For those out of the loop, Linkin Park has been a meme for a long time as a posterchild for overly edgy music usually associated with people who are trying too hard to be dark/serious/intimidating. In The End is the second most memed of their songs behind Crawling.
And it's for that reason I was giggling through the entire trailer.
^ This. Honestly, for a split second I thought the seong was performed by Evanessence, who fit that same mold.
I think Planeswalkers with 1-2 loyalty abilities and/or a possible trigger to gain loyalty are likely simplified options. Anything that mixes them with creatures seems very unlikely to me, personally.
This is my thought as well. It'd be the easiest to balance at lower rarities.
Something like:
Ajani, Lord of the Cats 2WW
Legendary Planeswalker - Ajani (U)
At the beginning of your end step, if a creature entered the battlefield under your control this turn, put 2 loyalty counters on Ajani.
- 1: Target creature you control gains first strike and lifelink until the end of turn.
- 6: Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. Those creatures gain vigilance until the end of your turn.
Starting Loyalty: 3
Which is a fine limited card but not at all broken for constructed.
I'm a big fan of presentation, and you've got that covered in droves. While I'm not sold on the untap symbol, and I don't like the idea of a bunch of non-artifact colorless permanents in a core set (as an aside, why not use the colorless frame?), I've got to give you props for the presentation here. You've got nice looking, appropriate art that's credited properly. You've got flavor text. Your templating looks correct. Like I said, I'm a big fan of presentation, and you've nailed it.
If you read much of Mark Rosewater's stuff, you know that there are a few different phases to a set's creation, and you're basically through with the design phase. You know what you want your set to do, and you've got a rough idea of where everything is going to fit and what each card slot is going to accomplish. Now you're on to development - tweaking the cards for balance, making sure your thoughts are cohesive, making sure everything works.
I'm bookmarking this page, and as I have time later I'll give more specific feedback on individual cards, but I just wanted to say for now, well done up to this point.
So, next to no information is known about Battle for Zendikar, however we have a ton of info to work off of as far as speculation goes.
For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume the following:
Gideon Jura will be the key planeswalker character in BFZ, much as Sarkhan was in Tarkir block, and Elspeth was in Theros block.
WotC will not print two planeswalkers with the exact same color identity in the same block.
Now let's talk about what we know about Nahiri
Nahiri is centered in white mana.
Nahiri was a key figure in locking away the Eldrazi to begin with (and therefore, like Ugin and Sorin, has a vested interest in being involved with the effort against the Eldrazi now)
Nahiri's mechanical inclination is the creation and manipulation of artifact equipment.
As we learned from the panel at Pax, it's unlikely we've seen the last of Nahiri
Can Nahiri appear in BFZ? I submit that she can, but given Gideon's assumed inclusion, they both can't be mono-white. This gives us a few options:
White/Red Gideon - Gideon has been closely affiliated with white/red factions in the past, even if he himself has always been mono-colored. Given his passion for the crusade against the Eldrazi, a White/Red Gideon is not out of the question (and given that we can fairly safely assume we'll have enemy fetches, and maybe even enemy man-lands, an enemy colored planeswalker is possibly more likely)
White/Blue Nahiri - Blue being one of the colors with the most artifact interaction, a blue white Nahiri wouldn't necessarily be unheard of.
White/Red Nahiri - Red needs more space in the colorpie, and expanding red to interactions with martial equipment makes sense, as the framework is already there. This could be an outside possibility.
what do you guys think? Will we see Nahiri in BFZ, and if so, what color(s) will she be?
[quote from="IcariiFA »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/custom-set-creation-and/592612-sor-siege-of-ravnica-50-cards?comment=9"]Regarding your last question: I have already backpadeled a bit. I started with the intention of doing >5 common named planeswalkers with three abilities, and many more at uncommon. Since then, first the planeswalkers lost their unique name, and their third abilities. Now I'm at that point where I'm very happy with the common cycle I have, but don't think I should do any more at common. So, I'll have five at common and about six to seven more at uncommon.
