This set is primarily a fan-service set, serving more than anything to give players a lot of what we've been asking for.
By the name of the thread, it's obviously a set that focuses on the enemy color combinations. As ally colors have been severely over-represented over the years, an enemy set would be a much-needed breath of fresh air.
In addition to that, I found that it's actually a great place to include tricolor cards in addition to color pairs. One of the problems with tricolor sets has been that having such a closely mixed pool of colors makes it all too easy to play four or five color decks, resulting in tournament formats dominated with good-stuff decks. I figure the best way to use tricolor as a theme is to use it in smaller numbers and make the tricolor cards far enough apart in theme that they don't want to be played together. Fewer tricolor cards also has the added benefit of conserving design space, which is pretty limited with tricolor cards.
Another thing players have wanted for a long time is a set that features mixed keywords. For example, MaRo often gets questions about Ravnica cards depicting alliances between guilds and featuring both guilds' keywords. As this would undermine the theme of Ravnica, it wouldn't be a good idea to do that in a Ravnica set. However, An enemy-color set with five new factions presents the opportunity to bake that idea into the theme of the world, and plays right into the desire to incorporate tricolor cards.
Speaking of Ravnica, while it's the most popular world with the most popular theme, players have also expressed interest in seeing two-color factions that are different from Ravnica guilds. For example, more recently there has been an outcry for a red-white faction that isn't all about combat, which simply can't be done on Ravnica with the Boros being so integrally tied to combat. Another example is the desire to see a blue-red faction which focuses on artifacts instead of spells, which would involve a major identity crisis for the Izzet. This set presents the perfect opportunity to establish novel identities for some two-color factions.
So far, here are the themes I've landed on:
-Five enemy-pair factions, each with their own keyword. Each is meant to be very different in theme from the Ravnica guilds of the same colors.
-Five "alliances" between each pair of factions that share a color, represented by a cycle of tricolor cards that each feature the keywords of their composite color pairs.
As one of the loudest requests has been for a blue-red artifact faction, I think it's important to start off with the assumption that this set will deliver on that. The problem, as has been stated by MaRo before, is that an artifact theme fights for space with multicolor cards. However, MaRo has also stated that one of the lessons he learned from Kaladesh block is that colorless artifacts as a set theme are dangerous, and that if they choose to do another artifact-centric set, they will strongly consider using primarily colored artifacts. I personally have always thought would be a better idea, and think that colored artifacts solve our problem of including artifacts as a faction theme.
Still, there is the problem that one faction doesn't quite give us the numbers to support an artifact theme, as is evident by the decision to change Azorius' them in RTR from enchantments to detain. Even though enchantments don't fight for space with colored cards, they simply couldn't fit enough enchantments into white and blue for it to be a theme. While artifacts are slightly easier to fit in, as they can regularly be creatures, there is still the possibility of a problem. To solve this problem, let's talk about inter-faction synergy.
Similar to how each of Guilds of Ravnica's guild mechanics were designed to work well with mechanics of adjacent guilds (for example, Surveil in blue-black works well with Jump-start in blue-red and with Undergrowth in black-green), each of this set's mechanics and themes should work well enough for two to appear on the same card, as long as they're connected by a color. What I mean is that the blue-red theme and the red-white theme should be synergistic enough that designing a blue-red-white card that supports or rewards those themes should be easy. It is important, however, that the blue-red theme not work well enough with the black-green theme or the white-black theme that they encourage four or five-color decks.
What this means is that, to adress both the priblem of not having enough artifacts for a faction theme and encouraging three-color decks, both the red-white faction and the green-blue factions should work well with the blue-red faction's artifacts, but should not work well with each other's themes. This allows us to plant artifacts into more colors, allowing the blue-red faction to splash into green OR white to fill out its deck. As for themes that could synergize well in red-white and green-blue, here's what I'm thinking:
Red-white - Tokens. Specifically, artifact creature tokens. While creating creature tokens is usually inherently combat-related, it has a lot more depth than, for example, Mentor or Raid, which locks you into attacking for value. Red and white have plenty of powerful token-makers as well as cards that really like when lots of creatures enter the battlefield, so I think that a red-white token faction feels like the right choice. Making the tokens it creates artifacts is the most easy and obvious way to play into the blue-red artifact theme.
