Pyrulea: Comments

We should start with just commons, to make sure our themes are present at common rarity, then start on the uncommons and rares after.

@Voxzorz Definitely the focus should be on commons right now. I just wanted to throw around ideas as part of exploring design space.

Should we do a full common file, and playtest that then?

How about we create a design skeleton like Maro did in his Design Blog and continue from there?

A Dyson sphere that's heavily forested. The 1st thing that jumps out is the ever-present sun and never-ending trees . Thus should have a strong influence. lo, horizon canopy and horizon boughs tells us exactly that.

instead of cycling, should follow canopy's lead by sacrificing permanents to draw cards. many lands will be lost, but there are also many ways to recover from land shortage.

Added the color balance for mechanics.

@amuseum For one, we don't need to bound to a single card. Cycling gives us variance of play and using basic landcycling provides support for discovery and the land theme in general. Sacrificing permanents to draw cards as a major theme is skirting giving a considerably more pessimistic and foreboding tone that what we are going for so far. It goes against Discovery as well.

Added all the enchantment > creature DFC from the forum. Names and stuff are just placeholders at this point. On the subject of a design skeleton, we could make one if we really want to. I don't know how it works with DFC though, he doesn't really go into it.

Just did a pass correcting wording and added some card comments

@DJK3654 Thanks for clearing up the wording, wasn't too sure what the correct one was exactly. I'm basically just dumping some of the stuff from the forum, so most of it will be really rough/badly designed. Just trying to fill out the commons atm so if you feel stuff needs to be changed go for it.

Do we really want Unbound in black and red? IDK if it really fits.

Ah yep you're right, that's some old ideas :p I could see maybe one or two in red, as it kind of feels like an aggressive mechanic to me, but we can just cut the black stuff.

Agree

Added remaining multicolor uncommons for the archetypes that were suggested. If you dont know what they were:

­ - Control

­ - DFC (minor enchantment theme as a thread, we can have DFC specific enablers as well, possibly cards going to the bottom of the library instead of the graveyard)

­ - Leaves the battlefield theme (death, bounce and flicker)

­ - Large instants/sorceries (different take on U/R mana 's general spells theme)

­ - Cycling (threads can be specific cycling support, cards that like discard and cards that like draw)

­ - Aggro (Tokens, small creatures, swarming)

­ - Discovery (Minor take control of lands)

­ - Small toughness (different take on R/W mana 's general go wide theme)

­ - +1/+1 counters (because it fits the themes of set and is a good way of making use of some of the mechanics)

­ - Unbound

Some of these are still up for debate, but most of them seem solid atm.

A cycle of lands seemed to slip in while no one was looking. I'm not too sure we have the room to do something like that, especially because if we do more dual lands they should be in enemy colors, considering we have the Horizon Canopy cycle at rare already. Maybe the common lands are just enemy color etb tapped lands? I would like to do a cycle of man lands also but I dont know if we really have the room. What does everyone think? Currently we are at 15 lands + some utility lands that where discussed before.

I think having more than usual amount of unique lands fits the theme of the set and makes Discovery more meaningful to build around within the set, and we had intended to try some manlands but haven't designed for them yet. Exactly where the limit is I'm not sure, but it can/should be more than normal. I honestly still feel like there still needs to be a rare land that adds mana of any color, or a rare land that utilizes Discovery (much like how there was one for Devotion), or both.

I added those, they were the Common DFC lands i proposed earlier in the thread. Personally I like the idea of dual lands at common who are DFC lands, since they mirror the theme of the plan pretty well. They probably should not ETB tapped to make them not strictly worse than gates, forgot about that.

By the way, a basic skeleton is now available for the set. Not sure if you want to use it, but it makes filling out missing roles much easier. Comparing similar cards as well as submitting different iteration for each number is also easier.

@Gustostuckerl

"They probably should not ETB tapped to make them not strictly worse than gates, forgot about that." But they untap when they transform. Currently they are too good. Would prefer putting back the ETP tapped than getting rid of the untap for when they transform.

@DJK3654: Yes, but you need to fulfill the trigger, which makes them harder to abuse. ETB tapped without untap makes them flat out worse than guildgates. Removing the untap is a good option though, because you could get 2 Mana out of them right now.

I agree with BrainPolice that we should have more than the usual amount of unique lands. The numbers to keep in mind is BFZ's as-fan of 0.98 with 6 common, 6 uncommon, 10 rare. We probably want something around this number to support our own land theme, especially when nonbasic lands are necessary to make Discovery not Domain. If we do a cycle at each rarity that already gives us 0.77. We could add another cycle at rare and have one or two misc across common and uncommon. Or perhaps one or two misc at each rarity (6/7/7 ascending for instance).

In order to do the DFC manland thing we might need to do another cycle at rare.

2 Rare cycles is where I think we want to be, especially if we want to play around with man lands. and then 1 or 2 at each other rarity seems good. Does mean the power level of the utility lands will be restricted but im not too worried about that

Without entering tapped, that cycle is now strictly better than basic lands. There's not a lot of knobs, but they could enter untapped and tap for on the front.

@dude1818 Not strictly better. Basics have generally positive landtypes and you can have any number in your deck. But I agree that they are developmentally concerning in how little drawback that actually is. Hence why I suggested making ETB tapped with untap on transform as originally entered into the file here.

You suggested making them ETB tapped WITHOUT untap on transform, which would make them worse than all the dual lands. I could put them back to ETB tapped plus untap on transform though. Tapping for is interesting, but not necessary. Would look too much like BFZ then too.

"You suggested making them ETB tapped WITHOUT untap on transform" I said "Would prefer putting back the ETP tapped than getting rid of the untap for when they transform." Notice than not then.

Fixed up the design skeleton to allow more lands and multicolored cards. It's 270 cards atm, which is around the size they've been doing large sets recently.

Current standard is 249 excluding basic lands and masterpieces series cards- 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rare, 15 mythics. However because we are doing DFCs we probably want to be more like what SOI did with 297 cards- 105/100/59/18.

Its currently at 96/90/67/17 The rares being so high due to extra lands at rare and multicolored rares. We could do something like 106/95/62/18 which is 281 cards, 1 less than SOI. Maybe we could go 106/100/57/18 and have 7 rares per color, or just cut the allied color rares.

I do have a little bit of a concern that, the way things are being designed so far, this set has a defacto enchantment theme. Far beyond the suggestion that it be emphasized for just one faction. There is an "enchantment matters" thing being pushed on a lot of cards. Should we be careful about this, or is it a natural thing emerging we should just accept?

@DJK3654: Ups, misunderstood you then, sorry for that.

@Enchantment theme: Hmm, good observation, it might be better to change the DFC creatures who aren't to something else. "Enchantments matter" would make it too similar to Theros, which some Unbound cards already do.

@Brainpolice

"I do have a little bit of a concern that, the way things are being designed so far, this set has a defacto enchantment theme. Far beyond the suggestion that it be emphasized for just one faction. There is an "enchantment matters" thing being pushed on a lot of cards."

I don't think so. Largely because Theros, which had more enchantment stuff then we have, has specifically stated to have not done enough to bring the enchantment theme home. Just having most of our DFCs be enchantments doesn't really make enchantments matter. It does bring somewhat of an enchantment theme as a general concept in, which is amplified by actually having some cards that do this, but only weakly.

"Should we be careful about this, or is it a natural thing emerging we should just accept?"

For the most part, I think the later. There are more sets with artifact themes than enchantment themes, so I don't mind at all if this set has a minor enchantment theme to it. I think it's quite fitting, and as long as it doesn't distract from our more major themes, I don't think it causes any issues. That this theme is largely linked to one of our mechanics which hits the more major themes helps in this regard. The only specific things I think we should do to avoid it becoming too big is to make sure we have a reasonable number of non-enchantment based DFC. I see the enchantment DFCs theme as being like the werewolf mechanic in INN and SOI- the main use of DFC, and the most mechanically unified, but far from the only use, and with similar numbers. We already have the lands for instance.

@Gustostuckerl "@Enchantment theme: Hmm, good observation, it might be better to change the DFC creatures who aren't to something else. "Enchantments matter" would make it too similar to Theros, which some Unbound cards already do."

Multiple sets have done artifacts matter- Mirrodin, Esper, Kaladesh- yet have been different. The same can be true of an enchantment theme, especially when the most we could have with what we are working with now is Esper levels, and when we have enchantments tied to one of our mechanics which hits at a major themes.

Yes, but why should we have so many enchantment DFCs outside of ? Especially because we said we can keep the set open regarding different ways of DFCs. Having them (almost) exclusively in helps to distinguish the archetype even more. Of course it is possible to distinguish the set from others, it's just an observation regarding the obvious similarities, which non designers could have too. I would rather we have DFC that fit specifically to archetypes more while being distinguished to

@Gustostuckerl

"Yes, but why should we have so many enchantment DFCs outside of ?" Because it's the main way so far we have decided we want to use DFCs and because DFCs is a mechanic we want a large number of cards using.

"Especially because we said we can keep the set open regarding different ways of DFCs. Having them (almost) exclusively in helps to distinguish the archetype even more." That's why I suggested having a few cards with the enchantment matters element in to begin with, as a way to give it a clear archetype. My suggestion has been that the few enchantment matters cards are only in , but enchantment DFCs are not. and can also get the most enchantment DFCs, and perhaps the most DFCs in general.

