Magic the Gathering XXII: Where Puns Go to Die

[thorgrim29]

So I found my old magic cards in my parent's basement the other day and since I have friends who still play regularly I'm thinking of picking it up again. I stopped playing around 10 years ago (the most recent cards I have are from the first Kamigawa set). I've been watching videos and looking through my collection for a few days and I've decided to put back together my green deck I grew out of a basic 8th edition deck way back when, where the goal is to use elves to get a lot of mana and keep me alive and then wreck my opponent with beasts. Here are the cards I'm considering, I'd appreciate some input on how best to play this.

Lands: I have a whole mess of basic lands plus a few neat other stuff (I have 4 urza's mine and 4 generators but only 1 tower, a few temples of the false god, stuff like that. I was putting together and artifact deck when I stopped playing) but nothing really pertinent for a green deck, so forests it is. I'm thinking between 10 and 15 since 3 is all I really need

Spoiler: Elves

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Elvish aberration x3
Krosan drover x2
Fyndhorn elder x2
Wood elves x3
Heedless one
Wirewood channeler x3
Wellwisher x4
Fierce empath x1

Spoiler: Other creatures

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Myojin of life's web
Plated slagwurm
Thorn elemental
Rhox
Living hive
darksteel gargoyle x2
ageless entity
arachnoid
kurgadon
malachite golem
ancient silverback
craw giant
crash of rhinos
tangle golem x2
scaled wurm
Krosan cloudscraper
moss kami

Spoiler: Non-creature artifacts

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Sensei's divining top x2 (which is apparently super good since they go for 20 $ online)
Extraplanar lens
Gilded lotus
Sword of light and shadow
Aether vial
Loxodon warhammer
Fireshrieker
slagwurm armor x2
general's kabuto x2
specter's shroud x2
chimeric egg
whispersilk cloak
nemesis mask
no-dachi
vorrac battlehorns x2
darksteel pendant
thought prison
horned helm
skullcage

Spoiler: Other spells

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Tooth and nail x2
Regeneration x2
Dragon fangs x2
wing snare
alpha status
lay of the land
dawn's refectionx x3
piper's melody
naturalize
carapace
fertile ground
refresh x2
revive x2
jolrael's favour
elvish guidance
kodama's reach x3

Now obviously that's too many cards, I had it pared down to 61 earlier but I put the finalists back in to see what you guys think. Then main problem I see myself having is early game, if I don't get 3 lands fairly soon I'm boned, but at the same time I have so much mana generation going on that I don't want to have too many forests for nothing. I was thinking of maybe just ignoring all the "go look for a forest" cards except maybe the wood elves and just put forests instead. If I had any I'd swap the elders for 1 mana generate 1 mane elves... I might just go spend a few bucks at the gaming store. Other than that, the strat is simple enough, get mana and a ton of life with the elves, summon a few big guys, equip them and go to town. Getting the ageless entity on the board with at least 1 wellwisher, giving it trample and a general's kabuto is the ideal game ender here, but a few things have to go my way first.

Of course I have a very cursory understanding of the last decade of magic (planeswalkers are now a thing, and apparently nobody plays sigle colour anymore...).

So what do you guys think?

[Techwarrior]

I've been paying around with one of my favorite cards: Remorseless Punishment. The card, when it's good, does one of the things I like best during Magic. It makes my opponent make a sometimes incredibly difficult decision on the spot, because of my play. Now, best case scenario for the card seems to be to make it so that none of the choices are good for my opponent. They can't take 10 life if they only have 12 and I have a flying creature to swing with. They can't sac creatures if they need those creatures to win, or even to block and I'm pressuring their life total. They can't discard if they need those cards to win. On the other hand, if my opponent had a flood of one resource or another, they cam just born 10 of their 30 life.

My question is, how would one best utilize the card in a deck. I've been going with an aggro-control R/B deck that seeks to keep my opponent off the board while chipping away at their life, and then finishing with Remorseless Punishment or Combustible Gearhulk. I was curious though, if anyone had any thoughts on the card, or best to use it.

[Dhavaer]

I've been paying around with one of my favorite cards: Remorseless Punishment. The card, when it's good, does one of the things I like best during Magic. It makes my opponent make a sometimes incredibly difficult decision on the spot, because of my play. Now, best case scenario for the card seems to be to make it so that none of the choices are good for my opponent. They can't take 10 life if they only have 12 and I have a flying creature to swing with. They can't sac creatures if they need those creatures to win, or even to block and I'm pressuring their life total. They can't discard if they need those cards to win. On the other hand, if my opponent had a flood of one resource or another, they cam just born 10 of their 30 life.

My question is, how would one best utilize the card in a deck. I've been going with an aggro-control R/B deck that seeks to keep my opponent off the board while chipping away at their life, and then finishing with Remorseless Punishment or Combustible Gearhulk. I was curious though, if anyone had any thoughts on the card, or best to use it.

Coincidentally, I went 2-1-1 with a deck built around Remorseless Punishment last FNM. It's a mono-black control deck with a lot of discard and removal spells to make sure your opponent can only take the life loss.

[Carl]

So my interest has been reawakened recently and i've started writing my own homebrew expansion on the side, but a more basic, (and one interesting) card concept are easy enough to share, (no new keywords involved), so i thought i'd run them past everyone:

Spoiler

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Card Name: Heartland
Colour: Colourless
Type: Non-Basic Land
Text: When playing this card search your deck or graveyard for a basic land and attach it to Heartland. When tapped Heartland produces 1 mana of the colour of it's attached basic land. At any time sacrifice untapped Heartland to gain 1 mana of the colour of the attached basic land and then place the basic land attached to it in play untapped.
Flavor Text: All civilisations have their heartlands, yet the deprivations of war will inevitably ruin them with the demands placed upon them, yet in that ruin they may provide the key to victory.

Comments: A flavourful any colour compatible one time light mana boost.

Card Name: Skyhome
Colour: Blue
Cost: B,B,2
Type: Sorcery
Text: Hexproof. Target player other than self exiles all lands and then gain your lands as his own. From now till the end of the game you may play as many lands per turn as you wish.
Flavour Text: Many times have the cooperatives settled lands, many times have they been driven away by the league. Always are they read to take once more to their ship homes.

Comment: A a fairly simple yet potent blue "upend the playing field" card. If the colour of your own lands is sufficiently incompatible, or you have sufficiently fewer lands in play allready, and in either case can expect to rapidly acquire additional lands of your own to play it can be very potent, but against the wrong deck or with the wrong deck and hand of your own it can be more of a hinderance than a help.

[tgva8889]

Here's an interesting game I was thinking of. For the following card text:

1. What color(s) is this card?
2. What is the smallest (lowest CMC) mana cost this card can have and still be reasonable printable in a Standard-legal set?

Enchantment
Exile your hand: Draw 2 cards. Activate this ability only once per turn.

