Community Set: Recent Activity

Mechanics | Skeleton | Common Breakdown Ref | All commons for playtesting

Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-19 07:41:14)

2012-03-07 05:07:21: jmgariepy commented on Aurora Soother

I have no idea how I missed this card on first pass. It was originally a 1/1 for , but I don't like those stats. It will almost always compare unfavorably to Soul Warden. Changed to 2/3 and made in order for it to feel like its own creature. cc and pt subject to change.
2012-03-07 05:05:41: jmgariepy edited Aurora Soother
2012-03-07 05:03:56: jmgariepy commented on Woven Life

I like the first suggestion, and have no qualms with the second one. Since no one argued against it, I'm changing it over. That gives us an enchantment matters card that also plays with exile in common. Good news.
2012-03-07 05:02:10: jmgariepy edited Woven Life
2012-03-05 12:28:40: Alex edited Huntmaster Shimmer:
give it a name
2012-03-05 12:28:31: Alex edited Huntmaster Shimmer:
tweak wording
2012-03-05 11:08:55: Jack V commented on White Commons Submissions
Other thoughts:
- As several people suggested, it would be nice if non-creature white spells were enchantments where possible. For instance, several people suggested something similar, but the simplest would be a flash "All creatures (or all white creatures) get +0/+1".
- There's often a recurring card. Something like Auramancer?
2012-03-05 10:54:38: Jack V commented on White Commons Submissions

How about a Stave Off variant that targets enchantments? That's basically "target white creature or enchantment you control" which is probably about right for W?

Other obvious simple "enchantment matters" creatures would be "gets +1/+1 as long as you control" or "gets flying/lifelink/intimidate etc etc". Aurora Soother would be a good choice IMHO.

FWIW, most of the other "enchantment matters" cards suggested before I like a lot, but almost all of them I think should be uncommon. (We can, of course, try something at common even if we're not sure to see how it goes, but by default they look uncommon.)
2012-03-05 10:52:00: Jack V commented on Woven Life

Should this be "when you control no other enchantments"? I like the idea of acting like an aura, but I don't think it really comes through unless we find a way of making it more obvious, but "caring about enchantments" is an obvious on-theme tweak.

Should the ability be "When you control no other X, exile ~. Return it to play when an X enters the battlefield under your control?" Returning from exiling is interesting, but possibly should be on a rare card somewhere and all being one ability is possibly more straightforward for this?
2012-03-05 09:30:07: jmgariepy commented on White Commons Submissions

The flavor of the white tribe in this set are "alien-like creatures made of fabric and light". They aren't supposed to have intelligence in the way we think of it (I don't believe), so they aren't quite operating the way Esper does. That being the case, Huntmaster Shimmer seems like a reasonable card to me... although the ability sits close to Wizened Cenn's. Would this sit better with people if it 'one and done'd' like most modern commons do? Enter the battlefield, and puts a +1/+1 counter on all enchantments, almost like a blanket?
Ah, crud. It occured to me that that would be incredibly good for the mono-green tribe. +1/+1 counters just happen to be taboo in this set, Mandroid, but I wouldn't expect you to know that. Back to the drawing board I guess.
2012-03-05 04:33:50: Mandroid commented on White Commons Submissions

Huntmaster Shimmer Here's an idea. Something to think about when designing 'theme-matters' cards. It will help in deciding what kind of effects belong on the theme matters cards if you have a strong idea of the flavor that the cards are based on. I haven't read much of this thread, but for example if this white society is like Esper and are using magic like plastic surgery to enhance themselves then Huntmaster Shimmer's effect can be flavorfully explained as making enchantment creatures even more perfect by making them more powerful.

So I guess if you're trying to coalesce the white commons as a set which develops powerful interactions based on Enchantments, it may help to first focus on the flavor of the society in order to inform the kinds of descisions you're going to have to make when creating cards.
2012-03-05 04:31:14: Mandroid edited Huntmaster Shimmer
2012-03-05 04:31:02: Mandroid edited Huntmaster Shimmer
2012-03-05 04:30:50: Mandroid created the card Huntmaster Shimmer
2012-03-05 01:09:34: jmgariepy commented on White Commons Submissions

Sounds like we need two enchantment matters commons, then. Try to keep them simple people, but, you know, not boring.
2012-03-04 23:40:17: Alex commented on White Commons Submissions

Not quite sure why I didn't comment on Backwards Talker. I quite like the design, I just really hate its name.

