Homelands Restored: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Homelands Restored: (Generated at 2025-08-07 19:44:55)
| Homelands Restored: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Skeleton |
Recent updates to Homelands Restored: (Generated at 2025-08-07 19:44:55)
Preprint of Portal Angel of Mercy with original flavor text.
Angel of Mercy fills a number of holes and I'm happy to add it. I need a 5-cost creature that can finish a game by its lonesome. The set could use more flying, and while life gain in white common isn't necessary, the angel lets me check it off my bucket list. It even makes sense flavor-wise... the flavor text of Homelands infers Serra and Feroz left Ulgrotha, never to return. These Angels of Mercy are the few creations of Serra that decided to stay behind and help protect the plane in its time of need.
The only other oddity is that the Angel is common. But... well, it is. the only reason it's been hanging out at uncommon for 15 years is because of its creature type.
Original Card, with art and flavor stolen from Fifth Edition Death Speakers.
Leaping Lizard was all alone with its off-color activation cost, so I decided to make a cycle out of it. Hole-filling requested a 3cc creature. Bob's your uncle.
A pity. I was primed to fill three holes with one white creature that activated red mana to reduce its power and toughness to Trumpet Blast the rest of your team. But then I realized I was walking the wrong way around the color wheel. Oh well.
Alright, White commons first. Currently, White seems like the weakest color, speaking strictly from a game design perspective. It doesn't have a way to win outside of pecking the opponent to death with a couple of Mesa Falcons. So giving the color some punch is a priority.
Currently has 7 cards, 4 of which are creatures. Needs 11 total, with 6 creatures ideally. Missing:
- A way to achieve victory. At least two cards that will get there by themselves, and...
- One trick.
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A beneficial aura
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One army boost
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Cycle of off-color activations inspired by Leaping Lizard.
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One vanilla creature.
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At least one card that costs five or six. Maybe two.
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One creature that costs 3
Things that aren't present, and could be, but aren't as necessary:
- Life gain
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Reset or Flicker
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Combat based removal
Since you're going for full technical accuracy on this set, I'll point out that the second word of "Enchant creature" shouldn't be capitalised.
Ack!
And edited. Thanks Alex.
Needs P/T.
When digging around in Fifth Edition, I found this card with flavor text from Baron Sengir. Fallen Angel never stopped being a good creature. The only real question is whether common is more appropriate.. but the card makes a good 'build around me' and 'doesn't play as well in multiples', so uncommon it is.
Also vaguely disturbing. By attaching the Baron to the flavor text, it becomes more likely that the original angel was once a Serra Angel. Huh. Now that I think of it, maybe Serra Angel should be in this set, too..?
Original Card: Fifth Edition Fallen Angel
I think my mind still has this card lined up with Island Sanctuary after 15 plus years of that not being an available combo. But, yeah, if you compare this card to Gravity Well, it's about on par, if not too expensive. I suppose you could always exploit Gravity Well's ability with Killer Whale type cards, but that's not so common that it's worth stressing over.
Alright. It's a rare. It should probably cost
. Changing casting cost.
"Powerful?" This is so narrow that I feel like it could cost less.
Well, I was planning on having one of each two-color card in the set. I'm not excited to see Mystic Decree take the blue-green slot, but at least it makes more sense than mono-blue. Green removes flying. Blue removes Islandwalk. I get a bonus aside that this powerful hoser can't be stuffed into just any blue deck.
I made a print run of all commons to playtest a few matches to see what each color was missing. Leave it to having the cards physically in front of you to see the immediate major problems. Green has three creatures that costs
(one of which, Trade Caravan was shifted from white.) I know I would have seen that eventually, but it's funny how stark these things become when you have the cards spread out in front of you.
So I'm moving Folk to green. Kind of weird, since this is supposed to be a Forest village... but it's a very white card none the less. The only real problem is that I'm going to have to fill out white with some aggressive commons. Right now, common white's strategy appears to be "Hold the ground, Arrest the occasional big creature and ride Mesa Falcons to victory."
Moved back to blue. Blue needs something 'Serpent-y', and this is the closest thing in set.
Moved Prophecy from from white to black, and changed gain 2 life to drain 1 life. This has nothing to do with Prophecy... I bumped Headstone from black to white because it didn't make sense flavor-wise (why is a Headstone an instant?), or when compared to Cremate. But that left two cantrips that cost
in the file. Would have fixed this sooner, but the idea that this card needed to shift into blue got stuck in my head... and well... Jinx. Why the other library manipulating color didn't occur to me is a mystery.
I realized that Fifth Edition probably had a few more quotes on odd cards, so I went digging. Fifth Fallen Angel has some Baron Sengir flavor text, and makes a good preprint so that's in. I don't know what to think of Deathgrip/Lifeforce featuring a conversation between Baron Sengir and the Autumn Willow, though. I got to think about it... but I'm leaning toward 'pretend I didn't see that.'
Maybe I can just let it inspire two completely different cards and keep the flavor text? Hmm...
Poking around to see what else I could find, I discovered Taysir flavor text on a Fifth Edition card. Wanderlust can't be a straight pre-print, though. It's too weak, and doesn't make sense in modern green (makes sense flavor-wise. Pity the mechanic wasn't used much. I blame Feedback and the like for watering the Wanderlust mechanic down.)
Anyhow, I could have made the card black, but I would either need to drop the casting cost to
, or increase the life lost to 3 and increase the casting cost (technically, there are reasons why you'd want to play a Stab Wound without the -2/-2, but it wouldn't read well.) Neither of those felt right, so I flipped this to life gain. The name isn't as appropriate as the life loss version, but it still makes sense IMO.
I suppose the real question is whether this needs to be preprinted at all if it's going to come with this baggage. Especially since most people won't recognize the Fifth edition flavor text connection. Not sure. It can hang out in the file for now, though. Probably needs a new name to nix confusion. "Wandering" will probably work fine.
Original card: Fifth Edition Wanderlust
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Preprinted from 5th edition.
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Changed opponent loses 1 life to you gain 2 life.
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Trigger is now during your upkeep.
How I forgot to add this in first pass is beyond me. Especially considering the set needs some common enchantment destruction.
Original card: Aura Blast