Is it the main way for DFC? I don't get why we should narrow it down already, especially because there are so many ways to make DFC. I know that DFC is a mechanic which we will need large quantities of, I do not get why it has to be enchantment creatures in more tan 2 colours.

Enchantments matter cards in is of course the best way to make it a good archetype.

"Is it the main way for DFC?"

That's what the consensus seems to be so far.

"I don't get why we should narrow it down already"

We have a lot of opportunity to go back on things. Currently, we have a main way, and we can test it to see how it plays out. Then we might decide to turn to something different.

"especially because there are so many ways to make DFC. I know that DFC is a mechanic which we will need large quantities of, I do not get why it has to be enchantment creatures in more tan 2 colours."

It's not about have to though. It's been an intentional choice about how to use DFCs to play into the themes of the set.

Honestly I had actually just intended to make plain DFC creatures that transform into creatures, experiment with different transform triggers, and maybe play around in general with DFC changing into different card types. I had also assumed that by DFC manlands we were actually talking about lands that transform literally/directly into creature lands on the other side. The "consensus" that the majority of the DFC creatures so far are enchantments on one side or another slipped past me and kind of threw me off upon looking at the card ideas. I didn't consider that a consensus so much as what people simply started doing anyway. I don't think it's inherently a problem but I don't want to overdo it.

I don't think emphasizing enchantments plays into the themes of the set, when it's supposed to be a land matters set, not an enchantment matters set. My worry is that enchantments might end up mattering more than lands if we keep making too many DFC enchantments and cards that refer to or target enchantments. On another note, I had hoped that we could fit in some legendary lands, which jibes well with Discovery. It looks like we simply won't have design space for it in this set though.

I was out of the loop for a while, so I didn't really get to follow the process.

Remember, nothing is set in stone, and we should make more than 1 card for some places in the skeleton to give us room to experiment. I'm with you on focusing on lands matter through more DFC lands and supporting cards. Right now, lands matter cause Discovery is a mechanic, but it doesn't feel yet that lands matter outside of that.

@Brainpolice "Honestly I had actually just intended to make plain DFC creatures that transform into creatures, experiment with different transform triggers, and maybe play around in general with DFC changing into different card types."

We can do that as well as the enchantment DFC idea.

"I don't think emphasizing enchantments plays into the themes of the set, when it's supposed to be a land matters set, not an enchantment matters set. "

Well I wouldn't say this is a land matters set, so much as a set that has land matters as a theme in it. Zendikar was the land matters set. I think this should be something larger, more about the conceptual themes, coming through in gameplay and flavor. In the same ways as I think lands mattering is something that fits that, I think some aspect of enchantments mattering does. Lands can be more important one, can be a major theme versus enchantments as only a minor theme. We are already on that road with a mechanic that specifically makes lands matter alongside a mechanic that helps enable this in basic landcycling, and no such mechanics for enchantments, only that they are associated with DFCs.

"On another note, I had hoped that we could fit in some legendary lands, which jibes well with Discovery. It looks like we simply won't have design space for it in this set though."

We could put one at mythic.

@Gustostuckerl "I'm with you on focusing on lands matter through more DFC lands and supporting cards. Right now, lands matter cause Discovery is a mechanic, but it doesn't feel yet that lands matter outside of that."

We have a few cards already that do so, and we have basic landcycling.

On the subject of DFC enchantments: These should be primarily in but I would like them to appear in other colors as well. If we start to get an enchantment matters theme that's ok as long as we don't lose the land matters one. We defiantly should have other DFC that aren't enchantments, especially in the other 3 colors. The lands are enchantments just because I feel that the enchantment creatures get across the sort of wondrous, weird feel of the set. I did say that I added a lot of stuff to the lands so stuff could be cut from them if people didnt like them.

Oh and we could put two legendary lands at mythic, there's technically room for another mythic in the set so we could add it there.

I know this hasn't been brought up for a long time but we did have a legendary matters theme originally. Although I'm completely against bringing it back I was thinking that each faction could have 3 legendaries; 1 at rare in their respective mono colors and then 1 at mythic in both colors. This was suggested early on and I think its appropriate flavour wise. What do people think?

Definitely we could, and probably should, do one or the other cycle. I don't know if I want to commit to both.

I don't have a problem with that. Another unsettled question is what we are going to do about Planeswalkers.

"I don't have a problem with that. Another unsettled question is what we are going to do about Planeswalkers."

We'll get there when we get there. Planeswalkers are really more of a creative and development problem in terms of WotC's process. We aren't even a third of the way through design I reckon.

I feel we should wait on that until we've at least got the commons and uncommons done. We'll get a better feel for the set overall then. Right now we're basically just chucking ideas out there and seeing what sticks. We haven't even started picking out cards for the design skeleton yet.

Yea it's not a priority at the moment. Just something to consider eventually.

"We haven't even started picking out cards for the design skeleton yet."

We should start inputting them quite soon I think.

Let's finish Commons and Uncommons first before we even think about Planeswalkers. They, as well as the rares and mythics, should fit into the framework given by the lower rarities, not the other way around.

@Enchantments: Again, I do not have a problem with them per se, it just doesn't add anything to DFC outside their archetypes that isn't already handled by them being a DFC. Flavourwise and mechanically, being a DFC is already good enough, and the relevant creature types can be added later on. Same goes for the enchantment lands, it feels especially weird cause they do not have an enchantment or aura effect unlike previous enchantment amalgams.

@Lands: Somebody mentioned that article on a forum, it's a very good read and also provides good ideas regarding land cycles. Nimbus Maze cycle would be awesome to finish, maybe in enemy colours though.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/sorry-i-didn-t-finish-your-land-cycle-bonus

@Enchantments: It lets the cards have the same type on both sides with is something. But tbh I don't see the problem with having them as enchantments. It doesn't really take away from anything and being kind of weird isn't a bad thing. But I do want to do other DFC that aren't enchantments, in predominately. As we currently had only made DFC that where enchantments//enchantment creatures I figured it was appropriate.

@Lands We're already finishing the Horizon Canopy so I don't know if finishing another cycle is really what we want to be doing. Plus we're chocked for space on rare lands atm, so apart from fine tuning what we have we're pretty good there.

@Enchantment lands: Not adding anything is a problem to me personally, but group consensus has to decide that. It's kind of weird in a mechanical sense instead of flavour, so it doesn't enrich the environment of the plane. I would understand it if they had enchantment effects like other enchantment creatures in this set, but they don't.

@Lands: How many rare lands will we have btw? 2 full cycles would be a bit much, that's true.

I tend to agree with Gusto that if we are going to have enchantment lands, there should be an enchantment-like effect, just like how enchantment creatures generally have effects that you would likely see on an enchantment that helps justify it both mechanically and flavorwise. Having an enchantment effect on a land may require adding mana costs or transform conditions that require paying mana to justify though.

@DFC Oh I'm fine with removing the enchantment from the man lands, like I said when I made them I just added lots of stuff to them and then we could cut the things from them we didn't like. I was talking about the DFC in general before.

@Lands We currently have allied color sac lands (Horizon Canopy cycle) and have 5 rare land slots left atm.

I'd honestly prefer DFC that directly transform into creature lands over the current DFC manlands.

Oh I see what you're saying, didn't really understand until now :/ Do people want to try that out? It does mean they can get hit with board wipes and removal more regularly which you might not want but I'm fine with that.

Yea, it'd be cool to have a DFC cycle for each color that turn into something like Dryad Arbor (possibly something a touch better than that even) on the 2nd side. If there's space maybe we could do both that and the manlands you have. I just like straight up creature lands more than manlands.

Made some DFC creature lands just to see if people prefer them over the man lands. We could do some weaker ones at uncommon that are creatures on the front side and flip into creature lands if people prefer then man lands in this slot.

Well, I'm already biased in favor of the versions you just made. Lets see what the others have to say.

The rules complexity of them is pretty high. They are interesting though. I'm not sure.

By the way, shouldn't we finish the Commons and Uncommons first before we create so many Rares?

By the way #2, how many different transform triggers do you think would be ok at common? The sorcery speed transform of the enchantment DFC is great already, but apart from that? Because honestly, even with less mechanics, we already have loads of complex cards with shitloads of triggered or activated abilities. Not that we should stop pitching ideas, just asking if later on you want to scale down the number of triggers to make it a bit less complex.

To me it doesn't matter that much, as I'm kind of approaching this as us just throwing ideas out there and seeing what sticks and refining the ideas as we go by consensus, whatever rarity the idea ends up being at. I can understand why people think it's important to not jump the shark with rares or just throw a bunch of the most powerful ideas around. I just don't quite understand or agree with the idea that as an assumed design philosophy, one inherently must do nothing but build commons first and go upwards from there step by step. I wonder if that's really how Wizards functions?

I also think I'm just personally better at designing uncommons and rares than commons, as most of my ideas often just naturally end up being too powerful for a common. Designing commons is my weak point. Sometimes I come up with some though.

Oh no, it's not that important, I just fear that if we get too many rares we start building around them instead of the other way, or that we push ourselves in a certain creative direction unintentionally. That's why I honestly don't look at too many cards right now :)

Yeah we're pretty much just chucking ideas out there as we think of them. I do feel like we have focused on rares too much because they're easier to think of. Some card that we make now wont make it because of that. We should try and get a decent number of commons soonish.

