Magic the Gathering: Brainstorming

[Carl]

Cool idea's there, i think everyone's said anything i'd have to say though. This post is going to be a tad big. I've gotten a good way through exploratory design on the G/W/R factions of elves and want to basically run a bunch of cards past you. I'm not looking for specific feedback., (though i'm happy to hear it), as much as your feelings on what theme's are becoming apparent. Have i got enough theme in place basically. I will provide a little "what i was aiming for" at the end, though some elements have allready been discussed ofc. As well as note a concern or two of my own vis a vis some things.

Spoiler: Common

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Spoiler: Uncommon

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Spoiler: Rare

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Spoiler: Mythic

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Spoiler: Themes

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As a quick note the Rares and Mythics are a mixture of stuff kicked upstairs and progressions on sub-theme elements (like the wardens as a lore element), setup at lower rarities. So whilst their not unimportant to the themes in the elast be careful how much you read into them. Also some cards will have to have flavour text cut, (and some allready have), i'm trying to keep as much of it on though for obvious reasons.

Obviously the core theme is communal and the lifegain it drives, with that further reinforced by lifegain triggered effects on cards as well.

Whats probably a tad less obvious at first glance is the aggression vs defence theme, mostly because i don't have a huge number of beast of treefolk creatures made yet. What i realised pretty quick sharp was that if there was going to be this much lifegain going on i needed to make sure the player with that lifegain played a long gameplan victory, using the lifegain in part to stall out that long. Equally other stalling needed to be primarily of the slow the opponent down variety, not the coldcock him into the ground variety. Thus a number of defender creatures and most elves are low P high T on the P/T ratio's. More expensive and higher rarity cards bring more of the offense with it focused disproportionately on the legendaries, the beats, and the treefolk. This is also why there's a CMC 6 8/8 vanillia at common, whilst the mana curve on that may be pushing it too far i knew i needed at least one big brutal kaiju scale war machine, (figuratively speaking), to let limited players have good odds of drawing a smasher even at common. You'll probably also notice most of the more aggressive stuff is either tri-mana or contains red and 1 other colour.

Spoiler: Concerns and Probable Changes

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The single biggest bear is that Communal is just a tad too big text wise, i'm giving serious consideration on letting it just give life off every permanent with communal everytime it triggers instead of just the highest values, just to get a bit more space back. Even so i'm probably going to have to restrict commons to either evergreen + communal, or evergreen + lifegain interaction, though the former needs to be more prevalent as the latter doesn't work without the former which is a concern for limited. I'll admit it's a nuisance and is likely to result in a lot of commons getting kicked upstairs and oversaturating uncommon where the bulk of the truly offensive stuff needs to go. Even then i'm worried about average text length.

[toapat]

Just discovered this thread so not going to post reviews just yet

Ok, 3 cards i would like to share, 2 concept and 1 joke

Spoiler: When Winter Comes

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Spoiler: Real Cards

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Note: Vytoria is an Elf specifically so that its not a "Good Tribe" for the colors

Edit: damnit i used URL links not Image tags

[Silfir]

@ Carl:

The power level on these cards seems completely off the hook. What kind of mass removal is going to be there to handle hordes of undercosted tokens?

I feel like there's way too much happening on the commons, and the Communal keyword seems too widespread. I feel like some sanity could be restored by removing "Communal 0" from all the cards that have it. It'll also be hard to draft decks with any kind of flexibility because of the preponderance of Gold cards with restrictive mana costs. That's particularly worrisome when it comes to the commons; these are supposed to be relatively easy to fit into many different types of deck. That's not to say you can't print multi-color commons - but this many?

I suppose the intent to is to turn this into a three-color archetype format - Naya, Grixis, Esper, Jund and Bant - in that case I think it's definitely helpful to look at the Alara Block and the Tarkir block for some orientation.

Thematically, this looks more or less like the Selesnya Guild on steroids. That might be another place to look for orientation.

I would also avoid triple hybrid costs and mixing hybrid costs with full mana symbols, just from an aesthetical standpoint.

What do the noncreature spells look like?


Just out of curiosity - how often have you played Limited so far?


@ toapat:

They both seem like very pushed mythic rares. I think Vitoria with her personal double-striking Umezawa's Jitte might be a step too far. The Thopter-maker is definitely a bomb, but since Wizards seemed perfectly willing to print the Hour of Devastation God cards, it seems almost tame by comparison. 0/6 might be a bit too much, it dodges a lot of removal up there.

Ideally I think you should link your card images with IMG tags - puts the cards directly into your post. Use spoiler boxes to save room if there are too many.

[toapat]

@ toapat:

They both seem like very pushed mythic rares. I think Vitoria with her personal double-striking Umezawa's Jitte might be a step too far. The Thopter-maker is definitely a bomb, but since Wizards seemed perfectly willing to print the Hour of Devastation God cards, it seems almost tame by comparison. 0/6 might be a bit too much, it dodges a lot of removal up there.

Ideally I think you should link your card images with IMG tags - puts the cards directly into your post. Use spoiler boxes to save room if there are too many.

