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| Mechanics | Skeleton | Common Breakdown Ref | All commons for playtesting |
Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-20 13:04:54)
A single veto probably shoots down the Arbiter plan, since there appears to be exactly 5 people who regularly comment on this set. That seems fine to me too. We'll see what playtesting brings about. Maybe I'll toss some extra cards in the file just so we can round out the numbers on the off colors. Nothing permanent, just for a sense of what we're getting at.
I've already designed my own versions (though obviously incomplete) for white, blue, black, and red, and I'm half done with multicolor, because I figured we'd all design commons for each color and then post them and talk about them. I've only posted my white and blue on here, though.
Anyway, I guess I'm saying that if we playtest, we should have commons for each color already, and if we do the arbiter thing, I don't think I'd like to do it (or that I would be good at it).
Being an arbiter for a color without directly designing cards for it is a funny solution, and, sounds like a good idea to me. When we do this again, I would recommend that's what we do from the start (well, after figuring out what we wanted to do in the first place).
Instituting that model right now may be a little trickier, but if other people are on board, I'd be game. We may want to see what happens when people come back with "playtest reports"... I don't know. I know that I'll be getting together with my group on Thursday and pushing this on them, though.
I think what someone mentioned up thread, of having an official-unofficial coordinator for each color (and for multicolor) may help. That would be someone to explicitly solicit feedback, and direct people to "what to do next" in that color. I don't want that to "five people design a color each" -- I'd be happy if that person designed none of that color, just used common sense to solicit and OK suggestions for skeletons, skeleton changes, card designs, changes to card designs, etc. That may help smooth out the yo-yos of productivity as different people have time free.
(I'd be happy to take that for, well, any color -- I like them all :))
I agree the most immediate thing to do is probably play-testing of some form, just to see which of the themes are fun to play with. I think we've done a pretty excellent job at pulling in good ideas from quite a lot of people into a set (which naturally provides a sort of structure-level design, in contrast to how easy it is for a single designer to fall into the trap of designing too many single cards at first), and have made significant progress towards the idea of several tribes with a distinct identity but work together as a set. However, I think we're definitely at the point where we have some rough skeletons and a lot of cool card ideas where we need to try some of it out and see, rather than pin ourselves down to a specific skeleton.
It seems the most plausible routes for playtesting are:
(a) with one of the online tools, where we can try with each other (b) in real life, with anyone you can persuade to play locally :)
I'm not sure what format playtesting should actually take. I think the most obvious thing to do first is what the judges did in GDS and take all the commons from one colour and make a deck (perhaps 2 of each, plus 20 land?, even though that's not a standard deck size) and play it against something. (Or even just goldfish it against a deck you have handy or against nothing.)
I think we want to test interactions between colours too (eg. see recent Latest Developments article on how wizards development look for an unnoficial number of archetypes, typiclaly of each color pair -- we decided we want each mono color to be a major archetype, and dedicated Aer decks, but there will probably need to be some mixed decks too), but testing the "fungus idea" and the "all tapped" idea to see how they work is probably first -- I expect that to give lots of good ideas, and to revamp the skeleton.
I'd be happy to try some in-person playtesting, assuming I can get together with Alex or other amenable local magic players, but I don't know if I'll have time this week.
Threw this one together as an example of the type of non-token Minions that we are looking for. Good when they first arrive, then expendable later.
This also brings up an interesting point. Are Satyrs creature type "Goat". Minotaur's creature type isn't Ox, but Leonin is Cat. Depends on personal preference I suppose. I do know that Goatnapper is very funny here.
Oh! One more thing. This creature automatically becomes a fungus when playing Mono-Green. Should there be no non-green creatures with +1/+1 counters on them, or is the occasional risky creature like this one (especially since it is meant to be sacrificed) okay?
I think I meant Vigilance to be Defender, and at some point got mixed up. Looking back, I'm not sure how I ended up with this as-is.
And by that I just mean the token slaves. The rest can be alive.
