MTG Salvation

These challenge decks are not supposed to follow the main storyline. Also they are more complex to allow the challenge to account for more different plays.

Each God is represented as an automated player and a permanent. As to make the Gods not play all the same they have different play algorithms in addition to different decks.

I might use existing card names for the challenge decks and in fact the cards will have mana costs and libraries will usually have lands.

Keranos

Goal:
-Weather the Storm: Keranos has conjured a Storm in form of its storm deck. The god cannot be defeated for good before this deck is empty.
-Silence the Believers: The visionaries and oracles of Theros are devoted to the god and their faith keeps Keranos in Nyx. To win you must make sure no devoted creature remains.
-Slay a God: Proving your resilience against the storm and your ruthlessness in dispatching the believers, it will take all your might to defeat the god himself by both


-Keranos and his creatures can be attacked and will deal damage equal to their power to each creature attacking them; the deck is also a player that can be attacked.
-Attacking the player directly causes loss of life. And reducing it to 0 or less life is a requirement to defeat Keranos.

The Storm Deck

Keranos offensive specialty is the Storm deck of instants and sorceries that grow increasingly violent and destructive. Only one who journeys to the eye of the storm will meet the god and be able to challenge its master.

At the end of each turn of the challengers, reveal the top card of the Storm deck. Instant cards are cast immediately, sorcery cards at the beginning of the next main phase of Keranos. (This rule is not a triggered ability and cannot be countered or copied, but the spells can.)

Choices are made at random. This means especially: Targets are chosen at random. Cards are worded appropriately.

If Keranos has enough lands to pay the mana cost of a card cast from the storm deck, Keranos will tap the appropriate amount of lands and cast a copy of the card.

Cards from the Storm deck are put into the graveyard upon resolving. Once the Storm deck is empty, it usually stays that way.

[spoiler=Storm Deck]






[/spoiler]

Commons will likely be twice in the deck, uncommons might be as well. I aim for approximately ten to twelve cards in the storm deck - forcing this challenge to go that many rounds at least.

The Insight Deck

Keranos defensive specialty is the Insight deck of instants (and enchantments with flash) that allow Keranos to react to the actions of his challengers. The more the players struggle, the harder Keranos strikes.

Whenever a player casts a spell, reveal the top card of the Insight deck. The spell is immediately cast if able. If one of these spells resolves, would be moved to another zone or the card cannot be cast, put it on the bottom of the Insight deck instead.

[spoiler=Insight Deck]








[spoiler]

The deck should be about 20 cards for variation, one of them Search for Inspiration.

The Devoted

Each god has a congregation of creatures. As long as they remain on the battlefield the god cannot be defeated.

The devoted creatures are part of the god's library along with several lands and other cards. Keranos will automatically draw and play one card from the library each turn (s. b.). If the library is empty as Keranos attempts to draw a card, Keranos loses.

If Keranos has enough lands to pay the cards mana cost, Keranos taps the lands for mana and draws another card.
[spoiler=Devoted Creatures]









[/spoiler]

Further Cards of Keranos's Library.

-see above-

[spoiler=Spells and Permanents]






[/spoiler]

The Storm Scale:

Whenever a land enters the battlefield a marker on the cyclone (found with the rules on the accompanying play mat) is moved ahead a bit. Whenever it completes a full circle a counter is added to the storm scale and all spells with storm are copied an additional time for each counter (this is cumulative with copies from spells cast before the spell and additional spells from permanents that increase the storm scale).

Also whenever a counter is added to the storm scale Keranos returns from Nyx to the battlefield if he has been removed before.

Design Notes:

I tried to reproduce some effects from existing cards associated with Keranos as faithful as possible. Since scry would involve some awful decision making I replaced it universally with an ability that allows Keranos to filter lands directly onto the battlefield which in turn increases the threat level of the deck over time.

The idea is that you can put in the original cards and simply translate scry to the new wording and get the desired effect. Activated abilities are translated into attack-triggers though. I hope I was consistent enough.

The challenge is structured in a way that allows it to play some typical benefits of blue-red decks: Counterspells and burn had to be represented in the deck of Keranos, God of Storms and that calls for an additional mechanic that allows to play spells "in response". With instants realized like that I also saw the door opened for actually implementing the namesake mechanic "storm".

I had a lot of ideas for this deck and put more into this write-up than might end up in the final deck(s) which will probably play better with a little more redundancy and possibly without some of the more devastating effects, but I want to delay cutting until I had a chance to see most of the effects in action. And obviously there were quite a few things left out that I did not include since the lists started to look crammed.

Nyx is basically the Command zone and may be renamed on the card as such. I imagine e. g. Nylea will have some enchantment creatures up there with her.

Why start with Keranos? At first I wanted a God that does represent as many colors as possible that do not overlap with Xenagos, but Athreos and Ephara seemed like bad flavor choices to introduce as "further enemies of mortals" while Phenax seemd like it would be very similar to the Jace challenge I already am preparing. So I settled for one color different than Xenagos.

