I know we haven't really finished discussing blue commons, but I couldn't help myself. I'll start with what a general white skeleton might look like in this set. I'm sure it will be up for revision, but I might as well give it a try.
CW01: Creature, Small, Evasion
CW02: Creature, Small, Evasion
CW03: Creature, Small, Evasion Hoser
CW04: Creature, Small, Life-Gain
CW05: Creature, Small, First Strike
CW06: Creature, Small, Enchantment-Like; Exile enabler
CW07: Creature, Small, Enchantment-Like; White commitment?
CW08: Creature, Medium, Vigilance
CW09: Creature, Medium, Enchantment-Like/ Vanilla? CW10: Creature, Medium, Enchantment-Like/ Enchantment
CW11: Enchantment, Flash, Combat trick
CW12: Enchantment, Flash, Creature Removal
CW12: Enchantment, Aura
CW14: Enchantment, Aura
I'm not sure whether we should go for 9 or 10 creatures. Finding intriguing flash enchantments for common to replace instants is going to be difficult, though.
EDIT: Okay, I'm realizing all of the things I missed. I don't remember whether we decided to use dedication or not, but there should be a strong color commitment card somewhere.

Here is my own submission. Two cards in one slot means either could go there.
CW01: Creature, Small, Evasion: Lightmare
CW02: Creature, Small, Evasion: Unshaped Aurora
CW03: Creature, Small, Evasion Hoser: Runearrow Archer
CW04: Creature, Small, Life: Dedication Example Guy, Aurora Soother
CW05: Creature, Small, First Strike
CW06: Creature, Small, Enchantment-Like: Aurora Weaver
CW07: Creature, Small, Enchantment-Like: Claw Knitter
CW08: Creature, Medium, Vigilance: Thread Gatherer
CW09: Creature, Medium, Enchantment-Like Mantra of the Moon
CW10: Creature, Medium, Enchantment-Like/ Enchantment Aurora Vault
CW11: Enchantment, Flash, Combat trick Combat Trick Enchantment, Energize
CW12: Enchantment, Flash, Creature Removal (I've been thinking of Journey to Nowhere but with flash. Thoughts?)
CW12: Enchantment, Aura Knit With Life
CW14: Enchantment, Aura: Still open
Sorry, had to stop in the middle. I'll come back later to finish.

Like the blue commons submissions, I'd like a list of things we need instead of a skeleton to determine what to choose for my submissions. Unlike the blue submissions, though, it's hard to tell what White needs, besides the basics, and a number of cards that like enchantments.

So, outside of things like number of creatures, Demystify type spell (do we want this?), and the rest of the basic White stuff, what must be in the White common slot? Are Crusade style effects automatic? Have we fully explored what can be done with Auras? How many Auras are a good idea? Is there an Oblivion Ring sub-theme? How many cards need that, or is the minimum amount of O-Ring cards 0?

The answer to a lot of these questions, from me at least is "I'm not sure". And it may not matter, either. I don't remember Esper having that strong a mechanical identity either, but it still felt like it hung together.

What I did for blue was make a table with recent sets along the top and slots down the side, except that I found it very helpful to, instead of trying to list fixed slots like "small creature, mill", I listed numbers of creatures and non-creatures, and then the number of mill cards of any sort, the number of bounce cards of any sort, etc. This seemed to make it easy to see at a glance what the recent defaults seemed to be, and make it less subjective (it was easy to tell what counted as a mill or evasion card, but harder to pigeonhole some cards into a specific slot).

I wonder, would it be helpful to do that on a wiki so everyone can do a bit of it; it's a bit like the core set projects of designing an archetypal skeleton, but more basic, but might also be useful elsewhere for designing any set to see at a glance what the creature breakdown for common blue is, or how many green cards had a set's theme, etc?

Or if this is already online somewhere, it would help creating a skeleton.

Edit: l2, that looks like a good start, but this might still help nailing details like number of creatures, and which colours do get vigilance most often at common. Eg. in 2012, blue had 10/20 creatures, and white had 12/20 and red, black, green had 11/20 (I think, I may have one wrong?), which suggests the current creature breakdowns are flatter than Rosewater thought when he wrote the skeleton articles (??)

jmgariepy, I know I should have done it that way, but this was just easier for me, personally, to keep track of. I don't mean to push this format on other people working on white commons. Sorry.
Jack V, I think you're right. The breakdowns of creature numbers in sets tend to be different from Rosewater's skeleton example.
Does anyone else think Demystify would be weird when white cares so much about enchantments?