This might be a weird thought, but what if the slaves are spirits? I've been having this idea of the Gorgons killing their enemies and enslaving their bodies, but what if they enslave their very souls? What if they make people not just work to death, but beyond it?
Changed name... how did I not notice that?
I'm fine with that.
We should decide on what these are. I like 1/1 black creatures, this is a vote from Camruth for something else... Personally, I think they should be black. In this form they just feel like crappy Eldrazi spawn tokens.
As to creature type: I just put Thrull on my cards as a default type. It needn't be that at all. In fact, I think they should have a distinct type, though I'm not sure what yet.
Removed
from ability.
What if could just block as though it were a creature? I was trying to avoid actually making it a creature, since I, personally, tend to find it weird that Walls are creatures.
I'm fine with that. I tend to err on the side of "not good enough."
I like Minion. Minion and I go way back.
Hmm. I think I don't like "Pest" as effectively a class type on sentient races like Dryads. The tie to Nuisance Engine is fun, but "Dryad Pest" or "Satyr Pest" sounds very odd to me, like a crossbreed rather than a social status. Perhaps "Minion"?
(I appreciate it's not really the time to be making choices that inside WotC would only be made after the design team handed off the document to Creative. But Multiverse does tend to rather blend together all the steps of making a custom set.)
Sensible card, anyway. The ETB-sac means its power level is only medium and in many decks it's not very good, but I think that's fine.
Hee. Weiird card. I'm not sure it does quite what you were after, as I don't think this deals or receives combat damage. Is the intent something like "
: Fortified land becomes a 0/6 creature. Activate this ability only if you're being attacked"?
Ah, cool - it's Goblin Warrens / Weirding Shaman for Thrulls. At
it probably doesn't need the 
as well.
It could make a good way to tie all the oppressed creatures together as well. Satyr Pests, Dryad Pests, Imp Pests and whatnot could all be printed as different token creatures, or just different creatures. Then when we print a Gorgon that comes into play and sacrifices three pests, you can just throw away those worthless lesser races.
I mentioned Nuisance Engine on the previous card, and it occurs to me that we could call these creatures 'pests' instead. We'd probably throw the word slave and slavery around a bunch, but if their type is pests, black mages might start to think of them as beneath them, which is a little funny, and kind of the point.
Holy expensive cost! I admit, we'd have to watch out for potential combo abuse with a card like this, and I know you're planning on using 0/1 tokens, which would use the cheapest token generation around. But even if you used cards like Breeding Pit or Nuisance Engine to fuel this land, it would still require a woeful amount of creature to get any value out of the thing. I'd suggest Replacing the ETB with
: Add 
. After all, Phyrexian Tower is a good card, but I don't think anyone would call it broken. Either that, or I'd at least drop this to "Sac a creature: Add a 
.
No humans. No problem. But I still think calling out one creature type to be called a peon, then constantly and cruelly grinding that creature under the heel of your boot makes a good linear mechanic, which can some time be striking, and maybe a little funny.
Thrulls and Homonoculuses are the traditional creatures that do this, but obviously don't work in Gorgon-land. In my mind, the nobler the creature once was, the better the contrast. Hmm... unfortunately "Noble Greek Monster" is not a very common phrase. Dryads maybe? Those would be some really odd black dryads. Satyrs would be my next choice. Really, satyrs should probably be red, what with the wanting sex all the time and what not. But I think we could make snivelling black oppressed satyrs that are a touch sympathetic and treated terribly by Gorgon overladies.
I avoided making them 0/1 colorless creatures so that they didn't seem like crappy Eldrazi spawn, and also because I wanted to keep all of the creatures on the black continent black. It's possible your slaves are easier to deal with, though, and I do like this card.
Made slaves colourless as they are more a resource than actual people (to their masters). To go with Slave Pens - also plays in to other cards that ask for sacrifice - especially in black.
can't have slaves without somewhere to keep them.