So, going through some old stuff in my computer today prior to formating it I came across some card designs for purple I made a few years ago. There is no sense of "newness" in any of them and most, if not all, could easily fit in the color pie among one of the already existing colors, but I felt some of them were kinda cool, so I downloaded MSE2 and got the m15 extra templates, with some art from deviantart.com, to get some versions of what they would be like.
At the time, I thought of purple as strongly oriented to lovecraftian horror, but also to the excentricaly bizarre, like a fairy-tale produced by Tim Burton kind of a thing. I imagined it as the competing big creature color, opposite to green. In order to make it more appealing, at the time I also came up with a few new concepts, such as:
The Tribes
Illithids: I thought of using Illithids because as far as I know, they are the closest thing there is in fantasy themed worlds to lovecraftian horror. In magic, they would mostly be minions, wizards and warlocks. They would have medium to high mana costs and small to medium bodies with abilities involving sanity and overpowering opposing creatures through abilities, not size.
Faeries: The purple faeries are different than blue faeries and feel closer to black. They would have a more bizarre, excentric look, as if they were drawn by Tim Burton or something. they have small bodies and vary largely in mana costs. They make very strong usage of evasion and forgeting cards.
Human Minions: The cultists. These people are the humans who come in contact with purple mana and either go obsessed with the whispered mysteries of the elder gods or get straight up possessed and start working torwards their return. These creatures have a strong relation to noncreature, nonland permanents, having low to medium bodies with low to medium manacosts.
Freaks: The freaks are a unique creature type that occurs in purple, and it basically applies to anything with tentacles, multiple limbs, multiple heads, multiple eyes, and are in a general way, freakish.
Elder Gods: The other unique, or at least, mostly purple only combination of creature types. They are the great old ones inspired by cthulhu mythos. I decided not to go for Eldrazi simply because they already exist as an element that is above magic colors.
New Abilities and Terminology
New Terminology: To forget a card
Forgeting cards is a new ability that some of the purple cards have. This would be shared mainly by red, and to some lesser extent by blue and black. Forgeting a card means you are exiling it from the top of your library face down, into a pile. Players may not look at cards that are forgotten. Some cards give a player the ability to remember forgotten cards, which are then returned to the top of their owner's library. Cards are aways remembered in a random order, so you don't get to chose what you remember. The main tribe to make usage of these abilities are the purple faeries, generaly bizarre, "tim burton"ish creatures.
New Keyword Ability: Mesmerize
The ability mesmerize makes use of the above described new terminology, and is strongly employed by the faery tribe. It states as follows: Mesmerize(Whenever this creature attacks, defending player forgets cards equal to this creature's power.)
So basically, whenever a creature with mesmerize creature attacks, defending player will exile cards from the top of his or her library face down equal to the attacking creature's power.
New Keyword Ability: Ethereal
This is a very simple ability and it's here because I feel it is one of the very ways to opposite green. Green likes to get physical, it likes the melee, savage, physical combat stuff. Ethereal breaks that in that it is basically a ripoff of the Shadow ability. It reads: Ethereal(This creature can't block or be blocked, except by other creatures with Ethereal.)
New Keyword Ability: Overpower
This is another way I thought of going against green, as this ability basically changes the opposing creature into a vanilla. It goes along the flavor of more intelectually evolved creatures, and the tribe that makes the most use of it are the Illithids. It reads as follows: Overpower(This creature can block creatures as though they had no abilities. Whenever a creature blocks or becomes blocked by this creature, it loses all abilities until end of combat.)
New Game Element: Insanity Counters
Insanity counters are generated by a number of purple cards. They belong to players, the same way poison counters do. What an Insanity counter does is, it reduces your maximum hand size by one. So, for exemple, if a player has two insanity counters, his or hers maximum hand size is reduced by two, and so on. Ilithids make use of this mechanic mostly.
Why is ethereal a rip-off of shadow? Why aren't you simply using shadow instead? It has the exact same flavor and mechanical identity. All you do is create a horsemanship to shadow - and you do not even have a different flavor as justification for such a change.
Forget has some logistic problems. You have to maintain a "forgotten" stack and shuffle it whenever you forget/remember to fulfill the criteria you describe. While that's not hard to do it is time-consuming upkeep. You should look into a less demanding solution.
Basically it is milling with exile - you could just make it that. I know how forget originally was conceived, so you have moved far enough away from that concept to use more standard wording.
