Mechnically, the big issue that stopped me in my tracks is that the 2nd side of cards with the Portal mechanic are simply outright exiled by blink/flicker effects, while at the same time, I actually have a whole bunch of blink/flicker cards! That's an internal inconsistency that either calls the Portal mechanic into question or means I'll need to remove blink/flicker as a theme. More likely I'll have to either completely redesign or replace the Portal mechanic.
I thought about this for a little bit, and i looked over the design for Ethereal Jaunt, and i see what you mean. You want to be able to portal spells into permanents using DFC tech. Of course based on the rules, if you blink/flicker a transformed permanent it resets to its front face. There aren't a lot of good solutions mechanically speaking. My though process went to the idea of establishing a rules rider inside of the Portal mechanic that creates a delayed replacement effect along the lines of "If it would leave the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand". similar to the rider used to keep spells from being abused by exiling them from the stack. While you couldn't blink portal cards in the traditional sense, it would allow portal cards to be recast, and still have added value. Balancing activation costs would ensure that it's not too format warping like buyback, since you will almost always get portal cards back in your hand.
Ethereal Jaunt U
Instant (C)
Return target creature or planeswalker to its owner's hand.
Portal 3UU (Exile this spell as it resolves. You may cast it transformed from exile for its Portal cost.)
///
Ethereal Marauder
Creature - Beast (C)
U: Return Ethereal Marauder to its owner's hand.
3/3
this would adjust the design along the lines of:
Ethereal Jaunt U
Instant (C)
Return target creature or planeswalker to its owner's hand.
Portal 3UU (You may cast this spell for its portal cost. If you do, exile this spell as it resolves, then return it to the battlefield transformed. If it would leave the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand.)
///
Ethereal Marauder
Creature - Beast (C)
U: Ethereal Marauder gains hexproof until end of turn.
3/3
The combination of hexproof and the adjusted function of portal would allow this card to be very similar functionally to what you wanted it to be in most game play scenarios, with it's blinking effect.
Based on your wording for Portal, which of the two costs is being used to cast it the first time, and which cost is from exile cost the second time? it's worded a little confusing unfortunately.I see that you like the idea of it being a flashback variant, with the cast twice design, but don't forget a lot of fun the game comes from creating decision points with spells, do i cast the small effect now, or save up for the big effect later. If that's not what you're looking to do, you can still word it in a way to work as per your initial design. Just remove the exile clause from Portal, and add it as hard text on the actual spells.
Ethereal Jaunt U
Instant (C)
Return target creature or planeswalker to its owner's hand.
Exile this spell as it resolves.
Portal 3UU (You may cast this spell from exile for its portal cost. If you do, exile this spell as it resolves, then return it to the battlefield transformed. If it would leave the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand.)
Hopefully this helps you on your way to solving your mechanics puzzles
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Easy Dude. You're being very un-Dude.
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Otherwise, I would say I actually am into limited more than anything else, and ideally would want this set to be playable in Modern and Standard.
That was actually the first question i was going to ask. I think it doesn't get asked enough when posting custom sets, but 'where do you want this set to sit in the grand scheme of magic?' should be the questions everyone starts with. I get a sense that most people posting are trying to get their sets to fit into rotation limited,standard,modern,legacy,cube,commander,et all. But that doesn't mean your set has to satisfy all those requirements. The nice thing about doing this on your own, is that you only have to satisfy the requirements you want it to. If you want this to be a limited only set, then design for that alone. It will unburden you from having to worry about how your cards designs impact formats the set isn't playing to. Power level can be low, if you want it to be for new players, or complex and deep if you want it to be played by the enfranchised player.
I actually find it sad that Wizards hasn't figured this out yet. the game is 25 years old, and they haven't' figured out how to make expansion sets that don't impact their constructed formats and don't have to be "wacky" sets. They could easily make silver bordered limited sets that are more powerful than any ultimate masters set, and because of using silver borders, will never be standard,modern,legacy,vintage legal, but perfectly suited for sealed,draft,commander,and cube. If they are never going to produce a product line call 'Limited Cube', then i will be more than happy to lead that crusade.
Anyways, I will address i know absolutely nothing about planescape, so i will just set aside any comments on the flavor and focus on the questions of mechanical identity you are working with. You listed a great many aspects you feel are important, including establishing a full 10 two color combinations to feature with multi-color. As the adage goes, Less is More, i would definitely caution doing some distilling down to what you feel are the top three most important mechanical identities and working from there. Consider that with Ravnica it takes at least two large sets to drill down the two color combinations enough to make them feel relevant. You will likely need to do some splitting up of mechanical across a couple of sets. If you choose to do Planescape 1 through 3, it will give you good focus on individual aspects of the nature of the world and give your mechanics room to breath.
