Blue is virtually done, save for the 'Disrupt' slot, so I'm moving over to Green, since that color is open, and people seem to be talking about Black. Green however, is a bit dead in the water. It was even missing it's submissions page.

I'm going to dredge up the green cards and link them here. Then we'll see how I feel about this color, once everything is out of the box and on the table.

­:

All right, that's done. Over in the main message board, there were some grumblings over green, its mechanic, its identity, and the fact that it sits close to blue. I came out and defended green, mentioning that I thought it did something different than most sets, and forced you to think out a plan of attack. No one responded to that comment, which I'm going to interpret as "No one wanted to tell the head designer that he's wrong."

Tell me that I am wrong. I most certainly cannot do my job the right way if I voice an opinion and it is met with silence. That would become "John-Michael, the set, with occasional guest submissions by Multiverse", and I don't want that. I want other people to tell me if we did something wrong, so that we can fix it.

I'm being dramatic here, I know, but I'm doing it for a reason. If people pass on Green and let me build it the way I would like, then test it and find out that, no, they don't like what I like, then we'll either have to go back to square one after a lot of work, or we'll 'release' a product that it's designers aren't fond of. If we're going to go back to square one, I need to know so we can do it now.

Here's my take on what I see in green right now: We're going to have a lot of fungus that enter the battlefield and put a +1/+1 counter on their opponent's creatures. There's a rider on most Fungi that say that if a creature has a +1/+1 counter it is now a fungus. The Fungus are either big creatures that either don't care if they accelerated the game a little, or get minor advantages when getting into combat with other fungi, or take advantage of their opponent's newly found yeasty state, or suck up +1/+1 counters on any creature for an effect.

Is there too much Johnny and Spike in here and not enough Timmy? How much do you squirm at the idea of giving your opponent better creatures whenever you play a creature? Is there something else that is inherently not fun about this? Is there a way for this to be more fun? Would you prefer to scrap this idea, or do you think we can alter it in a way that makes you happy?

Well said :) I don't remember seeing the last discussion, was it one of the things that disappeared?

My impression is: I like the fungus idea, I've a couple of concerns but not more than other colours.

I think I was subconsciously worried about the overlap with flood, but didn't realise it, and that made me view everything else a bit negatively. I think green is fine, and what was putting me off was the overlap with flood, even if I didn't realise it.

I think the overlap bothers me because the two mechanics are similar enough to stand out, but not similar enough to be given some mechanical/thematic connection (see below). I'll think about any possible resolutions, but I think if nothing seems better, we should live with the similarity, as it doesn't have to be a problem, and I don't think we want to redo either color from scratch.

With that out of the way, I'm not very worried about the current state.

I think the original idea was that green creatures would usually put a +1/+1 counter on your own creatures, and then someone suggested adding them to your opponent's as well with mixed drawback/advantages. (I think "caring about opponents fungus" dominated cards because that was the complicated bit, it's possible several basic "put a +1/+1 counter on a creature you control. it's a fungus" cards were considered on the commons submissions but not made into cards.)

I'm not sure we want to stick to that, but I think it makes sense. I think the default breakdown would be something like: several creatures/spells that put a +1/+1 fungus counter on any creature (but often your own); one or two creatures that put a +1/+1 counter on an opponent's creature as a cost; several creatures which benefit all/one fungus you control; several creatures which hose fungus opponents control.

Open questions for me would be: is there room for enough non-fungus creatures for putting +1/+1 on your own creatures to matter? Does it matter if there isn't, if the +1/+1 counters can go on an existing fungus creature?

How will this be templated? Will all cards that add a +1/+1 counter say "becomes a fungus" or will cards that care about fungus say "all fungus" or "all cards with +1/+1 counters" or will some/all cards say "creatures with +1/+1 counters on are fungus"?

Is it possible to have a reasonable mix of cards that make fungus, care about fungus, and aren't fungus, or will you end up drawing cards that don't really interact?

I think the first thing to do is make a suggested skeleton with obvious slots, and see if that looks like they'll interact how we'll hope.

­Is there too much Johnny and Spike in here and not enough Timmy?