Derangements are basically Auras - they could easily work the same way Curses do.
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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]
Yeah, I know, those are some really old stuff that I found on an excel worksheet with card ideas I had. Most don't need to exist, at all, but I just felt like creatung the cards and posting for nostalgia anyways.
My personal feel on purple is it would be really cool, but they will most likely never make it. Too hard to come up with a whole new color, full of abilities, tribes, flavour, and all that slightly touching the neighboring colors, but with a really strong, original feel at he same time.
I also like the idea of expanding on the magic color pie, but there are some problems here that haven't been mentioned.
One is that mechanics on these aren't being explained. I have no idea what insanity does or what forgetting does.
Another is that I don't understand he philosophies behind purple. It sounds exactly like black so far.
And as an extension of that problem, it needs to introduce new design space. So far it just isn't doing that. Needs to be more bold. If double faced cards weren't already a thing, you could have made an argument of that for purple, a way of finding new design space and giving it a place.
Personally, in looking at the pentagram philosophies and what has been represented, I feel via one interpretation of pentagram, that purple could represent the spirit. Maybe Purple creatures don't have physical bodies and are harder to destroy? This could lead to a lot of fun resonating ideas like possession, where maybe you can't play it but on another creature who has a physical body, or you can control the actions of another player. Since you yourself represent a planeswalker, it could be like purple represents your own spirit so many damage done to your spirit creatures is taken to your life directly as a drawback to cool stuff your creatures can do, and spells that require one of your creatures to go unblocked to cast on someone or only on an attacking or blocking creature.
Just ideas, but part of the point is that it has to really be new in order to justify amending the color pie.
Purple mages rather than using mana to fight their battles are self-reliant and physical, using ancient martial arts techniques and the power of emptiness. Just as we blow glass into a cup, it is the hollow of the cup that allows us to drink. There is usefulness in emptiness. The Purple mage draws from this resource. When a Purple mage fights, they will force opponents to defeat themselves, drawing portals that reflect attacks back to where they came from, sometimes even tearing rifts open into the blind eternities themselves, the space between planes.
Simplicity, dexterity and awareness are the signature of the Purple mage.
For Purple mages, what goes around comes around. So it chooses to remain still, neither coming nor going. Thus came, thus gone. The Purple mage uses the forces of gravity and magnetism to make the world seek Purple out rather than Purple seeking it. Purple’s style is that of no-style. Its world view is no-world view. The art of fighting without fighting. By remaining undefined it is open to all possibilities. By not giving them anything to oppose, eventually Purple wins by allowing the enemy to defeat itself.
Examples of Purple spells include ki-blasts, reversal of energetic forces and sovereignty over space to tear open rifts and portals into the blind eternities!
Purple-aligned creatures use their keen senses and skillfulness to subdue enemies without fighting them. Purple-aligned creatures seek to relinquish their opponents from their own limitations and inner conflicts and do this by coaxing them to drop their own world-views. Letting go of what they were, they become what they might be. Purple mages call reflections of their opponents forth that they may be forced to confront their own shadows. Brotherhoods of honorable Monks come to the aid of their fellow Purple mages. For between all Purple mages, there is no distance, either of time or of space.
Wearth - I completely agree with you. The hardest thing about expanding the color pie right now is finding new design space that feels actually new. Something original and not just borrowed from another color. The cards I posted are just some old ideas I had. For nostalgia, I decided to make card versions using MSE, and because I thought they looked cool, decided to post here, in hopes that meybe one of my ideas could inspire someone else to do something cool. I would love if they ever made a sixth-color, but mostly because I think I suffer from a "6th-ranger syndrom" or something. I mean, I aways like stuff that is new, even if it doesn't add that much to the already existing. But anyways, 6th color most likely will never happen, as wizards of the coast stated in so many different ocasions.
foo_intherain - Those cards and concepts you made are realy cool man! Congrats on your work! I would have to say though that going for 0 can be really risky, as it can easily create overpowered cards. Not using mana breaks away pretty hard from magic, as it is a fundamental thing.
I know there are decks that win tournaments without lands and/or mana, but I'm not sure wizards likes those guys out there. I play a manaless dredge, it feels like a completely different game, and I enjoy it a lot, but I'm not sure it's a thing they'd ever tolerate in modern or standard. It's a legacy freak that they probably inted to leave there.