Green-blue - Ramp. This a bit of a stretch, as it requires including a higher-than average number of mana-rocks, but I think it's doable. The more direct synergy I'm thinking of has to do with the keywords being used. Basically, I'm thinking of using Improvise for blue-red (which really likes red-whites artifact tokens) and a keyword that cares about large converted mana costs for green-blue.
Now that we have an idea about those three factions, let's look at the last two:
White-black - Sacrifice. The Orzhov have dabbled in sacrifice/death triggers before, mainly with haunt, but have more recently focused more on lifegain (as far as we know). My point is that they haven't really committed to using creatures as a resource, and that's what this faction aims to do. Obviously, this synergizes well with having lots of tokens, so the red-white-black strategy is pretty well defined.
Black-green - Graveyard Recursion. Okay, I'll admit I'm cheating with this one. It's really not all that different from the Golgari in how it focuses on the graveyard. In my defense, the graveyard theme is popular for black-green that I haven't really seen anyone loudly requesting something new or different, and this strategy plays right into what the set needs. Recurring creatures makes for a good supply of sacrifice-fodder for white-black and does a good job of stalling the game until green-blue's ramp deck can start powering out its threats. In fact, I can see a fun black-green-blue deck that focuses on cheating big ramp-targets into play via self-mill and reanimation. As a side note, I will need to be careful to make sure that the recursion value here isn't good enough to splash into off-color decks as recursion in general can be universally good.
So now let's look at the themes and how they interact:
White-black: Sacrifice works well with red-white's tokens and black-green's recursion. Does not work well with artifacts or ramp.
Blue-red: Improvise with support from red-white's artifact tokens and supporting green-blue's big CMC theme. Doesn't work well with sacrifice and doesn't directly synergize with recursion.
Black-green: Recursion again works well with sacrifice and helps prolong games to accommodate ramp. Doesn't work at all with tokens and offers no more support to artifacts than it does to any other faction in general.
Red-White: Again, tokens works great with sacrifice and artifact tokens work great with improvise. As a faster strategy, tokens don't work too well with ramp outside of stalling the board, and tokens can't be recurred. Need to be careful here to encourage a bit more aggression so as not to turn ramp into 4-color token control.
Green-blue: Pretty everything has already been said.
On the topic of the keyword mechanics, these should be on the simpler end of the spectrum. At least, they should be simple enough that two can be on a single uncommon without causing issues.
As for things to avoid, the first thing I want to look at is mana fixing. KTK block had fetches, which turned out to be problematic in more ways than one, even without Battle-lands in standard with them. I think it would be a mistake to put in mana fixing that powerful (or tedious) again. Instead, I'm thinking of using the lands we currently have in standard, with a couple of tweaks. Only enemy colored lands will be included.
Check lands: (Isolated Chapel) These are possibly the best dual lands when it comes to balancing for multicolor blocks. Not to flexible, but not too slow.
Basic-typed Duals: Not shock-lands, as I'm only talking about a single set and only have room for one cycle of rare dual lands. Instead, I'm thinking of using a common cycle of tap-lands with basic types. That way, they are slow enough to be available at common, but still enable check-lands.
Next, I want to talk about the color balance of the set. Specifically, how many cards of each color combination should be included. Let's look at the rares.
I'm thinking of using this mix:
-4 Rares of each color (Creature, Noncreature, Faction Keyword A, Faction Keyword B)
-3 Rares of each color pair (Creature, Noncreature, Faction Keyword)
-2 Tricolor Rares of each "Faction Alliance" (Legendary Creature, Keyword Mashup)
-5 Rare lands
-5 Other rares (colorless/5color)
Total - 55
I figured only one cycle of tricolor cards wouldn't be enough. Also, as one of the primary reasons for players to request a tricolor set is for more tricolor commander cards, it felt wrong not to include a cycle of legendary creatures.
