Portal of New New World Order: Comments

I think you mean "11 or more words". Reading more than an average sentence is just too daunting for new players, especially in this day and age.

I like the idea. This should be frustratingly entertaining.

Protection shouldn't be an issue, but this should account for new evergreen mechanics as well. I'm certain prowess would be red-flagged as well if it was taken into consideration while menace likely wouldn't if even intimidate makes it IN.

You should really create a skeleton early on since the challenge comes from filling the holes in that one (I suggest adding a column to mark flagged cards right in the skeleton).

Yup. Adding a crap ton of square-statted vanilla creatures will likely be boring though.

Since I need go to bed right now, I'll note that the set should be fully editable so if someone is up for it, they can add a skeleton and whatnot.

I was going to, but it seems it's actually not possible. You'd need to set admin privileges to all users, I think.

Oh. I had forgotten to add admin privileges to logged-in users :/
So now it should be possible for anybody to edit.

I have created a preliminary set skeleton and distributed all keywords allowed at common across the common creature slots in some approximation of the ratios I've found on a quick search.

In particular I marked 20 creature slots as vanilla. I gave an additional slot to green since green has the most options and one less to red since red is a spell color and has less p/t spread than blue.

Feel free to move these around, but that's the actual number we aim for.

Spell slots got a quick preliminary assignment, too.

DISCUSSION: The article introducing New New World Order mentions tokens are problematic, but makes no mention of counters. Loophole to be exploited or to be closed?

Also: One way to make vanilla creatures matter more is to introduce cards that care about them. Aaron Forsythe once pointed out that the vanilla 1/1s in Alpha also had a tribal lord in the set. I suggest building upon that and choosing vanilla 1/1s (and vanillas in general) accordingly.

I think choosing vanillas is harder than normal creatures. Normal creatures you have mechanical text to use to flesh them out. Vanilla, you only have flavour text and name. Sure, the stats part is easier, but the rest? Not so much. (Though also echo - it would maybe be better to allow the vanillas to be non-square and simplify the non-vanillas by having those be square)

Echo the suggestion of lords. I think counters need taking a bit of care over; but, for example, clockwork beasts seem simple enough to not be problematic - "How big is it? Count the counters" is pretty intuitive. Mind you, maybe that's still "Red flag it, but it passes" territory rather than a hard ban.

And.. wait; this is an actual official thing? Huh. That's 50% "Make it really simple for onboarding" and 50% "Hey, we can sell a lot more cards now, because you need to flush past the vanillas"

Just out of practical issues, I don't like counters much so I would definitely not like to have them... maybe not even on higher rarities...

I don't necessary think that the cards in this set would have to be less powerful than in an expert set, but I can't think of any way to make a 1/1 vanilla creature not 'bad'. 2/2 for 2 and 3/3 for 3 and etc are 'okay' but IMO 1/1 for 1 is just too low power. For that reason I might avoid having 1/1s vanillas in the set altogether. Though maybe one in since it's the worst creature color.

EDIT: Having non-square statted vanilla creatures and square-statted non-vanilla creatures sounds something worth exploring. Ie. "Learning how non-square stats" work could be the role of vanilla creatures. Thought that would lessen them as something easy you don't have to be think about too much - beyond the basics of being a creature.

I think having more than 20% of the vanillas non-square is a good idea. But you should be aware that some staple effects among the spells will gather red flags by going "up to 11" e. g. ramp.

EDIT: Always check the release date of an article.

That article was written in 2013. Now five years later, how much of it has been followed through? Spoiler: very little.

Tokens are redflagged? There are 47 commons that make tokens. That's average of 8 per set.

20% of commons are vanilla creatures? There are 37 vanilla commons, or about 10% of all commons creatures in standard, or 5% of all commons. The pattern is: for big sets, 1 vanilla for each of the five colors, plus optionally 1 more for white or artifact; so big sets get around 6, and small sets half of that = 3.

(Note: Current Standard has no vanillas above common rarity.)

Square stats by default? Only half the common creatures are square. This extends to vanillas, too: less than 1/3 of them are square.

... you do realize that the article was posted as an April Fools' joke, right?

if that's relevant, why was that never mentioned? yet you act like the design of this set is serious.

Well, I mean, is any custom card design really 'serious'? How is that defined?

I was thinking of this set as an interesting experiment; something that might be learned from. The premise has believability after all. It also sets harsh restrictions that could be interesting to try to meet. A 'hard mode' if you will.

For whatever it is worth I'm taking the restrictions serious for this set, but am mentally capable of separating this set from other custom sets and from official sets.

The intent to me never never appeared to be the creation of a set as it would mirror the design rules we will see in a contemporary official release, but merely to follow the design rules laid out in the fiction of the cited article.

I can tell you that the perspective shift after just spending fifteen minutes a day trying to follow NNWO and then returning to another project and enjoying the lack of restrictions has been a worthwhile experience for me.

Number of Red Flags: 15 Number of colored commons: 5*19= 95 Perecentage: ca. 15.8%

Number of common slots total: 101 Empty slots left (artifacts & land): 4 (Equipment, Mana Rock & Land)

Estimated Red Flag Percentage (once done): ca. 18.8%

We're on our way. I invite anyone to check the skeleton and comment on missed red flags and problematic cards etc.

I'm currently brainstorming some draft themes for the color pairs.

Inadvertently, it seems, the amount of life gain in green-white has gone up enough to justify a theme.

We also have many vanilla creatures and even a few cards like Muraganda Petroglyphs, so I though vanilla-matters for red-green and tokens for white-X?.

Among white-blue-black I could see a theme of power 2 (or less), flying/evasion, maybe life loss.

Flash is fine. How about interrupt? xD Seriously though, that term might better describe the general gameplay effect instants have.

Ugh, writing out and updating/fixing that reminder text is a bit of a pain. There doesn't seem to a way to create a mechanic with no name (with just codename)... Maybe a single white space as a name would be enough - if that required validation doesn't trim the name. I don't like that solution though.

A trick, that I use sometimes, is to give the mechanic a codename (e. g. "FlashReminder") and put the entire reminder text (including parentheses) as the name.

Check out e. g. the (custom) explore reminder text in my Card Repository over here.

It won't help with all the necessary retyping of supertypes, but that's just why I didn't want to bring the hassle of introducing that change into this set to begin with. ^^

What are the errata issues with instant that flash doesn't have? I have some sense there might be some, but I'm not 100% on the details. How much of an issue would they really be?

I kinda like instant since it works well as an adjective which I see as preferable for a super type.

This is on a whole another topic, but I would think about nonsquared stats not being a red-flag as long as the creature is (otherwise) fully vanilla (has no abilities whatsoever). For example, I would count the complexity of a 2/2 haste vs 2/3 vanilla being slightly more on the side of the haste creature.

I think you should be aware of the problem from your own experience with Puzzled Out - old wording will refer to instant cards but are not meant to apply to new wording instant permanent cards.

It is more consequent to just do the interrupt thing and fold instants into sorceries. And call out "flash sorcery card" or "swift sorcery card" on the cards where you want to be specific.

I don't think anything that directly is called out in the original article as deserving a red flag should get anything less. Otherwise you are not doing "NNWO" but "partway to NNWO".

I consider most of the challenge for creature cards in the square stats; allowing them is like "soccer but you're allowed to take the ball in your hands and run with it" or "marathon, but you may use a car rather than go by foot". You might as well not take the challenge at all and do a different thing.