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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-14 14:25:53)
I think that the greek theme could be a black mini-plane.
The sixth sect. The only identity they have so far is that they're multicolor, yet cohesive, and not divided. We also know (I think) that they consist of "normal" creatures, like elves, humans, merfolk, vampires (?), goblins, etc.
I suggest they have a keyword mechanic to themselves, possibly something that plays along with having multiple colors. "Multicolor creatures get +1/+1" is simple, but probably too much to have in spades. I suppose we could have an ability word, like landfall or metalcraft, but I like the idea of a keyword. That way it can be interacted with and has rules meaning.
I like your idea, jmgariepy. I feel that it only fits with Alex's conception of the story, though, and not with mine. Similarly, my concept of Mono Green fits mostly with my concept, and doesn't really jive with Alex's. My point is that I've made a mistake in starting these color discussions before the story is set. We need to decide which direction to take so that we can cater to it, rather than coming up with ideas and hoping they fit with the overall scheme.
I thought morph was a strange idea at first, but now I like it more: in several colours it could tie in to the invader theme in different ways.
I agree mill is still only a "maybe". And I also think fatesealing is too strong and too unfun, but some lesser filtering may be more plausible, though I'm not sure exactly what. Perhaps something like "one player divides into two piles, the other chooses one", although that's too complicated for a common mechanic.
I like the greek theme much more than undead.
Ants are funny. If they weren't already typed as being green insects, they would probably be White or Blue. I'm not saying I'm unwilling... I'm just thinking what some other casual observers might be thinking.
Colorless faction could come up in the expansion. If it does, then morph will be sitting there, waiting for it. colorless demorph costs would add a nice sense of confusion, because now it could pop up in any deck... including the white decks that have all the white morphing creatures...
So... Fateseal 2? Except the cards go the graveyard instead?
It's possible, but it is very powerful, and it doesn't look it to a lot of players. You'd still need to connect to make it work, though, so it can only be so bad... but if this is what we're working on, I'd probably push to have it not always trigger when it deals combat damage, since there's only so much design space one can use with 'only triggers when combat damage is dealt'. But, I suppose, then it really is Fateseal.
The morph idea is just me ruminating ideas off the top of my head, and isn't meant to be taken seriously. I'm still not sold that mill is automatically the way to go for blue, but I can be. I still think "target player puts the top two cards of their library into their graveyard" could make an excellent rider for a lot of spells, but I don't know if that automatically means we have a mill theme.
Gotta admit: Not a big fan of undead as theme. When Alara came out, Wizards showcased 4 new exciting worlds, and one world filled with zombies. I couldn't really see how Grixis was much different from Urborg... it never really hit with me on a flavor level.
I'm a fan of gorgons... in fact Magic 20XX plays with Gorgon/Thrull as a tribe. But, plain old gorgons may be to normal for a fantasy setting. Perhaps we could play with a world inspired by ancient greece, in which the gorgons over-populated and took over? Add a bunch of greek nominclature and feel for the mytholigy, without going so far in as to start pulling out names or minotaurs? We can also go house on Greek philosphy from that time period, and really ramp the black sounding philosophy. Concepts like individual liberty, and market driven capitalism...
I think stay away from zombies and vampires and other things black always gets, but I could see undead if they're done differently (eg. werewolves are sometimes seen as undead and sometimes not, although if Innistrad is doing horror we may want to avoid werewolves right on top of it). But yes, I like exploring other things first / as well. I'm curious what gorgons would be like.
Where did this discussion of morph come from? Did I miss it somewhere?
What about creatures with abilities like this:
Mindnumbing 2 (When this deals damage to a player, look at the top two cards of that player's library and put any number of those cards into that player's graveyard. Put the rest back in any order).
It's selective milling that lets you choose what your opponent will draw. It's very wordy and it might be too mean, and it doesn't need to be keyworded. But it's a thought.
Personally, I'd rather stay away from undead if possible, but if everyone else is a fan I'm not going to argue. They do seem perfectly otherwordly.