By the way, would it be ok to add the archetypes onto the front page?

"By the way, would it be ok to add the archetypes onto the front page?" Added them to the details page for now. I don't know if we want anymore stuff on the front.

I think we've got enough commons to fill out the colored common slots on the design skeleton. If we get just the commons filled out we can begin testing. Shall we do that?

Can we double fill a slot? That would be really helpful for designing alternatives. If not, we may need another column in the set for them.

Regarding the Commons, I just want to say that we got many complicated Commons, especially the trigger happy ones. Is that were we want to go in this set? I don't have a problem with it per se, it is just not beginners friendly at all.

I guess I am not sure how we should go about filling the slots in general as it is, as we need to come to some degree of consensus about what cards we are going to keep, and it seems like we are still brainstorming ideas. The idea of one of us just deciding unilaterally to fill the skeleton in as they please is problematic.

Inevitably, there are going to be some cards that get left behind, whether because they are competing for the space with another card, or simply because there are better alternatives, or the idea just doesn't work out.

I don't have a problem with a good deal of complexity personally. But it may be that some of the more complex commons get left behind as inappropriate designs.

Yeah, but you have to put it in notes or something. Tried double filling by putting in the same card code but it doesnt let you. There are definatly cards competing for the same slot currently.

I do realise that we have lots of complciated commons, thats one of the reasons I want to start putting the set together so we can see how complciated it looks overall.

I would say the next order of business for us should be to come to some consensus about what commons fill the skeleton, then create a new official thread on the forum to represent the cards of the set and get community feedback. While continuing to brainstorm and tweak card ideas here.

"Regarding the Commons, I just want to say that we got many complicated Commons, especially the trigger happy ones. Is that were we want to go in this set? I don't have a problem with it per se, it is just not beginners friendly at all."

I'd rather do the set realistically, as it were. That being said, I think it's probably going to be more interesting for us if we push the budget more on the higher end to give us more room for our designs. But I conversely think going well outside of realistic levels complexity would actually prove less interesting because making and playing text heavy cards can be quite easy and bland of an exercise.

And we're here for the challenge are we not? :)

DFCs do help mask some of the complexity by having the text be split up.

@Brainpolice yep that sounds like a good idea, more people to test the commons out, and we can work more on the other rarities while thats going on.

Cant think of a good way to decide what we are looking for at each slot without it being extreamly conveluted. unless we just start putting in what type of card we'd want to see in that slot and then others can put theirs in if they disagree?

"unless we just start putting in what type of card we'd want to see in that slot and then others can put theirs in if they disagree?"

That sounds like the best way to go about it. It's not like exchanging them should be a difficult process.

Well, from what I'm seeing, we already have a conflict of design space in the skeleton over the DFC manlands vs. the DFC creature lands, with the former already having been put in.

I just put them in when I made them because, as far as I was aware, we where guaranteed to make man lands in the set. The change to creature lands was after this so they're two competing cycles. Once we get into testing we can see which ones are 'better'.

Has anyone else tried editing the skeleton? When I try it keeps giving me an error :/

I haven't messed with it. That's weird though.

Now that I'm seeing that the white common slots have all been filled in with an exact description for each slot, of an exact mana cost, an exact card type, an exact mechanic, and so on, I might have an objection or feel confused. Do we really need to fill in every single slot with exact requirements to that level of detail? I certainly see some need for balance and to logically lay things out, but I'm not sure things should be quite that prescribed in advance. Is that how it's inherently done? Since this is my very first time being involved in set design, I feel I don't know the answer to that but it is a bit counter-intuitive to me. The natural flow of card ideas we've been coming up with clashes with it. And while I understand that it's not all going to be "let the cards fall where they may", I'd think there should be room for flexibility and variance. The idea of every single slot in the skeleton having a detailed prescribed requirement feels a little confining to me, like it will rigidly dictate what cards we design.

@Brainpolice

Set skeletons usually do feature that much description. The thing is that it's just used to map out the spread of colors, mechanics and staple effects across the set regardless of the individual cards. The point being to provide an easy way of making decisions when filling out the file and a way of deciding what cards to design as the set progresses.

Which is to say that it's all flexible.

@Brainpolice Of course there is room for variance, the skeleton is just framework, if we feel like there should be another card in that slot then we can change it to what we feel it should be. Having a strict structure like that is something that is especailly true at common.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/nuts-bolts-design-skeleton-2010-02-15

Here MaRo talks about how wizards uses the design skeleton. The article is over 4 years old but that is the way that the commons are still designed as far as I'm aware. The spread of CMC that I used is something that I picked up from another set designer, and that is the gernal spread of creatures in white at common (treating the DFC as creatures as well).

Fair enough, if the skeleton is open to being altered a bit here and there.

The skeleton is there to give the set some form of structure. Ofc we could just make a number of commons and put them into the set based on what we feel is appropriate but that is just a mash of commons, slightly refined. If we know what we're looking for, we can get an idea of what else we need.

In the design process they usually start with just the skeleton and the make cards from there. We've kind of jumped then gun and just started designing them, which is fine to get ideas onto paper.

When designing cards lots of them wont make the final cut, and very few will go unchanged.

It could actually be even more specific with regards to creature sizes, since there is a certain amount of creatures in every colour which we should keep in mind. A separate list where all possible creatures are kept could be made too for reference, but that's a lot of work.

So I've filled out the rest of the common cards in the skeleton, but I've been less specific than in the white section so others can have an input onto what mechanics and abilities we're looking for. All I've done is fill it out with the average distribution of cmc in each color as well as average number of instant/sorc/enchantments.

I've left a comment relevant to each competing card issue with the skeleton currently (a handful of white commons), so let me know what you guys think. Also, I'll address the remaining conflicts in the skeleton in this comment.

The common land slots are competing between the DFC ally-color cycle and the enemy color taplands. My intuition is that the enemy color taplands are OP for commons - at least the DFC common lands have to transform before they become dual lands. These are just plain dual taplands at common. To my knowledge cards like that by precedent exist at uncommon and already exist with their own names to boot; for example, (((Card73418))) = Foul Orchard but common: http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Taplands

On the flipside, if we favor the DFC ones, wouldn't it have been better to do them as enemy colors, since our factions are based on enemy colors?

Then we have a conflict between the manlands and creature lands at rare. I personally prefer creature lands as being more direct and to the point.

Changing the colour of mana produced is really not a problem, the DFC ally-colour cycle can be made into enemy-colour, no problem. Really prefer the DFC lands over the common dual lands. Straight up Dual Lands in Common is probably too good and also a bit boring. Undecided about manlands or creature lands though :/

On taplands: Although the pure taplands have been done at uncommon, dual taplands have been done at common, the guildgates and the life-gain taplands come to mind. Theses were made in sets that did focus on multicolor however so there was a reason to include them at common. As far as I'm aware they're not that OP but I get what you're saying. If we do make the DFC lands at common I would also prefer them to be enemy color.

Looks like it might be best to stick with the DFC common dual lands, if anything because they are more interesting and original. Even if the common dual taplands aren't OP, they are pretty plain and cards that do the same thing already have names. Only I'd prefer the DFC common lands to be in enemy colors to better fit the set, which can easily enough be changed.

Yep I can second that.

Totally forgot about the guildgates, sorry.

Still unsure about the manlands and the creature lands. The manlands feel a bit weak compared to other manlands, while the creature lands are a bit complicated, but not overly so. All in all, the creature lands feel a bit fresher I think?

I would also prefer to do the creature lands, as you said they feel newer. I would also prefer to do DFC lands at common. If we're all agreed on the creature lands we can swap the man lands for them in the skeleton.

Looks like we're generally agreed on that, with the exception that DJK hasn't been around for this discussion.

I like the creature lands.

Just filled out the skeleton for blue commons. It didn't go so bad until I got to the DFC slots. There are 2 common blue DFC slots, but 5 common blue DFC cards! That's going to be rough to boil down and required me to mark 3 competing cards for one slot. Stuff like that forces some decisions for us.

I did the same for the red commons, and the space for red is a bit more complicated and rough, with more competing cards (In one case there are 3 cards competing for one sorcery slot) and surprisingly a decent amount of open spaces (two CMC 3 creatures, a 5 CMC creature, and two instants).

Finally, I did the same for green commons. Green has its share of competing cards as well and a surprising amount of open spaces for sorceries. And much like blue, there is an overabundance of DFC (5 DFC) competing for only 2 DFC slots.

I figure this will be useful as a roadmap. It tells us what design space we probably shouldn't be creating more cards for, it lets us know what conflicts there currently are with what has already been designed so we can resolve them or otherwise figure out what cards we might not want to keep around afterall, and it shows what open spaces remain for ideas as well. In some cases maybe an open space at similar mana costs can function as a solution for competing cards. Another possible route for keeping some competing cards around while resolving conflict would be to tweak the idea of the card into an uncommon.

Either way, I highly suggest we work on resolving the current competing card issues, do some playtesting, and generally work towards a "complete first version" of the set's commons to share on the board. That will have to include naming and fleshing out cards, as we have quite a large amount of unnamed cards at the moment, as well as some without a creature type.

Thanks for filling out the skeleton :D Now we can see what we need for each color.