This is what I'm thinking for the mythics:
-1 Mythic of each color
-1 Mythic legendary creature of each color pair
-1 Mythic of each tricolor combo
-2 or 3 Other Mythics (Colorless/5color)
Total - 17-18
I wanted to include tricolor mythics that weren't part of any tight cycle because we haven't really seen that before (usually they're legendary creatures or have some kind of common template.) If they prove problematic, I'm fine with changing them to monocolor or two-color.
As this is a set which focuses on enemy color pair factions, a legendary creature for each pair seems obligatory. I moved these up to mythic and the tricolor legends down to rare to allow the two-color legends to be more high-profile and competitive than the tricolor legends.
I'm not quite as sure about the uncommons, but I'm thinking it'll have the same number of multicolor cards as Guilds of Ravnica, with one cycle being tricolor keyword-mashup cards and the rest being two-color cards.
Common is only gonna have monocolor and two-color cards.
And I think that's about it. So what do you guys think so far? Any ideas for specific mechanics? For othee fearures that happen to fit well? How about creative settings that fit the theme of "Factions that make alliances?"
For a setting that justifies why factions would join up and then split apart again at will, maybe a pastiche of the Balkans in... well, pick a time period, really. The whole notion does really seem a bit Ottoman Empire somehow.
To get Green/Black away from graveyard recursion, how about having Green focus on mana-ramp in both factions, but use it to feed Suicide Black mechanics on Green/Black? Using mana dorks as the method of ramp in Green/Black and bonus land mechanics in Blue/Green? Red already focuses on Artifacts in both Red/Blue and White/Red, maybe have Red/Blue focus more particularly on combos so Blue stays focused on card draw? Then White's already focused on wide boards in both White/Red, using a field of Artifacts, and Black/White, using them as a disposable sacrifice outlet.
To break down the above paragraph, I'm thinking each mono-color has a general mechanic it focuses on, used in synergy with its enemies to define the factions:
White: Weenies. Small, cheap creatures that synergise together defensively, only being game-ending with large masses of them.
Blue: Draw/Tutor. Getting through the deck quickly to get... Whatever it is you're looking for. Normally control cards, historically.
Black: Suicide. Burning up every resource you have to burn out every resource the enemy has. Life costs, sacrifices, discards, symmetric hate(?).
Red: Artifacts. More specifically artifact aggro, with various counter-dependent Artifacts and the standard high-P, low-T creatures.
Green: Mana-ramp. Get a lot of mana, play expensive things, beat the enemy's face in with those expensive things. Very touchy to design for.
Other color-typcial mechanics would be present, but usually below the par with riders focused on the theme. For instance, Blue's evasive and delaying creatures would have some variety of cantripping, perhaps having a colorshifted Squadron Hawk for one of the commons, while Black's graveyard interaction would mostly emphasize the graveyard-spending of exile-for-Zombies rather than proper reanimation.
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I love Slivers, Myr, Saprolings and generally any creature type best served by spamming loads of tokens
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By the name of the thread, it's obviously a set that focuses on the enemy color combinations. As ally colors have been severely over-represented over the years, an enemy set would be a much-needed breath of fresh air.
In addition to that, I found that it's actually a great place to include tricolor cards in addition to color pairs. One of the problems with tricolor sets has been that having such a closely mixed pool of colors makes it all too easy to play four or five color decks, resulting in tournament formats dominated with good-stuff decks. I figure the best way to use tricolor as a theme is to use it in smaller numbers and make the tricolor cards far enough apart in theme that they don't want to be played together. Fewer tricolor cards also has the added benefit of conserving design space, which is pretty limited with tricolor cards.
Another thing players have wanted for a long time is a set that features mixed keywords. For example, MaRo often gets questions about Ravnica cards depicting alliances between guilds and featuring both guilds' keywords. As this would undermine the theme of Ravnica, it wouldn't be a good idea to do that in a Ravnica set. However, An enemy-color set with five new factions presents the opportunity to bake that idea into the theme of the world, and plays right into the desire to incorporate tricolor cards.
Speaking of Ravnica, while it's the most popular world with the most popular theme, players have also expressed interest in seeing two-color factions that are different from Ravnica guilds. For example, more recently there has been an outcry for a red-white faction that isn't all about combat, which simply can't be done on Ravnica with the Boros being so integrally tied to combat. Another example is the desire to see a blue-red faction which focuses on artifacts instead of spells, which would involve a major identity crisis for the Izzet. This set presents the perfect opportunity to establish novel identities for some two-color factions.
