Anydria Storage: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Anydria Storage: (Generated at 2025-05-01 15:58:35)
For the most part I'm not directly color-shifting anything. It's not like white or black is going to get "
: Counter target spell." The tertiary things that the other colors could do, but don't as often, are just being played up. Green gets card draw. White gets soft counter spells. Red needs some fresh design space, and this is the perfect sort of set for that to start happening, so it's getting Phase Shift and Chronoflare because I think it should be able to get such things, not because I think it only deserves those things in this set.
To me, seeing that red is getting a Clone variant highlights even more that blue is missing. Seeing a green serpent, a red sphinx, and (still thinking on this one) black merfolk makes blue's absence even more obvious. Clearly we're of different opinions, though.
If blue returns later in the set, then color shifting blue into other colors is even more redundant and counter-productive.
The coolest thing is how draft would progress from one set to three sets. 111 draft would be zero blue effects (except lone PW). This would play very differently than any other draft ever. Then set 2 would be a normal set, even distribution of colors. With some real blue cards, 112 or 211 would play slightly differently than 111. Finally with set 3 filled with blue cards (dare I imagine ALL cards are blue or part blue?), it will again change draft into a different mode. Theoretically each draft deck would contain several blue cards (not necessarily main deck though, but in the player's pool).
You suggested this path before, and I found it very interesting. It's definitely one take on how to do this set, and honestly, it's a very smart take. It's not the way I've chosen to do it, though. However, some of your ideas are great. White has in fact stagnated itself by trying to overcome all adversity with strict laws; perhaps I can make this lack of advancement felt in other colors, as well. I like your ideas of white creatures being out in the day and black creatures at night.
Anydria isn't a plane that never had blue. It had blue in the past, and lost it to some cataclysmic event. The other colors then learned to get on without it, which is why they're seeking to fill the rolls of the things blue normally accomplishes. The story of the block is about Tamiyo accidentally bringing blue back to Anydria, and in great force. She can't bring it back if it never existed in the first place. By the last block, Anydria is basically covered in water.
By the way, perhaps calling Anydria a Desert plane is a bit of a misnomer. It's the easy way to put it, and it makes understanding the very basic flavor simple, but it's not strictly true. There is water on Anydria, and if you drink it, it will hydrate you enough to keep you alive. It just leaves you still thirsty, because the water on Anydria completely lacks blue mana. There are also large forests, which are home to treefolk; the one you see referenced most prominently on the cards right now, the Scorchwood, is very expansive and is the main habitat of green creatures on the the plane. There is less water, and there are more deserts, but Anydria is not one big desert.
I guess if I have to summarize more clearly, I'd say that Anydria is about what would happen if blue stopped existing, not what it would be like if blue never existed.
P.S. I wrote this at 3 am so I apologize for any lack of clarity.
Perhaps use a similar method to how Maro describes each color, color pair, and 3-color shard. This means theorizing what this 4-color group stands for in the absence of blue.
What is blue about? Its main themes are water, knowledge, and time management. Without water, the world is arid and stagnant. Without knowledge, there is not much progress. Without time management, nobody thinks ahead; they live only for the moment.
The color pair opposite of blue is red and green. According to Maro, red follows its impulses and green is driven by its animal instincts. Without blue's interference and sense of progress, red/green can run rampant and wild. The world remains unchanging for many eons (except after catastrophic events). Evolution and adaptation is a gradual process, so blue trying to progress too rapidly is detrimental to natural selection.
Where does white and black come in? They represent the day and night cycles. During the day, white creatures take advantage of the dry heat and prey on the weak who have been oppressed by the heat. On the contrary, black creatures come out at night when it's cooler and scavenge on the corpses, possibly remains of the creatures that have succumbed to the daytime heat.
There should be no distributing of blue's pie to the other colors. Otherwise, the absence thereof couldn't truly be felt. It wouldn't be a block without blue, instead where blue is incorporated into the colors. So white would become white + blue. However, that seems antithesis to the theme. How did white obtain blue traits when blue doesn't exist at all?