It might be useful to discuss the individual designs instead.
Ergamon Primalist2G
Planeswalker (C)
+1: Up to one target creature gets +1/+1 and gains trample until end of turn.
-3: Search your library for a basic land card, and put it onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library. “Ravnica has been my home for many years. I came as soon as I heard the rallying call.”
{4}
This planeswalker for example is how I want the common ones to be. They can generate some value, but they won't ever break the game in half if they can't be removed. Now, is that requirement fulfilled for all of them or are some too powerful when lasting multiple turns?
I think something like this is fair. Obviously, the numbers will change during development, but outside of the complexity of choice and the complexity of the planeswalker rules, this is fair at common. In some ways, it's easier to do that something I've been working on - legendary creatures at common.
In regards to using Monstrosity on the Eldrazi... I dunno. I feel that the Eldrazi should always be big and mean, not come out and become big and mean as a mana sink (although, mechanically, monstrosity works great for siege-style gameplay as a way to break over the mid-game stall). I don't know that I have any other suggestions at the moment for Eldrazi, outside of messing with lands, but I'll give it some thought.
I have two major problems with this set:
Why put Ravnica and Eldrazi together? I understand it's possible, but just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. I don't see the merit in using Ravnica to return the Eldrazi when both are easily returnable on their own. It seems like they will distract from each other and the set overall, to me at least, feels wrong.
Planeswalkers at common and uncommon is a terrible idea in practice. It has problems in every area of R&D
Creatively, why are planeswalkers, who are supposed to be very unique and powerful, showing up at common? It makes no sense in the current lore. You would have to do some story event similar to the mending for this to work at all and that wouldn't be a very good idea because it would ruin the whole point of planeswalkers.
Design-wise, planeswalkers are a card type newer players are supposed to not really see, only learning more about them as the become more enfranchised. Planeswalkers are the card type with the least rules explanation on their card and are therefore game-breakingly complex when they show up that low.
Developmentally, planeswalkers are the most difficult card type to balance, as they have a lot of things to consider and often work quite differently card-to-card.
There is a good reason planeswalkers are only mythic, and putting them at anything lower than rare, in my belief and at least a good portion of wizards as well, is completely wrong.
This set has some interest, but, to be honest, I don't really like anything you have here in the larger sense.
Can't 'because' be a good enough answer to why? A project like this is interesting to me because it's a break from the norm - this is very obviously not something that would see print from WotC because of the reasons you mentioned. However, as a custom fan-set, sometimes it's fun to simply 'crank it up to 11' and play around with something as big and wonky as this. Something I'd recommend to Apoquallyp is play that up - don't let the set take itself too seriously. It's like a Godzilla movie, but as a MtG set, which isn't a bad thing.
Frontline Courser 2G
Creature - Centaur Warrior (U)
Vanguard (Attacking creatures with vanguard must be blocked, if able, before attacking creatures without vanguard can be blocked.)
Whenever ~ becomes blocked, you gain 2 life.
2/2
Hello MTGS! I posted a similar video several months ago, and at the time the template was not updated, and the instructions were fairly convoluted. I've re-done the video and hopefully the instructions are much more clear. Hopefully this helps people begin to start playtesting sets on cockatrice!
Since we can't embed video links here, I'm just going to shamelessly link to the blog post I put up on the topic. You can find that post, with the video embedded, below:
Although the process is more complex, the quick and dirty is:
1) Install the Cockatrice Exporter
2) Run the Cockatrice Exporter, save cards.xml to your Cockatrice Appdata location
3) Export all card images to a folder with your set abbreviate in the downloadedPics folder.
4) Manually edit all apostrophes and commas into the file names of the images.
5) Playtest!
Quick update on Generals of Dareth today, which will be followed by a very large update in the near future.
I've finally gotten over some of my blocks on this set and have begun making some changes that will hopefully balance out limited and bring the set to a point where I can call it 'beta' release and move on two set 2 of the block.
