Name That Card: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Name That Card: (Generated at 2025-09-08 03:30:49)
| Name That Card: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Recent updates to Name That Card: (Generated at 2025-09-08 03:30:49)
Alex picks this one up with Deepwood Tower. See everybody in (((NTC #063)))!
Poll is up! Click here to vote on your favorite choice!
Oh, interesting. Yeah, I like the idea of mashing up two guilds. "Secret police" has compelling flavour, and a lot of others do as well.
I guess you could start with the five shards and the guild pairs that share a central colour, and the five wedges and the guild pairs that share the central colour. And then the five+five that share the anticlockwise colour. And then the five+five that share the clockwise colour. And then finally the fifteen pairs that didn't originally overlap in colour :) Probably wizards would probably get bored by then, although maybe not given we've already had several sequels to Ravnica, they could have had a different set of 10 guild-pairs every time.
I got another idea. Ten guilds of two guild pairings, exclusively. So Azorius and Dimir, but not Orzhov (they're the secret police.) This might sound counterintuitive, but if you're only doing it for a block, there's probably got to be way to make this work. Cards that look a lot like Castle Sengir or Keldon Mantle would be a decent way to start.
Thank you for the enthusiasm on the 3-guilds! Now I just need ten mechanics... :) More seriously, that's a good example of what I mean by "good sequel", of adding something to Ravnica more than just "Dimir, again". Although I think there's a lot of room for sequels less changed than that but more changed than the actual sequels, e.g. "the same ten guilds, but the city is destroyed" or "the same ten guilds, but they're only just being founded"
That also reminds me that flashbacks are probably a good idea for more magic sets, since if they (say) decide that blowing up a plane was a bad idea and don't want to wait 20 years to have a good idea what comes "next", they can fill in a bit of history earlier, or between two events, and build on the flavour that worked.
I like jmg's way of thinking about the triguilds too. I know I'm previously tried to remix the guilds somehow, trying to do mergers of two guilds or something, and it never quite clicked, but somehow "mix of three guilds" just fit perfectly for some reason.
Right. It seems weird to use the multicolor frame on tri-lands, but it's what supposed to be used.
Oddly, Jack is pushing into some of my Great Designer Search entry. I had an idea for 'tribunals' which consisted of three guilds that all hate one guild in specific. BWG would be the tribunal for UR (or Orzhov, Selesnya, and Golgari would all find common ground in how much they hate Izzet.) Likewise WUB would be the tribunal for RG (or Azorius, Dimir, and Orzhov would find common ground in how they hated Gruul.)
It's a cute idea that goes around the wheel like that. But honestly, Jack's idea is cleaner. It has more flavor, requires less explanation, and requires fewer cards to pay it off.
Hmm, so this is Sungrass Prairie/Selesnya Signet extended up to three colours. Seems reasonable. (Wants the gold frame like Sandsteppe Citadel and Cascading Cataracts.)
Jack's got some excellent setting-evocative names. I guess I'll go for something more generic then. Maybe... Deepwood Tower.
Jack's fused Ravnica triples are magnificently flavourful though. Awesome work.
And I can't resist a second:
Orzholgnya Resurectorium
I asked myself where this card could come from OTHER than a wedge set. And I considered a revamped Ravnica where the guilds have been remixed, breaking apart and forming into ten three-colour factions which each represents some aspects of the three guilds in those colours, e.g:
WBG: Orzholgnya, Orzhov/Golgari/Selesnya, obsessed with melding the spirit, body and flesh into technique of perfect resurrection
WBR: Orzhov/Rakdos/Boros, perfecting the perfect implacable crusaders
WBU: Orzhov/Azorius/Dimir, secretly ruling from the shadows, basically the illuminati
WGR: Selesnya/Boros/Gruul, basically Naya
WGU: Selesnya/Azorius/Simic, "growing" the perfect society for a culture
WRU: Boros/Azorius/Izzet, time police, or gadget police
BGR: Golgari/Rakdos/Gruul, feral zombies
BGU: Golgari/Dimir/Simic, secret fleshcrafters
BRU: Rakdos/Dimir/Izzet, secret agents of chaos
GRU: Gruul/Simic/Izzet, we make giant monsters who smash, oops
The flavour on Ravnica is so strong. I love how most of those ideas just came to me, but also represent fairly well defined tropes that fit into those colours, but are often distinct from the shards or wedges featured on other planes.
