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CardName: Challenge # 130 Cost: Type: Cycle challenge Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Choose a card from an existing 5-cards cycle, and use it to create a new cycle for reprinting in a new set. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Multiverse Design Challenge None

Challenge # 130
 
Cycle challenge
Choose a card from an existing 5-cards cycle, and use it to create a new cycle for reprinting in a new set.
Updated on 23 Jul 2015 by Circeus

History: [-]

2015-07-10 08:57:46: Circeus created the card Challenge # 130
2015-07-10 08:57:59: Circeus edited Challenge # 130

Ooh. So pluck a card out of its cycle, and design a different cycle around it.

I guess that's happened once or twice in the past. Leyline of the Void was the only reprinted Leyline, with four new compatriots in M11. Disciple of Grace was originally paired with Disciple of Law but was reprinted paired with Disciple of Malice. Circle of Protection: Red and Black were part of the original tight cycle in Alpha, but then represented white in the two colour-hoser cycles in Eighth and Ninth Editions. And there's the lovely example of a 5-card cycle which consistent of 4 functional reprints and one card that wasn't.

Amusingly, this is kind of the opposite of Challenge # 023.

And several other challenges (though not on multiverse?) for "take an existing cycle, and replace one element of it".

Anyway, this is a great idea.

A pity Alex spoiled the Circle of Protections. I was thinking of doing "Triangle of Hatred: White" and "Octagon of Subservience: Green". But I guess the Circles were probably too obvious a choice. Time to roll up my mental sleeves and get weirder.

Hee, no - I didn't mean to spoil them, just pointing out that it had already been done with them, but that's no reason not to do it again! That sounds awesome, do it! :)

Rolling random until I got a card in a cycle, I got Magus of the Vineyard. Hmm, yes, that works. It was a in a cycle of "print a creature with the same cost and abilities as an enchantment on the Reserve List" (Eladamri's Vineyard; Magus of the Moat, Magus of the Future, Magus of the Abyss, Magus of the Moon). But taken out of that context it could easily be in a cycle of, say, "group hug 1-drop rare creatures".

Took me a while to come up with some suitable group-hug effects for the other colours, but I ended up with Magus of the Aerie, Magus of the Pools, Magus of the Crypt, and Magus of the Back Room.

Added Triangle of Hatred: White, Square of Dominance: Black, Octagon of Subservience: Green and Decagon of Rage: Blue to go with Circle of Protection: Red. I was having a hard time, at first, coming up with four different abilities that could pwn each color and cost only {1}... but then I realized that circles only have one line. And Triangles have {3}, and Squares have {4}, etc..

I wanted to do something different, so I tried Alex's idea of getting a random cycle and ended up with Terravore. Ufda.

My first response was to keep rolling, since I wasn't interested in making yet another cycle of Llurgoyfs. But then I realized that I could pivot this cycle around "Creatures that care about the number of lands in your graveyard" and thought that might make for an interesting set. So I cooked up Villein Hordist, Consumate Digger, Trifle Collector And Vashdu Survivilist.

I followed Alex's idea of a random card and my first was Soaring Seacliff. Hm, like jmg I didn't want another cycle of lands, but I followed the same out and made a different sort of cycle.

­Duck Hunter, Touch the Heavens, Dragonise, Night of the Vampire, a cycle of "flying UEOT" cards.

I love the flavour of duck hunter :)

Of course, we wouldn't usually have a cycle of cards which fulfil different roles, even quite loose cycles aren't usually five different card types, they're usually "some blue spell" not "some card for a blue deck".

I also should have made one a colour-aligned artifact so the land wasn't the only colourless card, but I couldn't think of a good effect.

I got Torchling, so tried to start a different morphling cycle. I tried to go with "torch-" not "-ling" this time. So far I had Torch-snuffer :)

Rolling Random gave me Goldmeadow Stalwart. I found it pretty hard to imagine an interesting alternate direction to evolve that. Then Chaoslace... I could have made a "red matters" cycle, but Chaoslace is so very bad, it'd feel bad to create a modern-power-level cycle of four other cards. Next card is Tuskguard Captain, but I don't think that's actually in a 5-card cycle - there are two or three white, one green, and one black.

Finally (after many intervening cards that aren't in cycles) I got Sapphire Leech. Um. Well, it is at least still above the curve, unlike some of its cycle (Jade Leech looks rather sad next to Deadbridge Goliath). What other directions can you take that in? Manipulating blue spell costs in various ways? 2/2 fliers with drawbacks?

­New Benalia is the next one. Originally in a cycle of uncommon lands from Future Sight with "old mechanics" (Tolaria West, Dakmor Salvage, Keldon Megaliths, Llanowar Reborn), I could repurpose it as the white element in a cycle of scry-1 permanents. These are all pretty simple so I'm not bothering to create the cards for them...

­{2}{u}, Enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, scry 1.
­{1}{g}, Creature - Elf Shaman, 2/2. When ~ ETBs, scry 1.
­{1}{r}, Creature - Lizard, 2/1. Whenever ~ attacks, scry 1.
­{1}{b}, Creature - Zombie, 2/2. When ~ dies, scry 1.
Land, When ~ ETBs, scry 1. {t}: Add {w} to your mana pool.

Two of these are reprints, and one is nearly so. Two of those are originally uncommons, but with scry at evergreen I think these could probably all be common now.

And now I'm giving up on rolling random and starting to look at sets to choose a card in a 5-card cycle instead.

Looking down lists of cards in recent sets, I didn't see a single cycle in Tarkir block that would work for this: every single five-card cycle I could see was named things like "Abzan Charm" or "Anafenza, the Foremost", which don't really support reprinting into a different context.

But Gatecrash supplies the Primordials, so I took Diluvian Primordial and repositioned it into a cycle of 5/5s for 5CC that can reuse instants or sorceries somehow. "Every one of them should go nicely with prowess" was the theme I ended up going for, and created Primordial of Fraternity, Cruel Primordial, Incendiary Primordial and Wilderness Primordial.

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