[sonofzeal]

Here's an interesting game I was thinking of. For the following card text:

1. What color(s) is this card?
2. What is the smallest (lowest CMC) mana cost this card can have and still be reasonable printable in a Standard-legal set?

Enchantment
Exile your hand: Draw 2 cards. Activate this ability only once per turn.

Colors: I see elements of white (exile), black (cost), blue (draw), and red (rapid cycling). Overall though, I'd have to say black is the strongest note since it's happiest borrowing from elsewhere in the color pie as long as there's a cost of some kind. White/black, maybe.

Cost: This would need a very high CMC to be even vaguely balanced, and even then is exactly the sort of card people would love to try and cheat into play. Once you're properly rolling it's basically "draw two extra cards every turn for free" as long as you've got the mana to play what you're getting. Just bury them under card advantage. It's not an ability I'd ever expect on a card, and more like a Planeswaker's ultimate for "gain an emblem that says this". If I had to give it a cost, it might be something nuts like 7WWBB or 3WUBRG. Successfully playing this card has to hurt your tempo badly enough that the opponent has a fair chance to win or at least get you on the ropes that turn, or they're doomed.

Possible alternatives
"Exile your hand. If at least one card was exiled this way, draw two cards"
"Exile your hand, pay 2 life: draw 2 cards"

[Fable Wright]

So my interest has been reawakened recently and i've started writing my own homebrew expansion on the side, but a more basic, (and one interesting) card concept are easy enough to share, (no new keywords involved), so i thought i'd run them past everyone:

First card:

Flagstones of Trokair is one of the best lands in modern because of its ability to, very occasionally, tap for 2 mana in a turn. Being able to do that, fix colors for everyone, and tap for 2 in the first turn is really good.

Second card:

Blue is U in mana symbols, while B stands for Black. Also, spells having hexproof is just not a thing; if you intend for it to be uncounterable, please just say so. As for the effect... well, have you ever heard of Landfall? Nifty mechanic, works well with the Ravnica bouncelands when you can play and replay them infinite times. Or just get infinite mana with Amulet of Vigor. Really, who cares about giving up your lands when you just win that turn anyways?

[Carl]

First card:

Flagstones of Trokair is one of the best lands in modern because of its ability to, very occasionally, tap for 2 mana in a turn. Being able to do that, fix colors for everyone, and tap for 2 in the first turn is really good.

Second card:

Blue is U in mana symbols, while B stands for Black. Also, spells having hexproof is just not a thing; if you intend for it to be uncounterable, please just say so. As for the effect... well, have you ever heard of Landfall? Nifty mechanic, works well with the Ravnica bouncelands when you can play and replay them infinite times. Or just get infinite mana with Amulet of Vigor. Really, who cares about giving up your lands when you just win that turn anyways?

Ughh probably should have mentioned i'm hugely rusty and my primary MtG experiance is bia the Duels of the Planeswalkers PC games, i'm well aware they're on the lower end of the curve power wise but it is going to play into my thinking a lot, hence why i asked around here.


1. Maybe i'm blind but i can't see how the noted card ever lets you get 2 mana on it's own. As for the rest, the main reason for a colourless pick your own land type card is to avoid giving colourless heavy decks access to lot of these cards via having one set of four in each colour in the deck, thats 20 lands that can generate a one time 2 mana burst. With 4 cards your going to need heavy deck searching abilities to pull all 4 up which will burn time and mana both. Potentially powerful still in mass land playing decks, but thats an acceptable case. Getting 2 mana on the first turn is certainly very powerful and was my own worry, but i didn't want it to enter play tapped and potentially deny you any mana on the first turn ethier. Limit the sacrifice to not on the turn it enters play?

2. DoH! Like i said, rusty, not that i didn't mix up B and U plenty of old when brewing. As far as the rest. Familiar with landfall yes, but not with the bounceland cards. Not sure how amulet of vigor plays in. Probably another combo i'm not thinking/aware of. Would forcing both players to exile lands in hand until each only has one help? I'm not even sure what the problem is here beyond their being more strategies than i realised for keeping a large number of lands in hand, the rest of what your implying seems completely unrelated to the proposed card.

[Ninjaman]

Here's an interesting game I was thinking of. For the following card text:

1. What color(s) is this card?
2. What is the smallest (lowest CMC) mana cost this card can have and still be reasonable printable in a Standard-legal set?

Enchantment
Exile your hand: Draw 2 cards. Activate this ability only once per turn.

First of all this should say either "Activate this ability only once per turn and only during your turn." or "Activate this ability only once per turn and only any time you could cast a sorcery." I am going to evaluate it as if it was saying one of those as it will never be printed as it is now.

It's a better Grafted Skullkap, much better in fact, but Skullcap is bad. You draw one more card, you can chose not to use it, you can carry cards over to the opponent's turn and even your own if you draw multiple lands, making it much more versatile. I'd say it should cost 7 mana, with double, possibly triple intensity.

As for color, it just smells red. There's both the skullcap dragon and the skullcap Sarkhan emblem and there's also aggressive mining. I could see arguments for black or red black, but I think pure red is the way to go.

[Gauntlet]

Maybe i'm blind but i can't see how the noted card ever lets you get 2 mana on it's own. As for the rest, the main reason for a colourless pick your own land type card is to avoid giving colourless heavy decks access to lot of these cards via having one set of four in each colour in the deck, thats 20 lands that can generate a one time 2 mana burst. With 4 cards your going to need heavy deck searching abilities to pull all 4 up which will burn time and mana both. Potentially powerful still in mass land playing decks, but thats an acceptable case. Getting 2 mana on the first turn is certainly very powerful and was my own worry, but i didn't want it to enter play tapped and potentially deny you any mana on the first turn ethier. Limit the sacrifice to not on the turn it enters play?

1. Play Heartland, find a Forest.
2. Sac Heartland for G. Put Forest into play untapped.
3. Tap Forest for another mana.

It's a fetchland that only gets basics but gives you a mana while it does it and doesn't cost life.

Depending on what you meant by 'attached', by the current wording you could tap both Heartland and the attached basic, in which case it's just two lands for one land drop.

[Carl]

1. Play Heartland, find a Forest.
2. Sac Heartland for G. Put Forest into play untapped.
3. Tap Forest for another mana.

It's a fetchland that only gets basics but gives you a mana while it does it and doesn't cost life.

Depending on what you meant by 'attached', by the current wording you could tap both Heartland and the attached basic, in which case it's just two lands for one land drop.

By noted card i meant Flagstones of Trokair ;). Heartland is totally intended to allow a one time 2 coloured mana option, but can be tapped in the meantime for 1 coloured mana, and still leaves you with the basic land of the appropriate colour afterwards.

[Gauntlet]

By noted card i meant Flagstones of Trokair ;). Heartland is totally intended to allow a one time 2 coloured mana option, but can be tapped in the meantime for 1 coloured mana, and still leaves you with the basic land of the appropriate colour afterwards.

