My name is Jordy, long time MTG player from down under. When it comes to magic Limited stands head and shoulders above the rest in skill intensity and problem solving. To me Limited is magic in its most raw and pure form. It came to no surprise to me when I decided to try making my own set that in the same vein designing a set comes with its own series of problems and problem solving opportunities.
It all started with a ‘you know what; I think I could totally design my own set’. Some potentially hundreds of hours later and I managed to pull it off, and I found it to be wholly rewarding, sort of like a completing a puzzle.. only this puzzle gets picked apart and put back together into 40 card decks. Watching games of sealed and draft of your own set play out to perfection is an incredibly rewarding experiences, I can see how Mark Rosewater has kept his enthusiasm after all these years!
Enough about me getting all teary eyed about my baby,
Here it is, Muratha in all its glory.
I DO NOT OWN ANY CHARACTERS OR IMAGES REPRESENTED ON THESE CARDS. ALL IMAGES TAKEN FROM GOOGLE. ALL CREDIT GOES TO ARTISTS AND CREATORS. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SELLING OR MAKING ANY PROFIT ON THESE CARDS.
The Short of it
Plowshare - You may play this card transformed as a land. This follows all land and timing restrictions for the turn.
Cards with Plowshare are transform cards with a spell on its face half and a land on its flipped side.
Land Creatures – cast CARDNAME as a land play for the turn, you must still pay any additional costs including its mana cost
Encroach – Pseudo Ability - As long as you control NUMBER lands or more (Effect)
Returning Mechanics:
Morbid – Pseudo Ability – If a creature has died this turn (Effect)
Landfall – Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control (Effect)
Populate - Choose a creature token you control and create a token that’s a copy of that creature token
Unearth – Unearth < cost> : (<cost> Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.)
UWGThe Hanran Shogunate - The Hanran are the human nation that live around the Roots of the Worlds Tree Muratha and in the vast Murathan Plains, the plains surrounding the Great Tree. They have developed a strong martial identity as a nation and have build The Great Hanran Wall around their territory as an extra measure to keep out invaders who seek to steal the blessings of Muratha from the Hanran
UWBThe Kuilei Recluse - The Kuilei Recluse live on the mountainscapes that border the Murathan field. They have learnt to channel the life giving energies of the Roots of Muratha into their sculptures to create golems en masse. The Kuilei are generally great artisans who have traded in the sword for the chisel and hammer. These golems for the Kuilei's army and it was through their great Terra Cotta armies that the Hanran expansion was halted.
UB/Rish The Tao Coven - The Tao coven is lead by a great and all seeing djinn Tao the Redoubtable. Despite being gifted with sight beyond sight of all things past, present and future she was not blessed with the omniscient knowledge to properly apprehend all she sees. Because of this Tao spends her Immortal life in contemplation and meditation and rues mortal interruptions.
The Tao coven are a group of shaman who follow and interpret whatever shreds of translations and murmurings that they find from Tao herself. An enigmatic figure Gao-Nin (the red mana aspect) has usurped the influence of Tao by supplanting himself as 'Tao Head Translator' and guides the Tao Coven through weaving his own ends into Tao's words
RG The Bloodfall/The Spitethorns - The Bloodfall are a wild collection of Shaman that live towards the Worlds Edge, they enlist sanguine magic and are the only humans that are known to be able to communicate with spitethorns.
The Spitethorns are a breed of dryad who have been without the grace of Muratha for too long, the longer they are denied access to the World Tree the fursther they devolve. Spitethorns are savage, reckless and lethal. As they devolve their bodies become covered in stakes and their claws grow long and sharp.
GThe Aashka Ah - The Aashka Ah are a mysterious group of shamans seemingly controlled by a strange elemental force that linger towards the very outer edge of the world. Aashka Ah translates to the encroaching worlds edge, they are combating the destruction of the worlds edge and seek to destroy the Hanran.
BAppolyon/The Ókètè - Appolyon the Immeasurable is a gargantuan Demon that has created his own vast underworld and lives a life of terrific vanity. The Demons in the land of Muratha are repulsed by her presence and as the World Tree grows larger Appolyon has found that he is being forced further away to the very edges of his realm. He has begun colluding with the Gao-Nin to destroy Muratha.
The Ókètè are great Rat Demons who serve under Appolyon and occasionally traverse the surface worlds on his behalf. The Ókètè have begun their invasion of the Hanran territory by releasing a terrible plague of rats behind the Great Hanran Walls
Muratha is Plane named after the colossal ‘World Tree’ Muratha that lives in the centre of the world. Muratha’s Roots are spread across the entire plane, her Roots have the power to create life and sporadically and seemingly randomly they will urge titanic elemental to rise up from the ground. All beings Muratha create have an innate attraction to her and long to be within her presence.
The humans who from the dawn of civilization were settled around Muratha’s Roots; the Hanran Shogunate, has since grown to power. The Hanran used the natural advantages that Muratha had given them to spread their influence and power to cover a large circumference around the tree. To solidify their power and control of their territory they have constructed a Great Wall to protect themselves and the World Tree that has been so good to them. The Hanran and their Lifebloom Dryad allies are channeling their magics back into Muratha to cause her to grow even bigger.
Unbeknownst to the Hanran as Muratha is forced to grow larger and larger she is sapping away all natural life from the outer edges of the world. As the outer edge of the world encroaches inwards the ire of the forces from outside the wall are also forced to look inwards and unite to dismantle the Great Hanran Wall and then put a stop to their magics and free The Great Tree from her unintentional desolation of her own world.
Muratha from its inception was aiming to be a ‘land’ set, with the main drive of the story being Muratha itself (a large Yggdrasil style tree), to the inhabitants being elementals, dryads and naturally attuned humans and elves.
Multicolor formats tend to be some of my favourite formats to play, having support for a bit more liberal of a draft with multicolour lands and fixers, but still having to draft and create a legible deck with a goal in mind creates a fun but still rewarding draft environment. I decided to use the multicolour aspect to create a limitation in design; each (Alara style) Shard has their own mechanic that is only found within their colors, this will mean each color will have its own unique combination of three of the five keywords.
Muratha is a high powered set, along the likes of Dominaria, Kaladesh etc. but like those sets there is an internal balance built within the draft and sealed format. Like Dominaria it is somewhat more a ‘Pauper’ than a ‘Prince’ format. This means that as a general rule there is a lot of power found within uncommons and commons, while there are still powerful and bomby rares it is not a set where games are decided purely on your rare pulls.
Designed Keywords -
‘PLOWSHARE’
A journey of a thousand steps begins with just one, Plowshare was that first step in Muratha.
Overgrown Mossbeast was the very first card in this set. He was designed to encapsulate what Plowshare cards would be: overly costed/under efficient, ‘heavy’ color requirements, FLEXIBLE. Whilst at first glance this ability sure feels like Ixalan’s flip lands (so unoriginal), my response to that is all magic developments come from taking pre-existing ideas design space and manoeuvring all the subtleties create something new (eg Flashback/Jump-Start). Ixalan’s Land flips are always played out for their full cost and you will eventually be ‘rewarded’ with the land when the criteria is met, Plowshares couldn’t be further from this.
The reward is built directly into Plowshare cards in their extreme flexibility. Rares aside Plowshare cards do not provide you any extreme on board advantages on either of their sides but they allow you to progress the game in either of magic’s dimensions (playing spells/playing lands) from turn 1 onwards. Each side of a Plowshare is sub-par but at points in the game where you are desperate for land drops they will certainly do, in the late game or in a mana flood situation their spell half while (often) underwhelming will certainly do.
An interesting deck building aspect of these cards is in that it is completely correct to have Plowshare cards take up land slots in your limited deck (Like Flower/Flourish in GRN). While correct the payoff certainly dies down as your Plowshare count gets higher, minimising lands increases the chance that you will have to play a Plowshare on its land side reducing their flexibility and therefore their power, chances of effectively curving out with the enter tapped clause of the common Plowshares does also weaken this strategy (It may still just be correct to just replace lands 1:1).
An important part of the design of Plowshares was to prevent them being absolute free-rolls in every single deck during the draft as like all lands that house a powerful effect (such as Dominaria’s Memorials) have essentially no cost to include in decks of their color. To combat drafters just grabbing every single Plowshare in their pack and running them off of mild splashes, each Plowshare card comes with dual color symbols in their mana costs.
The design space surrounding Plowshare was barely touched. The commons are essentially identical with their spell side changed to suit their colors. There were 10 common Plowshares created due to the nature of how transform cards have historically been places within packs, as every single pack has one transform card one cycle of five created very low variance in packs and was bolstered.
Design was actually pushed with the Sorcery land cycle, unlike the rest I wanted these lands to have their own sense of magic essence, so even when played on their land side you will get smaller, different but similar effect to their Sorcery Side. A pseudo buddy land clause was added to the sorcery land cycle to prevent two things, from the land half of these cards from being played in any deck and to prevent the lands effects from happening turn one or two (at the very earliest). It also allows for a higher strength on the effects as lands with ETB effects have been historically negligible.
From Plowshares inception I knew I wanted the Dual color lands within this set to be Plowshare cards. With such a low inclusion cost these dual land Plowshares would make an impact in standard. It quickly became apparent that in constructed formats these lands were quite powerful, but being able to play multiple of them on their land side would be unbelievably powerful. To combat this the Rare Plowshares were made Legendary on both their sides, fortunately you can have a Redoubtable Ziggurat and a Tao the Redoubtable on the battlefield at the same time, this makes Legendary on these cards somewhat less of a drawback as they are far less likely to be a dead cards in hand.
‘LAND CREATURE’
With the Landscape of Muratha rising up and wondering around I knew I wanted a keyword to fill this flavorfully, Awaken from Battle for Zendikar would have been perfect, but using Both Landfall and Awaken would just mean I’m creating Battle 1.1.
What I decided was to include creatures that are innately lands in addition to their other types.
