Homelands Restored: Recent Activity
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| Skeleton |
Recent updates to Homelands Restored: (Generated at 2025-08-07 19:46:01)
| Homelands Restored: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Skeleton |
Recent updates to Homelands Restored: (Generated at 2025-08-07 19:46:01)
Original card with alt. flavor text from Ambush Party.
Red needs a positive aura, and probably needs a card that has or grants haste. Strange we've never seen this combination pop up on a 1 cost card yet. Also strange that Wizards never named a card 'Celerity'. Considering it was their inhouse name for Haste back in the day, you'd think they'd be eager to slap the word on something.
Seemed to have solved your problem by accident, Jack. It occurred to me that I wanted to add some poison to this set, to give Leeches more relevance. So this card is getting Infect soon, and you can, theorhetically activate it every turn (though, not for long, I suppose). Also keeps the Infect theme in black/green, which works for me.
That's a good idea. Flagged.
Huh. Looking through the skeleton, I find that there are no Soldiers in the set and almost no Warriors. Guess I'll have to work on that, too.
I feel like this could be Uncommon, if you're building for draft. It looks like a nice buildaround.
Original card, with alternate flavor text from Feast of the Unicorn.
I was tossing around a straight creature destruction spell for
. Eventually, I thought of Basalt Golem and thought that would be cool. The wall sub-theme in these early sets is a nice bonus.
Originally, the card said destroy, but then it occurred to me that if this targeted a regenerating creature... well that's dumb. So I tried adding 'As long as that creature goes to the graveyard' but that didn't seem right either. So I just did what the flavor told me I was doing anyway. Stealing your creature and turning it into a statue. Figure it reads more evil that way, too.
Original card, with alternate artwork and alt. flavor text from Dry Spell.
I needed discard. I needed a raise dead. I combined them like so. I'm not sure if it would have been more appropriate to just staple Mind Rot to Raise Dead, but I guess we're telling players not to hold creatures in their hand instead. Seems like a powerful spell... but the four for one can only happen at a perfect moment in the game when your opponent still has two cards in hand, and you've put two creatures in the yard.
Wasted too much time looking for artwork when I realized that the alt. art for Dry Spell would work fine. Is it me? Or did anyone else assume the artwork for Dry Spell was the same helmet as Helm of Obedience? It turns out it isn't, but I guess it doesn't hurt to make the connection anyway. Besides, Ihsan is talking about obedience's cost in the flavor. Makes sense to me.
...and updated to first strike.
I agree. It occurred to me, though, that a blue 3/3 that turns into a 2/2 first striker is pretty sweet. And the red to white card makes more sense with lifelink anyway, so that's where this is probably going.
A pity, almost. This card isn't good because of the haste. It's good because it's a 3/3 for 4 in blue. I kind of don't want the activated ability to also be good, but I guess I gotta if I don't want people hating the card.
I feel like a 2/2 with haste for 6 is pretty terrible.
Well, technically Money-Grubbing Minotaur won't get used every turn, but I get your point (I'm kind of hazy that people will like the Money-Grubber, too. But, to be honest, intentionally giving your own creature -1/-1 isn't sexy to begin with.) As a matter of fact, how you use the ability is different on Castigating Caste since one can use it twice (or maybe more times per turn with some boost) if you need to. There's no need to leap the lizard twice.
It's something to think about. Ultimately, this cycle has little to do with how the set as a whole operates. As long as they stick to their casting costs and don't go OP, I can kind of do what I want. I guess I want them all to have a similar feel to the Lizard... but I also don't want to end up with 5 evasive creatures. Red to white is likely to give first strike (assuming I don't do something really stupid and try to grant flash to the creature in my... nope. Time to stop talking about that.)
So, in theory, I would need a blue creature with a red ability, and a black creature with a green ability, no evasion, no hexproof or protection (plenty in the set already) that can be activated once per turn for positive benefit. And things like firebreathing don't really make sense (though, trust me, I thought about using "-1/-1: Target creature gets +1/+0." Seems silly, though.) Oh, and it would be a plus if I didn't have to change the flavor on either card while I'm at it. Hmm...
I like this, but something feels a little odd -- I think it's that, some of the other leaping abilities you might choose each turn whether to activate them, whereas if you use this, it's pretty much guaranteed that either this will die, or the creature blocking it will die, so the ability will usually only ever translates into 1 or 2 points of damage total.
Original card, based on the Leaping Lizard cycle.
I thought about using 'must block' here. But common has zero tramplers, so it made more sense in my mind to just use that.
Other than that, nothing special. Oh, I thought about using an undead minotaur here, but the blue creature in the leaping lizard cycle is already a minotaur. Would have felt weird. Plus this artwork works better as a black/green creature than any zombie minotaur I looked at anyway.
Sounds reasonable. Consider done. Also increased toughness by one to separate the two cards a little more.
The mechanic you're talking about (enabling Dark Maze to be a repeatable attacker) sounds like it should be a common-plus-uncommon interaction, not common-plus-common. Commons should stand alone for their utility in Limited decks, not just be combo pieces. (I'm all for commons that are combo pieces as well as being useful on their own, of course.) I'd say saboteur-triggered self-bounce is uncommon as well. Any kind of Vedalken Mastermind/Crystal Shard just doesn't seem common to me.