Personally i think there is a world of design space that can be explored with the exile zone. Of course every mechanic that requires special circumstances and non-battlefield zone relevance requires enablers, so if cards are going to care about being in exile, other cards are going to be required to support sending things to exile. Exile matters can easily be combined with other important aspects, such as the rule of three. For instance, you could have a creature with a trigger that at the beginning of combat checks to see if it's in exile with at least three other creatures, and for a cost, can be placed on the battlefield tapped and attacking for a turn, then exiled again. something similar to obzedat. there's a lot of possibility with zone based triggers, and that was just one lousy example.
For lands that represent the movement of planes, maybe look at the planes of this world, more like the planes of existence in Theros (the underworld, overworld, and Nyx), than disparate different worlds that planeswalkers visit. You could adapt the original designs of sagas where there is a list of abilities that cycles, but put them on the non-basic lands, to capture a mechanical identity of moving across planes within this world. It would require establishing some new ground to keep track which point on the progress you are on. When they were first making DFC's they toyed with a day/night tracker, you would need to adapt something similar to those two things to make it work. But if all non-basic lands had three or four abilities that synced up and mechanically felt like there were on the same plane, it could work. Food for though.
it's still a couple months out, but i wonder if War of the Spark will have a planeswalker matters sub theme? for a card type that only appears at mythic rarity, they will either have to lower the rarity of planeswalkers, or make it so that non-planeswalker cards have some kind of planewalkery ability. If they go that route, just wait a month and see what wizards does with it. If they don't, you can try and be the first! The problem with loyalty abilities, is they are basically activated abilities on any other card type, so they are not very special on non-planeswalkers. If you go with the planes within planescape can be walked by regular beings, you could make a hybrid of level up, that requires moving between zones in order to level up. Would get wordy in hurry on a card, so it would likely need to be managed well, but maybe vanilla creatures get activated abilities by changing zones from exile to the battlefield?
I think you posed some fun mechanical questions out there, and i love approaching these things from the bottom up, even though its meant to be a top down set, sometimes when you don't know where to start, the best place is somewhere right in the middle. Hope these suggestions get the wheels spinning for you!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Easy Dude. You're being very un-Dude.
____________________________________________
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I thought about this for a little bit, and i looked over the design for Ethereal Jaunt, and i see what you mean. You want to be able to portal spells into permanents using DFC tech. Of course based on the rules, if you blink/flicker a transformed permanent it resets to its front face. There aren't a lot of good solutions mechanically speaking. My though process went to the idea of establishing a rules rider inside of the Portal mechanic that creates a delayed replacement effect along the lines of "If it would leave the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand". similar to the rider used to keep spells from being abused by exiling them from the stack. While you couldn't blink portal cards in the traditional sense, it would allow portal cards to be recast, and still have added value. Balancing activation costs would ensure that it's not too format warping like buyback, since you will almost always get portal cards back in your hand.
Ethereal Jaunt U
Instant (C)
Return target creature or planeswalker to its owner's hand.
Portal 3UU (Exile this spell as it resolves. You may cast it transformed from exile for its Portal cost.)
///
Ethereal Marauder
Creature - Beast (C)
U: Return Ethereal Marauder to its owner's hand.
3/3
this would adjust the design along the lines of:
Ethereal Jaunt U
Instant (C)
Return target creature or planeswalker to its owner's hand.
Portal 3UU (You may cast this spell for its portal cost. If you do, exile this spell as it resolves, then return it to the battlefield transformed. If it would leave the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand.)
///
Ethereal Marauder
Creature - Beast (C)
U: Ethereal Marauder gains hexproof until end of turn.
3/3
The combination of hexproof and the adjusted function of portal would allow this card to be very similar functionally to what you wanted it to be in most game play scenarios, with it's blinking effect.
Based on your wording for Portal, which of the two costs is being used to cast it the first time, and which cost is from exile cost the second time? it's worded a little confusing unfortunately.I see that you like the idea of it being a flashback variant, with the cast twice design, but don't forget a lot of fun the game comes from creating decision points with spells, do i cast the small effect now, or save up for the big effect later. If that's not what you're looking to do, you can still word it in a way to work as per your initial design. Just remove the exile clause from Portal, and add it as hard text on the actual spells.