So far, here are the themes I've landed on:
-Five enemy-pair factions, each with their own keyword. Each is meant to be very different in theme from the Ravnica guilds of the same colors.
-Five "alliances" between each pair of factions that share a color, represented by a cycle of tricolor cards that each feature the keywords of their composite color pairs.
As one of the loudest requests has been for a blue-red artifact faction, I think it's important to start off with the assumption that this set will deliver on that. The problem, as has been stated by MaRo before, is that an artifact theme fights for space with multicolor cards. However, MaRo has also stated that one of the lessons he learned from Kaladesh block is that colorless artifacts as a set theme are dangerous, and that if they choose to do another artifact-centric set, they will strongly consider using primarily colored artifacts. I personally have always thought would be a better idea, and think that colored artifacts solve our problem of including artifacts as a faction theme.
Still, there is the problem that one faction doesn't quite give us the numbers to support an artifact theme, as is evident by the decision to change Azorius' them in RTR from enchantments to detain. Even though enchantments don't fight for space with colored cards, they simply couldn't fit enough enchantments into white and blue for it to be a theme. While artifacts are slightly easier to fit in, as they can regularly be creatures, there is still the possibility of a problem. To solve this problem, let's talk about inter-faction synergy.
Similar to how each of Guilds of Ravnica's guild mechanics were designed to work well with mechanics of adjacent guilds (for example, Surveil in blue-black works well with Jump-start in blue-red and with Undergrowth in black-green), each of this set's mechanics and themes should work well enough for two to appear on the same card, as long as they're connected by a color. What I mean is that the blue-red theme and the red-white theme should be synergistic enough that designing a blue-red-white card that supports or rewards those themes should be easy. It is important, however, that the blue-red theme not work well enough with the black-green theme or the white-black theme that they encourage four or five-color decks.
What this means is that, to adress both the priblem of not having enough artifacts for a faction theme and encouraging three-color decks, both the red-white faction and the green-blue factions should work well with the blue-red faction's artifacts, but should not work well with each other's themes. This allows us to plant artifacts into more colors, allowing the blue-red faction to splash into green OR white to fill out its deck. As for themes that could synergize well in red-white and green-blue, here's what I'm thinking:
Red-white - Tokens. Specifically, artifact creature tokens. While creating creature tokens is usually inherently combat-related, it has a lot more depth than, for example, Mentor or Raid, which locks you into attacking for value. Red and white have plenty of powerful token-makers as well as cards that really like when lots of creatures enter the battlefield, so I think that a red-white token faction feels like the right choice. Making the tokens it creates artifacts is the most easy and obvious way to play into the blue-red artifact theme.
Green-blue - Ramp. This a bit of a stretch, as it requires including a higher-than average number of mana-rocks, but I think it's doable. The more direct synergy I'm thinking of has to do with the keywords being used. Basically, I'm thinking of using Improvise for blue-red (which really likes red-whites artifact tokens) and a keyword that cares about large converted mana costs for green-blue.
Now that we have an idea about those three factions, let's look at the last two:
White-black - Sacrifice. The Orzhov have dabbled in sacrifice/death triggers before, mainly with haunt, but have more recently focused more on lifegain (as far as we know). My point is that they haven't really committed to using creatures as a resource, and that's what this faction aims to do. Obviously, this synergizes well with having lots of tokens, so the red-white-black strategy is pretty well defined.
Black-green - Graveyard Recursion. Okay, I'll admit I'm cheating with this one. It's really not all that different from the Golgari in how it focuses on the graveyard. In my defense, the graveyard theme is popular for black-green that I haven't really seen anyone loudly requesting something new or different, and this strategy plays right into what the set needs. Recurring creatures makes for a good supply of sacrifice-fodder for white-black and does a good job of stalling the game until green-blue's ramp deck can start powering out its threats. In fact, I can see a fun black-green-blue deck that focuses on cheating big ramp-targets into play via self-mill and reanimation. As a side note, I will need to be careful to make sure that the recursion value here isn't good enough to splash into off-color decks as recursion in general can be universally good.
