Definitely could change; the theme for UW is Serenity Control.

I think this would be fine without the looting, it could just draw you a card. It's a 3 mana enchantment with no immediate effect...

Honestly, it might be okay (and more synergistic) to have it draw you a card and gain you some life, every upkeep. Maybe 1 card and 3 life, sort of like a miniature version of Sphinx's Revelation

@Froggychum: I've gone through several iterations of this card and can't seem to make it balanced as an uncommon. Your first suggestion was similar to my first attempt at making the card, but seeing as Phyrexian Arena is 1- a rare and 2- picked highly in every draft format, it would be far too good as an uncommon, despite the Serenity drawback.

I also tried raising the card's CMC to 4 and removing the discard, but eventually I settled on this design. I still might change it back to the 4CMC effect; I'm not sure yet.

I like the idea of the signpost gaining you life; it would enable itself. I'm not sure if that would be balanced though.

Thoughts?

Yeah, I could see an extra card each turn being too powerful. Especially since doesn't get any card draw at all besides cantrips (actually, one of the newest sets changed this a bit, but there's no gold standard for draw yet)

The card is fine as it is, gets looting (as does ), but there's no in this effect (besides caring about life gain, which is in , and sometimes . and don't get any life gain).

As for my thoughts on that, if this is a cycle that you want to all have CMC of 3, then you should avoid breaking the symmetry and keep it like this (or change it to another balanced effect)

Otherwise, I like your idea of making this cost more and have a stronger ability.

Also, I can't say whether or not this will be balanced, because I haven't seen most of the cards in this set yet (I also don't know what card pool you intend it to be played with)... The best way to gauge balance is to playtest, but that almost always comes after the whole set has been design...

Design (make cards and themes) --> Development (balance stuff and do any other fixes)...

I like the effect of draw and life gain most, because it feels the most appropriate, but you're definitely right there could be balance issues.

the great thing about multiverse is that you can always edit cards later.

Changes have been made! I'll keep an eye on this one.

Also, I'm concerned about the visibility of my set now. I thought the set skeleton was visible to everybody, but am I the only one that can access it right now?

If I am, then I should tell you that this is a purely draft-oriented set and that while signposts are a cycle, they're not all 3 CMC.

The skeleton is visible to everyone right now, and only you can edit it (there might be an option in 'Cardset Options' to change some of those things if you don't like how they're set, but I dunno).

I love draft-oriented sets! I've never tried making one, because most of my balance/design knowledge is based on constructed, to the point where I sometimes forget draft exists when designing (lol).

I know the feeling xD. I used to be a cEDH player, so I mostly ignored rarity and draft playability. Since then I've gotten friends. Lol.

Serenity is a mechanic that falls into a broad category of mechanics that we see all the time that is widely problematic: the "opponent threshold" where you are directly competing with an opponent to be better in a certain resource category.

The mechanic is inherently "rich get richer" or "win-more". The tension competing over the same resource becomes extremely easily to notice in the mirror: A player able to get ahead stays ahead and runs away with the game. Games need opportunities to "catch up" and these mechanics as in this case make games foregone conclusions more often instead.

As a result games become more swingy and less about player choice.

Additionally this sends a wrong message thematically, because the correct way to stay ahead in life is obviously to bash in someone's face.

All of that is true, but it’s a bit too late to rework the mechanic or take it out.