Fetchlands see very extensive play in every format they're legal in, as does any land which taps for multiple mana without a severe downside (see Ancient Tomb, Eldrazi Temple, Urza's Lands, Cloudpost, City of Traitors).

This card would be a 4-of in basically every deck that runs lands.

[Eurus]

Colors: I see elements of white (exile), black (cost), blue (draw), and red (rapid cycling). Overall though, I'd have to say black is the strongest note since it's happiest borrowing from elsewhere in the color pie as long as there's a cost of some kind. White/black, maybe.

Cost: This would need a very high CMC to be even vaguely balanced, and even then is exactly the sort of card people would love to try and cheat into play. Once you're properly rolling it's basically "draw two extra cards every turn for free" as long as you've got the mana to play what you're getting. Just bury them under card advantage. It's not an ability I'd ever expect on a card, and more like a Planeswaker's ultimate for "gain an emblem that says this". If I had to give it a cost, it might be something nuts like 7WWBB or 3WUBRG. Successfully playing this card has to hurt your tempo badly enough that the opponent has a fair chance to win or at least get you on the ropes that turn, or they're doomed.

Possible alternatives
"Exile your hand. If at least one card was exiled this way, draw two cards"
"Exile your hand, pay 2 life: draw 2 cards"

I'd agree with black. The card it reminds me of most is Null Profusion/Recycle, and the hand-exiling seems to tip it more toward black; it's not exactly the same, but it's kind of a similar concept? Notably, though, this one doesn't have a built-in drawback. You can choose to just not use the ability if you don't want to, which destroys any element of risk.

Two free draws per turn on an enchantment is going to have to be crazy costed, yeah. I'd lean more toward 6BBB or somewhere in that neighborhood than 7WWBB, but either way it has to be impractically expensive. With a bit of tweaking, it could probably be much more reasonably costed. Null Profusion didn't exactly break the game, after all, and that had a much more dramatic best-case scenario, but it wasn't as reliable and risk-free as this hypothetical card proposes to be.

As for Heartland, uh. I look at that and see "lotus petal that cantrips". Which is horrifying. XD

[Fable Wright]

1. Maybe i'm blind but i can't see how the noted card ever lets you get 2 mana on it's own.

D'oh! Missed the tapped restriction on it. It's still an automatic 4-of in any multicolored White deck, because it comes into play untapped, and fetches you a dual land when you play a second one at no cost. This also comes in untapped, fixes your mana (though not as well as Flagstones), and comes with a 1-time mana boost for free.

Getting 2 mana on the first turn is certainly very powerful and was my own worry, but i didn't want it to enter play tapped and potentially deny you any mana on the first turn ethier. Limit the sacrifice to not on the turn it enters play?

It should really come into play tapped. The only other lands that generate two mana that aren't considered broken all come into play tapped, and sacrifice themselves permanently when producing one free mana. This is already leagues and bounds better than them without coming into play untapped.

2. DoH! Like i said, rusty, not that i didn't mix up B and U plenty of old when brewing. As far as the rest. Familiar with landfall yes, but not with the bounceland cards. Not sure how amulet of vigor plays in.

Alright, let's say this resolves with one Bounceland in your hand, and an Amulet of Vigor on your side of the battlefield. You play the bounceland, and stack the triggers so that Amulet of Vigor will untap it, then its effect will return it to your hand. You let the Amulet trigger resolve, but in response to the return to hand trigger, you tap it for two mana, then let it return. You now have two mana, one bounceland in hand, and an Amulet of Vigor.

Enjoy your infinite mana.

Probably another combo i'm not thinking/aware of. Would forcing both players to exile lands in hand until each only has one help?

See example above. No. Exiling all lands from hands just encourages people to use Crucible of Worlds with Fetchlands so that they can play X lands, where X is their life total minus one, directly from their library and then going for the kill.

Or using the land you created above and just playing all the basics in their library, having them all essentially tap for 2 mana, and paying no life for their troubles.

I'm not even sure what the problem is here beyond their being more strategies than i realised for keeping a large number of lands in hand, the rest of what your implying seems completely unrelated to the proposed card.

The problem is that there are many, many ways to abuse infinite land drops per turn. There's a reason Fastbond is restricted in Vintage. Fastbond + Zuran Orb + Crucible of Words = infinite life + infinite mana + all the lands with a basic land type in your deck on the battlefield untapped, and that's probably the least broken thing you can do with it.

[unseenmage]

...


The problem is that there are many, many ways to abuse infinite land drops per turn. There's a reason Fastbond is restricted in Vintage. Fastbond + Zuran Orb + Crucible of Words = infinite life + infinite mana + all the lands with a basic land type in your deck on the battlefield untapped, and that's probably the least broken thing you can do with it.

The original landfall centric Ob Nixilis comes to mind. 3 life loss per land drop and game's over.

[Carl]

Fetchlands see very extensive play in every format they're legal in, as does any land which taps for multiple mana without a severe downside (see Ancient Tomb, Eldrazi Temple, Urza's Lands, Cloudpost, City of Traitors).

This card would be a 4-of in basically every deck that runs lands.

Ahh, cards that can pull up lands in duels are mostly blue or green, mostly green, most decks have to do without and at 1 land a turn. That was sort of my baseline. Hmm, would pulling somthing like Temple and restricting it to certain cards subtypes work you think? The whole point is to give mana boost at some early to mid point for that, (how early depending greatly on the colour and rest of your deck setup ofc), as the nature of some of the new card subtypes and how they interact with each other and a couple of the new keywords can create some early vulnerabilities that would make such a mana boost useful. Like i said i mostly gave out the pick your colour thing to get around multi-colour decks pulling 4 of each.

@Fable Wright: Ok that kinda helps explain some of the points better, whilst i'm coming from duels perspective i have at least glanced over some of TvTropes articles, (i was there to get a better feel for the colours as i tend to play some much more than others in duels), like the gamebreaker one, i wasn't really factoring cards like that in as they part of the banned in most formats list, and the articles are pretty clear that the formats they're part of basically invalidate creature cards as a whole unless they're very, very, very powerful, and often not even then, given it's a creature centric concept i'm working on with the deck i really wasn't thinking of vintage stuff.

Hmm not sure how to handle this one, i take your point about infinite lands though, at the same time it needs to provide enough of an inherent option in terms of potential to comeback that it's worth handing your opponent all those lands, since even if he can't use the specific colour, most cards have a good chunk of non-color dependent mana, so he's going to be in a position to come back from it faster all other things being equal, (of course the idea is to use it when all other things are not equal, or as a delaying tactic if the other payer has pulled major land advantage but has not been able to convert that into a win, yet).

Couple of idea's:

1. For the rest of the game you may search your library for one basic land at your draw step, then place it into your hand, lands no longer count against your hand limit.