So now let's look at the themes and how they interact:
White-black: Sacrifice works well with red-white's tokens and black-green's recursion. Does not work well with artifacts or ramp.
Blue-red: Improvise with support from red-white's artifact tokens and supporting green-blue's big CMC theme. Doesn't work well with sacrifice and doesn't directly synergize with recursion.
Black-green: Recursion again works well with sacrifice and helps prolong games to accommodate ramp. Doesn't work at all with tokens and offers no more support to artifacts than it does to any other faction in general.
Red-White: Again, tokens works great with sacrifice and artifact tokens work great with improvise. As a faster strategy, tokens don't work too well with ramp outside of stalling the board, and tokens can't be recurred. Need to be careful here to encourage a bit more aggression so as not to turn ramp into 4-color token control.
Green-blue: Pretty everything has already been said.
On the topic of the keyword mechanics, these should be on the simpler end of the spectrum. At least, they should be simple enough that two can be on a single uncommon without causing issues.
As for things to avoid, the first thing I want to look at is mana fixing. KTK block had fetches, which turned out to be problematic in more ways than one, even without Battle-lands in standard with them. I think it would be a mistake to put in mana fixing that powerful (or tedious) again. Instead, I'm thinking of using the lands we currently have in standard, with a couple of tweaks. Only enemy colored lands will be included.
Check lands: (Isolated Chapel) These are possibly the best dual lands when it comes to balancing for multicolor blocks. Not to flexible, but not too slow.
Basic-typed Duals: Not shock-lands, as I'm only talking about a single set and only have room for one cycle of rare dual lands. Instead, I'm thinking of using a common cycle of tap-lands with basic types. That way, they are slow enough to be available at common, but still enable check-lands.
Next, I want to talk about the color balance of the set. Specifically, how many cards of each color combination should be included. Let's look at the rares.
I'm thinking of using this mix:
-4 Rares of each color (Creature, Noncreature, Faction Keyword A, Faction Keyword B)
-3 Rares of each color pair (Creature, Noncreature, Faction Keyword)
-2 Tricolor Rares of each "Faction Alliance" (Legendary Creature, Keyword Mashup)
-5 Rare lands
-5 Other rares (colorless/5color)
Total - 55
I figured only one cycle of tricolor cards wouldn't be enough. Also, as one of the primary reasons for players to request a tricolor set is for more tricolor commander cards, it felt wrong not to include a cycle of legendary creatures.
This is what I'm thinking for the mythics:
-1 Mythic of each color
-1 Mythic legendary creature of each color pair
-1 Mythic of each tricolor combo
-2 or 3 Other Mythics (Colorless/5color)
Total - 17-18
I wanted to include tricolor mythics that weren't part of any tight cycle because we haven't really seen that before (usually they're legendary creatures or have some kind of common template.) If they prove problematic, I'm fine with changing them to monocolor or two-color.
As this is a set which focuses on enemy color pair factions, a legendary creature for each pair seems obligatory. I moved these up to mythic and the tricolor legends down to rare to allow the two-color legends to be more high-profile and competitive than the tricolor legends.
I'm not quite as sure about the uncommons, but I'm thinking it'll have the same number of multicolor cards as Guilds of Ravnica, with one cycle being tricolor keyword-mashup cards and the rest being two-color cards.
Common is only gonna have monocolor and two-color cards.
And I think that's about it. So what do you guys think so far? Any ideas for specific mechanics? For othee fearures that happen to fit well? How about creative settings that fit the theme of "Factions that make alliances?"