-DFC: I think it might be better to revisit the DFC for , and . We want to try and make sure that the enchantment theme isn't too pushed in these colors. I think they should have 1 DFC enchantment and 1 other, or just 2 nonenchantment DFC. / has this DFC enchantment theme going on so i figured it was fine to keep them.

-Names/Creature types: Once we've completed the first draft for the commons we can give the cards names, even if they're just basic placeholders for now. Same with creature types.

I definitely agree that a major priority is working out the common DFC conflicts in those colors. And I agree with your suggested scheme of 1 DFC enchantment and 1 DFC nonenchantment in those colors. That strikes a balance and I think it's fair to have at least one DFC enchantment slot if anything because there is no regular enchantment slot as it is in the way you designed the scheme. So the DFC enchantments do need at least a little space.

But at the moment there are just way too many DFC enchantments that just won't all make it, at least at common's design space. Maybe a few could be tweaked into uncommons. Otherwise there's just not room.

Thank you for filling out the Design Skeleton!!!!

-DFC: Rather in favour of 2 nonenchantment DFC in , and , it may be confusing to players why some colours have 2 while the others have only 1. A clear difference as in "this is the theme of that colour combination" might be better.

-Names/Creature types: Agree with waiting with that, it's not important for playtesting and "flavour" can be added much later to flesh out the set, especially names since they rely heavily on what pictures you find. It's easier and also looks cleaner to use an appropriate picture for the card function and then name it to combine these two than finding a picture fitting to a name.

I made a few minor changes to the skeleton. I added in what common artifact cards there are so far. Also, I removed Sun Worshiper from the competing cards column, because its ability is effectively replaced by Solar Ritual and Temple Shrine.

Another thought: if we end up rolling with Emori Wanderer for an uncommon slot, this can be a good reason to take Satyr Wayfinder off the competing cards column as well, as the former does something similar but as a more powerful uncommon, while resolving the conflict of the latter for a common space.

Considering that we've decided not to include DFC enchantments in , and at common, I just edited the skeleton to reflect that by removing any of them from it (but of course they still exist in the cardslist in case anyone wants to edit them into something for an uncommon slot). Any existing non-enchantment DFC have been put in the slots instead. Currently, red has no non-enchantment DFC at common, so the slots are entirely open. This cleans up the skeleton a little bit more.

On another note, Gusto had expressed a desire to make a cycle out of Epiphyte Elder. I think that's a pretty cool idea, as it enhances the land matters theme to have a cycle of DFC that are lands on the 2nd side. However, in order to do so we would have to remove some DFC commons that already have a slot in the other colors, including one of the enchantment DFC's in and . The other cards that would make it a cycle haven't been created yet either. Another possibility is, short of making it a full cycle, we could just create a companion DFC creature/land card in the other main Discovery color . Just tossing the idea out there.

I'd be up for making a cycle out of them at common, cut 1 of the DFC enchantments from and and make a cycle of DFC creatures that flip into lands. Like you said we could just make them in and . What do we want to do for the other DFC? If we do this then we only need 1 other card in the remaining three colors.

I'd want to see what everyone else thinks before deciding to fill the space in all colors as a cycle, as it does threaten already existing slots in the other 3 colors. To stay on the safe side, for the moment I just created a companion card in also based on Discovery and the number 3. Another reason for this option is that if we do want the cards to transform based on Discovery, it makes most sense to just do it in the main Discovery colors.

Another thought, if we do end up doing a cycle with it, is that it could be argued that it's overkill for the two colors that get the most DFC commons ( and get 3 slots), literally all of them are enchantments. So 2 of the DFC slots could still be reserved for enchantments, but 1 would be opened up for the creature/land DFC cycle. A possible format for the and common DFC then could be: 1 Enchantment/Creature DFC, 1 Creature/Enchantment DFC, and 1 Creature/Land DFC.

Blue would also have to make room for a Creature/Land DFC replacing one of its slots.

I'd also suggest maybe changing the transform condition to occur during your upkeep, to prevent it from being able to transform on the same turn you cast it, as even Discovery 3 isn't that hard to achieve by the time you can cast a 4 mana card.

Now we've got a complete set of commons we can move onto testing them. Keep the competing cards in the skeleton for now, we can test both versions of the card and see which feels better later. We should give the cards names as well, they're going to be placeholders for now, we can work out what we actually want to call them later.

I'm assuming we're waiting until after a first playtest to make a new thread for the set that starts introducing the commons and opening things to more public criticism? I'm kind of itching to move things forward on the board. But Vox isn't especially around to nudge about that.

I mean we dont have to do a first playtest before starting a new thread, we just have to be happy with the commons we have. More people with access to the commons means more playtesting. But we should all feel like the commons are decent before that.

Fair enough to that, maybe do a few tweaks to the existing commons in the skeleton, and then if necessary one of us goes ahead and posts the next thread then? Overall I'm pretty happy with the majority of it so far. There are a few cards here and there in the skeleton I don't like much though, or that maybe could have something more useful in their slot.

I edited/radically-changed and in some cases deleted some of my more recent uncommon and rare card ideas to better serve the set and feel a little more unique from existing cards.

So what are we doing about playing testing the existing commons and resolving the current competing card issues with commons? Otherwise, I'm wondering if it's cool now if me or one of you guys posts a new thread on the forum for the set that gives a provisional list of the commons for community feedback and future updates.

Im keen to move on with design so, unless you'd rather have someone else do it, go ahead and post the commons on the forum. That's if its ok with everyone else?

I'm likewise keen to move on with design. And playtesting.

If no one else says anything about it in the next day or so I'll go ahead and do it, though formatting for that kind of post will be a first for me. I doubt it's all that hard though.

Well I made the forum post, only posted the white commons so far because it'd a bit of a slow process, but I should finish up posting the rest over the next few days.

Something that Secret pointed out is that our "big spells matter/4 cmc + instant and socery" theme in is severly lacking at common. We have 2 spells at 4 cmc and none larger than that. In a set where lands matter players will be able to play a slightly larger mana base, therefore we can make more expensive cards. There are defiantly some cards we can replace in both blue and red to make room for bigger instant and sorcery cards, even if its just 2 more. ­Sun Scorch, Spark of Passion and Trailblaze are all very similar cards, in fact the first two both pretty much do the same thing. One of these could be cut and replaced with a bigger effect, say Sun Scorch becomes

­

Deal 5 damage to target creature.

Cycling When you cycle ~ deal 5 damage to target creature.

I think we already want to cut Deny Experience, we could turn it into a big mill card, like:

­

Put the top X cards of target players library into their graveyard, where X is your discovery.

Something like that maybe?

I've sort just been going with a general instant/sorcery theme for blue and red, rather than "big spells".

While there are a lot of lands in this set, I don't follow the logic that this allows for more expensive cards. It's only the green ramp type effects, and the few ramp artifacts, that allow for that in practical terms. It is only the Discovery theme in that actively encourages more lands.

I can definitely see the space taken by Sun Scorch, Spark of Passion and Trailblaze being a bit much. I would actually say that the main choice there is between Trailblaze and Sun Scorch, as both of them are creature only damage. I'd choose one or the other if we intend to sac one. Maybe Sac Sun Scorch because Spark of Passion is the same type of cycling card.

I'm down with replacing Deny experience with a Mill Card, either based on Discovery or as a cycling card.

It really depends on how you build your deck. If you're looking for a card every turn that increases your discovery then you would either want every land in your deck to have a different name, or to play more lands than you normally would. The second is especially true if you want to see some lands more than others (in constructed I'd rather seem my dual lands than basics most of the time).

Either way if you want to have lots of lands on the battlefield with different names, right? If I only have 2 lands with different names then what's the point of me playing with discovery cards. A player will be much more excited about the cards they're picking if they know they can make it do something bigger most of the time, e.g. 5 damage over 2 damage for a 2 cmc card.

Now we arent encouraging players to play loads more lands like they did in Zendikar. But we are saying that they should want to have more lands in play and to do that they might have to play slightly more lands than they normally would. In Zendikar they had lots of different ways for you to use the abundance of lands that you would have; we dont have to go that far. A couple of mana sinks and a cards that are a bit higher on the curve is a reasonable response to this.

In reality we dont know if thats something that will happen until we start playtesting, but the only other land set needed a decent number of ways to use a large amount of mana so we should keep that in mind.

Yea that all makes sense, but I view it as only partially constituting what looks like the viable deck building strategies of the set itself, I.E. decks that care about Discovery. Which inherently will tend to favor Green, then Red, then the rest of the colors secondarily. But the set as a whole isn't based on Discovery and ramp.

Just judging by the general direction and feel of the cards we've been making, I can sort of anticipate a / focused Discovery route, a // focused Cycling route, and a // focused Unbound route, as being the major deck archetypes to come out of it. With possible overlap. / also has something of a DFC and enchantment theme for deckbuilding.

But overall, I don't object to some mana sinks here and there. I just don't think it should be a significant premise.

Since we already talk about Limited themes a lot, how about adding the signpost uncommons to the skeleton in addition to the commons to get a better idea of how things are supposed to fit together?

I'd like to reiterate one last thing Legend pointed out that is pretty serious: we literally have 7 black commons that are creature destruction. That's over 1/3 of the cards.

More generally, it looks like there are more flaws with the current commons skeleton than originally thought.

