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 Poll for deciding the winners is up! I'm gonna leave that running for a week, and link it in the OP as well. Once we've got some clear results, we'll run the next contest, about how we'll be coloring and flavoring those mechanics. In the mean time, Lack of Bear, would you like to give us a 'standard' custom card challenge so the thread has something to do for the next week, and to keep our ideas flowing? I've got an idea if not, one that's very vaguely thread-relevant, but...
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Jul 13, 2020 17:21
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I put this in the comments field of the vote, but figured I'd repeat it here: there were a lot of good ideas posted, and it made it really hard to limit myself to picking only ~5.
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Jul 13, 2020 19:55
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Set making has me thinking about what I like about new sets, which is limited! One thing I love to do in limited is look for fun build around cards.   A build around is a card that you should think about when drafting or deckbuilding that usually gives an advantage to playing a certain theme or strategy. A build around can be subtle and get you thinking, or it can be a card that says "whenever you play a card with keyword, do a cool thing."   Build arounds are more often than not an enchantment that costs between 2 and 5 mana, and can be a bit of a tempo risk that you make up for by giving all of your other cards an advantage. A good build around would ideally be supported by a large enough pool of cards in the set that support its theme.   For this week, make me a build around enchantment. Maybe if we find some fun ones we can figure out a way to work them into our set themes. You have until 9PM PST, Sunday, July 19th.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:59
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 First thought, especially with this seeming like it might be a set with a lot of creature tokens. The reference is obvious, I'm sure. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 21:51
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 I really liked the design of the new Barrin and wanted to make a build-around in its style. It enables potentially building around your own etb cards, or cards that bounce your opponent's permanents. I enjoyed drafting around portal of sanctuary in m20 limited which is similar to this card.
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Jul 13, 2020 23:13
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 quote:ERRATA: e: updated (added "from your hand" requirement to prevent it triggering itself) e2: i wasn't too crazy about this, so here's a variant: 
President Ark fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 23:53
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President Ark posted:
Doesn't this counter your smaller costed split spell? Did you mean "exile it as it resolves"?
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Jul 14, 2020 00:41
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WalrusWhiskers posted:Doesn't this counter your smaller costed split spell? i did, thank you
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Jul 14, 2020 00:49
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Naturally I'd already had a couple ideas floating around in my head for build-arounds for my monger keyword. If I'm being honest, I don't know if it'd be a good idea to build a draft deck around my mechanic, but also maybe it would be.  Next, we have a buildaround I wrote for this contest's husk mechanic, which I thought was a neat idea. I don't know if Magic has ever made anything intentionally work with generic cards, but I feel like it's up someone's alley.  My last buildaround card works with the mechanic created by our own judge, Momentum. Draft decks working around things like convoke tend to build around big expensive creatures rather than these sorts of draft enchantments, but I wanted to give it a shot anyway. 
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Jul 14, 2020 00:50
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This one goes infinite with itself, BTW.
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Jul 14, 2020 04:04
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you could probably fix it by giving the token an ability like the blue illusion "when this is targeted by something, sac it" thing
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Jul 14, 2020 04:08
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President Ark posted:you could probably fix it by giving the token an ability like the blue illusion "when this is targeted by something, sac it" thing Yeah, I came to a similar conclusion. I'll probably give the tokens haste.