Getting over my block involved thinking a lot about what makes a good limited environment. I've gone into it in more detail in my blog post found here, but long story short I've narrowed down each color pair to two loose strategies each, and I've begun cutting and redesigning cards that don't fit into those strategies. I've also begun going through and cutting/redesigning cards that felt wrong, weird, or out of place.
The strategies I've settled into are:
White/Black
All out attack using efficient creatures supported by vanguard ‘tanks’
Control the battlefield by punishing attackers/tapped creatures whilst blighting your opponent with -1/-1 counters
Blue/Red
Reverberate spells onto stealthy attackers
Counterburn behind a wall of defensive creatures
Black/Green
Using vanguard creatures, force your opponents into blocking creatures with deathtouch or that give -1/-1 counters to blockers.
Utilize sac/reanimate effects to abuse the graveyard
Red/White
Arm your creatures with equipment tokens to overwhelm your opponent
Build up an army of medium sized creatures, using unity to use activate their abilities for free to gain the advantage.
Green/Blue
Use auras with “sacrifice this aura to give target creature _____” to offensively adapt your creatures
Utilize unity to control the battlefield and ramp into a win condition
While I haven't detailed all the minor changes I've made, you can find the .pdf for the set as it stands currently here.
My focus this time around was on Green/Blue and Blue/Red. Some notes on those designs found below...
Green/Blue
Green blue is hard to design for in a set like this. I think I mentioned this difficulty in a post above, talking about how green and blue are so defined by the presence and manipulation of +1/+1 counters, symbolizing mutation, evolution, and growth. GEN being a set with -1/-1 counters, this is not an option for me, but after much consideration I made the choice to go with an aura focused theme, as growth/evolution/mutation can also be represented via auras.
Auras are generally bad, with a few exceptions, presenting a 2-for-1 opportunity for your opponent. In consideration of this, and trying to keep in mind the set's theme of combat strategy and trickery, I've create a cycle of auras that allow you to sacrifice the aura at any time to gain its effect. So, if you have you Countenance of Precision on your creature, and your creature gets target for destruction, you respond by sacrificing the aura and giving a different creature +1/+1 and reach.
Enchantment - Aura (C)
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has reach.
Sacrifice ~: Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains reach until end of turn.
Looking at each color combination, each 'General of Dareth' (the three legendary creatures and two planeswalkers) work well within their color's strategy, except for the green/blue general. While I liked the idea of the design, I've redesigned the card completely to play into the aura strategy. The current design of the card can be seen here.
Legendary Creature - Elf Advisor (M)
Whenever you cast a creature spell, look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in any order. Dominance — Whenever a creature you control attacks and isn’t blocked, reveal the top card of your library. If the revealed card is an Aura card, you may put it onto the battlefield attached to target creature you control.
5/7
All of this, of course, is still initial design and is subject to change. I feel like Sveya isn't quite thee yet, even though she's much better in context than her previous version.
Red/Blue
One of the ideas behind red/blue is to have a small creature base of evasive creatures who are supplemented by very powerful spells cast during combat. For whatever reason, I had Illusionist's Gambit in the set, which didn't exactly feel right. As part of revisiting Red/Blue, I've cut that spell and replaced it with this:
Instant (R)
Reverberate 1R (Whenever you cast a spell with the same converted mana cost as this card, you may cast this card from your graveyard for its reverberate cost. Then exile it.)
Unblocked attacking creatures you control get +1/+1 and gain “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card.” until end of turn.
So... yeah this will be a big finisher, obviously. It's likely too powerful, and as such the numbers will need to be tweaked. But, even if it will need to be nerfed before we're done, it does well in cluing the limited player in to what this color pair should want to do. If the average player drafts this, I'm hoping that they'll see it and nearly instantly begin to think 'hey, I should fill my deck up with dudes that can't be blocked use this as my finisher.' Of course, the more advanced player will hopefully think "Hey, I can loot this into my graveyard early on, then reverberate it off of a 4-cmc spell for value."