It looks like we may need to do some serious editing and rethinking of some of the commons before considering putting any uncommons into the skeleton.

We can easily cut back on the removal in black, as far as I see it Asphyxiate is the only one that really fits for me. We should also have a big removal spell, Downfall , but aside from that the rest could be cut for other options.

­Asphyxiate, Downfall and Roothollow Parasite are keepers to me for black removal.

I'd like to keep Roothollow Parasite as well but I could see changing it to reanimate something with power 3 or less instead if we wanted to keep another removal. I'm keen to get rid of CB10 and replace it with something more positive. Carrion Plague could be kept if we wanted a cycling removal spell, but might not be necessary.

How about something that makes a player lose life when a creature untaps for replacing Take Hostage? Like "whenever enchanted creature untaps, its controller loses 2 life" for 2B. That'd be a sort of anti-unbound thing especially.

I would rather have it be a postivie effect, like "Enchanted creature gets +2/+0 and menace." thats just a really simple one but just that kind of thing.

Something like that could be done, but it doesn't seem like something that is unique to the set or interacts with anything particular to it. While the white aura does.

Just a quick notes on reprints we're currently doing;

­Suppression Bonds: Deals with creatures and the enchantments we have. Seems to fit quite well.

­Regress: Has a lot of flexibility, especially when lands and enchantments are concerned.

­Divination: This one feels the most bland to me, maybe it helps the control decks but if we're going to cut a card because we're reprinting too many cards then this would be where I'd start.

­Asphyxiate: I see this as being one of the most fitting reprints we currently have.

Divination is the most bland one, but it does serve a purpose. I don't think we have any other plain card draw at common like that. But maybe we could replace it with another card draw idea that is less bland that uses cycling or interacts with our themes in some way?

­Asphyxiate is not super fitting. It has a vaguely interesting interaction with unbound. But since it is a hoser and one unbound strategy involves controlling when your unbound creatures tap and untap already Asphyxiate could easily made to fizzle.

­Divination and Regress could go anywhere.

­Harrow is a good reprint for the five-color green strategy that tries to play discovery like domain - worst case it is instant speed ramp. It would be my first choice. I personally have also no problem with a reprint per color at common.

EDIT: That said we don't necessarily need Harrow since I recall seeing a good ramp-like design for common outside the skeleton. Maybe going over them again I'll find something.

Going to have to disagree on Asphyxiate, it was printed in a set that also had cards that could tap creatures to make it easily fizzle. Plus it was less likely to hit there than it is here.

As far as other reprints go, I dont mind reprinting one card per color at common.

I made an as-fan calculation yesterday for some mechanical themes and ended up noting some small issues that inspired come micro-changes or were solved filling some slots that opened in the last two days e. g. up until today there was no cycling in green, no prowess, reach or defender anywhere at common etc.

FTR as of yesterday evening cycling or basic landcycling was on 25% of all commons, unbound on IIRC 17%. Since then some shifts may have occured.

That's a good thing to consider that I've been wondering about in the back of my head, about the distribution of the mechanics in the set. It did look like basic landcycling was on a lot of cards before. It may have been rolled back a little recently. We should look at what the distribution of Discovery is too.

@SecretInfiltrator: Thanks for doing that, did you check the alternate inputs for common cards too? Cause there are defenders and cards with prowess, they just didn't make it into the set yet.

About Discovery: As it is worded right now, does having just 2 plains already count as discovery 1?

Also, the extended rules need to include what "discovery increasing" means. We got non-basic lands who get played or transform with or without exiling, so that has to be included somehow.

As it stands right now discovery counts the names of lands you control. So if you had two basic plains your discovery would be 1, if you controlled two plains and a forest your discovery would be 2. I would assume that if a land transformed that your discovery would remain the same, the number of names amongst lands you control wouldnt change unless you had two DFC lands with the same name and only one of them transformed. In which case your discovery would increase.

Yea that is my understanding of how the numbers work out.

One slight ambiguity: You could say your Discovery is 1 by default if you have any land at all on the battlefield. Yet "lands with different names" could be read to imply more than 1 land. So there's some strangeness about what Discovery 1 means.

Mkay, that sounds reasonable, we need to fix it in the comprehensive rules too though, especially the increase part. There is probably a reason why Devotion or Chroma were static abilities.

By the way, does anybody know why the Mechanics counter doesn't work? Maybe assigned the wrong number or something? Everything seems to be spelled correctly, don't know what the problem is..

If this is about cycling and basic landcycling, I think it only counts cards made with the mechanic after its been added to the mechanics page.

@Gustostückerl: I'm aware of the problem and working on it.

I've overhauled the skeleton so that each slot has a description of what we're looking for. Subject to change if people think we need another card in that slot but this way we can stop just making cards and trying to force it into the skeleton.

I fixed some slot problems as well while I was there; we now need a discovery creature in both red and green, or at least a creature that supports the archetype.

Thank you for that. Some descriptions still read like they were written after the card was made, not the other way round, but as you said, that is still subject to change.

We should maybe make a checklist which cards would be played in which archetype and if one type still needs a little help.

That would be good. After just glancing over what we've got right now I think that the discovery archetype and the big spells archetype need a bit of help. The archetype is something that is brought together in the uncommons but the archetype should be much more emphasised at common.

The red-green archetype already gets plenty of coverage by the fact that discovery is extremely numerous (more than e. g. energy in KLD) and we have two horizontal cycles of land tutors.

I'm going through the skeleton right now to create a first draft for a physical playtest of commons this weekend - also adding some preliminary flavor text and subtypes where they are still missing to improve the presentation of the cards.

Yeah that's cool, just bear in mind depending on the art we find the types and flavour of a card might change in the final iteration. Right now there isnt anything that really cares about subtypes at common so it should be fine.

On another note are you playtesting with people unfamiliar with the evergreen mechanics? Because they stopped doing reminder text for those, even at common.

Took the liberty and removed some cards from the skeleton that have been questioned. We should either look for alternatives or reaffirm why they deserve the place.

Any aspect is fluid. Half-empty type lines on creatures just look unusual and no one else is working on world building.

@TRicher: Reminder text for common keywords like first strike and flying has been used at least as recently as Magic Origins and even on rares e. g. in the product Welcome Deck 2016.

­Highspire Artisan is in Kaladesh and uses reminder text for reach.

The reason I use reminder text is not strict necessity alone but also the fact that the space is available and the cards receive authenticity (and that not adding it is actually a tinsy bit of additional effort).

You will note I left it out for basic landcycling on the cards that trigger from it and hence don't have the space available.

Anyway: Please, do your research before forcing someone else to do it!

So they just forgot the reminder text for flying on Skyswirl Harrier? And Wind Drake? In fact the example you gave might be one of the only cards in Kaladesh that uses reminder text for an evergreen mechanic. Magic Origins isn't a really recent set, R&D has begun to change the way they design cards since then. In fact menace which was introduced in Origins doesn't even have its reminder text on some new cards; Wayward Giant. These mechanics are well known pillars of magic, which is why reminder text for stuff like flying and first strike dont get used anymore.

Adding unnecessary reminder text just clutters up the card and makes it harder to tell whats going on at first glance. Even if they still do it sometimes I would prefer that we just left it off, since the people that see this set are going to be existing magic players and they'll know what the mechanics do.

As far as world building goes I would love to go ahead and add the flavour to cards, but if we cant find art for that card then whats the point of me wanting something I cant have? The fleshing out of stuff like that tends to happen once we're happy with what we've got.

I mean, I've been tempted to add flavor text to some cards, especially ones with lots of open space, but it was generally said by others to wait on that. I think I do have one or two designs with flavor text in the file somewhere.

As for rules text for evergreen mechanics, I just assume in most cases it's to be left out, unless it's a sort of introductory style set. Taking up extra text space on the cards when not necessary is something to avoid I would think. Where the rules text will be truly necessary is for new mechanics.

Out of either 'territories' or 'discoveries' I much prefer 'discoveries'.

Added legendary/important characters to the world building slot. Not all of them have to have cards but if you want to have a quote from someone or something like that you can use it as a reference. I used some of the names already mentioned on other peoples cards as well, so if you want to go and edit the descriptions I put of them to what you originally though of go ahead. There's still room for other characters as well so you can add them too.

I think I also prefer discoveries, as territories feels a bit militaristic.

Yea I saw that. That could help with some decisions for card names and flavor text in the future.

About adding flavour text, I personally find that existing fluff might be misleading or unknowingly forcing you to fit the flavour when searching for art and names. That's kinda the wrong way around as how this should go, especially if the person looking for art is not the same as the one who has written the text. I personally would not want to force art onto a card that doesn't fit the flavour text without asking first, since it kinda feels bad to me.

As long as some work is put into Creative I'm happy.

I really don't understand why every single card is methodically being given rules text for every single keyword, no matter how long they've been evergreen. That seems to create unnecessary clutter on the cards to me. We and most people who are ever likely to see this set really don't need to be reminded what flying and first strike do.

On territories/discoveries... I never thought discoveries was the best fit, but territories is just barely better. Exploration?

Is there a good synonym for reconnaissance? Voyages?

Can we clarify the "small toughness" theme? I see there is an uncommon signpost playing of it in the set, but is there any intentional play off of it at common?

