counter". It makes other creatures more powerful vs dragons by giving them First Strike and makes the dragons get smaller as they're blocked. There are going to be enough dragons in the set to justify this, but it's not supposed to be useful 100% of the time. You may have misunderstood.
Essence Carafe: it's just a common... the idea of this one was not to be a thing optimized decks would use, but a thing that could save one creature once. It could be useful in drafts, maybe. With that in mind, do you think it's so bad as to never be used EVER? Not even at a 1 Casting Cost and 0 Activating Cost.
Everfrost Mox: what kind of drawback could it have to balance it? I thought entering tapped and generating only a snow mana would make it not so powerful...
Soul Collector: I'll try to think of a better name that fits the effect a little more. Also, it's possible to add a "T: put a card from somewhere on the bottom of library" effect. If I made it cost 2 and add any color instead of 2, maybe it would be more interesting? (btw, it's a common, so it can't be TOO powerful).
Sword of Sustaining: yeah, it's incredibly badly costed. I probably wanted to do something else and changed it, but forgot the cost The Beastform Crown will change into an Equipment, and there is one other Equipment that is black, but I didn't get there yet. There might be a red equipment too. So it would make it 4 Equipments, one of them being a Living Weapon. --- About the changes, I realized it's actually a 5 mana 2/2 with the ability to "pass damage" to other creatures you control, which is incredibly bad. I'll change it to a Casting Cost of 3 and keep it 2/2. The effect of passing damage is stupid for a plain 2/2, but if you equip it on an important creature, you could make it last much more than it would if you spread -1/-1 markers on your less important creatures, especially those who are not going to attack anyway. Considering it's a common, I think reducind the cost by 2 should do it. Tell me what you think.
Shivering Charm: no, there are Snow creatures. Not useless. And there are things in this set to make creatures become Snow creatures permanently (for instance, Everfrost Snowmancer is one)
Siane: yeah, Shroud is so weird in White. I removed it now. But for her to be a Mythic, I'll have to make her a bit harder to kill... maybe turning her into a 1/3 or 1/4?
Essence Recaller: it does have a trigger, which is whenever a player puts a card to the bottom of his or her library. There are going to be much more cards that send things to the bottom of the library in this set than usual, since it has the Recollection ability word. The effect is to reanimate creatures, and since you're included in the players that can trigger the effect by putting cards on the bottom of the library (even Scry can trigger it), then you can kind of control what to reanimate. I think it's a card that's not so easy to use, but has a powerful effect. Boltable is so bad for a card that can reanimate things without any cost? Maybe 2/4?
Everfrost Snowmancer: is this the card you said "no" to? It's a Snow creature, so it's going to be at least 1/1 (weak, I know). It also has Surge and it can make other creatures Snow too. Also, Shivering Charm is Snow, Everfrost Mox is Snow and Whitelands Adaptation turns a creature into Snow too. Some other creatures are also Snow. There isn't a huge amount of Snow things, but you can probably make a deck with them, and Everfrost Snowmancer might become 4/4 or 5/5. Looking at it now, maybe it could be a 2W instead of the currect cost. What do you think?
Antlerfire Hermit: the protection from snow was just flavor, but it would prevent Shivering Charm to be used on him. Also, there were originally more things that created ice counters, so it became weird even though there's still a couple of cards that do it, but you can't tie the usefulness of a card to a couple of other cards, so I'll change it or add a way for him to put ice counters on creatures (but this last effect would kill the flavor of the Hermit being a nice guy that unfreezes you and therefore you can't be attacked by the helped creature). Definitely needs changing, I'll see what I can come up with.
Disciple of the Winged: the set will have a bunch of flying things, even green, since there will be dragons. Being a CMC 3 and 2/3 is so bad for an uncommon with this effect? If it was CMC 2 and 2/2 would it be more interesting?
Everfrost Coldpiercer: no idea if the comment of -1/-1 counters was for this creature specifically, cause it has nothing to do with them, even though it's the Everfrost thing that deals with ice counters. This card is complete with adding ice counters and making them do something, so it's not so weird, except for the name of the counter. It makes creatures increasingly harder to untap. Maybe if it tapped a creature even if it didn't deal damage to you, it would be better, since its CMC is 3.
Essence Priest: agreed, added player.
Highroad Elite: it does that, yes, but it's something to help you trigger more Recollection, that's why it doesn't exile. Recollection is a white/blue ability in this set, so it needs things that send stuff to the bottom of the libraries sometimes.
Lightfist Inquisitor: I understand it's not fun, but this set has no creatures without abilities. Normally, there are some of those, and they're even less fun. The idea is to design a set that looks like a set that would be real, so I have to add unfun things sometimes... Being a common, I tried to make it weak, but I'll compare it to other recently printed commons that are CMC 4 and see if it needs slight buffs.
Veteran Horseman: I'll make it 2W instead, but I can't make it too cheap, cause Recollection might make it get big quickly, and it's only a common.
Well, I tried to reply to everything you had to discuss, thanks for taking the time to look at the cards and talk about them!
Snowlands - it's not a common occurance, but it always bothered me about Ice Age. If you're going to go snow, why not go all the way?
Storage-lands - there've been some variants out there, I suggest thinking of something new to do with them (perhaps alternate ways of getting storage counters, or letting you remove storage counters for some non-mana effect).
Diverse - it's not very diverse if you get 2 of the same, is it?
Underground city - WOTC generally frowns upon "extra mana" when untapping lands of late because of combos. Making it a land instead of an enchantment just makes is only useful for combo instead of acceleration.
Legendary Lands - Look at other legendary lands that are "strictly better" than basics - these are needlessly complex to foster your tribal theme - I'm saying it's not worth it, and they're unbalanced.
Engine of the Deep - it requires -1/-1 counters in the set, which is generally a bad thing unless you're going with Persist. Even then, undying is more desirable... right? Overall it's a card that doesn't make much sense and does too many things, none of which are worth a card in your set.