For Ethereal, I just renamed "Shadow" as "Ethereal" because it felt less black-ish-kind off? I don't know, Shadow just felt too blck for me. But you are right, no need there, both flavor and mechanic wise.
Forgeting began as an attempt to reword mill actually. Kind of like what they did with die (wording "die" instead of "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield."), but as I thought about it, I kept changing it until I got to the design explained above. And actually, it ened up just being a poor attempt at new design.
Derangements are also a weak a attempt at new design. Auras that affect players and planeswalkers. Later on I decided to include creatures too, but didn't want to use enchant simply to reinforce flavor.
I remeber even there was a moment when I thought of making insanity counters become a core part of the game. Players would have life and sanity (maximum hand size). Strating life would be 20 and starting sanity would be 7, and there would be cards that increase your sanity and cards that would decrease it.
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At the time, I thought of purple as strongly oriented to lovecraftian horror, but also to the excentricaly bizarre, like a fairy-tale produced by Tim Burton kind of a thing. I imagined it as the competing big creature color, opposite to green. In order to make it more appealing, at the time I also came up with a few new concepts, such as:
The Tribes
Faeries: The purple faeries are different than blue faeries and feel closer to black. They would have a more bizarre, excentric look, as if they were drawn by Tim Burton or something. they have small bodies and vary largely in mana costs. They make very strong usage of evasion and forgeting cards.
Human Minions: The cultists. These people are the humans who come in contact with purple mana and either go obsessed with the whispered mysteries of the elder gods or get straight up possessed and start working torwards their return. These creatures have a strong relation to noncreature, nonland permanents, having low to medium bodies with low to medium manacosts.
Freaks: The freaks are a unique creature type that occurs in purple, and it basically applies to anything with tentacles, multiple limbs, multiple heads, multiple eyes, and are in a general way, freakish.
Elder Gods: The other unique, or at least, mostly purple only combination of creature types. They are the great old ones inspired by cthulhu mythos. I decided not to go for Eldrazi simply because they already exist as an element that is above magic colors.
New Abilities and Terminology
Forgeting cards is a new ability that some of the purple cards have. This would be shared mainly by red, and to some lesser extent by blue and black. Forgeting a card means you are exiling it from the top of your library face down, into a pile. Players may not look at cards that are forgotten. Some cards give a player the ability to remember forgotten cards, which are then returned to the top of their owner's library. Cards are aways remembered in a random order, so you don't get to chose what you remember. The main tribe to make usage of these abilities are the purple faeries, generaly bizarre, "tim burton"ish creatures.
New Keyword Ability: Mesmerize
The ability mesmerize makes use of the above described new terminology, and is strongly employed by the faery tribe. It states as follows:
Mesmerize (Whenever this creature attacks, defending player forgets cards equal to this creature's power.)
So basically, whenever a creature with mesmerize creature attacks, defending player will exile cards from the top of his or her library face down equal to the attacking creature's power.
New Keyword Ability: Ethereal
This is a very simple ability and it's here because I feel it is one of the very ways to opposite green. Green likes to get physical, it likes the melee, savage, physical combat stuff. Ethereal breaks that in that it is basically a ripoff of the Shadow ability. It reads:
Ethereal (This creature can't block or be blocked, except by other creatures with Ethereal.)
New Keyword Ability: Overpower
This is another way I thought of going against green, as this ability basically changes the opposing creature into a vanilla. It goes along the flavor of more intelectually evolved creatures, and the tribe that makes the most use of it are the Illithids. It reads as follows:
Overpower (This creature can block creatures as though they had no abilities. Whenever a creature blocks or becomes blocked by this creature, it loses all abilities until end of combat.)
New Game Element: Insanity Counters
Insanity counters are generated by a number of purple cards. They belong to players, the same way poison counters do. What an Insanity counter does is, it reduces your maximum hand size by one. So, for exemple, if a player has two insanity counters, his or hers maximum hand size is reduced by two, and so on. Ilithids make use of this mechanic mostly.
I'll post the cards next.
Forget has some logistic problems. You have to maintain a "forgotten" stack and shuffle it whenever you forget/remember to fulfill the criteria you describe. While that's not hard to do it is time-consuming upkeep. You should look into a less demanding solution.
Basically it is milling with exile - you could just make it that. I know how forget originally was conceived, so you have moved far enough away from that concept to use more standard wording.