I think Mycoshamble (3/3 for GG) will satisfy many Timmies (since you can say "if my opponent doesn't have a creature, it's a 3/3 for free!"), and we can have a giant fungus that gives all your other fungus +?/+? which is very Timmy!

A minor point: Green normally gets a rampant growth and a llanowar elves. Should the green mana fixing here help you play multicolor cards or not? On the one hand, we need plenty of mana fixing so playing multicolor cards is plausible. On the other hand, that detracts from the mono-vs-multi theme if it's specifically useful to have a green enabler in a mostly multi deck.

Perhaps it makes sense for one enabler to accelerate more efficiently without fixing (eg. my "G. Sorcery. Search for a (basic?) forest" spell) and the other to be multicolor and enable mana fixing? Possibly, if we can find some way to do it, the mana fixer should be a multicolor card you can actually play with just G (a bit like the way the borderposts are multicolor cards, but also act as lands).

Frankly, I don't like the current direction of green, mechanically or flavorfully, despite the fact that (I think?) I came up with it. To me, the similarity between the green and blue mechanics is not a good thing: all of the other colors feel very distinct from each other. I really like what blue is doing, so that leaves green to change. Maybe you guys disagree with me, but I'm just taking jmgariepy's suggestion and saying something about what I don't like.

This conversation is moving over to the Overlap in G and U themes card.

I have a feeling the green cards proposed so far are a bit too focused on the "make your stuff Fungi" theme. We don't have a single common in the file yet that just makes mana, pumps P/T, even a French vanilla reach creature. I think this colour in particular is a bit too one-note at the moment.

I'm adding some green commons from the "plant" side to the file, but not sliding them into the skeleton. I'll link them here, just for the sake of keeping track of them.
­Sprouting Nymph
­Barkheart Dryad
­Dryad Collective
­Sunlit Blessing
­Break Down

3 of Jack's submissions:

­Simple Fungus
­Shrinking Violent
­Heavy Plant

All right. So this is how I'm breaking down Green right now:

Green's major mechanics all surround creatures, and green traditionally gets a nudge more creatures than the other colors. That means we need at least 58% creature coverage, since that's 8 cards. 9 creatures and/or a token producing non-creature card would be fine as well.

Of the creatures, half of them should be spreading fungus, and half should be getting fungused. Of the four fungus/fungus spreaders one will only give a +1/+1 counter to creatures the opponent controls. Of the other four creatures, most (or all. Really, 4 isn't a lot of cards) should find ways to put multiple creatures on the board. Creature #9 should probably be the creature so that we can keep that one relatively simple. Let's see what we can do with this.

Oh, and one more thing. I'm temporarily changing the fungus ability to "Creatures with +1/+1 counters on them are Fungus" because 1). That's not the way you usually do thing, and I'd like to see how this feels." and 2). It's shorter, and we can use the room on these cards. We did talk about this on a random card, and no one objected to it, though I assume that there are objections.

­

I think two copies of "makes numerous non-token creatures" in common may be asking a lot. I think Sprouting Nymph could perhaps be a member of a vertical cycle, one each at C, U and R. I'd suggest a token-making instant or sorcery, and a creature that makes a token, something like Ambassador Oak or a 1/1 with "ETB make a 1/1 token".

And when you say "Preferably it's something that you'd like either way", are you meaning you want the ability using +1/+1 counters to be something good for the caster whether the counters are on their own creatures or the opponent's creatures? That seems tricky for common. I've got a couple of ideas, but I think they're more uncommon-worthy.

Created Sporeback and Venomspore Sower by way of suggestions.

@Alex and "Preferably... either way": Yeah, that's the idea, though I wasn't very clear with it, and I realize that's tricky to fulfill design space. I guess I should look at the submission before I say much else, though. :)

You're right about "makes numerous non-token creatures" as well, and again, I was talking to myself instead of making my intention clear. I more wanted creatures with value. Gravedigger, Ambassador Oak, Wood Elves and Kavu Climber type cards. Maybe Viridian Shaman or something along those lines. The sort of creatures that end up on the battlefield and sit there.

