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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-15 22:06:11)
One thing uncommon often has is a large simple flier. This could have an ability as well, depending on cost.
I made this card as an illustration, it's not supposed to be definite, just a place for the question "how big can a stompy flier be at uncommon".
IIRC, wizards say "not better in limited than air elemental". So it probably can't be bigger than 4/4 flying. But it has to be splashy somehow in two colours. Can we justify a 4/X at 4 CMC? Or a 5 CMC at 4/3 with a nice ability?
What colour is best suited to this slot?
Red-white would naturally combine into an activated Giant Growth, as on Martial Glory.
:)
Ha! And I've just realised the activated ability here could be viewed as the combination of the activated abilities on Zarichi Tiger and Erebos, God of the Dead...
Indeed. :)
Sounds like we should be looking at the ((C8869)) family for ideas :)
Well, the idea is of an enemy-color cycle with an ally-colored activated ability. I like Cloudcover Drake a lot because the
ability really pulls together and fuses the 
and 
, which I think is ideal. Red gets Prodigal Pyromancer to ping creatures, and blue gets creature shrinking effects. Put them together and you get a black effect. Can we do that for every color? I don't know, but it would be nice.
I like it. I'm not sure if theoretically WB are the right colours but it feels right to me.
Good point. I guess, there should be mechanical overlap (eg. aggressive creatures) and there shouldn't be flavour overlap (eg. we shouldn't use the same keyword). But mill lies somewhere between those two, it suggests a thematic connection, but only a small amount.
On balance, I think it's ok, so I agree, let's leave this in for now.
We could always reprint Gravity Well.
I keep seeing people mention that we don't want to confuse our themes by having something like mill appear in both Multicolor and Blue, but to me, it's a good thing for support to appear for certain strategies within multiple factions. We want them to work well together, after all. I can't recall where, but I do remember reading something by Mark Rosewater on the design of RtR and Gatecrash that talked about how there were cards within the guilds meant to work well with other guilds, and cards within the monocolored slots specifically made to work well with one guild, another guild, or both guilds in which that card had a color. We don't have unaligned cards, but we can still make sure our factions play well together. We can't let too much focus on the story lead to poor gameplay.
Looking at mana costs, white common noncreature has two two-mana enchantments - Bolstering Light and Soft Filter - and no three-or-more except for this, so Cage of Hands is probably better than Pacifism. But we should note on it that we could switch it around if those other cards' mana costs change.
I assumed we'd still use "bud" to mean "put a +1/+1 counter on" -- the flavour seems worth it, and you can have cards that say "when you bud". That's one of my favourite things about the mechanic at the moment. We may have to remove it if we decide it's not doing any work, but I hope we don't.
I would be sad to see bud go, but Jack's right it's a lot simpler to just care about +1/+1 counters. I could go either way.
I think flavour will be fine either way. The original Simic (in Dissension) cared about +1/+1 counters with things like Helium Squirter and Simic Basilisk, and the flavour of those was pretty strong with those blue blobs in the artwork (cytoplasts).
I think we've probably gone too far that way, but I think we can refine it. We had too many ideas for ways for monocolour to block multi: we can bring some of those back if necessary. And we may have to tone blue down so it has some large creatures and some evasion creatures, but they're not the same ones. We've not tested an Aer deck much, so I'm not sure how unblockable it will be -- hopefully it will be more controlly, so it needs creatures to block, if not, we may have to tweak it that way.
Mmm. I think I prefer "you may" to "you control", because one of the themes of green was at least meant to be that you can turn your opponents' creatures into Fungi and then several of your Fungi benefit from there being more Fungi on the battlefield.
Hmm. In this set, Blue is aggressive and often unblockable. Red is very aggressive. Black, white and green are more controlly - though I guess green's +1/+1 counters could make for a sizeable army in the mid-game.
Problem is, gold is quite intensely focused on flying. I fear we might have set ourselves up for a Tempest-style limited format where nobody can block, so each player is just attacking with everything they can, and it just devolves into pure racing a lot of the time.
Anyway, I like the idea of an uncommon mono cycle of ETB-hate-multi in some non-removal way (maybe the black one gets to remove). An efficient red creature with ETB-Threaten a gold creature is a great plan.
I think the flavour is "this is the kind of oppression the Aer impose on whoever they like", and flavour text could help spell that out; I don't think the mechanics need to explicitly say "monocolour" or "without flying".
Heh. Since the discussion has raged this far, I reckon it's probably fine to leave this as it is :) Maybe this could go up to milling 5 to solidify it in the Tome Scour slot, but it sounds like it's controversial, which is good, right?
By comparison with Viper's Kiss, the -1/-1 version of this could be just 1 mana, I think.
I guess it's for playtesting to determine whether the -1/-1 version of this actually does enough against the other colours in the format to make it particularly worth playing.
Maybe it is. Sometimes, I forget the power of artwork. Truth is, that would make the flavor connection obvious. I will say this much: Removing rules baggage from Bud will open up complexity in other areas of green we've been brushing past.
It wouldn't really a problem is this was just a Lightning Blast. It's just the rules text scream 'flavor', and the name doesn't back it up. Well, not without some flavor text that ties it all together.
Anyhow, that's not the conversation here. I'm passing the mic. Anyone else want in on this?
Oh, that's right. Eroding Current is in set. Oddly, this might be too good when combined. That Current is rather strong.
Really, I have no idea how powerful cards like these are until I draft them, but I've suddenly flipped and think this might be a secret bomb... how weird. Two Eroding Currents and three Deny Knowledges should put your opponent down 26 cards, and deny them 6 draws, too. Hmm...
Almost a pity that there's no real reason to play this card on yourself in this set. Seems like an interesting card to play in Odyessey block, though. Madness trigger + one card from threshold. Heh.
Cage of Hands sounds good to me, I only suggested pacifism because it was simple. It may change again, but I agree it'd be nice to have the ETB trigger.
No, I think I was counting cards that were being removed, while not counting theoretical cards that were being added... but that was the point, and I was missing it. I highlighted your remark Jack so I don't forget to change this card if no one says anything.
Mostly, I'm just waiting to see if anyone wants to contest Pacifism over something else. Personally, I think Cage of Hands might make more sense, since we already got a "When an enchantment enters play" card, and we'll probably end up with at least one more in uncommon.