Also, I was thinking that white should have a stronger theme of boosting your creature's power and toughness. This is a common effect in white already, but for some reason, it just feels like it makes sense with enchantment creatures. Of course, perhaps it just has a few more of these effects at common than normal. Having too many is probably a bad idea. I do like the idea of enchantment creature Veteran Swordsmith and Veteran Armorsmith, though.
Also, jmgariepy mentioned an O-ring subtheme. Personally, I've been toying with that idea myself. Maybe we could try it out and see how it works, having a few that exile different things.
EDIT: Fixed links.

I agree about demystify: it can fit the flavour (white is good at making, and removing, enchantments), but it's a card white probably wants less than normal.

I like blue and green having ready answers for White since they should be available. A White O-Ring for enchantments would probably make a ton of sense, since it isn't killing its brethren, just sending them away for a little while. I'd say something about finding a way to get black and red to do it, but that isn't really going to happen. It may be wise, however, to let the multi-tribe have a and a anti-enchantment spell.

@L2i0n0k7: Oh, you didn't do anything wrong, so you shouldn't be apologizing. I'm just less clear on what is required for the White tribe, than the blue one. With blue, we could just snatch the numbers out of the air, because I knew where we were going. Here, I sat down to make a list of requirements, and I didn't know where to start. I like the O-ring theme, but have no idea what the 'minimum' number for that would be. A lot of the work in White feels more like "make it strange". So, I guess there really isn't that many limitations, except "make it strange, but make sure it's common". I'll probably add my submissions tonight. Don't think I'm gunning after you L2i0n0k7 if I make 14 completely different cards. Most of this is good stuff, and would be happy to give it a thumbs up. I'm just trying to drop a bunch more options on the table... especially since the skeleton doesn't seem as tight in White as it was in Blue.

Oh, it's cool. White definitely has less of a direction than blue, so all ideas are welcome. The things I want to aim for are these:
-Enchantment creatures that actually feel like enchantments
-Somewhat unconventional effects
-A minor exiling theme
As you said, this is quite vague. At the moment, all of my suggestions are just that- suggestions. I feel more strongly about some than others, but most could go without a fight from me.
By the way, you can shorten my name to Link of you don't feel like typing that all out.

Just for my own sake, and so people can inform me when I'm wrong, I'm making a quick list up of what white commons need. Right now, it looks like:

­

One CC Spell. (I cheated in Blue, calling a spell a CC spell. I think I got to go back and give Adrift the Endless Sea the cost of . I just, for once, wanted to see a useful shrink effect... sigh...)­ ­

One creature with an activation of ":" ­

I don't have a full skeleton up, but so far I've added

CW01: Cutwork Knight - 3cc Creature, CCC, Vanilla
CW02: Formless Cup - 6cc Creature, Life gain, Stops Flying
CW03: Erstwhile 5cc Creature, Demystify
CW04: Sharer of Souls 2cc Creature, Linear Enchantments, Creature boost
CW05: Reklat Sdrawkcab 3cc Creature, Exiled Plays with Exile
CW06: Piece Patch 3cc Creature, Evasion
CW07: Weft Weaver 1cc Creature, Evasion
CW08: Folded Light4cc Creature, Plays with exile, stops flying
CW09: (((Tie in Ribbons))) 5cc Pacifism, "creautre #9", Likes Crusades
CW10: Aurora Wall 3cc "creature #10"
CW11: Cleansing Powder 2cc combat trick, damage prevention, life gain
CW12: Soft Filter 3cc Aura, Hexproof, Linear Enchantments
CW13: Tine and Tine Again 2cc Enchantment, Linear Enchantments, Originally had flash and flicker, but was probably too much info on a common.
CW14:

I'm still working on this, and the cards are subject to change. Especially since I currently have 3 2cc cards, two of which are .

jmg: I don't have time to comment more, but I quite like several of those.