Land Creatures have always had the clause wherein they take up your land play for that turn which prevents double dropping lands for abilities like Landfall and Encroach, allows Land Creatures to be over efficient for their mana costs, provides choices to the player in the early game if it is worth playing these powerful creatures instead of their land drop and Provides those landfall decks additional means to get their triggers in the later part of the game.
Land Creatures initially didn’t tap for mana, but because of that they were incredibly efficient. These cards still felt balanced as playing them over a land was incorrect more often than not, and helped mana screwed players stall for just a little bit longer. This was changed later on in production as it is a rule in modern magic design for all lands to tap for mana, thematically it was also a much better change. Land Creatures can still help someone who is slightly mana screwed as they will still act like a land (albeit a summon sick land), They now give the controlling player extra choice while on the battlefield which has made them much more rewarding to play with.
Land Creatures is the one mechanic that is a bit of a dangerous introduction thanks to Vintage cards such as Crop Rotation, being able to summon a Worlds Heart Colossus on turn one of a game, even amongst Vintage power levels does seem incredibly powerful. Strategies like this are hampered by the existence of Tron so many decks already will have the cards to handle a Land Creature deck or at least the sideboard for it, it does also run a risk of a 3 for 1 if cards like Swords to Plowshare or Path to Exile become tech against this deck. So while it does appear risky and Worlds Soul Colossus may make a large initial impact, it would quickly shift the meta against itself and become just another deck. Banning Worlds Soul in Vintage would likely be the end of the deck as no other Land Creatures can stand up against the Vintage powerhouses, even on turn 1.
In modern there is also a chance a Land Creature Scapeshift deck gets created. This deck would for all intents and purposes be weaker than the Valakut deck, the only advantage it would have is that it can go off with 4-7 lands in play where Valakut requires 8+, but the weaknesses that go with this capability is that it must wait an entire turn to kill, will utterly lose to a single board wipe and spot removal can slow it significantly. If this or the legacy did become unbeatable, creating an Errata for those lands spells to instead say ‘non-creature’ land would be a complete fix. It is a powerful ability in Commander, but like all overpowered things in EDH it has the self-balancing measure in its multiplayer nature.
Shard Keywords
BANT - ‘ENCROACH’
The Idea of a land threshold is nothing new in magic; it is versatile in its simplicity and it is very untapped territory. Encroach fit naturally into Bant colors in that its colors seek life and growth for all, the more their surroundings are cultivated the stronger they become. It is a subtly selfish end (Blue) using selfless means (Green/White). There is overlap between Naya landfall in GW colors and UG Ramp is a traditional draft Archetype, Encroach ticked all the boxes for Bant’s keyword.
Encroach was the last keyword to be implemented in the set, I knew Bant should have some sort of land synergy due to their heavy overlap with Naya and their clans (Hanran) thematic place within the world. Encroach and Landfall while being similar operates in vastly different ways. Encroach provides either provides a bonus or it doesn’t, the level of bonus provided will be set and for the most part are permanent, Landfall rewards can be manipulated and increased but they are for the most part temporary.
The cards which reward Landfall and Encroach are often similar; this will lead to a little bit of competition whilst drafting but also allows for some strong interactions between the two. Much like in a Landfall deck Plowshare and Land Creatures will be far more effective in an Encroach; Plowshare cards will create interesting choices for the Encroach player as being one land closer to their threshold may be more impactful than the spell half of the card.
NAYA - LANDFALL
As heavily touched upon Landfall is a key archetype and part of the set with by far the most amount of synergy within this set to the introduced keywords. Landfall was deliberately kept as simple as possible in it’s effects and abilities, like any keyword the complexities are introduced more so in how it interacts and specific board states.
GRIXIS – MORBID
The three Black tinted shards have heavy synergies amongst eachother, this all stems essentially from morbid and how well it interacts with Unearth cards and tokens (therefore Populate). Black and Blue are notorious as the ruthless color combination, coupled with reds immediate reward mentality and very minor sacrifice capabilities Grixis was the perfect home for an ability like Morbid.
Morbid stands polar opposite to landfall, it takes quite an experienced player to understand just how powerful sacrificing your own creatures is. The rewards for some of the Morbid cards were quite advanced to reflect the prospective player base, but also to create very intricate and powerful interactions which can allow a player to feel very rewarded.
Within Muratha there are numerous sacrifice outlets within Grixis, many of the effects were deliberately kept to be quite weak so as to leave them more as Morbid enablers than as game changing engines. With so many sacrifice outlets the ‘threaten’ effects within the set were kept at Uncommon as they grow much more powerful with such easy access to sacrifice outlets. All this cross synergy makes it seem like Morbid will be the more powerful of the three black shards, but the synergy will work backwards and Populate decks/Unearth decks will try to draft strong morbid effects as well, diluting each of the decks.
Designers input – I love archetypes like this in limited of real sets (like the Exploit deck from DTK) and this deck is easily my favourite to draft and play with.
JUND – UNEARTH
Black and green has been the graveyard value colours for magic’s contemporary formats, Unearth is a clear fit but also has the added bonus of being an incredibly aggressive ability with short-term haste power created in the recursion allowing it to play really well within red and therefore Jund as a whole.
Unearth used exactly as designed is quite linear, re-play a creature and attack with it. Much like when Unearth was initially created Wizards created more intricate cards by utilising enter or Leave the battlefield effects, and tap abilities. In designing Muratha this was heavily played upon, the creature half would play like normal but the Unearth part of the card played more like a sorcery. The returned creature for reasons such a defender could attack when unearthed but would have an enter or leave the battlefield effect creating in effect a sorcery.
Unearth bears heavy synergy with morbid for the obvious reasons, creatures with Unearth can die to enable Morbid triggers and still provide value later on when they get Unearthed back. But with so many sacrifice outlets available Unearth creatures also generate value on either of their sides as a sacrifice outlet.
ESPER – POPULATE
Populate might feel a little out of place without green, but it is the nature of what is being Populated that brings it back into the realms of Blue/White/Black. Blue has a knack for creating artifacts, and Black will willingly supplant life with it’s own version if given the chance, paired with Whites life giving principles Populate plays well with in this Esper design.
The fun in Populate is having a divergence in tokens available to Populate and then choosing the one that is more correct for that particular board state or match up. Within Esper there are numerous ways to generate Golem artifact tokens that are either 1/1s or 2/2s, Blue is able to generate 1/1 flying Bird Tokens, Black is able to generate ‘typhoid rat’ Rat tokens which are 1/1s with deathtouch and found in the UB signpost uncommon and rare only is the 3/4 flying Dragon Golem Artifact.
If a Dragon Golem ever makes the field it seems highly unlikely that any other token from then on would be the target for populate, but this is not unlike the 5/5 Wurm from Return to Ravnica. As a rule the bird or rat tokens may seem stronger than the generic golems, but there are heavy synergies within Blue and White that can make Golems stronger.
The ability to generate 1/1 tokens with deathtouch and propagate them seems overtly powerful and able to hold back any ground board states, this is true Populate in of itself though regardless of the token. To combat the Typhoid rat tokens there are numerous creatures that themselves get around the token (via keywords such as first strike/menace) to multiple ways of dealing with 1 toughness or power creatures spread out amongst each colors. This creates a sort of high risk high reward for generating rats over other tokens.
The synergy for Populate/tokens and Morbid is quite simple, Tokens are often numerous and expendable, Morbid will reward you if you manage to kill anything (generally easier to kill your own creatures) and therefore having so many creatures you’re willing to sacrifice empowers your Morbid cards.
Draft Archetypes –
Despite being a ‘multicolor’ set, like any set in recent magic each color pair still has distinct goals it is trying to achieve (or at least their deck will be optimised if they build it this way) and in Muratha has a signpost card at common, Uncommon AND Rare that allude to these goals. Muratha Limited follows a very similar play style to Khans (Only without the 5 color morph deck), each player will draft a color pair heavily but is essentially granted a free splash by the heavy fixing leading to consistent three color decks.
W/U – White/Blue has two substyles of playing and each works well with one another. Like all contemporary sets White and Blue have access to the most and generally the strongest flyers in Muratha. They also have a strong Populate theme and synergies for golems fall entirely within these colors. This allows them to have a strong flying aggression bolstered by some Golems to block or generate a tonne of golems and golem synergies and use some flying creatures to finish the game if the opponent can stabilise.
W/B - White/Black follows a very heavy control theme which is granted a win condition by strong flyers in Black and White. White Black has numerous ways to combat aggressive decks: the Rat tokens trade upwards very efficiently; there is a life gain subtheme and it boasts the strongest unconditional removal within the set. There is access to Populate but they have less access to some of the stronger Token Payoffs without splashing blue.
U/B – Blue/Black is the Morbid deck and naturally has a heavy control theme with access to counterspells and strong removal from black. There are the greatest density of sacrifice outlets and creatures who reward sacrificing coupled with the Blue ability to generate multiple creatures off of a single card through Populate. Much like White/Black Blue/Black often tries to seal a game with a couple of solid flyers or unblockable creatures after stabilising the board.
U/R – Blue/Red follows two major subthemes, ‘Blocking is not a keyword’ where the Blue/Red player will play some early aggressive creatures then play multiple spells that prevent the opponent from blocking via tapping or tremor style effects. If the correct cards are found within the draft or sealed pool Blue/Red has access to both the Threaten spells Bloodmist Sight and Stolen Loyalty (both Uncommon) and can create something of a steal/sacrifice. Fortunately the baseline deck will still play threatens very highly so there is no real downside of trying to make the steal sac deck work.
B/R – Red/Black is a suicide aggro deck at its core. The creatures in this color pairing have efficient costs and aggressive stats but often have self-hurting text which causes the controller to lose life. The Morbid effects in Black and Red are often instead triggered through combat and trades with the Morbid effects often enabling increased pressure through loss of life or extra power on the field. The Unearth cards within Red/Black have considerably more aggressively stats.
