WotC have experimented with a 'Quest' mechanic during original Zendikar, ELD and ZNR design.
I liked the idea, so this is my take on it.
One of the things I thought of was that if the quest went into exile while you were completing the requirements a bit like suspend, this avoids the issue of opponent's removing it too easily. The card could then be cast when you complete the requirements and the reward for the quest could just be the effect of the card. You could then make quests sorceries to match this functionality. They can still be countered this way, but your opponent only has one chance to counter it and fewer colours have access to counterspells so it might be a little better to work with.
The other main thing was that the name quests couldn't stay because quests are already a mechanic from original Zendikar. Saga and Adventure are already taken, so the other main contenders I thought of were Trial, Pursuit, Campaign, and Journey. Trial sounds negative when here it's definitely a positive. Pursuit sounds kind of unexciting, and Campaign sounds fairly military and I'm not sure if that's what I want to go for. So I've decided on Journey for now.
The new frame idea is probably something I want with this version as well so I think that will stay.
Here it is:
Sorcery- Journey ((When you cast this spell from your hand, exile it. Cast it from exile without paying its mana cost once you complete all stages.)
And some example cards. Flavour is relevant here for the storytelling aspect, so I included a Chinese historical/mythological theme that I was thinking could fit with these. The stages (as in, stages of a journey, you see) can be completed in any order but the order they are in was chosen to fit a certain story that the card is telling. I've included cheat sheets so you can see what I'm going for with each.
Judgement of Youshi
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You control two or more artifacts and/or enchantments
• At the start of your turn, you didn’t cast a spell since the start of your last turn.
• You are dealt combat damage by two or more creatures.
Exile all creatures.
A wrath of god type story as well as mechanical card.
1. artifacts and enchantments represent treasures guarded in the realm of the gods
2. You don't cast spells therefore you're peaceful.
3. But the opponent attacks you anyway.
And retribution comes.
Explore the Undersea
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You cast a Merfolk or Dragon spell with converted mana cost 3 or greater.
• You control four or more islands.
• Two or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player.
Scry 3, then draw three cards.
A journey of discovery
1. merfolk or dragon ready to go exploring
2. ...under the sea
3. Diving down, fighting your way past obstacles
Hidden treasures are yours.
Rise of the Jiangshi
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You have 5 or more life less than your starting life total.
• The second creature you control dies in a turn.
• An opponent has six or more cards in their graveyard.
Create four 2/1 black Vampire creature tokens with lifelink.
Creation process of Jianghsi (Chinese vampire/zombie creature)
1. Ill omens around
2. people die
3. Dark powers prevail
And the jiangshi rise
Splitting of Gangkou
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You attack with three or more creatures.
• You cast a noncreature spell with converted mana cost 4 or greater.
• You have three or more land cards in your graveyard.
Splitting of Gangkou deals 3 damage to each opponent and each creature they control.
A legendary magical feat
1. War rages.
2. Powerful spell is cast.
3. The land is torn apart.
Massive fiery fissure opens up beneath the enemy.
The Bashe's Appeasement
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You cast your second creature spell in a turn.
• You control five or more lands.
• You have three or more creature cards in your graveyard.
Create a 7/7 green Snake creature token with trample and reach.
Making an offering to a monster
1. Tasty creatures to eat.
2. Lands to inhabit.
3. The tasty creatures get eaten.
Giant snake monster is now your friend.
The core idea is sound, but there are two big issues to solve. The structural issue is, how template the information in a way that is understandable and also fits on a card? The gameplay issue is, how do you make effects that are compelling enough to be worth all the hoops the player has to jump through to get them?
To the second point, the white card above is a wrath that you can't control when you cast (especially that one since it requires action from your opponent). Your would effectively have to build your deck around casting this card that is usually just a 5 mana sorcery. And given that your opponent can see it coming, it is easier for them to play around overcommitting to their board.
Interestingly, you might be able to solve for the second point with a solution to the first: Double-faced cards. If you make the "quest" one side of the card, it can transform when the quest is completed to be an actual legendary snake istelf of a token, or transformed and put on the stack as a sorcery for big one-shot spell effects.
I love the idea, but I am unsure about the balancing of the requirements and the effects. Explore the Undersea for example is probably the one that feels the most balanced in this regard to me, all of these are reasonable requirements for this effect. But Splitting of Gangkou and Rise of the Jiangshi feel much more restrictive for smaller gains: At the point at which red has all these requirements together for Splitting, it is pretty late in the game, what does a smaller sweeper even help at that point? Getting lands into the graveyard is also not something trivial for red at all. Rise on the other hand is even worse, if you fall below five lifepoints and your opponent has just killed two creatures of yours, I feel like four 2/1 lifelink tokens won't help much.