1: ya i realized when i checked my post that i used URL by habit rather than image tags, i fixed that already.

2: Bolded part: I see what you did there

3: Vytoria Sunstorm literally did start as Boros Swiftblade + Jitte. there was 3 itterations where she could literally Punch the Helicarrier to death Ala Captain America. I dont really think shes even as pushed as Death Shadow though

edit: and neither of them are as pushed as GRRM

multi edit: Oh, i think i did nerf the Helicarrier in the files to an 0/4

[Silfir]

I understood GRRM to be a joke card ;)

Vitoria plays nothing like Death's Shadow, that's not a good comparison. Jitte, on the other hand, is banned in Modern... No idea how she'd work out, she might just be pushed, not broken. People do tend to carry more creature removal than they do artifact removal.

[toapat]

I understood GRRM to be a joke card ;)

Vitoria plays nothing like Death's Shadow, that's not a good comparison. Jitte, on the other hand, is banned in Modern... No idea how she'd work out, she might just be pushed, not broken. People do tend to carry more creature removal than they do artifact removal.

Vicky was designed during OGW, and even then i felt she played kinda like a Boggles creature. Now we have blessed alliance, Condemn, and Fatal push for creature removal, and the only protection she naturally has is double poke. If she is overpushed, its simply because i wanted to make her for a deck archetype that should but doesnt exist

edit: also the 2 life per counter comes from simply needing there to be a reason to use the second state without it being protection or indestructible or reduce damage. 2 life per can certainly add up, but 2 life per is also not a great value

[Eurus]

I understood GRRM to be a joke card ;)

Vitoria plays nothing like Death's Shadow, that's not a good comparison. Jitte, on the other hand, is banned in Modern... No idea how she'd work out, she might just be pushed, not broken. People do tend to carry more creature removal than they do artifact removal.

I'm not sure comparing her to jitte is valid. The difference between an equipment that you can stick on any creature you want and a 1/2 body that you have to keep alive and deal combat damage with is huge. For one thing, she has no evasion and gets killed by any moderately-statted blocker, so actually attacking with her is a pain. Her ability to potentially ping down creatures (or just face for 4 damage per swing as a 2-drop) is powerful if you can stick some form of evasion on her, but then, she's vulnerable to pretty much any removal that you care to run.

[toapat]

Her ability to potentially ping down creatures (or just face for 4 damage per swing as a 2-drop) is powerful if you can stick some form of evasion on her, but then, she's vulnerable to pretty much any removal that you care to run.

She can only burn down creatures with the blaze counters

[Carl]

@ Carl:

The power level on these cards seems completely off the hook. What kind of mass removal is going to be there to handle hordes of undercosted tokens?

I feel like there's way too much happening on the commons, and the Communal keyword seems too widespread. I feel like some sanity could be restored by removing "Communal 0" from all the cards that have it. It'll also be hard to draft decks with any kind of flexibility because of the preponderance of Gold cards with restrictive mana costs. That's particularly worrisome when it comes to the commons; these are supposed to be relatively easy to fit into many different types of deck. That's not to say you can't print multi-color commons - but this many?

I suppose the intent to is to turn this into a three-color archetype format - Naya, Grixis, Esper, Jund and Bant - in that case I think it's definitely helpful to look at the Alara Block and the Tarkir block for some orientation.

Thematically, this looks more or less like the Selesnya Guild on steroids. That might be another place to look for orientation.

I would also avoid triple hybrid costs and mixing hybrid costs with full mana symbols, just from an aesthetical standpoint.

What do the noncreature spells look like?


Just out of curiosity - how often have you played Limited so far?

Hmm, actually i'd based all my token costs off each other and i had, i thought based the initial one (To Arms) on an existing card and just given it a light buff to account for the multi-colour nature, (which pretty much allways packs a discount in), but a quick nosey shows i somehow misread 5 as 4. Probably because i was tired when i wrote that thing, i find i get more creative when tired, but i tend to make these kind of snafu's more too. The reference card is knight watch.

Communal 0 was somthing i was planning to cut back on but i absolutely don't want to remove it from everything that has it. Without it the theme isn't common anymore because medium to high mana cards aren't, (pardon the pun), common at common, and you don't get positive communal values till at least CMC3 outside of the healer sequence so without a number of instances of communal 0 at common the entire theme stops working because there's no lifegain mechanic present there outside of a small handful of cards. The odds that limited will fail to pull any positive communal cards should be pretty low and if everything else works the odds that constructed would not want to play some of the medium cost communal cards in their decks are low, but having a few cards i your deck which means 1 or 2 out at a time with a positive ciommunal valu does not a theme make. Those couple of cards need the rest of the cards to drive their mechanic, to be enablers and triggerer's for it.