W/R – White/Red is the Landfall Aggro Archetype. This Archetype doesn’t require Landfall synergies as there are plenty of strong efficient creatures as is but curving out with some of the Landfall creatures will create enormous pressure. There is not a lot of ‘reach’ within these colors outside of Whites flyers but a small splash of black may provide a way to force through damage after stabilisation.
B/G – Black/Green has a self-mill sub-theme and is definitely the graveyard value deck. Black/Green plays best with Unearth and has the most capabilities of recursion. This set was designed before Guilds of Ravnica had reached spoiler season, so many of the Black/Green cards have what is essentially ‘Undergrowth’ on them to provide a sideways method of generating advantage from their self mill effects, Unfortunately these cards were too heavily cemented into the set by the time Undergrowth was revealed… so too bad Wizards.
W/G – White Green has the greatest synergies with controlling lands and has the most additional synergies with Plowshare and Land Creatures. This archetype curves out well with efficient bodies across all mana costs but has numerous ways to return your lands to your hand both enabling Plowshares to be played as lands early then recycled into their spell half and Landfall triggers in the later part of the game. There are multiple cards within these colors that boost the capabilities of Land Creatures that you control.
R/G – Red/Green is at its traditional curve out beatdown strategy, with very aggressively costed Red creatures curving into big beefy Green bodies. Red/Green has a solid amount of powerful landfall effects that become more powerful when they’re stacked.
U/G – Blue/Green is the ‘Encroach’ deck, with powerful payoffs and large spells innately in this color combination. It follows the traditional Blue/Green ramp archetype but utilises Encroach cards to grind value and to ‘pump’ the early game defensive creatures into legitimate threats when their threshold is reached.
Well congratulations if you were insane enough to read this far, but I appreciate your commitment in gaining insights for my set and the choices that went into its creation.
Feedback is appreciated for anything you noticed within the set or write up
You've got some good stuff started here. My eyes tend to start with the mechanical nature of a set so i do have some feedback for you on that line of logic. Out of the mechanics for Muratha, Plowshare seems to be the lynchpin for the set in defining how the environment plays out. I can see your intent is to help shore up inconsistency with draws and allow all games to play out against mana problems with this mechanic, but i think some of the details still need to be worked out. plowshare plays out in modular space, when evaluating the best possible play for plowshare cards, the intention should be that each side of the card creates a tension in determining the choice.
The power-level on many of the plowshare cards are simply below the power-level expectations of MTG's ingrained standards. Now certainly if you adjust your power level across the set such that your plowshare spells and creatures are at, and sometimes exceeds the set's baseline, this would create the desired scenarios where it's often better to play the card as is on curve, even thought it was in a land slot, and hope you'll top deck another land.
It seems that plowshare's goals wants to visually create tension in deckbuilding, but secretly wants to help stem mana issues. Without that tension, as a deckbuilder i would rather build my mana as consistently as possible and play the strongest cards that support that. And that's not to say that there aren't the other type that want to play the strongest cards in their pool regardless of mana, and they build the mana base second, but plowshare doesn't seem to fit very well in either of those deckbuilding strategies in it's current power state.
Case in point would be Alpine Fox. At double red for a vanilla 2/1, I would never consider playing that card based on it's power level to cost ratio. As a scenario, consider i'm playing green/red, and i keep a hand with a mountain and forest, and i play a forest turn one. Turn two i top deck the alpine fox. i can't play it until turn three, and that's only if i draw another mountain. i can play it as a mountain, but then i feel like i'm playing +1 land, even though i likely intended that card to be part of my turn 2 curve options. My deck now potentially feels that much weaker than my opponent's deck. the other side of that is late game, maybe i'm top decking, and i put in the alpine fox in a land slot to ease the mana flooding, unfortunately on turn 6+ a vanilla 2/1 is highly unlikely to swing the game for me without any other cards in hand.
Ways to look at balancing in Plowshare's case is that you have essentially a double faced card. So you have two distinctly different power-levels you can work with to find the right balance. One side can be over-powered with a drawback, while the other could be under powered, but with a perk. Ideally, for modal to make sense, the card wants the decision to be somewhere between 50/50 and 25/75 on how often each of the choices is being made. I should have to think hard about wanting to use alpine fox as a land rather than as a creature in order to make the card's mechanic meaningful in game play.
And i may be misunderstanding this based on the language used, but you describe plowshare as playing the cards "transformed" as a land. i'm assuming on the land side this means there are no morph or transform costs to turn the card back onto their other faces. But what if there were? That could be an interesting way to give plowshare cards some great late game value, if they have a transform trigger on some of the creatures. Would also play into the flavor nature of the set with all things spawning from the land? Anyways those are the initial thoughts i had for you. Balancing a set is not a quick task. think how many Labor hours Wizards uses up on each of their sets, they do about nine months of work. So for each team member that's approximately 40hours x 40 weeks for 1,600 hours per person. I image they probably split their time across several projects, but it's a lot of labor that goes into set creation. The trick i think is to Iterate, Iterate, and Iterate until it feels right.
Keep up the good work and i look forward to seeing your progress. This is new ground for land based mechanics here.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Easy Dude. You're being very un-Dude.
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MECHANICS REVIEW
First things first, you have too many mechanics. The normal amount is only three or four. Six has been seen before, but it's a lot. You have seven.
I recommend cutting at least one mechanic, maybe even four. I will propose an arrangement of this with the individual mechanics.
The second most obvious thing- why are you doing a land themed set that is not Zendikar?
Zendikar's whole shtick is that it's a land themed world, with an adventure world flavour. Okay, your world has different flavour. But it's taking Zendikar's mechanics, and I'm not convinced you are talking it in a distinct enough direction.
The third on your general mechanical design is your shard theme. This seems like a pretty bad idea. You're investing a lot of your stock in yet another theme that defines an existing set/world (Alara in this case). You want that space to differentiate your set, not make it even more derivative. Having a three colour environment sounds like a good idea for a land set because that theme promotes multicolour play, but I wouldn't go so far as to have factions of any sort and divy up mechanics based on it. Just let it happen naturally through the balance of cards in the set, maybe don't push it hard as a result, and focus on something exciting and different instead.
I would look at how Zendikar did this- they had the land theme, they asked what that represented in world, and based the rest of the mechanics around things that fit well with that flavour. In this case, I would ask particularly- what is it about the land theme that will be different here? And find themes that complement that mechanical element and the flavour of it.
Plowshare
Okay, this seems like a nice mechanic. It's complex, but every set has room for one key complex mechanic.
Your reminder text wording is a bit technical though. I imagine it would be better to do something more explanatory and a little more evocative.
Something like (You may play this card transformed as your land for the turn)
I do also think you have a little too much diversity in your Plowshare lands. I would mainly put the diversity and interest on the front side, keep the lands simpler. I would have a couple cycles of plowshare cards with the same land on the back except for colour. It's less likely to result in inbalanced lands, makes good use of the best land designs you come up with and makes it easier to remember what all the lands do.
I wonder also whether it would be best to stick to putting plowshare on creatures and enchantments only. The flavour seems a little better, but more importantly, it would make it a little easier to learn the right play pattern for the mechanic, and I suspect permanents might be more interesting with plowshare because the decision seems a little more straightforward with instants and sorceries. I would like to see how different card types play differently with this mechanic.
I'm glad to see you have some cards which transform into permanents from being lands. It's something I would definitely want to include, and probably with several cards.
Land Creatures
A serious problem here is that the overlap with Plowshare is a lot. Both mechanics centre around spells that are also lands. Both are complex. Both help with mana fixing and mana flood. The major difference is land creatures are AND while Plowshare is OR. Is that enough of a difference?
I would argue no, it isn't. They cramp on each other's space.
Even more so, I would argue land creatures are very complex, not entirely intuitive, developmentally dangerous and surprisingly limited in design space. And that therefore they might not ever see print again (Yes land creatures have been done before exactly once, in case you didn't know). Let alone see print in a set with a rather similar mechanic. Plowshare is a safer and simpler mechanic all in all, so I would stick to it and ditch land creatures as one of the mechanics to cut your number down. It will only give your more space to make the most of plowshare.
Enroach
This is a nice attempt to complement your more complex land mechanics with something simpler, but I have a few problems with Enroach.
The first is that it's kind of too simple. It's not an exciting mechanic at all, certainly not when you need to be differentiating yourself from Zendikar here, and that makes me wonder why bother giving it an ability word and not just having the effect unnamed on cards. Not every recurring theme needs to be named.
The second problem is that it's too open ended to warrant an ability word. Ability words usually describe a fixed trigger or condition with variable effects. You almost have that, expect not only does the effect vary, the number of lands for the condition also varies. That doesn't leave much consistency to string this mechanic together.
Luckily, the solution to both of these problems is the same- this shouldn't be a named mechanic at all. Another mechanic down for your total.
Landfall
Oh no. You have a set which borrows from Zendikar's theme and tries to do something different with it, and you include Zendikar's most defining mechanic? Bad idea. Makes this set worse, and steals from Landfall's limited remaining design space that probably wants to be saved for future Zendikar sets.
Cut this.
Morbid, Populate, Unearth
As a result of my suggestion to remove the three colour theme, these mechanics are all up in there while the decision is made as to what the themes of the set will be. These are good choices of mechanics that could be returned to though, but I also wouldn't want to do all of them at once, that's too many.
Just started coming back here, somewhat agree with DJK about the need to differentiate from Zendikar. It also reminds me of the Pyrulea set we started and never finished, was looking over it recently. I think that provides a solid alternative setting for a land themed set without being Zendikar, but part of the trick is avoiding Landfall and finding something else. At the same time, in retrospect, I don't like the "Discovery" ("Discovery" = Number of lands you control with different names) mechanic we settled for with the Pyrulea set, which is rather limited in its usage or potentially restricting of options, too EDH-like.
Just brainstorming on this, perhaps another way of doing a land creatures thing would be to try something like this:
Animate N (Put N +1/+1 counters on target land. That land becomes a 0/0 elemental creature. It's still a land.)