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Jul 14, 2020 04:36
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"a nontoken creature" would also work, seeing as it's currently insanely good with any effect along the lines of "pay x mana: make a 2/2 (3/3, etc.)" and not great with the typical creatures people want to play with, unless people really want to design another 4/2 for 2R in a custom set.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:23
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ungulateman posted:"a nontoken creature" would also work, seeing as it's currently insanely good with any effect along the lines of "pay x mana: make a 2/2 (3/3, etc.)" and not great with the typical creatures people want to play with, unless people really want to design another 4/2 for 2R in a custom set. The issue here is that it is specifically made for the "husk" mechanic, which creates tokens. I see two possible solutions; one being that I give the tokens haste (theoretically, I could give them flash, which is funny but also feels to much like a wink at the audience); the other is that husk changes to have the creatures enter the battlefield, and if their husk cost is paid they simply have no abilities, rather than being a token. This is a pretty substantial change, getting rid of graveyard synergies (and denying us all the neat "embalm" style token artwork), and I don't feel comfortable assuming that sort of change on a mechanic not my own. On a side note: I think it's important to see vanilla and french vanilla creatures in custom sets, especially if we ever want to try drafting with it. While nobody's favorite thing to design or see in a pack, every card being complicated leads to some very ugly gameplay.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:52
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itsmekidney posted:On a side note: I think it's important to see vanilla and french vanilla creatures in custom sets, especially if we ever want to try drafting with it. While nobody's favorite thing to design or see in a pack, every card being complicated leads to some very ugly gameplay.  Nobody really remembers Vulpine Goliath, but it was important for the limited environment.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:34
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PMush Perfect posted:
6/5 fox with trample for 4GG, if I recall correctly. Irked me because it was off-colour for fox tribal. 
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Jul 14, 2020 21:29
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itsmekidney posted:Next, we have a buildaround I wrote for this contest's husk mechanic, which I thought was a neat idea. I don't know if Magic has ever made anything intentionally work with generic cards, but I feel like it's up someone's alley. I'm glad to see someone liked my mechanic! I'm pretty sure this  is the only time wizards has gotten into generic-matters. I think Vanilla militia could be fixed with this wording: Whenever a creature with no abilities enters the battlefield under your control, if it is not a copy, create a token that is a copy of it. For build-around enchantments I made one for husk and a couple (maybe obvious and maybe overly-complicated) general tokens matter cards:    one for the galvanize/momentum/avalanche mechanic:  I'm not sure where it ended up between cost reduction and adding mana, the idea here is you should only be able to recur via momentum and maybe a little boost from llanowar elves and one for the twin mechanic:  Not quite sure about the cost/abilities on this one
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Jul 15, 2020 05:28
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 At long last I finally fixed my card, and in exchange made it perhaps a little too strong. I might edit it again to fix this; it's probably a bit much at the moment. I also made my MSE use the old frames and it always slows my computer down to go to the "change frame" tab so I'm going to do old frames until I need to use a special one.  This is made for my own Splash Damage mechanic, but it would be a lot stronger in a pingers deck. I sort of think that's okay; Pingers decks are, in my experience, not at huge risk of being broken.  I've been having a good time trying to make cool cards for abilities I didn't design; here is one for the mulch ability. Mulch actually reminds me of an ability I made myself a while back while trying to make a wedge set (I don't really recommend we make a wedge set now, tbh, with Ikoria so closely behind us). Mine works essentially the same way but was called "martyr" and was in the WBG color identity. This card combines the flavor of my idea and the mulch idea, and is in Abzan because I think that's a nice place for it. itsmekidney fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 22:23
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My wife is looking through the set and just realized that Resolute is a lot like Totem armor, which is a neat mechanic I somehow forgot all about despite technically having an Estrid deck.
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Jul 18, 2020 06:50
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I'll post info about the new main contest some time late tonight or early tomorrow, don't wanna take the wind out of LoB's sails.