I'm pulling forward a conversation in Mycobrewery here because I need to discuss it before we go forward. Mycobrewery seems to me to be a very simple extension of the set's "Fungus ability". But cmeister2's reaction to it was "Surely too texty for common. But nice card, possibly at uncommon or rare."

Is this true? My first reaction would be to compare this card to the fungus from Timespiral, such as Deathspore Thallid and claim it isn't any more complicated than them. But Wizards employees have cited that Timespiral was the height of complexity creep in their game, and that they aim the game to be easier to approach than that. Grazing Gladehart, as an example of a 'complicated' Landfall card in common, is much simpler than our Mycobrewery.

On the Mycobrewery card I came up with a plan to split the complication into two parts so that 3 of 6 cards would add +1/+1 counters, and 3 of 6 turned on Fungus, leaving us some room for non-Fungus interactions. Is this a good way to go? Is Mycobrewery too complicated, or is it right on the edge? Does it cost too many 'complexity points' or do we have a few to spare? And/or should we push a +1/+1 counter theme more, with a Fungus theme trailing in third most important theme in mono-green commons?

I feel a bit stupid here. I think several of us designing fungus cards were designing on the assumption that +1/+1 counters would turn things into Fungus somehow, but we didn't need to decide exactly where that description would go (on counter-adding cards, on counter-counting cards, in reminder text, are there too many memory issues, etc, etc) until we'd decided whether or not we thought the theme was good. Since the only +1/+1 counters in the set are from Fungus, I thought it was fine to playtest "Put a +1/+1 counter on" creatures and "for each Fungus" creatures and have everyone just know how it worked while we waited to see if it was fun enough to be worth doing.

I thought this was fairly normal for the design team -- there are lots of stories about "we tested replicate for ages before the template team made us decide whether it made one big spell or lots of little ones", etc.

But it seems that wasn't clear, because no-one said "I don't think there'll be any simple way of templating that whichever cards you put it on so we should give up now" but lots of people looked at one of the proposed fungus cards and said "ok, if you assume this card has all of the complexity of the whole theme written on it, and assume we eviscerate the rest of the fungus theme and judge this card in isolation, then it's too complicated for common".

I think that's usually the case with theme cards. If there was just one card that said "This creature deals damage in the form of -1/-1 counters. -1/-1 counters mutually annhilate with +1/+1 counters," it would be much too complicated for common, but those were the rules, and wither creatures just said "Wither (reminder text)."

I think Mycobrewery AS WRITTEN is too complicated for a common, but that assumes there's no way to condense the "all creatures with +1/+1 counters on them" clause into a keyword and reminder text or something: if we stick with the +1/+1 fungus theme, then it's not much complexity because even though it's more words, the CONCEPT is really simple.

I'm not sure whether to brainstorm possible ways of doing the rules now, or assume most people would rather the theme just died. I think we probably still need more simple common examples of the theme, but I haven't got round to brainstorming yet. So I don't know.

Thanks, Jack, but you can hold on the brainstorming for now until we get a few more opinions. Right now I need to know if this works. It is fair to assume, though, that this could be keyworded or ability worded. We may want to try tying the first two lines together into one reminder text as well. For example:

Bud (When this creature enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. As long as this creature is on the battlefield, creatures with counters on them are Fungus.)

Which ties it together better, but unfortunately we get "As long as this creature is on the battlefield" as bonus words. Hmmm... still, the mindspace is condensed into one small word "Bud" or possibly "Bud 1". (Bud Bud? Bud Bud Bud?)

Thanks. Sorry for ranting, I was in a hurry to write something down before I left and I see I went on a bit.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I was thinking of. I'd not thought of combining the two abilities into one word, that's a good possibility.

Since it's been a couple of days, I'm going to change everything to Bud and let people complain about this later if the want. I'm not a fan of having the keyword have both a trigger and an ongoing effect, but that's only because it's rare to see that happen, not because it is inherently bad.

Added: ­

I added Rootsnapping Kudzu to the skeleton and am walking away from Green for now. I'm a bit more certain that we know what we want to see come out of this color. I'll have to ask for some non-creature spells later when we respond to what the other colors are doing.