Book of Incantations - either you think scry will be reoccurring or you don't. If you don't, don't put it on there. If you do, ask yourself whether that's an effect you want. While I loved the original "Scry 2" one shots, WOTC has certainly overdone the keyword in every post-Mirrodin incarnation. Scry 1 because "Scry 2 is too good," yet throwing scry 1 all over the place.
Obelisk - I strongly suggest cutting it. If your goal is to "cheat" dragons into play, there are more efficient ways to do it. And if your goal is to force dragon tribal - and I highly suggest you don't do this - then this isn't the way to do it either.
Dragonstone - the costs are all wack on that. Look at other cards WOTC has done, and note that they don't do many of those cards anymore because of combo worries.
Everfrost Mox - Long story short: Do not print moxes. If you want to print moxes, become an expert on Moxes before you design one of them.
Sword of Sustaining - First, rarity shouldn't factor into the power design. Rarity is a matter of where it belongs in draft, not of how powerful it is. Second, if you're going living weapon you need to make sure it's on plenty of cards. Which means you should have at least 5 equipment that have it up front. That said, the equipment doesn't seem very fun and is wildly costed, so my advice would be to start from scratch. Living Weapon doesn't seem to be worth including unless you want to have a big equipment theme and are worried about how tough it'll be to equip things...
Shivering Charm - It's practically useless. I'm telling you right now that no one wants to "count" what creatures are snow and what aren't. You think it's "deck building incentive", but it's really just a card no one will ever play.
Siane - her ability is so weird I don't think it's worth printing. Not to mention "protection" is a crutch that hurts the game.
Essence Recaller - again, recollection as an ability doesn't seem to be well thought out. I'd be more interested in it if Recollection was a keyworded that put the card on the bottom of your deck when it would be put into a graveyard, and then other creatures say "When you recollect a card, do x." The psuedo-restocking ability might actually be fun on cards like removal or creatures - especially if mill is a thing. Then again, it also encourages you to shuffle your deck to get your good cards back, so...
Everfrost Snowmancer - you need to do a cost vs benefits analysis of this. My contention is that it doesn't satisfy the threshold. Overall your set needs more cards that are clear and easy to understand, and less cards that are needlessly complex, unfun, and have obscure interactions. No offense - maybe you've got a lot of "simple" cards lying around someplace, but of the ones I've read they seem to be doing a lot of things... not all of them worth doing.
Antlerfire Hermit - Honestly I haven't seen anything that screams "snow needs to be in this set", so unless you want to start with that... I suggest cutting them entirely.
Highroad Elite - Again, you've got an ability word that requires you to run other things that trigger said ability word. It's completely unnecessary. See the suggestion I make above with regards to "Recollection"... but when you're putting so much work into cards that NEED to go together for either to be half good... it's a problem.
Veteran Horseman - One problem is that this just isn't very "Knighty", the other is that again it's just a recollection parasite - it does nothing in any other deck.
I hope this helps. My biggest suggestion, though, would be to decide what keywords/mechanics you want in your set and then produce a "sampling" of those cards (no renders yet) to test to make sure they're easy to understand, fun, and appropriately costed. Then work on filling out the cards associated with said mechanics, and build the rest of the set on that foundation.
Snow Lands: I understand that having only Snow lands would be interesting, but some effects might affect snow things and not regular things, including lands. If a player is not going to explore Snow things, they might end up with just the downside of having them. I'm planning to have Snow things only on white, because of the setting, but I made Snow lands of all types because someone might want to have a multicolor deck with snow things (a white/blue control, maybe).
Desert City: I might change the way it gets counters, but I looked up other lands that work with counters and it seems most of them are Uncommon or more. The only common lands with counters are the ones from Mercadia that enter tapped with 2 counters and add two mana of a color at once, but they work two times and are wasted (unless you proliferate). The problem here is that charging this land might end up almost never happening. A little better trigger might be the solution if I want it to just add mana. Now for other effects, I'll have to think some more.
Diverse Environment: oh, now I see why you said it should be different. The idea of the name is that the land getting sacrificed it diverse as it has potential to bring different kinds of lands. The original card from which I copied that effect uses the same flavor... I just kind of made a synonym name of Myriad Landscape. It could be different and bring different lands, but since I want to enforce monocolors, the way it is now probably works better for the set.
Underground City: I agree it would be used for combos, but the one extra mana you get on the turn it gets exiled works well for acceleration. It doesn't provide intense ramp, but it's also a common.
Legendary Lands: I see. They're too focused on the tribal theme and aren't worth being a Legendary on their own. I'll try to have less restricted effects to make them more interesting. Thanks for pointing that out!
Engine of the Deep: I wasn't thinking -1/-1 counters were so adverse... never stopped to look at how often in sets they appeared, but I just did and there are something around 15 sets with these, with almost half of all the cards that deal with them on Eventide and Shadowmoor, which makes it quite focused on a few sets. So, you're right... I'll try to find a way to make the "thing that helps vs Dragons" flavor in a different way... maybe rewarding the player when he does bad things to dragons, like a dragonslaying thing.
Book of Incantations: makes sense. Maybe a single use of Scry 2 when it enters and then the unlimited hand effect? Scrying over and over would work well with Recollection, though. What do you think? Limit the scry or leave the possibility of that card being used to scry more than once? Maybe at a cost.
Dragon God Obelisk: I didn't really want to make dragons tribal exactly, just make it possible for a player to play dragons as they play lesser creature types (at least the ones from this set). There will be more powerful dragons, yes, but as you said, they're not the ones supposed to charge this. This would fall on the less useful rare cards, that are there just to improve casual decks that aren't being tournament-optimized. If there are other ways to achieve this, then I'm willing to explore them. I just don't want this specific card to be a dragon-booster like Ugin thing is to Eldrazis.
Dragonstone: the thing that reduces costs is exactly what I didn't want to do for the Obelisk, but wanted to do for this one. Maybe, instead of reducing Dragon spells by 1, I could have this add one mana of any color just to cast Dragon spells? Keeping the tutor effect also. Maybe it would make it less combo-prone.