I̟̥͍̠ͅn̩͉̣͍̬͚ͅ ̬̬͖t̯̹̞̺͖͓̯̤h̘͍̬e͙̯͈̖̼̮ ̭̬f̺̲̲̪i͙͉̟̩̰r̪̝͚͈̝̥͍̝̲s̼̻͇̘̳͔ͅt̲̺̳̗̜̪̙ ̳̺̥̻͚̗ͅm̜̜̟̰͈͓͎͇o̝̖̮̝͇m̯̻̞̼̫̗͓̤e̩̯̬̮̩n͎̱̪̲̹͖t͇̖s̰̮ͅ,̤̲͙̻̭̻̯̹̰ ̖t̫̙̺̯͖͚̯ͅh͙̯̦̳̗̰̟e͖̪͉̼̯ ̪͕g̞̣͔a̗̦t̬̬͓͙̫̖̭̻e̩̻̯ ̜̖̦̖̤̭͙̬t̞̹̥̪͎͉ͅo͕͚͍͇̲͇͓̺ ̭̬͙͈̣̻t͈͍͙͓̫̖͙̩h̪̬̖̙e̗͈ ̗̬̟̞̺̤͉̯ͅa̦̯͚̙̜̮f͉͙̲̣̞̼t̪̤̞̣͚e̲͉̳̥r͇̪̙͚͓l̥̞̞͎̹̯̹ͅi͓̬f̮̥̬̞͈ͅe͎ ̟̩̤̳̠̯̩̯o̮̘̲p̟͚̣̞͉͓e͍̩̣n͔̼͕͚̜e̬̱d̼̘͎̖̹͍̮̠,͖̺̭̱̮ ̣̲͖̬̪̭̥a̪͚n̟̲̝̤̤̞̗d̘̱̗͇̮͕̳͕͔ ͖̞͉͎t̹̙͎h̰̱͉̗e̪̞̱̝̹̩ͅ ̠̱̩̭̦p̯̙e͓o̳͚̰̯̺̱̰͔̘p̬͎̱̣̼̩͇l̗̟̖͚̠e̱͉͔̱̦̬̟̙ ̖͚̪͔̼̦w̺̖̤̱e͖̗̻̦͓̖̘̜r̭̥e͔̹̫̱͕̦̰͕ ̗͔̠p̠̗͍͍̱̳̠r̰͔͎̰o͉̥͓̰͚̥s̟͚̹̱͔̣t͉̙̳̖͖̪̮r̥̘̥͙̹a͉̟̫̟̳̠̟̭t͈̜̰͈͎e̞̣̭̲̬ ͚̗̯̟͙i͍͖̰̘̦͖͉ṇ̮̻̯̦̲̩͍ ̦̮͚̫̤t͉͖̫͕ͅͅh͙̮̻̘̣̮̼e͕̺ ͙l͕̠͎̰̥i̲͓͉̲g̫̳̟͈͇̖h̠̦̖t͓̯͎̗ ̳̪̘̟̙̩̦o̫̲f̙͔̰̙̠ ̹̪̗͇̯t͖̼̼͉͖̬h̹͇̩e͚̖̺̤͉̹͕̪ ͚͓̭̝̺G͎̗̯̩o̫̯̮̟̮̳̘d̜̲͙̠-̩̳̯̲̗̜P̹̘̥͉̝h͍͈̗̖̝ͅa͍̗̮̼̗r̜̖͇̙̺a̭̺͔̞̳͈o̪̣͓̯̬͙̯̰̗h̖̦͈̥̯͔.͇̣̙̝
To break down the above paragraph, I'm thinking each mono-color has a general mechanic it focuses on, used in synergy with its enemies to define the factions:
White: Weenies. Small, cheap creatures that synergise together defensively, only being game-ending with large masses of them.
Blue: Draw/Tutor. Getting through the deck quickly to get... Whatever it is you're looking for. Normally control cards, historically.
Black: Suicide. Burning up every resource you have to burn out every resource the enemy has. Life costs, sacrifices, discards, symmetric hate(?).
Red: Artifacts. More specifically artifact aggro, with various counter-dependent Artifacts and the standard high-P, low-T creatures.
Green: Mana-ramp. Get a lot of mana, play expensive things, beat the enemy's face in with those expensive things. Very touchy to design for.
Other color-typcial mechanics would be present, but usually below the par with riders focused on the theme. For instance, Blue's evasive and delaying creatures would have some variety of cantripping, perhaps having a colorshifted Squadron Hawk for one of the commons, while Black's graveyard interaction would mostly emphasize the graveyard-spending of exile-for-Zombies rather than proper reanimation.