That's all I have for the day. I'd love feedback. Specifically, looking at the mechanics and themes in the set, what are some things that you (whoever you might be) would like to see to make the limited game better? What are some things you see in the set that you think makes the limited game 'worse'?
1
^ This. Honestly, for a split second I thought the seong was performed by Evanessence, who fit that same mold.
1
This is my thought as well. It'd be the easiest to balance at lower rarities.
Something like:
Ajani, Lord of the Cats 2WW
Legendary Planeswalker - Ajani (U)
At the beginning of your end step, if a creature entered the battlefield under your control this turn, put 2 loyalty counters on Ajani.
- 1: Target creature you control gains first strike and lifelink until the end of turn.
- 6: Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. Those creatures gain vigilance until the end of your turn.
Starting Loyalty: 3
Which is a fine limited card but not at all broken for constructed.
1
If you read much of Mark Rosewater's stuff, you know that there are a few different phases to a set's creation, and you're basically through with the design phase. You know what you want your set to do, and you've got a rough idea of where everything is going to fit and what each card slot is going to accomplish. Now you're on to development - tweaking the cards for balance, making sure your thoughts are cohesive, making sure everything works.
I'm bookmarking this page, and as I have time later I'll give more specific feedback on individual cards, but I just wanted to say for now, well done up to this point.
2
From today's Uncharted Realms
Text:
Scion of Ugin 6
Creature - Dragon Spirit (U)
Flying
4/4
1
For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume the following:
Now let's talk about what we know about Nahiri
Can Nahiri appear in BFZ? I submit that she can, but given Gideon's assumed inclusion, they both can't be mono-white. This gives us a few options:
what do you guys think? Will we see Nahiri in BFZ, and if so, what color(s) will she be?
1
I think something like this is fair. Obviously, the numbers will change during development, but outside of the complexity of choice and the complexity of the planeswalker rules, this is fair at common. In some ways, it's easier to do that something I've been working on - legendary creatures at common.
In regards to using Monstrosity on the Eldrazi... I dunno. I feel that the Eldrazi should always be big and mean, not come out and become big and mean as a mana sink (although, mechanically, monstrosity works great for siege-style gameplay as a way to break over the mid-game stall). I don't know that I have any other suggestions at the moment for Eldrazi, outside of messing with lands, but I'll give it some thought.
Can't 'because' be a good enough answer to why? A project like this is interesting to me because it's a break from the norm - this is very obviously not something that would see print from WotC because of the reasons you mentioned. However, as a custom fan-set, sometimes it's fun to simply 'crank it up to 11' and play around with something as big and wonky as this. Something I'd recommend to Apoquallyp is play that up - don't let the set take itself too seriously. It's like a Godzilla movie, but as a MtG set, which isn't a bad thing.
1
Frontline Courser 2G
Creature - Centaur Warrior (U)
Vanguard (Attacking creatures with vanguard must be blocked, if able, before attacking creatures without vanguard can be blocked.)
Whenever ~ becomes blocked, you gain 2 life.
2/2
1
Challenge accepted.
@OP: Great article, as always. Very good resource, not just for newer designers, but more experienced designers as well. Thanks for posting it!
1
Since we can't embed video links here, I'm just going to shamelessly link to the blog post I put up on the topic. You can find that post, with the video embedded, below:
Although the process is more complex, the quick and dirty is:
1) Install the Cockatrice Exporter
2) Run the Cockatrice Exporter, save cards.xml to your Cockatrice Appdata location
3) Export all card images to a folder with your set abbreviate in the downloadedPics folder.
4) Manually edit all apostrophes and commas into the file names of the images.
5) Playtest!
I welcome and questions or suggestions.
Thanks!
1
I've finally gotten over some of my blocks on this set and have begun making some changes that will hopefully balance out limited and bring the set to a point where I can call it 'beta' release and move on two set 2 of the block.
