[Democracy: Bottom-up Set]: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to [Democracy: Bottom-up Set]: (Generated at 2025-05-01 09:19:37)
| [Democracy: Bottom-up Set]: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Recent updates to [Democracy: Bottom-up Set]: (Generated at 2025-05-01 09:19:37)
changed name so it's clear it's not a votable card
Fair enough.
I'll note that Morph has a bit of anti-synergy with both kinds of Tribal and any sort of color-matters, unless we make colorless, typeless creatures their own "tribe."
Good point. I'd also like to see if we can't find a way to make quests a lot simpler so that they're more common-suitable.
I mean; can you imagine trying to put a quest on a creature right now?
One obvious thing that would make them a lot simpler would be for Y to be one - that removes half the language right there, the rules text becomes "Do something, then something good happens to you". It also means the rewards would want to be proportionally smaller (thus more common-suitable)
The hard part would be making it feel like a quest. These small things would be more like a single step in a quest. But they could easily play into that - "Summon an elf to your side - receive bacon"
And... how abut morph as the combination?
The reward for the quest is... your 2/2 creature just became a spell effect, or a mighty creature.
I had to pick some values; due to the relative paucity of votes I wanted to emphasise what was most popular.
FWIW, setting the values to 1, 0.5 and -1 gives much the same ordering, except Control Matters is pushed down a bit.
I think I'd say hold off flavour for a moment, Link - I think we still need to figure out what other themes we're going to pair with quests, and how we can do that. Once we have an idea for a couple of the key mechanics, then it's time to let flavour give us some more ideas.
We've started a discussion about what quest counters as a major mechanic can do over on Discussion: Quest Mechanic. Someone should probably start an analogous discussion about tribal, which was the other word to crop up in multiple positive votes. It looks like people were wanting a few different variations on what tribal might mean, so we should figure out what we're wanting to collaborate on.
Once we know what kind of quests we're having, and what kind of tribal lines the set might divide along, I think that's the time to establish a flavour. Democratically, of course :)
The voting was clear that quest counters were something we wanted to be a major mechanic. One important thing about a set's major mechanic is it has to be on common cards. ("If your theme's not at common, it's not your theme.") So we need to give some consideration to common mechanics that can use quest counters.
This in turn means we need to find a way to keep complexity down while keeping interest up. For example, we could make it that all the commons have one single trigger (like Zendikar's common quests all triggering on landfall). Assuming landfall isn't going to be a major mechanic in this set, we could look at the other proposed themes in Vote 2 - Results!.
Some of them that leap out to me:
There are several options.
I think it'd make sense to look in a bit more detail at all of Zendikar's quest enchantments.
There was the common cycle:
Sunspring Expedition, 
Ior Ruin Expedition, 
Soul Stair Expedition, 
Zektar Shrine Expedition, 
Khalni Heart Expedition. These all accumulated quest counters on Landfall (another major theme of Zendikar), and sacrificed to do something. Note that this execution makes for the simplest gameplay: just one trigger across all common quests, and the bonus once achieved goes away.
There was the uncommon cycle:
Quest for the Holy Relic, 
Quest for Ancient Secrets, 
Quest for the Gravelord, 
Quest for Pure Flame, 
Quest for the Gemblades. These each acquired quest counters under their own specific circumstances, but again sacrificed to accomplish the goal.
There was the rare cycle:
Luminarch Ascension, 
Archmage Ascension, 
Bloodchief Ascension, 
Pyromancer Ascension, 
Beastmaster Ascension. These all accumulated quest counters under specific circumstances, and "turned on" once they activated, granting you a powerful effect (in some cases very powerful). They're mostly "build-around"s, needing specific cards to be useful (card-draw for Archmage, mill or discard for Bloodchief (though it works as a minor bonus in most circumstances), 4-ofs of instants or sorceries for Pyromancer). White and green are more universally applicable and should perhaps be more the kind of thing we're aiming for.
Finally, there were the Worldwake quests. Four of them, across four colours, two rares and two uncommons: Quest for Ula's Temple, Quest for the Nihil Stone, Quest for the Goblin Lord, Quest for Renewal. These were like the Ascensions, accumulating counters under specific circumstances and then "switching on" to give you some moderately powerful effect once they had sufficient counters.
How do you deal with a morphed instant when Humility is on the battlefield, and something forces it to flip? It would flip face up and then just be an instant on the battlefield because whatever effect you used to Spellmorph it would not exist as you flipped it.
Why would you make voting "for" worth 2 and against only -1? Seems like they should have been worth the same value so that it actually mattered to vote against something.
I think the next step for me would be to come up with some sort of flavor, even if it's rather vague, in order to help us guide the rest of the design process.
Mechanics for the themes? I suggest, run each theme concurrently; everyone suggesting any mechanic they can that fits one or more of those - sample cards welcome. Once we've got a bunch of ideas, do a vote to cull some out for further dev and more sample cards.
Then we should probably start on assigning a skeleton.
So, it looks like:
Then we have some minor themes to work in:
- Some manner of tribal:
- Hybrid (if possible)
- Traps (if possible)
- Keyword tribal
- 5 race 5 creature tribal
So, what's the next step in the democratic process? Suggestions below.
actually that thread made me more confident that spellmorph could work because it's filling in a rule that is undefined as of yet. that thread is like people arguing about two-sided cards before Innistrad.
Well, it's Tuesday. I'll collate the results later.
I'm a bit worried about Spellmorph after seeing this thread: mtgsalvation
Major themes I'd like:
Things I don't want to see:
Alright, I'm convinced that Victory Counters can fall by the wayside.
I'd note that although the block can only have a couple of major themes, many of the things that get positive upvotes could be included as minor themes.
Things I'd like to see as a major theme:
Things I'd like to see as minor themes:
Things I don't want to see:
I'm not so keen on victory counters because most approaches to them would be very uninteractive. If you don't have to interact with the opponent's life total at all, then you make their blockers, fog effects, lifegain, tappers and so on, all irrelevant. (And you risk even making their creature removal irrelevant.) The cards would have to be quests that involve the opponent somehow, but at that point, it's going to be hard to balance them to be easier than dealing 20 damage but not overpowered when played in casual games against other blocks' decks. It might be possible, but it sounds pretty hard.
Things I'd like to see
Things I'd not like to see
I personally don't think the game needs another type of counter specifically to track winning the game. The game's managed with filibuster counters, luck counters, charge counters, and tower counters - having Yet Another Life Total to track would get tedious.
Out of curiosity, why are you against Victory Counters, cmeister2? I thought they'd be a nice play on how much people like achievements in video games.
(From above)
Three I'd like to see:
- Control Matters
- Quests Matter
- Some degree of multicolour; not necessarily wedges
Things I'd like not to see:
- Legends Matter
- Victory/Luck counters
Well, it's after the 28th, so we're done submitting ideas and it's time for everybody to say which three mechanical bases they'd like to do most and which they want to do least.
Three I'd Like to See:
Honorable mention to Wedge.
Three I'd Like Not to See
Non-standard format cards wouldn't have to be released as decks, but that could actually be a really interesting idea. It could be easier to design something that's immediately fun to play, rather than try and design a set which lends itself to fun decks after people have tried as hard as they can to break it during deckbuilding.