Everfrost Mox: I have a question... are moxes supposed to be insanely powerful? I looked up Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox and Mox Opal... the last is a Mythic, so I should definitely make a rare mox less powerful than that. The others impose that you lose one card to make them usable (but maybe they're not Mythic just because they weren't reprinted). So, I'm guessing having Everfrost Mox enter the battlefild tapped is not enough as a drawback as it doesn't impose card disadvantage - what if the player had to put a Snow card from his hand on the bottom of his library? Is it an ok idea? The fact that I named it a mox seems to be the biggest problem here though... but I really wanted to keep it as a mox, even when I'm not an expert. (actually, I'm not an expert at other stuff either)
Sword of Sustaining: I don't agree with rarity not being a power factor. If common cards have a bigger chance of showing up, they're generally less powerful, or else everyone would end up getting a lot of powerful cards. In the pauper format some too powerful commons are banned for a reason. About the Living Weapon thing... you're right. It only shows up in Mirrodin Besieged (3 cards) and New Phyrexia (4 cards), so only one doesn't make sense. I'll make it a regular equipment and think of something to replace the -1/-1 counter effect. Redesigning from scratch is probably the best here, yes.
Shivering Charm: if I remove these incentives to Snow things I'd probably have to remove Snow from the set as a whole, but it's something I really wanted to keep. Maybe I'll just have effects that do things with Snow mana and not things that count Snow permanents. Maybe come up with some effects that hint at a snow flavor. If you see another way to make Snow decks more interesting, please tell me... I don't want to get rid of them.
Siane: the idea for her is that she wants to stop war, so I might change that into a less weird effect and into one of those white restrictions to combat, like keeping big creatures tapped. I have to look for this kind of effect on recent card too, cause I suspect these are older than I think.
Essence Recaller / Recollection: so the suggestion is to make things that alter the way they're destroyed to make them go back to the bottom of library, and make things happen when Recollections happen? For instace, a creature with Recollection wouldn't go to graveyard, but to the bottom of library instead and maybe an enchantment does a thing when that happens. Is that it? I'd have to have some of the Recollection cards capable of sending themselves to the graveyard.. like a creature that is sacrficed but has Recollection. Did I get the suggestion right or did I mess up?
Everfrost Snowmancer: if I get to redesign the snow things, this one will definitely go into redesign with them. Now, about the set as a whole, I'll need more input to better tune it into a more harmonious set. I hope more people join the discussion so we can do this correctly.
Antlerfire Hermit: snow is part of the the original RPG setting. The six most important areas of the continent are related to kinds of dragons that live there (except the desert). The "white dragons kingdom" is a snow place, so I wanted to keep it, but it seems I could work a lot more on making it a thing.
Highroad Elite, Veteran Horseman / Recollection: I understand it feels like you need other cards to make Recollection work (you really do). I compared it with Heroic a little, but Heroic fits more into the game because spells WILL target things. Maybe with the redesign of Recollection into something that happens more naturally, it won't be so bad.
I think working on Recollection to make it simpler and easier to use and not just something you need to be actively seeking to trigger would make White work much better on this set. I'll see what I can come up with and try to test it. About the set as a whole, maybe I tried to be more creative than the game allowed for a single set, and the fact that it wasn't done very well impacted on weird mechanics. I'll wait for more people to leave their impressions too, but thanks for the feedback!
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EDIT:
I'm trying to think of a way to turn Recollection into a Keyword ability that sends things to the bottom of a player's library as a way to "refund" your resources.
There would be effects triggered when a card is recollected.
The problem I'm dealing with is that if I let any card that would be put into a graveyard go to the bottom of the library by just having a permanent with Recollection on the battlefield, it would kill the purpose of having two or more instances of this ability in play, because it would be redundant.
Examples:
GUY THAT RECOLLECTS1W
Creature - Human Priest {C}
Recollection (Reminder text)
1/1
RECOLLECTION MACHINE2
Artifact {U}
Whenever a card is put on the bottom of your library, you may untap RECOLLECTION MACHINE. T: Untap target creature you control.
What I'm thinking is that I could make the Recollection activate only when:
(1) Permanent with Recollection is untapped and gets tapped -- seems like wasting too much resources, but could work.
(2) Permament with Recollection is sacrificed -- seems like wasting even more resources. Also, could cause weird chains of Recollections and possibly unwanted combos.
(3) Permanent with Recollection returns to its owner's hand -- feels too blue.
(4) Counters on permanent with Recollection are spent -- seems incredibly bad at first, but I'm not sure. If Recollection had a number and made the permanents come into play with that many counters, it could work, but it feels like I'm making it too complex.
(5) Player loses 1 life -- feels too black. This is going to be a White/Blue ability.
I'm making a set based on an RPG setting I created and wanted to know a couple of things before I start posting.
First: I know only one thread is allowed. Even though I'm not posting it right now, I'll use this same thread when I do.
Second: the rules say I need to credit all artists, that's fair of course. But do I need to write down a list of the galleries I picked images from or just having them on the artist line of each card is enough?
UPDATED ON: Feb 11, 2016
PLAYSTYLE:
I want to focus on monocolors. However, with the new abilities splashing on 2 colors each, it would also be good to play with two colors. More than two colors is not discouraged, but is not enforeced either. I'm not sure I'll even add multicolors, probably not.
SETTING:
The set is based on an RPG setting I'm developing with my friends. It's a continent ruled by dragons in disguise. What the common population knows about them is little, they see dragons as rare creatures, even though they exist almost everywhere and are just good at not revealing themselves.
There are six main areas:
- The Northern Seas, where Blue dragons live among Merfolk. It's a mostly unreachable place for land races, but it's still widely known they live there.
- The Everfrost Mountains, to the east, where White dragons live kind of isolated. It's a snow-covered place, so I brought Snow permanents and Snow-covered lands to the set.
- The Great Forest, to the west, where Green dragons live among elves.
