CardName: Challenge # 161
Cost:
Type: Challenge
Pow/Tgh: /
Rules Text: Design a cycle with more than five cards in
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Set/Rarity: Multiverse Design Challenge None
In Challenge # 109 I asked for a cycle of four cards or fewer (as now shown on the Ixalan faction cycles).
But it seems that I didn't ask the obvious counterpoint, for a cycle with more than five cards. I was originally going to ask for a cycle with a number wizards haven't done, but that's nearly the same thing.
I will say, not "five colours plus an artifact" or "ten guilds", as those have been done a lot. But anything else if fair game.
You can either design a single card, or a whole cycle.
Cycles should "feel" balanced, but that doesn't automatically mean equal numbers of each colour.
Feel free to discuss existing examples: I can think of at least one nine card cycle, but almost no other examples other than the ones mentioned above.
There's the twelve card zodiac animal cycle as well - Zodiac Rat & friends. While technically not part of the same cycle, Amonkhet Egyptian Gods number 8 - representing the Ogdoad in Egyptian myth.
I feel like this challenge would be more suited for sets rather than making one out of the blue. All of the greater than five-card cycles so far are either connected via meta flavor (i.e. Power 9) or via in-block mechanics/flavor (Harbinger cycle, Zodiac cycle). I feel like most entries will be based off of mythological or real-life groups of 6+ things.
Seems like the simplest execution would be to have two enemy colors do a simultaneous common/uncommon/rare cycle that mirrors each other. (White squire/Black Squire, White Knight/Black Knight, White Lord/Black Lady for example.)
Another version of this could be a 'one color missing' execution, similar to how Link was exploring a world without blue (or maybe all five colors are teaming up against a single color that has gone out of control.) If we did a CD cycle in a world like that, we'd get WB, WR, WG, BR, BG, RG. Six cards total. In theory, you could expand on that as well, either tossing in some three color cards, or making a super-powerful mono-colored card to represent the enemy's answer.
Without any context I asked what things I could care about? Doing more than 5 I didn't want trap myself by color, so I opted to stick to a single color. I though creatures that cared about the number of permanents of varying types as well as the number of other cards in other zones seemed an easy way (although bad) to approach the challenge.
As well as the 8-card Harbinger cycle that Mal mentioned, I also remember a bizarre 7-card cycle from Invasion block. That's more "5 plus an artifact plus 1 more randomly", though. Oh, Odyssey block had a wacky 7-card cycle too. I have no idea what Jack's 9-card cycle is though.
There are of course various 10-card cycles of colour triples, or 15-card cycles of each single and double colour (e.g. Theros gods), etc. Those don't feel like they fit the bill here.
I believe Jack is referring to the Power 9, which isn't technically a cycle but more of a set of cards that are notorious for breaking the game early on. Interestingly, there's a 5-plus-artifact cycle within those nine.
Doh, sorry! I just misremembered the number of harbingers. Power 9 is clearly not a cycle.
I guess there was also a cycle of lands for the 8 tribes, I can't remember, if there were any others.
Which were the bizarre 7-card cycles?
I guess you could maybe count the future sight cycle of land cycles as a cycle of 25, but you probably shouldn't, anything about "one for each colour" is not really in the spirit of "unprecedented cycles" :)
The idea of "all six non-white guilds gang up on white" is a nice one. Some other combinations of a subset of the colours might also be possible.
"Helps with one particular card type" cycle is another possibility; the wishes sort of do this, and the Goblin go-go mechs above, but neither quite do.
I didn't think of it before, but I just realised Grinding Station etc are basically a cycle with themselves. I don't think they were really colour aligned (one looks blue, one red, one white, but the other doesn't really look anything). There's only four, but you could do the same thing with six. That might be a bit too many artifacts, but you could do two colours twice, two colours once, or similar.
Although maybe it would be better to mix traditions even more and have metal servant and spirit servant both in W to keep up the "two per colour" pattern.
And Library Warden, part of an imagined cycle with one for each zone. "Stack warden" and at least one other would need to be named something else of course :)
Invasion block's 7-card cycle was Enlistment Officer (), Tidal Courier (), Grave Defiler (), Goblin Ringleader (), Sylvan Messenger (), Brass Herald (), plus Kavu Howler as an extra . The first five were the most characteristic creature types for each colour at the time (and would mostly go on 2 years later to be amongst the main creature types for Onslaught block, the first tribal block); then Brass Herald is a "pick-your-own" lord, the forerunner to Adaptive Automaton and Metallic Mimic; and then they randomly decided Kavu should get the same effect since they were the new creature type for the block.
