Archester Revival: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Archester Revival: (Generated at 2024-05-17 06:48:48)
| Archester Revival: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics | Skeleton |
Recent updates to Archester Revival: (Generated at 2024-05-17 06:48:48)
I feel like the nonbasic common slots should be similar to the Panorama cycle. It gives you access to the colorless mana needed for steam powered, and also gives you good color fixing.
If we're considering a slight tweaking of the Karoo cycle, the Ravinca Bounce lands have an ideal template for what were wanting.
I'm slightly concerned about the flavor implications of this card, though I know that might seem a little pedantic.
We've never, even in the original set, laid out the overall geography of Archester. There is the overall "19th Century America"-Vibe that is obviously present from eastern cities, barren arid west, and fruitful wilderness over a mountain range, but we've never really commented on the coasts.
Presumably sea-based ships predated Airships, and humanity has never been afraid to sail into the unknown, so why did explorers only start exploring the western reaches of Archester with the advent of Airships? They should have been exploring it much earlier by sea, if they could get to it, so why couldn't they?
One idea I have is that, riffing off the 19th century again, there are (or were) a lot of really big, really mean, sea serpents. Perhaps they were even hunted for their fats like whales in our world were but having seen their depletion beginning to affect his people, the prophet invented Mana Steam as a susitute, not realizing the long-term effects it would have on archester' as environment.
Alternativemy, perhaps there are really treacherous seas all long the coasts, precluding sea-based travel to any great extent.
P.S. I have similar concerns about Everglades, we don't have a mention of natural swamps or marshes in our world building.
I think that vigilance alone is fine, if only because of the interactions with Windup. We do still need a common white creature with Lifelink I believe though, so where do we put it?
But it doesn't actually seem that hard to get the counter. If this starts getting wound up and has lifelink it seems legitimately hard to stop, and it's not like Windup is a hard thing to get.
I would like to remove the non-land part to have this possibly interact with Karro lands
Can it then at least gain vigilance and lifelink when it has a +1/+1 counter? So that it goes from unplayable to marginal-build-around-me-that-might-contribute-to-the-game-if-your-are-dedicated-enough?
But in this format an 0/4 actually DOES have value. Since it's an artifact it can tap for Windup and carry Components (it can still attack for 0 to trigger the effects). Plus if it does get the counter a 1/5 vigilance is pretty annoying.
IDK, I kind of like seeing horrible cards become marginally good in the right context.
This looks good. I am not sure whether the hexproof guy should be an uncommon though, as Mistfire Weaver and Mizzium Meddler are the blue cards that come closest to this ability. We can try it as common for now I think.
The only 2-mana 0/4 common white ever got was Angelic wall. A 2 mana 0/4 has no value until it gets its +1/+1 counter. What about making it a 1/3?
What if we made this a new version of Helithopter?
Helithopter
Artifact Creature - Thopter C
Flying
When ~ enters the battlefield, target creature gains flying until end of turn.
1/1
Then we take Prowess Aven out and replace it with a hexproof SP guy (because blue still needs one more).
Steam Cleaner
Creature - Human Wizard C
Flash
SP - When ~ enters the battlefield, if
was spent to cast it, target creature you control gains hexproof until end of turn.
1/3
I like keflexxx's suggestion. What about:
Unfinished Guardian
Artifact Creature - Soldier C
~ has vigilance as long as it has a +1/+1 counter on it.
0/4
That might be a good idea Raptor, so long as we can keep things under control (that is to say, avoid wasting lots of time arguing back and forth about both the real art and the art descriptions).
Is there any reason we can't do both?
I mean, I know I (and my play group) would prefer text Art descriptions and I know some other people would prefer art (even if it doesn't match perfectly) so why not do both? Yes, it's a little extra work but I think it'll have a great impact on our set and broaden its appeal to those on both sides of the Artwork/Art descriptions debate.
We can make a thread about it on MTGS, doubt we'll get a good live meeting time (I too am incredibly busy).
FWIW, I think we're definitely willing to change some flavor things to match where appropriate, but we're going for game design over flavor fist and foremost (at least that's how I feel about it). Personally if I'm going to play a custom magic set I want to have an awesome play experience, and that experience will be mostly based on design (with art playing an important but smaller role). Personally I don't a problem with having some art that fits perfectly and other art that's not as good. But if you don't think you'd be satisfied with that, then obviously I don't want you to put in a bunch of effort for something you don't see as being worthwhile personally.
This weekend is not a good time for me either to do a live Skype call. Like Raptor, I can and will leave comments whenever I am available. Talk to MOON-E about this.
I like it better at instant speed too. The point is to either save your enchantment when the creature would otherwise die, or to act as a combat trick. Having it at 2 mana is enough of a mana commitment (in addition to the fire breathing) that it should not add too much board complexity even at instant speed.
I'm going to be busy most of this weekend, I'll have time to drop in off and on again here or over on mtgs but I won't be able to do a "sit down" skype call or anything like that.
Is there some way that myself and the main Design group can discuss this live over the weekend? We would need to determine what the actual end goal of the set is. If we want a completed .mse set with full flavor text and pictures, then we need to allow flexibility with artwork dictating card design. If the goal is to stay true to the card's design and with the flavor/story/species/characters, then honestly I'm not needed because there simply does not exist artwork that perfectly matches Archester. There are hardly any pictures of Steampunk Canids/wolves, no ogres, hardly any trolls, all the insects are mechanical. I'd prefer having a finished set with artwork so people can print them and play for fun but I'd like to discuss because after finding artwork for this project for 2+ years there's a lot of things I've learned and a lot of cards from the old set that I was able to tweak slightly to make the card work with a piece of artwork I had found.
Activating at instant speed was the idea; it's a combat trick (did an attacker go through unblocked? Swap it over to the unblocked creature) and to avoid targeted removal. The precedent I used was Detainment Spell from Time Spiral, which is 2 mana to activate and not restricted to Sorcery speed, and also the equipment cycle from Mirrodin like Cranial Plating and Neurok Stealthsuit (also 2 mana to swap at instant speed)
Bouncing the enchantment around would definitely play interestingly. We might even be able to have it only cost
instead of 
. Though if we go with this, it should be restricted to sorcery speed. To avoid complicating limited game states.
That is not a bad idea. It is worth playing around with it.
I believe he meant "If
was spent to cast ~, ..."
Still, I do not like the complete 180˚ shift from preventing only one target creature, to preventing all but that target creature. Beginners may inadvertently pay 
to cast Dense mist with one intention, only to realize that the card no longer works the way they believed it to.