This wouldn't help you play more lands, but it would let you keep pulling them into hand to play.

2. Any time you play a basic land, search your hand for another basic land and put it into play tapped.

Lets you get oodles of lands into play, at the cost of needing some way to get them into your hand in the first place.

Feel free to throw in any idea's of your own for sorting the basic concept into somthing workable.

[Bucky]

This is a reasonably nerfed, but overly wordy, version of the original design:

Heartland enters the battlefield tapped.
When Heartland enters the battlefield, search your library for a basic land and exile it, then shuffle your library.
{T}: Add one mana to your mana pool of any type the exiled land could produce
{T}, sacrifice Heartland: Put the exiled card onto the battlefield.


It's functionally like Evolving Wilds but with the extra Landfall delayed.

[Fable Wright]

1. For the rest of the game you may search your library for one basic land at your draw step, then place it into your hand, lands no longer count against your hand limit.

Endless Horizons does this without horrifyingly crippling drawback.

2. Any time you play a basic land, search your hand for another basic land and put it into play tapped.

Exploration and Burgeoning do this for one mana and no drawback. Though those haven't returned to Standard for a while, Azusa and the Oracle of Mul Daya still do it better, without crippling drawbacks.

[Arcane_Snowman]

1. For the rest of the game you may search your library for one basic land at your draw step, then place it into your hand, lands no longer count against your hand limit.

Unless the card in question has a "you play with your hand revealed" clause, there should be no conditional effects which rely on hidden information.

[sonofzeal]

I'm really confused right now. People seem to be talking about "Flagstones of Trokair" and "Heartland" as if they're the same card, but Flagstones doesn't seem to do what people are saying, and I can't even find a card named Heartland anywhere.

The original comment for reference:

Flagstones of Trokair is one of the best lands in modern because of its ability to, very occasionally, tap for 2 mana in a turn. Being able to do that, fix colors for everyone, and tap for 2 in the first turn is really good.

[tonberrian]

Heartland is a homebrew card a few posts up. On my phone or I'd link.

[Fable Wright]

I'm really confused right now. People seem to be talking about "Flagstones of Trokair" and "Heartland" as if they're the same card, but Flagstones doesn't seem to do what people are saying, and I can't even find a card named Heartland anywhere.

The original comment for reference:

Sorry. I missed Flagstones' fetch coming into play tapped, and was responding to homebrew critique on this:

Card Name: Heartland
Colour: Colourless
Type: Non-Basic Land
Text: When playing this card search your deck or graveyard for a basic land and attach it to Heartland. When tapped Heartland produces 1 mana of the colour of it's attached basic land. At any time sacrifice untapped Heartland to gain 1 mana of the colour of the attached basic land and then place the basic land attached to it in play untapped.
Flavor Text: All civilisations have their heartlands, yet the deprivations of war will inevitably ruin them with the demands placed upon them, yet in that ruin they may provide the key to victory.

Comments: A flavourful any colour compatible one time light mana boost.

[Carl]

@Fable: Yeah i know, that was basically why i went with unlimited. For now i think i'll shelve that card and come back to it. As a side question, as someone familiar with magic through less than normal formats how many new cards should a homebrew "set" be shooting for? Nowhere near that yet i know, (though i'm getting close to the point of being able to thrown enough at you to get the general concepts firmly fixed in mind), but getting an idea of how many i need would be handy.

[Fable Wright]

@Fable: Yeah i know, that was basically why i went with unlimited. For now i think i'll shelve that card and come back to it. As a side question, as someone familiar with magic through less than normal formats how many new cards should a homebrew "set" be shooting for? Nowhere near that yet i know, (though i'm getting close to the point of being able to thrown enough at you to get the general concepts firmly fixed in mind), but getting an idea of how many i need would be handy.

See this set of articles if you're considering anything like a real set.

[Carl]

See this set of articles if you're considering anything like a real set.

Thanks for the link, in particular the stuff on rarity was a big help, duels dosen;t really deal with rarity at all so i was going for simple power = rarity. For various reasons several cards have higher powered colour specific forms in the set, (my author comments on 3 go: "typical red zergling card" "More Zerglings", "All the Zerglings" :p), and given the simplicity ambiguity, e.t.c. I think i'll start downgrading a lot of them.

[Carl]

Ok got the first part of my design document done, here you go, spoiler tages for wall of text.

Spoiler

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MTG Custom Elves Set Card Design Philosophy and Codes

Ok after realising NOW was getting to be a serious issue and a crash eating the majority of the design document for the old concept I've abandoned it representing a world where mile long skyships are the low end of the creature spectrum was a bit much to really pull off. Gone with a new concept instead.

Ok hopefully a crash won’t eat this :(.

Decided to base this on my custom elves from a setting of mine. It avoids some of the issues the old idea had with needing so many custom rules for simple basic creatures.

That said it raises the alternate question, what IS the theme? Well at he end of the day I need a source of inspiration, and I've chosen a "my take on elves" bit I wrote. I'll copy it in below at some point between now and when I actually throw it up for you to see:

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The fact that the gods have been such a visible and indeed active part of Elven society for so long and willingly grant power to those who embody qualities they represent or value if they so desire the risk that come with it. Currently since I'm representing just the 3 common elven stereotypes I've only got 3 major gods. They can be broken down to match the three stereotypes. The major goddess maps to the nature side. And the two major gods, (the Mother, Husband and Master respectively), to the remaining two.

Where they fall on traditional human morality is honestly a little hard to define. Elves view almost anything as acceptable though the survival and well being of the community as a whole is extremely important, but how this manifests varies with the god. In general most elves like your average human are a mix of types. And moving between communities is both entirely acceptable and even quite common. Indeed at the lowest rungs of each group the differences are much more cosmetic than actual. They live in a very different kind of building in cities with entirely different layouts and due to the influence of the higher up some significant functional differences. But you could take an Elf from each of the three groups, dress them in neutral clothing and sit them down in a room and you wouldn't be able to tell who came from where. They'd probably still come off a little odd by human standards but you wouldn't be able to tell association easily. As you go up the ladder and individuals increasingly embody one or more aspects of the divine being in question their favour and thus power rises. At the very top each community has a single individual who most directly embodies the overall nature of the Divine being and directly below them a collection of individuals who embody singular aspects best.

It is important to note however that aside from those at the very top who directly embody all aspects, the next level down can also have other aspects of the same or even a different divine being, that's all perfectly acceptable. Also whilst the Divine beings handle the aspects of their divine hierarchies in the mortal Realm the day to day ruling of each realms is left to their highest Elven community member.

