Landwalk is actually a quite terrible mechanic - you probably would end up someplace way better with intimidate.
I don't feel all that much in favor of expanding the cycle - the original card had a very good reason to exist in the environment it was printed in. Considering what I've seen so far of the proposed set, I see no similar tendencies in your set.
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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]
Landwalk is actually a quite terrible mechanic - you probably would end up someplace way better with intimidate.
I don't feel all that much in favor of expanding the cycle - the original card had a very good reason to exist in the environment it was printed in. Considering what I've seen so far of the proposed set, I see no similar tendencies in your set.
The theme of the block is "combat," so I'm trying to give each of the evergreen combat keywords their own little niche to play with in this set. Even the bad ones.
For some of those keywords, the niche is much smaller than others. In particular, trample and landwalk probably aren't getting much new stuff thrown at them, and there's only so much more I can do with flying that would feel new. So, flying is only getting a little bit of love, as well.
This cycle is meant to give a higher profile to some of these lesser keywords, so it doesn't feel like I abandoned them in a set that was dedicated to exploring all of the various dimensions of combat. I'll throw in enough tramplers / landwalkers to make these viable in Limited, but this is probably the only bone I'm throwing to landwalk. Hopefully, it will be enough to spur some creative casual designers to build landwalk decks, which is all it needs to do, other than not be a complete dead draw in Limited.
Think of it like the Druid or Assassin subthemes in Morningtide - very small, but present for those who want them.
I kind of wish there was a way to make these more relevant. Moreover, as written, I suspect each of them could be cheaper as it will be tough to construct a deck around any except favorable winds. I also support the intimidate vs. landwalk suggestion--landwalk doesn't feel especially black.
I realize this drastically changes the concept, but maybe have each enchantment generate a token with the relevant ability when it ETB (obviously you'd have to up the casting costs as well).
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i like all the designs in a vacuum, but as mentioned i don't know if a set can support all 5. avacyn restored had 28 flyers (which was about 1/4 of all the creatures in the set). do you have a skeleton yet, planning how many creatures will have each of the above mechanics?
There are 3958 creatures in modern. Among them, 22% have flying. 2.5% have vigilance, 6% have haste, 5% have trample, and a meager 2% have some kind of landwalk.*
The point I'm making is that there are so amazingly few creatures for which most of these are relevant. How many cards with relevant types are going to be in Standard together, for some of these? 4-5? In INN and RTR both, for instance, there are 4 vigilance creatures each, only 2 of each are common. That's not enough to build a limited deck around. The situation is worse for landwalk. INN has only three haste creatures, one of which is rare.
* Numbers are approximate.
When the set is finished, I plan for it to have a vigilance subtheme and a haste subtheme. If they end up like my intimidate subtheme, they will probably amount to about 3-5 keyworded creatures and/or keyword-granting cards at each rarity, for each keyword. That should be enough to justify maindecking something like Scouting Party, even if it's not quite enough to build a completely unified "vigilance deck."
I'm going to be doing at least one of each type of basic landwalk in this set, with the distribution of those favoring the lower rarities, and then maybe a couple other less-standard landwalk abilities at uncommon / rare / mythic. It's not going to be easy to build a landwalk deck in draft, but I'm OK with one of these being "the bad one" in that context.
Again, I'm mostly looking to get these cards into the hands of casual deckbuilders. 2% of 3958 is still plenty of landwalk cards for the casual crowd.
Just make sure that as well as being at low rarities there are creatures with each ability in different colors. Haste mainly in red, secondary in black and green. Vigilance mainly in white, secondary in green and blue, and maybe one or two red creatures with "CARDNAME attacks each turn if able". Trample mainly in red and green, with some large monsters in blue and black and maybe one white creature. Landwalk is mainly blue black and green with some red and white; if you switch to intimidate it is mainly black red and green, but can conceivably fit in white and blue also.
Just make sure that as well as being at low rarities there are creatures with each ability in different colors. Haste mainly in red, secondary in black and green. Vigilance mainly in white, secondary in green and blue, and maybe one or two red creatures with "CARDNAME attacks each turn if able". Trample mainly in red and green, with some large monsters in blue and black and maybe one white creature. Landwalk is mainly blue black and green with some red and white; if you switch to intimidate it is mainly black red and green, but can conceivably fit in white and blue also.