The multi-colour part is completely intentional. None of the elven segments of society work as a mono colour period. Some of the beasts in this lot might fit mono-colour, but they'd be the only faction with any mono-colour in them so it wouldn't work thematically across all 3 factions. Though i have found i can almost design each faction as a seperate set because of how much interaction they have, (or rather don't have), with each other. This is my faction notes for them:

Spoiler

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Green/White primary colours. Focuses on community, provides all factions with food, water, most of the healers, as well as raw goods like leather stone, wood, e.t.c. The more someone dedicates themselves to helping the community the further they progress in the social hierarchy.

Has a Red secondary to represent their willingness to respect individual right to choose not to advance beyond a certain point, not force conformity, e.t.c.

Mostly elves with a strong defensive lifegain theme, but has lords and powerful beasts as well as board wipe in the later game. Relies on stalling out the game until it can pull a win condition by refusing to die.

Non-creature spells will be mostly concentrated at higher rarities, a few at uncommon and the rest as large scale game winning effects, (bombs i believe is the proper term), at rare or mythic. Common especially and some Uncommon will be token producers. That dosen;t mean no no-token makers at common just that token producers will be the more ahem, common.

As far as limited, duels sort of does it as a matter of course, you start with a very limited number of cards to work with and have to unlock the rest, otoh it tends to mix a lot of sets together so cards often don't interact well if at all. So i'm interpolating my experiance there with commentary from the many making magic articles :).


Hmm possibble way round my issues that gets a load of rules text off the commons. Make Communal a subtype for all card types and then make communal:

Communal N: (When a communal type permanent enters the battlefield or a non-permanent communal type spell is cast gain N life.)

Basically an Ally mechanic vairent. Thoughts?

[Carl]

Just discovered this thread so not going to post reviews just yet

Ok, 3 cards i would like to share, 2 concept and 1 joke

Spoiler: When Winter Comes

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Spoiler: Real Cards

Show

Note: Vytoria is an Elf specifically so that its not a "Good Tribe" for the colors

Edit: damnit i used URL links not Image tags

Heh i like i admit i'm not the best to review these but outside of some combo potentials i don't see any extreme stuff on the two serious cards. Not saying they don't need adjustment, (but i think what needs to be said on hat has allready been said), just nothing outside of that jumps out at me. And they're both cool idea's.

[Svata]

I'm gonna be honest. Vytoria reminds me a lot of this card.

Spoiler: Jitte

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And everyone knows Jitte is BUSTED. So I'm pretty worried about it.

[Carl]

Simplest answer if your really worried. Add:

At each end step, remove all blaze counters from this card.

That said it strikes me as being a lot weaker overall because it's on a low power chassis with low toughness and no innate way to boost that and the anti-creature effect can't cut down the damage it takes when it attacks, so anything 2/3 or better can kill it if it isn't pumped. Pumping could allow some nice tricks, but then your paying extra for the privilege of doing that. Jite could pump itself and could be put on much more capable base chassis. It was also dirt cheap by comparison being colourless, even if RW in a dual colour deck isn't super hard to get. Also jitte with double strike could get 4 counters a turn.

[solidork]

Vytoria is perfectly fine, in my opinion.

Toxic Fumes BR
Sorcery
Choose one —
- Toxic Fumes deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
- Target opponent reveals his or her hand. You choose a creature card with toughness 3 or less from it. That player discards that card.

Bombs Away! 2RR
Sorcery
Replicate - Sacrifice a non-creature artifact
Bombs Away! deals 2 damage to target creature or player. Create a colorless Bomb artifact token with "When Bomb enters the battlefield, sacrifice it. If you do, Bomb deals 2 damage to each creature."

[Carl]

The first one is cool, the second i think creating a token like that is excessively complex, unless your opponent has instant speed artifact destruction available it won't do much that just having it as a simpler written effect won't. At the same time that replicaite cost worries me, it has a lot of potential to really spiral, at the same time it's not a trivial cost to meet in quantity. It's probably balanced though, red really isn't my best colour tbh.

[JBPuffin]

Yeah, Vytoria's not busted. Jitte is so good because it has three effects which all kill things; Vytoria's kill Route is creature only and slower. The lifegain side is a nice white twist and provides some player defense. The ability also makes it a target for Bolt/Shock/Spray/whatever's legal removal in the format because so many players will overreact and think Jitte...

Toxic Fumes is Lightning Bolt+Despise variant; I think it needs to be Shock+Despise variant to be Standard-printable.

[Silfir]

As far as limited, duels sort of does it as a matter of course, you start with a very limited number of cards to work with and have to unlock the rest, otoh it tends to mix a lot of sets together so cards often don't interact well if at all. So i'm interpolating my experiance there with commentary from the many making magic articles :).

In the best possible words - try to participate in a Limited event in a local tournament. (Sealed is easier to get into, but Booster Draft is what is played most.) Magic Duels plays nothing like Limited; it's more or less Block Constructed. To understand how commons, uncommons and rares need to be designed and how the design of a card impacts the Limited formats, particularly Booster Draft, you really need to actually *play* it a couple of times.