I added a details page with a breakdown of several recent sets white commons (everyone feel free to add to it). Suggestions for numbers from that:

• More creatures than non-creature spells, even with an even number of slots. (Spells that animate things or make tokens can count to that total)
• 1 vanilla would be good but not necessary
• ~1 spell that recurs a card from the graveyard (a delayed card draw could fill this slot)
• Average 2-3 flyers, so we should probably have some evasion or an extra creature exile/tap/arrest
• Average about 6 cards that are explicitly on theme (ie. blatantly say 'enchantment creature') but can be more if we like, and can have more general enchantments, enchantment recurring etc
• 0-1 vigil
• 1 removal
• 2 combat-relevant instants
• 1 art/ench removal (should probably be something for artifacts, or something which isn't bad to play on your own enchantments, so we don't end up with a white white-hoser to go with our blue blue-hosers)
• 0-2 creatures which get bigger -- in this set we almost certainly want a Court Homunculus for enchantments, that's the simplest possible executation and quite good
• 1-2 ways of gaining life (can be -- preferably are -- incidental)
• 0-1 first strike
• 0-2 1/4-type creature
• 0-1 token maker
• 1 prevent damage or grant protection (or protection creature)

Most of this sounds about right, and reminds me that I need to pick up my combat tricks in the last few slots. I tried doing what Link did at first, throwing in some Flash Enchantments, but mine were too convoluted... Link got the idea right the first time. I think I'll just make some normal instants to contrast it all. After all, 10 enchantments should be plenty.

I'm also a bit annoyed by my "White hates White" situation. Both Erstwhile and Weft Weaver look like great spells to me, but I have not one, but two spells in white that are best when playing against white. Maybe one of those cards should bump to uncommon, I don't know. As much as I like Weft Weaver, it doesn't do what it should be doing, anyways, which is evade past the multi-color deck. It's funny. It reminds me of the old meta-game break down in Onslaught Block draft, where good players draft Severed Legion because black was very good, but great players drafted Anurid Murkdiver because black was very good.

"good players draft Severed Legion because black was very good, but great players drafted Anurid Murkdiver because black was very good"

­:) Yes, I agree about Weft Weaver -- I like it, but protection from something other than enchantments would make more sense.

In fact, in the interests of having many "as simple as possible" spells, perhaps it should be "protection from multicolor"? That's less broken than normal because it can't fly and obviously what the mono/multi conflict needs.

That, sadly, would probably make sense. I'd say "Can't be blocked by flying creatures", but red will clearly have that. Can't be blocked by Green, Blue or Black creatures is pretty funny, but too kooky. "Can't be blocked by artifacts" might be a funny trick... especially since most of the artifact creatures will probably end up multi-aligned...

Maybe, protection from red and black? Or protection from non-enchantments? :)

Protection is kind of strong, so we have to be careful of it. At the very least, the card would jump to a 2cc 1/1, since it would be about as good as "Protection from Creatures".

Can't be blocked by Blue or Green, while awkward, does make the card unblockable by 80%+ of the multicolored cards out there... we might want to lean toward that for flavor reasons.

Yeah, I agree we may (probably) not use protection, it's just a convenient shorthand for the set of effects we may choose form.

Added Aurora Wall to my skeleton because I like it. Also added Cleansing Powder which does nothing for our set... I needed a combat trick, and I figured my list had already hammered into the prerequisites hard enough. Also, changed Weft Weaver to Jack's original suggestion, and made him mimic a Death Speakers. It was probably the best way to do that card, as much as I fight to get something different in the set.

In an attempt to get some inspiration, I did an advanced search on gatherer for White common non-creature spells with a casting cost of 6 or more. It turns out that there are none. That sounds like a challenge to me for the last slot...

Okay, so we've got good shells for blue, green, black and red. It's time to take a look at White.

Beside both Link and my suggested card lists above, I've also found these three cards hiding in our files:
­Oblivion Gust, Woven Life, Soulcapture Lance.

When pulling everything together, I like to pull down a few uncommons that have a chance of becoming commons. These two are here to be acknowledged:
­Searing Skies, Vested Light.

So, the magic question is "What is the simple explanation for what white is doing?" Earlier in this thread, Link does a good breakdown of this:

­

I'm not sure weird for its own sake is a good idea. People have a mindspace for "intimidate" now. It sounds like you're saying "let's make as many of the white cards hard to understand as we can", and that doesn't sound like it'll make for a good play experience.

I made a terrible mistake. I checked Multiverse just before I went to bed. ;)

You'll have to excuse me Alex. I got to take off my Head Designer hat for a second here, because I can't help arguing.

Actually, I am talking about being weird for it's own sake. As designers, we throw that expression around to show people what their doing wrong with their design. What we're really saying is "Your design is too complicated, and only makes sense to you. You need to take a step back to reality, and show us some design that is relevant to us."