Looking at vigilance in particular... outside of the Modern context, and excluding Planar Chaos from the discussion, there aren't any cards in blue, black, or red that get vigilance without a green or white factor added in. Of course, outside of that context, you have vigilance representatives in allthreecolors.
So, let's say that you wanted to finally break into a tertiary vigilance color in the Modern context. Do we just assume it's blue, in keeping with Planar Chaos? Or is there a case for red? (I'm going to assume that black is not in the running.) I feel like WotC has made pretty strong statements with cards like Court Hussar and Ocular Halo that vigilance is NOT blue, in the Modern context. You could also interpret the Planar-Chaos-ness of blue vigilance to be a further argument that the mechanic doesn't belong to blue, in the real world.
Does red vigilance make sense? Should the mechanic just stay in green / white, exclusively?
I would argue strongly in favour of Blue over Red in the case of vigilance. Blue often has more high toughness/defensive creatures, and while I would imagine they haven't expanded the keyword to Blue because Blue already has a rather large share of mechanics, it definitely feels far more thematic and appropriate in Blue.
And I second the suggestion that the Black enchantment should be intimidate based, as that ability can easily be bled out into more colours.
The problem with landwalk is that 1) it's fundamentally uninteractive and 2) its effectiveness is based on your opponent instead of you. 99.9% of the time, especially in a non-multicolor set like this, either your opponent will already have a basic land of the appropriate type out (making landwalk equal "unblockable") or won't have a basic land of the appropriate type in their deck at all (making landwalk equal "vanilla"). "Roll the dice with WER to determine if your cards are godly or barely fringe playable" isn't exactly a compelling sales pitch for a build-around-me that does nothing on its own. Even if the card is specifically targeted at Spikes who will first-pick it then draft the landwalk theme deck if it's open, you're going to have a lot of games end with "He played an unblockable 5/5 then nothing I drew and none of my game decisions were relevant after that point."
Intimidate has somewhat of the same problem in that if your opponent isn't playing the appropriate color (or artifact creatures), all of your intimidators might as well say "unblockable." I would actually advocate deathtouch for more interesting combat purposes, although too many deathtouchers at common gunks up a format, and it already has synergies with ninjutsu so I doubt it needs to be pushed.
If there isn't enough vigilance in the format to be worth pushing, what about defender for the white card? Then you'd have two abilities that work on offense (haste/trample), one that works on defense (defender), and one that works either way (flying).
Haste and Landwalk stand out. Haste because it's relevant only on turn your creature entered the battlefield and others are more "permanent" - for example, I don't check before attack if the creature has haste, I just check for such creatures in hand. Landwalk stands out because it's too rare. Maybe ability caring about first strike for red and something checking power/CMC, like "creatures you control with power 4 or more have blah" - in spirit of "strong becomes stronger", for black?
The problem with landwalk is that 1) it's fundamentally uninteractive and 2) its effectiveness is based on your opponent instead of you. 99.9% of the time, especially in a non-multicolor set like this, either your opponent will already have a basic land of the appropriate type out (making landwalk equal "unblockable") or won't have a basic land of the appropriate type in their deck at all (making landwalk equal "vanilla"). [...]
those are the reasons why my play group uses a modified flying/horsemanship version of landwalk:
Swampwalk (As long as defending player controls an Swamp, this creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with landwalk abilities.)
Partly because landwalk is such a rare ability, it is okay if we allow a creature with any landwalk ability to be able to block any other landwalker (unless it has another evasion ability like Bayou Dragonfly). It increases interaction and allows even off-type landwalkers to have an effect on the game by still being able to block.
It would have to be awkwardly written out as ""Creatures you control with "This creature can't block" get +2/+1."" Otherwise, if you play Bedlam/Chaos/Panic Attack/Glarewielder/etc targeting your own creatures, then they can't block and would get the bonus. But also, if your opponents control only creatures with flying/intimidate/"CARDNAME is unblockable"/etc and you control only creatures with abilities like first strike/vigilance/haste/etc, then all of your opponents' creatures are unblockable so your creatures can't block and would get the bonus. For that matter, if your opponents controlled no creatures at all, then your creatures can't block (because there is nothing to block) and would get the bonus.
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Enchantment [U]
Creatures you control with flying get +1/+1.
Enchantment [U]
Creatures you control with haste get +1/+1.