A set-defining keyword ability does *not* have to be printed on many commons to establish a significant presence. There are 55 common creatures in Kaladesh, and only seven of those have the Fabricate keyword, for example; two each for green, black and white, and one artifact creature. Even in Shards of Alara, in which Exalted was the signature keyword of the Bant shard (White, Blue, Green), there are six common creatures with Exalted (out of 53), and Exalted, like Communal, is a keyword that gets better the more you have of it. (Also worth noting - even though Alara was heavily three-color-archetype-focused, only one of the Exalted commons in Shards was a multicolored card. I think you're leaning far too heavily on multi-colored costs.)

If you've read Making Magic articles, have you started out designing the set with a design skeleton? That would probably be quite useful to share.

[solidork]

The first one is cool, the second i think creating a token like that is excessively complex, unless your opponent has instant speed artifact destruction available it won't do much that just having it as a simpler written effect won't. At the same time that replicaite cost worries me, it has a lot of potential to really spiral, at the same time it's not a trivial cost to meet in quantity. It's probably balanced though, red really isn't my best colour tbh.

Yeah, it could be simpler, but where is the fun in that? :D The replicate cost was originally just some mana, but I decided to just go for it and play the flavor to the hilt.

Twist the Flesh 2UB
Instant
Transform target creature. If you can't, that creature gets +4/-4 until end of turn.

Bale Lightning BBB
Creature - Elemental Horror
Haste, Trample
At the beginning of each end step, sacrifice a creature.
6/1

Vhati, the Redeemed WBG
Creature - Human Warrior
Exalted
Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, the base power of creatures defending player controls becomes 1 until end of turn. Then, if Vhati is attacking, he gains deathtouch until end of turn.
4/4

Edit: For reference, since he's super old: http://magiccards.info/tpr/en/214.html

[toapat]

I'm gonna be honest. Vytoria reminds me a lot of this card.

Spoiler: Jitte

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And everyone knows Jitte is BUSTED. So I'm pretty worried about it.

Jitte generates 2 counters per Hit, and does both self +2/+2, can kill indestructible creatures with the -1/-1 although it still has the 2 life per counter Vicky basically generates a quarter the damage

Vytoria is perfectly fine, in my opinion.

Toxic Fumes BR
Sorcery
Choose one —
- Toxic Fumes deals 3 damage to target creature or player.
- Target opponent reveals his or her hand. You choose a creature card with toughness 3 or less from it. That player discards that card.

Bombs Away! 2RR
Sorcery
Replicate - Sacrifice a non-creature artifact
Bombs Away! deals 2 damage to target creature or player. Create a colorless Bomb artifact token with "When Bomb enters the battlefield, sacrifice it. If you do, Bomb deals 2 damage to each creature."

is Toxic Fumes supposed to be CmC 3 or less? the card is slightly overpowered but I dont imagine anyone taking it over K-command ever

generally the only problem with Bombs Away is that its a Clue Synergy card

[solidork]

is Toxic Fumes supposed to be CmC 3 or less? the card is slightly overpowered but I dont imagine anyone taking it over K-command ever

The idea is that you are sort of dealing 3 damage to a creature in their hand.

generally the only problem with Bombs Away is that its a Clue Synergy card

Yeah, I noticed the clue synergy but decided it was probably fine.

[Svata]

Jitte generates 2 counters per Hit, and does both self +2/+2, can kill indestructible creatures with the -1/-1 although it still has the 2 life per counter Vicky basically generates a quarter the damage

She also generates 2 counters. She has double strike. But yeah, she's less unbalanced. I just can't help but see similarities.

[toapat]

She also generates 2 counters. She has double strike. But yeah, she's less unbalanced. I just can't help but see similarities.

because the card literally started as Boros Swiftblade + Jitte.

[Carl]

In the best possible words - try to participate in a Limited event in a local tournament. (Sealed is easier to get into, but Booster Draft is what is played most.) Magic Duels plays nothing like Limited; it's more or less Block Constructed. To understand how commons, uncommons and rares need to be designed and how the design of a card impacts the Limited formats, particularly Booster Draft, you really need to actually *play* it a couple of times.

A set-defining keyword ability does *not* have to be printed on many commons to establish a significant presence. There are 55 common creatures in Kaladesh, and only seven of those have the Fabricate keyword, for example; two each for green, black and white, and one artifact creature. Even in Shards of Alara, in which Exalted was the signature keyword of the Bant shard (White, Blue, Green), there are six common creatures with Exalted (out of 53), and Exalted, like Communal, is a keyword that gets better the more you have of it. (Also worth noting - even though Alara was heavily three-color-archetype-focused, only one of the Exalted commons in Shards was a multicolored card. I think you're leaning far too heavily on multi-colored costs.)

If you've read Making Magic articles, have you started out designing the set with a design skeleton? That would probably be quite useful to share.

First. Like i said Exploratory design stage. I'm not yet at the design skeleton stage, though i'm getting close to doing the G/W/R section of that.

The thing to understand is that in making magic article terms this is an entirely top down design. The lore element that it all grows out of was written for other purposes and repurposed, but a couple of characters aside created to demonstrate core concepts of the factions i'd only filled into the medium detail level. Doing that constrains what i can do heavily because whilst all the possibble roles details thereof of individual members of elvish society haven;t been hammered out, the outline they have to fit into has.