But weird for it's own sake can be elegant, and it can possess qualities of excellent design. The intimidate example I gave above was poor... I was just riffing. Later on, though, I realized that this example, however, would make a very interesting card:

­
Enchantment Creature
Uncommon
~ must be blocked by black and artifact creatures, if able.
2/2

The previous intimidate example was poor because it was unclear what sort of statement the designer was making. This one works much better in my opinion. It's more obvious what's going on... this is a reverse Severed Legion. The concepts are strong in White's color pie, and, while it stretches to do what it does, I don't think many people would question it... it would just take them a step back because they hadn't seen a card work quite like that.

That's the reason I lamented that Link and I "hadn't smashed the ball out of the park". The only way design like this works is if it is done well. If we go for middle of the road 'kinda weird', then we risk looking like a bunch of amateurs who are just throwing ideas at the wall but don't have an understanding of how to pull it all together. If, however, we can pull off weird, and do it consistently and well, it could be a really neat trick.

[Puts Head Designer Hat back on]

Okay, enough with the counter-argument. I just had to get that out of my system. The truth is that weird won't work if the rest of the designers aren't on board with it. But let's say we pull weird out of the equation. What we have left is "Enchantment creatures that often use temporarily exiling". Is this good enough? I wouldn't mind super-charging the temp. exile bit, but is there such a thing as "Too much O-Ring"? Is there another direction we can take white that we're bordering on, but not quite doing? How much weird do we need? A little? A lot? Should we be looking to Esper in Shards of Alara for some inspiration (I have to admit, for a bunch of enchantment creatures, many of them don't interact much with enchantments. Many of the Esper artifacts mentioned artifacts somewhere in it's text). There anything else I'm missing?

Heh, OK, I guess I take your point. There is some measure in weirdness that plays well, and not too confusingly, while breaking audience expectations enough to be noticeable. (I think Wizards have been going for this recently, actually, with New Phyrexia's colour-bleeds and certain parts of Innistrad block.)

I think "Enchantment creatures that often use exile" is plenty enough to have as a major theme for one colour. Recall Esper's theme was just "Artifact creatures". There's room for minor themes within the colour too, of course. But I'm happy to try for the "weird" theme too if we want to.

I think Esper is a natural comparison, being as it was one-fifth of a large set (okay, ours is a bit more like one-sixth) themed around adding an unusual type to its coloured creatures when none of the other factions in its set did so.

I think my fear is that at the moment the cards we have are too strongly focused on enchantments. Many Esper cards were coloured artifacts with no other mention of the word artifact... in fact, interestingly, across the whole of Alara block there were 26 artifact creatures who mentioned artifacts and 28 who didn't. That density is actually rather higher than I expected.

I think we're doing ok here. I think there's plenty of design space in "unearthly enchantment creatures" without becoming unintuitive or hard to understand. Even vanilla and near-vanilla enchantment creatures are plenty weird enough. I agree every white common shouldn't stretch to include enchantment-specific references, but it makes sense to start by looking to see how far we can push it without it seeming out of place in common, and then winnow to get what we want to keep (which I agree, is likely to be in similar proportions to Esper).

FWIW, I thought "protection from multicolour" was more than enough "out there". It's simple and relevant, and fine for common as long as it plays ok in limited, but not what you'd USUALLY see lots and lots of at common.

This is good stuff. I think I was looking for one guiding principle to aim my arrows at, but I'll take a general feel for what people want... in the end, that's probably more rewarding anyways.

What I take from this is:
temp. exile is good.
tribal enchantment is good.
weird is acceptable and sometimes encouraged, but it must be done well.
I should probably get off of Weft Weaver's case. It's been through enough. ;)

Okay, in my first pass at mono-white, I'm making sure we have enough temp. exile so that it's noticeable. That gives us:

­

I think 3 or 4 commons, plus a few uncommons and a rare or two, will be plenty enough to be noticeable as a theme. I also note that of your top three, only one actually does the temporary exiling itself; the other two just play with exile. I'd think we'd want about three commons which do exile something themselves, plus perhaps one or two which play with exile in other ways (though I wonder if that might be more suited to uncommon).

