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| Mechanics | Skeleton | Common Breakdown Ref | All commons for playtesting |
Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-18 01:17:39)
Oh! Forgot to add. People REALLY need a way to unflood themselves. Perhaps the sweep mechanic?
This card's current implementation isn't very white. If you showed me the rules text I'd guess it was green or green-blue. Which isn't a problem per se, but I think it indicates that it's fine to change this if we want. I agree we also want to change Soft Filter, but that's fine too; we could try something else for this slot.
You know, you're right. I don't know why I didn't spot that. White does get a little untargetability, but you're right, it shouldn't be at common.
White countermagic is also very dubious, especially at common.
We could have this be a Cho-Manno's Blessing. That would work interestingly in a mono-vs-multi set. Or for a similar take on the same idea, Mask of Law and Grace.
Devil Charge caused a Yeti to deal 10 damage to a player once or twice as well, IIRC. I.e. it functioned like Lava Axe + "Target creature can't be blocked this turn".
Those suggestions seem reasonable to me. Note that I just pointed out we may change Soft Filter, so there is a question, which of these two cards do we prefer where it is?
I like this card, but I think we made a mistake. (Sorry :)) Shroud/Hexproof, despite their defensiveness, are not white common. They are, if I remember green first, blue second (although blue got quite a bit of hexproof and a lot of shroud at one time, and it feels more natural so people associate shroud with blue).
IIRC White gets similar effects: "protection from X" and "counter target spell that targets you/a permanent you control".
Should this become "W: Counter target spell that targets enchanted creature"? That's basically the same (slightly worse because of the mana), but fits the pie better. Or maybe we should stick with the spirit of the pie[1] and give this protection from something instead, or something else entirely?
[1] I enjoy saying "the spirit of the pie" :)
Lifegain would be deathly dull. Also absurdly expensive going by Kiss of the Amesha.
The next white effect I thought of was token-making, a la Bant Sojourners. Presumably since this is an Aer card the token should have flying Now drawing two cards and making a flyer sounds like Mulldrifter to me. Going down to
gets you Messenger Falcons.
I suspect a 1/1 flying creature with ETB draw-2-cards would still be too good for 4 mana... but I wonder whether a sorcery draw-2-cards and make a 1/1 flyer token might be okay at 4 mana. The difference between sorcery and creature is huge: Mulldrifter is a classic target for Momentary Blink, Venser, the Sojourner, Reveillark etc etc. Sorceries are far harder to recur and token creatures are somewhat less resilient. So I find it plausible that Divination + Spiritual Visit for a flyer could be okay at
.
Devil charge came up, and was an expensive combat trick that bounced off of green's cheap combat trick.
Final charge is "I win" and far too metagamey to be allowed to exist. (It didn't actually come up)
OK, removed hexproof. Shroud is an interesting suggestion (maybe wizards were right the first time and hexproof is too much better than shroud), but I think 2 damage a turn immune to all the common removal is still way too good.
For now, putting it to an early suggestion of tax-shroud. That's similar, but I think it has the right feel -- we already have another islandwalker, and I don't think this wants to have bigger power, it wants to be resiliant some other way.
Really like this. It's great turn one, it's great turn 3, it leads you into huge doom, or a swarm of chump blockers, turn 6. Like it a lot.
My guess is that all-in mechanics are harder to balance well, because if you stumble in an early turn, it tends to all be over, but if not, it tends to overwhelm the opponent before they have much room to find answers. So, speculating wildly, I guess they tend to end up being balanced at "just under the strength to annhiliate someone".
If there's any truth to that, it suggests (a) we may need to tweak the power of a couple of cards up a bit (carefully) so they're still strong but have more of a chance of hitting the opponent[1]. And (b) we may want some spell that helps keep the momentum up when you're attacking with everything and the opponent has some big blockers, but without totally obliterating all the blockers. Eg. "R. Tap X creatures you control, tap X target creatures" drawing offensive-tapping from red in future sight. Eg. Something that could remove some of your creatures from combat so they don't die when they attack into a creature (but still feels red).
[1] Did Devil Charge or Final Charge come up in playtest? Did they help?
Yeah, I like the feel of the blue aggro, even if we scale it back.
It's really hard to say what this card should look like. It spent one turn deterring 2/2s from attacking, so the toughness mattered marginally, but didn't make much difference (I guess it would matter against a Pyroclasm effect).
I fear there just shouldn't be an islandwalker that's hexproof. Have one or the other, or perhaps even an aura granting one that can go on creatures with the other, but the two of them put together just feel a bit auto-win-ish.