Starting Setup

The starting setup for Keranos should be one Omenspeaker per opponent and 20 life per opponent.

Playtesting begins on the next game day unless I turn out to lazy to proxy up the cards and design the play mat.

Wow, this is really cool! I like all of the ideas here individually - but throwing them all together into one Challenge Deck at once is going to make for a lot of bookkeeping and different things all happening at once. You have so many great ideas here, why use them all at once?

You have:

-A Storm deck, cast at the beginning of each player's turn
-An Insight deck, cast whenever a player casts a spell
-A Devoted deck, cast at the beginning of Keranos' turn
-A Cyclone tracker, moved forward whenever a land enters the battlefield, which
-Alters the Storm count, which is another thing players have to keep track of!

That's a lot of things going on at once!

I think a good idea would be to try to combine as many of these separate elements at once. One of my favorite board games, Seasons, does a great job of having a lot of different moving parts and interconnected systems, but have them rely on the minimal amount of separate elements. Any single change propagates throughout all of the systems in obvious and intuitive ways, and it makes the game feel very natural and every decision exciting! However, your different decks and trackers here are entirely different - the Storm count, Cyclone tracker, Devoted deck, Insight deck, and Storm deck are all keying off of entirely different variables and actions! That's a lot of different triggers, phases, and consequences to keep track of! I recommend finding a singular 'variable' or 'system' - such as the Storm Count - and building everything else in the Challenge Deck around that thing. Then, your players only have to keep track of one thing, but as that one thing changes, it alters the entire game.

Here's what I would do:

First of all: I agree. I introduce more elements to see which of them work and which I'll cut. I see a high chance of cutting one of the decks entirely and incorporating its pieces into another deck - most likely the devoted into the storm deck since they basically trigger at the same time.

Quote from TurboJustice

So, the Storm Count seems to be the biggest thing about Keranos. He is the GOD OF STORMS, after all! I think that'd be a great 'center' of the system to build off of. Further, the Storm Deck is clearly the coolest and most flavorful aspect of this Challenge - the idea of him responding to each player in turn is just cool! I think the Insight deck is the weakest element, so I'm gonna cut it.

I'm confused - the Insight deck is the one that responds to each player in turn, while the Storm deck is just a second library that works as a count down.

The Devoted are a nice aspect, but similarly weak. I think we could mix those into the Storm Deck, and count creatures as sorceries. No other Challenge Decks use mana or lands, so I'm gonna cut that as well, and make the Cyclone Tracker count off of something else.

An aspect that I considered as well, but am keeping in for consistency until the playtest.

How about the Storm Count is connected to the Cyclone Tracker? That makes sense - typically, the more spells your players are casting, the better they're doing. So let's say, whenever a player casts a spell, the "Tempest Tracker" goes up by 1 - and every, say, five spells, the value of the Tempest will go up by 1.

The Storm Count is already connected to the Cyclone tracker - exactly in the way you describe except I did not define five as the magic number. The Cyclone Tracker exists as a separate entity of the Storm Count just so the rate the Storm Count increases does not become too fast.

At the beginning of each player's turn (including his own) Keranos will draw and cast spells from the top of his "Tempest Deck" (the unified Storm, Insight, and Devoted decks) equal to the current Tempest Tracker value. As the players fight against Keranos, he'll cast more and more stuff against them! As Keranos is the first person to go on every turn, the Storm Count is always equal to the number of spells he's cast before that Storm spell this turn. That greatly simplifies the variables you have to track, and makes it a lot easier for the players, while letting you keep Storm on the cards!

And removes the ability to counter spells.

I considered reducing Keranos to the Storm win condition alone, but it puts the players on the defensive in a way that I feel changes the game play strongly skew the game play into that direction. I can easily test both versions though.

Sorry, my wording was poor in that first point. Responding to their turn, not to the spells they cast.

I thought the Cyclone Tracker went up with land drops, not with spells being cast?

I don't think a Challenge deck needs to counter spells.

This is incredibly cool and well thought out, I wish more people made custom challenges on here. Saving for later!

Quote from TurboJustice

Sorry, my wording was poor in that first point. Responding to their turn, not to the spells they cast.

Which once again won't happen with your proposal

I thought the Cyclone Tracker went up with land drops, not with spells being cast?

Obviously. The spells being cast already influences the storm count for the individual turn. The Cyclone Tracker makes certain the challenge deck becomes more potent over the course of the game as well, but uses a different measure to become non-redundant.

I don't think a Challenge deck needs to counter spells.

"Needs" is one part. "Could" is the other half. And

It should be noted that even if I remove parts for the final version of the challenge deck (and in that case I'll probably go something similar to your suggested route - the (late) introduction of storm into the concept makes the Insight deck indeed quite redundant), I still want to test the Insight deck in practice as soon as possible; if I cut it from Keranos, I will probably get to use it for another god - I could see Phenax.

@Derenathor: Many thanks. I recall Voila! making this thread, but not much came from it - also an Eldrazi, Phyrexia (white) and an Insect themed challenge have been actually posted.