That opens a lot of possible design space, I think, in a way that's more flexible than the Awaken mechanic from Zendikar, which has more limited usage and requires a mana cost. It's open-ended enough that it could be on permanents or non permanents, be an activated ability or a triggered ability, have a variety of triggers or costs, etc. It doesn't give haste though. Not sure if it'd be good to include haste or not. I kept it simple and clean.
Hi guys, sorry about the long Hiatus and thanks for taking the time to view, review and offer your opinions, very appreciated
Archemediesx Plowshare is certainly the Lynchpin and I think you are correct that there should be more difficult of a choice when deciding whether using their two sides. Versatility in cards has always come at a price but I believe you are right that the power level of most are too low. The Plowshare cards were generally fifth/sixth pick in all the playtest drafts, they will likely be third/fourth pickable now, which is definitely a god thing. The power level of all the common creatures has been increased to be 'on par' and the mana cost of the Uncommons was reduced.
DJK I am going to open that I strongly disagree that any and all lands sets are required to be Zendikar, though I also have the personal opinion that Wizards should stop constantly revisiting planes ad nauseum.
now if you meant to say "why are you doing a land set that is so similar to Zendikar and not calling it Zendikar?" I will happily accept that criticism. my only rebuttal is I think all land theme sets will have similar tropes (Magic in the land and Elementals) so I have to hope my flavour sets it apart.
From hereon DJK I agree with most of what you have written and proposed. The tri-color perhaps doesn't need to be forced through factions (only the Hanran and Kuilei are full three color, the rest are two colored) so will happily subdivide them. It also maybe shouldn't be pushed via color but each three color combination does get access to each keyword to a degree it really does create a diversity in drafting.
I knew my wording was too jargon heavy, I have changed to the one you proposed, my only worry is it doesn't genuinely explain the rule. You may play plowshares instead of any land drop, not just the given one (a minor issue, but rules lawyers will rules lawyer.)
The plowshare diversity at non-rare does comes purely from the spell lands, they are also the only ones to really risk being broken, they have since had plowshare removed. this also answers you following point, and makes the keyword a bit simpler for newer players now that it does not occur on non-permanents.
Land transformation is indirectly included within Naya, cards which state 'return a land you control' indirectly read you may cast this plowshare card you played as a land earlier in the game. outside of that I have decided to add a transform cost to Muratha but that is all (so two cards with it built in, but very easy design space for future sets left open).
Here's where you evoked the most changes, seven was absolutely too many keywords so I lowered the complexity down to five.
Land Creatures were always a bit of a taboo for mtg and whilst I adored how they played in limited they just would never theoretically be printed so it would be almost lying to keep them in the set. each Land Creature has been replaced by a Zendikon variants, only the land will be placed straight into play to grant neat interactions with landfall, boosted by sacrifice outlets to allow for selective timing.
eg. Awakened Icecrasher 2U
Enchantment Aura
Enchant island you control
Enchanted land is a 3/5 blue Elemental creature.
When enchanted land dies return that land to the battlefield under its owners control.
Encroach was too different as it applied to each card just as you stated, so it was removed as a keyword but the effect still remains as an implied mechanic (ala power 5 or greater from Alara).
as stated I do disagree that landfall can't be used by non-zendikar sets, but I will endeavour to create a keyword for Naya to differentiate, but also as now my set only has 1/5 keywords as new and the rest borrowed. Having the keywords not skewed to three colors will take a lot of reworking/revamping so I'll report back in at a later date if/when it integrated.
DJK I am going to open that I strongly disagree that any and all lands sets are required to be Zendikar, though I also have the personal opinion that Wizards should stop constantly revisiting planes ad nauseum.
now if you meant to say "why are you doing a land set that is so similar to Zendikar and not calling it Zendikar?" I will happily accept that criticism. my only rebuttal is I think all land theme sets will have similar tropes (Magic in the land and Elementals) so I have to hope my flavour sets it apart.
My first comment set out the problem question here- why are you doing a land set that is not Zendikar?
The major thesis of my critique was differentiating your set from Zendikar to justify doing a land themed set that is not Zendikar. I would not bother if I thought the answer was just to do Zendikar. That was not my point.
From hereon DJK I agree with most of what you have written and proposed. The tri-color perhaps doesn't need to be forced through factions (only the Hanran and Kuilei are full three color, the rest are two colored) so will happily subdivide them. It also maybe shouldn't be pushed via color but each three color combination does get access to each keyword to a degree it really does create a diversity in drafting.
I knew my wording was too jargon heavy, I have changed to the one you proposed, my only worry is it doesn't genuinely explain the rule. You may play plowshares instead of any land drop, not just the given one (a minor issue, but rules lawyers will rules lawyer.)
Reminder text is not rules text. One of the advantages of it is you can sometimes focus on explaining the effect rather than describing it's actual function. I think my suggested wording explains it well, I think people will be able to extrapolate it's rules meaning.
The plowshare diversity at non-rare does comes purely from the spell lands, they are also the only ones to really risk being broken, they have since had plowshare removed. this also answers you following point, and makes the keyword a bit simpler for newer players now that it does not occur on non-permanents.
Sure.
Land transformation is indirectly included within Naya, cards which state 'return a land you control' indirectly read you may cast this plowshare card you played as a land earlier in the game.
Very nice idea. I like it. I wouldn't do too much return a land specifically, because that can be annoying if mandatory, or not very useful if optional, outside of Plowshare. I would mix in 'return a permanent' alongside it.
outside of that I have decided to add a transform cost to Muratha but that is all (so two cards with it built in, but very easy design space for future sets left open).
Returning plowshare cards to your hand is a very good alternative, so there's no need for more, you're good.
Here's where you evoked the most changes, seven was absolutely too many keywords so I lowered the complexity down to five.
Okay. Good. Five is much more reasonable.
Land Creatures were always a bit of a taboo for mtg and whilst I adored how they played in limited they just would never theoretically be printed so it would be almost lying to keep them in the set. each Land Creature has been replaced by a Zendikon variants
Good. Land Creatures was one of the more particularly problematic things.
Encroach was too different as it applied to each card just as you stated, so it was removed as a keyword but the effect still remains as an implied mechanic (ala power 5 or greater from Alara).
Good.
as stated I do disagree that landfall can't be used by non-zendikar sets
Landfall might be able to used outside of Zendikar, I would say it's probably not worth it, but maybe. Where it definitely shouldn't be used is in a different land set. Because then not only are you taking away design space from Zendikar's signature mechanic, but you are also making it much more difficult to differentiate your set from Zendikar.
Your land mechanics are where you want to define the identity of your new world because land is your main thing, you don't want to copy the mechanics that defined a different world with the same theme. Alara was a multicolour faction set like Ravnica. You wouldn't want Alara to use Ravnica guild mechanics for it's factions. Kaldesh was an artifact set like Mirrodin. You wouldn't want Kaladesh to use Metalcraft and Imprint from Mirrodin.
If land is your big theme, you want some of your biggest, most exciting mechanics to be your land mechanics. Alara featured colored artifacts and Devour and Exalted and power 5 matters and unearth- new exciting mechanics for all of it's factions. Kaladesh had new and exciting mechanics with vehicles and fabricate to play up it's artifact theme. Follow their examples.
all good DJK I'm glad it was rhetoric and not a genuine question.
I am glad I diverged, whilst I believe my set is heavily distinct to Zendikar and landfall being far from it's defining mechanic having it in there is a very on the nose allusion to it and seems to draw attention away from what is created. So you're critique is quite valid.
The mechanic I have come up with for Naya is "Attuned".
example card:
Tigriff Courser 2W
Flying
Attuned - Tigriff courser gets +1/+1 as long as you have no untapped lands and your mana pool is empty (potential reminder text:"Mana in mana pools empty as steps and phases end.")
with a non-keyworded triggered effect parallel "At the begininning of *X* step if you control no untapped lands *effect*".
I like the mechanic as it plays off of the unsubtlety of RWG, and is very evocative of a planeswalker giving up his hold over the worlds mana to instead become one with it. A reward for flat tapping out seems like it'll make for cool balancing act games.
The ability has the huge drawback of having to play pre-combat and your opponent knows there is no trick coming, but it is very consistent when it wants to be.
The mechanic does have the downside of using a somewhat advanced rule(the mana pool). the question is is this a way to teach newer players or does it just lead to too much confusion (I believe it is the latter).
The fixes to that are have it just be 'control no untapped lands', but this just leads to a threat of activation and potentially won't even force the player to Attune to gain a benefit from it.
or have every instance become a triggered ability "At the beginning of combat if you control no untapped lands, Tigriff courser gets +1/+1 until end of turn.". but I like the idea of this providing a static buff, game play wise there will be VERY little difference I know, but still.
The mechanic I have come up with for Naya is "Attuned".
example card:
Tigriff Courser 2W
Flying
Attuned - Tigriff courser gets +1/+1 as long as you have no untapped lands and your mana pool is empty (potential reminder text:"Mana in mana pools empty as steps and phases end.")
The most obvious problem with this at that you can always tap out your lands for no reason, let your mana pool empty, and then have all your Attuned cards activate. I imagine the point of this is to 'curve out' each turn, but because you can just tap out extra lands you don't really need to worry about that. The only reason not to tap out with Attuned every turn is if you are holding an instant/card with flash or want to bluff holding one, or have a mana activated ability on board you want to keep up. It seems to mainly just discourage any form of reactive play including bluffing, which is a significant part of the strategic depth of the game. I don't like the sound of that gameplay.
The mechanic does have the downside of using a somewhat advanced rule(the mana pool). the question is is this a way to teach newer players or does it just lead to too much confusion (I believe it is the latter).
Yes probably the latter. Mana pool has largely been removed from cards now.
