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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-14 14:25:53)
Well, the fliers could have their food on the ground. Also, that was kind of what I was trying to get at with Good for mono or multi.
Ah, hm. I see there's been some of both in the past, I just assumed flood counters would mean only, when that's not necessarily the cast. I'm not sure. We agree we definitely don't want lots of "become island only". But it's harder to make "become island as well" interesting in multiples; you can design cards that care about how many islands your opponent or all players control, but it interacts less with existing cards.
I wonder if it's possible to have both, a bit of permanent island-only and a lot of temporary island-only, or a lot of island-as-well and a lot of temporary island-only, or have a bunch of "flood counter, island as well" effects and some "target land with a flood counter on becomes an island only". That's what I was thinking when I suggested the idea, but I suspect it would be too complicated and not have enough play value.
I'm intrigued by the decadant greek black gorgon theme; it would be a nice change for black to be cultural and decadant rather than anarchic and decadent.
"Comes out of nowhere and attacks" makes sense. I keep having a nagging feeling that even that is too subtle for red, and red would rather "just attack" but I think it's a good way to start. And I quite like P/T swapping, although neither is whole theme by itself.
What is red?
Nothing is yet suggesting any good unearthly ideas.
A red ninjitu-like ability makes a lot of sense, that's starting to feel like an identity. Perhaps the opposite of ninjitsu, you get the new devil as well as the existing ones, but before blockers, provided your attackers meet some restriction (eg attack with everything). Although simply ninjitsu would fit quite well with a different flavour.
Actually, I was assuming we were talking about lands becoming Islands in addition to their other types. That would allow us to flood the board with Islands, without crimping on whatever game your opponent is playing. They can still tap their lands for Black mana, because their lands are now "Basic Land - Island Swamp". This also allows you to play with cards that need varying amounts of Islands... some that require your opponent to have just one, and some that require your opponent to have five, let's say.
But turning your opponent's lands into Islands, straight up? That's probably a very bad idea in mono-colored land. If we have cards with casting costs like
, turning one Swamp into an Island is going to mean game.
I like the idea of flying (and something else) being shared by the multicolor cards.
We still don't know for sure how the tribes should match to decks. It may be the case that not ALL the monocolor cards are invaders after all, just most of them; or you may have hybrid, gold, or artifact creatures that can be cast with blue mana (a bit like how the borderposts fill the mechanical role of dual lands while unarguably being multicolor permanents).
Might it be worth taking the story to a new "thread"? (((Story / Universe)))
Yes, that's a clever one. This could be a cloud city with everyone flying about. Since multicolor would be, at best 40% of this set, that would be the maximum percentage of creatures that could fly. It could also do some funny things to a draft in this environment. Did you go 100% mono-colored? How do you plan to handle these flying creatures? Perhaps you should find a way to sneak a little Green (!) in your deck.
I'm cool with it, and it doesn't even have to be our mechanic. Just a nifty aside. The only strangeness is "If all the creatures are flying around, and the invaders can't do that, how the heck are they being invaded?"
I was thinking of flood counters when I suggested "becomes an island". (And perhaps turn creatures blue too?) I think it would be an interesting flavour. And I like wave burst. But I think counters need to be used sparingly, else you can colour-screw someone too easily, which is presumably not fun.
I also considered having an automatic way of removing flood counters, like "pay 1 to remove" so you can have lots and gum your opponent up, but it still doesn't lock him/her permanently. But that wouldn't work well with existing cards that give flood counters. You could possibly have a keyword that says the opponent can pay to remove flood counters when you grant a new one, or something, but it would be messy.
Funny. "Unearthly creatures which appear out of nowhere" says Flash, to me. Though, I see what you're getting at here.
While too much haste can be a bit ridiculous, I can get behind a lot of haste, and a lot of things that work well with haste. I'm not going to go into a litany of things that might do this... but I could see a linear mechanic that encourages tapping all permanents you control, and going all in. Possibly have creature abilities that are turned on only when they are turned sideways, or something like Masako, the Humorless kicking around (Tapped creatures can block / untapped creaures can't block? Sounds like a red Enchant World, but I can't find it).
Also, if we want a feeling of "creatures popping up out of nowhere" we could also have some sort of creature swapping effect, similar to what Ninjitsu does, except without the blocking requirement? I don't know if that works well with haste, or just accompanies it. I also don't know if it's better to tie something like this to a tribe: for example, only allow Devils to swap back and forth, to cut down on the number of crazy interactions this can have with various cards.
I think it's fine to brainstorm the story and the mechanics simultaneously and see what good ideas come off.
I like the idea of one or two planes where two tribes come from; that seems more like real life and less like the suspiciously neat arrangements where everything comes in fives. Although currently it looks more like red, black and blue ALL want to be demons of different sorts, and white and green want to be enchantments and funguses respectively.
How about: "unearthly creatures which appear out of nowhere"? The main mechanical identity would be haste. You can have a startling variety of flavours of haste. There's "dies at end of turn" as in Arc Runner etc; there's "bounces at end of turn" as in Viashino Sandstalker; there's "haste and can't block" as in Iron-Barb Hellion; there's "haste and attack trigger" as in Thraximundar; there's "haste and tap ability" as in Cunning Sparkmage; and of course plain French-vanilla haste as on Raging Goblin. You could have assorted abilities that synergise with haste, such as a Primal Forcemage-style card that pumps creatures only on the turn they enter the battlefield.