In rough order of preference out of all those you mentioned:

• I know I designed Soulcapture Lance, but I still think it's great for what we want.
• I like Folded Light quite a lot too.
• I like both Woven Life and Vested Light. Either could change size / cost a bit.
• I'd like to have something like Combat Trick Enchantment; there are lots of possible variations and I don't feel strongly about them at the moment.
• I quite like Erstwhile; the only strike against it is that it's white anti-white.
• I agree that Aurora Vault could be good but might want to change size.
• I feel quite strongly that white needs to do some things other than play with exile. So I think I'm against changing Runearrow Archer to use exile.

While I'm still waiting for a few more opinions on exile, temp or otherwise, let's move over to another question.

Mono-white has occasionally had a smattering of talk about "Enchantments are good" as a medium or minor feature. This theme pops up on Tine and Tine Again, Sharer of Souls, Soft Filter and Knit With Life.

Is it important to see "Plays well with enchantments" cards, or is the occasional card fine? Those 4 cards, by the way, really stretch what common does. In a real set, I'd say that any one or maybe two could be common, but not all of them. How many Battered Golems and Glaze Fiends do we need to add, if any? Should we ship this entire theme to uncommon? I know Rosewater has said "If your theme doesn't appear at common, it's not your theme." Is it all right to have a theme appear in uncommon plus, even if it is assumed that it is not the overall theme of White?

Absolutely; I think many sets have a minor theme that's only visible in a few uncommons and rares. Heck, Conflux didn't have any common cards (which was jolly sensible of them). BTW, I don't think Sharer of Souls is an enchantments-matter card - it's just a Glorious Anthem on a stick.

A colourshifted Yavimaya Enchantress is a nice idea for uncommon.

I haven't thought it through in detail, but for the moment my instinct is:

• If the theme is enchantment creatures, we should start by trying "all creatures are enchantment creatures", just like esper
• It would be good to have 2-3 enchantment-matters cards at common, so enchantment clearly matters. But even if there's only 0 or 1, enchantment creatures are still enough to make the theme distinctive.
• I like a lot of the exile cards we've had suggested, but I think they contribute to an unearthly mini-theme whether there's a critical mass of them or not. I think we should evaluate them individually on their merits. (If we have any "exile matters" cards, I think we've enough interesting ideas it's better to save those for a follow-up block, or for higher rarity, unless we want to make exiling the major white theme as well as or instead of enchantment creatures)

Oh, heh. I assumed Sharer of Souls was enchantment creatures only. My bad. Not part of the conversation right now, though. I'll poke my head in again later to see if we get any more comments before I start talking.

Okay. So what I'm getting here is:
Put in two enchantments matters cards in common
Put in three temp. exile or maybe exile cards
Come back at white from another angle.

I'm temporarily throwing out Backwards Talker and replacing it with Folded Light, since Alex mentioned that he liked FL and didn't say anything about the former. It's likely we'll add the latter back in later, but it doesn't get priority.

If I was to pick our two best common 'enchantment matters' cards in common, I'd say that Sharer of Souls should become an enchantment matters card, and maybe Tine and Tine Again is fine. But, I think I'd prefer TaTA to push to uncommon and get a simpler enchantment matters card from the team. Any preferences? Also, is anyone against Sharer of Souls becoming enchantment matters? (It does help out the "Is this card really a common" thingy that SoS has...) ­

Not quite sure why I didn't comment on Backwards Talker. I quite like the design, I just really hate its name.

I'm fine with a couple of enchantments-matter cards at common - I think it'd look odd having all the enchantment creatures without any commons making that relevant - but I don't think a Master of Etherium/Wizened Cenn is the right choice for common.

Sounds like we need two enchantment matters commons, then. Try to keep them simple people, but, you know, not boring.

­Huntmaster Shimmer Here's an idea. Something to think about when designing 'theme-matters' cards. It will help in deciding what kind of effects belong on the theme matters cards if you have a strong idea of the flavor that the cards are based on. I haven't read much of this thread, but for example if this white society is like Esper and are using magic like plastic surgery to enhance themselves then Huntmaster Shimmer's effect can be flavorfully explained as making enchantment creatures even more perfect by making them more powerful.

So I guess if you're trying to coalesce the white commons as a set which develops powerful interactions based on Enchantments, it may help to first focus on the flavor of the society in order to inform the kinds of descisions you're going to have to make when creating cards.

The flavor of the white tribe in this set are "alien-like creatures made of fabric and light". They aren't supposed to have intelligence in the way we think of it (I don't believe), so they aren't quite operating the way Esper does. That being the case, Huntmaster Shimmer seems like a reasonable card to me... although the ability sits close to Wizened Cenn's. Would this sit better with people if it 'one and done'd' like most modern commons do? Enter the battlefield, and puts a +1/+1 counter on all enchantments, almost like a blanket?