The fixes to that are have it just be 'control no untapped lands', but this just leads to a threat of activation and potentially won't even force the player to Attune to gain a benefit from it.
or have every instance become a triggered ability "At the beginning of combat if you control no untapped lands, Tigriff courser gets +1/+1 until end of turn.". but I like the idea of this providing a static buff, game play wise there will be VERY little difference I know, but still.
All still suffer from the easy activation problem I outlined.
DJK the purpose of the ability was indeed supposed to be easily by simply tapping out,
the wording has now changed to be completely triggered and at steps in order to dodge having to utilise
mana pools within the rules.
It does specifically remove the possibility of interaction for the attune player but forces it to be on
the opponent. but like many things in magic it can be used as a bluff in itself, why would the attune player not tap
out.
It would begin to play out much like X-green stompy plays in standard, it calls to be reacted upon,
but offers little reaction of its own, for good and for bad
DJK the purpose of the ability was indeed supposed to be easily by simply tapping out,
the wording has now changed to be completely triggered and at steps in order to dodge having to utilise
mana pools within the rules.
It does specifically remove the possibility of interaction for the attune player but forces it to be on
the opponent. but like many things in magic it can be used as a bluff in itself, why would the attune player not tap
out.
I don't like the sound of it.
You can bluff with attune, but you wouldn't bluff with attune except in circumstances where might bluff anyway. And if your opponent calls your bluff, has something that works regardless or doesn't do what you thought they were doing, you've just sacrificed even more than usual. The cost is higher, but the reward isn't greater because the bluff is essentially the same. You are therefore discouraged from bluffing.
It would begin to play out much like X-green stompy plays in standard, it calls to be reacted upon,
but offers little reaction of its own, for good and for bad
A competitive deck playing one way is very different from a mechanic.
I would say you want to encourage players to be reactive and use bluffing, timing and prediction, not discourage this. These are elements of the game that help distinguish Magic from other CCGs like HS, are also crucial to the learning to play at higher levels, and are part of the fun and balance of the game.
A mechanic that goes against this needs to be looked at carefully. Attune encourages very minimal reactiveness and doesn't do so in a very interesting or clever way, while also being notably complex and fiddly.
I'm sorry, but I really don't see it.
Hey Everyone,
My name is Jordy, long time MTG player from down under. When it comes to magic Limited stands head and shoulders above the rest in skill intensity and problem solving. To me Limited is magic in its most raw and pure form. It came to no surprise to me when I decided to try making my own set that in the same vein designing a set comes with its own series of problems and problem solving opportunities.
It all started with a ‘you know what; I think I could totally design my own set’. Some potentially hundreds of hours later and I managed to pull it off, and I found it to be wholly rewarding, sort of like a completing a puzzle.. only this puzzle gets picked apart and put back together into 40 card decks. Watching games of sealed and draft of your own set play out to perfection is an incredibly rewarding experiences, I can see how Mark Rosewater has kept his enthusiasm after all these years!
Enough about me getting all teary eyed about my baby,
Here it is, Muratha in all its glory.
I DO NOT OWN ANY CHARACTERS OR IMAGES REPRESENTED ON THESE CARDS. ALL IMAGES TAKEN FROM GOOGLE. ALL CREDIT GOES TO ARTISTS AND CREATORS. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SELLING OR MAKING ANY PROFIT ON THESE CARDS.
The Short of it
Plowshare - You may play this card transformed as a land. This follows all land and timing restrictions for the turn.
Cards with Plowshare are transform cards with a spell on its face half and a land on its flipped side.
Land Creatures – cast CARDNAME as a land play for the turn, you must still pay any additional costs including its mana cost
Encroach – Pseudo Ability - As long as you control NUMBER lands or more (Effect)
Returning Mechanics:
Morbid – Pseudo Ability – If a creature has died this turn (Effect)
Landfall – Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control (Effect)
Populate - Choose a creature token you control and create a token that’s a copy of that creature token
Unearth – Unearth < cost> : (<cost> Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.)
UWG The Hanran Shogunate - The Hanran are the human nation that live around the Roots of the Worlds Tree Muratha and in the vast Murathan Plains, the plains surrounding the Great Tree. They have developed a strong martial identity as a nation and have build The Great Hanran Wall around their territory as an extra measure to keep out invaders who seek to steal the blessings of Muratha from the Hanran
UWB The Kuilei Recluse - The Kuilei Recluse live on the mountainscapes that border the Murathan field. They have learnt to channel the life giving energies of the Roots of Muratha into their sculptures to create golems en masse. The Kuilei are generally great artisans who have traded in the sword for the chisel and hammer. These golems for the Kuilei's army and it was through their great Terra Cotta armies that the Hanran expansion was halted.
UB/Rish The Tao Coven - The Tao coven is lead by a great and all seeing djinn Tao the Redoubtable. Despite being gifted with sight beyond sight of all things past, present and future she was not blessed with the omniscient knowledge to properly apprehend all she sees. Because of this Tao spends her Immortal life in contemplation and meditation and rues mortal interruptions.
The Tao coven are a group of shaman who follow and interpret whatever shreds of translations and murmurings that they find from Tao herself. An enigmatic figure Gao-Nin (the red mana aspect) has usurped the influence of Tao by supplanting himself as 'Tao Head Translator' and guides the Tao Coven through weaving his own ends into Tao's words
RG The Bloodfall/The Spitethorns - The Bloodfall are a wild collection of Shaman that live towards the Worlds Edge, they enlist sanguine magic and are the only humans that are known to be able to communicate with spitethorns.
The Spitethorns are a breed of dryad who have been without the grace of Muratha for too long, the longer they are denied access to the World Tree the fursther they devolve. Spitethorns are savage, reckless and lethal. As they devolve their bodies become covered in stakes and their claws grow long and sharp.
G The Aashka Ah - The Aashka Ah are a mysterious group of shamans seemingly controlled by a strange elemental force that linger towards the very outer edge of the world. Aashka Ah translates to the encroaching worlds edge, they are combating the destruction of the worlds edge and seek to destroy the Hanran.
B Appolyon/The Ókètè - Appolyon the Immeasurable is a gargantuan Demon that has created his own vast underworld and lives a life of terrific vanity. The Demons in the land of Muratha are repulsed by her presence and as the World Tree grows larger Appolyon has found that he is being forced further away to the very edges of his realm. He has begun colluding with the Gao-Nin to destroy Muratha.
The Ókètè are great Rat Demons who serve under Appolyon and occasionally traverse the surface worlds on his behalf. The Ókètè have begun their invasion of the Hanran territory by releasing a terrible plague of rats behind the Great Hanran Walls
The humans who from the dawn of civilization were settled around Muratha’s Roots; the Hanran Shogunate, has since grown to power. The Hanran used the natural advantages that Muratha had given them to spread their influence and power to cover a large circumference around the tree. To solidify their power and control of their territory they have constructed a Great Wall to protect themselves and the World Tree that has been so good to them. The Hanran and their Lifebloom Dryad allies are channeling their magics back into Muratha to cause her to grow even bigger.
Unbeknownst to the Hanran as Muratha is forced to grow larger and larger she is sapping away all natural life from the outer edges of the world. As the outer edge of the world encroaches inwards the ire of the forces from outside the wall are also forced to look inwards and unite to dismantle the Great Hanran Wall and then put a stop to their magics and free The Great Tree from her unintentional desolation of her own world.
OVERALL SET DESIGN -
Muratha from its inception was aiming to be a ‘land’ set, with the main drive of the story being Muratha itself (a large Yggdrasil style tree), to the inhabitants being elementals, dryads and naturally attuned humans and elves.
Multicolor formats tend to be some of my favourite formats to play, having support for a bit more liberal of a draft with multicolour lands and fixers, but still having to draft and create a legible deck with a goal in mind creates a fun but still rewarding draft environment. I decided to use the multicolour aspect to create a limitation in design; each (Alara style) Shard has their own mechanic that is only found within their colors, this will mean each color will have its own unique combination of three of the five keywords.
Muratha is a high powered set, along the likes of Dominaria, Kaladesh etc. but like those sets there is an internal balance built within the draft and sealed format. Like Dominaria it is somewhat more a ‘Pauper’ than a ‘Prince’ format. This means that as a general rule there is a lot of power found within uncommons and commons, while there are still powerful and bomby rares it is not a set where games are decided purely on your rare pulls.
Designed Keywords -
‘PLOWSHARE’
A journey of a thousand steps begins with just one, Plowshare was that first step in Muratha.
Overgrown Mossbeast was the very first card in this set. He was designed to encapsulate what Plowshare cards would be: overly costed/under efficient, ‘heavy’ color requirements, FLEXIBLE. Whilst at first glance this ability sure feels like Ixalan’s flip lands (so unoriginal), my response to that is all magic developments come from taking pre-existing ideas design space and manoeuvring all the subtleties create something new (eg Flashback/Jump-Start). Ixalan’s Land flips are always played out for their full cost and you will eventually be ‘rewarded’ with the land when the criteria is met, Plowshares couldn’t be further from this.
The reward is built directly into Plowshare cards in their extreme flexibility. Rares aside Plowshare cards do not provide you any extreme on board advantages on either of their sides but they allow you to progress the game in either of magic’s dimensions (playing spells/playing lands) from turn 1 onwards. Each side of a Plowshare is sub-par but at points in the game where you are desperate for land drops they will certainly do, in the late game or in a mana flood situation their spell half while (often) underwhelming will certainly do.
An interesting deck building aspect of these cards is in that it is completely correct to have Plowshare cards take up land slots in your limited deck (Like Flower/Flourish in GRN). While correct the payoff certainly dies down as your Plowshare count gets higher, minimising lands increases the chance that you will have to play a Plowshare on its land side reducing their flexibility and therefore their power, chances of effectively curving out with the enter tapped clause of the common Plowshares does also weaken this strategy (It may still just be correct to just replace lands 1:1).
