Vryn
Vryn by Nodle
90 cards in Multiverse
61 commons, 15 uncommons, 14 rares
21 white, 23 blue, 19 black, 14 red,
9 green, 1 multicolour, 2 artifact, 1 land
125 comments total
Cold War Spy themed set
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| Mechanics | Skeleton | Archetypes | World | Cycles |
Design Overview
Vryn is a cold war themed set focussed on espionage tropes. I plan to draw a lot from popular interpretations of spy fiction. Think things like James Bond. Mechanically, I'm experimenting with much greater than normal quantities of modal effects. Players will be given the opportunity to make many decisions. These decisions should allow players the opportunity to infer things about their opponent's plans, gathering intelligence. These decisions should also allow for misinforming the opponent by making strange choices, counter intelligence.
Plot Introduction
In the years since Alhammarret's disappearance, tensions between the Trovian and the Ampryn have continued to rise. War looms as each side attempts to learn more about the other's plans and disrupt each others capabilities. Trovia is engaged in a war with the Affebern while the Core States are occupied with a potential rebellion in the Nurich province. The Mage Elite continue to remain aloof, asserting only the leadership needed to maintain access to the mage rings coveted by both the Ampryn and the Trovian.
Notes
Set is still in early design. All costs should be seen as provisional and comments on power level of a card mostly aren't helpful at this stage. There will be lots of placeholder names and "add flavor later" found as well. If there are any common spy tropes or cold war references you think I should make, feel free to leave a comment with your idea. It will be greatly appreciated.
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: Search your library for an artifact with converted mana cost equal to the number of artifacts you control and put it onto the battlefield then shuffle your library.
, sacrifice an artifact : Mage Ring Detonator deals damage to any target equal to the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost.
Sacrifice a Gadget : Q's Coupe becomes a Creature and gains First Strike, and Trample until end of turn.
Crew 2
"Protection from nonlegendary" seemed too hard to overcome. I like the new "hexproof from" variant more in that sense.
It wouldn't be much of a stretch for this to be mono-
(actually it's a stretch for this to be esper). The 
colors don't do much here. From EDH perspective I can (grudgingly) understand the added colors, but mono-
would feel more appropriate. From flavor perspective this would sound reasonable as well since at the moment the card seems akin to Blofeld from Bond series.
The villain of the story. Name to be updated later.
Functional reprint of Ritual of Rejuvenation. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
This could be
or 
cheaper. Even with the instant speed and cantrip life gain as a spell effect doesn't have much mileage.
Edit: after looking at your skeleton naming I can see you're probably aware lol
You might as well add Confident Captain to that list since it also cost
, is a 2/2, and gives you Gadgets thought it has higher risk-reward theme regarding getting those Gadgets.
The modes are balanced by virtue of being perpendicular to each other and desirable at different stages of the game. I'll worry about fine tuning balance later. There are definitely a lot of modes that could easily replace the scry 1 mode if I choose to make it more powerful.
marked for redesign
How is color fixing more problematic than mana acceleration? Color fixing encourages splashing and adding additional colors - ie. diversity. Mana acceleration asks for combos and powering out quickly your finishers. Chromatic Star is okay, but a Lotus Petal for colorless mana is not. Obviously Gold/Treasure tokens did both of these things, but they exclusively appeared in
, 
, and 
. Of all the colors, 
would be the wrong one as far as I know.
Scry 2 is certainly more complex than scry 1, but if you start comparing it to the decision tree you have to do when thinking whether or not pop for 'tap creature' option, it's the more preferable option IMO.
I guess 'tap target' is a tolerable option, but it's obviously the most complex of all the choices, even if scry 2 would be accompanying it. Life gain would certainly be one of the simpler options you could possibly have here. I would at least consider playing around the issues it could potentially cause rather than drop it cold out-right.
That all aside, if you really want to push for these bends, I don't think the 3 current options you suggest are balanced with each other.
> Add
; or tap target creature; or scry 1.
IMO "scry 1" pales in comparison to the other two. I would find the mana generation one to be the strongest one. It gains you tempo and likely board presence you wouldn't be able to muster otherwise - likely even not in the span of multiple rounds. "Tap creature" is certainly a strong contender. Preventing from attacking is essentially life gain though, so it's just furthering the inevitable. Alpha attacking by making your dudes unblockable is pretty strong though. Especially as the opponent has to play around the possibility of you making the couple of dudes they leave to defend unable to do so, which is an additional step of complexity as it even affects the decisions of your opponents in addition to you.
Looks a bit too similar to (((Clever Conscript))): same mana cost, power, and gives you a Gadget. It fills the same role essentially.
Redesigned after pushing around mechanics.