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Jul 20, 2020 04:55
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This week the cards that stood out to me most were the ones that played in the space we are exploring in our set making process. Third Place - AJ_Impy's Rumble Pit This is probably undercosted and should really have a cost associated with the triggered ability, but I like the token deck encouragement. One of my favorite cards when I started playing Magic was Pandemonium. Giving your creatures an opening shot right when they hit the board feels great, and it is a powerful effect. With the vanilla tokens we seem to be leaning toward, the fights would be pretty straightforward, but in other environments you could see tokens that make the fights a lot more interesting with stuff like keywords and damage triggers. Second Place - itsmekidney's Vanilla Militia I remember first looking at the effect of Muraganda Petroglyphs and not even considering the token applications, considering how they usually end up being vanilla creatures. This operates in the same space of saying without saying that it synergizes with tokens the most. Riot's form of an outer shell keyword surrounding a well worn keyword works great here as a stop gap for infinite triggers, as it provides great flexibility. I think the design does enough to differentiate it from a vanilla only version of Parallel Lives. First Place - BaiSha's Target of Opportunity Maybe I am biased because I am thinking about applications of abilities that I conceptualized, but this is a really fun one! It could probably be changed to a fight, or limited in targeting, as it get really strong when you are swinging away every turn, but it is such a fun interaction in red green. I would definitely pick this highly, and it makes me prioritize momentum creatures and mana dorks. That sort of consideration is what I was looking for in a build around. I feel like red green doesn't get enough fun stuff like this, so it is nice to see. Congratulations BaiSha
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Jul 20, 2020 07:09
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Nice! Next time we have a filler contest, BaiSha will judge it. For now, though, it's time for... Edit: nvm, a contest is a bad way to do this. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Jul 21, 2020 |
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Jul 20, 2020 19:50
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hey, so Mimic isn't a mechanic we've done.
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Jul 20, 2020 21:39
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If I'm being honest, this second contest is a lot; it's essentially asking us to come up with a minimum of 5-10 cards (and an ideal 25 or so). More importantly, it's actually asking us to perform 4 incredibly important tasks for the future of the set, all in a single bound: It wants us to (1) design the set's plane, (2) design the set's story, which is going to be incredibly tied to the plane's factions, (3) establish the mechanical identities of the colors, and (4) design what sort of play-style this set primarily appeals to. I worry at the moment that this is simply too much to ask in a single run. What's more, I feel as if the beginning of our contest still isn't very resolved. We're still looking at a whopping 9 mechanics, not all of which seem to play nice with each other. For instance, our third most popular mechanic, bloodrite, is the only mechanic on the list that cares about sacrificing permanents, and it very specifically doesn't function without heavy support from cards that allow us to sacrifice. My own mechanic and special baby, monger, is really only effective in a multiplayer set, and it's the only mechanic in our batch that cares about this specifically. Like I don't want to throw shade on lackofbear's contest, because Lackofbear runs really fun contests and I had a lot of fun making cards for it (and I think I learned how the set could theoretically function), but I feel as though we should have been using this time to host a forum (heh) on the mechanics being made. I feel as though we needed to talk about all the cool mechanics we did, and the fact that we went a week without doing so has taken the wind out of my sails a bit.
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Jul 20, 2020 23:06
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We’ve got time to talk about it now! I feel like a lot of the popular mechanics point to a potentially interesting token-focused set, which would work well with Bloodrite, since you’d have fuel for sacrifices. And you don’t need to include every popular mechanic! It’s not a requirement, but they’re ideas for which ones people are interested in, which certainly helps me figure out which ones I want to work in with existing mechanics.
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Jul 20, 2020 23:23
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This does look like a lot in one go, I have a document about backstory that's at 250 words and I haven't touched on anything mechanical yet. It seems like the important thing to do is establish color identities/mechanics/draft archetypes and the rest is either window dressing on that or example cards. I think this is going to work better if we're sketching things out or just posting about one or two aspects and expecting to collaborate and compromise more than if we're Entering A Contest with a fully formed and interlocking set of ideas. That said, I'm psyched to win lack of bear's contest! e: also what is mimic? BaiSha fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jul 21, 2020 |
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Jul 21, 2020 00:29
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I think it would be helpful if we decided on A.) A flavor. Any flavor B.) The factions resulting from this flavor. It would really suck to design 25 cards, with lore and backstory and just have it thrown out, I think.
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Jul 21, 2020 00:32
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Yeah, "as a contest" might not be the best way to do this, thinking about it.
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Jul 21, 2020 01:09
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I think that we need to decide the flavor of the set or we need to decide the theme of the set. If it is a token set then we need to say that decisively so that people can design around that. I would be open to spending a week or so just deciding on flavor and collecting art references to work on conceptualizing where each color fits.