Well, the right distribution is probably something like "2-3 1CMC, 2 4CMC, 1 5CMC, the rest split between 2CMC and 3CMC", does anyone have a more specific idea?
So this certainly can be a replacement for the 5CMC slot, but I don't think it has to be if a small tapper makes more sense, I think we can bump something else up in size equally or more easily.
In fact, I'm not sure we do want two 5CMC, does it make sense to have another 4CMC spell (or make folded light a bit stronger?).
WRT the specific suggestion, I think it's a very good implementation of a large tapper. I assume repeatable-tap should be uncommon, but I guess this is hard to use twice, do you think it's ok at common?
As it was.. it wasn't really too bad. I mean, yes, it's 2 damage a turn. If there had been some way to pump power it would be devastating - but without it's fine. so my suggestion is shroud. If it can be pumped, then yes, you'd need some way for it to be killable.
As a separate idea to Frost Titan's ability, we could use "
: ~ loses Hexproof until end of turn. Any player may use this ability." I think it's kind of cool that you can use it to have two people team up on this guy when playing multiplayer. Also, I have a tendency to throw "Any player may use this ability" on roughly every 30th card I design. Why stop now?
You know, to some extent, I'm happy that I pushed the pendulum that far in that direction. It gives us a place to move backwards from. That should be much easier to do then trying to convince people that, no, these creatures could use more potency.
Obviously, we have to pull back a few steps, and the other colors forward, but I do think it's awesome to see Blue say "No flying? Fine. I can still come out a winner."
There have been several printed blocks with "all-in" mechanics, though. I'm reminded particularly of Morningtide's Prowl mechanic (as on Latchkey Faerie and Morsel Theft), which only works if you're getting through already; and for that matter Shards of Alara's Exalted mechanic and most Landfall creatures from Zendikar means your creatures are great on attack but pretty poor on defence. So I think giving one colour an all-in mechanic is okay.
Okay, okay, enough with the compliments. They're appreciated, but you'll threaten to swell my head, push me in the other direction and turn me into a Fascist Art Director. :)
Sorry, I channeled my friend in my first post, who had a major problem with it. Very good of you to call me on changing the goalposts.
That being said, it doesn't mean the current goal post I set up isn't valid. We're locking us into one definition of manacycling. When we inevitably come back and try to make an expansion of this set, we're going to find that we can't riff off of manacycling... well... we won't be able to riff off of manacycling in that way at least.
You know what? Let's table this. It's really just a templating issue and it's going to pop up much later on anyways. What's the point in having a discussion of it now, only to have people change their opinions when we we're finalizing the set? It's good that the objection has been noted, but it's not going to have any effect on how we test the game... just how we present the game when it is finalized... so we're probably better off letting this one stew.
Since we're replacing Enchantment Digger, does it make more sense to try to get a 5cc creature in this slot? How about something more like:
: Tap target creature.
Creature
2/3
I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but I'm guessing that's a late game bomb.
Yeah "invisible stalker, but twice as big" is probably too good :)
People who played with it, what should this card look like? Is "more expensive to target" a sufficient change? Should it go back to being a French vanilla? Does the toughness matter -- did it sit back on defence before attacking, or just always have islandwalk already enabled?
Mmm... all-in is an interesting idea for a mechanic; but it pretty much means "I do what I would be doing naturally? Cool. does that make me win? No? Um, well, I won't do it. Great, now all my stuff is even MORE rubbish than expected."
Do like that the yeti is still 5/5 during opponents turns, that's nice. Don't like that red is the only colour that actually cares about toughness when removing; and am giggling insanely that blue can use twiddle as a white-style "Your attack fails, oh, and half your attackers die because of it" combat trick.
So yeah. Reds removal is pretty good, but slightly hard to use. Reds creatures really aren't - though those rubbish -2/2 firebreathers actually won me a game. Attack with enough mana to pump effectively and you can still win.
Flood turned out to be SERIOUSLY powerful. "All your lands are islands too, and all my creatures have perfect evasion" Very glad flood isn't "It is an island" because I was pretty trivially able to flood all my opponents lands. With flood around, I'd expect everyone to splash blue.
The hexproof stuff was pretty nasty as well. Blue was easily the most powerful of the decks - blue aggro, without flying no less. A bit of removal just made it all the lovlier. Combined with pretty much ANY pump, and I fear blue aggro would be devastating. It was far better than red's all-in aggro deck.
jmg: I'd hate to see you sit out all the arguments because you feel you need to be impartial. You're one of the top designers on Multiverse; the Head Designer's role is to oversee, sure, but not to remain impartial. Think of all the times MaRo's described arguing passionately for some particular mechanic or other :)