One of our team's current design projects is making a custom-designed Magic set just for drafting cube. As it's *not designed to be used in any form of constructed*, this allows us to make cards without worrying about their combinations outside of the draft. Furthermore, as the draft format will be singleton, we don't need to worry about multiples showing up in decks.
In addition to many unique cards, we also are working on homages to various iconic cube powerhouses. One of these powerhourses is the Sword Cycle. Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow and the rest.
All the current five swords represent enemy colors. For our set, we decided to imagine what allied-color swords might look like. To this end, we decided on the following.
1) We wanted the two on-hit triggers to work well together strategically. The opposing designs of the enemy colors emphasize that the effects that trigger when you deal combat damage have nothing to do with one another. A shock has nothing to do with drawing a card. Untapping your lands has no synergy with forcing your opponent to discard. Milling the defending player for 10 has nothing to do with making a 2/2 wolf. Sword of War and Peace has a thematic coherency, but the lifegain ability really has nothing to do with the damage ability - they're just two separate and awesome effects. This makes sense for oppositional forces bound into a blade. For allied effects, we wanted to make two effects that worked so well together that they felt almost like one effect.
2) No protection. The protection from specific colors is rarely why you play the swords in cube, you play them because they're awesome even when facing decks not of the colors the sword grants protection from. It just happens that every now and then you face a red/blue deck with Sword of Fire and Ice and basically auto-win. That's not ideal in terms of interactivity. One of the most fun aspects of the swords is figuring out the mini-game of how to get them to hit the opponent and protection cuts down on that interactivity by preventing the opponent from blocking every now and then. Instead of protection, we decided to have the swords grant abilities to the equipped creature that made sense in their color identity. This seemed to be a nice thematic shift that fit with the friendlier allied colors coming together within the blade. It also ensures that the swords are very powerful, even compared to their counterparts.
3) We made the swords extremely powerful. As this is a stand-alone cube set we don't have to worry about them being combined with any cards from any other set or ever impacting the tournament environment. Here they're just extremely cool things if you have to open one, but not so cool that you'll always take them 100% of the time. In short, a lot like the normal swords. However, we didn't want to make them less powerful than their originals - lest they feel like poor replacements to our drafters. For that reason, we decided to err on the side of making them even stronger than their counterparts.
Without further ado, take a look! Hope they look fun.
Sword of Death and Destruction - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike and deathtouch.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, that player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life and you may destroy target artifact.
Equip - 2
Note: Sword of Death and Destruction is rather the black sheep of the family (it even can destroy the other swords). While its on-hit abilities don't work well together, its keywords work extremely well together - making your creature very difficult to face in combat.
Sword of Method and Madness - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has shroud and deathtouch.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, scry 3, then reveal the top card of your library and put that card into your hand. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost.
Equip - 2
Sword of Sun and Sea - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has shroud and vigilance.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, tap target permanent and it does not untap during its controller's next untap step. You gain life equal to that permanent’s converted mana cost.
Sword of Hope and Harvest - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has trample and vigilance.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, put two +1/+1 counters on target creature then gain life equal to its toughness.
Equip - 2
Sword of Smoke and Squirrel - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike and trample.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, put three 1/1 green squirrel creature tokens onto the battlefield then you may sacrifice a creature. If you do, deal 2 damage divided among any number of target creatures.
Equip - 2
Note: We have a significant squirrel subteme in the set, with the flavor of a mad druid that does everything with squirrels. He's intended as a goofy character, and collaborated on the final sword.
After a quick look, I have to say to not forget your protection abilities! Also, I don't like scry on one of the swords. It doesn't make sense in relation to the cycle.
After a quick look, I have to say to not forget your protection abilities! Also, I don't like scry on one of the swords. It doesn't make sense in relation to the cycle.
Thanks for the comment, but I'm a bit confused.
1) There's a very specific reasoning why we traded the protection abilities for the current abilities. It's gone into in-depth above and touches on both flavor and mechanical considerations for the swap.
