Ooh, cool idea.

Are we looking for any synergistic mechanic that could appear on two colours (eg. evolve is appropriate-ish in G and U, so supports building a deck in those colours with lots of 6/1s), or something that specifically benefits from two-colour play?

Hmmm. I'm almost tempted to suggest "Just print lots of creatures with intimidate; golds can block those well" - but that's not quite enough. Anti-devotion? But that really encourages splash instead of true dual. Will have to have a think.

For what it's worth, I consider a strongly linear mechanic in a given two color pair to qualify (as in, you have to commit to the mechanic, which will most likely make you commit to those colors).

OK, I don't like the result, but Pargreased Boggle has my thoughts on how to approach it.

i made a cycle of these guild-like mechanics not long ago on a whim. probably too weird or clunky to see print.

maybe this one is acceptable:
­ guild
Familia — When ~ enters the battlefield, do something with X, where X is the number of creatures you control more than target opponent.

­Coffin Embers Emberlisk EDIT: Added a creature card. I know the wording is incorret, it only affects the card its on.

­Vindicator's Pet

Added Unburial Pyre, Badland Warp Stone, Rolling Mist and Order of Extreme Prejudice. This is a very strange challenge, in that it's easy to do if you're just dabbling with the idea, but incredibly challenging if you're serious about enforcing two-color decks.

Jmgariepy, your responses are not what I would have thought Circeus had in mind. I though he was looking for keywords or ability words. Nevertheless, it's a good reminder of the fact that "mechanics" aren't necessarily either of those things.

I made Bloom of Inspiration, Sanity Drain, and Spike in Processing.

most of these are too direct with color interaction or too narrow. but those are not 'guild' mechanics. a guild starts with a strong flavor and purpose. thats what drives the theme of the guild. not because it needs a certain color mana or because the card happens to be a certain color. thats more invasion or shadowmoor style multicolor, but not ravnica guilds (bad design like radiant notwithstanding.)

While it's true that the guild design needs to start with flavour and goals, most mechanics can be given a few different choices of flavour. This challenge isn't the approach that would be used in designing an actual guild set, but it's nonetheless an interesting challenge.

It's also really quite hard to find a mechanic that encourages two colours rather than three or more colours. That's one of the hardest parts of this challenge.

Ironically, design by using color or mana differentiation does the opposite of what this challenge wants. case in point, shadowmoor had exactly what many of you propose: hybrid mana, effects based on colored mana used and color of the permanents. in the end, it ended up being a free-for-all where 3/4/5 color decks were all viable.

that could be due to various reasons. making sure limited goes smoothly. enough dual lands and multicolor lands to support all color pairs and heavily colored mana costs.

i think the right approach is really by color pie intersections or by strictly following the color pair's means and ends. for instance, loves to create tokens. hence populate plays into that favoritism such that populate is less useful when or is paired with other colors. this is chiefly due to lack of critical mass. regardless of how easy the spells are to cast, even without such blatant constraints like this or that color. now since the mana costs are less stringent, you can use weaker duals to discourage 3/4/5 color decks.

The problem, if I may call it that, is that having a clear linear goal and focus doesn't really solve the 3/4/5 issue. Not if cards like Mortify exist alongside cards like Stinkweed Imp. The 3/4/5s will just ignore the Imp, and pack the Mortify.

To stop that from happening, you could cut all of the modular spells in a given set. The end result would be a set that many people would hate, I'd think, unless you figured out some radical way to replace modularity with a thing that was equally interesting, but not modularity (don't ask how. I don't know.)

It's rough. Like I said before, this is one of the hardest challenges I know of, masquerading as something very simple to do. You can always print a tribal lord in two colors, forcing players down a certain path. But all it takes is a single Watchwolf to open things up again. It seems that the real challenge isn't the linear guild mechanics at all. The real challenge is "What do you do about all these modular card you're forced to print, that roughly ignore the linear world you're building?"

Come to think of it, another thing that might help is an alternate win condition (although they have to be used sparingly). If a guild uses a mill strategy, a lot of otherwise powerful cards are suddenly much less useful, so you're less likely to splash for them. The same applies to an extent to fast beatdown decks and decks built around a couple of particular cards; you may pass up good cards to first-pick the cards that actually help your deck. It's hard to design for without being a pro, though, and even then some cards are good enough you'd probably want them if they came up.

Shadowmoor's 3/4/5-colour decks are precisely because it used hybrid cards rather than gold cards. (Which is the very reason it was beloved by many players.) If Wilt-Leaf Liege, Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers etc had been gold rather than hybrid, you wouldn't be able to throw them in the same deck as Balefire Liege and Burrenton Liege and Unmake.

Eventide came a lot closer to this, with things like Shorecrasher Mimic, Favor of the Overbeing and Sturdy Hatchling that were explicit rewards for being both colours. The problem is that the Mimics and auras made for triple-Eventide draft being a painfully linear and boring format. One person gets all the Nightsky Mimics and Edge of the Divinitys, and probably wins unless they get outraced by the player with all the Riverfall Mimics and Clout of the Dominuses. (Fortunately triple-Eventide wasn't a mainstream draft format, it only happened at the Eventide prerelease and for people who bought a box of EVE without an accompanying one of SHM.)

The conclusion I draw from this is that encouraging specifically 2-colour decks (rather than 3/4/5s) is so hard that Wizards haven't found a way to do it either that plays well, so we shouldn't feel bad if we can't find a way!

well the challenge only asks for guild mechanic, not block design. whereas shadowmoor's hybrid and color matters are the main mechanics and themes of that block. which doesnt fit the challenge anyway, since it feels color neutral. as in pick any 2 colors but they all play the same because of same mechanics with different colored skin.

another issue is how many guilds. the more guilds present, the more they overlap. i'd say limit to 5 guilds that have different game plans.

as for modular spells, you can tone it down a bit so that other guilds find them less useful. but still playable for a given guild. mortify is really efficient and versatile for its cost. you can try a narrower version, like destroy creature/enchantment CMC less than 3 for .

as for wizards, is this even something they want to try? IOW is this challenge 1) worth aiming for, and 2) fun, and 3) fill up 3 sets worth of card designs?

I think the answers are 1) Yes, 2) Yes and 3) Yes. But Wizards still wouldn't want to try it since it's missing 4) Are we even playing Magic at this point? I'm guessing no. By the time you've found a way to make a fun non-modular game that can fill up 3 sets worth of design, you've walked so far from Magic proper that the average player won't recognize it, and therefore, won't like it. That doesn't mean it's bad. It, in fact, could be a better game than Magic. I just don't think the audience would appreciate the better game.

Pity that. I guess that's why there are other games in the world.

yea there's always a some weirdo who likes weird stuff. j/k it is a difficult problem to solve. you might solve this problem, but then other problems might (read most likely) crop up. but if you want to try, you really have to find the right vision and the dedication not to stray.

for that matter, based on my intuition and observances from past sets, hybrid and color matters is not the way to go for this challenge. but also because that method seems dull and uninspiring. even if Ravnica guild mechanics aren't all competitive, at least they seem cool, fresh, and unique. it really feels like guild vs guild, and not colors A&B vs colors C&D.

I certainly agree that this challenge only goes to highlight what a great job Wizards did in Return to Ravnica. Individual problems aside, they really nailed 10 different guilds with 10 different modus operandi. It's very easy to lose that vision when designing.