Added Cultural Lean, Pod Cloud, Homeostasis and Creeping Mold to the skeleton. That takes care of white, green and black, and leaves me with removing a card from blue, helping to push the final pieces of red together, and selecting 10 fortifications.

Reviewing this a year later, I've a few thoughts:

• I like the theme of +1/+1 counters representing fungus and spreading fungus.
• Would it be equally good and a LOT simpler to make cards that care about creatures with +1/+1 counters on, instead of caring about fungus creature type?
  • It solves all the rules problems
  • We can either make all the fungus creatures have +1/+1 counters instead of base P/T
  • Or have multiple "put a +1/+1" actions, and stronger abilities which don't affect any fungus, just those with +1/+1 counters. This would need more management of counters, since your fungus creatures aren't "activated" by default, you need to choose between activating more creatures with +1/+1 counters, or piling +1/+1 counters on your best creatures.
  • Or somewhere between -- eg. all fungus are base 1/1 or 0/1 with varying number of counters on.
  • Or make lots (or all?) of fungus creatures with "ETB bud" -- I like this, it may be like a cross between evolve and exalted.
  • It's a shame to not interact with fungus creatures from other sets, but interacting with +1/+1 counters from other sets is a lot more open-ended.
  • We can keep bud as it is (wizards often use a keyword when they don't absolutely have to) or lose it. Or maybe it should be "Bud N (Put a +1/+1 counter on up to N target creatures.)" or "Bud N (Put N +1/+1 counters on up to N target creatures)". Ideally the normal keyword would be used at common, but uncommon+ could have "Bud, bud, bud," to mean "put 3 counters however you like."
  • More useful might be a word for "a creature with a +1/+1 counter on", although that would be controversial.
  • We can have common effects that put a +1/+1 counter on a creature as a rider, and at common primarily beneficial effects for creatures with counters on, and at uncommon and rare effects which count number of creatures or do effects which matter when they're on the opponent's creatures.
• I like the idea of "cares about mana" but we haven't done anything compelling with it yet. I'm open to ideas, but also happy to forget it.

It's a shame. I like the 'bud' keyword, but you're right that we're probably leaning way too much on the Vorthos spectrum by keeping it the way it is.

The problem, though, is that we lose a lot of the 'why' when we remove the fungus creature type from the equation. It's just +1/+1 counters and creatures that key off that. Still interesting. But I really liked the idea of everything getting fungified.

Maybe the correct idea is to do something like this?:

Some Fungus
??

Creature - Fungus
When ~ enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
Creatures with +1/+1 counters on them are Fungus in addition to their other types.
~ gets +1/+1 for each other Fungus in play.
1/1

I don't know. I'm rather torn. It's a pretty big Vorthos/Melvin split. I think part of my problem is that, as a designer, I appreciate Melvin, but as a game player, I prefer Vorthos.

I thought that "Fungus creatures that have +1/+1 counters on them, and put +1/+1 counters on other creatures, and care about creatures with +1/+1 counters on them" was a sufficiently obvious flavour for "Fungus creatures that are full of spores, which attach to other creatures, and the fungus have some sort of affinity to creatures to which the spores have spread".

I definitely want to keep flavour, but I feel like flavour conveyed by mechanics is at least as good as flavour conveyed by creature type.

Maybe it is. Sometimes, I forget the power of artwork. Truth is, that would make the flavor connection obvious. I will say this much: Removing rules baggage from Bud will open up complexity in other areas of green we've been brushing past.

I would be sad to see bud go, but Jack's right it's a lot simpler to just care about +1/+1 counters. I could go either way.

I think flavour will be fine either way. The original Simic (in Dissension) cared about +1/+1 counters with things like Helium Squirter and Simic Basilisk, and the flavour of those was pretty strong with those blue blobs in the artwork (cytoplasts).

I assumed we'd still use "bud" to mean "put a +1/+1 counter on" -- the flavour seems worth it, and you can have cards that say "when you bud". That's one of my favourite things about the mechanic at the moment. We may have to remove it if we decide it's not doing any work, but I hope we don't.

I think this means we have a consensus. Jack's current suggestion is better than the thing we like better, but isn't better for the set. Switching the cards over.

Cool. I like the green cards a lot more just from that change.