Judgement and Bashe's Appeasement feel fine on the requirement side, but Judgement could have severe timing issues that the opponent could use against you (say, you having established the better board since you cast Judgement, and him flying into you with two small flying tokens to exile it all, since it seems to be mandatory to cast it) and I somewhat doubt whether the payoff of the Appeasement is really worth the effort.
Overall very neat idea, but I feel like the requirements need some work and the payoffs need to be somewhat more impactful.
I love the idea, but I am unsure about the balancing of the requirements and the effects. Explore the Undersea for example is probably the one that feels the most balanced in this regard to me, all of these are reasonable requirements for this effect.
Explore the Undersea was actually the one I felt best on as a package
But Splitting of Gangkou and Rise of the Jiangshi feel much more restrictive for smaller gains: At the point at which red has all these requirements together for Splitting, it is pretty late in the game, what does a smaller sweeper even help at that point? Getting lands into the graveyard is also not something trivial for red at all.
The idea with the land requirement is you will probably use discard like Tormenting Voice and fetchland type lands. I was considering Splitting could be a Fireball type effect instead. That might be better in the late game.
Rise on the other hand is even worse, if you fall below five lifepoints and your opponent has just killed two creatures of yours, I feel like four 2/1 lifelink tokens won't help much.
I think you've misread that. Rise requires you to have lost five life, not be at five life.
The two creatures dying requirement is also done with sacrifice effects in mind. Just do it yourself for consistency. These cards are meant to influence deck building.
Judgement and Bashe's Appeasement feel fine on the requirement side, but Judgement could have severe timing issues that the opponent could use against you (say, you having established the better board since you cast Judgement, and him flying into you with two small flying tokens to exile it all, since it seems to be mandatory to cast it)
The idea with Judgement is you play it in a control deck with few creatures (and a number of noncreature artifacts and enchantments). That also works well with the not casting a spell condition, the idea being you meet it earlier on while holding up instants in case your opponent plays something that you need to respond to.
and I somewhat doubt whether the payoff of the Appeasement is really worth the effort.
These are all a bit of a guess balance wise. A number of variables here, so I think it's not going to be easy to estimate. These are definitely designs that would want a bunch of playtesting to figure out the right place for them.
The core idea is sound, but there are two big issues to solve. The structural issue is, how template the information in a way that is understandable and also fits on a card? The gameplay issue is, how do you make effects that are compelling enough to be worth all the hoops the player has to jump through to get them?
To the second point, the white card above is a wrath that you can't control when you cast (especially that one since it requires action from your opponent). Your would effectively have to build your deck around casting this card that is usually just a 5 mana sorcery. And given that your opponent can see it coming, it is easier for them to play around overcommitting to their board.
I did consider that reactive effects like a wrath might not work that well here but I also thought that wraths were an iconic big white effect and it might be interesting to try.
Interestingly, you might be able to solve for the second point with a solution to the first: Double-faced cards. If you make the "quest" one side of the card, it can transform when the quest is completed to be an actual legendary snake istelf of a token, or transformed and put on the stack as a sorcery for big one-shot spell effects.
I actually thought about exactly this idea, funnily enough. The question I came to was whether the reward effects would be complicated enough that you needed an extra face. It could also save a little space on the front side to do it this way, but dfcs are significantly more complicated to play with and perhaps the mechanic is complicated enough that aiming for simplicity with the rewards and avoiding dfcs is better.
I did consider that reactive effects like a wrath might not work that well here but I also thought that wraths were an iconic big white effect and it might be interesting to try.
The specific issue with your wrath above is that the opponent has some control over when it happens. Depending on the boardstate, they could actually trigger it with a couple of evasive creatures while you are ahead. It also goes to how the actual casting/transforming is worded, if its a "must" or a "may".
The bigger point, though, was that for all these difficult conditions, "Destroy all creatures" just isn't as exciting a pay off. Something like "Destroy all creatures you don't control. You gain life equal to the number of creatures destroyed in this way." is the kind of thing that would make that big an investment exciting to chase.
I actually thought about exactly this idea, funnily enough. The question I came to was whether the reward effects would be complicated enough that you needed an extra face. It could also save a little space on the front side to do it this way, but dfcs are significantly more complicated to play with and perhaps the mechanic is complicated enough that aiming for simplicity with the rewards and avoiding dfcs is better.
The thing to think about is that, for Eldraine, the payoff cards were going to be Embercleave, The Great Henge, etc. If you made a card with a set of requirements that then flipped into one of those, what might it look like? Your 7/7 snake token could be a fully realized legendary creature instead, for instance.