E.g. BWG is plausibly the colour of "true resurrection", given those are creature-graveyard-y colours, and BW are the most spiritual colours and G the most living-things colours. But it's no the only flavour. Resurrection has been seen in UBR with a more zombie-ish flavour. And BWG could also be the colour of "Abzan fortitute" or "treefolks" or "permanent destruction" instead.
But here I tried to capture a quintessential Orzholgnya place, something with both religious and somewhat scientific overtones, that featured their core concept.
And being on Ravnica would also explain the restrictive use: it's supposed to help you cast Orzholgnya coloured spells in one, two or three colours, not to be splashed into a different three colour deck to just round out the colour fixing.
Oh, interesting. I think wizards do avoid doing many "give net 1 mana cards" because of the finnicky-ness of remembering when they don't help, but they do do some and this would make sense for a three-colour focussed set.
I submit:
Saltsteppe Roost
The obvious connection here is Azban, or Tarkir generally. But most lands benefit from being able to be reprinted in other sets. So I chose "Saltsteppe" to evoke "Sandsteppe" from the other Tarkir cycle of wedgelands, to help remember which triland is which. And "roost" to evoke dragons (without necessarily needing physical dragons). Also, the dragon connection suggests "magestic, powerful, exciting, but hard to aim" which I thought fit the land :)
It could be part of a cycle of "something roost" or "something place" where the places are different dragon-y terms evoking the different clans' strengths. I don't have to choose which for this challenge :)
Welcome back! Sometimes you stumble across a mechanic that's so obvious, that it makes you wonder if it has been in the original game for years and you just haven't seen it yet. I don't think Wizards has done this, but I'm also kind of surprised they haven't.
Maybe the reason is the razor's edge nature of this card. In order to be playable, you need three lands. Opening a two land hand with one of these cards is a problem. And it sure is a clunky land. Keeping mana up to cast Giant Growth during your opponent's turn is rough. But this card also cuts through the challenge of assembling a mana base, giving players exactly what they need, and making casting Doran, the Siege Tower a non-issue.
And sure, Temple of the False God kind of has these problems. But the temple was one land; this card infers a cycle of at least five lands. I don't think Wizards would say 'no' to this mechanic, so much as they probably just keep passing on it for something a little less dynamic.
But what is the card's name?
This one was a rather close one. Ultimately, Jack picked it up. Though, I swapped what Mortal and Kami do, since there aren't any good 1/1 white mortal creature tokens in Kamigawa. Human Samurai tokens could be cool, but I'd expect them to have Bushido. I figured it just made sense for the Kami to make spirits, and have the mortals destroying artifacts and enchantments.
See everybody in (((NTC #062)))!
I still find it really hard to decide who to vote for!
I also considered a submission based on numerology, like 3s vs 7s, which had the advantage of not always tying the same mode to the same faction or strategy, but I didn't think of anything that worked well.
Voting is up! Click here to choose your favorite name!
Ooh, allegiance is a good word for a two faction set. Clan would have been better in a multi faction set like Ravnica.
I think something like this mechanic would be really interesting in Ravnica, but not exactly this: it pretty much would have to refer to the guilds, and rewarding you for focusing on a guild rather than just a three colour deck would be good, but making non overlapping allegiance cards blank is probably too much. Also, how would you choose the colours? I guess in a four guild set you could have the cards in the overlap colours. Or have split cards where one half is a guild allegiance card in that guilds colours and the other is another guild.
It's a pity that words like "Resolve" and "Devotion" already have meanings in Magic!
Captain's Divergence
Diverge - Presence or Distance.
I'm thinking the cycle would all be [Someone's] Divergence, and the "Presence" options would generally put something onto the battlefield or increase your creatures' strength, while the "Distance" options would generally be some kind of removal or control.
Except actually, if I can make another entry, I think I prefer tying this to a specific setting:
Trial of Duty
Allegiance - Mirrodin or Phyrexia
The Elf Soldiers might need to become Cat Soldiers or some such.
Exactly. Someone was saying in Conversation about the difficult of sequels, but I thought that was an excellent idea in that it built directly on the things that were awesome about the original set, but also made the new set about some significant addition, not just more of the same.