@Remindertext: All of the old ones have to go. Discovery and Unbound need a reminder text of course, but the rest could basically be deleted. Let's think about those cards having a lot of space for flavourtext to really tell a story.

@Small toughness: Yep, a clarification would be nice, so far it is not that easily discernible how it is implemented since many cards have standard strength and toughness for and .

@Editing cards: Please guys, let's have some consensus on etiquette here. I see a lot of editing going on WITHOUT specifying what has been edited! We don't have a way to see what has been changed, so please write at least a short sentence what you did. Teamwork people!

@Reminder text: I think its for the play test so lets keep it in for now. Once thats done, if its fine with people, I'll go through and cut out the ones we don't need/fix some.

@Small toughness: I was thinking since pretty much all the cards in and have 3 toughness or less, if we have key uncommons that bring the archetype together then it'll work out.

toughness 3 or less is really... broad, isn't it?

Memo to all: I have tagged untagged keywords to solve an issue with mechanics @Gustostückerl has brought up regarding untagged mechanics not being correctly displayed on the mechanics page.

The site adds reminder text to tagged mechanics unless specifically surpressed. I did not surpress them unless required by the design. The reason reminder text is showing up is that the mechanics are tagged - if you want to surpress the reminder text add "()" behind the keyword e. g. "Discovery" or "[Basic Landcycling ()]".

I assumed everyone was familiar with that site function. I will surpress all reminder text on upcoming tags.

Not so automatically, there are many cards with not suppressed keywords who do not display a reminder text. It probably doesn't work correctly yet.

That makes a little more sense. However, based on Gusto's experiment, you would still have had to choose to manually put brackets around the mechanics so that they show up with the reminder text for this to be happening. Whereas before those cards simply said "Menace" or "Cycling", not Menace (This creature can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.) or [Cycling]. In my understanding, the reminder text only shows up upon edits if you add the brackets. So to me, it appears the solution is to just not put brackets around evergreen keywords, and the reminder text won't show up.

Yes, the brackets are required to solve the problem that @Gustostückerl pointed out regarding the mechanics page.

Or maybe remove the reminder text from the Mechanics page of evergreen mechanics. Tagging is rather useful for statistics and having a quick overview on what mechanics are used how often, even evergreen ones. Suppressing is also good of course. I get it now what I did wrong, sorry for that!

See this is where I get real confused, because it seems obvious that not using the brackets is the solution, if we don't want the reminder text for every evergreen mechanic to automatically pop up on the cards. That text could only have gotten there by someone adding brackets.

Or write it like this: [keyword()] I don't care if we have them tagged or not, it's just useful using the Mechanics counter for having a quick overview.

As stated above, I'll surpress the reminder text on new tags. I misunderstood the earlier comments as card-by-card questions.

Sorry for causing so much fuzz. All I wanted to do was to track the keywords. ^^"

Ah I see, that makes much more sense.

Phew, glad we've got that sorted out now :D Counting the mechanics we've got is helpful, it was the reminder text taking up needless space that was causing the problem. I think I'm going to go through and remove the reminder text from the cards where I don't think it's needed, mainly the evergreen ones. I'll try and remember to write the changes but if I forget thats what it is.

Thanks for that, although let's keep it to only the cards that are in the skeleton. Counting mechanics of cards that aren't int he set is kinda pointless.

It looks like we are about to finish the Commons, a few cards are still missing but everything else looks ok. Do you think we could playtest just the Commons?

By the way, has anybody found a way to use the export function to add the cards to MSE? Tried it with CSV, but the CSV Importer for MSE didn't work for me...

I can export them and put up a MSE-file, but AFAIK no one has implmented DFCs yet.

s chance has it my work on a complete conversion tool for MSE/magicmultiverse.net is what made me notice this set. ^^

Oh cool, which kind of format do you export into? My meager research was that there aren't that many reliable ways to import into MSE, but many to export from it. It's just that MSE has really good statistic tools that can sort out everything, and that would make it easier for us to work on higher rarities since it always helps to know what kind of CMC or P/T etc. is not represented yet.

IIRC I'm converting XML into mse.

Note also: Right now all cards are exported, including cards not currently in the skeleton. Though I think I could filter those results and maybe even make the DFCs work.

That's a good approach, especially if you want to import old sets into MSE.

Importing all cards is not that much of a problem, once they are in MSE sorting takes not that long. Problem is getting the cards there :/

While mocking up some cards replacing discovery with discoveries I noticed that there might be a problem with changing the name to that. Since what you are counting isn't a physical number of lands (since while you control more than 1 of the same land, all of them are counting towards your discovery) using discoveries to describe them doesnt make sense. Dont know if anyone has found a way to word it that does make sense. Isnt too important until we start finishing up the set to finalise the name of a mechanic, but we will have to change the wording on cards.

BTW: Do NOT replace the name of the mechanic on individual cards! Just tag every instance of the mechanic as "Discovery". The site has a function to automatically replace every (tagged) instance of a keyword's development name with a final name.

Doing it by hand would be mindless work and just serve to make the cards incompatible with each other.

Ah I should have been a bit more specific, I wasnt using Multiverse to mock up the cards. I was just seeing how we'd have to change the wording on a few if we changed the name of the mechanic.

Come on guys, we need a final verdict on the missing cards! Let's finish the Commons so we can start planning the Uncommons.

@Gustostückerl: What do you expect anyone to do that isn't done?

We'll not "finish" the commons any time soon, but I think it's a good time to consider just setting up the uncommon slots in the skeleton.

Give an opinion on what cards are preferred for CW12 and CB12. Of course it's not fully finished then, but we can playtest better with a full Common skeleton.

For CW12 I like Sun's Glory. I would have normally picked something a little more complex for this but I really think that in this set if we can keep it simple we should.

For CB12 I think maybe a reworked version of Sudden Hunger. Could just give all creatures +1/+0 and lifelink, although it might have to cost more at that point.

Yeah, Sun's Glory for CW12. Celestial Flare would be stronger, but too hard to cast most of the time for all the mixed decks. I would Like Sudden Hunger for CB12 too, as it is right now. Unconditional +1/+0 and lifelink for all would need to be expensive, compare it to Cruel Feeding or slightly better Cutthroat Maneuver. If it proves to complicated to use we can change it, but I like the versatility it has.

Updated the skeleton to have a brief outline of what the uncommons should look like. We dont have to keep to it exactly, its more that we have a decent number of our themes present at uncommon. Added a few previously made cards that fit the descriptions.

Thanks for that, looks good so far. I think we need more Manasinks and creatures with activated abilities in Uncommon to fit a different playstyle. So far we got lots of triggered abilities on creatures but not much else, which may be too combolicious for some players.

Yeah there are some empty slots and stuff in the skeleton. I just tried to keep the themes we where going for present at uncommon. But more manasinks would be nice.

To the best of my ability, I filled out more slots in the skeleton that fitted what the slot descriptions were, including competing cards. I also commented on cards that I felt were good or useful designs that don't fit into the skeleton based on the descriptions. For example, Vanish into Undergrowth is a pretty core off-color Discovery card, and a creature destruction card, but there was no slot given for any regular creature destruction at uncommon. Same goes for discard, which has two contending cards, but there is no slot for either in the skeleton.

The one other thing that popped out at me is that the blue enchantment slot is reserved for mill. Should it be? We have a few mill cards but it's not that important of a theme overall.

The things I signposted in the uncommons are themes we need to hit, how they're done is up for debate. It is so much more important to have our themes obvious at uncommon than common. Cards that don't fit into out existing archetypes are secondary, for example discard doenst really fit any archetype so until we know we have room for it we shouldnt try and force it into the skeleton. Some cards I may have left out because I wasnt trying to just put the cards we had already made into the skeleton, it should be that the cards fit the skeleton not the other way around. Plus I dont want to try and force cards into slots that could be taken up by cards that do the thing we need better. That being said Vanish into Undergrowth and a few others should find a spot in there.

Well my first priority was simply to put in cards that did fit what you signposted, which simply weren't added.

Only secondarily to that, did I run into the issue that there are a few cards, like Vanish into Undergrowth, that are core designs we had going back a few months that I don't think we'd want to abandon. I simply commented on those cards to note that, I didn't put them in to the skeleton.

As far as discard, I just kind of figured there'd be room for one at uncommon, considering there is one at common as well.

The other thing is that how you decide to signpost the skeleton can be potentially subject to change here and there. As, for example, sign posting mill for the blue enchantment slot I don't agree with, as it's not an archetype or mechanic for the set. Especially when there already are a handful of blue uncommon enchantment designs that do fit archetypes for the set.

Don't get hung-up on the slots, everyone. Especially in uncommon you can easily relax a cardslot's requirements. A skeleton is not final.

Right now if anyone sees a card that should be in a slot, but has no perfectly fitting slot, put it as a contesting card to the closest fit (so it has a high visibility) and as time passes those essential designs will make there way back in.

BTW: I have updated my exporting script and will soon upload an exported mse-set with all commons.

NOTE: This will be an Alpha version and it has some issues (e. g. not yet correctly enforcing frames on DFCs etc.) but you probably don't want to wait for a bug-free release. ^^

EDIT: Pyrulea commons mse-set linked here.

Something that needs to be addressed is the uncommon skeleton and our already existing uncommons.