When i first tried this project 6 months ago i tried starting with a design skeleton and it went nowhere because i was too busy trying to hammer out what mechanics i was going to use and simultaneously figure out how those mechanics fit into the set design and what lore concepts in detail i had to work with to justify this or that mechanic and what mechanics i couldn't justify, and so on and so forth. I was to busy trying to figure out what i could do, what i couldn't do, and what i needed to do, in relation to the lore to really work with a design skeleton yet. So what i'm doing now is going "ok, what types of elves exist within this faction and what kind of effects can i put on them". Then when i've done a silly number of cards covering everything i can think of i can sit down, do the design skeleton for that faction, (before i started this after the 6 month break i didn't even realise i could treat each factions as a sub-set, thats something i've only realised very recently), figure out what i need as opposed to what i can do, and then see where mechanical needs align with the lore and figure out how it pieces together. Many cards will get the boot and become exploratory design cards only, others will get a rework because their lore concept can be tweaked to fit a different role mechanically. And a few new idea will probably occur to em along the way.

I'm also getting to see potential interactions and how that can play off. For example i had the idea in the back of my mind early on that i'd want to keep the lifegain cards low power high toughness focused to stop aggression and lifegain together, i hadn't thought about how i needed to bear that in mind across the whole faction till i started laying things out, doing that helped me spot the potential problem in a way i couldn't before.

That top down design element is also why there's all these multi-colour around. It isn't that i'm in love with multicolour, so much as my lore concept has an elvish society thats composed of 3 archetypal factions and i've defined them i specific yet at the same time subtle ways philosophically. And the occasional oddball aside elve's within the overarching tends to strongly associate with just the one faction, but each faction concept break down into multi-colour, oddly though this wasn't intentional when writing the lore, two primary and one secondary colour per faction. The thing is a cards colour needs to reflect what they are lore wise in a top down design, you'd never, (as an outside example), make a borg drone mono-colour, because the borg collective's outlook on the world around it just doesn't fit neatly into a single colour. You could potentially try and make a mono colour borg if you really wanted, but you'd lose most of the borg flavour in the process. I could certainly move to more hybrid mana ofc if that would help, but the dual and somtimes tri-colour nature of cards is very deliberate, exactly which colours they get tends to boil down to core concepts present for that type or specific individual with a bit of a sequencing factor.


As far as limited goes it would really help if you just explained better. I got into mtg via duels precisely because outside of hearing about it on occasion and running across a couple of the tie in novels in by reading i've never seen or heard anything related to actually playing it in the real world like ever. So the odds of me getting to actually play anything outside duels is virtually nil. I didn't even get into duels specifically for mtg, but rather i was looking for suggestion in a steam summer sale and someone recommended it, and then it got my creative juices going, and in case you haven't noticed i like doing this kind of thing for fun. I get the feeling from your comments i'm missing somthing that isn't being enunciated in the descriptions of how limited works, (which to me sounds exactly like first boot up of duels 2015, i.e. get a bunch of random cards from a small number of of boosters and build a deck around the contents, in some cases passing cards you don't want to another player). My main concerns between that and what's stated and implied in the making articles is that A) the power level to CMC ratio needs to be kept reasonable. B) Anything that exists at common needs to be answerable by a common. You shouldn't need a higher rarity to deal with things. C) there needs to be care given to the inevitability of random draws producing a mix of colours and how that plays out in terms of quantities of playable cards.

A) hasn;t gone perfectly, whilst i've tried to keep an eye on this by comparing equivalent cards where i can find them,the screw up on to arms has thrown all my token generation out of whack for example. B) is basically the thought behind Eldar Treekin, all the low to medium cost lifegain and token creation at common needs an answer. It shouldn't be the only one, but it's the only one i'd done so far, i was focusing on the elves in my exploration so far, non-elves are attempts to cover area's the elves don;t to see how that looks. C) is a potential issue, but i think the fact there are only three factions offsets a lot as it means a lot more in each colour combo in any given hypothetical booster, using HoD rarity ratios as a baseline and ignoring colourless it works out at 25 common, 22-23 uncommon, 15 rare, and 5 mythic per faction. Add in colour sharing amongst factions and you've got a better situation than first glance might suggest.