Ethereal Jaunt U
Instant (C)
Return target creature or planeswalker to its owner's hand.
Exile this spell as it resolves.
Portal 3UU (You may cast this spell from exile for its portal cost. If you do, exile this spell as it resolves, then return it to the battlefield transformed. If it would leave the battlefield, return it to its owner's hand.)
Hopefully this helps you on your way to solving your mechanics puzzles
____________________________________________
That was actually the first question i was going to ask. I think it doesn't get asked enough when posting custom sets, but 'where do you want this set to sit in the grand scheme of magic?' should be the questions everyone starts with. I get a sense that most people posting are trying to get their sets to fit into rotation limited,standard,modern,legacy,cube,commander,et all. But that doesn't mean your set has to satisfy all those requirements. The nice thing about doing this on your own, is that you only have to satisfy the requirements you want it to. If you want this to be a limited only set, then design for that alone. It will unburden you from having to worry about how your cards designs impact formats the set isn't playing to. Power level can be low, if you want it to be for new players, or complex and deep if you want it to be played by the enfranchised player.
I actually find it sad that Wizards hasn't figured this out yet. the game is 25 years old, and they haven't' figured out how to make expansion sets that don't impact their constructed formats and don't have to be "wacky" sets. They could easily make silver bordered limited sets that are more powerful than any ultimate masters set, and because of using silver borders, will never be standard,modern,legacy,vintage legal, but perfectly suited for sealed,draft,commander,and cube. If they are never going to produce a product line call 'Limited Cube', then i will be more than happy to lead that crusade.
Anyways, I will address i know absolutely nothing about planescape, so i will just set aside any comments on the flavor and focus on the questions of mechanical identity you are working with. You listed a great many aspects you feel are important, including establishing a full 10 two color combinations to feature with multi-color. As the adage goes, Less is More, i would definitely caution doing some distilling down to what you feel are the top three most important mechanical identities and working from there. Consider that with Ravnica it takes at least two large sets to drill down the two color combinations enough to make them feel relevant. You will likely need to do some splitting up of mechanical across a couple of sets. If you choose to do Planescape 1 through 3, it will give you good focus on individual aspects of the nature of the world and give your mechanics room to breath.
Personally i think there is a world of design space that can be explored with the exile zone. Of course every mechanic that requires special circumstances and non-battlefield zone relevance requires enablers, so if cards are going to care about being in exile, other cards are going to be required to support sending things to exile. Exile matters can easily be combined with other important aspects, such as the rule of three. For instance, you could have a creature with a trigger that at the beginning of combat checks to see if it's in exile with at least three other creatures, and for a cost, can be placed on the battlefield tapped and attacking for a turn, then exiled again. something similar to obzedat. there's a lot of possibility with zone based triggers, and that was just one lousy example.
For lands that represent the movement of planes, maybe look at the planes of this world, more like the planes of existence in Theros (the underworld, overworld, and Nyx), than disparate different worlds that planeswalkers visit. You could adapt the original designs of sagas where there is a list of abilities that cycles, but put them on the non-basic lands, to capture a mechanical identity of moving across planes within this world. It would require establishing some new ground to keep track which point on the progress you are on. When they were first making DFC's they toyed with a day/night tracker, you would need to adapt something similar to those two things to make it work. But if all non-basic lands had three or four abilities that synced up and mechanically felt like there were on the same plane, it could work. Food for though.
it's still a couple months out, but i wonder if War of the Spark will have a planeswalker matters sub theme? for a card type that only appears at mythic rarity, they will either have to lower the rarity of planeswalkers, or make it so that non-planeswalker cards have some kind of planewalkery ability. If they go that route, just wait a month and see what wizards does with it. If they don't, you can try and be the first! The problem with loyalty abilities, is they are basically activated abilities on any other card type, so they are not very special on non-planeswalkers. If you go with the planes within planescape can be walked by regular beings, you could make a hybrid of level up, that requires moving between zones in order to level up. Would get wordy in hurry on a card, so it would likely need to be managed well, but maybe vanilla creatures get activated abilities by changing zones from exile to the battlefield?
I think you posed some fun mechanical questions out there, and i love approaching these things from the bottom up, even though its meant to be a top down set, sometimes when you don't know where to start, the best place is somewhere right in the middle. Hope these suggestions get the wheels spinning for you!
____________________________________________