One common point you'll see as i cover each divine being is that certain protections exists in the system for all three deities. There's limits on what you can do or on the circumstances under which you can do it or who you can do it to, e.t.c. because whilst the gods want the elves to embody the qualities they value they also want them to thrive and if they're getting killed, crippled or otherwise subject to nastiness above a certain level, (mental or physical), then that isn't going to happen. Think of it like a parent, each has a different view on what makes a great elf, but they all want all elves to thrive regardless.

The Mother is often, (and mistakenly), seen by humans as the elven equivalent of Judaeo-Christian god. The good one who embodies virtues. This isn't strictly accurate in that she's not viewed as any more or less good than the other two by elves. But she does embody many of the same things. She's very much about responsibility and duty as a particularly great ideal. But she also embodies the concept of communities, balance with nature, frugality, fertility, healing, the hunt, and many of the aspects of nature amongst others. All members of her communities can to varying degrees be called upon to serve in one or more roles embodying one or more aspects she embodies to the benefit of the community, (subject to the obvious limit they have to be adequately capable ofc). In this respect there's very much an aspect of the needs of the community. Everyone is expected to work towards seeing that these are met. However there are also protections. Aside from the obvious point of not being able to be called up to do something your unsuited to or poorly skilled in. The lower you are the shorter time period you can be required to serve for before being released and the longer time period before you can be called upon to serve again. As you dedicate yourself more and more to one or more of the principles and virtues of the Mother the higher you can go in the hierarchy, but the greater your obligations and the lower your protections. However you don't have to advance if you don't want to and within some obvious but fairly broad limits you can drop back at will. The Mother's community also provides a number of goods, as well as individuals from it's higher ranks to the other communities.

The way the Mother, (and her highest ranking Elven representative) interact with the 3 Elven communities is also unique compared to the other two. Whilst all 3 communities to varying degrees provide members to each other to cover certain required tasks, the Mother and her community provide the most as many of the bare basics of life and their supply are within her purview. In turn the Mother is the Husband of one of the Gods, and through an ancient pact, (i haven't worked out the Divine cosmology behind this one yet), the Slave of the other God. She deals with her triplicate responsibilities by having 2 lesser Mother's as her handmaidens. She spends a third of each century in each divine realm, (the divine and physical realms are separate though the divine is accessible if the ruling God/Goddess allows it). When she is in her own realm she is her traditional self and rules over her people there whilst her Handmaidens handle the two other realms. When she is acting in her role of wife she lives in her husband's realm playing the role of dutiful wife and ruling over her people there whilst her handmaidens again handle the other two realms, and a third of a century is spent in her role as slave to the third major divine. The Handmaidens it should be noted rule in the other realms but do not take her role as wife or slave. The highest ranking member of the Mother's community mirrors her Mother, (as the highest ranking members of the other two communities mirror their Gods in the same way), by having two handmaidens and serving each of the three roles to her people and the other two highest members of the other communities. And don't assume that makes her time as a slave the worst, given what that God embodies it's physically traumatic in a whole slew of ways. But despite the fact that in the case of these two she very much does love her husband his culture that he oversees is as alien to her as her Master's. In effect each of the three sub communities highest individuals so thoroughly embody one god/Mother so thoroughly that the other two sub cultures are mostly as alien to them as any of the three would be to humans with all of the negative emotional consequences that brings.

The First of the God's is often viewed as the Elven equivalent of the Devil by Human's. But it would again not be entirely accurate. He embodies War, Slaughter, Rape, Slavery, Murder, Greed, Torture, Drunkenness, Feasts, Revelry, and Hedonism.

It should be noted that not all of the above should be taken literally. There's definitely a lot more obvious of a cultural difference here from human norms than with the Mother, (she's much simpler in some ways, she's the one who sees to the needs of survival which makes her the most relatable to a human by far). For example embodying War isn't about being a great martial champion, that's more properly slaughter, (which itself can be fulfilled by being a great gladiator, or even a great hunter technically. If you hunt for the joy of the kill first and the survival second, it''s slaughter, if you hunt for the good of the community and survival via food acquisition it's "The Hunt" even if you enjoy the kill also). Instead War is about all the preparation and forethought and effort that goes into the War. An armourer producing weapons and armour for the purposes of battle is embodying War just as a Great Tactician or Strategist or a breeder of beasts of war does also. And of course breeders of beasts and armourer can fall into categories of one or more of the other deities depending on their reasons for doing so. Slavery is about enslavement and the keeping and maintenance of slaves, not the act of being a slave, that belongs to a minor Goddess who is nonetheless surprisingly important and a permanent concubine of the Major God under discussion. A particularly confusing point for humans is that a Planner of Parties would fall under one or more of this Gods area's despite his otherwise seemingly awful other aspects. Arguably the two cores tenets that underpin a lot of this are Slavery and Hedonism. He's very much a god of personal self gratification, even at the expense of others. But because he also wishes to see all elves thrive this is handled via the aspects of him that deal with Slavery. Like with Duty and Responsibility for the Mother there are limits and protections in place and these are somewhat extended. Not only is being a slave subject to time limits and protections, but what your required to do as a slave impacts it. Naturally of course making someone a slave requires something a bit more forceful than words.

Conversely whilst they can fight back to prevent being captured, once made a slave they are required to serve until released. At the same time whilst the protections have additional rules, so do some of the higher ups have more ways around them. Though only the highest two layers, (i.e the one who most embodies all aspects of the god and the ones who most embody singular aspects of his ethos), can take permanent slaves, and even then the lowest layers are if not protected, nearly never allowed and the numbers are strictly limited. At the same time permanent harm to the slave is generally frowned upon, (though given divine presence really only death is permanent). Murder is a very interesting case protections wise. It used to use a very complicated highly restrictive system to keep the death rate down. But a long time ago one Elf combined it with greed and became what amounts to an assassin, (a novel concept at the time), which is now the only legal method of engaging in murder, (unless obviously someone willingly divests themselves of said protection, and whilst elves are culturally prideful there's certainly enough willing to do so, especially at the higher power levels, in some cases it even makes defending against attacks from people below easier).

The Third God is in many ways as different to the two existing ones as it's possible to be. Though as should be obvious there's a Blue/Orange/Yellow morality scale going on in general.

He represents Magic, Technology, Experimentation, Inventiveness, Intellect, Civilisation, Bureaucracy, Industry, The Art's, Beauty, and Individualism.

If that seems a short list it's partly because in this case I've combined a number of detail elements under fairly broader categories. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I haven't pinned down the exact technology levels involved here for the elves. The Mother is very obviously a one with nature type, very survival focused. It's her influence that got the elves through their equivalent of the stone age. The Master is about living and loving life, about personal self gratification and violence. He's the counterbalance to the other two that ensures the elves don't turn into highly regimented obsessive compulsives, or other mental health affected types. The Husband however is very much the one who helped the Elves progress technologically and build a more than stone age society He took them from a tribal hunter gatherer existence and through his influence brought them into a city dwelling nation state status. Those cities might be tree house based, or ground based human like, or something else entirely. But they grew out of his influence and how it interacted with the other Divine's influences. As his focus on individualism, (this is separate from the Masters self gratification aspect, he's about personal happiness and do what you want when you want it, the Husband is about the fewest restrictions possible), probably tells you his part of elven society is the one part where there's no medium or concept that allows another to require a specific action of you. You're not going to progress up his hierarchy by being a lazy layabout, but you have no real obligations or requirements placed upon you that you don't accept. In this respect advancing up his hierarchy is a bit like taking on a Job and then advancing up the promotion ladder. Of course those Job's cover a lot of ground not all of it analogous with things we'd think of as jobs.