- The Deadmist Marsh, to the north-west, connected with the Great Forest. It was originally part of the Great Forest but the dragon rulers decided it should be set as a place for Black dragons. It wasn't necessarily a place of evil and death, but it became like that since the Shard of Dragon God (a Legendary Dragon Avatar) emerged there.
- The Pyrelands, to the south, where the Red dragons live. It's a place ruled by the iron-hand of the most powerful Red dragon, who makes the life of the common population miserable, making them slaves and stuff. Races are kind of scattered there, but the most numerous are gnolls, cause they can live kind of anywhere, and dwarves, who have their own kingdom underground and are relatively free from the Red Ruler.
- The Desert, at the center of the continent. It's a place to travel through and mostly not to stay in. There are a few trade posts and commercial cities there.
CREATURE TYPES:
White - Humans, Cats, Spirits.
Blue - Merfolk, Illusions, Birds, Fish.
Black - Humans, Undead (I merged Skeletons and Zombies), Rats.
Red - Gnolls (I don't like goblins), Dwarves, Elementals.
Green - Elves, Centaurs, Bears. (and maybe Fairies)
Comment: I originally had Angels and Demons, but decided to remove them. Dragons are of all colors.
NEW MECHANICS:
RECOLLECTION (Ability word)
Whenever a player puts a card on the bottom of his or her library, <do something>.
- Colors intended to use this ability: white/blue.
Comment: I'm adding enough effects that send things to the bottom of the library, such as "1W: Put target artifact or enchantment on the bottom of its owner's library" or Scry.
Examples: There's a common 0/5 white creature that gets +1/+0 for each card sent to the bottom of libraries. There's a rare white creature that lets you reanimate a creature with same CMC of a card being sent to the bottom of a library.
COMPULSION (Ability word)
Whenever this creature gets blocked, for each blocking creature you may pay <cost>. If you do, <do something to>
- Colors intended to use this ability: blue/black.
Comment: At first I wanted something that "debuffed" the blocking creature, but then I decided to leave it open and the ability became versatile enough to splash to blue.
Examples: None yet (I'm working on it). Black effects might include -1/-1 counters to the blocking creature, simply killing it, life loss to its controller, black mana to your pool... Blue effects might send the creature to its owner's hand, give it -X/-0, tap things, or other control effects; maybe drawing cards if it's on a rare creature.
BACKSTAB <cost> (Keyword ability)
<cost>: Put this creature onto the battlefield and it deals damage equal to its power to target non-blocking creature. You can't activate this ability if there are no blocking creatures.
- Colors intended to use this ability: black/red.
Comment: Not sure if this fits black very well, but to me it seems fitting for red. Backstab costs should probably be higher than the creatures' casting costs, since using Backstab is kind of using a damage instant plus having a creature with flash. But it's not as powerful as having both effects, since you can't deal damage to any creatures and you can't do it whenever you want.
Examples: this is pretty straightforward, so a 2/2 creature would enter the battlefield and deal 2 damage, and so on. The flavor is that the backstabbing creature goes and hits a creature that stayed behind on battle.
OFFSPRING <number> (Keyword ability)
When this creature dies, if it's not a token, put <number> token(s) onto the battlefield that are copies of it, except they're 1/1.
- Colors intended to use this ability: red/green
Comment: most offsprings will be 1, so it's like making the creature become 1/1. I don't know what would be more intuitive: letting it die and putting a token or just making it 1/1. For some reason, I decided +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 counters, and effects that modify the creature's P/T would make it too complex if it just became 1/1. Auras would ruin the flavor unless I stated they had to be removed (which would still kind of damage the flavor).
Examples: this set will use green bears, elves and centaurs, red gnolls (I don't like goblins) and dragons of all colors, but I'll limit offspring to green and red for dragons. Green might have at least one enchantment that does something with offspring, like giving offspring to all of your green creatures or increasing offspring by 1. Red might have something to deal damage or break things when offspring is triggered.
SURGE (Keyword ability)
At the beginning of your combat phase, choose a creature with the least power or tied for the least power among creatures you control. That creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
- Colors intended to use this ability: green/white
Comment: this is intended to be a bit like Exalted, but not so much. Making weak creatures become bigger seems to fit white well, and buffing any creature is in-character for green. I'm not sure if I should limit this effect to happen only when the creature attacks or not. Leaving it like this could help Fight control a bit more with green, while white will probably have more instances of Surge to compensate for the weaker synergy. Sometimes, the flavor points a bit to "other guys helped this guy", so the name of the ability could see a change to reflect that.
Examples: There's a rare one mana 0/3 white creature that has this ability (it's basically 1/4 when alone), with Defender to keep it down, but loses Defender if its power is 3 or higher. There's a white enchantment with Surge that taps a creature and gives it Surge. Didn't work on green yet, but there are probably going to be only a couple of green things with this. For now, I don't want to have creatures with both surge and offspring, but it could happen if green needs more power.
- If you post a render of your designs that shows art created by anyone other than you, you must properly credit the artist.
-Properly crediting the artist means including:
a) The artist's full name or screen name.
b) A link to the website from where you got the art. Be as specific as possible.
- You should include the artist's name in the render and the link in your post.
- If you, or somebody you know personally (such as a significant other) created the art and you have permission to use it here, please mention this in the post.
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
I didn't notice that last part of the first line under "b)". I'll make a list of the artist galleries and post with the renders too.
Credits are at the last spoiler.