2) Could you go into more detail as to why the scry ability doesn't make sense with the cycle? It's a very blue ability (the method) and it works beautifully as a setup before using very black dark-confidant-esque ability of revealing the top card of your deck and putting it into your hand. I'm just not exactly sure why you mention that it doesn't make sense in relation to the cycle. Could you tell me more?
Seems like the protection has been ditched for keywords.
All told, I really didn't like the Scars swords, given how much they warped the format. These aren't nearly as powerful- mostly because they lack the protection- so maybe they're okay.
It's worth noting that Death and Destruction is the most powerful since First Strike + Deathtouch means usually kills everything and at worst trades with everything.
It's worth noting that Death and Destruction is the most powerful since First Strike + Deathtouch means usually kills everything and at worst trades with everything.
Absolutely, it's a devastating synergy. That's balanced by the fact that it's on-hit abilities are the weakest (provided the opponent doesn't have any artifacts). Not blocking the carrier of the Sword of Death and Destruction will only result in a 2 point drain most of the time.
1) We wanted the two on-hit triggers to work well together strategically. The opposing designs of the enemy colors emphasize that the effects that trigger when you deal combat damage have nothing to do with one another. A shock has nothing to do with drawing a card. Untapping your lands has no synergy with forcing your opponent to discard. Milling the defending player for 10 has nothing to do with making a 2/2 wolf. Sword of War and Peace has a thematic coherency, but the lifegain ability really has nothing to do with the damage ability - they're just two separate and awesome effects. This makes sense for oppositional forces bound into a blade. For allied effects, we wanted to make two effects that worked so well together that they felt almost like one effect.
Drain 2 life and destroy an artifact! Does that feel like one effect to you?
You fail quite hard on this part.
Sword of Death and Destruction - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike and deathtouch.
When equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, that player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life and you may destroy target artifact.
Equip - 2
Could easily force a player to sacrifice a creature and an artifact instead to keep the same name and actually have two abilities that work together - on the creature it's also a nice catch-22 for blocking the equipped creature.
Sword of Method and Madness - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has shroud and deathtouch.
When equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, scry 3, then reveal the top card of your library and put that card into your hand. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost.
Equip - 2
How about hexproof?
Scry is an unpleasant choice when all previous swords were evergreen.
You could easily go with other variants than scry specifically.
Sword of Sun and Sea - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has shroud and vigilance.
When equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, tap target permanent and it does not untap during its controller's next untap step. You gain life equal to that permanent’s converted mana cost.
How about hexproof?
This sword should have an equip ability to better fit with the others.
You are aware of color order? Why does blue gain life?
Sword of Hope and Harvest - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has trample and vigilance.
When equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, put two +1/+1 counters on target creature then gain life equal to its toughness.
Equip - 2
Are you aware of color order. Even more creature-based lifegain? Your cycle is stale. Three of the four swords cause life gain for the owner.
Sword of Smoke and Squirrel - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike and trample.
When equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, put three 1/1 green squirrel creature tokens onto the battlefield then you may sacrifice a creature. If you do, deal 2 damage divided among any number of target creatures.
Equip - 2
"Smoke and Squirrel"? I take it you were smoking a squirrel when you came up with that name?
The ability connection is so tremendously forced that unconnected abilities would have felt better. The way it is entirely optional as well makes this feel less than two rewards, but more than the choice between two rewards.
The connection between name, effect and color representation is tenuous.
When will we get to see the actual suggestion for sword #5?
Overall:
Ever heard of "whenever"?
With all the good you meant in replacing protection on the swords, you lose a great deal of the identity by doing so. If it was my draft, then I would have gone with something that still mentions the colors, but doesn't necessarily grant evasion.