Really like the idea. White one does seem like the least useful. I'd say they should be played and remain in exile facedown until all conditions are met. That way the opponent can't see what exactly is coming. If you have a few of them in each color then it could throw the opponent off and they may not guess correctly.
Really like the idea. White one does seem like the least useful. I'd say they should be played and remain in exile facedown until all conditions are met. That way the opponent can't see what exactly is coming. If you have a few of them in each color then it could throw the opponent off and they may not guess correctly.
The challenge of it being face down is that the conditions would all have to be met simultaneously, to avoid memory issues, and that narrows what sort of conditions could be required.
A face up card (especailly if we dip into silver bordered territory) can have some kind of marker to denote when each different condition is met over multiple turns until they are all complete.
Really like the idea. White one does seem like the least useful. I'd say they should be played and remain in exile facedown until all conditions are met. That way the opponent can't see what exactly is coming. If you have a few of them in each color then it could throw the opponent off and they may not guess correctly.
As rowanalpha said, I think face down is a bad idea. Your opponent seeing what's coming isn't much of a problem, especially compared to the difficulties involved in tracking the conditions of a facedown card.
I agree with y'all actually. I had thought the same thing after posting. Face up is definitely better for this type of card. Maybe it needs Splitsecond or something else of that nature to make it uncountable? I don't like the idea of telegraphing the cards more so than absolutely necessary.
Unless the condition checks three things that are true simultaneously, not telegraphing anything is going to be mostly impossible. If anything, knowing whats coming is good because then your opponent has to play around whatever your plan is and you can try to take advantage of that.
Sounds like it goes deep. They know you are trying to play around them playing around it. Lol. Vicious cycle. Kinda feels like the hidden cards from Ursa's saga block.
But what I was saying is try to make it where it's uncounterable in some way. Maybe it makes something like an emblem when it resolves and the effect goes off when the conditions are met. Like it's cast and if it resolves then it goes into exile. Not cast again or finish casting it, however you want to interpret it, in the originally written way. Basically right now it has to make it through 2 castings. If that can be cut to 1 in some way I feel like it would benefit the mechanic.
I liked the idea, so this is my take on it.
One of the things I thought of was that if the quest went into exile while you were completing the requirements a bit like suspend, this avoids the issue of opponent's removing it too easily. The card could then be cast when you complete the requirements and the reward for the quest could just be the effect of the card. You could then make quests sorceries to match this functionality. They can still be countered this way, but your opponent only has one chance to counter it and fewer colours have access to counterspells so it might be a little better to work with.
The other main thing was that the name quests couldn't stay because quests are already a mechanic from original Zendikar. Saga and Adventure are already taken, so the other main contenders I thought of were Trial, Pursuit, Campaign, and Journey. Trial sounds negative when here it's definitely a positive. Pursuit sounds kind of unexciting, and Campaign sounds fairly military and I'm not sure if that's what I want to go for. So I've decided on Journey for now.
The new frame idea is probably something I want with this version as well so I think that will stay.
Here it is:
Sorcery- Journey
((When you cast this spell from your hand, exile it. Cast it from exile without paying its mana cost once you complete all stages.)
And some example cards. Flavour is relevant here for the storytelling aspect, so I included a Chinese historical/mythological theme that I was thinking could fit with these. The stages (as in, stages of a journey, you see) can be completed in any order but the order they are in was chosen to fit a certain story that the card is telling. I've included cheat sheets so you can see what I'm going for with each.
Judgement of Youshi
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You control two or more artifacts and/or enchantments
• At the start of your turn, you didn’t cast a spell since the start of your last turn.
• You are dealt combat damage by two or more creatures.
Exile all creatures.
1. artifacts and enchantments represent treasures guarded in the realm of the gods
2. You don't cast spells therefore you're peaceful.
3. But the opponent attacks you anyway.
And retribution comes.
Explore the Undersea
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You cast a Merfolk or Dragon spell with converted mana cost 3 or greater.
• You control four or more islands.
• Two or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player.
Scry 3, then draw three cards.
1. merfolk or dragon ready to go exploring
2. ...under the sea
3. Diving down, fighting your way past obstacles
Hidden treasures are yours.
Rise of the Jiangshi
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You have 5 or more life less than your starting life total.
• The second creature you control dies in a turn.
• An opponent has six or more cards in their graveyard.
Create four 2/1 black Vampire creature tokens with lifelink.
1. Ill omens around
2. people die
3. Dark powers prevail
And the jiangshi rise
Splitting of Gangkou
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You attack with three or more creatures.