This would mean the gold cards don't get haste, at least not for the first set.
It's not actually been stated whether we're creating a standalone oneoff set, or the large first set in a large-small-small block, or something else. I'm happy to assume we're aiming at a block, but it's worth stating.
Oh, also L2i0n0k7 mentioned that we need to square away which story we're using. A planeswalker who gathers mana from 5 planes and it backfires by opening the multicolor world to 5 hostile realms, or a story of 5 imperial planes invading a new world that they've discovered.
Is it possible to tell both stories at the same time, or is that confusing? Two imperial two color worlds, and a simultaneous exploration of a green fungal world with terrible side effects? Possibly, the citizens of this plane got their hands on planar travel tech, and sought help, only to make things worse?
Oh, also, this all begs the question: What's the story? Because it looks like we're starting the block in the middle of the invasion. I'm cool with this. Magic has been having a trend of Invasion is Coming/Invasion is here/Someone Won. So I'm happy to see a block start out with us in the damn thick of it. But, as a writer, I got to point out that that means the invasion isn't the story. The block in three acts will probably be a story about something else entirely. In fact, this is kind of how you start a love story, of all things... or the plot to 1984, perhaps. I know we're very far away from determining that stuff, but I thought I'd throw that out there as food for thought.
If we do have two colors come from one plane, we should do it twice. You know, for kids.
Actually, I have no idea why that seems right to me, but it does. Something to do with viewer expectation?
It's not big enough for a main theme, but it's a nice idea for a subtheme.
I'll give some thought to what might be otherworldly mechanics for red.
When you say a mechanic that's in all-but-one colour, that makes me wonder: could we have it that the natives all have flying? And the monocolour creatures generally don't? Any gold card can have flying. And flying is a lot more exciting than cycling, which is a flavourless gameplay-smoother. (I absolutely love cycling, but it's not something to base a flavour on.)
Perhaps the toughest bit of this proposal is that monowhite and monoblue commons (and rares) would have no flying at all. I'm not sure if that's remotely plausible.
I think if we can find a way to make the natives actually consistently multicolour, and feel like it, that'd satisfy the criterion of not feeling like a boring plane. So I suggest we try to find a plausible mechanical identity that could link (some reasonable proportion of) the gold cards, and let the flavour relate to that.
Thinking about the solid gold set Alara Reborn, we cooould make it Alara that's being invaded by the five factions. But if we want to avoid that, then to me, gold implies cosmopolitan civilisation.
Sounds good to me.
Strangely, "Multicolor creatures get X" is probably the wrong approach. We have 5 linear mechanics coming down the line... I assume we'll want to have one or two very modular mechanics in multicolor to make up for it.
Are there any mechanics that easily end up in all 5 colors in Magic that can be exciting? (or all but one? This is multicolor after all.) Something like cycling, perhaps, but not that stiff? Can we make something up? Can we do it in a way that it feels like a normal Magic world would have access to this?
And for that matter, by calling this a "normal Magic world" are we setting ourselves up to make a boring plane that's being invaded? Shouldn't this place have some gimmick, besides "Magic Base".
Oh, now I like this. Not a bunch of cards that change lands into Islands, but a bunch of cards that add flood counters that make lands Islands in addition their other types? That's definitely a mono-color strategy. While this idea has been around since the beginning of the game, there hasn't been a block that's gone hog wild with it in blue (Lorwyn was close, but not quite). And I love the fact that we can print a bunch of nasty serpents and have them all be playable. That's some good linearity.
P/T switching? It is alien, but I don't think that it could fill a color.
Too go along with that theme, what about a card like this in blue:
Wave Burst
Instant
Counter target spell if its controller controls an island.
This works well with flood counters, and also makes sense if you think about the fact that the colors have existed in isolation for a very long time. They would have developed ways of dealing with themselves.
Note: This is just me brainstorming.
Sorry, I don't mean to seem like I'm pushing mill. I just got a bit excited about it for a minute. There are definitely other possible blue themes.
Maybe we could bring back flood counters like from Aquitect's Will and Quicksilver Fountain. We could have creatures do different things depending on the number of flood counters/ islands on the battlefield, and the flood makers wouldn't even have to be parasitic.
Sounds good. I'll try to think of one.
Pallid Mycoderm is a Fungus-pumper. I think fungi could be worth pursuing; I love the idea of the hive-mind fungus-spreaders. Ants still feel very green to me: they have a very structured "society", but it's all still instinct-driven, very much "swarm the predators, feed the hive, spawn new hills" which feels green to me.
For what it's worth, we don't have to have one faction per colour. We could have the Lovecraftian horrors in both blue and black, for example. Magic worlds do tend to be a bit predictably five-factioned. But there's probably a good reason for that.
Personally I'm not a fan of too much undead either, although there are a lot of players who like it. (Just not in the group of us designing this set, it seems :) )
Greek mythology could be fun if we can make it consistently black enough.