Enchantment [U]
Creatures you control with vigilance get +1/+1.
Enchantment [U]
Creatures you control with trample get +2/+2.
Enchantment [U]
Creatures you control with landwalk get +2/+2.
But, more than anything, I'd like help developing the flavor of each of these!
I don't feel all that much in favor of expanding the cycle - the original card had a very good reason to exist in the environment it was printed in. Considering what I've seen so far of the proposed set, I see no similar tendencies in your set.
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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The theme of the block is "combat," so I'm trying to give each of the evergreen combat keywords their own little niche to play with in this set. Even the bad ones.
For some of those keywords, the niche is much smaller than others. In particular, trample and landwalk probably aren't getting much new stuff thrown at them, and there's only so much more I can do with flying that would feel new. So, flying is only getting a little bit of love, as well.
This cycle is meant to give a higher profile to some of these lesser keywords, so it doesn't feel like I abandoned them in a set that was dedicated to exploring all of the various dimensions of combat. I'll throw in enough tramplers / landwalkers to make these viable in Limited, but this is probably the only bone I'm throwing to landwalk. Hopefully, it will be enough to spur some creative casual designers to build landwalk decks, which is all it needs to do, other than not be a complete dead draw in Limited.
Think of it like the Druid or Assassin subthemes in Morningtide - very small, but present for those who want them.
I realize this drastically changes the concept, but maybe have each enchantment generate a token with the relevant ability when it ETB (obviously you'd have to up the casting costs as well).
When the set is finished, I plan for it to have a vigilance subtheme and a haste subtheme. If they end up like my intimidate subtheme, they will probably amount to about 3-5 keyworded creatures and/or keyword-granting cards at each rarity, for each keyword. That should be enough to justify maindecking something like Scouting Party, even if it's not quite enough to build a completely unified "vigilance deck."
I'm going to be doing at least one of each type of basic landwalk in this set, with the distribution of those favoring the lower rarities, and then maybe a couple other less-standard landwalk abilities at uncommon / rare / mythic. It's not going to be easy to build a landwalk deck in draft, but I'm OK with one of these being "the bad one" in that context.
Again, I'm mostly looking to get these cards into the hands of casual deckbuilders. 2% of 3958 is still plenty of landwalk cards for the casual crowd.
Looking at vigilance in particular... outside of the Modern context, and excluding Planar Chaos from the discussion, there aren't any cards in blue, black, or red that get vigilance without a green or white factor added in. Of course, outside of that context, you have vigilance representatives in all three colors.
So, let's say that you wanted to finally break into a tertiary vigilance color in the Modern context. Do we just assume it's blue, in keeping with Planar Chaos? Or is there a case for red? (I'm going to assume that black is not in the running.) I feel like WotC has made pretty strong statements with cards like Court Hussar and Ocular Halo that vigilance is NOT blue, in the Modern context. You could also interpret the Planar-Chaos-ness of blue vigilance to be a further argument that the mechanic doesn't belong to blue, in the real world.
Does red vigilance make sense? Should the mechanic just stay in green / white, exclusively?
And I second the suggestion that the Black enchantment should be intimidate based, as that ability can easily be bled out into more colours.
Stalwart Minotaur 2RR
Creature - Minotaur Warrior (U)
Vigilance
CARDNAME attacks each turn if able.
3/3
Intimidate has somewhat of the same problem in that if your opponent isn't playing the appropriate color (or artifact creatures), all of your intimidators might as well say "unblockable." I would actually advocate deathtouch for more interesting combat purposes, although too many deathtouchers at common gunks up a format, and it already has synergies with ninjutsu so I doubt it needs to be pushed.
If there isn't enough vigilance in the format to be worth pushing, what about defender for the white card? Then you'd have two abilities that work on offense (haste/trample), one that works on defense (defender), and one that works either way (flying).
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those are the reasons why my play group uses a modified flying/horsemanship version of landwalk:
Swampwalk (As long as defending player controls an Swamp, this creature can’t be blocked except by creatures with landwalk abilities.)
Partly because landwalk is such a rare ability, it is okay if we allow a creature with any landwalk ability to be able to block any other landwalker (unless it has another evasion ability like Bayou Dragonfly). It increases interaction and allows even off-type landwalkers to have an effect on the game by still being able to block.