LANDS
Plains
Islands
Swamps
Mountains
Forests
Nonbasic Lands
Legendary Lands
--------------------------
ARTIFACTS
Colorless Artifacts
--------------------------
WHITE CARDS
White Artifacts
Humans
Cats
Spirits
Dragons
Avatar
White Dual-Faced Cards
Enchantments
Instants
Sorceries
--------------------------
CREDITS
http://sandara.deviantart.com
- Beastform Crown
- Power of Virtue
- Wynn, Shard of the Dragon God
- Dragonstone
http://tsabo6.deviantart.com
- Book of Incantations
- Spiritual Guide
- Desert City
http://telthona.deviantart.com
- Engine of the Deep
- Snowstorm Dragon
- Under the Ruler’s Aegis
http://crowsrock.deviantart.com
- Essence Carafe
http://bjpentecost.deviantart.com
- Soul Collector
http://delta1976.deviantart.com
- Assassin's Blade
http://88grzes.deviantart.com
- Sword of Sustaining
http://unidcolor.deviantart.com
- Forest
http://tyleredlinart.deviantart.com
- Forest
http://jjcanvas.deviantart.com
- Forest (x2)
- Swamp (x2)
http://fel-x.deviantart.com
- Island (x2)
- Mountain (x4)
- Plains (x4)
- Snow-Covered Moutain
- Diverse Environment
http://c0nstantini.deviantart.com
- Island
http://reneaigner.deviantart.com
- Island
http://merl1ncz.deviantart.com
- Swamp
http://wanbao.deviantart.com
- Swamp
http://minnasundberg.deviantart.com
- Snow-Covered Forest
http://bradlyvancamp.deviantart.com
- Snow-Covered Island
http://litka.deviantart.com
- Snow-Covered Plains
http://shuri77601.deviantart.com
- Snow-Covered Swamp
http://genjilim.deviantart.com
- Vastlands Disperser
- Vastlands Dragonslayer
http://furaffinity.net/user/cheetahpaws
(WARNING: NSFW GALLERY)
- Dustmane Paladin
http://furaffinity.net/user/rukis
(WARNING: NSFW GALLERY)
- Swiftsand Silkspinner
http://arthurgwg.deviantart.com
- Dustmane Guardian
http://koutanagamori.deviantart.com
- Dustmane Pathfinder
- Swiftsand Sablespear
http://qzurr.deviantart.com
(User seems to have stashed the pictures though)
- Swiftsand Skirmisher
- Calling of the Northern Pack
http://dac-editions.com
- Pearlscale Dragon
http://oroboros.de
- Whitecliff Dragon
http://lasahido.deviantart.com
- Essence Priest
http://yefumm.deviantart.com
- Lightfist Inquisitor
http://czarnystefan.deviantart.com
- Veteran Horseman
http://mgenccinar.deviantart.com
- Essence Recaller
http://billybobs.deviantart.com
- Highroad Elite
http://vitellan.deviantart.com
- Solace
http://carolina-eade.deviantart.com
- Territorial Apparition
http://gabrielwigren.deviantart.com
- Astral Walk
http://nimrais.deviantart.com
- Clerical Study
http://ehecod.deviantart.com
- The Cold Mists
http://onikafei.deviantart.com
- Chosen as a Shard
http://noahbradley.deviantart.com
- Freezing Rain
http://ilya-kyrrian.deviantart.com
- Rune Prison
http://depingo.deviantart.com
- Whitelands Adaptation
http://sycra.deviantart.com
- Essence Retrieval
http://treijim.deviantart.com
- Last Hope
http://sickbrush.deviantart.com
- Northern Port
http://m0ai.deviantart.com
- Labyrinth
http://philipstraub.deviantart.com
- Underground City
http://benwootten.deviantart.com
(Dragon on rock)
- Clodahr, White Ruler
http://jhart.deviantart.com
(Background mountains)
- Clodahr, White Ruler
http://herckeim.deviantart.com
- Clodahr, Disguised
- Shivering Charm
http://the-sixthleafclover.deviantart.com
- Lyreon, the Wise
http://njoo.deviantart.com
- Lyreon, Disguised
http://hahamba.ru
- Siane, Dragon God High Priestess
http://martanael.deviantart.com
- Cindercrest Peak
http://fynnmitsuki.deviantart.com
- Deadmist Marsh
http://cahess.deviantart.com
- The Great Forest
http://merl1ncz.deviantart.com
- Everfrost Plateau
http://jeanne-junmey.blogspot.com.br
- Everfrost Mox
http://phomax.deviantart.com
- Everfrost Coldpiercer
http://memed.deviantart.com
- Antlerfire Hermit
http://fetsch.deviantart.com
- Everfrost Snowmancer
http://ethicallychallenged.deviantart.com
- Casting Away
http://crushvisual.deviantart.com
- Shared Pilgrimage
http://feliciacano.deviantart.com
- Dragon God Obelisk
http://homoseptimus.deviantart.com
- Heart of Floralia
http://leesmith.deviantart.com
(I used the original name of the weapon too, cause it was great!)
- Skullbiter
http://chromamancer.deviantart.com
- Breath of Life
Comment: some of the pictures were cropped, so they might look different than the original versions. Some had the colors changed to make them more saturated or to raise the contrast to match the flavor of the card. Some were slightly editted to remove elements that wouldn't match the flavor. Others, especially the ones with characters with no background, were editted to a new background - these cards will show up in more than one artist gallery with what came from each one specified.
Some pictures were used in other games, but the artists are getting credit over the product they were used for.
This set is just for fun and is not to be sold or traded. I'm not claiming to be the owner of any of those arts, except of the card texts and the expansion symbol.
Also, I may have named some cards with pre-existing card names, since I didn't check (I was planning to do that when all cards are done) and I don't remember the name of every card ever printed by WotC. If you see one, please let me know and I'll change it. Same goes for pictures; I noticed one and changed it, but there could be more.
Desert City - Terrible storage land.
DiverseEnvironment - You mean 2 that don't share a name.
Labaryth - No.
Northern Port - too much going on here.
Underground City - what does this so, except combo with "untap target land" effects in a clunky way?
Legendary Lands: Too much text, and the red one is broken.
Crown - shouldn't this be an equipment?
Book - Scry is okay, but you really want to make it a reoccurring effect?
Obelisk - why not aether vial text? Also, this is useless. If I've attached 5 times with a dragon, I've won the game.
Dragonstone - so... overcosted.
Engine - what??? This is useless, overcosted, makes no sense, AND requires -1/-1 counters? What?
Carefe - Uh... I'm not sure this'd be playable at 1 and 0.
Mox - Broken. Also obviously broken.