Ah, crud. It occured to me that that would be incredibly good for the mono-green tribe. +1/+1 counters just happen to be taboo in this set, Mandroid, but I wouldn't expect you to know that. Back to the drawing board I guess.

How about a Stave Off variant that targets enchantments? That's basically "target white creature or enchantment you control" which is probably about right for W?

Other obvious simple "enchantment matters" creatures would be "gets +1/+1 as long as you control" or "gets flying/lifelink/intimidate etc etc". Aurora Soother would be a good choice IMHO.

FWIW, most of the other "enchantment matters" cards suggested before I like a lot, but almost all of them I think should be uncommon. (We can, of course, try something at common even if we're not sure to see how it goes, but by default they look uncommon.)

Other thoughts:

• As several people suggested, it would be nice if non-creature white spells were enchantments where possible. For instance, several people suggested something similar, but the simplest would be a flash "All creatures (or all white creatures) get +0/+1".

• There's often a recurring card. Something like Auramancer?

Changed Woven Life and added Aurora Soother to the set, solving our enchantment-matters common requirements. Don't know why I missed soother on first pass. Odd.

I really like the Auramancer idea, too. White has a tradition of returning enchantments from the graveyard, and this seems like one of the few sets where that really matters. Pity that we can't use Auramancer straight up, though. I'd prefer not to functional reprint, either. It's funny. If we just reprinted Auramancer with Gravediggers cc and made it an enchantment, it would probably be first pick material. People would probably hate us for that, though...

Also added Cutwork Knight and Thread Gatherer because we needed to add them. Altered p/t on Thread Gatherer. See notes there.

­

I think you could justify a Enchantment Auramancer with the point that it can now recur itself. I think that's reasonable. Alternatively make it 1/2 or 2/1 or 2/3.

Added Enchantment Digger, Runearrow Archer, (((Tie in Ribbons))), Cleansing Powder, Combat Trick Enchantment, Soft Filter and (((Demystify))). That's one more color done. We'll see if we can finish up these commons in a reasonable amount of time, so we can get to testing.

The skeleton looks pretty good. Judging from the breakdown of recent sets http://multiverse.heroku.com/cardsets/162/details_pages/163, I think the biggest things we should probably have but aren't cemented in the skeleton yet are:

• Probably have 8 creatures, 6 spells.
• Have 2+ combat tricks. Eg. Bolstering Light
• Usually (but not always) have a vigilance creature/spell
• Usually (but not always) have a first strike creature/spell
• Often (but not always) have a defender creature
• Have ~3 flying creatures.

We have removal and runearrow archer and reach, so I think we have enough flying defense, but we still need some evasion.

The best possibilities are probably: protection from multicolor (eg. Weft Weaver), plainswalk (we probably want to avoid this to accentuate the differences from blue), intimidate (eg. Lightmare, which I like, even if intimidate isn't usually in common white), tap-on-attack (eg. (((gustrider))) which hasn't been common outside portal, but could be), or maybe a protection-from-high-CMC (eg. Sneaking Gust )

I would vote for not trying to have a single replacement (like islandwalk in blue), but having three-ish individual cards that each evade somehow.

This makes sense to me, but with 13 slots, we're a bit strapped on meeting all our 'prerequisites'. Currently, I added Bolstering Light because I saw it first, and Gustrider is playing alternate because I saw it second. Right now we have 7 creatures out of 13, with an enchantment that puts two token creatures on the battlefield (albeit, inefficiently). Adding an evasion creature to white either complicates an existing creature (Like Cutwork Knight or Thread Gatherer) or pushes another creature out or top-heavy's white creature count and pushes a non-creature out.

That's not to say we can't do that. I'm perfectly aware of how important evasion is in draft environments. I would like to remind the team, however, that there technically are 6 creatures with flying in all colors... you just wouldn't have any evasion if you're playing mono-white. Whether or not that's acceptable is beyond my role to argue.

I know what you mean.

My instinct is that mono-white and mono-blue should have the usual proportion of flying-equivalents, since that's such a large part of their usual identity, or failing that we need to sculpt an alternative niche for it, but I don't have much experience designing or playing limited, so I don't know that for sure. The number could presumably be smaller and still relevant.