An important part of the design of Plowshares was to prevent them being absolute free-rolls in every single deck during the draft as like all lands that house a powerful effect (such as Dominaria’s Memorials) have essentially no cost to include in decks of their color. To combat drafters just grabbing every single Plowshare in their pack and running them off of mild splashes, each Plowshare card comes with dual color symbols in their mana costs.
The design space surrounding Plowshare was barely touched. The commons are essentially identical with their spell side changed to suit their colors. There were 10 common Plowshares created due to the nature of how transform cards have historically been places within packs, as every single pack has one transform card one cycle of five created very low variance in packs and was bolstered.
Design was actually pushed with the Sorcery land cycle, unlike the rest I wanted these lands to have their own sense of magic essence, so even when played on their land side you will get smaller, different but similar effect to their Sorcery Side. A pseudo buddy land clause was added to the sorcery land cycle to prevent two things, from the land half of these cards from being played in any deck and to prevent the lands effects from happening turn one or two (at the very earliest). It also allows for a higher strength on the effects as lands with ETB effects have been historically negligible.
From Plowshares inception I knew I wanted the Dual color lands within this set to be Plowshare cards. With such a low inclusion cost these dual land Plowshares would make an impact in standard. It quickly became apparent that in constructed formats these lands were quite powerful, but being able to play multiple of them on their land side would be unbelievably powerful. To combat this the Rare Plowshares were made Legendary on both their sides, fortunately you can have a Redoubtable Ziggurat and a Tao the Redoubtable on the battlefield at the same time, this makes Legendary on these cards somewhat less of a drawback as they are far less likely to be a dead cards in hand.
‘LAND CREATURE’
With the Landscape of Muratha rising up and wondering around I knew I wanted a keyword to fill this flavorfully, Awaken from Battle for Zendikar would have been perfect, but using Both Landfall and Awaken would just mean I’m creating Battle 1.1.
What I decided was to include creatures that are innately lands in addition to their other types.
Land Creatures have always had the clause wherein they take up your land play for that turn which prevents double dropping lands for abilities like Landfall and Encroach, allows Land Creatures to be over efficient for their mana costs, provides choices to the player in the early game if it is worth playing these powerful creatures instead of their land drop and Provides those landfall decks additional means to get their triggers in the later part of the game.
Land Creatures initially didn’t tap for mana, but because of that they were incredibly efficient. These cards still felt balanced as playing them over a land was incorrect more often than not, and helped mana screwed players stall for just a little bit longer. This was changed later on in production as it is a rule in modern magic design for all lands to tap for mana, thematically it was also a much better change. Land Creatures can still help someone who is slightly mana screwed as they will still act like a land (albeit a summon sick land), They now give the controlling player extra choice while on the battlefield which has made them much more rewarding to play with.
Land Creatures is the one mechanic that is a bit of a dangerous introduction thanks to Vintage cards such as Crop Rotation, being able to summon a Worlds Heart Colossus on turn one of a game, even amongst Vintage power levels does seem incredibly powerful. Strategies like this are hampered by the existence of Tron so many decks already will have the cards to handle a Land Creature deck or at least the sideboard for it, it does also run a risk of a 3 for 1 if cards like Swords to Plowshare or Path to Exile become tech against this deck. So while it does appear risky and Worlds Soul Colossus may make a large initial impact, it would quickly shift the meta against itself and become just another deck. Banning Worlds Soul in Vintage would likely be the end of the deck as no other Land Creatures can stand up against the Vintage powerhouses, even on turn 1.
In modern there is also a chance a Land Creature Scapeshift deck gets created. This deck would for all intents and purposes be weaker than the Valakut deck, the only advantage it would have is that it can go off with 4-7 lands in play where Valakut requires 8+, but the weaknesses that go with this capability is that it must wait an entire turn to kill, will utterly lose to a single board wipe and spot removal can slow it significantly. If this or the legacy did become unbeatable, creating an Errata for those lands spells to instead say ‘non-creature’ land would be a complete fix. It is a powerful ability in Commander, but like all overpowered things in EDH it has the self-balancing measure in its multiplayer nature.
Shard Keywords
BANT - ‘ENCROACH’
The Idea of a land threshold is nothing new in magic; it is versatile in its simplicity and it is very untapped territory. Encroach fit naturally into Bant colors in that its colors seek life and growth for all, the more their surroundings are cultivated the stronger they become. It is a subtly selfish end (Blue) using selfless means (Green/White). There is overlap between Naya landfall in GW colors and UG Ramp is a traditional draft Archetype, Encroach ticked all the boxes for Bant’s keyword.
Encroach was the last keyword to be implemented in the set, I knew Bant should have some sort of land synergy due to their heavy overlap with Naya and their clans (Hanran) thematic place within the world. Encroach and Landfall while being similar operates in vastly different ways. Encroach provides either provides a bonus or it doesn’t, the level of bonus provided will be set and for the most part are permanent, Landfall rewards can be manipulated and increased but they are for the most part temporary.
The cards which reward Landfall and Encroach are often similar; this will lead to a little bit of competition whilst drafting but also allows for some strong interactions between the two. Much like in a Landfall deck Plowshare and Land Creatures will be far more effective in an Encroach; Plowshare cards will create interesting choices for the Encroach player as being one land closer to their threshold may be more impactful than the spell half of the card.
NAYA - LANDFALL
As heavily touched upon Landfall is a key archetype and part of the set with by far the most amount of synergy within this set to the introduced keywords. Landfall was deliberately kept as simple as possible in it’s effects and abilities, like any keyword the complexities are introduced more so in how it interacts and specific board states.
GRIXIS – MORBID
The three Black tinted shards have heavy synergies amongst eachother, this all stems essentially from morbid and how well it interacts with Unearth cards and tokens (therefore Populate). Black and Blue are notorious as the ruthless color combination, coupled with reds immediate reward mentality and very minor sacrifice capabilities Grixis was the perfect home for an ability like Morbid.
Morbid stands polar opposite to landfall, it takes quite an experienced player to understand just how powerful sacrificing your own creatures is. The rewards for some of the Morbid cards were quite advanced to reflect the prospective player base, but also to create very intricate and powerful interactions which can allow a player to feel very rewarded.
Within Muratha there are numerous sacrifice outlets within Grixis, many of the effects were deliberately kept to be quite weak so as to leave them more as Morbid enablers than as game changing engines. With so many sacrifice outlets the ‘threaten’ effects within the set were kept at Uncommon as they grow much more powerful with such easy access to sacrifice outlets. All this cross synergy makes it seem like Morbid will be the more powerful of the three black shards, but the synergy will work backwards and Populate decks/Unearth decks will try to draft strong morbid effects as well, diluting each of the decks.
Designers input – I love archetypes like this in limited of real sets (like the Exploit deck from DTK) and this deck is easily my favourite to draft and play with.
JUND – UNEARTH
Black and green has been the graveyard value colours for magic’s contemporary formats, Unearth is a clear fit but also has the added bonus of being an incredibly aggressive ability with short-term haste power created in the recursion allowing it to play really well within red and therefore Jund as a whole.
Unearth used exactly as designed is quite linear, re-play a creature and attack with it. Much like when Unearth was initially created Wizards created more intricate cards by utilising enter or Leave the battlefield effects, and tap abilities. In designing Muratha this was heavily played upon, the creature half would play like normal but the Unearth part of the card played more like a sorcery. The returned creature for reasons such a defender could attack when unearthed but would have an enter or leave the battlefield effect creating in effect a sorcery.
Unearth bears heavy synergy with morbid for the obvious reasons, creatures with Unearth can die to enable Morbid triggers and still provide value later on when they get Unearthed back. But with so many sacrifice outlets available Unearth creatures also generate value on either of their sides as a sacrifice outlet.
ESPER – POPULATE
Populate might feel a little out of place without green, but it is the nature of what is being Populated that brings it back into the realms of Blue/White/Black. Blue has a knack for creating artifacts, and Black will willingly supplant life with it’s own version if given the chance, paired with Whites life giving principles Populate plays well with in this Esper design.
The fun in Populate is having a divergence in tokens available to Populate and then choosing the one that is more correct for that particular board state or match up. Within Esper there are numerous ways to generate Golem artifact tokens that are either 1/1s or 2/2s, Blue is able to generate 1/1 flying Bird Tokens, Black is able to generate ‘typhoid rat’ Rat tokens which are 1/1s with deathtouch and found in the UB signpost uncommon and rare only is the 3/4 flying Dragon Golem Artifact.
If a Dragon Golem ever makes the field it seems highly unlikely that any other token from then on would be the target for populate, but this is not unlike the 5/5 Wurm from Return to Ravnica. As a rule the bird or rat tokens may seem stronger than the generic golems, but there are heavy synergies within Blue and White that can make Golems stronger.
The ability to generate 1/1 tokens with deathtouch and propagate them seems overtly powerful and able to hold back any ground board states, this is true Populate in of itself though regardless of the token. To combat the Typhoid rat tokens there are numerous creatures that themselves get around the token (via keywords such as first strike/menace) to multiple ways of dealing with 1 toughness or power creatures spread out amongst each colors. This creates a sort of high risk high reward for generating rats over other tokens.
The synergy for Populate/tokens and Morbid is quite simple, Tokens are often numerous and expendable, Morbid will reward you if you manage to kill anything (generally easier to kill your own creatures) and therefore having so many creatures you’re willing to sacrifice empowers your Morbid cards.
Draft Archetypes –
Despite being a ‘multicolor’ set, like any set in recent magic each color pair still has distinct goals it is trying to achieve (or at least their deck will be optimised if they build it this way) and in Muratha has a signpost card at common, Uncommon AND Rare that allude to these goals. Muratha Limited follows a very similar play style to Khans (Only without the 5 color morph deck), each player will draft a color pair heavily but is essentially granted a free splash by the heavy fixing leading to consistent three color decks.