Derangements are basically Auras - they could easily work the same way Curses do.
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
My personal feel on purple is it would be really cool, but they will most likely never make it. Too hard to come up with a whole new color, full of abilities, tribes, flavour, and all that slightly touching the neighboring colors, but with a really strong, original feel at he same time.
One is that mechanics on these aren't being explained. I have no idea what insanity does or what forgetting does.
Another is that I don't understand he philosophies behind purple. It sounds exactly like black so far.
And as an extension of that problem, it needs to introduce new design space. So far it just isn't doing that. Needs to be more bold. If double faced cards weren't already a thing, you could have made an argument of that for purple, a way of finding new design space and giving it a place.
Personally, in looking at the pentagram philosophies and what has been represented, I feel via one interpretation of pentagram, that purple could represent the spirit. Maybe Purple creatures don't have physical bodies and are harder to destroy? This could lead to a lot of fun resonating ideas like possession, where maybe you can't play it but on another creature who has a physical body, or you can control the actions of another player. Since you yourself represent a planeswalker, it could be like purple represents your own spirit so many damage done to your spirit creatures is taken to your life directly as a drawback to cool stuff your creatures can do, and spells that require one of your creatures to go unblocked to cast on someone or only on an attacking or blocking creature.
Just ideas, but part of the point is that it has to really be new in order to justify amending the color pie.
http://imgur.com/a/B3VKj#0
Paradox
Synthesis
Emptiness
Purple mages rather than using mana to fight their battles are self-reliant and physical, using ancient martial arts techniques and the power of emptiness. Just as we blow glass into a cup, it is the hollow of the cup that allows us to drink. There is usefulness in emptiness. The Purple mage draws from this resource. When a Purple mage fights, they will force opponents to defeat themselves, drawing portals that reflect attacks back to where they came from, sometimes even tearing rifts open into the blind eternities themselves, the space between planes.
Simplicity, dexterity and awareness are the signature of the Purple mage.
For Purple mages, what goes around comes around. So it chooses to remain still, neither coming nor going. Thus came, thus gone. The Purple mage uses the forces of gravity and magnetism to make the world seek Purple out rather than Purple seeking it. Purple’s style is that of no-style. Its world view is no-world view. The art of fighting without fighting. By remaining undefined it is open to all possibilities. By not giving them anything to oppose, eventually Purple wins by allowing the enemy to defeat itself.
Examples of Purple spells include ki-blasts, reversal of energetic forces and sovereignty over space to tear open rifts and portals into the blind eternities!
Purple-aligned creatures use their keen senses and skillfulness to subdue enemies without fighting them. Purple-aligned creatures seek to relinquish their opponents from their own limitations and inner conflicts and do this by coaxing them to drop their own world-views. Letting go of what they were, they become what they might be. Purple mages call reflections of their opponents forth that they may be forced to confront their own shadows. Brotherhoods of honorable Monks come to the aid of their fellow Purple mages. For between all Purple mages, there is no distance, either of time or of space.
Avalon: The Legend Begins :: Pirate Set :: Babel: The Æther Wars
Favorite Magic Card: Fowl Play
[Primer] [Barrin's Tome]: A Master Wizard's Spellbook.
foo_intherain - Those cards and concepts you made are realy cool man! Congrats on your work! I would have to say though that going for 0 can be really risky, as it can easily create overpowered cards. Not using mana breaks away pretty hard from magic, as it is a fundamental thing.
I know there are decks that win tournaments without lands and/or mana, but I'm not sure wizards likes those guys out there. I play a manaless dredge, it feels like a completely different game, and I enjoy it a lot, but I'm not sure it's a thing they'd ever tolerate in modern or standard. It's a legacy freak that they probably inted to leave there.
Forgeting began as an attempt to reword mill actually. Kind of like what they did with die (wording "die" instead of "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield."), but as I thought about it, I kept changing it until I got to the design explained above. And actually, it ened up just being a poor attempt at new design.
Derangements are also a weak a attempt at new design. Auras that affect players and planeswalkers. Later on I decided to include creatures too, but didn't want to use enchant simply to reinforce flavor.
I remeber even there was a moment when I thought of making insanity counters become a core part of the game. Players would have life and sanity (maximum hand size). Strating life would be 20 and starting sanity would be 7, and there would be cards that increase your sanity and cards that would decrease it.