As noted previously a lot of his stuff can overlap with the other two. An armourer can produce armour to meet a practical survival need, and thus be associated with the goodness, to produce armour for the purposes of providing the finest gear for the fighting of wars possible, (i.e. the production of armour specifically for combat), is associated with The Maser. Whilst production of armour for the purposes of producing the most technologically capable, or most beautiful, (e.g. ceremonial), armour, or the most mass producible armour, or, well you get the idea i think. As Magic is one of the things that he represents and values he is also the easiest from which to acquire such gifts. The others hand out such power only to their upper echelons, (though far from just the topmost layers, but you can't get magic without progressing a good way all the same), he hands it out to anyone willing to put in the effort and dedication to it, the practising of magic for it's own sake is of value for him, not merely as a power and a means to other ends. Of course these lower level magic users are much less powerful, but conversely much more common as only the very bottom most layers can't get at it as opposed to the majority with the others. Whilst as noted i haven't totally laid out the details of their tech i can say i don't want to go steam punk here, but if Elves had giggling mad scientists, (and they have their fair share of Archimedes/Da Vinci/Leonard of Quirm type mad geniuses), they'd go here and would be valued by him. And you'll certainly see a lot of alchemical, technological, and magical experimentation going on.

Militarily all 3 groups have always pooled their resources but The Husband is interesting in that beyond a certain point, (and much like citizens of medieval and classical times), of advancement you have to be part of the standing militia as a matter of course, but it's not a lifestyle so much as an extra job responsibility. As a result he provides the bulk of the mass elven infantry as well as the spellcasters to the elven armies. The Mother through hunters and foragers provides much of the scouts and other light units, and the Master through great tacticians, strategists, and collections of martial champions under the command of a single "War Leader", or War beasts under the command of their breeders and Trainers provide the leaders and shock troops of the Elven armies.

Lets start by breaking this down to bare basics of colour tropes. The Elves can functionally be subdivided up into 3 broad groupings under the respective gods. The Mother , The Husband, and The Master.

The Mother is naturally enough, (pardon the pun), very green orientated, her focus on nature and living in balance with it provides this, as does her focus on things like the hunt. Equally however the distinct structured nature of the community with strong obligations and protections with a firm "for the betterment of the community" bent has a strong white feel. I'd argue green/white is a pillar stone for the Goddess, their primary colours. Despite that the hierarchical system has strong flexibility and adaptability and those same authoritarian tendencies are ultimately a product of a strong nurturing/protective instinct seeking to help and protect others out of deep seated compassion. In effect whilst the means are white, the motivation and some of the detailing is distinctly red. I'd argue based on how the methodology has taken over a bit that red is secondary in importance, not primary however. Black plays a minimal role however, it's an important part of the cycle of life and in a backwards sort of way you could argue that ambition to help others is a driving force in advancement up the ranks. Equally Blue is of fairly low importance, they can, have, do, and will make use of technological advances, they live in tree cities now, not caves or primitive huts and countless tools of medicine and hunting and so on are more advanced than they used to be. But it's not something they actively pursue or work out themselves, so blue is also of limited value. In that respect it's a tertiary colour.

The Master whilst he follows the same general pattern as the Mother, he has very different colour emphasis. The strong emphasis on personal self gratification, hedonism, and all kinds of darker theme's is very distinctly red-black and these are unquestionably primary colours for him. Yet at the same time he has a distinct morality and imposed order theme in the complex system of rules and protections. They're there strictly as a "necessary evil" to allow a hedonistic self-gratification society to function without internal collapse, and are at least partially driven by the Masters desire to see all his people partake of such a lifestyle which is a distinctly red trait too that’s normally at odds with the "it's all about me" line of thinking common to his other aspects. As a result I'd argue White whilst not a primary colour, is a distinctly important and thus secondary one. Much like with the Mother the two remaining colours have their places within his form of society, but they're not especially focused on, but rather things they'll make use of to further his other goals.

Last is the Husband. He's interesting. Blue is unquestionably a primary colour, but it's highly questionable as to weather he has a second primary colour or not. Red and Black are clearly strong elements of his philosophy with his focus on individualism and the fewest rules of the three. His shared with other gods nurturing focus also plays a role. In the end I think the clincher comes back to the point that he avoids too many "set" rules and the question of how an experiment, or other science or tech endeavour could end up "gone horribly wrong". He may support science and technology and magic, (in addition to the arts and so on and so forth), but he doesn't support the worst excesses, and that is part and parcel of why he can have such a loose rules society, there's less dangers to his people than The Master's, and not the inherent help others theme of The Mother. As a result his society is safe enough on it's own merits he has to impose far fewer rules. So if something gets out of hand, it's likely to be through excess enthusiasm rather than outright amorality/immorality. So I'd say Red is a Primary colour for him, but maybe not to quite the degree white is for the Goddess. Black however remains important, it's worst excesses are firmly curbed but it's not remotely absent and that still qualifies it for secondary status. However just as red is a bit weaker a primary colour, I'd also argue that whilst white remains of tertiary importance to The Husband, it's more important than the other tertiary colours of the other two. At the end of the day it is a functional non-Darwinist society and even with such relatively low danger elements as his emphasis there has to be a certain minimal level of order in such a society for it to exist at all. On the other hand green is of even less use to him than the other two, it's decorative and there's doubtless some beautiful flower arrangements and paintings of nature in his artists, but it's distinctly low on the importance scale.


All right, leaving aside the doubtless odd gaffe I've doubtless made when trying to apply colour labels the thing that stands out to me is that despite greater or lesser importance on each primary, secondary, or tertiary colour each divine beings piece of elvish society is distinctly multi-coloured. Your not going to see a lot of mono-coloured elves out there with this group.

To break it down to pure mechanics without the waffle:

The Mother:

Primary: Green & White
Secondary: Red
Tertiary: Blue & Black.

The Master:

Primary: Black & Red
Secondary: White
Tertiary: Blue & Green

The Husband:

Primary: Blue & Red
Secondary: Black
Tertiary: Green & White


Now simply being multi-coloured in of itself isn't strictly a theme, but it did suggest a simple mechanic or two to me.

The Core mechanic is really a variant of the Landfall concept. I'm going to call it Unity but the gist is that any time a multi-colour card is cast an effect triggers, with effects generally growing in magnitude the more colours there are.