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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 actually think the weakest design choice here, by far, is simply choosing a keyword ability for each color and tacking them together. When this results in combinations like first strike/deathtouch (kind of boring) and shroud/deathtouch (I suspect this will turn out to be oppressive), you've got a problem. I'd be tempted to replace the keywords with, "Equipped creature gets +2/+2, +1/+1 as long as it's (color A), and +1/+1 as long as it's (color B)," so that if you put Sword of Sun and Sea on a Zealous Guardian, you get a 5/5 monster.
Method and Madness, as a name, connotes deception and discarding of cards (3 of 4 cards with "madness" in the name have a discard mechanic, and then there is the madness mechanic itself) or milling, so it doesn't fit that well with the effect. I'm not too fond of the squirrel sword, both because it's silly in flavor (You hit a dude with a sword and squirrels fly out of the wound?) and because sacrificing creatures is at best secondary in red; it muddles the clarity of the mechanic.
In my opinion it'd be nicest to see, instead of two saboteur actions, just one that captures the allied color identity you're looking at. Say, like,
Sword of Method and Madness
Artifact — Equipment (M)
Equipped creature gets +2/+2, +1/+1 as long as it's blue, and +1/+1 as long as it's black.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, that player puts the top seven cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard. Then he or she discards a card for each creature card put into the graveyard in this way.
Equip
That's two distinct things that happened, but they have a common thread of 'draining your mental resources' and having your own cards come back to bite you is a very blue/black feeling effect.
In addition to many unique cards, we also are working on homages to various iconic cube powerhouses. One of these powerhourses is the Sword Cycle. Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow and the rest.
All the current five swords represent enemy colors. For our set, we decided to imagine what allied-color swords might look like. To this end, we decided on the following.
1) We wanted the two on-hit triggers to work well together strategically. The opposing designs of the enemy colors emphasize that the effects that trigger when you deal combat damage have nothing to do with one another. A shock has nothing to do with drawing a card. Untapping your lands has no synergy with forcing your opponent to discard. Milling the defending player for 10 has nothing to do with making a 2/2 wolf. Sword of War and Peace has a thematic coherency, but the lifegain ability really has nothing to do with the damage ability - they're just two separate and awesome effects. This makes sense for oppositional forces bound into a blade. For allied effects, we wanted to make two effects that worked so well together that they felt almost like one effect.
2) No protection. The protection from specific colors is rarely why you play the swords in cube, you play them because they're awesome even when facing decks not of the colors the sword grants protection from. It just happens that every now and then you face a red/blue deck with Sword of Fire and Ice and basically auto-win. That's not ideal in terms of interactivity. One of the most fun aspects of the swords is figuring out the mini-game of how to get them to hit the opponent and protection cuts down on that interactivity by preventing the opponent from blocking every now and then. Instead of protection, we decided to have the swords grant abilities to the equipped creature that made sense in their color identity. This seemed to be a nice thematic shift that fit with the friendlier allied colors coming together within the blade. It also ensures that the swords are very powerful, even compared to their counterparts.
3) We made the swords extremely powerful. As this is a stand-alone cube set we don't have to worry about them being combined with any cards from any other set or ever impacting the tournament environment. Here they're just extremely cool things if you have to open one, but not so cool that you'll always take them 100% of the time. In short, a lot like the normal swords. However, we didn't want to make them less powerful than their originals - lest they feel like poor replacements to our drafters. For that reason, we decided to err on the side of making them even stronger than their counterparts.
Without further ado, take a look! Hope they look fun.
Sword of Death and Destruction - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike and deathtouch.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, that player loses 2 life and you gain 2 life and you may destroy target artifact.
Equip - 2
Note: Sword of Death and Destruction is rather the black sheep of the family (it even can destroy the other swords). While its on-hit abilities don't work well together, its keywords work extremely well together - making your creature very difficult to face in combat.
Sword of Method and Madness - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has shroud and deathtouch.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, scry 3, then reveal the top card of your library and put that card into your hand. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost.
Equip - 2
Sword of Sun and Sea - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has shroud and vigilance.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, tap target permanent and it does not untap during its controller's next untap step. You gain life equal to that permanent’s converted mana cost.