For themes, this may be a tad less coherent, getting tired and about to go get a nap, but i thought the entire point of making a theme common was to make it so a typical booster would almost allways contain an example? Thats basically exactly the criticism one of the making magic articles leveled at Champions of Kamigawa, the Legendary matters theme was mostly invisible because it did not extend down to common so players could open multiple boosters and never notice it because it wasn't turning up enough, (or rather at all), in the commons to result in enough cards with it turning up in even a moderate number of booster openings to make it clear it was a central piece of the set in that colour or colour combo. I admit i'm genuinely confused now. I don't get how exalted is a bant theme if it basically on average will turn up 1 booster in two on a single card total, (based on the total of 107 commons in the set), Okay only a handful of those will be bant, (28 in one of the three colours, some of which i don't doubt are non-bant stuff), so the ratio isn't entirely that bad, but unless your looking at what % of Bant specific cards have Exalted it's still not exactly going to turn up a lot. Your average player probably won't even notice it's there, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen with a theme. Like i said i'm confused. As a p.s on the theme point, the stuff i presented is heavily elf slanted because thats the section i've been exploring, i expect to add plenty more beasts and treekin before i'm done, i just haven;t explored them too heavily beyond a few basic starting points, some of which will probably go away, (Wolf Pack will need a change for example, 3/3 for GW is reasonable, (It's a reprint of watchwolf by another name really), but too aggressive for the price point for the set concepts level of these colors. ed can get away with a bit more aggression but even that needs to be kept an eye on. But basically whilst i hadn't intended to cut back as far as your suggestions, the ratio of communal to non-communal is much higher than i'd expect final design skeleton form to fill out at.

[Silfir]

As far as limited goes it would really help if you just explained better.

I fear the only thing that will really help is to actually play it.

I don't get how exalted is a bant theme if it basically on average will turn up 1 booster in two on a single card total, (based on the total of 107 commons in the set), Okay only a handful of those will be bant, (28 in one of the three colours, some of which i don't doubt are non-bant stuff), so the ratio isn't entirely that bad, but unless your looking at what % of Bant specific cards have Exalted it's still not exactly going to turn up a lot. Your average player probably won't even notice it's there, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen with a theme.

Because of the way booster draft works. There are not enough Exalted cards in any given Booster Draft pod - consisting of 8 players - to allow every one of those players to draft Bant, and build a deck with an Exalted theme. But there are enough for one or two of those players to draft Bant colors and end up with multiple cards that use the theme, and you're definitely going to notice those players using it. The other players are going to play other themes.

There are ways to play Limited - sealed or draft - online for nothing, if there isn't a store nearby. I play Sealed weekly with a friend of mine; we pick one of Magic's many many past sets, we use a draft website that basically simulates opening six booster packs, build decks, then print and sleeve up proxies and go to town.

There are some fundamentals that Duels 2015 will not teach you, because it can't.

[solidork]

Watching draft videos can also be fun, if the person is both good and entertaining. It also gives you a good idea of what cards are good in limited.(obviously it varies based on the set)

[Carl]

Watching draft videos can also be fun, if the person is both good and entertaining. It also gives you a good idea of what cards are good in limited.(obviously it varies based on the set)

You got any linkies? Would be hugely helpful tbh.

I fear the only thing that will really help is to actually play it.



Because of the way booster draft works. There are not enough Exalted cards in any given Booster Draft pod - consisting of 8 players - to allow every one of those players to draft Bant, and build a deck with an Exalted theme. But there are enough for one or two of those players to draft Bant colors and end up with multiple cards that use the theme, and you're definitely going to notice those players using it. The other players are going to play other themes.

There are ways to play Limited - sealed or draft - online for nothing, if there isn't a store nearby. I play Sealed weekly with a friend of mine; we pick one of Magic's many many past sets, we use a draft website that basically simulates opening six booster packs, build decks, then print and sleeve up proxies and go to town.

There are some fundamentals that Duels 2015 will not teach you, because it can't.

I appreciate you trying to help, in fact have an internet man hug, (hugz), for the thought, like i said the issue is i don't know of anywhere local to me personally that has anything to do with mtg. Don't get me wrong, subject to the monetary cost factor, (more a matter of when really), i'd love to do so, and not just because i learn best by doing on a personal level, (hence this drawn out exploratory phase, it's teaching myself some stuff along the way), but because it honestly sounds fun, even if my deckbuilding skills suck a tad :p and i'd be pretty damm nervous given my social recluse tendencies.

That said even that last part helps a lot. I wasn't under the impression that, that much card passing happened anywhere outside of dedicated deck builders trading for cards. Knowing that pass around will allow people to focus more than i'd assumed helps a lot. Still i think it's worth repeating the point i noticed earlier, whilst exalted isn't on a lot of cards in the set total, it is on a large percentage of the appropriate color cards, so i give the likely number of cards overall in the G/W/R combinations it does need to be on a moderate percentage of them. In that vein i'd just repeat my point that my exploration was elf focused so far, as i move into other area's in my explorings a lot more non-elf, and thus non-communal compatible cards will pop up. At the same time my new idea for how to write it carries a lot of positives, Rally and Ally for example are connected mechanics, but when you look at the BfZ commons there's 20% of the creatures are ally's, but only 5% have rally. So that should help massively too.

Still i admit i'm kicked the ground a bit metaphorically speaking over the clear gaps in my knowledge.