Odyssey block had the interesting Dreams "cycle" (double-cycle?) in Torment. It was a horizontal cycle at rare and a vertical cycle in black, overlapping in Insidious Dreams. It looks like Insidious Dreams was "more" affiliated with the black vertical cycle than the rare horizontal cycle because the other four rares cost CC where all the black ones only cost a single . But I think it is a legitimate example of a 7-card cycle.
Ah, thank you. That first one does indeed seem questionable. I can obviously do a 6+ card cycle if I'm allowed to randomly add an extra green one :)
But the overlapping cycles is interesting, I wonder if there's any other interesting ways of doing overlapping cycles (ideally without a rarity cycle).
My first idea was a cycle with one card for each card type -- one creature, one enchantment, one artifact, one land, one planeswalker, and one instant/sorcery. No idea how you'd tie it together though.
I thought about doing that, and probably would have tried a cycle if I didn't have too much on my plate right now to work it out. The obvious choice, to me, is to base everything on the Planeswalker. "Chandra's Firebearer", "Chandra's Coffeemaker", "Chandra's Craving For More Sprinkles" ect., ect..
Since this is a soft cycle, the trick is to make all of this stuff interelate in some way. One big glorious machine, if you will.
In Challenge # 109 I asked for a cycle of four cards or fewer (as now shown on the Ixalan faction cycles).
But it seems that I didn't ask the obvious counterpoint, for a cycle with more than five cards. I was originally going to ask for a cycle with a number wizards haven't done, but that's nearly the same thing.
I will say, not "five colours plus an artifact" or "ten guilds", as those have been done a lot. But anything else if fair game.
You can either design a single card, or a whole cycle.
Cycles should "feel" balanced, but that doesn't automatically mean equal numbers of each colour.
Feel free to discuss existing examples: I can think of at least one nine card cycle, but almost no other examples other than the ones mentioned above.
There's the twelve card zodiac animal cycle as well - Zodiac Rat & friends. While technically not part of the same cycle, Amonkhet Egyptian Gods number 8 - representing the Ogdoad in Egyptian myth.
I feel like this challenge would be more suited for sets rather than making one out of the blue. All of the greater than five-card cycles so far are either connected via meta flavor (i.e. Power 9) or via in-block mechanics/flavor (Harbinger cycle, Zodiac cycle). I feel like most entries will be based off of mythological or real-life groups of 6+ things.
I made Armor of Gears, Armor of Mists, and Armor of Light. Iterations for black, red, and green would use deathtouch, double strike, and vigilance, respectively.
Oh, that's fascinating. I hadn't realised at all about the zodiac cards.
Seems like the simplest execution would be to have two enemy colors do a simultaneous common/uncommon/rare cycle that mirrors each other. (White squire/Black Squire, White Knight/Black Knight, White Lord/Black Lady for example.)
Another version of this could be a 'one color missing' execution, similar to how Link was exploring a world without blue (or maybe all five colors are teaming up against a single color that has gone out of control.) If we did a CD cycle in a world like that, we'd get WB, WR, WG, BR, BG, RG. Six cards total. In theory, you could expand on that as well, either tossing in some three color cards, or making a super-powerful mono-colored card to represent the enemy's answer.
Will think on this.
Without any context I asked what things I could care about? Doing more than 5 I didn't want trap myself by color, so I opted to stick to a single color. I though creatures that cared about the number of permanents of varying types as well as the number of other cards in other zones seemed an easy way (although bad) to approach the challenge.
Goblin-Go Charger, Goblin-Go Lorekeeper, Goblin-Go Mechanic, Goblin-Go Strategist, Goblin-Go Necromancer, Goblin-Go Voidbringer, Goblin-Go Gangmaker
Together, they form Goblin-Go Ultramech
Huh; nice idea. Will think a bit.
As well as the 8-card Harbinger cycle that Mal mentioned, I also remember a bizarre 7-card cycle from Invasion block. That's more "5 plus an artifact plus 1 more randomly", though. Oh, Odyssey block had a wacky 7-card cycle too. I have no idea what Jack's 9-card cycle is though.