Sword of Hope and Harvest - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has trample and vigilance.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, put two +1/+1 counters on target creature then gain life equal to its toughness.
Equip - 2
Sword of Smoke and Squirrel - 3
Artifact - Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has first strike and trample.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, put three 1/1 green squirrel creature tokens onto the battlefield then you may sacrifice a creature. If you do, deal 2 damage divided among any number of target creatures.
Equip - 2
Note: We have a significant squirrel subteme in the set, with the flavor of a mad druid that does everything with squirrels. He's intended as a goofy character, and collaborated on the final sword.
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Thanks for the comment, but I'm a bit confused.
1) There's a very specific reasoning why we traded the protection abilities for the current abilities. It's gone into in-depth above and touches on both flavor and mechanical considerations for the swap.
2) Could you go into more detail as to why the scry ability doesn't make sense with the cycle? It's a very blue ability (the method) and it works beautifully as a setup before using very black dark-confidant-esque ability of revealing the top card of your deck and putting it into your hand. I'm just not exactly sure why you mention that it doesn't make sense in relation to the cycle. Could you tell me more?
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All told, I really didn't like the Scars swords, given how much they warped the format. These aren't nearly as powerful- mostly because they lack the protection- so maybe they're okay.
It's worth noting that Death and Destruction is the most powerful since First Strike + Deathtouch means usually kills everything and at worst trades with everything.
When in doubt, call a judge.
Objectivist here. Hit me up to talk philosophy.
Absolutely, it's a devastating synergy. That's balanced by the fact that it's on-hit abilities are the weakest (provided the opponent doesn't have any artifacts). Not blocking the carrier of the Sword of Death and Destruction will only result in a 2 point drain most of the time.
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Drain 2 life and destroy an artifact! Does that feel like one effect to you?
You fail quite hard on this part.
Could easily force a player to sacrifice a creature and an artifact instead to keep the same name and actually have two abilities that work together - on the creature it's also a nice catch-22 for blocking the equipped creature.
How about hexproof?
Scry is an unpleasant choice when all previous swords were evergreen.
You could easily go with other variants than scry specifically.
How about hexproof?
This sword should have an equip ability to better fit with the others.
You are aware of color order? Why does blue gain life?
Are you aware of color order. Even more creature-based lifegain? Your cycle is stale. Three of the four swords cause life gain for the owner.
"Smoke and Squirrel"? I take it you were smoking a squirrel when you came up with that name?
The ability connection is so tremendously forced that unconnected abilities would have felt better. The way it is entirely optional as well makes this feel less than two rewards, but more than the choice between two rewards.
The connection between name, effect and color representation is tenuous.
When will we get to see the actual suggestion for sword #5?
Overall:
Ever heard of "whenever"?
With all the good you meant in replacing protection on the swords, you lose a great deal of the identity by doing so. If it was my draft, then I would have gone with something that still mentions the colors, but doesn't necessarily grant evasion.
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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Method and Madness, as a name, connotes deception and discarding of cards (3 of 4 cards with "madness" in the name have a discard mechanic, and then there is the madness mechanic itself) or milling, so it doesn't fit that well with the effect. I'm not too fond of the squirrel sword, both because it's silly in flavor (You hit a dude with a sword and squirrels fly out of the wound?) and because sacrificing creatures is at best secondary in red; it muddles the clarity of the mechanic.
In my opinion it'd be nicest to see, instead of two saboteur actions, just one that captures the allied color identity you're looking at. Say, like,
Sword of Method and Madness
Artifact — Equipment (M)
Equipped creature gets +2/+2, +1/+1 as long as it's blue, and +1/+1 as long as it's black.
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, that player puts the top seven cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard. Then he or she discards a card for each creature card put into the graveyard in this way.
Equip
That's two distinct things that happened, but they have a common thread of 'draining your mental resources' and having your own cards come back to bite you is a very blue/black feeling effect.