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Jul 21, 2020 01:11
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I think determining all the factions is too much. It's a bottom-top set, right? So that should really not be our major concern until we've done quite a bit of work determining the mechanical properties. Also, to get us started with the "talking about ideas" portion: - I don't think this is a token set. Husk is a very cool token mechanic, sure, but for the most part it's the only one we all seem to have agreed on. - I really want to push for a multiplayer focused set here for a variety of reasons. A lot of new players (including myself, relatively speaking) play Commander first and foremost, and experience the rotating format mostly through limited events ... especially pre-release two-headed events. Multiplayer draft has really only been attempted 3 times in all of magic's history, which means it has a lot open design space and pairs well with Commander oriented designers. - Momentum is our strongest mechanic, and I think we should work on that one before we take anything else for granted. I want to include monger in this set so badly, and I'm lowkey bitter that no one talked about it except for for grammar reasons, but I'm willing to table it if it means really carving out a piece of the color pie for a mechanic people seem really fond of. I feel like once we really get a base place to work from, other mechanics both old and new will click into place.
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Jul 21, 2020 01:57
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Y'all are making some good points, contest is officially cancelled so we can do this more collaboratively.itsmekidney posted:I think determining all the factions is too much. It's a bottom-top set, right? So that should really not be our major concern until we've done quite a bit of work determining the mechanical properties. Lack of Bear posted:I think that we need to decide the flavor of the set or we need to decide the theme of the set. The idea I was toying with was focusing on making combat tricks matter. My rough concept, mechanically, was ally colors were creature focused, while enemy colors were more spell-focused, and each faction's associated mechanic tied in with that. That would mean in limited, you could either focus on one specific kind of noncreature theme, and dip into two other creature themes, or focus on one kind of creature theme, and dip into two noncreature themes. Allied: Creature mechanic, represented by legendary creatures WU: Heroic UB: Ninjutsu (rename) BR: Bloodrite RG: Raid (rename?) GW: Husk (rename, Militia?) Enemy: Noncreature mechanic, represented by planeswalkers WR: Miracle RU: Encore (Rename?) UG: Retrace (Rename?) GB: Recover BW: Monger For example, if you draft RG, you're mostly focusing on stompy, but might splash U so you could lean more heavily into having something to do with your lands, or B for recursion, or even W for Mad Topdeck Rips. Meanwhile, someone focusing on RU control could splash B, and get in some creatures and spells to sacrifice things, having some chump blockers that could also be thrown into the furnace for cool effects. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Jul 21, 2020 |
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Jul 21, 2020 03:37
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If you aren't going to do the contest, I think it would be good to still leave the voting results/fun facts up for reference. Personally, I think it would be interesting to do a set with Bloodrite as a mechanic across all five colors, and then spread out the mechanics that can help enable sacrificing, like Husk, Twin, and Unfinished. Sacrificing has always been something any color + colorless can do even if some colors prefer to stick to self-sacrificing, and a set that's mechanically and thematically focused around sacrificing isn't something I can remember having been done before (usually it's a subtheme within a color combination.) I don't know how well that would work with Momentum, though, and it's the most popular. Maybe it could be in green, red, and blue, and then their concept is using Momentum to ramp out big permanents which then have abilities that let you sacrifice the Momentum dorks for value.
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Jul 21, 2020 04:20
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I could see sacrifice triggers in a Red/Black or a Red/Black/Green, maybe a Black/White, but I think it is hard to justify it in combinations outside of that. Things sacrifice to pay a cost in all colors, but specific sacrifice synergies are very much a Black and Black allied mechanic. It has been the goto theme for red black draft for most of the sets in recent history.
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Jul 21, 2020 05:15
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Yeah, but I think having a theme that pushes a mechanic beyond its usual space is interesting. There's plenty of sets that have a theme that's so important that it forces the colors that don't usually use it to stretch a bit to fit, and I think that could also make for a more interesting design challenge. Like, there's tons of sets where "graveyard matters" is relegated to just the black/green theme, but that didn't stop them from giving every color Flashback in Innistrad.