I've got a few other mechanical idea's for a few other points too.


What other obvious points does such a design raise? Well obviously a very large part, certainly the majority, and possibly all, of the cards need to be multi-coloured. However for obvious mana related reasons the bulk should be 2 types of mana at the most. Nonetheless there is inevitably going to be a moderate number of tri mana cards and maybe even a few quad mana cards. This suggests to me that whilst we don’t want to go too far overboard there's a strong need inherent here in having forms of landplay suitable for getting a lot of different land colours out at a suitable expense, and/or with suitable negatives.

Lets break that down a bit more, in gameplay what are likely to be the core, "gets in the way" issues a player might face in mana terms that the cards need to provide a solver for?

The core issue is that multi-colour decks, particularly, tri colour ones can only cast spells they have the specific mana combinations for. "So, tell us something we don’t know genius?" Okay I know that statement is a bit like saying the rain is wet but let me explain why I brought it up. Traditional mono coloured decks really only have one limitation when it comes to using their mana, and that is what specific CMC combinations are in their current hand. This is further limited by potential future draw combinations which is a factor of current and future card draw potential and current cards (and numbers thereof), in the library. Again I doubt this is news to anyone.

However when you stop and look at multi-colour decks it becomes very obvious that for any given mana total there are a fair number of combinations that can leave the owning player dangerously short of one or more mana types, (the more mana types in the deck the worse it is), again this probably isn't exactly news, but when you start to think about the hand+draw combinations that can turn up, (particularly in decks with few or no mono-coloured cards), it gets especially arkward.

If your having a bit of trouble following my meaning look at it like this. Take whatever mono-coloured deck of choice you please. Now imagine the types of 7 card hand you could have. Now for each possible combinations of number and types of lands you could have at any mana step, (a step being an increase in total available mana of 1), imagine the number of cards in each of the many, many 7 card hands that are playable, and what of those could be played in combination. Ok I probably overloaded your imagination a LOT with that. The point is at any given mana step your probably going to have a lot of possible hands where you'll have at least one playable card and at higher mana step increasing numbers of card combinations or multiple mutually exclusive single cards. In short your probability of having playable cards in your hand tends to increase at a steady or even exponential rate with your mana total.

Now repeat the exercise with a multi-colour deck, particularly tri and quad colour decks. It's shouldn’t take much to spot that there are a lot of hand combinations that need very, very specific mana combinations to be anywhere near as flexible as most mono coloured hands at the same mana step, (assuming a similar number of cards of a given mana cost in each deck), and there are a lot more combinations where you can’t use all/most of your mana.

Again that last line isn’t strictly anything new, but hopefully that exercise in mental imagining helped emphasise just how severe the disparity is, again particularly for tri and quad colour decks.

Of course there are some countervailing considerations. Multi-Colour cards tend to have better power for their cost than mono-coloured one's. Though it's also true that a lot of 2 and 3 mana mono-colours only have 1 mana of a specific colour required and those that don’t tend to be slightly more powerful in compensation. Still Multi-Colour cards tend to be the more powerful overall. But that doesn't help you if bad land draw leaves you effectively multiple entire mana per turn behind. In fact at low mana levels even being an average of 1 mana behind for a few turns can be decisive. In addition even if you can keep up in pure power play per turn, if your doing it through cards that are more powerful for their mana but spending, (in effect), less mana per turn your going to be playing less cards per turn and thus whilst you might have equivalent power you have less flexibility.

Again this probably isn’t anything news worthy as such but it's important I lay all this out here because it's stuff I'm going to need top reference back to. The core things that need to be kept an eye on generally are that the overall combination of power and flexibility should in combination be roughly equal between multi-colour and mono colour decks at the same mana step, accounting for probabilities of amount of mana each step can actually use.

Of course care has to be also taken to not make a situation where I expect multi-colour to regularly face too much mana stall, because giving them enough raw power and flexibility per mana to handle that is literally begging to create a situation where anytime mana stall doesn't happen due to the luck of the draw the multi-colour decks becomes an unstoppable juggernaught. Which is why it's very important to include some measures that address multi-colour mana stalls worst tendencies without giving mono coloured decks too much in return.

Ok, but what does all this mean in esign skeleton terms, whereas the card codes and all the rest. Well all of that’s more relevant for after I do that part, but I wanted to get it out of the way before hand because it has some bearing on some aspects.

At the core this is a multi-colour focused set and equally at it's core it's going to be focused more heavily on certain dual and triple colour combinations because they're the cores combinations of elvish society. This doesn't mean the other combinations won’t appear, I've already in the process of pointing out said combinations identified some conceptual elements of elvish society that fit into these other combinations, but the main point is they are secondary and should sit behind the other colour combinations in importance. That raises the question of how many cards this set is going to have. And honestly, I don’t know, It depends a lot on how much design space I can fill and I'm not sure on the answer to that one. So what I'm going to do instead is work out the ratios of cards in common using the stuff from the nuts and bolts articles, then start looking for concepts, deciding what colour combination that concept is, and then once I've got enough core concepts start working on balancing that. For reasons of simplicity I'm also going to temporarily exile any concept that comes out as anything but dual-coloured to the uncommon+ zone and then pull stuff out of their back down to common as and when I do the balancing.

Ok so what about those ratios.

Ok the recommendation was that half of all common cards should be creatures. It also laid out mono-coloured Creature priority. However I'll have to figure out how to order them for myself. I'm going to use average of all the priorities represented. I won’t show you the math behind it to avoid boring you too much but I can reproduce it if asked. My other rule of ratio is that colour combinations that don't correspond to one of the 3 elvish archetype combinations, (each archetype having two, 2-colour combinations, and one, 3-colour combination), can have any ratio of creatures to spells but must have no more than half as many cards as primary combinations of the same rarity. However they're also free to, and probably will undershoot.

So approximate number of cards, (if I create enough, increase each step by one, if I ru short decrease each by one and count tri-colours as a dual colour they contain when using them to balance).


Primary:

White/Green: = 9

White/Black: = 8

White/Red: = 7

Red/Green: = 6

Black/Red: = 5

Blue/Black: = 4

Blue/Red: = 3


Non-Primary:

Black/Green: = 7

White/Blue: = 6

Blue/Green: = 5

Before I go I want to note a couple of other things that slipped past me first time, (yes this is an after the fact edit DoH), The number of enchantments plus non-equipment enchantments will probably be subject to a higher than usual. Based on the articles it looks like around one tenth is the recommended ratio, but I'll be using them to shore up any Unity keyword presence deficiencies in each colour combination.

Ok at that I'm going to publish this first phase of the design document, now I need to sit down and get to work on card concepts.