I'd say swap this for some uncommon creature - Sea Sprite seems a fine choice.
Black commons. Currently seems balanced, just missing pieces. Path to victory is as simple as playing a 1/1 Giant Albatross on round 2, then enchanting it with Feast of the Unicorn on round 3.
Currently has 8 cards, 4 of which are creatures. Needs 11, with 6 creatures ideally. Missing:
-
One solid creature destruction spell.
-
Discard
-
Raise Dead
Things that aren't present, and could be, but aren't necessary: -
Shade
-
Weakness
-
A combat trick
-
Mill
-
Card draw, net positive
Hmm. The obelisk is strictly uncommon because it can't do anything on its own, and makes little sense in multiples. This, at least, is 1/1 bird. But I get what you're going for, Alex. Unlimited activation on an ability that isn't obvious to new players.
I agree with you, Alex, but I'm not sure I know how to make repeatable bounce more common (and keep the evasive creature.) Well, okay, the saboteur trigger, but I already mentioned why that isn't appropriate.
I could switch this card and the uncommon Sea Sprite. I'm not sure, however, if blue common really 'works' without a card like this, though. I'm going to have to do some playtesting.
To be honest this looks more like an uncommon than a common to me as well.
Original Card.
I needed a hard counter. I needed an offensive bounce spell. Here they both are. Unfortunately, this card pulling double duty means there aren't many cards in Blue that deal with your opponent's stuff. No Thirst, and no cheap bounce. I guess one can only do so much with 11 slots, seven of which were filled in before Limited existed. I could have slipped Disperse into this file. I just felt blue wanted Albatross Familiar more.
Original card.
Theoretically, this flavor is tied into Giant Albatross, which I color shifted in black. I only did that as an afterthought, though (and because the set could use more birds.) Originally, I was going to use the Giant Albatross artwork, but I thought it might confuse people into thinking this is what Giant Albatross became, and I didn't want that. That, and the albatross has a saddle. What a weird 1/1.
Anyhow, I wanted some repeatable bounce for Dark Maze, and it doesn't hurt that the creature bounces Flight of Fancy too. I would have preferred this ability to be a saboteur trigger, but I was afraid of what would happen if a player attacked with both this and Dark Maze, only to have the bird get smacked out of the sky. Good luck convincing that player to attack with his Dark Maze/Familiar combo again.
Oh, another aside. The original idea was to reprint Obelisk of Undoing as a blue enchantment. But I needed a 1/1 bird, and the Obelisk by itself was clearly uncommon material minimum.
No no, this is good. You certainly aren't bothering me with this; I'm really interested in the minutia, to the point where I worry about boring other people with my own damn comments.
At the very least, this gives us a record. At some point, I plan on highlighting this set on my blog, and welcoming people to use it. The more general comments on the card, the more people realize that a lot of thought went into this set, and the choices weren't done on a whim.
I'm sorry this is causing difficulties, I certainly think it's ok to ignore it for the moment. But I'm really interesting in it, because I don't think it's just an edge case -- I think it's actually an important part of design making cards that (usually) look like they do what they actually do, and part of that is sticking to "what words usually mean". Like, the same effect can be written in multiple ways, wizards usually use the same way. And Mark Rosewater talks about cards in base sets saying "you draw a card" not "target player draws a card" because even though the latter is more interesting, the first is a little easier to grok for newcomers.
That's why I focussed on this minor templating point, because I could see a problem, but I wasn't sure WHY there was a problem so I wanted to think it through.
I think the new text for sea troll is ok, though I agree it's not great. I do hope maybe there might be a better alternative we'll think of in time.
This is an odd problem. Because there's nothing wrong grammatically with the card. Jack mentioned new players having a problem, but I don't think they would. They'd just parse the sentence. It's people who have been playing the game for one year plus that would get tripped up for the reason you mentioned, Alex. They just aren't expecting the card's controller to be a defending player.
If this was me developing for Wizards, I'd stick to my guns on this. Because the only way to debunk that thought process in people's heads is to start using the word 'defending player' in other ways. But this set is supposed to be about conforming to standards, so I guess that's what I got to do. Delta Scamp won't be a problem. It's Sea Troll that bugs me, because it has to conform from:
"
: [Blink Sea Troll]. Activate this ability only if Sea Troll is attacking or blocking and the defending player controls an Island."
to
"
: [Blink Sea Troll]. Activate this ability only if Seat Troll is attacking and the defending player controls an Island, or if Sea Troll is blocking and you control an Island."
Messy. But I guess it's what needs to be done.
It doesn't read to me like it cares about your own Islands. "defending player" certainly can refer to you, but it's unusual because most cards will just say "you".
I honestly find the spelled out version easier to grok, the repeated words seem to fit a template which I can easily remember, not force me to remember them separately.
I think (I'm not sure?) "defending player" nearly always or always means a player you're attacking, not just any defending player. So people will assume it means that and then notice (or not notice) that it doesn't.
And I think that would apply to "normal" players even more than me, but I'm not completely sure, it may be the reverse.
You could always leave it until you design the rare and then see how it looks.