W/U – White/Blue has two substyles of playing and each works well with one another. Like all contemporary sets White and Blue have access to the most and generally the strongest flyers in Muratha. They also have a strong Populate theme and synergies for golems fall entirely within these colors. This allows them to have a strong flying aggression bolstered by some Golems to block or generate a tonne of golems and golem synergies and use some flying creatures to finish the game if the opponent can stabilise.
W/B - White/Black follows a very heavy control theme which is granted a win condition by strong flyers in Black and White. White Black has numerous ways to combat aggressive decks: the Rat tokens trade upwards very efficiently; there is a life gain subtheme and it boasts the strongest unconditional removal within the set. There is access to Populate but they have less access to some of the stronger Token Payoffs without splashing blue.
U/B – Blue/Black is the Morbid deck and naturally has a heavy control theme with access to counterspells and strong removal from black. There are the greatest density of sacrifice outlets and creatures who reward sacrificing coupled with the Blue ability to generate multiple creatures off of a single card through Populate. Much like White/Black Blue/Black often tries to seal a game with a couple of solid flyers or unblockable creatures after stabilising the board.
U/R – Blue/Red follows two major subthemes, ‘Blocking is not a keyword’ where the Blue/Red player will play some early aggressive creatures then play multiple spells that prevent the opponent from blocking via tapping or tremor style effects. If the correct cards are found within the draft or sealed pool Blue/Red has access to both the Threaten spells Bloodmist Sight and Stolen Loyalty (both Uncommon) and can create something of a steal/sacrifice. Fortunately the baseline deck will still play threatens very highly so there is no real downside of trying to make the steal sac deck work.
B/R – Red/Black is a suicide aggro deck at its core. The creatures in this color pairing have efficient costs and aggressive stats but often have self-hurting text which causes the controller to lose life. The Morbid effects in Black and Red are often instead triggered through combat and trades with the Morbid effects often enabling increased pressure through loss of life or extra power on the field. The Unearth cards within Red/Black have considerably more aggressively stats.
W/R – White/Red is the Landfall Aggro Archetype. This Archetype doesn’t require Landfall synergies as there are plenty of strong efficient creatures as is but curving out with some of the Landfall creatures will create enormous pressure. There is not a lot of ‘reach’ within these colors outside of Whites flyers but a small splash of black may provide a way to force through damage after stabilisation.
B/G – Black/Green has a self-mill sub-theme and is definitely the graveyard value deck. Black/Green plays best with Unearth and has the most capabilities of recursion. This set was designed before Guilds of Ravnica had reached spoiler season, so many of the Black/Green cards have what is essentially ‘Undergrowth’ on them to provide a sideways method of generating advantage from their self mill effects, Unfortunately these cards were too heavily cemented into the set by the time Undergrowth was revealed… so too bad Wizards.
W/G – White Green has the greatest synergies with controlling lands and has the most additional synergies with Plowshare and Land Creatures. This archetype curves out well with efficient bodies across all mana costs but has numerous ways to return your lands to your hand both enabling Plowshares to be played as lands early then recycled into their spell half and Landfall triggers in the later part of the game. There are multiple cards within these colors that boost the capabilities of Land Creatures that you control.
R/G – Red/Green is at its traditional curve out beatdown strategy, with very aggressively costed Red creatures curving into big beefy Green bodies. Red/Green has a solid amount of powerful landfall effects that become more powerful when they’re stacked.
U/G – Blue/Green is the ‘Encroach’ deck, with powerful payoffs and large spells innately in this color combination. It follows the traditional Blue/Green ramp archetype but utilises Encroach cards to grind value and to ‘pump’ the early game defensive creatures into legitimate threats when their threshold is reached.
Well congratulations if you were insane enough to read this far, but I appreciate your commitment in gaining insights for my set and the choices that went into its creation.
Feedback is appreciated for anything you noticed within the set or write up
Cheers,
Jordy
You've got some good stuff started here. My eyes tend to start with the mechanical nature of a set so i do have some feedback for you on that line of logic. Out of the mechanics for Muratha, Plowshare seems to be the lynchpin for the set in defining how the environment plays out. I can see your intent is to help shore up inconsistency with draws and allow all games to play out against mana problems with this mechanic, but i think some of the details still need to be worked out. plowshare plays out in modular space, when evaluating the best possible play for plowshare cards, the intention should be that each side of the card creates a tension in determining the choice.
The power-level on many of the plowshare cards are simply below the power-level expectations of MTG's ingrained standards. Now certainly if you adjust your power level across the set such that your plowshare spells and creatures are at, and sometimes exceeds the set's baseline, this would create the desired scenarios where it's often better to play the card as is on curve, even thought it was in a land slot, and hope you'll top deck another land.
It seems that plowshare's goals wants to visually create tension in deckbuilding, but secretly wants to help stem mana issues. Without that tension, as a deckbuilder i would rather build my mana as consistently as possible and play the strongest cards that support that. And that's not to say that there aren't the other type that want to play the strongest cards in their pool regardless of mana, and they build the mana base second, but plowshare doesn't seem to fit very well in either of those deckbuilding strategies in it's current power state.
Case in point would be Alpine Fox. At double red for a vanilla 2/1, I would never consider playing that card based on it's power level to cost ratio. As a scenario, consider i'm playing green/red, and i keep a hand with a mountain and forest, and i play a forest turn one. Turn two i top deck the alpine fox. i can't play it until turn three, and that's only if i draw another mountain. i can play it as a mountain, but then i feel like i'm playing +1 land, even though i likely intended that card to be part of my turn 2 curve options. My deck now potentially feels that much weaker than my opponent's deck. the other side of that is late game, maybe i'm top decking, and i put in the alpine fox in a land slot to ease the mana flooding, unfortunately on turn 6+ a vanilla 2/1 is highly unlikely to swing the game for me without any other cards in hand.
Ways to look at balancing in Plowshare's case is that you have essentially a double faced card. So you have two distinctly different power-levels you can work with to find the right balance. One side can be over-powered with a drawback, while the other could be under powered, but with a perk. Ideally, for modal to make sense, the card wants the decision to be somewhere between 50/50 and 25/75 on how often each of the choices is being made. I should have to think hard about wanting to use alpine fox as a land rather than as a creature in order to make the card's mechanic meaningful in game play.
And i may be misunderstanding this based on the language used, but you describe plowshare as playing the cards "transformed" as a land. i'm assuming on the land side this means there are no morph or transform costs to turn the card back onto their other faces. But what if there were? That could be an interesting way to give plowshare cards some great late game value, if they have a transform trigger on some of the creatures. Would also play into the flavor nature of the set with all things spawning from the land? Anyways those are the initial thoughts i had for you. Balancing a set is not a quick task. think how many Labor hours Wizards uses up on each of their sets, they do about nine months of work. So for each team member that's approximately 40hours x 40 weeks for 1,600 hours per person. I image they probably split their time across several projects, but it's a lot of labor that goes into set creation. The trick i think is to Iterate, Iterate, and Iterate until it feels right.
Keep up the good work and i look forward to seeing your progress. This is new ground for land based mechanics here.
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First things first, you have too many mechanics. The normal amount is only three or four. Six has been seen before, but it's a lot. You have seven.
I recommend cutting at least one mechanic, maybe even four. I will propose an arrangement of this with the individual mechanics.
The second most obvious thing- why are you doing a land themed set that is not Zendikar?
Zendikar's whole shtick is that it's a land themed world, with an adventure world flavour. Okay, your world has different flavour. But it's taking Zendikar's mechanics, and I'm not convinced you are talking it in a distinct enough direction.
The third on your general mechanical design is your shard theme. This seems like a pretty bad idea. You're investing a lot of your stock in yet another theme that defines an existing set/world (Alara in this case). You want that space to differentiate your set, not make it even more derivative. Having a three colour environment sounds like a good idea for a land set because that theme promotes multicolour play, but I wouldn't go so far as to have factions of any sort and divy up mechanics based on it. Just let it happen naturally through the balance of cards in the set, maybe don't push it hard as a result, and focus on something exciting and different instead.
I would look at how Zendikar did this- they had the land theme, they asked what that represented in world, and based the rest of the mechanics around things that fit well with that flavour. In this case, I would ask particularly- what is it about the land theme that will be different here? And find themes that complement that mechanical element and the flavour of it.
Plowshare
Okay, this seems like a nice mechanic. It's complex, but every set has room for one key complex mechanic.
Your reminder text wording is a bit technical though. I imagine it would be better to do something more explanatory and a little more evocative.
Something like (You may play this card transformed as your land for the turn)
I do also think you have a little too much diversity in your Plowshare lands. I would mainly put the diversity and interest on the front side, keep the lands simpler. I would have a couple cycles of plowshare cards with the same land on the back except for colour. It's less likely to result in inbalanced lands, makes good use of the best land designs you come up with and makes it easier to remember what all the lands do.
I wonder also whether it would be best to stick to putting plowshare on creatures and enchantments only. The flavour seems a little better, but more importantly, it would make it a little easier to learn the right play pattern for the mechanic, and I suspect permanents might be more interesting with plowshare because the decision seems a little more straightforward with instants and sorceries. I would like to see how different card types play differently with this mechanic.
I'm glad to see you have some cards which transform into permanents from being lands. It's something I would definitely want to include, and probably with several cards.
Land Creatures
A serious problem here is that the overlap with Plowshare is a lot. Both mechanics centre around spells that are also lands. Both are complex. Both help with mana fixing and mana flood. The major difference is land creatures are AND while Plowshare is OR. Is that enough of a difference?
I would argue no, it isn't. They cramp on each other's space.
Even more so, I would argue land creatures are very complex, not entirely intuitive, developmentally dangerous and surprisingly limited in design space. And that therefore they might not ever see print again (Yes land creatures have been done before exactly once, in case you didn't know). Let alone see print in a set with a rather similar mechanic. Plowshare is a safer and simpler mechanic all in all, so I would stick to it and ditch land creatures as one of the mechanics to cut your number down. It will only give your more space to make the most of plowshare.
Enroach
This is a nice attempt to complement your more complex land mechanics with something simpler, but I have a few problems with Enroach.