The uncommon skeleton is me throwing ideas out there about what we could want at uncommon. If each color has two cards for a 2 color archetype then there will be five cards for each archetype at uncommon, which is the average number. When I made uncommon skeleton I just came up with ideas about what these uncommons could be. I didnt use existing ideas when making it I just came up with what we 'needed' and then filled the rest in with generic stuff that could benefit the other archetypes. I'm fully expecting to find that we want other cards that we want at uncommon and replace some of the slots with new ideas.

Also we dont have to try and fit every uncommon we've made into these slots; some of the uncommons just dont feel right anymore, some arent balance, and some are just clearly outclassed by similar cards. The point is that we should only try and put a existing uncommon into the skeleton if we feel like it makes a necessary impact on the uncommons. If it doesnt feel necessary then leave it out, we can add it in later when we've got a good starting point for our uncommons.

I'm fine with the fact that some existing uncommons just aren't going to make it into the skeleton. There are some that I see why they just don't feel right or aren't viable designs (for example, in retrospect the cards that transform a creature/enchantment I think should be abandoned, so it makes perfect sense why no one has added them). But I feel like I've mostly only put cards in that do fit the archetypes listed.

The one concern I have is that some designs here and there that actually are good or core designs are going to be just forgotten in an ever-expanding card file if we don't mark them in the skeleton, if we proceed to go ahead and make a bunch of other new cards that fill the skeleton while they are left behind. So I'm not sure how easy it will be to "add it later" when all the space will already have been taken by other things. That's why I feel an incentive to make them visible in the skeleton.

The other thing is that I'd much rather have designs of mine that already exist be critiqued and for me to be told why they shouldn't be there, then for them to just be lost in the shuffle without comment or being considered for the skeleton. That's why I'm commenting on them asking for feedback. It's one thing for people to give reasons why something shouldn't be there, it's another for it to silently just not be considered at all. There are other people's designs this applies to as well.

For example, once I pushed the issue, you gave me a good explanation for why Itzal's Watchful probably shouldn't be included. That's great, I get it now. But, for another example, cards like Card74006 and Swirling Gale have been passed over without any comment or consideration. So I feel an incentive to comment on them asking for feedback and consideration, otherwise they're just going to be silently left behind without explanation.

So, in essence, my view is that existing cards that haven't been added to the skeleton need critique or consideration before just being sidelined for new designs. Maybe some of them have good reasons for not being added, maybe some should actually be there.

That's a very fair point. Some of the cards I saw and just felt there where better options but others I would like to try and fit into the skeleton. Is there someway we can have a group of cards that we'd consider for the skeleton? Ones that we feel should probably have a place but there doesn't seem to be one. I could make a seperate page and we could just post a list of cards that we feel could have a place in the skeleton there?

I'm not sure how it can be done other than just people going through the card file and zeroing in on the existing cards and critiqueing them or putting them up for consideration, though that isn't the most organized way I guess.

I think if everyone did it for every card it would be hard to keep track of everthing going on. I'm tempted to just go through and comment on the ones that I feel are intersting enough to warrent a spot. I think we have 130 uncommons right now so commenting on all of them isnt the most efficient way to do it.

It doesn't need to be done with every card, just particular ones of interest that haven't been considered or critiqued.

Big picture question: Should we keep the red-white theme as is? The more I look into it, the less it fits the set. Since 1/1 tokens have been moved into black-green there is no natural overlap there, and green-white's +1/+1 counter theme actively works against "low toughness".

We could have 's theme as Voltron? Kind of works with the +1/+1 counter theme in white, building up one huge creature. Opposite of the archetype. Cards could care about having only one/two creatures.

The low toughness theme is interesting but your right that it doesnt really fit alongside other themes, making it hard to make cards that could be played in other archetypes.

Could go in the opposite direction of bolster, giving a creature with the highest power among your creatures a bonus. Would always benefit of +1/+1 counters.

I wouldn't actually outright scrap those cards if they are in the skeleton. And while intuitively I didn't care for having enchantment creatures at first, I can think of one practical reason for keeping them in W/B: the fact that they count as enchantments can be useful for enchantment matters cards. Them being in only W/B is kind of exactly on point, is it not?

I dont mean just get rid of them, just turn the enchantment creatures types into just creatures. It does help the archetype out but don't know if its worth just having a few random enchantment creatures in the set.

I can see it being a little odd just for a handful of enchantment creatures existing, yea.

About the creature cycle that gets buffed by having a certain land, which place should they go in the skeleton if you want to have them? Blue is already full, so we would need to make space.

I kind of assumed it'd go in the closest equivolent of the non-specific "regular creature" slot and anything that still has an open slot, if possible. At least in a few colors those slots are not filled. A few cards may have to be shifted around to accommodate it in some colors though. But UW08 and UB05 are completely open.

Let's put them into the UX05 slot, since that's the highest every colour goes and every cycle card has to be in the same slot.

That's probably one of the better suggestions, though it kind of displaces certain design space, such as one of blue's unbound cards. I also must admit that it does occur to me that this cycle would be pushing it a little bit with cycles, as we already have 2 cycles at uncommon and 2 at common. Squeezing in 3 cycles at uncommon really puts limitations on design space.

That's true, at least we have options now for different cycles. Personally I would swap them for the basic landcycling cards in Uncommon. They are cool, but each colour already has one like that in Common, and I don't think every colour needs so many ways to search for lands. Yes lands are a major focuspoint, but that doesn't mean that every colour should have so much ramp. Zendikar didn't have it either, and you could still make good land decks in non Green colours.

Sorted out the skeleton a bit. Moved some cards from spots into competing spots even if there wasnt any cards competing with them, just because we hadn't talked about them in enough detail or explored other cards for that slot. Im going to try and clean up the uncommon skeleton in the next few days because it just feels like a mess to me. Only cards that I actually removed from the skeleton where the small toughness cards. What do we actually want to do for that archetype? 5+ power like in Shards, Voltron stacking effects onto one creature have been the two suggested archetypes so far.

Was wondering why cards where coming and going on the page. What exactly do you mean with cleaning up though? It looks good in terms of focusing on what cards are needed.

About the new theme, I'm for 5+ power/highest power kind of thing. Not so sure about Voltron, what exactly would that mean in this set? Would a reverse bolster be considered Voltron?

I mean just like sorting out the slots so that each slot of a similar type is next to each other, instead of being a few slots apart. Initially I had imagined a curve, similar to what we had at common, but didn't write in the specific mana costs. What turned out is a more natural skeleton. Don't you think it would be better to group the effects together so its easier to see what's competing for those slots?

As for the archetype, the 5+ power thing seems fine. It does feel a bit green to me but I can get over that. The way Voltron would work would be similar to the highest power archetype, kind of get a creature with double strike and pump it up with spells and enchantments. All Voltron really needs is a few creatures with double strike and then some pump spells.

Well what's the archetype going to be? Any more opinions on that? Apart from the cards for that type and a green Unbound creature we have suggestions for every cards slot in Uncommon, so let's review them and decide which cards go into the skeleton.

I think it's best to just do high power for the archetype. A few cards that care about you having the creature with the highest power on the battlefield, or do things to the creature with highest power you control. Its not a major part of the set but if we don't pin something down soon, is just gonna end up being aggro or something like that.

Vote for highest Power creature, either power 5+ or like Bolster but for highest power.

I think it's better to just have cards that care about the creature you control with the highest power, bolster for highest power kind of begins to overlap with the archetype too much. But yeah I'm on board with that.

Looks like our activity has died out for a little bit here. Hope the project doesn't fizzle out after all the work so far put into it. I recall DJK or Silent talking about play testing the commons a while back but never heard anything more about it.

I've been a little busy recently and didn't want to make too many changes on my own, since I also noticed that the activity had started to die down.

No idea what's happening with playtesting but finishing the uncommons before we playtest the commons seems a little counter intuative. Thats if we want to try and do this properly, we could just finish the set and playtest afterwards. But if we've got people willing to playtest now then I don't see why we should do that.

Can we playtest it ourselves? I know that is unprofessional, but I would like to be part of a playtest for our own set. We could make a fake draft with the commons via Cockatrice for example, will probably be faster and cheaper than printing them :)

I don't see anything wrong with that necessarily. I'm wondering if we've run out of steam for the moment with the set though.

Playtesting yourself is actually useful before you hand it off to blind playtesting - it helps weed out more glaring problems early. A lot of the cards and concepts we have still have to prove themselves to be fun at all, really.

You do the alpha test before the beta test. :)

Apparently not, but good job to everyone who has been working on this concept version of Ixalan. We have DFCs turning into lands, we have an explore keyword, we have a south-/meso-american theme.

We are severely lacking in Dinosaurs, Vampire Conquistadors and Pirates though.

I'm still around, just peeked in.

Wait what? Sorry you guys, kinda shelved this whole plane. Lost a bit of my spark, and then Ixalan was leaked and stole all my thunder!

Wouldn't mind alpha testing it if someone is still up for it. Still not sure about all the abilities though.

I can convert the cards from the skeleton to a Cockatrice file on a free day - after all I have some time for playtesting now.

So before playtests I want to make certain every card already in the skeleton has at least a name. EDIT: Done.

Discovery in Rivals of Ixalan! :)

That's neat because I always considered it the best mechanic to come out of Pyrulea (next to the explore version Ixalan took as well but that is not currently in the set).