[RPGNovice]

I have a lot of cards from when I used to play in earnest a few years ago. I liked the game a lot and liked to make a bunch of different color decks. White was my favorite color and to be honest playing black did not come naturally to me.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

*Snip*

So, I'm puzzled by why you haven't mentioned the use of hybrid mana costs anywhere in this document. They were specifically introduced precisely to solve this mana-screw issue in heavy multi-color decks from Alara Reborn, yet you don't touch upon it at all -- and it's going to be tool you should definitely be using.

Also, this is a rather long-winded design document. I'd consider revising future ones for brevity and clarity. For example: you say the following...

What other obvious points does such a design raise? Well obviously a very large part, certainly the majority, and possibly all, of the cards need to be multi-coloured. However for obvious mana related reasons the bulk should be 2 types of mana at the most. Nonetheless there is inevitably going to be a moderate number of tri mana cards and maybe even a few quad mana cards. This suggests to me that whilst we don’t want to go too far overboard there's a strong need inherent here in having forms of landplay suitable for getting a lot of different land colours out at a suitable expense, and/or with suitable negatives.

Lets break that down a bit more, in gameplay what are likely to be the core, "gets in the way" issues a player might face in mana terms that the cards need to provide a solver for?

The core issue is that multi-colour decks, particularly, tri colour ones can only cast spells they have the specific mana combinations for. "So, tell us something we don’t know genius?" Okay I know that statement is a bit like saying the rain is wet but let me explain why I brought it up. Traditional mono coloured decks really only have one limitation when it comes to using their mana, and that is what specific CMC combinations are in their current hand. This is further limited by potential future draw combinations which is a factor of current and future card draw potential and current cards (and numbers thereof), in the library. Again I doubt this is news to anyone.

However when you stop and look at multi-colour decks it becomes very obvious that for any given mana total there are a fair number of combinations that can leave the owning player dangerously short of one or more mana types, (the more mana types in the deck the worse it is), again this probably isn't exactly news, but when you start to think about the hand+draw combinations that can turn up, (particularly in decks with few or no mono-coloured cards), it gets especially arkward.

If your having a bit of trouble following my meaning look at it like this. Take whatever mono-coloured deck of choice you please. Now imagine the types of 7 card hand you could have. Now for each possible combinations of number and types of lands you could have at any mana step, (a step being an increase in total available mana of 1), imagine the number of cards in each of the many, many 7 card hands that are playable, and what of those could be played in combination. Ok I probably overloaded your imagination a LOT with that. The point is at any given mana step your probably going to have a lot of possible hands where you'll have at least one playable card and at higher mana step increasing numbers of card combinations or multiple mutually exclusive single cards. In short your probability of having playable cards in your hand tends to increase at a steady or even exponential rate with your mana total.

Now repeat the exercise with a multi-colour deck, particularly tri and quad colour decks. It's shouldn’t take much to spot that there are a lot of hand combinations that need very, very specific mana combinations to be anywhere near as flexible as most mono coloured hands at the same mana step, (assuming a similar number of cards of a given mana cost in each deck), and there are a lot more combinations where you can’t use all/most of your mana.

Again that last line isn’t strictly anything new, but hopefully that exercise in mental imagining helped emphasise just how severe the disparity is, again particularly for tri and quad colour decks.

...when you could say something like this.

Given the difficulty of getting proper land draws in a heavily multi-color deck and the associated risk of a deck simply stalling out as a result, the set will require heavy use of either hybrid mana costs or mana-fixing effects.

Basically, a good design document is concise, clear, and directly to the point. You risk distracting from your core design tenants if you occupy so much space with largely unnecessary analysis -- save the analysis for when it is really required to explain an issue.
--------------

I'm also wary of the mechanic Unity if most or all of the spells are multicolor. If each time you cast a spell you have to trigger several effects from several sources with several degrees of magnitude, the game will complicate VERY quickly.

[Carl]

So, I'm puzzled by why you haven't mentioned the use of hybrid mana costs anywhere in this document. They were specifically introduced precisely to solve this mana-screw issue in heavy multi-color decks from Alara Reborn, yet you don't touch upon it at all -- and it's going to be tool you should definitely be using.

Basically i tend to view how multi-colour a given deck is by the types of mana it spends, not the colour ratings of the cards. As a result i consider the OR mana cards hybrids rather than true multi-colour. That dosen;t mean i won't use it as an ancillary effect in various places, i may even on additional thought use it for any single mana cards rather than going mono coloured. But i don;t want a situation where a deck heavily themed around one aspect of the elvish society in question can be played entirely with one colour of lands.

Also, this is a rather long-winded design document. I'd consider revising future ones for brevity and clarity. For example: you say the following...

The point isn't to provide a simple summary though as such. Writing that has a few purposes. Firstly it's a way for me to work through my own thoughts, a lot of my thinking is very instinctual and i have to sit down and do this kind of rigorous self analysis of my thoughts to understand the details and find the flaws. So in one respect it helps me understand what the cards need to address better myself on a personal level. At the same time when i start laying out the details of the card to address this issue, having aspects of that analysis to point back to stops me from having to repeat all of that to address what specific sub aspects of the concept i'm trying to address. I could just point to a simple one liner like you gave, but that might not explain the nuances of what i'm trying to do very well. That said, yes long windedness is a general flaw of mine ;).

I'm also wary of the mechanic Unity if most or all of the spells are multicolor. If each time you cast a spell you have to trigger several effects from several sources with several degrees of magnitude, the game will complicate VERY quickly.

I've slightly simplified it in my head, here's the current rough version in my head and an example card i can use to show it off:


Unity: Each time a card with 2 or more colors in its mana casting cost is cast by the owner of the creature with this keyword, apply the listed effect once for each colour beyond the fist. So Once for a 2 colour card, twice for a three colour card and so on and so forth.


Example Card (Replace ____ with some unique name for this subspecies of elf):

Name: _____ Elvish Healer
Cost: R, W, G
Power/Toughness: 0/4
Rules: _____ Elvish Healer cannot attack or block. Unity - Heal yourself for 3 life and all opponents for 1 life.



So if you where to cast another copy of Elvish healer whilst a copy of it was already in play it's Unity ability would trigger twice, healing you for 3 each time and your opponents for 1, (it's sort of a red hurt self to hurt enemies more effect but with healing instead of damage courtesy o the white/green combo, maybe 2 life for self instead of 3 though, balance point under consideration atm). Your right however that it could result in a lot of triggers. But thats why i'm probably not going to have more than about half of all permanents with it, enough to keep it relevant, but not enough that it's spawning 50 effects, and certainly no infinite loops off it.

[Bucky]

Templating note: Unity is formatted like an ability word but used like a trigger. If this is just a shorthand, I suggest writing it out using this template:

Unity - Whenever you cast a multicolored spell, for each of its colors beyond the first, you gain 3 life and and each opponent gains 1 life.

It's fairly verbose as far as ability words go, so keep card space in mind.