Getting over my block involved thinking a lot about what makes a good limited environment. I've gone into it in more detail in my blog post found here, but long story short I've narrowed down each color pair to two loose strategies each, and I've begun cutting and redesigning cards that don't fit into those strategies. I've also begun going through and cutting/redesigning cards that felt wrong, weird, or out of place.
The strategies I've settled into are:
White/Black
- All out attack using efficient creatures supported by vanguard ‘tanks’
- Control the battlefield by punishing attackers/tapped creatures whilst blighting your opponent with -1/-1 counters
Blue/Red- Reverberate spells onto stealthy attackers
- Counterburn behind a wall of defensive creatures
Black/Green- Using vanguard creatures, force your opponents into blocking creatures with deathtouch or that give -1/-1 counters to blockers.
- Utilize sac/reanimate effects to abuse the graveyard
Red/White- Arm your creatures with equipment tokens to overwhelm your opponent
- Build up an army of medium sized creatures, using unity to use activate their abilities for free to gain the advantage.
Green/BlueWhile I haven't detailed all the minor changes I've made, you can find the .pdf for the set as it stands currently here.
My focus this time around was on Green/Blue and Blue/Red. Some notes on those designs found below...
Green/Blue
Green blue is hard to design for in a set like this. I think I mentioned this difficulty in a post above, talking about how green and blue are so defined by the presence and manipulation of +1/+1 counters, symbolizing mutation, evolution, and growth. GEN being a set with -1/-1 counters, this is not an option for me, but after much consideration I made the choice to go with an aura focused theme, as growth/evolution/mutation can also be represented via auras.
Auras are generally bad, with a few exceptions, presenting a 2-for-1 opportunity for your opponent. In consideration of this, and trying to keep in mind the set's theme of combat strategy and trickery, I've create a cycle of auras that allow you to sacrifice the aura at any time to gain its effect. So, if you have you Countenance of Precision on your creature, and your creature gets target for destruction, you respond by sacrificing the aura and giving a different creature +1/+1 and reach.
Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has reach.
Sacrifice ~: Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains reach until end of turn.
Looking at each color combination, each 'General of Dareth' (the three legendary creatures and two planeswalkers) work well within their color's strategy, except for the green/blue general. While I liked the idea of the design, I've redesigned the card completely to play into the aura strategy. The current design of the card can be seen here.
Whenever you cast a creature spell, look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in any order.
Dominance — Whenever a creature you control attacks and isn’t blocked, reveal the top card of your library. If the revealed card is an Aura card, you may put it onto the battlefield attached to target creature you control.
5/7
All of this, of course, is still initial design and is subject to change. I feel like Sveya isn't quite thee yet, even though she's much better in context than her previous version.
Red/Blue
One of the ideas behind red/blue is to have a small creature base of evasive creatures who are supplemented by very powerful spells cast during combat. For whatever reason, I had Illusionist's Gambit in the set, which didn't exactly feel right. As part of revisiting Red/Blue, I've cut that spell and replaced it with this:
Reverberate 1R (Whenever you cast a spell with the same converted mana cost as this card, you may cast this card from your graveyard for its reverberate cost. Then exile it.)
Unblocked attacking creatures you control get +1/+1 and gain “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card.” until end of turn.
So... yeah this will be a big finisher, obviously. It's likely too powerful, and as such the numbers will need to be tweaked. But, even if it will need to be nerfed before we're done, it does well in cluing the limited player in to what this color pair should want to do. If the average player drafts this, I'm hoping that they'll see it and nearly instantly begin to think 'hey, I should fill my deck up with dudes that can't be blocked use this as my finisher.' Of course, the more advanced player will hopefully think "Hey, I can loot this into my graveyard early on, then reverberate it off of a 4-cmc spell for value."
That's all I have for the day. I'd love feedback. Specifically, looking at the mechanics and themes in the set, what are some things that you (whoever you might be) would like to see to make the limited game better? What are some things you see in the set that you think makes the limited game 'worse'?