There are of course various 10-card cycles of colour triples, or 15-card cycles of each single and double colour (e.g. Theros gods), etc. Those don't feel like they fit the bill here.
"maybe all five colors are teaming up against a single color that has gone out of control"
I really like that idea... I feel like that might be what's going on with Vryn. Gonna think about this a bit.
I believe Jack is referring to the Power 9, which isn't technically a cycle but more of a set of cards that are notorious for breaking the game early on. Interestingly, there's a 5-plus-artifact cycle within those nine.
Doh, sorry! I just misremembered the number of harbingers. Power 9 is clearly not a cycle.
I guess there was also a cycle of lands for the 8 tribes, I can't remember, if there were any others.
Which were the bizarre 7-card cycles?
I guess you could maybe count the future sight cycle of land cycles as a cycle of 25, but you probably shouldn't, anything about "one for each colour" is not really in the spirit of "unprecedented cycles" :)
The idea of "all six non-white guilds gang up on white" is a nice one. Some other combinations of a subset of the colours might also be possible.
"Helps with one particular card type" cycle is another possibility; the wishes sort of do this, and the Goblin go-go mechs above, but neither quite do.
I didn't think of it before, but I just realised Grinding Station etc are basically a cycle with themselves. I don't think they were really colour aligned (one looks blue, one red, one white, but the other doesn't really look anything). There's only four, but you could do the same thing with six. That might be a bit too many artifacts, but you could do two colours twice, two colours once, or similar.
And I forgot maybe the most high-profile larger-than-five cycle of all: The "Oath of Gideon" etc cycle for all planeswalker members of the gatewatch.
Lorwyn/Morningtide had a number of 7-8 card cycles, since they were tied to creature type. Just saying.
Metal Servant and Wood Servant to add to the Fire Servant, Earth Servant, Water Servant and Air Servant cycle, bringing it up to six.
Although maybe it would be better to mix traditions even more and have metal servant and spirit servant both in W to keep up the "two per colour" pattern.
And Library Warden, part of an imagined cycle with one for each zone. "Stack warden" and at least one other would need to be named something else of course :)
Invasion block's 7-card cycle was Enlistment Officer (
), Tidal Courier (
), Grave Defiler (
), Goblin Ringleader (
), Sylvan Messenger (
), Brass Herald (
), plus Kavu Howler as an extra 
. The first five were the most characteristic creature types for each colour at the time (and would mostly go on 2 years later to be amongst the main creature types for Onslaught block, the first tribal block); then Brass Herald is a "pick-your-own" lord, the forerunner to Adaptive Automaton and Metallic Mimic; and then they randomly decided Kavu should get the same effect since they were the new creature type for the block.
Odyssey block had the interesting Dreams "cycle" (double-cycle?) in Torment. It was a horizontal cycle at rare and a vertical cycle in black, overlapping in Insidious Dreams. It looks like Insidious Dreams was "more" affiliated with the black vertical cycle than the rare horizontal cycle because the other four rares cost CC where all the black ones only cost a single
. But I think it is a legitimate example of a 7-card cycle.
Ah, thank you. That first one does indeed seem questionable. I can obviously do a 6+ card cycle if I'm allowed to randomly add an extra green one :)
But the overlapping cycles is interesting, I wonder if there's any other interesting ways of doing overlapping cycles (ideally without a rarity cycle).
I guess you could do two overlapping cycles, say one of "W+another" and one "B+another" and the WB one counts for both?
My first idea was a cycle with one card for each card type -- one creature, one enchantment, one artifact, one land, one planeswalker, and one instant/sorcery. No idea how you'd tie it together though.
I thought about doing that, and probably would have tried a cycle if I didn't have too much on my plate right now to work it out. The obvious choice, to me, is to base everything on the Planeswalker. "Chandra's Firebearer", "Chandra's Coffeemaker", "Chandra's Craving For More Sprinkles" ect., ect..
Since this is a soft cycle, the trick is to make all of this stuff interelate in some way. One big glorious machine, if you will.
Ajani's Partisan a six-card R W G cycle.
Blood Guildmage
I'm not sure this really works, but I was going for, if Eldrazi invade ravnica, will we have FIFTEEN guilds? :)