I'm fine with a couple of enchantments-matter cards at common - I think it'd look odd having all the enchantment creatures without any commons making that relevant - but I don't think a Master of Etherium/Wizened Cenn is the right choice for common.
2012-03-04 05:35:57: jmgariepy commented on White Commons Submissions

Okay. So what I'm getting here is:
Put in two enchantments matters cards in common
Put in three temp. exile or maybe exile cards
Come back at white from another angle.
I'm temporarily throwing out Backwards Talker and replacing it with Folded Light, since Alex mentioned that he liked FL and didn't say anything about the former. It's likely we'll add the latter back in later, but it doesn't get priority.
If I was to pick our two best common 'enchantment matters' cards in common, I'd say that Sharer of Souls should become an enchantment matters card, and maybe Tine and Tine Again is fine. But, I think I'd prefer TaTA to push to uncommon and get a simpler enchantment matters card from the team. Any preferences? Also, is anyone against Sharer of Souls becoming enchantment matters? (It does help out the "Is this card really a common" thingy that SoS has...)
2012-03-04 05:31:29: jmgariepy edited Folded Light
2012-03-04 05:31:14: jmgariepy edited Reklat Sdrawkcab
2012-03-01 12:35:44: jmgariepy commented on White Commons Submissions

Oh, heh. I assumed Sharer of Souls was enchantment creatures only. My bad. Not part of the conversation right now, though. I'll poke my head in again later to see if we get any more comments before I start talking.
2012-03-01 11:17:07: Jack V commented on White Commons Submissions
I haven't thought it through in detail, but for the moment my instinct is:
- If the theme is enchantment creatures, we should start by trying "all creatures are enchantment creatures", just like esper
- It would be good to have 2-3 enchantment-matters cards at common, so enchantment clearly matters. But even if there's only 0 or 1, enchantment creatures are still enough to make the theme distinctive.
- I like a lot of the exile cards we've had suggested, but I think they contribute to an unearthly mini-theme whether there's a critical mass of them or not. I think we should evaluate them individually on their merits. (If we have any "exile matters" cards, I think we've enough interesting ideas it's better to save those for a follow-up block, or for higher rarity, unless we want to make exiling the major white theme as well as or instead of enchantment creatures)
2012-03-01 10:30:27: Alex commented on White Commons Submissions

Absolutely; I think many sets have a minor theme that's only visible in a few uncommons and rares. Heck, Conflux didn't have any common cards (which was jolly sensible of them). BTW, I don't think Sharer of Souls is an enchantments-matter card - it's just a Glorious Anthem on a stick.

A colourshifted Yavimaya Enchantress is a nice idea for uncommon.
2012-03-01 10:29:40: Alex commented on Tine and Tine Again

Despite those precedents, I agree this should probably be uncommon.
2012-03-01 04:37:50: jmgariepy commented on White Commons Submissions

While I'm still waiting for a few more opinions on exile, temp or otherwise, let's move over to another question.
Mono-white has occasionally had a smattering of talk about "Enchantments are good" as a medium or minor feature. This theme pops up on Tine and Tine Again, Sharer of Souls, Soft Filter and Knit With Life.
Is it important to see "Plays well with enchantments" cards, or is the occasional card fine? Those 4 cards, by the way, really stretch what common does. In a real set, I'd say that any one or maybe two could be common, but not all of them. How many Battered Golems and Glaze Fiends do we need to add, if any? Should we ship this entire theme to uncommon? I know Rosewater has said "If your theme doesn't appear at common, it's not your theme." Is it all right to have a theme appear in uncommon plus, even if it is assumed that it is not the overall theme of White?
2012-02-29 13:20:29: Alex commented on Knit With Life

In fact, thinking about it some more I don't think this belongs at common at all. I think it should be uncommon either way.
2012-02-29 13:09:21: jmgariepy commented on Vested Light