[JBPuffin]

That top down design element is also why there's all these multi-colour around. It isn't that i'm in love with multicolour, so much as my lore concept has an elvish society thats composed of 3 archetypal factions and i've defined them i specific yet at the same time subtle ways philosophically. And the occasional oddball aside elve's within the overarching tends to strongly associate with just the one faction, but each faction concept break down into multi-colour, oddly though this wasn't intentional when writing the lore, two primary and one secondary colour per faction. The thing is a cards colour needs to reflect what they are lore wise in a top down design, you'd never, (as an outside example), make a borg drone mono-colour, because the borg collective's outlook on the world around it just doesn't fit neatly into a single colour. You could potentially try and make a mono colour borg if you really wanted, but you'd lose most of the borg flavour in the process. I could certainly move to more hybrid mana ofc if that would help, but the dual and somtimes tri-colour nature of cards is very deliberate, exactly which colours they get tends to boil down to core concepts present for that type or specific individual with a bit of a sequencing factor.

Magic creatures' color alignments aren't perfect matches of their personality or their faction's allegiances; they're based on the highlights of that character, not every quirk. The idea that not every card has to reintroduce the faction to the players is a sticking point for most new designers; ideally, each card hints at their faction while still having a niche in the game itself. I personally couldn't make Borg Collective cards, or anything based on someone else's material, because I don't know it well enough. However, I do know enough about Dolrath to say, "Alright, this character is from Beterra, they're a mage who doesn't deal with death magic, so they're blue." As a whole, Beterra is blue-black, and most cards of that color combination are from Beterra, but not all Beterran cards have to be both of those colors. I design a lot of multicolored cards as well, but sometimes the only thematic link required is the use of the faction's mechanic and/or a bit of flavor text.

[Carl]

Magic creatures' color alignments aren't perfect matches of their personality or their faction's allegiances; they're based on the highlights of that character, not every quirk. The idea that not every card has to reintroduce the faction to the players is a sticking point for most new designers; ideally, each card hints at their faction while still having a niche in the game itself. I personally couldn't make Borg Collective cards, or anything based on someone else's material, because I don't know it well enough. However, I do know enough about Dolrath to say, "Alright, this character is from Beterra, they're a mage who doesn't deal with death magic, so they're blue." As a whole, Beterra is blue-black, and most cards of that color combination are from Beterra, but not all Beterran cards have to be both of those colors. I design a lot of multicolored cards as well, but sometimes the only thematic link required is the use of the faction's mechanic and/or a bit of flavor text.

I don't want to turn this into a massive lore discussion, i allready feel like i've monopolized the thread a tad the last couple of days and i don't want to kill it by doing so ;). But to try and cover this as succinctly as i can, first i genuinely have no idea who Dolrath is so i really have no firm basis to comment on your example and offer a counter example you'd be familiar with, but i'll try and work with it. The core problem with your example is that it assumes it's possibble for that circumstance to be true. There isn't actually an elvish faction in blue black primary colours so i can't provide a specific counter example from my lore, but the key to understanding each faction is that every faction has a core guiding principle, for elves who are a part of that faction it's the core reason for why they're doing what they're doing in life.

To try and break that down a bit the faction i'm doing the exploring on so far has a core guiding principle "The Needs of the Community First". If you ask an elf of the Mother's faction why he's doing what he's doing, (or she), they'll state some variation on that first, if you press them for why they're doing the specific thing they are, thats when they'll start talking about personal preference, about how their current way of expressing that primary ideal appeals to them.

Certainly at times i've let how i lay out the card ability wise or how that special sub aspect is a little more towards one aspect move me away from the pure green/white mix that normally exemplifies the whole community matters, (especially when combined with the secondary aspect of living in harmony with nature), but i've tried to allways keep at least one and build the majority in the colour pair simply because it's such a central theme not just of the faction but of everyone within that factions outlook on life.

Maybe i am overthinking this, i'm not sure now TBH. I just know my starting point all along was "what is the single core defining trait of every elf within each faction, what is their identity as a group and how does that factor into their personal goals". And that allways came back to the faction guiding principle which allways came back to being multi-colour by nature and thats where the whole multi-colour thing ultimately came from, an attempt to define what all elves of a given faction has a common motivating force for their actions. They're really weird as a whole by human standards TBH, we don;t have anything like as well defined or limited in number of types guiding principles so we tend to go off in a lot more directions, but those directions aren't allways as full of the same subtle distinctions between sub elements as the elves.

The closest human equivalent i can give you is to imagine if every christian allways chose one or more of the 7 commandments to embody, how they embody that in detail would vary from person to person but the guiding principle wouldn't.

Anyway bed time again here.

[Silfir]

I don't want to turn this into a massive lore discussion, i allready feel like i've monopolized the thread a tad the last couple of days and i don't want to kill it by doing so ;). But to try and cover this as succinctly as i can, first i genuinely have no idea who Dolrath is so i really have no firm basis to comment on your example and offer a counter example you'd be familiar with, but i'll try and work with it. The core problem with your example is that it assumes it's possibble for that circumstance to be true. There isn't actually an elvish faction in blue black primary colours so i can't provide a specific counter example from my lore, but the key to understanding each faction is that every faction has a core guiding principle, for elves who are a part of that faction it's the core reason for why they're doing what they're doing in life.

