Probably should push this up to , but I thought I'd be risky and see what people said at .

I was going to write here about how red is my least favorite color in Magic and that I don't design many red cards as a result, but when I look at this set, I've actually designed more mono-red cards than black or green. Interesting.

This card came about when I was trying to think of a red counterspell, because I've had a vague idea for a set floating around in my head. What if there was a set that was completely missing one of the colors? For some reason, a set missing blue makes sense to me. Of course, the other colors would have to take on blue's roles for the set, which I think would be interesting design-wise. Blue would then have to make a big comeback later in the block, which I also think would be interesting.

Anyway, I start (and then don't finish) way too many sets.

This is really interesting. It's a very "red" approach to countering spells: it can range from a hard counter to a catastrophic failure (e.g. Ponder into Cruel Ultimatum). The best part is that you have no control over what happens! I think is fine.

Hmm. I would think that "That player reveals cards until they reveal an instant or sorcery spell" would be a bit more appropriate for . After all, it does have the chance of downgrading a Wildfire into a Shock. Even at this seems strong to me. Consider: 40% of most decks are lands. So, even in a deck that contains 10% creatures and 40% lands, there's a 50/50 shot that this card is as good as Cancel... and... you know... there are few decks built that way.

Right now, though, it's occurring to me that this card will only counter instants and sorceries. Hmm. I don't know why I assumed this was a universal counter. Maybe because what it's doing doesn't really fit the color pie? I know that the idea here is "Counter target instant. Possibly polymorph it.", but, I would think, in practice, that this will only polymorph approximately 5-10% of the time. That means, in the vast majority of cases, it reads "Counter target instant or sorcery". That seems like a very weird thing for red to do.

What jmg seems to be thinking of initially is Spellshift. This is also like a red Muddle the Mixture, except worse for the same cost.

What's interesting is that one of those is rare and the other is common, but both are comparable to this.

True that. If you start tearing apart my argument, it becomes more about color than actual casting cost. I just don't think Muddle the Mixture is appropriate in red... but, I also think there's room between that and Spellshift. Once that gets struck seems fine again, already.

Oh, and also, the reason why Spellshift costs so much is because it can (with perhaps a little deck manipulation) let you, the caster, turn a Lightning Bolt into a Warp World for . In of that sense, Muddle the Mixture isn't a 'better' card.

I agree that something with >50% chance of being Muddle the Mixture isn't really right for red. Interestingly Chaos Warp is kinda just about fine.

This is a straight-up variation on Chaos Warp. I'm interested in the fact that you don't think this belongs in red, because I didn't expect that. I thought it made perfect sense. I see it, now that you said it, and it does make sense, but I would argue that this isn't utterly out of place in red.
Remember that this would go in a set completely without blue. Does that make the stretch any better?

Hmm... Yeah, perhaps I didn't entirely take that bit on board. If you consider it in the context of a non-blue set then it's somewhat better. (Not getting into the question here of whether a non-blue set itself is a good idea :P :) )

I think it's an interesting idea, but I'm not entirely set to argue that it's a good idea.

At the risk of you repeating yourself, what's the impetus behind the non-blue set? Or perhaps you can link me to the card that talks about it the most?

From a very surface take, I think the idea of removing any one color from the color pie for one set seems solid. Very, very difficult to make work right... but if the set did come out right, it would stir a lot of conversation. In this sense it would be similar to Torment, which, despite the Odyssey mechanics that non-Spikes don't appreciate, was a very popular set. Of course, if you were to follow Wizard's cue, then, the next set would be all blue, or 50% blue... but I don't think that's really necessary. Mind you, there will be people that hate it off concept alone. It's impossible to do something dramatic without making someone angry.

As for this card in a non-blue set... hmm. It still bothers me. I think my problem is that I would have accepted Muddle the Mixture without Transmute in red. It's a stretch... but it's one that you can argue. I can also accept Chaos Warp, and I kind of think that Spellshift should have been red the first time out. This spell, however, looks like it's trying to get away with something. It feels like it hides behind a veneer of chaos to do something that red wouldn't normally be able to do. My initial reaction would be to say "That's wrong." as opposed to a red Muddle the Mixture, where my initial reaction would be to say "That's interesting. I don't think I agree, but I see your point." I don't know how many people have the same gut reactions that I do, though.