That's a fair response. It seems, to me, that I've organically moved to temp. exile over 'plays with exile'. If we were doing plays with exile, we'd see a lot of cards that did stuff in the exile zone, or moved cards through it into other zones, and we haven't really done that. Instead, there's just been the occasional card that uses exile. I don't know about you, but 'some cards that use exile' doesn't feel like a theme to me. It feels like an author who hasn't realized that she used the word 'effervesce' five stinking times in the same book (Anne Rice's 'Interview with a Vampire'. What the heck?).
I apologize about moving forward with something that makes sense to me, without explaining my point of view. That's not the way to do things. I'm happy to take a few steps back and go back to 'plays with exile'. But if we do, I suggest that we legitimately mess with it. Otherwise... well, I'm one of the designers, and I wasn't picking up on it.
Edit: After having read your response in White Common Submissions, I got agree that, yes, Vested Light isn't really temp. exiling. And neither is Redrat... redraclt... whatever. It's just the word "Backwards Talker" spelled backwards. And, heh, yeah, that's true. But they still feel like O-Ring variations, even if they aren't, strictly speaking, that.
2012-02-29 12:30:25: Alex commented on White Commons Submissions
I think 3 or 4 commons, plus a few uncommons and a rare or two, will be plenty enough to be noticeable as a theme. I also note that of your top three, only one actually does the temporary exiling itself; the other two just play with exile. I'd think we'd want about three commons which do exile something themselves, plus perhaps one or two which play with exile in other ways (though I wonder if that might be more suited to uncommon).

In rough order of preference out of all those you mentioned:
- I know I designed Soulcapture Lance, but I still think it's great for what we want.
- I like Folded Light quite a lot too.
- I like both Woven Life and Vested Light. Either could change size / cost a bit.
- I'd like to have something like Combat Trick Enchantment; there are lots of possible variations and I don't feel strongly about them at the moment.
- I quite like Erstwhile; the only strike against it is that it's white anti-white.
- I agree that Aurora Vault could be good but might want to change size.
- I feel quite strongly that white needs to do some things other than play with exile. So I think I'm against changing Runearrow Archer to use exile.
2012-02-29 12:23:47: Alex commented on Soulcapture Lance

You could argue that this should be , because it's not that much better than Journey to Nowhere and it's a heck of a lot more vulnerable. I'm fine with too though.
2012-02-29 12:20:44: Alex commented on Vested Light

Is white's theme "temporary exile", or just "playing with exile"? It doesn't seem clear to me that it has to be restricted to temporary exile.

In this case I'm happy to let the exiled card return; it was even discussed 6 months ago. But I don't see that white automatically has to only use temporary exile.
2012-02-29 05:36:49: jmgariepy commented on White Commons Submissions

Okay, in my first pass at mono-white, I'm making sure we have enough temp. exile so that it's noticeable. That gives us:
Soulcapture Lance is a strong Journey to Nowhere variant. It feels bad that you can get 2 or 3 for one'd with it, but if we're to have this many temp. exile effects, ones you want in your deck, but often leave play are what we wan to see.
Woven Life is a temp. exile effect on yourself. We need a few of these to bulk up temp. exile, without slaughtering the opponent.
Reklat Sdrawkcab works well when there's lots of exiling going on.
That's 3 that seem like easy inclusions. 3 doesn't seem like a strong enough push, however. Out of 13 cards, I'm thinking that maybe 5 should mention temp. exile? Here are how I see the other options presented to me:
Runearrow Archer could be temp. exiling instead of doing what he's doing. Maybe he exiles target attacking creature as long its toughness is one or less, then dumps those creatures back on the board if he leaves play. That's quite a big difference from what he's doing now, though, and I'm uncomfortable changing him to that unless other people agree its a good idea.
Aurora Vault seems fine. It's stats are a little off, though. If you had a good card trapped under that stupid 0/5, you'd be annoyed at how hard it is to get rid of. As long as the casting cost of the card is 3 or above, however, the card could easily fill in the gap with squarer stats.
Combat Trick Enchantment seems okay, but its a bit fiddly. And it doesn't temp. exile. Can we line this card up closer to Neck Snap, make it an expensive combat trick with temp. exile? Do we need the boost to creatures in the process, or is that dangly part too much information? (I have no regrets about that last sentence.)
Nothing really wrong with Erstwhile, it just seems inappropriate at common, maybe for the entire set.
I like what Folded Light is doing. It's possible that the ability could end up too good, nerfing it into Groffskithur numbers. But, you know, aside from that, I like it.
The more I look at Vested Light (now with added temp. exile!) the more it seems like a common to me. The only problem it has is that it's fighting for the aggressive 1cc white creature slot with Woven Life... but Woven Life can change p/t and cc. Vested Light... not so much so.
So, voting is now open. Which of two of these do you guys want to sport?