I agree a token-maker is ok to count as a creature (although I'm not sure about (((Tie in Ribbons))), I like the idea, but I'm not sure how often you'd want to play it to get the tokens.)

I forgot what we agreed, I thought there were 13 slots, did we remove one? I was aiming my numbers at 14 so it's possible some of them should go down 1.

I realise it's a squeeze whatever we do, but I'd be in favour of squeezing in at least a little evasion. (It's unfortunate that none of it is as simple as flying.) Cutwork Knight could possibly have another ability (since I'm not sure the WWW creature should have the manacycling ability). Folded Light could possibly be uncommon and be replaced with something simple like lightmare?

The 14th slot is still on the skeleton, but isn't really there. 13 slots right now. I just haven't gotten around to removing them yet. Sorry if this response is curt, but I want to see someone besides me respond to this.

OK, in which case it should probably be 7 creatures, 6 others, with 2-3 evasion creatures?

ETA: And yeah, I'd like a second opinion from anyone else, although I suspect we'll end up guessing until we can playtest :)

I think the way most draft pods will play out is there'll be at most 1-2 monocolour drafters, and at most 1 heavy-multicolour drafter, so there'll be at least 5 of the usual two-colours-plus-splash limited decks. These will likely have a few gold creatures, and since every gold creature has flying (and almost all of the gold commons are creatures), I think it's very legitimate to have the evasion count in monowhite slightly lower to compensate. Otherwise we risk reducing the actual creature interaction too much. So I say we don't need to bend over too much to try to fit in another evasion creature.

I agree that 7 creatures 6 noncreatures is fine; the token-maker could reasinably go in either of those buckets.

I enjoyed playing mono-white quite a bit. It seemed to be the middle aggro-against-green control-against-red colour, which is probably natural for white.

But the aggro game I played urgently needed evasion! White still has nothing better than soulcapture lance, and would usually have at least a couple of fliers.

Alex and Vitenka saw more of the playtest than I did (I hope to try again with Rachel over the easter w/e). I gather the general feedback on white is that it was quite fun, but lacked "oomph" compared the other colours.

We've still to decide what the appropriate power level is, but it sounds like appropriate tweaks for white would be:

• Reduce the CMC of the pacifism variant
• See if we can get a combat trick that boosts power, or is more likely to kill something
• Introduce at least one evasion creature (or put evasion on the aura, like Spectral Flight)

I think we probably want to do all that.

If we want to do more, we can:

• Boost cutwork knight or another large creature so it's insane rather than just good
• Introduce another "kill" spell (maybe pacifism variant or tapper, but the board is pretty clogged, maybe just a straight rebuke variant). This shouldn't be necessary because we already have tie in ribbons and soulcapture lance, but in some ways soulcapture lance acts more as tempo than removal? But if we followed my earlier suggestion of making tie in ribbons cheaper but temporary, two temporary removals might not be enough.

But I don't think we need to do that yet. Does that sound right to people?

I can say, from my very small playtest of multicolor, that you don't have to worry too much about white's ability to evade. It seems to have some of the best fliers lined up in it's color... it just won't play them unless you have a second color.

This puts me a bit on the fence on whether white needs evasion. I do like the idea that mono-white, which normally has it, has to live with fighting on the ground in this set... but if that's the problem, you're absolutely right, Jack, that White will need something extra to push through. I'm thinking we need some tappers. Tappers can work as anti-flying and remove blockers. If we can get a straight up tapper in the file, and slip an 'accidental' tapper in the file, White will have a lot of tools to deal with the other teams...

We didn't play black on Tuesday, but out of the other four colours, white felt like it had the best removal. Soulcapture Lance certainly felt like removal, albeit quite vulnerable removal. Runearrow Archer works a bit like a tapper, but I'd definitely support having a straight-up Goldmeadow Harrier / Master Decoy. In fact, Goldmeadow Harrier would give white its controlling one-drop where Woven Life is the aggressive one-drop.

Fair enough. For the moment, I switched Tie in Ribbons and added a tapper in place of enchantment digger. We need to check if that gave too few or too many cards with some CMC.

White got a Prodigal Sorcerer! The lance is very much an O-Ring that also gives you first strike. It's powerful. Evasion... yeah, it lacked that. Only blue got any, it seems. (will comment more on blues page) Against green it hit up into green's superior toughness. Red it walloped fairly soundly, though - it didn't have to go all-in to get its attacks through, which gave flexibility. Fairly balanced there though, reds removal is brutal in comparison.