To try and break that down a bit the faction i'm doing the exploring on so far has a core guiding principle "The Needs of the Community First". If you ask an elf of the Mother's faction why he's doing what he's doing, (or she), they'll state some variation on that first, if you press them for why they're doing the specific thing they are, thats when they'll start talking about personal preference, about how their current way of expressing that primary ideal appeals to them.

Certainly at times i've let how i lay out the card ability wise or how that special sub aspect is a little more towards one aspect move me away from the pure green/white mix that normally exemplifies the whole community matters, (especially when combined with the secondary aspect of living in harmony with nature), but i've tried to allways keep at least one and build the majority in the colour pair simply because it's such a central theme not just of the faction but of everyone within that factions outlook on life.

Maybe i am overthinking this, i'm not sure now TBH. I just know my starting point all along was "what is the single core defining trait of every elf within each faction, what is their identity as a group and how does that factor into their personal goals". And that allways came back to the faction guiding principle which allways came back to being multi-colour by nature and thats where the whole multi-colour thing ultimately came from, an attempt to define what all elves of a given faction has a common motivating force for their actions. They're really weird as a whole by human standards TBH, we don;t have anything like as well defined or limited in number of types guiding principles so we tend to go off in a lot more directions, but those directions aren't allways as full of the same subtle distinctions between sub elements as the elves.

The closest human equivalent i can give you is to imagine if every christian allways chose one or more of the 7 commandments to embody, how they embody that in detail would vary from person to person but the guiding principle wouldn't.

Anyway bed time again here.

You don't have to understand who Dolrath is to understand the example you were given. All you need to know is that while Dolrath is from a faction that is blue/black that practices all sorts of "forbidden" magic, including necromancy, he personally doesn't feel drawn to the necromancy that represents the black aspect, but is definitely a mage through and through (focused on knowledge and mastery of magical arts), and therefore Blue.

Consider for each individual of your green/white faction which aspect of their core philosophy - stressing the needs of the community over their own, and protecting and cherishing nature - drives them more than the other. Take the Initiate Healer and the Elvish Tree Druid, for example. You made both of them simply G/W, but looking at the flavor text, the emphasis for the Initiate Healer is that they "rose through the ranks" and were granted healing powers by "the mother" as a reward for their faithful service. This guy could easily, and should, be Mono-White. Whereas the Elvish Tree Druid's main job is making sure the trees that make up the elven realm or something are nurtured and raised, I presume, and even expresses a touch of defiance in the flavour text ("Without us there would...") giving him a bit of a ornery, stubborn air. That, to me, suggests he is leaning far more towards the Green aspect of the faction, and could easily be Mono-Green.

To determine where a given creature falls - and which of them do, in fact, deserve full multi-colored status - consider the main conflict between Green and White philosophies, as laid out in MaRo's article on that color pair. To summarize, Green is not a thinking color, but White is. Green's emphasis on community and harmony is a "natural" one, as it's perfectly usual for animals to band together to help each other without the influence of any sort of imposed order. They form a natural community based on instinct. White emphasises community because White wants everything and everyone to follow a certain, abstract order of things, that may not be natural at all. Green is an ally of Red - they share a respect for the gut instinct, for action over thought, for acting on their feelings rather than suppressing them. White is an ally of Blue - they share a respect for deep thought and considered action, though White does so with the goal of creating an ordered, well-functioning society, and Blue does it for the sake of the pursuit of knowledge and logic itself.

All members of a G/W society have a personal stance in this conflict, and chances are they're leaning a certain way - the ones that don't, that understand the conflict and don't lean towards either side, can be considered to truly incorporate both colors of mana into their beings, and be "true" gold cards. (Or hybrid cost cards.)

[solidork]

You got any linkies? Would be hugely helpful tbh.

It's been a while, but LSV (Luis Scott Vargas, of Channel Fireball) was always my personal favorite, but I haven't watched in a long time. Their YouTube has videos going back all the way to Shards of Alara. Unfortunately the most memorable videos are often ones where something goes amusingly awry. My personal favorite is below:

Spoiler

Show

Drafting 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEAKPxitY3Q
Drafting 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbC6Krhgd2w

Spoiler: Round 1

Show

Round 1 G1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSyZbZFZ3e4
Round 1 G2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gWKuMvhiCw

Spoiler: Round 2

Show

Round 2 G1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFdp4L2hOww (Aura Gnarlid <3)
Round 2 G2 P1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZKd7oReOoI
Round 2 G2 P2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_dqleRz-2U
Round 2 G3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H89wlVJX_kU

Spoiler: Round 3

Show

G1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEmsoJ4Bt7c
G2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB83ZycZyTk
G3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnk80rVSspo

If you want to look at sets that had strong themes that supported multiple distinct archetypes, I suggest looking at Innistrad/Innistrad/Innistrad drafts.

[JBPuffin]

Forgot to say that Dolrath is my setting, which is how I know what each character's colors are. Silfir has explained it much more in-depth; listen to them, Carl. As much as we'd like to think our designs are different enough to change the system and make every card multicolor, they really aren't.