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Jul 21, 2020 05:46
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I guess this is the kind of discussion that I was interested in having about the set's specific theme. A sacrifice specific set would be an interesting direction. It probably would need a lot of fodder tokens, like Eldrazi Spawn, Food, or Clues. The other option would be a lot of card advantage or recursion, which could be dangerous.
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Jul 21, 2020 06:25
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Personally I feel like sacrificing is a cool subtheme, but that as a focal point of a set it is more about a gameplay style than say, Kaladesh's artifact theme or Inistrad's graveyard theme. Specifically, those places are just new zones to work in, and giving them to new colors gives them new zones to play in, whereas sacrifice to me isn't so much a new space to play in as it is a way to play. Not that it's impossible, but I know a lot of people who don't really play sacrifice decks because sacrificing permanents isn't something they like doing (which you'd never hear about say, playing a land.) Not that I'm completely opposed, but I think I'd have to see some really solid evidence that a sacrifice theme could feel at home for someone who only enjoys playing in the Bant range. ... That said, if we do keep a sacrifice theme going, I happen to know a mechanic that uses silver, which isn't a creature, I admit (which is what comes to mind for me when I think sacrifice) but would be a self creating sacrifice outlet that could work in whatever colors you wanted it to. Something to consider.
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Jul 21, 2020 08:27
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I'm trying to map out mechanics to colors and I have something I'm pretty happy with. I'm going with wedge splits here, people were talking about momentum as a RUG mechanic, and I thought of husk as a GWB one, so I just tried to fit some of the other mechanics into wedges, some make more sense than others. RUG: momentum (R/G as basic ramp into fatties, U with defenders/big butt guys to block and reduce costs on the opponent's turn) GWB: husk (B with recursion husk guys, G with exile from your graveyard for spell effects, W with basic split cards) RWU: encore (combat tricks to improve your encore guys/instants with smaller evasive guys) WRB: enchanter (defensive/grindy enchantments while attacking for 1 or 2 damage a turn) GUB: bloodline (etb/death trigger guys) On these last two I think they might be switched, or either could be exchanged with unfinished if either of those make more sense. If we're all in on sacrifice as an overarching theme this doesn't include much support for that, but there are creature and enchantment tokens both being made if we're still thinking about tokens. I think monger works best as a couple cycles tying into the themes, present in all colors, but not a single draftable deck something like this: at common something like the rusalka cycle, a cheap activation cost but requiring a sacrifice or to sacrifice itself at uncommon the alabaster mage cycle or the ravnica guildmages, but with 2/c activated abilities at rare something more like a serious build around for the wedge mechanic, but including a monger ability and probably a special sacrifice option for silver tokens at mythic a legendary artifact/ 5c enchantment pushed for group hug EDH I'm not sure what rarity it would work for, but I think monger would be cool on a set of mana rocks. You risk fixing/ramping your opponent's mana, but you also stand to be ramped yourself and will definitely fix your own mana.
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Jul 21, 2020 11:09
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We've had sacrifice themes before. Devour worked as one of five coequal themes on Alara, with some synergies with Unearth. Artifact sacrifice was Red's bag on original Mirrodin. The less said about the land sacrifice in Prophecy, the better. Getting resources into play is a key part of the game, and making cards rely on self-depleting them is a tricky balancing act.
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Jul 21, 2020 11:10
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I think, if we're going to do a sacrifice-heavy set, we need to also make it a token-heavy set. It's the only way that kind of strong emphasis on finite resources works out in a limited environment.
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Jul 21, 2020 11:15
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PMush Perfect posted:I think, if we're going to do a sacrifice-heavy set, we need to also make it a token-heavy set. It's the only way that kind of strong emphasis on finite resources works out in a limited environment. Yeah, Twin would work best here since two permanents from one card has the synergy we need. That said, Jund sacrifice is a huge and obnoxious part of Standard right this second, and I'd be leery of emulating that.
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Jul 21, 2020 16:18
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