Pyrulea: Recent Activity
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| Mechanics | More Detail on The Set | Skeleton | Color Archetypes | Creative/World Building | Cycles |
Recent updates to Pyrulea: (Generated at 2025-05-06 16:10:29)
I think giving +2/+1 works better here.
"My only reason for criticizing the unnamed landfall is because it was explicitly part of the design goal of the set not to use landfall. So it just seems to be a little counter-intuitive to have it at all."
Having a couple of cards with the landfall effect is quite different from dozens with named landfall. The reason not to use landfall is to take the idea of land matters in a different direction. Given landfall is such a generic way of making lands matter, I don't think having less than say four or five cards is going to be enough to take away from doing that with Discovery, especially with other non-Discovery ways of caring about lands, such as with basic landcycling and linked effects.
This particular card is bleh and I see the point, so I'm cool with going ahead and replacing it.
My only reason for criticizing the unnamed landfall is because it was explicitly part of the design goal of the set not to use landfall. So it just seems to be a little counter-intuitive to have it at all.
So with that said, what do we want to replace this with? A vanilla/french-vanilla creature? Some other use of Discovery?
This actually feels worse than unnamed landfall. Its harder to actually use, which just makes the card harder to balance. It has to be able to reward you appropriately for each time. Its not uncommon for cards to have unnamed landfall in other sets, and this being a land set makes sense that it'd have a few instances of that.
Changed trigger to instant or sorcery dealing damage. Changed second sides creature type to elemental.
The biggest problem with that card is the timing issue you will have most of the time. Vengeance of the Sun and similar cards probably do not care when you increase your Discovery, but this one does since Mana gets lost between the phases. Might lead to a lot of feel bad moments when you surprisingly increase your Discovery without using the Mana.
I have no problem with replacing this particular card, but I'm not keen on purging Vengeance of the Sun and Planar Conciousness, as I quite like them and I sort of treat them as a pair for the main discovery colors. TRicher recently created Open Valves as well. Maybe that one is less important, being off-color discovery. But I'd be quite hesitant to get rid of my main two designs using discovery this way.
With some of the cards we have that are Discovery enablers and general land ramp, the "lame duck" aspect can be overcome.
I think the few cards we have that are landfall without being named such are more questionable than using Discovery as pseudo-landfall on a handful of cards. Better psuedo-landfall than landfall in everything but name in a set in which we said we were not doing landfall.
I see "increasing discovery" as being lame duck in general and especially at common its use is doing a disservice to this already stretching mechanic.
This card e. g. punishes you for getting a high discovery early on since increasing discovery gets harder. The whole concept seems flawed from the beginning and if there are more cards like that I'd purge them from the file in an instant.
Yep, I started with this one and didn't get into the right mindset right away. The actual purpose is to give abilities that can break a stalemate - but also creatures that are common level rather than uncommon level.
Maybe this could become a bear or pump for +2/+1 or have a different efffect (token creation?).
I think that's a great suggestion. Keeping the same creature type on the 2nd side generally is not flavorful.
I like "Whenever a red instant or sorcery spell you controls deals damage to a player, ..." which is typical for red and kinda reminiscent of Delver of Secrets which this already resembles.
On a flavor note - does anyone else feel that the transformed side should be an Elemental? Like the Ashna worshippers turn into actual flamekin when they ascend to a higher level in their hierarchy.
Changed transform condition to be based on death, to match the white companion card.
Is this design considered problematic? It really is just Disruptive Student with Unbound, a more color-restrictive cost, and a slightly higher toughness. Much like Disruptive Student, I can see there being a concern that being able to potentially perpetually counter spells is a problem.
Is this card OP as it currently is? A lot of cards that do similar things are more limited. Necrotic Ooze only applies to creatures in graveyards. Experiment Kraj only applies to creatures with +1/+1 counters and is a higher CMC legendary creature. While this only applies to untapped creatures, creatures being untapped isn't that much of a limitation.
Even then, it's a weaker version of that card, as Discovery is more limited than landfall/"lands you control" stuff. Adding a cantrip or something else, like Cycling
, would make me feel better about it.
You're right, I was mistaken that this was taking a CMC space, it's only creatures that have a required CMC in the skeleton.
changed text to be in line with other mill cards.
This is a slightly altered version of Dreadwaters which counts all lands but is a sorcery. I was thinking of adding 'Draw a card' onto it, as it did seem a bit on the weaker side (as was Dreadwaters).
Discovery cards are going to be weaker in the early game, thats just how most of them function. Thats what gives the incentive to play more lands.
I'm almost 100% sure that this wasnt taking up any specific cmc space in the skeleton. We have 2 other 3 cmc cards in blue plus the cycling costs of other blue spells often cost around 3.
Honestly though, as it currently stands this is a pretty weak mill card. Tome Scour can mill 5 for one mana. For four mana this mills equal to your Discovery, which in a quick-paced single player game is not likely to reach much more than 6 or 7. I couldn't honestly see this card costing more than
for what it does, and even then, it is a weak play until the late game.
This seems to be a general problem that occurs with a number of the Discovery based instants and sorceries we have, where the card is actually a very weak play until the mid to late game when you've gotten a bunch of lands on the battlefield. Which gives you little incentive to cast the spell on the first three turns or so, when it amounts to a lesser version of other cards.
Maybe it'd be better just to do a Mill card that is a cycling card instead of Discovery.
Another issue is that this card was specifically taking up a 3 mana card space. So we either need to make a 3 mana card in its place, or be forced to displace another card for it (which I'd prefer not to do).
Changed from a disocvery based counter to a discovery based mill card, increased cost by
. Maybe this shouldnt be instant anymore but might not be too much of a problem.
Gave name(s).
I mostly just felt like black had one too many off-color Discovery cards at common. 5 in red and green, 3 in the rest isn't a bad way to do it.
Was missing card type.
I dont think there is too much off-color discovery. At common right now we have 5 cards in red and green, 4 in black, 3 in blue and 2 in white. Dont think that split dilutes the discovery that much, maybe something in black could be cut but I dont think its a huge problem.
Changed cycling to cost
from 
Part of me wishes that a DFC slot be reserved for something not so Vanilla. But at the same time, it has been said that red lacks some vanilla cards, and this is one way to do it. I do wonder if the transform condition could be something that coheres with themes on other cards better though. Like instant/sorcery theme, or something.
Yea I'd be fine with that, as I agree that Ash Barrens is surprisingly pushed. If only I can remember the original name I had for that card though! Something Wilderness?
I can see making it more color restrictive by changing it to
.
While it's true that Discovery exists in all colors, it's obviously skewed first and foremost toward green for a reason. It just seems natural, as part of green's identity, that the Discovery thing is strongest there and we've sort of emphasized
as its archetype ahead of time.
I feel like if we do too much off-color discovery, it can potentially start to feel arbitrary or not fit flavor very well. That's not to say that the other colors couldn't be viably integrated into a Discovery type of deck, but it really isn't something that should be equally represented in all the colors. Green is naturally going to have the biggest edge due to how much it cares about lands.
I can agree it makes most sense on the mostly uncommon enchantments that it is otherwise on with the cards we have.
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.