The first is that it's kind of too simple. It's not an exciting mechanic at all, certainly not when you need to be differentiating yourself from Zendikar here, and that makes me wonder why bother giving it an ability word and not just having the effect unnamed on cards. Not every recurring theme needs to be named.
The second problem is that it's too open ended to warrant an ability word. Ability words usually describe a fixed trigger or condition with variable effects. You almost have that, expect not only does the effect vary, the number of lands for the condition also varies. That doesn't leave much consistency to string this mechanic together.
Luckily, the solution to both of these problems is the same- this shouldn't be a named mechanic at all. Another mechanic down for your total.
Landfall
Oh no. You have a set which borrows from Zendikar's theme and tries to do something different with it, and you include Zendikar's most defining mechanic? Bad idea. Makes this set worse, and steals from Landfall's limited remaining design space that probably wants to be saved for future Zendikar sets.
Cut this.
Morbid, Populate, Unearth
As a result of my suggestion to remove the three colour theme, these mechanics are all up in there while the decision is made as to what the themes of the set will be. These are good choices of mechanics that could be returned to though, but I also wouldn't want to do all of them at once, that's too many.
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
Just brainstorming on this, perhaps another way of doing a land creatures thing would be to try something like this:
Animate N (Put N +1/+1 counters on target land. That land becomes a 0/0 elemental creature. It's still a land.)
That opens a lot of possible design space, I think, in a way that's more flexible than the Awaken mechanic from Zendikar, which has more limited usage and requires a mana cost. It's open-ended enough that it could be on permanents or non permanents, be an activated ability or a triggered ability, have a variety of triggers or costs, etc. It doesn't give haste though. Not sure if it'd be good to include haste or not. I kept it simple and clean.
Archemediesx Plowshare is certainly the Lynchpin and I think you are correct that there should be more difficult of a choice when deciding whether using their two sides. Versatility in cards has always come at a price but I believe you are right that the power level of most are too low. The Plowshare cards were generally fifth/sixth pick in all the playtest drafts, they will likely be third/fourth pickable now, which is definitely a god thing. The power level of all the common creatures has been increased to be 'on par' and the mana cost of the Uncommons was reduced.
DJK I am going to open that I strongly disagree that any and all lands sets are required to be Zendikar, though I also have the personal opinion that Wizards should stop constantly revisiting planes ad nauseum.
now if you meant to say "why are you doing a land set that is so similar to Zendikar and not calling it Zendikar?" I will happily accept that criticism. my only rebuttal is I think all land theme sets will have similar tropes (Magic in the land and Elementals) so I have to hope my flavour sets it apart.
From hereon DJK I agree with most of what you have written and proposed. The tri-color perhaps doesn't need to be forced through factions (only the Hanran and Kuilei are full three color, the rest are two colored) so will happily subdivide them. It also maybe shouldn't be pushed via color but each three color combination does get access to each keyword to a degree it really does create a diversity in drafting.
I knew my wording was too jargon heavy, I have changed to the one you proposed, my only worry is it doesn't genuinely explain the rule. You may play plowshares instead of any land drop, not just the given one (a minor issue, but rules lawyers will rules lawyer.)
The plowshare diversity at non-rare does comes purely from the spell lands, they are also the only ones to really risk being broken, they have since had plowshare removed. this also answers you following point, and makes the keyword a bit simpler for newer players now that it does not occur on non-permanents.
Land transformation is indirectly included within Naya, cards which state 'return a land you control' indirectly read you may cast this plowshare card you played as a land earlier in the game. outside of that I have decided to add a transform cost to Muratha but that is all (so two cards with it built in, but very easy design space for future sets left open).
Here's where you evoked the most changes, seven was absolutely too many keywords so I lowered the complexity down to five.
Land Creatures were always a bit of a taboo for mtg and whilst I adored how they played in limited they just would never theoretically be printed so it would be almost lying to keep them in the set. each Land Creature has been replaced by a Zendikon variants, only the land will be placed straight into play to grant neat interactions with landfall, boosted by sacrifice outlets to allow for selective timing.
eg. Awakened Icecrasher 2U
Enchantment Aura
Enchant island you control
Enchanted land is a 3/5 blue Elemental creature.
When enchanted land dies return that land to the battlefield under its owners control.
Encroach was too different as it applied to each card just as you stated, so it was removed as a keyword but the effect still remains as an implied mechanic (ala power 5 or greater from Alara).
as stated I do disagree that landfall can't be used by non-zendikar sets, but I will endeavour to create a keyword for Naya to differentiate, but also as now my set only has 1/5 keywords as new and the rest borrowed. Having the keywords not skewed to three colors will take a lot of reworking/revamping so I'll report back in at a later date if/when it integrated.
My first comment set out the problem question here- why are you doing a land set that is not Zendikar?
The major thesis of my critique was differentiating your set from Zendikar to justify doing a land themed set that is not Zendikar. I would not bother if I thought the answer was just to do Zendikar. That was not my point.
Reminder text is not rules text. One of the advantages of it is you can sometimes focus on explaining the effect rather than describing it's actual function. I think my suggested wording explains it well, I think people will be able to extrapolate it's rules meaning.
Sure.
Very nice idea. I like it. I wouldn't do too much return a land specifically, because that can be annoying if mandatory, or not very useful if optional, outside of Plowshare. I would mix in 'return a permanent' alongside it.
Returning plowshare cards to your hand is a very good alternative, so there's no need for more, you're good.
Okay. Good. Five is much more reasonable.
Good. Land Creatures was one of the more particularly problematic things.
Good.
Landfall might be able to used outside of Zendikar, I would say it's probably not worth it, but maybe. Where it definitely shouldn't be used is in a different land set. Because then not only are you taking away design space from Zendikar's signature mechanic, but you are also making it much more difficult to differentiate your set from Zendikar.
Your land mechanics are where you want to define the identity of your new world because land is your main thing, you don't want to copy the mechanics that defined a different world with the same theme. Alara was a multicolour faction set like Ravnica. You wouldn't want Alara to use Ravnica guild mechanics for it's factions. Kaldesh was an artifact set like Mirrodin. You wouldn't want Kaladesh to use Metalcraft and Imprint from Mirrodin.
If land is your big theme, you want some of your biggest, most exciting mechanics to be your land mechanics. Alara featured colored artifacts and Devour and Exalted and power 5 matters and unearth- new exciting mechanics for all of it's factions. Kaladesh had new and exciting mechanics with vehicles and fabricate to play up it's artifact theme. Follow their examples.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
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Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
I am glad I diverged, whilst I believe my set is heavily distinct to Zendikar and landfall being far from it's defining mechanic having it in there is a very on the nose allusion to it and seems to draw attention away from what is created. So you're critique is quite valid.
The mechanic I have come up with for Naya is "Attuned".
example card:
Tigriff Courser 2W
Flying
Attuned - Tigriff courser gets +1/+1 as long as you have no untapped lands and your mana pool is empty (potential reminder text:"Mana in mana pools empty as steps and phases end.")
with a non-keyworded triggered effect parallel "At the begininning of *X* step if you control no untapped lands *effect*".
I like the mechanic as it plays off of the unsubtlety of RWG, and is very evocative of a planeswalker giving up his hold over the worlds mana to instead become one with it. A reward for flat tapping out seems like it'll make for cool balancing act games.
The ability has the huge drawback of having to play pre-combat and your opponent knows there is no trick coming, but it is very consistent when it wants to be.
The mechanic does have the downside of using a somewhat advanced rule(the mana pool). the question is is this a way to teach newer players or does it just lead to too much confusion (I believe it is the latter).
The fixes to that are have it just be 'control no untapped lands', but this just leads to a threat of activation and potentially won't even force the player to Attune to gain a benefit from it.
or have every instance become a triggered ability "At the beginning of combat if you control no untapped lands, Tigriff courser gets +1/+1 until end of turn.". but I like the idea of this providing a static buff, game play wise there will be VERY little difference I know, but still.
The most obvious problem with this at that you can always tap out your lands for no reason, let your mana pool empty, and then have all your Attuned cards activate. I imagine the point of this is to 'curve out' each turn, but because you can just tap out extra lands you don't really need to worry about that. The only reason not to tap out with Attuned every turn is if you are holding an instant/card with flash or want to bluff holding one, or have a mana activated ability on board you want to keep up. It seems to mainly just discourage any form of reactive play including bluffing, which is a significant part of the strategic depth of the game. I don't like the sound of that gameplay.
This has the same problems as above. More specific timing, but doesn't look at your mana pool, so still very easy to just activate every turn.
Yes probably the latter. Mana pool has largely been removed from cards now.
All still suffer from the easy activation problem I outlined.
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
the wording has now changed to be completely triggered and at steps in order to dodge having to utilise
mana pools within the rules.
It does specifically remove the possibility of interaction for the attune player but forces it to be on
the opponent. but like many things in magic it can be used as a bluff in itself, why would the attune player not tap
out.
It would begin to play out much like X-green stompy plays in standard, it calls to be reacted upon,
but offers little reaction of its own, for good and for bad
I don't like the sound of it.
You can bluff with attune, but you wouldn't bluff with attune except in circumstances where might bluff anyway. And if your opponent calls your bluff, has something that works regardless or doesn't do what you thought they were doing, you've just sacrificed even more than usual. The cost is higher, but the reward isn't greater because the bluff is essentially the same. You are therefore discouraged from bluffing.
A competitive deck playing one way is very different from a mechanic.
I would say you want to encourage players to be reactive and use bluffing, timing and prediction, not discourage this. These are elements of the game that help distinguish Magic from other CCGs like HS, are also crucial to the learning to play at higher levels, and are part of the fun and balance of the game.
A mechanic that goes against this needs to be looked at carefully. Attune encourages very minimal reactiveness and doesn't do so in a very interesting or clever way, while also being notably complex and fiddly.
I'm sorry, but I really don't see it.
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