Experimenting a bit here. Not entirely sure about the "soldiers" thing. Bytopia jibes with things that effect all creatures you control and possibility something to do with either tokens or creature type matters though - it's a neutral/lawful good plane that emphasizes collectivism.

http://www.rilmani.org/timaresh/Bytopia

Bytopia is, allegedly, the plane of gnomes. That seems to still be a supported creature type; but a gnome-lord would need quite a lot of support in a set 'cause there are like, maybe 6 of them ever.

Maybe "Gnomes and soldiers" and then this card is viable, but also a gnome lord? For that one guy who built the gnome deck?

I hadn't considered that. I had sort been leaning away from including standard DnD races here like gnomes and elves, simply because planescape itself tends to de-emphasize them, but the planes do still relate to them somewhat and they still technically exist in the setting.

It would require a decent bit of gnomes in the set to make gnome-tribal make sense as well, and that would have to be juggled with quite a bit of planescape-specific and plane-specific creatures. On top of the races I have listed, I am also working from lists of what monsters inhabit the planes, partly working from that Rilmani.org website.

So there's quite a bit of creature types on the plate.

How about "soldiers and tokens"? I've given the Harmonium faction a tokens theme, and this is one of the planes that overlaps with their interests and feel, I.E. lawful neutral with some good leanings, though they are based on Arcadia, not Bytopia. This doesn't seem like a tokens card though, it's a tribal card.

I don't know. This design was a bit of a shot in the dark, but it could be warped into making more sense possibility. It's the creature type thing that throws it off or opens a can of worms without the proper tribal support.

Oh I agree, I don't think you can slip "This is the gnome tribal set you've been waiting for!" into this set. I was just thinking of it as a tiny nod towards it, which flips the flavour while pretty much being trinket text for now.

Dunno what else to suggest. I mean, the imagery of "Yup, look up, gravity inverts, and there's another floor up there with people looking up at you" is pretty nifty; like all those lovely old 50s space-habitat drawings. But as a mechanical effect in magic? Doesn't seem very meaninful. Unless you go full on 'raging river' and don't do that.

And, well, that and "There's some gnomes there" seems to be all I was able to dig up about the plane. It's just not very notable. It's pastoral maybe? But mtg doesn't seem to have even semi-formalised any kind of 'farmer' ability.

Yea, I can see it as a minor side-flavor thing.

From what I gathered about Bytopia, it emphasizes making people work for the collective. So I'd try to associate it with things that tap or untap creatures, or things that effect all creatures, is what I'm thinking.

Hmmm, bennies when someone exerts? That would seem flavourful.

Excert does fit that for sure.

As far as realizing the Planescape feel in MTG further, I haven't broached designing DFC lands yet. But that's going to most explicitly represent the planes in my guesstimation. The fact that each of the outer planes in planescape literally has a "gate-town" to that plane in the Outlands is very exploitable and flavorful for the DFC lands too.

There are other mechanic possibilities I haven't explored yet as well. Maybe something along the lines of a subtype for lands (maybe artifacts?) representing portals/gates is another possibility (though unfortunately, Ravnica already has "gate" as a land subtype).

I could also see the Modrons () getting Devoid.

Otherwise, for the moment I'm pretty content with a mix of this mechanic and nonbasic landcycling, and otherwise just trying to come up with cards that are flavored well to things from Planescape.

Fair enough.

Modrons ought to get die-roll cards, and the ability to tap by 60° because geometry :)

Oh, and 'gate' being a subtype is an opportunity rather than a problem; I'd say. It means you can sensibly have cards that trigger on gates, care about number of gates, etc - without them ending up completely parasitic.

Hang on - is portal meant to be "This is a split card in disguise" or "Hey, do this AND then that"? The mechanics confuse me.

LOL!

True, in the back of my head I have wondered if backwards compatibility of Gates with Ravnica cards would actually be a good thing. And it would open up designs for cards that care about gates here, yes.

There is only so much that can be done as far as mechanically representing Planescape in MTG. Overall, I think that's less important than capturing the flavor of Planescape.

But nonbasic landcycling and Portal at least sort of feel like mechanics that represent planescape. Recreating the feeling of Sigil itself as you describe is a whole different story, and probably would be an insane undertaking.

Portal does seem to effectively be "do this and then that", while also being a way for instants and sorceries to be DFC. It somewhat was meant to have the feel of "turn a concept into a thing" as well, which is a bit of a Planescape feel. Otherwise, it seems to represent a creature coming over from a portal from a plane.

Originally I had it worded differently to be an alternate cost to optionally get the 2nd side, rather then an additional/optional cost, but that version had memory problems.

Yeah, no real issue with the flavour of it. Just got very confused by the actual mechanical implementation. I had thought it was "This or that".

Capturing sigil... I half want to say "That is too much - it needs to be most of the second set in the block" half "You can't leave it out! That's like leaving ninja's out of Kamigawa!" and half "Just namedrop 'Ravinica' a lot, and have done".

(And is it currently:
Pay casting cost, also pay the portal cost. Card is now exiled and waiting. Pay portal cost AGAIN, cast second half of it.
Because that's what I think the current wording implies?)

Well, I'm not necessarily trying to go out of my way to capture Sigil, but there already are designs here that represent things from Sigil or reference it, like The Dabus, anything that references The Mortuary, Portal Keys, etc. "The feeling of being in Sigil" is not of interest to me mechanically, other than the fact that it's connected to the portals to the planes, which is sort of represented by nonbasic landcycling.

As far as Portal, I'm not 100% fond of it being "This and That" myself. It originally was "This or That", but the implementation was less clean and straight forward than this.

And what plane do beebles come from? Because a beeble plane needs to be a thing :)

The wording is only meant to imply paying the Portal cost once. I'm not seeing where you're getting the double-pay interpretation. But it is true that I had a bit of a formatting brainscratcher over how to word and format it correctly as to not imply something else, and it is a little confusing as is.

Intuitively, it seems like "Exile this spell as it resolves etc." should be a separate line than the listing of the cost, probably at the top of the card, though that makes text formatting with it take up more space. The card exiling as it resolves is automatic. Paying the Portal cost for the 2nd side is optional afterwards.

So a more precise version would look something like this, but take up more text space and require two different parts in italics:

(Exile this spell as it resolves.)

Card effect.

Portal [Cost] (You may cast this spell transformed from exile for its portal cost.)

I'm still open to messing with the mechanic or trying to find a way to represent plane traveling creatures as the 2nd side on DFC. But I've just been rolling with the most simple and least wordy implimentation so far, which SecretInfiltrator suggested some days ago.

Originally, it was something more like: Portal [Cost] (You may cast this spell transformed for its portal cost.)

Actually, that's an improved version of the original version, which simply said something like "Put this onto the battlefield transformed", which created the problem that it didn't count as being cast.

Which is "This or that". I do prefer "This or that" over "This and that". I might consider switching over to: Portal [Cost] (You may cast this spell transformed for its portal cost.). Which is both less wordy and confusing than this version.

I suppose that is somewhat similar to how split cards work, but split cards can only be instants and sorceries by the rules, and the whole idea here is to have a permanent as an alternative option on instant and sorceries, with the flavor that you're turning something abstract (instant/sorcery) into something concrete (permanent).

It also adds a new spin to cards that care about transform: a "spell" (instant/sorcery) can transform on top of a "permanent". Hence I am toying with designs with an unkeyworded "Whenever a permanent or spell you control transforms".

So at the moment I'm leaning heavily towards altering Portal to what I suggest, based on your feedback and further reflection.