• You cast a noncreature spell with converted mana cost 4 or greater.
• You have three or more land cards in your graveyard.
Splitting of Gangkou deals 3 damage to each opponent and each creature they control.
1. War rages.
2. Powerful spell is cast.
3. The land is torn apart.
Massive fiery fissure opens up beneath the enemy.
The Bashe's Appeasement
Sorcery- Journey (R)
• You cast your second creature spell in a turn.
• You control five or more lands.
• You have three or more creature cards in your graveyard.
Create a 7/7 green Snake creature token with trample and reach.
1. Tasty creatures to eat.
2. Lands to inhabit.
3. The tasty creatures get eaten.
Giant snake monster is now your friend.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
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StaffTo the second point, the white card above is a wrath that you can't control when you cast (especially that one since it requires action from your opponent). Your would effectively have to build your deck around casting this card that is usually just a 5 mana sorcery. And given that your opponent can see it coming, it is easier for them to play around overcommitting to their board.
Interestingly, you might be able to solve for the second point with a solution to the first: Double-faced cards. If you make the "quest" one side of the card, it can transform when the quest is completed to be an actual legendary snake istelf of a token, or transformed and put on the stack as a sorcery for big one-shot spell effects.
Judgement and Bashe's Appeasement feel fine on the requirement side, but Judgement could have severe timing issues that the opponent could use against you (say, you having established the better board since you cast Judgement, and him flying into you with two small flying tokens to exile it all, since it seems to be mandatory to cast it) and I somewhat doubt whether the payoff of the Appeasement is really worth the effort.
Overall very neat idea, but I feel like the requirements need some work and the payoffs need to be somewhat more impactful.
Explore the Undersea was actually the one I felt best on as a package
The idea with the land requirement is you will probably use discard like Tormenting Voice and fetchland type lands. I was considering Splitting could be a Fireball type effect instead. That might be better in the late game.
I think you've misread that. Rise requires you to have lost five life, not be at five life.
The two creatures dying requirement is also done with sacrifice effects in mind. Just do it yourself for consistency. These cards are meant to influence deck building.
The idea with Judgement is you play it in a control deck with few creatures (and a number of noncreature artifacts and enchantments). That also works well with the not casting a spell condition, the idea being you meet it earlier on while holding up instants in case your opponent plays something that you need to respond to.
These are all a bit of a guess balance wise. A number of variables here, so I think it's not going to be easy to estimate. These are definitely designs that would want a bunch of playtesting to figure out the right place for them.
thanks for the feedback
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
I did consider that reactive effects like a wrath might not work that well here but I also thought that wraths were an iconic big white effect and it might be interesting to try.
I actually thought about exactly this idea, funnily enough. The question I came to was whether the reward effects would be complicated enough that you needed an extra face. It could also save a little space on the front side to do it this way, but dfcs are significantly more complicated to play with and perhaps the mechanic is complicated enough that aiming for simplicity with the rewards and avoiding dfcs is better.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
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StaffThe specific issue with your wrath above is that the opponent has some control over when it happens. Depending on the boardstate, they could actually trigger it with a couple of evasive creatures while you are ahead. It also goes to how the actual casting/transforming is worded, if its a "must" or a "may".
The bigger point, though, was that for all these difficult conditions, "Destroy all creatures" just isn't as exciting a pay off. Something like "Destroy all creatures you don't control. You gain life equal to the number of creatures destroyed in this way." is the kind of thing that would make that big an investment exciting to chase.
The thing to think about is that, for Eldraine, the payoff cards were going to be Embercleave, The Great Henge, etc. If you made a card with a set of requirements that then flipped into one of those, what might it look like? Your 7/7 snake token could be a fully realized legendary creature instead, for instance.
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StaffThe challenge of it being face down is that the conditions would all have to be met simultaneously, to avoid memory issues, and that narrows what sort of conditions could be required.
A face up card (especailly if we dip into silver bordered territory) can have some kind of marker to denote when each different condition is met over multiple turns until they are all complete.
As rowanalpha said, I think face down is a bad idea. Your opponent seeing what's coming isn't much of a problem, especially compared to the difficulties involved in tracking the conditions of a facedown card.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
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StaffBut what I was saying is try to make it where it's uncounterable in some way. Maybe it makes something like an emblem when it resolves and the effect goes off when the conditions are met. Like it's cast and if it resolves then it goes into exile. Not cast again or finish casting it, however you want to interpret it, in the originally written way. Basically right now it has to make it through 2 castings. If that can be cut to 1 in some way I feel like it would benefit the mechanic.