Desert world seems way too played out. Why not a world filled with methane, or lava-filled volcanoes, or salt lakes, etc.? (I admit, I just read some articles about how other life forms could exist, like whether methane-filled Titan, Saturn's moon, could harbor life, and if so, in what form.)
In retrospect this is more of a green shift of Oblivion Ring than a shift of anything blue.
1. You know, this might be the perfect set for the long sough-after White or Black Morphling.
7. I could possibly see a red Compulsive Research variant, but I think Perilous Research is a great shift. I'm thinking black can't quite get it straight up because it's not allowed to get rid of its own enchantments, but it could get something similar, or red could get it.
9. A flying pinger is a great callback blue reference.
Bulleted lists are done in Markdown by starting each line in a paragraph with *, where the paragraph is set apart from preceding text by a blank line.
1: I was actually thinking of a creature with both C: +1/-1 and C: -1/+1, as a Morphling reference. I'd say Torchling had a "blue feel" in the way you're going for.
7: That sounds risky. I don't think a nonblue Thirst for Knowledge would fit anywhere else. I suppose Compulsive Research could be a Harmonize variant.
9: Ah, yes, I agree you wouldn't want both Reverberate and Phase Shift in the same set. Maybe one in set 1 and one in set 2? To make a more blue-feeling pinger, how about a colourshift of Fledgling Mawcor (minus the morph) into red? Or Thornwind Faeries, I guess, but Fledgling Mawcor has the Anaba Shaman stats to help it feel more red-suited (while still feeling a little blue).
How do you make bullet points like that, Alex? I still haven't figured it out.
1. +1/-1 seems great for red, and perhaps I'll stretch -1/+1 into white. White already gets shieldbreathing, and it would certainly make sense for white to reduce its power if it was trying to be pacifistic.
2. Black will definitely be getting some mill.
3. Ooh, Dream Thrush would make a great shift to green, especially given that in my little blurb about the different color's themes, I mention that green's way of surviving is promoting the spread of life and community. A green creature that turns things into forests might be a good way of showing this.
4. For some reason I always think of red as a color that changes colors, and I have no idea why. Perhaps it's my artistic red civilization from Onora that polluted me.
5. White often gets equipment tutors, and it gets artifact recursion well enough. Something like Trinket Mage could probably make sense in white.
6. A high flier in white is a great idea for one of my common "blue feel" white cards!
7. I was thinking of giving something like Compulsive Research or Thirst for Knowledge to another color. Perilous Research sounds like a great shift, too.
8. I would never have thought of Wistful Thinking. That's a good one to look at.
9. I always forget that Prodigal Pyromancer used to be blue, since it makes so little sense with blue's current color pie. Char might be a good reprint as a color-shifted Psionic Blast. I thought about Reverberate, but I think the slot I would put that in is probably filled by Phase Shift.
Inspired by Alex suggesting a color shift of Spreading Seas over on Suggestions.
Those are all excellent suggestions, Alex. I'll go over them thoroughly when I get home from work.
A few brainstormed ideas for your "blue feel" cards:
Thanks, Jack.
The one thing I'm most unsure about right now is React. I'm starting to wonder if it's a bad idea.
Yes, it's intended that the creature has to be tapped in order to focus.
I abandoned Focus because it seemed like a feel-bad mechanic. Keeping your creature tapped to get an additional benefit? It has to be a pretty good benefit in order to pay off. I don't think people would enjoy Focus. I guess I'd have to playtest with it to know for sure, though.
I decided against using Response because it's so narrow in application, though I may use it in one of the next two sets.
Whoa, that's pretty spicy. Need to get through with it once, but after that it's... hm. Cast on turn 1, attack on turn 2. Turn 3 focus it and it's a tapped 3/3; turn 4 either attack as a 3/3 or focus it into a 5/5 that attacks on turn 5... Yeah, I guess that's all reasonable. It's a very good one-drop, but not overpowered. Especially since when you draw it on turn 6 it's not going to be easy to get it tapped.
(I assume focus doesn't apply if the creature is already untapped?)