Soul Collector - terrible name, great "ability" word, terrible costing. MAYBE if it let you tap it to put something on the bottom, thus charging it...
Sword - so you've got ONE equipment and ONE living weapon use? Ignoring the odd effect and the bizarre costing.. come on guy.
Shivering - non-land snow = nothing. Useless.
Siane - Shroud? Nope.
Recaller - what? Since I haven't seen a trigger, I can't gauge it. But it's needlessly complex and 'boltable.
Everfrost - non-land snow = no.
Hermit - Protection from Snow. So useless or broken. Problem. ice counters?
Disciple - Uh... sure. I wish this was a 2 drop with better stats, but whatevs.
Everfrost - ice counters AND -1/-1 counters? so much counter nonsense and for a card I'd never use in constructed.
Priest - SURE! But why not player?
Elite - oh, so it's a triggered ability to stop graveyard recursion? Why not just exile? Exile is so much easier.
Lightfist - ugh. I'm sorry, but this is a hill giant that occasionally is unblockable. SO generic and useless and unfun.
Horseman - this needs to be a 2/2 for 1W.
Snow Lands: do they normally do that on sets with Snow Lands? I don't really know, but I'll take a look.
Desert City: I'll take a look at pre-existing similar lands and see if I can make it a bit better.
Diverse Environment: it's the exact same text of Myriad Landscape, I just copied it into a "remake" of that card, so I guess the text is acceptable.
Labyrinth: ??
Underground City: you can combo it with things that untap, yes, but you can also gain one extra mana the turn you exile it, because it can already be tapped when the Landfall triggers. I believe it's possible that this is more powerful than it should instead of the opposite, but there are many OP lands around these days. I'll look at it and compare some more too.
Legendary Lands: I don't think there's that much text, but what are you comparing them with? Also, what is broken with the red one? The haste effect?
Beastform Crown: I could make it an equipment, yes. I'll try to re-design it as an equipment and see if I can create the same flavor.
Book of Incantations: it won't be so reoccurring unless the player uses no cards or finds a method for drawing a lot of cards. How powerful do you think it is like this?
Obelisk: I partially agree with the dragon attacking five times is almost winning the game, but the set will have not so powerful (even common) dragons. But I'll try to make it easier to use.
Dragonstone: reduced the Casting Cost to 3 and activating cost to 4. Is it too low? Still high? (I don't think so)
Engine of the Deep: it doesn't require -1/-1 counters, it PUTS -1/-1 counters. The idea is to be a "dragon counter". It makes other creatures more powerful vs dragons by giving them First Strike and makes the dragons get smaller as they're blocked. There are going to be enough dragons in the set to justify this, but it's not supposed to be useful 100% of the time. You may have misunderstood.
Essence Carafe: it's just a common... the idea of this one was not to be a thing optimized decks would use, but a thing that could save one creature once. It could be useful in drafts, maybe. With that in mind, do you think it's so bad as to never be used EVER? Not even at a 1 Casting Cost and 0 Activating Cost.
Everfrost Mox: what kind of drawback could it have to balance it? I thought entering tapped and generating only a snow mana would make it not so powerful...
Soul Collector: I'll try to think of a better name that fits the effect a little more. Also, it's possible to add a "T: put a card from somewhere on the bottom of library" effect. If I made it cost 2 and add any color instead of 2, maybe it would be more interesting? (btw, it's a common, so it can't be TOO powerful).
Sword of Sustaining: yeah, it's incredibly badly costed. I probably wanted to do something else and changed it, but forgot the cost
Shivering Charm: no, there are Snow creatures. Not useless. And there are things in this set to make creatures become Snow creatures permanently (for instance, Everfrost Snowmancer is one)
Siane: yeah, Shroud is so weird in White. I removed it now. But for her to be a Mythic, I'll have to make her a bit harder to kill... maybe turning her into a 1/3 or 1/4?
Essence Recaller: it does have a trigger, which is whenever a player puts a card to the bottom of his or her library. There are going to be much more cards that send things to the bottom of the library in this set than usual, since it has the Recollection ability word. The effect is to reanimate creatures, and since you're included in the players that can trigger the effect by putting cards on the bottom of the library (even Scry can trigger it), then you can kind of control what to reanimate. I think it's a card that's not so easy to use, but has a powerful effect. Boltable is so bad for a card that can reanimate things without any cost? Maybe 2/4?
Everfrost Snowmancer: is this the card you said "no" to? It's a Snow creature, so it's going to be at least 1/1 (weak, I know). It also has Surge and it can make other creatures Snow too. Also, Shivering Charm is Snow, Everfrost Mox is Snow and Whitelands Adaptation turns a creature into Snow too. Some other creatures are also Snow. There isn't a huge amount of Snow things, but you can probably make a deck with them, and Everfrost Snowmancer might become 4/4 or 5/5. Looking at it now, maybe it could be a 2W instead of the currect cost. What do you think?
Antlerfire Hermit: the protection from snow was just flavor, but it would prevent Shivering Charm to be used on him. Also, there were originally more things that created ice counters, so it became weird even though there's still a couple of cards that do it, but you can't tie the usefulness of a card to a couple of other cards, so I'll change it or add a way for him to put ice counters on creatures (but this last effect would kill the flavor of the Hermit being a nice guy that unfreezes you and therefore you can't be attacked by the helped creature). Definitely needs changing, I'll see what I can come up with.
Disciple of the Winged: the set will have a bunch of flying things, even green, since there will be dragons. Being a CMC 3 and 2/3 is so bad for an uncommon with this effect? If it was CMC 2 and 2/2 would it be more interesting?
Everfrost Coldpiercer: no idea if the comment of -1/-1 counters was for this creature specifically, cause it has nothing to do with them, even though it's the Everfrost thing that deals with ice counters. This card is complete with adding ice counters and making them do something, so it's not so weird, except for the name of the counter. It makes creatures increasingly harder to untap. Maybe if it tapped a creature even if it didn't deal damage to you, it would be better, since its CMC is 3.
Essence Priest: agreed, added player.