Unless I've had this idea before and forgot about it, this is the first place I've mentioned anything of the sort. To digress entirely from talking about this card, once I arrived at the idea of a set that lacked one of the colors, I immediately wondered which color I would remove. I decided on blue, though red might have also been interesting, for two different reasons.

The first is flavor, which convinced me blue was the right choice in several ways. I began by eliminating the colors that wouldn't work to remove. Innistrad block and Scars of Mirrodin block made be feel that black and white would be poor choices, as did Torment. Remove white, and the story could end up feeling like Innistrad/Dark Ascension or New Phyrexia. Remove black, and you've got an Avacyn Restored vibe. Removing green tempted me dangerously close to settings similar to Mirrodin or Ravnica. Obviously, those settings had green, but it should be easy to see why green should struggle on a metal plane or a giant city plane.

That left red and blue. Removing red means a place with no mountains, and possibly a cold place. Removing blue probably means a lack of water, but not necessarily. It could just mean that the land no longer produces blue mana, for some reason. I found either a desert plane or a dried-up husk of a plane more interesting than possible red variations.

Since I feel the need to balance this set that entirely lacks blue by making another set in the block have a great deal more blue, the fact that it's easier for me to explain the departure and return of water/blue mana also helped convince me to choose blue.

The second main reason I chose blue is mechanical. My justification here doesn't feel as strong to me as my flavorful justification, but I often feel like blue is a color people don't like, and that it is constantly on the upper end of the power scale between the colors. I wanted to give the other colors all a chance to shine. Removing blue also means finding other ways to deal with things than counterspells, or giving other colors countermagic for a set.

As to why I want to do a set missing a color in the first place... well, it sounded cool. It sounded interesting. And, well, that's pretty much all I've got. :)

Well; it's also something wizards is unlikely to do, as it would hurt their sales to casual players - some of whom would avoid a set that they couldn't add to their deck.

So very nice idea for a multiverse set. And red certainly does get random messing up of spells. Seems a bit too strong at ; but hey, Fork.

Oh. Oohhhhh! I just realized something Link! You're accidently making Azoria!. Azoria is the plane where Tevesh Sztat and Freylise originally come from. In a climatic battle, before moving their confrontation to Dominia, Freylise destroyed the islands of Azoria. All of them. Azoria has no access to blue mana. Unfortunately, it didn't work well enough, because Tevesh was a powerful enough black planeswalker to rely off just black mana.

Well, shoot. The wiki says the life on Azoria was destroyed, though, which doesn't make for the most interesting setting.

Crud. Maybe it wasn't?

All of the land creatures were killed.

Hmm. This is going to sound very blue-focused, but hear me out: the entire plane is underwater.

I can explain. Underwater, you can have plains, swamps, mountains, and forests. But how do you have an island underwater?

Creature types could be Merfolk, Cephalid, C̶l̶a̶m̶f̶o̶l̶k̶Homarid, and some sort of aquatic Vedalken. Each tribe would belong to a single color. Secondary types would be fish, crab, crocodile, whale, turtle, kraken, leviathan, octopus, and serpent.

I think this is potentially very cool!

Completely underwater plane comes up from time to time. I know, because that was the first set I tried, based on a loose comment on "Ask Wizards", which roughly told me that they weren't planning on using that idea for a while. Whenever anybody says "What if we had a Magic set completely underwater" it makes my radar go off.

That being said, I think a completely underwater is very cool. In case you're wondering, my own set had a White aligned Sandy seaweed farmland for Plains, tended by a culture of monastic-farmer Crabpeople. Green was a Corral Jungle, overseen by a druidic race of Morray Eels. Red was an underwater mountain range, filled with Goblins (which, evidently, adapt to everything). And black was a race of trolls that slipped in and out of a series of dark underwater crevices. Blue was a Byzantine series of city-state 'islands', ruled over by Merfolk.

I have thought about moving some of my old stuff online after finishing Magic 20XX... but it's some old tech, leading back to 2002. While I like many of the cards, a few of them are quite off. Maybe I'll pick off the better cards and move them into New Mirrodin, or whatever other set wants to easily absorb a few spare cards.

Oh, there was one more strange detail about my underwater set. Almost nothing had flying, for flavor reasons. It happened, but when it did, it operated closer to Shadow... creatures with flying can't block non-flyers thingy. Lots of Killer Whaleing, too. If your set has no blue, no-flying might make even more sense...