And for that matter, I hope that it's set in an actual interesting plane, rather than set in a moment of upheaval that destroys the setting forever :) That was interesting in Scars of Mirrodin because it stood out, but I think MTG sets too many sets in "the world is falling apart/converging/being devoured" and "a big climax" IS the way you sell a book but is NOT the way you sell a set.
Oh, and yes, changing the template to fit your name is fine by me.
Thanks! I was pretty sure I understood what you thought. But in life in general I tend to second guess myself rather often about whether I'm interpreting instructions too loosely or too strictly :)
Wild. Considering the events of Kamigawa took place thousands of years in the past compared to the current Magic storyline (Tetsuo Umezawa is the descendant of Toshiro Umezawa) I could definitely see them returning to Kamigawa and giving it a scifi makeover. It would do an excellent job rehabilitating the domain, too. A lot of people like Kamigawa for flavor reasons, but hate on the mechanics/power level. You need to shake it up quite a bit to get the general audience excited to 'go back'.
Oh, and yes, changing the template to fit your name is fine by me. I've altered the occasional card after the fact to better fit the winning names. This is just does that pre-emptively.
Ooh, interesting. Like "khans or dragons" but (potentially) for sorceries/instants. I wonder how that would work out, if people would usually end up targeting one mode, or if people would make decks that can go in on two different strategies depending what they get.
I thought about what world might have a resonant two-sided choice. Well, ok, actually I was brainstorming what the opposite of "three elves" might be, but in retrospect, that was a good question I should have asked first :)
Path of Blossoms
Clan -- Choose Mortal or Kami
Straight from Kamigawa which was a beautiful (although fiddly) set. I imagined it might be a cycle of "Path of X", although it's probably more important to get the affiliation in one or two colours so there's more chance of the cards overlapping.
I realised too late I'd tweaked the template slightly in not choosing a verb as the keyword. I assume that amount of retemplating is allowed. If not, the most Japanese word for "choosing a clan" is probably "dedicate" and Vitenka already thought of that one :) OK, maybe that is better, but it's too late now :)
While googling japenese words for "war", I learned the japanese name Kami War might have been "Kamiren" which I considered as the choice. Although having a keyword that can be reused for a different faction choice in a new set would be cool.
And I learned that some rumours suggest that MTG might be having an uncoming cyberpunk set set in the future of Kamigawa, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. Or maybe someone else just registered that domain name.
Hmmm. My mind leaps to promising yourself to a particular cause (here, brute force creatures or crumble-like spells). Promise is a weak word. Devote is too close to devotion which is taken. Dedicate.
And while we could dedicate to the cause (Physical / Mystical) ... which... writing it out like that isn't as bad as I thought it would be? I was going to say you should put god names in there. And think of an appropriate pantheon. But actually? Keeping it to concepts makes it a lot more expandable and re-usable.
Card name... Now that is harder. Obviously, dedicate should be in the name. Luckily the only thin already in that namespace is Dedicated Martyr. I think the best way to square the circle of this wanting to have two completely different names is to just sidestep it. The artwork should be some kind of ceremony, and we'll reference the name of the ceremony in the card name. Obscure ceremonies... oh. Or not. Oh dear. the pun is horrible and yet must be made. Votive Dedication
Okay, that probably requires some explanation. We not only need the name for this card, but the keyword, and also the name of the two choices. Since this card was confusing enough, I chose Elf Soldier for the creature types.
How this works: When you cast the spell, it asks you to make a modal choice. Whatever you choose is what you're going to choose for the rest of the game. So, for example, the choices might be "creatures" or "life", and if I chose creatures, each time I cast NTC #061, I would have to keep choosing creatures. But this card presumes there are also a number of cards in this set with the same mechanic. Casting a card with this mechanic would force me to make a choice and stick with that choice with all of those cards.
But clearly "creatures" or "life" are two boring, lazy names. You'll probably want something better (especially since the other cards probably won't split with those two mechanics, specifically.) And the keyword mechanic also needs a name... just mentioning that again, because it's easy to miss.
Oh... and what's this card's name?
Froggy wins this week with Purifying Spirit. See everybody in (((NTC #061)))!
Poll is up! Click here to choose your favorite card name!