Highroad Elite: it does that, yes, but it's something to help you trigger more Recollection, that's why it doesn't exile. Recollection is a white/blue ability in this set, so it needs things that send stuff to the bottom of the libraries sometimes.
Lightfist Inquisitor: I understand it's not fun, but this set has no creatures without abilities. Normally, there are some of those, and they're even less fun. The idea is to design a set that looks like a set that would be real, so I have to add unfun things sometimes... Being a common, I tried to make it weak, but I'll compare it to other recently printed commons that are CMC 4 and see if it needs slight buffs.
Veteran Horseman: I'll make it 2W instead, but I can't make it too cheap, cause Recollection might make it get big quickly, and it's only a common.
Well, I tried to reply to everything you had to discuss, thanks for taking the time to look at the cards and talk about them!
Storage-lands - there've been some variants out there, I suggest thinking of something new to do with them (perhaps alternate ways of getting storage counters, or letting you remove storage counters for some non-mana effect).
Diverse - it's not very diverse if you get 2 of the same, is it?
Underground city - WOTC generally frowns upon "extra mana" when untapping lands of late because of combos. Making it a land instead of an enchantment just makes is only useful for combo instead of acceleration.
Legendary Lands - Look at other legendary lands that are "strictly better" than basics - these are needlessly complex to foster your tribal theme - I'm saying it's not worth it, and they're unbalanced.
Engine of the Deep - it requires -1/-1 counters in the set, which is generally a bad thing unless you're going with Persist. Even then, undying is more desirable... right? Overall it's a card that doesn't make much sense and does too many things, none of which are worth a card in your set.
Book of Incantations - either you think scry will be reoccurring or you don't. If you don't, don't put it on there. If you do, ask yourself whether that's an effect you want. While I loved the original "Scry 2" one shots, WOTC has certainly overdone the keyword in every post-Mirrodin incarnation. Scry 1 because "Scry 2 is too good," yet throwing scry 1 all over the place.
Obelisk - I strongly suggest cutting it. If your goal is to "cheat" dragons into play, there are more efficient ways to do it. And if your goal is to force dragon tribal - and I highly suggest you don't do this - then this isn't the way to do it either.
Dragonstone - the costs are all wack on that. Look at other cards WOTC has done, and note that they don't do many of those cards anymore because of combo worries.
Everfrost Mox - Long story short: Do not print moxes. If you want to print moxes, become an expert on Moxes before you design one of them.
Sword of Sustaining - First, rarity shouldn't factor into the power design. Rarity is a matter of where it belongs in draft, not of how powerful it is. Second, if you're going living weapon you need to make sure it's on plenty of cards. Which means you should have at least 5 equipment that have it up front. That said, the equipment doesn't seem very fun and is wildly costed, so my advice would be to start from scratch. Living Weapon doesn't seem to be worth including unless you want to have a big equipment theme and are worried about how tough it'll be to equip things...
Shivering Charm - It's practically useless. I'm telling you right now that no one wants to "count" what creatures are snow and what aren't. You think it's "deck building incentive", but it's really just a card no one will ever play.
Siane - her ability is so weird I don't think it's worth printing. Not to mention "protection" is a crutch that hurts the game.
Essence Recaller - again, recollection as an ability doesn't seem to be well thought out. I'd be more interested in it if Recollection was a keyworded that put the card on the bottom of your deck when it would be put into a graveyard, and then other creatures say "When you recollect a card, do x." The psuedo-restocking ability might actually be fun on cards like removal or creatures - especially if mill is a thing. Then again, it also encourages you to shuffle your deck to get your good cards back, so...
Everfrost Snowmancer - you need to do a cost vs benefits analysis of this. My contention is that it doesn't satisfy the threshold. Overall your set needs more cards that are clear and easy to understand, and less cards that are needlessly complex, unfun, and have obscure interactions. No offense - maybe you've got a lot of "simple" cards lying around someplace, but of the ones I've read they seem to be doing a lot of things... not all of them worth doing.
Antlerfire Hermit - Honestly I haven't seen anything that screams "snow needs to be in this set", so unless you want to start with that... I suggest cutting them entirely.
Highroad Elite - Again, you've got an ability word that requires you to run other things that trigger said ability word. It's completely unnecessary. See the suggestion I make above with regards to "Recollection"... but when you're putting so much work into cards that NEED to go together for either to be half good... it's a problem.
Veteran Horseman - One problem is that this just isn't very "Knighty", the other is that again it's just a recollection parasite - it does nothing in any other deck.
I hope this helps. My biggest suggestion, though, would be to decide what keywords/mechanics you want in your set and then produce a "sampling" of those cards (no renders yet) to test to make sure they're easy to understand, fun, and appropriately costed. Then work on filling out the cards associated with said mechanics, and build the rest of the set on that foundation.
Desert City: I might change the way it gets counters, but I looked up other lands that work with counters and it seems most of them are Uncommon or more. The only common lands with counters are the ones from Mercadia that enter tapped with 2 counters and add two mana of a color at once, but they work two times and are wasted (unless you proliferate). The problem here is that charging this land might end up almost never happening. A little better trigger might be the solution if I want it to just add mana. Now for other effects, I'll have to think some more.
Diverse Environment: oh, now I see why you said it should be different. The idea of the name is that the land getting sacrificed it diverse as it has potential to bring different kinds of lands. The original card from which I copied that effect uses the same flavor... I just kind of made a synonym name of Myriad Landscape. It could be different and bring different lands, but since I want to enforce monocolors, the way it is now probably works better for the set.
Underground City: I agree it would be used for combos, but the one extra mana you get on the turn it gets exiled works well for acceleration. It doesn't provide intense ramp, but it's also a common.
Legendary Lands: I see. They're too focused on the tribal theme and aren't worth being a Legendary on their own. I'll try to have less restricted effects to make them more interesting. Thanks for pointing that out!