So, I'm considering either reprinting a cycle of cycling lands at common, or make a new one.

Options:

• Secluded Steppe, Lonely Sandbar, Barren Moor, Forgotten Cave, Tranquil Thicket
• Drifting Meadow, Remote Isle, Polluted Mire, Smoldering Crater, Slippery Karst, Blasted Landscape
• something new...
• like Sunblood Roost, Coalescing Cascades, Haunted Crypt, Cavernous Encampment, Bustling Nest
• like Twilight Settlement, Mystical Outpost, Infested Roothold, Hearth Shrine, Frontier Observatory

(I don't think Deserts fit the setting, so Desert of the Indomitable etc. are out)

Added new details page

• Cycles

Currently fleshing out the Creative of Pyrulea and adding some details that should help creating more flavorful cards down the line.

As far as the initial wave of Unbound ideas I brainstormed, I'd pose the question of if you're cool with the change that was made to Unbound, and I'd point you to some of my recent Unbound designs as possibilities:

In white: Spiritual Incarnation, Temple Apothecary, ((C101464)), Radiant Guardian, Temple Guard (my version, could be renamed), and ((C101463)). Rallying Captain is already in the skeleton here and got a pretty positive response at the salvation forums last week.

For blue: Coastal Incarnation, Skyborn Elemental, Tidal Elemental, Uir's Betrayal, Yaados Elemental, and Freewind Visionary (different card, same name).

For green: Birds of Pyrulea, Canopy Voyager, Earth Incarnation, Hive Soldier, Horizon Incarnation, Mystical Terrain, Treefolk Elder, ((C101471)), ((C101472)), and Xibal Shaman. Birds of Pyrulea got good response at MTG Salvation as well.

For multicolor: Uir, Emori Outsider and Liberate Territory.

The new unbound also opened up a few artifact and land design ideas: Solar Crucible and Undiscovered Terrain.

A few of these cards might accidentally have the same name as another card here, or are slight variations on some of the commons in the skeleton, generally with a slightly lower mana cost and P/T as to be more practical, but otherwise they're original designs, some of which are designed with the "new unbound" in mind.

Those Unbound creatures that turn into Unbound lands are part of a cycle in all colors actually, I just used something other than unbound on front side of the red and black cards.

Big picture, especially when it comes to multicolor and artifact/land ideas that have limited space or a lot of cards already competing for the space, some of these might be best suited for a 2nd companion Pyrulea set. Otherwise, I think some of this could potentially be worked in here and possibly tweaked as necessary, particularly for some uncommon and rare slots, but it's contingent on the new Unbound being implemented for some of them.

I see Unbound as encouraging a "tap/untap" creature combo scheme, and generally uniquely being beneficial to control players. Another thought of mine is that Unbound meshes well with Flash, especially once we get to this notion of lands and mana tapping creatures having unbound.

One of the things I like about the second branch, is that we care about different things. To me personally unbound is a mechanic with nice (unproven) potential, but it is the weakest link when it comes to actually interacting nicely with the rest of the set - also to its own detriment since the other mechanics don't provide unbound with the environment it needs to blossom (as e. g. conspire or convoke would).

An important test unbound has currently too often failed in playtesting is players correctly remembering to untap only some of their permanents during other players' untap steps - it turns out remembering that one unbound creature you attacked with at a time you usually leave the action to your opponent is not a simple thing.

I'm not certain what you mean with the "change that was made to Unbound". Putting it on noncreature permanents? That was never not an option IMO, so that's cool and kinda why I suggested it. ;)

A notion that I carry in the back of my mind is to split Pyrulea in two branches where one develops the unbound/flash opportunities properly, while the other carries on and focusses on the land-/cycling-themes.

That would be a big step, but with all the work you have put into developing unbound already, I wonder whether it's become a valid option.

Discovery works better with a 1+ threshold than a static threshold of 3 that doesn't encourage you to grow any further.

I'm pruning "discovery 3 or more"-mechanics from common in an effort to make discovery more relevant as a positive than as a requirement you fail to satisfy.

One of the main things that prompted me to look further into Unbound was a flavor consideration when I saw this card as the second side of a DFC: Horizon Boughs. It references Pyrulea, and gives your permanents the equivalent of Unbound. And gives a flavor reason for Birds of Pyrulea as well.

The change to unbound was rewording it so it can work on non-creatures, yes.

The other thing about Unbound is, almost by nature of it being able to be on lands, I see it as being very beneficial to blue control strategies. What blue player wouldn't love the idea of their lands always being open for a counterspell?

IIRC Horizon Boughs is the inspiration/justification for unbound. It's notable that it's a global effect and actually requires less attention to process than individual cards with unbound.

I do wonder, based on what you're saying, if the a 2nd/followup Pyrulea set would be best served with either of those two mechanics being introduced as an important set mechanic, or otherwise a new mechanic that jibes with Unbound. So the 1st set would introduce Unbound, and the 2nd set would complete its interactive potential more.

But then I do have to wonder...would that feel like Pyrulea?

Another thing, about me as a designer in general. I like to experiment and stretch the boundaries. Some of my ideas come from a "What if?" thought. That doesn't always work out. But it can. I'm better at designing than when I first started with it. Sometimes I have a concept that I'm trying out. But often the first version of the concept doesn't work out and I have to backtrack to make it work. Other times the idea just has to be abandoned. But I view that as part of the process.

My designs also probably reflect the type of player I am to an extent. I'm a combo oriented player. I'm also very much a Johnny type of player, and someone who likes deck ideas that are counter-intuitive or a bit off the wall. Some of my favorite cards and decks back in the day were things that manipulate the rules or the battlefield a lot, or that involve wild combos.

If I'm ever missing something about MTG mechanic precedent, it's most likely just because I simply do not actually keep up consistently with new sets or play these days, and I missed years of MTG precedent after I originally quit in the early 2000's. For the same reason a lot of people quit: People don't like to endlessly shell out money just to stay competitive with a rotating format. It is a convenient endless money suck for Wizards that way.

So I find custom design much more rewarding and fun than buying new cards, and it doesn't cost me a dime. The fact that my original heyday of playing was about 1994-2002 is also reflected a bit in my designs. I'm nostalgic for some of the things that used to exist that probably never would fly today. Like Stasis decks and Graveyard manipulation stuff, and just crazy control strategies, that just doesn't exist outside vintage/legacy.

I don't know what to prefer: Two independent mechanical realizations of the same plane/flavor (that maybe overlap in some mechanics e. g. transform and cycling); or two sets that form a block/arc and play well with one another.

What I really wouldn't want is one set to be forced into some unnatural knots to match the other, but if I naturally fit some cards like Oltac Congregation into a set without unbound that's still positive synergy.
I think WotC got that right with their new system that utilizes multiple stand-alone sets over the big & small expansions.

As you are the last other member of the old team active: Would you prefer me branching off as well, or should I continue updating this set?

I actually am fully supportive of continuing this set and completing it if possible. I just wasn't sure, when I initially started Branch II, that this set was continuing. I saw that you were archiving it, but I assumed it was dead in the water at first, because so much time has passed and as far as I can tell you were the only active one left. But then you started commenting and updating things.

I'm down to continue contributing to this. I view my Branch two as a potential linked 2nd Pyrulea set, but if so, I'd like it to be coherent with this one. And I'm totally cool if some of the ideas from Branch II make their way into this. It looks like most of it probably won't. But something as simple as the change to Unbound in itself already has implications for changing the designs here.

Also, I'm not just interested in Unbound, but also exploring the "cycling synergy/combo" or "cycling matters" thing.

I want a more visible white-blue draft-theme. The playstyle can stay the same, but they could use some definition to make them stand out more as a buildable theme. No idea where to go with that yet.

Mechanics that this set could have or riff on:

• evoke (imagination, miracles)
• undergrowth (where the Xibal live after all)
• delve (through the layers... exploration, discovery)
• explore (which was part of the set once already - with one suggested wording being a good match)

I wonder what it means to think of cycling as a way of "traversing/exploring your deck" and how that relates to the mechanics we have and whether we really could make the act of cycling feel more evocative of exploration. Cards like Fatal Smite would make for intriguing discoveries.

I personally thought about a (nonkeyworded) mechanic that said "~ costs less to cast for each card you cycled or discarded this turn." Such cards that you are happy to "uncover" by cycling are why undergrowth also seems like a fascinating potential addition.

Current themes:

• lands matter (discovery, double-faced lands, landcycling) to show exploration
• enchantments matter (dfc enchantments, enhantment creature Elementals) to show imagination/wonder
• cycling/discard matters (cycling, cycling-reward cards, graveyard-reward cards) to show exploration and discovery
• large spells matter (high cmc instant/sorcery theme, cycling cards with high cmc) to show wonder/discovery

I think Explore would enhance the land matters thing, while also furthering the ends of the cycling and exploration thing.

It also occured to me strongly that we need black's end of cycling to have some graveyard matters, so I could see undergrowth.

A mechanic like what you suggest would probably work good for / - instants and sorceries costing less based on you cycling cards. More in /'s domain, on big instant/sorceries. Which enhances that archetype as well. It's not a bad idea with the "or discarded" added.

Convoke works well with Unbound.

Yea, I like Fatal Smite and wonder about other possible similar designs.