Well, since we can't support 6 or more different keyword mechanics within the set (though maybe within the block?), we have to decide which factions deserve those mechanics most, and which keywords can be in multiple factions. Does an enchantment theme need a keyword? Probably not.
Morph, though, would be a nice fit for this block: it feels alien, and helps you be color neutral with your creatures. I've been pondering a colorless faction, for which morph could be a perfect fit. But 7 is possibly too many to balance.
Well, the insect-fugus concept could move away from saprolings and do ants instead.
I like fungus, but I'm tired of saprolings. Conundrum! Is there any way we can focus on the fungus side of things without touching saprolings? I think that most of the audience would still like some Fungus lords, since there isn't any that boosts their fungus that makes the saprolings, so we may be cool here...
I can see black having lycanthropes, or gorgons. It could also be the underworld of the main plane, with more intelligent undead.
I'm wondering if we can tag morph into this enchantment creature theme, or if doing so would be asking too much. Morph would have the benefit of allowing us to up the number of straight-up enchantments, because they can come onto the battlefield as creatures, then morph into enchantments later. Plus, I'd like to just see morph in a combat oriented color.
The downside to "just tacking on" any ability, is that it increases complexity, and reduces the amount of words that you can use on each card with the mechanic. I suppose this mostly depends on if we're going for a open-ended enchantment support theme, or a whole mechanic that supports enchantments.
We could do something similar to what Dimir guild did in Ravnica and give blue a number of linear ways to win. That worked in Ravnica, specifically because of Transmute. I don't know if it would work so well without the tutoring...
We could also give blue something that looks like clash, because of its tendency to rearange libraries. So, the goal isn't to mill... it just works very well with the other blue mechanic.
Otherwise, playing with Morph makes quasi-sense for a Cthulu race... and we've seen that before in blue. Though, I must admit, I think I'd like to advice Morph for mono-white... it works much better in a combat oriented color and gives options to an otherwise option-low color.
Flash could be an interesting mechanic to build around, that's both linear open to being modular for other decks to tag onto. For example, if we had a number of cards in blue that gave a benefit for when you played spells during your opponent's turn, blue would greatly benefit - but you other colored instants would still trigger it.
I like the flavor. These things are so alien that they drive you insane.
I also had an enchantment and enchantment-creature theme in Sienira's Facets. The green and white cards focused on enchantment things. I tried hard to make all my enchantment creatures feel somewhat "enchantmenty" (which is where I feel Lucent Liminid really failed). So we had Mirrorglade Gazebo, Silkvine, Skywarper Mass, and following the same principle there was an artifact enchantment and a land enchantment. (It was a set themed around playing with card types...) Other enchantment-themed cards: 1 2 3 4
Mill is not that new, but there might be new ways to do it. The obvious implementation is "deals damage to a player in the form of" like mindstrike, although I don't think that's enough on its own. Things that spring to mind:
(i) Ways to make it less an all-or-nothing mechanic (ii) Ways to make it interact with creatures (iii) Other ways to interact with it, eg. cards that let you filter your opponent's deck while milling (probably that make it hard to lock them out completely, but punish them for relying too much on a couple of big cards), cards that care about cards in your opponent's graveyard.
The idea I like for green right now came from discussion on Monocolored Alien Invaders?. Mechanically, it stretches the color pie a little bit, but maybe that's okay. We could make the entire force a sort of fungal hive mind that converts everything into fungus and then takes control of it, or at least uses it somehow. The "hive mind" reminds me of insects, so perhaps a sort of fungus-insect hybrid is the predominant creature type. I also like the idea of the green plane being full of instinctual, non-thinking creatures, and fungus insects fit the bill perfectly.
Literally giving creatures the horror type might be a good thing, too.
My only suggestion is that it should have devils. And elementals. But I think all of the monocolors should have elementals.
I don't really have many ideas here. Demons and horrors are both too common in black, unless we did something weird and had demons of all different sizes, or mixed all the creatures with demons.