Engine of the Deep: I wasn't thinking -1/-1 counters were so adverse... never stopped to look at how often in sets they appeared, but I just did and there are something around 15 sets with these, with almost half of all the cards that deal with them on Eventide and Shadowmoor, which makes it quite focused on a few sets. So, you're right... I'll try to find a way to make the "thing that helps vs Dragons" flavor in a different way... maybe rewarding the player when he does bad things to dragons, like a dragonslaying thing.
Book of Incantations: makes sense. Maybe a single use of Scry 2 when it enters and then the unlimited hand effect? Scrying over and over would work well with Recollection, though. What do you think? Limit the scry or leave the possibility of that card being used to scry more than once? Maybe at a cost.
Dragon God Obelisk: I didn't really want to make dragons tribal exactly, just make it possible for a player to play dragons as they play lesser creature types (at least the ones from this set). There will be more powerful dragons, yes, but as you said, they're not the ones supposed to charge this. This would fall on the less useful rare cards, that are there just to improve casual decks that aren't being tournament-optimized. If there are other ways to achieve this, then I'm willing to explore them. I just don't want this specific card to be a dragon-booster like Ugin thing is to Eldrazis.
Dragonstone: the thing that reduces costs is exactly what I didn't want to do for the Obelisk, but wanted to do for this one. Maybe, instead of reducing Dragon spells by 1, I could have this add one mana of any color just to cast Dragon spells? Keeping the tutor effect also. Maybe it would make it less combo-prone.
Everfrost Mox: I have a question... are moxes supposed to be insanely powerful? I looked up Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox and Mox Opal... the last is a Mythic, so I should definitely make a rare mox less powerful than that. The others impose that you lose one card to make them usable (but maybe they're not Mythic just because they weren't reprinted). So, I'm guessing having Everfrost Mox enter the battlefild tapped is not enough as a drawback as it doesn't impose card disadvantage - what if the player had to put a Snow card from his hand on the bottom of his library? Is it an ok idea? The fact that I named it a mox seems to be the biggest problem here though... but I really wanted to keep it as a mox, even when I'm not an expert. (actually, I'm not an expert at other stuff either)
Sword of Sustaining: I don't agree with rarity not being a power factor. If common cards have a bigger chance of showing up, they're generally less powerful, or else everyone would end up getting a lot of powerful cards. In the pauper format some too powerful commons are banned for a reason. About the Living Weapon thing... you're right. It only shows up in Mirrodin Besieged (3 cards) and New Phyrexia (4 cards), so only one doesn't make sense. I'll make it a regular equipment and think of something to replace the -1/-1 counter effect. Redesigning from scratch is probably the best here, yes.
Shivering Charm: if I remove these incentives to Snow things I'd probably have to remove Snow from the set as a whole, but it's something I really wanted to keep. Maybe I'll just have effects that do things with Snow mana and not things that count Snow permanents. Maybe come up with some effects that hint at a snow flavor. If you see another way to make Snow decks more interesting, please tell me... I don't want to get rid of them.
Siane: the idea for her is that she wants to stop war, so I might change that into a less weird effect and into one of those white restrictions to combat, like keeping big creatures tapped. I have to look for this kind of effect on recent card too, cause I suspect these are older than I think.
Essence Recaller / Recollection: so the suggestion is to make things that alter the way they're destroyed to make them go back to the bottom of library, and make things happen when Recollections happen? For instace, a creature with Recollection wouldn't go to graveyard, but to the bottom of library instead and maybe an enchantment does a thing when that happens. Is that it? I'd have to have some of the Recollection cards capable of sending themselves to the graveyard.. like a creature that is sacrficed but has Recollection. Did I get the suggestion right or did I mess up?
Everfrost Snowmancer: if I get to redesign the snow things, this one will definitely go into redesign with them. Now, about the set as a whole, I'll need more input to better tune it into a more harmonious set. I hope more people join the discussion so we can do this correctly.
Antlerfire Hermit: snow is part of the the original RPG setting. The six most important areas of the continent are related to kinds of dragons that live there (except the desert). The "white dragons kingdom" is a snow place, so I wanted to keep it, but it seems I could work a lot more on making it a thing.
Highroad Elite, Veteran Horseman / Recollection: I understand it feels like you need other cards to make Recollection work (you really do). I compared it with Heroic a little, but Heroic fits more into the game because spells WILL target things. Maybe with the redesign of Recollection into something that happens more naturally, it won't be so bad.
I think working on Recollection to make it simpler and easier to use and not just something you need to be actively seeking to trigger would make White work much better on this set. I'll see what I can come up with and try to test it. About the set as a whole, maybe I tried to be more creative than the game allowed for a single set, and the fact that it wasn't done very well impacted on weird mechanics. I'll wait for more people to leave their impressions too, but thanks for the feedback!
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EDIT:
I'm trying to think of a way to turn Recollection into a Keyword ability that sends things to the bottom of a player's library as a way to "refund" your resources.
There would be effects triggered when a card is recollected.
The problem I'm dealing with is that if I let any card that would be put into a graveyard go to the bottom of the library by just having a permanent with Recollection on the battlefield, it would kill the purpose of having two or more instances of this ability in play, because it would be redundant.
Examples:
GUY THAT RECOLLECTS 1W
Creature - Human Priest {C}
Recollection (Reminder text)
1/1
RECOLLECTION MACHINE 2
Artifact {U}
Whenever a card is put on the bottom of your library, you may untap RECOLLECTION MACHINE.
T: Untap target creature you control.
What I'm thinking is that I could make the Recollection activate only when:
(1) Permanent with Recollection is untapped and gets tapped -- seems like wasting too much resources, but could work.
(2) Permament with Recollection is sacrificed -- seems like wasting even more resources. Also, could cause weird chains of Recollections and possibly unwanted combos.
(3) Permanent with Recollection returns to its owner's hand -- feels too blue.
(4) Counters on permanent with Recollection are spent -- seems incredibly bad at first, but I'm not sure. If Recollection had a number and made the permanents come into play with that many counters, it could work, but it feels like I'm making it too complex.
(5) Player loses 1 life -- feels too black. This is going to be a White/Blue ability.
I'm still thinking about it.